Sugawara stared at the other man that had been dumped uncerimoniously into their alien cell.

He was huge, easily over 6 foot and built like he just stepped out of an advert for a gym or dojo.

Even unconscious he looked intimidating, but Sugawara didn’t have the choice of waiting until he woke up, his shoulder was still bleeding and in terrible pain. He needed help.

Sugawara tried shaking the black guy awake, tapping his face and yelling but whatever drug had got them in their current predicament had him out cold.

So, Sugawara tried the next best thing. He ran over to the automatic water tube, collected a handful and threw it all onto the stranger's face.

The reaction was instant, arms and legs flailing as a familiar English phrase screamed from his lips:

“MOTHERFUCKER-!” Angry brown eyes focused a death glare on Sugawara, demanding an explanation. “What the hell, man?!” he shouted, wiping the residue from off his face.

Sugawara stared back, deadpan expression on his face while holding his shoulder wound.

“おはよう(mornin’),” he answered, watching as the American quickly ran through the same trains of thought he had when he first woke up.

“What the…? What’s going on? Who the heck are you?”

‘Rude,’ Sugawara snorted, before trying to remember how to pronounce the words he was more accustomed to typing. “We are captured, prisoners, aliens, hurt.” He pulled his hand away from the wound to show his new cellmate.

“Oh Jesus.” The giant man stood up and came over to inspect the damage. He was nearly head and shoulders above Sugawara, and as he inspected his wound for a closer look, surprisingly gentle. “There’s too much blood. Where's that water you had? I need to clean it to see.”

Sugawara nodded, and walked over to the water tube, before plonking himself underneath the opening. The automated water poured out and over the wound, a combination of soothing cold and stinging like hell. Sugawara put on a brave face though, gritting his teeth before clamping his hand back over his shoulder.

“Yeah it’s gonna hurt, but you gotta let me see.” The stranger’s tone wasn't harsh, or chiding, didn’t ridicule him for weakness.

Sugawara turned his head as he pulled his hand away, allowing the older man to look at the injury. Two large thumbs pressed either side of the wound. Sugawara muffled a wince.

“Looks like you’ve been stabbed with a soldering iron, you’re not in danger of bleeding out, but just keep the pressure on,” The American explained. “Lean back, let the water cool the burn, you got that?” Sugawara slowly leant back under the water tube, letting the cold fluid pour over his shoulder. The initial sting subsided after a while, the cold numbing his nerves.

“You got a name, kid?” The American asked.

“Sugawara.”

“Sugawara, that’s a mouthful, got anything shorter?” He asked with a joking smile.

Sugawara looked at him incredulously.

“... Ryo,” he lied.

“Hey Ryo, I’m Beau.” A large hand rested on Sugawara’s dry shoulder, trying to be reassuring. “It’s going to be okay, but I need you to explain to me what the hell is going on, like why the hell are we naked?”

Sugawara let out a heavy sigh, he’d taken English in high school like everyone else in the country, but his conversational English he had perfected by listening to ‘Lets plays’ and chat forums over the internet. Actually speaking the language outloud wasn’t something he’d done past the proficiency exam. He decided to answer to the best of his ability, the simpler the better as he would undoubtedly stumble over pronunciation.

“I said, we are captured, prisoners, aliens…”

Beau shook his head as he stood up to inspect the rather spacious cell.

“Aliens, right…” Beau began tapping the metal walls, searching for a gap or a door just like Sugawara had. "You know that for a fact, huh?"

Well, at least the American understood him.

"Yes, I'm not crazy."

"Never said that you were, kid, just tryna get all the facts," Beau replied, making his way around the room. "So what do these aliens look like then? We talking Roswell Greys or Lizard people?"

"Bugs."

"Ahh great, what kinda space bugs? Hive mind Zerg type or people in bug suits type?" Beau continued his line of questioning, he seemed the kind of person to just say whatever popped into his head without even bothering to read the room.

"...Not Zerg." Sugawara answered frustrated, wishing he had his phone with him to do all of the talking.

"Cool, cool, bug people is the far better scenario in our case. I’m far too pretty to get my ass eaten, then again, having my ass shaved bare has me thinking they ain’t fond of hair in their BBQ."

Sugawara frowned, wondering how someone in their position could be so damn calm, no, chipper about the prospect of being abducted and imprisoned by insect xenomorphs.

He talked way too damn much.

“Hey Ryo, you tried talking to them? Get a line of conversation going?”

