Though not known for his patience, The Node did enjoy being groomed, and groomed very meticulously. It gave him time to reflect, and it made his armoured power suit shiny and smell of tar and roses. When he had Vrume T'cha T'cha, the best barber and machine detailer on Lyme Node working on him, he felt the weight of the entire known universe lift ever so slightly off of his burly metal shoulders.

Vrume was a class act, too. He knew all the right things to say without sounding like a kiss-ass yes-man. He was the only one The Node would let wag a finger at him.

"You haven't been taking care of this chassis!" Vrume would say, wagging a finger.

"Well, I have been busy. I am the ruler of the universe, you know..."

"Well maybe you ought to spend a little less time worrying about the universe, and a little more time worrying about yourself, no?" Vrume would say wagging a finger.

"Yes, yes. I know. Sometimes I think the whole of everything would just fall apart without me though..."

"Well better the whole of everything than that sweet chassis of yours!" Vrume would say, wagging a finger.

Vrume won him over years ago by not only giving his almost bald head the best haircut it had ever had, but by shooting two of his own assistants on the spot for applying too much finishing wax to his chest plate armour. He had even splattered one of the assistant's brains in The Node's face. Being such an innovative genius, Vrume then turned that bloody grey matter into an exfoliating facial mask that had him looking almost days younger (everybody said so).

Over the following years Vrume would end up killing so many assistants in front of The Node for even the slightest of mistakes that the job had become a death sentence for criminals, because no one in their right mind would apply for it voluntarily. Once convicted, they would go through rigorous "beauty school" and "machinery restoration" boot camp training so that they might last even a few days assisting Vrume before inevitably getting shot between the eyes.

A whole new industry had to be created, combining beauty school and machinery restoration training into one skill set. No one could say that The Node didn't have a part in creating new jobs for a suffering workforce. Of course, anyone that tried to unionize was sentenced to become a student and end up as an exfoliating facial that would make him look (almost) days younger. "The teacher becomes the student becomes the exfoliating facial mask" as it were.

As much as The Node loved Vrume, General Kendra Eppie loathed him. Even when The Node would get Vrume to style the wee shock of fuchsia hair on top of Eppie's head, Eppie longed for a day Vrume accidentally shot himself, or wagged his finger at the wrong time.

Eppie had the sneaking (and paranoid) suspicion that Vrume talked trash about him when he wasn't there, which was most of the time because The Node liked privacy when he was with Vrume and his disposable assistants. (He liked to emerge from his chamber with a "ta-dah!" post-groom razzmatazz.)

Eppie also had the sneaking (and paranoid) suspicion that everyone was talking trash about him all of the time. He had once felt that way on a planetary level, and that was part of the reason he had his whole planet destroyed.

Eppie had created a few jobs of his own. He had created a very secret Secret Force that was secretly trying to dig up any dirt on Vrume T'cha T'cha. So far it had come up empty handed, mostly due to the fact that none of that Secret Force actually did anything. Eppie constantly forgot to check up on them and was far more lenient on his assistants. The bi-monthly check up was always the same:

"Find anything?"

"Nope."

"Keep looking!"

"Oh, yeah. Of course. Right on."

If they had have done any digging, they may have found out that Vrume was responsible for one of the biggest conspiracies in the very universe that weighed so heavily on The Node. If The Node had known the truth about Vrume, he would have had the sassy stylist/detailer tortured and killed slowly over many, many millennia without hesitation.

On this day, however, The Node was content to have a finger wagged at him while he had his chassis worked over and some of his hairs cut.

Eppie entered with haste. Vrume may have been the only one to get away with the finger thing, but he was the only one that could get away with interrupting The Node with business. In fact, that was part of his job description.

"Your Excellency...my humblest of apologies for the interruption..." he began.

"No, no! You see? This is what I'm talking about!" Vrume protested. It took everything in Eppie not to twist his head off right there and then, The Node bedamned.

"It's ok. Comes with the job of Universal Ruler," The Node said with a smirk and a wink that prompted Eppie, Vrume and Vrume's temporary assistants to all laugh heartily or else. Vrume shot one of them for laughing like a duck anyway. "What is it, Ken?"

"This sensitive news has to do with the fugitives," Eppie replied, shifting his eyes to Vrume as if to say "Probably shouldn't talk in front of the loathed hired help" in Pig Latin. The Node caught on, but wrongfully trusted Vrume implicitly.

"He's cool," he answered much to Eppie's dismay.

"Well, their ship was spotted earlier."

"Where were they off to? Some hidden planet? Some top-secret base in some far-off system?"

"Er...no. In an impound lot underneath Tower 431. Two buildings down from us. It was only discovered when it escaped. It somehow managed to knock the building down."

