If there were but one humanoid species in the vast ocean of space more irritating and more despised than a Blankton clone, it was a Yaygher clone.

Perhaps because, when Emperor Reginald Zophricaties had used his disastrous Master Cloner to make lesser-formed and far more inferior copies of himself to infest the universe, he got lazy partway through the process and started cloning the clones. What resulted was an even lesser formed and far more inferior version of Blanktons.

Zophricaties, realizing his mistake, tried to rectify the situation by exterminating as many of these "barely-sentient mistakes" as he could, but hundreds of thousands of them escaped and spread throughout the galaxy.

He had named them Yayghers after his ex-brother-in-law Pixelle Yaygher, a small-town real estate broker on his ex-wife's home planet of Vex 4 that constantly made fun of his cleft palate, called him Reggie, and continually tried to sell him on Vexian bungalows.

Most others simply referred to Yayghers as "Sewer Rats". They were only half the height as Blanktons, couldn't grow the moustache, couldn't work out how to put a patch on their eye without somehow blinding themselves in both eyes, and they had wispy bright red curly hair on their heads that extended to their backs and didn't match the rest of the hair on their bodies. They generally lived in sewers (hence the nickname), under bridges, secretively in corn silos, abandoned warehouses and they occasionally squatted in dilapidated Vexian bungalows thanks to a vengeful "Reggie".

They were also known to commit crimes to intentionally get thrown into both big prisons and small stockades alike.

~~~

K'ween's stockades looked like they were designed by the Spanish Inquisition's top prison interior designer. There were three main dingy cells beside a slightly less dingy (but more blood-stained) torture chamber. Straw was strewn about on the floors for bedding, and empty but filthy pig troughs were bolted to the stone floor of each for feeding. There was a stinking hole of horrors in the floor of each for emptying one's self.

Potto and Aye were in separate cells, each with a different cellmate. In the corner of Potto's cell, a younger looking woman in filthy rags slept, curled up like a cat and covering her head with her arms.

In Aye's cell a filthy Yaygher sat gnawing on a large and completely meatless bone like a desperate animal. Neither cellmate seemed to notice Potto or Aye.

"I can't believe you," Aye scolded. "I was just about to have an eight-some. Probably. Maybe. I dunno. Regardless..."

"I'm sorry! I didn't do it on purpose. I think I might be irresistible," Potto said sheepishly.

"I don't think that's it, Quarol. Just in comparison to your friend," interrupted the guard standing by. Her name was Pannick, and Potto recognized her as K'ween's main guard and the woman who made the unsettling sound of an alarm with her throat. Aye winced at the insult. Potto smiled at the word "friend".

"You are both very lucky K'ween survived or you'd both already be dead, regardless of what The Node wants," she added.

"Can you make that noise again?" Potto asked.

"No," coughed Pannick.

Aye sighed heavily and turned to Potto. "I know you didn't do it on purpose. I'm betting you don't do anything on purpose. I bet you haven't even gotten it up since...have you ever gotten it up?"

"Gotten what up?" Potto asked innocently. After a second, and a downward crotch-level glance from Aye, he finally clued in. "Oh!" he blushed, "Oh no, no, no. I don't kill. Nobody deserves that. Nobody deserves my kind of cruelty," he continued sadly.

"You? Cruel?" Aye laughed. "C'mon. You are incapable of killing a jaundice beetle. We just have no luck, buddy."

"Buddy?" Potto brightened up. "I'm your buddy? I like it when you call me that. Or maybe Scamp, or Baby Boy."

"Okay, shut up, Baby Boy!" Aye snapped.

~~~

After several hours, Aye was starting to feel a little claustrophobic. The woman asleep in Potto's cell hadn't moved an inch. Whether she was awake or not was anyone's guess. The gross little man in Aye's cell had only taken a break from gnawing on his bone to have a squat over the hole, much to Aye's dismay.

"This is the worst. That was the worst. What are we going to do?" Aye asked in Potto's direction, but not necessarily to Potto.

"Nothin' you can do," wheezed the Yaygher, putting down the bone. "Either rot here or get executed. Might as well enjoy it. I looooooove it." He then laughed for an uncomfortable amount of time.

"Enjoy it?" Aye responded, "It's a shit-hole prison. Literally. Its main feature is a shit hole."

The Yaygher lifted up his bone. "Yeah, but the food is good." He then pointed to the young woman. "You get to sleep in late, set your own hours...and sometimes a lonely jailer will come down and...uh...use you, if you know what I mean."

