Webcomic / Alone, Together

I'm over here!

Alone Together is a webcomic authored by Steve Gallacci, the creator of the famous Albedo: Erma Felna EDF and one of his first original works, along with Dog House, he did after having to finish Albedo due of the death of his wife.

Danni is a young rabbit cadet from The Empire, a government ruled by rabbits who is in a very long war with another government only known as The Federation, being ruled by mice. One day, Danni and her cadet unit, who were working as guards in a very distant island named Shem-Sheka, are attacked and Danni falls into a empty bunker and is cut off from her companions, who escape from the island and leave Danni behind, forcing her to live on her own.

A year later, during a ceasefire, a Federation mouse pilot-reservist named Jerom takes off on a routine flight over the ocean trying to search for any remaining Imperial forces on any of the islands. While in flight, Jerom's plane suffers an engine failure, forcing him to land on Danni's island. After a... not very nice encounter with Danni, they both must set aside their prejudices in order to survive.

The comic is hosted on the author's FurAffinity page right here (some contents of the page are NSFW, albeit the comic itself is very light on Fanservice compared with Gallacci's previous works.)

The comic, as with many other Gallacci's works, is split in three story arcs, being the final arc finished in April 29, 2015.

(No relation to the Kim Possible fanfic "Alone, Together". Of course, neither are related to the episode from Steven Universe)

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Alone Together provides examples of:

• Accidental Pervert: Jerom accidentaly touches Danni's breasts when taking her rifle from her hands, causing her to faint. When Jerom finds the reason of this, he only laughs hard.
• Author Tract: Very downplayed, compared with Albedo: Erma Felna EDF, but Gallacci normally is a very vocal critic of capitalism and Danni, whose country is implied to run on a palace economy(essentially a communist monarchy), discuss with Jerom about the evils of capitalism in his face. Luckily it doesn't go anywhere and this is just used to give her something to complain with Jerom, who hails from a capitalist country.
• Chekhov's Gunman: The shadow fish. When first seen, Cadet Danni throws a spear at it; it eats the spear. Later, the shadow fish appears while some mongoose pirates attempt to overrun Shem Sheka. Lastly, an Imperial conspirator gets taken by Navy loyalists out to sea, where it's implied the naughty fellow gets to feed this aquatic monster.
• Comfort the Dying: Sergeant Jerom was recovering from a cracked skull in the ship's infirmary. Another patient, mummified in bandages, mutters something unintelligible. A combat veteran, Jerom knows severe burns are both painful and deadly. Jerom holds the fellow's hand until, "A life-time later" according to the panel header, medics come to check on them. Jerom is taken back to his bed, while the deceased patient gets the sheet pulled over him. Mutters Jerom to himself, "No one should have to die alone."
• Cool Old Guy: Jerom.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Jerom beats the crap out of Danni with the butt of her own rifle and his fists, after she shoots out his plane's engine, screwing up his chance to fly away and get help.
• Diesel Punk: The technology is recognizably that of the late World War 2 era, with radial piston engine planes. Jerom's aircraft an expy of a De Haviland Mosquito, though nothing quite matches the real world.
• Diplomatic Back Channel: The senior officers of the Imperial Fleet thwart a Special Forces operative conducting torture on Sergeant Jerom, and planning more (and worse) for Cadet Danni. The admiral knows that formal charges through the chain of command will be suppressed, but mentions "back channels" to the Imperial palace. Further, after the Emperor has conducted a purge of warhawks in his cabinet, back channel communiques offer to withdraw from contested territory (including Shem Sheka, where much of the story transpires) if the Federation is quiet about it. This back channel affair also returns Sergeant Jerom to his countrymen.

