"Back when my arms were made of steel, and my hair was still red. In fact, they called me...Big Red.
"We'd just finished one of our first test runs of AMEE, - that's our spaceship - and we were still learning about all this stuff - all these people out here who aren't human, and all the ones that, contrary to everything we knew, are human. While the initial excitement of learning about other human planets had turned to disgust at their apathy and complete lack of self-awareness, we were still all wide-eyed and gape-mouthed at the sights and sounds of space.
"This place was even busier then than it is now, crammed full of oddballs and weirdos and scrappers from all over hell. The way we headed straight here, we must have been looking for a fight. Probably were. We were feeling pretty cocky right about then. But we didn't really know how bad this place can be, either.
"Anyway, we got our drinks in return for some stolen goods we happened to have salvaged from a dwarf ship, and we were sitting at a table...over there, I think."
I'm pointing to a dingy corner of the bar, close to the music box, as I say this.
"So we were laughing it up, getting wasted and being complete assholes, and the only thing keeping us from getting creamed is the fact that we obviously don't have any money, or at least that's what we figured. What we didn't know was that word had been going around about a bunch of humans from JK Omega 7 were on station, and no one knew how to tell them from the rest of us. So, these guys weren't taking any chances.
"Which would have been a pretty lucky break for us, and no one the wiser. The trouble was, the Omegans happened to pick this bar as their destination, too.
"I'm just sitting there, trying to enjoy my vodka, and Glitterboy's going a mile a minute about some shit I'd probably find interesting if I could keep up with it, and Aranae was trying to pretend he's too well-disciplined to be enjoying himself in here. Deathbringer and Harbinger were out guarding the ship, and God only knows where the Ripper went. Probably out slashing up hookers or kids or something.
"The way I was facing, I didn't notice the Omegans come in the door. Aranae raised his eyebrows, feeling not-quite-controlled emotions. Glitterboy didn't bother trying to control his reactions. The way he was staring, I figured either Deathbringer had just come in wearing nothing but panties, or the Galactic Police had walked in the door and exploded. I glanced over my shoulder and saw the Omegans - a small unit, about six troops. All female.
"Well, I was trying not to be disappointed by the humans anymore, so I dismissed these ones as more boytoys without more than a glance. Even bothering to look them over seemed like raising false hope.
"Glitterboy always has time to study things, when he bothers. Before I can take another drink and comment, he's already finished looking.
"He said, 'Hey Big Red, I think I see your woman over there. She looks like she could break you with one hand and make you like it.'
"Again, I refused to raise my hopes. I replied with, 'Probably just another vat-grown sex machine, designed to amuse some perverted Andronelle or haul rocks. How good can she be?'
"That was, with only one or two exceptions, the dumbest thing I have ever said in my life, and it nearly got me killed. Of course, there was no way she should have heard me from across the bar. I wasn't speaking loudly, and the noise in the room was already almost enough for my safety dampeners to kick in. No average human could have heard me...but, of course, Omegans aren't average humans.
"So, I started to turn my head and look at the 'vat-grown sex machine', and about all I saw was a flash of white and black colors. The next thing I knew, I was being held up about a foot - uhm, that's about three sahmans - off of the floor, and the only thing distracting me from this fantastic view of the most beautiful face I've ever seen was a strange pain in both my throat and my crotch. Just as alarms started going off about 'Damage Report in Critical Area', I realized that this face was, indirectly, connected to the arms which were holding me up in the air by the aforementioned painful areas. Despite her perfectly normal appearance, she was squeezing me hard enough to be bending my steel superstructure, and the look on her face said it was about to get worse.
"Glitterboy was, of course, holding one of our new guns to her head simultaneously. As fast as she was, he still had plenty of time to act. However, his expression hinted that he was somewhat at a loss for the next appropriate action, partially because he could tell I was enjoying myself, and partially because she was completely ignoring him, which is a little unusual for Glitterboy. Especially when he's pressing a gun into someone's skull. Apparently, though, she had either completely dismissed him and the firearm as harmless, or she just didn't care about being shot in the head. I guess she was concentrating pretty hard on me at the time, but looking back on it now I'd say it was a combination of both.
