Disclaimer: I do not own Total Drama Island/Action/World Tour, Warhammer 40,000 or Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann or any other copyrighted properties.
...
The airship was huge, looming over them, and as they walked up the ramp that had been extended from it for them, the Total Drama kids had a certain unnerving feeling that they were walking into the belly of a beast, insatiable and monstrous.
Rossiu led the way. He was short and slight, but he walked like he was a stone in the world, immovable and unchanged by anything around him. His footsteps were surprising heavy on the metal, and he walked with an self-posession odd in someone so young, his arms crossed behind his back. "Come along," He said, and it was so polite that it was hard to hear the order underneath.
Duncan heard it, though, and he stomped along with the resentment and grouchiness that implied that he would quite happily shove Rossiu off the airship in midair if he got the chance. He glared at the younger boy's back, frowning faintly when he saw his shirt pull from his neck enough to reveal the edges of faint burn scars, ragged and vicious, going down his back.
Gwen pulled up next to him. "What's with you?" She asked him.
"I don't like this kid," Duncan hissed to her. "There's something weird about him. What kind of kid talks like a grammer book?"
"The kind of kid that plays with Legos when all the other kids wanted to go for the slides?" Gwen guessed. "He seems the type. Bigger question, how did a kid end up in charge here?"
Duncan nodded. "Something weird's going on here. This doesn't feel like the other seasons, you know? Chris is screwing with us worse than usual and I don't like it."
"You don't like anything."
"I like you," Duncan said, with unabashed and unthinking honesty.
"Smooth," Noah said from somewhere behind him.
Duncan turned around, about to smack him one, thinking otherwise when he saw Noah walking just a bit behind Sierra, who gave him a suspicious look. Duncan had learned better than to treat a girl as weaker just because she was a girl (mainly due to Courtney kicking his ass in season two) and Sierra was a lot bigger than him; Noah smirked at him from behind Duncan, practically daring him to go through Sierra.
"We have a schedule to keep," Rossiu said coldly.
Duncan whirled around and kept walking. "Don't you order me around, kid. You might work here, but I'm a contestant. I'm the one this whole thing revolves around; you're just a placeholder for it to work, got it?"
Rossiu didn't even bother to look at him. "And what makes you think this is like the other seasons?" He asked softly, with the hint of a threat behind it.
That stopped Duncan dead in his tracks for a moment. The others caught up momentarily, and he briefly overhead Geoff say, "Oh man, I do not like the sound of that..."
Rossiu did not respond.
...
The ramp eventually led into what had, unknown to any of them or even Chris, once been a bomb bay; the floor had been replaced with something sturdier and lots of fancy floor tiling, and the walls strung with big cheerful banners that said Welcome To Hell! which didn't really fit the happy vibes. A few other interns were waiting there, dressed like waiters or stewardesses and generally looking utter apathetic, standing at attention behind a large serving buffet of many assorted breakfasting foodstuffs; pancakes, bacon, sasauge, dry cereal, muffins, waffles, and more, smelling so good it was physically painful not to be closer to the delicious food. On a nearby table was an slightly smaller selection of beverages like fruit drinks of many varieties, milk, tea, coffee, hot chocolate...Rossiu had gone quite a ways to make a good breakfast banquet.
"...Hrm," Alejandro said, reluctantly impressed. "That's quite a lot of food. A pity I can't have any, what with being trapped inside a robot."
"Then how have you been feeding yourself?" Katie asked, horrorified.
"You're better off not knowing, it's distressingly medical and invasive."
"Chris is evil!" Katie and Sadie cried.
"Duh!" Sierra said, with a great big helping of hypocritical humor. (It had taken Chris essentially leaving her to die before she'd gotten the message. The poor girl was too dense for her own good.)
"You do realize you have a food hatch built in, right?" Harold said. "I can see one right there."
"What, really?" Heather said. "I don't see one."
"Where is it!" Alejandro said desperately. "I've spent months surviving on intraveneously supplied nutrients! I crave food!"
Harold made a point of looking away. "Oh look at that. Something more interesting that whatever I was talking about."
"...You're still annoyed about me tricking you into commiting elimination suicide, aren't you?" Alejandro asked.
"Hrm? No, actually, but I am annoyed about you pushing Leshawna into going beserk! And then bragging about it. Through song. Gosh, you're sick."
"I'm not sick, I'm simply efficient."
"Also completely alone and friendless," Cody said spitefully.
"...That's unusually harsh of you..."
"YOU PUSHED HIM INTO A LAKE OF MAN-EATING SHARKS, YOU SOCIOPATH!" Sierra yelled, raising a fist in furious indignation. Harold, Trent, Geoff, Gwen, Noah and everyone else that even slightly liked Cody or at least had a functioning moral compass gave Alejandro the dirtiest looks ever.
"This," Noah said sternly. "Is what's known as pop schlock culture karma applied in a short-term sense. You try to get someone killed for a cheap advantage in a reality TV show and now you're in a robot with no breakfast for you. Sucks to be you."
Duncan added, "And look at all the shit we just just do not give."
"Oh, come on!" Alejandro said. "You threw a dingo at him! He fell down a cliff! And yet no one's harraunging you."
"Uh, he slugged me?" Duncan pointed out. "It was revenge, everybody's totally cool with that."
"I'm not!" Cody said.
"Me either!" Sierra said, giving Duncan a look that promised a vengeance he would never forget. A vegeance terrifying and awesome in it's scope and vastness, vengeance so awful and monstrous that future avengers would look back and say things like "Well, I may have destroyed my village because they forced my beloved brother into killing my entire family and pushed me into an awful cycle of vengeance culminating me in killing EVERYONE in that village unto the bacteria in the dirt, yea, and also the algae in the lakes thereof, but I can still feel good about myself because that's still not as bad as what Sierra did to Duncan." It was a vengeance that would make Duncan very said indeed. He would probably cry, and Sierra would collect his tears and rub them in his papercuts so the salt would hurt extra. (It would be vengeance well in excess of unreasonable. Never underestimate the wrath of a smitten teenage girl gradually develouping her girlish crush into something more meaningful.)
"Uh," Duncan said. "...Crap."
"Hey, what, we can't get our hate on either!" Eva demanded, glaring fiercely at the world in general. It had pissed her off by lurking suspiciously.
"And I KNOW we haven't settled a thing!" Leshawna announced, glaring at Heather.
"You knocked out my tooth and beat me stupid when I was trying to warn you about Alejandro!" Heather retorted. "It is so FAR from settled!"
"Gothy!" Courtney said, pointing at Gwen.
"Great," Gwen said deadpan. "I get the angry one who actually did a song that more or less involved wishing me dead."
"Yeah, you're getting a lot of sympathy from people over that," Sierra told her.
"Hey, you were helping her with that song! You gave a really creepy line too, something about subverted nursery rhymes?"
"Um...uh...I thought you were a rival for Cody's affections at the time, I was harboring deep rage issues?"
Gwen worredly looked at Cody, who looked politely at her. Gwen observed that Cody was standing very close to Sierra, within handholding distance, and didn't seem at all aware of the implications, and if he was he surely didn't mind. "Then...good thing that's a problem anymore, right?"
Sierra glanced at Cody and grinned at Gwen, as if to say What do YOU think?
Gwen sighed in relief, a relief that was shortly broken by Courtney flatly saying, "I'll NEVER FORGIVE YOU."
"Did you know that's a very dire insult in Japanese, owing to the restrained nature of the language?" Harold remarked.
"NO ONE CARES!" Justin yelled unexpectedly.
"Dude, you're supposed to not be evil anymore!" Trent told him angrily.
Beth gasped. "You're not supposed to mention stuff like that! We agreed on it!"
Justin ignored her. "Oh, you're mad? What are ya gonna do to get over it, count to nine!"
"Better then eight, that has dire occult significance," Noah muttered to Sierra, who nodded fiercely. (They both had a surprising interest in comic fantasy novels.)
Trent's usual cool broke just a little bit. "You jerkass."
"You got all mean and arrogant when you were a host and stuff!" Lindsay said, pointing at Geoff. "You should be ashamed of yourself!"
"YOU CHRIS CLONE!" Eva shouted.
Geoff gasped. "That was uncalled for! Besides, that happened during Total Drama Action. I don't believe that season even happened sometimes."
Tyler and Lindsey gasped. "Shun the non-believer! Shun! Shuuun!"
"...What?"
Eva whirled around on Izzy. "And YOU! You sold all our secrets to HER!" She pointed at Sierra.
"Yep," Izzy said proudly.
"YOU PSYCHO! DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID! WHEN THAT INFO GOT THE INTERNET, ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE!"
"True, it did," Sierra said. "Mostly because of me. Sorry."
Eva ignored her, and DJ said, "YOU MADE THE FLAMES WARS SO MUCH WORSE!"
"Worse..." Izzy said. "Or better?"
DJ thought about it. "Um. Worse. Yeah, definitely worse."
Sierra nodded. "There are some 'fans' that are even worse than me." There was a mutual gasp of horror from all around.
"And you!" Eva said, whirling around on Bridgette, who cowered in abject terror. "You're TOO NICE! WHAT'S YOUR ANGLE!"
"I don't know what you're talking about!" Bridgette said.
"YOU TWO ARE EVIL INCARNATE!" Beth wailed at Alejandro and Heather. "NEVER HAVE BABIES OR WE'LL ALL DIE FROM CONCENTRATED EVIL!"
"What," Alejandro and Heather said.
"Stop being a creepy hive mind and poor judges of character!" Sierra told Katie and Sadie. They gasped.
"ALL OF YOU, STOP BEING MEAN!" Owen cried desperately.
"YOU!" Harold said, pointing at Rossiu. "Wait, you're not even in the game and we've never met, why am I yelling at you?"
"...I don't know," Rossiu said as the arguing escalated around him to a dangerous extent; he suspected a fight was about to break out. He sighed and rolled up his sleeves, prepared to stop it. "Yes, you're all overly emotional dysfunctional children with grievance issues, can we move on?"
Everyone stopped, staring at him. "'Children'?" Leshawna said incredulously. "You're younger than Cody!"
"Hey!" Cody said. "I'm not that young!"
"Actually, you are," Sierra said matter-of-factly. "...Sorry."
"Darn. Wait, how old are you?"
"Older than you," Sierra said evasively.
"Oh man, you guys are just awesome!" Chris said from a nearby monitor no one had noticed, having turned on just in time to watch the arguing. "Seriously! Completely forgetting all the bonding and friendships you made just so you can obsess over the little nitpicky issues you have? Awe-some. You're all ratings goldmines!" He paused. "Seriously, though, how old are you, Sierra? 'Cause Cody looks enough like a little kid next to you, that's creepy. Good wish fantasy fodder for all the little short fanboys in the watching audience, but creepy."
They paused, and froze. "How long have you been watching this?" DJ asked cautiously.
"Long enough!" Chris chose that moment to cackle ominously. "This is gonna make some great footage, you know?"
"...Aw man," Trent said unhappily.
"Creepy?" Sierra said, aghast. "Creepy? Our friendship isn't creepy, is it Cody?"
"Given that you stalked and practically molested him the entire season until he did a total flip because you're the one person in the world who actually cares enough to remember his birthday, plus you're so big he actually does look a lot like a little kid next to you sometimes...yeah," Duncan said. "Kinda is."
Sierra slumped in dismay. "No...no it's not..." Cody and Izzy gathered behind her and group-hugged her to raise her spirits. So mighty was their group hug that it did the trick right away, all thoughts of creepiness banished to the back of Sierra's mind where she could brood about them later. (Hugs are the natural enemy of wangst. This is why people with personal space issues have a lot of emotional problems sometimes.)
"So!" Chris said. "Time to get this show on the road, y'know?"
"Joy," Noah said. "I suppose this is the moment where we do some sort of inane challenge to seperate us into different teams. Or do you just split us based on demographic appeal and whatever broad sterotypes people ascribe to us?"
"Hrm, good ideas," Chris said thoughtfully. "But NAH! There ain't gonna BE any teams this time!"
"What."
"Or challenges!" Chris grinned fiendishly. "Well, not official ones..."
"What."
"And hell, I can't wait to see your faces so I just gotta say it! This airship, or really, surviving living on it with people that hate you? THAT'S THE CHALLENGE OF THE FIRST PART OF THE GAME!"
"WHAT."
"I echo his flat what!" Owen said. "All of that sounds kind of...not good. Painful kind of not-good."
"This is gonna suck, isn't it?" DJ asked mournfully.
"In what way is this airship a challenge?" Courtney asked suspiciously.
"Because the whole thing has savage animals and Ezekiel running around, and nearly every single part of it has been rigged to hurt you," Chris said cheerfully.
"...You suck so bad," Geoff said flatly.
"Says the guy in a cowboy hat! Aaanyway...here's the deal! No eliminations. No teams besides what you do yourselves. No challenges besides just staying alive against all the crap I can throw at you! And no rules, NOTHING to stop you doing whatever you want, provided you don't mind doing it while being FILMED and televised around the world! All until you reach the site the airship's heading for! Maybe the survivors get to split the million. Maybe that's where the next part of the season happens. Or maybe I'll stick you all in an island inhabited by monsters and give the viewing audience all the carnage they can handle! Have fun thinking about that."
"You...can't!" Courtney stammered. "You CAN'T! There's NO WAY THAT'S LEGAL! You've put us through dangerous stuff, but...but...you can't just start actively TRYING TO KILL US! That's like every human rights violation ever! My lawyers...they have to...WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU!"
"Hum, good points!" Chris said from the monitor, grinning like an jerkass. "Maybe I could say somethings. Maybe I could say that, I don't know, those things are legal in Canada but right now you're in international waters where there are no laws and we can do whatever we damn please to you. Maybe as of now your contracts strip you of all legal consideration as human beings and you're now property of the show to do with as we want. Maybe the mass media is so powerful that the legal system takes a flying hike next to what people want to see televised, even a glorified snuff series like what's probably gonna happen here. Who knows?"
"You're actually trying to kill us?" Sierra said faintly. "You...you can't...of all the things I've..." She stiffened, something in her breaking. "...You complete monster."
"...We'll just clone you or something," Chris said, after a moment, a brief look of uncertainty crossed his features. "No big deal."
"YES IT IS!" They shouted.
"You're so self-centered!" Chris complained. "...Anyway, soon as you're done eating that food the new intern, Wilfred or whatever-"
"Rossiu," Rossiu said automatically.
"Yeah, whatever, soon as you're done with that, those doors at the other end of the room?" THey noticed those doors, big sealed vault-type doors, and also a furious pounding coming from the other sides. "Well, food time over, DOORS OPEN. And then fun time begins! And by 'fun time' I mean 'suckage time'. For you guys. For me and the audience, it's gonna be awesome."
