Author's Notes: If the torture in the previous chapter didn't scare you, I don't think this torture will either, but I'm going to warn you anyway. Blood, pain, near death experiences, and gore ect are in this chapter, so continue with caution. There is a time skip if that helps at all.
I did not want to change the rating on this fic to anything higher than T.
The Horrible Plot
Lard Nar had never been so sure of anything in his life. He had not been the one to kill Purple. Someone else had to have snuck into the room while he and Purple were sleeping… but the red Tallest wouldn't listen.
The gag in his mouth kept him from talking. He couldn't move his arms or legs. They had chained him to one of the hard metal tables, only his hands were stretched up more over his head. It was an uncomfortable position, and the level of discomfort was only going to increase.
His silent pleas wouldn't be answered. He knew this, so he kept his eyes fixated on the ceiling as he tried to ignore the movement around him. Voices were whispering. He could hear the sneers of some of the guards before they left the room, leaving the torturer to do his work. The red Tallest was probably watching from behind the two way mirror. Unlike Purple, Red wasn't going to show any compassion. In fact, the torture was going to probably drag out as long as possible before his misery was finally ended.
The torturer approached him with a small energy knife. With a smirk, the Irken began to cut his victims clothes from his body. Lard Nar winced each time the blade made contact with his skin. His mind was racing. He was already struggling for breath. The last thing to be removed was the collar. Lard Nar had always seen it as a degrading thing, only now did he view it as an object of protection.
"When I'm through with you…" the torturer spoke in a gruff voice as he picked up a different instrument; the one used for causing burns. "You'll wish you'd never joined any rebel group. You'll regret ever harming our Tallest Purple."
The first flash of pain came when the energy beam travelled over his arm. He wrenched against his binds and shut his eyes tight. He could hear his skin sizzling from the burns.
After a while of inflicting this kind of pain, the torturer decided to take a break from burning. He placed the object down and grabbed a hold of one of the Vortians fingers.
Snap.
Lard Nar screamed silently because of the gag, and he began to struggle in vain against his bonds.
Snap. Another finger was broken. Pain burned up his hand, as he heard more cracks. Tears flooded his vision as he tried to remain staring at the ceiling. He bit his tongue, but that did nothing to mask the pain in his now crushed hand which had been broken in several places.
"This is only the beginning," the guard told him, patting him on the head like an animal. "You'll see."
Grahl huffed as he ran through the hallway with Purple's pak in his arms. The other Irkens standing around watched him curiously until he vanished from their sights. It had taken Grahl some time to track down his commander's Pak. It had been, out of all the places it could have possibly been, in Tallest Red's room.
No one ever dared to go into Red's room, but Grahl did; only because he knew his other Tallest was currently preoccupied. Now he was rushing to save his leader from certain death, or so he hoped. Once the countdown had been completed, he knew death always followed. He just couldn't bring himself to believe that one of his Tallests had died.
"Sir sir!" he called as he rushed into Purple's room. "I found it!"
He hurried over to the bed and carefully lowered the pak on the floor so he could move Purple into a better position. Then he picked up the device and reattached it to the Tallest's back.
At first there was no movement from the Tallest. Purple appeared as dead with his pak on as he did with it off… but then he let out a moan.
"W-what happ'n?" Purple croaked as his eyes blinked open.
"Sir! You're alive!" Grahl exclaimed happily. "I don't know how, but you're alive!"
"What…?" Purple couldn't move his body. It would take a while for his pak to fully respond to its host. "I don't… 'memer… anything…"
"I was passing by your room last night when I saw someone leave your room sir… I believe it was Tallest Red. Then this morning when I heard your Pak was missing, I immediately set out to find it."
"My Pak…?" Purple mumbled closing his eyes and breathing a sigh. "Why would…?"
"Just rest my Tallest," Grahl said. "You need to recover your strength."
Purple gave in to his exhaustion and fell asleep while Grahl positioned himself in front of his Tallest's door. He wasn't going to let anyone near Purple if he could help it.
It was two days later when Purple woke feeling completely recharged and nearly back to normal. He had some dizziness when he first got up, but that quickly subsided. He looked around the room and noticed Lard Nar wasn't there. His antennae fell back and his eyes narrowed. What the flurk was going on?
He didn't bother turning on his hover-belt. He was angry, and walking in long angry strides seemed the most fitting way to confront the other Tallest. "Where is Red?" he asked Grahl when he stepped out into the hallway. The Irken had been guarding the door and refused to leave until his Tallest had recovered.
"Sir," Grahl saluted him. "He is in the torture chamber sir."
"Why is he in there?"
"He blamed your death on the Vortian slave sir, so he is currently having him tortured."
