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The lights were blinking again. Black, then red, then black, then red again. It was maddening. It was normality. Here—far in the depth of the vessel, where no star’s fire could ever shine its beauty—it was an everyday struggle. He laid on the floor and watched as the ceiling became a dance floor for the flickering beams that shone through the small gap in the door. Black. Then red. For just a blink of an eye.
He chirred in irritation and tedium, and then he fluffed his feathers until his wings were double their size. Once he felt himself grow warm, he slowly dragged his body to roll over until he laid on his front side. The hard, rusty steel floor was a bit cooler than where he had previously rested. He tried to shift as many feathers under his head as he could. Like that, he had made it through the last resting period mostly without a stiff neck. Sleeping was alright, though he missed his nest.
He pulled one of his limbs in front of his eyes and tapped his talon onto the ground in a rhythmic manner. He could still see the light blinking from the corner of his vision.
This was starting to get really annoying, he decided then. When they wanted to do a proper kidnapping, ransom and all, they should at least get him a holding cell that had functioning light. Only, Tommy had found out pretty quickly, this was no normal holding cell. It was not even a normal spaceship he was on. No, he, because of course he had that kind of luck, had been brought no nowhere else than the shipmound .
And Tommy would curse his captors if he could, and that burning rage was only smothered by the knowledge that Techno would absolutely decimate each and everyone who had touched him in the last few- Tommy didn’t know how long it had been. It had been so long, because Techno couldn’t just dock ship and come to his rescue, no. Of course they would drag him to this wretched place.
“The shipmound,” Techno had told him once after he had found logs about it on the main computer of their ship, “stay away from there. Maybe one day I’ll take you. But only once you’ve learned to defend yourself better.”
“What is it?” Tommy had asked. “The pictures- It’s not a ship, is it?”
“Well, yes and no.”
“Huh? How does that work.” He had wondered and crawled onto Techno’s lap in the seating area. Letting him play with the end of one of his many braids, Techno had begun to explain.
“It had been an outpost, once, long ago. Some say it was a laboratory, others it was a hotel, but what it for sure was was too small. So they expanded it, one by one, until they ran out of money and parts, and it was abandoned.”
“It didn’t look abandoned in the pictures.” Tommy said and tilted his head back as far as would go to look Techno in the eyes. Techno looked down at him and ruffled the feathers on his head.
“It’s not. Not today, at least. It was rediscovered soon, and people started livin’ in it. Rolling Stones, robbers who needed to hide, that bunch. It grew, once again, but, because they didn’t have parts for buildin’, they started to use their own ships for parts. It grew like a tumour. It still is today. A heap of old ships and scraps.”
“It’s a junkyard, then?”
“Hmm,” Techno had thought for a second. “No, because once it became so big people started to know about it, some of the big mob bosses started to fight over it. Today, it’s the most crime density you’ll ever find in such a cramped space. It all is under strict rules of the organised crime. You can go there and spend all your money in the most luxurious casinos you have ever seen while not ten floors beneath you you’ll find the most brutal fightin’ ring, to the right is the auction where you can buy things you should not own and to the left you can hire people who engage in everything if you just pay them enough.”
While Techno had spoken, Tommy had crawled over the back of the seat and up to his shoulders. Techno was so big that Tommy could sit on them and dangle his legs onto his chest. “Then why doesn’t the committee do anything about it.”
“Because, as much as it is a junkyard, it’s a fortress. Gettin’ inside without them wantin’ you inside is like tryin’ to escape the gravitation of a black hole.”
“So you could do it?” He had asked and put his head on Techno’s.
Techno had only laughed. “Yes. Yes I could, though it wouldn’t be easy. But they’ve got nothin’ in there that’s worth breakin’ into.”
Tommy hoped he was worth enough. He knew he was, Techno would search galaxies for him (had done before) and he would come. But, and he hated to admit it worried him, Techno’s words. For him, rarely anything was ‘hard’. And he admitted to it even less.
Tommy pulled all his wings close to him. His arms were pulled tightly against his chest. His eyes stared at something on the ground that didn’t exist. That dark, brownish red of old metal shone in the blinking light. All of the surrounding walls were brown. Ugly and boring. The rust had started to eat away at these old parts long ago. He swallowed.
Breathe, he could hear Techno’s monotone voice float distantly in his mind, yet strong and familiar like he was just sitting behind him, soothing him with his arms around his chest, holding him. If you don’t know what to do, just focus on yourself.
