[Namek] Bad Medicine

[Juno]

“Get your hands off of me, you asshole!”

“We’ve got to take you to the medical bay, sir,” the male nurse implored him, tightening his grip on the half-Saiyan’s arm. Juno’s scowl deepened, and he jerked away from the medic, panting heavily.

I’m not going to some damn med-bay.

The medic’s expression mimicked Juno’s; a frustrated frown. He bent his knees, and began to dig around inside the fanny-pack that was hanging off of his waist — Juno had to stifle a laugh, because he seemed to be having a rather tough time searching blindly for whatever it was he was searching for.

Of course, none of this was his fault — he had enough coherent thoughts to know that the pilot of the shuttle was to blame. He’d been through space before, and was very comfortable with the journey. But this pilot, whoever the hell they’d hired to fly this batch of recruits from Earth to Namek, obviously hadn’t aced his end-of-course exam when he was tested for his flying license. The turbulence had been absolutely ridiculous; even with his seat-belt on, Juno had been flung this way and that around his corner of the ship, and the result was a churning stomach.

One trip to the in-flight bathroom to puke a little, and they thought he had a terminal illness or something. It wasn’t that serious — and the more this encounter continued, with other recruits filing past them as if nothing was disturbing their sunny day, the more he began to think that this gender-bending male nurse was the only one who viewed the matter with even the slightest sense of urgency.

“I was a bit seasick,” the seer proclaimed, “Nothing to be worried about. Focus your efforts on someone who really needs them.”

“Sir, you weren’t on a boat, you’re having delusions,” the nurse evaluated, pulling a syringe out of his fanny-pack and approaching the black-haired boy. The impulsive warrior scoffed, and lunged forward, grasping the wrist of the hand and holding it steady. This guy wasn’t going to inject anything into him — especially not a sedative, which he had a sneaking suspicion was what the shot was filled with.

“It’s a mutually-exclusive expression,” Juno informed his counterpart, “Don’t we call the vehicle that traverses the galaxy a spaceship? I see no reason why seasick isn’t an applicable term — mainly because spacesick just sounds plain fucking stupid.”

Juno chuckled a bit — it did sound really idiotic, spacesick. He let go of the nurse’s hand, and smirked victoriously, turning to walk away. Unfortunately, the meek little man wasn’t about to let what was probably his first patient ever get the better of him. Seconds after spinning away from his adversary, Juno felt the cold metal of a needle sinking into the back of his neck, and slowly, his senses washed away from him, and he was out like a light, just one word escaping his lips before he’d lost the ability to speak altogether.

“Shit.”

~ + ~

Slowly, things began to return to focus.

Juno jolted upright as soon as he’d woken up — perhaps a bit too quickly, to be completely honest. A dizzying sensation attacked him, and he squeezed his eyes shut to attempt to maintain focus of his thoughts. After a few seconds, he remembered the events that had transpired just before he’d fallen unconscious, and Saiyan fury began to bubble in his veins.

White, fluorescent light filled his vision the second he opened his eyes, and after a couple of moments and an adjustment of his vision, he noticed that he was inside a small, makeshift hospital room.

The walls were whitewashed, like a hospital’s, but if he recalled right, most of the buildings on Namek were either a light grey or hospital white, both on the inside and on the outside. Forced to look for other signs of his location, he had spotted a tray of different drugs and medicines sitting on a small push-cart to his left, and that had given away his location.

That meant that the male nurse had been successful; he couldn’t specifically remember how — it must’ve been some sort of trickery; it didn’t seem likely he’d beaten Juno in a fight — but he knew that was the way he’d gotten in this predicament.

“Alright, soldier, vitals look clear,” a voice said from his right. Juno’s head whipped in the direction of the doctor’s analysis, and shot a glare that would kill if looks were weapons. “You don’t look to be as sick as Nurse McCoy thought you were, so I’m going to go ahead and let you go register, all right?” Narrowing his eyes, Juno slid off of the bed, and brushed past the doctor, going out the door without another word.

Nurse McCoy… ha, Juno simmered. Who did this guy think he was, the badass version of a Grey’s Anatomy slash Law and Order crossover character?

“Juno — uh, sir,” the doctor’s voice shouted from behind him. Juno spun around casually, looking at the medical officer with a quizzical expression. “I was just wondering if you’d registered at either of the locations, yet. Warriors, troops… you know.” The half-Saiyan’s puzzled expression almost gave away his answer.

“If I have, I haven’t been informed of it,” he replied.

“Good, good,” the doctor nodded, “Because I could actually use you here, if you’re interested.” Juno raised an eyebrow, interested, and allowed the doc to continue his proposal. “You see, there’s plenty of men and women out on the front lines — which means there’s plenty of men and women that are going to be wheeled in here, and to be honest, I’m not sure if my paramedics can get into the more hotly contested zones to pick up the injured folks before the enemy gets to them, and either captures them or finishes the job. Under any other chief medical officer, those guys might’ve been left to die, but I think that they’re salvageable; so I need stronger folk like you — I checked your power level, yes — to go in there and get them.”

The hybrid stood for a moment, silent. He mulled over the thought in his head — he’d always been on the front lines, and while he hadn’t been the most sucky soldier in his regiment the majority of the time, it had never really worked for his tastes. Perhaps working for this doctor, as sort of a fighting medic, for lack of a better term, was his calling… perhaps Nurse McCoy had had a (albeit undiscovered) purpose, and getting Juno to this place was the entire reason he’d had to go through being spacesick, and being sedated.

But all of that predestination crap was getting dreadfully overdramatic, and he didn’t want to feel hypocritical after the dramatization of the war that had already taken place in the foreboding ‘distress signal’ pipelined to different television screens across the galaxy. If nothing else valuable could be divulged from this, then, he would’ve turned and walked away, ‘defied fate’ and given up on this opportunity to go be a member of the gun-toting, hoo-rah army. But this was a new, intriguing job that he could try, and plus, it guaranteed that he’d be right in the middle of the action, just in the job description. It seemed like too exciting an offer to pass up, so Juno looked at the doctor, and smiled approvingly.

