Discoveries

Story by Drake_The_Traveller on SoFurry

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Starfox: Liberation

Chapter 6: Discoveries

Life is an endless process of self-discovery...

-James Gardner

Alaric was in the engine room of his ship,

recalibrating the drive core and making sure that everything was functioning

smoothly. The last thing he wanted was for the drive to give out and get

stranded somewhere in space. As he worked, he found himself thinking about his

guest.

Krystal, the cerulean vixen, was turning out to be

interesting. Something about her seemed to calm his demons, even temporarily.

Their conversations distracted him from his brooding and his mission. That was

both a good and bad thing. It had been a day since they entered the shock gate

and they were about a little less than halfway to Katina, with maybe two more

days if the computer was functioning properly. From there he would narrow down

the location of The Undying, and see what it was that went wrong. Alaric was

still puzzling out how he was supposed to balance doing his mission, and

keeping her in the dark. He somewhat regretted letting her come with him, but

he was glad, however little he truly was, to have the company either way.

Silence had a tendency to make one recollect their past.

Alaric took off the observation panel to the core

and looked inside the blue glowing matrix. It looked to be functioning

perfectly, although he really should replace the outer housing as soon as he

could. It was rusted and partially decayed, which was probably breaking half a dozen

safety regulations. Thank the lord these Asimov freighters were built to last. Otherwise

they might have never been able to get this far.

"Having fun there?" Krystal asked him merrily. The

vixen was sitting near the entrance to the reactor room, sipping from a plastic mug of second

grade coffee. It was a part of the MRE's standard package, which meant that it

was probably the worst damn coffee ever made. Still, it was better than no

coffee at all.

"Not really." Alaric replied grouchily as he turned

away from the core. "Maintenance was never my favorite thing."

She grinned while sipping from the mug and flopped

her tail on the deck lazily with a soft drumming. "I can see that."

"Oh shut it." The man grunted roughly. He sounded

crass and more than a little bit rude, but by now she had come to understand

him better and knew that he wasn't really cross with her. Over the course of

the trip they seemed to have fallen into a slightly irregular rapport. All

though it was prone to rough patches every now and then if anything relating to

his past was brought up. Alaric would become viciously defensive.

Most of the reason Alaric was being less confrontational

was purely because he unconsciously craved societal interaction. He had been

deprived of it for more than seven years. The man was starved of that human connection;

ironically it was not a human that he was connecting with. But at the moment,

she was the best option and so he forced himself to tolerate her slightly annoying

presence. On the plus side, she had a pretty face to look at.

"You know..." He muttered gruffly as he tried his best

to clean the outer core of the reactor with solvent and what could be alluded

to as a mechanic's steel wool. "You could always pitch in and pull your own damn

weight."

The vixen nodded sagely and flicked her tail as she

dipped her shapely, cream furred muzzle into her mug and sipped gently. "True...but

then you wouldn't be able to say you fixed this ship all by yourself, think how

impressed people would be to hear that."

Alaric rolled his crimson eyes as he wiped his brow

with an exceptionally dirtier cloth then he started out with. "Uh huh...I think

you just don't want to get your paws dirty."

"....Perhaps." The vixen relented after a brief

silence eyeing with an air of amusement, as if she found all of this to be entertaining.

Alaric scoffed and turned away from her, finishing

with the left side of the paneling and starting on the right. "Damn freeloader...."

He grumbled to himself as he set about the arduous process of cleaning the

large swath of protective bulky armored sheeting that covered the reactor. "Don't

even know why I let her come along. Fucking useless..." He continued to gripe

irritably, making the azure vixen giggle at his expense.

An hour later, he finished with the dirty task, and

eyed the female fox disdainfully as he dusted himself off. "Thanks for the

help." He uttered sarcastically.

Krystal smiled brightly and stroked her tail

contentedly. "You're most welcome."

Hearing that, he stopped and gave her a hard look.

And yet even though his gaze was heated enough to rip hull plating of a battleship,

all it did was cause her to smile even more. After a minute, his left eye

twitched and he walked away without a word, exiting the compartment.

Krystal sighed and shook her muzzle before speeding

after him. "Oh come on, lighten up." She called out to him as he stormed off.

"Starting to think that I was better off in the

prison..." He muttered darkly to himself as he thundered down the hall towards

the bridge.  

She caught up with him and had a difficult time

keeping up with his ruthless pace. "Can't you take a joke? I was just playing

around, I mean seriously, fun, have you heard of it?" She demanded as she

looked up at his unamused face.

"No..." He retorted stiffly.

