Chapter 24 #2
"That's a spaceship!" I pressed my face against the glass. "I knew it! With so many weird ass aliens, there had to be a spaceport or two. We can go home!"
Arnina practically threw herself out of the car when it came to a stop, and I followed after her.
Several aliens approached us. They were huge bipedal alien men with grey-purple skin and several horns that emerged from Klingon-like ridges along the scalp, cheekbones, and jawline.
There was a human woman with them.
She had thick black hair pulled back in a ponytail, and her outfit screamed deliberate steampunk styling with decorative gears and cogs attached to a lacy mini skirt draped over black leggings and knee-high flat brown sneaker boots.
My body moved before my brain caught up with it.
I was running at her, my arms out.
"Ohmagawdyou'reanotherhumanIthoughtwewereallalooooooone," I cried out as I ran.
One of the horny aliens blocked my path and grabbed me by the upper arms.
Suddenly, everything was absolute chaos.
Arnina was yanking on my arm, trying to pry the horny alien's fingers from me.
Then a different horny guy grabbed her.
As he pulled her away from me, suddenly, he was ripped away, releasing her, so she staggered slightly as a blur of fur and snarls tackled him into the ground.
The horned guys were yelling.
The noise they were making was overlaid with vocalizations that sounded eerily like a war chant coming from the elves.
"LEMMEGO!" I shouted in the midst of all the rest of the yelling.
Then Zale was there, standing next to me.
He growled something at the alien, who let me go.
Wait, could the horned guys understand the cat elves?
The Boy Toy had caught up to us and tackled the guy who grabbed Arnina. They rolled and came to a stop, the Boy Toy on top of the horned alien. He pulled his right elbow back, his claws flashing in the sunlight as his face contorted by vicious rage.
"STOP!" Arnina sang out. "In the name of love."
"Before you break my heart..." the black-haired human woman continued.
The Boy Toy stopped, shuddering as if the effort to hold back his attack was almost too much for him.
The wardrobe woman began singing to the Boy Toy.
"So, you like the classics, or are you an outdated popsicle?" The steampunk space pirate cosplayer walked over and stuck out her hand. "I'm Tiffany...That one there is my husband."
Whoa, she was married to a horny alien?
This was ridiculous.
Next, someone was going to tell me that the lizard aliens were abducting human women so they could implant them with their ovipositors and make them carry their eggs. Nothing so sexy as being a walking incubator for carnivorous spawn.
Unless they were cute babies with cute little fluffy ears and tails…
My joy at seeing another human, especially one that had a spaceship, overflowed, and I couldn't hold it in anymore.
"We're SO HAPPY to see you!" I wailed and threw my arms around the steampunk pirate.
I sniffled and squeezed her, ignoring the water dripping down my cheeks.
I totally wasn't crying.
"Whoa there," Tiffany said in my ear. "You okay?"
Arnina grabbed me, so I turned and buried my face in her shoulder to hide the fact that I was absolutely not crying. I totally did not just burst into tears at the thought of access to a spaceship.
"You're the first human we've seen since we were abducted," Arnina said over my head. "I'm Arnina, and this is Lorelei. We don't know how long we've been gone. Is it still July?"
"What year?" Tiffany asked.
I lifted my head.
"What do you mean ‘what year’?" I wiped my definitely not tears on my forearm. "We haven't been gone long enough for it to be a new year."
"Oh, I hate doing this," Tiffany groaned, tilting her head back to look up at the sky.
Oh shit.
Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.
My heart dropped at her words as my mind leaped to the possibilities of what she might say.
Earth was destroyed. It had been a decade or whatever, and we had no idea what we had missed.
There were only a few humans left scattered around, and we needed to abandon our hot aliens so that we could regrow an entire species.
I forced myself to relax.
Nah, I totally was not taking responsibility for the entire human race.
"Just spit it out," Arnina demanded. "Rip off the bandaid."
"Oh shit, is Earth gone?" I said. "Are we like the last humans left and now have to bang hot elf cats?"
"What? No! Wow... I mean, if you want to?
No, Earth has a douchebag bureaucracy, we think, and we count as undocumented immigrants even if we try to visit because we don't have the proper proof of our lineage. At least, that is the excuse they are giving us - the Terran empire is in the middle of a war with some other species, and their borders are completely closed to us.” She explained as she tucked a stray hair back behind her ear.
“So they won't let us go there. We're not even allowed anywhere near Earth.
It's like some huge paperwork nightmare, only there is no paper, and they won't actually give us any way to work towards the goal of going there.
" Tiffany sighed. "Do you remember waking up out of a cryo pod?
You would have been naked and covered in goo. "
"The goo!" I stepped away from Arnina.
"A cryo pod, like in cryogenics?" Arnina asked.
"Yeah, so there is no gentle way to do this, but it's hundreds of years in the future, and some aliens decided in the 2000s plus or then some to go around abducting human women from Earth and sticking us in cryo pods and stashing us.
" Tiffany winced as she said it, searching our faces.
"At least, that is the timeline we've gotten from the Terran Empire.
I'm pretty sure they're holding back because they've said several conflicting things to us. "
"Oh," Arnina replied flatly.
Emotion surged in me - shock, horror - and something different, something unexpected.
I couldn't go back because there was nothing remaining to go back to. Everything I knew, everyone I knew, was gone. It was terrifying, yet there was something more.
There was utter, manic joy.
"What the fuck?" I screamed.
This was… not what I expected.
I thought we were just abducted, not abducted and frozen in time so that hundreds of years would pass and everyone I ever knew or ever hated was dead.
Wait a minute.
No one I hated was still alive.
They were all dead.
I took a huge breath, and a grin spread across my face.
This was a brand new life.
"You're safe with us," Tiffany said quickly. "We have a small town with a bunch of us. I think that Avatar alien was trying to sell you to us anyway, though I'm not sure, as we just got the translators working for these guys. They still don't work for talking to them, but we can-"
Arnina grabbed her by the shoulders.
"Give me a translator!" Arnina demanded.
Yes! A translator!
Finally!