Chapter 3: Shadows
"Pick a target. Any random target. Analyse and find out their weakness, and if you're ready, go in for the kill."
A sound advice coming from a man who slaughtered, killed, conned, and very ready to rape if he so please. Not a very sound man but how else should Turles pull this off?
The 18-year-old Saiyan boy sat in the shadows. Scruffy bangs shielding his eyes from being seen, his demeanour dead silent and observant as he watched his prey in the dark.
Pick a target. One…
Any target. Two… three…
Analyse them. They say that one has eyes that will stun you into immobility. And that one can turn you into stone. This one, however, looks gullible enough. His eyes skimmed down lower and instantaneously declined his own prey. He frowned, hard. She has claws.
"Every female in here is unfitting," Turles growled impatiently under his breath, grasping tightly on his pint of intoxicated beverage, face vacant and bored. The girls weren't looking his way and even when they did, their gazes were either curt, fleeting, fearful, or uninterested. And that made him question his confidence... and looks. He didn't think he was that scary or bad-looking.
Turles was nervous. Amond knew. The boy just wouldn't show it.
Being the only male adult close to the hormone-raging runt, Amond had been trying his best to make this easy for the kid. He remembered his own first time, a not so pleasant one, but it was good nonetheless. Ahh, to be young again.
It was a fine morning when he awoke to the sound of chirping birds, rustling leaves, and an explosion. They had parked their flagship on a water planet, shrouded behind trees in the middle of a rainforest. In the distant, violent waves crashed against the side of a cliff, the sound could not even drown out the colourful words which followed after the sudden surge of eruption.
The floor of the ship rumbled and shook, nearly throwing Amond out of his bed if not for his quick reflexes. Projecting curses of his own, he made headways towards the source of his plight, hoping that it wasn't an invasion of the Horcs. There was a hint of smoke and he followed it, only to have it lead him to none other than the quarters of his young captain, Turles.
The wall of Turles' room was blown through, showcasing to all who walked the hallway a destroyed washroom where broken pipes squirted cascading fountains of water with abandon. Amond scrutinised the damage boredly before laying his eyes on the culprit. Standing before the tattered sink drenched, unmoving, and pissed was Turles.
That was a month ago.
Amond drank his own alcoholic beverage in big gulps, feeling a headache coming as the tavern became increasingly busy. He turned to his captain and observed the boy with a sense of detachment, feeling ever-so-slightly at a loss for not being able to help him choose. That was something which Turles had to do on his own. How the hell would he know the kind of females that turned the kid on anyway?
"Saiyan-looking," Turles muttered incoherently, a towel draped atop his wet and wild tousled mane as he sat on the edge of his bed, tail languid, torso naked, and waist down donning a new set of loose pants. It stirred him a little to realise that eight years had passed since that fateful incident. Sometimes, as he slept and woke up to a bout of cold sweat, he sombrely wondered how he had come to accept that there were no more Father and Mother… even the short, annoying, feisty, too-damn-cute Cerilia who lived next door, their precious faces fading away, becoming grey memories from a life he had come close to not being able to remember.
The behemoth of an adult had to pry this information out of him, after reprimanding Turles - for the first time ever with a boost of stupid courage and sheer dumb luck he didn't know he possessed - for destroying the ship without thinking. He didn't go on after spouting a few choice lecture of 'don't be so reckless', 'do ye wanna get stranded and wait for the Galactic Police to pick us up?', and 'fuck'.
He was the adult here after all, because all he received was an unnerving bout of silence, averted gaze, and a faint 'mind your own goddamn business'. It was then it all clicked. As ruthless and vicious and uncouth and uneducated as he might have seemed to people, he was not that stupid and so he pried under the pretense of providing 'expert' guidance. He'd like to think of himself as the kid's guardian sometimes, not the most exemplary of guardians but a guardian nonetheless. And a simple empathetic response of 'I know; been there done that' and an apathetic attempt to walk away did the trick. His captain ordered him to resolve it ASAP.
The crowd had increased in number as the night prolonged. Amond's headache was on the dangerous rise and so was his captain's frustration, which in turn should Turles fail again, also meant his imminent death, possibly. This was their nth outing on their nth planet. He reckoned that Turles' problem was that he was too fickle. Will the kid choose already?!
He lolled his head back, shut his eyes, and groaned, "Have ye picked one?"
"Don't rush me," came Turles' growl. He continued to survey his selection and strategised his approach, dark eyes clamping down on each and every eligible and willing girl he could see, especially ones who were close to his age and fitted his bill. He drank slowly, a gulp to calm the senses and another to ease his frustration. A snore resounded beside him and his eyes swept towards the source.
His behemoth of a general had fallen asleep in his most crucial of times, in an extremely noisy tavern. Utter disrespect. He eyed the man with an incredulous glare, lips thinned into a single line, nostrils slightly flaring with contained annoyance. Another gulp was what he needed, and he swallowed the bitter drink with haste. He looked back at the crowd and noticed some people leering his way, the girls who initially caught his eye included. He blinked. Then he looked back at his behemoth of an associate, and back at the crowd, and something in him clicked.
