New Beginnings: An Ooorah Anthology

AngusEcrivain's Last Man Standing

Last Man Standing

by AngusEcrivain

The Multiverse is a funny thing and such are the truly endless, infinite possibilities, events rarely play out the way one might expect.

One minute you might be swigging coffee in your local trademarked coffee house or fighting on the front lines of a battle eight hundred thousand light years from your home planet and the next, you find yourself running and fighting for your life as several billion of Earth's residents succumb to an infection that turns them into mindless zombies or that you're sitting opposite a totally unfamiliar man in one of the many booths of an astrobar in orbit around a gas giant, the faint green glow of which makes your straight vodka look more like a watered down creme de menthe.

He could well be wearing black; trousers, shirt, tie, jacket and all, and may have three rings adorning his fingers - one on the middle and ring fingers of his right hand and a single, solitary piece of similar jewelery upon the index finger of his left hand.

He might be wearing dentures, incredibly good ones, mind, and probably as a result of a particularly brutal experience - if the eyepatch and potentially empty socket beneath it are anything to go by - rather than poor dental hygiene.

Dan took all of this in and more as he stared across the table at the stranger.

The astrobar was loud and vibrant but this was nothing he was not used to. He lived in a world of noise, after all, and rarely did anything without some obnoxiously loud heavy metal blasting from some speaker or other.

Crotch-Pointer & Knife Wielder

"So you've had seven seconds," the man said without any real hint of inflection or expression. "I'm certain that's more than enough time for a man of your reputation to have been able to work out what's going on here."

"I'm certain you're a dick," said Dan, shrugging, smiling up at the rather attractive, alien female, as she placed a frosty pitcher of beer upon the table beside the two glasses that were already there. "I'm also certain that you ain't got so much of a fucking clue what kinda' man I am. If you did then you sure as fuck wouldn't have done whatever the fuck you did to bring me here."

"Is that your way of saying you haven't been able to work it out?" the man asked, reaching for the pitcher though Dan beat him to it. Snatching the jug he put it to his lips and tipped the entirety of the six pints contained within down his gullet without spilling a single drop, likewise never taking his eyes off the man.

"People only ever come to see me when the want something or when they want to kill me." Dan shrugged again as he placed the jug to the table and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "So which is it?"

"If I wanted to kill you, Sir Colt, you'd know it by being dead already."

"You know, that's fighting talk where I'm from."

"I imagine it's fighting talk where most people are from," the man replied, once again keeping his face level and emotionless. "Here, however, it is simply a fact."

Dan shook his head and smiled. He glanced to his left and looked through the porthole window. Far below the gas giant's atmosphere appeared to be in turmoil as what looked to be clouds of methane swirled violently.

"You like to play the big man, I get it," he said, turning back to face the man sitting across the table. "I'll play along if it makes you happy. So tell me, if you don't wanna' kill me then what do you want?"