Welcome back to Fire in the Snow! As promised, I am all better and my hiatus is over! I hope that you all like this chapter, and I hope that it has more of the soul that I guess I've been known to pour into things! As always, thank you all for waiting and thank you so much for your continued support of my work! I love you all!
Chapter rated M for allusions to PTSD/mental instability, drug use/addiction, murder in the past tense, brief heavy language and general adult content.
4 Cycles in the Recent Past; The Irken Capitol City of Veloria
Blueberry cheesecake? No, that would melt far too fast in his mouth and not last very long on the stomach, leaving him with the same emptiness he dreaded mere hours later. He needed something filling and chocked to the brim with fluffy layers and crispy edges begging to be inhaled like bromine, and cheesecake definitely didn't fit the bill this time. Plus, that sounded far too exotic for his simple countryside taste, drawing his nervously chittering, mud caked claws over to the freshly stocked rack of steaming, beautifully glazed donuts sparkling under the vivid lights of the bakery he'd been forced to sleep by in the alleyway for the past several months, taking in every lucky bastard that had the gall to step over him as they munched flippantly on crumbling scones and sipped spiced coffee in the cold. The smells…oh the smells drove him absolutely feral, awakening the diabolical itch inside him to heave a rock through the protective windowpane shrouding the back door as he crept inside and made off with as much fluffy, buttery, delectably rich sugar he could handle in his own two arms. He would take them far away and open up a guttural binge unlike anything any rational Irken had ever witnessed, licking every last drop of gooey, molten sweetness off the wax paper that remained behind to taunt him with the goodness he wouldn't have for another week's time. At least it would be something. It would be tangible and free of caked on molds yellowed with age, clinging to the crippled, month old plastic of cookie packages and stale crumbs resting in the bottoms of tins he scavenged from the dump. Yeah, that would be something, alright. No more bouncing between food-poisoned nausea and piercing, never ending hunger pangs pinching at his lower spooch.
He would finally be free of that hideously demeaning existence…as long as he could keep up the act.
Red swallowed and took a tiny step backwards when the cashier eyed him with stoic suspicion from across the glass top counter, running a cleaning cloth over the pristine surface a forth time to try and appear inconspicuously busy, not that Red didn't already know she was watching him. He took a deep breath and smoothed down the front of his tattered cadet uniform, his unbearably shaky fingers catching holes along the way and tearing at the fringes of the thick canvas fabric that once bore the glittering gold, imperial crest of Tallest Del. He'd since sold it for prescription pills, popping them at the pier as career fisherman wrangled squealing balls of writhing tentacles and laughing through his high as he took his mind off the crushing weight of the planet for once. He was a walking uniform, a marked reminder that he'd failed the Academy when IQ regulations were instilled, falling short a mere three points of the standard for his Tallest's newest initiative to procure only the finest, fittest, most harrowingly intelligent of soldiers for his Armada. Red had been on his way to the top, climbing ranks and titles like smooth rungs in a polished ladder and traversing lightyears before the rest of his troop to earn the title of preliminary Staff Sergeant praised for his beautiful amethyst eyecolor. He had blown away his inspection, proving with flying colors that he was ready to take on the field as one of the best cadets in the whole of the overpowering fleet and race his way to his goal of General to preside over millions. Why did a few intelligence points matter? Why did his miniscule, unimportant plot point on a graph make any difference with how well he had already proven he could do his job? Ah…well. His Tallest thought it mattered…and so he lost everything.
No job.
No home.
No friends.
No hope.
No hope? Hm…had Red really sunk so low as to let them take the fundamentals of what had made him himself sink into the mudslide of a fanatical, egotistical mess this Empire had become in the past fifty cycles? He missed the radiant benevolence of the beautiful, kindhearted Miyuki leading them on to territorial greatness with her consort, the timid Spork, hanging back at her side. Still, Red had a knack for bouncing back, for overcoming any issue smacked into his unsuspecting jawline but this was pushing him to his limits. He was beginning to fear in the back of his swimming, perpetually fatigued mind that he would always be homeless, eating away at his once frigid resolve and turning him to a pile of shivering mush as the planet progressed in its long orbit and brought him further to something mind-numbingly frozen to bite at his lopsided antennae and rake through his bitter skin. He couldn't do this. He couldn't cry himself to some semblance of overwhelmed, depleted slumber as opulent Spittle Runners zipped overhead through the city that was supposed to give opportunity to young Irkens like him, not screech curses back in his face when he asked for pocket change. Had he snapped internally? Had a single cog in the back of his shorting brain fried and popped free from the once well-oiled war machine he'd thought he was? What if he wasn't as cool and collected as he'd hoped, hanging on a razor's edge of a thread between the dark forces of snickering crime and the heavenly grins of justice. Maybe it was the drugs; maybe the tiny pills he popped periodically past his grimy teeth were beginning to chip away at him like soggy clay to mold him back into something disgusting and viscerally sickening to the brain.
Then…the unthinkable happened.
Red was emaciated, gruesomely skeletal, but ravenously desperate as he attempted to shroud himself in the stretchy plastic of a trashbag and watch with a dry tongue the others who poured in and out of the bakery that had become his obsession. It was like watching a transmission station, tiny snickers overcoming him as he forgot his woes to the fictitious stories and tribulations he whipped together for every patron, giving them depth through false drama and crime that he would pretend to solve in his labyrinth of a mind. There was one he saw on the daily that made his skin crawl, racing over every nerve in his body like skittering insects digging into his spooch and taking hold in the worst of ways. Thoughts raced and rebounded. Fingers twitched against stained plastic. Teeth chattered with unbearable tension as exquisite Plookesian leather boots made it a point to step over him on the daily and flick a quarter back down in his face with a haughty smirk.