"She hissed something through her teeth which was, unfortunately for me, not in a language I recognized. My lack of any intelligent response (classifying gurgling and choking sounds as unintelligent) seemed to irritate her even more, and I sensed a tension building in her forearms which suggested I was about to die in the most pleasant way possible, at least for me.
"So, just as I was thanking whatever gods may be for my fortune, Aranae began speaking haltingly in the Local Galactic Standard for humans. He always pays more attention to customs than I do, and I didn't have any translators yet.
"I'm still not sure what he said. He always has something appropriate to say involving avoiding conflict and other claptrap like that. And, while it didn't have the usual effect of turning animosity into outright friendship, it did keep my vitals intact for a few extra moments.
"While she was now beginning to look a little less sure of my eminent destruction, one of her friends from across the bar had arrived and began talking to both her and Aranae. A few tense moments passed, and then I was summarily plunked down in my chair. I'm not sure exactly what happened next because I was busy gasping and trying to get the black areas out of my vision.
"Upon regaining some semblance of consciousness, I realized everyone was looking at me expectantly. However, I had no idea what they wanted and said so, quietly, to Aranae, while trying at the same time to appear very friendly and inoffensive. He said something about her expecting my apology, and no harm done, etc etc.
"Well, I just looked up at her. Really looked, for the first time. Her hair was completely white, almost transparent. Her skin was pale and stretched tight over muscles like stone. She wasn't an albino, though, - that's usually the case with humans that pale - because her eye was blue like the depths of a sulfur glacier. Every feature of her face spoke to me of a frightening intelligence, mixed with an intense primitive streak of aggression I'd never seen before. The one imperfection was the scar which ran from her scalp all the way down to her chin, a ragged, ugly, white streak which pulled her mouth partly open as it crossed over, and ran directly under the black eyepatch covering her left eye. Now, to most anyone else, that would have been a fairly repulsive sight. But, I'm not the average man any more than I'm an average human. I was in complete and utter love.
"So, in addition to the most eloquent apology I have ever given in my life, I asked Aranae to translate for me a marriage proposal.
"Aranae closed his eyes and muttered something under his breath about keeping his cool even when surrounded by suicidal idiots, and then started fishing for words.
"I watched her expression carefully as he stumbled through the sentences, and at the end I knelt down in front of her with my arms spread wide.
"I'll never forget the look on her face. It turned, slowly, from incredulity to embarrassment, and then to outright hysteria as her friend started commenting amid guffaws and claps on the back.
"The two women walked back to their comrades at the far end of the bar, and they never stopped laughing for the rest of the night.
"As I rose shakily to my chair, Aranae and Glitterboy gave me slightly embarrassed looks and tried to comfort me.
"'It's okay, man. Sometimes you just can't have what you want.', Aranae said with some pity in his eyes. And Glitterboy...well, he obviously felt torn between sympathy for my humiliation and irritation at my fumbling attempt.
"I, however, never stopped smiling, and waved off all of their attempts to cheer me up. Eventually they realized that I was not, in fact, depressed at all, and this confused them even more.
"Finally, Glitterboy asked outright, 'What the hell are you so happy about?'"
"I smiled even wider, and replied, 'She didn't say no.'"
I pause here, waiting for the squid's appropriate laughter. At first I figure that either there was a translation problem, or I've just lost my knack for humor. I haven't told a story with a happy ending in a long time. I also haven't had the stomach for jokes for quite a while, something I thought I'd always maintain in the face of disaster. I guess people change after a few hundred years, though.
Just when I'm about to shrug and take a swig of vodka, the squid finally gets it. Okay, so I guess the problem was just slowness of thought on his part. No big surprise there.
*chig chig chig ta-hawk* "Very funny, Earthman! Very! Hard imagining of you as small one." *chig chig*
I really hate that sound they make when they laugh. It sounds like somebody mixing gravel in a blender. Still, nice to know I haven't lost my touch after all. Just like riding a bike or whatever.
