Waking Up Trouble (Part Two)

Posted on Sun Aug 2nd, 2020 @ 7:28am by Alden Loxley & Alison Bliss
Edited on on Wed Sep 23rd, 2020 @ 10:06am

Mission: Sweet Emotion
Location: On Board the Little Rascal After Crash Landing on Beylix
Timeline: Two years ago - Two days after the Part One

Alison stood over the freezer box. She had the same strappy mini dress with a shirred bodice, the black leather jacket, black high boots and the belt with the holster, as she had last time. The trusted semi-auto pistol she had secured in the holster. She sighed considering what to do with the box.

Things had gone relatively well, at first. She had managed to kill everyone on the ship who caught her. For a moment, she had thought she had been lucky enough that she got herself a ship. It had been nothing special but for a brief moment, it had been hers. Until she had arrived over the very first destination. The ship must have had a tracking device because they had been waiting for her. She had done what she could, dodging, weaving and taking them down into the atmo. But in the end, they just had shot the ship to shreds and she had crash landed. It had looked very convincing and there had been no place to land nearby so anyone willing to check the wreckage would need to land a couple of kilometers away. Still, she expected them to do that.

Alison sighed and opened the freezer letting the machinery cycle through the thawing process. She folded her hands on her chest and made a step back, watching Alden’s naked form coming out of stasis.

“Nooooo!” A short, sharp, angry yell split the cargo bay after a mouth gasped open and sucked air into thawing lungs. Eyes blinked and the man curled in the foetal position in the cryo crate shivered into brutally gifted consciousness.

First time for Alden Loxley on the freeze/defrost cycle, but sadly not the first time he’d been suckerpunched by a woman. He sat up, expression somewhere between mortally emotionally wounded and beyond angry, let his mouth bob like a beached fish for a moment and then shot an accusational glare at the woman in the red dress.

“You….” Alden shook his head to try and clear it. “You!” He looked down and brushed some rimed ice from his chest, then set his sights back on Alison. “What…”

Alison grinned. It was all worth it. For that very bit. She remained otherwise unmoving.

"You are all right. Try to sit down." She couldn't resist not to greet him with the very words he greeted her. Though back then the cargo hold was in much better shape. Now, it was strewn with bits and pieces and there was a persisting smell of burning cables in the air. Still considering they crash landed, no fire was something Alison took as great personal success.

Heavy breathing signalled his annoyance as well as the chill permeating his warming body, but Alden didn't smile back. His face portrayed indignance on a major scale and he hadn't missed the significance of her words thrown back at him. He hadn't missed that at all. "You... you hit me!" He protested, then looked down at the crate and his chilled toes. "You froze me?!"

"You didn't want to help. I wasn't going to kill you. I couldn't have you running around and get in the way." Alison said with a shrug. "Freezing you was the only option. For your own sake."

Grumpily, Alden unintentionally complied with the sitting, then realised he had and wobbily forced himself up to an unstable footing inside the moulded crate. There was a long line of cursing in Chinese, followed by a definite pout/glare combo that (at least in his imagination) bored a hole through the blonde woman's skull.

"Ha..ha..." Muttered Alden dramatically as he staggered, and with difficulty, negotiated his way to slowly and awkwardly stand with both feet on the cold decking. His nakedness didn't seem to be causing him any particular shame, but he protectively cupped his genitals then canted his head to regard her.

"What the fuck happened?" He asked, wrinkling his nose at the scent of melted plastic and finally picking up on the state of the ship.

"I freed us." Alison said with an innocent smile. "Unfortunately, your colleagues shot us down. Still, I saved us with crash landing. They should be here probably within an hour. Maybe less."

Internally, Alison had fun with this. Immense fun. Externally though, she kept her cool. She could imagine that from the man's perspective, this might not look as funny as it was for her. So just in case, even if she had a neutral stance, she was watching him closely in case he would try something stupid. As he got out, it was obviously he was still feeling the cryo effects so she gave him more space taking a step back. "We probably should get moving."

His heart thumped a little too fast for his liking, as Alden took all this information on board. She'd taken him out, easily, but she hadn't killed him - well, obviously. Why? That was a question he didn't bother to voice, because... no sense in drawning attention to a decision that he didn't need to be reconsidered. He thought he'd managed to keep his expression in neutral while all this internal musing was underway, but the wrinkle at the bridge of his nose stood as a clear tell. If she'd known him better, at least.

"Us," he stated rather than asked. Alden frowned. "Not my colleagues by the way," he added. "Just to be clear. Indentured servitude, not cooperation by choice. So, yeah," he flashed a quick, humourless smile. "Thanks. Great job. And now their friends are coming for some vengeance then?"

He hopped from one foot to the other, the floor cold beneath his bare feet and he grumbled a few words under his breath. For some reason the universe mocked him on a regular basis, this was simply one more of those moments he'd possibly be laughed at later over drinks if he was lucky.

"Any chance of dying with my clothes on and a weapon in my hand?" Alden asked then, giving the woman before him a hopeful look that somehow felt pointless.

Alison made another step, this time to the side and off his line of sight towards the familiar box. Two days ago, there was her stuff inside and now it was locked again with the very same padlock. She motioned with her head toward the box.

"Here. All your things, nicely packed, so they wouldn't be damaged in cryo." She said softly.

