Kayla couldn't sleep after dinner, so she took a shower. She had almost finished shedding, and her fresh scales gleamed as she toweled off. She thought of trying to wash her clothes in the sink and thought better of it. She liked how scuffed and dirty they were. They told a story, it would show Buka that she wasn't a lost and frightened student waiting to be rescued. Now she understood why Buster had worn his scrubs the night he had gone out to find her. She imagined he would be wearing them tomorrow to really let Buka know who he was dealing with when he kicked the plan into action.

She wasn't wrong. As Buster prepared for bed, he held his freshly-laundered scrubs. They weren't the same pair he had worn all those years ago when he first prepared to face down Lance. Those were long gone, and he had gone through many more since. This was a special pair he had only worn a few times before, and he was happy he had them for tomorrow.

The first time he had worn his pink scrubs to battle, he had thought about what they meant to him. It had become something of a ritual: the night before a big showdown, when he was getting ready to go to sleep for what could be the last time, he would hold those scrubs and he would reflect on the steps that had led him there.

As Kayla had grounded herself by looking to the stars, Buster found his mind wandering to the past. Not to his own. He wandered further and further back, beyond the date of his own birth. He found himself thinking of the humans, and their tragic story.

Long ago, the humans had their own planet. Earth never reached the heights of Nakuna. They built many empires, but none ever extended beyond their own planet or species. Then one day, something happened.

Nobody knows why. But a massive group of humans awoke on a strange planet with nothing but themselves and their memories. Not even the clothes on their backs came with them. Some of them thought that they had died and gone to an afterlife, or that this was a cosmic act of retribution from an unknowable deity. Others imagined that they had become the protagonists of the adventure stories they saw on television or in vidcons, whisked away to a fantasy world free from consequence. In the modern day, most of them believed it was just a great unknowable cosmic event; finding Earth one day was a nice idea to think about, but their time and energy would be better focused on the new world they were living in now.

Buster wasn't so optimistic.

He loved stories. It was one of the reasons he loved humans so much: they held stories in great reverence, because they were the only thing they brought with them. Every human was full of stories to share, and the stories of the Earth they left behind were very bleak.

Buster thought that they had been sent here by a weapon. If the humans ever did return to their Milky Way, they wouldn't find an Earth. They had found a way to destroy themselves so forcefully that the shrapnel was sent across the universe. The humans that were sent away were the cosmic equivalent of the silhouettes left by atomic fire.

He didn't share this theory with them. He knew that ultimately it didn't matter, and it would just upset them. But to him, that made what came next all the more special.

Vast numbers of humans. Speaking different languages. From every society and culture and class. They were all stranded on a pristine world with nothing. And in spite of everything, they figured it out. They worked together. They helped each other.

All of civilization up until that point had been driven by inertia. Cities were built on ruins. The new was always cobbled together in the mad dash to escape the old, repeating the same mistakes and taking the same shortcuts just to stay above water one more day. Now for maybe the first time in the history of the galaxy, a civilization had a chance to start over with what they had learned in a whole new world with no obligations.

Bless those humans, they made the most of it.

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Generations later, the Nakunan Empire stumbled upon the utopia the humans had built. The Empire made them the same offer they make every non-spacefaring society they find: join as a thrall and enjoy the comfort and luxury of interplanetary society, or remain an isolated planetlocked anthropological preserve and enjoy isolated autonomy in blissful ignorance of the greater cosmos.

The humans didn't accept either choice they were offered. They recognized their own worst instincts in Nakuna: the desire to hoard, to establish dominance, to view conflicts as wars between tribes. They recognized it because the Nakunan empire was founded by apes, not unlike the ones that were the evolutionary ancestors to the humans.

Buster had still never seen an ape in person. They reaped the rewards of their empire in the comfort and isolation of their homeworld, Nakuna.

So the humans recognized that there was no right choice. Subjugation would destroy what they had built and return them to what they had worked so hard to escape. Isolation would just lead to their gradual corruption and downfall, they had learned that trick well from their own evil empires back on Earth.

So with great sadness, they chose to fight. Knowing that the society they built couldn't exist in wartime, and that even if they won there was no guarantee that what remained would be capable of rebuilding it. But they chose to fight for that hope, against all odds.

Generations later, humans spanned the galaxy. The other species that had been subjugated by Nakuna saw that it was possible to exist outside the world they had helped build. The other species saw people on the outside who were much happier and more fulfilled than they thought they would ever be. All the while, they were being squeezed harder and pulled further as Nakuna retreated.

Eventually, they had to ask: why am I working so hard and getting so little in return? Those people over there seem to be doing great. Maybe they know something I don't? I should hear what they have to say. What have I got to lose?

Until the humans came along, utopia was a dream. Now we know it's possible. It happened. It can happen again. If they can do it, we can all do it too.

Buster couldn't do the Martenwol Massacre if he were in that position today. Back then he had nothing to lose. Now he had what Nakuna could never give him: compassion, unconditional support, and a reason to get out of bed every morning. He couldn't flame out in a dramatic act of self-sacrifice, because then Petro wouldn't have breakfast in the morning. People like Kayla wouldn't have a friendly face in an unfriendly world to help them get their start on their own journeys. The stories he had learned would no longer have anyone to tell them.

But that was also why, in spite of everything, he still didn't feel too bad about doing it. He had been about as successful as a person in his field could get. He was some of the best the Nakunan Empire had to offer. He dedicated his life to the cause, and all it gave him was a comfortable cage to grow angry and alone in.

He wasn't the only one. He wasn't even the first. He was just the most high-profile at the time. Most traitors were a lot smarter and subtler in their treachery. Across the empire, human compassion moved people to do incredible things. All Nakuna could offer was acting like it never happened and squeezing the survivors a little harder to make up for what they lost. It only made Humanity more appealing.

Nakuna made monsters and did nothing to stop it. He thought he had broken the mold, but he was just another accepted outcome. Sometimes one of our guys goes crazy and a bunch of people die, nothing we could have done about it. Get back to work.

Nakuna didn't care about Buster being a casualty, so he was happy to return the favor. They made this monster, they would have to be the ones to put it down.

That was one of the reasons he had been happy to settle on Redtree. When he first fled the Nakunan Empire, their people kept coming after him and he was surrounded by collateral damage. When Buster first arrived and saw the people of Big Zig, he had thought to himself that at least he wouldn't have to worry about the collateral damage in a shithole like this.

Now as he prepared for bed, he once again felt ashamed of himself. He had thought this place was beneath him, and instead it had come together to help him. People he hadn't known then were willing to risk their lives now because they believed in something he had helped create. Once again, he had expected the worst because he was the worst. But he was getting better.

More than anything, that was why he didn't want to kill Buka Nightingale. He saw himself in the polar bear. He knew what it was like to be where he was. And he knew that it was possible to get out.

He didn't want to kill Buka because he had hope for him.

Once, a powerful and fearsome man had broken the panda's spirit. It wound up being the first step to the end of Nakunan biologics supremacy forever.

Buster hoped that he could be Buka's first step to something even more inspiring.