Well, I can keep up the humor. The only condition my sense of irony demands is that the underlying theme of naivety be fulfilled. Or in other words, these stories are only funny as long as you don't know how they all end.
"Very, Earthman! So, did she you see again? No, wait! Who Glitterboy and Aranae and...Gethbringer?"
"Two very different stories, chicala . Which do you want to hear first?"
*dzzzzurzzzruzzzz*...
I guess that's the equivalent of "hmmmmm".
"Me first hear of she-man. Tell of 'wife'! Very!"
"Actually, I saw her again, and we did get married, but that was a long time later. That story is going to need a little more background..."
"So anyway, we finished up with our travels up here, and then headed back to Earth, and I figured that I'd probably never see her again, but some loves were meant to remain unrequited and all that...anyway, pretty soon we were a little too busy fighting dwarves on Earth to be concerned with romance. And after that, we were too busy trying to find a safe place in space where we could...regroup, we called it, but really we were hiding and trying to figure out what in the hell had just happened to us. We were still in a state of shock, because it had never seriously occurred to us up to that point that we might lose the occasional battle. Definitely never occurred to us that we might lose members of our team. But, that's not really anything important...anyway, eventually what we did was come back here.
"This time we were a little more careful. No loud drunkenness, no bar fights, just the occasional confrontation with dwarves in the street, or with dwarf-haters who don't like us gene-trash. Our new goal was to gather information from people, with the idea of eventually attacking the dwarves in their home territory, once we figured out where and how.
"Well, you probably heard how all that turned out. No? Guess it went even worse than we thought. We certainly got our asses kicked. I didn't think it made Galactic headlines, but I figured enough people around here got a laugh out of it to make us local names. Maybe not.
"Once again, we came back here, and this time we were really quiet, because we were starting to get the idea that maybe we'd never actually be able to attack the dwarves, at least not head-on. So now, we were talking to people about dwarves, but we were looking for allies, or places like Earth where they weren't so strong, where we could maybe use guerrilla tactics to gain an edge, something like that.
"The first thought we had was, what about the Omegans? They seemed pretty kick-ass, and being human, they ought to have a grudge against dwarves, just like us. So, we talked in dark corners, and asked questions without looking interested, and bought a lot of drinks. And, eventually, what we learned was this: the Omegans weren't interested. In fact, they were pissed off at us for our 'invasion' plans, which had drawn too much attention to humans all over the galaxy. Apparently, the dwarves had begun to wonder if keeping us around was really all that safe, and they were looking into old trouble spots they'd had in the past, like JK Omega 7. The Omegans love battle, but no one (except us) was stupid enough to want to try taking on the Sectoid Empire, especially when losing meant losing your home planet (like we had already done). The Omegans felt that we were a bunch of irresponsible punks who had gotten our civilians back home slaughtered, and were looking to do the same to them. This was not entirely fair, but you can see where they were coming from.
"So, eventually we gave up on the Omegans, and tried to be even more quiet in the hopes that we wouldn't end up having them on our asses, too. Eventually, though, the sectoids found out exactly what we were doing, and we had to leave town in a hurry. Come to think of it, this can't be that same bar, because that one got pretty well nuked when we left. Guess they're pretty good at replacing structures around here.
"To summarize, not only did we not get any help from the Omegans, we also didn't see my 'fiancee' while we were here, and then we were bouncing around the galaxy for the next few years, on the run from the dwarves and trying to piece together some sort of an alliance at the same time.
"After a few years of that, plus some time we spent outside the galaxy - I don't need to get into that - we were starting to get a plan together. By now we had acquired some new technology and a little more experience, so we weren't completely hopeless anymore. Well, one day we were monitoring dwarf channels, and we found what looked like a massive invasion of a human planet, similar to what had happened on Earth. Hoping to save these people from the fate we had suffered, we immediately jumped into the fray.
