A part of her hadn't been expecting her "plan" to work at all. Tracking the Omnitrix's signal hadn't been difficult, though following it certainly hadn't been easy and figuring out a way to recapture Tennyson had been all but futile. Still, Murowa wasn't the quitting type. And, considering that the corpse of her good friend was floating around Tennyson's holding chamber, she had a lot to prove by making him suffer.
From the command area just above the escape pod chamber, she had managed to get the manual retrieval snake functioning. Aiming it hadn't been easy, but she had designed over half of the station herself and she was driven by the sort of anger that was cool as ice until the second that she was provoked.
Of course, thinking that capturing Ben Tennyson would be simple was her first mistake. She managed to hook his abdomen, hopefully not killing him, and was in the process of retrieving the Necrofriggian she had captured when, close enough that she could see the splinters in his exoskeleton, he vanished. Like snapping her fingers, he was gone, leaving only a blue smear up the length of the hook.
Murowa felt her brow twitch. Her grip on the manual controls tightened until, like wood, the metal snapped under her crushing fists. Shards of steel dug into her palm but she didn't notice. Even if she had, she wouldn't have cared.
Right. In the heat of the moment, she had forgotten. Necrofriggians could turn intangible. She could catch him by surprise, but after that?
She was so furious that she was no longer angry. It looped right back around. Murowa flexed her bleeding hands, now dripping with a thick, purple goo that was laced with golden flecks. It splattered onto the ruined control console and, for a moment, she found catharsis in pretending that it was red and that Tennyson was screaming. The illusion didn't stay. It was difficult to maintain when she had never heard him scream before. But that little detail would soon be rectified.
Thanks to whatever dolt kept Tennyson's Plumber file updated, Murowa knew plenty about the Omnitrix. Her attack wouldn't kill Tennyson. As a Necrofriggian, he could heal enough to not bleed out as soon as he was forcibly reverted to human form. It was a safety measure, Murowa thought, in order to help preserve the user's original form. Staying as a different alien while greatly injured or while the Omnitrix was low on energy would only increase the risk of DNA mutations. And Azmuth, Great Thinker that the overblown pipsqueak thought that he was, would never want to risk the life of his trained pet.
Usually, that worked to Murowa's benefit. But then again, "usually" her situation wasn't so inconvenient.
She glanced idly back out the window as she began removing the metal shards from her small hands. The escape pod that held Tennyson's friends was still there. She could kidnap them. It would be easy. They could be useful in forcing Tennyson to submit to her, if she showed him the charred body of one friend and offered the chance to save another. Her thoughts flashed to Diavik and Murowa's wince had nothing to do with the metal she had just plucked from her flesh.
No. Dozens before her had tried it and dozens more no doubt would repeat that mistake. Tennyson was stronger with his friends around, regardless of how many cages they were locked in or how many precautions Murowa took. Hadn't their attack proved that? It was impressively coordinated and carried-out. She had barely managed to initiate the emergency shut down to spare the rest of the ship's wiring before being called on for escaping prisoners and then that her main prisoner had been released. It was a catastrophe, not helped by the cowards she had hired to help man the station taking any and every opportunity to run.
It was better, Murowa thought, for Tennyson's friends to be as far away from him as possible. There was no doubt still soldiers left on the ship. He was the type to try banding together for some last-ditch attack, which was all well-and-good, unless Murowa managed to get the station somewhere that would render Tennyson and the others effectively stranded.
There was an emergency release switch for all of the escape pods. Murowa pulled it and watched several empty and open containers drift off into the vacuum. The room below, where they were housed, was no doubt devoid of oxygen and heat. Good. She wouldn't be abandoning ship anytime soon. And, thanks to her, neither would anyone else.
From that section of the ship, at least. She would have to ditch the other escape pods while Tennyson was still weakened and in the process of staving off death.
As much as she didn't want to, Murowa knew that she would have to talk to Argyle at some point. They had to reach a decision about what to do now that, in all likelihood, the Plumbers would be prioritizing their capture. She suspected that Ben Tennyson's by-the-books partner had held off on reporting them because there was no solid, concrete evidence, but the witness testimonies of a few thousand prisoners ought to be enough. It wasn't as though Murowa had worn a mask around them — not when they were slated for death anyway.
The ship's internal communications were busted but, luckily, Murowa had a small communicator on her wrist that would do the job just fine. She called for Argyle and waited for the signal to be picked up.
On the direct other side of the ship, she knew that Argyle, most probably, had not felt any effects from the fighting. He would know about it, certainly. The man prided himself on the sheer amount of cameras and microphones that he could cram into any given area. But he wouldn't step in. Why would he? It wasn't as though he cared. All of this was, for him, nothing but the end of a slippery slope. Either he would fall off the edge or push on to the next limit.
Frankly, Murowa didn't give a damn about his philosophical babble. All she wanted was Ben Tennyson tied down in her lab. Was that really so difficult?
"Argyle," she said as soon as he answered. It had taken ages for him to get around to it — likely, he had been turning the artificial gravity back on. She could feel the shift in pressure on her wings and handled it with a faint twitch. It had been her hope that turning it off in the middle of the chaos would disorient their enemies further, as it was powered independently of the main energy source of the station, but no such luck. "We need a plan."
He snorted — as though her asking for his thoughts was somehow an insult. "A plan? For what? I'd think that retreat would be the logical option, seeing as how you went and lost our doomsday weapon."
Murowa bristled. "Me? You think that I—?" She cut herself off.