A recruitment officer.
Why did everyone in Veloria have to be a total ass?
Red tried to ignore it, watching him from afar as the magenta-eyed beast laughed with his friends and straightened his peacoat before puffing out his egotistical chest and coming over to stoop to his level. He always got in his face, grabbing at Red's tattered excuse for a uniform and pointing out how pitifully it marked him as a nauseating failure to the Academy and to his people, gripping at what remained of his rank and yanking it free with a boisterous laugh to stomp it firmly into the filth of the shadowy alleyway before retreating for his daily donut. Red never said a word, keeping his head down as an incredible, festering pit of rage took hold in his stomach and sweltered, turning him into a ticking time bomb of violence awaiting the perfect moment to hop up and shout back in the snooty officer's direction and tell his story for some semblance of closure to the government that blatantly refused to help him. No welfare, no support. Nothing…he was nothing, wasn't he? And that officer…oh, that pathetic excuse for a lump of sentient cells only reminded him as he slipped further into comatose desires in the form of painkillers before upgrading to sticking the sensitive crook of his arm with shared morphine needles he'd stolen off of the stagnant bodies of others he'd stumbled upon in a homeless den. His PAK always cleansed his blood by morning, leaving him unfortunately fresh and able to recollect every single dark, malicious desire to survive driving him to keep a tight rope from around his neck each night. Hm…hm.
He was dancing around the point again.
He'd…he'd done the unthinkable.
That damned officer. It was his fault for taunting Red one to many times one evening on his own, grabbing for handfuls of trash and snatching his collar to stuff gooey, sulfery sickness down the front of his coat. The feeling of muck, of being tainted beyond anything he'd ever experienced was worse than anything Red had ever experienced yet and the pills blossoming in his nervous system only heightened the agonizing frenzy of ailing wrath contorting him into something unsightly and intolerably vile. It was the officer's fault. It was always and would always be his fault. He had to keep telling himself that as he stood catatonic before the pristine countertops of the bakery, clutching a stolen points card in his pale, twitchy fingers to work up the courage to use what he'd pilfered.
It was the officer's fault that he hopped up and confronted him, screaming out a fury of slurred curses that made no sense as he tried to back away and apologize.
It was the officer's fault that he lunged forward and pinned him back to the ground to raspingly scream and shred his perfect uniform as he tried to weakly defend himself in mounting fear.
It was the officer's fault when he grabbed a jagged piece of serrated metal from the sidelines and drove it down to land a single slice to his jugular before he came to and realized what he had done in the heat of his white-hot agony.
It wasn't his fault.
It couldn't be his fault.
It would never be Red's fault…right?
He could vaguely remember the adrenaline pumping through his system and the feeling of his own claws gripping at his sweat-slicked cheeks as he folded forward in the familiar shadows next to the pallid, cold body of the man he'd destroyed on impulse, his breathing escalating when he finally worked up some semblance of courage to pick through his bloodstained pockets and steal his information; a bar punch card, identification papers, a points card loaded with money from the Veloria Airbase. The worst of it all was the officer's pocketbook, a tiny, primitive strip of leather concealing a handful of old, outdated technology in the form of photographs of his plain, but beautiful, wife. Oh no.
Murder.
Pink blood leaking over fabric in warm, gushing waves.
Sirens blaring in the background when detectives had found the body stuffed under a toppling mountain of cardboard at the edge of the dump.
No, forget this. Forget it and push it out of your mind. Red took a deep breath and attempted to recollect himself when the cashier cleared her throat and tapped her manicured claws impatiently against the glass, the rhythmic drumming only setting Red further on edge. He swallowed against his scratchy throat and reached up to tug down what was left of his sleeve to conceal the obvious track marks flooding up his vascular system to give away his improvised drug habits, glancing up at the menu before stalling and holding out the unsuspecting points card with a cheesy grin. Say something you fool! Say something before she suspects that you're something erroneous and wrong! Whatever you do…don't make yourself look like a murderer. One press of a button on her personal transmitter and the imperial police would swarm this little place and bust his kneecaps in with their thick nightsticks…or just shoot him in the back with searing hot plasma and be done with it. Did they know he had murdered? Did the cashier know? Were they onto him or was it just a frenzy of paranoia swirling in his spooch from the overpowering stress of hunger pangs and pacifying guilt? Calm. He needed to be calm. He felt his smile twitch dangerously when his arm began to itch at the pincushion of an injection site, resisting the impulse to pick at his razed skin as he gingerly set the card down on the counter and finally composed himself, leaning against the polished glass as the drone narrowed her eyes and tentatively took the little bit of plastic to hold it up to the light for examination.
"Morning." He chimed up, trying to make casual, overbearingly normal small talk as she continued to run her scrutinizing gaze over each and every identification groove before looking up to meet his eyes for a brief, fiery moment. "I'd like a dozen glazed donuts, please. Regular. Well…hm. Could you throw in two chocolate as well? I haven't had that kind before and I'd like to try it at least once-"
"Sir, can I see your identification papers?" The cashier cut off his jittery ramblings and asked in a surprisingly level tone, standing as tall as she could when a visible nervousness flooded her senses and revealed the true extent of stressful anxieties beneath. "A-And I'd like to know your height."
Red blinked when a pang of dread hit him dead in the emaciated abdomen, nearly knocking him off his already tottering feet when he realized he hadn't taken the identification papers off of the officer to try and prove that the card was his, knowing in the back of his mind that he was going to have to book it. Stupid! How could he be so stupid as to forget the one thing he needed to use the damn card?! He braced himself, throwing out a well-placed chuckle and smoothing a clammy hand up over his alarmingly quivering antennae as he tried to rapidly think over his escalating situation. His mind wouldn't slow, pumped to the brim with uppers and electrifying as his PAK attempted to regulate his system to little avail. Geez, he needed to lay off the drugs…they made him feel worse every time and he couldn't handle the exertion of obsessive mistrust that always seemed to follow. He glanced over his shoulder when a shiver of electric pressure raced up the length of his spine, locking eyes with a single policeman sitting alone and looking him head to toe in confusion when he noticed the sorry state Red appeared to be in.