Tommy closed his eyes and took a deep breath of air and felt as it rushed into his four lungs. It stung of oil and tar and smoke on his tongue. He blew the air back out through his nose. The stench remained stuck in his parched throat. He groaned.
“…Bruh…” he mimicked what he had heard Techno sound so many times before. The noise ripped sudden from his mouth and disturbed the ruling silence around him.
And like that had been the queue, like it had been some signal, in that moment, the old door screeched in its hinges as it was flung open and a small group of aliens pushed inside. They were taller than him by at least half height, and yet Tommy knew that they still didn’t nearly reach up to Techno’s waist. He grinned darkly to himself. Techno would kick them around like they were balls, their weird spikes and shells be damned.
But, as the group advanced, both of the features were a lot more intimidating if you weren’t ridiculously tall and, in fact, a lot smaller. Still, he bared his teeth and jumped up in shock, though he would rather fight these guys than let himself be backed into a corner. He felt chips of rust flake away from where his claws scratched lines into the metal ground. It cut into the soft pads of his hands.
Two spikey fuckers were closing in on his right, and Tommy whirled around and snapped his teeth at them. He made sure they saw his canines, as proud as they were deadly. He felt all his wings stretch out, all feathers on end.
“Come peaceful, Simia , we just need proof of life.” One grunted. Their voice was contorted through the translator in his iron mask, an unpleasant, twisted mass of words, rough like two stones grinding each other into a fine powder. The translator ripped their words of all emotion.
Tommy tried to make his hiss sound as deep and wild as he could, and thanked his fear and fury for the help. Proof of life. One of his feathers then. He swiped at someone who came too close. A pennatis simia's feathers were no lingering beauty. Alive, it was full of colour, a flickering flame to be held in hand but, once the simia’s body died, it would distinguish, wither into nothing but ash and grey.
They wanted a feather. Tommy would rip their arms off before those dirty hands came close to his stunning plumage.
And so, before he could think, before the start of a bad plan formed in his head, he whirled around and bit.
He could feel the shell crack and crumble beneath his teeth and the shards digging into his tongue and cheeks. He tasted the addictively sweet flood of blood. He felt it drip down the side of his mouth. The second his jaw had locked, he heard a scream so distorted and disgusting he almost let go. He pinned his feathered ears back and hoped it would dull the sound piercing through his head.
Then, there were claws everywhere, limbs, wings, head. Hands, unwanted hands, gripping him and trying to rip him away. His feathers puffed. His struggles picked up. But then those claws found his jaw, digging into his skin and mouth and tried to dislocate his desperate grip. And Tommy fought. He bit, he tried to keep his dwindling upper hand, but the claws, they pressed into his joints, and his jaw sprung free with a screech of white pain.
They grabbed his arms and yanked him around. They dug into his wings and pulled. They screeched words the translator didn’t know and pulled him out of his cell, down, down a hallway that was the same old rust brown as his cell. He flailed his arms and wings, and they only pressed them tighter to his body.
“ Dimoni,” hissed one close to his head. “You couldn’t help it. Little dimoni.” He gripped the feathers on his head and yanked. Tommy shrieked. “So self confident. So arrogant. That deathworldler never showed you your place, did he. Saekki! ”
And he heard a door open somewhere, a slamm, iron against concrete. He was thrown, pushed. He flew, then fell, then hit the ground with a shout.
They pulled the heavy door shut and took all the light with them.
Tommy laid in complete darkness.
After a while, with gritted teeth, he pushed himself into a somewhat sitting position and pulled his fifth wing in front of him. He couldn’t see— but he could feel—the hurting, burning, tingling sensation, and when he raised his hand, he felt the rough, leathery texture of skin where feathers should be.
A warm, thick liquid coated the tips of his claws. He could still taste the copper on his tongue. Tommy swore silently under his breath, desperate and much more high pitched than he would admit. He pressed his eyes together. Opened them. It was the same pitch black. Tommy couldn’t even see the floor he was sitting on.
Once more, he closed them, and this time, he took a deep breath and tried to get his limbs to stop shaking. He felt his two hearts beat violently in his small chests. He pressed his forehead to the stone and breathed.
