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“Good evening.”
“AHHH!”
Damn Clarence, damn his children, and damn his next seven generations, although he doubted he would even have more generations, adopted or otherwise, considering his children were psychopaths.
“Gary, may I mention the irony? You’re a prisoner again,” HUE said, while looking at the height they were trapped at.
“Wow, what a funny comment, HUE. Now let’s get out of here. I have a plan.”
As they detached themselves from the giant magnet and fell ungracefully to the ground, he thought that perhaps it hadn’t been such a brilliant plan, considering how much his stomach was throbbing.
Stupid spider robot.
“Come on, freedom, free—ahh!”
Perhaps it wasn’t a better plan when, after being captured again, they tried it again, and again, and again.
They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result, but whatever, who cared?
He felt hopeful when they mentioned a race. Free them and give them a spaceship? They really were idiots. He felt despair when KVN came back to life. He was seriously considering ripping off his organic arm and strangling himself with it.
AVA seemed nice, somewhat condescending, but she sounded amused. At least she made HUE nervous, and that was funny.
His hands were shaking a little. The race was INTENSE, and if there was one thing he knew, it was that he was a shitty captain. That was what they always told him. But if he was honest, it was fucking fun.
“I don’t want to do this, shit! I don’t want to!” he screamed as AVA sent him diving toward the handsome blond guy’s ship.
“Oh my God, I’m not the right person for this! I Lost a planet!” Gary yelled.
Ash had saved him. She had slowed his fall and killed the guy who was pointing a gun at him. One point for Clarence’s daughter.
Colliding with that handsome blond and floating while hanging onto a rope, headbutting him only to discover he was a robot, and then falling into Clarence’s ship. hurt.
Going back to the race, winning, being rescued by Nightfall, and seeing Mooncake again made him happy.
“Chookity! Chookity-pok.”
“Mhh, yeah, really?”
He felt Little Cato’s skeptical gaze, but somehow, he had learned to understand Mooncake. They had told him he was good with languages. He never would have guessed that also applied to alien languages.
Nightfall looked at him while asking if Quinn was still alive, as she tried to assure him that no one had survived Final Space.
“Then she’ll be the first.”
Now that everything had calmed down, he could feel the pain again. A LOT OF PAIN. But it was hilarious watching AVA annoy HUE, and now that HUE had a body, KVN would annoy him instead of Gary. Small victories.
How he hated Clarence, as he tried to take the cube away from him, only for it to transform into Bolo.
“The day comes. The time has come for you to free me.”
“Gather the five keys to break my prison.”
“They are hidden throughout the universe.”
“BOLO, THE UNIVERSE IS A BIG PLACE!”
The idiot turned back into a little cube and disappeared.
What an idiot.
As they boarded the ship and he sat in the pilot’s seat, Clarence sat on top of him.
Putting aside the absolute disgust it caused him, when he leaned back, Clarence also pressed against his wound.
He had tried to ignore it, but when the spider robot from Jack’s swarm—because, just to piss him off, Gary refused to call him by his title—stabbed him, it had done some real damage. It wasn’t fatal, the wound was closed, but it hurt.
“Ahg…”
“Are you getting horny, primate?”
“Clarence, oh my God, shut up and get off me,” he said as he pushed him away and stood up, motioning for Nightfall to take over.
Ignoring the suspicious looks from Clarence’s children, he headed down the hallway, with Little Cato following him.
“Are you okay, Gary?”
“Relax, Spider-Cat. I’m just looking for bandages or medical supplies. I took a few good hits back there.”
“We have bandages and medicine in the cabin,” Ash said from behind them. She had been quiet ever since she had shouted that she liked Little Cato.
“Really? Take me there.”
Back in the cabin, where Nightfall was kicking Clarence to make him let her fly, Gary took some bandages that Ash handed him and some strange-looking medicine.
“I’m guessing you’re not familiar with our medicines, are you?” Ash said, beginning to point at bottles and pills. “These are for scrapes, these are for bruises, this ointment works for #5jhw poison, but it’ll kill you with anything else, and umm, this one is for broken bones.”
“Ash, could you stop sharing our high-quality supplements with our merchandise?” Clarence said, rubbing his face.
“And what about this?” Gary grunted, unzipping his jacket and revealing the hole in his abdomen, still with the green gel keeping him from bleeding out.
“Oh my God! I can’t look at that, it’s too much for me,” Fox said, covering his eyes with his organic hand.
“WHEN DID THAT HAPPEN?!” Little Cato shouted.
“When we were fighting Jack’s swarm,” Gary grunted.
“And why didn’t you say anything before?!”
“Uh… I was busy dying, you know? Wandering through space thinking I had ten minutes left to live until they ran out. I think I died for a while.”
“Indeed,” HUE said. “According to my sensors, you were clinically dead for 34 seconds, less than the last time you died: five minutes.”
“Yay,” he muttered.
“Sit down. I’ll get some bandages,” Little Cato said, guiding him to the floor as Ash brought over a bottle containing a green liquid.
“What is that? You’re not going to put some radioactive-looking liquid on me, are you? I don’t want to turn into a mutant hybrid—or, no, a mutation. Or get superpowers? That would be awesome, actually.”
“Oh my God, shut up,” Ash said before spraying it onto his stomach.
“AH, SHIT! THAT BURNS! Oh—I'm disintegrating! Why is it bubbling? It’s smoking! It’s cooking me!”
The liquid dissolved the gel covering the wound and seeped deeper into it, beginning to seal and heal it at an incredible speed.
Little Cato approached, knelt in front of Gary, and began bandaging the wound while Mooncake flew over him, offering moral support.
“Stop wasting resources on him!” Clarence shouted, but they ignored him.
“Chookity-pok!”
“I know, he’s an idiot, but trust me, I got revenge on him when I went to the past.”
“Chookity-pok.”
“Mooncake! Little ears!” Gary shouted scandalously, trying to cover Little Cato’s ears.
“Gary! Move, I don’t even understand what he’s saying.”
“He was just insulting Lord Commander for stabbing me.”
“LORD COMMANDER?!”
Little Cato and Gary turned and saw how shocked Clarence looked.
“Yep.”
“He did that to you?”
“Yep.”
“Just that?”
“Are you having a stroke, or do you not understand that yes means yes?”
“Dad? How do you know Lord Commander?” Fox asked.
“Uh, through some very honest business dealings that—”
“Shady business,” everyone said at the same time.
“As I was saying, he’s not someone you want to mess with. If he’s looking for you, there’s no escape.”
“There is,” Nightfall said.
“What do you mean?” Little Cato asked.
“I killed him.”
Silence.
“WHAT?!”
Not so silent anymore.
“I’ve killed him many times. Get over it.”
“But—I…”
“I know you wanted to kill him yourself, Little Cato, but I couldn’t leave him alive.”
Little Cato nodded, still looking dejected, while tightening the bandage around Gary’s abdomen.
“Ahg! Take it easy, buddy. I don’t want my guts coming out through my mouth.”
“Sorry.”
“…”
“…”
“What are we going to do now?”
“I think I want to break into a maximum-security prison.”