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[sub][ [url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/4985262]Prev[/url] ]  [color=#00bfff]“[b]PASSING THROUGH GETHSEMANE[/b], Part III”[/color]  [ [url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/5010360]Next[/url] ][/sub][/center][COLOR=1E90FF][INDENT][B][SUP][SUB][H3]K N O W H E R E[/H3][/SUB][/SUP][/B][/INDENT][hr][/COLOR][INDENT][INDENT][sup][color=gold]Outer Limits of the Milky Way Galaxy[/color][/sup][/INDENT]
[i][color=#ffff00]...if you like piña coladas[/color][/i]
[i][color=#ffff00]getting caught in the rain[/color][/i]
[i][color=#ffff00]if you’re not into yoga[/color][/i]
[i][color=#ffff00]if you have half a brain…[/color][/i]

[color=silver]Air pods nestled in his ears, the lyrical stylings of Rupert Holmes supplied the music as the child rocketed through the cosmos at speeds that defied human understanding.

Knowhere wasn’t a planet.  It wasn’t an asteroid or a moon.  It was a head.  A [i]literal[/i] head.  The decaying remains carved out as the blood and tissues of the primordial corpse were mined for the exotic minerals they contained.  

It was a shadowport.  It wasn’t on any maps.  At least, not any maps that [i]legitimate[/i] businesses used.  The Resistance had made it a port of call on occasion, but only when absolutely necessary.  The criminal element was rife in Knowhere.  It was the last safe haven of Reavers and their ilk.  The kind of people who moved flesh markets like people were just another commodity or vice to be sold.  Suffice to say, they didn’t get a lot of kids here.

Even less so, kids who flew in under their own power 

Straightening up, Billy oriented himself to the shadowport’s artificial gravity as he entered inside of the airlock and passed through the atmospheric shield.  His tennis shoes touched down a moment later, as the boy casually stepped out amid a slew of dock workers who were staring, open-mouthed, at what they had just witnessed.

Kicking his head to the side, the boy shook the ice that had formed in his hair and eyebrows. A hand coming up to swipe a lock of hair from out of his face as he strolled onto the main thoroughfare.

As he rounded a corner, Billy saw a Bolovaxian that was four or five times his size pushing along a chain gang of aliens. Men. Women. Children. It was easy to see that they were slaves being moved.

The boy’s fist clenched. His cold, sapphire eyes locked onto the Bolovaxian. For his part, the porcine giant just laughed and said something extremely rude in the local trade pidgin. 

Five seconds was all that Billy would need to free those people… but then he’d be fighting his way out of Knowhere. And he hadn’t come here to free slaves.

He’d come here to meet with some terrorists in the hope of possibly rescuing some Kymelians before they could wind up in a chain gang like that one.  And he couldn’t do that if he was picking every fight and championing every cause between here and Chandilar.

It was a bitter pill to swallow. Seventy or fifty years ago, Billy would have said [i]fuck it[/i] and punched that Bolovaxian from here to the Golden Galaxy and then taken on the whole world and every last motherfucker in it…

...but it was 2019.  And he walked away.

It made him sick to his stomach. [i][color=#00bfff]“Does anyone remember when we used to be heroes?”[/color][/i] the boy uttered softly.  Meeting in secret with terrorists.  Arranging a smuggling operation.  No more dealing directly with the enemy.  Everything had become shadow and shadowplay.

That didn’t sound like a hero to Billy. 

At some point, war didn’t require a hero.  It required that someone be ready to do whatever needed to be done.

The meeting place was a Reaver dive.  He’d been expecting a bar of some kind.  A dive, obviously.  Instead, no sooner had Billy pushed through the doors than he looked up and saw a scantily-clad Arisian dancer hooked around a pole.  

He felt his face become hot, as he quickly looked away and shuffled on in.  Of course, it would be [i]one of those kinds[/i] of bars.  Why not?  After all, this was the galaxy’s version of a truck stop.

“Friiiiieeeeeend…”

Raising his eyes, the embarrassed youth found himself looking at a hulking, green reptillian alient.  Alora had said that his name was [b]Ch’od[/b].  Billy had asked Alora about how she’d met one of the infamous Starjammers and the answer had apparently swiping ripe on some dating app.  At that point, Billy had stopped asking questions.

