Sometimes the tiny little tidbits of joy found buried under humongous banks of shit could feel so huge, even in comparison to their monumental shit backdrop.

Aye was still missing. Those in charge of everything were still against them. The battle scars (both physical and mental) were starting to pile up on each other and criss-cross like a 3D road map of purgatory, and an egg containing a deadly embryo was rolling about all over the cargo bay floor like a pin-dangling cute-grenade.

Yet here they were, killers and fools...arms wrapped around a tree. Laughing. Crying tears of joy. Laughing more. (Disbelief!)

There would be much time to sink back into the shit bank later. For now, they were proving that some reunions were better than winning lotteries.

Clory was weak and husky, but she was happy. She would not be able to part with Potto for the time being. The sap that she had used to heal him, that harmlessly contaminated his ridiculous blood and enabled her to draw him to her through space like a magnet, needed to be shared for a while. Like a pre-mall Earth car battery, she just needed the boost and to run for a bit to start charging herself up.

Two small jumper-cable branches pierced his skin, but he did not complain. He was too wrapped up in the moment of laughing tears, quietly joy-weeping to himself inside his odorous protective space shell.

Besides, he was not a complainer, grumbler or whiner. These things rarely occurred to him.

Teeg put her forehead against her leafy sister, who was looking a bit too "late fall/early winter" for her liking, and told her "Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. A million times, thank you my sister. I should have said it so many times before. Thank you, thank you."

Gekko climbed up into her branchy hair, which jutted up like a dry, woody fountain. She continued her hugging and kind-of-terrifying-to-an-outsider yeee-like silent laughing. She offered many tiny tender kisses.

"I...I...I..." She was too overwhelmed to speak, even through her thoughts.

"I know, my love," Clory reassured silently. "Keep kissing, though. I like it. Never stop kissing, okay?"

"How can we help you, Clory?" Teeg transmitted.

"Give me time. Give me oxygen and food. Give me the Quarol for a short spell. His blood still contains my healing sap. That is how I was able to draw him to me. I'm afraid it was horribly painful for him, but we were both lucky to find one another," Clory thought.

Potto smiled widely, though no one could see him through his sick-caked helmet.

"We should probably remove the space suit," Clover piped up from the back of the room. No one had noticed her there, and for good reason. It wasn't she that had gone missing, much to Teeg's dismay. She didn't know Clory well, but she cried nonetheless because that's who Clover was.

"If we must," Teeg shrugged with a sly smile, only half-joking. It's not that she disliked the oddball Quarol, but she didn't want him ruining the mood with senseless yammering, which he was more than likely to do. He may not have been a grumbler, but he definitely was a senseless yammerer.

"The Quarol..." Clory continued telepathically. "We have a bond. I couldn't get past his block, but I could see faint images on the other side, and I know where it came from. I think with the Oian's help we could break through."

Just then the egg rolled over and knocked Clover in the ankle. She picked it up to examine it.

"Oh, n-n-n-n-n-n-n-no-no-no-no-nooooo, hell no," Teeg shouted as if her words were fired from a rapid-fire machine gun that shot no's instead of bullets. "Put that down. That's going back out into space."

"Is this a Teddy Bear egg?" Clover asked excitedly, shaking it next to her ear like a child shakes a birthday present. In all her years she had never seen one.

"It's evil. A whole lotta horribleness. Top-shelf abomination. I wouldn't hold it so close to your face. Y' know, if you like that face."

Clover put the egg down slowly. She was curious but not suicidal, and after many millennia, she had grown to quite like her face. It was a good face. A "top-shelf" face.

"Quickly...out the airlock. Before it does something stupid like hatch." Teeg demanded.

"Nooooooooooo!!!!!" Potto yelled inside the heads of Clory, Teeg and Gekko, causing them all to squint.

"Who said that?" Gekko thought.

"Potto is in here with us until we disconnect. Well, he's with me always, but for now, he's with you, too," Clory answered.

"We cannot destroy that egg. It's just a baby!" Potto pleaded.

"Oooooh yes we can. And we will. That's gonna be a nasty little baby Toobli Dentatan. Oh, it will be adorable, but an adorable killing machine. There is no nurture. These bastards are all nature. All instinct, and that instinct is killer."

