Gears of Comedy presents…
The New Man's Best Friend
by Stephanie G., aka MyFantasiWorld
Copyrights: Everything that is Gears of War belongs to Epic Games, People Can Fly, and The Coalition. Other material used here either belongs to me or other creators.
Rating: Rated M for language, violence and mild adult themes.
A/N: Here's the new chapter you've all been waiting for. Sorry if it took so long, but it's getting close to the end. Enjoy and R&R as always!
Summary: Since dogs, cats, and every known animal are now considered as food instead of pets to the human society, will Rockworms instead take over as humanity's new man's best friend? Follow Delta Squad and many of their friends on this random journey as they struggle to harness a friendship with these stone-shelled, cave-dwelling, constant-eating creatures of Sera!
Chapter 4: A Turn Of Events
THIRTY MINUTES AFTER ANYA'S CALL…
It was nighttime and the search for a Rockworm replacement was still unsuccessful.
Dom had tried checking around the bushes of the nearby forests, but he only found squirrels, which began attacking him for disrupting their territory. Tai and Carmine were searching the underground caves, but they only found Kryll, which began to pick at Carmine because he was hungry and decided to take a sandwich with him. Jace was unfortunately ordered to go through the building again. He found nothing but a case of bad headaches from flashing back to events to make time move quickly forward for him. Cole looked around the parking lot, but he didn't find a trace of Rockworms either. He only found an unexpected group of Thrashball fans who crowded him and begged for autographs, which he didn't deny every request given. Lastly, Marcus was struggling to look deeper in the forest and hoped that luck was on his side, but like the rest of his friends, he found nothing. However, he didn't try much to look for a damn Rockworm. He was worried about Anya.
As Marcus traced himself back to the headquarters, he switched on his com and called in to all his friends to rendezvous back to him. Everyone sighed in defeat, instead of Carmine who cried for his sandwich rather the epidemic they were going to face once Anya finds out the worm had killed itself.
Everyone regrouped and Marcus scratched the back of his head. He sighed dismally, "We're gonna have to call it in, guys. Looks like we're in deep shit from where I see it."
"Well, if somebody was paying attention to the worm, none of this would've happened in the first place!" Jace exclaimed as he forcefully pointed at Carmine roughly.
The young Private covered his head with his arms so Jace's finger wouldn't be poking at it. "I'm sorry! But I didn't want to take care of the worm! They made me! I would've been better off caring for my garden than get involved in this!" Carmine flinched from Jace's poking that seemed to get harder on every turn.
Tai got in-between the young soldiers and said, "Take it easy, fellas. This isn't what we should be worrying about right now. Miss Anya sounded like she's in danger."
"Tai's right," Dom agreed, "She said something about Locusts. Do you think they're planning something on them?"
Marcus replied, "I think so. She wouldn't call anything urgent if it wasn't Locusts involved."
"Or if she needed you to do something urgent for her! Know what I mean?" Carmine joked and winked at Marcus, who suddenly snarled at him to make him cower and hide behind Jace.
"I think we should go check it out," Cole suggested, "Whether Miss Anya finds out the worm died or not, we still gotta make sure her, Baird, and Dizzy are okay."
Jace then recalled, "True, but don't you remember what Anya said. Something about us 'not going over there'? What did that even mean?"
Marcus thought it over just as everyone else did, but after a few silent moments he shook his head, "I don't know, but we're not going to stay here to find out." He turned to Cole who took the hint by giving him a nod and proceeded to go into the building. Before following the Thrashball player, he turned to the rest of the group and ordered, "Dom, you better come too. Tai, Jace, and Carmine, it'll be best if you catch any luck in finding a worm. If not, you guys don't say a word about what happened here to Hoffman. I'll take the blame myself."
The trio who were ordered to stay behind looked at each other with worry. However, their expressions seemed to soften in relief, knowing now Marcus was going to take the blame for the dead Rockworm.
