Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"S'uh, Nova!" The unmistakeable greeting from Commander Meouch sounded muffled from behind the door of Nova's dorm, as the Moebian laid on his bed playing with a ratchet spanner. A few knocks came from the door, as Meouch asked if it was ok to come in. "Who's askin'?" responded Nova, clearly disinterested in whatever Meouch wanted from him. "Commander Meouch, now open this door, I command you!" he snarled, obviously getting agitated. Nova, sensing he'd be in trouble if he didn't get up, quickly did so.

As Nova opened the door, he looked up with a blank expression at Meouch. "Nova, I've got a job for you!" Meouch said, the agitation fading. Nova rolled his eyes. "What did Strive break this time?" he said, as he followed Meouch through the hall. "Oh, not that kind of job, kid!" Meouch laughed, "No, I've got something far more interesting. Quick, come in here."

Meouch pulled Nova into a small room. He couldn't make out what exactly it was though, as it was pitch black. Meouch turned on a light, and as Nova's eyes adjusted to the sudden change in brightness, he saw shelves upon shelves of miniature reconstructions of various objects made of small bricks.

"This" Meouch explained, "Is my Lego room." He looked at the room proudly. "I've been building up my collection throughout the years, but there's one kit missing that I have yet to get my hands on." he continued. Nova walked around the room, his eyes open wide as he looked at all of the little models with the utmost interest. "But, I do know where one is." Meouch said, making a big show of this whole thing. "Fittingly, it's on Earth, in the trunk of a car in a small scrapyard in Wales"

"Earth?!" Nova exclaimed, excited about the prospect of visiting. "I've always wanted to go there!" Nova ran up to Meouch, looking up at him expectantly.
Meouch grinned, showing his big sharp teeth, and said "Well then you're in luck, kid! Although, we do have to lay out some ground rules." Meouch explained. Nova sat down on a rickety chair with a groan. "Oh don't be like that!" Meouch grumbled. "First and foremost, absolutely no contact with humans! They're skittish little bastards, one sight of you and you'll send the whole planet into panic. We might have a few humans in the brigade, but the general population of Earth is still not aware of alien life. Second, you have to be quick. The brigade shouldn't know that you've been gone as this is not an official mission, so keep it snappy."

Nova sat for a minute. "What am I looking for anyway, like what does this 'car' look like?" he asked. "Well, it's in the trunk of a small white hatchback, probably very rusty." Meouch replied. Nova looked puzzled. "What's a hatchback?"

The questions continued for a while as Meouch explained the various elements of car-ness to Nova, but after a while he seemed to get the hang of it. "It's a long trip, so you'll need rations. Luckily the bit of Earth you're going to is cold and humid so you won't need any special protection. I'll be giving you a ship large enough to fit in the whole car and which blends into its surroundings as an earth vehicle. Oh yeah, you're leaving tomorrow" Meouch finished, as he ushered Nova out again.

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As the Commander hurried off again, Nova stood in the hallway taking in what just occurred. "A mission? Just me? To earth no less?!" he said to himself excitedly. He hadn't been away from Sanctuary* for such a long time, bar the occasional test flight for a craft he'd just repaired. Nova quickly went to the deck to find the ship he'd call his home for the next few days. As he entered the oh-so familiar deck, with its various ships lined across a massive floor, he noticed a small, boxy cargo ship tucked behind a big fighter ship in a corner. He walked over to it, grabbing a couple tools around to avoid suspicion. As he came close, he saw a small note stuck to it. He grabbed the note, and it read:

"Don't be afraid to help yourself to any snacks I've left in the van, by the way.
C.M."

Nova chuckled as he put the note in his pocket. He peered in through the windows, and saw two leather seats in the front of the ship, both seating a bunch of crap. He opened the ship's door, and a pile of aluminium cans rattled out of it. Great. Nova spent the next hour or so cleaning out the "van", but halfway through he heard some footsteps behind him. He quickly spun around, trying to seem as inconspicuous as possible. Lo and behold, in the distance, there was Meouch. Nova gave a sigh of relief, and the Commander gave him a big thumbs up and kept walking. During the cleanup he came across a small hatch on the right side of the passenger compartment, he opened it, and found a bunch of candy bars. To his surprise, a little bag of catnip** was also tucked in the compartment. His eyes widened, and he stuffed the bag into his pocket. When he was done, he left the van where it was, and hurried back to his room to get some rest before the big trip. He opened his door and practically jumped into his room, flinging what he had scavenged onto his desk, and he threw himself onto his bed. After checking he had no more duties, he closed his eyes and went to sleep.

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As his alarm rang, Nova could barely get out of bed. He didn't sleep a wink because of the excitement, and as such groggily rolled out of bed. He lumbered over to his bathroom to get himself cleaned up and ready, wrote a note explaining away his abscence and made his way over to the deck. Walking through the corridors at this time was oddly eery. There's quite a lot of activity most all of the time, yet you could hear a pin drop now. His footsteps echoed as he kept an eye out for anyone he might stumble into. Luckily he didn't, and he soon reached the deck. Nova glanced around to check if the coast was clear. There was one person there, a janitor lying face flat on the ground snoring away. "Poor guy" Nova whispered to himself. He quickly hopped over to the van and clambered inside.

