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Time was hard to read in the Null Void, but Argit was pretty certain it was at least several weeks before he got the chance to in any way relax after finding that stupid band.
He’d only even come across the thing due to pure bad luck. Random junk wasn’t a rare find in the Null Void. Sometimes people on the outside just threw things there, garbage from the prison or Plumber base got moved around as the Void shifted, people got transported with their gear and could only carry it so long. So, while he’d been cautious, finding a strange pod while he did his hunting hadn’t been something odd or unusual, and he’d gone in with the thought that he could find something valuable to bring back to the family. It was the second-best way for the older kids to ensure they got fed, was to find valuable things to bring back to their parents.
The expectation had been that he’d find something inside that was good for trade, or even just straight up food he could hide away for himself and the younger litter. Maybe even some functional parts if he wasn’t quite that lucky, those were always worth something. Nothing had prepared him to have anything jump out of a cold, sealed pod and grab him. He’d screamed as a first instinct, quickly shutting himself up in case he attracted further trouble, bolted into the nearest hidey-hole, and set to work trying to frantically get the band off his wrist. Only after a several failed attempts had he returned to his family- who had, as expected, made no attempts to look for him- in hopes his parents would be able to remove it.
It was shiny and strange, surely it would have enough potential value for them to take notice.
His pa had huffed and ma rolled her eyes when he returned, announcing he’d found something, but the glint of the low light off the band had caught their attention. Ma’s in particular, as soon as she’d gotten a good look her ear had twitched and her eyes crinkled in that way he’d tried for ages to stop doing after his siblings pointed out it was the same, the one that meant she was planning something. She fiddled with it, trying every way she could to remove the thing. Even had his pa come in and make a few attempts, before finally deciding it wasn’t worth it.
He had to assume she’d known what it was from the start, though she said nothing of the sort, because once she’d decided not to bother attempting removals anymore she’d moved straight to trying to figure out how it worked. Something Argit himself hadn’t cared about, already incredibly distrustful of the whole situation- from the strange encounter to his ma’s behavior. She’d been the only one there not to panic when he’d transformed into a Vulpimancer in a flash of orange and a dull ache, quilling him with cold calm. Rolling her eyes and huffing at the rest of the lot’s concern, she’d strode over, buried a hand in his fur, and called it ‘about time’ he pulled his weight.
Looking back even soon after, nonetheless in the years to come, he knew that was when he should’ve run. That nothing good would come of this and that his best bet was to wait until everyone was asleep and try to make it on his own. But, he hadn’t been able to make himself leave. His remaining elder siblings, his littermates, he’d given up on them and them on him ages ago, but he couldn’t take care of the youngest litter on his own, nor could he bring himself to abandon them to fate. Leaving him with no real option but to stay.
Ma’d taken him under her guidance in a way neither of his parents had bothered with any of them before, teaching him each of the species he could now become, their strengths and their weaknesses. Practice was constant, quizzes filling the gaps. No longer was he left with the others to learn conning, theft, fighting through observation and experimentation, she made sure he was right there in the thick of it. The band opened a host of doors and found enough successes though them that the whole of the family was doing marginally better on food and supplies, rather than his parents doing fine and everyone else fighting over the scraps. Such an improvement were the benefits that his siblings were only mildly snippy and stand-offish about his seeming to sink further into position as ‘the favorite’.
Because that title had ever served him.
The whole time he’d spent on edge, waiting for the limb to give. Things were going too well, his ma was being too good to him- for a given value of good, he was getting third picks of the food in exchange for having more of her attention- and he had known, in his gut, that it was only a matter of time before things collapsed again. He’d eaten like he was dying, jumped at every sound, spent every minute with his parents with his ears pressed firm against his mane. And then the stranger had shown up.
Argit had never seen anything like him, though that was really every other encounter in the Null Void, but his pa had been instantly concerned, damn near scared, and all of them had picked up on it. Except their ma, who had immediately engaged him in the same way she did Pa when he was doing as she wanted and her mood was good. ‘Vilgax’ she’d called him, and he knew her by name. Fawned over her just like Pa did. She’d grabbed Argit by the arm, just above the band, and Vilgax had recognized it too, called it an ‘Omnitrix’ and looked at it with an expression that’d made Argit want to quill him then and there.