Jace voiced out on behalf of the other two and sighed, "Oh, thanks a lot, Marcus! You're a true friend! Well, I guess we'll see you guys later!"
As they waved and chanted out their farewells with a grin they all disappeared, leaving Marcus with an unsatisfied look and a feeling of regret for having such high courtesy for his comrades.
SAME TIME, BACK AT DIZZY'S FARM…
Anya wasn't comfortable without her armor on, but she didn't let it phase her when Dizzy had insisted of letting her use Toby as "guard dog" for the upcoming battle they were expecting to appear within any moment. Toby was leashed with hefty chains, and in order for her to keep the rings from pinching her hands every time he made it go taut, she wore a pair of gloves Dizzy would use to handle the Kryll whenever he changed their newspaper from their cages.
On her other hand, though, she armed it with the Boltok she always kept hidden inside her boot. Baird had wondered how she went about the day carrying it. He was probably glad she didn't use it when he tried to make the moves on her earlier.
Speaking of which, the blonde man was able to acquire a set of weaponry of his own within the small makeshift garage Dizzy created to hold an entire stock of weapons, ammo, fuels, and rations. He even stored lots of unusual portraits of himself and his supposed-to-be-his-wife rig. Some were a bit decent with common poses that couples would do with each other, like kissing or cuddling. Yet, there were some so exotic and too much for the blonde to bear, the sight of them almost made him run out and barf, but the amounts of weaponry he saw distracted him from doing so.
The western went over to a Lancer hanging on the wall and tossed one at Baird's direction. "Here ya go, son, y'all may not have any armor to protect ya, but it won't mean shit when ya got these babies!" He whisked out his own Lancer and made sure to brandish the chainsaw to prove his statement.
"Well, I'm not gonna ask where you got all this from, but at least you're prepared when those monsters you call 'pets' are ready to turn on their master."
"Nah, boy! Ma critters won't ever lay a finger on me at all! This is all just ma hunting gear! It makes hunting creative, y'know?"
Baird was perplexed and had to scratch his head in nervousness when déjà vu crept over him. "Wow, well… can I ask you something? Are you related to Bernie by any chance?"
Just as Dizzy was going to laugh at a silly notion, even though he didn't know what he meant by it, he decided to change the subject while checking for any damages or malfunctions to his weapon. "So remind me again, Blondie, how did them Locusts know y'all were going to be here?"
"It's simple, man, those scumbags must have took one of my notes about this little project I've been trying to figure out. I think I had written on it about visiting you and that's probably how they found out."
"Really? That's it? Well, shoot, Son! Ya should at least get a journal or something before they find out ya secrets! Heck, it'll be like finding out ya sleep with a teddy bear or something."
"Hey, I only need to 'cause the pillows lost their cushion, alright!"
"Um… I was just laying that out as an example, Boy."
"Oh," was the only thing he said and stood silent for a moment.
Without making it awkward for the two of them, Dizzy kept on packing his belt bags with magazines and returned to asking, "Ahem… So anyway, what's this little project y'all were talking about? Does it have something to do with them Locusts ya tried to catch?"
Baird was glad he strayed from his revealed secret, and answered while he packed himself a few grenades, "My project is about trying to find a way to communicate with Rockworms and convert them into pets we can handle. I thought it would be a neat discovery for me to find out first, but I had trouble figuring it out until I saw those Locusts walking around the headquarters." As he clipped on a magazine to his Lancer with the satisfying sound of a click, he continued, "And to answer your question, yes. These Locusts had something to do with this. I had planned to capture them so I can learn about the language through interrogation or something - I don't know, I haven't figured out how to yet - but they were hard to catch without killing them."
DURING THE MONTH OF ANYA SECRETLY CARING FOR BLACKY…
Baird was sleeping in his bed with a stuffed bear curled around his arm. He was peacefully dreaming about machines he was successful in fixing up, until disrupted by the sound of broken glass. He sat up abruptly and got out of his bed to investigate the source of the noise.
