Nevertheless, the surprise from the first blow was enough to knock me flat on the ground, my hands barely whipping forward in time to spare my face from colliding with the rocky ground. Stupidly, I turned over to get a look at my assailant, only to be firmly clocked on the clavicle. Still, I managed to get an eyeful of my anonymous attacker: an Aisha guard, using his semiautomatic as a billy club. Reeling in pain, I grabbed at my injured shoulder, inadvertently rolling to my side and offering the Aisha guard a clear shot of my hip and ribs, which he bashed with equal gusto. And despite all the pain sizzling through my body, I could only think of the sort of injuries I would sustain from this attack: the ugly bruises, purple mixed unevenly with rose, the bones with hairline fractures like the warnings of an earthquake, and the bones shattered, a whole reduced to so many dagger-like puzzle pieces.
My mind—perhaps in an attempt to divorce from the pain—recalled a pelvis shattered into sixty-three pieces that I had, piece by agonizing piece, fused back into a functioning whole. It had been my masterwork; it was my "surgery story" that defined my career, and ultimately what landed me the privilege of being in that space station while my species down on Neopia suffered. Funny: to think how one unfortunate Feather's pain and tragedy could have ultimately granted me borrowed time.
I saw colorful streaks of some conjuration race above me, aimed at my assailant. Yet the bludgeoning didn't cease—instead, I heard laser fire in retaliation, and a groan unleashed by a female voice. It was difficult to discern the things that were going on around me, but it became clear that there was more than a single Aisha guard. There had to be at least one providing my assailant backup, the one who fired his gun at Hoshiya after her spell. Blood was getting in my eyes—writhing on the ground, I dashed my forehead open—so I couldn't see if she had been badly wounded by the bullets. I could hear Gormos and Jerry's spirited verbal protests; as far as I could tell, they were merely being restrained, rather than legitimately attacked.
My beating seemed needlessly gratuitous, seeing as Gormos and Jerry had been presumably captured, and Hoshiya neutralized, so I turned my scarlet-hued vision up to my assailant. "Why?" I demanded, to which he responded by striking me hard across the cheek, nearly buckling in my nose.
"Because I hate tourists," spat the Aisha guard, and hit me another solid one across the face.
"Are you going to kill me then?" I asked, making no attempt to strike him back. The Aisha grinned sadistically.
"I know you a fugitive. I am a cop, how would not I know? Dead or alive. Doesn't matter, then, does it?" Another blow to the head, and I was struggling to maintain consciousness. I could only imagine the state of my face: bloodied and beaten, maybe mashed up like a squashed piece of fruit. Oddly, I didn't blame the Aisha; I couldn't impart any hatred upon him. Needless, senseless violence brought on by an overwhelming urge for release; I could relate to it, distantly, and it seemed hypocritical of me to blame someone for indulging in an animal instinct.
Just as the world was beginning to get black around the edges, a deafening roar echoed through the opening of the cave, though originating from the outside. Immediately my attacker stopped; I strained upwards as much as my weary, beaten muscles would allow me. I could see at the very mouth of the cave Hoshiya holding her stomach in paralyzing agony, her hand cupped over her wound, smoke slipping out from between her fingers from laser burns. Outside of the cave were two additional Aisha guards to the one that was wailing on me, one of these extras holding a squirming Jerry firmly. The other guard might've formerly been restraining Gormos, but now was standing a good distance away from the still-Green-Aisha, the guard regarding Gormos with a look of fear. Gormos was red-faced and pissed, baring his tiny Aisha teeth—which, curiously, seemed to be growing in length by the moment.
"You dirty pigs!" Gormos roared, and with each word he spoke his voice tuned down a note, gradually restored to its original booming bass. He seemed to be growing in proportion to his rage: small Aisha ears flaring out into the fur-filled scoops of Kougra ears, green fur blazing with black stripes and becoming blue and shaggy, his height increasing by the moment like some sort of angry transformation. As Gormos' original form emerged from the Aisha ruse, I realized with a start how terrifying my old friend actually was. With incisors more like steak knives and ear flattened against his skull in anger, towering over the Aishas by twice their height and three times their bulk, even I felt a tremor of terror pierce through me.
