Episode 4: Part 7: We Are What We Eat

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Previously on The Final Countdown...

If you haven't been able to keep up with what's going on in this story, don't worry, that's okay. Neither has anybody else. It's kind of like a Choose Your Own Adventure story had a baby with whatever's left of your brain after a concussion, and then that baby went out and stole a laptop. This is what that baby might write.

Fancypants...sorry, his name is now Kyle...and Venti have been drafted into T'Iguidou's guard and now have to track down Java, who is at this moment a feral robot cat.

The yurt stands abandoned in the alien hangar. Alas, poor Yurt, I knew it well.

Let us join Ronnie as she plummets ever onward in her quest down the Shaft of Eternity.

"S

H

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."

SPALOOSH!

Deep down, in the absolute unholy bowels of T'Iguidou's ship, dwelt the fuel pools. The ship was so massive, tanks weren't nearly big enough. No, no, this ship required full-on pools. Back on Earth, if Earth were still kicking around, this pool was so big it would have been developed into at least two golf courses, a place to dump mining wastewater, and somewhere for middle managers to 'unwind' for 36 hours on the weekend.

A huge metal door screeched open on the starboard side of the pool. (Wait, hold on a sec. They're in space. Isn't everything starboard? How does anybody ever turn right in space?) A gangly alien in dark green coveralls shuffled onto the deck and stared out at the pool with his eyebrow in full furrow.

"That's not supposed to happen." 

Something rippled way out, right dead centre in the middle of the lake.

"That's DEFINITELY not supposed to happen."

Another alien squeezed through the door, but for every bit of gangle the first one possessed, this one matched it with rotundity. She peered out into the middle of the lake with her left eye stalk (the right one was in a cast, thanks to a rather violent altercation with a vending machine) and gulped. 

"What is that, Carl?" The rotund one couldn't take her eye away from the ripples, which were now growing into a rolling boil.

"You think I know, Marlene?" Carl suffered from a severe lack of spine, but that had nothing to do with his poor level of courage. His species literally didn't have skeletal tissue.

"Should we tell the boss, Carl?" Marlene was already shuffling back toward the door. The boiling had reached halfway across the lake.

"I think maybe we should tell the boss, Marlene." Carl ducked around Marlene and disappeared into the dark corridors of the ship. Marlene was only seconds behind.

The whole lake of fuel was boiling now.

Ronnie, it seemed, was very much NOT dead.

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A



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