As he came to the main part of his room, he found his window broken and its glass spread across the floor, but he found no sign of anything that had caused the destruction. Assuming it could be some Kryll accidently crashing through, he grabbed one of his tools he normally discarded around the place and continued to look around. Before he set to check the bathroom, he heard metal tinkering in his kitchen.
Slowly and warily, he raised his weapon and crawled along the wall to keep from exposing himself. As he peaked around the corner, he couldn't believe his eyes. Instead of expecting to see those nasty, flying creatures, he saw three Locusts, a Hunter and two Drones, shuffling through cabinets and the discarded papers of his "Wild-To-Pet Converting" project.
One of the Drones was happily discovering boxes of food and eating all of its contents one by one. The other Drone was messing around with the kitchen utensils, but unfortunately cut himself on the hand with a knife at the process. The two Drones seemed to be familiar, maybe the ones he had met not too long ago, but the Hunter was entirely new. The Hunter who may have been the one leading the other two, given by his gargantuan size, was busy reading through some of Baird's paperwork. He seemed more intent on searching for something while he disregarded the mess his other comrades were making in the kitchen.
"Ah crap!" the Drone who cut himself yelped when his hand bled over the counter, "That human object almost took my hand off! Why would they have that in here?!"
"Oh c'mon, Matt," the other Drone gurgled over a mouthful of sugar, "I already told you that those are knives. They have it here to cut their meat and stuff! Now get over here and try this…" he brought the package of sugar in front of his face and tried to make out the title, "Shoe…shoe-jar!"
The Hunter growled menacingly and turned to the two Drones, "Louie! Matt! Quit your bickering! We cannot have the human know of our presence!"
"Sorry, Steve," they simultaneously apologized.
As Steve huffed in annoyance, he went back to his own search and grabbed a specific paper which was scribbled in small notes. With the help of learning the human language with his high superiors, he read through the paper with ease and snarled in satisfaction. "Interesting. I believe we might get rid of more than just one of the Warriors." Stuffing the leaf into one of his bags he ordered the two Drones to attention, "Brothers, we're done here. Let us leave at once."
Before they were about to retreat out of the area, Baird took a chance to jump in and stop them in their tracks while raising his tool over his head, "Not so fast, assholes! You guys aren't going anywhere!"
The Locusts stood in silence. They almost seemed to be taken aback by Baird's unlikely appearance, but when they noticed how he was dressed almost bare naked they straightened up and guffawed. Baird didn't take notice of it until he looked down and remembered he was just in his teddy bear boxers.
Then the laughing Drone named Louie pointed straight at him, "Now this is why I love my job!"
He could've been embarrassed of the moment if not for the fact they were Locusts ready to kill him once they were finished with their laughter. So he excused himself from the room, put on a pair a pants, grabbed the shocking rod he saved for taming the Locusts for his experiment, and ran back to the kitchen. As he jumped back into the same place, he raised his new weapon up, but then he noticed they were all gone.
Muttering out some curses on letting them escape, he decided then to look through his papers to see if anything went missing. There was only one small piece of parchment he couldn't find in the stack, but had remembered it was the one he scribbled with notes that weren't of any significance.
Sighing out of both reluctance and disappointment, he went to his couch and slumped on it. He took a study of his electric rod for a moment and then strayed to a red color in his peripheral vision. Just then, he shot up from his seat and noticed it was a track of blood spots leading from the kitchen then out of the doorway. He had just remembered one of the Drones named Matt had cut himself with the knife and was probably unaware of the path of blood he had just laid for the blonde man to follow. Under sheer determination, he quickly went back to his bedroom to completely clothe himself and start following the Locust's blood.
TENTH FLOOR OF THE COG'S HEADQUARTERS…
The Locusts didn't seem to work well with human technology, Baird had thought, when he found the button to the tenth floor in the elevator shattered in. He had assumed they didn't know how to work with using buttons and used brute force to slam it in, or the fact their talons were too long to press it correctly. Either way, he had found the rest of the bloody trail and continued to follow it.
