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We are so fucked, is Norman’s first coherent thought as he ducks behind a wall, sinking down as gunfire rains overhead. Chest heaving from exhaustion, he runs a weary hand through his hair, cursing whoever the hell is responsible for these circumstances.
It’s mostly himself.
They have about fifteen minutes before the rest of the crew turn up, but knowing them, landing the ship could take anywhere between five and fifty minutes depending on how willing they’re feeling to demolish a city in the process. He takes out the comms and attempts to fiddle with the circuitry, but it’s been blasted beyond repair. For however long it takes the ship to land, he’s alone. Facing off against an entire squadron of Amercadian troopers with nothing but a blast rifle and whatever the hell they managed to take with them in a bag.
It could be worse, a voice pipes up in his brain, and Norman exhales wearily.
“Explain to me, right now, how this could be worse,” he whispers barely-audibly, attempting to convey as much irritation as he can without giving away their exact location to the Space Brigaders. “You’re the most wanted brainslug in the galaxy, I’m a traitor to the Amercadians, we have no comms, and the rest of the crew are god-knows where.”
We could be facing Plinth. Plinth was a lot worse.
“See, you keep saying that, but I’m pretty confident Sidney threw a grenade at Plinth and it died near-instantly, so I don’t think”
Riva’s offline droid made for a pretty good grenade, though.
“If you keep arguing about this I'm going to retreat to the back of the mind again,” Norman mutters, and goes to crouch — only for one of his legs to abruptly buckle. “What the—”
Oh. We got shot about two and a half minutes ago.
Norm curses under his breath, and immediately backs himself further against the wall. “And you didn't tell me?” he asks, gritting his teeth and keeping an ear out as the Amercadian troops send out their soldiers in different directions. They’re short on time, and a shot leg is the last thing he needs to be dealing with.
Lower leg, Skip directs, and Norman rolls up his trouser sleeve, where the fabric is already torn up from several tumbles while on the run — and can’t resist a grimace at the sight. The wound’s deep, deep enough that it could cause some real damage, especially as the adrenaline that was powering him through dies down to a more constant thrum in the back of his chest. The blood is spilling from it at a pretty steady rate — he doesn’t know what was hit, but it can’t be good.
“Turn the pain sensors on.”
What?
“You heard what I said, Skip,” Norman says in a hushed whisper, “do what I fucking asked. I need to assess the damage, and we need to be quick about it.”
Norman feels Skip send a wave of reluctance his way, but begrudgingly, he flicks on the pain sensors. The sudden wave of exhaustion and pain shoots through Norm like a lightning bolt, and he crumples into himself, breathing heavily until it finally becomes manageable again. Fuck.
Are you sure you don’t want me to turn them back off? It’d be easier—
“Skip, I am not in the fucking mood to be having this conversation right now,” Norman says, and winces as he begins to check the leg. The wound isn’t as deep as he initially thought, thank god, but it’s still pretty damn deep — the real source of pain comes from a sudden onset of pain when he tries to wrap it. “It’s dislocated,” he mutters when the pain subsides. “I can probably set it,” he says, thoughts drifting back to times when he was in the Amercadian Brigade, where all of their first aid training came from experience mid-combat. He closes his eyes and forces the thoughts back. They're too short on time for that. “Just - take control of the vocal cords for a moment.”
Why would I need to—
One of the Amercadian soldiers turns and begins to walk down the alley, and Norm bites the bullet.
Skip just about stops him from producing any noise as he sets the bone and finishes wrapping up the wounded leg tightly, and Norman pushes himself back further against the wall to hide any movement. The Amercadian soldier rounds the corner as the pain spikes — and Skip takes control of the body, reaching for his blaster and hitting the soldier square in the chest.
“Nice shot,” Norman tries to say, but it doesn’t come out. Skip switches the vocal cords back on, and goddamnit, the slug reeks of smugness.
What did you say?
“You heard what I meant loud and clear,” Norman mutters — but the shouts of soldiers headed in their direction stop him in his tracks.
We can’t get rid of all of them.
“I know.”
