No, I haven't forgotten about this. Just got majorly distracted with real life stuff. And now of course I'm distracted with a NEW story idea.
However, I'm still intending on finishing this at some point since I have worked on a few things. Not much, since this one is intending to be another larger story, but every little bit helps.
Capturing a spy
You need to catch whoever this is now rather than running back to get help. You just hope this person is by themselves.
Tracking this wounded person isn’t difficult, you can see drops of blood and hear noises every now and then. Though you don’t take the chance that this person isn’t at least somewhat clever and potentially leading you into an ambush. So you don’t follow the trail directly, and instead take a more indirect path of tracking them.
This turns out to be a good idea since when you come upon an area with large rock formations; you instead climb on them rather than maneuvering through. Sure enough from the top, you see a figure hiding behind a cluster with a pistol of some sort probably hoping to blast you. Look like a human from your position, possibly female due to the long hair though you can’t tell for certain.
While you could easily dispatch this person, you’re not Lisa so shooting first and asking questions to a dead body isn’t your style.
“Alright, don’t look up and throw your weapon away. I guarantee you will NOT be quick enough to shoot me or even run before I shoot you.” You say pointing down.
The figure is still for a moment as if pondering their chances, but eventually toss their gun away and raise their hands slowly.
“Alright, alright, you got me blue boy. Can I turn around now?” the figure asks.
“No, you stay exactly like that until I get down there.” You answer and start to make your way down the rock formation while keeping your gun on your target.
“HEY! I said don’t fucking move!” you shout when you see the figure start to partially get down on one knee and move their hands to their leg.
“I’m not going for a weapon! If you didn’t realize it, you shot me in the fucking leg, it’s bleeding and I’m in pain!” the figure shouts back.
“Looks more like I grazed your leg. If I’d actually shot you, you wouldn’t have even gotten this far! Turn around.”
The figure turns around still holding their leg with one of their hands. Definitely female now that you’re this close up, though you’re a little surprised to see a spotted face staring back at you.
“What? You never seen an Elojin before?” she says.
“You have hair.” You say.
“Fine, you never seen a half blood Elojin before?”
“Rarely. What are you doing out here helping the lizard primitivists?”
“Helping the lizards? I’m not helping those little biters. I’m out here…um…on scientific research.”
“Wow, you certainly didn’t inherit the Elojin gift of lying that’s for sure.”
“It’s true! I have a camp not too far away, I can take you to it…”
“Hah, and then you either escape or you have something worse in store for me. No, we’re going back to The Lighthouse and finding out exactly what you’re doing out here.”
“…but my leg…I don’t think I can walk that far back. My camp has medical supplies and like I said isn’t too far away. We could go there first and then you can take me back to your Lighthouse if you still don’t believe me.”
“Look, that’s not happening. I’ve been in worse condition and walked further distances. You can too, stop stalling and come on.”
“Ugh. You blue dickheads are always so fucking inflexible!”
“Yeah, yeah, move.”
You and your elojin captive walk back towards the Lighthouse in a somewhat slow manner since she keeps complaining about her leg and stopping every so often.
Eventually you get tired of this.
“Hold on, my leg.” She says.
“You better keep moving right now, my patience is running out.” You reply.
“Fine. Fine. I can’t help but notice you don’t have those pointy ears that indrul have.”
“And?”
“Those things are so funny looking they almost make me want to laugh anytime I see them mainly due to how dour the indrul look all the time. It’s like they have these serious attitudes and whimsical ears which detract from all that.”
“Your point?”
“My point is, you can’t be full indrul. Looks like you had some human dipping into your DNA too. We have something in common as one half breed to another.”
“Not a halfbreed, if anything I’m more human than indrul. I just rolled lucky on recessive genes.”
“Huh, coulda fooled me with how humorless you are.”
“How the fuck am I supposed to act? I’m an officer of the law and you’re a suspicious interloper. I’m not going to sit around a joke with you.”
“Hm. I suppose I should be glad you favor your indrul heritage. A human might have tried to take advantage of me by now. They really are a lustful race, I’m sure you agree. Though they can be a lot of fun. We could have a lot of fun too, if we went back to my…”
“If you don’t stop this shit, I’m going to shoot you in your OTHER leg and just drag you back.”
“Huh, threatening violence towards a helpless civilian. Now you’re acting like a mazatt.
“If I was a mazatt, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. I would have shot you dead a long time ago. Now move!”
“Alright! Alright! I’m walking, you grim blue bastard!”
While she starts walking, she doesn’t stop talking. She mentions her name is Roxxy which you immediately think is an odd name for an Elojin though she says her human mother called her that even though her father didn’t like it due to it being too human. She then goes into how she studied at Paradise University and actually works there now. She majored in xenobiology, mostly involving life forms on Paradise.
“Just as well I focused my studies to this planet since with the way the Trazz have been wiping out entire planets, this one is one of the few left! Still, there are new species on this planet being discovered even today. A lot of them seem to be incredibly hostile and poisonous in some way to non-natives to this planet. It’s fascinating how it seems like everything on this planet has evolved in order to efficiently kill life forms not natural to this planet. It really does tap into the theory that this entire planet is a living creature. Could you imagine?” she remarks.
“Or maybe this place just has a highly competitive ecosystem and it just spawned a bunch of critters that were deadly long before anyone got here.” You reply.
“That’s just it though! Some studies were done on creatures that were around pre-colonization and they didn’t have some of the abilities they have now! For example, did you know that camo-leg snakes pre-colonization weren’t even poisonous? They developed that ability not long after humans started settling. And now their venom can even kill other races as quickly as it kills humans!”