"It knocked a whole building down?"

"Well, not down. It just sort of fell to one side gently. It's now leaning on Tower 432."

"Oh wow! That's wild!" exclaimed The Node excitedly. "The whole high-rise is on an angle now? What a novelty! Raise the rent and call up the tourism bureau so that tourists can constantly hang about taking pictures!"

"Good idea!" Vrume piped up.

"Shut up," Eppie said to him dryly.

"Where is the ship now?" asked The Node.

~~~

A random man on the street, passing between two buildings instead of using the garages underground like everyone else (because he kinda liked a slight drizzle) thought he'd seen everything.

As with most people who used this expression, this was a huge exaggeration as the random man had never left his planet and had actually seen so very, very little in his sheltered and privileged life. That was neither here nor there as he exclaimed, "And I thought I'd seen everything!" upon witnessing a spaceship shoot a hole into his (now leaning) building and catch a falling man with his face on fire.

He used a function on his watch that acted like virtual binoculars to then see that very ship seemingly answer an albino figure waving at it from the neighbouring high-rise's rooftop. It was almost as if the strange looking ship had turned its head and came to the albino like a golden retriever comes when called.

The random man chuckled to himself and said, "Well now I've seen everything!" to the onion sandwich he pulled out of his jacket pocket.

~~~

Once back on the ship, Gekko got right to work re-attaching the unconscious Weird Jimmy back up to the ship's power grid. She was on top of such things for the most part, but this time even more so. She really needed a distraction to keep her mind off of Clory.

Jimmy was once again a prisoner. A prisoner that Aye couldn't help but notice was far more grotesque looking than he had been before, with only half the arms he started out with. Though he did smell like a lovely summer barbecue now which was an improvement over his usual stench of potting soil and tooth decay.

Teeg may have felt like luck was finally turning around for her when the very ship they sought out came to them like a golden retriever, had she not been lamenting on the loss of Clory as well. She instructed Potto to fly them away from Lyme Node, much to Aye's dismay. She instructed Clover to navigate, and to point them in the direction of the Pantheist System. To the planet of O-bode.

She then retired to one of the sleeping chambers in the stern of the Shiv. Not to sleep but to be alone with her sorrow, and perhaps grab a shower in one of the adjoining shower rooms.

Many people choose to cry in the shower. Teeg was one of those people, and a good cry was long overdue.

The dismay Aye felt in not getting to go home disappeared as thoughts of his mother were now stuck in his head. He had forgotten her entirely, but upon seeing her in his dreams he now remembered every hair on her head.

It was as if he had discovered that after living in the same house for many years, there was suddenly a new room that he had somehow never noticed, and he had so much stuff to put in there.

Teeg turned the taps as hot as she could stand, stripped out of her leathers, tucked them into a dry radiation cleaner, and climbed into the shower. The hot and wet felt good, but the tears felt better. Her skin felt so slippery and smooth, which had her wondering what Clory had felt when touching her own woody skin-bark.

Were there nerve endings that reached the surface? Could she feel a pinch? A scratch? A scrape? Was it more like the hard keratin of a fingernail? Was it like a husk of dry wood? Did she ever feel itchy? She had never asked. She had never thought much about it before.

She had taken Clory for granted. Halfway between the way one often takes a sibling for granted, and the way one takes a houseplant for granted. However, for granted was for granted and she felt terrible.

She thought of all the things Clory had done. How powerful she was. How she had never once said thank you. She thought of all the questions she wanted to ask now. There was a slight chance Clory was still alive, but she had seen how much damage Toobli had inflicted. She was witness to how hollow the look in Clory's eyes had been. Much more than the regular hollow. There was a "light about to go off" quality to them as she sacrificed herself.

Going back for her, for the time being, would be suicide. Toobli had already destroyed the more powerful Muse, and would be waiting for them. They would have to wait to search for her, or rather, her remains.

How rare and beautiful an opportunity it would be to ask a tree questions and get real answers in spoken (telepathic) sentence form. She had had that opportunity in front of her for many years and had wasted it.

"Does time seem slower to you? How does the underground interconnectedness of fungus allow you to communicate with other vegetation? Is it like an electrical current? Do different plants have different voices to you? Which is the most irritating? Do you enjoy having things live in you? Do bugs hurt? How much do you hate humans? How do you feel about treehouses? Do you like hugs? Do you feel pinches, scratches and scrapes? Do you ever get itchy? Do you think ferns are sexy?" Teeg rambled, musing out loud through tears and mouthfuls of hot water.

She heard the door to the shower room. She didn't care. She knew it was Gekko. She knew Gekko would be hurting, too. Perhaps even more than her. Gekko and Clory were connected in their inability (or in Gekko's case, refusal) to speak aloud. They were connected in many ways that Teeg didn't even know about, but assumed and respected.