"Yay," The interns said apathetically.
"My heart is so full of joy now," Rossiu said monotonously.
Chris laughed at the interns. (And Rossiu.) "Man, it is so awesome having human beings I can treat as my personal property. They should totally make a thing out of that."
"They did, it's called slavery," Harold said. "It's generally frowned upon, man!"
"Nah, I mean something completely different. Not sure what, but, y'know, different." Chris paused. "So, anyway, try to make this awesome, 'kay? Bye." His monitor blipped out, going black.
They stared at it for a long time. "...This is gonna suck so bad," Noah lamented.
"Yeah, probably, but free food is right over there!" Owen said.
"Yeah..."
"FREE FOOD, LITTLE BUDDY!"
Noah rolled his eyes. "Oh, if you insist." He and Owen went over to the buffet table.
Sierra crossed her arms and 'huff'ed. "That does it! Cody, I will not stand for this anymore!"
"You mean being a pawn of a media empire that wouldn't care less about your physical or psychological well-being as long as you entertain people?" Cody suggested. "Or Chris, I don't know, being a jerk and fooling people into thinking he's not?"
"Well, yeah, those things, but I meant the most important thing! I don't have a cute nickname for you as your friend!"
"Wha?"
"From now on, you're my LITTLE BUDDY!" Sierra declared.
Cody blinked up at Sierra. "...Okay?"
"I DECLARE TODAY THE FESTIVAL OF DEVOURING!" Sierra cried, grabbing Cody, throwing him over her shoulder and rushing off for the buffet, the little guy taking it in stride.
Owen saw her coming and, his arms loaded with plates, somehow managed to high-five her. "I know! We can be nickname buddies!"
"Score!" Sierra said.
Noah and Cody caught each other's eyes and shrugged before Sierra twirling away, taking Cody with her. "Meh," They said, both of them content on their somewhat overbearing friends.
The others started gravitating towards the buffet, figuring that if suckiness was about to ensue they might as well make the most of it, while trying to ignore the people they hated and think about the fact that their argumenting of several minutes ago was going to be played around the world and make them all look like vindictive idiots. (It was quite strange how they had all blown up like that out of nowhere. It was quite chaotic, actually.)
Except for Alejandro, who suffered for his sins by being unfed and snubbed by everyone except Owen, who still liked him because Owen was cool that way. Alejandro did not much appreciate this, for he was a bit of a jerkass.
...
A week later, an event of mythic scales was occuring in an small fishing village near the coast of Southern Africa was happening, unseen and unknown until now except for some very odd blips on seismic sensors. (It would have been sooner, but Da Boss was wary about breaking the planet by smashing up the tectonic plates too much and anyway they had a brief altercation with mole people, that delayed them a lot.)
A pair of fisherman, one significantly taller and broader than the other, were dragging the end of one massive net along one side of the lake they drew most of their livelihood from, the other end of it already set into place for them to start sieving up fish from the lake and possibly junk that had ended up there. "It would be such a shame if aliens suddenly appeared and frightened us all," Said the taller one, whose name was Bishop, a descendant of British colonists who had gotten bored with the colonies and had literally gone native.
The smaller man, who was named Wilkus and was unaware of the unimportant fact that he was one of the last surviving descendants of a tribe of natives who had been assimilated in the general cultural change that had swept over Africa, gave him an odd look. "Er, yes, I suppose so. Unfortunate, I guess."
Bishop grunted. "Yes. It would be." He didn't sound like he meant it. "Really. It would be an utter tragedy if aliens appeared. Right now. Right here and now. Boom, out of nowhere, aliens."
Wilkus gave him a look, but Bishop stopped ranting, so he left it at that; he was used to behavior like that. They went back to work for a while, passing the time with idle small-talk. The net was put into place and fishing was done. Eventually, Wilkus said, "What's up with you and aliens all of a sudden?"
Bishop gave him a look. "...Because an alien invasion would be exciting."
"Huh?"
"Don't you see, I'm bored! There's nothing to do here but fish and farm and other little village-y things that suggest we're only here as a pageholder in the big narrative convention of the cosmos! I crave intellectual stimulation! The pump and thrust of adrenaline! Not being bored stupid!"
"...You could just move. There's a port city down that-a-ways."
"Are you crazy? Old man Poulkus from Greece has been eying my place for weeks. Like hell I'm gonna move and let him steal my house. It has a bay window, you know. Any idea what that man would do with my bay window? I don't know and I'm keeping it that way."
Wilkus said nothing. He felt a faint trembling from underground, but dismissed it as something minor.
"Now aliens, aliens would be an acceptable compromise between maintaining my stake in this community and genuine excitement! It would an interesting diversion, at the very least."
"You might die," Wilkus said. The subterranean trembling was getting louder, and some of the pebbles and stones underfoot were rattling around. "Or at least be greatly inconvienced. Aliens aren't known for being polite about showing up in the movies."
"Well, at least I wouldn't be bored. I might be on fire, or vaporized, or incubating their young in a terrifyingly biological manner, or have to slow-dance with them, but I wouldn't be bored."
"I'm reasonably certain that in moments like that, you'd wish desperately that you were bored again."
"Hah, shows what you know about me! I never take back anything I say!"
Wilkus leaned forward a bit and grinned. "Like when those super-intelligent gorillas wandered into town and you called one of them a monkey?"
"...We promised never to speak of that again. And besides, after my legs healed they got a lot more limber. I can do splits now! My arms still hurt when I hear monkey noises, though."
"Hoo-hoo hah," Wilkus said, imitating monkey noises.
"Hey, stop that!"
Wilkus hooted some more, so focused on this he didn't see the cracks appearing in the ground.
"Seriously, knock it off!"
"Hoo hoo, ooh-ah-AH!"
"Okay, now you're just being a jerkass."
Wilkus would have kept on screwing with his friend, as is the natural behavior of all truly dependable friendships, except that he took a step at the wrong moment and could feel the ground rumbling, a dull roar just under his feet (and the sound of metal grinding against stone like...drills?) and he said, "Wait, do you hear that?"
Cracks appeared in the ground as beams of brilliantly warm green light shone forth, bits of it pulling up and fall over, larger fissures growing around them in neat patterns around the lake. (And also appeared to be making the shape of a spiral.) "Yep," Bishop said. "Definitely do." He glanced at Wilkus. "So. Earthquake?"
"I don't think earthquakes work like this!" Wilkus said, before he tripped, the ground under him suddenly giving in; Bishop grabbed him before Wilkus could topple over into a particular larger fissure filling up with water as the lake spilled into it, diffusing the green light somewhat. "Oh no," He said in a quiet, horrified voice. "The fish. GET THE FISH!"
Bishop did just that, locking down the truck that the fish containers had been loaded into, and not a moment sooner, because a chance rumble opened another fissure that would have taken the fish with it. They had more immediate concerns, though, what with the sudden earthquake or whatever it was.
They both got into the truck, the ground cracking and buckling under their feet and starting to bulge up, like there was some gigantic animal burrowing to the surface under their feet. "Damn it, this had better not drain the lake!" Wilkus said; that lake was one of their most productive fishing spots, if it drained, it would severely hurt their economic well-being and right now that was tauntamount to a death sentence.
Wilkus had spoken at the wrong moment; as dirt started fountaining up, exploding out of the ground by some incredibly pressure, there was a tremendous blast of noise that actually knocked the truck over sideways, just out of the way of a blast of water precipiating the entire lake exploding upwards in a thunderous blast of green-
A huge metal shape had erupted from the lake bed, tearing it apart and flying straight up. Wilkus would later have time to remember those few moments of terrified incomprehension and realize that was what had happened, but then, all he saw was vaugeness: the cracking and tearing of the ground under him, and then the lake, the source of his livelihood, all the water in it shooting up as something huge came screaming out, burning with a green light pounding out from every sqaure inch like an emerald sun, the water arcing high over head and spreading out and finally smashing down just behind them, missing them by feet and nearly flipping the truck around. If it hadn't been for several large rocks behind them, the water would have probably shoved them and lost them all the fish.
More fish were falled down around them, raining down and smacking off the ground and then flopping around. They seemed to be taunting Wilkus.
Bishop blinked. "...Huh."
Wilkus stared. More specifically, he was staring at the torn and shredded remains of the lake, now a mass of upturned dirt and large rocks, and all the fish flopping around and dying on the ground, the water flooding back into the lake but not nearly fast enough.
Bishop was about to say something out, but he glanced into the sky and his jaw dropped. "Um, Wilkus?"
Wilkus said nothing. He kept staring.
"Wilkus?" A small note of desperation.
"Lake," Wilkus said, speaking in that perfectly calm and toneless fashion of someone about to go utterly mad with rage.
"Wilkus!"
"My lake. That. It was my. Lake mine is. No. Yes. That was my lake. Yes. Fishing rights, it was mine. Only place, me to fish. It's gone. My fishing lake is gone and HOW THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO MAKE ANY MONEY WITH MY LAKE GONE-"
"Wilkus!"
Wilkus whirled around on Bishop. "What!"
"Look up there!" Bishop said, pointing at the sky frantically.
"What are you-" Wilkus looked out the window. He stopped, and stared. His jaw dropped. "No. Seriously. Seriously? SERIOUSLY!"
"...I'm sorry?" Bishop said weakly.
"You silly bastard and your boredom. Well, you wanted excitement? You GOT IT!"
Hanging in the sky above them, engines burning green, was an unmistakably alien craft, streaked with dirt and bits of rock still gouged in and the scars of dozens of battles. It was huge, as it would have to be to have torn up the entire lake just by digging through it, and looked a bit...unwieldy, even scrappy. It didn't really look like it should be able to fly, let alone float there like it was. Even more absurd, there were a number of huge drills extending from bases all over the front of the craft, green specks like motes in sunlight floating around them.
"See?" Wilkus said sarcastically. "You got your wish. Exciting, isn't it."
Bishop gaped. "Holy dirt-slaps. Aliens. Aliens. Actual aliens right here. REAL ALIENS."
"Yes, it's real exciting. You've seen a alien ship. One that got here by digging through the ground and DESTROYING the lake we get fish out of, and now we're totally fooked for a lifestyle, but hey! You've seen aliens. All is well."
"I know, isn't it!" Bishop said, one of those people completely immune to sarcasm. Wilkus facepalmed.
Inside the ship, which was of course the craft belong to the vaugely heroic Orks known colliquially as Da Boyz, Da Boss sat back and laughed excitedly. "WE DID IT, BOYZ! THE SURFACE OF A NEW WORLD! DUG RIGHT THROUGH, WE DID! HAH!"
"Yep," Said a nearby Grot.
"...So, where iz we, hah?"
The Grot, named Nikigok, shrugged. "I dunno."
Down below, Wilkus was not taking this well. "Hey! HEY!" He screamed at the ship. "LISTEN TO ME, YOU BASTARDS! HEY!"
"Woah, hey, what are you doing!" Bishop said, alarmed.
"Getting my satisfaction by giving these jerkasses what-for! I'll probably be lasered or something, but at least I'll die with my satisfaction! HEY! LISTEN TO ME WHEN I'M TALKING TO YOU! YOU BASTARDS RUINED MY LIVELIHOOD!"
"Wilkus, hey, stop!" Bishop said desperately. "I don't think they can even hear you!"
He was wrong. "'Ey, Boss," An Ork said over a communicator in the room where Da Boss powered the Awesomness Engine. "We got summat yellin' at us."
Da Boss grunted; he actually disliked being called 'Da Boss'. It was a title, not his name, and it was hard work getting Da Boyz to call him by his actual name. "Really? Give 'em a shout an' see wot they're on about, yeah?"
"'Kay."
Outside, a hologram suddenly appeared in front of the ship, showing a horrible bestial green thing looking down on them. "Yo," the Ork, one of the higher Ork castes (well, they had castes before Da Boss came) known as a Nob and was named Gorbash, said amiably.
"...Huh, it can hear you," Bishop said. "But it doesn't know people words or have translator technology! It's speaking some goofy langauge of madness and incomprehension and stupidness!"
"That's English," Wilkus said, having picked up some in his youth overseas. "Very, ah, authentic English. Sounds like it actually comes from England. The very roughest parts, I mean."
"Wot's dis yelling, about, eh?" The alien asked them, apparently unpeturbed. "Ya humies gotz a problem?"
"...What the hell did he just say?" Bishop asked.
"I'm not sure. I...think he wants to know what I'm mad about." Wilkus cleared his throat. "Well...what are you doing here?"
"None of yer damn bid'ness is wot da Orkses iz doin' here. Wot's you gettin' all fussed about, eh?"
"Oh? Oh! YOU DESTROYED MY LAKE! YOU TOTALLY KILLED MY JOB SECURITY!"
"...Huh. Whoops. I guess." The alien shrugged indifferently, and checked a book. "Uh, let's see...'Repartations To Random Things Wot Ain't Enemiez'...dang it, wish I knew how ta read..."
"Then what are you carrying that book around for then?" Bishop asked.
"Mind ya own bidness!" Gorbash said.
"Oy, wot's goin' on dere?" The voice of Da Boss cut in.
"Bit of a scrape 'ere. Dese humies iz sayin' dat we wronged him. Wot we'z s'posed ta do?" Gorbash gave a plaintitve look. This was very unfamiliar territory for any Ork, and Gorbash had once been a Warboss. Like the rest of Da Boyz, he looked up to Da Boss for anything even remotely approaching that strange and frighteningly subjective thing called morality. It was doubtful that they would even try if not for Da Boss' encouragement, and the fact that doing good stuff felt...well, good.
Da Boss considered it. "Wrecked der lives, eh? I 'spose dat's PART of wot we do, but like like dis, huh? Give 'em one of those big shiny rocks we looted from da mole peoples, dat'll make everythin' betta."
"Told yaz lootin' is da solution ta everythin'," Gorbash said smugly, doing something with some instruments.
"No g'wan, ask 'em where da hellz we is on dis planet!"
"Ho'kay. Hey, humies, where iz we?"
"...What?"
"Where. Iz. We? Da Boss wants to know, where did we crack out! Been digging for days, we wants to know where we iz!"
"Um..." Wilkus felt embarrased that he didn't actually know. He lived a very provincial life. "Southern Africa?"
The alien stared at him. "...Dat's it? Ain't nothin' more specific? Just 'Southern Africa'? Dat's not a very narrow thing, that's wot I'm sayin'."
Wilkus fidgeted in acute embarrasment. "I think we're sort of close to Nigeria or something..."
The alien threw his arms up in frustration. "Fig-yahz! Bah. Africa, eh? We'z WAY off-course. Africa, dat's hardly Canada at all. Eh, s'kay, bye. Gotz ya a present to say dat wussy humie thing. Wot'z dat thing yaz says when yaz done wrong?"
"...Sorry?"