For long, he stayed like that, wings shaking rhythmically to reduce his nervousness and eyes staying closed. He thought of Techno, of his hand on his chest, of his exaggerated breathing and his calming murmurs. He took one final quick breath, and blew it out. He opened his eyes.
The room was still dark, but it didn’t feel like a void anymore. Tommy continued his calm breathing, and extended his wings. He shook them, then focused his movements more on the shivering of single feathers, and soon, a low, dull shine of purple and red started to emit from them.
First, he saw the concrete under him. It really was like Techno had said. Every part of the ship mound was different. He hadn’t even changed floors.
Fully sitting up, he shook his wings out, this time to get the lingering sensation of hands on them to go away. He looked around—
And crossed eyes with a huge creature.
He shrieked and jumped off the ground in surprise. The wall he was now pressing up against suddenly felt a lot more trapping than before. Wide eyed, he stared at the alien, who stared back just as confused.
They were bound to the wall, trapped in heavy chains weighing him down. His chains were short, wrist to wrist and foot to foot and to the wall, and as Tommy observed his weird autonomy in the dim glow, it started to look more and more familiar.
“Human!?” Tommy exclaimed in disbelief. That was a human. Heavily constrained and squinting against Tommy’s bioluminescence. Two questions shot into his head in an instant. Where did they get a human from, and how the fuck did they manage to overpower him enough to lock him in here.
But, as Tommy’s eyes got used to the low light level and saw more clearly, there was no doubting it. It was a human. There was a human in the cell with him. They were human.
They were human, like Techno.
Towering over him by multiple wingspans even when sitting down, they were as tall as Technoblade, had the same autonomy, and powerful appearance.
“What the fuck.” Tommy whispered. “What the fuck.”
And they seemed to hear him, for they shied back, against the wall, not as desperately as Tommy but still, and gazed at him with a dangerous sort of caution—ready to lunge.
Tommy wondered what those chains must be made of to keep him constrained. But they were short, he noticed once more, short enough to not even get into the middle of the room. And that realisation let his limbs relax, wings shivering to calm down once more. He relaxed at the foot of the wall.
“How the fuck did they get a human?” Tommy asked himself, and then the human. “Hey, uh… hi? What’s your name?”
The human stared.
“You… you don’t speak common, do you.” He turned his head slightly to the right. He believed he knew the answer to that.
The human stared.
“And they didn’t bother to give you a translator…”
The human stared. They seemed to relax a bit at tommys passive approach.
“No. Of course they wouldn’t. The last thing they need is their captives talking back.” Tommy said and moved into a more comfortable sitting position. “What. They let you fight in the arena?”
The human didn’t look like it. He had scars, multiple, but not fighting ones. Around his wrist, and on his jaw and neck too. He had scars, but not ones like Techno. Tommy could just barely make it out in the orange glow of his feathers.
The human didn’t answer, even as Tommy continued to ask questions. But that didn’t stop him from talking. He talked, because now he actually had someone to talk too, even if the human didn’t understand him. But Tommy felt an unusual calmness in the act.
“Techno’s like you, though he would never get caught. I don’t know who you pissed off to land here. Techno pissed off a lot of wronguns and rightuns. But he’s special force. The committee tells him to do something, he does it. Flawlessly. A+. No problem. The mob bosses tell him to do something, he does it. Mostly. But still. A+. And you know why the committee doesn’t do anything against him? ‘Cause they can’t. They can’t. He’s too much of a big man." He said. He sighed.
“He’s gonna come…”
The human stared at him from their spot in the corner. They stared at him, who had laid down on his back long ago, to that moment staring at the ceiling. They tilted their head, short, blond strands hanging into their face. It was weird. How would they fight with all of that hair getting in their face? It reached almost to their shoulders. Tommy turned his head fully towards them.
Noticing his attention, the human shifted. His chains clicked together as he moved, a bright, tingling noise that spoke of trapped freedom and dying dreams. Tommy cringed.
“Those can’t be comfortable, right?” He said and turned onto his stomach, now fully looking up at the human. He squinted his eyes. There, beneath the shackles on his wrist, were angry, red marks circling his wrist like the metal. The skin was…flaky and- moist?
Ew. That probably wasn’t good, he had only seen a wound on Techno grow like that once, when he got burned by that one blaze and their engine had broken down so they couldn’t go to the nearest medical outpost.
