"Don't take this the wrong way, Naboo, but your planet is kind of rubbish." Vince was sitting with his back to the wall, arms tightly hugging his knees, back arched and shivering in his thin, fashionable jacket.
Naboo shrugged indifferently, "No one asked you to come. Might've been better if you hadn't, actually."
Vince scowled, but quickly smoothed the expression out. The last thing he needed on top of everything else was to have to worry about wrinkles. "All your transportation things are shiny jewellery," he said, "what do you expect? Why can't you be like a normal Shaman and drive a white van?"
"I don't think you've got that quite right, Vince."
Vince ignored him and looked around. They were in a room made of stone. The walls, floor and ceiling were all the same uniform grey colour, the only break from it being the slightly shiny grey of the thick metal door. The only light came from a row of small windows placed far out of reach along the very top of the wall that lay between them and the outside. The sun was rapidly setting, and soon it would be completely dark in their cell.
"What do you reckon they're doing to Howard?" Vince asked after a while, breaking the silence that had stretched taut across the room.
Naboo shrugged, "Dunno, they're probably torturing him or something,"
Vince's eyes opened wide as he peered across the gloom in an attempt to see whether or not Naboo was joking. He wasn't. Vince let out an involuntary moan of despair and hugged his knees even tighter, "This is all my fault, isn't it?"
"Yep," Naboo told him, "but don't worry, you'll get your turn,"
"What do you mean?" Vince's eyes widened further in panic.
"Well, you're the one that picked that stupid flower, don't you think they're going to be more angry at you than Howard?"
Vince thought about this for a moment, then visibly crumpled. He rested his head on his knees and closed his eyes. He missed Howard. If Howard were there, everything would be okay. Nothing bad could happen to them as long as they stayed together. Separated, he wasn't so sure.
Howard shivered sitting on the wooden bench. He hated this place. Not just the strange prison in which he currently found himself incarcerated, but the whole stupid planet. Every time he came here, and granted, it had only been twice, he managed to find himself in chains.
These particular chains were heavy iron things attached to cuffs on his wrists and ankles, and securing him to the wall. They allowed him a few feet of mobility, and placed him within easy sitting distance of the most uncomfortable bench he had ever encountered.
He reached his hands up to rub vigorously at the tops of his arms, friction supplying some temporary relief from the permanent chill of the cell, and scowled in irritation at the clanging of metal on metal as the chains banged against one another. He wondered what he had done to deserve this.
Well, it was obvious, wasn't it? He had met Vince. He couldn't exactly say that everything had gone wrong when he met his best friend, especially since the opposite was true, but he could definitely say, with no doubt whatsoever, that if he had never met Vince, he wouldn't be chained to the wall in a jail cell on an alien planet. For starters, Vince had suggested they come here, and for seconds, Vince had been the one that had picked the stupid flower that had got them arrested.
Howard wondered why he had chosen that particular moment to try to be a hero. It was so utterly, ridiculously unlike him, that he wondered whether he had been overcome by some kind of temporary insanity. When the guard had grabbed hold of Vince and he dropped the stupid flower in shock, looking at Howard with such utter terror, Howard had become possessed by something that compelled him to spring forward and punch the guard in the face before attempting to pry his hands from Vince's arms.
It was a shame, really, that Howard had never been athletically inclined. He wondered whether, if he had been better at PE than music at school, he would have had the ability to knock out the guard, free Vince and let them both leg it away and teleport back to Earth before Naboo's ring had been confiscated from them. As it was, he had only made the guard more angry, and had completely forgotten that there were other guards around, all of whom were willing and able to leap in and squash the burst of heroism before it had chance to achieve anything.
For as long as he lived, Howard would never forget the look of panic on Vince's face as they were dragged apart, the younger man reaching out to try to grab hold of his arm even as he was pulled backwards and away from the garden in the opposite direction to Howard.
Whatever had been the reason for his uncharacteristic actions, and Howard was still banking on temporary insanity as a defence if it should come to it, Howard really wished that hadn't chosen that particular moment to be a hero. It meant he was now alone in jail cell, worrying about Vince, who was presumably in the same predicament, rather than being free, and therefore able to reason with their captors and try to find out what Vince had done that was so terrible.
