The BB Gun’s boarding skip was cramped and stank of cheap deodorant. Neckbrace sat crammed between Bodacious Barry and a worm monster named Kim. She was pretty sure Kim was the source of the deodorant smell. To take her mind off the unpleasant atmosphere, Neckbrace leaned towards Barry and asked, ‘So tell me more about this Heartburn guy.’

‘Yeah, I’m pretty sure the bloke’s off his meds,’ Barry replied. ‘Ever since the chips thing he keeps threatenin’ to murder me. Really exacerbates me anxiety disorder, yeah? So to get ‘im off me back I got me mates to grab some blackmail. Heartburn won’t go near me now that I got those embarrassing photos of ‘im at the Christmas party. Pretty sure he’s more pissed off than ever now, though.’

‘Huh,’ Neckbrace said.

The Rainbow was basically the spacefaring embodiment of the 70’s. Neckbrace found this a strange analogy to make considering that Vampire Bomb Squad ostensibly takes place in the 60’s, but whatever. Its curving, white and orange form loomed in the distance past the skip’s extremely unsafe glass window. As it grew rapidly near, Neckbrace could make out the tiny shapes of maintenance workers in spacesuits hurriedly climbing to the airlocks in fear. When the boarding skip slowed down in preparation to dock at The Rainbow’s port, Bodacious Barry began to explain their plan. There exists a pattern in fiction where if the protagonists’ plan is explained to the audience, then it must certainly go awry at some point. Inversely, if the plan is never explained, then it must succeed. So to ensure that Barry’s plan succeeds, this part of the chapter will be skipped.

‘…and that’s the plan,’ Barry finished as the boarding skip arrived at The Rainbow’s expansive, and probably expensive, docking port. The Rainbow was either very well maintained or very recently built, as there did not appear to be a single scratch or spot of dust throughout the whole port.

‘Hey, Bazza?’ said Jim. ‘Can you explain that plan again? I wasn’t listening.’

‘No worries, mate,’ said Barry. ‘I’ll just explain it again, to make absolutely sure nothing goes awry in an unexpected manner. So we’re pretending to be the last remains of a crew whose ship was stolen by Mercurian pirates, aight? We’ll ask to be taken to the sick bay cause we got someone who needs medical attention. That’s where our good mate Damo comes in. Damo’s gonna pretend to have hemorrhoids, so he’ll be our ticket into the sick bay. ‘

‘Actually, I really do have hemorrhoids, Bazza,’ said Damo.

Barry clapped him on the shoulder. ‘I knew I could count on ya, Damo. Anyway, by the time we’ve got some cream for Damo, we’ll’ve earned the captain’s complete trust, and that’s when we stab ‘em in the back. Everyone got that?’

Everybody nodded. They were ready. Barry counted down from three, then pulled the lever to open the skip’s main door. The door hissed open and Barry rushed out in a frenzy.

‘SOMEONE HELP! IT’S ME MATE DAMO! HE’S GOT… REAL… bad… hemorr…’

‘Freeze, pirates!’ said The Rainbow’s captain, with a fully armed squadron of Martian warriors at his side. The captain himself was also a Martian it would seem, judging by the cylindrical camera he had in place of a head.

Barry put his hands up and the rest of Barry’s crew (plus Neckbrace) filed out of the skip and did the same.

‘I don’t get it,’ Barry whispered to Neckbrace. ‘Me plan was perfect. How did it fail?’

At the very least, The Rainbow’s prison was much nicer than The BB Gun’s. It was more of an isolated village in the heart of the ship than anything resembling a brig. There was farmland, houses, a self-contained economy, a Starbucks, another Starbucks, a forest, a Satanic cult that lived in the forest; it was basically just like Venus, only without the crushing pressure and heat. Neckbrace would still rather be back on Venus, but she was content to rest up here for now. Barry, on the other hand, was not.

‘Oi, we gotta get outta here, Necko,’ said Barry, rudely interrupting Neckbrace’s free demon-summoning lesson provided by the cultists.

‘What did you just call me?’ Neckbrace asked, turning around and leaving the demon she was summoning half-stuck in the pentagram.

‘Hey, a little help here, dudes?’ Krukoxilis the Blood Festerer asked. A couple of nearby cultists rushed over to help him out of the pentagram.

‘Necko. That’s ya nickname. Pretty sick, ay?’ said Barry.

