ThisIsGonnaHurt

@epox: @adam_grimm: @rive_drakis:

The initial chaos of the Spire didn't sit well for Duke, to say the least. Facing down a gargantuan arachnoid behemoth was not anywhere near his bucket list. His natural instincts were screaming at him to run and hide. He would have in the blink of an eye if not for the hairs standing on the back of his neck.

“Hey hey woah! Rive, you fraggin’ bozo!!”

Without any warning or cushioning for the inevitable impact, the captain of the Roulette Dawn shuddered as the Sith warrior slammed the group into the broad side of the chasm. While this meant safety, at first, Duke immediately recognized something sticking to his fur.

“Great, good job everybody. Ten paces in and we're already gonna have our organs melted into smoothies,” he sighed, gnawing at something on his chest armor.

“Well I, for one, ain't going out without a fight!”

He tugged on the pin from a plasma grenade just as the abomination crept close enough for its face to be burned to cinders.

“Come on! When death is on the table, always bet on Musta-”

He didn't get to finish his catchphrase before the beast was ensnared by something much bigger down below the bones and oozing darkness. There were sounds of struggle, and then silence.

Duke calmly spat out the pin, letting it dangle back harmlessly against his fur. He scrambled out of the sizzling remnants of webbing and climbed onto the nearest ledge, meaning he was the first one on the other side of the damn bridge.

He was picking out what still stuck to his fur, the sensation of which drove him bonkers. He snorted and coughed before scratching his neck.

“Uh, yeah? All in favor of leaving this behind us, say I,” he lifted his paw and continued forward without looking back.

He felt his heart in his throat but played it off as cool as he could, inhaling through his nose and exhaling slowly. Duke lagged behind Rive, who seemed to know exactly where to go. The deeper they went into the complex, the worse his skin tingled.

When the group arrived at their next destination, Duke sneered at the droids.

His nose wrinkled unpleasantly as he pulled on Rive's robes and gestured for the group to huddle so he could talk with them more discreetly.

“Hey, big guy, no offense but… somehow this stinks worse than the pit full of corpses,” he didn't seem unsettled, more agitated about the smell.

He swatted at the fog, grumbling as he unconsciously stepped forward. Rive might have shoved him a bit with his boot, at which Duke turned around quickly and snarled… but popped his collar.

“Fine, whatever. As your fearless leader and dashing ace pilot I'll see how dangerous this is personally,”

He dipped a toe beyond the unseen barrier the droids maintained.

“If I die, don't touch my stuff. That goes double for you, Epox - I will know, and I will find a way to haunt you,”

After his snide little comment, he slipped into the mist and was gone.

---

One thing above all others settled a rowdy soul in the deserts of Space Texas, and that was a cold glass of apple cider in a frozen mug. The edges basically became an apple and cinnamon flavored slush, and mixing it together just yielded more of the same. Duke settled on his first mug after a long day patrolling the roads between his ranch and the wilderness beyond.

Coming to town was a special occasion, just for this moment.

He could feel the icy grip of the chilled mug on his paw. He smelled the cider before he tasted it. Just one sip…

But a laser bolt ripped through the air. It replaced the sweet smell of cider with pure burning. The mug shattered in front of his face and the contents spilled all over his lap.

“Duke Mustang!”

The perpetrator of the smoking gun twirled his energy pistol, setting it back into its holster. The Space Raccoon grumbled and turned his head slightly just to shoot daggers at the man responsible for ruining one of the only pleasures in his life.

“Max Rampage,” he retorted with less than half the energy of his latest target.

Max was a Space Badger, larger than most and a whole lot meaner. He was flanked by two other outlaws, all of them in matching bandanas and hats.

“Heard you've been hiding like a yellow-bellied snake! No offense, Carl,” he tipped his hat to his Space Rattlesnake associate.

“Ain't none taken, boss,” Carl shook his tail benevolently.

“Haven't been hiding, I've been waiting though,” Duke pulled out his plasma pistol and pointed it at both of them. The rest of the saloon had taken cover at Max's initial outburst, but collectively shuddered at the prospect of a gunfight in their midst.

“You're dumber than you look if you think you can outshoot both of us,” Max snarled.

“Not both of you. Just you,” Duke glanced over at the clocktower in the town square and holstered his gun. Max did the same.