"Yeah, dat'z it. Here yaz go."
A small cannon on the front of the ship fired something; more dirt fountained just in front of Wilkus and Bishop. Wilkus grunted. "And they can't even shoot right. That thing missed us completely!" The smoke from the impact cleared. "And what the hell did...they...shoot."
A distinctive gleam shone from the basketball-sized object on the ground. "Is it just me," Bishop said, after a moment. "Or did the aliens just give us a big chunk of gold?"
"Yes," Wilkus said calmly. "Yes they did."
Bishop and him looked at each other. "You know," Wilkus said carefully. "I think I can live without the lake after all."
"And I think maybe we can afford our own excitement," Bishop said. He paused. "And also..." He held up a camcorder. "Alien contact would be nice for certain people to see, you know?"
"You recorded the whole thing?" Bishop nodded. "Nice." Wilkus paused. "...Edit out the part where we get the gold, please?"
"Yep."
They stared at each other, and did the Happy Dance of Capitalist Superiority. The situation called for it.
Then Gorbash said, "Nice dance, humies, ya realize we'z taping dat, right? Looks stupid."
The two fishermen turned around. The alien ship was still there. "Beh?" Bishop said.
"Da Boss wants ta know one more thing. How'z we gonna find the nearest...uh, how'z it go... 'crim-i-nal pit of scum and vill-a-ny'...?We needs ta fight da Good Fight!"
Wilkus scratched his head. "In this political climate? Throw a rock, I think."
Gorbash grunted. "Eh, good enuff. Say, iz dat a camera? Wuz YOU TAPING US SHOWIN' UP AFORE WE'Z READY?"
Bishop paled in terror and excitement. "Um. Yes?"
Gorbash shrugged. "Jest askin'."
"KICKASS!" Da Boss added. "DA BOYZ NEED EXPOSURE! GO FORTH, FISHER-HUMIES, AND GO FIGHT FOR YA DREAMS! YAZ HUMIE, DATZ WHAT YAZ FOR!"
With those stirring (and incomprehensible) words, Da Boyz flew off, soon to descend upon the first den of evil they found to beat them to a pulp and take all their stuff, leaving Wilkus and Bishop to go live their own stories, which swiftly stopped having anything to do with Da Boyz or the Total Drama kids. In fact, aside from the upcoming troubles to feature on Earth, Wilkus and Bishop would go one to lead very comfortable lives from their newfound wealth, and die many years later in the comfort of their very nice homes, satisfied with their lives and regretting nothing.
Bishop was a bit bored, but there's no pleasing some people.
As they left, Nikigok told Da Boss, "Dem was some nice wordz, Boss. Wish I knew how ta talk fancy like dat."
"It'z easy!" Da Boss said easily. "All ya gotz ta do iz speak from da heart with all da fire ya CAN! Ya does with enough passion, and da universe makes da wordz come out all fancy and epic. At least dat's how it workz for me, see?"
"Not really, but I wantz ta!"
Da Boss chuckled. "Good enuff! Nikigok, I wantz yaz ta know. Yaz good at sneaking and stuff better den most of Da Boyz?"
"Yeah!" Nikigok said, not bothering to ask how Da Boss knew this. He was Da Boss.
"An' ya like da kidz I gotz my eye on, yeah?"
"Dem Total Drama kiddiez? Yeah!"
Da Boss grinned. "I gotz a special job for you..."
Nikigok listened to the job, and took it at once. It was from Da Boss. What else would he do?
Everything from Da Boss was Da Word.
...
The multiverse is made of stories.
Untold billions upon millions upon thousands, and those are the ones that only make an obvious difference in the overall meta-fiction of history. The stories of Da Boyz and the Total Drama kids began to become closer, though only Da Boyz were aware of it, as it was Da Boss' design. And by then, they had other business to attend to before then.
Six weeks passed after Da Boyz broke through the surface of what was, for them, a brave new world, and they found it an enchanting one, largely free of the grim darkness of the universe they had come from.
They had a mission to do, though, and that involved some proppa stompin'. In their ship, crude and unwieldly but millenia more advanced than any technology of Earth, they went across the world, doing as Da Boss had taught them: taking all their Orky bloodlust, battlerage and need for fighting out on people who needed to have their heads crumped, and by doing so making the world a better place for everyone and therefore making everything-that-is better. (Stealing their beaten enemie's stuff was a bonus.)
This alone would have gotten them a great deal of attention once people faced up to them being aliens, but they also weren't camera shy at all. Da Boss insisted that they pose.
So, along with the teenagers rapidly becoming extremely dissatisfied with their lot in life and wishing they could get away from it, Da Boyz were becoming very noticable to the media indeed, and almost as much scrunity put on their actions.
The kids aboard the Total Drama Airship had become aware of this, of course. Their opinions on it were, of course, varied.
Deep in the airship, in one of the more heavily trapped parts that had once hosted soldier's barracks (according to Alejandro's observations; he claimed he had visited quite many a military base to know how they were designed and this airship was very military), in a vaulted corridor shaped in arcs and vaults that made for wonderful acoustics (not good if you were hiding from something) Noah and Izzy carefully made their way down the corridor, the more sensible boy leading the way.
The airship bothered him. It wasn't something he'd shared with the other contestants, because they didn't ask, but...the airship didn't seem to fit right. The half-faded stylized flames engraved in the walls, the way the metal clearly had been heated by flames far more intense than any forge, the worrying intent and unpleasant purpose that seemed to emanate from the airship's shell like it had been made for murder...
It didn't belong here. And they didn't belong in it. Noah had been having dreams, terrible dreams unlike the usual lucid ones he had, but he was on more comfortable ground discussing those, because everyone had been having some, including Izzy.
"So last night I found myself crawling in the corner under a bed and I had a pretty bad headache," Noah told Izzy while they inched across the side of the wall to avoid pressing any pressure-senstive floor panels. Well, Noah was, Izzy was just swinging on the ceiling and having a grand ol' time. "Feel free to draw your own conclusions, but the bottom of that bed was dented pretty bad."
"Didn't you get your bed taken off the walls so it wouldn't flip into the wall and almost suffocate you again?" Izzy asked, hanging upside down from a handhold by her toes.
"Yes. I did. Still ended up under it. Make sense of that."
"And all I did was hear the unending screams of a thousand worlds burning forever in the hellfires of incomprehensibly vast gods embodying emotions that are supposed to be good and stuff but taken so far they became PURE EVIL," Izzy said. "...I bet your dream would have been better. Even if it was so bad you beat it out of your head while you were still asleep."
"Oh?"
"Yep! I got to see why they were screaming. And who was doing it to them. They were really, ah, inventive."
Noah paused, stepping gingerly over a tripwire; he was certain this one had been snipped before. He suspected that one of the interns - possibly Rossiu, but then he didn't know just where his alliegences lay - kept rearming the traps. "Inventive. Now there's a word you don't want to hear in this context."
"You sure don't," Izzy said, swinging to the next rafter in such a way that she spun right through the barely visible web of lasers without so much as getting singed.
"Now they're using deadly lasers again," Noah said. "...I miss the old days, when we could ask if Chris was trying to kill us and it wasn't rhetorical."
"What about having actual rules? But hey, that one's fun!" Izzy said, laughing manically while she dropped down just in time to avoid a hunter robot that slammed into where she had just been, breaking itself. "I like no rules! ANARCHY IS AWESOME!"
"Technically, we're in a state of controlled chaos modified only by everyone apparently being unwilling to have a violent free-for-all and turn this place into a bloodbath," Noah said. "Anarchy is chaotic, but chaos is not automatically anarchy."
"How'd ya know that?"
"I was stuck with Harold for a day and we had time to talk while being chased by hyenas some idiot thought would be funny to stick us with. It's an educational experience."
They kept walking, entering an area that had no traps or horrible trick-walls or unpleasant surprises or savage beasts (Unless you counted Sierra, her bunk was in the area); the reason for all of this was because this was one of the areas where the contestants had made their sleeping quarters and they made sure that those places at least were safe. They could hardly stay sane if they didn't have at least one precious place free of death-bringing suffering. It was insane that they had survived this long, and that no one had complained to the studios about this: people enjoyed watching them almost dying, sickeningly enough.
"Chris is up to something," Noah said, partly to himself, and this wasn't the first time he'd said it. "He's got something worse than usual up his sleeve and this isn't gonna be the worst of it, you know."
"Yeah," Izzy said, landing on the ground next to him and keeping in step. "But whatcha gonna do?"
Noah grimaced. They couldn't leave the airship; the interns made quite sure of that. There had been more than one altercation; just last week, Owen'd had an all-out panic attack when the stress of being isolated for long periods of time by the airship's dangerous traps had brought back his fear of flying, and it had not ended well.
Eventually, he and Izzy reached a door without being molested by traps or unexpected horrors, and reached a reinforced door. "You sure Sierra lives here?" Noah said; he hadn't seen her or Cody in a while, and he had suspected they were lost somewhere again; starting with their rooms seemed a safe bet and he wasn't sure where Cody lived on the airship. He firmly believed that it was in their best interests to ally with each other or the airship would kill them all eventually.
No one was dead yet. But if they stayed apart, it was only a matter of time. Noah played online RPGs, he had seen this happen so many times.
He knocked on the door, and he heard Sierra's voice, cheery as always, shout, "Come in! Unless you're a monster. In that case, go away!"
"Awww," Izzy said sadly. Noah rolled his eyes and pushed the door open (it had been reinforced, but not closed, how very silly!).
The room was rather odd. It was pretty big, and Noah briefly resented Sierra for being so lucky to claim a room like this for her own. Probably it had once been an armory or maybe a storage room for some valuable supply that was no longer needed, but now the floors had been covered with a multitude of blankets Sierra had scavenged from somewhere, fluffy and multicolored and quite pretty in a disjointed way. Several tables had remained, and most of them were covered with all manner of odd memorabilia and mementos Sierra evidently thought signicant. (She was a bit of a packrat, judging by how much of this stuff she had scavenged all ready.) Strangely enough, there was more than one hunter robot lying diseccted on the table, or machines in the process of being built, as if an engineer had been at work.
In fact, Noah realized as he walked in and got a better look, a lot of this didn't seem quite in character for Sierra. There were at least two chairs for every table. He saw two computers on a table, in the process of being made from spare parts scavenged from around the airship. A large makeshift bed in the middle of the room, a huge mass of blankets and cushions mashed together with a huge comfort sheet and two overfluffed pillows on top, was clearly overmuch for just one person. There was a geekiness to the room; a sense of disjointed cheerful obsession directed all manner of minor projects and hobbies, but not all of it was of Sierra, surely.
Among those obsessions was a variety of papers stuck to the walls, not unlike something you might see on a schizophrenic's room that pointed out the Swedish military's link to the recent rise in tourism to the isle of Komodo; they were a big mess of crude drawings of green aliens, photos of green aliens, intensively complicated diagrams, delicately worked out calculations, big flowcharts of possible trends relating to the alien incursions, a painstakingly worked out character alignment chart that ended in CHAOTIC GOOD? in big excited letters. Sitting on the floor on matching green-and-purple pillows, feverishly typing away at a pair of battered computers hooked up to each other (possibly the ones being built were backups) was Sierra and Cody, both of them still quite clearly in their sleeping clothes, Sierra in a dark green T-shirt and shorts; Cody in matching clothing but colored light purple.
Cody looked up at Izzy and Noah, seemingly oblivious to Noah's bewilderment, and grinned. His face had a slightly pale tint that suggested he hadn't been getting a lot of sleep and that pinkish sheen common to an obsessive who just knew he was on the edge of a major breakthrough. "Hey guys," He said, before going right back to typing away like a madman, doing...something.
Sierra turned around, grinning with a similar unstable way, and said, "Whatcha doin' down here?"
"Looking for you guys, silly!" Izzy said with a big grin, after briefly looking at Noah. Possibly, she'd noticed that her friend seemed more disheveled than usual: her hair, recently regrown to shoulder-length and colored a more natural black that Noah assumed was her natural hair color, flopped a bit, a big unkempt mass with tangles and frayed ends everywhere. Noah didn't want to get too close; she and Cody stunk, their body odor thick and not rank exactly, but getting there. Sweat and body oils mixing together for days on end was not a pleasant smell. Noah found himself wondering how long it had been since they had taken baths, or even left this room. Or slept.
That thought raised a host of other question, espicially considering the double bed. Noah gave it a glance before Sierra giggled, a bit unsteadily, and said, "That's silly. Why'd you want to look for us?" She gasped. "Ooh! Did you hear about our thing about the aliens! Because that is so cool!"
"Wow, wait, what!" Cody said, leaning around his computer unsteadily and almost falling over. Noah saw him trembling when he pushed himself back up and Sierra had to lean around to get him back up. Forget sleeping and bathing, when was the last time he'd eaten? "Already? You found out already? I didn't know Harold had told anyone yet. We haven't even reported in for a few days!" He grinned, and one of his eyes slowly drifted around until he blinked. "That's...that's cool...we're so close. Me and Sierra. We're so close."
"Okay, this is getting weird," Noah said. "What are you guys talking about? I just came down here to see if you were still alive and Izzy brought me 'cause she was thinking the same thing and anyway she's the only one that knows where Sierra lives."
"Oh," The two of them said in unison, looking disappointed. They brightened up anyway. "Aww," Sierra said. "You were concerned! Noah has people-feelings."
"Why are people always surprised?" Noah complained.
"Someone cares about my continued existence!" Cody said happily. "It's almost like having friends."
Sierra gasped, not because she had apparently been left out but because he felt that way at all. "I care! I always cared! And I'm your friend!"
Cody grinned crookedly at her. "Yeah...yeah..." He wavered unsteadily again and almost fell over before he caught himself. "But sometimes, I, uh, almost feel like that's for granted, you know? Automatic thing. Don't remember it sometimes."
"My affection is taken for granted?" Sierra made a victorious little pumping gesture. "That means my continued existence is acceptable to someone!"
The two of them continued to celebrate. "Aw, that's kind of cute!" Izzy remarked to Noah. "In the way that understated emotional issues amplified by extreme stress and social isolation can be."
"We've been in this game too long," Noah muttered to her. "It's making us crazy. Crazier, some of us," He added, noticing that Sierra was staring at her own hair with deep fascination.
"Shiny," Sierra said vaugely.
"It is shiny," Cody said.
"Okay, seriously, what's going on here!" Noah said, marching over to Cody to get a look at the screen. "I haven't seen you in days, you clearly haven't been eating or sleeping or anything in that time, and anyway what are you doing in her room? Your room is at least easier to get to the eating room or bathrooms!"
Cody shrugged. "Yeah, it used to be."
"'Used to be'? Did someone somehow move the interior of the airship around? Again!"
"What?" Sierra said. "Nope, Cody just lives here with me now."