“I’ll do it, doc.”

“Oh, that’s absolutely outstanding!” the white-bearded surgeon cheered, almost dropping his clipboard in the excitement. “Your team — the first team of ‘militarized medics,’ as I like to call them — is waiting in the Medical Docking Bay. Go familiarize yourself with them; they’re a motley crew, but they’re exceptional at their jobs.”

“I’d settle for nothing less,” Juno nodded with a smile, and followed the doctor’s pointing finger down the hall. A slight nervousness made the hairs on the back of his neck tingle, but he knew he probably had nothing to worry about — his powers and techniques were unique, and they were useful, so he was quite sure he’d find his place amongst this ragtag band of fighters.

“Hey, dude with the tail!” a grizzly voice yelled; the half-Saiyan’s tail perked up at a mention, and its owner turned toward the source of the voice. A red, reptilian alien leaned against a ship, smoking a cigarette, and holding a shotgun in the other hand.

Next to him, a short, stubby purple alien nursed a can of soda before crumpling it up and tossing it aside. It was obvious that Juno was going to be the intellectual one in this group before he’d even reached them. After his initial observations were completed, he took several long strides, and reached the two alien warriors in a matter of fifteen seconds. The shotgun-toting alien was the first to speak; he seemed to be the owner of the grizzly voice, which just made him sound more badass than he already looked, thank you very much.

“I’m Boomstick,” he nodded, spitting the cigarette onto the ground and then squelching its fire with the stamp of his boot.

“Is that because of… uh, your big boomstick?” Juno asked with a chuckle, gesturing toward the shotgun.

“Don’t flirt with me, monkey boy,” Boomstick replied, painting a smirk on his crimson face and lifting the shotgun into a readied position. The purple alien, who was, again, considerably shorter than either of the two warriors, grumbled angrily.

“Oh, look, Boomstick’s got him a jokester friend he can flirt with,” he mumbled impatiently, “Anyway, I’m Rex.”

Juno nodded, smiling. “Appropriate.”

“How so?”

“I don’t actually know, it just seemed like the right thing to say,” Juno laughed, “But I’m Juno. I don’t have any big guns or a big mouth, but I’ve got big power. Like, abilities and all that shit.”

“Sounds like your mouth’s pretty damn big to me,” Rex smirked.

“Well, we’d better head toward our ship — the battle’s already begun,” Boomstick relegated the topic back to their duty. Juno frowned.

“Wait a hot damn second, there’s no chicks in this squad?” the lady-killer asked. Rex shook his head no, and the half-Saiyan cursed under his breath. It’d been a while since he’d worked with a fighting girl, and besides, he always worked better when there was someone to flirt with fighting alongside him. It was just sort of a motivating factor for him, that’s all. “Well, damn,” he said, “This is a frigging testosterone overload, how do they expect us to get anything done?”

“Well, there was supposed to be a girl, but she hasn’t shown up yet,” Rex mused, “So Boomstick and I figured she’d chickened out. But he’s right — we’d best head toward the hover-cars, see which one we’re assigned to. The war’s started, people are already dying, so we’ve got to get moving.”

The hybrid sighed — well, he supposed that the excitement of being a ‘militarized medic’ was a fair tradeoff for not having a hot girl to stare at while he fought. And, he thought, in times of need, he could always just reminisce about fighting alongside chicks such as Sophia, or Sage, or even that pink-haired vixen Victoria he’d met during that civil war.

He smiled, pleased with himself. He prided himself on his intelligence, and his ability to always find an efficient solution for whatever personal problem was currently plaguing him on the field of battle. A hell of a soldier, that Juno.

[Juno]

“Look, it isn’t that we think you’re weak or anything,” Boomstick prefaced, leaning back to look at Juno, who was sulking in the back seat of their hover car, “We just… have our doubts about your abilities, since you’re, you know, kind of scrawny.”

The half-Saiyan grunted, rolling his eyes.

He didn’t particularly like Boomstick and Rex. Sure, they were funny, and he could joke around with them, and get along with them fine, under normal circumstances; but in wartime, they got presumptuous and overconfident — well, Juno would show them what was what, that was certain.

Who were they, anyway, to question him? Boomstick carried a shotgun, and in Juno’s very humble opinion, anyone who relied on a weapon so much that they were named after it couldn’t have been all that powerful in the first place. That wasn’t to say weapons were bad — Juno himself kept an XRS-9 Ki pistol inside his pea-coat, for special circumstances — but the hybrid didn’t think they should be relied on; not by self-proclaimed ‘warriors,’ at least. If Boomstick couldn’t hold his own in a one-on-one, no-guns-allowed fight, then he had no reason to doubt the seer’s abilities.

Rex, the short, purple alien, hadn’t been quite as vocal about his predictions regarding Juno’s shortcomings as his friend had, but he certainly had done little other than contribute to the argument. Ironically, though, he had seemed inclined to agree with Boomstick’s notion that Juno was, in fact, ‘scrawny’ — confirmed by an approving nod of the head from the squatty extraterrestrial. The semi-Saiyan didn’t see how he had any room to talk; bulkier he may have been, but smaller, too.

All of this had started back in the hangar bay, when they’d reached the hover-cars. Juno, in his usually overconfident manner, had seen himself as, for lack of a better term, the ‘commander’ of their particular battery; Boomstick and Rex had quickly pushed that idea away from the realm of thought, relegating him to the backseat and telling him to watch behind them, just in case, and to let them know if anything dangerous came up. Juno sat in silence for several minutes, pondering the meaning behind that statement, before he came to a suitable hypothesis and confronted the two alien warriors about it.

“Why do I have to tell you guys if something dangerous comes up?” he’d asked, correct in his suspicions that they were questioning his abilities, “I’m pretty sure I could handle it myself, you know.”

Boomstick’s comment about his ‘scrawny’ physical form came subsequently, and for another good span of minutes, Juno sat silently, fuming interiorly on the subject. He wasn’t weak — the record on the doctor’s sheet had showed his power level at well over 3000, which he was quite certain neither of these two brutes could compete with — and they most definitely were not going to make him feel like he was.

