The Smeet

The Camp

Before Ilk arrived, Red had no idea what quality time meant.

However, he soon realized that as a young smeet, she couldn't just be stuck around the Massive without doing anything. And now that he thought about it, when she turned ten she'd have to go to the Academy to be fit with a PAK and train to become a soldier, and hopefully eventually an Invader.

The point? Irk knows for how long he wouldn't see her when that happened, of if she'd even be assigned to work on the Massive at all.

Then he heard the two magical words: quality time.

Turns out parents and their kids in inferior species often spend time with each other to strengthen their emotional bonds, often in activities such as fishing, watching movies, going to the mall, etcetera, bla, bla, bla.

Well, what did he have to lose? Besides, it had been a while since he spent some good time with Ilk; she didn't bother him much ever since she learned how to feed herself and use the toilet without falling in it (don't ask for details on the latter, please don't).

So that day, Red simply went into Ilk's room and cried out. "Sweetie, pack up! We're going camping!"

He didn't seem to notice or mind she was asleep.

And so now they found themselves going to a planet with lots of forests and no signs of big, highly advanced metropolis. It was a good distance away from the Armada too, which meant they'd have no interruptions.

Ilk wasn't sure it was a good idea to leave Uncle Pur in charge by himself for a week; it wasn't that she didn't think him capable, but sometimes he could be so... immature. From what she heard when Zim hacked the Massive on one occasion, dad had to single-handedly fix the problem while Uncle Pur did nothing more than panic and eat doughnuts.

She had to admit, though, this planet wasn't so bad. They landed in a cleary part with no trees near a river.

Getting to the planet was the easy part.

The hard part was to actually camp.

"Think it's okay?" Red asked, taking a quick look at the picture in manual, then at the tent.

Well, it's supposed to be a tent, but instead it looked like a pile of sticks with a blanket on top of them.

"Wouldn't it be easier if we put it in automatic mode?" Ilk pointed out.

"Come on, where's the fun in that?" Red tried to lighten up the mood with a laugh, but he was actually freaking out. What would Ilk think of him if he couldn't even set up a damn tent?!

Looks like allowing himself to mellow out wasn't such a good action after all. The knowledge of how it was done was there (thank you to the PAK for that), but he just couldn't wrap his finger around it anymore.

After a while, he merely tossed the manual away. "Well, who needs a tent? We can sleep on the ship!"

Ilk crossed her arms, smirking a bit. "How curious, because you said we wouldn't use any technology for this trip."

"Did I? Well, the ship can be an exception."

"Think Uncle Pur is okay?"

Oh, right, he almost forgot. He had turned off the communicator to avoid any disturbance. "Relax, he's not my co-Tallest for nothing. I'm pretty certain he's got everything under control."

*IZ*

Purple was in the kitchen peeking out from behind one of the counters, with the rest of the cooks behind him while Bob was poking at one of the power plugs on the wall with a screwdriver, and holding an empty glass jar on the other.