Notes: This is basically a story set within the same timeline I wrote about in 'Ghost of a Spouse.' So I guess it's either a sequel or a prequel, depending on your point of view of time-travel in general. Also, may or may not be inspired by someone asking ages ago about how Coraline fuctions within the family unit I briefly mentioned in 'Ghost of a Spouse.' This...is not that exploration. Though I may do a tiny bit of it towards the end.
A small galaxy, uncluttered by ships or technology, lies in the outer reaches of the Hospilltonallian System. Eight small worlds circulate a slightly larger gold star, three of which play host to life, life which walks and plays and chatters in approximately sixty different languages, only fifteen of which are routinely translated across all the Plumber's badges.
And then one day, a ship, black and gleaming, as though to disguise itself between the gaps of space their star cannot illuminate, slides out into their midst. Two worlds do not notice. One does. Their version of NASA runs tests, translation frequencies, fine-tunes their radio. But nothing, not a hint of a greeting escapes the gleaming black ship that waits. And then, out in the cold reaches of space, the hatch opens, low and smooth.
And out drops a bomb. It explodes, a fierce gold light dropping out into their centre of their galaxy to roar out like a candle flame, before it flickers and fades, drowned out by the vast darkness that allows it to go mostly unnoticed. The concussive blast it pushes out is small, failing to touch any planet within its radius; but the purple rings of light that spring out after the gold fades, glimmer and fall like fireworks in the sky. Much like rain, they dive through the atmosphere of multiple worlds.
And that is when things begin.
'Take care.'
A shadow on his skin, the fur as soft as always, and it treks over his fingers and crosses over onto his palm. Ben lets it slide down and gives the blue hand there a fellow squeeze.
'What, no fist-bump for the road?' he teases.
But Rook looks at him tired and unafraid.
'There is Corrodium down there,' he pronounces, and the familiar roll of his voice makes it sound as though he's referring to nothing more than a chocolate bar. 'You and I both know that humans do not end up...looking their best after being exposed to such a mineral.'
Ben smiles, fights the temptation to wink. 'No monster make-over, got it.'
'Yes,' Rook intones gravely. 'Save it for Halloween, please.'
Ben laughs and turns away, dragging his hand free. There's the familiar pang when it leaves the fur, just enough to remind him that they're not in bed together or within each other's space in any way that can be called comfortable. The atmosphere here is all wrong, the ship around them sleek and gleaming with no welcome hues of green to touch the interior and remind them of Earth. Everything is silver, the buttons and keyboards jutting out of the workstations with a curved sharpness that reminds him of a dagger that's lost its edge. The aliens wielding them however, have no hesitation in slamming their fingers into their shapes, pressing down as though they fear nothing more than a papercut in return.
Ben frowns. 'I hate to break it to you, but maybe you should take your own advice. I still don't trust these...whoever they are. They still haven't given us their names, even though it's been more than a decade since we saved their bacon.'
The nearest alien gives a casual sniff, rolling his shoulders slightly from under the harsh purple cuff that juts out like a ledge over them. He's unwaveringly tall, nine feet to Rook's six foot-something and intimidating to boot, claws and head-crest tipped with a turquoise-tinted gleam. The round disc stamped on his chest gives off the same glow, marred only by the black line of the maths symbol inside. A symbol that still, after all these years, remains untranslatable to them all.
'The definitive name of our species contains at least eleven syllables alien to your primitive universe,' he says, somehow managing to sound snooty without altering his tone. 'It is far preferable to all of us not to have to hear your barbarian tongues mangle that or the glory that is our individual...'
'Names...' Ben finishes dully. He's half-tempted to add 'because you're actually called something embarrassing like squirrel-face, aren't you?' the way he would have done when he was sixteen but no, he's too old for that. Mostly. Besides Rook is eyeing said 'squirrel-face' in a way that means he's rapidly losing patience for the situation at hand. And a testy Rook is a fun Rook. Especially when it's not being directed at him.
'Do you not miss it?' Rook asks, his voice deliberately passive. 'Roaming your home dimension, one you have proclaimed to be unrestricted by the limits of time and space as we understand them? Because you have stayed here in our 'primitive universe' for sixteen years.'