Shit.
"Ah…w-well…I'm five foot, three inches as of the last time I checked." Red stuttered honestly, swallowing down the hitch of nerve induced sickness threatening to break him down inch by inch and draw him away to run for his life.
Hold it together. It's just a question. There doesn't have to be an ulterior motive and she's not trying to turn you in. You're safe. You're safe. You're safe!
The little cashier nodded slowly, searching his piecemealed uniform for something she could use as identification as she memorized everything from his details to the vivid amethyst of his gaze staring back from under a damp brow. There was something lingering beneath her intentions as she shifted uncomfortably on her feet, throwing a hand up on the counter with a single knock that had Red thinking something….something was terribly amiss. He slid the card back across the glass with another, much more genial, grin this time, remembering his lack of dental work in the past few months and quickly letting it fade when the service drone sneered up at him in disgust.
Look, lady, if you were homeless you'd be in the same damn boat as me.
"You're a pretty tall guy, huh?" She finally piped up, still refusing to meet his gaze as she hung back and declined to fill his order with her wavering body language. "Can I see your identification papers?"
Red felt like he was suffocating when the same impossible question split his personal, stifling atmosphere, sweating profusely in the warm, tepidness of the sweet-laced air pouring off the industrial ovens in the back of the shop. Did she know? Did the cop know? Were they playing him as a fool and trying to fish for information to take him down with? Paranoia. So much crawling and skittering through his mind that he could barely hear his own internal voice screaming over the deafening, strident boom of horror. Then, a single word.
Run.
He heard the sound of soft footsteps behind him, going rigid with petrifying terror as his pulse escalated to dangerous levels and threatened to drop him where he stood, forcing him to act impulsively and snatch back his precious lifeline of a card from the glass before throwing open his mouth to speak before letting it die on his lips as a soft, gruff voice piped up from below.
Run, now!
"There you are, Styx! I've been looking for you."
Wait a minute…who? Who the hell said that?
Red stared forward in dumbfounded bewilderment for a few moments longer as his initial fight or flight instincts stilled and smoothed over, jaw hanging pathetically limp as the little drone flew to attention and respectfully saluted the glistening rank stamped to the breast of someone short and squat. They had called him by name, Red's apprehensive gaze flicking down as he frowned in uncomfortable unsteadiness to meet the sickly green stare of someone so familiar to him but so distant. Gold silken robes fluttering gently against the tops of polished boots to show off the chosen color of their Empire's latest Tallest, officer's visor curling up to halfway obscure the time-worn smirk pressed kindly against his wrinkled face, two well-preened antennae firm against the tension stabbing painfully at the air. Red kept going, noticing the smell of sugary cologne invading his already blown out senses and nearly gagging him as he flew to haphazard attention on impulse and stood erect and moribund upon noticing the polished rank of Imperial Advisor cresting against the man's breastplate. That was the mark of Tallest Del, every curve and swell followed by the sharp angular features of his esteemed leader etched into fine gold mined off planet and smelted down into something that would bring even the most hardened politicians to their knees in shimmering, undying respect. Had he seen him before? Had they met in the Academy upon inspection? How the hell would someone so venerated and luxurious know him, a lowly, pathetic mess, by name?
The advisor threw his hands behind his back with a warm chuckle and nodded for Red to relax, turning back to the service drone with a flourish. "Please, madam, if you would kindly fill this man's order? He has just returned from the Callnowian front and is terribly exhausted, as you can see. Poor cadet got himself into a minefield, didn't you boy?" The officer lied smoothly through his teeth, only confusing Red further as he tried to piece together what was happening in the rapidly fluctuating situation. "If you could do this quickly, I would greatly appreciate it. We have business we must attend to elsewhere and I'd really not like to be hung up."
The drone didn't question further, scrambling over her own feet and nearly tripping as she hastily constructed a box and began filling it with scrumptious deliciousness as the officer placed a generous tip atop the counter and stood up on his toes to take the piping hot meal from the drone's awe trembling fingers, flashing her a final smile before passing Red the box and snapping for him to follow closely behind.
"Come now, we have much to discuss!" He sang, clapping his hands together and turning on his heel as Red stared absolutely speechless down at the dozen of mouthwatering pastries that had finally made their way into his shaky, glucose-deprived grip. "Did you hear me? I said move, soldier." The officer's tone rang out once more, prompting Red to keep his eyes down as he turned to unsteadily follow without a word.
Who was this guy?
Red stepped nervously through the whoosh of automatic doors closing swiftly behind him, watching in a mixture of idiotic wonder and flagrant misunderstanding as the councilman tugged out a seat from one of the external tables and plopped himself down to pluck a transmitter from his PAK, holding it up before him to snap a photo of Red from afar. His fingers danced wildly across the screen as he shot off the image to an unknown second party, chewing on his bottom lip a bit as he mumbled something under his breath and periodically glanced up to examine Red in full from afar. He felt violated, as if the advisor were taking his measurements with his eyes and running his nauseating gaze over each and every rib exposed through the tattered material of his once beautiful uniform reduced to dust, forcing Red to impulsively cover his side with his palm when the attention on his bodily details became too much for him handle in the heat of the strange, unwarranted moment. He felt like a piece of meat hanging from a hook at the local butcher station, swaying in the breeze and waiting to pass over the muttering jowls of the mystery officer who had saved his ass just moments before but…but for what? Why?