• Earn Your Happy Ending: The ending is somewhat bittersweet, with Jerom losing his left eye due to the torture suffered due to the Imperial conspirator, and retiring from the army after the Empire brings him home, becoming a school teacher. Danni is promoted to Commodore and she reunites with him 20 years later. Shem-Sheka Island is now a research site thanks to Danni's efforts.
• Expy:
  • Jerom is basically a gender-bended Toki mixed with Erma Felna's father Kanoc and Danni is basically Erma as a rabbit, complete with a very similar background, this is even more evident at the end of the comic, as both girls even share the same haircut and military rank. They're also expies from the American pilot and Tsuruhiko Kuroda respectively from the film Hell in the Pacific.
  • The Empire is basically Albedo's ILR and the Federation is basically the EDF, except in a World War II-like era, rather than a sci-fi setting.
• Eye Scream: Jerom loses his right eye during brutal torture by a sadist Imperial Special Branch officer. The blow also cracks Jerom's skull.
• Gone Mad From The Isolation: After spending her first year on the island alone Danni isn't barking crazy, but she's very unpredictable and prone to panic attacks when she first meets Jerom.
• Gory Discretion Shot: The shadow fish eats the remaining pirates, and while we don't see the scene, the narration outright lampshade this trope, not to mention the faces of horror both Danni and Jerom does when the pirates were eaten by the beast.
• Hard-Work Montage: Several times in the course of comic, particularly when Jerom has to strip down his plane's engines to repair them.
• Hope Spot: Twice. The first is when a boat manned by weasels arrive at the island who were going to search for salvage after eliminating Jerom and Danni. The second when an Imperial task force finds them but the flagship's security officer plans on murdering them both, before the ship's captain has him killed instead.
• Improbable Use of a Weapon: Averted like bloody hell and even this trope is discussed by Word of God (both in-universe and also in the FurAffinity's discussion section) when Jerom handles Danni's rifle and he teach her how to correctly handle one, while Gallacci also does the same towards the readers text-wise.
• Inelegant Blubbering: Danni breaks down completely after Jerom makes her a salad from his garden.
• Kishōtenketsu: The plot follows this to a T: In the first arc, we are introduced with the two main characters, Danni and Jerom, and their motivations and goals; then during the second arc, the two main characters are further developed and we know both Danni and Jerom are more complex than they seem; the twist is when some pirates appears and tried to cause a wedge between both characters, just to be killed by Jerom when he quickly caught their intentions, and that without going with the entire sub-arc about Jerom being captured and tortured by an imperial officer of Danni's own country, and the last part of the final arc deals with the conclusion of the story and what happened with both characters at the end.
• Language Barrier: Neither Jerom nor Danni can speak each other native language, but it turns out they both know a common trade language, with Danni hiding her fluency at first because Jerom was the enemy.
• Left Hanging: We never find out what happened with Danni's family after all and their fates nor we never found out much about Jerom's background, albeit this could be intentional from the author's side, because Jerom is more or less modeled after Gallacci himself.
• Macgyvering: Jerom manages to create a moisture still for fresh water, and an irrigation system to create a viable garden to keep he and Danni fed. Averted when he repairs his aircraft's engines, which he does completely by the book since they're high performance mechanisms and would shred to pieces if it wasn't done right the first time.
• Minimalist Cast: The only recurrent characters are Jerom and Danni. There's other minor characters like the mongoose pirates, the Imperial soldiers who rescue both of them, the Federation officers who sent Jerom on his mission in first place, the Emperor and Jerom's nephew.
• No Communities Were Harmed: By Word of God, the Empire is based in Imperial Japan and the Federation in World War II-era U.S.
• Never Found the Body: Twice: Both the mongoose pirates and the Imperial conspirator were eaten by the shadow fish.
• Sarashi: Cadet Danni tries going naked while alone on that tropical island, but sunburnt nipples necessitate wearing a sarashi thereafter as her default outfit, making Danni resemble a Nubile Savage.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Danni and Jerom both. Danni after being trapped alone on the island for a year before Jerom's arrival, and Jerom after decades of war against the Empire.
  Jerome: "Damnit! I've been killing you people my entire adult life and I want it to stop!" Turns away. "Hell with it. Just shoot me in the back next time."
• Translation with an Agenda: One of the mongooses who speaks Imperial, when Jerom tells them that Danni doesn't know the war is over, tries to convince her that the war is still on. But, while Danni doesn't speak Jerom's native language she does know Mid-Reach, the language he and the mongooses had been speaking.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: Between Danni and Jerom, despite, just for beginners, they're both from different species, different countries and above all, their countries are in a tense peace.
• Vehicular Sabotage: Jerom's plane goes down due to his fuel lines being fouled, implied by a Imperial fueling tech who was annoyed by his superior attitude.
• Wham Episode: Twice:
  • Danni and Jerom are attacked by mongoose pirates in the second arc, after they tried to fool Danni into distrusting Jerom. They didn't expect him to have a hidden weapon and he kills them quickly.
  • Jerom is brutally tortured by a Imperial agent in the third arc who plans to do the same to Danni, as Danni turns to be a minor member of the Imperial family and he and many other are attempting a coup against the emperor. Fortunately the ship's captain finds out about the plans, and kills the agent, dumping his body into the sea.
• Would Hit a Girl: Jerom has no qualms about wiping the floor with Danni after she tried to kill Jerom by shooting out his plane's engine, even after Jerom already told her the war was over.
• You Didn't Ask: Danni and Jerom both just assumed the other one didn't speak Mid-Reach.