Ch 6
Nidnene has barely returned to kitchen in time to stop the brewing food fight between Uno & Duo over the last pancake, having already taken Trey into tunnels with the other 'slow' people, when she hears a thud just outside the window. She peeks into the night beyond the small kitchen window, grabs her trusty shotgun without saying a word and seeing nothing she thinks, My mind must be playing tricks turning her attention back to her kits. "C'mon kits, time to get moving." She says and freezes for a second upon seeing what's lurking and scraping behind the window. Ashen, or rather something which looked like Ashen but she was pretty damn sure it wasn't -couldn't be him when she pulled the trigger to shoot at 'it' through the glass, taking the creatures head clean off with her gun.
"Maker's mercy in all heavens." She mutters over and over in an attempt to get a grip of herself until the whine of her frightened kits pulls her back on track. She quickly reloads the sawed-off shot gun, almost surprised at how little her hands shake, and grabs the kits in to her embrace before running out of the kitchen, nearly colliding with Rocket at the doorway, who was running towards the gun shots with several able-bodied men in tow.
"What happened, Nidnene? Who did you shoot at?" Rocket asks sounding almost annoyingly calm. Nidnene eyes at him in askance. "It looked like Ash but it sure wasn't him -not anymore."
"Flark me! This is just Krutacking frackin' fann-tastic! Like we need another problem on top of those damn lizards about to storm the Inn!" Rocket spits angry from both the loss of Ashen and the realization that from now on they'd need to kill twice anyone recently deceased.
"Excuse me, mister!" Nidnene retorts in dangerous tone, holding her hands at her hips. Reminding Rocket about the age of some of his audience.
Rocket is gathering a reply to her but changes what his about to say into confused "what the flark was that?"-look on his face when they all can hear heavy thuds and loud shouting in strange hissing language from behind the heavily blocked main door. The group looks at their each other before replying in unison "The Badoon." Rocket almost throws her out of the way in to safety behind the partition wall. She hears wood breaking and they start firing. Suddenly the whole building shakes and everything seems to go into slow motion. Rocket screams something which Nidnene can't make out. Thick clouds of dust and plaster rains down on them, suffocating and obfuscating everything. People are screaming, running, shooting happens somewhere else in the building too, but mostly its towards the main doors at the long wall of the saloon she realizes. Rocket again yells something unintelligible while she tries to drag her transfixed kits towards safety, to basement. She glances at her beautiful, brave husband drawing something out from his belt pocket, something which looks like a grenade. His about to throw it towards the Saloon and she feels a surge of pride for him. She can clearly hear the roof timbers creak in alarm, Rocket yells and abruptly there's a roaring bright flash. She instinctively jumps on top of her kits to shield them from it all and everything goes dark around her.
His about to reply her about his use of language! in front of their kits when they hear the shouting and banging from behind the barricaded front doors. The Badoon! They all curse in unison and Rocket turns around cocking the Badoon made infantry riffle before shoving Nidnene roughly behind the corner and out of their firing line. The front doors burst in and Rocket orders the troops to commence firing. The momentum of the attack shifts and even halts momentarily as the Badoon bodies pile up at the door. Abruptly the whole building begins to shake.
"Aah- Flark! The Badoon captain must have ordered the Monsters of Badoon to break through the walls. Take cover people!" Rocket yells and flips his helmet visor down to shield him from the dust and particles raining down on them and grabs a grenade, readying to throw it, when the roof beams creak alarmingly which makes him look up and shout a warning. It's just enough of a distraction for their firing to slow which offers a Badoon trooper the chance to slug in his own grenade. The explosion roars through the saloon, bashing Rocket and his men against and even through the partition walls when they're not immediately ripped apart by the blast. Rocket is saved from immediate death by the grace of his armor. He shakily tries to get up and fight, but the roof beams can no longer stand the abuse and with a heavy groan the ceiling falls on top of him.