Why?
"A-Are you…" Red took a deep breath followed by a step back. "A-Are you gonna kill me?" He blurted out without thinking, clutching at his box as if it were a lifeline and holding his breath when the officer met his gaze once more and gestured for him to move forward and take a seat across from him.
Red did as he was told but with great hesitation, terrified of the consequences should he try to make an escape and pound his way through the amassing crowd around them when passersby got wind of the immaculately trimmed robes of the man sitting on their measly sidewalks in such a desolate part of the city. Men stared and whispered amongst themselves while women snapped inconspicuous photographs from afar and attempted to piece together what was happening as Red gingerly lowered himself down and kept hold of his box as if it would melt should he let go, wanting nothing more than to dig into the feast he'd been so oddly gifted and munch away without a care. He decided against it, his antennae standing straight to the scent of caramelized glaze begging to stick to the pads of his fingers as he shoveled his face full of everything he needed and more, staring with apprehensive edginess as the officer payed him no mind and continued his slew of messages with a tiny smile upturned on his cheeks and the occasional 'ah-ha' when he would find what he was looking for.
Eventually, after what felt like grueling cycles for Red, the little advisor clicked off his device and set it down before him to bring his hands together atop the patchy metal of the weather-beaten table, looking up and watching Red with mounting fascination at the sheer rigidity of his statuesque posture.
"Are you going to eat?" He asked with calculated intention, the slow twitch in his steady green gaze alerting Red that there definitely was something hiding beneath all the grandeur. "That's what you wanted, wasn't it? They smell delicious, so go ahead and take a bite."
Red instantly shook his head, refusing to open the box and take his careful attention away from the officer despite the screaming climb in intensity of stabbing hunger hitching and rebounding through his abdomen. No. He needed more information first. He would rather starve then let his guard down.
"Who are you?" He asked in as confident a tone as he could muster, renewing his posture and remembering what he was taught in the academy; the bigger you look, the more respect you'll earn from shorters. "I-I need to know how you know me."
Was this guy sent by the government to steal him away for killing an officer? He had maimed one of their own kind but…no. No. No more paranoia. That guy was only a recruiter, so there was no conceivable way that he would have been important enough for Del to send one of his own down to arrest him. That kind of venture took funding and time, something their leader wouldn't take lightly unless he was after something he desperately wanted to squeeze his sharp claws around before it popped.
Red cleared his throat when the officer returned to his transmitter, waving over the screen to unlock it before hunting for something specific as his guest leaned over the table and grew panicked the longer the silence droned on. "L-Look, if you want something from me…I-I don't even know what you'd want." He dropped his voice to a hushed hiss, periodically looking over his shoulder when the crowds made his antennae twitch. "Please, I don't care about the theatrics or the mystery, I just wanna know how you know my name. Am I in trouble?"
"My name, cadet, is Councilman Lire." The advisor finally admitted with a sigh, shooting Red a interested gape before furrowing his brow and returning to his electronic hunt. "And you are Styx of the Naphrus region. You've been dishonorably discharged from the Naphrus Academy due to an inadequate IQ evaluation and you've been living on the streets of Veloria looking for work for the past seven months. In that time you've become addicted to illegal morphine, steal bread from the corner store, and have committed…oh, very interesting." Lire blinked and flashed Red a warm smile. "Desperation does funny things to the mind, doesn't it? I would have never guessed that you'd have the gall to commit murder."
Red nearly came unglued, slamming his box down hard on the table and listening to the cardboard strain under the dig of his sharp claws digging into the corrugated sides as his blood pressure went back through the heavens and beyond. He hastily caught sight of the police officer sitting in the window finishing his lunch, hoping and praying to the gods that he didn't believe in that he hadn't heard anything.
"H-How…" He tried to catch his breath as Lire held up a hand to his wheezing, blinking through the sheer, overpowering terror ripping through his chest at being caught when the advisor slid his vivid screen across the table. "What the hell is this? How do you know so much about me?!"
Red snatched at the transmitter with unsteady, malnutritioned hands to hold it up and read frantically over his old Academy file staring back at him. He found himself absolutely fixated on his identification photo, the ghost of his past smile peaking on his face for a moment before fading completely when he slammed the device back down with a metallic thump to scare a few bystanders lingering nearby.
"I asked you a question! I don't care about your rank right now, or how powerful you think you are!" Red snapped, his irritation finally cresting when his need to survive arose once more. "Who the hell are you and what do you want with me?!"
Lire leaned back with a huff at Red's unsurprising insolence, pulling a tiny snackcake from the side pocket of his robes and fiddling with the wrapper. "You're just as rambunctious as they say, Styx. We've been monitoring you from afar for quite some time to see if you're a viable candidate for our first wave of negotiations with the Callnowian people." He explained vaguely, watching as Red scrunched up his face and cocked his head in annoyance. "Keep in mind that the treaty I'm about to explain to you hasn't ever been done by the Empire, and is still in the smeeting stages of blooming. In language you can understand, we don't know exactly what we're doing yet, but our wonderful confidante, Sen, has chosen you from the catalogue of violet-eyed Irkens we've given her."
"What treaty? You talk about me like I'm a model or something but I don't even have an agent!" Red growled, narrowing his eyes dangerously then stumbling back and nearly falling from his seat when Lire hopped up from is own and rapidly flooded over, taking him by the jawline and peeling back one of his eyelids to examine his eye color. "H-Hey! D-Don't touch me you freak!" Red swatted him away with a careful bat to the wrist before holding his breath when Lire grabbed him by the arm to stop his advances.
