Chapter Text
“The Boov are miserable little soap-eaters.”
That was the direct translation of K-Trong’s guttural words echoing down the corridor. Although, with the proper context, it could accurately be translated to “My ungrateful kid won’t let me sleep.” See, the Gorg species had a rich linguistic culture whose meaning existed in the nuances of intonation. An insult against the Boov could mean virtually anything depending on how it was spoken. A spit on the first single-celled bacterial ancestor of the Boov could be sentimental admiration for a beautiful day.
Of course, K-Trong usually tried to avoid the habit of expressing disdain for the Boov. He still didn’t have any special affection for the aliens that erased every other Gorg of his generation. But their new Captain, Oh, had returned his kids to him in an act of selflessness novel to either species. The fued between Boov and Gorg that had lasted for millennia was finally over. K-Trong didn’t want his kids to inherent any of his own grudges. Right now, though, he was just too exhausted to care about what he said. All the Gorglings were asleep anyway.
Well. All except one.
His search for that particular troublemaker had led him to one of the ship’s corridors of holding cells. And not coincidentally, the corridor in which his old enemy Smek was trapped. K-Trong had yet to see him lucid. The Boov had been almost adamantly unconscious since he was brought on board the Gorg mothership. He was probably awake by now, and K-Trong had no qualms admitting he’d love to see the stupid terror on his face.
Sure, it was petty. But kidnapping somebody’s children during a peace meeting also fell within that range, didn’t it?
The Gorg made a low rumbling growl that didn't particularly mean anything. But it was certainly as much a vicious threat as anything words could put together. He approached Smek’s cell, glaring and bristling and ready to convey all his deep-seated contempt in the couple seconds it took to pass by. There’d be shrill screams and bright yellow colors. K-Trong personally found amusement in the Boovs’ fear response. They became the most obnoxiously conspicuous things in existence, in the very moments it would do well for them to disappear.
Unless they'd finally figured that out for themselves. K-Trong froze in his tracks, and the small creature hidden beyond the mask blinked dumbly in time with the mechsuit’s yellow eyes. The absence of a shrieking Boov registered before he even realized the green-tinted force field was down. A perfectly round cut had been surgically pried off the back wall, revealing the glowing green intestinal circuitry beyond. Thin chords snaked from the wall and hooked up to the charred, sparking remains of an overwhelmed Boov tablet.
It was of no help to K-Trong to consider how smart it would’ve been to check the Boov’s vest pocket. And it wasn’t particularly helpful for a familiar tide of anger to rise up inside of him. Some problems required logical solutions, even though that was a grossly Boov notion. But the wave of anger grew, drawing on memories of the last time Smek fled through the ship, and then a sudden realization hit him with the same wild force that his rage crashed and spilled throughout his body. The Gorgling was loose too, in the same proximity of the Boov that had already stolen it once before.
K-Trong’s roar echoed throughout the ship. He roared probably the most vicious insult against a Boov that he himself had ever heard. And this time, it wasn’t anything up to interpretation.
* * *
Smek briefly paused in his wild sprint through the mothership. He heaved for breath, wiping his brow and squinting at the distant roar of the Gorg leader.
“I do not even have a mother,” he muttered.
Apparently K-Trong figured out he’d hacked the cell and taken down the force field with his Boovish tablet. He might've even noticed that Smek had snagged a useful little souvenir. He reached into his pocket now, just to make sure the pyramidal piece of Gorg tech he’d scrounged from the wall was still there. It was quite literally the key to his escape. Slushious was out of fuel, but with this chip Smek could jolt the car back to life.
Plugging into the mainframe gave him a complex map of the ship’s interior and allowed him to pinpoint Slushious’ location. It was one of those times when his perfect memory came in handy, and he used it to his full advantage as he dove through the confusing maze of halls. The dark, sharp-edged architecture was a shocking change of pace from all the colorful and spherical themes that any Boov was used to. Green lines slashed the walls around him, glowing and ebbing like the ship itself was a breathing monster. It felt like he was being digested even while he fled for safety.
At least he was nearly to Slushious, over halfway there if he’d calculated the distance correctly. And he was a Boov so that wasn’t really a question. It would hardly take him two seconds to wire up the Gorg chip, and he’d be millions of miles away by the end of a minute. In a rare instance where something wriggled past his terror, Smek grinned. He really was the best Boov at running away. This was the second time he’d slipped from right under the Gorg’s non-existent nose. To think that K-Trong was the sole trainer of a next generation of trackers. Those suckers didn’t stand a chance.
But there was always a star student. That’s how Smek would’ve explained it if he still had the presence of mind to form a pretentious thought. Honestly though, only one thought formed when he turned a hard corner and met the patiently waiting Gorgling:
He. Was. Dead.