Gekko slipped out of her clothes and climbed into the shower with her. There was nothing dirty or sordid about this. They both just stood under the cascading water with their foreheads together, and mourned their sister.

~~~

The slight poison from Potto's kiss was still in K'ween's blood. Now that the danger was gone, it was almost intoxicating. It was a different kind of poison. It may have been deadly, but it also fired up the pleasure centres in the brain.

It was such a slurry of chemicals, but one of the ingredients was an extract from the myspiston plant, the same Sqambogian plant that the drug Pyst came from. It killed quickly as it tricked the brain into thinking it wanted more. And K'ween wanted more. She wanted more deadly kisses. She wanted more Potto kisses. She wanted more Potto.

Unfortunately, they had gone in the wrong direction when they left hastily in pursuit of the Muse.

Fortunately, after the Muse had crashed on Chagrin (followed by a mysterious rescue, a return to Lyme Node, and then departure) the new Shiv crew was now headed directly towards them.

Both were headed in the direction of the Pantheist System (even if K'ween didn't know it), but the Shiv was going faster and would catch up with them. The K'rown was a much more powerful ship, but the Shiv was a faster one.

It might only take a week to catch up on the long journey to O-bode. One would think that in the vastness of space that these two ships headed in the same direction would never meet regardless. The chances were ridiculously small but...

When one is driving along a wide country road, one may never see another vehicle going in the opposite direction unless there is a single lane bridge along the road. In this case another car will pop up out of nowhere so that the first will have to wait to cross. Oh yes, they could have passed anywhere on that long road without issue, but timing and object attraction always brings them together at the one spot and time that it's most inconvenient.

It has something to do with magnets and thought bubbles and dark matter and originality of thought and the laws of bullshit.

Regardless of cause, for this reason it was almost inevitable that the Shiv and The K'rown would meet up in space. Probably when having to pass through some narrow wormhole that is only wide enough for one of them.

~~~

Potto sat staring out the front view window of the Shiv, absentmindedly piloting it.

"I never thought I'd say this, but I am glad you're back," said Knutt.

Potto jumped. "Who said that?" he laughed. Being startled was fun.

"Me. The ship. I guess my name is Knutt now," Knutt-who-was-once-Stig replied dryly.

"Oh! Right! You sound nice. Actually, you sound sad. Of course you can be both. Are you okay? Are you an okay spaceship?" Potto asked. He didn't have to try to sound empathetic. It just came naturally.

"Really? I went from spaceship captain to spaceship. I went from a woman very much in love, to a vehicle very much in need of repair on my left landing thruster. I went from someone to something. I'm just great. Just fucking peachy," said Knutt.

"Phew!" smiled Potto relieved (on the surface) that she was peachy, and relieved (in his subconscious) that he didn't register sarcasm.

"Well, that's odd," Clover piped up from behind a console.

"Which part?" asked Knutt with an electronic sigh.

"There seems to be a big chunk of space debris fused to the outer hull of the ship." Clover continued.

"That is odd! I wonder if the big chunk of space debris thinks it is us that is fused to it," Potto mused idiotically.

"My censors do not pick up anything stuck to the outside of the ship –er—me," Knutt added. "It must be harmless. Perhaps I picked it up smashing around in the underground garage. You'll have to pry it off later. It won't affect me in the least bit. Just a bit of garbage. Thanks to that awful mall planet, space is full of it."

Potto caught Clover staring at him.

From the universe's most advanced and intelligent species, through to its most fierce, and right down to the lowliest, hardly evolved, brainless slime: it turns out that being stared at made everyone uncomfortable. Potto shuffled in his seat and tried to ignore it. That didn't last long.

"Sooooo," he said nonchalantly. "What 'cha starin' at?" he added with a sing-song flare to insure she didn't think he was judging her.

"I'm sorry. I was just wondering what magnificent treasures you have trapped in that head of yours," she answered, still staring.

"Oh, I'm sure there are lots of wonderful things. Everybody has wonderful things hidden in their heads somewhere, don't you think? Some people are very good at letting those out. Some people..." he trailed off. "Sorry, I forgot what I was talking about."

Clover perked up. An epiphany hit her like a tonne of epiphany bricks.

"I could hypnotize you!" she said excitedly. "It's been so long since I have hypnotized anyone, it didn't occur to me. I used to be very good at it!"

"That sounds like fun!" he replied. "By the way, do you know what the differences are between mild, medium and old cheddars?" he added to unintentionally show he didn't have a clue what she was talking about, and really hadn't been paying any attention because he was hungry.

"Yes!" she answered, now also excited about cheese.