Against All Odds

*Against All Odds and the Inkravari are a fan-creation and are not canon to Project Xero!* 

Ink's body thrummed with thoughts, yet his mind was unable to settle on just one. Like fireflies, each thought presented itself and vanished as soon as he landed on it. He observed a small bug perched on a particularly vibrant leaf and watched as the bug’s movements caused the morning's dew to fall.

Tap, tap. Two droplets wet the soft ground in a haphazard splatter. Ink flicked his tail and felt the air of empty space against his skin, caused by his missing fin. He felt the humidity of the setting weigh on him as brilliant rays beamed overhead, slicing through the forest’s thick canopy.

No later than noon, Ink interjected into his thoughts. He pulled a heavy, dark binder from a nearby satchel. Papers jutted out at each end, their white sheen blinding in the light. He thumbed to a tabbed folder, retrieved a wooden pen tucked away in the spine, and began to write hasty observations.

Humid. Roughly 75-80 percent. Jurupa Forest; Outskirts. Resources are low. Will have to turn in for the day soon. Almost out of water. Definitely need to bring more snacks. Nothing of significance, yet. But I feel that I am close.

Black words spelling out his current state spilled onto the ivory page. Close, he underlined—once, then again for good measure. Close.

Gaining insight into Jurupa Forest’s mutualistic symbiosis and the interdependence of the biome’s flora and fauna, his work for ARC on life in the forest had been nothing short of spectacular. With Jurupa as his home, no scientist could better study these relationships than Ink himself. Yet, even with this acclaim, Ink had always held onto what seemed to be the impossible: re-discovery of the very species he was so deeply intertwined with.

Inkravari.

Declared extinct, their ecological niche presumed filled, Owai-6 had long since moved on. But a single paper on these elusive beings would be a breakthrough in AREZ sciences. The paper. The kind that earned grants and rewrote textbooks.

Still, no funding body would support a search based on intuition and old field notes. Two decades had passed with no confirmed sighting, no tracks, no remains. ARC declined to fund his pursuit.

So, he searched alone. Every free moment was devoted to the cause. 

Ink snapped his binder shut. The noise echoed sharply, bouncing between the trunks of impossibly tall trees, cutting through the ambient hum of forest life. He flinched. The Xero’s ears flickered as he listened to the faint scuttling of unseen creatures. His body taut with tension he didn’t dare voice. If anything had been nearby, it was surely gone now.

Ink silently grabbed his pocket notebook, a quiet alternative to his binder. The chestnut–colored notebook was dedicated to extensive notes taken from ARC’s laboratory and expedition archives, acting as a field guide. His eyes scanned the pages, as he had done so numerous times before. Words blurred together, diagrams stretched and shrunk as he flipped through the pages almost frantically. A nervous gesture, perhaps. 

And then, a word, and an image, struck him almost as soon as he saw it:
Semi-aquatic. 

Just below the words that had been scrawled in hurried handwriting was a drawing. Clearly taken from an old study book on the distant planet Kiah, the image depicted a slender animal bobbing on the surface of murky river water. Plants shrouded the creature from view, yet its presence was undeniable. Under the image, in faint, printed text read:
Ascadon swimming in the Omahri River, Kiah. 

The image had been torn from a textbook, just before the print date. Despite the wear and fading, Ink recognized that the drawing was no more than a decade old. But something was off. Ink stared. This wasn’t an Ascadon. The creature was too small and lacked a dorsal spine. 

The creature had been…falsely identified?

Falsely Identified.
The thought seemed absurd—this was from a published textbook, after all. But Ink knew Ascadons. He had encountered many. They were stout, amphibian-like creatures. This being, gliding just above the water’s surface, was not one of them. His pulse quickened.

How had he missed this? After years of research, how had he overlooked something so simple?

Then a second thought–perhaps even more absurd than the first–came to him. 

Was this really the Omarhi River?
The foliage in the drawing certainly matched the flora of Kiah, yet the waterway depicted was narrow—more stream than river. It lacked the width and banks typical of the jungle’s great Omarhi. And moreover, the plant life, while familiar, wasn’t exclusive to Kiah. Similar species had been introduced to the eroded regions of Jurupa, the result of a conservation effort years ago in an attempt to restore outer zones of the forest; botanists had imported seeds from other planets to thicken the underbrush. To confirm his suspicions, Ink packed his various supplies with methodical efficiency, and took out a digital pad. The drawing must’ve been based on a real image—and it didn’t take much digging to find the source. The image was no different than the drawing. This wasn’t just an observational error on the artist’s behalf.
Ink read the caption carefully. Snapped ten years ago—just as he’d guessed—the photo originated from a small expedition tasked with collecting soil samples across several planets. He concluded that this explained how the location on the photo had been mislabeled. Yet, that still left the creature in the image completely unidentified.

 He searched deeper, combing through published papers related to the expedition, hunting for any additional photographs, any footnotes, any fleeting mentions of the unknown being.   Nothing.

 As always, Ink was on his own.
He sank onto a moss-covered stump, half frustrated, half defeated. He knew  this had to be his lead. Something urged him to go on, as insistent as his own heartbeat. However, an old drawing and his intuition wouldn’t be enough.
ARC would never act on superstition alone.