After a few minutes of scowling, the hybrid remembered what he’d been told to do, and was hesitant to do it because the order had come from the two mouthy aliens. Nevertheless, he figured it was better to be safe and sorry, and turned to look for disturbances, expecting to find it clear again, much like every other time.

This time, though, something was there — a human, at first glance, on a hover-bike, slowly catching up to them. Juno’s brow furrowed — under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t have thought anything of a human nipping at their tail, but something told him to look at the pamphlet they’d been given.

Sure enough, the alien on the front of the brochure looked identical to the yellow-garbed man on the motorcycle. Upon seeing Juno glance down at the picture, the alien yanked a pistol from a hip holster. That was enough for the hybrid to realize that this guy wasn’t your friendly neighborhood Spider-man, coming to save the day, but rather, something much more hostile than that.

“Boomstick, Rex, evasive maneuvers!” Juno yelled, but the alien was quick on the draw; it fired a shot toward the hovercraft, and the semi-Saiyan seer ducked beneath the ki bolt. Rex, in the driver’s seat, slammed the steering wheel to the left, and the flying car tipped, forcing the passengers to hold on tightly.

“I got this, small fry,” Boomstick said, standing up and taking aim with his shotgun, “Don’t strain your tiny muscles.”

The black-haired boy scowled, glancing over his shoulder at the alien. He turned and listened to the sounds of Boomstick’s shotgun prepping his shot. That alien didn’t have a chance in hell; so Juno decided to make Boomstick fight someone his own size, maybe teach him a lesson or two.

Juno held up a hand, making sure it was out of view of his two compadres, and shut his eyes, attempting to reach out to the alien with his Telepathy. The alien’s mind wasn’t too hard to breach — he was obviously just a grunt — and once inside, Juno bit his lip, and pushed a good chunk of his energy into using his Possession abilities. Previously, the hybrid hadn’t been able to use Possession without touching the target, but during his idle hours on Earth, he’d been practicing, mostly on powerless humans, in an attempt to give himself the upper hand in fights.

Luckily for the puppeteer, this alien’s mind was weak — it didn’t take long for the hybrid to wrap his fingers around its mind. As Boomstick held the shotgun up, and prepared to fire, Juno planned out his next move, and at the sound of Boomstick’s shot, the alien suddenly jerked to the right, out of the firing line, escaping safely, and unharmed.

“What the hell?!” Boomstick shouted over the whirring of the hover-car. The alien continued to fly out of reach of the red alien’s shot, which elicited a string of vulgarties from him. Juno, on the other hand, was beaming — this was his chance to prove to Boomstick and Rex that he wasn’t ‘scrawny’ at all.

The semi-Saiyan released the alien from his Possession, and then proceeded to leap off of the hover-car and onto the blue grass of Namek’s surface. Above and behind him, he could hear the confused shots of Boomstick and Rex, but he ignored them, and broke into a sprint, gradually getting closer to the yellow-garbed enemy. After a few seconds of running, he kicked off the ground — it was easier to fly with a running start — and engulfed his body in purple ki, charging, airborne, toward his prey.

WHAM!

The lanky, ‘scrawny’ form of Juno crashed headfirst into the abdomen of the yellow-suited alien, and, in a marvelous display of contact physics, the latter tumbled, much like a rag doll, off of his hover bike and down onto the teal grass which blanketed the surface of the picturesque planet. Juno caught himself in mid-air, and then slowly floated down to the ground, landing softly on his two feet.

For just a moment, Juno felt intimidating. Standing above the defeated foe, the humanoid alien, triumphant. Something in him said, ‘good job, Juno’ and patted him on the back, because he felt a remarkable sense of accomplishment. However, only one thing made him feel truly victorious right now — the idea that he had usurped the opinion of Boomstick and Rex that he perhaps wasn’t up to the job. Yeah, it had taken some tinkering, but hey, that’s what abilities are for, right? And at that thought of that victory — a small victory, but a victory nonetheless — he allowed a smirk to invade his face, and paint his countenance with confidence.

Suck on that, he thought, glancing over his shoulder to see Boomstick and Rex approaching. The bulky, red alien cocked his shotgun and then barreled past Juno, aiming it at the alien’s head and preparing to fire.

“Whoa, hold up —” Juno shouted, but Boomstick didn’t seem to have any intention of stopping. The hybrid closed his eyes and Pushed the idea of not shooting the alien into Boomstick’s head, and suddenly, the gun dropped from the red alien’s hands, clinking as it hit the grassy surface of Namek. “You can’t just go around shooting them like that. He might have some valuable information.”

“…what the hell did you do?” Boomstick asked, reaching up and clutching his head. Juno ignored him, and knelt next to the alien.

“I don’t think you understand our purpose, Juno,” Rex said, brushing past Boomstick and placing a hand on the hybrid’s shoulder. Juno shrugged, knocking Rex’s hand away, and checked the pulse of the yellow-suited extraterrestrial. He was still very much alive, and breathing.

“You did something, you scrawny little son-of-a-bitch!” Boomstick roared, reaching down and yanking Juno up by the collar of his pea-coat. Juno lifted up his knee and slammed it into the red-skinned reptilian’s gut, and he let go; the half-Saiyan landed firmly on his feet, a scowl crossing his face now. “What the hell?! What the hell is going on here, Juno?”

“I told you,” the black-haired hybrid muttered, “I don’t have a big mouth. I don’t have big guns. But I’ve got abilities that you two could never dream of having, alright? Like… mind control. And Foresight. And all that jazz.”

“You… mind control? Like, Possession?” Rex asked, stepping back. Juno nodded. “That’s a rare one, that is. I… uh… well, uh, I suppose that will be… valuable, in the long run.”

Juno ignored the purple alien’s rambling, and knelt down next to the enemy. Taking a deep breath, he decided that now was the time to tap into some long-unused powers, and placed his hand on the unconscious alien’s forehead. He accessed his Telepathy, and began searching through the mind of the enemy, attempting to figure out what exactly was going on. He couldn’t help but feel like they were going into this war blind, what with the shoddy pamphlet being their only source of information, and he hoped that maybe this alien’s mind might be an access point for more, useful information, that they could maybe take back. That wasn’t their main priority — they were militarized medics, that’s it — but he figured it wouldn’t hurt.

