None of this is canon, it’s merely a noodling in my head that I felt compelled to write. Thank you for the inspiration u/bluefishcake, and many more! 

CHAPTER 1 - BEYOND INVASION (NIGHT AT FALSETTO FRIARS)

Earth was no longer alone in the cosmos. We had been invaded. And there was no way to fight back.

Michael being Michael, took the responsibility for the occupation of his planet. Maybe if he hadn’t screwed up most of his relationships--like his marriage, or when he broke up with his last girlfriend Rachel to hook up with another fling named Amber--maybe the Earth wouldn’t’ve been attacked. That said, he couldn’t take responsibility for the military deaths. They knew what they were signing up for, he thought absently. 

It was a shame how little patriotism Michael felt. His Uncle Joe had served in Okinawa during Vietnam. His grandfather and several other family members from that Greatest Generation served in World War II. Michael should have drawn pride from their service. Instead, however, he heard stories from his mother about how abusive Papaw had been when he’d had a few too many. Additionally, he couldn’t remember exact details, but he knew that Papaw and Uncle Joe had almost crossed fists in the living room of his grandparents’ home one day. 

“I’MMA DECK YOU, OLD MAN!” was the quote that had intertwined with serving in the military in Michael’s mind. 

Halo and other video games had not ameliorated his doubts regarding military life. They knew what they were signing up for.

That was not what Michael had gravitated toward growing up. His paternal Grandfather had lost his hearing. His cousins on his father’s side had gravitated to nursing and occupational therapy. Michael, therefore, was drawn to more caretaking than lifetaking. 

That didn’t stop him from thinking himself responsible for the invasion. It was his fault that the Earth was getting its comeuppance. Maybe if he could have held out with Rachel. Maybe if he hadn’t slept with Amber. Maybe…just maybe all would have been well with the world. 

Michael tried desperately to escape that guilty feeling. He threw himself into his work and threw himself into chemicals in order to escape. 

“I’ll try anything four times.” Michael managed to not slur across the table. 

He’d rarely had so much room on a tabletop taken up by so little food. Bill had warned him that, in living together, Michael would become an alcoholic. With four former steins of hefeweizen, two (three?) mostly empty car bomb husks and a basket that once nestled garlic fries between them, Bill was living the dream. 

Bill developed a weird mannerism when he was drunk. He would turn his head very slowly and his eyes would loll around the edges of his eyelids. Like a magic eight ball settling into an answer to your dumbass question, Bill’s eyes wandered without focus around the room and to the inside of his skull before finally centering back on Michael. 

Bill’s thought ran the bases, slid into home plate and out of his mouth, “Fine. Prove it.” 

Michael braced himself. Bill had a lot of silly ideas. Bill was a competitive man who had had dreams of killing Michael in his sleep. Random conversations in their daily lives involved how Bill was going to taze Michael because every man should know how it feels. It hadn’t happened. Yet. 

“If you’ll try anything three times, go talk to those purple ladies right there.” Bill subtly pointed at a table with three giant, purple skinned, tusked women; all of whom smirked at the finger wagging shakily in their direction. Michael felt no need to correct Bill’s misnumbering. 

The Falsetto Friars wasn’t much larger than the average high school choir room, if you didn’t count the kitchen. Their gimmick was to play loud music while food was being served and in between the servers would sing crowd favorites. It was better than karaoke, but it was your servers instead of yourself and your drunk friends singing. It was a unique method of milking for themselves a higher tip, maybe with some extra cash you could go out to Hollywood and perform for the masses, which worked more often than not. Jacksonville was a conservative town who believed in the American Dream. This tip money could be just what they need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and make something of themselves. 

They know what they signed up for; what a bunch of fucking suckers we are. 

Michael swirled his eyes in his head to try to see what Bill saw in it. 

Well, that’s once...three more times and I can say I’ve done that.

The room was returning to restaurant and bar mode after one of the female servers had serenaded them with Black Velvet.

If anything could be said for the three Shil’vati women, it was that they were having a good time. They may not have known any of the lyrics or have had any familiarity with the songs, but they did see Humans having fun. And friends, isn’t that what good music is about? Everyone has a good time until some drunk blatantly points you out of a crowd. 

