How do I even get myself into these messes?
Martin could, as in any situation, come up with a million excuses to write off his mistakes. It could be, "oh, Paisley was threatening the salamanders of the Salt Wash with her disruptive construction, so of course I had to leap in at my own peril," or, "I tried my best to be stealthy, but when I snuck into her tent and saw her heinous plans, I was so overcome with righteous fury that I lost focus for a moment!" Or even, "you know, this is kinda Chris' fault for agreeing to split up, and letting me do recon on Paisley, unarmed, while he went back to the Tortuga."
But no matter which way the older Kratt could slice it, all these objects of blame had only one conclusion to events that were their consequence: Martin, dangling helplessly by the waist from one of Paisley's utility grapplers, while the villainess continued unperturbed in her quest to turn the deserts of Utah into high-rise apartments.
He tried not to look at the ground. As strong as the cable that suspended him was, it wasn't rigid, and swayed in the nighttime breeze, which made the potential drop even more daunting- sickening, even. And there were plenty more of those terrible arms, primed for bashing him about the moment he made his escape.
There's got to be a way out of this.
He knew help wasn't coming from the Tortuga for a while. Chris said he'd formulate a plan with the information Martin gathered, and Chris was rarely one to jump into a situation without a plan.
Unlike me.
Truthfully, Martin had no one but himself to blame. His approach down the sandstone towards her base of operations was not nearly as stealthy as he'd thought, despite his blue attire being ideal camouflage in the intense moonlight. He had been found out before setting foot in his foe's tent - what seemed sudden, the three prongs bursting through the canvas like a movie monster, snapping shut around him and ripping him back outside was merely a calculated move on Paisley's part, as she noticed him, took a pause from what she was doing, calibrated the arm, and got back to her regular work, as her mechanical tool did what she told it to. If was a botched operation from the word go.
Martin had been hanging for some time now. He'd tried everything - looking for some weak spot in the rims he could reach, pleading with Paisley to stop her invasion and spare the life here - which most assuredly fell on deaf ears - anything at all to get free and redeem himself. As of now, it didn't seem like a good idea to just wriggle out and plummet, so, for at least an hour, he had resigned himself to wallow in misery.
They're really not coming for me.
Wait! My pod!
There was a glimmer of hope as Martin realized his Creature Pod was still in his back pocket - though, he still wanted to smack himself for forgetting. He had planned to take it out to photograph Paisley's blueprints, but his hand hadn't even reached for his pants by the time she captured him. All he had to do was send a message to his friends, and the rescue would be expedited.
Martin stared at the Creature Pod. Should I call? No, no. The second I start chatting, she'll realize what I'm doing and kick my ass. He had to be discreet. Thankfully, it had text capabilities.
Just a word message? No, that would be too vague. I have to take a picture or something, so they can get some idea of what we're dealing with, so I'm not being totally useless.
His back was turned to all the goings-on, so he had to take the photo in selfie mode, and when his camera was in selfie mode, it was his instinct to do a silly little pose. The thought crossed his mind after taking a pic of him winking and throwing up the peace sign that maybe it wasn't an all too appropriate demeanor in a situation of this sort of gravity, and considered taking it again, but he didn't want to admit he was afraid, either. Besides, funny and casual was just his style, right? He felt so silly for failing, and a jab at his circumstance was just his go-to coping mechanism. He typed the message.
"Whaddup, ya boy's been abducted."
No matter what, it still isn't a big deal. He swallowed hard. I just don't want them to worry. He sent the photo.
It wasn't until after the message was on its way that Martin noticed Paisley, in the corner of the frame, looking up at him, apparently having noticed his selfie. Sure enough, she was already acting on it, piloting the arm to carry Martin close enough that she could snatch his creature pod out of his hands. She sent him back to dangle in the air, though this time he was facing her. Paisley examined the message.
She laughed. She cackled. Martin hadn't heard any such noise from her before. It was nasally and unrestrained, enthusiastic and condescending all at once. He didn't even know at what or why she was laughing, but he already felt embarrassed.
"Seriously?" She scoffed. "This is the message you send to your allies? Is this how you people communicate with eachother?"
Martin crossed his arms. "I don't need to explain myself to you."
Her face was turning bright red from laughing. She wiped away some tears, then, to Martin's chagrin, snapped the pod. Its glass screen crackled and glistening. "Oh, there is no need to. I can't believe I consider you all a threat."
"You should! Trust me, they're on their way right now to put an end to this! You outta be quaking in your boots, er, heels."
"A convincing threat," she rolled her eyes. "You know you're trespassing, right? That sure won't help your case with... what was it you were fussing about? Lizards?" She chuckled. "I'm sure your friends will be real thrilled that you jeopardized their operation. Or are they used to this behavior? Screwing up seems par for the course with you."