*Ka-CLUNK*

That was loud. He had not anticipated the door being quite so heavy, but luckily it seemed nobody had noticed. "Thrusters, check. Pressurisation... Check. Comms.. Check. Warp... Check. Good!" Nova mumbled as he did the standard pre-flight checks. He gently pushed in the throttle, and the thrusters started grumbling in accordance. With one final look to see if anyone was around, the van shot off into space. After flying through space for a while, Nova realised it had been quite a while since he had been a significant way away from Sanctuary. He enjoyed the views of glistening galaxies that went by the window. To be so close with the stars again after such a long time was a feeling he had sorely missed. He couldn't let his mind wander too much, though, as the van was still in manual control. So he set the course to Earth, laid back in his chair and watched the universe go by, waiting for enough charge to build up to warp. Soon thereafter he felt the sleep deprivation set in, and as unconsciousness got the better of him, he drifted off to sleep.

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Nova was, however, rudely awoken by alarms blaring into his ears. He scrambled around groggily, until he noticed on the control deck that the main thrusters were down. He looked back at them, and they were covered in what looked to be some sort of giant space slug creature. Immediately after, he noticed something significantly more pressing happening inside the vessel, a fuel line had burst and was ablaze! One of the creatures was also sitting nearby, presumably having chewed through it. Nova went for the fire extuingisher, and against every fibre of his being, put out the fire.

"I can see to that fuel line in a minute" He mumbled to himself. Nova wondered for a moment how he would get the slug things off of his thrusters as well, then it hit him. The slug thing also got hit with the spray from the fire extuingisher, and it had seemingly melted away into goo.

"Of course!" He exclaimed, "They're slugs, the sodium bicarbonate in the fire extuingisher melts them!" Pleased with himself, he quickly figured out that he could point the fire extuingisher into the burst fuel line and give a good few bursts into it, that would send some of the sodium through the lines into the thrusters and goo-ify the slugs on them. Which they did!

After the chaos was over, he quickly turned his attention to the still leaking fuel line. He didn't have much to hand right now, so he had to make do with some creative tape usage. When he finished his checkup of the ship, he slouched back down into his seat with an exasperated sigh. "They really have to start arming me for these missions.."

A little time passed, and then an affirmative beep sounded through the cabin. "Ah, the warp's charged!" Nova exclaimed. He strapped himself into his seat, and with the push of a button, galaxies started flying by in an incomprehensible flurry of colours and lights. This wasn't anything new for Nova, as he had had to test the warp drive for dozens of ships after mending them. It lasted for a few moments until he was face to face with the Pale Blue Dot he was told so much about.

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As the ship floated in the Earth's high orbit, Nova punched in the latitude and longitude coordinates, muttering the numbers as he clicked the keys. Once confirmed, he carefully proceeded into lower orbit. He had to be careful, as he was informed that Earth has quite a large amount of satellites and debris in its lower orbit.

He was lucky, this part of the planet was currently shrouded in night, and as such he could slip in reasonably unnoticed, his vessel entering the atmosphere appearing similar to a falling star.

As Nova lowered into the landscape, his eyes could feast on sights the likes of which he had only ever seen in movies. Green, rolling hills adorned with leafy trees and black ribbons strewn across the land speckled with warm lights like the fairy lights on his wall. He knew these ribbons, he learnt about them from Meouch back on Sanctuary. The humans use them to move about in their "cars". He had never seen this much of the colour green in one place. Sure, they had the greenhouses on Sanctuary, but that's not on the level of a full planet.

Soon he lowered enough to the point where he could pinpoint exactly where he needed to be. He slowly brought the ship down, being as quiet as possible to prevent from alerting anyone. He parked it somewhere near the chain-link fence of his destination. He silently got out, and walked over to the front entrance.

Of course, he couldn't really read anything. Firstly because it was too dark, secondly because he wasn't that familiar with most human scripts, although, with the help of his flashlight and his translator he could make some of it out:

"MYLLWNI'S CLUNKERS, YOU SELL THEM, WE SCRAP THEM"

"They've really gotta come up with a better slogan." Nova thought to himself, as he started making his way through the scrapyard, taking much care not to accidentally step on something. Soon enough, he found a car that matched the description. One small issue though, it was sat on top of another car.

Nova stood and pondered for a bit. How in the stars was he going to get that thing down from there without being spotted? Pushing it off is clearly not an option, nor is driving it off, he had no idea how to!

Then it clicked! The inside of the van had a winch. If he could somehow get the van up there, he could winch the car in there and be out within a couple minutes.

He jogged back over to the van, still looking out for anything potentially loud on the ground. He started it up, and very quietly hovered over to the target car. He put it in position, and then let it hover. One small problem again, how to get from the driver's cockpit to the back of it, as there was a dividing wall inbetween the storage space and the cockpit. Van still floating, Nova very carefully clambered out of the driver's side door and, hanging on for dear life, made his way over to the back of the van. Surprisingly, he didn't slip.

Nova chained up the winch to the rear bumper of the car, and then activated the winch.

"KLNCK-VRRRRRRRRRRRR" said the winch. That was loud. What was even louder though, was the mighty CRASH the car made as its body exited the stability of the car underneath and was now precariously dangling between the van and its previous resting place. Nova saw a light go on in a building in the scrapyard.

"Uh-oh" Nova exlaimed.