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jedibuttercupT; Riddick 'verse; Riddick & Boss Johns; 2500 words. Canon-divergence AU, set during Pitch Black.
That last rough scramble up the canyon in the dark, fat drops of water splashing off the bones of the creatures who'd died on that world before them, went a lot quicker than Riddick had been expecting. Then again, he hadn't been expecting the merc to still be with him, pulling the other half of the load.
Title: for the historical record
Author: Jedi Buttercup
Disclaimer: The words are mine; the worlds are not.
Spoilers: Pitch Black (2000); Riddick (2013); etc.
Notes: Another fic I found 500 words of in my scrapfiles and resurrected. I've written Riddick and Boss Johns post-movie fic for Riddick; AU Soulbond fic during Riddick; and AU Divergence with Boss Johns in Chronicles; so of course I would eventually get around to putting Boss Johns into Pitch Black. So have a scene from that. :)
Summary: That last rough scramble up the canyon in the dark, fat drops of water splashing off the bones of the creatures who'd died on that world before them, went a lot quicker than Riddick had been expecting. Then again, he hadn't been expecting the merc to still be with him, pulling the other half of the load. 2500 words.
That last rough scramble up the canyon in the dark, fat drops of water splashing off the bones of the creatures who'd died on that world before them, went a lot quicker than Riddick had been expecting.
Then again, he hadn't been expecting the merc to still be with him, pulling the other half of the load. It had been a given, when they'd left the wreck to head for the escape skiff, that something would go wrong along the way and take out their carefully-constructed shield of light, leaving them vulnerable to the bioraptors. It had also, he'd thought, been obvious that at that point Johns would start making calculated decisions to ensure his personal survival. That's what Little Johns would have done, anyway: the blue-eyed devil who'd actually caught him and put him on the Hunter Gratzner back in the Conga System.
But somewhere between there and the meteor shower that had woken them all up, the ship must have made another stop-- because when he'd broken his binders after the crash and started to run, it had been a far more seasoned merc who'd tripped him up and chained him down again. Short-cropped dark hair, just starting to salt with gray; a broader frame and squarer face than Billy Badass. The same nickel-slick badge pinned to his uniform vest, but none of the sweats and tremors that came with a hype habit. And far harder to bait than his energetic asshole of a son. The man who called himself simply Johns had taken one look at the situation after Ogilvie went down, taking the ribbon lighting with him, and bulled on ahead without even one attempt to better his odds by further thinning the herd. At least one of the Imam's charges owed their lives to his intervention, as well.
It made him interesting, even more than the guilt-heavy pilot: a merc who actually valued lives for more than they were worth to him in coin. As much of an endangered species as Riddick himself, really. Made him wonder what had happened to the younger Johns.
"So why'd you really make the switch?" he asked, grunting as one of his pair of power cells caught briefly on a rock, interrupting his momentum. He jerked it free, slipping briefly in the mud, but caught himself quickly before he could go down; not a good time to be showing vulnerability. Better to keep the other man off balance, as well. "That boy of yours couldn't have been too happy about you jumping his claim. And what's he gonna say when he hears you let me go?"
Assuming, of course, that Johns held to his word on that, too. The man might be willing to protect those who didn't deserve what came their way, but Riddick hardly fit that definition. He was definitely expecting another fight when they made it to the skiff. But the merc had surprised him before.
Johns snorted as he trudged beside him, pulling nearly his own bodyweight with only a little more visible strain than Riddick. The cables towing the cells were visibly pressing the straps of his armor deep into the muscles of his shoulders, but he shrugged it off as easily as he did the splashing rain. "Wasn't about the claim," he replied, irritably. "Not that I gave him much choice in the matter. None of his business what happens to you now, either."
"Yeah, and why's that?" With every evasion, Riddick got a little more curious; getting a personal reaction out of William J. Johns had been as simple as prodding him in the ego, but his father seemed to have been cut from different cloth entirely.
"And in what corner of the universe is that any of your business?" Johns shot him a dark look from under hooded brows. "You're his bounty. And the man that literally stabbed him in the back. If I hadn't needed your cooperation to get us this far...."
"You'd what. Have returned the favor?" Riddick gave a derisive chuckle.