"Why didn't you stop him!?" Purple snapped, wrenching the smaller Irken off the floor.
"Please forgive me my Tallest," Grahl spoke. "But his life in comparison to your life is nothing... and uh... I can't argue with a Tallest...I'm not tall enough..."
"That Vortian saved your freaken life, yet you would leave him to die in the most brutal way imaginable?" Purple questioned in disbelief. And Lard Nar wondered why he threw drones out of airlocks and kicked them when they were dying.
He dropped Grahl and began walking towards the torture chamber. It was on one of the lower levels. Purple's walk turned into a jog and then into a run. He was tripping on his uniform a lot, so he paused for a moment to tear a nice long strip out, freeing his legs. Then he started running again.
"Oh Shliza… shliza… dlark it all!" he swore out loud. He was panting already, and his legs felt heavy, but he wasn't going to turn his hover belt on. Actually, right now it was weighing him down more than anything. As he was running, he gripped the belt and tore it off. It landed far behind him, and he kept going.
None of the Irkens questioned why their Tallest was in such a hurry. All of them quickly got out of his way so they wouldn't be hit or run over. Purple took one of the elevators all the way down. He continued at a more deliberate pace when he saw the large metal doors which led into the torture chamber.
It had been two days, yet the torture was still going on. He braced himself for what he was going to see. For all he knew, Lard Nar was already dead, but he wasn't going to give up until he knew for sure, and even then there would be repercussions. Red was not going to get away with this.
When the doors slid open, the torturer stopped what he was doing long enough to glance over his shoulder. The furious lavender eyes of the second Tallest was the last thing he saw before everything became black. His body crumpled to the ground, and the blunt object in his hand clattered noisily on the tiles. There was blood everywhere.
Purple recoiled when he saw the red liquid covering his hands. Sucking in a breath, he closed his eyes and reached to undo the clasps binding Lard Nar's wrists and legs. Everything was hot to the touch, especially the metal. The room was stifling… it was difficult to breathe.
"I'm really sorry about this..." Purple whispered. "You have no idea..."
The Vortian appeared to be unconscious, but that wasn't really surprising. Purple had no idea how such a small creature could bleed so much. There was a large gash that cut the Vortian's mid-section wide open, and this was where most of the blood was coming from. One of his horns had been snapped in half, and blood was coming from there as well.
"Purple?" Red stepped into the room. He had been watching from the two-way mirror. "You're alive! This is great."
"Shut up!" Purple snapped, barring his teeth and flattening his antennae in an almost primeval fashion. "You... I don't want you near me! You nearly killed me and for what!? Petty revenge!?"
"Purple... I didn't mean to kill you... I was going to have your pak returned, honest..."
"I don't give a flurk!" Purple shouted. "Stay away from me! Stay away or I'll hurt you worse than you've ever been hurt before, so help me..." He extended his pak-legs and pointed them threateningly at his partner. Red raised his hands and backed himself against the wall. Not even the somewhat unstable Tallest who was prone to violent mood-swings felt confident enough to take on Purple in his full rage.
"Ok... we'll talk later..." Red agreed as he carefully moved towards the exit.
"I need sedatives..." Purple realized quickly after analyzing Lard Nar's desperate condition. His pak legs retracted.
Once the Vortian's arms and legs were free, he set to work gathering the materials he would need to fix broken bones and seal off the separated flesh. These devices were kept near the torture chamber in order to casually mask a torture session (it had happened to one of the Jackers before, and they didn't really want to tick off the important people of that planet,) or to fix up a victim enough to keep them alive if they happened to be dying "too quickly."
The Tallest made a quick mental note of everything that was wrong with the dying Vortian: a crushed hand, broken fingers, two of which had been completely severed, a broken horn, a near disemboweling, excessive bleeding from the torso wound and other areas, one of his legs was bent and twisted in several different places while the other had many small cuts in the flesh as well as a fresh break at the knee, burns along his limbs, and there was also blood trickling down his chin..
He removed the cloth that had been nearly shoved down Lard Nar's throat and found evidence of forced entry from some kind of object, probably a tube. The Vortian's throat was damaged; he most likely wouldn't be able to swallow properly for a while.
White and coloured blistered covered his arms and legs from the burnings. The skin looked tender... he wondered if he would be able to touch Lard Nar without causing him immense pain.
It was amazing that the Vortian had survived all of this.
Oh great control brains... Lard Nar's eyes were open. They were glassy and unfocused, but they were open. "You were never unconscious were you...?" Purple grumbled. He wanted to hit something. "Dlarn it... Red must have used that new drug from Planet Carcashia..."