Ben lets out a low whistle. 'He's got a point there.'
The alien clenches his fist, shoulders bunching up beneath his odd purple ruff. 'We have yet to reach our primary objective. And we have no need to answer to you.'
'You do when you seek the help of the primary law-enforcement agency of this universe,' Rook says grimly. His arms are now firmly crossed and he's not exactly glowering. But the only thing that rises to address the alien is his eyes and not his face, his neck staying firmly level with the symbol glowing in front of him. It's the closest thing he'll get to showing outright disrespect.
Besides, Ben notices, that purple robe, stream-lined shoulder ridges and glowy symbol may be intimidating, but Rook's uniform is no slouch in that department either. The silver of his armoured collar blends in with the background with a titillating gleam, but the black of the armour beneath it, that surrounds the rest of him, pushes him out to the forefront of everything else, making the eye jump to attention straightaway.
...Or maybe Ben's just biased.
'You are here to help only yourselves,' the alien says scornfully. 'The Corroduim being harvested from this world, and injected into these weapons of mass destruction your kind likes to blather on about has no effect on us.'
'No, just on the rest of the universe,' Ben says grimly, hackles automatically rising at the uncaring tone of the alien's voice. 'But believe me, you will start wanting to help us out when those weapons start getting unleashed on Earth, the planet you refuse to leave.'
The alien sniffs. 'As I said, we have yet to fulfil our primary objective. You are here because we are the only ones with the means to build a ship impervious to the startling effects of this new bomb. And I must admit, judging by the radiation readings of this Hospiltollian System you have shared with us, that the way the intrinsic power of a dwarf star has been combined with distilled Corroduim and used to produce such a devastating effect across the ecosystems of a single galaxy is fascinating.'
'Yeah,' says Ben tightly. 'Real fascinating.'
He's seen it up close, first-hand. Burnt-out worlds that look as though nuclear war-far has torn across their surfaces, rendering their oceans grey and boiling and leaving acid-eaten craters in place of cities, snarling holes that gobble everything else down. The surviving trees and plants now black and skeletal, empty of leaves as though winter has approached and brushed over their forms. And as for the animals, the people...surprisingly, despite the destruction, they aren't dead. No, now they wander over the purple desert their world has become, their forms twisted into black shapes more akin to the natural mud-like slick of the Lepoaians' than whatever their biology previously dictated them to be. On the upside, such a mutation has allowed them to survive the torn landscape and rubble in a way Ben highly doubts their previous forms could have been able to withstand.
It's been hours and a single galaxy has been wiped cleaned of it's beautiful shape, three individual cultures and histories gone up in smoke. Ben's hope is that they can turn what's left of the people back to themselves if they can track down these bombs and their creators.
Rook sighs, turning away from the alien and his glare and taking hold of Ben by the shoulder in order to sheer him away. 'I share your distaste,' his husband says, his eyes looking just as grim as Ben feels. 'But you do not have to place your trust in our hosts,' Rook says. 'Because while you will be down there, being a hero, I will be up here, watching them. Making sure they can do no harm.'
Ben stares at him. 'Wow, Mr RookâTennyson. I get all tingly when you take charge like that.'
One of the other aliens nearby huddles further into his seat, his white face glaring down balefully at the keys he shoves down. They quiver there for a moment, before his claws slip off and start charging back across the buttons with a speed that screams of annoyance.
Ben gives a half-hearted shrug to the grumpy alien, and Rook stares at him, his expression looking even more tired than before.
'Go. Azumuth gave you the code for the life form-lock, correct?'
Ben rolls his eyes. 'Yes, yes. You don't need to double-check everything. I can tie my own shoes.'
'You have no laces,' Rook tells him entirely straight-faced and Ben can't help but let his eyes drop down to his feet for a second in order to double-check, before they sweep up to in order to see the smirk curl up and change Rook's face, giving it some much-needed liveliness.
'You...' he pauses, unsure of which insult to use, before Rook laughs, pats him on the shoulder and says, very quietly with a teasing tweak to his mouth, 'there, there.'