With an overly dramatic expression of intolerance animating his face, Alden rolled his eyes and padded over to the indicated box. This time, however, he didn't have his lockpick handy, so he simply stood next to it, canted his head to the side and regarded Alison with a 'please just help me' look in his eyes. He wasn't even trying to hide behind his hands now, shoulders back, standing upright and proud, utterly unconcerned in his nakedness.

"Thanks," Alden said, tone heavy with sarcasm. "Just the gun then?" He asked then, hopefully. "I mean, I could fight them naked, but not everyone might be happy about that."

Alison pouted. She was hoping that he would produce a lock pick out of random items lying around, but he didn't. So he was an expert in picking the locks but not a wizard. She reached into a pocket and produced a key. She knelt by the box, which put her eyes at the level of Alden's manhood now proudly presented. Looking right at it, Alison quickly unlocked and took off the padlock. Raising eyes from his groin up on his face, she stood up and stepped back again.

"Liking what you see?" He asked, outright and with more amusement now. She was, he noted, definitely checking him out. Which was a small help to his ego, and worthy of a lopsided grin.

"I certainly would be happy." Alison grinned. "And yes, so far I like what I see. I might keep ya around for a while." Her tone was playful and light.

Alison watched the man with a playful grin dancing in the corner of her mouth, assessing his body the same he had been assessing her when she had been standing naked in front of him. Probably she was doing that even more sexually than he was. After all, she didn't feel like needed to be too nice to him yet. He could helped her back then and it could gone better, but because he didn't wanted to go against his buddies, they were now stranded on the big pile of waste called Beylix. "And let's not plan your death just yet. We crashed on Beylix, we can just vanish and recycle ourselves. This is a perfect world for that."

Well, this was certainly developing in an interesting way, Alden considered. She looked... hungry? And not for food, which would have been far more engaging had he not been recently defrosted and still a little shaky from the experience. "I'm just gonna remind ya," he said, a little defensively but in good humour. "I was - as you know - recently frozen solid. So things may be a bit... less impressive... than usual."

Beylix? Oh great...

"Is that a proposition?" Alison grin became wider into a toothy smile."Listen, you unfroze me, you maybe didn't help as much as I thought you would, but that counts for something in my book. So consider this returning a favor. We fade into the night on this planet and you can go your merry way."

"Favour? You knocked me out. Killed everyone else? And this ship is basically fucked, right?" Alden asked, for the record. Quickly he started to pull on clothing, rubbing his arms and legs with his hands as he did so to get the blood flowing quicker. "And now we have an hour to find some other way off this rubbish dump of a world? No time to fix her up, no way to get off-planet... And we're being hunted. Great job," he said, words wrapped in sarcasm as he looked for his handgun amongst his things.

"It could be worse. You could be dead by now with them blowing up the ship. I could leave you here for them to find you so they could beat you up to death." Alison replied unfazed and shrugged. "Or better yet, you could still be flying the ship for those guys, and get beaten every evening." She canted her head playfully. "See, your future is brighter with me than without me."

Alden stopped, halfway back into his shirt, bare feet through his trousers to feel the chill of the metal floor. He appeared to be giving her words some serious thought for a second, then suddenly he just shook his head emphatically. Sure it could be way worse. And he might not have ever woken up. But he still had that sense of being a temporary bump in her road. "How do I know you won't just use me and kill me later?"

"Why would I do that?" Alison replied with a question and shrugged. "Is there anything I say at this point that makes you believe me one way or the other?" She asked doubtfully. Alison didn't know the man. He didn't know her. "Trust comes with time. For now, I am going to keep an eye on you as nothing stands in the way of you using me and killing me later." She eyed his weapon that she left him. "Right now, we have a common enemy." She reminded him.

Inhale. Exhale. Pull on socks and boots. Leave the Model B to the side for the moment, since she'd made no move to hurt him - not since she'd defrosted him at least - and Alden quietly considered her words. "If I was gonna try to kill you," he noted. "I'd have done it while you were naked and unarmed." Which kinda went both ways, he supposed. "And yeah, agreed." He nodded emphatically. "We need to get outta here. They're not gonna be real friendly or talkative, I'm thinking..."

Alison nodded patiently while waiting for him to dress up and arm himself. She'd been on Beylix few times and had a vague idea where was the closest town.

"We will need to change clothes." She pointed out folding her hands. "If we want to vanish, we need to look like scavengers. I am thinking we could go into the nearest town, and then hitch a ride from there to a different town. As scavengers. We would lose any pursuit in the crowd. At the new town we could look for a transport off the planet." She presented the plan.

He'd heard worse ideas, and Beylix's core objective was recycling, right? So why not people too. Alden straightened himself up, tucked his handgun into its holster to complete his outfit and nodded. "Sure," he agreed. "But I'm not giving up my jacket."
Because, of course, that was the most important consideration right now...

There wasn't anything else he cared about on this damn ship though, so a few moments later and without a look back, Alden Loxley followed the scary blonde woman down the ramp and onto the planet's messy and unpredictable surface.

Alison left the man to gather rest of his things, getting outside through the half-open ramp that was heavily damaged in the crash landing. The smell in the air was so bad that she winced. She was not going to wash it off for days after they left the planet. When he emerged Alison turned to him.

"What's your name?"

"Alden Loxley," said Alden Loxley, sounding a little muffled as he wrapped his jacket sleeve across his mouth and nose to protect himself from the stench. "You?"

For a brief moment she thought of introducing herself by the name under which she was caught and met him. But decided against that.

"Alison." She said using her real first name first time in a while but stopping short of her real last name. "Leaving this planet, I'll be Alison Bliss."

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