Michael followed the invisible line being drawn from Bill’s first finger to the Shils. Seeing their reaction, not going over there was no longer an option. Michael inhaled deeply before investigating the ceiling through the glass bottom of a beer stein. “Fuck you, Bill,” he growled as he slid off his barstool and began ambling through the crowd to the ladies. Bill grinned drunkenly and turned his head slowly to the left, eyeballs headed to first base. 

Michael was too drunk for decorum. He wasn’t a vomit faucet yet, but the bathroom was calling his name. The speakers started to belch Hungry Like the Wolf. He deliberately exhaled again, trying to find his center so as to not stumble into a server on his way to the ladies’ table. He didn’t see their knowing smiles.

“Hey…ladies,” Michael began, trying to meet each of the women’s eyes as he spoke. “I’m Michael Greer and I am ever so sorry for my friend,” mentally flipping him off, “Bill’s behavior. He is rather uncouth, but he has a good time.” 

“We can tell,” sleuthed one of the women. 

Now that Michael was closer to them, they looked less like ladies having a night out and more like a couple niche refrigerators that had been wedged together around a table. This bar was not accommodating for Shil’vati patrons. He accidentally slipped into an image of two of them ducking to get in the entrance and the last one hitting her head on the door jamb. He tried to stifle a giggle. 

Undeterred by his random giggling, the second of the women followed through with the lay up he had provided, “Are you having a good time?” The scandalously low number of clasped buttons on her flannel blouse exposed enough of her chest to let one’s imagination coast into fantasy. She also wore what seemed to be a buckskin jacket whose fringe and beads drew implied topographical lines detailing her endowment. Her hair was down, though hidden behind her ears and topped by a Goddamn cowboy hat. 

Despite having taken in all this detail, Michael tried his best to not look below her lips. As a wise man once said, I just look at their lips and wrinkle my eyebrows and I’m the big sweetheart. “I’m not having a bad time by any stretch of the term.”

“Might you have a better time if you sat with us?” The first of the purple Amazons leaned forward. Her lips pursed between two white tusks. Michael’s drunken mind’s eye saw himself float like a field goal between the uprights that were her tusks, landing his lips onto hers. And the crowd goes wild!

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Unconsciously, he shifted his head in the opposite direction.What are you thinking?! Michael startled himself out of his fantasy. Do you know how many of your people that they’ve killed?!

Turning his head in the first direction. Yeah, but they knew what they were signing up for, his mind rebutted. 

What a dickhead you are, he thought as he shook his head at his own brain.

“Are you ok?” The last of the trio inquired, bursting Michael’s dueling thought bubbles. “You look like you’re playing volleyball against each side of your face.” This Doubting Thomasina searched Michael’s face. “Are you having a stronk? Serca, you’re the medic; is he having a, uh, stroke?” Her dual braids dipped into and out of her cleavage as she turned her head from Michael to the cowgirl. Drunk Michael thought this one’s features looked similar to a rope you’d pull to ring a church bell the way her hair bobbed alternatively up and down her front. Or maybe she looks like a belt turning a gear?

Serca, the cowgirl, took the straw out of her empty vessel, pointed it at Michael, and slid it into her next pitcher of blue liquid while declaring, “Nah, our boy here is a little tipsy. He oughta sit down.” Sherlock, the sleuth who first responded to Michael, reached easily and placed perfectly a barstool for Michael to settle into with them at the table. 

Michael didn’t see Sherlock’s body move. It was as though a refrigerator had grown a ribbed arm and moved a seat, just for him. We must exterminate, Michael’s mind spoke for the image he imagined. Low budget special effects and all, shit was gonna get weird. And Michael was willing to do some science. I’ll try anything four times, he repeated his mantra. 

Seated now, Michael found his faculties returning. Sherlock also wore a form-flattering outfit: a Jaguars jersey whose sea of teal was separated by an island shaped like the number five. Though, from Sherlock’s curvature, it could have been a sigma or a lowercase xi. Her hair fell into loose curls that didn’t quite seem well conceived. Speaking of ill conceived, Michael found his newly planted self taking inventory of what was going on, “Do I understand Shil’vati? How do I know what you’re saying?”