Sugawara groaned. Beau talked too much and he wanted to talk to their would-be captors.

“No, I wake up, they stab me and drop you on the floor, I can’t talk clicks.”

“So they were talking then, just them pendejos thinking we don’t understand.” Beau finished his survey of the room and returned to Sugawara. “How’s your shoulder going?”

Amongst all the back and forth and listening to the inane questions, Sugawara had almost forgotten about the pain.

“...”

“You can take it out of the water now, and maybe you can help me think of a way to talk to our insect overlords.” Beau smiled. His teeth were incredibly too white, but even he could see the smile was more for ‘Ryo’s’ sake than Beau’s actual emotions.

He almost wanted to tell him to knock it off.

“So what do you think? They can’t speak English and I don’t know ‘clicking’ either. Should we try math? Or star charts?”

Sugawara shook his head, standing up and shivering. The water had numbed his shoulder and diluted the pain, but had also dropped his body temp, not a very nice combination for his concentration, so he decided to give the American an example of the meaning of ‘show, don’t tell’.

Sugawara walked over to the still fresh pool of blood on the floor and dipped his finger in, before drawing geometric hexagonal lines and chains on the floor. To his credit, Beau let out a knowing chuckle after he finished the first diagram.

“Organic chemistry, damn that takes me back, memorising all the sugars and isotopes.”

Sugawara started with simple element representation - oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, hydrogen - using dots to replace the chemical symbols before mixing them up into more complex chains - water, carbon dioxide, nitric acid and hydrogen peroxide. By the time he began working on a glucose chain, Beau lowered himself and signalled for him to stop.

“Ryo, someone’s coming.” Beau motioned for him to get behind him and Sugawara didn’t hesitate scrambling to hide behind the mountain of a man.

The hidden door slid open and Beau got to witness their captors.

Lithe armoured guards burst into the room, clicking and shrieking, their wings displayed flayed out to intimidate. Sugawara was able to get a better look this time.

They were the closest to grasshoppers, with hard shiny dull green exoskeleton, their armour was a nondescript grey with alien writing down their upper left arm. It looked molded to their bodies, it didn’t look like steel, more like cheap childrens plastic, the kind you found at playground parks. One of the four wore a small green shoulder cape, it stood at the back and his antennae flickered as he chirped out loud orders. They all had the taser lances folded up at their hips, the leader had two.

The reality of it all must have hit the man all at once as Beau didn’t even move when a taser lance was raised in his direction. Sugawara tried to pull him out of the way, but Beau ended up taking the extended weapon to the chest. The paralysing electric shock threw them both on the ground, Beau almost crushing Sugawara’s hand during the ordeal.

Sugawara let out an involuntary cry.

The giant bugs then lifted their bodies and shoved them to the side of the room, not even letting them move on their own, it was apparently easier to shock first and man handle them.

The humans could only watch as the other guards tapped the opposing wall and a hose appeared from an automatic and unseen hatch. A guard took aim and high pressure water poured out, washing away their hard work, blood-stained water disappeared down the corner drain.

Once the floors were returned to their pristine state, the guard then turned the hose on them.

The water was strong enough to move them off the floor and against the wall, Sugawara was sure he’d need to add bruises to the growing list of injuries he’d acquired since he woke up. He was scared to yell incase the guard decided to aim for his mouth, death by pressure hose drowning was not how he wanted to cross into the afterlife.

Their work completed, the leader of the guards screeched and clicked, and his underlings filed out in a single line, six angry, insect eyes stared at them before walking out. The perfect seamed door closed shut behind them, the only indication of their presence were the soaking wet humans on the floor.

They pulled themselves together, Beau coughed up water, staring at the ceiling while his brain caught up with the shock. Sugawara sat up, holding onto his shin, he could feel the impact of the hose, tender skin going right up his ankle to his knee.

“Mother fucking aliens…” Beau breathed, a combination of disbelief and disgust.

“I told you, bugs, we prisoners. No talk." Sugawara reiterated.

“Yeah well, now I know what we’re up against." Beau rolled over to his front but stayed low as if the open chest wound didn’t phase him at all. He spoke softly but with none of the levity of his previous tone. He was quiet, serious and scary. “Those assholes have underestimated us, and we're going to wipe the motherfucking floor with them. You’re a smart kid Ryo, you tough as well?”

Sugawara grinned back with a sadistic smile.

“Fuck yeah I am.”