Random stories

It was odd. I had seen this movie countless times, watching as the heroes make their dramatic entrance, then struggle in their fight, find some way to pull out a victory, then have everything neatly tied up in the end.

*Why does The Iron Man not let go of the...projectile with fire... missile before the opening... portal entrance?*

I looked over at Glorm, sitting in my room on my couch, wearing a shirt with Thor on it, looking not too dissimilar from the alien invaders in the first *Avengers* movie we were watching.

I shrugged and went back to watching as Robert Downey Junior fell from the sky after his near heroic sacrifice.

"He wanted to be the hero," I replied before sipping my beer.

*Ah.* I heard in my head as his helmet translated the thoughts I wanted to hear. *A person who sacrifices themself for others. Is that how I interpret that?*

I glance askance, not wanting to miss the Hulk scream save Junior scene.

"Yeah...that's about right."

We watch the scene. I always chuckle at it.

*It is never easy.* he thought to me.

"What isn't?" I ask.

*Doing for others...with no regard for self...Sacrifice.*

I think for a second.

"Yeah...it never is."

*It's never over, either.*

"Never." I miss without a beat as we finished watching Loki taken into custody.

*And that never happens either.* Glorm noted, pushing a button on his carapace armor. I heard it releases sustenance to a soldier of his race as they couldn't take off their suits in Earth atmosphere.

With the film winding down, I looked at my seven foot house guest in war gear, a white Thor shirt placed over it, and had to guess what he meant.

"Do you mean...capturing the bad guy?"

Glorm also appraised me.

*Clean? Yes...clean. A resolution that is clean. Nothing left to do afterwards. Always more to do.*

As a military liaison to this particular Ma-Hala soldier for a 'cultural exchange' session, nothing hit as hard as Thor's hammer than an apt comparison, shared by someone entirely from a literal alien culture.

"Yeah...we had...oh...some twenty years ago...that's twenty times Earth orbited the Sun by the way...someone who proclaimed 'Mission Accomplished.' We spent the better part of those twenty years cleaning that mess up..."

I chugged a final gulp of my alcohol to cleanse the surfacing thoughts of my last two tours for that.

*Yes...that. We had...* He was struggling for the right thought. *similar issues on our world, many rotations ago. Our people had the same...ideas. We fight until...we cannot fight. That never happens. But we...sleep think...dream of better times. Times when we can say we did everything and there is nothing left to fight.*

I had to think about that. Obviously, the Ma-Hala from everything we knew about them were a warlike species in conflict with dozens of other species across the galaxy. And for some reason, instead of razing the Earth, an insignificant little blip in the celestial scheme without an iota of advanced stellar travel, they wanted to talk to us...

"So...why did you stop this time? With Earth?"

Glorm paused. The end credits were finally rolling.

*You. Humans. You are so much like us. You...dream you are the...people who sacrifices for others... heroes. You go to war and think you win. But you never win...just like us.*

Thanos finally makes his appearance at the end of a credits roll. Blah blah blah, sequel bait.

Glorm points to Thanos.

*You never see the end. Just another...beginning. Just like us.*

The film finally ended, the credits roll done and I'm sitting back on my couch as Glorm begins to slow clap. Something he learned about human etiquette at the end of movies.

And here I was, thinking my existential dread hosting a war alien in my home couldn't hit closer...

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Submitted by Obtuse_Mongoose on Mon, Aug 29, 2022 to /r/WritingPrompts/

The prompt

We were afraid that the constant portrayals of us stopping alien invasions would piss off the aliens we just made contact with. Turns out the aliens went through a similar phase when they were on our level and they are eager to compare their portrayals of alien invasions to ours.