Okay, so I deleted all my old HHE stuff, and now I'm starting anew with a completely different approach. Something I may be better working with, definitely more controversial (after all, what good is a Hills fic if you don't inject it with controversy until it vomits?), and something way more fun/less childish than before. Also, this one's gonna be much more Lizard-centric than my old stuff. Hope y'all like it...
One last thing: this is EXTREMELY AU. Pretty much the only similarity to the movies are the characters and the basic attitudes and workings of the HHE characters. Theirs ages and most everything else will be much different. You'll see why as the fic procedes. Now go on. Read. You know you want to.
There had never really seemed to be a point in saving any of the stupid, naïve norms for much more than another day's lunchtime. The old man working out at that gas station was more than capable of finding more and more for them, and as of late, there had been at least 2 vehicles per week rolling towards Jupiter's happy little family in the silent, dusty hills of New Mexico. No reason at all to save a single one of their unintelligent and unwary squishy bodies except for food.
But now? Oh, now Jupiter was starting to think about repopulating the family, making a sort of clan that could rival the size and productiveness of that of Hades' group. Lizard wasn't too stoked about the idea, though. Hell, the small, ill-tempered man had just about thrown a fit proportional to those of Pluto's nightly tantrums when Papa Jupiter had announced that they would be saving a handful of humans for reproduction's sakes. There was no point! Papa Jupiter had just about snapped Lizard's spine in two when he began swearing and throwing things around the communal house and had almost hit Big Brain with the leg of a chair. Big Mama had begun to cry, too, wanting the anger to stop and for the family to agree on something for once. Pluto had giggled stupidly.
So that was that. Lizard was to personally pick (with the help of the wise and mighty Pluto and Goggle… the shit heads…) two females and one male from the next few weeks of prey. They were to be, as Papa Jupiter has stated so eloquently, "A good age for fuckin', pretty in the face, and healthy in the body." AKA: he wanted a tiny group of beautiful and fertile people. Yeah, because they always went travelling through the middle of nowhere in dusty Oldsmobile's and twenty year old trailers that stank of shit and cigarettes. Beautiful people always travelled like that.
There was a reason, Lizard thought bitterly as he fingered the walkie-talkie strapped comfortably to his palm, that Jupiter wasn't the one out on these hunting trips. He may be big and the most dominant fucker of the Test Village, but he wasn't exactly the most knowledgeable when it came to people. Norms were stupid, ugly cock-suckers who tended to eat too much, sleep too much, and cry too much. Nothing attractive about the lot of them. Well, nothing but the easily accessible orifices of the women, which Lizard wasn't exactly picky about.
"Seen anythin' yet?" Lizard had gotten bored and sent out the terse question to Goggle via the walkie-talkie in hopes of a positive answer. Pluto was sitting contentedly next to him, looking very fascinating with the backs of his hands and very happy to be near his favorite mutant, Lizard. The smaller man, on the other hand, wished Papa Jupiter hadn't assigned the stupid lug to be his chaperone of sorts on this 'Save The Humans' venture. He was perfectly capable of keeping a few stupid people alive.
A rush of static screamed at lizard for a moment before Goggle's barely understandable growl responded, "There's one pretty far out right now. Just started driving out our way from the station; old man seemed to have a hard time with this group."
Lizard sighed, and rolled his eyes, "A hard time, how?"
"Well, they's got a baby with 'em, which is unusual, and twin girls no older than five years. I don't think he likes sending up babies and children to us."
Pluto perked up at the words 'babies' and 'children', his eyes darting up to look at Lizard's walkie-talkie as he cooed, "Baaaaaaby?"
"Yeah, shit-head, there's a baby with these'uns," Lizard snorted, knowing full well how much of a dumb fascination Pluto had with the little fuckers the norms raised to fear anyone different than them. He personally hated babies and their adorable little faces with their big, staring eyes and grasping hands. They were pointless little creatures until they were big enough to talk, and even then, the conversations were about as stellar as talking to Pluto when the big ol' lump was sleepy.
