Bwee-bwee-bwee-bwee

"Warning. Warning."

"It's okay, it's okay, just throttle up — throttle up, pull back, and we'll switch out and try again!"

"It is not! I am! And thank God, why am I even flying this thing?!"

It wasn't meant as terse or as tense as it sounded, but the situation -- at least, from her point of view -- wasn't something to take lightly. They had already "bounced" off the atmosphere once. Now it was time for bounce #2. Atmospheric reentry was a difficult thing to try to wing as a first-timer, and poor Jam, distracted as she was, hadn't quite nailed the angle of attack right the first time. The second time, they came in rather steep, and things were starting to get hot — which is to say the entire exterior of the ship was burning orange, shedding heat-resistant panels like dandruff, and basking them with the pleasant warmth of the Sahara, because they were entering like a meteor.

She wasted absolutely no time in flinging the safety restraints off her, and wriggling as far out of the way as the confines of the cockpit would allow. By the time they managed to clamber around the cramped interior of the fighter and switch places (a feat that required reclining the front seat and shimmying past one another simultaneously, leaving the ship perilously, terrifyingly uncontrolled for a moment), they were well off the mark of their original approach. Rock didn't seem stressed by it, though. He may have even let loose a ragged laugh during their swap, which Jam reciprocated with one that may or may not have been wholly genuine.

"Don't get me wrong," said Jam bracingly with a dry gulp, sounding unreasonably taxed. "I have every confidence in you, I'm just suddenly remembering every puzzle and Playgo model I ever built,"

"Jam."

"and wondering how in the asscrack of hell I ever thought me building a space ship to rescue you and fly us home in wasn't—"

"Jam! Laylee!"


...


"Hush, babe. I'm tryinn'a fly here."

Jam deflated with a sigh and continued to clutch at her heart as though it might otherwise escape, but seemed calmer simply knowing she had vacated the liability seat.

And so they went, soaring off to who-knows-where. Nothing had quite turned out how they planned it to, but in so, so many ways, it was so much better than either of them could have possibly hoped. They may have been limping back to Earth in a crippled and cramped fighter, but they were together, and that was the important part.

Blue sky began to surround them. Rock rolled the fighter left and right, pulling back and bleeding off speed. During one of their steeper-turning veers, he chanced a glance earthward, and blurted an abrupt "Huh" in the flavor of "wouldja look at that"—the kind of "huh" one doesn't want to hear from a pilot, mechanic, doctor, or anyone else working on something important.

"This is, uh." Rock sniffed ineffectually. "This is China that we're comin' down toward."

"Hah," replied Jam casually, clonking her helmet solidly as she butted up against the window, and scrutinized the landmass below.

She seemed completely and totally at ease once Rock had displaced her from the hotseat, and as a testament to her faith in the fairer primate, would have been whether or not the warnings or klaxons or cautionary sound effects continued.

She licked her lips, while shaking her head in a "Well, how do you like that" sort of fashion with an appropriately coordinating expression coloring her features.

"Now that's some damned poetic justice, there."

Rock blinked solidly once, twice, then shook his head.

"Naw, we'll divert course to friggin' Blahagawhatever-stan before we let cosmic irony make some sorta case out of our—"

*SNAP!*

"shiiiiiiiiit"

An important looking metal control surface of some sort fluttered off into the great beyond, free of where it belonged.


~*Fifteen minutes later*~

The canopy of their half-wrecked fighter popped open. It sat at the end of a long, blackened track of grass down the face of a sparsely-vegetated, gravelly slope, with a spiraling trail of smoke leading from the gloomy, grey sky to their present location.

The distinctive "fwoosh" of a fire extinguisher accompanied puffs of dusty white flame-retardant spray spilling out of the cockpit.

"F$@& China," coughed Rock through his open visor from atop the nose of the fighter. "And poetry."

He discarded the extinguisher and wrenched his helmet off, wobbling unstably under the weight of his own body in his gravity-wracked feebleness. His arms windmilled several times, flailing his helmet; he cussed quietly, stabilized into an awkwardly postured freeze frame, then spontaneously fell smack into the weeds with a painful-sounding thud.