Unfortunately, the majority of the alien’s mind was blocked off by some sort of telepathic shield; it wasn’t of this specific alien’s creation, it was a uniform mind block, created by a hive master, of sorts. Of course, none of this was certain, but it was the closest Juno had to a conjecture, to an explanation, right now.

He did see one thing, though, lurking in a dark, unprotected corner of the alien’s brain — it was strange, he didn’t think it was something that would be left unchecked, but this alien (who he had hypothesized was some sort of reconnaissance officer, or scout, based on basic information he’d gotten) seemed to leave it out in the open, freely, for anyone who could find their way in to see. Nevertheless, it was important info, so Juno leapt out of the mind of the beast and quickly started to power walk towards the hover car.

“What the hell?” Boomstick said, repeating that phrase of confusion yet again, “Where do you think you’re going? Should I kill this bastard?”

“Shoot him if you want, but do it fast,” Juno called back, “We’ve got to move.”

[Juno]

“Shot through the heart, and you’re to blame — ”

Juno closed his eyes.

“ — darlin, you give love a bad name.”

The hover-car’s radio blared the Bon Jovi classic into the three warriors’ ears, and while Boomstick contented himself by rocking out, Juno simply shut his eyes and listened to the music, allowing it to flow through him, like ki. The song reminded him of previous battles he’d fought, where love — or, more accurately described, infatuation — had been one of the main motivating factors.

Most of the women he’d almost died for he now counted among his friends — Sophia and Sage being the prime examples — while others, like Juliet, now found themselves locked away in a prison, far from the public’s eye. And to be honest, Juno hadn’t ever been good about keeping up with visiting hours.

He remembered a time when he’d let his interest in women cloud his judgment. He liked to call that time Friend or Foe 3. He’d been nineteen years old, then, and, he supposed that he’d been desperate to get some sort of attraction from these two women. Unfortunately, he also seemed to like a challenge, because he had picked the two women in the entire group who were least likely to give him anything he wanted — Sage, who, he’d noted, was pathologically shy, and Sophia, who was a priestess, of all things.

Needless to say, he hadn’t been that successful. Sage had turned away from his advances either because she wasn’t attracted to him or because of the aforementioned fear of human contact, and Sophia had made it quite clear that she wasn’t interested — despite the flirting; the ‘good girls’ always flirted the most.

However, love wasn’t his main motivator now — he didn’t know why he was fighting in this war, but that wasn’t it. Maybe he felt a sense of duty to all of the free peoples of Middle Earth; no, wait, that was the wrong mythos. In the end, Juno would decide that he was fighting for two reasons: some desire to do good that he’d adopted from his heroically-natured friends, and a desire for adventure that hadn’t been satiated in several months.

Of course, he was having the time of his life now.

“We’re coming up on that place, Juno,” Rex said, turning around and looking at the onyx-haired hybrid. He still sat in the back seat, but this time by choice; it made him feel more like Rex and Boomstick were his chauffeurs than his superiors. “I’m going to park us on that cliff, alright?”

Juno nodded, and Rex swerved the car into position. It slid almost to the edge, but didn’t quite get close enough to tip and slide down it. Of course, as a hover car, you might think it could easily defy gravity, but with this particular model, ‘hover’ was the operative word. It couldn’t support itself more than a few feet above ground or water, so you had to stay relatively low.

The half-Saiyan’s feet hit the floor with a delicate thump as he dropped from the vehicle, and he quickly spun on his heel, looking down, off the cliff, at what lie ahead. Below them, a militant base blanketed the majority of vision, something high-tech, and artless; it felt awkwardly steam punk, with the rusted buildings and the polluted air rising up from tall, worn-out smoke stacks. Tiny dots patrolled the different areas of the base — guards, from the look of them. The hybrid narrowed his eyes, attempting to form some sort of plan inside his head. It was difficult, though, from this vantage point, to do anything, since he couldn’t see the smaller details, like how well-armed the patrols were.

“What’re we doing, boss?” Rex asked, sidling up beside him.

Juno turned, slightly surprised by the purple alien’s admission of him as the ‘boss’ — he hadn’t expected it to be quite so easy.

“Don’t call him boss!”

There it was.

Boomstick walked up and shoved Juno and Rex out of the way, a deep, pouty scowl on his face as he looked down at the enemy’s base of operations. Juno mimicked his scowl, but decided not to challenge him at the moment; the time for that would come later. The three warriors stared down into the headquarters, each attempting to decipher separate things.

Using his Telepathy, Juno could tell what his two companions were watching for. Boomstick looked strictly with a warrior’s eye — if he could have his way, he would blast in there with his shotgun, killing everything and everyone in sight until they got to the destination… but what was the destination? As this thought registered in Boomstick’s head, Juno noticed the red man’s eyes darting from their focus on the base to him.

Uncomfortable with Boomstick’s gaze, the hybrid turned his attention to Rex’s thoughts. Rex was still trying to piece together a stealthy way in; he wasn’t shy about his desire to kill people, but he didn’t feel like going in, guns blazing, was the idea to get behind. At that moment, Juno decided he liked Rex better than he liked Boomstick, most definitely.

“Alright, ‘boss-man’ — and I use that term loosely and sarcastically,” Boomstick piped up, stepping towards Juno, “We’re at the fuckers’ base. Now what exactly did you plan on doing here?”

“Well, I — ” Juno stammered. He bit his lip; he didn’t know. He didn’t know what the hell he planned on doing here. He wasn’t ready for this, he wasn’t ready to take on the man — or, uh, the alien — head on. All he’d seen was a vision of this base, a vision of somebody getting dragged into a prison cell and thrown in there, and then he’d been booted out. He didn’t realize that this was the aliens’ base of operations. Hell, it might not have even been the main base of operations, it could just be an outpost (if it was, it was one hell of an outpost). But he thought that they could come and rescue some casualties, like their job description said.