"Don't look at me, you repulsive little sewer rat," Pannick rebutted as she left the outer chamber in disgust, hoping to switch off her shift with another guard.

"Which means," he continued, "That they come in and hose you down once a month whether you need it or not! It's like a frickin' spa!"

"What are you in for?" Aye asked.

"K'ween sniffed me down," answered the Yaygher.

"Gross. But so what?"

"Well, I sniffed back. Big no-no here. Was worth it though, she smelled like burnt plastic and raisins," the Yaygher said dreamily.

"My head hurts. I need a drink," Aye muttered.

A few moments later Pannick came back in the room with a very sharp-looking glaive.

"To your feet Yaygher," she said with a touch of joy. "K'ween has decided that the cells are getting too crowded and you're clogging up your hole. Your time has come."

The Yaygher scrambled to his feet as Pannick entered the cell. "That's fair. Well, it was a good ru--"

With a mighty swoosh of the glaive, the Yaygher's sentences (both verbal and prison time) were cut short, as was his height. His head rolled across the floor and his body collapsed down on itself, before Pannick dragged it off, leaving the head.

"What am I supposed to do with that?" Aye stuttered.

"Lunch," smiled Pannick.

"Yeah. Go for it," said the smiling head of the Yaygher. "I might just be delicious," he winked.

~~~

Back on the Muse, Teeg paced, Gekko climbed, and Clory took root in the sandbox where she absorbed her meals.

A rescue was being planned. Teeg had made rescues before, and she had thwarted even more of them. She knew that she could easily get in. She and her crew were trusted members of the Barbohdeans, and K'ween revered them. For now.

What she would be giving up weighed heavily on her. She would go from hunter to hunted, but she knew this was big. Bigger than her. Bigger than K'ween. Bigger than everything.

~~~

Much like a child, Aye needed to be entertained. When Aye was bored, he got maudlin. He didn't like to give himself too much time to speculate. A pondering Aye was an Aye that hated himself. Drink and activity kept him happily narcissistic.

Something Potto had said was stuck in his mind. He had grown up on a planet where life was not terribly important and though one wanted to survive and feared death, murder was fairly commonplace. He had never met someone who was opposed to it, or openly admitted it anyway.

"You said earlier that you don't kill. Whaddya mean?" he finally asked.

Potto smiled and went into a daze. He had been daydreaming about his own personal fairy, Bundle. She had been fluttering around inside his head and was trying again to get him to remember. When he answered Aye, his voice was different. Almost...intelligent.

"I don't remember anything about my life. I'm sure I had a youth. Everybody has a youth, right? I don't remember mine. That gets me thinking even more about it as I try to remember. So, I started making one up. It became such a habit that I can't look at anyone for too long without making one up for them as well. Even for just a second.

"So, if I were to look down the barrel of a gun with my hand on the trigger, hundreds of events would go through my mind. I'd look into that person's eyes and I'd see a childhood. I'd see that person playing with their parents, unaware of future struggles or dangers. I'd see that person having a favourite food, and a favourite colour. I'd see that person crying themselves to sleep because of a lost friendship or a broken heart. I'd see that person going to school. Maybe they hated math. Maybe they feared gym. Maybe they loved art class. Or spelling. Maybe other kids ignored them. Maybe they listened to music for countless hours to help them feel less lonely, or maybe to help them fall asleep.

"Maybe they questioned their faith. Maybe they questioned their sanity. Or maybe something happened that was so horrible that they started hating everything. Maybe it was so bad they wanted revenge on everyone. Maybe they got hit on the head, or had some kind of chemical imbalance in their brain. Maybe they had a dog. Maybe they liked camping. Maybe they had too many secrets they wished they could unload.

"All the things that made that person who they are, and all of the adventures good and bad, all the countless hours they spent being Doug, or Wendy or Geppetto or...you, sweet Dickhead. All that snuffed out in an instant? By me? By ME? Who am I to be the one to end their adventure? To close that person's book and say 'no more chapters for you!' To stop the clock on those countless hours they put into living, growing, loving, dreaming and simply being? Who am I?"

Aye was speechless. He was expecting "I dunno". Finally he quietly muttered while looking at his shoes, "My name is Aye. Not Dickhead."

"They say that your life flashes before your eyes right before you die, but for me their life would flash right before my eyes if I were to aim that gun at them. Do you understand, dear Aye?" Potto added sadly.

Pannick had been listening too. She had taken it all in.

"What if that person was going to kill your children? Or your wife?" she asked, tearing up. This had all struck a chord. She spoke of her children. Her wife.