"We blew our way down to the planet, where the ground fighting was going to determine the outcome of the whole mess, and saw two things. One, this was JK Omega 7, and those were the humans who had refused to help us earlier, because they wanted to avoid the invasion we were now witnessing. Two, they were going to lose. Omegans are just about the most pissed off people around, and they had seriously kicked some sectoid ass, but there's only so much you can do against odds of a thousand to one, and the sectoids had learned from Earth just what to do with super-tough humans. They had brought their own. In case you're missing it, we felt a little bit guilty for what was going on here at this point.
"However, we had been out of everyone's hair for so long, I guess the old Poobah figured we were gone for good. We certainly had a bit of a surprise factor with us as we charged into the Gene-hunters and Psi-breeds and mind-controlled super freaks.
"The fight was real nasty. It lasted about three Earth days without slowing down, and the weather on JK is about as shitty as you can find in this galaxy. Eventually I managed to get separated from everyone else and I was slugging it out with Coronus himself. Glitterboy had personally claimed this guy's ass, but he was nowhere in sight and I figured I could pay him back somehow.
"The problem is that Glitterboy might be capable of taking him on, but I'm really not. Basically, Coronus is just like me, only tougher in every way that counts. Before long, I had finally managed to break one of my hands on his armor, and he had basically worked me over like a Ularian bitch. He left me for dead, and he was pretty much right on that one. The last thing I saw before I blacked out was the blonde chick, my 'fiancee', squaring off with the bad boy himself..."
At this point, I realize that I don't really want to share the next scene with the squid. Sure, he's giving me free vodka, but that doesn't make him family. I haven't even told Glitterboy what really happened that day on JK-7.
Yeah, time for some more creative storytelling. Besides, that way I can put a little humor into this story after all.
"So, what happened Earth Man? You still alive, so I guess she ass beat?"
Wince.
"Yeah, she beat his ass, all right. I woke up in AMEE Medical, and she was there, waiting for me to regain my senses. Apparently, she decided that after what had happened down there, I needed somebody around to keep my nuts out of the fire, or something like that. And eventually, she figured she might as well marry me just to make sure I would stay where she could keep an eye on me."
*chig chig* "Very, Earthman! Splendid is you! Good at story! And at drinking Earth Vodka, see I. So, where is she-human now? Home with kids?" *chig chig chig...*
The squid's laughter dies off uneasily. Probably its because he can hear my teeth grinding over the sound of the music. Or because you'd have to be a sectoid to miss my "you're this close to becoming paste" vibes.
"...She's dead, squid."
An uncomfortable silence follows. Mostly uncomfortable for the squid, who just realized that his initial fears of me kicking his ass shouldn't have gone away just because I'm telling him stories and booting losers out of his bar. It's okay, though. He had no way of knowing. It's just kind of a sensitive subject for me. That and the "kids" comment.
Well, its getting pretty close to closing again, and no trouble today. Maybe some word got around about the big goon. Anyway, I've had enough for now, and I'm no longer in the mood to tell stories.
"See you tomorrow, bartender."
I'm wearing a pretty good scowl as I tread heavily down the plasticene hallway to my rented room. If telling these stories is going to put me in such a shitty mood, maybe I should just forget the whole thing. It's only Vodka, and I can't really get drunk anyway.
I have to work out for a long time before I'm relaxed enough to sleep.
They say you can't feel pain in a dream, but whoever "they" are, they don't dream like me. It's so cold and wet here that a normal human would die in minutes. Not that any normal human would be here. The inch-diameter hailstones of frozen carbon dioxide are moving with enough energy to tear human flesh, but I don't have any. The weather isn't why I'm in pain.
My hand is throbbing almost painfully enough to make me open my eyes, but not quite. Neither my broken jaw or ribs are enough either. You can only take so many hits to the head before it just gets hard to pay attention to anything.
Get Up.
Beat it, lady. I'm busy dying here, so just fuck off.
Get Up, Weak Boy.
...
Get Up! Worthless Boy! I Never Should Have Taught You!
I said, fuck off. You can call me all the names you want, Mother.
...A part of me, somewhere in the present, knows what is about to happen. This part of me is laughing, but there is no humor in it. Just irony.