 A gust of wind rustled the canopy overhead, and a few dry leaves spiraled down, brushing against Ink’s shoulders as if to wake him from thought. He blinked, the edges of frustration still clouding his vision. Then, slowly, he stood and dusted himself off. 

 There wasn’t time to wallow. Not now.

 He slipped the digital pad into a side pocket of his satchel and tightened the strap across his chest. Clouds rolled in across the sky, and eased the afternoon heat. The air felt different—cooler, almost charged. The way it gets before a storm, or a discovery. 

 Ink set off northward. Off the trodden path he had walked so many times, away from the comfort of familiarity, the image had sparked something inside him—a memory, a hunch, a pull. His body almost ached with something primal, something deeper than explanation. He was being guided by the beating in his chest.

After an hour of walking, the forest became spliced into two, cut by a body of water. More stream than river–yet not quite small enough to be classified as one. Its steady waters seemed familiar, though Ink had never seen this part of the forest.

Was this it?

 He crouched down and dipped a paw into the water. Though it wasn’t particularly cold, a chill ran up his spine. He closed his eyes, and listened. The soft current lapped at the banks and leaves whispered in the breeze. No animals chittered or scurried. The forest was unusually silent. Ink opened his notebook once more, and retrieved the textbook drawing. The similarities between the two were unquestionable. Though the landscape had changed with time, the stream's curvature and coloration were unmatched. Ink could even locate where the image might've been snapped. He sat with his thoughts for a moment, pondering his next course of action. He had a lead, but without any true physical evidence, there was nothing indicating that the beings were still here.

 Bu then, as Ink moved to pack his things and submit for the day, movement.

 Subtle, almost completely undetectable. Hardly a splash off in the distance, too far for the average ear to pick up. His narrowed to where the sound had come from with unimaginable precision and speed. At first, he thought it was a trick of the current, or even a trick of the mind. But the ripple didn’t match the water. It curved upstream, against logic. Against nature. His vision blurred due to the distance, but the soft outline of a body swimming in the water was unmistakable. 

 Ink’s breath caught in his throat.

 He dared not move, not now when he was so close. His eyes scanned the murky surface again, readjusting. 

 Nothing.
Disappointment seared right into his thoughts. Perhaps it truly had been a trick of his mind, exhausted. He started to get up, but then, movement. 

 Again.
This time,  the splash was closer. He could see a slender body, breaking the surface and dipping back down. It repeated this action twice–no, three times before a flicker came just below the water. Bioluminescence. A behavior unlike any he had seen–unlike any known fauna he had ever encountered.

His pulse thundered in his ears. He reached, slowly, for his pocket notebook, claws trembling, nearly dropping the book into the water. He turned to a blank page.

 Inkravari.

 He measured his writing, ensuring each letter was deliberate, each syllable silenced by the pressure of his pencil. He couldn’t make a sound.

Then, eyes. Two of them, staring at him from across the water. Every theory, every long night of fruitless searching, every refusal letter from ARC—this was the moment it had all led to.

 “I knew it,” he whispered. “I knew you were still out here.”

The creature, the Inkravari, tilted its head. Listening. 

 It studied him, head tilted, posture curious but not afraid. He didn’t move, didn’t dare. A soft hum vibrated in his chest. Not a noise, but a resonance. He realized it wasn’t his heartbeat. The Inkravari was… humming?

 Was it speaking?

 He attempted to hum back and create a similar resonance, but to no avail. Even still, the creature looked at him with a level of understanding. It knew that he was attempting to respond.

Ink hurried to document every sensory detail he could. His pencil shook in his hand. Sketching quickly, barely grazing the paper as he moved from line to line, he captured the sharp contours of its head; its spiney, sloping back; its broad fins; and wide, intelligent eyes.
The water rippled again, first at a distance, then closer. Before Ink could take in a breath, a second one appeared. He watched in awe as the two Inkravari communicated in a low vibration.

They watched him as he wrote just below his scribbles.

JURUPA FOREST - Outskirts, nearing Sector 3C; Coordinates logged.

Observations:
They are here. I have found them.

 Sleek, semi-aquatic. Two, one first and then another that followed after communication. They hum?  Small bioluminescent markings consistent with old reports. Dark coloration, hardly visable when in the water. They appear to have spines and fins, though I could not get close enough to confirm. No sexual  dimorphism observed yet. They are curious, watching. Signs of high intelligence noted. No signs of aggression.

Ink looked up. For a moment, they remained. Just for a beat. And as if knowing he had finished, the two Inkravari dipped back into the dark waters. Gone, as if they had never been there to begin with. 

 Within seconds, the forest was still again.

 Ink fell back, stiff knees buckling under the enormity of what he had seen.  This would shift everything—ecological models, extinction protocols, interplanetary conservation. His discovery wasn’t just personal accomplishment. It was the return of a species thought lost to time.

 Ink pressed a hand to his chest, grounding himself. There was work to do now—tracking, observation, a full report—but just for a moment, he couldn’t help but think about what he had witnessed. Against all odds, he had found them. Or had they found him?

 Not extinct. Not gone. He had been right all along.

 He opened his binder and wrote a defining line through his observations made earlier that day.
Close, no longer. 

 And just beneath it, almost like a whisper:

 We were wrong. They are still here.