"Yeah, well," Martin fired back, feeling his cheeks get warm, "one, they're Salamanders, not lizards, and two - that's not true! We're all seriously dedicated to protecting animals! As far as I'm concerned, the environment is no laughing matter!"
"Oh I know that's how you feel, and between you and me, that is not as intimidating as you think it is. But this isn't even about that. They're not coming here, if they're coming at all, to save nature anymore. They're coming to save you, because you messed up big time. Tell me, Martin, does your team agree with you, that you take this as seriously as they do?"
Martin had no retort. Paisley snickered.
"It must be exhausting, trying to make up for your failures all the time. I wonder how soon it will be before to get too tired of it, and replace you? I mean, how much could anyone really be willing to do, just for some screwup like you?"
Martin furrowed his brow, all his facial features sloped violently downward like they were a sudden sinkhole. Now, his pride was hurt, and what little bit of dignity and cool he had left evaporated. "That doesn't matter. You're still going to fail!"
Martin began to writhe, struggling for a way out of the machine's grasp. He was no longer too cautious to take the drop - at this point it almost seemed like anything was better than just hanging around, letting Paisley rip into him and make him feel bad. Besides, now he had something to prove, and, as far as he was concerned in the moment, nothing to lose.
"Stop that!" Paisley commanded. "You could hurt yourself, these things are not so easy to control!"
"Neither am I!" Martin hollered back, continuing to struggle and push. Eventually, he managed to get free, but that meant plummeting 20 feet, twisting and flailing as he went. The left side of his ribcage landed first. Shortly after the rest of him followed. He groaned, clutching his smashed side. He could feel his sun-shirt was tattered in that spot, and, though the skin wasn't yet bleeding, it stung like hell.
That doesn't matter, he reminded himself. Get up. Finish it.
Despite himself, he got up. With his fingers, he could tell rising to his feet finally made his skinned ribs start to bleed.
"You can't be serious," she grumbled. "You've been caught on private property, sneaking around in the dark, with only some sad joke to alert your allies, and you think this is a good time to pick a fight? Think this through. If I kill you now, I may very well be seen as justified!"
"Then do it, and kill me," Martin shouted back, fed up with this back and forth, "if this crusade of your's is so important, you've got no reason to not risk it!"
"Your crusade isn't worth it either," she shouted back - though, behind her claims, she was secretly taken aback that this normally obnoxiously sweet tree hugger had broken out into such a rage.
"Like hell it is!" He charged at her.
Obviously this didn't go well. While Paisley did have Martin outgunned, she was frightened of him and his sudden outburst, like any person being frightened of a bug that logically cannot kill them. Of course, this just made her more dangerous, defensive, and reactionary, which was the last thing Martin needed if he wanted to get out of this alive. Next thing he knew he'd been grabbed from behind, by another grabber that he didn't even know was there. He must've been too out of it to notice. As he was flung into the air, he couldn't keep track of anything, not how many arms were on him, not his relation to the ground, not even if he was up-side down or right-side up. All he knew was kicking and screaming, until -
crraaaack!
A searing hot pain rocketed from his ankle all the way up his spine. He thought for sure he had been flat out ripped in half. He tensed, then went limp, then was falling - his perception of everything was scrambled, as the wretched sensations inside him pulsated. He slammed into the ground so hard, he found himself having to spit dirt out of his mouth. Beyond that, he couldn't move. He realized he was fading fast. It took everything in him to turn his head to the side so he wouldn't suffocate in the dirt. Because of this, he happened to catch the glint of broken glass.
It was his creature pod, dropped next to him.
Maybe I should've sent something else.
He lost consciousness.
.
.
.
"Seriously, Martin?"
The crew had been worried out of their minds, waiting for Martin's intel. The message that finally came through did prove their worst fears true - but not in a way that made them sympathetic.
"I vote we just leave him," Aviva grumbled.
Chris sighed. Martin, why are you like this? A part of him wanted to defend his brother, but another agreed with Aviva just as much.
Jimmy looked at the screen over Chris' shoulder. He chuckled.
"We still have to stop Paisley," Chris said.
"But it looks like we won't have that 'insider info' we were promised to back us up," Koki pointed out, "thanks to Martin."
"Ugh, we never should've split up," Chris groaned.
"¡Honestamente, pensé que ya sabía cómo recomponerse!" Aviva muttered. "And to treat the situation so... immaturely!"
Finally, Chris did come to Martin's defense. "Hey, I probably would've been just as likely to get captured if I'd gone down there. Which one of us it was came down to a coin toss." He looked back at the photo. "Besides, I'm sure he just doesn't want us to worry."
