"Nebular, do we really have anything to defend ourselves with?"

"We're an exploration ship, we don't exactly stock weapons..."

"I have my camera!"

"Camera's not going to do much, Socrates."

"No, I mean, I have my camera! Can you guys switch a light on? I'm not picking up anything."

"You're documenting this dangerous event?"

"Vlogging, thank you!"

"Yeah, documenting would imply some level of thought put into it…"

"You shut your smug hamster mouth up!"

Suddenly, there was the sound of a generator clunking on, and all the lights in the spaceship roared back to life, revealing, Hobbes, Andy, Sherman, Socrates, Galaxoid and Nebular all standing at the front of the room, staring off into the blackness outside the windows.

"I guess we've parked…," Andy said, slowly.

"Also, 'smug hamster mouth'?" Sherman demanded, looking over at Socrates incredulously.

Socrates stuck his tongue out at Sherman.

There was a silence as everyone stood, trying to determine their next plan of action.

Finally, Hobbes broke the silence. "That actually reminds me, Socrates, you remember that one time like fourteen years ago when you completely broke character and were evil for a little bit?"

"Didn't we strike that from canon?" Socrates asked.

"Did we?"

"Pretty sure. I don't remember at this point. I mean, how many rewrites has our lore even had?"

Hobbes paused. "Is this conversation even canon?"

"Is what conversation even canon?"

"Do we have anything that can even possibly be used as a weapon?" Sherman piped up once again, trying to keep everyone on track.

"I have a swiss army knife," Andy offered.

"They have ray guns. Nothing ranged?" Sherman groaned.

"What about the Time Pauser?"

Sherman tapped his chin in thought. "I mean, that's not a bad thing to have on you… Keep it handy. What else do we have?"

"Erm... We have a vacuum cleaner?" Galaxoid offered weakly.

There was a moment of silence.

"Sure, we'll use the vacuum cleaner," Sherman deadpanned. "We always manage to make this nonsense work anyway."

"Oooh! Can I use it?" Socrates shouted, excitedly.

"Why not? Why don't you just attach your camera to it, while you're at it?"

"Way ahead you, little rodent buddy!" Socrates shouted happily, pulling his cell phone out along with a roll of duct tape.

"Brilliant," Sherman growled. "Our lives are in good hands as always…"

"… You okay there, Shermie?" Andy asked.

Air hissed and smoke bellowed from the ship's bay doors and the group slowly peered into the Zokain ship. In the blackness they could vaguely make out the shapes of engines and other moving mechanical parts. Nothing exceptionally out of the ordinary, though.

Socrates lead the charge, holding in his hand a large hose connected to a large spherical bag latched onto his back. He held it out in front of him as he walked.

"Did anybody bring a flashlight?" Andy whispered.

"No, this lighting is perfect." Socrates whispered back. "It really sets the mood."

"Okay, here's the plan…," Hobbes said slowly. "We'll stick together and make our way to the ship's main control room. Then we'll…"

"Why are we whispering? I can help you get to the control room."

Hobbes' head jerked to one side where his vision was immediately filled with a pair of faintly glowing yellow compound eyes staring into him.

"AAAAUGH!" Hobbes screamed, tumbling backwards.

"AAAAAUGH!" the alien also screamed, tumbling backwards himself.

"AAAAUGH!" Everyone else proceeded to scream, as Socrates aimed the hose at the glowing eyes.

VRRRRRRRRRRIP!

The alien clawed and struggled, but was ultimately powerless against the strangely overpowered suction of the vacuum, as he was pulled into the hose and sucked up into the bag on Socrates' back.

Sherman stared at Socrates, dumbfounded. "That worked?"

"Yeah…?" Socrates said. "Why, you weren't expecting it to?"

"How did that work?! How in the absolute - ?"

"It's dark in here!" Dave shouted out of the bag. "Should I keep screaming?"

"No! No, you shouldn't!" Hobbes snapped. "Where's Calvin?"

"Calvin? Who's Calvin?"

"You know who Calvin is, buddy!" Socrates snapped. "I recommend you speak before we unleash further cleaning products on you!"

"I have no idea who Calvin is…," Dave said, truthfully. "I just work here, man!"

"Calvin..." Andy sighed. "The kid you've all been trying to kill for however many years now..."

Dave was silent for a moment. "Nope. Not ringing a bell."

"Spiky hair? Usually has a red T-shirt?"

"Errrm…," Dave started. "You mean Rupert? His name's not Calvin. But he sometimes wears a red suit depending on what event we're going to."

Air hissed from Andy's nose. "The Earth Potentate…," he said, finally.

"Oh yeah! Him! Yeah, he's here!" Dave said, happily. "Can I go yet? I think I got a fluffball in my mouth."

"Where is he?" Sherman demanded.

