MAD: You can't cure stupid.

Mutually assured destruction. Or MAD, for short.

For humans, whom always questioned such doctrine, it wasn't until the expanse of their realm opened before them to the wonder of many other civilizations that they would finally find an answer. That not only would such insanity span the cosmos in far greater destructive thresholds, but even through broader everyday life.Eager to learn, hard to let go of a grudge, humans would soon adapt or perish under the perception turned fact.

They were a one world minority.

So, naturally, MAD. Right? They had one tiny little planet, and if the day they found out they were no longer alone taught them anything it was that some asshole might just come and steal your moon. Why? Because nothing you can do about it. Even as half a world watched in horror as almost half a world worth perished in the aftermath of what would later be laughed off as but a non-consequence, they were finally understanding what it is to be truly MAD.

But it is one thing to watch lightning strike and make fire, and another entirely to be able to do it yourself. Turns out those moon grabbing bastards had been busy for quite some time, and like the guy who shows up after you just got your ass handed to you, the Moonless Coalition's MAD was still better than something stupid like AD. So beaten and battered, but eager to get a little payback, humanity jumped into the fray that held the known universe tighter than a black hole.

Black holes. Silly humans. Those are called prisons.

In what would embrace another form of MAD so enamored that should any within dare question it's hold the entire eggshell of a pocket dimension may simply implode and erase all within. Or at least, what was the idea. With galactic prisoners keeping watch over others just as dangerous, each prison would only house a few guards that were no less subject to it's harsh reality than the coldest killer. But with monsters guarding other monsters, it would be up to the guards in case any did escape to prevent it's greatest threat from spreading.

"Sure glad you think I actually have any choice in the matter." The man, standing before the cackling sludge like creature shackled and imprisoned in a force field reinforced container, presses a few more buttons on the center front keypad. "You made a hole."

A hole. That's all there was to it for the man who stands unaffected by the sludge creature's thrashing and roars of contempt to it's reestablished fate. His choices were simple, as there were none. If he didn't seal the rupture on his end, then the prison would collapse and be violently pulled through, causing a catastrophic reaction. He couldn't go back, because it just wouldn't last.

"Stay? You, here?" The man laughs to the idea. "So you can get bored and find new ways to destroy everything you see?"

The creature didn't need a name, just a number. It wasn't too large, even almost minuscule, if they were to go by the ancient numeric of the man's own people who most have chosen to abandon. But the only way to be sent to pocket dimension prison is to reach the first digit, and this creature had a sequence five long. It couldn't stay here, because it just wouldn't last.

"They're planning to kill you as soon as you get back." The man's solemn words secure only harsher thrashing and snarled threats of a tongue he just couldn't reciprocate. Finishing the key sequence on the pad front and center, he steps back just as purple arcs of energy strike and lash outwards in all directions.  "Good luck!"

Humming so loud that he begins to feel what he hears, he dares not look away even as the snap of imploding air pelts his face with specs of debris from the cavern floor. Enveloped in darkness once more, he continues to stand in the deafening silence.

"Especially since I fused the locks on your restraints, you son of a bitch."

Taken in by the rush, like a chill down his back, he seems no less capable of seeing what lays before him even if he was never born to be able. The dark stone that had held strong during their conflict now lay broken and cratered, but no less appreciated for having kept the prisoner from escaping any farther. Ignoring the splash of liquid below his feet now risen up to his ankles, he simply cannot help but let one knee fall when finally close enough to give that which is owed much, a helping hand.

"You never told me how you all handle this kind of stuff." The man nods. "But I guess you wouldn't know, either."

The man reaches down to the first of two arms on either side, careful to lift and fold onto the center mass. Doing so three more times, he finally hobbles down farther in order to slide his forearms underneath before heaving upwards with a loud upturn of water. Paying no heed to the heavy mass in such a small frame, he simply looks around the darkened cavern filling with water for a possible exit.

"So I'm going to be honest with you, which is something I hate doing because It always leads to drinking!" The man talks loud, even chuckles, to no one who could properly answer. Swirling about until something finally catches his eyes, which now bristle with bright blue light, he finally moves forward for the first time in his entire life. "Been in prison all my life, like you. So I don't know what we're supposed to do."

Approaching what seems to be just another solid wall of rock, it is the small bleeding cracks that interests the man. With the bright blue in his eyes flickering as if in rapid activity, he guides his vision to the deep left and then gradually upwards. Forced to lift his head so not to impede his visioned train of thought, his ample nodding gives way to him moving back towards the farther wall.

