Don't talk to me about life
Aug. 11th, 2007 10:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
keire_keWord to the wise: if you encounter a puddle 12 inches deep, do not drive through it. Engine + water = hardware error.
We watched the Firefly episode "Out of Gas" yesterday, and I am once again suffering from the "who in their right mind made the decision to cancel this" syndrome. To better my mood, and to celebrate Saiyuki #6 finally being released, I set to work on ACB. I thought this part would be shorter than usual, but it turned out it's not. Or at least not much shorter. *grins* You'll see why I wanted to end this chapter where I did.
The way to the terminal was not exactly brightly lit, but at least it was unoccupied, by neither the living nor the dead. Somehow, that made it the most unnerving corridor yet. Gojyo released the breath he didn’t know he was holding when they reached the computer room. It was dominated by a giant screen, a couple of holographic projectors and, along the walls, a number of smaller computer stations. Not one of them was on.
Gojyo would rather die than admit it, but since Sanzo left the two of them alone he’d been a little edgy. Hakkai was good company, better than good, and as someone for whom “accompanying” was a job description he had the authority to state it in a firm voice. Hakkai, however, wasn’t Sanzo. For all the captain’s charms he had a presence about him that, if you were one of his, frightened all else away. It was comforting, especially in huge underground facilities designed to turn otherwise adorable kids into killing machines.
Gojyo didn’t know until now how much he appreciated Sanzo’s “fuck off now” aura.
“You know, I’m almost starting to regret coming here,” he told Hakkai.
“I don’t blame you.”
The main computer flickered into life, bringing with it the lights to the smaller screens. With a soft hum the space was suddenly a little less freaky. Gojyo didn’t relax, but the humming was something of a comfort for anyone who’d spent much of their time onboard a space ship.
“It’s freaky, no offence. I wonder how you managed to last as long as you had.”
“I have a high tolerance for weird,” Hakkai replied. “Of course, it was a lot less creepy when there were people in here.”
“Not if they were anything like you, it wasn’t.” Gojyo really didn’t want to say it, but sometimes his tongue got the better of him.
Hakkai accepted the comment gracefully, if with surprise. “You think I’m creepy?”
“Well, yes. You are. No offence, but even Sanzo is more human than you, sometimes.”
Hakkai took a moment to consider this. “In that case I must commend your tolerance for creepiness.” He smiled at the companion. It was a quiet, pleasant smile, quite unlike his public face. Hakkai surprised himself with how easy it was to show Gojyo that smile.
Gojyo grinned in reply. “I suppose, when you look at it like that…”
“I am quite human, Gojyo,” Hakkai said, turning his face away from the light. Gojyo looked at him and then reached out to turn the doctor’s face.
“I haven’t forgotten,” he said softly. He then turned back to the equipment Sanzo entrusted them with. He sorted the cables in his hand and connected the disc to the palmtop and the palmtop to the mainframe. On the giant screen a friendly font demanded a username and a password. “Here goes nothing,” Gojyo muttered and selected the colourful cracker icon. He touched “run” and watched the icon fill the tiny screen of the palmtop.
The user-friendly face of the mainframe dissolved into million pieces. “Oh, that was pretty literal,” the companion said. They waited a few seconds, then: “I’m hoping it was supposed to happen.” The screen was black now, with strings of random symbols flowing uninterrupted from top to bottom.
Gojyo’s “Now what?” was not particularly encouraging.
xxx.XXX.xxx
It was really starting to get dense in the air around West. Kougaji reloaded his gun and cursed.
“Language,” he heard through the com. Holy fuck, if Yaone was turning patronising, it meant they were in big trouble. “We are in trouble,” she added. No shit, Kougaji thought. The West lurched violently, forcing Kougaji to cling to the railing to keep his balance.
“No, you think?” Jien yelled from the other side of the cargo hold. He and Kougaji were harnessed to the permanent fixtures on both sides of the hold, shooting at anything that showed in the span of the wide-open gate. Yaone was performing her usual miracles in the cockpit, trying to keep the harpoons away from West and let the gunners have a shot every now and then.
“There’s more of them coming, we have to go,” Yaone shouted. “I’m taking us into the clouds!” Through the open door Kougaji saw, instead of the sky, nothing but the ground. He hoped Lirin had something to hold on to in the engine room. Belatedly he wondered whether everything was stowed correctly, including the cat. If not, there would be hours of cleaning to be done and just as many, if not more, of listening to Sanzo grumble.
“We have to wait for Sanzo!”