"I dunno, I haven't seen him for a while. He's been running around the ship doing stuff. Last I saw, Rupert was mad about it or something."

Hobbes sighed with relief. "Okay, good, he's safe."

"He usually is when he's here," Dave said. "I mean, let's be honest…"

"What do we do now?" Galaxoid asked.

"I guess let's start looking…," Andy said.

"Should we let the worker drone go?" Socrates asked.

There was a silence as Hobbes and Andy stared at the bag on Socrates' back, while it squirmed slightly, as Dave presumably tried to find a comfortable position.

"Say, umm… Which one are you?" Andy asked.

"Dave!" the alien said, happily.

"Right…," Andy went on. "How would you like being our tour guide while we look for the Earth Potentate?"

"You would give me such an honor?" Dave said, the pitch of his voice raising with excitement.

"We sure would," Hobbes said. "You just have to be really quiet and take us to parts of the ship that Rupert and Earl don't usually check..."

"This is awesome! So it's like a super-secret surprise birthday party tour?!" Dave shouted.

There was a moment of silence.

"Sure…," Hobbes said. "It's, erm… it's exactly that."

"Do you have any remote idea how long I've wanted to do this exact thing for?!" Dave shouted.

There was a pause.

"No. How long?" Hobbes said, finally.

"Ever since I just brought it up! You have no idea how happy I am right now!"

Everyone sighed as Socrates unzipped the bag on his back, causing a cloud of dust and the alien to come tumbling out.

They waited for him to regain himself before Hobbes spoke again. "All right. Where was the last place you saw Calvin?"

"He walked by the game room while Lenny and I were playing checkers!"

"Cool… Great… can you take us to the game room?" Andy sighed.

"Nope! Earl locked the door down when he saw we were playing checkers and not looking for the Earth Potentate!"

"Can you take us to the locked door?" Galaxoid asked.

Dave stared at Galaxoid in confusion. "I… I mean… I guess I could… But we couldn't play checkers… The door is locked."

"We don't want to play checkers. We want to find Calvin," Socrates said.

"I can teach Calvin how to play checkers if you want. It's really easy," Dave said. "Then we can all play checkers!"

"No… Forget about checkers, Dave!" Hobbes said, impatiently.

"You forgot how to play checkers?!" Dave gasped. "Don't worry! I'll teach you, too! First you roll the dice and try to get even numbers…"

"Dave!" Sherman shouted. All eyes went to the hamster. "If you find the Earth Potentate and help us get home, we will play Super Checkers."

Dave stared at Sherman in wonder. "SUPER Checkers?"

"Super Checkers. We'll all gather around a board and play it to your heart's desire. After we're home safe with Calvin. How does that sound?"

"That sounds like the most super funnest thing ever! I know just the places to look! Follow me!"

And with that, the alien sprinted off, as much as he could do so, having tentacles for legs.

Everyone watched him for a moment.

"Have neither of them ever tried saying something like that to the crew to motivate them?" Hobbes asked.

"I… guess not…," Sherman said, slowly.

Rupert entered the lab as Retro worked tirelessly away at a new device sitting on a desk in the middle of the room. The device looked like a laptop with electric prongs sticking out of the sides. They crackled with electricity as Rupert approached.

"How's progress?"

"Slow, but I'm almost done," Retro said, closing the laptop. "This might interest you, though."

Rupert remained silent and motioned for him to continue. Retro pulled a cord out of the side of the computer that had a pair of electrodes on the end of them.

"We attach these to Calvin's brain, and we can trap him inside of his own mind and construct a nightmare. Torture him however we please."

"That's promising," Rupert nodded.

"Have you caught him yet?"

"No…, He's still loose on the ship, but he can't get away. We may have another issue though."

"Hmm?"

"Something else is on the ship."

Retro paused, as he waited for Rupert to quantify this. "What do you mean?"

"What is that creature you have on Earth? The eight legged one…?"

"Spiders?" Retro asked, his brow furrowing.

"Yeah… Those. They looked like spider legs… They just burst out of the ceiling and blocked me from getting to the boy…"

"Spider legs…?" Retro repeated, looking back down at his device. "Now what would that be?"

"I don't know, but the boy didn't recognize it. So it's nothing of his."

"Really?" Retro said, thoughtfully rubbing the laptop. He remembered how easily Calvin escaped him due to the falling beam. Could that have been more than a coincidence? Was this something else that Calvin had dreamed up? "Hmmm… We need to find him… Fast."

Rupert nodded and pressed a button on his suit. His voice immediately began broadcasting throughout the ship's speaker system. Retro remained staring at his device as he did so.

"This is a red alert! This is not a drill! Get off the TV! I want the Earth Potentate located and brought to me immediately! This is an Alpha-level command and you will ignore all other directives until he is recaptured. Get him now!"