Noah stared blankly. "...Does he, now."
"Wow, you guys move fast," Izzy said.
Cody has enough presence of mind to be embarrased. "Wait, wait, it's not like that. I think."
"You're sharing the same bed," Noah pointed out.
"Are not! Wait. Wait. Wait. Oh yeah, we are," Cody said. He paused. "...It helps, you know."
"Helps what?"
"The nightmares," Sierra said, with unexpected quietness. "Having someone...with you? At night? They're not so bad, when you wake up almost screaming and there's someone you know is there for you. It helps, a whole lot."
Noah readjusted his evaluation. "Ah," He said. "Well...that makes a bit more sense. Come to think it, I heard that some of the others did the same thing. Bridgette and Geoff, obviously, and a few others I can't be bothered to keep in mind, but...you, Cody? And Sierra? Never thought you'd do something like that."
Cody shrugged. "Me neither."
"Moving in with someone to help with the crushing isolation and stuff?" Izzy said. "Nice moves, Sierra." She gave her a little elbow nudge. "Work fast, don't you?"
"Yep," Sierra said happily. Cody gave the air a sort of vacantly pleased look.
Izzy gave Noah a sidelong look and a evil little grin that filled him with sudden worry and fear. "Now there's an idea," She said. Noah had a sudden impulse to run and hide himself away forever. Izzy took a look at what Sierra was doing. "Saaay, what's all this?"
Sierra and Cody looked at each other, the tiredness going out of them both immediately and replaced by a manic energy that was a lot more worrying. As one, they looked at the mess of papers and pictures on the wall and they said, "Everything."
"O-kay, that's not creepy at all," Noah said sarcastically. "But, seriously, what have you two been doing down here? And I mean that in the sense of need-to-know basis and a lack of personal stuff. The papers! What's that about is what I mean!"
Sierra and Cody blinked. They looked at each other, grinned, and laughed, in that state of mind where anything can be funny. (It is generally only acquired by either the badly stoned or someone in a deep state of frantic busyness coupled with dangerous lack of sleep.) "Okay, fine!" Sierra said, giggling madly and getting up, wavering a bit but still much better than Cody, who tried to get up but fell over, his legs apparently refusing to work. She went over and, with Izzy's help, got him onto his feet. Cody almost fell back immediately, so Sierra worked one of his arms around her waist and hoisted him up with her hand at his side, forcing him to lean on her like a crutch.
There was a slight clattering from an airvent on the wall, too small to permit anything human-sized in. Noah gave it a look, but supposed that since it was bolted shut, nothing could get into the room and attack them. Sometimes that was a problem. "I don't suppose Ezekiel's been crawling around here?"
"I dunno," Cody said. He turned his head. "Are you in there, Zeke?"
"Newp!" Said a high-pitched and heavily accented voice.
"Okay," Cody said, his brain not in a condition to realize that this was not a normal thing. And also, the voice having a thick football hooligan accent. (Or, in one dark universe, an Orky accent.)
Noah gave them a look. "...There's someone in there!"
"No dere's not!" Said the something in the vent.
"The vent's gotta know best!" Sierra said. Noah gave up, already coming up with a plan to do something about Sierra and Cody; and he wanted to at least see what they'd been obsessing over. She led them all over to the wall where so many different things - papers, photos, handmade graphs and charts and the like - and gestured proudly. "Check it out! Our complete findings into the aliens among us!"
"They're hot!" Izzy said chirpily. Noah blinked.
He was vestigially aware that some weeks ago, aliens had shown up in the middle of a tiny village in Africa; one of the two fisherman that had recorded it had sold the video footage to dozens of different networks, and a lot of people had gone more than a little crazy over it. (Harold espicially.) Noah was suspicious; they'd already seen aliens in Area 51, though he had already been eliminated from World Tour at the time. He was half-convinced that it was an elaborate prank, though admittedly he hadn't had much contact with mass media. No one had, aside from some TVs and sattilite connections they'd manage to rig up in a desperate need for distractions from their increasingly hard life on the airship; stress requires a release or something eventually goes wrong, and nothing builds stress like being in a place of people that hate or distrust you and constantly being on edge for your life. (How Sierra and Cody had gotten this information was anyone's guess.)
There was a picture of one of the aliens; a massive hulking beast, green-skinned and hunched like an ape, it's body bulging with powerful muscles and covered by crude clothing generally in the form of leathery skins stitched together with plates of metal over them. It's face was something out of a nightmare; almost skull-like with it's porcine nose, it's oversized lower jaw hanging slack with a array of knife-long yellowed teeth extending past it's lips like tusks. It's Neanderthalic brows beetled over eyes glowing like burning coals, and the comparatively small pointed ears were so full of metal rings and studs and earrigns and piercing that the weight should have tipped it's head over. At the top of this was a simple word, just over the rather nice Prussian military cap it was wearing: ORK.
"Nice portrait," Noah said sarcastically. "What, is this one of those sketches based on eyewitness reports?"
"No, he posed for that one," Cody said. "We found it on live TV; they were just doing a cat show and then this alien...this 'Ork'...smashed it, petted all the kittens for no reason, then he slapped the security guard because he was wearing an ugly tie, and demanded that somebody make a good picture of him to show people. They did, and he left."
"Well, who doesn't like cats?" Izzy said. "And I saw that report. It was AWESOME! That guy's tie was so ugly, it is an ugliness that ugly despairs, it is what people smell when they drudge the foul horrors of the deep to the sun-kissed lands above only to witness their last ichor-stained exporations."
"That was surprisingly poetic!"
"I read a lot of cosmic horror stories!" Izzy said. "The nightmares of H.P. Lovecraft are the stuff of my fluffy-dreams."
Noah tried not to think about that, and for something to do, looked at the other stuff. He wasn't quite sure what most of it was, but he did recognize the photo of the alien ship hovering in mid-air, dirty and sharp against the African skyline, looking like the living fantasy of a steampunk enthusiast's dreams. Unlike most pictures of dubious urban legends, this was perfectly clear and unmarred, leaving no mistake as to what the thing in the picture was. (On the other hand, it could still be an expertly arranged model.) "The very first picture of the alien's craft!" Sierra said proudly. "Right before they vanished to destianations unknown." She grinned. "Until they showed up again.
She pointed at a map of the world; dozens of little circles had been marked out in red. "For weeks, the aliens have been coming out of nowhere, and these are the places we can definitely confirm them to being doing stuff at!" A few photos had been pinned up nearby, showing urban scenes; rundown cities, gloomy slums, fetid ghettoes...though they were certainly a lot less apparently so due to the green aliens in each photo, all doing something destructive. Picking up mail boxes and throwing them through windows, stealing trucks and running them through buildings, shooting at billboards with rocket launchers, using gatling guns that shot explosive lasers to make graffiti on the streets...
"Um," Noah said, and gave up. There wasn't a whole more he could say. "Um."
"They've been all across the world!" Sierra said. "Going from city to city, town to town, country to country. Sometimes they fly in their spaceship or little vehicles. Sometimes they dug right from underground and bust up everything in their way. And sometimes, they sneak in. Or try to." Sierra pointed at a picture of one of those brutes tip-toeing through a police barrier in a trenchcoat, an extremely furry little round thing that was mostly mouth sitting on the alien's head and wearing a fedora with a little piece of paper saying I AM A HUMIE! on it. Also, both of them were painted a shade of bright purple that was painful to look at.
"That's the worst disguise anyone has ever done," Cody said.
"I've seen worse," Izzy said unconcernedly. "And anyway, that's a pretty good idea. Trenchcoat and fedoras ROCK, and purple is the best sneaking color!"
"Huh?" Noah said.
"You've ever seen a purple army sneaking around?"
"No."
"That's because purple's real sneaky."
"How do you think people never used to notice me until it was too late!" Sierra said excitedly.
Noah gripped his head. "The assaults on logic! They burn!"
Sierra laughed giddily. "I know, isn't it fun?"
"So what are the aliens actually doing?" Izzy asked. "Wrecking stuff for fun and giggles."
"Maybe," Cody said. "But we've figured that they might have an ulterior motive. See, they keep attacking completely random places. At least...it looks that way. See, every single place they've attacked? Has to do with sometihng EVIL!"
"No way!"
"Yes way! We did a ton of investigating, and it all holds up! A street in San Francisco? Home of the most vicious gang in North America. A compound in the United States South, where they kidnapped everyone there and dumped them in Israel? The biggest Neo-Nazi white supremecy skinhead organization on the entire planet! A European law firm? The executives of it were making money off of letting vicious criminals and serial rapists off so they could make headlines and let the news studios under those executives control sensationalize them for profit! The list goes on and on, but the point is this! They've rampaged across the planet, they strike out of nowhere, steal everything their enemies have and disappear...but they somehow keep leaving proof that these guys are big-time bad guys! Sometimes not so big time, but it's a minor thing."
"...Huh," Noah said, grudgingly impressed. "But what about the people caught in the crossfire?"
Sierra grinned at him. "There aren't any."
"What."
"I was just as surprised as you! I don't know how they do it, but every single bullet, every flamethrower shot, every exploding missle they shoot...not a single thing they do gets anyone that's not involved hurt. It breaks, like, a million-zillion-billion laws of probability. It should be impossible, but they do it anyway. I checked the law records and convictions that go on afterwards, it's all true! And also, only the people involved in the real nasty stuff actually die. The other ones somehow survive for jail. I don't know how, since they fight with giant machine-guns and huge laser and flamethrowers and these big chainsaw-sword-things, but they do it anyway. And, maybe even bigger things..." Sierra said ominously. She pointed at several pictures of battlescapes the aliens had left behind, and in them were things like the marks of tank treads and massive footprints suitable to a dinosaur.
"Okay, okay," Noah said, trying to stay calm. "Let's assume these are real aliens. Let's assume that they are trying to help for whatever reason...in a violent and insane way, but nonetheless, help. Why?"
Sierra shrugged, nearly upsetting Cody; she quickly adjusted herself to keep him upright. "Who knows? They talk to people a lot. That's how I figured out what they call themselves. It depends; sometimes they call themselves 'Da Boyz' and sometimes 'Da Orkz', but I think these particular guys are 'Da Boyz'. I think 'Ork' is their species as a whole. Anyway, they're not exactly camera-shy, but they haven't gone out of their way to explain what they're doing here. Then again, they don't stick around long enough for any bystanders to ask questions like that."
Cody pointed at something. "But we might just have a big clue to something important to them."
"What's that?" Izzy asked. "Is it their god?"
"Could be." The photo Cody indicated...well, Noah wasn't sure what to expect, but he certainly wasn't expecting to see a wall painted with graffiti of all sorts: Da Orkz iz DA BEST! and Da Boyz Iz Gonna Turn Da Wurld Upside-Downz and most prominently Kah-Mee-Nah Believes In You!; this last one, made with such grave care that it looked almost holy in it's sharp letters, had a small arrow next to it, and it was pointing at a human in the picture; a blue-haired teen their age and of uncertain ethnicity, dressed in similar fashion to the Orks, giving a huge thumbs up and grinning like a fool while two tiny Orks resembling goblins did a little dance around him, like little kids playing with their big brother.
"That guy," Sierra said proudly, like someone who had found a big clue to a great mystery. "Shows up a lot."
"...That's a guy," Izzy said. "A cute guy, but what's he doing there? Did he join the aliens?"
"We're...not sure," Cody said. "Sierra thinks it might be the other way around...but whatever he's doing there, he seems pretty important to them."
"Is that a chainsaw on his back!" Noah demanded.
"Yeah, the Orks seem to love them for weapons. Not as much as they seem to love this guy. Look at this picture."
There was another photo, or rather, a series of them, overlapping on each other to make small pieces of a larger picture; it was the ruins of a building, and graffiti had been drawn over it, resembling a boast about someone. In lines of ragged letters that looked like visible growls, they said:
HIM IZ DA BOSS.
HIM IZ DA ONE WHO GAVE DA BOYZ DA RIGHT AND PROPPA.
HIM WUZ MADE HUMIE BY DA GODZ, AND HIM'Z DA ONE DAT GOT KNOCKED PROPPA IN DA HEAD.
HIM TOOK EACH OF DA BOYZ, KNOCKED DA WORD INTA OUR HEADZ AND GAVE UZ DA KNOWING.
HIM IZ DA BOSS. HIM IS KAH-MEE-NAH, AND WE IZ ALL HIS BRUDDAHS.
IN HIM IS DA BRUTAL CUNNING OF GORK. IN HIM IZ DA CUNNING BRUTALITY OF MORK. (OR DA OTHER WAY AROUND, SEE?)
HE IZ DA ORK WHAT WUZ BORN HUMIE. HIM IZ DA ONLY ORK EVA WHO GOTS STRONG IN DA HEAD, DA BODY, AND DA HEART.
KAH-MEE-NAH IZ HIS NAME, AN' HE'Z GOT DA SPINNY-FOREVER IN HIS EYE.
TRUST KAH-MEE-NAH, HUMIES. TAKE THE KNOWING OF DA RIGHT AND PROPPA!
"Wow," Izzy said. "Deep."
"That's..." Noah started to say. He shook his head and tried not to grin. Reading all that was like listening to a good story so wonderful and proper and right that you wanted it to be real. A dream so strong it was bigger than the real world. The words were simple, the grammer atrocious, but there was a feeling there, desperate and heartfelt and true. He didn't know what to say. "It's like...they believe in this like people believed in gods," He eventually managed. "Is that human guy...is he this 'Kah-Mee-Nah'?"
"Definitely," Cody said. "We're sure of that all right." He paused, and smiled faintly. "...These aliens are crazy. They're destructive and they're like fratboys with guns. But they're changing things. Just a few weeks ago, there was a huge human trafficking ring in South America that was bribing away the authorities. There was a little genocide going on in a part of Russia the world had almost forgotten about. And worse, so much worse." He smiled brighter. "They're gone now. The ones that could be imprisoned are behind bars. The ones that were above the law? Now they're in pieces."
"I think you need some sleep," Noah said gently after a moment. "You're starting to think like the crazy alien monsters."
Cody twitched. "Can't sleep," He muttered. "We're so close. Just...just have to look a bit more. We're this close to finding that last bit of knowing. Almost there, we almost know what they really are, why they came here, what they're after..." He tottered, even helped up by Sierra, who outweighed him considerably. "I...I...I can do something!" He said suddenly.
"We know," Izzy said, moving behind Cody and Sierra to steer them towards the bed and some much needed sleep. "Gotta sleep, or your brains will explode. Or precious organs. Do you want splodey meat-bits?"
Cody didn't appear to listen. "Can't do anything right," he said. "But I can try. I never make ever. But I gotta try. Gotta keep moving. Gotta smash through. Doing anything without help iz impossible, but I gotta try. Keep going. Keep trying. I'll make it. I can do this one thing. I can help Sierra."