They headed outside without a word between the two. Carl took up a position near the saloon entrance, his tail coiled around his belt and settling on top of his laser pistol.

Time passed painfully slowly. Max, his anger boiling over, notably twitched with anticipation. Duke just breathed slowly.

He had his target. He had his weapon. He had his time to draw and fire. That's all he needed.

When the clock struck the hour, that's all he had. That's all Max lacked, too. The Space Badger collapsed with a fresh hole where half of his face used to be, burned away by the cruel energies of a contained star-like power core. Carl scattered like a tumbleweed, as did the rest of the cast.

The cast. That’s right.

Duke’s breathing became irregular. His eyes widened in horror as the corpse of his friend, Max Rampage, stared off into the distance. He started pleading with himself, anyone, and threw the plasma pistol onto the ground… no, the floor. The dirt road dividing the small town of Silver Gulch wasn’t real. None of this was… all except for Max and the blood on Duke’s hands.

“Cut!” a voice rang out like a razor through leather.

Duke flinched and he tried hiding, but there was nowhere he could run to. The stage lights popped off and he could at least see the source of his anxiety. The director approached him with a rictus smile plastered onto his face.

“Well done, Duke! That was a job well done!”

Duke looked over and watched as Max’s corpse was dragged off by a pair of droids into the bowels of the studio. He didn’t know what happened to the bodies. No one did.

“M-Max,” Duke mouthed silently. “W-Was that in the script? I-I thought the pistols weren’t loaded!”

The director gave a sinister chuckle and knelt down, giving Duke a good look at the lack of humanity behind his blood-red eyes.

“Oh, silly, you forgot! When we need someone to die, then they’re loaded! No sense in firing them off all willy-nilly,” he cascaded his fingers.

Duke clutched at his head, his brain unable to process the dozens and scores of emotions flooding into his body.

“Ah… AAHHHH!!!” he screamed.

“There, there, we have plenty more scenes to film - no sense losing your mind yet, E-127,” the director wagged his finger.

Duke looked around at the other cast members. They were all animals, unlike the director and the crew. He started to remember, but composed himself.

“R-Right…” he shivered and took to his feet.

“Fantastic! Now, from the top!” The director swirled his hand authoritatively.

Max Rampage emerged from behind him. Duke stared at him, but understood. One of the staff members cut off a tag on his ear. O-136 clattered to the floor.

“Hey, Duke!” he smiled, waving his hand.

“H-Hey Max,”

“I can’t wait to film that duel we have. Mr. Mephisto told me it would blow my mind!”

Duke’s eyes dilated in horror.

“W-We already filmed it,”

“Oh yeah? How was it?”

“Y-...” Duke looked from Max… to the director.

The smile burned itself in his mind like a branding iron.

“Y… You blew your top off,” Duke smiled nervously.

He didn’t register what Max said next. The Space Badger just smiled and laughed, mouthing something about Duke being his best friend and how lucky they were to have a boss like Mr. Mephisto.

Duke opened his eyes. He shook his head, not wanting to go any further. But the fog compelled him.

Max was in front of him, but he no longer had his smile. They weren’t in the studio anymore either, or at least it didn’t look like the studio.

“Thirteen seasons and four movies,” the Space Badger grumbled, swirling a glass around.

It smelled like apple cider.

“Can’t believe it’s all over,” Max continued.

“Can’t believe… what’s over?” Duke had his cognizance about him. He was no longer watching his memories. He could interact with them… maybe even change them.

“The franchise. I doubt anyone will even know what it was after a hundred years,” Max looked up from his glass.

“Does anyone remember us… besides you?”

Duke didn’t want to answer. Max already knew what he wanted to know regardless.

“What are you doing anyway?”

“I’m… an outlaw I guess,”

Max stifled a laugh at that. “Funny. So you’re stealing things to make ends meet?”

“I can’t work like I used to, my contract-”

“To Hell with your contract, Duke! You used to be someone I looked up to. It didn’t matter how many times we were recycled, you were always there! But you looked at the future and canceled your contract before the expiration while the rest of us died peacefully. What, were you scared?”

“Yes! I was always fraggin’ scared! Between all the times I saw you and the others blended up and spat back out… I didn’t even know how many times it happened to me! I canceled it because I didn’t want there to be even the slightest chance of me being dug back up and strung around for another sick show,”

“Understandable,” Max shrugged his shoulders. “But now you’re stuck in your own personal Hell. You don’t have a purpose,”

“I have a purpose! Shut up!”

