FIC: Small Irritants
Title: Small Irritants
Author: guardian_chaos
Fandom: Critters. Post Critters 1, pre Critters 2.
Rating: PG
Words: 1320-ish
Summary: Charlie causes a bit of a problem for his bounty hunting group.
Author's Note: This is a spur-of-the-moment fic, mostly for the purpose of helping me to find the mindset I require to write these characters. Feel free to critique, but don't expect something magnificent just yet. =)
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Ug wasn’t quite sure what had happened. The day had been relatively calm for the most part, at least until his ship had experienced a fatal error over a thankfully uninhabited world and come crashing down through the atmosphere to roll a few horrifying times before finally, mercifully bouncing to a stop in an upright position. Following this, he, Lee and Charlie had staggered out of the ship, himself reeling from a bruised head, Lee silent as ever, and Charlie babbling incoherently for many minutes before finally calming down and wandering off to inspect the strange, alien trees surrounding them all.
There were moments when Ug almost admired-or found foolish; Ug wasn’t sure which-Charlie’s quick recovery from traumatic events, but after Charlie had foolishly-and yes, foolishly, not admirably-touched a tree trunk and, in doing so, had them both (but mostly Ug) sprayed with tree sap from an unusually responsive tree, Ug decided that there was nothing about the situation he admired. Especially not when he discovered that the tree sap, gooey and sticky already, became incredibly sticky as it dried.
“Disgusting,” he mumbled, barely resisting the urge to shake his arms clean of the stickiness as he found a nearby stone and set himself down upon it, hoping not to disturb the native, unpredictable wildlife any further as he waited for Lee to find out what was wrong with the ship so that they could leave. Adding insult to injury, from behind him Ug could hear the staggering footsteps of a mostly un-tree-sapped Charlie approaching.
“Wow!” the bounty hunter cried, his voice almost trembling with giddy excitement. “Did you see the way that thing reacted when I touched it? Never seen a tree like that, ever!”
“Now is not the time for this, Charlie,” Ug hissed, trying not to consider the unpleasant feeling of his hair plastered in sticky rivulets against his face.
Finding Ug to be a little less joyous than Charlie had thought he would be, Charlie came to a stop before the alien and stared down at him. “Well, how was I to know that tree would react like it did?” he protested, waving a hand for emphasis and shaking slime in all directions. “I ain’t used to all your alien stuff yet! I’m still trying to figure you out!”
Clenching his jaw, Ug placed a hand against his forehead and tried to imagine a calming setting, one free from the rambling chatter of his fellow bounty hunter.
“Ug!” the fellow bounty hunter cried, unwilling to be ignored.
A heavy sigh filled the silence, followed by a testily spoken, “What?”
“You’re gonna’ get stuck that way.”
A chill ran up Ug’s spine and he went stiff. Lightly trying to pull his hand away from his face, he found it to be stuck, immobilized by a sheet of tree goo. Defeated, Ug leaned back on the stuck hand, figuring that as long as it wasn’t going anywhere, he might as well use it for some good. “Thank you for telling me this, Charlie,” he said.
“Yeah, sure,” Charlie replied, already too distracted by his surroundings to be aware of the insincere nature of Ug’s gratitude. A half a spin on his heel later, followed by a moment of almost tripping over an invisible root, Charlie stared up at the trees surrounding the two of them and breathed deeply. The trees stretched high into the atmosphere, their branches long and extended above and covered by so many leaves that the sky was visible only as a glaringly bright sheet of greenish light through the foliage. “Gosh, this is beautiful. Where the heck are we?”
Bringing his stuck hand up with him, Ug looked up with a disinterested raise of his eyebrow. “A forest,” he said, dryly.
Charlie waved his arms towards the sky. “Well, I know that much, Ug. I ain’t completely stupid.”
“Oh?”
“I ain’t.”
“I said nothing about your intelligence, Charlie.”
“No,” Charlie pointed at Ug. “But you were implying something.”
“I assure you,” Ug said, looking to the side where Lee was approaching, “I have nothing but the highest of regard for you and your glaring lack of mistakes.”
Just as Charlie was about to demand the reasoning behind this barely veiled insult, Lee stepped firmly in front of him and faced Ug.
A moment of silence crept over the three as Ug stared up into the pale and blank face of his fellow bounty hunter. If it were possible, the featureless, alien face looked irritated to within an inch of its life, even though there was nothing about Lee that could allow for any logical determining of this.
In a wave of some strange emotion Ug was not used to experiencing, Ug suddenly felt a lurch of distinct discomfort in his stomach. “Yes, Lee?” he asked, lightly. “Have you found the source of our computer error?”
Without a word, the alien reached forward, a red circle of plastic clutched in its fist. As Lee released the red circle it twirled downwards and then jerked to a stop a few inches from the ground, hovering there, suspended by a thin, white string.
“My yo-yo!” Charlie cried, elated. He snatched the string from Lee’s hand and the alien did not protest. “You found it! I’ve been wondering where you were, little yo-yo!” Squinting, he stared down at his toy for a second. “Hey, this string looks like it’s been burnt.”
Shutting his eyes, Ug sighed heavily and then stood from the ground. “You fool,” he snarled, taking the ‘yo-yo’ from Charlie and then throwing it to the ground.
“Ug!” Charlie cried, as Ug’s boot crashed down on the tiny object, plunging it into the dirt.
“No protests,” Ug said, wincing as he yanked his stuck hand away from his head in a burning scream of skin-torture. Taking a few seconds to compose himself as the agony shot through his forehead and palm, he shook out his tingling hand and then raised a finger at Charlie in warning. “You caused this. You and your toy.”
“Well, it wasn’t on purpose,” Charlie weakly said, taking a step back. “I’m really sorry, Ug.”
“Sorry,” Ug said, turning towards Lee and walking with the bounty hunter towards their crashed shuttle, “is not enough to get a ship off of the ground. You are fortunate that this mistake was solved before anything worse could occur.”
Nodding feebly, Charlie took one last, long, staggering look of awe at the branches above them all and then bent over to peel his yo-yo from the mud. The plastic toy recovered, he ran after Ug and Lee as they entered their ship, the metal door sliding shut just as Charlie scampered through it. “Yeah, but guys, forgetting that it caused a problem and all that, have you ever played with a yo-yo? It’s a lotta’ fun.”
“A bounty hunter has no time for fun,” Ug stated flatly, as he and Lee slid into their respective seats and began to start up the now-functional ship.
“You don’t?” Charlie said, his eyes wide as he held onto the back of Ug’s chair. “How can you stand that? I’d lose my mind if I didn’t have fun.”
Sharing a ‘look’ with Lee, Ug went back to his controls, refusing to look back at Charlie. “A bounty hunter has no need for such things,” he said, utterly convinced of this fact.
“Yeah, whatever. Still, you gotta' find something that makes you happy, Ug,” Charlie said, walking back to slump down on the bench seat just behind his friend, “before stress makes your rock star face melt off or something.”
“I will consider it,” Ug replied, tartly. “Powering ship now. Hold on to something, Charlie.”
With a nod, Charlie braced himself against the wall as the ship rose from the ground and shifted upwards, the internal gravity controls taking a second or two longer than they rightfully should have to take effect as the ship shot off into the sky, leaving the forest and its unending supply of tree sap behind.
~END~