“Uh huh,” Boomstick nodded, “That’s what I thought.”

The red alien turned away from Juno and crouched down at the edge of the cliff, prepping himself to slide down and unload on the extraterrestrials. At that moment, though, his violent rage was indubitably cock-blocked.

“What the — ” Rex shouted, and Juno turned around just in time to see a yellow-suited alien bash the violet-skinned alien in the head. He fell to the ground, unconscious, and the alien lunged at Juno. A shotgun blast came from behind the black-haired half-Saiyan, and the yellow-garbed alien was sent flying backwards, dead. Juno turned around to thank Boomstick — something he hadn’t figured he’d ever do — but he in the end, it was for naught. Another alien appeared — as if through teleportation — behind the gun-toting fighter, and grasped his neck from behind, choking him into unconsciousness.

The hybrid took a step towards Boomstick and his assailant, but tripped on a foot that seemed to materialize from nowhere. He cursed himself, mentally — he’d been tripped? Who the hell would have the balls do that? Looking up, the foot was, in fact, connected to yet another alien, who proceeded to bring a fist down into Juno’s face. Again, the hybrid let a curse slip from his mouth; this was so fucking anticlimactic, it wasn’t even funny. At this point, everything went black — the seer’s vision was gone, and within a matter of minutes, so was every other sense; hearing, touch…

Darkness.

~ + ~

It was never any fun to wake up in prison.

Juno had been through this too many times — whether it be his awakening in the desert, which he had done twice, or being thrown into some carnival because some teenager got bitchy, he’d been in this predicament before.

For some reason, though, this time felt different. The bars, unlike the rest of the buildings in the complex, seemed brand new, and seemed to be made out of some extraterrestrial material that he had no experience with, and didn’t know if he could break. The hybrid sat up against the wall, clutching his throbbing skull, and gazed out into the hallway. No guards — no sign of Boomstick or Rex.

He almost felt embarrassed; he was one of the first prisoners of war, and yet, he was probably one of the strongest fighters on the battlefield. He didn’t understand how that was plausible — and he didn’t know what that meant for the rest of them. Someone out there was stronger than him, probably, he knew that much… he just hoped to God that they were fighting, and that they were fighting really damn hard, because if they could take him… they could probably take almost anything the army had to throw at them.

Of course, that might’ve just been Juno being an arrogant bastard.

When some people are in a desperate situation, they turn to their gods — Juno, on the other hand, turned to his friends. He thought of Kaden, and Sophia, and Sage, and Belle, and Piper, and anyone else he’d ever met and ever worked with before; he didn’t know if they were even here, but the thought of them being here — the thought of someone else with some sort of power coming to rescue him… that was comforting, in a way.

Of course, it also meant he had even more to prove — if, for example, Kaden came and rescued him, he didn’t think he would ever be able to live it down. The shame would be so great that he’d have to tease himself, probably, just to make sure he’d been punished enough for letting it get to that point. This meant, of course, that because of the Saiyan pride that flowed freely through his veins, he would have to find some way to rescue himself. He didn’t think there was any other option, now, because as much as would’ve loved to see a familiar face peek between those bars, his pride would’ve been crushed. He had something to prove, and damn it all to hell if he wasn’t going to prove it.

For now, though, he’d have to bide his time. He’d have to bide his time so that he could take the moment when it came — not let it pass him by. So he turned to music to keep him company; to comfort him, while he waited for that moment.

“Chains of love got a hold on me,” he hummed.

“When passion’s a prison, you can’t break free… la, la, la…”

[Chubbs Story Account]

Days pass. Treatment is not harsh, but is somewhat alien. Water is oversupplied, food is somewhat undersupplied.

No attempt is made by the invaders to communicate (even in body language), until one day (the sixth), the door opens into the cell, and a single invader steps in, hands raised in good faith.

A small device is placed on the ground, roughly the size and shape of a tape cassette. It is activated. It translates the alien's speech for Juno, Boomstick, and Rex.

The alien speaks, slowly, calmly.

"We are at war, your people and our people. It is a historical accident; a cosmic contingency. We must expand our territory, and the planets in this area are fertile and promising. We are not here to murder soldiers and ravage women; we just need more land, and water, and resources. This is a story unfamiliar to you? Warfare? The need for expansion?

We are poised to win; your Militia knows it and we know it. A quicker end to the conflict would save our lives and your lives. Thus, we keep our stocks open. You are invited to join us. Tentative, of course, and with a degree of suspicion (as you could not yet be trusted thoroughly). But we nevertheless extend the invitation. Rest assured, you would not be the only one. You are medics, yes? We have need of such persons as well.

You would, of course, be well-rewarded.

What say you?"

[Juno]

“Hell yes.”

Juno repeated the alien’s words in his head.

“We are at war, your people and our people,” it had spoken, quite articulately, “It is a historical accident, a cosmic contingency. We must expand our territory, and the planets in this area are fertile, and promising. We are not here to murder soldiers and ravage women; we just need more land, and water, and resources. This is a story unfamiliar to you? Warfare? The need for expansion?”

So, that was it — these extraterrestrials felt like they had some sort of right to expansion, some sort of ‘manifest destiny.’ Now, this particular alien, probably a commander of some sort, attempted to justify their atrocities with this. As if it was a necessity. To be honest, Juno couldn’t blame them; he almost felt sorry for them.

“We are poised to win,” the creature continued.

Aren’t you being a bit presumptuous?

“Your militia knows it, and we know it,” it ignored the thought that Juno had projected telepathically. Or maybe it didn’t, and this was its response; either way, it continued its diatribe: “A quicker end to the conflict would save our lives and your lives. Thus, we keep our stocks open. You are invited to join us.”

Shit, Juno thought, a scowl crossing his face. That was it; that was the big thing. They had been in this cell for days — Boomstick spewing conspiracy theories, Rex constantly telling him to shut up and eat his damn food, and Juno sitting in the corner, not uttering a word to either of them. And now, it all came to this: a single decision, whether to abandon the people they fought for, or not. To the half-Saiyan, the choice would be simple; but he was content to listen to the alien’s speech.