She slowly comes back to her senses when someone grabs her by the wrists to hoist her up from the rubble and they sure as heck aren't spindly and hairy but big, muscular and quite scaly hands. Groping and checking on her to see if she's irrevocably 'damaged goods' or not. She screams in fright at the realization but all that comes out is a rasping cough and her head spins making her feel queasy. The alien lets out a nasty sounding chuckle while saying something in that raspy hissing language of theirs and claps a pair of odd looking shackles on her wrists. She's not given further time to explore her new 'jewelry' or what's going on around her by her captors when she is quickly escorted out of the ruined building with a handful of other survivors.
"Where are my kits! Maker's mercy my kits!" She realizes, crying out frantically and tries to turn around and run back in to the house but is roughly pushed back in line with the other prisoners though the lizard-man in charge gives her the strangest of looks as if understanding what she just said and grunts something to another lizard-man. His subordinate looks like his about to balk at the orders but quickly decides otherwise and scuttles back in. He soon returns with Nidnene's futilely resisting kits in his grasp and unceremoniously dumps them on her and the prisoner caravan trudges forward as soon as she's gathered her kits to cling from the hem of her skirts. She turns to thank the Badoon commander for letting her keep her kits with her but realizes from the way he looks at them that it hadn't been altruism that saved her kits but plain old greed. Child slaves were worth more than adults.
She glances behind her past the guard to get that one last look on the life she once led and for the longest time after, her wish is that she'd never had. The building was slowly catching flames and the saloon had been completely destroyed. Out of the corner of her eyes she glimpses the faith of those picked from the house who were too injured or infirm to walk on their own. The Badoon line them up against the wall to execute them and one by one the dead rise up which the Badoon then round up to herd them like cattle into a different direction. The only small solace is that she can't make out their faces. The guard grunts and prods her with his weapon, goading her to move faster and she numbly complies. What else was there to do but to obey? She had lost her first mate to disease and second to this war, but she still had two kits to care for and at that moment it was all that really mattered to her and she was willing to go through a great deal to accomplish it. Care the living first -mourning for the dead now would help no one.
Have to get... Up. Fight, fight, fight! Fight it you miserable piece of flark! They're all going to die if I don't. You can't let those bastards win...Rocket curses his weakness, struggling to keep conscious after the blast that had thrown him against the wall with enough force to kill almost anyone without a fuso-carbon and titanium enhanced skeleton and advanced combat armor. He climbs back to his feet and tries to shake off the blackness & splotches of colors swimming through his vision. He hears a timber groan above him and something heavy falls over him, knocking him out cold for good.
It's completely dark. The suit's lights weren't responding to commands -probably broken if the big crack in his helmet's visor is any indicator and something heavy lays over him, pressing his chest and making breathing hard. The ceiling has collapsed. Rocket realizes. His eyelids droop heavily but he slowly claws himself back to consciousness and carefully tries to move but his unable to wriggle even an inch. The incessant beeping is getting louder -the oxygen level of the suit is low and soon it will run out and being hermetic it means he'll inexorably suffocate. Normally the suit's reserves automatically replenished when enough oxygen was present in the surrounding atmosphere. Probably clogged from dust or the recent fire had left too much carbon monoxide in the air. The suit lets out a second, longer sequence of beeps. Two minutes left before oxygen was too low to remain conscious. After that he would have another minute or two depending on how much he had inside his own lungs. Probably not the worst way to go but it still sucked hairy Gorgonite glonards -all twelve of them. If he only could reach his knife he might have a chance to cut himself free. The suit chimes a third set of beeps, -oxygen level critical. he gives up on trying to reach the knife with his fingertips and admits to himself that; yes, life indeed mostly sucks and then you die.
"Is he... dead, Doc?" Roork whispers kneeling down beside doc Greyle at the basement. Boss hadn't been moving when found and Roork hadn't even been sure if he was still alive when they'd dragged him out from under the rubble once the Badoon had left.
"I don't know yet, Roork! Help me get this damn helmet off and I'll consider telling you" Doctor Greyle snaps nervously while trying to figure out how to remove the helmet without breaking it.
"Wait, look there's a latch right there..." Tan points out.