Sierra tightened her grip on his arm. "We can do it," She said sternly, not paying attention to her feet and almost tripping; Noah shouldered her weight in time, which almost knocked him off his feet. Sierra was far from a small girl, and she was even heavier than she looked. "Know we can! Nothin's impossible when it's me an' you. Can do it. Yeah. Definitely. No maybes. We can do it."
Cody smiled faintly. "Nice to have someone that believes in me..." He muttered faintly.
"Enough crazy talk from you guys, we get enough of that when you aren't nearly dead on your feet," Noah said, and for a moment he deeply pitied them both, and then wondered if pity was the right word. They seemed happy enough. Stupidly disinterested in their own well-being, but happy. He and Izzy finally got them to the bed and let go, both Sierra and Cody falling over and softly bouncing off the mass of blankets and cushions. They lay there for a moment, and then Sierra rolled over, slipping her arms over Cody's sides and mashing his entire body right up against her's in a tight desperate hug. Instead of pulling away, like Noah expected, Cody nuzzled in deeper as if in near-unconsciousness, a distance of several inches was still too far away for him to tolerate.
"I totally knew he'd go for her," Izzy said smugly as Cody, falling fast into sleep, slipped his arms past her sides and clung to her like a drowning man to the faintest hope of air. He shivered a bit, but as Sierra hugged him tighter, he stopped. Maybe it made the both of them feel like they weren't alone. There was a pause of several long moments, both their eyes closed, and both Cody and Sierra's breathing became the regular patterns of true sleep.
"Yeesh," Noah said. "This airship really is tough on people." Izzy grinned. "Why are you grinning at me like that? I don't think I like you grinning at me like that..."
They left, after putting some proper sheets on Cody and Sierra and also turning off their computers and making sure to save all their work. (Overheating computers is a bad idea.) They glanced back once, more, and left, and they didn't notice the continued scamperings of the the small Grot named Nikigok, having broke into the airship on Da Boss's orders and watching the whole thing through his spot in that vent, occasionally taking notes on a very small notepad he was carrying around with him or taking pictures with a spy-camera.
He had waited, listened, and watched with a patience alien to an Ork, but not to a Grot, which had to take the brunt of the thinking duties among the Orks (and, outside of Da Boyz, the abuse; Da Boss did not tolerate that stuff); that ability served him well in the mission given to him by Da Boss, and like all jobs assigned by Da Boy to his Boyz, it was taken with enormous enthusiasm, determination and an approach towards doing it best compared to the same approach any Ork took towards any objective; if it could be done with something, then it could be done even better with lots of something!
That something, in this case, was stealth; along with subterfuge, subtlety, and in fact any ability that tended towards deceit or being deceptive to others or yourself, stealth was something Orks tended to not only lack but actively dislike. (And by dislike, that means that they hated it with a burning passion and liked to shoot dictionaries in order to wipe out those hateful ideas that were anathema to all things good and Orky.) Nikigok was one of those who, thanks to Da Boss' unconventional thinking and habits passed down to Da Boyz, had thought that maybe subtlety and all it's children were maybe worth a look-up.
That was good, for the airship was a dangerous place. Not just for a Gretch like him, but espicially for the contestants. The public liked seeing people in danger (generally assuming that it was all expertly timed to avoid killing anyone when the producers of the show didn't actually mind if anyone died; it was a miracle that they were all still alive, actually), and the new show had already delivered on that; the airship was intentionally rigged with all sorts of bizarre traps to get to bathrooms or the eating area; entire hallways in the most frequented areas had been converted into ornate obstacle courses to make it hard for them to, say, find a rec room or a place to watch TV; seemingly innocent patches of walls would swing open to reveal a savage beast, intent with revenge for anyone that associated with DJ or was just alive, and the barracks (one apiece for each contestant) where the contestants lived and slept were infested with all manner of clever devices, trick doors, false walls and trapdoors, all designed less for lethality and more for making life utterly miserable; more than one contestant had disappered for a few days because of these traps.
Da Boss knew, now. Knew about all of this, thanks to Nikigok telling him. He was...displeased.
And then there was the matter of the peculiar intern in charge of everything, Rossiu, who effectively ruled the airship with an iron hand but rarely did anything to even show he had authority aside from trying his hardest to get rid of the most dangerous of the traps he could find-
Nikigok heard a scraping behind him, and a gruff growl, turning around to see a horribly diseased human behind him.
Ezekiel crept slowly on Nikigok and the Grot did as he was wont to do in these circumstances, and prompty fled for his life, Ezekiel in hot pursuit.
He got away, of course, but that's a longer and unimportant story.
...
Nikigok's presence had not gone totally unnoticed.
"I'm telling you guys, there's something here!" Duncan said for the sixth time, having tried and failed to get the other's attention.
"Yes, there is," Said Justin. "It's small, suspicious and horribly unpleasant to look at! Also, there's Ezekiel, but I'm sure Rossoy doesn't mind the competition."
"His names Rossiu," Beth corrected him.
"Yes, that too."
Duncan, Justin, Beth and a few other of the contestants were presently holed up inside the eating room, a large cafeteria-type room with an adjoined large kitchen suitable for all their needs and a single round table, thus keeping a minimum on possible 'sub-order' organizing that might happen. (It wouldn't do if, say, the ruthless and good-looking kids like Justin, Courtney, Alejandro and Heather joined up to put their heads together and possibly seek to use the geeks like Harold, Noah, Sierra and Cody as human sacrifices for the dangers of the airship. Rossiu was doing his best to steer them away from those dangerous waters, with the help of the contestants that actually wanted people to get along, like DJ and Owen.) The kids here were taking the oppertunity to eat and wait out a number of time-based traps currently keeping them stuck in the eating room, and get away from Rossiu, who had a certain gift for unnerving a lot of people. (Even Bridgette, the kindest of them all, thought there was something unnervingly intense about the younger boy.)
"Hey, no need to talk about him behind his back," Geoff said gallantly. "Sure, the kid's creepy, but ya don't gotta be a jerk about it."
"But that's the best time to do it!" Duncan joked. "Seriously, though, you've seen that kid? There's some weird gears clicking behind that giant forehead of his. I'm waiting to see him find a gun somewhere and whisper sweet nothings to us while he's writing down a list of which one of us he's gonna kill first." He paused. "Geeks are going first, you know. They always go after the unpopular kids."
"I'm sure Rossiu means well," Courtney said, more or less because Duncan had said the opposite. "And he respects the rules and enforces them at every turn! How can you not approve of such dedication?"
"How about when those rules are directly aimed at making us miserable for the viewing audience?" Gwen said. "...Seriously. The people that like us must be twisted."
They paused as Sierra came to mind.
"The fact that a considerable amount of the viewing public fits that description, based on our popularity, is not an encouraging thought," Alejandro said; in light of the fact that they had to all work together just to stay in single most unmaimed pieces, Eva and Noah had reluctantly let him out of the robot he'd been put inside, under the condition that they still had the robot waiting for him should he turn evil again. And also, there were plenty of airlocks to shove him out of.
"Popularity is desirable regardless of how it's earned," Justin said primly. Gwen, Beth and Duncan made disagreeable little noises.
"Experience has taught me otherwise," Rossiu said, his arms folded behind his back, standing right behind Justin when he had previously not been in the room at all.
Nearly everyone scooted back in a fit of panic; Justin fell out of his chair and screamed like a little girl. "Where did you come from!" Gwen said.
"A personal question? That's new from you lot." Rossiu thought about it with an amused seriousness. "Well, my memories tend to be a bit fuzzy, but I was born in North Korea but then an earthquake buried my entire extended family underground, and after I spent six days eating dead rats and drinking my own urine while trying not to go insane from being packed with the dead bodies of my family; I realized that doing so was unproductive in the long run and the smell of the decaying bodies was starting to get to me, so I dug my way out with a drill I made from rat bones after clawing my hands bloody on the bedrock in a futile effort to do it with my hands and-" He stopped, noticing that everyone was starting at him with various degrees of horror, revulsion and disbelief. "Ah, you meant right now. I just used the door. You weren't paying much attention to it."
There was another awkward silence. Possibly the oddest thing about the way Rossiu said things like that was the casual tone he said them in, like he didn't consider them particularily important.
"...I used to get nervous in small spaces but I spent some time working at a mental hospital in Israel for people with post-traumatic stress disorder and I met a psychologist that talked me out of that," Rossiu added as an afterthought. He frowned at Duncan. "And I can assure you, if I was going mad and planning to kill you all...well, I wouldn't start with the 'geeks', I promise you that. They don't arbitarily insult someone whose lives are in their hands."
"Hint hint," Beth said. Rossiu glanced at her, bemused, and she looked away in a hurry, a bit red in the face. Rossiu clearly had no idea what to make of it.
Duncan rolled his eyes, clearly thinking that Rossiu was acting tough. (This was an incorrect assumption.) "Whatever you say, midgets."
Beth made a indignant huff. Rossiu frowned. "I'm not short. I have...I'm just...my size doesn't matter."
Duncan grinned at him. "Yeah, I'm sure you'll tell all the girls that."
Beth colored. "Dun-caaan! That's gross!"
"...Wait, what does that mean?" Rossiu asked, perplexed.
"You don't get out much, do you?" Courtney asked him plainly.
"I'm sure he'll never get a chance to find out what I mean." Duncan yawned and stretched lazily. "I mean, do you even like girls, forelock boy?"
Rossiu tried to smooth over the stubborn lock of hair on his forehead. "Er...that's...I don't...um..." He stammered a bit, his usual composure lost in a young teenager's awkwardness in answering that question plainly in front of girls who might suddenly decide to test it. (This wasn't a matter of male arrogance, but of extreme shyness in certain matters; few things were more terrifying to Rossiu than the prospect of romance.)
Don't panic, he tried to tell himself. For the love of all that's holy, do not lost yourself because you're flustered. Why is it every time I speak in front of these people, I sound like a complete idiot? He asked himself. "...That's not important," he finally said, forcing his gut feelings down and putting some emotional distance between him and the situation. He felt better. Yes, it was IMPROPER to let your emotions make you do things. It was the CORRECT THING to maintain a professional distance at all times, no matter the situation.
He didn't understand these people. He wanted to like them, and he wanted them to like him, but that was irrelevant to the matter at hand. He pited them a little; he had to work hard to nudge things then and there, keeping them working together, or they would surely tear themselves apart. They were like children sometimes, little idiot-children that barely understood that sticking a fork in the electrical socket was a Bad Thing, he needed to Be There for them, he needed people to Need Him...
Rossiu was attributing capital letters to a lot of things nowadays. This was starting to worry him.
Seeing Rossiu's brief moment of mental distress (a few weeks and he already knew that Rossiu absolutely hated looking weak or vulnerable), Duncan laughed. He'd been having a lot of fun since he'd found out that Rossiu was terminally shy when it came to some things, and he was also trying to find a way to push his buttons even more. "So...North Korea, huh? That's the best sob story you could think of? Geez. I mean, no one just gets buried with their parents and spents almost a week with their rotting bits, kid. If you're trying to shock us and make yourself look like some sort of cool psychopath, try some excuse that makes sense!"
Rossiu's expression, usually an unflappable mask, twitched, color rising in his cheeks. His arms dropped, and his hand briefly clenched into a fist hard enough to leave small marks in his palms. (don't fight, he warned himself. punch him and he'll hit back and you'll hit back harder to make him stop and you'll lose it, you won't stop hitting him until he stops moving and you'll STILL be hitting him until he CRUNCHES and CRIES-)
A thought flickered, one that didn't seem entirely his, a whisper of letting go just this once, a promise of relief, vegeance, retribution...he resisted the impulse. "If I wanted to go to the trouble of impressing people," Rossiu said in a bored and utterly monotone voice. "I would better company, and by that, I mean any company that doesn't include you."
Duncan raised an eyebrow. That was a mildly good comeback. The kid wasn't even freaking out or crying or anything.
Geoff grinned at Duncan. "Trying to mouth off to the new kid isn't working so well, yeah?"
"Psh, he was totally gonna swing at me. Wouldn't have gone well for you, by the way, forelock boy."
"Please stop calling me that," Rossiu asked politely.
"Nope!"
"Actually," Courtney said haughtily. "It seemed to work out fine for Harold and Cody when they punched you out. You know, the biggest nerds on the show?"
Duncan glared at her while Beth, Geoff and Justin laughed at Duncan. Gwen supressed a smirk, and even Rossiu permitted himself a light chuckle. "Low blow, Court."
"And it's always the sweetest one."
"Sometimes I wonder how you got this reputation of yours," Rossiu observed.
"Yeah, at least I'm the right age to be here, uh..." Duncan thought fast for a new nickname to annoy Rossiu with. "Forehead boy."
It was rare to see Rossiu's masque crack. This was more than a crack; for a brief moment he grimaced. "My head's not big!" He said defensively.
"Oh, so you just have a big brain, and it's pushing your skull out?" Duncan suggested.
"Big and unwieldly!" Justin added.
Gwen winced. "Ow. You just got one from Justin. That's gotta suck."
"Hey!" Justin complained.
"...That is a new low for me," Rossiu admitted. "And I once spent three straight days lost at sea on a plank of wood in shark-infested waters inhabited by pirates that flew red flags."
Beth stared at him, her eyes wide. (She liked to read pirate stories, so she knew the signicance of red flags; black flags meant that you might be taken prisoner. Red flags meant that the pirates would kill everyone.) "Um...wow."
The others stared at him, bemused and frowning. Rossiu was somewhat prone to slipping in anecdotes of his life to date; he didn't seem to be aware that they were invariably unpleasant and quite often horrifying to various extents. There was some debate whether or not he was just making it all up or not. Duncan was one of those who thought he wasn't being truthful. "He's making it up," Duncan said. "Trying to show off to the big TV stars."
Rossiu gave Duncan a long look that creeped him out a little. Duncan wasn't intimidated by Rossiu at all, but sometimes he got a sense that there was something...different about the intern, showing in small moments of brief excitement, like a fire burning under a shelf of ice. And this ice was starting to melt, and the fire getting closer to erupting. It wasn't something anyone had seen clearly yet, but Duncan felt instinctively that he had to see what it was. Poking and prodding at Rossiu's buttons seemed a good way to see what that was.
Rossiu, for his part, was thinking dark thought. He hated people making fun of his forehead. He hated it so very much. The priest who had taught Rossiu several years ago, who had taught Rossiu of the virtues of self-control and always doing the Right Thing no matter what, had a forehead like that and had sometimes mentioned that the best thing to do was simply treat people base enough to make fun of you as complete non-entities, unworthy of consideration or communication. Rossiu had trouble doing that very thing, but sometimes he wished he ruled the world just so he could have idiots like that imprisoned. Or executed.