“What about Slink-slinks? They aren’t hostile or dangerous.”
“Ah! That’s an interesting case. Earlier slink slinks were much…well I guess the word is less aesthetically pleasing, at least to humans. Ever since some humans decided to make pets out of the damn things, they’ve become…cuter over time. Or at least what humans consider cute. And before you even bring it up, yes, this is independent of you lot breeding the damn things to look a certain way. Even the wild ones are fluffier. Makes humans less likely to kill them.”
“What about other races?”
“Hm, well I guess they primarily focused on humans due to them being the most dominant on the planet. The rest of the races are in lower numbers and in the case of the Vexak, they’re going to eat ‘em regardless of what they look like, so finding safety with humans probably seemed to be the way to go. Humans are very protective of their pets.”
Fascinating stuff. Though you aren’t really sure about any of it and for all you know this is all a bunch of bullshit that Roxxy is spewing to make it look like she actually is who she’s claiming. When asked for ID, she claims its back at her camp and if you’d just gone there, she could have proved everything.
She rattles off some people you can contact at the university to confirm her story when you get to the Lighthouse. You have noticed that she’s not walking like half of her leg is ripped off anymore and is just walking with a slight limp now.
When you get back to the Lighthouse, Stephan meets you as soon as you get to the perimeter.
“Well now, what do we have here?” Stephan asks with a rifle in hand.
“A scientist or so she claims. Says she works for Paradise University and is doing some field research.” You answer.
“I am.” Roxxy says.
“Hah! The fuck you are. I’ve worked here for fucking years and know damn well the Xont zone is off limits to all except security until further notice and ain’t nobody said shit to me about it.”
“So you think she’s helping the lizard primitivists?”
“If she was a full blood human I’d say yeah, but the fact that’s she’s part elojin and telling stories as opposed to proudly proclaiming lizard rights or some shit, makes me think she’s here for more sinister reasons.”
“Like what?”
“Sex slave ring, drugs, how the fuck should I know, but finding out should break up some of the monotony. Bring her inside, I’ll get some restraints.”
You take Roxxy inside the Lighthouse as she continues to protest and claim innocence. Meanwhile Stephan has already gotten a pair of cuffs and he roughly takes Roxxy to restrain her to a chair.
“Hey, my leg’s still wounded. The least you could do is patch it up.” Roxxy says causing Stephan to look her in the eye with a coldness you haven’t seen before in the man.
“And THAT will be the last thing you say until I ask you to respond to my questions.”
“Or what?”
Stephan at this point back hands Roxxy so hard the chair actually lifts up a bit. He then looks at Roxxy again, waving a finger in front of her face.
“Or THAT is going to be the nicest thing you are going to experience. Mikayl, watch her, while I go get some things. Be back in a moment.” Stephan says and heads up the stairs.
You are a little unnerved by Stephan’s actions. Not like you haven’t seen overzealous members of your department before (You’re going out with one after all) but this feels a bit different.
Roxxy looks at you now with a little blood coming from her mouth from the backhand.
“Judging by your expression, I’d say you’re more surprised by this than I am, which gives me a little hope.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean are you really going to just let this asshole torture me blue boy? On the way here I could tell you were a by the book tight ass, but I didn’t get the impression you were unnecessarily cruel, even if you bluffed about shooting me in my other leg.”
“Nobody is going to torture you, just answer the questions and there won’t be any more trouble.” You reply trying to keep a united front with Stephan, even if you aren’t sure about how far he’s going to really go.
“There’s nothing more to tell! I told you who I am and where I’m from. Look, all you gotta do is contact the people I told you about at the university. They can confirm everything! I mean you might have to wait until tomorrow morning to get a response probably, but surely you can wait that long before putting shock clamps to my nipples!”
“Nobody is putting shock clamps to your nipples.”
“Well whatever that old fucker has in store for me probably isn’t good. Look, I can tell you where exactly my camp is. It has all my paperwork and all that shit. You could probably head to it and be back here even quicker than getting a response from my co-workers.”
Roxxy now is starting to show a less confident expression and one more of fear. The problem is it’s always hard to trust elojins, especially if they’ve been acting in a suspicious manner to begin with.
“Blue boy! Look, at least check out my story! Give me at least some sort of basic rights here, before you let that maniac start chopping off my fingers or worse!”
Before you can answer, Stephan’s returned with a large box which he sets down on a table nearby. Upon opening it, you see a variety of tools. Most of which don’t look like they’re for fixing anything especially given how rusty they are. They don’t even look like they’re from this century.
“What…is that?” you ask.
“This my friend are the tools of one of MY ancestors. He was an inquisitor for the old Empire. I find that the old ways are often the best ways of extracting information.” Stephan answers enthusiastically.
You think you might be seeing the exact reason why Stephan was transferred here so long ago.
As Roxxy looks to you for some sort of intervention, you have the same idea.
“Um, I don’t think this is quite necessary Stephan. Let me at least check out her story first!”
“What for? It’s just time wasting bullshit. No, we’ll get more out of her going in hard immediately.”
“Stephan, this is against protocol! We’re officers of the law, we’re not supposed to be torturing suspects and to be fair, what if she IS telling the truth? How’s that going to look if you’ve sliced up an innocent civilian?”
Stephan looks annoyed with you, but he doesn’t seem willing to argue too much about it.
“Fine. You wanna waste time, be my guest. Don’t waste too much of it though, because I’m not going to give this obvious criminal time to figure out how to escape.”
You’ve bought a little time, now just comes how you’re going to confirm her story.
Contact her university co-workers
Go to her camp