That might actually have been a challenge; the younger Johns was one of the few mercs able to keep up with him, and he had to have learned it all somewhere. "I guess he didn't tell you the part where he had a weapon in my face, and I caught him with the shiv after I knocked it out of the way. Not that I wouldn't have taken him by surprise, if I could, but you taught your boy better than that. Pity you didn't also teach him not to bring a gun to a fist fight."
Johns ground his teeth, and opened his mouth to say something else-- then sputtered and took a hand off the cables he was towing to swipe at his face. Something dark and glutinous clung to his fingers; it was too dark to see what might be mixed in with the rain beyond the weak beams their flashlights cast-- but now that he was paying attention, Riddick could smell it.
Blood. Copper-based, not iron, but the scent was unmistakable.
"What the fuck," Johns swore, casting his gaze up toward the pitch-dark sky. He couldn't have seen much there with his unaltered eyes, but it was hard to mistake the chunks of flesh that followed after, slapping off the wet ground just in front of them. "I guess they really will kill anything that moves. No wonder you've adapted so well here."
"I don't kill everything that moves," Riddick corrected him, keeping one eye on the widening drift of the canyon ahead-- then threw out a hand in front of Johns, slapping against his armor-covered chest as the settlement came into view. He could see the glow of the buildings, of the waiting ship in the distance, clear as clear; but there were a number of shadows on the ground between it and their position. "Just anything that gets in my way."
Johns swatted Riddick's arm away, but took the hint, planting his feet as he pulled a monocular out of his pocket. Man knew his priorities: another thing that separated him from his son. "Shit. How are we supposed to get past that many?"
Riddick snorted, then shouldered out from under the cables attached to his pair of cells and held them out toward Johns. Another gout of foul blood splashed on his out-stretched hand, and he smirked as he answered the merc's rhetorical question with another. "How does a porcupine fuck?"
Very carefully. This was going to get ugly. But at least he had someone competent to share the load. Man might leave him behind temporarily if he fell, but he was the do-right type, through and through-- he would come back again after. For the bounty, if for no other reason.
Johns fumbled the cables, then swore as he added the load to his own. "Riddick...."
"Be ready," he growled, slipping the shiv out of his boot, then turned back toward the settlement. The bioraptors had been all clustered together at first glance, but they were fighting each other every bit as much as the ones in the air... and as soon as one fell, they fell apart into smaller squabbles. "Now."
"Hey, I thought I said no shivs!" Johns called after him, grunting as he followed in Riddicks' wake through the stinking mud.
"You can bitch at me about it when we're off this rock!" Riddick tossed back in reply, weaving toward the biggest gap between the native predators.
It was inevitable that they'd be noticed; the closest bioraptor turned its head in their direction before he'd made it a handful of paces, the long stalks of its sensor organs aiming directly at them as it gave its distinctive echoing call. More heads swiveled further back in the pack-- though most of those were immediately engaged again by their fellows, as they took advantage of the distraction to strike at each other with twin-forked, pointed tails and the bone spears in their legs.
Luckily, since one was more than enough to be going on with. The raptor charging Riddick's way hissed as the flashlight beam crossed its rough grey skin, whipping to one side before leaping into the air, claws outstretched. Riddick eyeballed the arc of its jump, then dodged out of easy reach, skidding to a halt beside where it would land. "Keep going! I'll take care of this one."
It landed, then hissed and whipped around-- and Riddick stepped right into the blind spot in front of its face, where the view from its sonar 'ears' was distorted by its own ugly skull. It swayed, calling again, trying to get a better 'look'; he swayed with it, turning until he could see Johns most of the way to the skiff behind it. Then he lunged forward with the shiv, burying it where it would do the most good.
The bioraptor thrashed as it fell, spine severed, calling out in pain... and all the others not immediately absorbed in fights of their own immediately turned at the noise, drawn to the sound of weakness. Bad news for anyone there when they arrived. But the perfect distraction to cover noise at the skiff.
Riddick faded back toward the nearest stack of old abandoned cargo containers, then put it between him and the bioraptors and took off again toward the ship.
Johns was already hooking up the power cells as he rushed up the ramp; the merc gave him a half-relieved, half-irritated glance, then tossed his own flashlight in Riddick's direction.