He could feel his steady pulse through his palm, a petite drum humming against Red's skin as they stopped, the world falling away to be replaced with terrified sickness opening up Red's internal need to run once more but freezing him where he sat. Lire stretched up on his toes, staring Red down for a long while before licking his cracked lips and speaking once more in a dangerous, malicious grumble that let Red know he no longer owned his own skin.
"You've been chosen, and I'll ask you kindly to come with me. I'm in…"
The Present; the Med Bay of the Massive
"…charge!" Red barked, shaking the beginning fringes of a terrifying flashback from his mind as he threw his fists up before him and stilled the nervous quiver in his fingers to appear as boisterously menacing as he could. "You heard me! I'm in charge now, and you legally can't touch me until we engage in combat!"
He glanced back to Purple, watching as he narrowed his eyes in disgust and glanced up to Del who had all but frozen in his tracks, slithering back like a slimy snake to straighten his pathetically contorted spine. They stood still for a long while, Red panting under his breath as his ocular implants flickered and kept close watch on Purple's vitals, his heartrate calm and collected as Lire took over his vascular system and instilled his own terrible nerves upon him to keep him under the calloused pad of his gnarled thumb to squash him like an insect. What was Purple feeling? Did he hurt? Did he ache worse in his pilfered body or in his razed soul stolen by his abuser? Could he see him? Could he feel Lire's nauseatingly disgusting body invading his skin and slipping him on like a coat? Red couldn't stand the thought of his love being trapped with the one individual in the galaxy that he feared the most, taking a step forward and reaching out with a careful palm to grab at Purple's thin shoulder before shrinking back when Lire gave him a hideous hiss from behind his lover's teeth. It was appalling…disturbing…disconcerting. Why the hell did Del think he wouldn't notice if Purple came back to him ruined and a threadbare image of what he had grown to become in the past week, all of his strength sapped and stolen by someone bouncing through every vibrating cell in his perfect body to take him at the most fundamental building blocks of everything that made him who Red had fallen for.
"You dare to challenge your Tallest, creature?" Del sneered, brushing lightly over Purple's shoulder when Lire flashed him a smug smile of approval at the danger in his musky tone, pushing off of his Tallest and stalking forward on feet that should have never been his own.
"It sounds like he's received a bit of help, Del, from the internal monster stuck inside my new mind." Lire cackled, flashing Red the same stoic twitch of his eye he'd noticed nearly four cycles in the past. "You're lucky your boyfriend here knows the Imperial Law, or else we would have been able to gut you and string you up like beautiful party décor." He tapped against Purple's temple for good measure, snickering when Red dropped his defenses and clenched his teeth in undeniable wrath.
Del thought a moment, glancing back over his shoulder with a sigh of well-masked, familiar defeat when he noticed the faint glow of his PAK recording systems kick on in his hardware and race along the edge of his lighted panels. The Control Brains would be listening, and Red knew for a fact that Del wouldn't be dumb enough to contest them or put his egotistical life on the line for something as trivial as a combat trial. He grimaced in tentative discomfort when he slowly looked back and smiled with a horrid, saccharine sweetness that had Red wanting to turn and vomit into the trashcan behind him, instead drawing a condescending eyeroll from him when he noticed his own systems had synced with his Tallest. They were being monitored until their stipulations for warfare were stated and decided upon, upon which time, Red would have twenty-four hours to prepare for the battle of his life, quite literally, his adrenaline shooting through his bloodstream as bruises flowered over his mottled skin and only set the hook of anger deeper into his heaving spooch.
He was supposed to be the one to make fun of Purple.
He was supposed to be the one to caress him with his hands.
He was supposed to be the one to save him from the terrors of this place.
They should have never come back…but it was far too late for regret now, wasn't it?
Red chewed lightly on the tip of his tongue as he thought, letting his mechanical leaders invade his PAK from millions of lightyears away on Judgmentia as his hardware beeped out it's compliance like an answering machine, a booming, strident voice resounding through his mind and laced with the mechanized hum of whipping tendrils and wires suspended in the background.
"We have received notice that a challenger has appeared to undergo ritual combat with Almighty Tallest Del of Veloria. Please state your name and your intentions to confirm."
Red had never heard the Control Brains in person, their sound so foreign yet so oddly familiar over his racing thoughts as they weaved their way like a knitted web through every fiber of what made him whole. It was almost spiritual, code leaking in tidal waves into his internal wiring and sprinting through his biology to prickle goosebumps over his imperfect skin. They would know. They would know who he really was and everything he'd done in the past; they would see his time posing as a General, his running with Purple through Callnowia, their first true kiss, his perilous sexual exploits outside of Moo-Ping 10, his agonizing eye enhancement under chemical and needle, and everything in between. They'd hear every terribly negative thought he'd had regarding Sen and realize that he'd defected from his position as consort to the Callnowian Empire to trade out Purple's life for his own. Ugh, when he thought of it that way he felt overwhelmingly guilty, a heaviness taking over each and every one of his extremities when he felt his leaders sift through memory after memory to land against the fateful day he was drafted and went to war, the day he scarred his body with his boot knife, and the day he committed cold-blooded murder in the reeking alleyway back in Veloria. They felt every emotion he'd felt; white-hot rage, cavernous depression, warmhearted love, blazing sexual tension, boisterous laughter.
Alright…it was now or never.
Red opened his mouth to shout out the back-breaking stipulations for warfare he'd decided upon, falling short when he felt a switch inside his PAK flip to light him up with a blinding shade of crimson, a central beep resounding through his antennae as Del stared blankly at his own hands in confusion.
Wait…huh? The ordinance didn't go through?! But he said it exactly as he'd been taught in the Academy! What…how…why?! Before Red could respond, the booming voice deafened his senses once more, drowning out his panic to replace it with deepening regret for something that had happened so long ago, ruining his chances to call Del into the arena. Why did he always fuck up? Why did every tiny twinge of forgotten karma come back to bite him when he needed it least?
