Dear Journal,
I revise my previous statement.
I’m not a xeno dog,
I’m a xeno snake.
And I’m a failure at it.
Severus almost had a stroke when he saw what had happened to the door, and I think it was only Mama Giraffe’s intervention that kept him from finding that ray gun I was sure he had stashed around here somewhere. Dink was scolded too, but this time it was done the way a parent should scold a child; it was also done by Mama, which was what made the difference. Regardless of the clicks said, I was soon moved out of my old room and into an empty cargo bay. Funny thing, I had thought that cargo bay had been full last time I had gone out exploring. I wasn’t going to complain though, since I now had a room half the size of a warehouse all to myself. It was a great reminder of how many friends I had up here. Still, the acoustics were good.
Dink came in a few minutes after I had found the most comfortable piece of metal floor, carrying a mat which he set on the floor, and a bucket he filled with water from an oddly shaped but easily recognizable tap on the wall. I marked how its mechanism worked and stored that away for later. It would most definitely come in handy next time I wanted to get a drink or take a bath without needing to wrestle a hose from one of the caretakers in the hydroponics bay. When he left I had assumed he wouldn’t be back for a while. After all, I had my bed, I had my water, and I didn’t think I was going to be getting any lettuce today after the whole door incident, so why would he come back? In hindsight I almost wish he hadn’t.
He did come back, carrying one of the now familiar shoe boxes, and I was relieved that I was getting lunch. When he opened the box, it was filled with the purple rats he had dropped earlier upon observing my dislike of enclosed areas. He backpedaled quickly once he had put it down, looking at me with trepidatious expectation. I looked at the rats, then up at Dink, then back at the rats. The light-bulb turned on. “Oh that’s sick. You want me to eat these raw? I said I wanted meat, and I’m really impressed you figured it out somehow, but I haven’t hunted a day in my life. I don’t know how to skin or clean one of these things, and even if I did I don’t have a knife to do it with. Even if I managed to do all that, where would I cook it? I hope you didn’t spend any money on these.
Unfortunately, I was pretty sure they had. I’m not sure if it was Dink specifically or not, but I was pretty sure by now the blue-giraffes were strictly herbivores. I owed it to them to at least try and find a way to prepare these things. After all, it was my only chance at getting meat on this ship. I picked up one of the near-spherical bundles of purple hair. They were actually kind of cute, viewed from above. Then I saw its face. It made the naked mole rat look like the kind of designer animals you want to show off at competitions. Its little excrescence of a face had three eyes, a flat, wrinkled snout like a pug’s, and the protruding front teeth of a beaver. It didn’t help that its tongue and eyes appeared to be in full derp mode.
Deciding it was for the best that I had seen its face so I wouldn’t mind killing these things in the future, I tried to think of the best way of going about it. In the end I just slammed it against the ground. I guess they don’t make xeno rats the way they do back home, because on the first hit it burst like an overfull water balloon, its last squeak cut abruptly and shockingly short. Glistening orange blood flew in all directions, splatting my white shirt and even getting on Dinks feet, who was standing a good three meters away. The splash of the little rat’s body was quickly followed by the splash of Dink’s vomit as he heaved all over the floor, adding to the horrendous smell, and confirming my assumptions that he only ate plants. He ran out of the room, trying with minimal success to keep his breakfast from following his Lunch.
“Sorry!” I called after his retreating figure. There wasn’t much left of that first rat, and nothing that I felt like putting in my mouth, even if I could cook it. I chose a second rat, and opting out of attempting another purple xeno rat smoothy, tried to find its neck. I couldn’t. It really was an almost perfect sphere, and its face just seemed to occupy one side of its obscenely round body. I didn’t want to see how many flicks in the face it would take to kill it, since I was pretty sure slapping would have a similar affect as punching. Feeling rather foolish as I held this thing before me as though contemplating its inner meaning, I tried a similar approach as last time. I grabbed it by the tail and used that to swing it against the side of the shoebox, which seemed to be made of a material almost identical to plastic. I had intended for the increased ductility of the shoebox to lessen the force of impact, but at the last moment the tail snapped off, throwing the unfortunate rodent into the corner of the box instead of the side, where it once again burst, this time splattering all over its fellows, sending them into a frenzy.
I swore. Getting frustrated, I snatched one by pinching some of the excess skin on its back back and yanking it up with a snap of my wrist. To my utter surprise its entire skin flew off of its back as though I were a magician, snapping the cloth off a skinless xeno rat oozing orange blood which had “magically” appeared. It seemed almost as shocked as I was, and continued running around for a few seconds until the massive amount of blood loss finally ended its shrieks. I had to admit, it was a rather efficient way of getting all the blood out of the thing. I needn’t have worried about gutting it either. It was so fragile that a knife would have been a hindrance.