"Good. You made it. Now go back and get the rest of them, and I'll get this thing flight-ready."
Riddick growled as he caught the light. He'd known when Johns told Fry that they'd be back with more light that the merc meant it, but it was no part of his own plan to risk his neck again now that his way off-world was clear. The dying bioraptor wouldn't keep the rest distracted for long. "You're welcome. Now why don't you go, and I'll get this thing flight-ready."
"Don't make me laugh," Johns gave him a grim smile. "I leave you alone in this thing, it'll be gone before I even get back. And don't try to say it won't be. I know your kind."
"Yeah?" Riddick narrowed his eyes at him. "And what's your kind? You never did answer my question. Why are you here, instead of Little Johns?"
Johns' mouth turned down at the corners, eyes blazing in Riddick's direction. "You mean, why is my son currently in a hospital on Lupus V, detoxing so he can get nano-med healing to dissolve that fragment of shiv in his back, and I'm here cleaning up his mess in his place? Gee, I wonder."
"Responsibility," Riddick replied, lip curling.
Detox-- from morphine, presumably-- did explain a few things about the way the younger Johns had suddenly turned mean during the last legs of their chase, though. A sober man probably would have given up at the first hurdle and gone back to clear the most urgent problem on his record-- the mess they'd left behind at Butcher Bay, which had put a warrant on Billy-boy's head, too. Instead, Johns had blamed Riddick for everything, despite his own involvement in the warden's death and Riddick's escape, and took reckless risks tracking him down.
Riddick had left him behind alive. He hadn't had to. He'd thought that would be enough of a message.
...And maybe it would have been for this Johns, but not for Johns Jr.
"Yeah, that's right," Johns fired back. "So I'm going to fire up the ship, and wait while you go back for the others. Better hurry; that rock you blocked the cave with wasn't exactly a security door."
Riddick paused a moment longer, fingering the flashlight in his hands. "You swear you're gonna cut me loose. Claim I died in the crash." The man had implied as much when he'd struck the binders off to get Riddick to help, but never promised outright. Now that he'd taken the measure of the man, Riddick thought he might actually uphold it-- if he actually said the words.
Too bad. Leading this Johns on a merry chase might be even more entertaining than playing with his son.
"Frankly, you're more trouble than you're worth." Johns rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I swear. If you swear to stay out of my son's way. You cross his path again, or do anything worthy of earning yourself a fresh bounty sheet, and the deal's off."
"But then how would I get the attention of my new favorite dance partner for another set?" Riddick parried with a leer.
The bemused, affronted expression on Johns' face was worth every minute of the run back to the cave, and even his near-death on the way back, when he drew off another pair of fighting bioraptors and took a few slashes for his troubles. Johns did come back for him after all, barely escaping a fatal encounter of his own when a flying raptor's claws skittered off the back of his armor, and slid a shoulder under his unwounded arm to support him back to the skiff.
"You know, if you really wanted to get up close and personal with me, you could have just asked," Riddick rasped, as they splashed the last few meters through the mud.
"Man, I don't know whether to admire you for your sheer balls, or put you out of everyone's misery," Johns replied, shaking his head. "What kind of world spawns a man like you, anyway."
"Let you know if I ever find out," Riddick replied more seriously as they walked back into the skiff. "In the meantime, how about we get the fuck off this rock."
Behind them, Jack slammed a hand on the close control for the doors, cutting off the rain and the last echoing calls of the predators outside. The Imam and his last surviving boy were already strapped into jump seats in the cargo area; Johns folded down two more, then pushed Riddick into one of them. In the front, Riddick heard Fry powering up the engines, followed by a yell of challenge as she flared the external lights. Johns took his own seat next to Riddick, gritting his teeth as the drives lit.
The skiff shook a little as bodies hit the windshield-- and then they were off, finally rising above the rain.
"So what is your first name, anyway?" Riddick asked.
"You can call me Boss," Johns replied, tartly. Then he sighed and gave him a long-suffering look. "I'm never going to be rid of you now, am I? Is this how it started with Billy?"
There were worse things that could happen. He should know; he'd lived a fair few. Maybe-- for Jack, for the Imam, for Boss-- it would be worth giving civilization a try just once more.
