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I don’t think HQ can be bothered with setting up e-mail accounts and even if they did they probably aren’t coded to work with whatever this useless Earth tech is. Anyway, I find it strange that we have orders to take over Earth. That can’t be correct. I’m sure this is another classic case of our ever faithful commander failing to do its homework.
—Corporal Spork out.

Chapter Seventeen: Toaster Thieves

Kerfuffle and Cheeseburger had been diligently assembling, spending long hours troubleshooting, building, testing, failing and repeating. Of course Cheeseburger always seemed to work tirelessly, but Kerfuffle tended to lose enthusiasm.
“Where’s the toaster?”
“Cheeseburger took it.” I replied. “I’ve already told you that before, silly Cedric.”
Cedric twisted his mouth into a frown; he held a slice of bread in one hand. “How am I supposed to make toast without a toaster?”
As if I didn’t have enough problems, Cedric kept complaining about us utilizing his resources for the construction of our com-link.
“I dunno, call London, see if you can use her toaster.” I grinned. “Tell her alien cats invaded your home and stole your toaster.”
Cedric shook the pitiful, floppy bread slice at me. “That isn’t even nice! You know she’d never believe me.”
I let my grin widen and shrugged.
Cedric pouted about the lack of toaster for some time then finally retrieved the butter from the refrigerator and slapped some on the bread.
“I guess it’s the same thing.” He muttered. “Less crunchy.”
“Better on your teeth.” I commented and then scurried out of the room.
Success had been scarce lately. Not only was I not conquering the planet, and becoming president of the world, I also wasn’t finding my crew. The first’s blame fell on Spork who didn’t seem to think destroying the world was a good idea, the other half…I’m also going to blame that on Spork, because why not? It was taller than me so it should have been able to see them better. That’s the story I was going with.
Time for a walk with Plant. It had decided to tag along at some point. Its species was hard to find, but the few who were still around had a great fondness of following one owner for their whole life. Simply put, if it decided its company was required, there wasn’t much saying no to it.
It rumbled contently as I paced around to the backyard, paws clasped behind my back. Perhaps I should talk to the space squid again, not that that ever proved useful. There was no hope in speaking further with Spork.
I sighed and sat down. Plant wrapped itself around my waist with another shrill rumble of happiness and rubbed its flowery head against my belly. I gave it a couple of quick pets.
Getting communication established with Headquarters seemed more important than gathering the crew. Getting the crew was kind of pointless at the time. Even if they were all together, Spork wouldn’t let us rule the city.
There was also the idea that I could rule the city without Spork knowing. I was the commander after all; it was my choice to make and I didn’t have to include it in on the planning. Then it was decided. I flashed a toothy grin at Plant, unraveled it from around myself then hurried back into the house.