Hobbes and the rest of his group stared upwards at the ceiling of the corridor they were in as Rupert's announcement echoed throughout it.

Dave clicked his tongue in thought.

"Huh. Weird. Rupert usually doesn't want to play checkers."

"Yeah, we need to speed things up a bit," Hobbes said, turning back to the group.

"Dave!" Sherman shouted from Andy's shirt pocket. Dave looked around. "What Rupert meant to say is that he wants to find Calvin first, so he can play all the checkers with him first! He doesn't want you to play checkers, so he's challenging you to find Calvin before he does."

"Ah yes, that makes perfect sense, actually," Dave nodded. "Don't worry! I'll get on the radio and tell the rest of the crew to be on the lookout! We will have the biggest game of checkers ever checkered!"

Sherman smiled with satisfaction. "I should have been the evil alien trying to kill you all," he chuckled, smugly. "I would have had it done right the first time around."

Hobbes, Andy and Socrates all turned and gave Sherman a disturbed look.

"… What?"

Calvin looked around himself as the announcement played out.

"Oh-kay…," he said, slowly. "Maybe I'll stop messing around now. Hiding place, hiding place…"

He moved his hands over the spaceship walls, looking for some kind of door or indent, but he found nothing on the smooth surface. Finally, his eyes fell on an air vent on one of the turns. He moved towards it, until the same spiked spider legs erupted from the ground, making a sickly crunching sound in its wake, as it blocked the vent off. Still unused to this, Calvin reared back slightly and cringed.

Letting out a yelp of terror, he backed away from the vent and the legs quickly retracted back into the floor.

"Don't want me in there, then huh?" Calvin said, looking around. "What do you want? Why are you doing this?"

Over the humming of the ship, Calvin swore he heard the sound of whispering for a split second, but it was quickly drowned out by the machinery around him. Frustrated, he turned to leave.

Meanwhile, Hobbes and his group rushed to try and keep up with Dave, who was easily keeping ahead of them, as he raced down the corridor.

"Okay, so here's the way to the room with the weird legs," he announced, pointing down the corridor. "Although, they're not there anymore, and I don't think the Earth Potentate is there, either."

Hobbes poked his head in the room. Indeed, the whole place looked about as normal as normal could get – on an alien spaceship, that is, and actually, it would appear normal to the aliens themselves, probably. So nothing of note here.

Taking a moment, Hobbes sniffed the air. A familiar scent wafted through his nostrils. That smell that only little boys smell of… "He's definitely been here," he said, entering the room. Sniffing some more, he looked to the door on the far end of the room. "Looks like he went that way. Come on!"

Hobbes took the lead, and they all followed him through.

"Wow, that was cool!" Dave exclaimed. "You gotta teach me how to do that!"

"Grow yourself a nose first, and we'll consider it," replied Socrates.

Hobbes led the group down a maze of corridors, still following the scent.

"You sure we're going the right way?" asked Andy.

"Positive," he replied. "The nose knows. Just gotta follow the scent. It's strongest from down this way…"

But before they could go any further down the corridor, those enormous weird-looking spider legs shot out of the wall, across the floor and through the other wall, effectively cutting them off. They all collided with Hobbes when he stopped, and they all toppled over into a massive heap.

The tiger dug himself out from under his friends and saw the writhing thrashing legs before him. "What the ever-loving heck…?!"

Andy stared in open shock. "That's them…!" he gasped. "Those are the legs I keep seeing in my dreams! The creature!"

"That's it, all right," confirmed the MTM. "Definitely needs to give those things a shave."

"Quickly! Back the other way!" said Galaxoid, already dragging Nebular to safety.

They all struggled to their feet and made their way back up the corridor. Glancing back, they saw that the legs were retreating back into the wall.

"Can you still smell Calvin?" asked Socrates.

Hobbes sniffed the air again. "Yeah, his scent is kind of everywhere. It was at its strongest back that way, but I can smell it almost as strong down this junction coming up."

So they all turned at the next junction. They were just walking along before they were forced to skid to a halt. The legs erupted from the wall just ahead of them, causing them to all cry out in shock before they came to yet another stop.

"What the heck is the deal?!" Socrates demanded. "Why does it keep stopping us?"

"Must have some kind of ulterior motive," said Sherman. "It's got its own endgame lined up, and it's making sure we head in that direction."

"But is that towards Calvin or away from him?" Andy asked.

Calvin was running down a corridor not too far away from them. He was just running, trying to find his way to an escape pod, when he heard a voice in the distance. A voice he knew.

"Calvin…?" the voice shouted.

He skidded to a halt, looking in the direction he'd heard the voice. "Andy?!" he cried, turning and going in that direction.

"I just heard him!" Andy said.

"Yeah, so did the rest of us!" said Sherman. "Sounded like he came from back that way!"