It would be nice to do it himself, he thought, an uncharacteristic bitterness flowing through his emotions like a river of acid. Yes. If he had a drill (Rossiu liked drills. He instinctively felt that they were the perfect tools, the sublime metaphor of human nature and it's method of moving forward by piercing all obstaces in it's way) he could just shove it into Duncan's guts and drill in, use the shape of Duncan's body against him, let the drill penetrate through skin and muscle and into his stomach, the blood spraying over Rossiu's hands like mana from heaven; let that arrogant punk laugh then, let him keep underestimating him, let him scream and bleed and let the blood flow, didn't matter where it flowed from as long as it flowed-
it would be so good to let go, to stop holding on to the things that kept him back, to just snap and rage and destroy everything that hurt him or laughed at him or reminded him that he was small and weak and all the things he had let down-
Something was wrong, Rossiu realized. What was he thinking?
But the thoughts wouldn't stop, as they reminded him that he wanted to protect so much, but had so little means to do so. Something outside of Rossiu, something strange and huge and vast seemed to suggest that there was a way to protect everything. There were means of power beyond temporal authority, as far beyond simple political strength as humanity was beyond a paramecium. Rossiu could have the strength he'd always wanted so badly; he merely had to let go, to surrender to his rage, his fury, and embrace the chaos inside, unleash the wind swirling inside him and let it become the endless storm-
Rossiu thought he saw the shadows of the room move. Like something enormous was crouching in the corners and watching him, something huge and serrated and demonic. Something...chaotic.
It would be good, so good, no one else would have to die but his enemies, they would scream and burn and bleed, scream forever begging for the mercy no one had ever given him, they would die, by his hands they would break, and Rossiu would never be weak again-
Rossiu twitched and shut his eyes so tightly it hurt. NO, he thought, willing such awful thoughts to cease. They did, but reluctantly, like they were alive, grasping and tough and clawing at his mind for the slightest handhold. They were disgusting and foul and, and his head hurt now like a massive claw had squeezed his brain, but they were back now and screaming, screaming to TRUST in Chaos, for in CHAOS all things were POSSIBLE-
"Uh, Rossiu?" Gwen said, noticing that Rossiu's face had gone unnaturally still and he was staring at Duncan with a murderous blankness. "Uh, what's with-"
Rossiu's eyes flickered, like something was moving inside his skull and trying to push out, and his sleeve tore apart in a clean split, like an invisible blade had tore them open. But that was nothing compared to the wet soft chuffing noise that came out of thin air.
"No," Rossiu said tightly, speaking to nothing they could see.
Something heard him.
A large and cruel cut appeared on his neck with a steaming and noxious smell, the blood welling up at once.
Rossiu fell back, clutching at his neck and screaming. It was like something none of them had ever heard, a feral howl of such bone-deep misery and pain. It wasn't something a human throat should have ever made, not a noise designed to be formed with a larnyx or vocal cords he had. It sounded like an animal caught in a bear trap, a cat being skinned alive, and for a moment, Geoff just barely heard an echo in his voice, thousands of voices, of men and women and children and stranger things, all screaming at once, ragged and agonized and tormented and strangely joyful; a cacophonic chorus of the damned, reverbating with madness and violent insanity and above all, it was so very monstrously Chaotic and Evil and he didn't understand why it sounded so welcoming-
"No," Rossiu insisted, not really knowing what he was addressing, only that there was something there, pulling and prying and the way through was him, he couldn't let them through. He muttered proper Latin prayers that he had learned from his lessons before the priest he considered his real father during his time in the Vatican, his hand clutching the faint bulge of the small Roman cross he kept under his shirt.
Something changed. The balance in power shifted, and as if in retaliation, his shirt's shoulder exploded in a blast of fury and sound, and there was claw marks there, raw and red and bleeding-
The shadows flickered, just for a moment, and they all saw them; the faintest impressions of something vast, a terrible shape that was either a monster of bloodlust so big it was beyond human comprehension or a enormous crowd mutilated and twisted and warped into shapes so innately wrong they weren't human anymore...no, it was both, it was neither, it was beyond all knowing and something was touching them, the small child in all of them was screaming at the approach of every nightmare they'd ever had coming to get them, they could hear the claws scratching at the walls and the whispers of a thousand bloody jaws-
There was the briefest flash of green, a subtle twisting of things, like the spinning of a drill applied to reality itself, and it was all gone. The shadows were gone. The whispers silent. And only Rossiu bleeding was evidence that anyone abnormal had happened. "Aha," Rossiu said vaugely. "I have done it." He paused. "What did I just do?" He blinked, his eyes rolled back in his head, and he fell over on the ground unconscious.
There was a brief pause. "Okay," Duncan said. "What the hell was that?"
Courtney shrank back in her chair, staring at the wall and Rossiu bleeding without reason. "I..." She said faintly. "I don't...I can't...I..." There was nothing rational here. Nothing sane or comprehensible she could point at. It was insanity, and her well-organized heart cowered from the madness of it.
Without a word, Geoff got up, moving gingerly and cautiously, as though the world might break into pieces at the slightest movement. His eyes blank and focused, he went over to Rossiu and picked him up. "Hey," He said. "This guy, uh, this guy...he needs help, you know?" Beth got up at once, silent and trembling but keeping her expression absolutely still.
"What?" Gwen said, her brain still singing with the terrible, awful things she had witnessed in the privacy of her mind. They were fading now, but she suspected that they would clearer when the nights were fresh and deep, and there she would never forget them. She'd wake up screaming in the middle of the night for the rest of her life, perhaps. Her mind shifted gears - someone needs help - and she got up, perversely glad of a task to divert her attention. "Yeah. Of course, yeah, come on."
"What...?" Justin whimpered, like a small child in a dark forest that had seen the monsters hiding behind the trees, claws and fangs slick with blood. "I don't...what? What?"
Gwen gave him a brief, worried look. "It'd be nice," She said quietly. "If weird stuff stopped happening to us like this."
"Weird?" Courtney said disbelivingly. "No. No. That wasn't 'weird'. 'Weird' is when you lose your wallet and someone just hands it back to you a moment later! 'Weird' is when you talk about a song you like and then it comes on the radio! 'Weird' is when Izzy or Sierra does anything! That was...that was something that didn't happen! Yeah, it was...just something we thought of. Something weird in the food. Yeah." She looked like she desperately wanted it to be true.
Gwen ignored her ramblings. "We need to stop the bleeding or something first," She said. She went over to Duncan. "Hold still," Gwen said, abruptly grabbing Duncan's outer shirt and ripping off a huge patch of it, tearing it into several long strips and went back to Rossiu.
Duncan blinked. "Hey! Not the circumstances I wanted you tearing my shirt off in, you know?" He said weakly, not really able to protest given that someone was probably bleeding to death right there. (And having that...whatever had just happened was good for disorienting you.) Courtney gave him a dirty look. "What?"
Courtney scowled, her expression fading swiftly. "Never mind...jerk."
"Seriously, what?"
Gwen finished helping Beth and Geoff make a tourniquet for Rossiu. "Okay, now we just gotta make it past the deadly traps, roaming beasts and other stupid bits Chris put in this thing!" She said. "Not the hardest thing we've had to do, right?"
Geoff adjusted Rossiu; the kid was surprisingly heavy. "Newp!" Geoff said. "Not like anything's going to make it easier for us-"
At that point, Ezekiel came screaming out from an airvent like he'd been kicked out, slammed into the floor and scrambled to his feet like an ape, freezing just long enough for the others to notice that he looked like he'd been in a fight with a dozen tigers and a blender. He panicked at the sight of the others, and fled out the door, shortly providing a series of screams as he set off the traps.
"...On the other hand, we could always have Ezekiel accidentally activate the traps for us," Beth said.
"Good point," Gwen said. "Let's go!"
"Hey, wait for me!" Geoff said.
They left out the door, Gwen helping to support Rossiu (Beth would have done that too, but she was too short to even reach), leaving Justin alone with Duncan and Courtney. He looked from one to the other. "...Too much tension!" He said, and promptly left, and he locked the door behind him so they could come after him and make things stressful. (Also, if there were demons, then they would eat Duncan and Courtney and be satisfied for a while.)
"Hey!" Duncan said, banging on a door. "What are you doing? LET US OUT OF HERE!" They're gonna be back, he thought randomly in his head. The things are coming BACK and they'll be hungry and angry and WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE- "Who makes a door that locks on the outside!" He screamed in frustration.
(On a distant world far from the reality they knew, a reluctant mad scientist known only as The Mechanist sneezed. His son Teo probably knew his real name, but he hadn't said.)
Courtney snuck up next to him, her arms crossed. "Hang on," She said, looking like swallowing her pride enough for this was physically painful. "I know a bit about locks."
Duncan gave her a look. "More than me?"
"Probably not, but extra hands can't hurt."
Duncan grunted, not wanting to let on how bad he just wanted to get out, get out, GET OUT OF THERE. "Fine, okay, let's go!"
And so, a mixture of reluctant teamwork and a spot of small talk ensued, surprisingly easy-going, rather like they had been before Courtney had become more controlling and restrictive. And unseen in the vent, in spite of the fact that they really should have been suspicious about Ezekiel's damage levels, Nikigok watched and waited, listening and learning. (He wanted some other stuff he could use alliterative appeal with to, he loved that kind of stuff. Espicially after he'd learned warrior-poeting from the Nac Mac Feegle of the Discworld and become an honorary pictsie.)
Nikigok, in general terms, was a bit concerned now. Not worried, Orks hardly ever worried. But when he saw things like the obvious signs of the Warp trying to break into a fresh and untainted innocent world...he got very close to worrying indeed.
Da Boss needed to know.
...
On an isolated valley in the soutwestern portion of Asia, the Orks were waging war under the command of Da Boss, fielding more extreme methods then they had previously owing to the greater threat against them (still insignificant though) and they were having such great fun at it.
Da Boss himself, standing next to his favorite motorcycle, was waiting for the right moment amid the screams of bullets and Orks and humies striking his ears with sound, the crump-crump-crump of the missles the massive numerous tanks (formerly a Leman Russ Eradicator the Orks had stolen from the Imperial Guard and modified) the Orks had fielded smashing into buildings with such rapidity that it sounded like hail striking a bell only magnified by degrees brain-hurting to think about. Chainswords revved and Orks roared as many of them smashed right into the ranks of terrified but fierce humans in gray uniforms and body armor; the humans fought with machine guns and rifles, which were of little use against an Ork's superior resilience and strength. No Ork could be easily felled by machine gun fire, not when their bodies were capable of being blown in half and still functioning, and even that took a internal grenade hit to go that far.
Little bullets like these just wouldn't cut it.
Da Boss watched his Orks go to it, and he grinned; he just loved seeing a good stomping goin' on. His grin faltered a bit, watching one of the Nobz leap over a tank and smash screaming into a few stray soldiers that had banded together; given than a Nob was an Ork that was tough enough and old enough to have gone years undefeated to grow to sizes over ten feet of raging muscle and battle-fury, their screams of dismay were hardly unexpected, soon drowned out by their panicked machine-gun fire and the Nob (named Gorbash, formerly Big Boss Gorbash until Da Boss beat him in a fight and brought him and his warband into Da Boyz) roared a mighty battlecry of "SPOON!" and shoved them out of the way with a single swipe of a mechanical arm several times bigger than it ought to be, sending the poor puny humans going right through a wall.
"WUT!" Gorbash said, the saw-toothed mechanical mishmash that had replaced his lower jaw long ago buzzing loudly. "Dat's all YA GOTS! C'MERE AN' GIMME A REAL FIGHT!" He took off into a loping simian gait, his enormous weight leaving massive prints in the ground, and smashed right into the building, the whole thing leaning forward slightly with the damage he had done to it.
Da Boss chuckled. "Dat's not what I calls a proppa fight..." he remarked, hearing the soldier's pleas for mercy. "Oy, Gorbash! Save ya fight for sum humies that can take it!"
Gorbash smashed through another wall. "Aw, but I was givvin' 'em such a thumpin'!"
"'Den give dose tanks over dere a thumpin'!" Da Boss said, pointing.
"Eh?" A motorshell flew over Gorbash's head; the geyser of dirt and fire from behind almost knocked him over. "Whoa!" He said, turning towards an advancing line of tanks the enemy was fielding. "Things iz getting GOOD!" He raised his mechanical arm, which ended in a Power Klaw, an oversized pincer-claw with all manner of cables and hissing vents all over the place, and grabbed one of Da Boyz's tank that had come to close and raised it overhead like a shield, the Ork gunner on-board roaring joyfully and firing madly. (But then he would have done that anyway.) "DA WORD SAYZ YOUZ GOIN' DOWN!" Gorbash roared, and charged forward, using his free arm to unholster a machine gun the size of a tree trunk and firing wildly, the bullets bigger than a human head, and he balanced the tank on his shoulder, the Orks on-board taking the oppertunity to start shooting with the slightly greater balance Gorbash now afforded them.
"De're steppin' up wif da fight!" Da Boss said, cheering Da Boyz on and whipping them into a frenzy with the promise of good fighting. "Good! GOOD! Perfeck! No matter what dey throws at us, we'll smash through and STOMP 'EM GOOD! Aint' dat right, Boyz!"
"HELL YEAH!" The Orks across the valley, now scarred and increasingly broken from the battle, roared. The bunker located at the far end of the valley, their target and host to the enemies they were hunting down this time, seemed to shudder.
The Orks charged; from above, on bi-planes made from scrap-metal and old cars and engines as big as the Orks were or by simply strapping themselves into rockets and shooting themselves into the ranks of men behind the tanks, trusting in their superior resilience to live through the experience. (They did.) From below, drill-faced machines burrowing underground in violent sprays of dirt and stone right underneat the tanks. And those who simply raced across the battlefield, on Orkish motorcycles that were little more than engines bigger than the Orks themselves with two wheels and a whole lot of weapons bolted down, hulking all-terrain vehicles, oversized artillery shooters on spiked wheels and, of course, tanks. The Orks loved tanks.
They had not yet begun to fight properly. The Orks fought. It was was they did. It was what they were for, instinctive battlejoy and combat know-how planted deep in their DNA from countless millenia ago, from the days of what other species called the Great Old Ones and what the Orks themselves called the Brain-Boyz. An ancient war had been fought, and the Orks were one of the living weapons fielded by their makers; they lived now when the Great Old Ones had faded into extinction, having made a phyrric victory of their foes the Necrontyr. The Orks fought, survived and built what they needed for surviving and fighting, but they had rarely thought. They had never considered if they were fighting the right people, or if they could be building better things for the Orks to come or fighting good enough for the Orks that had come before.
