Mike carried the unconscious squid-creature to his cave and spent the afternoon making sure it was both comfortable and secured–both of which were made more complicated by him not knowing anything about the creature. Did it like lying on its stomach or back better? Were its legs truly as flexible as they appeared, or should he straighten them out? Is looping Quicksilver around its entire body enough to hold it in place, or should he bury it in the ground as well?
Mike watched the creature’s eyes flutter open sometime later as they groggily opened, only to widen when they found themselves in a dark cave lit by some blasting stone. Their eyes got even bigger when they realized that they were buried neck-deep in a very tight fitting hole and somehow unable to wiggle even the ends of their tentacles–Yep, he had outdown himself with some of those half-hitches. As it turned out, tentacle based appendages actually do. uble as built-in hostage ropes.
“Achpar, pupach ale medved provost!” the creature garbled at him when it finally noticed his presence. Mike couldn’t tell where the sound was actually coming from since no mouth was visible.
“Come now, I know you speak English.” he replied, “Since you already mentioned the System to me when I saved you from the wreckage?”
Recognition seemed to pass through the creature’s eyes, “You pulled me out?” it exclaimed, before realizing its mistake and shutting up again.
“Ahah! See, you do speak English!” Mike exclaimed as he squatted down to get in a better position to meet his prisoner’s eyes, all four of which were doing their best to avoid them.
“Why don’t you tell me more about the System, where it comes from, and what it is doing on Earth?”
No response.
“Ok, well how about you tell me where you learned English?”
The creature responded with only silence, a pattern which continued as Mike tried every angle he could think of. At length, he came to the conclusion that he was in a position where he had to choose between the proverbial carrot or stick. He really hated torture, but he loved carrots, so he decided to try his hand at making a new friend. And what better way to make a new friend than to share some recipes?
“Ok, let’s say for a minute you want to make a honey-cured ham. You may be tempted into thinking that the process starts with just heating up your oven, but in reality, it starts long before that. Let’s go way back to how you properly select a good cut of pork, then we will move to how to cure it into ham…” without further ado, his quest for friendship had begun.
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The torture was unending. Strike Leader had no idea how the anomaly knew about its aversion to eating meats, but one thing was for certain: he knew. Why else would he go into so much detail about butchering, curing, preparing and cooking the revolting food groups. Throughout the first recipe, they endured by telling themselves that it would all be over soon, after all, how much can one unenlightened anomaly know about cooking meat, right? Hours later, with no end in sight, they learned the answer to that question: Everything.
After the third recipe, they tried to zone it out, but the anomaly seemed to know just when to ask the right questions to force their mind back to the topic at hand.
By the fifth recipe, they found himself wondering what sort of abyssal creature would be so sadistic as to toy with its food for this long?
At the tenth recipe, their eyes glazed over, their will to live completely gone… or at least they thought so, but it turned out that the anomaly was well versed in keeping a hostage alive. Acting like it thought Strike Leader was hungry, the anomaly pulled out a piece of revolting jerky and pushed it towards Strike Leader’s face. The smell was enough to make its tentacles curl, and the revulsion was enough to bring it fully back to the present.
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By the 15th recipe, they found their will to continue almost fully depleted, and they bolstered themselves with thoughts of home. They would remain strong, the Hive deserved that much.
By the 17th recipe, their reason for enduring was singular, the Queen. Sector Assimilator, Junior Administrator and many other leaders had only ever looked out for themselves, but her Spawnliness was all benevolence.
By the 20th recipe, they found themselves wondering what the Queen had ever done for them. Their whole life had been a struggle for resources that were a mere pittance compared to what inner-Hive members received. Why should they keep toiling on for a being who would never even notice them?
They were about to give in, when suddenly, the torture stopped.
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It was difficult to talk to someone non stop when they weren’t involved in the conversation, but Mike felt that he excelled at it, especially with a topic as robust as cooking. He could talk for hours. Try as he might, however, he just couldn’t get the carrot to land. It was like the creature had a will of iron. Here he was pouring his soul and recipes out freely, and the creature only responded with silence. It had even refused his offering of wurm-jerky when he realized it must be starving. While he wasn’t running out of recipes, his belief in the ability of cooking to cross all borders was waning, and in desperation he changed tactics.
Pulling out some dried sweet-potato stalks which he had been storing for basket weaving, he laid them out in formation, then struck one of his old steel axes on the rocky ground to get a spark. With a small fire going, he pulled out a piece of meat, he was unsure what it was from as he had fought too many unknown creatures in the previous days, but he was positive it was relatively fresh, especially since it had sat in his spatial storage device, and began preparing it. He layered each side with a generous supply of salt and pepper, despite his diminishing supply, and even went so far as to get the last bit of garlic from his pouch. Boy, he couldn’t wait to get back to earth and restock on some essentials.
He was missing butter to get a proper sear, but luckily the meat was decently fatty, so when the pan was screaming-hot he threw it on. The sound meat makes when cooking at high temperatures is fantastic, and for a moment, he almost forgot he had guests until a croaked voice reminded him.
“Alright… I’ll do it. Just please make it stop”
Proud of his success in using diplomacy, he flipped the steak while giving his soon-to-be-friend a wide smile.
“Please, I beg you. Just make it stop.”
Realizing the creature must be referring to his tied up tentacles, he replied with a helpless shrug, “Sorry, not until I feel I can trust you and you tell me what I need to know.”
The meat was done cooking, so he took it off the fire and set it down to rest so it could reabsorb some of the juices. “How about we try again? Where did you learn English?”
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The anomaly was a monster, and to their shame, Strike Leader was capitulating.
“I don’t. But the System equipment I still have on me allows me to hear, understand, and speak your language when I want to?”
“So the System is here?” it asked, while eyeing Strike Leader weirdly.
Strike Leader briefly considered leading the anomaly astray, but that thought was dashed when the bald, burly, native picked up the meat and put it near its face, forcing their hand into answering the question that the anomaly should be asking, not the question it actually was asking. In no circumstance did they want the anomaly feeling like it needed to get retribution for deception down the road, it was far too scary.
“The System is nothing more than the compilation of thousands of different sigils from the sacred cultivation language which empowers our order to assimilate planets. Some of those sigils have been included in the construction of my body suit and with an influx of cosmic energy from my soul space, can be activated to function.”
The anomaly paused in thought for several minutes, before asking a terrifying question: “What does it mean to assimilate a planet?”
Strike Leader was hesitant to answer, sure that the answer to that question would mean certain death, but then the anomaly picked up the piece of meat which had been sitting in front of Strike Leader’s fate and bit off a fat chunk. They watched as blood and fat dripped from its mouth and across the hair follicles it had in place of tentacles. They weren’t proud of it, but in that moment, they didn’t care. Strike Leader gave up every secret without hesitation and in full transparency. They had been broken.