"Keep… baby?"
Again, Lizard sighed, but he was in a good enough mood with the approach of food to indulge the brainless muscle mass, so he sent out a signal to Papa Jupiter's walkie-talkie, "Hey, Papa, whatchya think of raising the baby as our own along with capturing a few breeders?"
"I don't think that's such a—" Goggles began quickly, but his unintelligible voice was overpowered by Jupiter's booming bass.
"Whatever you think is best, Lizard," he said in a condescending tone tinged with warning. There was no way Jupiter was going to let Lizard live if he fucked up anything to come… and rescuing a baby seemed to be borderline fucking up to Papa Jupiter. But Lizard knew the old, lazy shit would appreciate some more youth beside Ruby, and it would keep the girl out of trouble by taking care of the little norm. "Whatever you think best."
Lizard had no idea what the hell was going through his brain to put his own ass on the line for the sake of the dummy sitting next to him and the annoying young girl back at the Village who Lizard secretly thought deserved better than a life with the fucked up assholes back home. Maybe it was the unusual, small amount of cloud cover that stopped Lizard from getting a headache that afternoon, or maybe he was just getting soft. Either way, he hoped such a moment of charity for other wouldn't happen again.
Just when the small man thought that Jupiter was going to ignore them for the rest of the day's hunt, his voice boomed from the old, batter speaker once more, "Save the twins as well if you're planning to save the baby. No need to waste children; if we plan to raise one, why not three?"
Again, he was condescending, and Lizard could clearly hear the mocking leer that was on the big man's face. Lizard glanced at Pluto to see if he was still paying attention, but the man had gone back to examining his hands and giggling stupidly from time to time at the pure fascination of them. The sudden urge to push Pluto from the top of the hill and watch him roll clumsily down the slope was almost overwhelming. "Yeah, sounds like a great idea, Papa Jupiter," he replied dryly, wishing he had never asked the question about the baby in the first place.
When Jupiter's talkie crackled out of the conversation, Lizard could hear Goggle's laughter on the other end. It was a sort of gasping hack that only members of the family could discern as laughter instead of the sounds of a man choking wetly on something gross.
"What're you laughing at, dick face?"
"Seems you just roped yourself into taking care of a norm baby and its twin sisters!" He hooted almost too growl-like for even Lizard to understand.
"Why you little shit… I'm gonna come over there an—"
"Oh, shit!"
"What? Afraid now, Goggle, that I might just be able to slice yer—"
"Shut up; they're comin' your way now, dumbass. You better have your traps set out for 'em in a matter of minutes or you'll miss 'em!"
That dumb fucker. Lizard growled at the talkie before switching it off and running down the hill smoothly and laying out his spike strip across the road, readying it in record time for the vehicle's coming. If Goggle had been paying any attention to the road instead of the tense conversation snippet before him and Jupiter, then maybe he would have had time to do more than just the spike strip, and there would have been less chance that the whole plan would get fucked up, and… oh, hell. Nothing could be now.
With a few choice words mumbled angrily beneath his breath, Lizard scrambled back up the hillside and dragged Pluto into hiding with him, just past the crest of the hill. They only waited a matter of minutes, but it felt like hours to the irritable Lizard. In his approximately twenty-two years of existence, no wait had felt so damn long. Finally, the car came around the corner, it's faded red paint coated with a thin sheath of tan dust and the inhabitants, a middle aged couple in the front with three small children in the back, looking very tired. Perfect.
Their car, Lizard could recognize most of the older models by their undercarriages once they crashed and almost always rolled in the process of the driver's panic, was some early 80's Ford Tempo that looked to have a frequent oil problem. Once the car came to a screeching halt, its tires sadly still in contact with the dirt, Lizard watched as the man and the woman stumbled out of the car. The woman's head was bleeding, and the man seemed incapable of walking straight without stumbling.