In an instant the Gorgling was on top of him. It was less than half his size, but the mechsuit had that insane density that made Gorg wary of water. Smek had been effectively pinned, and he barely had time to scream before the Gorg lunged to bite—
And chomped down on the curious thing the Boov clutched so desperately in his hand. Sparks flew and a nasty web of green voltage writhed across the mechsuit. The Gorgling screeched and rolled across the floor, twitching and wincing until the electricity faded and it scuttled off with a high-pitched whine.
Smek hefted himself to his pods and watched the Gorgling run crying around the corner. His stunned expression slowly morphed into something way more smug than was really justified.
“HA!” he laughed, making sure it echoed through the ship. He switched to Gorgspeak; “Take that, you little brat! Be sure to tell K-Trong that the Great Captain Smek gave you a fraction of the nasty shock you deserve! And if I ever see you again, I’ll—I’ll…”
He saw the Gorgling again a lot faster than he expected, crouching behind the hulking form of its father. Needless to say, any trace of smugness on the young Gorg’s face was more than deserved.
Smek blanched white and his nostricles dropped down his back. He glanced from the seething face of K-Trong to the similarly seething wreck of a Gorg chip in his hand.
“Eheh…” he tossed the useless chip to the side and took a couple trembling steps backward. “Soo,” he stuck a couple fingers in the air, “how about Peace Meeting Part Two?”
* * *
Lucy looked forward to spending the night alone, in a quiet place without any shouting protestors demanding her attention. K-Trong had offered the human her own private room when she’d arrived on the ship. It was one of many, many, many empty living quarters on the mothership. Which would end up completely shattering her heart if she really let herself think about it.
She had to spare her own feelings and focus on selfish thoughts, like how she really wished the Gorg had any tendencies toward comfort. The bed was pretty much just a slab of steel and there weren't any sheets or pillows in sight. That was why she'd walked to Slushious, getting lost a couple times and hitting dead ends until she finally stumbled upon the right room. And “room” was a pretty humble word for it, because the boarding dock had enough space for an entire city.
For as giant as the Gorg ship was, there were hardly any supplies to show how a person could be expected to live inside it. Fortunately Slushious was basically a MoPo on wheels, and if her daughter could survive on gas station junk food for two weeks during an alien invasion, then Lucy could probably last a day on chips and soda too.
Now, after raiding the car for blankets and a very lenient definition of “sustenance”, Lucy was ready to burrow into her own private corner of the ship. She’d try to get a decent night’s rest before her weighty task of watching over the Gorglings tomorrow. She had a feeling she really didn’t understand the full breadth of the favor that she’d agreed to. But as soon as she’d known for certain that she had a secure transit back to her kids, and that they were alright without her for the time being, something other than compassion prompted her to stay and help K-Trong.
She really did feel empathy for his struggles as a single parent. And she was willing to give him an overdue break from his kids, so he could focus on some kind of alien grocery run. But she knew that she was ultimately sparing herself from a bigger chore, that of returning to Chicago, where it was harder every day to feel safe and at home.
Lucy sighed over the heaping pile of blankets and snacks in her arms. She just needed to focus on finding her way back to her room on the Gorg’s ship. If she got lost, she was fully prepared to make a nest in a random spot like some kind of unwelcome rodent. At least she wouldn’t be in the mouse trap like a certain Boov.
As Lucy walked away from Slushious, heading toward one of the boarding dock’s many triangular exits, she briefly wondered how he was doing. Hopefully he’d finally accepted that there was nowhere for him to run, and that he was going back to New Boovworld whether he liked it or not. Seriously, she mused with some irritation; there were worse things than having to return to a city that was actually safe.
But screaming and running away were both dearly held habits of the prior Captain. Habits he had yet to break out of, which was made very clear to Lucy when he suddenly ran screaming onto the boarding dock. She paused and watched him flee for Slushious like he had any hope of escaping in it. Didn’t he remember the car was out of fuel? But there was something familiar in the way that he ran.
Lucy remembered her last day in Happy Humanstown. Everyone had been so happy when the Boov fled from the human camps without warning. Many people taunted and jeered at the little aliens while they rushed past, but Lucy hadn’t been one of them. The fear in their eyes told her they weren’t just running toward the Boov mothership. They were running away from something else. Now, like then, she recognized the look of someone being hunted.
And just like last time, K-Trong was the one closing in. But instead of being a faceless pursuer hidden away in a giant looming spaceship, the Gorg had taken a more personal approach to this chase. K-Trong flew out of the same corridor Smek had come screaming out of. He was down on all fours in a loping run between that of a wolf and a gorilla, and he was catching up fast to the Boov. Lucy’s heart dropped when she realized Smek, the self-proclaimed inventor of running away, wasn’t going to be able to outrun him. The car was too far, and the Gorg was too fast.
