01-10-2011, 07:16 PM
“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…”
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…”