Right now, I have the pleasure of being the first human to ever know how a surprised gigantic, dotted raccoon looks like. I have to say, it’s not a very flattering look on Dot-y.

“Are you sure?” Dot-y asks me in a trembling voice. “Someone just put that ship’s name in the list as a joke. No one ever picks it up.”

“Positive.” I nod at him.

“You can always change your-“

“Positive.” I repeat myself.

“Okay. Well then, please follow me.” Dot-y says in an exasperated voice.

So like a goat following another goat, like a child following the Pied Piper of Hamlin and like Hansel and Gretel following the bread crumbs, I follow Dot-y~

And I follow~ and I follow~

Merry go round the mulberry bush, mulberry bush, mulberry bush~~

Seriously, this following is taking too long. I wonder if Dot-y is taking me to an abandoned corner to kill me and hide my corpse. I haven’t insulted him till now, right?

Unfortunately and to my great horror, Dot-y does take me to an abandoned corner.

Fortunately, he does not kill me.

“Open the doors and the ship is all yours.” He tells me as he points to a gigantic spherical ship.

I waste no time and walk up the ramp and to the very small doors of the ship. Seriously, the ship is so damn big, yet the designers made the doors this small? Were they short on materials or something?

The doors did not have a key-hole or a biometric system. I wonder how I am supposed to open it. Do I knock on the door or something?

Oh well, there’s nothing to lose here.

I raise my fist and knock on the door.

*Knock! Knock!*

“Who’s there?”

“Robin.”

“Robin who?”

“Robin you! Hand over your cash!”

Disclaimer: The conversation above is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

No animals were harmed in the making of this conversation, Freddy’s or otherwise.

Silence. That’s my only response.

So, I knock again.

Once…

Twice…

Thrice…

This is irritating.

Open the door? What is that supposed to mean anyways?

Is this a trick question? I want the Freddy’s to stop playing with me like this. First it was the gibberish in conscription tests and now this.

Is this supposed to be some kind of yen bullshit?! “Open the doors to your potential and the ship shall be yours” or some crap like that?!!

I look back at Dot-y to see him smirking at me. He shrugs in response to the expression on my face, making fun of my methods.

Okay, this whole day has been pretty bad for me.

First, that Chatterbox speaks my ears and sanity off.

I nearly become a murderer.

Then, I meet that twice damned Green-y.

I nearly get a sign of my future failure to fail by meeting him/her/it.

The ship’s door refuses to open despite my best ‘efforts’.

Now, even a giant dotted raccoon is making fun of me.

What the hell.

I kick the doors angrily.

“Open Up!”

The doors shiver as I kick them but they still do not budge.

Ah, I am getting pretty irritated now. Quite angry, I am sure.

“Either the damn doors open when I count to three or else…” I leave my threat hanging at the end.

I continue kicking the doors.

“One.”

Kick.

“Two”

Kick. Kick.

“Thre-“

The doors open with a creaking, haunting sound.

I stare at the dark, chill-inducing interior of the space ship and raise my hands.

“Victory!”

Booyah!

Then I turn and look at the shocked face of the a-hole Dot-y.

Who’s your daddy now? Me, that’s who!

*****************************************

Dot-y POV

Meeting a new conscript is not supposed to be my job. Yet the management handed over the job to me. Apparently, the aforementioned recruit is a human who got lucky and scored really high on both the first and second tests. That lucky bastard is getting promoted straight to be a Captain.

I have served in the UGF army for 15 years and have yet to be made a Captain and get my own ship. But why! Why and how can a newbie human get to the place I want to so easily!

I look at the information I have on the terminal in my hands and sigh. I know the reason why. However, I am sure there must have been some kind of a mistake. A human, a race that never believed in the supernatural or unlocking of the psyche’s power could never have the specs that the results indicate.

I was pretty smug when I saw the human. His name was Neal, as indicated by the files. He was an absent minded fellow. His eyes seemed to be disinterested in what was around him, looking at everything and yet nothing. His body-language screamed his thoughts: “This is just as I knew it must be. Nothing is new. Everything is normal.”

A very bored human. One who doesn’t appreciate what he has. Those were the thoughts I had about him.

A person like that will die first in any battle, so said my experience.

When I introduced myself to him, in the end, he didn’t reply in kind.

When I told him about the Geneva base and its details, he didn’t seem impressed.

When I told him about his new position and taunted him, trying to get a rise, he didn’t respond.

I was expecting him to stay silent all along the way, never even spending a second thought about me. When I told him to pick a ship to captain, he silently took the interface from my hand and began browsing it almost immediately.

I expected him to be disinterested in the ships too and take about a month or so to pick one. Other Captains take 2-3 weeks, get to inspect each and every ship before deciding on one.

He didn’t.

He immediately picked a ship in the next few minutes.

The Dream Destroyer.

The ship that had ended an entire space civilization once upon a time.

The ship that had never accepted someone as its cleaner, let alone its Captain.

It was only put in the list as a joke.

Everyone knew about that ship.

No one was going to pick it up and no one was going to be willing to crew it.

Everyone knew that too.

Yet, he didn’t even hesitate when I asked him a second time. He only replied with a word.

For the first time since I met him, his eyes were not unfocused. They were clear, decisive.

I decided to let him try. He will fail just like the people before him did when they tried to control that. After that, I will gloat and tell him “I told you so.”

After-all, he was only a newbie human and maybe ignorant of the ship’s infamy.

So I tried to let him down gently. I told him to “open the doors.” After failing that, surely that newbie human will know his place and listen to me when I explain his failure. He will learn to respect his seniors. That was the plan.

The human was truly a newbie and really foolish. He tried to knock on the door to open it up. What an idiot.

If it worked like that then lots of people before him would have got the ship to work. But it truly was a novel approach to a problem. I wonder if anyone really had tried to knock on the doors to get the ship to open up?

I link to my interface and bring up records to check of anyone had. No one had ever tried this approach, so say the records. Of course, no one would be idiotic enough to knock on the doors of the most infamous Eldritch Starship to ever exist. This human is the first.

To my surprise, the human continues to knock on the doors even after the first time fails. What an idiot. If it doesn’t work the first and second time, obviously it isn’t going to work the third time.

However, my surprise doesn’t end there. The human proceeds to try to kick down the doors.

Kick them down! The doors of The Dream Destroyer! Is he suicidal?!

“Open Up!”

A wave of change comes crashing down on me. It begins centered on that human and spreads all around the base. The fabric of reality twists and crashes, bending to his will.

Over the sounds of him kicking a door, I hear the resounding crack of all the doors opening across the Base. The sounds of doors opening synchronously, cabinets being banged open, drawers and windows straining against their locks and opening. Everything that can open opened.

And for the first time in history, the doors of The Dream Destroyer shiver.

He continues kicking and screaming, beginning a countdown to three and threatening the infamous ship to open its doors. The scene was like a kid throwing a temper tantrum. Seemingly harmless.

I half expected it to stay closed, even after this change…

… But as the count ended, so did the doors to the ship open.

The human had succeeded in controlling that ship.

I look at the human. He looked delighted, his arms raised and an almost innocent grin etched across his face.

I look back down, the information from my terminal flashing across my retina in red.

Name: Neal of Earth

Species: Human

Position: Captain

Specialty: Reality Warper (pure) (minor)

I trembled in fear.

If this is the power of a minor (pure) Reality Warper, then I’ll change my name and live like a koala.

That is no human.

The man standing before with an innocent grin that scares only me…

… is a monster…