He seemed near to reaching the end of his destination when he came upon a door, but when he came to see a nameplate reading "Hoffman", he almost shit his pants. Just before he thought to ram the door down, he instead carefully turned the door knob and slightly opened it to where he could see through a crack. Fortunately, the Locusts who ransacked his kitchen were within the office, almost as if admiring the decorative room displayed before them.
It seemed Baird was on time to catch them, though, when the ones named Matt and Louie who were searching through Hoffman's desk stood in complete attention to their leader, who he recalled was named Steve. They were ready to leave from the way he saw them pay lots of attention to the large window in front of them. He wasn't sure what they were planning to do, but then within moments he saw a Reaver from the horizon flying towards the window.
The leader then instructed, "Now, Brothers, we will jump at the exact moment she flies by when I command the order."
"Um, can we break the glass first? I think it'll hurt us if we jump through it," Louie said while pointing a claw at the large glass in front of them.
"Don't you mean, why didn't we just go downstairs to get out of the building than jump out from the tenth floor?!" Matt countered logically, almost ready to piss all over himself in fright.
Before the Reaver came close to them and the Locusts were ready to sprint through the window, Baird took action and flew the door open, charging his electrical rod, and ran towards them.
The Hunter took notice of Baird and hollered, "JUMP!" They shattered through the glass and leaped as far as they could to successfully catch their ride. When they scrambled into their seats, Steve looked behind him to account for his two Drones. Louie was manning the gun in the far back, but for some reason Matt wasn't accommodating the seat in front of him.
Back at what used to be Hoffman's window, Baird had struck Matt with a large amount of electricity with his rod before the Drone managed to jump out. The Locust then started to thrash in pain, screaming and clawing the air senseless, and subsequently, making him fall forward and out of the building to his demise on the concrete below.
The blonde soldier looked over at the Locust dismembered at the ground below and then to the rod in his hand, "Oookay… now I know this thing's not gonna to help me capture a Locust." He then inspected the broken window before him, shrugging, and mumbled to himself, "Huh, good thing Hoffman just went on his vacation. Ah well, I'll make sure to put up a new one after I replace that button to the elevator." He took one last look at the Reaver disappearing into the sky and went back to his room to get some sleep, and too tired of worrying about the mess the dead Locust made.
While back on the Reaver, Louie exclaimed to the Hunter, "Steve! Matt didn't make it! Should we go back to get his remains and make a proper burial for him?"
Steve took a moment to look back and sit in silence. Then finally he replied flatly, "No."
With that answer, the Drone frowned sadly and slowly turned his head to look back to where Matt had died. He felt disappointed he had to die this way. He had wished he could've noticed the human attacking them before they made their escape. Now, he had to be haunted with the fact they couldn't go back to retrieve his body and honor his death as a noble sacrifice for the Locust race.
He was on the verge of tears when he realized something and said, "Oh, okay. He was a dick, anyway. He stole my favorite helmet!"
"Now, as much as I liked killing that last one, I need to make sure they're alive this time. The only way I can learn how to use the language is to get it from the one that can teach me it. Any other method is a lost cause."
"Ah, I see now," Dizzy nodded as he finished packing up with weapons and ammo during the flashback, "Well then, if it's all that important to ya, I could surely use ma expertise and help catch them critters for ya."
"Sure, Dizzy, but just make sure you don't kill them," Baird warned him but not to roughly, knowing he knew what he was doing.
Just then, a loud screech engulfed their ears and they quickly covered them with their hands to keep their eardrums from popping. The windows of the garage cracked and broke into pieces. Even the beer inside the large wooden boxes Dizzy stored in the room broke and spilt its contents all over the floor. After the screeching stopped, Dizzy went over to his shipment and sobbed.
"Oh, dammit to Freddy! That was all the beer I had for this whole month!"