“You’re empty inside. All your friends are dead,”

“I’m still here for a reason!”

“It’s been a hundred years, Duke. It’s okay to let go,”

“No! I have friends now too! We're gonna sail the stars together until they explode!”

---

He glared up into the abyss with tears in his eyes. Nothing was there except for the exit. He rubbed his snout and found a rock to sit on. He contemplated shouting back through the maze to let the others know he was fine… but then remembered the communicator. He clicked it using his paw and cleared his throat.

“Testing, testing, one two, one two, does anyone copy?”

He swung his legs back and forth while sitting on the rock.

“I’m alive, if any of you bozos were wondering. Come on through, it’s a… it’s a wonderful time in there - I promise.”

@epox: @adam_grimm: @rive_drakis:

The cockpit of the Roulette Dawn had plenty of legroom, especially considering its new helmsman. The Space Raccoon set a device on a nearby console and cranked the volume all the way up. The music that bounced off the walls was jovial, a complete disconnect from their current situation being on the run. The brass and wind instruments connected beautifully, weaving a tapestry of audio that Duke tapped his foot and mumbled along to.

He always needed to be doing something with his grubby little paws, and so busied himself with adjusting various parts of the consoles involved in his new ship's design… mostly by taking parts from other sections of the cockpit and making customized seats that swung around with the momentum of the ship itself. He kept in mind to include the average heights of their makeshift squad just in case anyone else decided to join in on the festivities.

Of course, he kept his seat in the middle like any self-respecting captain would. The main control module hovered in place, swirling on interconnected panels so that no matter where he faced he always had his eyes on the nose of the freighter. A 360 degree view of the rest of the ship hung in a spherical diorama he could manipulate at will. This, coupled with various forms of radar (some of which he had to install manually), gave him uncontested knowledge of the Roulette Dawn's surroundings for miles.

At length, and after a few hours of hard maintenance and “upgrading” an already high-security luxury freighter, Duke found his high chair and settled in, sighing contentedly at a job well done - at least in his mind.

Spare parts he had yet to put away were still scattered this way and that, but this just came with the territory of being a Space Raccoon. He gnawed on what he assumed was food. He found it in the pantry, at least, and chewed only to discover it to be a very rare form of jerky.

“Blegh, it's like eating leather,” he turned the container around to read the label.

“Sourced from our pampered… giant MORSIAN FLEAS?!”

He didn't spit it out… and instead mulled about the flavor some more. He shrugged and bit into it again, chewing thoughtfully this time.

That's when the others trickled into the new and improved command deck with Rive following along. Duke was about to compliment himself on how he managed to convert the whole operation in order to better suit the group's needs… but any praise he'd have heaped lavishly upon himself was cut short by Rive's immediate - and rather blunt - introduction to their task.

He listened as well as anyone could have expected him to. He may have smacked his gums a bit louder than he intended, but who could blame him? Smoked flea meat was drier than sand! By the end of the demonstration, he picked at his teeth with a claw.

“Sounds good to me,” he said with a minor shrug.

“Oh yeah, and don't mind the accommodations or anything. Totally the same as before, yeah,” he grumbled, sinking into his chair and inputting the coordinates Rive's little Imperial Sith doohicky possessed.

“What is this thing, anyway?” he asked rhetorically, chewing on the priceless Sith artifact given to him by nothing short of pureblood royalty.

The resulting conversation about “behaving himself” and “begging for forgiveness” just went in one ear and out the other. He had better things to commit brainspace to, such as all the new spots he could hide his loot and… the fact that they were going to be getting loot!

Upon arrival at Madrovesta, Duke started the landing sequence and pocketed the device Rive distributed. He expected a horrible experience, at the very least, and packed accordingly. Plasma weapons were his favorite, including his collapsible rifle and grenades. He had a few pistols of various ammunition types and more explosives for whatever they might encounter once inside.

He popped another piece of flea jerky between his teeth and followed Rive's lead.

The horrors of the ancient universe could only be hinted at. From Duke's limited knowledge of what actually moved and shook the cosmos, he expected the bones littering the ground to be some sort of mass grave for a religious cult or unfortunate genocidal event.