It had been a stressful week, he shuddered at the memory. Techno had spent a lot of time in the nest and at one point Tommy couldn’t wake him anymore. He had panicked, then, and called for help over the com. The medical team that came had spent much longer by Techno’s side than usual. Tommy had only later realised that Techno had been in real life danger.
He stood and shook his wings out. He cringed. They would need a good preening soon. But here, in the depths of the shipmound , he had not once felt calm enough to do so. He needs his nest. He needed Techno to reach the places he couldn’t. He needed Techno. Right now.
He will come. He told himself. He always has.
He shook his head like he had his wings. He looked up. The human was watching curiously. “Quit starin’, yer weirdo.” He turned his head away and looked around the room. It was a lot bigger than his previous one, probably to fit a human, and not just a tiny simia . Tommy scowled. His previous room felt like a box compared to this. He noticed a lamp on the roof. His eyes went wide.
“They got light in here?” He stood. “Why isn’t it on? It’s not even blinking.”
Tommy looked up at the light rod, then at the wall. It was concrete, like every other wall. Just stone, he thought. No different than rock. He had climbed a hundred mountains on his home planet. He ran. His feet hit the wall. His wings flapped. There was no air current they could catch. No breeze. No puff of air. He missed the rod by a claw.
He landed and huffed out an unsatisfied breath.
“How are we supposed to tell when it’s resting period without light?” He asked the light rod above him. Continuing to look up, he took a few steps back-
and promptly stumbled over his own wing.
He fell in a heap of feathers and limbs. Concrete really was like rocks. It was hard.
But his self pity was cut short by a loud noise behind him. Tomy whirled around, untangling his tail from his wings. It was the human. He was laughing.
His laugh was different from Techno’s. It wasn’t the barking, unice thing that Tommy loved to tickle out of him and that moment he thought, was this even the same species as Techno? It was a human, yes, but Tommy was pennatis simia , and there were different species of his origin too. With different coloured feathers or without a tail. Tommy’s home planet was diverse when it came to biomes. Plains to jungles to the mountains he once called home—and then the harsh conditions of the nether. Tommy wasn’t made for fire, some of his old friends had been. Were humans similar?
Tommy took a closer look. His eyes had the outstanding hue of a blue giant. He didn’t have the same hair colour as Techno—yellow like an elliptical galaxy—, and his skin was much brighter too—almost as white as the walls of his and Techno’s ship. Was it Camouflage? But why the clothes then? Tommy wished he had asked Techno more about his species.
The human had noticed his curious gaze, and he tilted his head like Tommy had done, his mouth pulled into the thing Techno had taught him was the human version of a smile. Friendly, then. The laugh too, even if it was different from Techno’s.
He made the first step in his direction before he could second guess himself, and Techno would have scolded him for his impulsiveness, but he was careful in his steps. He really was! Cautious too—so he wouldn’t make any sudden noise that could spook the human. Tommy knew that Techno often jumped when something loud happened.
But the human didn’t jump and didn’t lunge, didn’t even hold eye contact for longer than a few seconds, like he knew some species didn’t like that. Was he trying to be polite? Or just wary, like Tommy?
“You’re not gonna, like, grab me, the second I get into grabbing distance, right?” He asked. He stopped in his steps, just a few arm lengths away. “ ‘cause you’re doing all friendly and friend ‘n what not, but I know your kind. Techno’s also nice— to me, at least, ‘cause I’m just that great— but I’ve seen him do some mad shit. Shit you won’t believe! And he’ll do that to get me out of here, but I don’t want you doing that to me. Understandable?”
The human just stared, confused, maybe, why he wasn’t coming closer and-, was that sadness? Tommy wasn’t sure, he had rarely seen Techno sad.
For a long moment, they both sat in silence, before the human said something in their human language. It was soft spoken and calm, and with a motion of his head, a small jerk, a gesture, asking Tommy to come closer.
“Oh no, no, no.” Tommy sputtered and crawled back. “You’re not just gonna lure me in like that. I’m not stupid.” He kept crawling until he was back in his corner, back against the wall.
And now Tommy was certain that there was sadness on the human's face. Well, Tommy couldn’t care less. Be the human disappointed all he wanted, he would not fall for such cheap tricks.
And that was that. Tommy sat in his corner, silent, still. Across from him, the human did the same. They say in silence, sometimes staring at each other, sometimes staring at the wall. It was silent for so long, until, suddenly, the human began to make a sound.