A wicked, taloned hand that was at least as large as Billy’s head gestured toward an empty seat.  As the boy took the offered chair, the lizard alien loomed down over the child as he uttered, “You have come to bargain. Yessss?”

A single, clawed digit pushed a dirty mug of some kind of piss-colored froth across the table toward him.

Billy pushed the offered mug away, craning his head back as he said, [color=#00bfff]“I’m looking for passage to Spartax.” [/color]

“Ssssspartaxxxxx,” the lizard man echoed, almost mockingly.  A lingering note of mirth seemed to resonate like hollow laughter.  “Ssssspartaxxxx easy is not,” the massive alien remarked, his clawed hand turning its palm up on the table top as he said, “Ten thousand.”

[color=#00bfff]“Ten thousand?”[/color]

Ch’od’s face split into a Cheshire grin, withdrawing back into the shadows as he mockingly added, “In advanccccce.”

Billy’s jaw tensed.  His eyes pulsed with an inhuman light as he looked up at the alien.  This was starting to feel like a set up.  [color=#00bfff]“That’s not what you discussed with Alora,”[/color] the boy said, his words carefully measured to try and maintain some semblance of civility.

A large, clawed hand came across the table as Ch’od leaned forward.  “Ah, but Alora not say the job was for Billy Batson of Earth,” the alien almost purred, the line punctuated by the same hollow mirth as before.

Then the hand slammed down on top of Billy’s.  There was a look of confusion on the boy’s face, as Ch’od declared, “Bounty on you is worth [i]seventeen[/i] thousand!”

Something didn’t feel right.

Yanking his hand out from under Ch’od’s, Billy found some kind of [i]patch[/i] affixed to the back of his left hand. There was a burning or itching sensation starting to form underneath it.  Billy clamped his right hand over the left, tugging to try and pull it off -- but that actually succeeded in making the sensation [b]worse[/b].

A gasp of pain escaped from out of Billy’s lips, as a feeling like that of lightning coursing through his veins racked his body.  He fell out of the chair, collapsing onto the floor as his body curled into a fetal position.

Sparks were igniting between his teeth as he bit down and then gave a loud sigh of relief as the patch finally came free.

Kofi said this had been a bad idea.

...boy, was Billy glad that the horse kid wasn’t here right now.  Billy [i]really[/i] wasn’t in the mood for that smug Kymellian [i]I told you so[/i] attitude.  Especially because Kofi was usually right about these things.

Rolling up on his knees, Billy started to get up. That was when Ch’od’s hand came down to engulf his head, forcing him back down.  Grabbing on to the alien’s arm with his right, Billy pulled it aside as he came up from the floor with a left hook that buried itself in the alien’s midsection.

Ch’od went sailing across the bar, knocking tables and chairs aside before he slammed up against the side of the dancer stage.

Four more aliens advanced on Billy.  Or, where there six?  Eight?

[i][color=#00bfff]“Oh, shit,”[/color][/i] the boy uttered, trying to get back to his feet and staggering like an old drunk.  He was seeing double.  Halos surrounded the lighting.  His equilibrium was shot and it felt like the floor kept trying to rush at him.

He doubted people played billards at space truck stops, but the stick that someone had just broken over the top of his head was very pool cue-esque. Someone caught him in the gut, while another hit him behind the knee.  A fist connected with the side of Billy’s head and the boy went down hard. 

Which was when the beating just intensified.

Billy managed to grab a foot, chucking it and whatever might be attached to it up into the air. His other hand felt along the floor, discovering a splintered fragment of the pool cue and then Billy was coming up swinging.

Win some, lose some.  He connected solidly with something.  A person?  Maybe.  Hell, at this point, Billy was pretty sure he was on some kind of acid trip.  The walls were melting, the floor was the ceiling, and this was the goddamn golden brick road of [b]poor life choices[/b].  Was he fighting a person?  Or just swinging at the wall?  Honestly, at this point, Billy had no idea.

His head snapped aside.  Some dull part of his brain rationalizing that he’d just been punched across the face.  Repeatedly.  He was back down a knee, with the floor or ceiling or whatever the hell this was rapidly approaching.

A burst of plasma erupted from the boy, as a scream of rage ripped from out of his throat with a ferocity that sent everyone flying in all directions as the front of the bar was blown out into the street.

Billy struggled to get back to his feet, managed to take one step, and then collapsed.[/color][/indent]