"Actually, he's right for once. We have to save it. Not for cuddles or little feet pitter-patter. We need to stop on Vex 4 for fuel and we have no way of paying for it. A Teddy Bear egg is worth a fortune..." Gekko added.

"Ugh. Fine. It better not hatch before then," Teeg said rolling her eyes. "Find somewhere safe to store it. Like in concrete."

Clover, who had not heard a word of that in-head conversation, was busy prying off Potto's helmet. She was greeted by a horrible waft of regurgitated (and twice-liquified) ham and cheese on rye.

"Ok. We get fuel, and then back out to look for Aye, right?" Potto said aloud, happy to be free of his stinking fish bowl-like prison.

Sadly, no-one knew how to answer.

He took a deep breath of the ship's non-vomity air. He never noticed how sweet it smelled. Like old man hair and accidentally laundered pocket candy.

~~~

Though he had not specifically created it, somehow between the H.C. (happiness chip) and the L.C. (laughing chip), an A.C. (amusement chip) had created itself inside Mel Million Max. It made the crazy violence in the vintage Earth horror movies even more disturbingly enjoyable.

As he waited to attack, having kept his distance and showing great restraint, his life-like circuitry was fantasizing about killing Aye at a summer camp, in his dreams followed by snappy one-liners, with a nightmarish possessed doll, strapped to a torture chair after having to solve a series of painful and macabre puzzles, and being fed to various giant sharks, zombies and inbred hillbillies.

He had been following the Shiv's comings and goings very closely, yet he had no idea that Aye was not, in fact, on the ship. When last he had scanned, it was docked at Euphoria and Aye was on board then in his usual drunken dormancy. He had watched it escape as that horrible den of perversion was destroyed.

But it was almost time to strike. They were fuelling on Vex 4, and he would catch them as they left. He would have Aye finally, and he would kill Aye over and over.

He needed to stop thinking about it briefly and do some crosswords and Sudoku before his H.C. burned out from over-use. He was great at Sudoku. He could finish a whole book of Sudoku in less than a second.

As he waited, however, he was startled (which was not an easy thing to do to a meccanik), as several Kancorian-manned Vexian ships zipped by his craft on their way to the planet.

He had waited this long. A little bit longer wasn't going to kill him. He made popcorn for effect. He couldn't eat it, but he loved the idea of a food being inedible until it explodes.

~~~

As the Shiv pulled into a fuelling station on the surface of Vex 4, Potto rubbed his neck, circling his fingers over the holes where Clory had been plugged into him through the spring-flex neck of his space suit. Now that he was free of it (and her), they were merely small, mildly itchy bumps, like tiny insect bites, and nothing more. He gazed and dazed out an observation window.

He marvelled at the site of the nearby city that the fuelling station sat on the edge of. Giant billboards advertising rock-bottom prices of nearby bungalows obscured most of the view, but the lights from Krank City at night were like holiday decorations.

Promises of "0% down!" "Newly renovated!" "Definitely not haunted!" "Prefab at its Most Fab!" and "Now 76% Yaygher free!" were enticing. He wondered what a bungalow was. Perhaps a type of beverage or small pet. He was happy to hear that someone's beverage or small pet was no longer haunted.

It had only been an hour since he had separated from Clory, and although he still had her sap running through his veins and was relieved she was on the mend, he felt a tremendous loss. He had quite liked being attached to her. It was the most physically intimate that he'd been with anyone since being filled with Tractos poison.

Teeg was getting the egg safe to take out to the attendant for barter. Gekko was at the console preparing the ship to take on fuel while checking the water supply and coolant. Clover was off practising hypnosis. She would need to be in peak shape if she were to help the sentient tree find out the truth about the sentient Potto.

It started raining outside the ship. The city lights and a bungalow billboard promise of "Lonely? Now more ants!" were obscured by the wet, but the Shiv was getting a much-needed bath, and it made Knutt calm slightly. An uptight ship was not an efficient ship.

Teeg put the cantaloupe-sized egg in a heavy, padded cargo transport case. She took heavy chain and wrapped it around the case for extra security, and left the ship wishing she had an umbrella. As she looked across the well-lit fuelling station at all the other ships filling up, she noticed Jorge Jorge Jorge.