Tommy looked up and saw them with their head leaned back against the wall, eyes closed and hands resting on the knees in front of him. Tommy noticed they had a finger under the shackle of their right arm, slightly lifting the metal from the wounds on their wrist. Earlier, he had seen them inspecting the broken skin, had seen them flinch at contact to the inflammation.
Tommy’s face pulled into a grimace. The red skin looked so wrong compared to the pale flesh around it. It almost seemed purple . He hoped Techno would come soon. He hoped Techno still had that medical kit he had installed into the ship after the blaze incident.
But now, the human was leaning back, and from his throat he sounded low, humming notes, some brighter some deeper, a song, a melody, gently bouncing off the walls and back to Tommy.
It was a calming song, slow and careful, and Tommy felt a tension leave his muscles that he hadn’t realised was there before. He laid down on his side and straightened his ears to the sound. He closed his eyes. He didn’t notice drifting off.
It was dark. Not a dark he couldn’t illuminate, but one that was closing, capturing, starving, killing. Walls around him, close, he couldn’t spread his wings, too close, he couldn’t turn around, coming closer-
Tommy whimpered. He couldn’t move his hands more than a feather length before they hit cold metal. It was everywhere. It was all consuming. It was eternity. He tried to shift. Immediately, his shoulder hit the cold. He tried to raise his head. He hit the roof. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t move.
He shrieked, a high, desperate, confused call for help. It only echoed back. He struggled and tried to flail his limbs. His wings knocked against the walls and roof.
Soft murmuring against his ear, calm and comforting.
A box. He was in a box. He was trapped. They had trapped him. They had shoved him in a box, together with his flock. They came into mountains and had grabbed them out their cave.
Where were they? Were they in these horrible boxes too? What were they?
A gentle hand carding through his feathers, straightening them where they were puffed up.
He fought, he struggled, but he couldn’t—
Breathe. He needed to breathe. And there was a hand on his chest, not constricting, not trapping, slowly stroking his feathers, encouraging him to expand his lungs. A hand, a hand like Technos, with fife claws that gently dug between and underneath his feathers, never in a hurting manner, but in an almost preening one.
Tommy gasped. He spread his wings out to all sides. There were no walls. There were no walls . Techno had promised him there would never be again.
The murmur above him changed, now less silent, less repetitive. Words, now, sentences, a language he had heard often but never understood. A warm chest behind him, one he leaned into, mind still too far away but coming back, and it was warm—warm like the box had never been.
The hands lifted from his feathers and a surprised and panicked peep left him, a desperate call for flock, for companionship, for help .
And the hands, they returned, and they stayed as he clung to thin fabric.
It would be long until Tommy really woke up again, but even then, he didn’t let go.
He only moved when they came again. Both him and the human, whose chest he was clinging to, jumped at the loud noise and light. An alien stormed in.
“You befriended it?” It gasped at the sight. The spikes on his dark blue shell quivered. “Dimoni, befriending deathworldlers! You’re no good luck.” It tried to approach, slowly, fearfully, and Tommy pulled his lips back over his fangs and hissed. It growled back, contorted and twisted through the translator.
“Dimoni,” it pressed through his teeth, almost taunting, playful, as though Tommy was a child. “Your little friend is here.” And it shook its shell, a dangerous, rattling sound. “He’s here. He thinks he can just walz on in and destroy everything.” It sounded mad. It tried to grab him. The human pulled him out of reach at the last moment. “Let’s see how he reacts when I blast your stupid, tiny brain out in front of him, huh?” His voice got louder, threatening to slip off the cliff of sanity. “How will he look when I rip you to shreds—“
It was too fast, or maybe Tommy didn’t pay attention, but he blinked and the human had a claw around a jittering spike. He threw and slammed it into the wall.
The aliens' dark blue shell shattered into big and sharp pieces against the concrete. They fell to the ground in a pulp of white and yellow, shell sticking out in shards.
Tommy flinched so hard he scooted into the other corner, away from the human who was breathing heavily. Tommy stared at the mangled corpse. His hearts were beating furiously. Then, he looked up.
The door was open.
Techno was here .
Tommy ran before he could think twice.
Through the room, out the doorway, into the rust brown halls. The last thing he could hear behind him was the human straining against the chains.
He heard a noise. He cut a corner. The further he got down the corridors, the louder it got. Screaming, panicked and angry, interrupted by blasters and then the following explosion. He flapped his wings for more speed.
