PROLOGUE:

AN: I know I should be working more on my fic 'Into the Woods' but the Riddick Plot Bunny has bitten me badly...and I think maybe it had rabies or something...

Anyways, since there are not enough 'girl-falls-into-Pitch-Black' stories, I figured I'd write one. Here it goes.

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The long haired brunette let out an angry growl as she finally managed to unlock the door to her small apartment, storming in like a Hun on the warpath, her bifocals askew on her face.

"…..stupid, idiotic, cruel, mean….it's not like there's not about a million feet of space all around, nooooo, they have to go right where I'm going….." rambling to herself the nineteen year-old dropped her extremely heavy bookbag onto the cluttered floor with a loud thud and, absently straightening her glasses, moved straight to her laptop to fire it up. While the computer whirred, jumpstarting, the young woman grabbed a couple of towels and headed for the shower, practically ripping off her clothes.

The hot water was a blessing, pounding down on her back and easing her cramps. She spent a long time in there, letting the water wash away her troubles, or at least dilute them. When she was finished, she hastily dried herself, put in a new pad, dressed in some comfy, loose kitty pajamas and let her long hair hang down her back to drip dry.

Going to the kitchen to start up some popcorn, she continued her mental rant. "I mean, honestly, it's not like I'm doing anything to them…..I don't even TALK to them, for heavens sake." She poured the oil into the popcorn popper that her mom had gotten her after she had caught the last pan on literal fire. "Just minding my own business." She gritted her teeth. "Apparently, that's not enough."

The young woman lifted her slightly damp shirt to examine the bruise that was fast forming on her side and gave off a sigh. "I need a new school…No, I need a new PLANET…..and I'm still talking to myself." She shrugged her shoulders. "Ah, well. The best way to have an intelligent conversation, I guess."

After the popcorn had been added and the machine plugged in, the young woman moved back to her laptop and logged into Itunes to start one of her favorite movies of all times; Pitch Black starring Vin Diesel as Richard B. Riddick the Furyan.

Her name was Cassie Andrews. She was nineteen years old, fresh out of high-school and newly into college with a love for books and writing, an absolute hatred of math, a small dose of OCD and a problem with bullies.

After a quick check on the popcorn—no fires, everything good—she went back to her laptop so see the Hunter Gratzner floating in space, heard the voice of Richard B. Riddick speaking from the movie.

"…..They say most of your brain shuts down in cryo-sleep. All but the primitive side, the animal side. No wonder I'm still awake….."

The mans voice sent happy shivers up her spine. Warm and deep and velvet. Purely masculine, a girls dream. She closed her eyes, savoring the sound, the tenor.

"…..Transporting me with civilians, sounded like forty, forty plus. Heard an Arab voice, some hoodoo holy man, probably on his way to New Mecca. But what route? ….What route? Smelled a woman. Sweat, boots, tool belt, leather, prospector type."

Cassie wondered absently what it would be like to possess Riddicks sense of smell. She couldn't help but let out a girlish giggle as she wondered what he thought she would smell like. Probably books and graphite from pencils, pen ink and….(she winced as her womb spasmed)…..blood.

"…..Free settlers. And they only take the back roads. And here's my real problem; Mr. Johns, the blue-eyed devil. Plannin' on taking me back to slam only this time he picked a ghost lane."

Oh yeah. Blue-eyed Johns the druggie.

Cassie shuddered theatrically and smiled to herself at her silliness after she stuck her tongue out at the Johns on the screen.

"…..A long time between stops…..A long time for something to go wrong."

That was when the lights in her apartment flickered.

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Cassie blinked, distracted from the movie as she looked up at the ceiling, musing outloud to herself. "Well, that's odd." She cocked her head to the side, listening as her popcorn machine sputtered to a stop then started up again.

In the movie, tiny meteors penetrated the ship 'The Hunter Gratzner' but Cassie ignored it in favor of walking back to her small kitchenette and eyeing the popcorn machine. "Huh."

She went to check on her alarm-clock.

The numbers on the digital clock blinked, like it did when the power went out then came back on. She rolled her eyes and growled a little. This meant she would have to reset the darn thing and she always managed to somehow mess that up.

From her laptop, she could hear the movie continuing;

"Why did I fall on you?"

"He's dead. The Captain's dead. I was looking right at'em."

"The chrono shows we have twenty-two weeks out, so-so gravity was not supposed to kick in for another nineteen. Why'd I fall at all?"

The lights flickered again before they went out and Cassie groaned, rolling her eyes. The popcorn machine screeched to a stop, her alarm clock went dead in her hands, all the lights were off…..but she could still hear the movie playing on her laptop.

That made her pause for a minute in confusion before she remembered that her laptop had it's own separate battery, so of course it would continue working if the electricity went off….at least until the battery ran down.

A quick check out of the tiny window confirmed that there was no storm, not even any wind. The sun was still out, though it was fast setting, so if she put up the blinds there would be light for at least a little while.

Okay, this was weird. Maybe there was something wrong with the power-box? She chewed her lower lip slightly, wondering if she should call her apartment supervisor. She had absolutely no idea where the power-box would be and, even if by some chance she DID find it, she still would have no idea what to do with it.

She rubbed that back of her head. "Aw, forget it."

That was when her laptop seemingly decided to grow a consciousness of it's own, as the sound seemed to turn itself up to incredibly loud levels.

Cassie winced, putting her hands over her sensitive ears and rushing to her bed to turn the volume back down. "And in todays news, modern technology is rebelling in the apartment of one Cassie Andrews…." She pretended to be a newscaster as she managed to mute her computer before turning down the volume to a more reasonable level.

On the screen, the Hunter Gratzner crashed onto the un-named planet where the Grue (or bioraptors) lived underground, and that was when everything went black.