She ducked behind a rack of flotsam grease. This was going to be tricky. She swerved past a second rack of jetsam oil, in the opposite direction. She'd have to go around to a different attendant to avoid conflict. Normally she loved a good fight, but she was tired and really just wanted to relax with a bottle of something very, very strong.

Flotsam grease and jetsam oil were items she saw at every fuelling station and had always wondered what they were used for. They were always together like salt and pepper. But that was not on her mind at this time.

She stopped in her tracks and rubbed her eyes. Jorge Jorge Jorge had somehow impossibly zipped around to the other side.

Upon further stealthy investigation she counted four more Jorge Jorge Jorges fuelling various stolen Vexian ships. They were all just a little shorter than the original Koncorian hunter, and all just a tad less "sharp" looking, but the giant was among them, she could feel it in her bones.

She got back to the ship and started fuelling without paying. There was no time to pay. No time to barter. They already had The Node against them, they might as well have the Vexian authorities on their backs as well for fuel theft. As she filled the tank a large reptilian hand grabbed her by the throat and lifted her off the ground.

"I hear you've been very bad, Teeg," the original Jorge Jorge Jorge said in his tiny tot voice. It would have been hard to take him seriously if it hadn't been for the claws and fangs and hulking.

"Don't believe everything you hear, you ogre," Teeg managed through gags and gasps.

"You shouldn't call people names, you know. It's meeeeeean," he whined.

"Oh come on!" she thought. "It's one thing to talk like a little girl, but it's another to say things that a little girl would say. He has to be doing it on purpose."

"Put...me...down...let's...talk about...this," she said out loud. "I am...warning...you..."

"Ha ha ha ha ha ha!!" he giggled as if he were being tickled at his third birthday party.

Jorge Jorge Jorge wasn't used to being threatened. He wasn't used to being made fun of. He wasn't used to anyone knowing his one weak spot: the scale-less underside of his armoured scrotum. He wasn't used to fighting anyone with thigh-high, pointed boots.

When Teeg landed that pointed toe into that soft, fleshy area beneath his inexplainable gonads, it was apparent he also was not used to dropping a victim, or falling to the ground, feeling as if his testes were in his gizzard.

Teeg didn't waste time with unhooking the fuel line. She grabbed the egg-case and ran back to the hatch, closing it tight. "Knutt! Lock that hatch! Lock all hatches! Lock everything that locks!"

Within seconds the ship was surrounded by angry Jorge Jorge Jorge clones. Within more seconds Gekko, Clory, Clover and Potto had all joined her on the bridge.

"We have to get Potto off this ship. He's too important. If we are going down, he can't go down with us!" Clory thought with urgency.

Teeg turned to Clover. "You and Potto are getting off here. You are going to hide out in Krank City. We will get rid of these idiots and then come back and find you."

"But what if they..." Clover started sadly, overwhelmed with concern.

"Then you'll have to find another way to get him to O-bode. Get him there any way possible. Don't trust anyone. Maybe that guardian angel of yours will come and get you and give you a ride."

"But you! You!" Potto asked, even more overwhelmed with concern.

"Don't worry, my Potto. I will always find you," Clory said directly to his brain.

Potto calmed ever so slightly, but it was quite clear that he didn't want to leave them again. Ever again.

"Okay. How do we get off the ship with all those monsters out there?" Clover asked, giving in.

"I have an idea..." Teeg said as quickly as those words had ever been spoken.

~~~

The Node stood in front of his mirror. He looked sadly at his hair. He looked sadly at the fading shine on his marvellous chassis. He wondered if he would ever look good again.

General Eppie tried to match The Node's look of grave disappointment, but the joy in his horrible heart was making it difficult. He also tried to sound sincerely disappointed, but the little fits of giggling gave him away.

"Would you like to see the records again?" he offered The Node.

"No." The Node said very, very quietly, and the living definition of sullen.

Vrume stood before them, hands cuffed behind his back. He was very, very cross with himself. Not only had he killed an innocent and uncommonly handsome Sammolite, but he had underestimated Eppie.

Eppie had used the Sammolite as bait to further prove Vrume's backstabbing. The damning information had actually been on a mediocre-looking Trampolyte's computer.

Now it was on The Node's.

After millions of years, Vrume T'cha T'cha's life was going to come to an end.