"Displaced Worker Styx of Naphrus, we have found you to be in violation of three key points. Violation one; in the cycle 22788 you committed capital murder at the corner of Polaris and Sopria in the capitol city of Veloria. Violation two; in the cycle 22789 you were found to be a defector of the state when you left your coded role as Consort to the Callnowian Empire, putting you in direct defiance to your superiors and the high state. Violation three; In the cycle 22790 you have engaged in sexual contact with a designated Consort to the Callnowian Empire and were marked as an official defector to the state. You are unable to engage in ritual combat with Almighty Tallest Del until you face trial. Please designate a viable other to stand in your place."
Sexual content? But he didn't-oh. Lire had backed him up against the counter and touched him, breaking high law by controlling Purple's virgin hands for his own malicious values. And what was this about a viable other?
Did that mean he still had a chance at taking down Del once and for all?
"You…you're Styx? The Styx?" Del breathed from across the room as his face went slack to the dumbfounded sensation of guttural betrayal stabbing him through the back. "You've been hiding as a General under my antennae this entire time?!" Del reared back and slammed a fist hard into the wall to his right, knocking free a few rolls of gauze perched on the shelf behind him.
He went to lunge forward with a screech of fiery need to rip Red to shreds but hit an invisible wall and stopped, gripping at something that blocked his way when the Control Brains took complete jurisdiction over his body and halted him in his snarling tracks as Red came down off of the horrid fear that he was going to die. He gripped at his chest and doubled over to catch his breath once more as Lire stood dumbfounded, trying to figure out how on Irk he hadn't figured out who they'd been dealing with for the past six months and glaring back out of Purple's retinas to burn the deepest of holes into the side of Red's skull. The brains still wouldn't let them kill him off? But didn't they just say he wasn't allowed to call for combat?
"Displaced Worker Styx, designate a viable other to take your place in combat."
A viable other? There it was again…but he didn't have a viable other! He was on his own for the time being with Purple stuck with Lire floating around in his mind until…
That could work.
Red cleared his throat with a grin of devious understanding, knowing that this would be for the best even if it meant that his partner could die in the process. He had to get that disgusting little imp out of his thoughts and give him control of his body once more, standing tall and resolute as a renewed determination flashed behind his smoldering crimson gaze.
"Yes. I am Styx, and I'm here to sink the teeth of justice into your throat!" He barked back, holding back a chuckle when he could almost hear Purple complaining about how cheesy his words sounded. He didn't care, continuing on and feeling every muscle in his body brace for impact. "I, Displaced Worker Styx of Naphrus, designate Callnowian Consort Nemi to take my place in combat against Almighty Tallest Del!"
Silence.
Then, violence.
Purple's PAK lit up like a star, lurching him forward to his knees as he wrangled with something unseen, Lire's hideous voice contorting in the back of his throat as he attempted to suck him free from his hardware and respond to the firing of neurons in his limbs taking him back to his last moments before he was invaded by the parasitic beast eating away at his sanity from within. He fell forward as Red rushed to his side with a yelp of blistering concern, running into the same undistinguishable partition Del had smacked face-first into as he reached out with flailing hands to grab for his partner when he began to twist uncontrollably against the existential struggle for his soul unfolding inside his spooch and beyond.
If Red was right about this…Lire would have to be deleted to keep in line with battle regulations. But Purple would have to engage in combat. No, don't worry about that right now! Right now he needed to free him from everything he feared!
"Purple, please! You're so much stronger than he'll ever be and I need you to fight this so we can fight him!" Red jabbed a panicked, frenzied finger in Del's direction as he tried to snap with sharp, gnarly jaws in his direction, opening up the venomous sacks in the back of his throat and spitting as Red cried out and flew back to avoid the acidic saliva they rarely used. "Come on, this is your only chance to take what's yours!" He took a deep breath and wavered, finally letting his partner know what he'd been harboring. "You deserve to be Tallest!"
Motion.
E-motion.
Everlasting gravity dragging him backdown to the surface of wherever he was colliding from within the innermost regions of his mind, Purple throwing his hands forward through the perpetual blackness surrounding him as a disturbingly unstable weightlessness took him over. He tried to cry out in the darkness, unable to hear the sound of his own voice as he choked and wavered, his bewildered stare snapping back to his hands as they ebbed and flowed in the viscous language of sporadic code, breaking away and reforming in his touch. He was being evaluated, scanned by some unwanted eye probing into the depths of his darkest demons and brightest flower fields before he was knocked back once more and thrown into a death defying spiral in the void he had come to know all too well. He felt a swift jerk tug him what he thought was upwards in his shocking lack of coordination and bearings, flooding his mind with the surging resonance of the Control Brains cleansing his blood and scooping into every cell in his body to pluck away the tiny shreds of Lire's DNA strain they found there before his whole biological body shuddered and went still. He tried to find something, anything to grab onto, trying with every fiber of his being to cry out for Red when he stole a fleeting glimpse of him struggling to make his way over to where his body began to sweat profusely against the sterile tile, his claws slamming down as he openly fought with Lire for dominance once more when he made a second attempt to override his PAK systems and take his shell of a body back into his own hands and claim it for himself.
Then…he was there.
Lire?
