Riddik's Story: Escape

Riddik was watching a fight. He'd ventured out of his room after "sunset" hit the corridors and chambers of the giant ship, deftly avoiding Twenty-Eight for the moment, with the grue-beasties in tow. They were hungry, he was bored, and apparently there was action out in the recreation deck tonight.

Not that he'd expected there to be, but maybe today he was just lucky.

There was a boy by the lakeside, not even five feet tall, being attacked by members of the ship's crew. Five of them, to be exact, which hardly seemed fair. But the boy was holding his own at first, fighting with what looked like sand, or something like that. They didn't attack him all at once, which would have been the most sensible option, but one by one, which really said something about their plans. This wasn't a massacre. This was a test. Which made Riddik wonder just what a passing or failing grade would mean.

If the boy had continue doing fine on his own, Riddik would have said and done nothing, just watched to find out. If he hadn't recognized the Rune-brandings, he probably would have said and done nothing. If the boy hadn't put up a commendable fight, he probably would have said and done nothing. Hell, if Gara had been bigger, he probably would have said and done nothing.

But he didn't do fine on his own: he'd gone down under the onslaught, finally tackled to the ground by a tycharis. He had recognized the Rune-brands: they were mere, slight enhancers to speed and strength. The boy had fought well: he'd killed two and incapacitated one. And, finally, he wasn't bigger: whoever he was, he barely looked adolescent, and Riddik didn't particularly approve of that. Roll it all up into one big ball of optimal reasons to get involved, and, well, Riddik was going to get involved.

So Riddik leapt from his own shadow into the dimness of "twilight" in this never-completely-dark place, his goggles atop his head rather than protecting his eyes-- it wasn't bright enough that he needed them-- and shivs in hand. One tycharis went down without even a sound, knocked off its prey by Riddik's bulk, speed, and momentum, throat slit in the fall. He sprang up and into the air, hovering and, because he felt like being generous, letting Big Girl-- as he'd taken to calling the sentient grue-- and the little guys swarm over the second, startled tycharis. They needed a meal, anyway, right? A meal he provided, to keep them loyal. And they needed experience.

They took a little longer to deal with the beast, and while they were busy, Riddik dropped to land again, much more lightly than he looked like he should, given his size and build. "Well, that was interesting," he said simply.

The kid's response was to crouch, gasping and turtled under his wings and a dome of... yes, sand, that was what the stuff was he'd been tossing around like magic. With magic, he decided. Huh. Interesting. Riddik kept half his attention on the boy, in case there was an ungrateful retaliation, while he turned his eyes to the grue and her little cousins. They were quite happily decimating the tycharis, right down to his bones. Grue, he had discovered since his attachment of a couple of them, could eat a lot.

The boy behind him coughed, and he felt a glare on his back-- or, rather, his side, since he didn't quite turn his back on a potential threat unless he was specifically inviting an attack-- and felt the focused attention of an angry, suspicious mind. He registered that he was going to be addressed before the voice came, hoarse from having a windpipe bruised up, but demanding and, Riddik expected, afraid.

"What do you want?"

Glancing over his shoulder at the boy, he shrugged. "Nothin'. Thought it'd be fun to get in on the action." Then he grinned, crouching to wipe his bloody shiv on the body of the tycharis he'd slain. "Though a name'd be nice. You got one, kid?"

After edging his feet under him into a more ready position to spring and flee, or whatever it was he wanted to do-- the sand-shield hovered around him, refitting itself to his movements to protect his back; it was even slowly orbited by a few shapeless streamers ready for the command to strike-- the boy cleared his throat and finally answered. "Gara of the Sand."

Feeling a bit whimsical, Riddik sheathed his shiv and turned fully to the kid-- Gara of the Sand; okay, pretentious name, but at least it sort of fit-- and, grinning jauntily enough, stuck out his hand, intending for the boy to shake it. "Riddik, of the nothing in particular," he rumbled amiably, mocking-but-not. That, after all, was generally his way.

The grues behind him exploded into a tussle, snarling and snapping at each other over the scraps of the tycharis they had killed, but Riddik ignored them, not even twitching. They'd move on to the second body in a minute, anyway. "Don't mind them," he told Gara of the Sand-- that was going to get old, fast; he might have to just go with Gara. Or Sandy. He liked Sandy. "They've got no table manners."

Of course, he didn't get a handshake. He got an immediate recoil and some threatening sand glaring daggers at him-- literally. Gara went tense, crouched there on the lakeshore, one hand pressed to the ground and the other, apparently, commanding the sand to menace him. Riddik looked from the kid's face, to his outstretched hand, then shrugged and dropped it. "Suit yourself," he said off-handedly, and turned away, back to the grues, who were finally down to the bones on their first meal.

If the boy was going to attack, now was the time he would do it, and though he didn't look it, Riddik was ready to dodge if need be.