"Promises, promises," Riddick replied, chuckling as they arced up toward the stars.
(x-posted at AO3)
That last rough scramble up the canyon in the dark, fat drops of water splashing off the bones of the creatures who'd died on that world before them, went a lot quicker than Riddick had been expecting. Then again, he hadn't been expecting the merc to still be with him, pulling the other half of the load.
Title: for the historical record
Author: Jedi Buttercup
Disclaimer: The words are mine; the worlds are not.
Spoilers: Pitch Black (2000); Riddick (2013); etc.
Notes: Another fic I found 500 words of in my scrapfiles and resurrected. I've written Riddick and Boss Johns post-movie fic for Riddick; AU Soulbond fic during Riddick; and AU Divergence with Boss Johns in Chronicles; so of course I would eventually get around to putting Boss Johns into Pitch Black. So have a scene from that. :)
Summary: That last rough scramble up the canyon in the dark, fat drops of water splashing off the bones of the creatures who'd died on that world before them, went a lot quicker than Riddick had been expecting. Then again, he hadn't been expecting the merc to still be with him, pulling the other half of the load. 2500 words.
That last rough scramble up the canyon in the dark, fat drops of water splashing off the bones of the creatures who'd died on that world before them, went a lot quicker than Riddick had been expecting.
Then again, he hadn't been expecting the merc to still be with him, pulling the other half of the load. It had been a given, when they'd left the wreck to head for the escape skiff, that something would go wrong along the way and take out their carefully-constructed shield of light, leaving them vulnerable to the bioraptors. It had also, he'd thought, been obvious that at that point Johns would start making calculated decisions to ensure his personal survival. That's what Little Johns would have done, anyway: the blue-eyed devil who'd actually caught him and put him on the Hunter Gratzner back in the Conga System.
But somewhere between there and the meteor shower that had woken them all up, the ship must have made another stop-- because when he'd broken his binders after the crash and started to run, it had been a far more seasoned merc who'd tripped him up and chained him down again. Short-cropped dark hair, just starting to salt with gray; a broader frame and squarer face than Billy Badass. The same nickel-slick badge pinned to his uniform vest, but none of the sweats and tremors that came with a hype habit. And far harder to bait than his energetic asshole of a son. The man who called himself simply Johns had taken one look at the situation after Ogilvie went down, taking the ribbon lighting with him, and bulled on ahead without even one attempt to better his odds by further thinning the herd. At least one of the Imam's charges owed their lives to his intervention, as well.
It made him interesting, even more than the guilt-heavy pilot: a merc who actually valued lives for more than they were worth to him in coin. As much of an endangered species as Riddick himself, really. Made him wonder what had happened to the younger Johns.
"So why'd you really make the switch?" he asked, grunting as one of his pair of power cells caught briefly on a rock, interrupting his momentum. He jerked it free, slipping briefly in the mud, but caught himself quickly before he could go down; not a good time to be showing vulnerability. Better to keep the other man off balance, as well. "That boy of yours couldn't have been too happy about you jumping his claim. And what's he gonna say when he hears you let me go?"
Assuming, of course, that Johns held to his word on that, too. The man might be willing to protect those who didn't deserve what came their way, but Riddick hardly fit that definition. He was definitely expecting another fight when they made it to the skiff. But the merc had surprised him before.
Johns snorted as he trudged beside him, pulling nearly his own bodyweight with only a little more visible strain than Riddick. The cables towing the cells were visibly pressing the straps of his armor deep into the muscles of his shoulders, but he shrugged it off as easily as he did the splashing rain. "Wasn't about the claim," he replied, irritably. "Not that I gave him much choice in the matter. None of his business what happens to you now, either."
"Yeah, and why's that?" With every evasion, Riddick got a little more curious; getting a personal reaction out of William J. Johns had been as simple as prodding him in the ego, but his father seemed to have been cut from different cloth entirely.
"And in what corner of the universe is that any of your business?" Johns shot him a dark look from under hooded brows. "You're his bounty. And the man that literally stabbed him in the back. If I hadn't needed your cooperation to get us this far...."
"You'd what. Have returned the favor?" Riddick gave a derisive chuckle.