Neckbrace groaned. ‘So, what’s the rush?’

Barry seemed quite stressed. A bead of tanned sweat rolled down his tanned forehead. ‘I got a buyer waitin’ on me, right? Says he’ll gut me if I don’t get this ship’s tech.’

‘Tell you what,’ said Neckbrace. ‘Take this collar off me and I’ll get us out of here.’

Barry put a finger to his chin. ‘I dunno if that’s a good idea, Necko. Vampires can get pretty nasty, yeah?’

‘That’s just racism,’ said Neckbrace.

‘Speciesism, actually,’ Barry corrected.

‘… Yeah.’

‘Aight, fine,’ Barry said, withdrawing a key from the great jungle of his chest hair. ‘You better not just fly back to Venus as soon as I get this off, though.’

He unlocked the collar. Before it could hit the ground, Neckbrace was off. She couldn’t believe how easy it had been to trick him! She burst through the bulkhead above, then the bulkhead above that, then the bulkhead above… Something grabbed her. Hard. Just before Neckbrace was about to burst out of the ship and into freedom, something had grabbed her neck and was holding her aloft as if she were a ragdoll. The thing threw her across the room, and she smashed against the wall hard enough to melt its metal plating. Neckbrace coughed and spluttered, trying to regain enough sense to jump off again, but before she could, the thing was on her once again. This time, however, she saw what it was. It was a vampire. He was insanely huge and muscular, at least ten feet tall (or 3.2217e-16 light years for metric system users), and was denting the metal plating beneath him with weight alone.

‘I AM JAWBREAKER!’ said the vampire as he held Neckbrace up by her hair. ‘WHAT IS YOUR NAME?’

‘Neckbrac—‘

‘SHUT UP! I DIDN’T TELL YOU TO SPEAK! DO YOU KNOW WHY THEY CALL ME JAWBREAKER?’

‘I don’t—‘

‘SHUT UP! THEY CALL ME JAWBREAKER BECAUSE I BREAK JAWS! AND I BREAK JAWS BECAUSE I AM CALLED JAWBREAKER! IT IS A FEEDBACK LOOP!’

Neckbrace didn’t say anything.

‘WHY ARE YOU NOT TALKING?’

Jawbreaker punched Neckbrace in the head so hard the atoms of her face briefly ascended to the eighth dimension. Once she had returned to a more familiar plain of existence, Neckbrace modified the molecules in her hair to transform each individual strand into a centipede, which were coincidentally Jawbreaker’s greatest phobia. Jawbreaker recoiled in fright, finally letting Neckbrace go. Taking advantage of the opening, Neckbrace leaped directly forward and roundhouse-kicked Jawbreaker in the head, ironically breaking his jaw. Jawbreaker responded by grabbing Neckbrace’s leg and swinging her in a wide arc fast enough to tear her body in two. Unfortunately for Jawbreaker, this suited Neckbrace just fine. Her legs quickly grew a new upper body and her upper body grew new legs. Now there were two Neckbraces. The Neckbraces jumped at Jawbreaker from opposite sides and refused into one Neckbrace with Jawbreaker between them, leaving his head trapped in her stomach. He screamed as Neckbrace’s hyper-active stomach acid digested his head to give Neckbrace a temporary boost in strength. With this newfound power, Neckbrace jumped away from Jawbreaker’s headless body, then springed forward once more. With a thunderous dropkick, Neckbrace smashed into Jawbreaker’s spine, sending him flying through fifteen bulkheads and out into space. A nearby maintenance worker quickly patched the hole with some balsa wood before too much air could escape.

‘Sick as, mate,’ said Barry.

‘Wait, what?’ said Neckbrace ‘How did you get up here?’

‘Climbed,’ Barry replied. ‘I always keep a grappling hook in me trusty pack.’

‘You have a backpack?’

‘Too right,’ said Barry, turning around to show off his backpack.

‘Oh,’ said Neckbrace.

‘CRIKEY!’ Barry exclaimed, running over to some machine at the other side of the room. ‘You found it! The tech me buyer wants!’

As Neckbrace approached the machine, she realized she actually knew what it was somehow. Maybe it was the distinctive gizmotubes, the capacitive zappotrons, or the big block lettering that read TIME MACHINE, but something about the machine clued her into its true purpose. She was looking at a time machine. Probably.