There was a collective shrug from the other side of the table. “Maybe we speak better English when we’re drunk?” Doubting Thomasina posited while sucking an olive off of the skewer from her shallow, wide-brimmed glass. She put the toothpick back in the glass and brought her hand back up to her face then thumbed her tusk like an old man tweaking his mustache. 

It was cute that Michael accepted that fact, even cuter when he thought that he could retain the answer to his next question; “Serca, you’re a medic.” He smiled a little too slowly at the cowgirl. “What are your names and what do you do around here?” He looped his head around at the other two Shil’vati women at the table. He regretted the movement as it still lingered even though his head stopped. 

Doubting Thomasina gave a smile that somehow also made Michael feel lesser than she. Of the three, she had a little black dress on that did all the right things for her intended purpose tonight but Michael was obviously not the target of her intended purpose. He assumed she was here for a hard-bodied Marine or the like. He was a soft-bodied hairball, who was lucky he’d gotten this far into a conversation with these hotties without being sent away. Anyway, her name is Josepha or some such bullshit. Chump don’t want the help, chump don’t get the help. Michael moved on, listening as best he could.

Sherlock, on the other hand, seemed a bit more curious and questioning. She’s more than happy to share her name, Michael chuckled to himself as she blathered, Guinevere. Guinevere happily pointed out that they were all members of the Shil’vati military who were stationed at the big purple monstrosity of a base that had been stationed on the ash of what was once NAS Jax. They all had cushy, not so demanding jobs on base. Guinevere worked in SR, Shil’vati Resources.

Serca spoke up, “‘Medic’ is the furthest thing from what I do. I requisition medical supplies for wahwahwah.” Michael stopped caring enough to listen. 

Luckily enough, he was saved by the bell. The entire staff was on stage. “When I wake up in the morning and the alarm gives out a warning…”

The women started bouncing to the beat. Michael glanced back at Bill who was bouncing and shooting thumbs up in Michael’s direction, mouth agape with You Got It Buddy clearly readable. Fuck you too, buddy. 

The bop ended quickly enough. Michael ordered a round of bourbon shots for the table. “You know, that song is from a show I grew up watching.” Michael slyly smiled, his generation watched the show, he didn’t really care for it that much but they didn’t know anything about it so he was an ambassador. 

“Zach. Slater. We know. We’ve been doing our homework about Earth.” Josepha replied tersely. 

Gwen followed up dreamily, “Slater takes his shirt off. A lot.”

Gwen and Serca looked at Michael thirstily. Josepha remained unfazed. Michael knew the Shil’vati were a randy bunch, but this was the first that he’d registered that Bill had thrown him to the wolves. He wasn’t sure how to disrupt their gazes. As if on cue, the shots arrived. 

Michael held up his shot glass to the ladies. They hesitantly held theirs up in similar fashion. They all clinked their glasses together. “To new friends,” Michael beamed, then tapped his glass on the table, “Prost!” Down Michael’s hatch, the bourbon burned its way to his core. The ladies did likewise before they all came up for air. 

An electric guitar cut through the sudden silence. “Let’s go girls.” The call to action for every woman had been rung. Eyes wide, Josepha clasped hands with the other two women and practically clotheslined Michael in trying to stand up together. They clustered together with all the other hot-blooded women on the minuscule dance floor. 

Michael took a moment to look over at Bill. He was talking to their server when Michael caught his eye. Bill raised another half empty stein Michael’s way. Michael drew his pointer finger up to his throat then across it, then pointed it at Bill. 

Bill took his own pointer finger, jutted it toward the dancing girls, then back to Michael. Ever so subtly, Bill brought two fingers up to his goatee and stuck his tongue between them. Then he produced another V with his other hand and brought it to his mouth as well. This kept going long after Michael had turned away. 

