Chapter Text
LOOP 0
The hull of the enemy ship exploded into a bloom of fiery brilliance, the colors flashing across Scar’s bright green eyes, its beauty sending a stark thrill directly through his veins. A purrrrfect shot as always, Mumbo Jumbo reaching his full potential under Scar’s expert guidance, as always. Scar called out his praise, but Mumbo almost certainly didn’t hear him through the airlock, though Scar could hear Mumbo clearly just as if he was right there, blithering into his ear.
“Are you sure about this, Scar? This looks an awful lot like one of those ships we aren’t supposed to touch..”
“Nonsense!” Scar declared, outloud to noone, “All ships on the starfield belong under our claws, and we will make sure they regret ever coming under notice of the grrrreat ScarFire Mercenaries!” Scar threw his paws up, slammed all four of his hands on the walls of the tight airlock and cringed in pain, even through the light protection of his space suit. Well. It was a good thing the only other member of the ScarFire Mercenaries wasn’t here to see that.. Wait, was there a camera in here? Nevermind that, Mumbo surely wasn’t watching. Scar shook out his fur, whiskers twitching. No more time to waste!
Scar worked fast, readying himself for his journey to the enemy ship. Mumbo would line the ships up for easy access, then pick him up once the place was clear, Scar returning with the bodies that would feed their clan for days! Well. Maybe not days. This was quite a small ship, but that suited Scar, especially since he would be boarding alone. As fun as tackling larger ships could be, he did not work particularly well with other people.
Scar watched impatiently as the claw reached out from his own ship to the damaged one, drawing them together. Oddly enough, this ship didn’t seem to have an airlock, so Mumbo would have to create a temporary seal until Scar was past the damaged rooms. Once Scar had secured the bodies, it mattered less; Scar could float around in space with the corpses and wait to be picked up, though hopefully it didn’t come to that.
Luckily, Mumbo was very good at his job, and the hole in the enemy ship was dwarfed by their own ship’s airlock, meaning they could level out the life support with their own in the case that something was wrong with the enemy ship’s. Scar grinned, unlocking his airlock and stepping out into the enemy ship.
It was a matter of waiting until the atmosphere stabilized, but in the meantime, Scar entertained himself by looking around at all the stuff this peoples’ species kept; at least the stuff that didn’t get sucked out of the hole in the side, which was most of it. That was fine. He’d rather look at the architecture than sit twiddling his thumbs. Though, it was odd actually, the whole ship was odd. There was so much.. detail..? Writing carved into the wall, numbers, human characters Scar was pretty sure; honestly, he really should know this, but he was never very good in school. Every space traveling people had so many languages, so many different letters and numbers- How was he meant to learn them all? There was no point, not when the tech existed to read and speak to other peoples automatically, and why would you do that if your mission was solely to hunt them?
Well! Scar could answer!
His spacesuit letting him know that the atmosphere was safe for him to breathe, Scar grinned, removing his helmet and adjusting the microphone that allowed him to communicate with different peoples. He had to beg to be allowed to have one of these, there was truly no practical reason he would need one, but who didn’t love playing with their food from time to time? There was truly nothing better than speaking to dead men, taunting them, watching them struggle, hearing them beg for their lives (with the assistance of a chip in his good ear). Scar had been called many names; cruel, distasteful, inefficient, and sure, these things may be true, and taking his time had certainly left him with a few scars, but Scar wasn’t fussed. Mercenary work was a noble, dangerous, job, and as far as Scar was concerned, it didn’t matter how he got it done so long as he was bringing home resources for his clan, and nothing was more valuable than food.
Once he was certain everything was in working order, he put his helmet back into place; even if he could technically breathe here, it wasn’t very comfortable, and if something went wrong he would not be a victim of dying to something so stupid as leaving his helmet off. Ideally he wouldn’t have to wear a suit at all, but he respected the engineering that went into making them comfortable and mobile, as well as the protection it gave.