I was impressed by the fact that most of the hump of the back seemed to be a fatty meat, similar to chicken leg. The back layers peeled off into nice slices like the meat of a fish. Honestly, this creature almost seemed to come pre-skinned, pre-cleaned, and pre-sliced. The only thing left to do was to find a way to cook it, as I am not a fan of Japanese food. Looking around my room, I saw the water tap. If each of these cargo bays had been built with basic utilities so that virtually any form of cargo could be stored in them, then it was reasonable to assume that there had to be some form of power outlet nearby. I couldn’t see any, although I didn’t exactly know what I was looking for. I looked up and saw a plethora of pipes with varying diameters.
I didn’t have the fuzziest as to how FTL worked, but those Trekkies and Star Wars fans always seemed to be talking about plasma, and if anyone even had the slightest idea of how FTL might function I supposed it would be them, or someone way beyond my IQ level. I didn’t have any better ideas, so I walked over to the nearest wall, which, having been made for strictly utilitarian purposes, was pockmarked with various boxes and holes, making it a simple matter to climb to the ceiling. Once I could reach the various pipes, I moved my hand close to them, hoping to feel heat. If they were going to make a pipe which was going to hold plasma, it probably would be such an effective insulator I wouldn’t feel anything, but it was best to check. I got lucky, and found a pipe that I doubted I could touch without suffering severe burns in seconds.
I climbed half the way down, then fell the rest of the 10 meter drop in what I would like to say was a purposeful action. I carried the meat slices up to the scalding pipe, and carefully laid them on top of it, where they emanated a delightful sizzling sound which reminded me oh too clearly of bacon. One purple xeno rat pig didn’t have much meat on it despite its odd biology, so I cleaned another one and carried its meat and another live one to the ceiling, just in case two didn’t look sufficient either. I accidentally dropped that one, which only added to the mess and mayhem all over the floor. It did look peaceful, though, falling through the air, its mutant-pug face serene, tongue lolling. Contented with my work, I carried my mat to a cleaner section of the floor and waited for my xeno bacon to finish up.
Xkkrk entered Cqcq’trtr’s new room and immediately regretted it. After he had decided to show his displeasure with being locked into the medical bay by somehow ripping off its door, Xkkrk felt fortunate she had been able to stop Tnnxz from grabbing his pulse pistol and shooting Cqcq’trtr right there. After he had calmed down, Xkkrk had been able to convince Tnnxz that all Cqcq’trtr needed was more space to move around. He was a lively fellow, to put it lightly, and the medical bay was one of the smallest rooms on the ship. She had suggested cargo bay 9, as it had just been vacated due to a successful discussion with the Tormix trade cruiser. A mere [30 minutes] after moving into his new home, Vtv had come stumbling into cargo bay 12 where the replacement parts for the ship were stored, crying, gagging and trying to speak at the same time.
She quickly guessed the reason for the problem, and started walking as quickly as she could without looking panicked towards cargo bay 9. As she followed a trail of Vtv’s vomit, she quickened her pace, not even attempting to appear composed. She took the final few steps at a run, bursting into the compartment. She didn’t know if it was the smell which immediately assaulted her nose or the sight which instantly burned itself into her eyes that made her vomit, but her stomach’s contents were soon joining Vtv’s on the floor, along with what appeared to be a Dizi rat massacre.
Bright orange blood splattered half the floor of the compartment, most of it seeming to come from a single rodent which had been crushed into the floor with such force its body had left a blast radius a full 20 meters in diameter, to the point that there was barely enough matter in the Dizi’s body to create more than the outline of the circle. Another rat seemed to have shared a similar fate as the first, but most revolting of all was the storage container Vtv had delivered the rats in. It appeared to have been ceremoniously drenched in blood, surrounded by countless glistening entrails, with the skins of three rats draped over its side. One rat remained in the box, but it appeared to have drowned in the blood of its comrades and wasn’t moving. Either that, or its poor little mind had snapped after what it had seen.
Cqcq’trtr sat contentedly upon the mat Vtv had brought him, eating the charred flesh of one of the rodents. His visage was equally as horrifying as his handiwork. His front was almost completely orange and wet, his face covered in splatters and squirts. Xkkrk didn’t think she had ever seen him so happy. She wondered why he had cooked the meat, or how he had even done it. Something orange, hot, and sticky dripped onto her snout. She looked up, and saw ragged shreds of meat draped over one of the plasma conduits on the ceiling. How had he gotten up there? How had he known those pipes were hot? Xkkrk mentally added infrared vision to the already startlingly large list of dangerous biological characteristics Cqcq’trtr possessed. Her thoughts were interrupted by another drop of blood hitting her right between the eyes.
Her roiling stomach happily grasped upon this excuse and heaved with all its might, emptying any remaining breakfast she had managed to retain and clawing for the dinner it had already discarded through traditional means. She stumbled her way out of the cargo bay, only to run into Tnnxz right outside the door. She thought for a moment that he had heard of Cqcq’trtr’s most recent escapades, but then his pale, fearful face snapped her back to reality.
“Ztrkx’s ship just decloaked [10 kilometers] off our port side,” He breathed. “He told us to power down our engines and ready the port docking module. He’s here to make good on his promises.”