Putting all doubts about saving children for the Village aside, Lizard sneaked over the hill and came to a silent rest halfway down the side closest to the unhappy little family. He sat with his arms crossed and resting on his knees as he watched Pluto approach the couple and their children. They always did it this way as of late; Lizard would watch while Pluto took out the strongest one(s) of the group, and then the younger man would leave his perch on the hill and take care of the weaker members with some help from his lumbering companion. Pluto was always more than happy to be the first to dispatch anyone, feeling important every single time, no doubt. And the people were never smart enough for Lizard to rush down and stow away his spike strip before they went looking for the object that murdered their tires.
The woman—he assumed she was the mother, though she looked a bit old to be giving birth to a baby anytime in the recent past—had ushered the children from the back seat into the warmth of the New Mexico air. The man, the father, was checking the engine and the tires. When he had finally realized that the tires of the family car were shredded, and that there was literally no way the flatness of the desert road could have done such splendid work on his newest investment in the family vehicle… well, that's about as far as the revelation got.
A loud crack that Lizard was sure even Papa Jupiter could hear from his home miles off resounded from the man's neck as Pluto snapped it like a toothpick. The smaller mutant grinned as he heard a gleeful laugh escape Pluto's mouth at the loud and rather fulfilling sound of a broken spine. Once the screams from the woman, and then from her children since they didn't understand what was going on, began Lizard scrambled down the hill with a grin on his face.
She didn't even try to run. Just stood there as the mountain of a man looked at Lizard, who knew that he undoubtedly looked like some short, deformed old man to her stupid eyes. That made his grin widen to the point of pain. He scooped up his spikes gently, disarming and subsequently draping them around his shoulders and torso carefully, never making eye contact with the shrieking woman inevitably staring at him.
Lizard clapped Pluto on the shoulder for the clean break to the man's neck; it was one of the prettiest jobs the smaller mutant had ever seen the older, clumsier fellow do, and Lizard was never one to bypass praising the shit head for things he wanted to see happen again. "Well done, ol' boy! Couldn't have done it better myself," he stared at the body on the ground, the neck's angle making the man look like he was resting his head on his shoulder as he lay there. It was almost… artistic.
The screams suddenly lowered in intensity as the woman quieted herself, her children following suit like tiny, wool-free lambs. Only the baby continued crying, it's little round face as red as it's hair. Though Ruby was just a tyke herself and hadn't exactly come to calling anything her favorites, Lizard was quite sure she'd like the little bastard. She liked red things, and that baby. That baby was the personification of all things red and baby-like.
"Now, ma'am," Lizard began as he approached slowly, spreading his arms wide to show that he wasn't overtly bearing any weapons, his blue eyes large and faking innocence, "I'm gonna need you to calm down and hand over your young'uns. We ain't gonna hurt 'em, cross my heart and hope to die."
"Y-you… you k-k-keep away from my children… you… you monster!" She yelled, her voice breaking and sounding hysterical as she hugged the baby tighter to her chest and pushed her twin girls behind her legs. They began wailing as well, causing the woman's frenzy to heighten. Her eyes darted everywhere as she stood there, probably searching for an escape or a shelter. No tears at her husband's expense had begun to even accumulate yet.
"Now, I'm thinkin' that monster's a bit too harsh a word for me," Lizard said conversationally, slowly lowering his arms to link behind him loosely, secretively motioning at Pluto to approach as well, "Now my friend here, he might take offense to ya insulting me so harshly… so I'mma give you a chance here, ma'am."
He waited to see if she would respond, which she dutifully did, not even noticing Pluto slowly moving behind her and the children to wait for a signal from Lizard, "A-a chance?"
"Mmm-hmm, a chance. Now. Ya can A) hand over them kids and apologize to me or, B) run with those children a'yers and see how far ya get before we catch and skin ya. Yer choice," he purred, enjoying the separate states of horror crossing her visage in alternating patterns. He lifted his arms to cross the forearms behind his neck, letting his elbows point to the sky in a deceptively carefree and defenseless manner.