Anur Khufos is a desert world, much like the ones Ben has had to stare at hours before and feel nothing but horror creep through his stomach at the sight. The difference is that Anur Khufos is still full of life. And it's also the one place in the universe where Corroduim is produced.
So Ben trudges through blistering heat and storms that make the red sand swirl up and round the glowing curls of Corrodium he eyes distrustfully in the distance like mist. They arch out of the rusty gloom like jagged waves, their points and tips reminiscent of the ocean back home. Because of their existence, the desert does not take on the form of Earth's; there are no sand dunes here, no centuries of storms and wind flurries to etch out ridges that on Earthrise sixty feet into the air. Instead the Corrodium pokes on through, dividing and driving the wind into smaller currents that sweep around and away, their multiple mirror-like surfaces being braised with the red dust ,the purple gleam still shining on through.
Ben's legs drag and sweep, the bandages from his Snare-Oh form weaving forwards to clutch at the outline of one of them, leading him like a harness to it's shape. He breathes as the sun beats down, the sand whistling as the wind flings it carelessly through all the gap his bandages leak through.
He's beginning to realise why so many Thep Khufans emigrate to Scout's world.
Already he can make out the patchwork shapes of their housing up ahead, bulbous shadows that are cut and thrust directly beneath the overhanging curls of the Corrodium. But on braving the metres between them, he realises how pitifully small they are, the sand distorting their shadows so that on forcing his feet across each dark blur that tries to paint their shape as large, he is left disappointed, confronted with igloo-like hovels where each brick, crystallised solid, seems to crumble under his gaze. They're red, baked by heat, sand fashioned and hardened into glass; there's an odd gleam that passes over them, a shimmer that shines like ice.
Welcome to the neighbourhood, he thinks and pauses, offering his hand up in a hesitant wave as a set of purple eyes peer curiously from the arch-like gap on the dome furthest away. There's no movement from the others, except for a thin sweep of noise, of something that shuffles and cracks like paper crinkling and pulling free.
But the owner of the curious eyes is not quite as frightened as her neighbour. She pulls herself out into the light.
'Are you parched?' she asks and Ben winces inwardly. The bandages of her body are torn and dirtied with red smears, of sand turned halfway into mud. Her dress, barely white, is short and ragged, the sleeves falling down to land heavily on her arms and her legs are bare. There is no hint of gold falling down, around and into her face, no fancy headdress to announce the Egyptian-like fashion style her species tend to favour. Just a burnished circlet of what looks to be, but probably isn't, copper, a cat-like slant to the centre, with the ends curling back like a headband.
'I could do with a drop,' he says, realising, with some surprise, that it is true. He has never fastened himself within Snare-oh's form long enough to fee anything like hunger or thirst. But here he is, trapped by the Life-Form lock and craving relief.
Her fingers fly out in a curiously human-like gesture, beckoning, and he follows, straight into the welcoming dark.
There's a baby in the basket by his feet. At least he thinks so. He stares down into the plaited weave of reeds, ones that creak and crack as he places his fingers over their rock-like edges and peers closer. A small ball of wrapped bandages stares up at him, their outer edges worn and torn loose and they wave above a set of loose, floppy, tentacles. Except, no, they're bandages too but bigger, and lacking any definite humanoid shape.
'One would think that you'd never have seen a baby before,' his host remarks wryly, her fingers escaping into a flickering ripple that wipes across the pot of water she offers him to brush away a few smudges of dirt.
'Thank you,' Ben says, trying to imitate Rook but unable to tear his eyes away from the flopped-over swaddle of bandage in the basket. He can make out eyes now, purple and set into the slightly darkened cracks the spaces between the bandages let escape. 'And err, no, I guess I haven't. Not many kids where I'm from.'
Well. Thep Khufan ones anyway.
The adult one in front of him stares at him. 'She's experimenting,' she says finally, her tone sounding slightly incredulous. 'All babies do. She's finally detached from me and has bandages of her own and the freedom to use them; so it's all very exciting for her. She'll settle into a more normal form over the following months, as she sees that she can't really crawl around and hold things as a limpid shape or ball. That's why I'm making more of an effort to stay...restricted in my usual form. If she starts copying me it will makes this phase end faster.'