"Then I guess I'd have to stop them. I guess the fear of losing my children, and betraying that silent oath to protect them, or the unbearable pain of seeing them suffer might have me replace thoughts of my enemy's adventures with those of my loved ones," Potto said.

"So then you'd kill?" asked Pannick.

Potto snapped out of it and his voice returned its normal idiocy.

"I dunno," he said quietly.

The young woman in Potto's cell had been awake the entire time Potto and Aye had been in their cells. She was listening, deciding whether her new cellmate was dangerous or not, and debating what she would do, what she could do, if he was. Upon hearing Potto's words, she not only felt safe, but also intrigued. She sat up.

"Hey! Look who's up!" said Potto.

She sadly looked over at the head of her only means of conversation for ages, the Yaygher, which Aye had kicked to the corner of his cell. It was, at least for the moment, still very much alive and trying fruitlessly to gnaw at the bone again but the bone was comically just out of reach.

"Oh! Yeah....sorry about your friend there," Potto offered. "But, hey, looks like you're next, so you won't be mourning for long!" he said, trying to be optimistic but failing miserably.

Luckily, she seemed to ignore this. She stared at Potto. Despite being covered in dirt, she had large, very beautiful crystal blue eyes that shone through the filth like sad and tired tropical, yet otherworldly, pools.

Sensing she was afraid of him, Potto extended a hand. "No no no! Don't be frightened...I'm good people. Here, smell my hand."

The girl ignored this gesture. "What...what are you?" she finally said with wonder.

"Sorry?" Potto answered.

"You're all pale. Are you a spirit?"

"She's asking what species you are, Baby Boy," Aye snapped.

"Oh. I don't remember right now. Catch me off-guard later," Potto answered. "That seems to be the best way to get answers from me."

"He's a Quarol," Aye said, rolling his eyes.

"Really?" she said astonished.

"Well there ya go," Potto added. "I should really write that down on my hand. What are you?"

"I am an Oian."

"The spirit world?" Aye laughed in disbelief. "That's a frickin' myth!"

"My name is Clover, and I am not a myth," she said.

"Bullshit. You're not from O-bode. You'd have the legs of a goat or something. Man, that would be so hot," Aye mused.

"The only myth is that it is a spirit world. It's actually a regular, tangible world. It's just dominated by the presence of spiritual belief. Every spiritual belief. Oians have done away with fear, believing fear to be the root of all evil in the reachable universe. I came here to help the women here find their inner peace. To stop their violence. It obviously didn't work out so well. The women here are smugglers, assassins, criminals. They've been hurt too badly. Too far gone." Clover said. "I tried to show them a life without fear, and now all I know is fear."

"Yeah, that'll happen," said Aye. He hadn't been paying attention, but instead was holding up the bone that the Yaygher's head was now hanging onto with its teeth.

"But there is a prophecy," she went on, "that one of light and one of dark, belonging to no particular spiritual belief at all, will unify and save us all from the fear. Two beings coming from different worlds...both homeless and lost. Our people have been scouring the night skies looking for their energies for decades. All that is known is that the light one is all colours when he wishes. The dark one holds benevolence in his ignorance and is ignorant to his benevolence. Quarols can change colour, no?"

Aye dropped the bone moments after the head had dropped, only half paying attention now. "Yeah, in a completely useless way with this one I imagine. Pretty sure this Quarol is broken."

Tears started to stream down Clover's face, cutting through the grime. A look of awe, relief, and joy on her face. She got up and put her hand on Potto's cheek.

"I have found you," she whispered. "I have found you both!"

Potto was moments away from saying something stupid when the spearhead on the tip of Pannick's glaive came popping out of his chest from behind. He looked down at his bloody chest.

"Well...I guess that's the end of my adventure..." Potto said before his body went limp and he slid off of the blade and onto the straw floor.

~~~

Vibloblblah Ooze watched from the darkness of the chamber's rafters overhead, completely unseen. All he predicted had happened, up until that moment where the young woman in Potto's cell had lifted her head. Then everything went haywire.

Even though he could talk, it was through an electronic device that covered his mouth to amplify his damaged voice box. He rarely spoke, so he rarely had it turned on. He only wore it because it also helped him breathe.

It was just as well he hadn't turned it on, for three unintended words softly made their way from that damaged voice box to his horribly scarred, almost non-existent lips.

With those words his body froze and his world came crashing down.

"Clover. My...love..."

And for the first time in his long and ancient life, Vibloblablah Ooze felt ugly. Uglier than everything.