That might actually have been a challenge; the younger Johns was one of the few mercs able to keep up with him, and he had to have learned it all somewhere. "I guess he didn't tell you the part where he had a weapon in my face, and I caught him with the shiv after I knocked it out of the way. Not that I wouldn't have taken him by surprise, if I could, but you taught your boy better than that. Pity you didn't also teach him not to bring a gun to a fist fight."
Johns ground his teeth, and opened his mouth to say something else-- then sputtered and took a hand off the cables he was towing to swipe at his face. Something dark and glutinous clung to his fingers; it was too dark to see what might be mixed in with the rain beyond the weak beams their flashlights cast-- but now that he was paying attention, Riddick could smell it.
Blood. Copper-based, not iron, but the scent was unmistakable.
"What the fuck," Johns swore, casting his gaze up toward the pitch-dark sky. He couldn't have seen much there with his unaltered eyes, but it was hard to mistake the chunks of flesh that followed after, slapping off the wet ground just in front of them. "I guess they really will kill anything that moves. No wonder you've adapted so well here."
"I don't kill everything that moves," Riddick corrected him, keeping one eye on the widening drift of the canyon ahead-- then threw out a hand in front of Johns, slapping against his armor-covered chest as the settlement came into view. He could see the glow of the buildings, of the waiting ship in the distance, clear as clear; but there were a number of shadows on the ground between it and their position. "Just anything that gets in my way."
Johns swatted Riddick's arm away, but took the hint, planting his feet as he pulled a monocular out of his pocket. Man knew his priorities: another thing that separated him from his son. "Shit. How are we supposed to get past that many?"
Riddick snorted, then shouldered out from under the cables attached to his pair of cells and held them out toward Johns. Another gout of foul blood splashed on his out-stretched hand, and he smirked as he answered the merc's rhetorical question with another. "How does a porcupine fuck?"
Very carefully. This was going to get ugly. But at least he had someone competent to share the load. Man might leave him behind temporarily if he fell, but he was the do-right type, through and through-- he would come back again after. For the bounty, if for no other reason.
Johns fumbled the cables, then swore as he added the load to his own. "Riddick...."
"Be ready," he growled, slipping the shiv out of his boot, then turned back toward the settlement. The bioraptors had been all clustered together at first glance, but they were fighting each other every bit as much as the ones in the air... and as soon as one fell, they fell apart into smaller squabbles. "Now."
"Hey, I thought I said no shivs!" Johns called after him, grunting as he followed in Riddicks' wake through the stinking mud.
"You can bitch at me about it when we're off this rock!" Riddick tossed back in reply, weaving toward the biggest gap between the native predators.
It was inevitable that they'd be noticed; the closest bioraptor turned its head in their direction before he'd made it a handful of paces, the long stalks of its sensor organs aiming directly at them as it gave its distinctive echoing call. More heads swiveled further back in the pack-- though most of those were immediately engaged again by their fellows, as they took advantage of the distraction to strike at each other with twin-forked, pointed tails and the bone spears in their legs.
Luckily, since one was more than enough to be going on with. The raptor charging Riddick's way hissed as the flashlight beam crossed its rough grey skin, whipping to one side before leaping into the air, claws outstretched. Riddick eyeballed the arc of its jump, then dodged out of easy reach, skidding to a halt beside where it would land. "Keep going! I'll take care of this one."
It landed, then hissed and whipped around-- and Riddick stepped right into the blind spot in front of its face, where the view from its sonar 'ears' was distorted by its own ugly skull. It swayed, calling again, trying to get a better 'look'; he swayed with it, turning until he could see Johns most of the way to the skiff behind it. Then he lunged forward with the shiv, burying it where it would do the most good.
The bioraptor thrashed as it fell, spine severed, calling out in pain... and all the others not immediately absorbed in fights of their own immediately turned at the noise, drawn to the sound of weakness. Bad news for anyone there when they arrived. But the perfect distraction to cover noise at the skiff.
Riddick faded back toward the nearest stack of old abandoned cargo containers, then put it between him and the bioraptors and took off again toward the ship.
Johns was already hooking up the power cells as he rushed up the ramp; the merc gave him a half-relieved, half-irritated glance, then tossed his own flashlight in Riddick's direction.
"Good. You made it. Now go back and get the rest of them, and I'll get this thing flight-ready."