"Well, it didn't work," Aviva said, pulling her arms into a tight fold. "God, half the things you and your brother get up to, it's a wonder any of us can sleep at night!"
"I would like to point out that I couldn't sleep with anything that any of us do, if I didn't have my meds," Jimmy said.
"Look, I'll go back out there. It's Paisley, she tends to give up easy," Chris said, rising to his feet and heading to his power suit.
"Fine," Aviva said. "But when Martin gets back, that patán is doing the dishes for a month, at least."
.
.
.
When Chris and Martin had first discovered Paisley's camp, it was very different from how it was now. There had been her jet, as well as numerous forklifts and backhoes and excavators, all being worked remotely of course, chugging and pounding into the night, with the only other man in the operation being that loudmouthed and single-minded fellow, Rex.
But what Chris came upon as the sky became lighter from the obscured sunrise was empty, unmoving, like a ghost town. It should have been relieving that the sounds of drilling and hammering were replaced by the gentle tones of thin trails of sand flying peacefully across the landscape and the finches announcing it was dawn, but the shift was strangely unsettling. It was strangest that, in the wake of this blatant absence, instead of everything being gone and back to normal as he would've expected, many things were still left behind - some construction equipment, as well as two tents, one of which Martin had set off towards last night.
I know I said she gives up easy, but this - this is ridiculous! What did Martin do?
Chris followed in his brother's footsteps, towards that tent. Inside, there was an abandoned table, with some loose papers and pencils beneath it, like someone had cleared it in a hurry. There was also a rudimentary monitor setup, likely for security. Remarkably, it turned on.
I guess it was battery powered. Why'd she leave it behind? Curious, he fumbled with the controls figuring out how to pull up and rewind the captured footage, which he did up until the first moment he noticed a change.
He couldn't see much, but he heard voices through the static.
"We have to go, now!"
"But, you said -"
"Dammit, Rex, I was bluffing, okay? I don't have permits to work this site yet, and the state appraiser comes in three hours! If he sees this I'm ruined - I can get rid of a body that fast but I can't clean up all this blood! And if they're on his trail - even after that ridiculous message - there's no coming back from that!"
Chris' heart sank. He didn't wait for the video to finish, he ran back outside.
"MARTIN!" He screamed. "MARTIN?"
'A body?' She couldn't have already -
"MARTIN!" He cried his brother's name over and over, but heard nothing back but the desert wind, and the echo of his own slowly breaking voice.
Then, at the top of a ridge, he saw him.
Martin was lying at the bottom of a ditch, almost face-down, his head turned to the side. Chris didn't stand another second. He sprinted down the ridge.
Martin was alive. Thank god, he was alive. Even more surprising, he was awake, giving Chris a small smile, causing the dirt that had mixed with blood and was caked on his face to crumble slightly. He didn't seem totally there, though, as his faint expression didn't change, even as Chris was badgering him with panicked questions.
"Hey, there," Martin mumbled, "could you help me out?"
"Yes? What? Anything!" Chris begged in response.
"Could you kill me? Crew probably hates me so much, would do it myself, but…"
"What?" Chris cried. Why is he talking like this?
"S' joke," he muttered. "Hurts bad though, wouldn't mind…." He trailed off. "Stop…ing..." Martin closed his eyes.
"Oh, god. Oh, god oh god oh god." Chris sat back into his knees. He put his fingers on Martin's neck, feeling for a pulse that was there, but disconcertingly weak. Chris rolled Martin on his back to look for injuries. There was that nasty cut on his left side, and the corresponding part of the shirt looking like it had been through a blender. Red dots glistened along the edges of the fabric's holes, so Chris wasted no time in ripping off the sun shirt to get to the scrapes. Through the undershirt, it looked even worse. The red shown intensely on the white cloth, which was more and more starting to match the color of Martin's skin. However, Chris was baffled as to why he was turning so pale. The gashes were bad, and covered a good chunk of surface area, but none of them were terribly deep, and it seemed like overall he hadn't lost that much blood - he'd lost more in other instances, so had Chris, and what he saw here wasn't nearly to that level. Chris blinked. Was he even really that pale? Or was it just in the morning light? He looked at his own hands, but still couldn't make up his mind. He shook his head. It doesn't matter. He needs my help.
He called Aviva.
"So, how's our jokester," she asked, half sarcastically.
"Um," he said, "hurt pretty bad, actually. We may need all hands on deck."
Aviva's face dropped. "You're kidding? Ugh, now I feel like a big jerk!"
"What about Paisley?" Koki asked, while Chris, on the other end, had noticed Martin's Creature Pod, and picked it up.
"Already gone by the time I got here, I think she thought she'd killed him and panicked."