The attack came, of course. And Big Girl, between meals now, thoughtfully warned him of it, screeching a high-pitched warble of sound. It wasn't necessary, but he appreciate it all the same, already in the air and backflipping over the attack: a narrow spread of several drill-like darts of sand. Not terribly smart, leaving that open space behind the darts. The grues scattered to get out of their way, the little brown guy snapping at one as he passed it, and Riddik twisted in mid-air with aid of his wings to land into a crouch, himself, facing Gara from barely a foot away and with a shiv out-- not threatening yet, but he could if he wanted to. All he was really doing with it was pointing with it, at the little guy's nose rather than somewhere more dangerous. That, at this point, was only because Gara-of-the-Sand looked a hell of a lot like him, and he'd never seen that before.

"Wanna try that again?" he asked, no longer smiling. "Or you wanna just let me go?"

Well, he'd startled the kid, anyway, which was more than he'd even managed when rescuing him. And he wasn't getting attacked again. That was a plus. Apparently Gara-of-the-sand could learn. All he did was stare at him, eyes wider than before, and ask, "What do you want? Why are you here?"

"I," Riddik answered succinctly, "am here until they let me go." Or, well, until they let his guardian go, but he didn't need to mention that, now, did he? It was embarrassing enough to be trapped here until anyone was let go. He was aware that only half-way answered Gara's questions, but he wasn't in the business of answering questions-- just like he wasn't officially in the business of rescuing kids. He just felt like it now and then. He sheathed the knife and got to his feet, this time offering his hand again to Gara to help him up rather than just shake.

The gray grue dove at Gara, as if to get back at him for throwing darts made of sand in his general direction, but Riddik swatted him away casually before Gara had a chance to retaliate. "And like I said," he added, "ignore them. They got no manners at all."

Gara took the offered hand and let Riddik pull him up. He didn't weigh much more than Jay'tiel did, it seemed like. The protective shield of sand vanished, too, dropping to the ground. Apparently there was something that still trusted, even if there probably wasn't much out there to trust.

But, of course, Gara extracted himself from the grip immediately upon getting to his feet, backing up and away a step. Riddik was a little amused, and half-expected a hand to be wiped on some random piece of clothing to clean itself of Riddk-hand contamination. Big Girl crept up behind Riddik, but was smart enough to stay back and not actually threaten. After all, she was relatively sated, or as sated as a grue ever got, and Riddik wasn't attacking. Both of the little guys fluttered back to land on his shoulders, one on either side, and he watched Gara try to make up his mind about... something or another.

"They won't let you go," Gara answered after staring at his hand and his face, scowling with what he could only guess was confusion and searching him with his eyes. Looking for weapons?

Riddik smiled again, toothily and confidently, with real amusement. Cute kid. "Then I'll get out one way or another," he replied with a casual shrug, folding his arms across his chest. "Nobody keeps me for long. I escaped from worse places than this before." Well, places as bad as this, at least.

Gara scowled more darkly. "You'll change your mind," he said matter-of-factly. "They'll strengthen your Brand until you do." While Riddik's brows went up-- and a few things clicked into place in his head-- the boy went off in the direction of the big, round, carry-thing rolling around on the ground a little ways off. That's why Gara had that symbol on his head: it looked a great deal like a Rune-brand. In fact... it looked like a brand he'd seen before-- on grue eggs. Interesting. And Gara thought he had one, too, that he was tied here somehow through magic.

Well, well, well.

Big Girl, seeing no threat and no meal, was already making echos in the direction of the now-silent but still living bull-thing a ways off. Riddik glanced back over at it, hitched a shoulder, and gave her silent permission. She slithered off to put it out of its misery with a tentative bone spur through the head-- they were still learning how to use those. The little guys fluttered after her with angry creels at not being "invited". She just snapped at them before crunching into the former-attacker's skull. There was tasty stuff in there, apparently.

::You gonna make yourselves sick,:: Riddik warned, but they ignored him.

"So how long they had you for?" he asked Gara, letting them make idiots of themselves. He wasn't letting them into his rooms until they'd thrown up whatever they stuffed themselves with, because he wasn't going to clean it up.

Gara, interestingly, was collecting his sand again. It was interesting to watch as it just... flowed upwards, fell upwards, like backwards rain that then turned into streams that then turned into a solid flow right into that big thing on his back. Riddik watched with mild interest until he corked it up again and spoke, shrugging as if the question meant nothing. "You stop keeping track when you stop caring. I don't care anymore. There's nowhere else to be."

The image of Twenty-Eight came to mind, unbidden-- from, Riddik realized after a beat, Big Girl, who was somehow paying attention to the conversation. Well, he didn't agree with the association. He imagined Gara cared plenty. He just was afraid of caring. Big Girl's response to that was disgust at weakness.

Well, Gara was just a kid. He was allowed to have a weakness or two.

After a pause, Gara added, "Since before the Seekers started being sent out for Chosen again."