“You know Sanzo would scalp me if anything happened to the ship,” which was to say Sanzo knew damn well a ship stripped for parts would get them nowhere faster than a ship you had to wait to board, Kougaji translated in his head. “They have enough sense to stay safe on the ground until we get them.” There were a few more curses, all the more disturbing for the otherwise soft voice uttering them, and West performed a most disquieting turn. “Close the hold, now!”
As soon as the cargo hold was airtight, Yaone sent West into a spin. Aerial acrobatics were a sound tactic against the floating scrapyards – the scavengers’ vessels were heavy and hard to maneuver, plus their pilots lost interest quickly. Pursuing a ship capable of running away was outside their expertise. If West managed to reach the clouds, her crew would have found a moderately safe hiding place. Of course they still had to outrun the fleet already on their tail.
“Sanzo?” Kougaji asked the com when he gained his footing. He’d been praying to whoever might be listening that they were not out of range yet. “Do you copy?”
“What?” Sanzo replied, and even the curt word was almost unrecognizable, distorted as it was by static and distance.
“We going into the clouds, there are too many scavengers to hover here.”
Sanzo’s response was a short expletive and a sudden breach of contact. Kougaji stared at the communicator. It’s been a long time since he heard that note in Sanzo’s voice. Coming to think of it, that one time he had had been directly before Sanzo was court-martialed…
Damn.
It wasn’t that Kougaji hoped that whoever was standing in Sanzo’s way deserved it, because he knew they did. Sanzo might have been a mighty prick with a temper like a nitroglycerin tank in direct sunlight, but his heart was in the right place. The place might have been shuttered by titanium panels and encased in ice-cold steel, but it was right. What Kougaji hoped was that this time they would be left with something more than pieces.
Around West, in the cold air high above Galatea, the swarm of awkward, bulky scavenger ships thickened. The stray sunbeams glittered off the spikes and electrical nets, installed in every nook and cranny of the flying traps, designed to pull apart everything worth at least selling for scraps.
The clouds were miles away. Yaone looked at the monitors around her.
“Hold on tight,” she said tersely and flipped the comlink off. She gripped the steer tightly. “Watch me soar,” she whispered to the surrounding ships.
xxx.XXX.xxx
Far below the ground the captain’s communicator managed to cough out its final message before falling completely silent.
Sanzo shoved the device back into his pocket and cursed. As if things couldn’t have been worse. Now there was no way to escape this accursed place, even if everything went according to plan, which it hadn’t. There was a million to one chance of finding a landing spot the scavengers wouldn’t assault as soon as the ship was near, if it was bad enough for Yaone to take West into the clouds.
On the plus side, the show was excellent and Goku was gaining the upper hand. Homura might have had skills surpassing everyone else plus eons of experience, but Goku was- Well, there was no word for who Goku was. He certainly was light-years ahead of the bounty hunter in terms of reaction times and sheer strength. Sanzo once again made a mental note never to fight the monkey. Luckily for him, said monkey seemed most unwilling to fight the captain. He supposed that was a distant nod from a deity of some sort – if they had to have this shit brought upon their heads, it was at least comforting to know that they had someone like Goku on their side.
Nevertheless, Sanzo almost winced when the monkey landed a hit that sent Homura onto the floor, head first. He’d never had much sympathy for the bounty hunters, or for people who tried to shoot him. The flinch, he suspected, was a natural human reaction to seeing a fellow human break a couple of ribs and dislocate a shoulder.
He followed the fighters through the dark corridors, taking care to remain outside the immediate danger zone and wondered (once he stopped cursing Goku for not giving him a clear enough shot, but the monkey was moving entirely too fast to risk it), not for the first time since the fight started, what was the point.
Sanzo knew, and if Homura survived half of what the stories suggested he had, he must have known it too: there was no way he could win this fight. Against any man or woman in the galaxy, even Sanzo himself (who was, a lifetime ago, considered the best fighter in UE), Homura would probably emerge from the fray as the winner. But here and now Goku was setting a standard that should be impossible to achieve.
And yet, even though that simple truth was plain as the light of day, there was no trace of worry on Homura’s face. There was intense focus and pain, cause by the injuries, but nothing even remotely resembling fear.
Homura collected himself from the floor in time to avoid a punch and a roundhouse kick. Goku let him have no time to catch his breath before following through with a punch to the solar plexus, which Homura managed to avoid only by a backward roll.
Sanzo didn’t know how much time had passed since Hakkai uttered the triggering phrase – and the good doctor was going to be grilled for it, afterwards. Unique procedures my ass, Sanzo fumed. But this had to wait. Right now Goku threw Homura into a wall, and by the sound the collision made Sanzo could tell the hit was forceful enough to knock a normal person out. Nevertheless, Homura righted himself, even though his movements suggested he was in much pain, and looked straight at Goku. He wasn’t smiling anymore.