But Boov were quite the little strategists, and Smek’s survival plan changed the second his wild-eyed gaze moved from the car to the frozen human observer. The floor squealed with how sharp he turned and then both the aliens were on trajectory right toward her. Lucy dropped the blankets and took a few useless steps back. She hardly had time to shout before the Boov tackled her with all the force of a cannonball.
They rolled and she wound up on top of him. Which she thought was an accident, until he curled and burrowed underneath her like an invertebrate fitting its new shell. It turned out his new strategy was to use her as a human shield. She peeked up to see K-Trong hovering over them, huffing and puffing and in every way the big bad wolf. Lucy flattened herself as much as she could with a shivering Boov crammed underneath her.
“What did you do?” she hissed.
“The Gorg’s little brat started it!” Smek wailed.
“Oh no,” she groaned. Then the Gorg reached one of his lanky tentacle-arms toward her.
Maybe Lucy could've reasoned with him if she’d just opened her mouth and used her words. She didn’t know Gorgspeak, but tone was pretty universal. And K-Trong had no intention of hurting her. In her leather suit, she was very much just the inconvenient fruit-peel between the Gorg and what he really wanted to sink his teeth into. But the day’s growing culmination of chases and tackles and general alien unpleasantness had her nerves completely frayed. So when she used her mouth to resolve the issue, it wasn’t in any way she was proud of.
K-Trong screeched and reeled backward. He stumbled in a fashion that was way too dramatic for anyone not planning insurance fraud. He cradled his arm pitifully and spat some Gorgspeak at her.
“Oh my gosh!” Lucy cried. She scrambled to her feet. “I didn’t mean to—I am so sorry!”
Lucy grimaced. There was a sour taste in her mouth. And not just in a guilty sense, K-Trong’s mechsuit tasted awful.
At least the cat-and-mouse chase was temporarily on hold. Lucy had their attention and she wanted to help resolve their issues. This time without anyone biting anyone else. She wasn’t exactly fond of Smek, but she’d already put a lot of effort into keeping him in one piece, and he was starting to feel like a homework assignment she really deserved to get full credit for. Even though he actively tried to get himself eaten by the dog.
She was still figuring out how to talk things out with K-Trong when a barely-stifled laugh made the Gorg bristle.
“Smek,” Lucy warned.
“Pffffft HAHAHA.”
Lucy pinned him with a look that shut him up faster than the Gorg’s own nasty glare. “I don’t know what you did to make him that angry,” she scolded, “but you're going to apologize right now. Tell him that you're sorry!”
Suddenly Smek had a problem with lying. He squirmed. “But—”
“JUST SAY IT.”
She couldn’t tell when his groaning whine ended and his Gorgspeak began. By the amount of gesturing Smek did, it seemed more like a long-winded explanation than anything along the lines of a genuine apology. But whatever he said managed to ease the Gorg’s bristling posture into something less animalistic.
“Okay,” Lucy sighed, “tell him that I apologize for biting him. And tell him I can babysit.”
Smek gave her an odd look but translated. He asked, “You are watching the Gorglings?”
“Oh, right, tell him I can do that too.”
He got a couple Gorg words in before her meaning caught up and he flushed red. “Hey-now,” he snapped.
All his snark miraculously vanished when K-Trong lurched forward. Smek yelped and ducked behind Lucy’s legs. The Gorg said something low and hardly distinguishable from an animal’s deep-throated growl. Then he turned and plodded off, returning to his task of putting an unreasonable mischief-maker to bed, and leaving Lucy to deal with her own.
“Are you needing me to translate?” the Boov squeaked.
“No, that was pretty universal,” Lucy sighed. “Please make a better effort to get along with his kids. I really need you to behave.”
It was like lecturing a younger Tip, back when she was in the single-digits with no emotional regulation to speak of. Those were the days Lucy never got a break from parenting. But now that the worst of the alien drama was settled, she was more than ready to have some adult time to herself.
Lucy gathered up the blankets that she’d had to abandon earlier. Smek hovered near her side, scanning anxiously for K-Trong’s return.
“Okay,” she said, “I’m just gonna sleep in Slushious tonight.”
The Boov ripped his eyes away from the invisible Gorg creeping in the shadows. “What about me?”
Smek looked down at the single blanket she dropped on the ground.
She wasn’t going to feel guilty.
He looked up at her.
“I think we should be taking turns with the backseat,” Smek complained from the driver's side, glaring at her from the rear view mirror.
“I’ll say it again,” Lucy muttered. “The backseat is my space. I’m not above biting a second alien today, trust me.”