The girls weren't looking at him because they were staring at Amond. Their glances were curt and fearful because they were afraid of Amond. They didn't show any interest, even when he swore he caught the slightest of wanton in their eyes when they gazed his way, because they were quickly put off by the bastard seated beside him, Amond!
Turles snapped and, without any more of that annoyance contained, grabbed the monstrous numbnut by the collar and hauled ass out of the watering hole, to hell with tonight's conquest. Like getting hit with an oncoming space pod, Amond jerked awake in shock and struggled in defense, but he could not resist against the strength of Turles' death grip that was so close to choking the living daylights out of him. He saw the ground as his face glided along the sandy surface, his slow dead brain unable to comprehend why the hell his captain was dragging him across the muddy threshold. He saw the same ground suddenly zooming out from his field of vision and realised a little too slow, a little too late that he had been flung into the air.
With his head aching, throat stinging, and vertigo kicking in at full speed, his reflexes were nowhere to be found. He fell unceremoniously face-flat into the earth, creating an unsightly crater, and it took him awhile to push himself up and come face-to-face with an enraged boss.
A fist covered by a fingerless glove came down hard, connecting with his cheek carelessly. For some reason, Turles despised Amond's face so much right now till the point of breaking. Breaking his face, so to speak. And so he punched the man again, and again, and again, until he was sure the numbnut was nearly out for the count. Amond wouldn't have even been able to stand against the teenage Saiyan in terms of strength anyway. Blaming it on the headache when he came around later would be easy at the best.
"The next bar we go to, you're staying put in the fucking ship!" Turles exclaimed, yanking the large man forward by the collar.
"B-but why, Cap'n?" Amond slurred, spitting blood and a tooth out the second the Saiyan shoved him away, back to the ground. He dared ask, "Am I not being helpful?"
"The fact that you were there did not fucking help at all!"
"But I didn't do nothing, Cap'n!"
"It's your face!" Turles snarled, stomping away. "Your face is so -GAH- I can't even!"
Amond pushed himself up, standing at his fullest height which easily towered over the Saiyan runt. He dusted himself off, expertly readjusted his dislocated jaw, and threw yet another careless stupid remark. He shrugged, smugly.
"Well, that explains why the lassies were looking at me. They probably just find ye unattractive."
If Amond was a jester, Turles would have most definitely laughed. But that wasn't the case. Such a remark garnered a haunting reaction out of the youngster. Dead silence. Turles halted in his tracks and the same incredulous glare he had bestowed upon Amond back in the tavern reared its ugly head once more, only this time the numbnut was able to see it. Thick muscular forearms bulged with the clenching of his fists, a stern scowl etched upon his handsome tanned face. Irate. Enraged. Annoyed. Bemused. Confused. Furious. Unable to even. What. The. Fuck?
The damned nutcase just called himself attractive, and him - Turles, the teenage Saiyan warrior who stood at a height of 168cm and still nicely growing, packed with muscles in all the right places, with a face that could possibly win any maiden's heart if only he would smile a genuine smile - ugly.
Face vacant and eyes seemingly bored with life, Turles nonchalantly raised a fingerless gloved hand, his digits loosely cupped to cradle an energy orb that was spurring to life. This was a big one, Amond could tell, else his captain would have used his index finger instead. The energy ball grew in size, the bigger it expanded the brighter it glowed, and Amond mused that it would have been a pretty sight to catch if only it wasn't directed at him.
The slight frowning of Turles' brows was the wordless cue, and he charged his palm, the beam launching off in an instant and lightly grazing the flesh of Amond's cheek. The energy beam bolted right past him and crashed into the tavern behind. There was an enormous explosion. Sounds of windows shattering, steel groaning, and fire crackling filled the night, but none of those sounds could conceal the painful wails of victims burning into crispy corpses.
Without a care or another moment to spare, the young captain stormed off towards the direction of his ship.
"Yeap. He definitely went in for the kill," murmured Amond under his breath, unfeeling of the cut on his flesh, as he chased after Turles. It'd be a wonder if the kid ever got laid, one day, maybe. "Hey, hey, there are lassies who actually prefer ugly guys and I know where to- hey, Cap'n!"
Turles leapt into the air and sliced through the dark night sky, making a beeline dash for home base. The sound of wind whipping violently through his hair and past his ears had never been this calming as it drowned out the unpleasant voice calling after him. He had half a mind to abandon his fool of a subordinate in this desert plane because the man obviously irritated him more than he should. Nearly every single time. As he had discovered just moments ago, the brute's face alone was proof. But in the end, absolutely apathetic towards everything yet still extremely annoyed, he zipped through the sky and left nothing but his shadow behind.
If you don't know how attractive Amond is, kindly Google it. XD
And thank you, Full Power, for the chapter title!