Disc: I don't own JAG, I don't own Lexx, I'm not profiting from this.
Oy vey, I'm on crack…
Special thanks to Reeve for the title. And to Julia for getting me on JAG and making me pity poor Bud. Spoilers for the JAG season finale. No particular time during Lexx, just season 4.
Gargantuan Insect Mastication
by Alhazred
madarab20@hotmail.com
A desert, Afghanistan, a minefield and a boy... a boy. Bud had to wonder why the things that made him feel so damn weird right now had to outweigh that last one. He'd done a good deed, right? He'd saved someone, and in return he felt...
He felt light-headed. Vaguely, he managed to lift his head up and realize half of his leg was gone, but his bleary mind didn't quite process the information correctly. There wasn't really pain... yet... but he certainly didn't like the situation. And the whole lost-limb thing was starting to force him into his right mind.
He didn't want to be in his right mind at the moment, he wanted to lie there in shock for as long as possible until help arrived. Help would arrive, of course, help always arrived. Maybe the boy would run off and get help.
Considering the boy was pretty dumbstruck and not moving at all, that seemed unlikely.
---
In a Moth, a rather large Moth in the sky, the explosion had not gone unnoticed.
"What was that?" Xev tried to look at the barren land below.
"I believe it was an explosive device called a 'land-mine,'" Kai answered, his voice as stiff as always. "They are hidden lightly under the ground so they may explode when someone steps on them."
"Why would someone want to waste time with something like that," Xev wondered, still scanning the area. This planet did things in such strange ways; on the Cluster, someone would have just fired off a Black Pak to vaporize an undesirable.
"Who cares?" 790 spoke up from his perch on the back of the seat. "Humans die all the time. Heck, my human is already dead anyway!"
Kai was indifferent while 790 rowled at him.
Suddenly, Xev jumped in surprise. "Kai, there are people down there!"
"There aren't any women, are there?" 790 asked, "because if there is, they'll just have to deal with it rather then laying eyes on Kai! You know they all want him!"
"Oh quiet, 790," she scolded. "They look injured... Kai, can you help them? I mean, we could take them to the Lexx and use the Protein Regenerator, right?"
"I will help them if you wish, Xev."
790 got loud. "She doesn't wish it! The bitch is delusional!"
"I do wish it," she glared at the robot head.
"Very well," Kai answered, piloting the Moth closer to the ground.
Bud was thankful for the breeze; it was starting to get way too hot. Funny, it felt like the breeze created by wings, beat... beat... beat... if a bit faster then that. He sighed. All this for a school. Well, schools were nice. And hey, that little boy needed an education, and... was that a giant BUG hovering in the air a few feet away? Bud wondered if his vision was playing tricks on him. And he wondered if it was possible to hallucinate a forced perspective.
But then a black flying shape zoomed out from the bug's head, spun around in the air a bit, and landed to his far side. Bud just registered that it looked like a person decked out in black before he or she happened to land on another mine and explode.
Well, so much for that.
"Kai!" Xev reacted instinctively; forgetting for the moment that Kai would survive. So to speak.
790 started wailing.
Meanwhile, on the ground, Bud watched in a stupor while two legs carried a torso with one arm around. Logically speaking, the new arrival had lost a head and an arm. The arm still attached reached out somewhere and shot out a... thing. The thing seemed to scream through the air with a cord attached, and it pulled back a head with a really bizarre hairdo. The arm placed the head on top of the torso and an orange-ish glow re-attached it. Bud came to the conclusion that he was hallucinating when the arm repeated this process to re-attach the other arm.
Those people nearby would've laughed if they could've seen what his mind was cooking up. Although, the boy looked pretty wide-eyed at the moment. And was something inside that big bug's head crying?
"Are you alright?" The black-garbed hallucination asked once it walked over.
Bud looked down at himself again, confirming his earlier suspicion that half of his right led was, indeed, gone. "Um... no, not really."
He supposed talking to his imagination was better then doing nothing.
Looking around, Kai soon found the remains of the man's leg. It would have been a disgusting sight, but then, the dead do not feel disgust. He fired off his brace one more time and brought the mangled, scorched and mostly cooked limb to his hand. It was fortunate that the bones had remained largely intact, even if the flesh was unsalvageable.
Kai tossed the leg up into the Moth's cockpit.
"Yuck!" Xev yelled back down, "Kai, watch it with that stuff!"
Kai didn't respond. He bent down over Bud again. "I am going to take you to the Lexx, where we will repair your leg."
"Uh-huh, sure," Bud answered. He really didn't believe he was being flung over the shoulder of some guy in black with a funny hairdo, but it would take energy to resist delusions, and he didn't feel like making that effort right now. But he could've sworn he saw a rather shocked Coates running back into view in the no-mines area over there...
With the injured man over his shoulder, Kai fired off his brace and pulled the two of them into the hovering Moth. While Xev managed to get a bleary-eyes Bud situated in the seat, Kai used his brace to bring the boy into the Moth. To the boy's credit, he didn't say anything, but that was probably because he was scared to death. He looked at everything quite a few times, though.