Her muzzle twisted into disbelief. "Really...?"

"There wasn't much time for fun in my life." He growled and stepped into the bridge. "It was a

luxury I could ill afford."

Krystal was baffled. "What do you mean? Everyone has

time for fun, how can you not?"

Alaric walked towards the newly repaired captain's

chair and placed his hands on the back and looked out to the soft blue aura of

shockspace. "Not everyone has a life of pleasure and superfluity, as surprising

as that must sound to you." He scowled irritably. "Sometimes, people are given a

shitty hand and they're forced to play it, as was my case."

"But...never...?" She asked in horror. The thought that

someone could go their whole life without even a shred of enjoyment was an anathema

to her kind hearted nature. She believed that a life without happiness was no

life at all.

Alaric paused to give her question some thought.

There as not really any time he could recall where he genuinely enjoyed his

life. Even now, all he was working towards was the chance to attempt to have a

happy life. He guessed that the times he and his men were given to rest before

the next mission could be counted as somewhat happy. Yet, there was not much to

be happy about when you spent your life killing innocents and those who fought

for a better life themselves.

"Never." He told her with a sigh.

The vixen huffed and crossed her arms with a pouty

muzzle. That just would not do, she decided. Krystal was going to do something to

fix that. "Well, it seems that it is my responsibility to make you have fun."

She stated determinedly, slowly growing a smile the more she thought about it.

Alaric openly scoffed at her. "I don't think so."

Krystal's grin deflated, and she looked to him in

shock. "What...why not?" She demanded angrily.

"I have neither the time, patience, nor desire to pursue

fun." He replied coldly and moved to sit in his chair, which creaked dangerously.

"There is far too much for me to worry about to play silly games."

"But that's exactly why you have fun!" Krystal exclaimed

loudly and moved to strand in front of him. "Without fun, what point is there

to life?"

"Surviving." He responded simply.

'Clearly

this was going to be more of a challenge than I expected.' Krystal thought to herself. The vixen tapped her

fuzzy chin with a clawed digit as she tried to think of a way to get the human

to open up more and have fun. Then a light flashed in her eyes and her tail

began to wag as she had an epiphany.

"What do you like to do?" She asked excitedly.

"Fight." He answered simply.

Krystal's tail ceased its wagging and she rolled her

head back in exasperation. "Alright," She tried again, "What else do you enjoy doing?

What makes you feel the most relaxed and laid back?"  

Alaric took a moment to think about her question. He

decided to play along, if nothing more than to amuse her. He thought back to

when he had spare time to himself, to what he did when he had that opportunity.

Alaric did remember that he liked to sit in the armory and work on his

equipment, when he fixed things he felt more at ease and allowed himself to

drift off and become distracted by daydreams about a better life. Anything that

made him temporarily forget about his life or past was what he supposed made

him 'happy'. But that was incredibly vague. It was more of a sentiment than

anything else. And because of that he did not know how to classify it in a way

she would understand.

"What do you like to do?" He suddenly asked her,

flipping the interrogation around.

Krystal was starting to think that he did not

understand, and she decided that she would show him the ropes so to speak. "I

like to snuggle up in bed and read a book, or have fun with my friends. Oh and

sometimes I like to meditate."

Snuggling in bed was definitely a no for Alaric, and

he never did things with his men that could be considered fun. And they were

not friends, more like a tightly knit family. "Meditation...?" He repeated

curiously.

"Yes, sometimes when I have a lot on my mind, I find

that sitting down and relaxing was the best thing." She explained quickly,

hoping that he would think about it.

But after a moment, Alaric shook his head negatively.

"That's not for me." He was a man of action, so sitting around until he felt

better did not appeal to him.

Krystal frowned and dropped her tail. There was

nothing it seemed that could change him...at least for now. She would pull back

and regroup with a better plan. Krystal vowed that she would find a way inside

his defenses. There was a normal person locked inside Alaric, and she was going

to free him.

Alaric stared at the vixen with concern. He did not

like the look on her muzzle one bit. He could tell when someone was planning, and

she definitely was churning the gears in her head.

He decided that his time could best be spent working

on the bridge and so he stood up from his chair and walked over to one of the

functioning consoles. With a few clicks Alaric brought up a task menu and tried to see if he

could somehow eliminate the glitches inside the ship's systems. As he worked

diligently, fingers dancing across the two dimensional holographic display,

Krystal took his seat and watched him work.