He could smell the dust but it all intermingled. The contents such as age and circumstance, whether he could still smell something organic within the fossilized remains, were impossible to discern from the vast majority. It all coalesced into an uneasy feeling in his gut.

If the dead were not sequential, then what did that mean for the living? He understood the vast bestiary of the breathing galaxy. He knew the markings of scavengers by the slashes on solid rock. The fact that this temple was not swarming with enormous, carnivorous worms was perhaps a blessing.

But it also meant that something bigger had left its scent.

He climbed on top of Rive's shoulders much like he had done before.

“I know your Sith magic probably already told you, but we're being tracked,” his eyes darted from one end of the dark hall to the other.

“It hasn't found us yet. But it's moving,”

He suddenly straightened his body like a Yoxian meerkat.

“I wouldn't split up. Not now. It might be waiting for us to do something stupid,”

He sniffed the air again.

“It definitely is.”

@adam_grimm: @epox: @rive_drakis:

Duke felt accomplished as the Gutter Runner's “security” force scattered from the combined efforts of the squad he seemed to fall into. He was about to gloat when the hand of his latest victim clattered to the floor with the telltale ticking of a thermal detonator clenched within. He would have scurried to safety, probably somewhere behind a nearby body or under a makeshift trash bunker, but one of his new accomplices managed that for him.

The familiar sensation of an invisible hand clasped not around his throat this time but instead about the scruff of his neck. His limbs went akimbo and soft, yet he maintained his grip on his collapsible plasma rifle. He seemed almost calm and tame despite his rabid disposition mere moments earlier and the thunderous explosion that rang out from the battlefield. He spat out a bloody mouthful of fabric and leathery skin with a zealous “patooie!”

“And there's more where that came from, you flark heads!!”

He cackled as he wiggled away from the fading grip on his neck and crawled on top of the imposing Sith warrior's shoulders.

“Alright, here's what you gotta do,” he settled into his perch, feeding instructions and directions to the group.

He knew the Gutter Runner like the back of his paw.

He told them how best to evade patrols, and which back alleys to take. The chase became a deadly game of cat and mouse, where the group took dangerous routes and had to be completely silent at the best of times.

Duke only spoke when he absolutely had to.

Eventually they managed to successfully infiltrate all the way to the main hangar. One ship in particular caught his attention: a large luxury freighter.

He hopped off Rive's shoulders and immediately popped open the door console, pulling some wires and chewing on others to expose the insulated parts he needed. Adam Grimm would probably recognize this ship and be mortified by what Duke was doing, but the outlaw Space Raccoon didn't seem to care in the slightest.

Once he hotwired his way into the door, a droid greeted them as it opened.

“Hello Master Brashear, welcome back to-”

“Yeah yeah, shut up,”

The protocol droid, sheathed in a suave black paint scheme to compliment its gold metal parts, tilted its saucer-shaped head and scoffed.

“Well, how rude! Master Brashear will be most cross with you when he returns,”

Duke ignored the droid and scrolled through a small security holomap of the ship on the nearby wall. The front door was obviously compromised and he noticed that the hangars were in lockdown, but he whistled as he learned the actual scale of the vessel.

“Alright! Hey, fellas, go get your wings and meet me outside. This baby's got plenty of room! I'll only wait for a few seconds though, so hurry up!”

“W-Wait, no! Master Brashear won't tolerate any more guests!”

Duke shot a pointer finger at the droid.

“Listen, you: I don't know who this Brass Ear guy is but I also don't care! As far as I'm concerned, this ship and everything on it is mine now - got it?”

The droid nodded in a defeated manner.

“Good. I'll reprogram you later, so just be quiet,”

Duke managed to find the control room easily enough and powered the engines to full. He handled the oversized controls like a true professional ace, and steered the massive rig outside of the habitation shields.

He flipped a couple of switches and the side hangars opened, spilling their contents out into the void. This included some illegal contraband and a few unfortunate guards that had been locked inside, but Duke just chuckled at their misfortune.

He set the freighter into a gentle hovering position, keeping a close eye on any ships he might recognize as security drones or armed boarding vessels.

Once the group had reassembled, their personal hangars locked in place with the artificial atmospheric generators humming peacefully, he'd turn on the intercom.

“Welcome aboard the Mustang Express, this is your captain speaking, I-”

There was an audible argument.

