The Gooseberry sat unattended and seemingly abandoned when Teeg discovered it lazily hanging out in a forest clearing. This was both a good thing (if there was only one working ship on all of Chagrin, what better place than right in front of them?), and a highly suspect thing (if there was only one working ship on all of Chagrin, what are the chances it would be right in front of them?)

She signalled for everyone to keep quiet, keep their eyes open, and keep low in the brush until she could determine whether this was a trap, just a really great parking spot (in Chagrin terms) or perhaps just a pit stop for a deadly anteater Teddy Bear to stop for a pee.

Oh, she knew it was an obvious trap, as did Gekko and Clory, but felt it was best not to alarm Potto (who would no doubt ask a lot of arbitrary questions about it) or Aye (who would no doubt panic and get that vacant stare a dog gets when caught in a thunderstorm). Best to let on it was just the pee break.

Clory spoke with the surrounding trees through vibrations sent underground. Even though most ignored her (trees being very good at ignoring things) she found out from a rather extroverted pine that there was indeed a Teddy Bear close by.

They needed this ship, however. From the tree tops Gekko signalled to Teeg that she couldn't see any enemies, Teddy Bear or otherwise.

"How we all gonna fit in there?" Aye asked far too loudly, making Teeg shush him, which made Potto giggle and get shushed himself.

Clory moved ahead slowly. She wavered her arms back and forth lightly to give the impression she was merely a shuffling tree blowing in the non-existent breeze. It didn't matter whether or not there was a breeze...no one suspects the foliage. Once beside the ship, she opened the hatch.

Immediately a hidden Toobli sprang towards her from his hiding place behind some lovely throw pillows.

Clory started madly swatting with her branchy limbs but he was too fast for her. He cut and slashed, and slivers of Clory flew about like a woody blizzard. She plunged her rooty toes into the ground to stabilize her body and before he could jump up again, she grabbed him. This wouldn't last long. The little bugger was strong for his size and had too many sharp bits. If he started spinning, he might just saw through her like he were a living wood chipper.

Gekko whistled from above and sent Teeg a quick telepathic message.

"There are more coming now. Many, many more," Teeg shouted, relaying the message.

Aye froze (again). As much as he liked to think of himself as a bar brawler, he really was more of an under-table-hider. He was also more of a punch taker than a punch giver, even if that punch were served in a bowl and spiked with Alorean anti-freeze gin-bourbon.

There was too much going on, and though his brain screamed "RUN!!", his body yodelled "Which way? Oh shit, it doesn't really matter! Death is upon us!", which kept both brain and body at a stand-still.

Potto was more concerned with Clory's welfare then his own. This was not some kind of marvellous bravery; it was an ignorance to his dire situation. It was an inability to see past the one thing that was concerning him without considering any cause-and-effect. It was very much like accidentally dropping a coin off of a bridge and then jumping off to retrieve it, forgetting that there was a one-thousand-and-forty-foot drop and a very hard ground that would splatter the very brain that was still thinking "Oh! My coin!"

As he ran towards her (which was a horrible idea), he looked up. There was a strange piece of space garbage floating in the sky right above the clearing. He stopped (which was a much better idea).

Gekko dropped down to the ground and stood by Teeg as the two readied themselves for a fight to the death, one they were sure to lose, but always ready for.

Knowing that she couldn't hold onto Toobli much longer, and as he painfully sliced through the vines that held him before she could spear a branch through his forehead (a finishing move she often employed in these situations), Clory threw him back into the hatch of the Gooseberry. She closed it, and climbed over the entire tiny ship, wrapping it with her strongest limbs. He was trapped inside as she covered the ship like an old Earth pickup truck that had been abandoned in a swamp and enveloped in bayou vegetation. He would have to tear his ship apart to get out.

She took the type of deep breath only a lung-less sentient tree could take.

As many varied sub-species of Teddy Bears came out of the woods surrounding them, a green smoke was released from the piece of garbage floating above the clearing before anyone (apart from Potto) had noticed it.

Potto had still been staring at it in wonder when his consciousness left him and he collapsed onto the soil. Teeg and Gekko tumbled towards each other losing theirs.