After zealously pitching her own confining helmet as far into the distance as her wobbly space limbs would allow, Jam's open hands teetered indecisively in front of her, unsure of both how and whether or not to help, and ultimately just wound up watching poor Rock drop like his namesake. She simultaneously frowned and smiled at him, the bubbling mirth behind it barely contained in so subtle an expression, as she swung her legs over the cockpit's edge, and slid supine down the fuselage of the fighter, landing lightly next to him on the balls of her feet.

Rather than helping him up, though, she lunged, probably knocking the wind out of him, as she fell forward on top of him, her arms snaking up around his neck, and pulling, squeezing. At once, she was very nearly all over him; a cheek to cheek nuzzle turned into a trail of kisses that started around his jaw, diverted to the top of his neck, the underside of his chin, and went all the way to the other side of his face and back before lingering at his own lips, deeply, persistently, and enthusiastically.

With apparent difficulty, she eventually pried her mouth from his, though just enough to rested her forehead against his; breathlessly, she whispered, "Anywhere with you. Is perfect."

His hands rested on her back; his focus lingered straight on, staring, drawn utterly into her big, green eyes. Any frustration, even mild or jocular, was just plain out the window, and all he could do was smile—huff a steam-breathed laugh into the chill air and shake his head at his own undeservedly kind fate.

He opened his mouth to speak. Whatever mesmerized sweet nothing he had to whisper didn't come out, though. Instead, his eyes almost imperceptibly narrowed as they darted to one side, onto a faint shadow that had befallen them.

"Is that why you crash the plane?" the shadow asked, perhaps surprisingly in "English." "Is more better for that sort of thing to be in a car, I think. Unmoving car."

Jam rolled off with a gasp, and jerked upright, less-than-subtly flushed, as she coughed into her hand and looked away.

The loris' head fell to a cant as she straightened, staring evaluatingly at the monkeys with the tiniest of smiles curling her lip. She wore an eclectic hodge-podge of occidental and oriental clothing that somehow suggested her lack of shoes was born more out of choice than circumstance. She took slow set of steps toward the pair, tucking a raggedy paperback into a wide-banded cloth belt behind her back, as she glanced back to the downed bird with less intrigue than one might expect of a rural Tibetan girl.

"But last people not crash here for kissing, probably." The girl's eyes narrowed with scrutiny. "Maybe."



***



"Starter's probably bad."

A more rested-looking Rock, clean, well-fed, and freshly dressed in new pants and a borrowed orange mountain climber's jacket, was crouched next to a hulking, old, weathered gas generator out behind a shack that verged on shanty. A string of tatty old prayer flags fluttered quietly overhead in the same cold wind that blew his shaggy, unkempt spikes of white hair around. Behind him was Latika and a small gaggle of kids who seemed to find both his work and his mere presence fascinating, and tittered on about both in a language he could not understand.

"Really?" asked the loris, excitedly with a clap of her hands. "I was before thinking cause of clicking sound like similar problem I read in story about 'Service Manual for Folkswagon Bunny', but did not know if car was same like generator!"

It had been a day or so. The sun shone brightly on the cluttery little village and monastery, and the air, though frigid and a little thin, was the freshest they'd tasted. At least, it was the main thing they had actually enjoyed "tasting" so far—misadventures with local cuisine had already started up the previous evening. Suffice to say that Rock, tough as he liked to act, had stomached all the butter tea with but a hardened face and a suppressed shiver, knowing fully well he needed it whether or not he wanted it.

But now, it was a new day, and time to give back a little. Much as he had assumed, just about anything with a microprocessor or an electric motor was cooked and crispy. The death of the rural town's sole source of electricity had set the residents digging through their closets, cabinets and chests for oil lamps months ago, and left them that way indefinitely.

"I've got some tools," he mumbled as he stood and dusted his knees. "Might need some wire if I'm gonna have to completely rewind it, though."

As the effective shepherd for her noisy, teeming flock, Latika kept the undulating crowd of kids at bay, hopefully maintaining a sufficient work zone for Rock as she and the others watched him with great, intrusive interest.