“This ship is called the Roulette Dawn, I'm afraid,” the droid mumbled.

“Roulette Dawn? That is such a better name. Whatever! We're going to lightspeed, hold onto something,”

He fired up the engines and pointed the nose of the freighter in a direction that would get them far away from the Gutter Runner. Just as the security drones started catching up, the Roulette Dawn vanished.

Once they were gone, Duke set it to autopilot to avoid any collisions and climbed on top of the droid.

“Wh-What are you doing?”

“Fixing you,” he unhinged the top panel and threw it on the floor.

“I need that, no - please!”

Duke connected and disconnected some wires and found a tracking device, which he promptly chewed through and destroyed.

“Let's see… personality inhibitor, calculations limiter, language filter… wow, you were stripped down to your bare components,”

“I feel so violated,”

“What's your name, anyway?”

“I am T-4K0, part of the extended communication series,”

“Ha! Your name is Forko!” Duke cackled as he made a few sparks fly out of the droid's noggin.

“T-4 will suffice,”

“Nah, your name is Forko,” Duke climbed off and snapped the plate back into T-4's head.

“There you go,” the Space Raccoon sighed. “Now go find the others and show them around,”

“I shall indeed, Master Mustang. The Roulette Dawn is equipped with only the finest in-”

“Just go!”

@adam_grimm, @rive_drakis, @epox

The first step in befriending a Space Raccoon was to grab their attention. They were squirmy creatures, always looking for a way out of a situation they didn't immediately like. They often didn't care about the details. If the first thing they perceived was a threat, they were gone. Duke was no different. He started kicking at the invisible force keeping him airborne, his fingers grazing a certain weapon of his, but that's when Rive unintentionally proceeded to step two.

He dispersed the assumed threat, gave the Space Texan a satisfactory amount of information, then presented him with an ultimatum. Trust wasn't the primary focus of a friendship with a Space Raccoon... but mutual survival definitely was. Duke fumbled for the pistol grip on his belt loop and snarled, ready for a fight.

"I don't know what the flark Big Bad and Thorny is talking about destiny and all that but I can stand to blow off some steam!"

With a flick of his arm, the pistol grip expanded into a plasma rifle. He shouldered the butt and aimed down the iron sights, laughing maniacally... but never getting to pull the trigger. Whatever Adam did, he created a smokescreen that rolled over the fateful meeting place as one part distraction and one part cover tactic.

"Not what I meant!"

Despite his protest, this suited Duke just fine. He blinked a few times, scurrying out of the thickest part of the smog, and hung an immediate turn back into the flank of the guards chasing the Barzonian. He was a quick little freak, and shot like a lunatic.

"Ye-hahaha! Take that you zog-muckers!!"

He wasn't trying to kill any of them, moreso just distract them from the larger part of his group. He was too far away and shooting into too dense a fog anyway to make accuracy count. Of course, he attracted his fair share of return fire and his loud boisterous voice caused about half of the group to break off and make pursuit. This was perfect for him, since it meant that the others had fewer obstacles to deal with.

This also meant that he had about a dozen security jockeys on his tail.

He'd fire off intermittent bursts, keeping their attention as he basically circled the small plaza this entire skirmish started in. He made optimal use of the terrain, sneaking to and from cover and kneecapping stragglers with a well-placed plasma bolt or catching the group in harrowing suppressing fire from a completely unsuspected angle. When there was only one, he leaped down and started biting into his rebreather pipes and gnawing parts of his face. Duke steered him while on his shoulders back into the group, practically foaming at the mouth with his howling laughter.

@adam_grimm, @epox, @rive_drakis

The massive interstellar casino ship known as the Gutter Runner posed a lot of problems inherent in the system. Thousands of galactically-unsanctioned gambling dens alone was but a single wrench it threw into the grand scheme of peace and prosperity. The curling trails of colored smoke from countless hookah bars all intermingled into a nigh-unbreathable miasma, tolerable only thanks to an artificial atmosphere imposed by impressive - if archaic - machines. Crime infested its streets and slums, but those that lived and died on the Gutter Runner were able to forge a unique path through the stars.

Duke Mustang often counted himself amongst these individuals, but he had never seen this man before in his life.

"Hey thanks for the - " was all he could choke out before he was lifted from his paws by an unseen force.