Aye drifted off feeling relieved. He could finally take a nap rather than "deal with even one more thing", as he felt the grip of an electronic claw lift him off of the ground and through the unexpected thick green fog, as if he was the plush prize in an arcade claw crane machine.

~~~

There were only two things Gladd Hepptonne liked about his job.

First and foremost, that he didn't have to work with anyone (especially that bastard Phrewy Tarmuster who scolded everybody and everything). And second that (thanks to that bastard Phrewy Tarmuster who worked so much overtime scolding everybody and everything) he was able to show up late and go home early every day and still get paid for a full shift.

Due to his hatred for Phrewy (and being talked to as if he were a child), he was quite delighted to start his shift tripping over the decapitated body of the scolding bastard. It was lying only a few feet from the body of a Public Relations man he had only seen once before when he was first hired.

He shrugged and quickly decided that they had been lovers who got into a heated argument over kale and killed each other in a blind rage because they knew they would never, ever see eye-to-eye on the leafy green. Somehow one of them managed to lose their head in the squabble. He wasn't a forensic scientist, and was quite comfortable glossing over all the plot holes in his theory.

He walked away, leaving the truth for the cleaning crew, and thinking about a funny joke he had heard earlier about bass players.

He barely noticed the trophy he had stepped on (and crushed underfoot) when he heard a mighty roar and the walls started shaking. A giant light bulb was coming straight for him through the garage.

He had just enough time to jump out of the way.

Unfortunately, due to the size of most space ships (this one included), jumping out of the way wasn't jumping far enough. He quickly experienced that last thing a mosquito flying across a busy highway experiences.

He left a marvellous pair of almost-new trophy-stomping boots behind, however. And as a bonus for whoever found them, they came with a perfectly good pair of feet still in them.

All at once this Lyme Node Space Ship Parking Enforcement and Impound Lot was temporarily understaffed and had no one upstairs in PR to hire anyone new.

~~~

Stig/Knutt found it difficult to fly the ship without a pilot. Though the technology had always been around, regulations had been set for ship manufacturers. Knutts were not programmed to fly without pilots to keep them from stealing themselves.

Though they were also programmed back then not to steal themselves, a virus had been created by crafty space ship thieves to corrupt Knutt programming so that they could in fact steal themselves anyway and then deliver themselves to said thieves.

So, these bad apples had to ruin the whole basket, and anti-autopilot regulations were set up that made Knutts much harder to hack.

Though perhaps it just took a bit of Stig to get this Shiv going. A little bit of human passion. And she had it going alright, the Shiv and the passion. But steering was near impossible, and without Jimmy powering the ship, she was unknowingly diverting a bit of her own brain power to keep it off the ground.

The Shiv raced through the garage. It crashed around spiralled ramps and bounced from wall to wall, taking down support pillars and denting other impounded ships. She may have taken out a woman taking her dog out for a lazy underground walk along the way. It was hard to tell.

Where there was a woman walking her dog moments before, there was now just a rather confused looking dog by itself. The woman may have run off unexpectedly. (Yes. Yes. She told herself that the woman had run off unexpectedly. Yes. Most definitely. Yes.)

Thankfully she did get a slight power charge to her shields while merely trying to stay off the ground, and all this bouncing around was causing far more damage to her surroundings than to her. She hit a few more support beams and the entire building started to make horribly loud, and expensive sounding noises.

She didn't notice. She was now a tad dizzy, and could only think of saving her beloved.

She burst through the huge rolling door to the impound lot. As she left, the entire high-rise collapsed on one side at the garage level. This didn't destroy the building, but tipped it over slowly so that it gently crashed in a nice lazy lean onto the building next to it, physics be damned.

This high-rise would be known from that moment on as The Leaning Tower of Frustrating Inconvenience. All its residents and office workers would just have to get used to the new angle and the rolling of everything that once stayed put. This novelty would raise rent and have tourists constantly hanging about, taking pictures.

Stig/Knutt was outside now and honed in on the exterior of her ninety-eighth-floor flat with what little navigational programming she could operate.

