Wrote this (my first PRiS... well, pre-PRiS fic in a long time!) for Purplestripe66 on Livejournal. Happy Birthday!
It was the barren, white sand desert surface of the planet Elbbard VIII that they trained on that week; a step up in difficulty from their last training ground.
"It doesn't seem so bad!" she exclaimed, jumping a few times. "I feel great! Let's do this!"
"Very well."
20 minutes passed. The usual exercises took more time, determination and focus to complete. The canteen went dry part of the way through her run.
"My Princess," he said, slowing his pace so that he ran by her side.
"I'm fine," she panted, irritation in every word. "I can keep going. Come on!"
"You have done very well," he replied, "We will stop-"
"No, we won't!" she snapped, letting out an irritated snarl as she passed him. "Come ON!"
It wasn't more than a minute before she realized her legs were turning to jelly, her heart was pounding out of her chest, and her skin was bone dry. The blinding white sand stretched into forever, all around her, and she felt a rising sense of panic as she realized she could not continue. To do so would almost certainly result in death.
"My Princess." His voice came from what seemed to be miles away, "We will stop."
"Yeah. Let's do that," she laughed shakily.
It was a short (and very slow) walk to the only building in sight for miles, a run down saloon surrounded by all manner of vehicles. Ecliptor assured her that they would have water, and food that she could stomach. No blood tarantulas.
"Twenty minutes? Pitiful! I should have been just fine. What happened?" Astronema asked, wincing as she realized she had developed painful blisters on her feet, in addition to the array of other physical troubles.
"The gravity here is 4% stronger than you are accustomed to," he explained. "The ambient temperature is also a bit higher."
"Whatever," she snapped, "How much higher?"
He stopped for a minute, extending a hand. He initiated his thermometer subroutine, and within another second, he had an accurate reading.
"124 degrees."
Astronema would have swallowed hard, had she not been dehydrated. The realization made her a bit dizzy.
"Your kind," Ecliptor said, "Is not engineered to survive very long in such temperatures. I am sorry that you had such difficulty. With time, I am confident that you will adapt, but for now, we must go at a significantly slower pace if you wish to remain functional."
Astronema nodded, but set her jaw. She had long since ceased being annoyed by the way he referred to her as being "engineered", and "functional"; he was a robot, after all. And he was right.
But still.
"Well, even so. The volcano on Harnast Prime wasn't nearly as bad as this!"
"Indeed."
They were in the "parking lot" of the saloon now; a disordered cluster of flying crafts of all kinds. As though the drivers could not wait another moment to get in the doors to fill their stomachs with greasy, hastily prepared slop and putrid green drinks.
The sign over the door was printed in a language Astronema couldn't begin to understand, and Ecliptor translated it as
"The Only Saloon For Parsecs".
The door flew open before they even reached it, and a massive dog-like creature tore across the "parking lot" to his vehicle, a strange red scooter with a brown satchel on the side.
"You got 'em?" a voice yelled from inside the bar.
"I got 'em! Yes! I got the karaoke!" replied the dog creature. He was clearly intoxicated, and began to twirl around as he held a handful of music discs and began to badly sing, "'Turn around, briiight eyes! Every now and then I fall apart!' Let's DO THIS!"
A cheer rose up from within the bar, and Astronema instinctively went for her staff, but Ecliptor laid a hand on her shoulder.
"What is it?" she asked him in a low voice.
"... A party," he growled.
Astronema groaned.
"I hate parties. Should we leave? No, we can't leave. It's the only saloon for parsecs."
The dog creature lumbered his way up to them, reeking of alcohol and various other mood-altering substances. He had blue sauce splattered down his shirt.
"Hey guys! You here for the party? WHOOO! Sweet date you got there, man!"
He clapped Ecliptor on his spiky shoulder, immediately withdrawing his hand, as he realized it was bleeding.
"Ohhhh man!" the dog creature slurred, "You shoulda warned me! Good thing I'm in a good mood! I'd kill your ass dead! WHOOOO! LET'S DO SOME KARAOKE!"
He bounced into the bar, leaving a trail of dropped discs behind him.
Astronema and Ecliptor stared at one another.
"I... want to destroy that creature," Astronema said.
"You would be well within your rights to do so," Ecliptor nodded.
"But I want to eat first."
The inside of the saloon contained possibly the biggest mess Astronema had ever seen concentrated into such a small area. Not one square inch of floor was suitable for standing on, not one single surface was littered with any fewer than twenty bottles. A short, elderly creature was flitting about, trying, and failing, to keep up with the turmoil.
A tall humanoid woman in a red and gold dress was dancing on the bar in massive platform shoes, breaking bottles and pitchers with a fervor usually reserved for the battlefield. A splattered banner hanging from the ceiling read "HAPPY BIRTDHAY DEE! 39 YEARS YOUNG".
"Getting service may prove difficult," Ecliptor yelled to be heard above the din.
"Watch this," Astronema grinned, pulling out her boomerang. Ecliptor would have cringed had he been able to do so, and his learned behavior proved an adequate facsimile.
Astronema let the boomerang fly into the air, slicing streamers and hanging lamps in twain. Its last stop before it returned to her was to neatly cut "HAPPY BIRTDHAY DEE! 39 YEARS YOUNG" right down the middle.
As she predicted, an eerie silence fell over the bar, until only the dog monster could be heard, singing from a karaoke stage in the corner.
All eyes turned on her, and her heart skipped a beat. She could sense Ecliptor beside her, tensing for a possible battle.
A moment, and she raised her chin with what she hoped resembled confidence. She prepared to speak, asking for a menu, or something else, to get a chuckle out of the crowd, while still asserting her dominance.