The drug kept its victim in a state of full consciousness while completely immobilizing the body. It was illegal in most parts of the galaxy... Purple wondered briefly how his partner had gotten his hands on it.
"Don't worry..." he tried to sound calm. "You'll be fine. I'll erase your memory again like last time. You won't remember anything..." He found a syringe in the supplies he'd gathered. Now he needed a sedative.
"Sir...?" Grahl questioned from the entrance of the chamber.
"You!" Purple pointed at his follower. "Go get me a sedative from the medical facility, and be quick about it!"
"Yes sir!" Grahl exclaimed as he rushed to follow his Tallest's orders.
"Computer: access codes 4579, return the temperature to normal."
Voice authorization recognized: Tallest Purple, request granted.
A flow of cold air quickly cooled the room back down to normal temperature. Purple breathed in the new air and let out a sigh. "I hate this ship... my followers are all idiots... Red is a Blastard..." Why was he still here? If only he would have released Lard Nar sooner... at least the Vortian could have escaped all of this.
"I was selfish..." he admitted rubbing his temples. "I was planning on letting him for a while, but I hesitated... It was because I didn't want to be trapped here alone... with Red. It wasn't his fault." He turned to Lard Nar who was lying motionless on the table.
"I promise... this time I will release you... you won't ever have to experience this kind of thing again." He opened one of the containers he found, and he stuck his fingers in the cool gel. "I'll have to wait for the sedatives before I can fix your broken bones and seal up that gash, but this should work on your burns nicely."
He began rubbing the gel over the Vortian's burned skin. The blistered faded quickly, and the flesh changed back to its normal colouring. Some peeled off, but the skin underneath was fine. Hopefully there wouldn't be any scarring.
"I don't want to cause you anymore pain," Purple told him as he glanced towards the door to see if Grahl was retuning. "We'll have to wait for Grahl... hopefully that useless drone won't take too long."
He noticed the metal collar lying on the ground and he stooped down to retrieve it. It was covered in blood as well. Just how much had Lard Nar bled? His fingers tightened around the device. "Miyuki wouldn't have done any of this... just what is Red thinking…?"
"Sir!" Grahl gasped as he bolted into the room. "The... the sedative..." he breathed, holding up the small container.
"Hold still or I'll jab you in the arm," Purple growled as he stuck the needle through the top. He wondered if he should be doing this since he only had two fingers on each hand and no thumb, but he didn't really have the luxury of time right now. It would take too long to call someone who knew what they were doing.
Lard Nar was very near death... at least he couldn't make things much worse.
"Alright... once I am finished sealing up the external wounds and reattaching the bones, I'll need you to contact Prisoner 777 from Vort. Tell him we'll need plans for a robotic hand."
"Yes sir."
"Also, get some of the engineers in here."
"Yes my Tallest, right away."
Grahl saluted before dashing out the door.
There was no point trying to save Lard Nar's hand. The bones had been crushed badly, and no amount of fixing would ever allow him to use that hand properly again. Also, the missing fingers were not lying around in plain sight. They could have already been destroyed.
"Alright," Purple said as he carefully stuck the needle in the Vortian's upper arm. There was a small red mark where it looked like he'd taken a needle once before, so Purple didn't spend a lot of time worrying if he'd done it right. "This will only take a day or two..."
Lard Nar's eyes slowly drifted shut.
Purple breathed a sigh. This was no time to get sick... he wanted to throw up when he first saw the Vortian lying there with his organs exposed and blood covering everything... but the Tallest was ignoring this feeling now so he could concentrate on what needed to be done.
He would never understand how Red could sit through an entire torture session with a bag of chips, laughing at the blood and the screams of agony coming from the victim. It always made Purple's spooch feel queasy to watch such a thing excessively... he usually found some kind of excuse to leave if the torture session lasted longer than a few cycles, although he pretended to like it well enough.
He didn't like to admit it, but he had gotten sick a few times in the past from watching creatures getting their limbs broken and torn off.
More Notes: Soo... do you like Red? Do you hate him? Who knows why he's crazy... maybe he has a Pak malfunction or something. Or maybe Purple is the real crazy one. Saving a slave, and being all nice towards a non-Irken, tsk tsk.
Oh yeah, I lied about Purple being dead. You've probably noticed. Sorry. He's alive after all. Grahl was fixed at some point. He now acts like any other follower of the Tallest which pisses Purple off just a bit.
And yes, you'll find out how Purple beat the ten minute count down in the next chapter. If he hadn't, Lard Nar would be dead for sure. Literally no one else on board would have helped him, not even Grahl. Although it would have been one of the not nicer ways of ending this story I guess. Instead I wrote like 100 or more pages of stuff.