Howard looked up as he heard the turning of a key in the lock. The door swung open to reveal the same guard that had grabbed Vince. Howard felt a small glow of satisfaction as he noticed the bruising appearing around his right eye. He hoped it hurt.
The guard was followed into the room by another man, who Howard recognised immediately as the short, blue skinned leader of the nomadic tribe that had adopted Vince as their 'Chosen one' last time they had found themselves on this hell hole of a planet. The same man that had ordered them to be killed, burying them up to their necks in the sand and leaving them to die in the hot sun. Howard immediately sprang to his feet, ignoring the jangling of his chains and pointed to the blue man, "You!"
"Yes, and you," he replied, before turning away from Howard and focusing his attention on the guard, "That's one of them," he said, "they must have escaped when we tried to kill them before. I thought it was odd if they had disintegrated in the sun. Can I have him back? He was irritating, but he made a useful slave."
The uniformed man shook his head, "We merely needed testimony as to his crimes," he said, "But when we are finished with him, you can have whatever is left."
"Hey, come on now," Howard protested, "I haven't done anything wrong, not really. I mean, I'm sorry about your eye, but it was temporary insanity. And the flower that Vince picked, how was he supposed to know he wasn't supposed to?"
"There was a sign right next to it," the guard told him, "That flower was a symbol of hope, one of the last of its kind. It was sacred to our people. What possible excuse could there be for such a transgression?"
Howard sighed. Well, that was just perfect, "Temporary insanity?" he tried.
"You mention the chos...the imposter. The one who pretended to be the chosen one?" the blue man asked.
"No," Howard told him, "no, he's not here, I meant a different Vince."
The man turned back to the guard, "The other one is here? In the building?" There was something in the widening of his eyes and the little puddle of drool that was beginning to form at the corner of his mouth that disgusted and terrified Howard with equal intensity.
The guard nodded as he turned to leave, and the nomadic leader spun around and followed him, practically jogging to keep up with his long strides, "Can I have that one too? I made a mistake trying to put him to death. He pretended to be the chosen one, he cost me my hand! Death is too good for him, and he's too pretty."
Howard struggled against his chains as the door opened and the guard held it for the nomad to leave. As he closed the door after him, the guard remaining in the cell, Howard just managed to catch the last thing he said, and it sent a chill of horror and revulsion through him, "He would make an excellent concubine,"
As Howard lunged forward, chains for the moment completely forgotten, putting all his energy into reaching the door and stopping the blue psychopath before he could get anywhere near Vince, two thoughts occurred to him. The first was that the insanity was back, and so wasn't as temporary as he had thought, and the second was 'ouch'. The second was prompted more by the fist that was pounded through his stomach than anything else. He sat back down. He sat there for a while, trying to work out what had happened.
He recovered his wits just as the guard was about to land another blow, and flinched out of the way, not avoiding the fist entirely, but lessening the impact of the punch, "What are you doing?" he gasped.
"So you don't like being hitting? Funny, you didn't seem to mind before."
"Okay, okay..." Howard held out a hand in front of him, palm forwards and waved t around none-threateningly, "I'm sorry. It's just, Vince..."
"How long have you been working with our enemies?"
"I..." Howard took as deep a breath as he could manage and his stomach protested violently, "What?"
"The people who wish to destroy our world, the anarchists. How long? How many other members of the organisation do you know?"
Howard shook his head in disbelief, squashing down the urge to back into a corner and curl up in a quivering ball, crying. "This is ridiculous. Look, you've got it all wrong. This isn't even our planet, we're just here on a daytrip with our friend Naboo. You might know him, he's from here."
"Never heard of him,"
The guard raised his fist to strike again and Howard cowered back, "Okay, well why would you? I haven't heard of everyone from Earth. I don't even know most of the people from my street. Look, my point is, why would he want to hurt his own planet, and why would we be helping when we don't know anything about the place?"