She settled on,
"Table for two."
No one laughed. The short creature with the broom paled, glancing over his shoulder at the woman in the red dress, who was speechless. The bartender, however, motioned for him to go, go, GO, GO, and he reluctantly skittered over to Astronema.
"R-right this way," he murmured.
"Mm-hmm," Astronema said irritably. As she followed him, she looked down her nose at the partygoers, who were harumphing amongst themselves.
The booth was covered in garbage, empty bottles and other refuse. Astronema and Ecliptor sat down, and the waiter made a half-hearted attempt to push all the junk on the table to one corner, before giving up.
"What can I get for you?" he asked timidly, looking behind him.
"Water," Astronema said, paging through the menu. "I can't read this."
"Very well, water, and-"
"EXCUSE ME?" a voice suddenly rang out from behind them. It was the woman in the red dress, as Astronema could have predicted. "Who is she? Who are THEY?"
The waiter turned, and Astronema growled and grabbed his arm.
"I need WATER," she snapped, "Regardless of what happens with HER, you will bring me my water, and something to eat with it. Nothing alive. Got it?"
"R-right," the waiter mumbled, skittering away again.
Ecliptor shook his head.
"I apologize, Princess, this place is..." he trailed off, glancing to the side. "Unsatisfactory."
"Oh, I like it. It's got atmosphere," Astronema said, as the angry woman in red approached the table.
"Excuse me, did you not hear me?" the woman snapped. "I said, who ARE you?"
"I'm just passing through," Astronema said innocently, narrowing her eyes.
"This party is INVITATION-ONLY. I don't recall inviting YOU."
"I'm not here for the party."
"Oh, well, then, I'm afraid you'll have to leave."
"And I will leave," Astronema said, getting to her feet, "As soon as I'm finished."
She was almost a foot shorter than the woman, but she stood her ground and tried to be as imposing and assertive as a young teenaged girl could be.
"You're finished NOW," the woman said through gritted teeth. "Piranhatrons!"
A murmur went through the crowd, and it was apparent that the Piranhatrons weren't obeying her call.
"Piranhatrons!" she roared again.
"Uh, Auntie Divatox?" a male voice asked from somewhere in the crowd, "Uhh, they're not here, remember? You sent them-"
"ARGH!" Divatox screamed.
"You sent them to get the cake..."
"YES! THANK YOU! I REMEMBER!"
The waiter was back, with a pitcher of greenish tinted water and a plate of some strange brown dumplings.
"What is this?" Astronema asked, pointing to the pitcher of water. "Why is it green?"
"Vitamins?" the waiter asked.
"And these. What are they? They look disgusting-"
Divatox scoffed and flung the tray out of the waiter's hand. She grabbed him by the collar and lifted the hapless creature to her eye level.
"Hey! You! You work for ME, remember? Who rented out this place, huh? Huh? ME! Who's paying you? ME! Meaning, you do what I say, and I say, throw these two out!"
"Um, I'm afraid you'll have to... leave..." he choked, looking at Astronema.
"NOW!" Divatox shrieked.
"Now," the waiter groaned.
Astronema grabbed the pitcher of green water and neatly slipped out of the booth. She bent over, picking up a few of the dumplings from the floor before she made her way back to the entrance.
"Enjoy the party," she said with a smirk. "Sorry to interrupt."
Ecliptor followed, nodding to the partygoers.
As they walked out the door, they heard Divatox's screeching howl,
"Who did they think they WERE? It's MY birthday party, isn't it?"
The dog monster had just wrapped up "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and was moving on to "And I'm Telling You I'm Not Going" from Dreamgirls.
He was terrible.
There was nothing in the way of natural shade on the entire planet, so far as Astronema could tell, but the large brown SUV at the far end of the parking lot cast a usable bit of a shadow. She sat against the side of the vehicle, chugging the greenish, slightly sour water and eating the doughy dumplings.
"Not bad," she mused. "I'd go back. Not now, of course, but..."
"Astronema, I must say," Ecliptor said, "You handled that situation very well. You kept your temper under control. I couldn't have done any better."
"Well, you could have," Astronema said, smirking. "But, no. There was no reason to get angry. One day, they'll all bow before me."
"Indeed..."
"Divatox. I'll remember that name, believe me."
The two were silent for a moment.
"Ecliptor," Astronema said thoughtfully. "What's a... birthday party, anyway?"
Ecliptor was standing at the edge of the van, keeping a look out. At her question, however, he turned fully toward her.
"A birthday party?" he asked.
"Divatox said it was her birthday party. What is that?"
Ecliptor hesitated. The fact that the girl had originally come from KO35, a race of humans who do not take note of such things, had meant that she had never longed for a lavish birthday party the way some other species had. He knew her approximate biological age was fourteen years, but when she had been born was anyone's guess.
"Many species," he began, "Take great stock in their own existence, and the passage of time. They choose to yearly celebrate the fact that they... yet exist, on the anniversary of their creation."
Astronema nodded.
"I don't even know... the anniversary of my own... creation, do I?" she said, so quietly that her voice seemed to be part of the wind.
"No," Ecliptor replied.
She nodded, biting her lip.
"When were you... created?" she asked him.
"I went online over 17,000 years ago. I am afraid the way in which we tell time has changed a good deal since then. I do not know the exact date."
"Then neither of us know," she said thoughtfully.
Ecliptor nodded.
Astronema hesitated, looking up at him, and then she raised the pitcher. With a wistful kind of smile, she whispered,
"Well, then... to our birthdays... whenever they are."