Purple's thoughts echoed faintly in the distance, giving him a strange, surreal sensation of divinity in the moment as he locked eyes with the coded demon breaking down his memories and eating him like a buffet of blood vessels and soft tissues, watching as Lire's visage twisted into something broken by the Control Brain's own hand, dissolving to nothing more than a skeletal pile of ashen dust and strings of wavering coded particles lingering in the atmosphere of…wherever this place was. Was this his mind? Why did it seem so vast and endless? Or was this his PAK? Purple swallowed, feeling himself raise from the solid mass beneath his feet and throwing his arms out for some sense of stability when he was transported down at lightning speed, throwing his hands over his face when he rapidly approached the back of his own eye sockets and slammed into something fleshy and hot.
Dizziness….so much discombobulated enervation. His irritation lingered for a moment when he grumbled against the floor in a pool of his own sticky drool, peeling back up on shaky arms as he spat to the ground and fell back forward. Disgusting…what? What was disgusting? Where was he? Who….ugh, his head felt swimmy and stuffed to the brim with cotton, every sound around him muffled as his mechanical leaders reset his internal systems from afar and brought him back to the present. Antennae? Twitching. Fingers? Gripping aimlessly. Voice? Cracked and broken as he sputtered nonsense in his native tongue and tried once more to slur his way up to a sit before plopping back down face first into his own goopy DNA.
"Consort Nemi of Veloria, your election for ritual combat has been confirmed and all contaminants in your code have been destroyed according to Imperial Irken Law." A feminine, robotic voice called through his faintly glowing PAK, alerting Del to the notice as well as he stumbled back to grip at the counter behind him when the realization that Lire's backup code had been completely obliterated. "In twenty-four hours time exactly you will be transported to Judgementia for controlled ritual combat against Almighty Tallest Del. What are your stipulations?"
Red rushed forward and knelt at Purple's side when his omnipotent rulers let him go, stumbling a bit as he rolled him onto his side and took his cheeks in his palms to smooth over his skin. "Pur? Pur, can you hear me?" He hissed, frantically searching his bleary features as the Control Brain repeated the same phrase in Purple's thoughts, growing impatient with his perceived insolence. "Hey, here, we'll sit up together."
Purple tried not to slump to the side when Red hooked his hands under his arms and heaved, hoisting him up into his ribcage to hold him close in a protective embrace as Del hung back and listened in catatonic shock as the Control Brains repeated their request the final time.
Purple shook himself free from his fog, reaching up and latching onto Red's shoulder as they locked eyes. See? He could see. He could hear everything. He could feel and smell and taste the tinge of blood on his tongue from where he'd bit down during his internal struggle with Lire. Ah, Lire…he was finally destroyed completely, nothing more than a string of fractured code in the back of the Control Brains' hardware and forgotten by all but Del himself.
"Red?" He mumbled, his voice dry and hoarse as Red scrambled to grab for his hands and press them to his lips to warm with his breath. "What the hell happened? I feel so gross."
"Purple?" Red breathed in response, pressing his forehead to his knuckles and laughing on a giddy, adrenaline fueled loop when his nerves finally broke and turned to something still anxious but relieved. "We have to stop coming together like this. You save me, I save you, your love for danger is gonna get us killed one day." He joked, peeking over his fingers with wide, glittering eyes and a tiny smile. "Welcome back to reality, asshole."
"Maybe if you wouldn't be so stupid, I wouldn't have to save you all the time." Purple jabbed lovingly back with a smirk, finally feeling his mind settle like sediment and glancing up to where Del stood half enshrouded in the darkness of the far corner, the faint glow of his PAK an eerie reminder that he was no longer allowed to harm him for the duration of the next twenty-four hours.
His Tallest couldn't do so much as spit in their direction without threat of execution himself, giving Purple the frame of mind to take his time getting to his knees with a labored huff. Red kept firm hold of his elbow, helping him to his feet and catching him when another wave of unforeseen vertigo hit him like a Voot, slamming into the back of his mind as the whole of the gloomy room spun for a moment longer.
"You. Both of you betrayed me and your people. Do you understand that I'm trying to help you achieve immortality?" Del hissed darkly, refusing to face them directly and stepping free from his perch in the corner, keeping his golden gaze averted out of fear he would do something rash and end up on the chopping block of their mechanized overlords. "You're making a mistake if you think you have the gall to take me. Styx may have had a chance but you, dear Nemi, I'll take my time with you."
"Shut up, Del." Red growled as Purple took a deep, shuddering breath and clutched at his belt when he threatened to dissolve like jello once more. "The only reason I don't get to take you myself is because all of your pathetic ordinances destroyed my life and drove me to make decisions I'm not proud of. Otherwise, I'd be out there on the battlefield feeding your organs one by one to a Schlorbeast."
"My what? Stipulations?" Purple asked to the atmosphere, listing intently before glancing up when Del finally met his lavender eyes with a searing, overpoweringly hateful stare of his own that made Purple's skin crawl. "Um…is there anything that I'm not allowed to pursue?"
There was a moment of silence as he listened to the Control Brains chattering over laws and explaining in depth regulations to him from afar, stating the only thing he wasn't allowed to take was the territory of another Empire he had no further jurisdiction over unless they went to war and stole it away for themselves. Ok…ok…he had to make this count for everyone in attendance.
"I have several stipulations." He began, moving before Red for protection should Del try to take out his rage on the only living thing he could touch in the room. "If I win, I want Sen of Callnowia and Styx of Naphrus to be cleared of all charges held against them as well as complete protections for the next twenty four hours. I also want to hold all rights as acting Almighty Tallest of the Imperial Irken Empire and to be cleared of all duties as a consort." He shrunk back a bit when Del threw his hands up in the air to pretend and choke the life from his trachea, continuing at his own risk when he heard the brains stall and process his information feed. "Finally, I want safe transport of myself, Styx, and Sen to Judgementia via the Massive complete with amenities including food, bunking, clothes, and my choice of weapons for the-"
"Weapons request denied."