"We can probably find," chirped the girl enthusiastically. "Any kind of wire is okay?"

"Just bare copper wire," answered Rock. "I'm not sure what gauge yet, but if you bring whatever you find, we'll figure it out."

One of the children behind her, a boy that barely came up to her chest, rattled off something that sounded rather cheeky, which she responded to with a brisk shake of her head, along with some indiscernible discourse of her own.

"Senge is want to know how much you need, too."

"A good sized spool," Rock gestured vaguely with his hands and nodded.

Latika nodded and turned back to her herd, mimicking the gesture for them, as she transposed what started out as only a handful of syllables into so many, a more paranoid non-speaker would be forced to wonder what was being said about their mother. Instead, the children abruptly fell into a hushed excitement as they methodically broke off into pairs, and scampered off in different directions.

"We are going to search!" Latika called over her shoulder as she and the boy called Senge shuffled gradually away.

Unintentionally churlish as ever, Rock didn't answer, but merely set to work, unfolding a screwdriver from his multitool to begin setting the part in question free from its mount.

"Back on earth a day, and you're already fixing everyone else's problems..."

It wasn't that she was trying to sneak up on Rock -- she couldn't have if she wanted to, and she knew it, but something about the way she languorously shimmied around the corner seemed to suggest that Jam had been waiting for a more private audience before she made her presence known. Despite her preparedness in packing for Rock, Jam had been less prudent about her own supplies, and thus wore a borrowed collection of local finery; colorful, heavy, and varying in textures and patterns. It was certainly an odd look compared to her norm, but at least she was warm. She slid casually behind the other primate, and draped her arms around his shoulders, pressing her cold nose against his neck.

His expression softened at her voice, even with the chill. He lowered the tool and turned his head just enough to cast a quiet smile over his shoulder toward her, while his free hand reached just far enough behind him to set on the side of her leg, the nearest one could do to returning a hug from behind.

"I'm pretty sure being marooned in space, and like... going comatose, and being revived warrants a little more R&R before you start saving the world again..." chided Layla, with all the severity of a pillow.

His lips tightened and his eyes opened wider without budging his brows any.

"'Again,'" he sighed an echo of her last word as if it was devoid of credit. "I don't know if you've noticed this," he explained through a conciliatory smile as he turned more to face her, "but every time I try and 'save' the world, I... kinda leave it more broken than it started."

"I have noticed that that is a thing that sometimes happens," she obliged, laying her head alongside his, her chin resting on his shoulder. "However, even if one were to be brutally honest, I think we'd all agree that at least for this particular snafu, all credit belongs to your faithful fan club."

She said it dryly, and without sarcasm or malice. Her expression was placid as she blinked straight ahead at nothing at all. With a passionless sniff that had nothing to do with the cold, she pressed her lips into Rock's cheek, and stayed there, grinning contentedly.

"As for the rest, I am all out of I Can't Believe It's Not Bias, today," murmured the monkey with a shrug of her shoulders. "Haters gonna hate."

Things were good.

Soon, they were meandering through the village hand-in-hand — just taking in the sights and simply being together. "Being together" was a thing they'd been really short on for a long time, after all. They passed some noisily-chewing yaks (not the upright, talking kind, but more the grazing-and-walleyed kind), a villager working a churn... A tiny, rusty, tricycle-configuration pickup truck puttered by, prompting them to step aside and out of the narrow, packed-dirt path. Either someone around there had gotten something working, or the thing was just so old a specimen it didn't have any delicate electronics to mess up.

"So," breathed Rock with a puff of steam, eyes skyward, "you said you brought some sort of beacon for Caruso to track us down by?"

"I did!" Jam chirped enthusiastically. With a spring in her step, she swung around to Rock's front, detaching from him for the first time in so long, it'd likely leave a noticeable chill in the wake of her warmth as she skipped backwards in front of him with her hands behind her back.

"I put iiiiit..." With an abrupt halt that might make a less astute companion walk into her, the bubbly simian girl cast a look left and right, before turning in a full one-eighty-and-then-some, eventually stopping with a rigid arm straight out, pointing over the squatty rooftops to the aged stone monastery towering over the village.