The women were definitely trying to hide that they were having a conversation on the dance floor. Rhythm was lost in translation. Eyes pointed in Michael’s direction. Feet stomped a little more forcefully than the Shania Twain’s aesthetic intended at parts. Josepha leaned forward until Serca and Gwen seemed to entwine tusks to join together to push Josepha back. The song ended with the fanfare it deserves, soon replaced by a fast-paced rap song. The women returned to the table where Michael had stayed. 

Two pairs of eyes implored to Michael, “Will you come with us?” Gwen and Serca harmonized. 

“Ladies, I’d go anywhere with you. Take me to the stars!” Michael may have been a little too enthusiastic. 

Josepha chuckled dismissively. 

“No, to base!”

“To…base?” Michael stammered, “I-I didn’t know that was an option.”

“I mean, we could take you to a couple bases…I think you’re practically at first.” Gwen threaded a finger into one of Serca’s open buttonholes to open the flannel even further, revealing a thickly reinforced bra cup in its entirety. 

Michael’s eyes widened, trying to take in all the details. His jaw slackened at their explicit willingness to get explicit with him. He recovered cooly with, “Seems like a home run to me.” Drooling slightly as he spoke. 

He looked at his mental map. Falsetto Friars was halfway between his and Bill’s apartment and the Shil’vati base. From here, it wasn’t that big of a deal. Though how would I get home?

“How would I get home? Are you driving me?” Michael did a decent impression of the Scarecrow meeting Dorothy, pointing every which way. “ I’m not driving. Have you seen the table I came from?”

Their table looked over, as one, to Bill who was schmoozing with the server again. He felt their eyes on him and turned to meet their gaze. Their eyes met briefly as Bill’s were about to round the bases again. He held up a hand that did a disembodied finger-wiggle wave up and down all of its digits. 

“And what am I going to do with that guy?” Michael voiced his paternal concern.

Serca teased, “What are you, his babysitter?” 

“Is he going to fuck you tonight?” Gwen asked mockingly.

Michael’s own eyes scored one for the home team as his head pivoted back to the most recent speaker.

“F-fuck me? Him? I hope not.”

“Then you need to let him figure himself out. He’s a big boy. He can take care of himself.”

“...Ok. Just a second.” Michael requested while feeling his wallet and keys through his pants pocket.

Michael dipped, dodged and drove through servers and patrons to get back to the table with Bill. 

“How’s it going with the ladies?” Bill smiled lopsidedly.

“They’re taking me back to base. You got money for an Uber?” 

Bill inhaled sharply and turned his head, “You lucky son of a bitch...yeah, I guess so. You got the check?”

Michael stabilized himself with both hands on the edge of the table, “Half. I have half of the check.”

“You’re going to get some pussy, ditch me, and make me pay my way home?”

Michael’s glazed eyes stared forward, through Bill.

“Ahhhh, fine. You’d better thank me for this later.” Bill moaned.

They waved the server over to settle up the check. Michael kept one eye toward the ladies, making sure they didn’t leave without them. They did appear to be paying off their own tabs as well.

Having recently grown a conscience, “Oh, you got a condom?” Bill asked.

“Oh yeah, I carry’em on me all the time. You know how I get lucky like this so much.” Michael’s sarcasm laid thick. “I don’t even know if I could get them pregnant, but you know I got the snip snip.” His fingers opened and closed in downward pointing scissor motions.

“Yeah, but who knows what those girls got?” Bill looked warily from side to side before taking another sip, “They could give you the Ninja.”

The Ninja was an inside joke about STIs that Bill had had since he was enlisted. Who knows what you could pick up out there? It’s mysterious and could strike when you’re least expecting it: the Ninja.

Michael shrugged. “Maybe my crabs’ll be purple too.”

Bill swallowed with difficulty then snapped C-shaped hands open and shut.

Meanwhile, the Shil’vati women gathered their belongings and headed for the door. Serca cocked her head in Michael’s direction. 

“Thanks for this, Fucker.” Michael grinned at his roommate.

“You’d better take some pictures.”

“I’ll see what I can do, Bud.”

Off he went. Not knowing what the future held for sure, but he had a hunch. One phrase kept rolling in his head as he followed the women out the door.

They knew what they were signing up for.