“Tentative, of course,” the alien clarified, “And with a degree of suspicion, as you could not yet be trusted thoroughly.”

That’s a way to win our hearts.

“But,” it said, once again ignoring Juno’s sarcastic thought, “We nevertheless extend the invitation.” Boomstick and Rex remained entranced; the hybrid’s telepathic messages were not for them to hear, or be distracted by. “Rest assured, you would not be the only ones. You are medics, yes? We have need of such persons as well.”

Juno knew it was coming. It was only a matter of time before they brought up the next matter, because they couldn’t have honestly thought that their sob story was going to convince the likes of meatheads like Boomstick, or self-obsessed survivalists, like Rex. To be completely honest, though, he might’ve expected the idea to have been ignored by these aliens — by the way they’d been treated, he didn’t expect them to know customs of the North Quadrant, and this, he thought, might’ve been one they had overlooked.

“You would, of course, be well-rewarded.”

There it was.

“What say you?”

“Hell yes.”

Juno looked to his left; Boomstick had stood up, and the declaration of loyalty had come from him. He narrowed his eyes, confused; Boomstick hadn’t exactly seemed like the most patriotic person in the first place, but the idea that he would just give up on the defense of Namek without thinking about it for a few minutes showed his true stupidity. Juno, on the other hand, sat in silence, weighing his choices.

“I’m not sticking around if not even our militia has the balls to put forth their effort in the fight,” Boomstick said, lifting up his shotgun. “Come on, guys, stop being pansies and sitting there, these guys are offering us a way to stay alive.”

“You wouldn’t stay alive even if you joined them, Boomstick.”

The red alien turned his gaze to the half-Saiyan. “So,” he muttered, “Whiny little Juno finally decides to open his trap, eh? And what makes you think that I’d die any sooner than you would?”

The hybrid refused to reply, but merely stared at a single spot on the floor, vacillating. In all honesty, there would be so many benefits to joining the aliens — the chances of staying alive were, like Boomstick said, much more likely with the invaders, and because of the promised reward, choosing their side would probably end up being much more lucrative.

“Whatever, sit there and mope if you want,” Boomstick scoffed, “Come on, Rex, let’s go see what these people want us to do.”

“Boomstick, are you… sure?” Rex asked, looking up at his partner, “I mean, yeah, it sounds great, but… we’re going to just let them enslave us? I mean, I guess, if we helped them, we wouldn’t end up being slaves, so… I… guess it’s the right decision, for us, I mean, you know, for our own well-being…”

“Exactly, now get up,” the red-skinned man said, grasping Rex by the arm and yanking him onto his feet. Rex glanced at Juno, but the half-Saiyan hadn’t budged since his sarcastic aside to the tallest of the trio.

Boomstick was ushered out the door, and leaned on the wall outside, relishing in his freedom. Rex hesitantly followed, shooting another glance back at Juno — the alien representative turned back to the cross-legged half-Saiyan, and looked down at him. The hybrid’s eyes didn’t move; they stayed fixated on that spot on the floor, as if that spot were the most interesting thing in the room. The yellow-robed alien placed its hands in its pockets, and sighed impatiently.

Several minutes passed, but to Juno, and to the invader, it felt like a lifetime. Only after what seemed like forever did Juno speak.

“No.”

The humanoid’s eyes widened. “Think about what you’re doing, Juno.”

“I’ve thought about it long enough,” the hybrid replied, lifting his head up and looking the alien in its eyes, “And I’ve made my decision. I don’t want to join you.”

The alien sighed again, this time in frustration instead of impatience; Rex’s eyes brightened, and he began to move back to the door, placing his hand on a bar and leaning in, smiling a small, unsure smile as he looked at the half-Saiyan, whose gaze indicated that he was firmly staying with that position.

“Juno,” the alien hissed, “Joining us isn’t the right choice. It is the only choice.”

“Fuck you.”

The alien lifted up a hand and gestured to one of the guards outside. The summoned invader grasped the translation device and carried it away; it looked as if everything that was going to be said had been said, and now all that was left was action. To the other guard, the robed invader said something in their native tongue.

The soldier stepped into the cell, and grasped tightly onto Juno’s arm. It pulled him forcibly off the ground, and the hybrid grunted in pain. Rex stepped back out of the way as he was removed from the cell, and carried down the hallway. As he tried to keep pace with his ‘guide,’ he could hear the chortling of Boomstick behind him. He resisted the urge to turn around and shoot him in the gut with a ki blast.

The hallway, like the silence just minutes before, seemed to extend forever, before finally, Juno found himself bathed in the sunlight of Namek’s twin suns. He squinted his eyes; the sudden admission of light into them almost blinded the hybrid. Slowly, the area around him began to come back into focus.

He was in the encampment — the one he’d seen from the cliff just days before, just before they’d captured him. The buildings rose around him, rusted and brown, like something that might’ve been seen on Mercy, or in a steampunk-influenced science fiction film. He looked around, and saw towers, and shabby houses, probably barracks for the aliens; and then, as they turned the corner, he saw them. Hundreds of aliens, either wearing armor, colored yellow and black, or — and these were much fewer in number — wearing yellow robes, much like the invader that had stepped into their cell.

On the horizon was a platform, large, built out of metal. It was a stage, and there was a bar hanging over it, supported by two columns — a ‘proscenium arch,’ as it were. It seemed that their resemblance to humans was closer than Juno expected; they also shared punishment methods that Earth had utilized in its early history. Tightly knotted around the top bar were three ropes, all tied into nooses. Juno supposed that the aliens had prepared for all of them to deny their offer; he doubted, however, that they’d expected rejection from any of them.

Ushered onto the stage, the hybrid grunted in pain once again as they shoved him onto the metallic floor; the invaders cheered, and as Juno scanned the crowd, he saw Boomstick laughing in the back, a nervous, shaking Rex standing at his side. His scowl deepened — this was not how things were supposed to happen; this wasn’t glory, this was death. This was fucking death, and that was not cool at all.