"There." She looked just a little proud.

Rock stopped and followed her gaze and point. He squinted.

"'There' where?"

"There, there!" she replied, her smile coloring her voice. "On top of that temple building place!"

She dipped her head forward in a single, pleased nod that was almost a bow.

"The very top."

The white primate gave one blink as he stared up. His mouth opened to speak, but he paused. His eyes narrowed in a way that was barely perceptible. He blinked twice more. Then, he looked straight at Jam again, and in a hushed, uncertain-sounding tone, said,

"You put it on top of the monastery?"

Jam made her own contribution to Rock's blinking contest, as confusion swiftly replaced elation, her lips retreating between her teeth.

"Nnnnot unlesss..." Blink. "I shouldn't have?"

With a pitiable frown, her shoulders slumped. Following the white primate's lead, she too dropped her voice, explaining defensively, "It just looked so climbable."

There was a long pause. Then, Rock shrugged.

"We'll just... take that off before we leave. Quietly. At night."

Rockets.

The sound coursed through the whole village, wobbling through the atmosphere with the distinct sound of something closing in on their new little vacation spot, and fast.

A vaguely-greenish flash sped overhead and thoomed right at the top of the monastery, quite ironically at the exact spot where Jam's finger had been pointing.

boom

Brick and stone spewed away from the impact spot, accompanied by a great, billowing cloud of gray dust. A heavy-looking spire tipped precariously and tumbled down the rooftops of the holy structure, red and yellow architecture crumbling and splitting. If an avalanche could sound blasphemous, it probably sounded a lot like what they were hearing.

A breeze flitted, the dust cloud blew, revealing, at the top of the structure where Jam had indicated, a dark green Capsule Trooper, brown cape billowing. His hand gripped some not-destroyed section of the tower. He stared at the beacon.

"... Jam?" Green looked around, at the damaged building beneath him and the wide open airspace. Judging by his movements, he seemed... terribly confused.

Several more rockets sounded from the skies.

"No no no no nononono--" was what Zesty said shortly before crashing into one of the cliffs overlooking the settlement, some distance away.

"I'm okay!" they heard somewhere in the Zesty-shaped indenture in the cliff.

There was the telltale rumble of an avalanche beginning somewhere above him.

"Ohhhh noooooo"

*crumble crash rumble brrrrrrrmmmmmmmmmm*, the cliff said.

"YEEEEEHAAWWWWWW OHHHHHHHHH FFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU--"

... Phobia disappeared into the well at the center of town, voice echoing and draining away until they couldn't hear him anymore.

*brrrrrrrrrrrmmmmmmmrrrmmm*

"aaaaaahhhhhh"

Rockets boomed as Magnet careened by Green's location, clipping another chunk of the monastery.

"SORRY."

He touched down onto the roof of a building, which happened to be the home of the village elder. ... Except he didn't, instead smashing feet-first through the roof without even so much as slowing, resulting in an explosion of timber and patchwork. A second later the home sounded like it had a plane crash going on inside, along with a lot of screaming and several dogs barking.

*brrrrrrrrrrrmmmmmmmrrrmmm*

"aaaaaahhhhhh"

"Wheeeeeeeeeee uh oh."

Dizzy went face-first through the passenger window of the tricycle-wheeled pickup, glass smashing to noisy effect. The vehicle bobbled, teetered, careened out of control, the Capsule Trooper's metal legs sticking out the window the whole time.

*brrrrrrrrrrrmmmmmmmrrrmmm*

"aaaaaahhhhhh"

"MOVE LOOK OUT MAYDAY MAYDAY--" Last came Slaw, who managed to not utterly demolish some section of town in his landing. Instead he happened to be coming down right around where Latika and her little crew had sped off to. He disappeared from view beneath some rooftops, then there was a deep boom, like a distant cannonblast, and a big, towering geyser of dirt and dust.

*brrrrmmmm...* Silence.

"aaaahahaaa waaah hahaaa, aahhhhwahhhhh..." More sobbing, mildly pathetic crying.