She had forgotten again. Diavik was the one assigned to watch Tennyson. It wasn't as though he could manage the ship, like Murowa, or command the mercenaries, like Argyle. He was a sleazy entrepreneur who had been drifting from planet-to-planet when she proposed this business offer to him years before. He had been selling knock-offs and hoaxes to anyone willing to give him a copper coin, using the profits to pay for his travels while he fed off of the low-brow drama found in bars and back-alleys.
When she closed her eyes, she could still see the smile on his face when their "business," illegal and morally bankrupt though it was, finally began to pay off. He had come to her wearing a suit made of Ziboson leather, some of the finest in the galaxy, and offering a simple bracelet that he'd fashioned to fit her small wrist. He had made the mold for it himself.
"It doesn't matter how Tennyson got out," Murowa said finally, forcing herself from her thoughts. "The fact is that he's out and on the ship somewhere. We could have already been out of this system if you hadn't wasted my time by forcing me to make the Omnitrix into a flashy, useless weapon in the first place!"
He scowled up at her from the little screen. "Always so over-dramatic. I hardly "forced" you to do anything. It was your agreed compensation for my help in capturing Tennyson in the first place."
Though Murowa had to begrudgingly acknowledge that he had a point, she still rolled her eyes. "Oh, yes. I'm sure that convincing those boneheaded soldiers of yours to attack a small base was quite difficult for you, Argyle. But that doesn't mean that I was alright with you tacking on more things to your demand! I can make a doomsday weapon from a device that powerful easily, but I don't see why we had to "test it" by killing those politicians when we could have done the whole planet in at once and been finished with it!"
She knew that Argyle had anger issues. They both did. But he, especially, didn't like to have to justify his actions. He narrowed his eyes. "It doesn't matter if you understand it or not. That was my payment. By destroying Central and anyone of Petropia who has meaningful influence, the planet is crippled. That also proves that we can do it to any other planets we come across," he explained as though speaking to a child.
The world-conqueror delusion of his was one that she had heard before. In a month, he would probably move on to drug-dealing or money-laundering. Murowa shook her head. "Rule an alien world as an iron-fisted dictator? I thought that the whole reason you were running from Petropia was because you can't handle hard work."
"Is it really running if we don't leave anything to run from?" Argyle asked with a dismissive wave of the hand. "Don't tell me that you wouldn't enjoy it. A planet-full of helpless subjects? You could make incredible strives in your research with access like that."
Murowa knew that she couldn't refute that so she didn't try. Instead, she said, "None of this answers the original point of my call. The engine still functions, to an extent. We can't use the FTL drive, but we should be able to reach a repair station if we can decide on a direction that we should travel."
Unlike Diavik, Argyle didn't care enough to poke and prod until she admitted the things that she would only ever acknowledge in her head. In some ways, she appreciated that about him. In others, she knew that there would be many nights in the future where she longed for Diavik's insufferable meddling.
"We already have a course plotted for Andromeda," Argyle said with a shrug. "Does it matter? There will be plenty of repair stations along the way. We can stop as soon as we come across one."
"Is that smart?" Murowa shot back, having known even before she called what his answer would be. "We have Tennyson on board still. I don't doubt that the Plumbers will be on their way in full-force. If not because of the countless laws we've broken, then to recover their little super weapon. I don't think it would be wise to lead them to our next goal."
Argyle made a face. "We can lose them in between galaxies. Does it really matter? They won't be able to leave the Milky Way defenseless and Andromeda is twice the size of this galaxy. By the time they find us, the human will be long-dead of old age and we'll have everything that we could ever want."
That was the logical thought process. However, it was only useful against logical creatures. "You are assuming that his friends will not happily waste away trying to save him," Murowa muttered.
He smirked faintly. "Let them. They're made of flesh and blood. They're weak. All we have to do is outlive them and this is no longer a problem."
Experimentally, Murowa flexed her still-bleeding hand. Her fingers twitched. Blood with the consistency of pahoehoe dribbled onto the ground, evaporating as soon as it made contact. Steam was beginning to clog her small control room. She ought to do something about that.
"I suppose it will give me plenty of time to hunt Tennyson down," she conceded. It took a moment of focus, so she stayed quiet as she watched the deep cuts in her lavender skin stitch themselves shut. There was no sign left behind that she had been hurt in the slightest. "Fine. I'll set a course for Andromeda."
That could have been the end of their conversation, but Argyle arched an eyebrow. Or, the Petrosapien equivalent. "And Tennyson? Will you take him dead, or…?"
It was tempting. If she agreed to take Tennyson dead, Argyle would probably help her hunt him and there was a lot of ship to cover. But then everything they did would be for nothing. "Alive," she answered. "Mostly, at least. Heart pumping, lungs breathing, basic brain activity… Everything else is optional."
For a brief moment, it looked like Argyle had smiled. But then he smoothed his expression over and the moment had passed. "Good luck," he said, and it almost sounded genuine. "I'll leave him to you. Alive or not, make sure that he suffers. For Diavik."
Something unpleasant tightened in her throat. Murowa didn't trust herself to speak so she nodded and ended the call. Just like that. If only stopping her runaway thoughts was as easy as hitting a button.
She switched her watch to a basic, cramped blueprint of the sections of the ship close to her. The Omnitrix's signal blinked steadily for a few moments before cutting off. Unfortunate, but not unexpected. She had gathered enough on his position to be able to track down a single human. He wouldn't last long without food, fresh oxygen, or heat.
Letting out a slow breath, Murowa lowered her arm and started toward the door. "For Diavik," she echoed, and she was off.
Woah, Act Three: Part One is done! I am so ridiculously proud of myself right now, you guys have no idea.
Anyway, our story marches onward! Part Two is finally going to tie this story together in a neat, little bow.
Chapter Twenty-Eight: No Pain, No Gain