"Wait! don't just..." Roork hisses but his too late to stop the kid and the helmet seal loosens with an audible hiss.
"... go touching on what you don't know." He finishes grumpily.
"Well, his alive but definitely not looking good. Make a stretcher. It may actually be for the best that he isn't conscious right now. He'll move less that way." Greyle says but doesn't look terribly hopeful.
"All right people, you heard the man! Make a stretcher and Let's move out." Roork orders sounding quite a bit more confident than what he actually felt. In truth he had barely any plans aside from leading them out of the city via service tunnels. After that there was very little hope for keeping these people together and fighting the invasion with Ashen gone and if Guardian-Ranger wouldn't recover. Guardian-Ranger may have taken a shine on him but Roork knew what he really was -just a baker's apprentice playing at being a soldier. There was no way anyone would ever follow his lead if they had another choice. Behind him the people form up to a line in dour silence before following Roork into darkness. Trusting him with their lives to guide them to safety.
As far as Greyle knew Rocket should've died in the blast and even though he had survived the blast his innards might still be completely scrambled. Greyle's inner monologue ends abruptly when the line suddenly stops. A domino effect of bumping and cursing goes through the line, making him almost hit his muzzle on the back of the guy in front of him when the person behind him bumps against his back.
"What is it, why did we stop?" Someone frantically stage-whispers from the middle of the row. "There's something ahead of us..." Another voice replies from farther ahead. "Be quiet you idiots!" A third voice whispers frantically. The Doc tenses his grip around the handle of one of the Guardian-ranger's futuristic pistols. He wouldn't mind him borrowing them when it meant keeping him safe.
Suddenly a beam of bright light floods over the long column of survivors. There's a moment of confusion in the cramped-up space as everyone tries to grab and point their guns, batons and assorted homemade shiv's & Billy clubs at the light up ahead.
"Wait a minute! Stand down everyone! You're no Lizards!" Roork yells at someone.
"Well neither are you, I reckon." Someone shouts back and after some shuffling to get to the front of the line the Doc can see that Roork is standing a few feet apart from both groups, chatting animatedly with another Raccoonoid whose most assuredly wearing military gear and displays special forces group leader insignias on his lapel.
"Well, it's about damn time you guys showed up." Is all that he bothers to reply in greeting for being 'saved' which makes his savior slightly crestfallen.
Rocket wasn't pleased with this development. Well, he was obviously pleased to be alive, but he was not pleased to have found himself akin to a prisoner and wearing a hospital gown while being incarcerated in some ruddy, probably underground bunker, and being questioned like a common criminal by this woman, who during their first interview had introduced herself as Special agent Samase Brightwater. She was once again sitting across the table in front of him, readying to interview him though in Rocket's mind it was closer to interrogation.
"Now what the frakk is all this crap for? Why do you keep asking these stupid questions! You already said that you agree that I would be the best to have as your middle man for talks with the wider Galaxy!" Rocket grumbled throwing the electric pen on the table and refusing to go through the questions displayed at a pad placed on the table for him when she entered the room.
"That is not the issue here Galactic Guardian Rocket Raccoon." She announced stressing Rockets 'job title' and Rocket was sure there was a slight mocking undertone in that voice. Was she amused by his name, him or his group, their alleged intentions or perhaps all four?
"Then what the frakk are these psychic evaluations for? And don't say they're not, I recognize a psychic evaluation when I see one."
"We're trying to determine how dangerous your existence is to public safety and whether you are fit to be released among the populace without a chaperone once we have the situation back under control." Samase replies almost annoyingly pleasant like.
"Oh, okay. Sure." Rocket contends. He supposed that he was dangerous in his own way, especially when annoyed to his limit and he provably tended to carry enough fire power to blow up a small moon on a regular basis, but he'd still never before been forced to go through a psychic evaluation by the planet's authority before being allowed to save the planet in question. Either these people had never before met a Raccoon-in-space. Quite likely possible as there was only one of him, or something else was going on and they were stalling for some reason. It wasn't like he couldn't just rig open the flimsy lock in the door of this room he'd been awoken at -Still without really seeing anyone else except this woman, just taking and leaving might rob him from possible allies. He picked up the pen and pad from the table once again and started filling out the questions as requested, knowing that lying wasn't really going to be an option and too many ambiguous answers might be seen as a sign of mistrust or an attempt at deceit from his part. So, he grit his teeth, placing the finished questionnaire tablet on the table and waited for the woman to return.
