Chapter 8: A Simple Solution
“Master, look!” The little boy held the black cat up to a human woman in a thick brown robe. She was smoking space-crack, I mean, ‘spice’ from a long pipe and had big bags under her eyes.
“Maaaou~!” Middy cried out before clawing at the woman’s dirty hands when she tried to grab him.
“E chu tah!” The crackhead shouted angrily and tried to smack my cat, but he dodged and she ended up hitting the boy so hard that he collapsed to the ground. She tried to stand up out of her chair, but wobbled and fell back down, taking another deep puff of spice.
“Master, I’m sorry…” The boy cried, but his Master just groaned and ignored him. Honestly not sure whether Spice is more like crack or heroin yet, I’ll have to do some research. Either way, it’s really not that great for human consumption.
“Maaaou!” Midnight ran back over to my feet and rubbed up against my shin, “Maaaou, maaaou~!”
“Master, do you want me to kill them?” Izsha floated down in front of me and glared at the crying child, along with the glassy-eyed human woman.
“Nah, I thought this would be something interesting. Oh well.” I ignored the slave boy and his owner. I was about to leave, but I heard something inside the house that the crackhead was ‘guarding’.
“Aah, ow, stop, please!” I breathed out a long sigh and told Izsha, “The Force really likes to force you into moral dilemmas.”
“Morality is relative.” The Zerg Drone said that as she ripped the metal door open with her scorpion claws.
“Exactly.” I followed inside at a leisurely pace. The stench was nasty, Spice didn’t smell as bad as the cigarettes or pot from my memory, but it wasn’t much better. Maybe more like crystal meth? I’ve heard it smells pretty bad but I can’t remember if I ever actually smelled it before. Actually, I think people said that meth smelled worse than-
“What the frak?!” A man shouted anxiously and then started screaming his lungs out as his body was being vivisected by sharp pincers. Midnight stayed outside to guard the suitcase and money case.
“Papa!” The little human girl screamed anxiously as she watched her abusive father being mutilated. She had a lot of bruises on her exposed skin, which was most of the skin. Not hard to figure out what was happening. But now what?
“Die!” A teenage boy fired a blaster pistol at the Drone, but the bolts bounced off the carapace, exploding on the ceiling and sending sharp pieces of rock down on everyone. Izsha quickly covered the little girl, while I casually Force Pushed the boy out the window behind him.
“Waaaah~!” The little girl started crying loudly, her voice replacing the Rodian slave child outside that stopped crying because of the noise in here.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
“Now what?” I groaned, looking at the mutilated corpse on the ground. The piece of shit definitely deserved to die. But what would happen after he was dead? See, a lot of people don’t really think about what will happen to children after their abusive, rapist parents are punished for the fucked up shit they’ve done. What happens to the kids? Do they really think that their future is going to be any less traumatic after they lost their parents? Nah, this kid will almost certainly end up as a sex slave sooner rather than later.
If the brother was letting it happen, no, he was probably involved as well. So the big brother will become the abuser instead of the father now. Probably gonna pimp out his little sister for Wupiupi, assuming that their crackhead mother wasn’t already doing that.
“Master, we could just eat them all?” Izsha came up with a simple solution to the moral dilemma. Can’t suffer if you’re dead, right? But with the Force, that’s debatable. And look at me, if I can reincarnate, then why can’t everyone else? What if by killing someone to put them out of their misery, it will just send them to literal hell?
“Fuck it. I’m too lazy to deal with this moral bullshit.” I reached out and grabbed the Papa-Chunks with the Force. The pieces were rapidly rearranged and assembled. Entrails repaired and restored back into their proper places. What about the mangled brainmatter? His last brain obviously wasn’t that useful anyway.
“Tanya… It’s okay, Sweetie, don’t cry…” The tall and muscular tan-skinned dude crouched down to hug his crying daughter. Even after he hurt her so much, she still trusted and loved him. It’s kinda funny and adorable how dumb humans are. But I can relate.
“Papa?” That teenager peeked in through the window and seemed horrified to see his father alive and well again. Then he looked at me and was even more terrified, because I threw a purple centipede at his face! “Aaaaah! No~!” He screamed in terror and tried desperately to pull it out of his nose, but it was a little too late. His face twisted and writhed, his eyes twitched, turning from brown to a pretty light-purple shade for a moment, before returning to normal.
“Izsha Sweetie, you can handle the mother.” I had a simple solution to the problem. I mean, wasn’t it always going to come to this anyway?
“Yes, Master!” Only a few moments after she went outside, I heard her voice whisper into my mind happily, “Infestation successful!”
I could feel them. All three of them. They were… Zerg. Not quite Infested Terrans, nothing quite that extreme. But a good start. They weren’t contagious. They had Zerg parasites in their brains puppeteering their bodies to a certain extent. Making them more… Efficient? At the very least they wouldn’t mistreat the two uninfected boy and girl, or each other.
“Anyway, we should go.” I didn’t want to stay too long and draw attention to their little family. Midnight meowed angrily at the scared Rodian child, but I didn’t bother saying anything to him or them. It was kinda pointless.
“Wald, you can’t tell anyone about what you just saw.” The former crackhead gently caressed the boy’s smooth green head as she stared at my back, “Not even your friends. Okay?”
“Y-yes, M-Master!” Whether he would keep his promise or not was debatable, but I wasn’t too worried about it. The parasites have safeguards. They won’t be so easy to find or research. Besides, this is Tatooine, not the heart of the Republic. The Hutts might be the ‘law’ here, but their actual level of surveillance and control is kinda pathetic.
“Let’s go find somewhere to eat. I know you’re starving.” I was talking to Izsha, but Midnight immediately started meowing in response. That’s fine though, even if they don’t have cat-food, I can always make some myself. That’s what I usually have to do anyway.
“Yes, Master!” Izsha wiggled her webbed legs and floated along beside me like a Zerg Drone balloon. I left behind a few Peggats so that the newly infested family could afford to fix their roof and head back into the market area while carrying along my two cases. I would put one of them on my daughter’s back, but it was more energy efficient for me to carry both.
Besides, Midnight hopped up onto her back again and was using her as a mount. The suns were still beating down on his black fur, but he endured the discomfort silently. Clearly getting kidnapped has made him realize that he isn’t the cat king of Tatooine just yet.
The streets were noisy and crowded, even out here in the outskirts of the city. There’s no fucking way that the population of this big-ass city is less than five million. If you include the whole planet, it’s gotta be over 10 million at least.
“I wonder if it’s because the slaves aren’t considered people? Or maybe their census data is just wrong?” I wasn’t sure, but either way, it’s a massive amount of Essence and Biomass. But it’s too soon for that. For now, we’ll just find a restaurant, have lunch, search for a Chosen One and then head out into the Dune Sea.