* * *

“Teeeentacles! Teeentaclllles!”
Why was the Qahrburboxis never around when it was actually needed?
“Teeeenta—”
“You better not be calling in any new, disturbing alien weirdness.”
I turned around to find Cedric. He held a tablet of some sort in one hand—a new one he had recently bought since we had confiscated his laptop—and coffee in the other. Such a strange infatuation he had with that stuff.
“I’m not.” I flicked my tail back and forth. “I’m calling Tenta—” I paused.
Tentacles had been around as long as Spork had. Was it possible Cedric had yet to cross paths with it? I mean, yes, it had been elusive, but not intentionally.
“Just go talk to London. This isn’t important.”
Cedric didn’t move. He sipped at his coffee, very slowly and looked in my general direction. Those glasses, krillfish, did they ever make it hard to read him. After a moment or so longer he moved on, probably concluding that arguing with me would prove futile.
He did point at me as he walked by, as if his dumb finger was enough to stop me. When I was sure he couldn’t see me regardless to where he was peering through his glasses, I stuck my tongue out.
“Teeeentacles.”
I resumed my search, but found no dumb tentacle creature. Decided that the effort was perhaps not even worth it and considered other things that could potentially amuse me; didn’t have a whole lot of options to sift through at the given time.
One thing I had yet to do though was rummage through Cheeseburger’s stuff. That may sound strange to you, as earlier I mentioned that Cheeseburger was boring. Cheeseburger itself was not a very interesting individual, there was no denying that, but the fact it was a mechanic and weapons developer meant that it did sometimes have some interesting odds and ends.
I knew all the stuff was in the room with them, but I doubted Cheeseburger would stop me.
As I was walking down the hall, I passed by Spork who paused momentarily and glanced back at me as I pranced along happily.
“What are you doing?” It asked skeptically.
“Me?” I mewed and looked around. There didn’t seem to be anyone else. “I’m just walking.”
“I know.”
I flicked my tail. Spork was confusing. If it already knew, then why had it even asked me? And for that matter, it still looked incredibly skeptical.
“I’m the commander! I don’t have to stand around for this.”
“No.” Spork paused, then continued, “Stay out of trouble, Commander.”
The last part was a jab at my title, no doubt, but I ignored it and carried on. I had better things to do than deal with Spork and its dumb opinions. They really were dumb by the way, that wasn’t an exaggeration.
I held my head high as I marched into the room where they were currently working. Kerfuffle glanced at me from the corner of its eye and gave a brief greeting. Cheeseburger nodded. I gave a half nod back to them and stopped when I reached Cheeseburger’s stuff tossed in the far corner. It hardly looked like the Qwuedeviv had even touched it since its arrival. Granted, it had probably been busy fixing stuff.
I scooted closer to it, pretending to watch the two work for a bit. I even asked a question or two to appear interested. After that, I let my eyes rest on the supply packs and poked at one a little, quietly rummaging through some of the surface stuff. There was a well worn utility belt lined with tools, and then a duffle bag, dull army green in color with a few tears.
All the tools looked boring, but I casually dug deeper to see if there were any fun ones buried beneath the surface. Two of them clanked together.
“Lieutenant?” Cheeseburger’s long ears twitched.
“Oh don’t worry.” I fidgeted. “I won’t lose anything.”
“I’m certain, please excuse any implications, ma’am but…do you think that’s a good idea? For safety reasons of co—”
“Just because you’re a specialist and I’m not doesn’t mean I don’t know how to use Qwuedeviv tech!”
“Of…of course.” Cheeseburger frowned then hesitantly returned to its work.
With that interruption taken care of, I resumed rummaging. The utility belt proved to be uninteresting so I slung it aside and began digging through the duffel bag. Score! This one seemed more interesting.
I wasn’t entirely sure what the things inside of it were but they had buttons and little flip switches. That right there was proof that they were more interesting. It meant they had special features, or to put it another way, they could do more than just exist as they were.
Some were probably standard grade, but others were certainly in the developmental stages. That meant they were rare, potentially dangerous, but rare. I pulled a sleek one out and held it in my paws. I was uncertain of its purpose. Being a prototype it was fairly colorless and a bit unrefined. From what I could tell it had a space for a projectile to be shot from the center—not like an energy blast or laser, but a solid, strangely shaped hook.
I began looking for a button or switch or something that would make it activate. Finally I found a touch sensitive strip. It had several little marks on it that indicated…I didn’t know what it indicated, but I slid my paw across the entire length quickly. It made a strange, hollow sounding click and then the odd shaped projectile shot straight up and unfurled into a spider-like claw.
My ears shot up, but it didn’t seem so bad. It hadn’t broken the ceiling, just clung to it. Cheeseburger and Kerfuffle turned around to see what was going on. Remotely the same time, the metal claw-spider made a metallic chnk sound and several sharp legs unfolded backwards to the larger set. These were pointed down and outward.
“Lieutenant!” Cheeseburger called and at the same time flung itself in my direction.
I would have moved out of its way had the circumstance allowed, but it landed on top of me and the two of us rolled until we hit the wall. Kerfuffle mewed with shrill alarm.
Sharp, needle-like shards bombarded the walls and floor. A few clattered noisily as their course was redirected from the collision with the mound of junk Cheeseburger and Kerfuffle had collectively created. As the razor rain stopped, Cheeseburger pushed off of the wall it had braced against to protect me.
Sparks flickered and made occasional little zap sounds that caused a secondary wave to erupt in a chaotic but semi regular pattern. Something burst with a loud pop and a thin trail of smoke wafted above it. My ears flopped down. Cheeseburger was working to pull its thick glove off with a bit of difficulty.
“Kerfuffle.”
After a moment the tropical’s head emerged from the side of the doorway.
“It’s safe, don’t worry.” Cheeseburger assured. “It jammed. Only one launched, fortunately. Had the others been successful we’d have been in a world of trouble.” It had its glove off by now and shook its green paw with a quiet hiss. The outer side had a cut that a thin trail of blood trickled from. “I’ll disengage it so that it doesn’t accidentally misfire again. Lieutenant, are you okay?”
I nodded.
Cheeseburger grabbed its utility belt and gathered an assortment of tools with its tentacles. At the same time it picked up the prototype with caution not to trigger the others and set to work on disabling it.
“Smiley!”
I pinned my ears down and scrunched my muzzle up. That was unmistakably Spork. It sounded like it was headed our way. I moved myself slowly to the far side of Cheeseburger, furthest from the door. Maybe it wouldn’t see me.
“Smiley!”
It saw me.
Spork’s gaze drifted to the uh, slight mess that had been caused. The spider claw groaned as its life energy faded and its grip released. It crashed to the floor. One of the legs or fingers—whatever they were—popped off.
The tip of Spork’s tail twitched back and forth then it crossed its arms, a low growl rumbling in its throat.
“What happened?”
“I uh…well I was going through Cheeseburger’s stuff.”
“Hold up.” It interrupted. “Cheeseburger, you mean you let it?”
Cheeseburger seemed hesitant to answer. “Yes sir, Smiley is our commander, it hardly seemed right too question its authority.”
“It’s Smiley.”
“I think we’ll have some moderate setbacks.” Cheeseburger noted, looking at the wreckage, “But on a positive note, no one was seriously injured.” It shook its paw again and wiped the blood away with a finger.
Spork growled. It held its paws out, palms up, claws unsheathed, flexing them in turn as if exercising to sink them into something, or worse, someone. I won’t lie, it looked angry. Not just a little, but MAD, like I was beginning to wonder if its next intent was to tear me to shreds.
“No more delays!” It finally managed, “Smiley! We’re going on recon—NOW.”
I didn’t protest, because at that very moment, I began fearing for my life.