"Well what do you think, is-is it -real?" Samase asks trying to hide her nervousness from her comrades.
"All tests say yes, it's real and not an android skin-job or some other kind of mechanical puppet sent down to infiltrate us by the enemy. Though there are some strange things about it when you look at the deep scans we took earlier." Doctor Kevorken Miles replies confidently.
"Look people, could we please use the word he, it gives me the willies to look at him while you refer him as it as if he'd have less value than a mere pet." Commander Ravn Nightshade voices his displeasure.
"Yes, the uncanny valley effect... while it -he looks fairly annoyed and bored right now we can't be sure how autonomous it is. However, I don't think it intends to be harmful to us or our home and the answers in the questionnaire that we've received from this... Rocket indicate as much." She says.
"What about those others... he mentioned about." Ravn said and shivered slightly when thinking about the revolting looking near hairless lizard aliens that had invaded their planet not even a week ago.
"Yes, most unsettling." she says rather ambiguously.
"So, all agree on the mental assessment summary?" Kevorken pipes up, wanting to get the meeting back on track.
"Yes, to summarize; highly intelligent and dangerous if provoked but otherwise stable and mostly harmless despite some indications of unspecified recalcitrance towards regulations & authority and minor mental health problems possibly due to combat related PSTD." She replies looking at her notes.
"Aye, I concur those findings. He does seem like a veteran of some kind." Ravn agrees.
"All right then next item; items carried. Allowed to keep them, aye or nay?" She says.
"Nay, can't let them get in to wrong hands and our weapon R&D dept. could really use an edge. Any edge." Doctor Kevorken notes with a certain gleam in his eyes.
"I say Aye. We should show some trust in our part as well. He has already shown considerable patience by letting us poke and prod him." Ravn counters.
"well that assumes it's not considered as expendable." she reminds her colleagues and continues. "I say aye as well, let it keep its possessions and weaponry but inform it that they must be kept deactivated and out of public sight during its stay here on the pain of imprisonment and banishment."
"Estimated risk level in one to ten? I say eight due to possibility of negative feedback from interacting with general populace he isn't already acquainted with." She notes scribbling something on the page paragraph.
"Six, he probably will comply with the rules once they're made clear, but it might be best to limit his interactions at first." Ravn says.
"Eight, I doubt it will heed them very vigorously as I have noted in my quick & dirty psychic analysis." Doctor comments.
"Very well... Seven it is then. We'll let it roam free with the stipulations mentioned while under covert surveillance in case of problems. Aye?" Samase summarizes.
"Aye -and you two, stop calling him it already." Ravn huffs.
"Aye - and aye, I could positively make a case study out of you and your sudden enthusiastic compassion towards this extraterrestrial procyonian, Commander Nightshade"
"Don't you even dare poking my brains Doc." Ravn replies sharply.
"Enough! We have to get these reports presentable and done for our dear Chairman Lyoko Talltree of the intelligence committee AKA our actual boss, in three hours." She reminds them snappily which quite pleasantly shuts up the unprofessional banter.
"...And then we have Mr. Rocket Raccoon, the apparent defacto leader of the 'resistance cell' of city district 16. Whom I will now quote from transcription as the video capture from his preliminary interrogation did not contain a mic." She explains flipping over her notes. "I refuse to co-operate with any such fascist pigs like YOU." and I quote again here "-And I swear to you, once I break out of this flarking chokey, I'll slather you Flarknards with Gunavian jelly and skullfuck you into your empty eye sockets while you're still alive and in great pain unless you release me right flarking now and reveal the whereabouts and/or fate of my mate, people and kits." Special agent Samase Brightwater finishes with a small sigh, deciding to leave out the rest of the rather vulgar but colorful & innovative descriptions of violence and sexual anatomy and his very threatening demeanor and body language which was evident in the film anyway.