Then what’s your—
“Well maybe we don’t have a plan, Skip!” Norm hisses, which does enough to shut up the brainslug for the moment. “Do you know how to take out fifteen Amercadian guards?” Silence on the other end. “Well, you'd better learn quick.”
Norman has never had a good sense of self-preservation. He climbed the ranks of the Amercadian Space Brigade because of it — there’s nothing that appeals more to the Amercadian spirit than recklessly dying in a blaze of glory for your planet, and Norman was good at that. Well, except for the fact that he never seemed to be able to die. A craniobolt and a cerebroslug couldn’t keep him down, and now?
Now he’s trapped in an alleyway with said cerebroslug and absolutely no way to get in contact with the people that could actually help and blood already soaking through the bandages he’s tied around his leg. He tilts his head back against the wall and sighs.
We could always climb.
“Absolutely not,” Norman mutters, but Skip just tugs at the corners of his consciousness insistently.
Could make it to the landing bay faster.
“Skip—” One of the soldiers turns the corner.
Norman’s quick to fire off a shot while Skip describes anything that he might miss — they’ve found a rhythm, despite the hell that symbiosis can be sometimes, and Norman is all but willing to let Skip take the lead on the body as he just shoots, heart hammering faster and faster. Somehow, the slug that had his body for a nargon did a much better job of living life than he did in a hundred or so cycles.
It's something he doesn't like to dwell on much.
It’s not too high from the ground to the roof, and I think there's a way up.
Norman's eyes drift to his bag again, and sighs. "Alright, fuck it - we'll do it your way." Skip immediately makes to climb - this body's not forty cycles anymore, hasn’t been for a long time, but it still remembers some of his old training as he just barely scrapes the landing.
I told you we should’ve packed the rocket boots, Skip remarks.
“You wanted to make space for the guns, remember?”
Oh, yeah. To be fair, they were some pretty good guns.
The rooftops are slippery with the aftermath of rain, and it’s dark, dark enough that Skip has to actively stay on alert when telling Norman where to watch his step — somewhere in his peripheral vision, he can register the Amercadian soldiers coming after them with shouts of his own name (not Skip’s, as he’s pretty damn sure that they’re more focused on freezing him out than they are on any actual arrests), and Norman picks up the pace as somewhere, not so far from where they are, he sees the faint silhouette of a hot-dog shaped spaceship taking a rather haphazard landing on one of the landing bays, and he exhales in relief.
They’re just a hundred or so metres out when Norman hears gunfire behind him again. He spins his head around, cursing as he sees the Amercadian Brigade have caught up. He sighs, and says: “Turn the pain receptors off again.”
Are you sure? Skip responds, nudging at the uncertainty in their mind right now.
“Yeah. Just —" Norman winces. "Trust me on this.”
Alright.
Norman feels the pain sensors turn off and exhales a sigh of relief; nothing’s hit him yet, but it’s only a matter of time. He’s confident that the Amercadian Space Brigade isn't going to kill him, he’s too much of a loose end for them to not. But whether or not they’ll target him — he shoves every panicked thought to the back of his mind and hopes to god that Skip’s too busy keeping them alive to catch any sentimental shit.
The bay doors open, and Norman exhales as he dimly registers Barry and Sid setting up their usual guns.
That elation drops the moment that he feels his leg buckle, again, and despite the lack of pain receptors, he sure as hell feels the cough that wracks his body as droplets of blood land on the ground.
That bullet — it was spiked with something.
“No shit,” he hisses out — there’s still space until they reach the bay, but Norman doesn’t hesitate to scrabble for the bag as he feels his system starting to shut down, hands shaking slightly as he reaches for a different gun. Maybe he’ll be lucky and it’ll just be a tranquiliser that they hit him with.
Distantly, he registers Barry and Sid opening fire on the front line of the guards, Barry crowing in elation — but they’re still too far. The soldiers are closer.
Norman lifts one of the guns and exhales. It’s not going to kill anyone it hits — but it’ll sure as hell blast them with enough cold to do its work. At least there’ll be no one to yell at him for it afterwards.
The others will do a much better job of the whole symbiosis thing, he's sure of it. This body's barely worth having him in it.
And Skip’s reflexes may be fast, but Norman’s faster to the chase.
He fires the gun, and the cold rushes in.