The Amazing Adventure
Page 22
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Harvey was stirring a black coffee, it was refreshing after the 18 hours they’d spent dragon riding. At first it was brilliant, a real thrill, however, soon the excitement wore off. Harvey had now decided it would’ve been much better if they’d managed to find a ship from somewhere.
They were in a floating stop-station, a type that was quite common along the less well travelled expressway they were travelling down. These stops were just large tankers of hydro-fuel with a small restaurant/shop on. On the main routes some stops had become whole towns, others became cities, and one even became a planet.
This usually happened because the stops were so expensive that sometimes people would unsuspectingly stop there without realising that they had to pay for parking. Sometimes this was so expensive that these people had no choice but to sell their ships in order to pay the fees. This led to them staying there indefinitely and getting jobs, eventually this pattern repeated until each stop would be granted city status.
This stop however was just a medium sized room, with 5 easy clean plastic tables, with plastic wipe clean floors. Outside the glass doors the dragons floated in various directions over the backdrop of near infinite stars. They were leashed quite tightly to the heavy tankers that made up the bulk of the stop. The manager was not happy with this set up, but he knew better than to incite the irk of Magnus and his crew.
Magnus, Indy and Leo were in deep discussion over a collection of maps they’d spread over one of the tables, while Harvey, Ginge and Alex were drinking coffee and generally unwinding. The Rangers had been through this kind of stress countless times before, but Harvey hadn’t, and was massively on-edge. The three of them were sitting quietly, listening to the murmur of voices coming from the other table, until Ginge broke the silence in an attempt to lighten Harvey’s mood.
“Do you want to hear something hilarious?” She asked expectantly “Apparently, back in the past, people thought they couldn’t breathe in space! They actually thought they would die if they came up into space without wearing stupid looking metal suits.”
“Nah, come off it, there’s no way that’s true! No one is that stupid.” Alex exclaimed.
“I’m being totally serious, they actually thought that.”
“Past-people were so weird.” Harvey said dejectedly into his coffee, “how did they even function?”
“I dunno man.” The conversation seemed to drift off slightly until Ginge elbowed Alex in the ribs. “Oh, You seem pretty down dude, wanna talk about it?”
“Not really”
“Phew, I thought we were going to have to deal with emotions or something.” Alex started to get up.
“Well, I guess this isn’t the way I wanted my life to go.” Alex sat down again, swearing under his breath. “I don’t really want this crazy lifestyle, I mean, any one of us could die. You saw what they did to the Barbarian Homeworld.”
“Well, why don’t you just go home, you do have a home right?” Harvey nodded. “As far as I’m aware no one’s forcing you to do this, but if you left now you’d be the biggest whuss this side of the TRK ring!” Alex and Ginge laughed.
“I don’t get it. Is that some sort of in-joke that neither me nor any separate entity following this story from an unseen perspective would understand?” The two rangers looked at each other and shrugged.
“That was quite an oddly specific and extraneous question, but yeah, that is an in-joke.” Gingeanswered.
“Ah ok, that explains why it makes no sense.” Harvey paused for a second, looked down at his coffee then back up again. “Do you guys ever get the feeling that some sections of life are just sort of filler, like the god controlling your life is just stalling, you know, just trying to pad out the story of your life with more words?”
“No, I don’t really do that religion thing.”
“You don’t even do that thinking thing,” Ginge playfully bantered with him. “Look, Harvey, if you want to go home, just go. I understand that you’re just trying to avoid making the decision by going off on some existential tangent.”
“You’re right. I guess, I might stay, that guy over there.” He pointed at Indy, who was pointing exaggeratedly at some maps. “He’s the closest I have to a family right now, and it looks like he’s sticking around, so I’m sticking with him.”
“I heard that, you’re blatantly gay!” Indy shouted across the café without looking up from the maps.
“I’m quite sure that he doesn’t even know the word irony. But I’m going to stay anyway. My mind is made up.”
Alex looked him in the eye, pulled out a pistol and put it on the table. “It’s dangerous to go alone, take this”
“Serious? That’s a straight quote from a very popular computer game!”
“Not enough for a lawsuit.” Alex smiled back at him. “Just remember, with great power comes great responsibility.”
“Come on! We’re already pushing it here. You guys just don’t care about the law do you?”
“All I can say is that nobody puts baby in the corner,” Ginge added to the conversation. “Besides, you can take our lives, but you can never take our freedom.”
Alex and Harvey both stared at her. “Those didn’t even make sense in context. At least mine were almost relevant!”
Ginge looked down, slightly embarrassed, “I just wanted to join in. I’m sorry.”
“God, you should be, especially if we get sued! It seems like we have 99 problems but a bitch ain’tone.” Harvey lamented to himself.
Magnus walked over to the table and stood in front of the trio, he leaned down to Harvey. “Wrong medium dude,” and leaned back to the middle of the table. “Alirght, listen up, Grigor’s going after the five pieces of awesome, the Dragon Heart and the Barbarian Spirit have both been picked up, and we’re pretty sure that Grigor went after the Cajones of the Wolf. So, our choices are the Rainbow Horn of the Interstellar Unicorn, or the Flaming Motorbike of the Great Bear. Seeing as the unicorn hasn’t been seen in millennia and flits about the universe avoiding people, we’re going after the Motorbike. Don’t ask any questions because we don’t have a plan yet, but we’ll make one on the way. Move out guys.”
Everyone nodded in approval, finished off their drinks and started to pack their objects away. “And luckily, it’s most likely that Volkang’s gone after Grigor to the Dagoba system.” Ginge and Harvey heaved a sigh of relief while Alex laughed.
“Haha, it would be a suicide mission if he wasn’t” He said while shouldering his rifle and turning towards the door.
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