His tail twitched. It had floated there, ever since it’d grown back, and after about the first week of reclaiming it, Juno had actually stopped noticing it was there; but now it seemed to be calling to him, calling his attention. He stared at it for a moment — it wanted something. The hybrid shook his head, attempting to erase that from his mind — when he died, he didn’t want to be thinking about his tail sending him weird, unconscious messages.

He didn’t completely know why he had denied the aliens’ offer. Maybe it was out of some weird sense of righteousness he’d adopted throughout the years, or out of some Saiyan determination to just not give up fighting these bastards — he suspected it was the former, because he imagined that two years ago, before all of the shit that had happened the last two years had come to pass, he would’ve taken the selfish track. He would’ve wrapped himself in a yellow robe, no questions asked, and slaughtered those fighting ‘the good fight.’

Now, though, he was fighting ‘the good fight.’ And for whatever reason, he wasn’t going to let that go.

“This man has chosen not to join us,” the alien guard said, and Juno looked over to see why he could understand — one of the translation devices had been built into the stage. So, they want the victims to hear their insults before they hang them, eh?

There was a rumble of excitement in the crowd, and the guard came over and socked Juno in the face; the hybrid’s cheek slammed into the metal stage, reddening from the impact. “He must be punished for his insolence, and for his pointless dedication to a dying cause! What say you?”

A roaring cheer broke out amongst the aliens, and they yelled what he thought to be profanity in their language at him. He caught a few of their insults, those who were close enough to the stage to be translated. The guard grasped Juno’s arm again, clutching tightly — almost as if he feared the hybrid would try to escape, even in his weakened state — and drug him over to the noose, lifting him up and slipping his head through the rope. The hybrid took a deep breath as the hoop was tightened around his neck, already strangling him for air, and the guard stepped over to the lever. Juno took a glance down at the small square cut in the floor below — the trapdoor would drop and the pull of that lever, and he would be dead.

Juno’s tail twitched again.

[Juno]

Stay calm.

The muscles in his neck tensed, and he caught his breath. The rope curled around his throat, squeezing ever so slightly on him, slowly stifling his access to the air that slipped past his lips. Below him, making up the ravenous members of the crowd, the humanoid extraterrestrials feasted their eyes on his pain, smiled as his face grew more and more red — and he hadn’t even dropped yet.

They were vicious — not just their cheers, but their expressions. Each one gritted his or her teeth in a different way, which sang to the individuality of them, but at the same time, they each had that same glint in their eye. That predatorily glint that refused to let Juno walk out of here alive.

His feet began to tremble as the ‘executioner,’ for that was the closest term Juno could derive for him, stalked cryptically toward the lever. The yellow-suited man — no, not man… the yellow-suited thing shot one last glance at the half-Saiyan, and a smirk crossed his face. It wasn’t sinister, or evil — it was primitive, and raw, as if this thirst for death was all that he and his comrades had ever known. Juno caught the executioner’s glance, but he did not return the alien’s cheerful expression.

Later on, the hybrid might recall these events — if he survived — with some clarity; as it were, he could not distinguish for himself what, exactly, was happening. From this point, he was driven purely by instinct. There was no thought, no calculation; this was an utter breach of character for Juno, a break from form — he followed his guy, and didn’t let himself get distracted.

The guard yanked the lever down, and with it fell the trapdoor beneath the seer, leaving his body dangling in midair, with nowhere to go but down; traditionally, the noose tied tightly around his neck was meant to stop that fall — but Juno was not meant to survive.

The hybrid, however, did not move an inch. He did not descend, and for a few moments, he did not rise, either. He hung there, in mid-air, and with all of the energy he had been able to gather after having it sapped out of him for days on end, he forced himself to fly. He hovered, through use of ki, in the same position, and did not allow that noose to steal his last breaths.

The aliens hadn’t thought about this. They hadn’t foreseen this. The guard’s eyes widened, and Juno watched in his periphery as his would-be executioner pulled a dagger from beneath his yellow robes.

The hybrid sucked in as much air as he could, and lifted up his hand, forming an orb of golden ki. The aliens had neglected to bind his hands, so he tossed the orb high into the air, high above the conglomeration of extraterrestrials, and looked up at it, ignoring all other sights. It flew higher and higher until finally it stopped, hovering idly above Namek’s surface. Juno’s glance could’ve burned a hole in it — instead, it started a fire within him.

Nothing around him was real anymore. Everything seemed decidedly small. The last thing Juno heard before his consciousness was no more was a loud rip. He didn’t bother looking down to watch his clothes be torn off of him by his expanding body mass; he didn’t care to see the brown tufts of hair appearing all over his pale skin; his focus was that ball of ki, that False Moon, that was enabling him to access this power, whatever this was.

His chest heaved — it took more effort to breathe now, whether it was from the expanding mass of his body or from the fact that with the growth of the muscles in his neck, the rope around it seemed to be tightening its hold.

It didn’t take long for that choking feeling to subside, though, as eventually, the girth of his neck forced the rope to rip. The noose unfurled from around Juno’s neck, and his eyes glazed over white as his hefty form fell from its hovering position in the air and slammed into the stage below. The majority of Juno’s mass fell through the hole made by the trapdoor, and what didn’t brought the stage down with it.

From that point, the mind of Juno wasn’t functional anymore. There was simply a beast, continuously growing in mass, tearing through the black fabric that the hybrid wore and unleashing itself upon the aliens’ camp. The giant ape’s yellow eyes looked out at the base — it seemed to be growing smaller. Or maybe he was getting larger.

The latter seemed the most likely, as several of the yellow-suited aliens were backing away, struggling as they frantically attempted to pull their guns from their holsters. The monster that had been awakened within the half-Saiyan growled viciously, and clambered onto its feet, whipping its gargantuan head around to look at the aliens. The executioner still stood on the stage, still holding the dagger he’d meant to use to kill the half-Saiyan when he had been in a smaller, more easily battled form; now, however, he held the dagger in a ready position, trembling with fear — the ape knew he had no chance of killing him with it, not now.

