Grizz in Space

Grizz brought his spaceship to a gentle landing among the debris.  “Honey, I'm home!” he called out to no one.  He laughed to himself as he leaned back in his chair and looked up into space.  The Galaxy Patrol was unlikely to find him here on an uninhabited planetoid, among all the other junk.  Even if they could spot his ship among all the other ship detritus, they wouldn't dare get close to a Mayors' Parade.

In fact, entrenched and ready to hide as he was, there wasn't much for Grizz to do except sit back and watch the Parade himself.  First, though, he shut his engine down with the flip of a switch.  This close to the Parade, he didn't want his ship to give off an energy signature that a Mayor-class monster could perhaps sniff out.  His onboard computer was an older model, unburdened by bloatware and unlikely to be sensed.  Grizz laughed again; he was sure the only way someone could find him was by the scent of the dehydrated noodle soup he suddenly craved.

Grizz rose from his seat and wasted no time in finding the cupboard where he kept his snacks.  Out in space in such a small craft, many of his nutrients were delivered via pill, but he found that miserable.  Nestled among his supply of nutrients were a few solid foods he'd bought at the last space station he'd visited way out in empty space.  Stopping for munchies while being wanted by the Galaxy Patrol was a frivolous risk, but one he couldn't help but take.  Way out on the fringes of settled space, it was easy to keep his head down and avoid scrutiny.

The spice blend of Mama Gustav's-brand soup quickly filled Grizz's cabin and his nose as he ripped open the packet they'd been sealed in.  As he inhaled the tantalizing scent, he couldn't help but glance into space again.  Without looking, his hand tumbled expertly over the orb of water packed into the noodles, and the water was ejected into the bowl with one squeeze.  He threw the empty orb on the floor, then swirled the bowl in his hand to mix everything up.  Some sort of patented chemical interaction caused the bowl to heat up in his hand.

The whole time the noodles cooked, Grizz's eyes were transfixed upon a gorgeous nebula, a purple haze in the vague shape of a ballroom mask.  He certainly had no one to bounce his similes off of, no one to share the sight with.

Grizz shrugged.  He was hiding from the police in the middle of nowhere, and had come to see a cheap bowl of instant noodles as a delicacy.  He couldn't imagine anyone appreciating being dragged into the situation with him.  He didn't even have a proper utensil to eat his noodles with; he'd have to eat them off an engine dipstick and hope he could get it clean enough on his shirt.

These thoughts were fairly common, but easily shaken.  Grizz couldn't do much about it either way.  All he could do at the moment was bask in the nebula's colorful glow, eat his noodles, and watch the Mayors go by.

“WARNING,” the red light on his dashboard alerted him, as if he didn't already know.  Faint orange crystals were already meandering past his view of the nebula.  Within the crystals, Grizz could clearly see clumps of organs, nerves, and blood vessels.  Even from afar, Grizz was in awe of the giant creatures.  If they had mouths, they could gulp up his tiny ship without even noticing.

They were crystalises, transitory lifeforms.  As they grew, their organs would unfurl and tunnel through the crystal, innervating the crystal and using it as a body.  In the state Grizz saw them in, though, they were still too young to locomote; they could only soak up solar rays as they drifted along.  Briefly, as he watched the crystalises drift by, he wondered if they were watching him back.

What they both should have been watching, though, was the other ship streaking in from beyond the crystalises.  Grizz could barely process what it was before it slammed into a crystalis, and shattered the crystal it was living in.  It let out a screech as it and its crystal rained down on the planetoid Grizz had parked on.

“Dammit!” Grizz blurted.  He set the bowl of noodles down on the floor and reached for his control glove.  He could feel the junk around him shudder as the crane arm affixed to the back of his ship groaned to life.  The glove he wore on his right hand transmitted his movements to the crane; with it, he held his hand aloft to block the falling crystals.

The mystery ship had to loop around the planetoid a few times before it slowed down enough to come in for a landing.  It was a one-person craft similar in size to his own, but theirs was a factory model through and through, and one built entirely for speed, except for the battering ram strapped on the front.

When the ship finally landed, its driver wasted no time in bounding out across the detritus in a lightweight spacesuit.  Grizz crouched down behind his pilot's chair, hoping he wouldn't be spotted.  It was the only cover he had in his sparsely furnished cabin, and he had no other rooms to—

“Dude,” a voice suddenly cut in.  Grizz could tell it was coming over his close-range communications receiver because of the tinny audio quality.  “I have infrared goggles.  I can see you hiding in there.  Come out with your hands up.”

Grizz winced.  “Damn.”  Despite his myriad worries about the situation, he played it the stranger's way.  He pressed a few switches on his chair to connect him to short-range communications, where his mic had better quality.  “A'ight, ya ain't gotta be that way,” he reassured the stranger, reclining in his chair with his hands behind his head.  “Whaddaya want?”