Baird sat up quickly with his Lancer in hand and exclaimed, "Forget about that! Looks like the cavalry's here!" Baird took a dash out the garage while trying to make Dizzy catch up and forget about his precious cargo by tugging him along. They both headed for the backyard, but were stopped by the sight of a dozen Wretches wreaking havoc on Dizzy's house.
A few Wretches scratched around the building, making much of the logged walls splintered and looked like it was chewed up by woodlouse. Some busted out through windows carrying certain items with them, such as picture frames, a vase, a television set, and a pair of polka-dotted boxers, which Baird guessed might've belonged to Dizzy. The Wretch even placed it on his head to humor his other Wretch friends and make them laugh.
Dizzy gasped and yelled out, "Hey there, now! That's ma favorite pair of boxers y'all are messing with!"
"And a nice pair you got there too." The mechanic snorted, also amused by the Wretch's goofing-off.
But the fun was spoiled as soon as Dizzy went to them and sliced up every one of them with his chainsaw. As soon as he was done he huffed and puffed and picked up his boxers, delighted they weren't damaged under the attack. However, the boxers fell into pieces moments later making the cowboy drop his shoulders and frown.
Baird went up to him and shouldered his arm, "Hey, you can always go commando. Everyone's doing it."
Just then, a loud feminine scream was emitting in the back area of the house. They quickly dashed to the source of the noise but stopped when they found that Anya was not the one screaming, but a Wretch who was unfortunately caught in-between the jaws of Bloodmount Toby.
The small monkey-dog creature was holding on for its life as it acted like a car jack trying to keep a bear trap from closing in on him. Both Baird and Dizzy watched them for a while and noticed Anya was making progress isolating all the approaching Wretches with wonderful marksmanship with her Boltok. Every wretch that almost grazed her blonde hair only received a blast in the face, groin or any other vulnerable place she managed to get. It made Baird get a bit excited in the pants.
"Damn, if we weren't under a serious battle right now, I'd say that's hot!"
Dizzy was almost jumped by a Wretch but he kicked it like a coming soccer ball and asked, "So… are both of ya dating or something? I thought she liked Marcus."
"No, we're not dating or none of that bullshit. She couldn't have me even if she tried." The mechanic snarled at the thought of Anya tazing him earlier in the day. He then ducked from an incoming Wretch who was blown away by one of Anya's shots.
No more Wretches had come out and Anya was panting from exhaustion. After catching her breath, she stood as though she was standing in watch for any more Wretches to shoot at. Baird then noticed she had a scratch on her face and a scowl that read "Don't fuck with me or you'll regret it", while Toby stood next to her with a wretch arm hanging from its jaw. With them together, he would've mistaken Anya to be a blonde, sexy, badass assassin taming a demon-dog pet as her lackey. She was getting into the combat a bit too much, he mused. Either way, he was getting turned on by all of it.
As they regrouped and with Anya changing back to her innocent, feminine nature, which both Baird and Dizzy were reluctant to see her back as, they noticed there were still Wretches around them. The group started to pull up their weapons to aim at the first one ready to jump at them.
Strangely, they didn't.
Instead, they were all standing in their place, staring them down with their beady eyes and clawing the air with their razor sharp nails. It's as if something told them to stop attacking them. Even so, the soldiers didn't think to let their guard down and still kept their defenses up. Toby also thought the same when he continued to growl threateningly at their unusual performance.
"What in the hell? What are they all doing?" Dizzy whispered, thinking a regular tone of voice would startle the Wretches into attacking them again. Nobody answered, though, so they stood their ground and hoped they found out soon what was going on.
After some moments of stillness, a whistle hung in the air and all the Wretches jumped into the shadows of the forest. Lowering their weapons, everyone, even Toby, looked at the small monsters leaving with perplexed expressions. Toby was then ready to yank his chain out of Anya's grasp and follow the creatures to wherever they were going. Except his maternal instincts kicked in and he began to growl at a source he barely noticed was upon them all this time.
"What is it, Toby?" Anya asked the Bloodmount as they aimed their weapons again but towards the forest.