He flew through a gate, suddenly standing in a massive open space. The ceiling was so high he couldn’t see and tall walls of concrete were closing in a trapping circle around him. Under his feet, a thin layer of endstone dust and sand hid the sharp rust beneath. It flew up in small clouds as he sprinted over it.
Because in the middle, ash on his face, blaster in hand and shooting at grandstands and galleries he hadn’t even noticed before, stood Techno.
He spinned and turned and shot everything with a weapon in hand. Still, Tommy wasn’t afraid. He ran and ran through the sand and then-
“Techno!”
He saw the exact moment the human heard him. His eyes found him immediately and the humming of the blasters died into silence. A terrifying void of noise, so out of place on the battlefield that it made Tommy’s feathers shiver.
“Tommy,” breathed Techno, followed by a relived laugh. He stretched his arm out. Tommy stayed where he was. “I thought I’d have t‘ treat this whole place apart.”
Tommy chirped, “Tech-, you have to see this.” He jumped with his front legs and spread his wings.
“Tommy?“ Techno asked without losing the urgency in his voice, Red eyes squinting. He turned the palm of his hand up and everything in Tommy screamed to just run up his arm and cling to his chest, but there still was- “Come on, kid. We need to get out of here.”
He hadn’t heard him. Darn high difference.
“Techno!“ he yelled. He let his arm drop. “You have to see this!”
His human squinted his eyes. “Tommy, come here, we need to get away!” He repeated.
“Wait, no.” Tommy tried to reason. He spun around, looking for the gate he had come through. It sat empty between two stone pillars, leading off into darkness.
“Tommy,” Techno called again. Tommy could hear his boots in the sand as he came closer.
“There is something you need to see!”
“Don’t play around, Tommy. We’re going to the ship. Am I understood?”
I know this is serious. Tommy turned back to Techno in the moment the human bend down to pick him up. Gently, he lifted him up until he once again clung to his chest, and it was warm, it was comfortable, it was home— but his relief was not yet complete.
“Tech- I really have to show you this!” He looked up at his human who’s blaster had returned, one arm secure around him, other pointing the deadly weapon at potential threats.
“Show me on the ship,” Techno said, concentrating eyes not even looking at him.
“No!” Tommy yelled. He tensed his body and kicked Techno’s chest, falling, falling— until he hit the ground in a cloud of dust. And then—
he was off.
“Tommy!” Now, Techno’s voice had lost all its urgency. Now, it was fear.
Tommy was already at the gate.
I’m sorry, Tech. I’m sorry for worrying you.
But he was already in the hallways, skipping corners.
Right, right again, down the corridor—
The rust cut into his feet.
There, the door, it was still open, still leading into darkness. Tommy stormed in without hesitation.
The human sat still in the same corner as before, head resting on arms flung around his knees. Despite being huge, he seemed… small?
Tommy startled and skidded to a stop. Behind him, he could hear the familiar and heavy footsteps of the only other human he had ever seen.
“Tommy, where-?” Tommy knew when Techno had turned the corner behind him. It was the exact moment his voice broke into silence. It was the exact moment he saw what Tommy saw.
But, unlike Tommy, Techno was only frozen in place for a moment..
“Darn it.” Tommy heard, and then Techno was sprinting past him to the human, who had first slightly lifted his head at the noise, and now his sunken eyes were wide as they stared frozen at Techno.
Techno said something Tommy didn’t understand, a melodic string of sounds, but the human did, for they sat up straight, still looking at Techno, hoarsely saying something back. They were breathing more heavily than before.
Techno said something again. The human lifted his hands.
“Tommy,” he heard suddenly between the human language. “Come here, please.” Weirdly enough, Techno sounded eerily calm.
But Tommy didn’t care, he spurted into action, jumping over Techno’s back onto his shoulder. Techno was loosely holding the human’s wrists.
“Did they file your claws down?” Techno asked.
“They wouldn’t dare.” Tommy hissed.
Techno carefully turned the shackles around. They gleamed in the light falling from the doorway. And there, between netherite and greenish-purple wounds, sat a lock. Tommy stretched his hand out before Techno could say anything more, picking the lock with his hand and skill alone.
The shackles fell away, then the ones around the human’s feet, and then their breathing turned shaky as Techno helped them stand up.