"So, he is dangerous, unpredictable, mostly uncontrollable and therefore probably not someone we should let loose?" The chairman said after a fashion.
"Well yes, a very dangerous individual but not to us. I think. Well beyond his umm, rather colorful threats but he did turn more amenable once his initial anger and shock had faded." She corrects.
"Alright. What do we have gathered so far about him and 'his people' as he calls them." He says encouraging her to continue with her report.
"We gathered 387 civilians and 63 militiamen total from the service tunnels after the scouting parties had made the initial contact with their group. Their leader and near half of their fighting men had received severe concussions, energy weapon wounds and numerous minor lacerations from the battle fought against the invaders and he himself was still unconscious when found. His second; a man called Roork Shade water, claims that they initially were around five hundred strong and were in the process of evacuating to a more secure premise when they were attacked by the enemy which are now known as a starfaring civilization called the Badoon Empire. You will find the detailed report in the blue folder." She says indicating at the blue plastic folder in a stack of dozens of military and intelligence reports that littered his desk in haphazard piles.
"I'll look into it later. Thank you." He thanks curtly to which she just nods before continuing.
"During medical procedures done to mister Raccoon and once we had removed his rather intriguingly sophisticated suit of armor... We discovered that he has had a set of very extensive and unbelievably advanced bionic modifications done to him. Though I find the word distasteful to use I find no other word that properly describes his implantations short of calling them cybernetic. Pardon the use of a word of fiction." She apologizes almost timidly. His boss nods in acceptance. He knew how much she detested the use of 'fantastical' words in her reports, deeming them as unprofessional.
"So, his 'cybernetics', -was there something especially 'special' about them that they needed this much attention in reports?"
"Well, they seem to follow function and by the reports from eyewitnesses, they work very well in their function. He appears to be some kind of 'living weapon' or perhaps a 'super soldier'? But on whose side and under whose orders, I cannot determine. X-ray charts, sketches and photos of his implantation can be found at the end of my team's assessment of the threats posed by the Badoon invasion. He personally claims to be a member of 'The Guardians of the Galaxy'. Ridiculous title, I know, but it's what he insists on." She concludes.
"Well he certainly isn't siding with those Badoon scum, considering how earnest they wanted to kill him and his group." He notes rubbing his chin in thought. "Was there anything else I should pay special attention to?"
"No sir, apart from the curious note from the research team that there's something not quite right with his DNA."
The chairman just glances at her, encouraging her to keep going with the briefing.
"It appears that while he looks exactly like us and by his own admission can even reproduce successfully with our species, his DNA reveals that he most assuredly isn't like us, not really."
"In what capacity is he different from us? His kit seemed fairly normal to my eyes." Chairman Talltree comments somewhat sceptically.
"I'm not a geneticist but those who are say that his DNA seemed very purposefully altered - almost over engineered in comparison to our own. You know, leaner and meaner as the saying goes and much of this 'package' has likely been carried to his offspring." She elaborates further.
"Does this pose a danger to public safety or health at large?"
"According to our experts; assuming that his current and possible future offspring are carefully monitored and not allowed to further breed into population, the risk of genetic contamination should remain minimal."
"Alright, good work Agent Brightwater and in the meantime, you're to work as a liaison to this 'Galaxy guardian' and his surviving group. If he really has the means to help us fight back these invaders, then by all means offer all the aid you can muster with my blessing. We've already lost a sizable city, 1700 war machines, thousands of airplanes and another several thousand men and countless civilians in this 'war' without even a dent on our enemy. By this rate we'll lose the whole continent in less than a month. By the latest reports their numbers just keep growing with something which our soldiers have recently started calling as 'Zoms & Monsters' after the slang used by those 'militia men' we detained at City district-13." Chairman Talltree comments flipping through the files that were at the top of the pile in front of him.
"Yes sir. I'll do my best." Samase acknowledges saluting briskly and snaps her heels together before leaving his office.