What happened next went faster than it felt. Ma had said, offhandedly, that she wasn’t fond of the Null Void. Vilgax had nodded, pulling out a device Argit didn’t recognize and turning it on. A portal, an honest to truth portal had generated beside them, prompting Pa to finally step forward. Prompting Pa to be quilled alongside the rest of the family before he could complete more than one stride. It wasn’t a new action, Ma’d been known to quill the lot of them if they were being too loud or she was in a foul enough mood, but the situation was unusual and disconcerting already, and Argit was bright enough to read the writing in the dirt. He’d panicked, fighting and arguing as his Ma dragged him through the portal. Away from everything he’d known or cared about.
The adults seemed entirely unaffected by a trip that had made Argit’s stomach turn, and were deaf to his upset. Vilgax had turned to his ma like the last few minutes had been nothing, the portal closing behind them, focus entirely on the damned band. As if they hadn’t just abandoned his entire family in one fell swoop. All the new adult had cared about was how the band functioned, if it met his expectations, and how they were going to get it off him. His ma had just snorted, explained that it wouldn’t come off, and flashed a sharp smile.
“Help me get set up again, a few more thousand taedon, and you can have the watch and kitten both, package deal.”
Those words would haunt Argit for the rest of his life. They also were the final straw that got him to stop struggling and start quilling.
He’d yanked his arm from his ma’s hand as the two adults collapsed and bolted. With no idea where he was, he’d run aimlessly through corridor after corridor, dodging and hiding from people similar to Vilgax. At first they were mostly just confused, but about the time he began to run out of energy they seemed to begin actively seeking him out. He’d gone out a window at that point, mostly because that was when he’d found one that was open, and climbed his way to the top of the building in a fit of instinct.
Sometimes, being from an arboreal species was as big a hindrance as a help.
This wasn’t the trees his species normally dealt in, there was no lateral movement. ‘Up’ there had meant trapped, and it wasn’t long before he heard his ma following after him, snipping about her time being wasted. It was all the prompting he’d needed to finally turn to the band. He knew the species in it, he’d been taught well, and with shaking hands but surety in his knowledge he’d dialed a Pturbosaurian and been properly gone. Again, there’d been no plan for where he was going, he’d simply flown in a mostly straight line until the timer ran out and dropped him at the edge of a body of water. The most he’d ever seen in one place. He’d have been tempted to stop and marvel at it had his mind not still been screaming ‘danger’. Instead he had turned away and fled limping into the wilderness, not stopping until he found a rocky little alcove only just big enough to fit an underfed runt and deep enough to shield him from sight.
The next three days had been spent cramped, scared, occasionally crying, hiding from search parties and trying to figure out how he was going to properly escape. His first breakthrough came from the band itself, and the way the local species had been added to the list of those he could access. Meaning after he was certain the searches were done and he had managed to evade predators and forage food long enough to find his way to a settlement- pausing occasionally to get in ‘oh fuck there’s food and water everywhere’ time, because he’d certainly earned it- he could, for brief periods, disguise himself as one of them. Very brief periods, yes, but his ma had already taught him how to run his thefts and cons fast, so they could take advantage of the transformations, and so he was primed and ready to make do. The whole place, wilderness and all, was still a step up from the Null Void as far as surviving went.
He managed to figure out he was in a town called ‘Pipela’ on a planet called ‘Vilgaxia’ (and he had to wonder who named their kid after a planet, but then apparently he was in charge of the place, so maybe that was how things were done). That the whole rest of the galaxy was out there, though a lot of the places nearby belonged to Vilgax too, so they would have to be avoided. He figured out currency, got an idea of how things worked outside the Null Void. Found out where ships leaving the planet could be found, and a map there, that he eventually figured out how to read.
The second breakthrough came when he reached this other area and discovered that one of the ships was heading outside of Vilgax’s territory. Something about trade, that Argit really didn’t care about. All that mattered was that he was small, smart, and experienced in sneaking, so it was comparatively easy to him to slip into amongst the cargo and keep out of sight until they reached their destination. Tedious, stressful, but comparatively easy. From there it had just been a matter of slipping back off the ship, and scuttling off until he could find another Argit-sized hidey-hole. On the edge of town, just in case he had to flee into the wild again. The spot was quiet, seemingly secure, and far, far away from his ma, Vilgax, and anybody working with them.
Weeks, at least, since everything had changed, and finally he had the chance to fucking breath. To get some proper sleep. Then, once he’d gotten some amount of rest, he could try to figure out what to do next…