THE SPACE NAVY AU (18+)

"Oh, yeah, that's probably the game. If it's a scavenger hunt. Relax," you add, patting his shoulder awkwardly. "Nothing bad will happen if we don't play, I'm sure of it. But since we're here we might as well, right?" Maybe it will soothe him.

You get up and begin wandering, studying the scenery. "Red rocks and something blue. Well, I'm something blue, but that probably doesn't count."

 

The brownblood follows closely, peering around under bushes. The park isn't much larger than a suburban lawnring or two, but densely planted, with narrow, winding footpaths through steep, overlapping hills and rocky overhangs. It conveys a sense of lush wildness even where the bulkheads or ceiling plating shows through the foliage.

"Oh— here's one, sir. It's... is this jasper?" He pressed back against Bel's side and presents a small red-brown nut.

 

You take it and tap it with your claw. "No, it's woody. A nut, looks like. Might be tasty." You hand it back, then crouch on your heels to reach under a fern where you thought you saw something glinting.

 

A small, spiny landcrab clamps on to Bel's arm, hissing and clicking its mandibles threateningly. Lycaon yelps in fright and scrambles up the nearest tree to get away.

 

You grimace, not really in pain; the thing is too small to deal you more than a bit of a bruise. "You're not a stone," you tell it disapprovingly as you carefully pry it loose.

Looking up at Lycaon, you just barely manage not to laugh. "Spot anything interesting from up there?"

 

"Oh, I— uh— uhh— there's a gravel path!" he points, suddenly excited. "It's got colors!"

 

"Good job, that's perfect." You stand ready to help him down, though he turns out not to need it. Then you hurry to the path and collect three of the reddest rocks. "Now we just need something blue."

 

"Maybe a flower...?" he wonders. "Or— a bug? There are blue bugs? But I think there were blue flowers back that way..."

 

"If we give the frog a bug it might think it's a snack instead of a quest item, no matter what color it is. Let's go with the flowers."

You collect a blue flower for the frog -- and one for your hair, because you're feeling a little whimsical -- and go to turn in your collection. Holding it out in your palm, you find you're kind of giving the frog the stinkeye, because you don't really enjoy being judged by amphibians. It occurs to you that you might be taking its earlier rejection a bit too personally.

 

The frog eats the rocks and the flower, then licks its lips mouth with a long pale tongue, gold goggle eyes squinting shut, as if it were a gourmet connoisseur of random items.

The task I set
Was not very hard.
You'll only get
A small reward!

It croaks, then hacks, then spits out a walnut-sized chunk of raw opal— the kind of gemstone entire live-ammo campaigns would be waged over, back on the homeworld. Lycaon looks at the stone and frowns, a bit disappointed, as if it were about as impressive as a cheap chitin novelty ring from Chainsaw Cheeze.

"Aw," he says. "It's just a baby prize."

Retry / New Game / Quit? the frog asks.

 

"Uh. Baby prize?" You hold it up to the light, trying to see any sign it's fake. "It looks pretty damn valuable to me!"

 

Lycaon blurts out a laugh, then claps his hand over his mouth and watches Bel apprehensively, seeing if he's going to be punished for it. When no violence is forthcoming, he shuffles closer and has a look at the stone.

"It looks like it's just a little bit of opal?" he says, more hesitantly now, as if doubting his own assessment. "Is— is it something better? Sir?"

 

"No, that's what it looks like to me too. But it's a nice piece of opal, and --" You pause as disparate scraps of information from TV and internet click into place and the answer comes to you. "The homeworld economy is very different from the economy in space, isn't it? Gemstones... would tend to flow from the planet outward and not return. People's keepsakes and jewelry and stuff. Out here, people must get tons of the stuff from asteroid mining and the tribute of conquered aliens and all that, but it doesn't get down to Alternia." You shrug, rolling the stone thoughtfully in your palm. "To me, this looks like a rare treasure, but out here it's just a game token, isn't it."

 

"Huh... Yeah," the brownblood says, evidently not have thought of this before, or at least for a long time. "Yeah, I mean, it's not even carved into anything cool, you'd have to do that yourself. Some kind of alien fossil or coral would be better. Or a credit chip, something you could actually spend, that'd be good." His stomach rumbles, abruptly. "...Or candy."

 

"So you don't mind if I keep this?" You drop it into your jeans pocket rather than bother with your sylladex for something so small. "Let's quest for food, then. I'm hungry too."

 

"Okay. Um... okay, I think the door was... over here..." the brownblood flinches when they encounter the brighter lights of the hallway, and insists on holding Bel's hand again. When they finally find the little automat that serves the aft maker-space section of the ship, he gives a tremulous whimper and flattens to wall outside the block.

"There's people in there," he hisses, eyes purple-bright with terror. "Real people."

 

"You're real people, Lycaon Pictis," you remind him. "Just stick with me, we'll be fine." You give his hand a tug, positioning him sort of behind you, so he can use you for a shield. It takes some coaxing, but you get him to shadow you into the automat. You do your best to look like you belong there and know what you're doing -- which honestly isn't very hard, as it's your default attitude.

"The grilled cheese looks good, I wonder if it's real cheese or that protein paste stuff?" You hand him a tray and start setting food items on it.

 

Lycaon whines the whole way through, a compulsive grublike appeasement noise directed at the two increasingly weirded-out mechanics on some kind of late-morning snack run, then insists on going all the way back to the park to eat there once they've gotten their food.

He's halfway through swallowing everything on his tray like he's been starving— though with the stark way his bulky muscles and thick bones stand out under his skin, he probably has been— when he drops his whole tray to the grass and bolts up a tree.

Captain Aspera is strolling through the park, in full dress, fins pinned back with violent anger. When he finally sees Bel, his eye flashes garnet red.

"Mister Kadros," he says, curling his lip enough to show a lot of very white fangs. "Have you been enjoying yourself?"

 

"Yes, mostly," you say with defiant calm, not bothering to get up. Pretending his presence has no effect on you. He's kind of magnificent and a little bit genuinely scary, but that doesn't mean you have to fold up like the pupa everyone here thinks you are. "You fell asleep and I got bored, so I went for a walk. I didn't get in any fights."

Lycaon doesn't count. You didn't fight him, you just dodged until he calmed down.

 

"You asked me to trust you to stay put," you say in your best dangerously level tone, the kind you use for the rowdiest and dumbest of ensigns. "You assured me when I expressed, we can both agree, a perfectly reasonable level of skepticism that you wouldn't immediately dash off the moment I took my eye off you and feed your reckless, arrogant little horns straight into the nearest bad decision rodeo. And when I try to get some shut-eye after a supremely trying week, what do I find? Hmm? Tell me, Mister Kadros, who's nine very important sweeps old, if you're so very grown up and intelligent, please tell me what I found when I woke up after three goddamn hours of sleep. What did I find in your hive, where you were supposed to stay put?"

You spread your arms out to either side, to indicate absolutely fuck-all, and waggle your claws.