Luckily, Scar had no trouble getting through the doors in the room once the atmosphere was stable. That was odd; usually the inhabitants tried to lock him out, but there were quite a few oddities about this particular ship. It hadn’t even tried to escape him upon his approach, nor did it fight back! Perhaps these poor souls were simply lost in space, starving, waiting to die. Scar hoped not. That was no fun.
“Hello?” he called, his voice echoing down the lonely hall. No one answered. Not a massive surprise. Still, this ship wasn’t very big, he would find its inhabitants eventually. “Helloooo?” he repeated himself, if for no other reason than lacking anything else to do. He was a little distracted by the walls; once again they were so detailed, and so was the decor now that he was seeing it for the first time. There were carpets decorated with erratic patterns, letters scattered across picture frames and desk drawers and murals like the words they’d formed prior had been caught in a category six hurricane. It made no sense, and Scar was equally fascinated; maybe his victims would be so kind as to tell him what the deal was with their weird ass ship before they perished tragically at his hand. His tail twitched in his fascination, flicking back and forth in its own mild curiosity.
When his ankle drew on a tripwire, he heard the whoosh of air before he felt the wire, ear swiveling back as he leapt out of the way, yelping as an arrow whistled past, finding sharp purchase in the chest of a body of armor at the other end of the hall. Scar gaped.
“What, are you guys stuck five thousand years in the past? Who the hell uses arrows anymore? That wouldn’t have even killed me! I’m gonna- Oohhh, when I get my claws on you! Worst trap I’ve ever seen! Do humans have the worst reflexes of all time? For goodness’ sake!” Scar growled, raking his gaze across the hall. He should keep heading towards the front of the ship; if that’s where control rooms were, that’s where the humans would most likely be. Straight ahead. On behalf of all traps, he was deeply offended!
Though Scar did step lighter, catching a pressure plate and a hanging anvil of all things- what in the world was going on here? Did these humans seriously string up a fucking anvil from the time they saw Scar was riding their tail to now? What the hell? Seriously! What the hell!?
Scar slammed through the door, lunging forward just in case a pile of bricks or a piano or something was perched to fall as he entered, but nothing of the sort happened. It seemed he’d found the pilot’s room or control room or whatever this was supposed to be on this fuck ass ship. He was so caught up in his righteous confusion that he failed to notice the two humans in the cockpit, both of them already staring his way from their seats, looking.. mild..? Scar couldn’t help gaping at them, his lashing tail stilling to a hard twitch, ears poking up from where they had flattened against his head.
One of the humans was shorter with similarly short dark hair, had a rounder face, and wore glasses, though Scar didn’t very much understand why. That was pretty old tech, even for humans. Most problems like poor eyesight could be fixed before you were even born, though, maybe the glasses did something else. That was probably the case.
The other human.. well, the longer Scar looked the less sure he was that she was human. Humans.. he didn’t think humans could be green. This one was green. In general, she was far more striking than the other, curly red hair and green skin and not quite scars- she looked almost stitched together, was she hurt? Scar found himself drawn to her until the unremarkable human pointed at him, catching his attention.
“Is that a boob window? On your space suit?”
Whatever silent trance had fallen over the three of them was immediately broken, the red haired human cackling, and the other snickering in turn. Scar blinked several times, gaping slightly, then looked down at his extremely fashionable boob window- why were they laughing! That’s- he was here to kill them and they were laughing! Tail tucked firmly at his legs, Scar straightened up flexing all four of his hands then turning them to fists. But before he could inform them of their incoming demise, the red haired human spoke.
“Look! Look at his hands! They put little paw pads on the gloves, that’s adorable!”
“Oh my god.”
“You think he’s got them on his boots too? I bet they squish down when he walks, awh, that’s great. Why don’t we get that?”
“I’ll file a complaint. Or we can tell Joe and he can do it for us. It’s a reasonable ask, I think. Though, maybe they won’t be able to get us paw pad boots because of the nature of the loop. Do you think we can make an argument on the basis of excessive cruelty? We were deprived of an essential item, legally you must cut a couple years off our sentence.”
“Hmmm,” the red headed human considered her companion thoughtfully, or maybe it was part of the joke, Scar couldn’t quite tell, but he was getting the inkling he was being made fun of, a preposterous notion!