The signal of relaxed waiting on Lizards part let Pluto know exactly what to do. Swift as a rattlesnake, his large hands reached out and planted themselves on her head, one on the back of her hair, the other covering her face (but not her frightened eyes, Lizard noticed with a sort of gleeful malice) and twisted her head quickly to the side. The cracking wasn't as satisfying as the break on the man, but this one wasn't a killer blow. It was the paralyzer. Pluto kept her body upright by holding her skull on each side of her head, twisting it painfully back to look at the approaching Lizard.
"Didn't decide quickly 'nough, ma'am," he chuckled, tapping her on the nose with a single grimy finger, "Otherwise we woulda letchya go, mindin' you left these children here with us. Seems like yer gonna have to just watch an' see what we do next…"
When Pluto and Lizard returned to the village that evening, they were greeted by the entire family in the communal house. The look on Papa Jupiter's face let Lizard know that he had let everyone know about Test Village's hard-ass saving a baby and two tiny girls from being eaten. Fucker. Lizard had been hoping that the bastard would have had enough respect for him to not be such an irritation, but apparently such brittle confidence in the man couldn't even be had.
Ruby, her little six-year-old body barely larger than the twin girls, stepped away from the protective grip of Big Mama and approached the little girls standing behind Lizard. The small, prematurely greying man had been thankful that they had been so willing to follow him once he had the little baby in his arms and Pluto had their parents flung over each shoulder. They were almost cute following him dutifully and silently on the 4 mile trek home, though now they looked exhausted and frightened. Their baby sibling hadn't made a sound the entire journey, except to yawn occasionally and smuggle into Lizard's warmth. The mutated girl smiled crookedly at them, "Hi! What're your guys' names? I'm Ruby and I'm six!"
Though tired and disturbed by the large group of unknown people, the girls answer quietly with the names Hannah and Kimberly, and the ages of four years (that part was answered with fingers being held up dutifully and the beginnings of half-smiles on their faces). Ruby seemed to approve of the names and smiled even wider, showing off the gap where one of her baby teeth had fallen out within the past week, "And what's your baby's name?"
They replied in unison: Jonathan.
With a giggle and happy glint in her overly large brown eyes, Ruby turned to Big Mama, "Can I go outside and play with Hannah and Kimberly, Mama? We won't go far."
Big Mama nodded her consent after looking for approve from Papa Jupiter, and Lizard heard Ruby chattering away to the quiet girls as they went outside… something about being best friends and playing with dollies and such. Lizard wanted to smile at the sound of Rub being so happy, but he didn't dare break his outward appearance in front of Jupiter. Is dignity with the Village was already shattered, so he knew he couldn't afford to show even the slightest bit of softness lest he be ridiculed for the rest of his life by papa Jupiter.
"Seems you made good on saving the children, Lizard," Jupiter finally spoke, his tone condescending at best, "But I don't see any breeders being brought back."
"It's day one; we aren't guaranteed to find toys for any of us on just the first day."
Jupiter snorted, "I expect you to bring me at least one woman by the end of the week or I'll have your hide… and that of your precious baby's as well." And with those parting words, Papa Jupiter stalked from the room, up the stairs, and into his and Big Mama's bedroom. Only his heavy footfalls betrayed how seriously angry he was at the lack of breeders brought back that first day. His face had been calm and almost sarcastic the entire time.
"Ignore him," Big Mama said as she began wheeling Big Brain into the other room, Cyst following her dutifully. "He just wants to fuck something, and I won't let him do me after how he treated you just last week. He's tense."
Lizard was left in the entry way alone with the sleeping red-haired baby. He looked up to where Big Mama had been, "What should I do with the baby?"
"Take care of him, of course," was the only response from the other room.
Oh, lovely.
SMALL CHILDREN! Yep, how's that for adding family dynamics? Also, there's gonna be some romantic what-nots in the future, but I'm not telling you who it'll be between. You'll just have to keep guessing! I don't mind reviews, guys, since this is me basicly starting over and I want to see where you all stand on my new beginning. Also... do you like the longer sections? I do. ^_^ Until next time!