A/N: Yay! Some familiar faces as the Tallest come into play. This chapter also assures people that Skibby, our narrator, is in fact female, if that wasn't already made clear. I'd like to thank some peoples who left me those friendly notes, because I find it easier to write with encouragement…and y'know, what choice do I have other than to obey the heel?

Chapter III – The Hideous Freak-Smeet

I opened the door because I am a defective. I knew Mistress didn't want me around. Any normal Irken apprentice to her elegance would have obeyed without question. But she screamed. It was shrill and loud and unlike anything I'd ever heard from her, but I was positive that it was her, my mistress. My body responded by opening the door. The conscience part of my brain had no say in the matter.

Had she been in any serious trouble, I don't know what I would have done.

But I suppose the severity of the trouble is in the eye of the beholder.

I flung myself into the elevator quickly to make for the upper chambers of our house and the communications port. The platform couldn't have moved slower. Every millisecond spent waiting for that blasted number to change was a millisecond that I could be…doing something in her proximity. As I said, I had no plan as to how I would rescue or even console my troubled mistress.

At last, the elevator's doors parted and I threw myself into the corridors. Those hallways were bathed in a menacing red aura; at the end of them was a large opening for the communications port. I bounded inside. She was nowhere in sight, but…

The screen had been left in full-view, the walls of that particular room were projectors of a huge hologram. Of course, I'd never seen an image projected in this room on such a large scale; that would have been shock enough. But it was the image itself that paralyzed me. I was staring up at two beings. They were strangely familiar, and for a good reason. The two of them looked similar to my mistress and me, very similar. My heart ceased to beat. They looked too similar not to be—

I cannot describe what went through my mind in that moment. I do know that the first thing I felt was hope. Strange hope, like an age-old question of my existence had been answered. Then there was inevitable confusion as I'd been lied to about the existence of more like us. Then finally, there was fear in me when they looked away from a sheet of paper they were holding and met my gaze. Their gem-like eyes narrowed.

"Hey…who's that?" one of them said. Its eyes were a familiar purple, like the color of my mistress's robes. I'd never seen eyes of such a hue, so naturally I was dazzled. And it spoke! It spoke in the language I knew! Had there not been a screen between this creature and me, I may have flung myself at it for an embrace. With the information I have now on "it", that would have been a very, very, very bad idea. Nonetheless, I never remembered being so thrilled.

I plugged in quickly to the prospect: These are my people!

But its frown worsened as I smiled.

They stared. Both of them were wearing the strangest uniform I'd ever seen; more like battle-armor, really. Battle armor that coordinated with their eye color perfectly. The one to my right was clad in red, a good, familiar color that I associated with myself. Though they hadn't exactly warmed up to greet me, I had already decided that there was something vastly different about their presence. Their voices were pitched lower than ours were. It sounded unnatural at first. They also looked bigger, not necessarily taller than Mistress, but broader, sturdier. They had gossamer short little antennae, a huge contradiction to the coiled thickness that were our antennae. Lastly, there were no visible eyelashes.

"Well?" the red one poked.

"Almighty Tallest, this is Skibby. Skibby, these are our Almighty Tallest." That was the voice of my Mistress, who happened to be suspended in air, her boots swaying near my head. She'd been restrained. Her tone was uncommonly meek.

I could have kicked myself. I had allowed my adoration of these two regal creatures to distract me from aiding my mistress. With all haste, I climbed the walls and settled on the thick mechanical arms that harnessed her. "Shall I try to cut the restraints, my lady?" My Pak buzzed as the laser limbs extended from it.

She slowly shook her head. I backed off immediately, my mouth agape. She mustn't have been in her right mind. I didn't have much time to think on this, though. Before I came to, I was dangling upended from the ceiling alongside her. The restraints had grabbed my tail, so I twirled and oscillated a bit as I struggled. I noticed that a thin metal probe had found its way into the wiring of Mistress's Pak, which surprised me. Keep in mind that back then, I didn't understand the full function of the Pak. I saw them only as implements to our manual labor. I supposed that the probe had been issued to disable her from retaliating by the use of her Pak.

Suddenly, I suffered the same fate. It was eerie that I felt the probe penetrate my Pak's circuitry; quite violating, to say the least.

I met the gaze of the Almighty Tallest, groped for my tail, and pulled myself up to keep the blood from spilling to my head. They were staring at something just below them and off-screen. It buzzed. A new sheet of paper was suddenly in the hands of the Purple one.

"Blank," it said, "No information on her at all."

"What?" the Red one spat. It zoomed away, giving view to its entire body structure. Its torso was thin and bent. It wore a robe that obscured its legs, and its feet played no role in walking, as the creature hovered to get around. Perhaps it wasn't part of my kin. It made its way to a large computer.

"Come to think of it," said the other, "I don't even think we have information on any Skibby. Are you looking into this?"

The machine that the Red one helmed beeped as it sifted through its files. "Well, there's a Skickis and a Skivvy…but I don't see anything—nope, nothing…DEFECTIVE!" When it faced us again, its eyes were twitching most maniacally.

"Yeah," Purple added, "And according to your records, you don't have a license for biologically engineering Irken beings, Hexa!"

It was strange to hear my mistress's name, even stranger hearing it from this creature who hardly knew us. Were they referring to me? I had not been biologically engineered…at least I didn't think so. I saved my thoughts for later, though. These creatures may have held the secret of my origins.

"What kind of sicko are you, huh? Bringing such an unfortunately misshapen freak-smeet into the world!"

Though I was propped up so the blood wouldn't rush to my head, I felt myself blush. Misshapen? I wondered. It must have been my tail. Mistress didn't have a tail, and from what I could see, neither did the Tallest.

"My tallest," Mistress retorted, "Please, I did not create Skibby. I…took her on as an apprentice before the third great purge."

"She's still an illegal unregistered Irken. She should have died like the rest of the batch," its red eyes were screwed-up in a glare, "Ugh, it's so small."

"And ugly," Purple winced, "Do you think it can even hear with those antennae?"

I might've responded to tell them that I could hear, but I was very distraught, and understandably so. I'd just been shunned by authoritarian figures of my own mysterious kind. My breath quickened. I felt a lump fizzle in my throat. So this is the secret to my past? I should be dead, but I'm a misshapen freak-smeet instead.

Mistress stared daggers at me not to cry.

It couldn't be helped. I released gobs of sobs and juicy tears. It wasn't my fault how immature I was. Mistress had always kept me in check as the minor.

Through soggy vision, I saw the Red one. It said, "We're pressing charges. An Irken representative officer should be by to pick you up in oh…eight hours?"

"And should you fail to win-over the control brains, you'll face punishment. All sorts of bad punishment. We're talkin' wedgies, public humiliation, meat; the works."

"Yeah, yeah! And we'll destroy your little friend there, too!"

"You cannot do this! You CAN'T! This is in violation to clause eighteen of my contract!" Mistress snarled and wriggled in her restraints.

"We can too, because according to this," it waved a long sheet of paper at the cameras, "we're still taller than you…and what contract? You're retired."

Purple nodded its head and grinned. "We'll see you on Judgementia, Hexa!"

The hologram was consumed in static, and then flickered off. We were left in the warm purple glow of the walls. Mistress was dropped from her restraints and landed precisely on her feet. She headed for the transmitter's controls and pounded them, fists blurred.

"That's GENERAL Hexa!" she demanded to an audience that was not listening.