The guard smiled in a way that Howard really didn't like, and opened what looked like a black leather briefcase that Howard hadn't noticed until now. "We'll find out the truth soon enough," he said, and pulled out something that Howard couldn't identify. It looked looked like a thin metal wire, silver coloured and quite long. The guard picked up the briefcase and carried it closer, and Howard realised that it wasn't a briefcase at all, it was some kind of machine that the wire was attached.
This couldn't be good at all. Howard shrunk back against the wall, muttering "Don't kill me," over and over as he tried to make himself appear as small and unthreatening as possible. As the guard reached him and, with a sharp tug of his hair, jerked his head up to force eye contact, Howard couldn't help himself, he screamed.
In another part of the complex, Vince's head snapped up and he opened his eyes to complete blackness. "What was that?" he said, hoping Naboo was still there, "Was that Howard?"
"Yeah, I reckon," Naboo replied. As Vince slept, the shaman had moved across the room and was sitting next to him. Vince reached out in the darkness and grabbed hold of the his arm, then shuffled closer. An unspoken demonstration of his appreciation, as well as a way to keep track of the other man's position; he was fairly sure shamans could see in the dark, and could probably move away without being heard. "Don't worry," Naboo told him, "they probably haven't started the torture yet. People don't normally scream, usually they just kind of whimper,"
For almost two hours after the scream, they heard nothing. Vince sat bolt upright, his back leaning against the wall and his hand on Naboo's arm, the only two things whose location he knew in the impossible blackness of the room. He wasn't scared of the dark, he liked the dark, but he preferred it with enough light mixed in to see by. Like the kind of dark you get in a nightclub, or outside at night when there is a full moon. This kind of impenetrable darkness scared him a bit. There could be anything lurking in it. He wished Howard was there to tell him it was all right, but he wasn't. And somehow Naboo just wasn't the same.
When the door finally opened and light flooded in from the corridor beyond, Vince had become so used to the darkness, that the sudden unexpected burst made his eyes water.
A man entered. He wore the same uniform that the men who arrested them had worn, a kind of grey and red jacket and trousers, with some kind of weapon strapped around his waist. He stood in the doorway and looked at them for a few minutes before he spoke. As he did, Vince's eyes recovered from the sudden assault of light and he made out the silhouettes of several other people standing behind him.
"On your feet!" The man yelled eventually.
Vince and Naboo exchanged a glance, Naboo nodded and they both stood up.
The man entered the room flanked by two other soldiers who pointed their strange gun-like weapons at them, while the first soldier cuffed Vince's hands behind his back. He then motioned for them to walk towards he door.
"Hey, what about him? Vince asked, nodding at Naboo, "Why doesn't he get handcuffed?"
"He is free to go," the man answered.
Naboo's expression remained indifferent as he absorbed this news, and with it the implication that Vince was not free. "How come?" he asked eventually.
"After questioning your friend, we realise you are not anarchists. You did nothing wrong, except for making friends with a couple of idiots. This one, however," he indicated Vince with a flick of his thumb, "pulled the flower from the Gualhama plant, and the other one attacked a soldier."
Vince chewed on his bottom lip, "I didn't know that flower was important," he said, "I just thought it was pretty. Look, if you like flowers, I can get you some more. There's this shop near where I live..."
The man ignored him, "We would have let them go," he continued, "but it turns out they are wanted by the leader of a nomadic desert tribe, so we have decided to hand them over,"
"Hey, hang on a minute," said Vince, "you can't just go about handing us over to people like that! Who is this blok..."
The question dies on his lips as he noticed a familiar short blue figure standing just a few feet ahead of him, with a very unhappy looking Howard standing next to him, prevented from moving away by a hefty looking chain that connected his wrists to the hand of a muscular blue man with a very angry expression on his face.
Vince exchanged a glance with Howard, registered the defeat in his friend's eyes and smiled nervously. "Naboo?" he said quietly out of the corner of his mouth, "Help?"
Naboo shook his head, "I'll see what I can do," he said, "but in the meantime I reckon you'll have to go with them."