Goku – and Sanzo was grateful he couldn’t see his face – was at Homura’s side in no time at all. It only took a few punches and Homura was flying through the air again, landing on his side with a barely concealed grunt of pain. Goku stood above him, poised to deliver a killing blow, when suddenly the bounty hunter looked up.
“Aliquam augue. Aenean quis pede at ante facilisis elementum,” he said, carefully enunciating the words around the blood Sanzo could see trickling from his mouth. Sanzo looked to Goku and watched as the monkey shivered violently. For a few seconds he stood swaying, until another bout of tremors forced him to his knees. One of his hands came up to his chest, clutching desperately at the fabric over his heart, until finally he toppled over and stilled. His eyelids were still fluttering, but that was the only part of him that moved.
Sanzo, who was inching closer ever since Homura fell, managed to get within two yards. Homura remained ignorant of his presence, too pained to worry about anything but his immediate opponent. He got to his feet slowly, never taking his eyes off Goku. He withdrew a small gun from his hip holster and steadied his hand.
“It seems the old men were right, for once. Something like you should not exist,” he said taking aim. Goku’s eyes, fixed on the muzzle, closed slowly.
Sanzo heard the quiet words and, assaulted with the memory of Goku’s warm hair tickling his chin as the kid listened to his heartbeat, seethed inside. This was a test? The fucker thought fighting Goku was a game, that the kid was someone to test his own abilities against? Fuck you, Sanzo thought, bringing his gun up to level the trigger with the bounty hunter’s temple.
There was no way the bullet could miss. Not at this distance.
Sanzo had his gun holstered before the body hit the ground and jumped to Goku’s side. “Wake up!” he growled, slapping the kid. He didn’t stir. “Wake the fuck up, you stupid monkey!”
He fought with his hand as it slid down to Goku’s neck. No need for that, he told himself. Goku would wake up any second now. Sanzo kept repeating the words even as his fingers dug deeply into Goku’s neck, right beside the trachea. He must have missed the pulse the previous time, right?
He tried again and again, kneeling on the cold floor in the almost dark corridors, but still there was no evidence Goku’s heart was pumping blood. Still Goku didn’t breathe.
We watched the Firefly episode "Out of Gas" yesterday, and I am once again suffering from the "who in their right mind made the decision to cancel this" syndrome. To better my mood, and to celebrate Saiyuki #6 finally being released, I set to work on ACB. I thought this part would be shorter than usual, but it turned out it's not. Or at least not much shorter. *grins* You'll see why I wanted to end this chapter where I did.
The way to the terminal was not exactly brightly lit, but at least it was unoccupied, by neither the living nor the dead. Somehow, that made it the most unnerving corridor yet. Gojyo released the breath he didn’t know he was holding when they reached the computer room. It was dominated by a giant screen, a couple of holographic projectors and, along the walls, a number of smaller computer stations. Not one of them was on.
Gojyo would rather die than admit it, but since Sanzo left the two of them alone he’d been a little edgy. Hakkai was good company, better than good, and as someone for whom “accompanying” was a job description he had the authority to state it in a firm voice. Hakkai, however, wasn’t Sanzo. For all the captain’s charms he had a presence about him that, if you were one of his, frightened all else away. It was comforting, especially in huge underground facilities designed to turn otherwise adorable kids into killing machines.
Gojyo didn’t know until now how much he appreciated Sanzo’s “fuck off now” aura.
“You know, I’m almost starting to regret coming here,” he told Hakkai.
“I don’t blame you.”
The main computer flickered into life, bringing with it the lights to the smaller screens. With a soft hum the space was suddenly a little less freaky. Gojyo didn’t relax, but the humming was something of a comfort for anyone who’d spent much of their time onboard a space ship.
“It’s freaky, no offence. I wonder how you managed to last as long as you had.”
“I have a high tolerance for weird,” Hakkai replied. “Of course, it was a lot less creepy when there were people in here.”
“Not if they were anything like you, it wasn’t.” Gojyo really didn’t want to say it, but sometimes his tongue got the better of him.
Hakkai accepted the comment gracefully, if with surprise. “You think I’m creepy?”
“Well, yes. You are. No offence, but even Sanzo is more human than you, sometimes.”
Hakkai took a moment to consider this. “In that case I must commend your tolerance for creepiness.” He smiled at the companion. It was a quiet, pleasant smile, quite unlike his public face. Hakkai surprised himself with how easy it was to show Gojyo that smile.
