Spirits were high on the mothership as Tartarus Squadron arrived in orbit around Baldwin's Fall.

Stubbs was grinding his antlers down to fit into his helmet. He wanted to tie down the panda and strap a cooking iron to his fat belly, let him blow his voicebox out screaming as the smell of burning fur and fat filled the air.

Pitt was standing in front of his mirror and rubbing his headfrills sensuously. He bet that panda stank real good and he was looking forward to finding out.

Rema smashed into a training dummy with his taloned foot, leaving deep gouges in the self-healing material. He thought it might be fun to challenge the panda to a few rounds in the ring, really dance around him, just sweep his chubby little legs over and over until he couldn't get up anymore. Then break them one at a time.

Lance was in the captain's quarters, brooding. He felt like a failure. His entire life was built around the fact that he was good at assessing threats. He knew what jobs were the kind that you didn't walk away from. He could smell the stink of desperation and weakness on the lesser people sleepwalking through life. He had loved toying with the panda because he had never seen someone so lonely that they just kept coming back to him because they had nowhere else to go.

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That was how they had been friends in high school. Lance had a gang of bullies back then just like he did now, and Buster had been a pet of sorts. None of them liked him, but they liked making fun of him. And he didn't even seem to realize it, like he was just happy to have someone to talk to. The idea that whatever home he had come from was so fucked up that being picked on was just normal to the big dumb panda was incredibly funny to the jackrabbit.

All those years later, Buster had been exactly the same on Ryzeen. Every day Lance and the boys would tear into him, and the next day there he was again.

That's why he had wanted Buster to come along when those humans had crashed. The idea of him crying and trembling in the corner helplessly was so fucking funny. He had legitimately felt slighted by the panda standing up to him and refusing to go along, which is why he went out of his way to stop talking to him afterward. If Buster thought he was too good for them, the panda could enjoy being really and truly alone for the rest of quarantine. As he deserved to be.

For Lance to have been wrong about all of that, for this big dumb stupid panda to have made fools of them all, was something he could not allow to go unpunished.

The boys could do whatever they wanted to the panda. But first, Lance was going to take the panda along on a ride to make up for the one he had missed out on.

Lance had used his connections to dig up everything he could about the panda. He really wanted to hurt him. He wanted to send him to hell before he died.

They were going to get Buster Harkness, one way or another. And then the whole gang would pay the stupid panda's wife a visit, and he could watch as they all took turns practicing what they were going to do to him on her.