Setting the crystallized four armed figure back down, in gentle lean against the wall, the man stands back up and walks back over towards the bleeding wall. Stretching his arm directly out from his side, a small metallic cylinder shoots out from the underside of his forearm up into his now clenched hand. Twisting his wrist, the cylinder shoots forth blue electric arcs from both ends into a bo staff just under his own height of six feet. Twisting once more to let one end swing down into the water below, the electricity only grows in intensity.

Traveling all through the water laced cavern, and even up and through the entirety of the man's body, nothing is spared the tendrils of blue electricity snapping and crackling in abandon. Bringing the pole into a slow but steady twirl between his fingers, his eyes never leaves the wall as the staff begins to disappear to the whirl of a blue haze forming in it's place. Pulsating in brilliance and hum, volatile droplets of shimmering liquid begin to rise and pulse to the same heartbeat of a man finally afforded a chance to speak from it.

If only he knew what he was supposed to say.

So just as it began did it all come to fall back down. Whirling back down to the light patter of drizzle across the shin high lagoon that continues to fill their current tomb, the man finds himself secluded once more in pitch darkness both in and out.

"Got to thinking." The man's venture betrayed by the whoosh of water that voices echoed fail to conceal. "Never sat well with me, the things they said we would have done if left on our own. How they saved us from turning out bad by never giving us the chance to."

The man raises his left arm, letting the palm of his open hand touch the cold wet wall. Pressing harder, to no progress to be had, he simply begins to swivel his have back and forth as solid wall gives way to something far less profound.

Sandstone.

Rearing back with with far less energy gathered into his metallic staff, he stabs it forth much like a spear into the center mass of brittle sediment before him. Met with a no less humble display of progress, he repeats the process several more times as larger and larger chucks are broke away. Noticing the ever increasing bleed of water, he halts his latest assault half thrust.

Walking back over towards his four armed crystallized comrade, he kneels forward to press his left shoulder into it's upper abdomen, holding his arm behind it's back before heaving them both up. Bobbing down and then back up until comfortably firm, he then goes back to where he had once stood before the slowly crumbling sandstone. With water beginning to gush out in small horizontal geysers in ever increasing streams, it only exasperates farther when several vibrating impacts ripple the water below the man's water dredged knees.

"But you and me, we're in it together. You died for it, and I'm going to have to live with it. You'll just have to sit and be patient until I get myself killed and we can go over how all of this was supposed to have gone, cause I sure as hell ain't got a clue."

Twirling the bo staff for a few seconds to make good on his intended finale, blue energy drags through the air like a firefly on it's collision into the sediment wall. Refusing to concede to the cold eruption of liquid that roars like a waterfall into the cavern, the man leans forward until equalization has finally had it's fill for the newly created aquifer.

Taking one last look around, the man's glowing blue eyes flicker to the air bubbles that gurgle out from underneath his heels. Turning back forward, small vibrations impact with each heel forward. Slow but dutiful, he dredges through the watery passage into an eventual incline that becomes ever more difficult as hard sediment begins to shift into slippery mud. Forced to slam his staff down as a third leg less he slip back down the dark abyss, he eventually finds himself leveling off just before the first hairs on his head find air once again.

"Gaaarrrbbb-!"

Shooting forth into the life giving air, the man knee splatters down hard onto the mud as the chill of life giving air desperately tries to breach the water rushing back out in his coughing fit. Somehow keeping his grip over his shoulder, he continues to cough and gag with no free hand to wipe away what stings his eyes. Brought into his current dilemma through his own idiocy, he gasps in just enough air to laugh himself into another.

"Ack! Hah..." The man spits and slowly recollects himself, still anchored by one knee in the mud. "Like I said, just be patient."

Rising yet again from the muck, eyes flickering alive with orange brilliance as he turns his head to his surroundings, he finds his current position in the drained basin nothing impeding. Turning in place to give the entirety a once over, it is what his eyes shouldn't see that holds his all.

"Hot damn is this place alive." His quick shifts of attention to certain directions linger longer than others. "Definitely not random concentrations." Cussing underneath his breath at only himself. "There's one only a few miles away."

First step. Blast far enough through sediment far weaker than assumed and kill a whole bunch of indigenous beings.

"Well. No one needs to know." Looking around the drained basin once more. "Least no one cares about something like this."