Purple froze and glanced back to Red, opening his mouth to keep going and try and find a loophole within the ordinance when the brain spoke up to cut him off once more.
"Protections for Sen of Callnowia denied."
Purple scrunched up his face and stared up at the ceiling as if he'd see the glow of smoldering mechanical eyes hanging above him. "What?! Why? Why doesn't she deserve protections?!"
"It is outside our territory of rule to judge the actions of someone not of our own kind."
Purple threw out a hot, untamed curse under his breath, knowing Sen wouldn't last more than thirty short minutes once Del was able to leave the med bay and sink his teeth into her once and for all. She would be razed, cut to pieces, and shot into the void of space with no one to ever find her again…dammit. But, what else could he do? Sen had proven herself as an ally, but the lives of billions were at stake on Irk and Callnowia and Purple couldn't leave them to literally rot with foreign blood tainting their flesh until it melted clean from their bone.
"Fine. I understand." He finally mumbled, nearly choking on the lump of stress forming in his throat. "Do I retain permissions to keep my other requests active?"
There was a moment of thick, unnerving silence before the brains piped back up once more, chittering excitedly amongst one another before dinging out their approval and setting both party's hardware alight with the seal of Irken approval radiating just beneath their lighted sensors. The Brains didn't say anything else, they merely slithered back to undergo preparations for the first sequence of ritual combat in seven hundred cycles, leaving Purple with his own thoughts free of anyone else's hideous, fanatically institutionalized opinions. Lire was destroyed on the micro level, eaten away by the code of the very beings he had learned to serve and Purple still hadn't comprehended what had happened as he faded to dust and perished a second time before his eyes. He didn't feel as free as he'd hoped, the same nauseous anger welling up within him every time Lire's face appeared in his thoughts or his voice echoed through his still fresh memories. He wouldn't heal for a while, but at least this was something.
This was a start.
Del took a step forward, reaching out to test the boundaries of protections and finding he was completely unable to act upon the two, his undying hatred for Red only swelling when his pinched, sweltering gaze landed back on Purple and saw nothing but the consort he'd taken into his custody two cycle prior.
"You'll regret this." He said slowly, ushering them forward as he threw open the hatch for the medical pod and stepped out into the faint light of the corridor to admire the upturned mess Red had caused. "I'll execute you on the battlefield and burn Styx alive on the bridge of the Massive to set an example of you both. Do you know what fire feels like once it hits your skin, defector?"
Purple noticed Red grimace in obvious discomfort, reaching back and taking his hand to lead him along proud and tall as the, hopeful, next successor to the dictator they'd come to hate more than anything in their current existence.
"If you so much as touch him, I'll slit your throat in your sleep tonight." Purple threatened, knowing full well that Red had less importance to the Control Brains than he did at the moment. "He's mine, and I say what happens to him."
Del took the menacing warning lightly, blowing it off with the flick of a wrist as he descended down the narrow hallway and instructed a confused service drone nearby to unfortunately house the two while they waited out their sentence. Purple held firm, keeping hold of Red's fingers as the squat medical drone raced back to where they stood and removed her mask, stripping it away and tossing it to the side before anxiously bowing out of respect when the mass notice was finally drilled into each and everyone's PAKs for them to read over at their frantic dispositions.
Red kept his gaze down as they followed the tiny worker around amassing crowds of curious, but visibly frightened onlookers, listing to the bog and slog of horrid remarks thrown back in their faces when officers noticed Red was clutching at the claws of Empire property, their still young relationship receiving scoffs and hatred around every weathered corner and pipeline.
"I'm sorry." Red mumbled from behind, too ashamed to pick up his pace and fall in line at Purple's side. "I didn't know how to get that monster out of your head and that was the only way I could-"
Purple brought his free hand to his lips and shushed his jittery partner, hoping to calm his deepening dread but knowing it wouldn't do much to help. "Don't worry. We've still got twenty-four hours to figure this out, Red. That's a lot of time to formulate a plan to finally end this. Just think, I'll be Tallest soon and I'll make you an actual General like you dreamed."
A tiny ghost of a smile peaked on Red's face but quickly faded to something cold and distant as his grip tightened. "It should have been me. Because I messed up, I'm gonna get you killed." He clamped a hand over his mouth then swiftly let it fall back to his side when one of his past coworkers laughed openly in his face from the sidelines. "Pur, let's be realistic here; there's no way in hell that you're gonna be able to take on Del! You're a sharpshooter, not a fighter!"
Purple shrugged, still miles away from catching up to the intensity of what had just transpired and unsure of what would happen to his sluggish mind when it all caught up and smacked into him like a freight train. "Well…like I said, we have twenty-four hours. I won't be allowed to take weapons from the ship, so I'll have to put something together myself." He stopped when a sudden idea came over him in waves, giving him a bit of hope for the future as he spun on his heel and grabbed Red firmly by the shoulders to halt him in his tracks. "You were top of your class in hand to hand combat, right?"
Red didn't know what to say, sputtering as his nerves got the best of him and faltered. "U-Um, yeah? But what does that have to do with anything? You're fighting, not me!"
Purple yelled out a victory cry and flew forward to squeeze Red around the abdomen in a tight, ecstatic embrace. They had a chance. They had a chance afterall!
"P-Pur? Talk to me, use your words, idiot!"
"Teach me."
"T-Teach you what, exactly?"
"Teach me how to kill Del."
Thank you for coming to this next update of Fire in the Snow! I hope you enjoyed and as always, I'll read all of your reviews and appreciate them immensely! I'm going to be posting on Mondays now, because it's not conflicting with my new work schedule since quarantine got my country messed up, so I hope to see you all again!
Next Update: Monday, May 11, 2020 by 10:00 pm CDT (UTC -5)! See you then!