Gojyo grinned in reply. “I suppose, when you look at it like that…”
“I am quite human, Gojyo,” Hakkai said, turning his face away from the light. Gojyo looked at him and then reached out to turn the doctor’s face.
“I haven’t forgotten,” he said softly. He then turned back to the equipment Sanzo entrusted them with. He sorted the cables in his hand and connected the disc to the palmtop and the palmtop to the mainframe. On the giant screen a friendly font demanded a username and a password. “Here goes nothing,” Gojyo muttered and selected the colourful cracker icon. He touched “run” and watched the icon fill the tiny screen of the palmtop.
The user-friendly face of the mainframe dissolved into million pieces. “Oh, that was pretty literal,” the companion said. They waited a few seconds, then: “I’m hoping it was supposed to happen.” The screen was black now, with strings of random symbols flowing uninterrupted from top to bottom.
Gojyo’s “Now what?” was not particularly encouraging.
xxx.XXX.xxx
It was really starting to get dense in the air around West. Kougaji reloaded his gun and cursed.
“Language,” he heard through the com. Holy fuck, if Yaone was turning patronising, it meant they were in big trouble. “We are in trouble,” she added. No shit, Kougaji thought. The West lurched violently, forcing Kougaji to cling to the railing to keep his balance.
“No, you think?” Jien yelled from the other side of the cargo hold. He and Kougaji were harnessed to the permanent fixtures on both sides of the hold, shooting at anything that showed in the span of the wide-open gate. Yaone was performing her usual miracles in the cockpit, trying to keep the harpoons away from West and let the gunners have a shot every now and then.
“There’s more of them coming, we have to go,” Yaone shouted. “I’m taking us into the clouds!” Through the open door Kougaji saw, instead of the sky, nothing but the ground. He hoped Lirin had something to hold on to in the engine room. Belatedly he wondered whether everything was stowed correctly, including the cat. If not, there would be hours of cleaning to be done and just as many, if not more, of listening to Sanzo grumble.
“We have to wait for Sanzo!”
“You know Sanzo would scalp me if anything happened to the ship,” which was to say Sanzo knew damn well a ship stripped for parts would get them nowhere faster than a ship you had to wait to board, Kougaji translated in his head. “They have enough sense to stay safe on the ground until we get them.” There were a few more curses, all the more disturbing for the otherwise soft voice uttering them, and West performed a most disquieting turn. “Close the hold, now!”
As soon as the cargo hold was airtight, Yaone sent West into a spin. Aerial acrobatics were a sound tactic against the floating scrapyards – the scavengers’ vessels were heavy and hard to maneuver, plus their pilots lost interest quickly. Pursuing a ship capable of running away was outside their expertise. If West managed to reach the clouds, her crew would have found a moderately safe hiding place. Of course they still had to outrun the fleet already on their tail.
“Sanzo?” Kougaji asked the com when he gained his footing. He’d been praying to whoever might be listening that they were not out of range yet. “Do you copy?”
“What?” Sanzo replied, and even the curt word was almost unrecognizable, distorted as it was by static and distance.
“We going into the clouds, there are too many scavengers to hover here.”
Sanzo’s response was a short expletive and a sudden breach of contact. Kougaji stared at the communicator. It’s been a long time since he heard that note in Sanzo’s voice. Coming to think of it, that one time he had had been directly before Sanzo was court-martialed…
Damn.
It wasn’t that Kougaji hoped that whoever was standing in Sanzo’s way deserved it, because he knew they did. Sanzo might have been a mighty prick with a temper like a nitroglycerin tank in direct sunlight, but his heart was in the right place. The place might have been shuttered by titanium panels and encased in ice-cold steel, but it was right. What Kougaji hoped was that this time they would be left with something more than pieces.
Around West, in the cold air high above Galatea, the swarm of awkward, bulky scavenger ships thickened. The stray sunbeams glittered off the spikes and electrical nets, installed in every nook and cranny of the flying traps, designed to pull apart everything worth at least selling for scraps.
The clouds were miles away. Yaone looked at the monitors around her.
“Hold on tight,” she said tersely and flipped the comlink off. She gripped the steer tightly. “Watch me soar,” she whispered to the surrounding ships.
xxx.XXX.xxx
Far below the ground the captain’s communicator managed to cough out its final message before falling completely silent.
Sanzo shoved the device back into his pocket and cursed. As if things couldn’t have been worse. Now there was no way to escape this accursed place, even if everything went according to plan, which it hadn’t. There was a million to one chance of finding a landing spot the scavengers wouldn’t assault as soon as the ship was near, if it was bad enough for Yaone to take West into the clouds.