“That crystal I just knocked off that...that thing.”  The voice was feminine, yet low and rich in bass.  “What else would I want?”

Grizz was in no mood to answer that.  Whoever this was, he would rather just shoo them away.  “Okay...!  It's a little big to carry by hand, though!”

The stranger laughed over the intercom.  “Betcha I could...but point taken.  Keep your ship parked right where it is, and I'll bring my ship over.  You move this hunk of junk so much as a hair, and I smash it to pieces.  Got it?”

“Wow, okay, fuck you too.”  As long as Grizz was already detected and under watch, he saw no reason not to sit back down.  The stranger watched him silently, but at least they didn't hassle him any.  “I told ya, I'm cooperatin', ya don't have to act like that.  Take your damn crystal an' go if you're gonna have that attitude.”

Grizz was met with more silence at first.  Then, “...don't take it so personally.  You just gotta be careful around strangers, especially out here on the fringes.”

“Fair,” Grizz agreed.  He paused to slurp up some noodles before they got too cold.  “Make sure it ain't pregnant, will ya?”

The stranger bounded away without a reply.  They seemed eager to get their crystal.  If they had a live crystalid inside, though, the creature would get picked up by scanners at customs.  If the stranger stayed away from civilization, the crystalid would grow its body right through their ship after digesting away enough of its host crystal.

They didn't seem too concerned, though.  They brought their fist-like spaceship around and aimed a small tractor beam at the crystal.

“Oh no,” Grizz admonished the stranger.  He wasn't sure if their short-range communicator was still on or not, but he had to try.  “Your ship is too fast to tow that big-ass crystal through space with such a shitty little tractor beam!”

The stranger made no move to correct their egregiously unsafe cargo-transporting practices.  Grizz scoffed and waved a hand their way.  He'd done all he could to prevent them from doing something stupid.  As long as they took their trouble far away from him, he didn't care much about what happened next.  Sure, if they caused some kind of accident, the Galaxy Patrol would have to come provide emergency services, but he wasn't too worried about that either.  After all, they tended to ignore the needs of folks on the edges of society when they weren't actively—

“Hey!” the stranger shouted over the communicator.  “I said don't move!”

“Huh?”  Grizz hadn't even noticed he'd moved.  His mind had been drifting.  The boxy pile of remainder parts that was his spaceship hadn't moved, but he'd raised his hand subconsciously.  His control arm had brought the crystal a little closer to the stranger's ship.  “Thought I told ya, I'm tryin' to help ya!  I don't wanna hurt ya or nothin'...I just want ya to take the damn thing an' go!”

Grizz was met with silence over the intercom once again.  Then, finally, “...you really don't recognize me, do you?”

“Nah, should I?”

The stranger left their mic on as they belted out a sigh of relief.  “Nice.”  Before long, the stranger was calling Grizz over ship-to-ship audiovisual channels.  Grizz answered, but only to stop their signal from getting smelled by the nearby crystalids.  When they came in over the comms screen, they had already taken off their helmet, revealing a scowling face framed by wavy brown hair.  “I'm Nicole...Nicole Ellery.”

The name was vaguely familiar to Grizz.  “...uh...”  Try as he might, though, he couldn't remember why.

“Oh, this is great...!”  Nicole must have read the nonplussed look on Grizz's face.  “I'm so used to having to control myself and my public image that I just want to...urgh...!”  Nicole twisted her body around to punch the wall to her left.

“...okay?” Grizz said as he leaned back in his chair.  “Listen, I don't give a shit.”

Grizz had meant it dismissively, but Nicole beamed a wide smile when she heard that.  “Awesome!” she cooed.  “I could tell you didn't care much for appearances!”

“Hey, what's that supposed to mean?”

Nicole's smile settled into a smirk.  “Look, I heard you hollering about my shitty tractor beam.  You sure don't look like someone who knows a lot, but you do look like someone who could use some cred.”

“Hey!” Grizz shouted again.

“If you know so much about towing crystals, and you don't have anything better to do than wallow in space junk...why don't you haul this thing for me, smart guy?”

Plenty of reasons swirled through Grizz's mind immediately.  Most of what came to mind first was too self-incriminating to offer, and most of what came later were insults.  On the other hand, Nicole was offering him quite an opportunity.  If Nicole was truly so beloved a celebrity, attaching his reputation to hers could help dissuade the Galaxy Patrol from harassing him.  If not, he could probably convince her to swat them away with that fist-ship of hers.

And, loath as Grizz was to admit it, what with the way Nicole had pointed it out, he really could use the credits.  “A'ight,” he agreed with a shrug.  “Guess I've got time to kill.”