Techno said something, and the human looked at him, then nodded, and Techno pulled one of his insta-kill injection sticks from his belt and stuck it into the human's shoulder without hesitation.
“What—Techno!?” Tommy exclaimed in horrified shock, wings spreading and ruffling. He jumped on Techno’s head and leaned down until they were face to face. “What the actual fuck, Techno!”
“It’s only adrenaline, Tommy.” Techno answered calmly and raised a hand to lift Tommy back onto his shoulder.
“That was a lethal dose, Techno!” It was only meant for close quarter combat, for last emergencies, for enemies. Alone getting your hands on that stuff was far too difficult to just use it at random.
“Not to humans, it’s not.” Techno said. Tommy deflated on his shoulders.
“What?” He looked up. The human was breathing faster and Tommy could hear his heartbeat having picked up a lot compared to Techno, but he was standing. He was standing on his own, a slight tremor through his muscles, but he was standing on his own. He gave Tommy a trying smile. Tommy’s wings dropped.
“Come on,” Techno said, and then again probably in human language. “We need to get out of here.” And Tommy clung to his shirt as he started moving.
Through the hallways that had almost turned familiar, though they quickly became foreign as they advanced deeper that Tommy had been. Techno, though, cut through the hull like he had wandered the paths for years. But, he was never running, never sprinting, always looking behind him and making sure the human was right behind him.
Soon enough, they came into a massive hall, not as big as the coliseum, but littered with just as many blaster holes. And in the middle, just in front of a plasma membrane leading into outer space, stood their good old Argo .
But it was then that the human let out a pained grunt and staggered. Tommy turned and saw a face painted by the torture of agony.
“Tommy,” Techno whispered. He had seen the human’s struggles as well. “Go and start the engine. I want to be out of here before they get their security system rebooted.” Tommy jumped off his shoulder immediately.
Up the open ramp and into their ship—it was a small ship. It didn’t take him long until he sat in the cockpit and slammed buttons until the engine hummed to live. A quick glance at the vital scanner confirmed both Techno and the other human both on board, so Tommy closed the ramp and all hatches, and the ship took off.
Since Techno hadn’t given him detailed directions, Tommy just booked it towards the next outpost only a few hundred light years away. Tommy flew the ship into hyperspace. Then, he sat in Techno’s pilot's chair. The armrests reached up to his head. He would sit there a while until Techno entered the cockpit.
Tommy could hear his footsteps. Leather against the smooth tiles.
“Hey Tommy.” Techno said, in his normal, monotone voice Tommy was familiar with. Techno came to a stop next to the chair. He started carding his fingers through the feathers on Tommy’s head. His rough and calloused fingers felt soft.
After a few seconds of silence, Techno gently put his hand under Tommy’s chest and picked him up. Tommy wordlessly accepted the invitation and clung to Techno’s chest. Techno sat down on the chair and slightly adjusted the course.
“Where’s the human?” Tommy asked and leaned his head against Techno’s shoulder.
“In the spare resting room.”
“Aren’t they, like, high on adrenaline?”
Techno sighed. “You weren’t completely wrong, Tommy. Adrenaline, though not lethal to humans, is, in that concentration, not exactly good either.” Techno petted on his back between his wings. Tommy felt a pleased churr sit comfortably in his chest. “It’s like a drug. For a few minutes you’re invulnerable, you feel no pain, but once the effect crashes, it crashes hard. He could barely lift his arms by the time we reached the nest.”
Tommy listened with just as much amazement as confusion. “So they’re…”
“Resting.” Techno said.
“Uh huh.”
They sat in silence.
“I’m glad you’re ok.” Techno whispered after a while.
“Hmm. Glad you’re ok too.” Tommy whispered back. “Was scared there for a second.”
Silence.
“What did they want from you?” Tommy asked.
“Just tried to force me to do a job. Nothing special.”
“Did you do it?”
“No.” Techno laughed. “Would’ve costed way more resources than just breaking you out myself.”
Tommy grinned. Then, his happy face fell. “They’re gonna be after us, now, aren’t they?”
“Let them.” Techno reassured. “They won’t stand a chance. They never have.”
Once again, they watched the passing stars in comfortable silence.
“We have a human on board.“ Tommy bluntly stated out of the blue.
Techno barked out a short laugh. “You say that like it’s something unusual.“ He looked down at Tommy. “His name’s Phil, by the way.”