---
"I am still very hungry, Stan." The Lexx said. "When can I consume Holland?"
"Soon Lexx, soon," Stanley Tweedle sighed. He wanted to tell the Lexx to eat, but even he felt the pangs of guilt that even thinking about causing mass death brought. Nevertheless, he was slowly overcoming that. The Lexx was his ship, it was his companion... it was his friend. And he certainly wasn't going to let it starve to death!
"Lexx, are Xev and Kai coming back yet?" He asked.
"Yes they are, Captain Stan," the Lexx answered, zooming the picture on the viewscreen into the spot where their Moth was visible. "They are right there."
"Thank you Lexx," Stan called, stepping down from the central column and heading down to meet them. Xev and her exploring. Explore this, explore that, it always led to trouble...
He just knew trouble was brewing when Kai climbed out of the Moth with an injured guy over his shoulder and the injured guy's leg in his hand. "Woah woah woah, Kai, what are you doing with him? And what are you doing with a kid?"
The kid was still looking around, dumbstruck.
"Xev asked me to use the Protein Regenerator to repair his injuries," Kai answered, heading for the cryo-chamber. Xev shrugged at Stanley as his blood-pressure shot up, the kid mindlessly following them, too scared to dare say anything.
The Protein Regenerator did its thing, and when the spinny part on the top stopped spinning, it was... done. Bud's leg was all shiny and new and repaired, even though he had long resigned himself to his hallucinations and fallen asleep while being propped up in the open cryo-pod.
So Xev poked his tummy a little. He snorted once or twice, stirred, woke up, and blinked a lot. His mind was certain a bit clearer now, and he realized the severity of his situation. Places like this were just… wrong. Weird, living walls, a cold pod to stand in, a guy in black with wrong hair, an old guy in a red jumpsuit, a hot chick, and a robot head on a little podium were just ingredients for trouble.
So he said the first thing that came to mind. "Um. Hi?"
"Hi!" Xev smiled, getting right up in his face. Stanley rolled his eyes when she started running a finger down the middle of Bud's chest. Bud seemed rather flustered by this. "So, whatcha doin tonight?"
"Um." He decided to drop a hint. "Taking my wife out for dinner?"
She made a face at him, then pouted and moved away. "Drat."
"Okay, listen, buddy," Stanley said, "we did the nice thing, we fixed yer leg up all nice and good, now will you please take Junior here," he nudged the little boy, "and be on your merry way and away from here?"
Bud blinked a few times. "Um... where is here?"
"The Lexx, of course," Stanley became incredulous, getting even more then fed up with these stupid people from Earth never knowing anything. "The most powerful weapon of destruction in the two universes?"
Bud blinked again. "Oh yeah... hey, you mean that big floating insect near the moon was real?"
Stan turned to Xev. "He's standing in it and he asks if it's real."
"He's obviously a lower life-form," 790 piped up. "Kai, can you kill him now?"
"Kai is not going to kill him," Xev growled at the head.
"Okaayyyy, space slut!" 790 spat.
Xev let out a Cluster Lizard yell that had 790 cowering in fear (no small feat, considering he was just a head) and Bud trembling. At this point, Bud noticed that his leg was all fine and dandy, even his combat fatigues were suddenly intact. He tapped his foot on the bottom of the cryo-pod a few times, testing it, and then hopped down.
It was all so surreal. Who were these people? How could they be aliens from a giant insect in space if they looked, well, perfectly human? Where were Mulder and Scully? Was he dreaming this and still lying in the desert, minus half a leg? Or was that the delusion? Or was it all completely real? Or...
Finally, the little boy spoke up. Unfortunately, said boy didn't know a word of English.
"The who in the what now?" Stan complained.
"I believe he said," Kai added, "'Can we go home now?'"
"Huh? Oh!" Bud exclaimed. "Oh yeah, sure... um... as soon as I figure out how to get there..."
"I will take you back to the Earth," Kai intoned.
So Kai led them both to the Moth, with Bud occasionally hopping on his new leg to make sure it was real. Of course, if he was dreaming that didn't matter, but it was the principle of the thing.
And the Moth was pretty cool too! It wasn't a typical science-fiction shuttlecraft; after all, most shuttlecraft didn't have wings and they weren't alive. And the Lexx, Bud wished he had a camera. Kai didn't understand why he commented, 'boy, did Roddenberry get it wrong,' while he craned his neck around to look at the big bug on their way back to Earth.
So Kai dropped him off (with the boy, of course,) right back in Afghanistan, at that crowd that had grown larger near the minefield, and had simply flown off again.
He stared at the Moth, and didn't blink when Coates ran up and almost tackled him. He did, however, look at his leg again and comment, "wow... that was all real, wasn't it?"
---
The ref list:
790's line, "Okaayyy, space slut!" is an actual 790 line taken from Lexx #4.24- "Yo Way Yo."