Riddick growled as he caught the light. He'd known when Johns told Fry that they'd be back with more light that the merc meant it, but it was no part of his own plan to risk his neck again now that his way off-world was clear. The dying bioraptor wouldn't keep the rest distracted for long. "You're welcome. Now why don't you go, and I'll get this thing flight-ready."
"Don't make me laugh," Johns gave him a grim smile. "I leave you alone in this thing, it'll be gone before I even get back. And don't try to say it won't be. I know your kind."
"Yeah?" Riddick narrowed his eyes at him. "And what's your kind? You never did answer my question. Why are you here, instead of Little Johns?"
Johns' mouth turned down at the corners, eyes blazing in Riddick's direction. "You mean, why is my son currently in a hospital on Lupus V, detoxing so he can get nano-med healing to dissolve that fragment of shiv in his back, and I'm here cleaning up his mess in his place? Gee, I wonder."
"Responsibility," Riddick replied, lip curling.
Detox-- from morphine, presumably-- did explain a few things about the way the younger Johns had suddenly turned mean during the last legs of their chase, though. A sober man probably would have given up at the first hurdle and gone back to clear the most urgent problem on his record-- the mess they'd left behind at Butcher Bay, which had put a warrant on Billy-boy's head, too. Instead, Johns had blamed Riddick for everything, despite his own involvement in the warden's death and Riddick's escape, and took reckless risks tracking him down.
Riddick had left him behind alive. He hadn't had to. He'd thought that would be enough of a message.
...And maybe it would have been for this Johns, but not for Johns Jr.
"Yeah, that's right," Johns fired back. "So I'm going to fire up the ship, and wait while you go back for the others. Better hurry; that rock you blocked the cave with wasn't exactly a security door."
Riddick paused a moment longer, fingering the flashlight in his hands. "You swear you're gonna cut me loose. Claim I died in the crash." The man had implied as much when he'd struck the binders off to get Riddick to help, but never promised outright. Now that he'd taken the measure of the man, Riddick thought he might actually uphold it-- if he actually said the words.
Too bad. Leading this Johns on a merry chase might be even more entertaining than playing with his son.
"Frankly, you're more trouble than you're worth." Johns rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I swear. If you swear to stay out of my son's way. You cross his path again, or do anything worthy of earning yourself a fresh bounty sheet, and the deal's off."
"But then how would I get the attention of my new favorite dance partner for another set?" Riddick parried with a leer.
The bemused, affronted expression on Johns' face was worth every minute of the run back to the cave, and even his near-death on the way back, when he drew off another pair of fighting bioraptors and took a few slashes for his troubles. Johns did come back for him after all, barely escaping a fatal encounter of his own when a flying raptor's claws skittered off the back of his armor, and slid a shoulder under his unwounded arm to support him back to the skiff.
"You know, if you really wanted to get up close and personal with me, you could have just asked," Riddick rasped, as they splashed the last few meters through the mud.
"Man, I don't know whether to admire you for your sheer balls, or put you out of everyone's misery," Johns replied, shaking his head. "What kind of world spawns a man like you, anyway."
"Let you know if I ever find out," Riddick replied more seriously as they walked back into the skiff. "In the meantime, how about we get the fuck off this rock."
Behind them, Jack slammed a hand on the close control for the doors, cutting off the rain and the last echoing calls of the predators outside. The Imam and his last surviving boy were already strapped into jump seats in the cargo area; Johns folded down two more, then pushed Riddick into one of them. In the front, Riddick heard Fry powering up the engines, followed by a yell of challenge as she flared the external lights. Johns took his own seat next to Riddick, gritting his teeth as the drives lit.
The skiff shook a little as bodies hit the windshield-- and then they were off, finally rising above the rain.
"So what is your first name, anyway?" Riddick asked.
"You can call me Boss," Johns replied, tartly. Then he sighed and gave him a long-suffering look. "I'm never going to be rid of you now, am I? Is this how it started with Billy?"
There were worse things that could happen. He should know; he'd lived a fair few. Maybe-- for Jack, for the Imam, for Boss-- it would be worth giving civilization a try just once more.
"Promises, promises," Riddick replied, chuckling as they arced up toward the stars.
(x-posted at AO3)