Scar growled, but when neither of them looked at him and the redhead started to speak, Scar just talked over her, “You two should know that you and whoever else is on this ship’s lives are at an end. Say your goodbyes, cry, fight, run, whatever you see fit, because I will be taking your bodies home for the noble purpose of feeding my clan.”
The two humans stopped, glancing at the myriad of impressive and greatly intimidatingly awesome guns set snugly on Scar’s belt.
“Well. This wasn’t going anywhere anyway." The unremarkable human turned back around, apparently unconcerned, but the red haired human was still looking at Scar, like she was searching for something, and while Scar was disappointed it didn’t seem that there would be any screaming and running and begging for their lives, sometimes these things were dull. If these people couldn’t comprehend what it meant to be dead, then Scar supposed the next best thing was to be ogled before taking their bodies home.
“Are you like. A warrior cat? A space warrior cat?”
Scar blinked. Well, that was an odd way of saying it, but he supposed it could just be an odd translation. “You could say that.”
The unremarkable human poked his head back around the chair, like this information had sparked his interest. The redhead snickered, eying her companion playfully.
“Cub. We’ve been caught by space warrior cats. He’s got a clan, which one do you think he’s from? He’s orange, this might be a descendant of Firestar!”
“Firestar..” ‘Cub’ mumbled, like this was a topic of great importance, “Yeah, this guy definitely seems like he’d be from Thunderclan. He’s got the air to him.” Cub turned to Scar, “Do you know Firestar?” He seemed serious. Maybe this was some kind of human god; Scar was vaguely aware humans had a history with cats, or cat-esc people.. Long ago histories had people from his own planet traveling to far reaches, imprinting themselves in the mythologies of other worlds. But again, Scar did not do well in school, he knew little of other planets’ gods.
“I am not aware, but.. well, my people have a history of travel. Much longer than your people’s history.”
Cub snorted, his companion snickering in turn before she spoke, “Firestar is an alien. He came to Earth and told his story to Erin Hunter, who diligently wrote every word. Well. After they started making money Firestar was long gone.. The series after the first six books is likely a false narrative.”
“You think so?”
“Well I didn’t read them but I heard they weren’t as good. And Firestar dies at the end or something- he wouldn’t be able to tell his story if he was dead!”
Cub nodded, solemn. “True, true.” He turned back to Scar, expression unchanging, “Just so you know, we are making fun of you.”
“You-” Scar straightened, offended- but wait! This human was smug and unremarkable, surely he was not very trustworthy. Scar looked instead to the other, who he liked more.
“Oh,” they said, belated, “Yeah. We are making fun of you.” Without missing a beat they turned to their companion, “What do you think his warrior cat name is? Actually, scratch that, what’s my warrior cat name? You’re- hm.. You could be Bear-something. Bearstomp. Beartooth. Bearnose.”
“Bearnose?”
“What? It’s cute. Have you ever seen a bear’s nose, Cub? You look just like one.”
“I- Okay. Give me a minute to think of a mildly offensive warrior cat name for you. I’m thinking. I’m thinking.”
“And I’m waiting..” The redhead grinned, Cub snorting in turn, and neither of them were paying any attention to Scar and still making fun of him so he shot the both of them dead right there. It was a rare thing for Scar to kill his quarry instantly, but clearly something was deeply wrong with these two, and Scar didn’t want to risk getting sick or anything, so better to end things fast. The spray of eviscerated human pieces across the control panels made Scar feel the tiniest bit better. Perhaps he should have used a less destructive gun for jobs like this, but then again, where was the fun in that?
Scar scooped the both of them up under his four arms, having had enough of these weird people on this weird ship. If there was anyone else here they could consider themselves lucky, Scar wanted nothing to do with them.
All in all, he wouldn’t consider this to be a crazily successful trip, but he and Mumbo had three more bodies in the freezer, and these two were on the larger side, they’d feed quite a few cats. However, what really put a damper on this mission was the fact that Scar had forgotten about the anvil.