Green studied the village below the monastery, at the various results of the search & rescue crew. He looked around again.

"..."

...

"Jam?"

The reddish primate stood rooted, watching the collateral destruction of the unsuspecting settlement without any of the appropriate shock or dismay; her lips just sloooowly retreated between her teeth, though she kept up an admirable smile. When all the dust began to settle, Jam was still staring unblinkingly at what was once the top of the monastery, and she raised a single open hand in greeting. The simian girl blinked once, and without turning to Rock, said dryly,

"There might be a problem with that plan."

Rock ran his fingers up through his hair, then just.. stopped there, hand frozen atop his head. He forwent all further semblance of reaction or even remote connectedness to what was happening around him in favor of the simplest, most understated greeting that a plain old smile and wave could represent.

"We're gonna be here a while." He similarly did not spare a single glance aside as he waved. "Fixing this."



***



"Truth be told," Green said to his primate compatriots, "I wasn't expecting . . . this." He waved a hand as if to encompass the whole village and its pristine, natural surroundings. He observed the various Capsule Troopers as he spoke, the men working to undo the unforeseen consequences of their arrival. They milled about, picking up destroyed remnants of things, shoveling dirt and debris, complaining about it, and so on and so forth. "It's not quite . . . you."

This, in particular, wasn't quite directed at one monkey or the other, since apparently to him it really could have applied to either...

"But it reminds me of home."

He watched as Slaw and Dizzy dug away at dirt and debris, the remnants of half the cliffside's final resting place. With visible effort they slowly hauled Zesty up out of the giant swath of dirt and mud, the stuff spilling off him, like they were helping some helpless zombie up out of its former grave. Villagers gaped in mute horror.

"Ohhhh man, that was... that was just awful. I just... wow. Hey, wow. Did I do that? Did I bring like half that cliff down? Wow, I... I've never done anything like that. That's amazing. I feel incredible. I, just... wow! I must have some kind of special power... If only my manager back at Taco King had known this, then I'd never have put up with--"

"Hey, look," said Dizzy, pointing.

"Huh?"

Zesty looked down. His left arm was missing.

"AAAAAHHHHH" he screamed, faster than you could say "it's only a flesh wound."

"Home indeed," said Green. "Sorry about the, ah."

... He glanced at the various results of their coming. And at the men themselves.

"No, really, just... thanks for showin' up," Rock interjected with a genuine smile.

He drew a hand from his borrowed jacket's pocket and zipped up a little further, a little closer to his neck, as a chilly wind whipped across his face and through his hair. He seemed to regard the CTs and their commotion with a markedly similar brand of quiet, understated fondness, despite all the trouble they'd brought with them. How could he help but be just plain happy to see them? Jam, the General, the General's men, all of it. The look in his eyes soon flew distant, though, as if suddenly he concerned himself with matters far, far away, gazing through his surroundings more than at.

"What's 'home' look like now, anyway?" he asked, very quiet, his curiosity mixing almost palpably with thick apprehension.

Jam had been quiet; not troubled, or distracted, even, but held that same wordless contentedness Rock had seemed to savor, however fleetingly. She shivered as the cold breeze whistled through, and tried in vain to retract her arms into the large, billowy sleeves she wore. It didn't really work, and by the time that became apparent, the chill had passed, leaving only Rock's heavy question hanging in the stillness.

The pinker of the primates swallowed dryly, and exchanged a hesitant glance with the caped Capsule Trooper that seemed to silently wonder how to go about answering...

"It's different," was all she could offer initially with a shrug, as she licked her lips, her brows furrowing with consideration. "We've moved into the old airfield, been usin' it as our base of operations. The federation's dead, the city's under water. I've heard it's bad outside; y'know, people fightin' over food and gas and stuff, but Green's men've been great about fortifications and scavenging supplies. At the very least, our people are taken care of..."

Green nodded simply. He looked away, at distant mountains, taking in the sheer quiet of the village.

"Though I'll never get over how a world that was once so loud is now so... silent."