His fists clenched around both devices. Paisley. Even though she hadn't killed him, and Chris was glad of that, he was furious at what she'd done. They hadn't been working against Paisley for very long, and thus hadn't built up the resentment they had for other villains, but this certainly would go on her ledger. He knew she was cold-blooded, but to do this to Martin, someone so enthusiastic and kind, funny, supportive, willing to help anyone in need- it made his blood boil.
"Ok, we'll be there with a stretcher in 10," Aviva said.
"Thanks," Chris replied quietly through his anger.
He looked at Martin. What happened to you? His brother could get glum from time to time, and had his fair share of self doubt, but to ask for death, even as a dark joke, was unthinkable for him.
I wonder... did she say something to him?
As he took a deep breath, he saw something he hadn't noticed before - his right leg. It had been partially obscured by the other when Chris hurriedly turned Martin over, but taking a second look at the little sliver of if that was visible from the other side of the body, something was definitely wrong. Chris pulled the other leg off of it, and gasped.
Almost the entirety of the calf was black, not from the dirt, but from bruises alone. The skin that bore that blotchy hue was twisted and misshapen, like the world's most unappetizing lop-sided soft serve ice cream cone. It even had sprinkled: in some spots, the wear of the warped skin was too much, and jagged bright red marks zig-zagged across the stressed areas. Chris, mortified, gingerly stroked the tibia to find where it was broken, and was greeted not just with one incongruity, but many. It's broken, in so many places! However, as Chris traced the bumps more methodically, he discovered that it was even worse - not many breaks, but one giant one that snaked its way up his leg to the knee, from which the bone was dislocated. It was a spiral fracture, and the biggest, nastiest one he'd seen or even heard of.
He looked back at Martin. There was not a twinge of pain on his face. If there wasn't blood and dirt on him, you wouldn't even be able to tell he was hurt.
But is he at peace, or has he given up?
Chris was starting to understand Martin's earlier comment. Everything he's been through - and thinking it was his fault! Thinking we were mad at him - and then, an even more horrid realization came to him. They were mad at him. Martin was right, and wrong, and wrong and right. Chris felt horrible, for doubting him at all, but he felt just as horrible that Martin was either so unaware of the danger he was in, or so in denial about it, that some stupid meme could've ended up the last thing he'd ever heard from his brother and his best friend. And the new last thing, that Martin had said before he passed out, was asking Chris to kill him? Both messages were abhorrent, for completely different reasons.
Chris heard a sputtering and whirring behind him - the arrival of help, and ahead of schedule too. The hover bike was fully loaded, with side car, stretcher, whole crew, the works. They saw the fear in Chris' eyes, and rushed to join him.
"What're we working w- oh my god!" Koki recoiled when she saw the leg. Jimmy looked like he might faint.
"I-it's bad, but he's bleeding the most from his side," Chris said, fighting to maintain his composure.
"Jimmy, get the rag and the rubbing alcohol," Koki instructed, but Jimmy still stood, looking sick and dazed. "JIMMY!" This snapped him out of it. He rushed to the bike.
When they pressed the soaked cloth to Martin's wound, he didn't react at all. His eyelids didn't even twitch. He was just so still. Even as Koki elevated his shattered limb, he didn't move.
Chris started to hyperventilate. Aviva put a hand on his shoulder. "Chris," she said quietly, "you can feel terrible later. We have to focus now."
Chris looked around. Jimmy was calling the nearest hospital. Koki was trying to straighten the leg out. Aviva was pressing down on the gashes with another cloth. There wasn't much left for Chris to do that he would need to focus on. So, he just started running his fingers through Martin's hair. It did soothe him, a little, though while doing it, he couldn't bring himself to look at his brother's deathlike face.
"Aviva, he - I don't know if it was a joke, or he really felt that way but he - when I first found him, he asked me to kill him."
"What?" Aviva cried, though she was briefly pulled from her shock when Jimmy gave a thumbs-up, signifying a trauma center was making preparations for their future patient. "How could he say that? Even if it was a joke, that is so not funny."
"But I'm worried... what if it wasn't?"
She put her hand on Christopher's back. "Then we're all here, for him. Like he's always here for us."
Yeah, they had been mad at Martin. But that didn't mean they didn't love him, and wouldn't care for him fiercely until the day they all died. Martin would be fine - he'd wake up in a hospital bed, get his cast signed by everyone, apologize profusely for making them worry, and, as in any situation, come up with a million excuses to write off his mistakes. And they wouldn't believe any of them, and Martin would know that, and it would all be a big joke anyways. Even if it didn't seem like that now, while he was sitting in the blood and dirt.
Chris sighed. He couldn't wait for Martin to wake up, and realize how much they all really loved him.
He ran his fingers through his hair one last time, and smiled.
You have no idea.