They all turned and pounded their way up another corridor, keeping their eyes locked straight ahead. The further they ran, they noticed that the legs weren't appearing.

"I think we're finally on the right track!" said Hobbes.

Calvin rounded a bend and found himself coming face-to-face with another junction. He skidded to a halt when he saw something familiar ahead. Something he'd been hoping to see for a very long time now.

He saw his friends, running up the adjoining corridor. They were running so fast that they almost missed him, but then, he heard them start yelling, and they went running back the way they'd come, having him in their sights once again.

He and Hobbes saw each other. They were about one hundred feet apart, separated by the space of the long corridor.

"… Hobbes!" he cried joyously, running towards his friend.

Hobbes smiled a great big furry smile as well, and he started bounding down the corridor.

It was one of those moments where Calvin honestly believed that everything was finally going to be okay. In retrospect, he really should've known better. It's what he got for forgetting that life was hard and largely unfair.

Thankfully, those giant legs suddenly sprouted out of thin air to give him a firm reminder. They sprouted outwards and collided with the opposite wall.

"NO!" Calvin shouted. "No, no, no, no!"

Hobbes skidded to a halt just before the mess of legs, but he could still see his friend on the other side. "Oh, come on!" he shouted. "Let us through!"

"They're just skinny old legs!" said Socrates. "Let's try getting past them!"

"Agreed!" said Calvin, already in the process of climbing through the legs like they were enormous jungle vines.

Hobbes and Socrates on the other side were doing likewise, but they were unable to shift them. They attempted using their claws to cut through them, but a couple of the legs responded by suddenly coiling their way around the two tigers, grasping them above the floor. They thrashed and growled, trying to get free, but the legs sent them flying back down the corridor.

Calvin was still trying to force his way through, but another of the legs twitched suddenly, and he fell back to the floor. He got up for another try, but he was interrupted by a sudden mass of tentacles wrapping around his arms, dragging him back.

"Found him!" Carl shouted cheerfully.

"Yeah, we finally got him!" added Zack. "All set for capturing and stuff!"

Calvin thrashed and struggled to get free. "Let go of me!" he shouted.

"No," said a familiar voice. "Not anymore. Never again."

It was Rupert. Calvin looked back and saw that he was slithering through the crowd of aliens with Retro walking up behind him.

"You will not be escaping," Rupert continued. "You've done too much of that over the years."

Retro approached him, smirking gleefully. "And now…," he said, sounding a little giddy, "it's time for us to have some fun with you…"

Calvin writhed and struggled, but he simply couldn't get lose.

Hobbes had by now gotten back up again and was preparing to give the legs another attack, but his attempt fell flat as he and the others were suddenly tackled by the various aliens who weren't already on the other side.

"Wow, I can't believe it! We really got them!" Biff cheered.

Dave was the only who was confused. "Wait… what's happening?"

"Rupert says that we have to capture all the Earth Potentate's friends!"

"He did? Do you think this is part of his ploy to keep me from playing Super Checkers?"

The other aliens looked bemused. "What's 'Super Checkers'?" asked Erne.

"I don't know, but the hamster said he was going to show me!"

All the crew said, "Oooooooooooh," in great interest.

"No!" Rupert snapped. "Absolutely not! I will not let your buffoonery impede my revenge!"

The aliens all looked at him in confusion.

"What is this…'impede'… of which you speak?" asked Dave, perfectly serious.

Rupert looked like he was going to explode, so Retro stepped in. "What he means is, we have to finish the job first, and then we'll play this… 'Super Checkers'."

"Ooooooooooh!" the aliens said again.

"Okay, you got it!" Biff cheered.

"Good. Take them away to be put in suspended animation so they can't interfere. We'll… have some fun with them later."

Kicking and yelling, Hobbes and his group were swarmed by the aliens and dragged away.

"No! Let go!" Hobbes yelled, trying to get free. "Stop! What are they going to do to him?!"

As Calvin thrashed and kicked, Retro gave the tiger a sickly smile. "Oh… just a tiny bit of torture…," he replied. "All in good fun, I assure you. But not to worry – I'll take care of you later, 'tiger'." With a mocking wave, he turned on his heel and walked after Rupert.

Hobbes tried even harder to get free, still yelling and pleading as he and his friend were fiercely dragged away.

Earl observed all of this on the monitors in the security room. He watched as Calvin was dragged away, fear in his eyes as he tried to escape, and he saw the fierce glee in Rupert's eyes, and the smug satisfaction in Retro's smile. Something about it… chilled him.

He watched as Hobbes and the others were all forcibly dragged off by the crew, no doubt oblivious to what was going to happen – what they were about to take part in. The horror of it all. Normally, he was pretty chill about these things, but the more he watched… He wasn't sure what to do anymore.