On the plus side, the show was excellent and Goku was gaining the upper hand. Homura might have had skills surpassing everyone else plus eons of experience, but Goku was- Well, there was no word for who Goku was. He certainly was light-years ahead of the bounty hunter in terms of reaction times and sheer strength. Sanzo once again made a mental note never to fight the monkey. Luckily for him, said monkey seemed most unwilling to fight the captain. He supposed that was a distant nod from a deity of some sort – if they had to have this shit brought upon their heads, it was at least comforting to know that they had someone like Goku on their side.
Nevertheless, Sanzo almost winced when the monkey landed a hit that sent Homura onto the floor, head first. He’d never had much sympathy for the bounty hunters, or for people who tried to shoot him. The flinch, he suspected, was a natural human reaction to seeing a fellow human break a couple of ribs and dislocate a shoulder.
He followed the fighters through the dark corridors, taking care to remain outside the immediate danger zone and wondered (once he stopped cursing Goku for not giving him a clear enough shot, but the monkey was moving entirely too fast to risk it), not for the first time since the fight started, what was the point.
Sanzo knew, and if Homura survived half of what the stories suggested he had, he must have known it too: there was no way he could win this fight. Against any man or woman in the galaxy, even Sanzo himself (who was, a lifetime ago, considered the best fighter in UE), Homura would probably emerge from the fray as the winner. But here and now Goku was setting a standard that should be impossible to achieve.
And yet, even though that simple truth was plain as the light of day, there was no trace of worry on Homura’s face. There was intense focus and pain, cause by the injuries, but nothing even remotely resembling fear.
Homura collected himself from the floor in time to avoid a punch and a roundhouse kick. Goku let him have no time to catch his breath before following through with a punch to the solar plexus, which Homura managed to avoid only by a backward roll.
Sanzo didn’t know how much time had passed since Hakkai uttered the triggering phrase – and the good doctor was going to be grilled for it, afterwards. Unique procedures my ass, Sanzo fumed. But this had to wait. Right now Goku threw Homura into a wall, and by the sound the collision made Sanzo could tell the hit was forceful enough to knock a normal person out. Nevertheless, Homura righted himself, even though his movements suggested he was in much pain, and looked straight at Goku. He wasn’t smiling anymore.
Goku – and Sanzo was grateful he couldn’t see his face – was at Homura’s side in no time at all. It only took a few punches and Homura was flying through the air again, landing on his side with a barely concealed grunt of pain. Goku stood above him, poised to deliver a killing blow, when suddenly the bounty hunter looked up.
“Aliquam augue. Aenean quis pede at ante facilisis elementum,” he said, carefully enunciating the words around the blood Sanzo could see trickling from his mouth. Sanzo looked to Goku and watched as the monkey shivered violently. For a few seconds he stood swaying, until another bout of tremors forced him to his knees. One of his hands came up to his chest, clutching desperately at the fabric over his heart, until finally he toppled over and stilled. His eyelids were still fluttering, but that was the only part of him that moved.
Sanzo, who was inching closer ever since Homura fell, managed to get within two yards. Homura remained ignorant of his presence, too pained to worry about anything but his immediate opponent. He got to his feet slowly, never taking his eyes off Goku. He withdrew a small gun from his hip holster and steadied his hand.
“It seems the old men were right, for once. Something like you should not exist,” he said taking aim. Goku’s eyes, fixed on the muzzle, closed slowly.
Sanzo heard the quiet words and, assaulted with the memory of Goku’s warm hair tickling his chin as the kid listened to his heartbeat, seethed inside. This was a test? The fucker thought fighting Goku was a game, that the kid was someone to test his own abilities against? Fuck you, Sanzo thought, bringing his gun up to level the trigger with the bounty hunter’s temple.
There was no way the bullet could miss. Not at this distance.
Sanzo had his gun holstered before the body hit the ground and jumped to Goku’s side. “Wake up!” he growled, slapping the kid. He didn’t stir. “Wake the fuck up, you stupid monkey!”
He fought with his hand as it slid down to Goku’s neck. No need for that, he told himself. Goku would wake up any second now. Sanzo kept repeating the words even as his fingers dug deeply into Goku’s neck, right beside the trachea. He must have missed the pulse the previous time, right?
He tried again and again, kneeling on the cold floor in the almost dark corridors, but still there was no evidence Goku’s heart was pumping blood. Still Goku didn’t breathe.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-08-12 03:24 am (UTC)Hope you have a great day tomorrow!!!
no subject
Date: 2007-08-12 12:39 pm (UTC)Thanks! You too.