That was before Da Boss. He had made them think. They were...different. All Da Boyz knew that; Da Boss had made them better. And it was good, and they wished to make the whole multiverse smart like them. They would show the multiverse what was wrong and what was right and destroy that which was wrong, and do it the only way they knew: with unrelenting, needless excessive and absolutely insane scales of brutal force.
(It was Da Orky Way.)
As it was, few of Da Boys were strictly aware of who they fighting right now, and they didn't much care; it was a bad guy, and Da Boss didn't like what he was doing, and that was the same thing as far as they were concerned. A stompin' needed to happen. For that matter, Da Boss didn't actually know who he was fighting, but he did know that this was the biggest cartel on this part of the continent, was runnin' the biggest human trafficking ring on the continent and made a ton of money from it, enough to field a personal army to protect their investments, and Da Boss resented it when people lived high and mighty off of people suffering. (And they had a lot of nice things Da Boyz had their eyes on. Da Boys had gone to war for flimsier reasons, and with Da Boss aiming them like a cannon, their own primitive moral compasses, freshly grown thanks to Da Boss enlightening them with many thumpings and being an inspirational badass spurring them on, they were going through them like, as Gritzgrotz put it, 'Enuff dakka with lotsa blasty going through squig-poo'.)
Da Boss glanced up and took a step sideways; a green screaming blur came smashing into where he had been standing, the dust passing as it proved itself to be Bitz, his new mechanical eyes blasting las-beams at distant enemies while he pulled a pair of sparking rockets off his back and throwing them with such force that they hit an enemy tank and bent the turret out of shape just before four Orks came screaming on motorcycle and smashed into it, tore the hatch off the top and dove screaming into it to commandeer it. (Human screaming ensued.) "Eyes working good, Bitz?"
"I can see smells now!" Bitz said; one of his eyes was an oversized piece like a monicle, a tiny chip of power crystal plug into processing devices on the side so it could shoot lasers. The other eye was smaller and narrower, designed for more precise data-gathering work, and the effect was that Bitz had a permanent psychotic squint, the kind that other Orks had to practice at before they got it right. "And I think I can smell wet ugly, but I bets dat's just da skull-crackin' I've been taking."
"Ooh, what does my smell look like!"
"Like yaz on fire." Bitz paused, and because things tended to happen when Da Boss was on the battlefield, added, "Again."
"Fire? Yeeeah, FIRE! FIRE! LIKE THE BURNING FLAME OF MY SOUL!" Da Boss pulled his head back and let loose a mighty yell, the ground twisting up around him from his proximity. "Hell yeah, HELL YEAH! Now I'm all fired up! Bitz, long as yaz here, go and get da rest of da Nobs! Dey still mopping up dose humies in clanky-bits dey sent at us?"
Bitz' eyes whirred, magnifying at a battle in the distance. There were several explosions, a completely demolished bunker, and at least ten Nobs of varying size and shape making life living hell for a number of humans in experimental powered armor that, as it turned out, wasn't just enough to deal with the biggest and toughest Orks around. "Almost." There was another explosion. "Wait...wait..." Several more explosions, followed by roars of triumph. "Newp, they're done!"
"Go and get dem, 'kay? I'mma gonna clear da path for yaz, lessen Gritzgrotz gets here with da Sqiggoths first!"
Bitz snorted. "Wot, dese puny humies worth da Squiggoths?"
Da Boss shrugged. "Dey're lonely up dere all the time, dey need some time ta fight even if it ain't a proppa scrap!" Bitz nodded. "I'm off," Da Boss announced, unsheathing his mighty chainsword from his back and slamming it on the ground, cracking the earth underneath. He fired it up, and even though the spinning blades weren't in contact with the ground, a wickedly harsh cut tore through the dirt regardless. "'ERE I GO!" Da Boss shouted, jumping aboard his favorite motorcycle (converted from the still-functional main fire cannon of a Lemun Russ Devastator, only with engines, some power-maces on chains, big ol' monster truck wheels and jumpjets attacked) and revved it up, the truck-sized 'cycle screaming to life as green energy crackled from Da Boss.
Bitz carefully stepped aside as the wheels spun on, the rivets on them extending into little drills, and the Dakkacycle (as Da Boss fondly called his motorcyle) tore off. "...I wants one too," he complained before he trundled off to go get the Nobs.
On the opposite side of the alignment grid (from Chaotic Good to Lawful Evil), Sergeant Yang, having recently been promoted to tank-brigade commander after the last one got blown up, was having a very bad week. First his girlfriend dumped him. Then his dog ran away and came back with a live bear. Then he misplaced his favorite coffee mug, and now big green alien monsters were engaging all out war with his less-than-strictly-legal employers, which was a considerable step down in the whole 'horrific turns of bad luck' in his life.
"Men, hold the line!" He said, mainly because it seemed like a good idea. "And...uh...live. I guess. Because we won't have anyone to man the tanks if you're dead or whatever. Um. Yeah. God, I suck at inspiring the troops."
"We're fighting aliens monsters armed with giant guns, giant guns on wheels, and use chainsaw swords as basic melee weapons," His co-pilot, a stoic young lady named Mei Fong remarked. "There's not a whole lot you could say to make them want to fight." (Little did she knew, there was a whole army of people that did just that on a daily basis, and their numbers dwarfed Earth's entire population. Not that she knew that.)
"At least we've exhausted all their surprises!" Sergeant Yang said hopefully, firing the main cannon again and again, breaking a line in the oncoming horde of Orks, when they abruptly scattered as the ground started to tremble under the footsteps of giants. "What the-?"
"Sir, I think something's coming," their tank's gunner said. "I don't HOLY HELL WHAT THE CRAP IS THAT!"
"GUESS WHO BROUGHT DA BIG BOYZ?" Gritzgrotz shouted from his place atop a mighty metal thing resembling a riveted-and-folded howdah pretty much made of armor-plated machines that were really there to hold, maintain and fuel weapons of all sorts: plasma rifles, gatling lasers, intention-guided mininukes, napalm grenade-launching Heavy Incinerators, wide-scale flamethrowers, steam-powered rifles that shot nails that tore the fabric of the universe to summon more guns that shot more guns that shoot nails and so on. The Ork sat atop a crude but effective gunner's seat on it, with a little fan to cool him (it was hot up there) and a beer-drinking-hat, because he loved his beer-drinking-hat. Also, he had a sniper's rig for a weapon that shot giant chakrams with rotating chainsaw-blades on them and he was having a marvelous time with them. (Da Boss had determined that these humies were so rotten, Da Boyz would be a disgrace if they held back. Da Boyz were ecstatic.)
All of that wasn't the impressive (and utterly terrifying) bit. The really impressive (and utterly terrifying) bit was the fact that this heavily-armed howdah was securely fastened to the back of a monstrously big thing that looked like nothing less than a sixty-foot tall dinosaur (vaugely similar to a predator sauropod with a shorter neck), it's footfalls hitting the earth like the tread of a beast-god, the short blunt claw tearing up tracts of dirt and uprooting trees too small for it to even notice, only to fall from it and rain to the ground and be smashed underfoot as it marched on in a distinctive leaning gait. It's body, low-slung and bulging with enormous muscles under the dark green mosiac of it's scales and the overlapping plated-armor the Orks had protected it with, barely seemed to notice the weight of the howdah at all, the only concession to it's burden a shifting of it's weight to it's sturdier back legs. It's head, not unlike the Orks it was partially descended from if reptilian and longer, swayed a bit under the weight of the metal plates on it's skull and probably the gunner platform's mounted on the sides of it's head so that a trio of Orks could operate the long-range zap guns on the tucks extending from it's lower jaw as well as the larger horn on it's head.
It was a Squiggoth, the largest of the various Squigs breeds the Orks bred for food, companionship and other stuff, and it was bored. (And with anything even slightly Orky, this is a very dangerous time to be near it.)
"...Seriously? Seriously? Are they fielding a miniature fortress on top of a goddamn DINOSAUR!" Sergeant Yang screamed, pulling at his hair in utter disbelief. "The aliens have ALIEN DINOSAURS!"
"Sure," Said Colonel Fong. "Dinosaurs make everything better. Well, not for us, but you know. Why wouldn't the aliens have any?"
"That's...I can't...it's not...YOU HURT MY BRAIN."
Gritzgrotz took a long, deep sip from his beer-drinking-hat. "I AM BORED NOW! BOB, GO GET 'EM!"
The Squiggoth, who was named Bob, roared in affirmation (unaware that being asked to attack the enemy by his handler rather than being abused into fighting was a singular thing for an Ork battlebeast) and charged, the various gunner's manning his weapons firing randomly at anything that moved. Including Orks. Espicially other Orks. (Da Boss hadn't quite broke them of that habit yet. It was on his to-do list, right between Wake up the Emperor of Mankind and beat him up until he quits being a jerkass about aliens and Find all Orks in the galaxy back home, teach 'em the Right and Proppa, and throw a Waaugh! Aim said Waaaugh! at the Tyranids, film proceeding battle and sell it for PROFIT.) Bob, who wasn't the best trained Squiggoth around, went right for the first thing he saw, a random tank that happened to be piloted by Bitz after he'd found it empty of it's human pilots (having fled in sheer terror from the alien dinosaur-thing).
Bob ran right for it, his footfalls shaking the ground like miniature quakes. "Why's all dis rumbling?" Bitz asked himself. He looked out and saw Bob coming. "Oh. Dat's why." Bob roared, pulling his head back and flipping the tank into the air with his horn, sending it flying across the battlefield. "Wheee!" Bitz said, his tank firing off a few shots and taking out a few powered-armor men as it went before it smashed past the tank lines. This served his purposes well enough, as the tanks now had the enemy right in their blind spots. This was a very fatal occurance, very quickly.
Da Boss grinned as he accelerated to a speed well in excess of stupid-fast. "Heh. Ya beat me to it!" He called out as he rolled up to Bob, weaving in and out of the beast-titan's falling footsteps, effortlessly dodging several tons of scaly beastfeet and claws bigger than he was because he was cool like that, occasionally getting flipped into the air by the small shockwaves of Bob's footsteps only to land the right way and keep going. "Where's da rest of da big boyz!"
"We gots Shredface and the Bigga Dok moppin' up some surprise tanks from behind!" Gritzgrotz said, firing a few chainsaw-frisbees at choice-looking targets. "And we got Boota coming right up! Got ya stompa and everythin'!"
"Hot damn!" Da Boss said, driving far to the side. "We'z gonna make a spektakle a' dis, Gritzgrotz! Show da whole world Da Right an' Proppa!"
"'Course! Yaz Da Boss!"
Da Boss grunted in annoyance, so piqued he broke away from the battle to start pulling back so hard that the Dakkacycle flipped into the air; the moment it's tail end faced the ground again, Da Boss engaged the jet-jumpers and green fire blazed from the glowing discs near the rear, sending it shooting straight up into the air like a rocket, spinning gently through the air. The wheels slammed into Bob's armor, Bob himself none the wiser, and Da Boss drove straight up Bob's side, not falling off or hitting a bad jump or anything stupid like that because he was just that awesome.
From a distance, he might have been seen as a tiny speck on the side of the Squiggoth, driving up in a more or less straight line until he reached the howdah, running out of surface area to keep moving around on and went flying into open space. Being sixty feet up with no appreciable way of surviving the fall didn't bother him much, as he just hit the jet-jumpers again and fired himself over the howdah like a ballistic missle, spinning the whole way thanks to the perilously unstablized devices.
Gritzgotz was justifiably surprised when Da Boss came right out of nowhere, nearly a ton of weaponized machine designed for offense and speed sailing right overhead, right before Da Boss gave Gritzgrotz such a thump on the head. "Hey hey hey hey hey, stop calling me 'Da Boss'!" He shouted, time seeming to stand still. "I ain't da Warboss ta beat ya stupid, or a Warlord that jest wants ta kill everythin' including da boyz wif me! I'm better den DAT! Yaz boyz are my SOUL-BROTHERS! IF YAZ GONNA CALL ME ANYTHING, YAZ GONNA CALL ME BRO!"
Gritzgrotz, a relative addition to Da Boyz, came to a decision and met the humie's still out-stretched fist in a brotherly gesture. "You gots it, Kah-Mee-Nah!"
Da Boss (or rather, Kah-Mee-Nah) rolled his eyes as he went on falling over the opposite side of Bob, the Squiggoth completely oblivious to all of this due to being engaged in trying to eat a tank because he was stupid that way. "Good enuff!" Kah-Mee-Nah said, a bit annoyed with the difficulty his Ork brothers had in saying his actual name right. (It had been so many years since he'd been around humans to call him by his proper name for a long time, but he would never forget his own name. He never forgot names.) "Break the line of da tanks! BREAK RIGHT THROUGH AND SHOW DA HUMIES SOME HEROIC SPIRIT!"
Gritzgrotz snarled agreeingly as Kah-Mee-Nah nosedived back to the ground, a jump-jet propelling him that much faster because it was taking too long, and he shouted a mighty and primal cry of "WAAUGH!" as he accelerated his freefall, aiming himself for the lead tank like a missle, green energy coursing around him like a twisting aura.
It started with a single roar, backed up by Kah-Mee-Nah, and it echoed in every Ork there. They were Da Orkz; they were made for FIGHTING and KILLING. War was their life, their love, their very reason for being. But their beloved leader Kah-Mee-Nah had changed them, and so to had the nature of the Waaugh itself. Something even greener than what old-time Yellerz called Da Big Green, like the white-hot screaming passion of Gork and Mork themselves; it struck every Ork there, from the biggest Nob to the puniest Gretch and even the squiggly beasts, and inflamed the smallest echo of true Orkiness and amplified it into a raging inferno.
Green burned in them, blasting out from around them like emerald fires that last for only a moment. But it was only a visible demonstration, and there was far more to it than flash. Each Ork, whether Gretch, Shoota Boy, Burna Boy, Nob, Mek Boy, Weird Boy, Pain Dok and all the other countless castes of Ork present there, felt it. The power of their beloved leader's passion concentrated into a single shout energized them all.
They shouted, all at once, in a mighty cry that brought furiously happy tears from a few of them (even though Orks weren't supposed to be able of tears), the very essence of the gods coursing through them and quaking in bodies that were suddenly mightier than a gargant and stronger than the biggest Squiggoth; they felt, for a single pure instant of white-hot glory, that they all burned with the same fire that drove Kah-Mee-Nah, the same resolve and spirit that kept him going on in a galaxy they now knew to be grim and dark and so very awful in it's monstrousness and that it was their duty to make it better and it was the fault of people like the ones they were fighting that it was so.
They shouted with one voice, their minds bleeding together into a vast war machine bonded by sheer unstoppable resolve and fighting spirit, and guding it like a precision bullet was Kah-Mee-Nah.
You could almost pity all those that stood in their way.