The executioner lunged forward, sinking the dagger into the tough skin of Juno’s knee; the giant ape reached down with a monstrous fist and swept the extraterrestrial aside, as if he was the king in a chess match, and the hybrid had just made checkmate. The yellow-robed alien tumbled off of the stage and into the crowd, and as the hybrid plucked the dagger out of his skin, its tinier opponent could only stare up in horror.

With a lurching battle cry, the yellow-robed man found his own dagger being thrown precisely into his own chest; the first death in what would be a rampage, fulfilled by Juno’s newfound bloodlust. Somehow, though, some of his conscious thoughts must have filtered through as the ape selected its next target — its yellow eyes focused on Boomstick, the tall, muscular red alien who had so quickly flopped sides to join with the enemy. Another roar escaped Juno’s lips, and the ape rushed over to the red-skinned warrior, grasping him tightly in one fist and knocking Rex, the shorter, pudgier, purple-skinned counterpart, away.

“What the fuck?!” Boomstick screamed over the roaring of the ape. The Oozaru’s rampage was personal — and it had all been caused by this pathetic excuse for a warrior. Through the feral agenda that the ape knew, Juno’s thoughts were able to project, thanks to his telepathy.

You’re a fucking idiot, the hybrid projected, attempting, with all his might, to push through the primal instincts of the Oozaru and allow his voice to be heard. Boomstick must’ve heard, because he looked around, a fearful, scared expression on his face, for the hybrid’s voice, wherever it might’ve come from. And you’re a coward, Juno continued, a fucking coward who doesn’t deserve to call himself a warrior.

That was all the Oozaru let Juno get out. There was a crack as Boomstick’s spine felt the ape’s tightening grip, and within seconds, he dropped to the ground, dead.

~ + ~

Boomstick was dead. The alien executioner was dead. Everyone was going to die.

Juno’s eyes popped open, but he wasn’t inside his own body anymore; this wasn’t Namek. Everything around him was pure black, as if he was in darkness. The walls were black, the floor was black. It might’ve been like he was in a room blanketed in darkness — save for the fact that he himself could be clearly seen.

The fact that he couldn’t see anything that was going on in the real world troubled him. He knew — he didn’t know how he knew, but he did — that he was still murdering people, in his Oozaru form, but he couldn’t see it… couldn’t control it…

Was this what it felt like when you lost yourself to Saiyan rage? Did you just withdraw into your mind and let the primal instincts take over? Juno didn’t know why, but that troubled him more than anything else — the fact that he might be mindlessly killing people without even a second thought, and that he could be killing someone who didn’t deserve it, like a prisoner that did nothing wrong, or Rex, who was just confused by his desire for self-preservation.

…wait a second, why the hell did that matter? He was Juno, not some self-righteous bitch, right? Nevertheless, the idea troubled him.

Maybe he was a better person than he’d originally given himself credit for. After all, he had turned down the alien’s offer to join them, when that was obviously the more lucrative choice. He’d almost gotten himself killed over it, but did that mean that the aliens deserved to die for it?

Probably, yeah. But those prisoners — and Rex… that was who he was thinking about now, who he had to consider. Maybe shooting the False Moon into the sky had been a mistake. Maybe he shouldn’t have done that, or gotten himself into this situation in the first place, maybe he should’ve just let the aliens kill him — at least then, he would’ve died for a good cause.

He chuckled at the thought — he really was turning into a self-righteous bitch.

Stop, he told himself, you’ve got to stop.

He didn’t know what he was talking about, though. Stop the rampaging ape that was slaughtering people outside of this mental realm, or stop turning into a good person? Ha, he thought, there’s the big question. He didn’t have much longer to ponder it, though, because almost as quickly as he’d found himself here, the world around him dissolved, and he felt his body falling through empty space, and all too soon, he was back inside himself. But he wasn’t an ape anymore.

~ + ~

Juno wasn’t awake when the soldiers stumbled upon him, but upon hearing the whirring of their hover-bikes as they took him back to Ja City, his eyelids slowly opened. He didn’t let them in on his consciousness, however, because he was much more interested in eavesdropping on their conversations.

He had been slung, stark naked, over the back of one of the two soldiers’ motorbikes. Apparently, they’d found him lying, unconscious and nude, on one of Namek’s many plateaus — which led him to hypothesize that he’d stumbled sufficiently outside the radius of the False Moon, triggering the return to his human form. Unfortunately, he hadn’t anticipated having to transform into an Oozaru — to be honest, it was actually the first time he’d tried it — and he hadn’t brought the stretchy clothes that they tell you about on Vegeta, so he was probably giving the soldiers a great view.

He hoped one of them was female.

“We’re going to have to find another way in, now that Ja City’s under siege,” one of the soldiers mentioned, in a voice that sounded like it was female.

Score.

[Chubbs Story Account]

Juno is taken to the secondary military base outside of Ja City. Shortly after arriving, he is informed that, partially because of his strength, partially because of his recent 'victory' (the word seemed wrong for what had transpired, but what other could be used?), and partially because of the lack of manpower, he was specifically chosen to organize the assault against the Grand Ship Myreen, currently overshadowing the Ja City Spaceport. There simply was no one else. Manpower was stretched thin, and this was an urgent priority.

||If you don't wish to act in this capacity, then you don't have to explicitly lead the assault. Just invent an NPC. You will be, however, tasked with organizing an assault team. This can either be a group of solely NPCs, or you could solicit some of the available PCs. Your chance of success will be higher if you have active and potent PCs along with you, though a team of NPCs is hardly a death sentence.

You have two Update cycles to complete this task. If you choose to reject this task, you will not suffer an explicit penalty, though the Militia will certainly think less of you. If you choose to accept this task, then taking longer than two Update cycles to organize an assault team could have disastrous consequences for Ja City. If you will not take it, someone else will.||

*BUFF*
Experience (Duration: The rest of the saga) - Juno has seen and slain many of the enemy ranks, and thus has the capacity to speak with a recognizable authority.

*DEBUFF*
Oozaru Fatigue (Duration: One Cycle [Third]) - Juno has transformed recently, and is exhausted from that transformation. He is now at 50% CA.