No, no...not her flat. Vitrie's flat. Just Vitrie's now.

~~~

It was quite common for Aye to dream about his childhood. In his sleep he was always travelling back to a time that was most uncomfortable when his physical body was at its most cozy comfortable.

He would dream of his father the evil son-of-a-bitch tyrant. Where his mother once lived in his memory, there was now only a hole.

He couldn't remember anything about her. At times he wasn't even sure he had ever had a mother. Perhaps, he thought, he was just another invention of Mel Aye's twisted mind.

Once in a drunken stupor he had become convinced of this and had dissected a portion of his arm looking for wire and bells and whistles. He had found nothing of the sort and had to spend some time in a Lyme Node hospital. First being stitched up and topping up lost blood (not easy to find Topher blood off Towerscape), and then a few weeks in the psychiatric ward so that his doctors could be sure he didn't try it again.

The particular green gas-induced dream he was having now started out the same as many of the others. He was in his father's robotics workshop.

Usually at some point his father would pop up from behind a robot and yell at him, take his shoes, and make Aye eat them. But not this time.

This time he was alone. All the lights were off, all but a small candle dimly lighting the room. He stared at it. The flame stared back. He grimaced. The flame grimaced back.

The flame then changed shape.

Though Aye had never seen a fairy before, he was sure that this was, indeed, a fairy. It buzzed about where the flame once flickered. It spoke.

"I don't like you," Bundle said.

"I'm sorry," Aye stuttered, at a loss for words.

"But I need your help. I need you to help Potto."

"I don't want to help anybody. I just want to go home," he muttered.

"I need you to be bigger than that. I need to help you realize what you could be."

"And what, pray tell, could I be?"

"His friend."

Aye was at a loss for words again, but soon managed a weak "I don't know how."

Bundle smiled warmly. Not because she suddenly felt something for Aye, but because she thought he needed it.

"Perhaps this will help..."

With a snap of her tiny fingers, his father's robotics workshop disappeared and was replaced with a library. Shelves of books rose up for miles, disappearing into the darkness, no ceiling in sight. A fireplace lit the room with a warm glow. This all seemed so familiar to Aye.

He sat by the fire in a big comfy chair and stared. The fairy was gone.

"Here you go, my little Aye-Aye. Sweet tea. Did you pick a book?" a woman asked, startling him from his fireplace-induced daze, handing him the sweetest smelling mug.

He looked up at the woman and his body froze and his eyes exploded into something he hadn't felt drip down his cheeks in over thirty years. Real tears.

"Mom?"

~~~

When Potto opened his eyes he could see Gekko sitting up. She looked dazed. Her saucer eyes were mere egg cups. She slowly looked over at him. He smiled. She looked away rolling those egg cups.

Teeg was lying next to her still unconscious. Aye was in fetal position loudly snoring, and Clover was already on her feet, trying to get a wobble to stop.

He sat up himself, and looked about. They were on the roof of a Lyme Node high-rise, with a second high-rise inexplicably leaning on it. There was a slight drizzle of rain. The usual drizzle.

Teeg opened her eyes and immediately sprang to her feet like she had slept in for work. She looked about quickly.

"What happened?" she asked with a dizzy urgency.

"I think we're dead and this is the afterlife. So moderately damp! I'd have pictured it dryer," Potto answered in his most helpful tone.

"This isn't the afterlife, dummy," Aye yawned as he rolled over. "We're back home. That's my building taking a rest on this building. That novelty is gonna raise my rent and have tourists constantly hanging about, taking pictures."

"Have you been crying?" Potto asked with genuine concern.

"No! It's the slight drizzle of rain! Now...I would really like to go back to sleep if no one has any objections," he barked defensively.

"We've been rescued! My prayers have been answered!" Clover beamed.

"Hmmm. Prayers? Prayers to whom?" Potto inquired.

"Prayers to everyone!" Clover smiled, "And everything! Everything in the entire universe my good Potto. Prayers to everything in the universe!!"

"Oh, I like that!" Potto sang.

"Where is Clory?" Teeg interrupted. Her blood pressure was on the rise, as was the volume of her voice.

