It's dark for a while after the 'red streak' hits.
At first, he thinks it was a dream. That he'll wake up any minute, and the headache is just the fourty percent vodka burning their shared memories of last night into his brain. He does wake up. It is in a cell though. So that was just wishful thinking. And he grunts, hands that have been stripped of expensive rings and his chain glove patting down his torso which has been equally robbed of sacred overcoat (with boomerangs!) and training jacket. This one wasn't a success then, but that's just a temporary setback. Hell, the prison they plan on throwing him into probably is one of the many he has already equipped with getaway boomerangs. It's too bloody easy. They're too bloody stupid.
It comes different then. First thing they do when they haul him out, cuffed and thrashing (because duh, he'll never not protest), is put a black fucking bag over his head. But he can play, if they wanna play all tough. He's here for a party.
He notices, after some escorting around, by all sensory intake except for sight, that these aren't police, not even S.W.A.T. (which they've sent after him a lot of times. Because he's just so infamous, thank you very much.). No, these guys - are fucking military.
Feeling honoured, gents.
Or they're just kinky motherfuckers, he muses, when next, he's bent over something, torso pushed onto hard surface, and then - Crikey! - the bag is removed. Unfortunately, oh joy lasts only shortly when the first thing that comes into his light-blinded vision is something that looks alarmingly similar to a piercing gun and held dangerously close to his neck.
"Oi chief, ya wanna keep yer hand, ya bettah- AH!"
The scream that tears itself from his throat is feral. He feels something going in. This can't be good.
"Oh, ya bloody son 'f a bitch, you…"
Boomerang feels sick now, an uncomfortable feeling settling down deep inside his guts. The drowsy mumbling of various and very detailed threats drooled against the stretcher gets drowned out by other voices and "Injection successful." and then something cold pressed to his back, …a stethoscope? Did they just put a fucking tracker in his neck? …Something? Escaped and re-escaped too many times. That must be it. He swears he'll rip that thing out of his throat with his bare hands. And then all of those guys' throats are going to get ripped out. Oh yeah, something to look forward to.
He tries again, to ask now, just for giggles. But they ignore him. Why talk to the demented Aussie?
He thinks, perhaps, this is it now. They're not playing games anymore. Too many dirty deeds. Too homicidal, violent, absolutely crazy. Probably at the very front of death row now. He has no idea what this is about, who is behind it. That this is going to be a new 'life'. Not on death row. Not exactly.
More like assisted suicide.
The next needle that pricks his neck is too much. Now this is personal.
A toxic smile that resembles that of a person who'd just been hit in the face slowly spreads on his own.
"Eh-eey! Ya know that- yer mum, when- when the last time I bent 'er over jus' like this…"
But he has not even begun to properly struggle against his restraints and the hands holding him down when that earlier drowsiness from pain starts to feel a lot like real, physically tranquilizing drowsiness now. So that was a sedative. The entire mum-insult he's already carefully made up in his mind - and they won't even get to hear it.
What a waste of creativity.
Digger feels his breath slow down, despite the efforts that he makes to stay awake, to keep that wonderful temper that usually makes them all back up. But all the half-hearted movements, the little strength he can muster up prove futile against hands roughly hoisting him back up and U.S. marshals undoing heavy wrist and ankle chains only to tightly fasten his hands in front of him with zip ties. For a moment, and in his drugged state, the self-proclaimed Captain only stares at them like a brain-dead idiot. Now, what's going on?
What he sees next makes the 'brain-dead' snap to 'utter confusion', and the 'idiot' intensify. They've done some fucked-up shit to him, but if that is what he thinks it is they're about to do, he's resigning. Brought by yet more soldiers and laid out on the ground in front of him is an oversized mail bag, …a body bag? No, he's sure, even with his blurry vision, it reads 'mail'. 'Australian mai-
Oh…
Oh.
Fuckers.
Where did you even find that? Did you honestly dig this up somewhere in the dusty store room of your nan? Did you go that extra mile, sergeant, he wants to ask, coyly, for me? There's something more important now, however, something worse. So all his remaining strength goes into wrestling against officers that slowly but surely force him down to be burried inside the oversized joke that lies waiting on the ground.
Because that is what it is, really. What they think of him.
Pushed inside and held down, the zipper slowly (challenged still by the fight he puts up) shuts him off, again, from any day light. And he can hear them cackling.
But no one laughs at Captain Boomerang.
Then it's dark around him.
No one…
No...
And then, before he knows it, everything is dark once his eyes roll back into his head.
He bites his way through the zip ties once he wakes up again.
And whoever's going to open this present, has a free year of (hopefully not-so-free) dental reconstructions coming to them.