"It's all good though," said Magnet, who had somehow inserted himself into the conversation when the general wasn't looking. "I've seen Mad Mack a thousand times and played Farout 3 even more. Once the giant radioactive roaches start swarming Emerald Town, you know who to call."

"Did you finish repairing the roof?" Green said in a tone that implied he would not be pleased if the answer was anything but a hasty yes.

"The what? Oh. No, I asked those really helpful kids to do it." Magnet pointed to the roof of the elder's home, where several small, tired-looking children were busy working away at patching up the Magnet-shaped hole and all the other damage he'd wrought. "I let them borrow my C.E. pistol in exchange. They're such good kids."

Green paused at length. "Do me a favor and go get it back," he said after a while.

"Really? But then I'll have to--hmm, which one did I lend it to? Not him, not that one... Weird, he's not up there. Wonder where he went. Well, he must be around here somewhere. Hey Jam, how are you? Hey... Rick, was it?"

"Get out of here and go find it before we get kicked out of the village."

"Yes-sir." Magnet hurried off.

"Anyway, our own little slice of home is ever the same, though we have had... visitors on the rare occasion." He glanced away again. "The fortifications do their job. The airfield is more or less the last semblance of a sane world." He stared at nothing in particular, but wistfully nonetheless. Green's home, the rooms full of weapons, the quaint office with bookshelves, the music room, all of it seemed to resonate off him at that moment, but it only lasted that long. "The world is severely lacking in people like you, Rock."

Rock took a moment to absorb it all. Perhaps it was just that he had to figure out how he felt about things. The General's kind words seemed like they may have rolled off his pensive mental barricade; after all, there were a lot of questions left unanswered. How many had been lost? Were things really in such a bad state? Was it okay to be okay with things as long as his own family and friends were safe, even if others were struggling?

A grin crept onto his face. When it suddenly seemed like he could contain it no more, he just blatantly laughed and slung an arm around Caruso's shoulders.

"The world sure tries hard enough to kill us off, don't it?" he blurted, and not all that bitterly. He quickly shook his head, though, leaning heavily on his robotic brother (robo-bro?), unable to fully stave off the peculiar outburst.

Rock never was one to let moral quandaries percolate too long.

"Sorry, sorry, it's just," he sputtered, "things feel different now."

He stood straighter, but looked no more dour for it. On the contrary, he still looked quite happy.

"I mean I know I oughta feel bad about everything being as shitty as it is, but, I just don't." He shrugged with his eyebrows, lips drawn tight for an instant. "The feds are dead, the military's dead, Seven's dead. Everybody thinks I'm dead. It's perfect."

He looked to Jam, and back to the robot he had in a friendly headlock, eyes darting.

"I wanna go on a vacation. Can we do that?"

For a good while, Jam couldn't be certain whether or not they had really given Rock an accurate picture of the world he'd helped them create... Had they downplayed the situation, or exaggerated? She second guessed herself in silence while the whiter simian processed it all, but failed to stifle a half-amused, half-relieved puff of air out her nostrils when his reactionary bomb at last dropped.

Her lips curled at the corners, and she hinged on asking how everyone thinking he was space rubble was a good thing, but she didn't need to deliberate long.

"Well, I guess dependin' on what you had in mind," replied the simian girl with a buoyance to her tone. "Don' think there're many luxury liners leaving port these days, but more of this?" She waved a hand vaguely at their surroundings.

"I think there's plenty of that left to go around."

Given a moment's consideration, she blinked implicitly, and lowly added, "Might could do without, you know, all the collateral damage next place we wind up, though..."

Green gave this due consideration. His glowing green eye went from Jam to the monkey with the lanky arm wrapped around his shoulders. Then he looked at the peaceful surroundings they now inhabited, a distant cry from all the turmoil and suffering they had endured for what had felt like all time.

"I think, perhaps, that a little excursion would... probably be okay."

He allowed himself a shifty, not-entirely-conspicuous glance at his men. Loved them as brothers he did, but...

"... For some of us." Dizzy saw the general looking their way and waved excitedly, as if at his sports hero. Green nonchalantly waved back.

Rock suppressed another laugh.

"I love that guy."