Sergeant Yang cowered in horror as the Orks fought on. He had done terrible things, for his job. He knew perfectly well just what sort of men and women he worked for; he just never cared, and neither had all the men and women under his command, generally being mercenaries hired for this army or corporate terrorists for hire that liked the exorbitant amounts of money they got out of it.
For some reason, in that brief blaze of green and that incredible shout, he wondered if maybe he shouldn't have killed so many people. Maybe he should have thought about not putting a bullet in the head of that one priest that wouldn't pay up, or setting that crowded apartment building on fire with it's inhabitants trapped inside (he remembered that one well; he'd been stuck in a hotel in the area and it took weeks for the smell of roasting human flesh to get out of his nose) or raiding that one rural village and taking all the able-bodied men and women in chains and shooting everyone else...
His hands shook. "...We're going to die," He said suddenly. "Yes. We're going to die..." He narrowed his eyes. "But that idiot with his monsters dies too."
"Sir?" Colonel Fong said.
"Charge them. We die standing."
She nodded grimly. "...Yes, sir."
"You know, we're all sitting down, so we, uh, can't die standing-" The gunner said unhelpfully.
"Shut up, it's a figure of speech," Sergeant Yang said.
He could see it all now; they would charge, right into the horde of monsters. They were one tank. They were going to die, and die gloriously. These monsters would remember them forever, remember this tank and it's crew in their nightmares forever, their leader dead and gone, yes, that would be a fitting memorial for themselves-
An odd sound interrupted his musings. "What the...oh no."
Something blazing green hit the ground several dozen feet from him, slamming into it hard enough to throw a shockwave that send a cascade of dirt into the tank hard enough to send it off-course and stop it dead in it's tracks, and a massive explosion sent another one, a geyser of fire and dirt fountaining up before raining down-
A shape tore out of it, and their tank was still sufficiently forward enough for the crew to gape in disbelief when they saw that it was a monster-motorcycle that was on FIRE and bearing right down on them, a pair of massively oversized blades on either side of the front wheel, and moving so fast that the air was breaking around it.
"What? WHAT? WHAAAT!" Sergeant Yang howled. "WHAT THE HELL IS THIS-"
He, and indeed, his life, was cut off in midword, the flaming Dakkacycle slicing right through it, it's wheelblades and extreme speed, cutting right through it with a brief tortured scream of metal, sections of tank sliced away in seconds until it lurched back from the impact, it's crew dead, falling back in two neat little halves as a last-second reaction from Sergeant Yang sent a final motor shell flying up into the sky to arc down eventually, and then a timely push of the jumper-jets gave the Dakkacycle a short jump that also threw the tank halves up into the air, where Gritzgrots fired a blast of plasma that exploded them in mid-air.
Kah-Mee-Nah kept going, the fire around him winking out due to being smothered from the dirt he was plowing through. "DAT'S THE TANKS DOWN!" He said, his Dakkacycle on a straight course for the bunker's their enemy were hiding in (possibly so they could avoid sensible people asking them how the hell they could afford to buy tanks and powered suits of armor and outfit an army when they were supposed to be running a criminal enterprise, that sort of thing takes up your time) and he fired a single shell from his Dakkacycle's main bodygun that flew screaming across the battlefield, over the heads of the remaining soldiers (now in a bit of a panic for obvious reasons) and heading for the front of the bunker.
The motor shell fired in Sergeant Yang's last moment came down; Kah-Mee-Nah glanced up and spun the Dakkacycle around, readying and revving up his chainsword in a single motion, and without breaking his incredible speed, cut the missle in half, ignoring all the laws of physics that should have had it explode messily right there, doing it with a single swipe that sent both halves spinning at two misfortunate squads that had picked the wrong day to continue working for massive violators of human rights, mainly because they exploded in great bit chunks when the missle halves exploded.
Kah-Mee-Nah hit the brakes (a humie idea, no Ork would even conceive of brakes) and skidded to a stop, his displaced velocity finding a release in a mighty blast of flame from the sparks he sent up. (There was no reason it should be so, only that it was cool and that Kah-Mee-Nah treated physics like most people treated mildly annoying guidelines.) This was just in time for the shell he had launched moments ago to crash into the front of the bunker with a massive explosion, a backlash of bone-pulverizing force and dust smashing out (it was quite fortunate that Kah-Mee-Nah and his Boyz were a safe distance away, but the same could not be said about the remaining soldiers) and when the light and dust faded, the entire bunker was leaning over a bit, a gaping hole that was still molten-red at the edges melted in the wall. It was just barely big enough to admit something huge; not big enough for a Squiggoth, but something smaller, surely.
There was a tremendous thud; Kah-Mee-Nah waited patiently for his own Squiggoth to come to an awkward halt a short distance from him, bearing a mighty compact machine-titan on his back. "Hey," Kah-Mee-Nah said. "Boota! Ya made it!"
Boota was, as Squiggoths went, unusually small, barely forty feet in height, his stout and compact body covered in wooly green fur and his legs built for endurance rather than speed or strength, thick and powerful and ending in sharper claws than Squiggoth's normally had. His tail was short and twisted up into a piglike squiggle, spiraling behind his rear. His head was quite unusual, wide and with a prominent snout, dense clusters of teeth visible in his prim little mouth and a pair of shovel-like tusks extending from his cheekbones. His eyes, small and round and much more unnervingly intelligent than a Squiggoth's ought to be, were protected from the sun by a pair of round sunglasses specially made for him.
"Awright," Kah-Mee-Nah said. "Let's do it! We'll go an'-" He heard a ringing. He blinked, wondering if someone had hit him, and then he remembered the phone he'd rigged up, and he also remembered who had the other phone they'd made. "Wait a tick." He answered it and said,. "Yo, dis iz me.""
"Big bro!" The excitable voice of Nikigok said, distorted a bit by interference but perfectly audible. "It'z me, reportin' in from da airship with dose kidz ya likes!"
"Figured that much. Give it ta me straight, we'z in the middle of some stompin' here!"
"Ooh, anything good?"
"Nah, just some cowards with no proppa strength in da head, body and espicially da heart, ya knows? But we'z givvin' da Squiggoths a workout, an' evverybody's havin' fun. So it's a win-win. And gettin' rid of these grots will take this world a good way towards da Right and Proppa! Oh," He added as an afterthouht. "I figure the loot we'll pull off this will take us a long way towards that party we'z gotta pull. Treat da Orky humies right, you know?"
"Yeah!" Nikigok agreed.
"Right. So what's it?" Nikigok had been giving him usual reports, frequently when something important had happened. (Kah-Mee-Nah also watched the episodes when they aired, but frankly, the ruthless extremes the kids were being up through was making him really annoyed and put him in the mood for a stompin'.)
"Da Chaos is comin'. Maybe here already."
Kah-Mee-Nah said nothing for a moment. "...What happened?"
Nikigok told him everything he had seen in that little room. The rise of the shadows, the way the intern Rossiu had been cut up by something that hadn't even been there, the way they all acted like their minds were hurt...Kah-Mee-Nah heard it all, and he understood the implications immediately.
There was also a briefer but equally interesting matter. "Dat gurl an' da boy yaz interested in?" Nikigok said. "Dey've almost figured us out!"
"Hah?"
"Dey'z putting it all together. Dey'z goin' crazy from not sleeping, but they've worked it out. They almost know that we'z after Da Right and Proppa! Dey know what yaz wants from everyun'!" Nikigok sounded excited. "Jest like ya wuz hopin'!"
"...Heh. I knew those humies wuz smart, but pickin' up on me already? Heh. Heh! Hah hah hah! PERFECT! That fits with Da Plan perfeck-like!"
"Really?"
"Hells yeah! Looks like I gots ta change things up a bit,; dey wuz bein' touched in da 'eads, from da Chaoz boyz tryin' ta peel through, looks like!"
"From dat humie with the big forehead?" Nikigok asked shrewedly.
"...Looks like. And he pushed da Chaos away. Dat's interestin'. Hardly ever hear of humies doing that." Kah-Mee-Nah grinned. "Dis Rossiu sounds interestin'. Nikigok! If da Chaoz iz moving dis fast, we'z gonna have ta step things up too! Lookz like jest fighting da Good Fight ain't enough to beat dis world back from da Chaoz, so I figgure Da Boyz iz goin' ta have ta step up our planz for da Total Drama kidz."
"Whaaat?" Nikigok said. "Yaz mean...yaz comin' HERE!"
"Yep; first we gotz to finish up here and do sum shoppin'. For da big party and all. And wot's a party widdout guests!" Kah-Mee-Nah said. "Keep a good eye on t'ings, Nikigok! We'z gonna be dere soon enough, yaz hears? Stay outta sight and mind, an' before yaz knowz it we'll be there ta kick some awesome inta dem!"
"Yaz gotz it, Kah-Mee-Nah!" Nikigok said smartly. "I'll get it done!"
"I knowz ya can! Believe in me, Nikigok! Believe in da me dat believes in you!"
"Alwayz!" Nikigok promised, and hung up.
Kah-Mee-Nah put his phone away and noticed that the battle had been raging on without him, and was nearly done. "Boyz!" He called out. They looked up. "Let's go finish this in style, and den go give da TOTAL DRAMA KIDZ A HELLO!" Boota, having protectively been skulking near Kah-Mee-Nah, peered up as Kah-Mee-Nah grinned. "Boota!" He announced. "We'll finish this together!"
Boota roared agreement, and Kah-Mee-Nah's Dakkacycle came screaming back to life and roared down to the bunker, Boota shortly behind him and the rest of Da Boyz catching up. Boota caught up pace with him, and together, the woolly Squiggoth and Kah-Mee-Nah smashed through into the gaping hole, easily fitting through, followed by Da Boyz, the screaming host of Orks roaring right after.
Da Boyz did their thing, and it was awesome.
Overlooking the valley, Death looked down, his eyes like miniature stars. Sergeant Yang and his men stood behind him, their heads bowed. "This is gonna suck worse, isn't it?" He asked Death, trembling in terror. When you died, it stripped away all your illusions. Yang could see...everything he'd done, in perfect clarity and understanding.
THAT MAY BE, Death said. AND IT MAY BE NOT.
"...Really?"
IT IS ENTIRELY DEPENDANT ON YOU. AND YOU MAY YET CONSIDER YOURSELVES LUCKY.
"How?"
Death peered down on Yang, and Yang felt very small indeed. YOU WILL NOT BE THERE WHEN THE TIDES OF CHAOS WASH UPON THESE SHORES.
"What...what do you mean?"
IT IS BETTER THAT YOU DO NOT KNOW, Death said patiently. Yang cowered and bowed his head, leaving it be. AND NOW, YOU WILL COME WITH ME.
Yang's story ended there, but for better or worse is another matter.
(Fortunately, he believed in reincarnation. Unfortunately, it works in mysterious ways, and he was born backwards in time. As one of the interns from Total Drama World Tour. Specifically, the one that was eaten alive by scarabs. But that wasn't enough punishment to absolve his karma, and he was next reborn as a man destined to join the Imperial Guard. And that was a fate cruel enough to absolve his karma. Several dozen times over.)
And life went on. For some people, obviously not those guys. But they were jerks, so it all balanced out.
...
A/N: The tone of the story is starting to change a little, isn't it? I intended a goofy humor story of curbstomping...and now it's turning into more of a, well, Warhammer 40K story! Not surprising though, and I'm gonna do my hardest to keep the tone light! Also, since the title doesn't really fit, I'm changing the title of the story to 'All The Stars In The Sky' or ATSITS for short. (Makes it easier to mention in PMs, I can tell you that!)
Just what is Chris up to? It's not nice, I can tell you that.
The scene with those two fishermen started out longer, but I cut it short because...well, they're just a pair of random guys to witness Kamina and Da Boyz breaking through. Originally, that was also the first scene in this chapter, but I added the one with the Total Drama guys and girls to better fit the story. To make my point, this isn't a competition story, and frankly by this point, the Total Drama kids really wouldn't WANT it to be. This version of the game is MEAN.
Funny thing about the bit with Cody and Sierra; it was originally a scene about Harold discussing the whole thing with some of the others. I changed it to make it more personal and to emphaize Sierra and Cody a bit, who are, in a way, the main Total Drama characters here. Also..er, yeah, the idea of Cody becoming more dependant on Sierra was a plot bunny that seemed right. I remember reading a bit on TV Tropes the kind of mental deconstruction that goes on in Total Drama (explaining the Character Derailment); it's hard, you're surronded by people you don't like or distrust, conditions are hard, the food is unhealthy and you're in real danger of DYING. The most sucessful campers are the ones that can take it. (Like, say, Owen.) In this case, Cody and Sierra are dealing with the even worse conditions on the airship by buddying up to a degree that clearly scares poor Noah. (So's Izzy. Poor guy.) Also, I believe this marks me pushing the Coderra element from 'subtle' to 'what subtlety?'.
I like Rossiu. Thus, I'm doing my hardest to keep him recognizable as a character but distinct from his Gurren Lagann characterization. I'm tending towards his behavior towards the second half of the series, but tending towards Lawful Good. Even so, it seems that a Gurren Lagann character is still too intense to fit in among Total Drama fellows just yet.
Looks like Beth might have a little crush on Rossiu. (Even though she has a boyfriend, but no big deal. I mean, she's not like Duncan.)
Chaos is coming. But it tried to use Rossiu first. Bit of a mistake there. Yeah, Chaos, try to break through using the Lawful Good Knight Templar Well-Intentioned Extremist. Yeah, GREAT IDEA.
I'm going to start treating Chaos with more of a 'cosmic horror' vibe, as I already should have in my initial thoughts. Poor Total Drama kids; they're gonna have to face off against the living embodiment of Chaotic Evil itself, a foul horror that taints and corrupts all it touches, fueled by the souls of billions and empowered by a grim dark future of war. Fortunately, they have Kamina and his Orks on his side, so that evens things up.
That big scene with the Orks curbstomping that army? Yeah. I LOVE epic crazy fights.
Readers of Fullmetal Alchemist may be familiar with the Memetic Badassery of Wrath who, it is often said, 'killed a tank with a SWORD'. More accurately, he killed the tank's crew with the sword and used a grenade to blow it up. Kamina (whose proper name I'm saving for a more epic time) killed a tank with a weaponized MOTORCYCLE. In a single move. And then he blew up some guys by cutting a missle in half. Now that's badass.
I turned Boota into a Squiggoth. Possibly the craziest thing I've done so far that isn't my reimagining of Traverse Town.
What does Kamina have in mind for the Total Drama kids? Probably nothing too horrible or insane. But then again...this is the same guy who rides a giant gun on wheels into battle, climbs up a Squiggoth to give it's rider a dope-slap for not being brotherly enough and intends to awesomize Cody. He's so awesome it's stupid, and vice versa.
