Space Bunnies!

Chapter 2: For Hire

The cleaning took them two hours. Weight meant everything on a solar sailor when breaking orbit, so that required some extra effort in the way of organization. Bodi was in charge of dusting, Kai tried to go easy on him— but if there was one thing Bodi hated more than anything in the entire universe, it was dusting. So Kai was not surprised when his brother kept saying he was 'finished.' But after a quick inspection, Kai determined that he was not. His brother had a very small attention span and was prone to being distracted easily. Kai was sure that Bodi was eager to get back to doing what he was doing before— but the cleaning came first. And there seemed to be more to do today than in the previous days. After managing a full thirty minutes of dusting, Bodi went back to catching the alien moths that were fluttering inside of the ship, this time Kai did not try to stop him, cleaning did get boring, so a break was welcome. Even Kai was on the holo-computer searching for lucrative contracts. Skipping right past the more dangerous activities, because he was quite adamant about keeping the violence his little brother experienced to a minimum. But looking at the list so far... it looked like hunting for someone might not be a terrible idea.

Bodi's butterfly hunt led him into the shared bedroom where he partially gooified the lower part of his body, using the metal flooring of the ship to propel himself forward, he absorbed the butterfly onto his body. Smashing against the wall with a splat, after his goo flowed down the wall without resistance, he then reformed solid with the butterfly in his palms, unharmed, it rested and flapped its wings— it looked like even it had been startled by briefly being enveloped within the goop of Bodi. He walked over to Kai, who watched the screen, and rubbed his chin. Only slightly surprised. "Look! It looks like we were wrong, this planet is inhabited! Can I keep it?" Bodi asked, holding the creature up into Kai's line of sight. "You know the answer to that."

"Come on! It's not even that big! I'll feed it and water it every day! After you said I couldn't keep that cat on Perscion Five, you said that I could have the next one!" Bodi pleaded, he glared with determination, even if it were about the size of a mouse, and fluffy like one, it would do nothing but add weight and strain on resources, its large black eyes watched, waiting for Kai to make a decision. 'No,' would've been the default, but Bodi still hadn't lost his ability to use 'extrusion eyes.' It was clear he wanted the thing, "I didn't let you keep that thing because it was ten times your size, it would've eaten you!" After a brief pause and a sigh he continued, "But a promise is a promise, so you can keep it. For now." Bodi jumped in excitement, he moved toward the holographic computer with his new pet on his shoulder, and he examined Kai's work. "Wait! You weren't thinking of leaving? We haven't even been to the waterfalls on the north side!"

"I know! You don't think I want to scale the mountain on that side? But if we don't have UC then we can't buy fuel, we need fuel to break orbit. We might as well go while we have a window, otherwise, we'll be trapped here for who knows how long, and then you can explore for as long as you like, all for the low price of being trapped here for weeks. So yeah, I'm thinking of leaving. Look, wherever we go is going to have just as many waterfalls, I promise!" Kai answered, collected. Bodi frowned and nodded, it was unfortunate that their departure would be so soon. Perhaps a quick morale boost was needed, "Do you want to pick?" Kai called out to his brother as he was heading out of the room, Bodi whipped around just fast enough to spook his new pet. "No way! Yes! I never get to pick the mission!" Bodi exclaimed as he returned to the holomonitor. He bounced up and down with excitement and his tail made sure to emphasize the emotion as the opportunity fell upon him. "Well, you're getting older, so I figured you were ready, and you should have more say in what we do." Kai smiled patting his brother on the back, "Now... it's a big decision, so I wouldn't be surprised if it takes you a while to—" Bodi cut Kai off, "I picked already!" Bodi shouted, "What—?" Kai felt a chill run the course of his body, as his brother made an instantaneous selection.

It usually took him three or four hours just to make the right choice. But as Bodi moved his pointer finger and tapped on one of the little squares, out of all perspective missions, on the entire board. He picked the one marked high priority— a bounty. "85,000 universal credits! With that much, we can stay out here for as long as we want!" Kai examined the selected target and attempted to mask his terror. He was an adventurer primarily, not a bounty hunter, and with the target being marked high priority— they would no doubt be some person who was incredibly difficult to capture. This mission was reserved for professionals, not amateurs. Kai scrolled down to the lower priority targets, ones in the 1,500 UC range—people who committed petty crimes. "Why don't you pick from these?" Kai attempted to sway his brother.

"But you said I could pick..." Bodi pointed, his smile didn't fluctuate nor did his mind, well that backfired tremendously. "Okay. Fine. Whatever you want, Bode." Reluctantly Kai accepted the highest bounty on the list. Looks like their days of exploration were paused— and the freelance began.