'Oh,' says Ben. What else can he really say to that? He pauses. 'Notice anything unusual around here?' he asks as casually as possible.
She gives him a look. 'Apart from the outsiders coming to tear down parts of our home? No. Nothing much.'
Ben's grip tightens on the pot, enough for the water to slosh up against the side slightly. 'Show me,' he manages.
Every dune looks the same to Ben. His Thep Khufan eyes offer no new insights into the way the grains of sand slip and slide together, no way to tell one mound from another. The ones set on the face of his new friend, who has given her name as Nailah, however, are narrowing upon recognition of each new one.
'Sixteen...seventeen...' she counts under her breath and Ben feels himself knocked sideways by the thought that it isn't so much recognition that plays through her eyes, but focus and concentration on the numbers she has fine-tuned into her memory.
'Ah,' she says happily. 'And now we go left for fifty-six dunes.'
'Don't suppose you have GPS down here?' Ben asks wryly.
'I assume that acronym is a name for some sort of technology?' Nailah asks without turning her head to face him. 'No. I hear of things, from those who occasionally go off world, or attempt to start another life somewhere else and end up back here. But only the elite can afford spaceships or manage to pay the tolling stations that grant them access to climb the large cobwebs that link all the worlds in this solar system together. Unlike us, their ancestors were fortunate enough to build their home over the areas of our planet rich in metal, so they actually have things that outsiders want, things to bather with.'
Ben frowns. 'Is that something a lot of you want?' he asks. 'To get out of here? What if some outsider was willing to give you a lift? Would you take it?'
She freezes. But her head still refuses to swing round to him, her eyes still locked on the rise and fall of sand. 'The sand and sky is all I have ever known. And the generosity of someone who comes from beyond those things? Not something I can trust.'
'That's not always a good way to live,' Ben tells her. 'Taking chances, seeing something other than this sand and sky...isn't that something that you'ld be interested in having your daughter see?'
She goes silent. Then off then her body collapses in on itself, slithering out into a serpent-like shape, leaving only her head attached. And, much like the vipers Ben's seen in nature documentaries, travelling across the sand, her long legless body half-leaps, half-sweeps up the sand dune, leaving only singular crescent-moon curves in the sand behind her, one half of her body acting as a step to pull the rest of her up. It's efficient Ben notes as he forces himself to copy her; the heat of the sand barely bites into the slender line of the stomach that now travels down underneath all of him.
'I don't know,' she tells him, as he catches up to her. 'If I am lucky, all that I have ever known will be passed down to my daughter. And that will be enough to keep her alive. What more can a parent ask for?'
Ben has not got a ready answer. He is not a parent, not yet. That is something due to change, soon, very soon. He still remembers the dull look in the eyes of someone who was meant to come from him and Kai, the birth date the boy had offered up though it were step one for producing cookie-dough instead of a human being. He hasn't forgotten that look, he's offered up his genetic material and so has Kai, to Azumuth, as well as the single strand of hair from Kenny that Rook had thoughtfully snagged before the kid was dragged out of view by the timeline seeking to reset itself. None of them have forgotten, and Azumuth has been at work comparing and contrasting the DNA lodged in Kenny hair to the multiple combinations he's created out of the samples he and Kai have donated. And, well. There may or may not be a real-life test-tube baby bursting into existence any day now.
And it's subtle. But Rook has been taking more time out to help his sisters nurse their children, helping them collect grains and flowers amongst the rut and grit of paths on Revonnah. He's so fond and gentle, letting the girls paste crowns of white flowers against his scalp and letting the boys run eager fingers over the little knick-knacks and gadgets he keeps in his pockets. It makes something in Ben warm at the sight. And feel terribly sad. Because he can't give Rook that. Can't offer up the same lively atmosphere, the same shrill squeals of small people who constantly need something, some scrap of attention, in their home. No, their home is full of jokes and warm beer, fruity wine after a hard mission and Sumo Slammer memorabilia lining the shelves. No realtoys, no clutter and half-chewed blankets to stain their admittedly cool-looking pad.