"That's quite a while," Riddik commented. He hadn't heard of the Fate before being captured by it, himself, but he'd learned quite a bit since, and using standard universal time, that was coming up on a year, soon. "And you really don't think there's anywhere else to be?" Not a thought that would ever cross his mind, not in a million years. There was always somewhere else to be, usually someplace else where there wasn't a thumb to be under.

"I've been here and where we came from," Gara said, folding his wings against the side of that big sand-carrying thing-- that looked very heavy, but was apparently Branded, as well, probably to be less heavy or to float or... something-- and folding his arms across his chest, mirroring Riddik's pose. Purposeful? He didn't think so. "They're not so different. And anywhere else...." The boy trailed off, looking out over the lake indifferently, then shrugged. "You can't care about anywhere else."

"Maybe you can't," Riddik pointed out. "But I can. And I do. I don't let nobody pick and choose where I stay and what I do when I'm there." Was that his Rune-brand talking? The brand he thought Riddik had, too, and that had marked eggs in the bloodbath hatching cavern? Or was he actually disenchanted with everywhere else? Obviously, he wasn't happy here, so was this the least of other evils? He had to wonder.

He also had to wonder about that line. That "where we came from" line. Riddik had never thought much about where he came from, but apparently Gara knew something about it. More than he remembered. But that was a question for a different conversation, wasn't it? This conversation had a rather solid direction to it, already. "How long ago did you stop caring who bossed you around? Who attacked you whenever they wanted to?" He was making a guess, but given how quickly Gara had reacted to this attack, and how suspicious he'd been of potential aid, it seemed like a regular thing.

Gara's face was impassive, another mask. "You don't just stop," he explained. "You'll care a little less every day. Then you don't care at all. I cared once, but then you just go along with it. Eventually they'll change my Brand and nothing will matter, anyway."

This time when Big Girl reiterated her comparison to the feline construct, Riddik agreed, but only in the way that Twenty-Eight's ability and slavery had eroded his ability to care. Not entirely, though. He still cared about some things. Maybe so did Gara.

The boy paused briefly, as if a thought occurred to him, and added, "Might even get bored with me faster, with you here, now. You and your night-screams."

"Well, I'm always glad to be entertainment." Riddik grinned wolfishly. "So maybe they will get bored with you, with someone new to torment. 'Spect I'd thin their ranks quite a bit before they took me down." Now that he knew what to look for, anyway. They all seemed to wear their Rune-brands proudly, and once you knew what they meant, it was easy to defend. You just needed a plan. And Riddik was good with plans. "You got a room on this deck, kid?" he asked. "Or you on one of the resident decks?"

Though his brows furrowed a bit, apparently confused by the question, at least Gara answered. "No room, too predictable. You should stop using yours if you still do. Go to sleep there and you'll wake up on a surgical altar. Sometimes you still will, even if you think you're hidden, but using your room is just asking for it." As he continued, the crease smoothed out, as if just by talking he got more comfortable with the subject. "They expect it, but this is still one of the easier decks to stay on, with all the Chosen coming and going. Most of the Chosen won't be any help in finding you, and lots of the Custodians won't want to help either. They can be territorial-- don't like mage-lab business down here on their deck."

Riddik inclined his head, not quite a nod but definitely an acknowledgment. "A good idea," he agreed. One he would have been doing, himself, if he were under constant attack. The kid was smart, he had good instincts, even if his mind was half-asleep under that Rune-brand, the way his own had been sometimes under Twenty-Eight's aura.

Big Girl sent him a wash of disgust, which he shot back a spike of amusement that didn't quite cover the attached warning. Seeing kinship in someone who apparently saw him as kin wasn't getting soft. It wasn't as if he'd decided to do anything about it, anyway. Yet. That might change.

"Well," he said with a glance around, thinking this conversation about as done as it was going to get. "I probably ought to get going, before they send someone else down here. I was just passing through, anyway."

After a blink and a glance around-- he'd been so distracted by Riddik himself that he'd missed the obvious fact that they were standing in the midst of a bunch of dead bodies; apparently he saw a lot of dead bodies-- Gara nodded. "Won't be long until they realize they lost again. And who knows how they'll act now, with you in it. Guess we'll find out."

"Guess we will," Riddik agreed, and reached up to pull his goggles back down over his eyes, heading over to the picked-over carcass of the bull-thing. Big Girl had eaten so much she looked twice her size around the middle. He wasn't sure whether the little guys would be able to fly.

Their fault, not his. "Get a move on, you guys," he told them mercilessly. "You can sleep later." Or throw up.

It was a good thing the little guys could still fly. When Gara finally turned away and walked away, Gray fluttered stealthily after him in the darkness. It wasn't a perfect solution, not unless Gara sticking completely to shadows himself or accepting the grue as a stow-away in his clothing, but it was all Riddik could come up with on short notice. At least someone would have an eye on the kid, until he decided if he was going to do anything about him.