Get Up! Look At Her!
I cannot ignore the inflection of that last word. Is it Her?
And, somehow, I open my eyes, with my dream-body crying for peace, asking to die, to stop listening to the voices of dead people. I open my eyes, despite my body, despite even my mind at this point. I open my eyes, and I see Her.
A lifetime from now, in some sleazy bar on Angellica Prime, I'm going to say that I passed out seeing her, and woke up next to her in a hospital. But right now, the truth is that I gave up and was going to die, and I woke up on JK Omega 7 because a part of me refuses to stop living in the past, where I was different. And what I see is not Coronus standing over Selendikdkai Bandalanaden with his Mark III Plasma Staff, preparing for the final blow. What I see is a different Coronus in different armor, standing over a different white-haired woman, with his raven-black Spear of Midnight. The scene is too similar to be a coincidence, but anything even close would have been enough to cause the reaction it did.
"Sa...sa...you..."
And Coronus turns, hearing me through the driving rain, and looks at the broken thing I now am.
"So, not yet dead, puppy? Give me another minute with the gene-whore, and I'll take care of you, yes. Don't worry, yes."
"You...you think you can...take her away from me? You think you can take her again?"
I have to stop and cough up some blood. Someone's hitting my ribs with a sledgehammer...no, that's because I'm coughing with broken ribs. The pain is secondary, though. It's already being transformed.
Coronus seems surprised that I can actually form a complete sentence, but I'm still not worthy of his attention. He turns back to Selena to finish the "gene-whore". And that is all it takes.
"You think I'm nothing? You think you can take it away from me, again and again! You always think that! Well, you're wrong! She's mine!"
Coronus seems closer now. It's because I'm up and walking, but I'm not rational any more. My last coherent thought is how surprised he's going to be. How surprised they're all going to be.
"Mine! MINE!"
Coronus turns back to me just in time to receive my right cross straight in the face. I think it's the first time I've caused him any actual pain. He staggers back, incredulous.
"You're stronger than you look, little puppy! I thought you were all finished with, but now..."
I'm usually approving of snappy banter while fighting, but right now I'm not going to listen to anything he has to say. If he wants to talk, let him. I'll just kill him that much more quickly if he doesn't defend himself.
Not that I thought that consciously, at the time. I just barely registered a feeling of disgust at his stupidity, followed by glee at my fortune.
So, I interrupt his monologue with another punch to the face, and before he can react my other hand is driving into his body, just where the solar plexus meets the diaphragm. Because the face is all well and good, but it won't kill him. I want to rip his heart out.
"MINE! SHE'S MINE! I HATE YOU! HATE! HATE!"
Additional one syllable words are all that follow. Each one is accompanied by a blow. Coronus should be able to block these. He's got more than enough speed and skill. But he isn't. And they're hurting him. The bones of my hands and feet are so much jelly from hitting his armor. I shatter my kneecap the first time it hits his chin, but that doesn't keep me from doing it again and again. The pain isn't something I feel now.
And the whole time, the voice is going in my head.
That's It. Pain Becomes Anger. Anger Becomes Speed And Power. How You Hate Him. He Thinks You're Nothing. He Thinks He Can Keep Taking And Taking And Taking. Show Him He's Wrong. Show Him. Hate Him. Hurt Him.
And his back snaps like rotten wood over my knee. And he screams. And I love it.
...And I wake up, sweating fiercely, muscles contorted into painful knots. Not as bad as when it happens for real, but even the emotional edge of the dream was enough to trigger the reaction a little bit. I'm going to have to take it easy today.
As I lie there, waiting for the cramps to subside so that I can take a shower, I remember the first thing Selena really said when I woke up in AMEE Medical.
"I'm yours, is that right? Is that what you think, little man?"
An all-too-familiar grip was encircling my neck. And I couldn't imagine a better place to be.
I lie there, torturing myself for a while. My lust for self-pity is insatiable, someone once told me. But eventually, it's time to go to work again. I'm doing important work here on Angellica, and it can't wait just because I'm feeling nostalgic.