"I think we're about to find out, Ma'am!" Dizzy answered as two forms emerged out of the forest with a giant leap and landed carefully on the ground ten feet away from them. However, one of them lost its footing and fell backward.
"Don't worry, I'm okay!" The right one lifted his arm to indicate he was fine.
"Ugh, imbecile." The left one shook his head at his partner's disposition.
The group finally realized it was the Locusts the mechanic had mentioned about and aimed their weapons at them ready to squeeze the life out of their triggers.
Dizzy sniffed through his nose and smirked, "Heh, did ya come here for a death wish? 'Cause y'all sure are wishing for one if ya thinking of facing us!"
The Locust Hunter then spoke deadly, "Hmph, we know our place when we see it, human." As he turned to examine the soldiers, he caught sight of the familiar male blonde and smiled, "Ah! Well if it isn't the one they call Baird!"
The mechanic made an annoyed face and remarked, "Yeah, thanks, appreciate the recognition. Now are you just going to monologue about some crap or are we going to fight?"
"We will fight, Warrior, but I only wanted to give you my thanks for giving us the opportunity to get rid of you filthy humans before you all die."
"As much as I like thank-you's being exchanged between us, I can't give you a welcome for it. You see, I need to capture one of you guys so I can keep doing my experiment, and I'm pretty sure you are aware of what it is after you barged into my home. So with that said, I hardly doubt we'll be taken down that easily, because this time… you're not escaping." He then smirked in assurance of his words, "And I intend to keep it that way."
The Drone cupped a hand on one side of his mouth and whispered to the Hunter, "Huh, and he said we were gonna monologue."
However, the Hunter seemed to ignore his companion and responded to Baird with a chuckle, "I really hope so. It's been a while since I got to slaughter a challenging kind like yours." Toby's growl was beginning to heighten more in volume and the Locust leader took notice of him as he turned to stare at him. "And since you won't live long enough to know of our language, I wouldn't mind giving you a small… demonstration."
The last word gave a small chill to Anya, as she and the group watched the Hunter began to speak in an unusual dialect. After a while, Toby started to stir uncomfortably in his chain until finally howling in pain. Dizzy then quickly took to his side to calm his Bloodmount down.
While the western was caring for his pet, Baird and Anya became aware of his other creatures in the farm writhing and screaming in pain as well. Every Rockworm, Kryll, Reaver and Wild Ticker within their pens and cages howled and screeched at the language the Locust was performing. As quickly as they started to cry they began to calm down. However, all their eyes were glowing red and fixed on the human beings.
The two blondes gasped at the transformation the creatures took. Baird even noticed how Toby turned to Dizzy and snarled menacingly at him. Before the creature could open his maw and catch the western's head, Baird jumped in and kicked the Bloodmount in the face to make it pace back a few steps and rescue the owner.
Dizzy, still oblivious of Toby's transformation, exclaimed, "Hey, what did ya do that for!"
Baird glowered at him, "Dizzy, he's being controlled with that language! I think it's what the Locusts use to talk to the worms. Hell, even all of these creatures too!"
Anya worriedly cried out, "This isn't good, we're outnumbered!"
When they all set themselves into defense mode again, Dizzy stared at Toby, who now was baring his teeth at him instead of the enemy. Clenching his jaw, he yelled out to the Hunter, "Dammit, you vermin! Ya gonna pay for what ya done!"
The Locust Hunter smirked and plainly said, "Hmph, not so likely." He brandished his own weapon, which what appeared to be a large sword, and so did his partner with a Hammerburst.
The Locust Drone who was silent all this time finally spoke, "Yeah, but let's make it quick! I just ordered some pizza. I don't want it to get cold while we're still battling, y'know."
The Locust Hunter then slapped the Locust Drone upside his head.
A/N: Yep, the showdown's about to begin, and it'll be in the next and, hopefully last, chapter of this story!
Hope you guys enjoyed it so far too, because I had put a lot of effort and time to come back and finish this story. Remember, leave a review. Reviews are what keep me brainstorming.