They all looked about. Clory was nowhere to be seen. She had been left behind.

Teeg was gobsmacked. Clory was her sister in so many ways, and this was a devastating blow. The more she tried not to show panic in her voice the angrier she got.

"Oh for fuck's sake! You two are fucking bad luck, that's what you are. Bad fucking luck. Totally not worth it!" Teeg screamed at Potto and Aye, knowing deep down that the more they seemed not worth it, the more worth it they likely were.

"Hey, hey, hey!" snorted Aye, "let me remind you that your lizard over there grabbed me. I just wanted a uniform from an already-dead-guy in a damn fine uniform. Next thing I know I'm bullshitting my way around the stupid universe."

At this point Teeg thought it important to assert her dominance. She didn't like to be talked back to. Especially by cretons. Especially by cretons who she blamed. She leapt at Aye and lifted him off the ground by his neck.

"She is not a lizard," she said with such cold chill that if Gekko had been a lizard she may have quickly gone into hibernation by simply being in Teeg's vicinity.

She let him fall to the ground as a ship loudly whizzed past them, almost knocking them off the building to what, presumably, would have been their deaths.

"Wasn't that your ship?" she asked Potto.

"I dunno," he shrugged. "I have a ship?"

They all ran to the edge of the building to see where it had gone. It had stopped in front of a lower level window of the leaning building. It just seemed to hang there in mid-air, facing the window like a big metallic Peeping Tom.

All was silent for about ten seconds before a hail of laser fire directly at the building sent the glass shards and concrete flying through the air. Once it had blasted a big enough hole, it flew it's nose right into the flat (and any adjoining flats...it was a fairly sizable ship, and flats weren't sizable at all. Nor rent controlled.)

Teeg, Gekko, Potto, Aye and Clover all watched in stunned silence.

"Well that was weird," Potto finally said.

~~~

Vitrie wasn't one to give into any hype. She knew of Weird Jimmy's reputation. She also knew he must have had something to do with Stig's disappearance and probable death.

She knew he was strong and relentless and cruel and psychotic and unstoppable, but a funny (peculiar, not comical) thing happens to one when they feel empty and tired and angry. They also feel strong and relentless and cruel and psychotic and unstoppable simply because they stop caring about themselves and feel they have nothing to lose.

The hurt grows bigger than fear. As does the anger.

Weird Jimmy was on her in seconds with his butter knife ready to do things far worse than buttering. She didn't cower; she fought back.

She grabbed the empty "fanged dangling jessop" stew pot and hit him so hard in the face that three teeth went flying and his jaw looked unhinged. He didn't fall though. He shook it off, jaw wobbling, and grabbed her by the throat and squeezed.

She smashed him again and again as she struggled for breath and felt her skin on the verge of tearing and her neck on the verge of snapping. He lost more teeth but kept on squeezing. However, before her flesh could actually tear or her bones could snap, the flat's picture window shattered in a hail of laser fire and glass and concrete dust and terrifying shadows. The lasers were not aimed at her, but Vitrie hit the floor hard.

Before she passed out, she watched as a laser took Jimmy's arm clear off. It landed beside her, smelling of burnt steak and melted butter knife.

Weird Jimmy looked at his severed arm with the disconnected curiosity only someone void of all rational feeling could. He picked it up and held the dripping end up to the dripping shoulder it had once been attached to as if it would somehow stick if he lined it up right. It didn't.

He looked down to Vitrie on the floor. She looked dead, and that would have to do for now. He had a much bigger, much more metallic victim to take care of. A victim with plush vinyl seats. He would rather be incinerated by laser-fire than be imprisoned back in the Shiv's engine room.

The ship seemed to be resting its base-of-a-light-bulb-looking nose in the front picture window of the flat. He rushed it with such ferociousness, power and intimidation, that Stig/Knutt actually shrieked and backed up, recoiling in fear.

Jimmy leapt out of the window like an attacking bionic puma after sixteen Turkish coffees. He would have made it to her too if she hadn't fired her lasers on him, catching him in the face mid-air, ninety-eight floors above the damp concrete below.