I had never seen Gormos in such a fit—even when wrangling a particularly difficult engine, or dealing with a snippy ship owner who thought they knew more about mechanics than the actual mechanic, his anger rarely exceeded a mild irritation, which often devolved into a detached, childish amusement. He was blessed with that indifference available to individuals who had always been more powerful than their peers: there was never a need to be aggressive and prove their physical dominance, as it was assumed. Seeing him at the peak of his wrath, then, was jarring, my image of Gormos as a peaceful, playful soul forever shaken by this new creature with teeth and gums fully exposed, fur raised almost vertically and golden eyes glinting with unbridled fury.
It only took a single blow from Gormos' paw—scythe-like claws fully extended—to knock my assailant hard against the side of the cave, like a baseball bat hitting a wiffle ball off a tee. With the other two Aisha guards coming back to their senses, Gormos had to deal with a rain of bullets coming in his direction, which he seemed to shake off like water droplets. Two more sweeps of his massive forearms sent the remaining guards out of commission; Gormos relieved their unconscious bodies of the rifles and hurled them against the side of the cave. Then it was all over, Gormos barely panting with exertion, standing between a staring Jerry and me, buck naked save for his fur.
He closed his eyes for a minute, and his composure returned, as if channeled back into his brain by some invisible source. "You okay, Frank?"
"Oh, marvelous," I replied shakily. I attempted to get to my feet, but found my abdominal muscles, thoroughly bludgeoned, refused to support a standing position. Clumsily, I crashed back into the twisted, somewhat reclined position I had assumed while being beaten. "Never better. I just decided to take a little rest right now … the bleeding is incidental."
Gormos grinned sharply, yet even with a pleasant expression I now saw those teeth in a different light, with more than just the potential for ferocity. "Solid enough to still be a sarcastic bastard. How 'bout you, Hoshi?"
"A little bit … crispy," she answered between clenched teeth, her hands still tightly closed over her abdomen. "I'm having … trouble with getting the proper healing spell for these wounds … the Aishas must be using a new kind of laser, because I've been able to heal this kind of thing before … augh …" The tail end of her reply consisted of an unintelligible string of curses and grunts of pain.
"Frank'll fix that later," Gormos reassured her. I was in far too much pain to refute his offering my services. He prodded back towards the opening of the cave where I lay and scooped me off the rock, slinging me over his shoulder like a light load, picking up Hoshiya in the same fashion. He even had the foresight enough to arrange our bodies so our heads weren't facing, my head hanging down Gormos' chest while hers dangled down his back, subverting any pointless pain-induced quarrels. (Though once or twice I did attempt to dock Hoshiya in the face with my heel, which she justly repaid by disgustingly and somewhat impressively jamming her toe up my nose.)
With the two of us in tow, he hopped out of the cave, stepped delicately over the unconscious Aisha guards, and approached Jerry, who had been spending the past ten minutes staring slack-jawed at the scene. Blushing in a Kougra fashion, he smiled sheepishly. "Uh, Jerry, you think you can do me a favor?"
"You not an Aisha!" Jerry blurted, utterly dumbfounded.
"Uh, actually, no, m'names Gormos Brahmin Kougra, and I'm not an Aisha. I'm not even biologically related to Aishas, and there's no way we could ever breed, oh, ho, ho, no. Heck, I don't even think we share the same type of DNA. Frank, whattya say?"
"Nope, completely different DNA," I answered over his shoulder.
"See, there you go. But hey, that shouldn't make our relationship any different, right? We're still buddies, right?" The strain in Gormos' voice was evident.
Jerry didn't reply for a long time, letting her brain take its sweet time to process this onrush of information. Slowly, she began raising her index finger to her temple, as if coming across a revelation. "Thaaaat … would explain how you not talk Aishaspeak!" she gasped, the puzzle pieces finally falling neatly into place. She pounded her fist into her open palm, mentally solving a second mystery. "And you the third missing fugitive!"
"Bingo, Jerry. You got us. But hey, since we're buddies now and all, you think you could do us a favor, and just bring us back to the Aisha City space port? We really gotta get going on this Fountain of Youth thing," Gormos implored Jerry, a note of pleading in his voice. I stole a glance at Gormos' face: plastered on it was that innocent smile he always used to worm his way into people's hearts. With Gormos' oafish charm on full blast, not even a hardened taxi driver like Jerry could resist bending to his whim.
Jerry did, however, require one condition to getting us smoothly to the space port and out of the Aisha home world orbit: that we take her along with us to some as-of-yet-undefined destination. While the fitful grumbling produced from behind Gormos' back suggested one of our crew opposed this idea, the ship did technically belong to Gormos. As such, our ragtag trio became a motley quartet. We cruised somewhat clearly out of the space sport, although we did have to disguise Jerry as the tongueless Aisha who "originally" docked the ship, and board Gormos by hiding him in a shipping box marked as a 'large souvenir.'
