Dustin closed his eyes for a moment.

“Of course, you do,” he finally said with a sigh.

Time to revise his plan of action. Teach the stick people how to fight, then sneak into the shuttle port, get off the damn planet, find his genetic material to become human again, grab the hot chick, and leave this nightmare in his dust.

“I would recommend your first course of action, to be finding a way to hide from the drones. If you can successfully hide from them for a period of seven days, they will assume you are dead.” The prince looked thoughtful as he said this.

“Then how do those things work?”

“The first thing the drones look for, is movement. The second is color differences in the normal spectrum. The third is heat, and I think the fourth thing they look for is electromagnetic signatures.”

“Shit! How the hell am I supposed to hide from all of that? I might be better off heading back into that cave and hiding out there for a week.”

“That would be an option, though I hesitate to return to that place,” he said with a shudder.

“That would not be good for us. We must have the sun to survive.”

“But, you’re underground right now,” pointed out Dustin, annoyed.

“Short periods out of the sun will not harm us.”

Dustin stared at the twig girl for a moment, as an idea started to form in his head. Looking around at the cave he was in, he decided to give it a try.

“What about this place. It’s plenty big enough for me to sleep in, and you could go out, kill things for me, and bring them back.”

She did not like that, and he could tell right away.

“Look,” he said, before she could object, “We’ll start you off small. You can get used to killing things slowly, over the next week or so, then once I’ve gotten enough genetic material to hide from those drones, I’ll start teaching you how to kill bigger things.”

He had no idea if this would work, or not, but he had to try something. He was sick of fighting harder and harder things. If he had to lay low for a week to get them off his tail, he’d do it. Let the whole fucking system reboot, or whatever.

“Alright,” she grudgingly agreed. “We shall see if this works. We are not happy with this plan as we do not like to kill things.”

“You can’t go to war without knowing how to kill things! That’s the whole point of war, to kill your opponent!” exclaimed the prince.

“Actually,” Dustin started, then stopped himself. There could be a way to do this without killing the damn birds, but he wasn’t willing to put in that much effort. The whole fucking race could die for all he cared!

“Never mind, why don’t you change back into your stick bug form, give me Olivia’s PED back, and go find some bugs. Little ones. You don’t even have to kill them, just bring them back, and I’ll show you how to kill them.”

Nodding, she returned to her form, and gave him back the PED before leaving the hollow.

“You do realize that as soon as they start killing things, the rest of my people will notice them and start to evaluate them as possible targets, right?”

“It gets your people off my back, keeps her busy, and gives me possible sources of genetic material to sample. If anything at all is brought back that is helpful, it will have been worth it.”

He looked like he wanted to argue for a moment, then shrugged and rolled over to sleep.

Sleep. That sounded like an excellent idea. So much had happened since they woke up earlier, that he felt like he had been running on fumes. Maybe after he slept, he’d be able to think a little clearer.

-Dream:

-“Damn you, Sean! I told you to leave my tools alone!” he yelled, digging through his bag, looking for that yellow handled screwdriver. The one that had the smallest little head. It was perfect for the screws on this thing, but he couldn’t find it.

-“Fuck you, Dustin! I pay the rent here, too! If you don’t want me using your stuff, leave it in your room, or at work!” He stepped out of the kitchen, just long enough to hurl it at him, without really looking, and then returned to whatever horrible thing was stinking up the apartment.

-The screwdriver looked like it had been used to scrape something up, all the little grooves were full of black ick. Cursing at him, he tried to clean it off, but whatever it was, was not coming off.

-He stood in his boss’s office, sweating bullets. The project was behind schedule, and most of the reason was his roommate’s fault. He was going to kill him when he got home!

-The fireplace loomed in his face, that hadn’t been there before. The room had changed. His tools and projects that had been scattered, were gone, replaced by a nice, well-to-do set of furniture.

“This is wrong,” he murmured in his sleep.

-“How could you?” he whispered in horror, holding the paper from the clinic. No words were on it, but his dream-self knew that it talked about an abortion.

-“I did it to hurt you!” she screamed at him, swinging to punch him, but her form flickered, and it was his roommate, swinging, for a moment. Then it was her again.

-“You’ll never get what you’ve always wanted!” she/he screamed as the form flickered again. The punch, too strong for a sexy woman, landed, almost breaking his jaw.

-He swung back, not afraid to hit a man, landing a good hit, that had him/her falling back. The form flickered back and forth, finally settling back on her, as she connected with the fireplace.

Jerking awake, Dustin rubbed his head. He had a splitting headache. Running back over his dream, he realized he must have killed his roommate, instead of an exgirlfriend. Maybe? There hadn’t been a fireplace in the apartment.

His head hurt too much to think about it anymore. The stick girl was waiting for him to wake up, holding a handful of different bugs. All of them were squirming, and he immediately jumped to his feet, backing away.