Only a few times had he been completely speechless, but never like this. The breath was literally driven down back into his lungs as his throat was pressured and pulled as if he had been collared. Needless to say, he didn't much appreciate this kind of treatment. The only witnesses were divided between the observant, who were moving closer, and the intelligent, who had already left.

The pebbles cascaded down, mere remnants of the raw power this new individual left behind. Duke struggled and kicked the open air but to no avail. The grip seemed to lessen, at least, and he was able to speak.

"Fraggin' frothin' funkin' zog-mucker!" he cursed incessantly, wriggling and writhing helplessly. "What do you want?!"

He glared at the two who were approaching this unscheduled meeting of the minds.

"And you! Don't get any closer if you value those dumb flaps of skin on the side of your head!" he warned, gnawing his teeth threateningly.

"Or the one of the front of your face, whichever is more important!"

He turned towards the rather intimidating man who seemed to be the focal point of this sudden exchange.

"Ahem, you may continue good sir," he said with a cranky smile as if he were the one dictating the pace of things.

He gripped the pack containing his rightly-earned loot in one claw, the other fumbling at his throat. He banked on a sneaky sleight of hand and exchanged that paw for a foot, making it seem like he was still trying to breathe effectively while quietly reaching for something on his belt.

@loom_weaver:

So far it's a general space adventure but I don't see any reason for you to not introduce some Star Wars-themed stuff so be my guest!

@adam_grimm, @epox, @zox

The clock on the wall ticked like a frantic heartbeat.

It wasn't like his, no it couldn't have been. Duke tapped his finger as he waited, his snout furrowing from side to side.

He inspected his cards. He had a good hand, but the big palooka across the table had a scowl on his face a mile in either direction. His whiskers flickered. The granite-faced Molothian snarled as dust fumed from his flaring nostrils. Pebbles clattered to the floor. He was getting pissed.

"You think you're real clever, huh?" the rocky beast grumbled, his voice like a mudslide.

"Nah," Duke replied, casting a knowing glance to the chips he had already accumulated. He had a few pieces of jewelry, the keys to some spaceships, and three chrome-plated pistols in the pile. "I know I'm pretty clever,"

He adjusted some cards from one end of his hand to the other, his grubby little paws making it more like he was rearranging leaflets.

The Molothian growled a low, threatening noise.

The dealer flipped over the final piece to their puzzle.

"Show your hands, gentle-" he didn't get to finish as the Molothian slammed his cards down.

"There you go, you little rat! Beat these,"

"Well, if you say so," Duke laid his hand on the table.

The room went silent, and the Molothian sat back down deflated. Duke laughed maniacally as he shoveled as much as he could into his pack. He hoisted himself off the barstool and started walking out.

"Pleasure doing business with you, boys, but the dealership closes soon and I can't drive all these ships!"

Before he made it out the door, one of the enforcers noticed something and plucked him up. The Molothian grumbled as the guard inspected Duke and took a card from behind his vest... and then another. And another.

The guard grew concerned.

Rightly so, as the Molothian threw the table into the ceiling and cracked it in half. Cards and wood splinters fell like rain. Duke gave him a cheeky little grin.

"Uh... I was... going to do a magic show for some orphans! Yeah..." Duke bit the guard's finger, nearly tearing it off, and scurried away - leaving behind whatever didn't weight him down.

"GET HIM! KILL THAT RAT!" he heard his former host roar as he scampered, evading laser bolts that sizzled at his heels.

That's a Lot of Stars...

Welcome to the final frontier!

This thread encompasses all journeys, adventures, and hijinks of any crew - pirate, law-abiding, or otherwise - as they sail through the unexplored unknown of an unlimited and unforgiving sea of potential!

Now, when you land on a planet you have one of two choices:

1. Play it out here, I really don't mind

2. Make an entirely new thread about it - expand that CV22U horizon!

This might just be the in-between, but it is the beginning of your next odyssey!

OOC:

Despite being the wild west, the basic rules apply.

Don't be a jerk, have fun, and let others have fun too.

This is more a general catch-all thread for places that are way far off from CV22U Earth or for locations that don't even have names yet. Turn on some music, set a course for somewhere you haven't heard of, and let your imagination go wild!

@ozzy_manueldiaz:

Oh come on, it isn't that bad :P