She liked the expression he made whenever he was

really going at something. He looked so determined and confident, as if he

could fix anything, do anything. And yet, at the same time she could see a

faint unhinged air about him, as if he could barely keep a hold on himself let

alone something else. Krystal was exceptionally perceptive, especially when it

came to people. It was not only because of her latent telepathic power. She had

learned it from her father, who was Cerinia's King. He had been an excellent

diplomat and empathetic ruler, and he had taught her much before he and the

others of her race died. He, along with her mother, had been the driving force

in Krystal's life and she missed them dearly every day.

She was so deep in thought, that she did not notice

that she had been sitting there for quite some time. Alaric took her out of her

musing when he hesitantly shook her shoulder.

"Are you still alive in their?" He asked gruffly and

with a hint of amusement in his tone.

Krystal flushed in embarrassment at having been

caught so off guard and nodded quickly. "Yes, just lost in thought was all."

Alaric seemed to eye her gently for the first time. "Yes,

I suppose we all get lost in thought every now and again. I was just letting

you know that I'll be heading back to my cabin."

Alaric did not wait for an answer and walked out of

the room, leaving the vixen to her thoughts once more. She watched him depart

and leaned back in the chair, which threatened to break if she attempted to

lean any farther back. She hummed quietly to herself and thought about the real

reason she decided to go with him. Alaric was withholding information from her

about that ship. And she was curious to know what exactly that information was.

She had heard of the Solarans or humans, (whatever they liked to call themselves),

before her homeworld had been destroyed. But due to their far off location, she

did not know much about them. But she was willing to bet that they were not all

like Alaric. He was something else entirely. He was, perhaps, the strangest man

she had ever met, and that was what drew her to him. Something inside of him

was not working properly, and she wanted to be the one to make it right again. But

in order to do that, she would need to know more about his past, and how it

made him what he was now. The problem was, how would she get him to speak, he

was hostile if it was brought up. Krystal sat in the chair and patted her tail steadily.

It would take some doing, but she felt that she could get him to talk.

Alaric stepped into his cabin and plopped down on

the chair pulled up to the desk. His rifle and sword's hilt were laid alongside each other on the wooden desk and his armor stood up under its own power to the left of

his bed. He reached towards the rifle and picked it up, running a hand down the

smooth black framework and snapped it open where the barrel started to separate

from the main body. He carefully slid out the cylindrical magazine and deposited

it on the desk gently.

Alaric liked guns.

They were easy to understand and easy to fix. They

had one simple purpose, to defend the life of their owners. They did not talk,

complain, cry, berate, nor hate you. And you could always rely on them if you

took care of them. Guns could always be fixed, replace parts, oil parts, and it

would always keep going....unlike people.

Alaric did not like people.

People were impossible to understand. They had no

purpose besides what they give themselves. They talked, complained, cried,

berated, and hated. All the ones he had met were unreliable...and they could be

broken. And eventually, no matter what you did, at one point they would ultimately

and unequivocally cease to function. There was no stopping this, it was

inevitable, a fact of life. It did not matter if they had fur, scales, skin, gills,

paws, flippers, hands, muzzles, snouts, faces. They all had a limited time in

this universe. And there was absolutely nothing one could do to stop it.

Worst of all, they formed attachments with one another. It was also a fact of life. People

need other people; they need to not be alone. But, with attachments come consequences.

If the ones you are attached to die, the pain you feel is almost physical and

debilitating. It haunts you till your dying days, and the only way to escape

this is to either distance yourself from others until you die or hope to perish

before they do.

Alaric did not like pain.

And yet pain was something he was unfortunately all

too familiar with. He had been born into pain, raised with pain, taught with

pain, and ordered to inflicted pain. His life was a seemingly unending cycle of

pain.

As Alaric sat at the desk and fiddled with his

weapons. He thought about his life. What was there to becoming free? He would

inevitably experience loss and pain. It was an unalterable and factually

assumption. What was truly the difference between freedom and damnation? To be

free is to be in pain. And to be shackled it to be in pain. So why would one

want to experience either...why did they not just end it?

The answer was simple.

Fear.

Fear of the unknown, fear of what lies beyond the

end, fear of what death may bring. That is what stayed the slice of the knife, the pull

of the trigger, the leap into the abyss.

Fear was what kept people alive, it was the one

thing that every living thing shared. Everyone fears something.

To be fair with Alaric's dark conclusion about

life, the human had never experienced the joy that life brought that often

counteracted the terrors it carried. He had not experienced family, friendship...love.

Those were foreign concepts he could not come to terms with. Concepts he barely

grasped the meaning of. They were so strange as to almost be abhorrent. He

considered those things to be flaws when they are in fact...our greatest strengths