I was assigned to tend to the wounded, half of those in question being me. My nose still bleeding considerably, I sequestered the cringing Hoshiya into one of the bedrooms, armed with a first aid kit and various medicinal ointments. I instructed her to lay flat on her back so I could get a clear view of her stomach injury. Reluctantly, and with visible pain, she laid herself out on the floor, stretching her arms over her head. Her toned abdominals were branded with several ugly burns in centralized blast points, the laser equivalent of a bullet hole. I selected a burn salve from my arsenal and began smoothing a layer over the bright red wounds. I could feel her muscles contract under my fingers, strong and taut.
"Good betty that's cold," she complained, squirming under my hands. "And not relieving my pain that much. In fact, I think it's starting to hurt worse." Her voice began to pitch towards the end of her sentence, her discomfort level growing.
"Quit your griping, faerie, my blood's still busy clotting over here," I sneered. Unfortunately, I was telling the truth: my nose had decided to play the role of a perpetually drippy faucet with scarlet water, and every so often a bead of blood would issue from the gash under my eye. "I'm going to have to give myself stitches, and let me tell you something, I'm not looking forward to poking a threaded needle through my skin."
"Then let me heal it," Hoshiya suggested, her face contorted with displeasure at the stinging sensation of the salve. "It's not that I can't heal at all, it's just that I can't heal these particular type of burns. Regular skin tears like yours should be no problem."
Automatically, I began to shoot down her suggestion with my standard anti-magic prejudice. Yet curiosity slowed my protest, and as I began to secure down a cross hatch of bandages over Hoshiya's wounds with medical tape, I found my head bobbing up and down, my interest getting the better of me. "Yeah, well, guess it can't hurt for you to close up one of them."
The look of utter shock on Hoshiya's face at my compliance reflected perfectly what I was feeling inside. Determined to approach this coolly, though, I regarded her blandly, giving an indifferent shrug of my shoulders. "Don't give me that look. It was your idea, right?" After smoothing out the medical tape borders of Hoshiya's bandages, I gestured towards my face, more of a challenge than an invitation. "Go on, then. Go for the big leagues—the one on the forehead." From what I had glimpsed of my mashed-up mug, the worst injury I had incurred was the gash that ran diagonally from the crown of my head to right above my left eyebrow. I ran my finger along its crusting edges, as if targeting the wound for Hoshiya.
Haltingly, Hoshiya sat up. She reached for my forehead, stopping midway with a jerk, as if expecting me to strike out at her. When I remained patiently still, she let her hand travel the rest of the way, resting her fore and middle finger in the deepest canyon of the wound. I winced slightly with the salt of her skin attacking the raw flesh, but otherwise remained unmoving. She closed her eyes to concentrate, and the burning of her fingertips inside the gash softened to pulsating warmth. Under her touch, light and comforting, my skin shivered: I felt the edges of the wound pucker together at the very tip, readhering themselves in a solid seal of new flesh.
A base excitement collected in my stomach at the sensation of magic closing my wound like a zipper at either end, but I kept a poker face, making sure not to seem too impressed. After only a half minute, Hoshiya removed her fingers from my forehead. My blood was on her hands, a cherry stain she rubbed off on her pant leg. "There," she declared, soberly pleased with her work. "No scar, nothing. Like it was never there at all." Her eyes flickered down to the wound right under my right eye, crescent-shaped. "Now for this one…"
I intercepted her hand groping to heal a second wound, wanting to heal at least one of my injures by conventional methods. For a few agonizing seconds our hands overlapped: and to my surprise, instead of feeling a relentless loathing, I feel something like electricity exchanged across our skin, an instinctual communication bypassing civilized speech.
And then I saw the wound on that same hand, and that understanding dissolved.
"How about you leave that one to the expert?" I suggested, keeping my tone cold and professional. My feigned indifference came off successfully: Hoshiya retreated from me with the same predictable repugnance, wrinkling her nose.
"Feather can't even admit magic's usefulness after I save you from bleeding to death?" she said, obviously disgusted with my insolence. Outwardly, I shrugged with cocky apathy. Yet inwardly my stomach churned, unable to digest a sliver of uncertainty towards my opinion of Hoshiya.