But if Kenny gets here, if he's really here, to share between him and Kai, then how will Rook feel looking down into some remnant of Ben that contains nothing of him, his husband?
Ben has never been brave enough to ask the question. But he should. He will. ...right after this mission gets done with. No sooner than he thinks this, then he and his Thep Khufan friend break out into a wide dip in the dessert, great grey cracks running through the hardened sand that spills out, brown and craggy, into makeshift rock. There are holes, great chunks in the landscape where the Corroduim has been ripped out by the roots. A machine, similar but a lot smaller to that strange, jutting contraption Dr Psychobos built on Revonnah so long ago, reaches out half-heartedly into the sky, the pulsing light from a dwarf star lodged into the circular silver clap right in the very centre.
Ben watches as the familiar hulking form of Dr Viktor takes up a set of black tweezers, one glittery and shot through with tiny pinpricks of light, like tiny jewelled stars set into their frame, and...picks out some of that shining light. It's odd, watching it happen, seeing a part of the dwarf star melt into the hold like molten glass and drip light before it's torn away, part of the gold still snaking out as though to mingle and reform with its original self. But Viktor rather ruthlessly slams it back down into a see-through container of some kind, not glass, but close. A container containing tiny black amethysts, chopped and sullen, little specks of Corroduim.
Ben's seen enough. He bursts forward, his snake-like shape instantly re-coiling into something humanoid.
'Oi, Frankenstein!'
Viktor jolts a little in surprise, but he doesn't turn, not completely. No, only his head gives a small shake, the edge of a satisfied smile on his face.
'Ah, Mr Tennyson. I wondered when you'd show.'
Ben's bandages race outwards in a sweeping coil, wrestling Viktor's arms to his side and carefully catching the containers as it jolts out the Doctor's large grey hand.
'That's not my name, anymore,' he says stoutly. 'Not completely, not for years. I'm married now, haven't you heard?'
Viktor sighs. 'Congratulations. But you should still kill me, you know,' he remarks. 'It's always been a stupid fallibility of yours; the refusal to kill enemies who will only make trouble for you later on.'
Ben is disturbed by how passive Viktor is being. But there's no time to wonder. Only time to gasp as something as black and shiny as the tweezers Viktor has been sprouting, suddenly slams though his stomach. His gaze drifts down, bandages uncoiling from Viktor's form, drifting and falling loose like ripped plant stems as Ben's eyes find a dagger laced with stars sprouting from his mid-section. It hurts which is strange, given that he's a Thep Khufan now. They don't hurt like this, no matter how their body is sliced and diced.
His head turns, to see his new Thep Khufan friend's body is reforming, the large hole in her chest shivering down into a small pinprick, from where she has presumably plucked out the dagger she has been hiding.
'Like it?' she asks coolly. 'It's a copy of the ones forged by the Celestialsapians themselves. I told you before that only the elite of us can barter. But I said nothing about how the poorest of us can steal.'
Viktor sighs again and before darkness claims him, Ben has enough time to draw back his head and see the tiny slant of an eye-like device lodged inside a batwing just jutting out of the corner of his vision as Viktor turns round fully, the mind-control projectile of a Vladat on his forehead.
'See, Tennyson? Like I said: trouble.'
Notes: I still find it weird how, according to certain scenes in Omniverse, you have giant purple cobwebs linking the various planets of the Anur System together. I wonder how long it takes to clamber from planet to planet? Or is it's even feasible? Well, at the very least, given that Thep Khufans can survive the hostile conditions of space, they could manage the pilgrimage at least. Though if the distance between their planets is anything like the vast ones between the ones in our solar system, I don't see how. But I figured perhaps I should mention that some of them try. Whether anyone ever hears anything from the ones who do afterwards is anyone's guess. Maybe there's some giant space spider out there, scrawling from planet to planet that feasts on those stupid enough to do so. Would explain why the cobwebs exist in the first place.
Also, the aliens Ben and Rook are working with are introduced in a comic (a Viz Media's Perfect Square publication) titled 'Ghost Ship.' They never appeared in the cartoon, despite their suspicious motivations for entering Ben's universe, so I brought them back here.