"Who is she?" Lyekka repeated, sniffing in Vlad's direction. "I like her,"
Stan immediately pushed Vlad behind him, since he knew that this new Lyekka wasn't his Lyekka. "Don't act like that around me, I know what you are!" he said.
"I'm a plant," said Lyekka. "Don't you remember?"
"Yeah, I remember!" said Stan, backing toward the exit. "Lyekka's dead, and even though you're the same kinda species as her, you're not her. You're just pretending to be her, so you can eat us. Well, I'm not gonna stand for it. Me and Vlad are leaving here, right now,"
"Please don't," Lyekka said sweetly, blocking the entrance. "I like you both,"
"I do not like either of you," Vlad said defiantly. "If you do not remove yourself from our exit...I will kill you,"
Lyekka's arm stretched out like a rubber band and grabbed Vlad by the neck, flinging her into a pile of the green substance on the floor. "No, you won't," she said simply.
As Vlad sat up, shaking muck off her, breathing heavilly as if she were a bull with a red cape dangling in front of her. Her eyes reflected nothing but pure hatred, as two more pods opened near her. Lyekka smiled at him. "I don't like her anymore, Stanley," she said.
Okay, now if this situation couldn't get any worse, it certainly did at that moment, because his only means of protection was bested. Lyekka leaned close to him, making him fall backward in fear on what seemed like a very slimy root embedded in the floor. She climbed on top of him, saying, "Don't worry, Stanley. This will be very pleasant for you,"
Kai woke up on top of a pile of broken glass and dead tentacles. The floor was cold, so he was inevitably just as cold as the floor. His head was throbbing hard enough for him to hear his blood in his ears, but he couldn't tell if it was from his fall, or if it was from whatever was making his body malfunction. He sat up, and immediately coughed blood out onto the floor. Whatever this was, it seemed to just keep piling on insult to injury, since it wasn't enough that every part of his body hated him at the moment.
He had landed on a small piece of glass, which was now somewhat embedded in his side. As he gingerly pulled it out, looked around to see that the room was seemingly empty. "Xev?" he asked hoarsely.
No answer. He tried again, but still nothing. He blinked a few times until his eyes focused. The alcoves that had contained the tentacle creatures were empty; person, ice, creature, and all. Xev was nowhere to be found, except her flashlight was on the floor close to him. In an unexplainable weird sort of way, he was strangely comforted by the fact that not that much had changed while he was gone. At least he wasn't as worthless as most people kept telling him.
He got up, looked around, and saw that the pod that contained Xev's attacker, was open, and it was large enough for a person to fit through.
Although, the pod wasn't a pod at all. It was more like a holding cell for something, and there was a hole in the back wall. "Hello,"
Kai turned around to be face-to-face with a smiling woman, with her hair in braids around her face, and a fuzzy pink outfit; which inevitably reminded him strongly of Bunny. He raised his brace in defense, since this was undoubtedly another life-threatning situation. "Are you who I think you are?" he asked.
"I am Lyekka," she said, circling around him, licking her chops. "You are Kai. You were dead, and I didn't like you last time I saw you,"
"I destroyed the asteroid containing you and your sisters. How is it that you can exist here?" he asked.
"I'm a different Lyekka. A sister Lyekka," she said. "I like you now..although...you smell...sick. But that's okay. I can't get sick, and I'm hungry,"
Kai turned to face her, because now she was trying to set him up as her fix for the day. "Perhaps I am unwell, though that is not my concern at the moment. Where is Xev?"
"Who is Xev?" Lyekka asked.
Of course, he thought. This was a different Lyekka creature, so that meant that she most likely hadn't seen Xev. He knew he could at least count on her telling the truth, since this species rarely lied, and since he'd been doing a bit of lying of his own lately, he could tell the difference. "Xev is a beautiful love slave dressed in a cluster lizard skin. Perhaps one of your sisters can help me find her,"
Kai lowered his brace, and headed toward the broken glass alcove where Xev had been attacked. He wasn't much in the mood to deal with a hungry plant, so he figured it best to leave her to her own devices. This Lyekka on the other hand, didn't seem to like being ignored, as she planted herself firmly in front of him, much too close for his liking (if he actually knew what a liking felt like). "You don't understand," she said, trailing a pink fingernail over his shoulder. "I'm very hungry. And I want to eat you,"
"And what if I stop you?" said Kai.
"How?" said Lyekka, still treating him as if he was a freshly cooked meal.
"Kill you perhaps?" he said flatly, as his brace slid up into his hand.
Lyekka licked the side of his face lightly, like a kitten lapping at milk. Many things were beyond his understanding, and the fact that both Vlad and Lyekka had found it necessary to slurp him was one of them. In death, it hadn't meant very much, but now he could recognize the disturbing oddity of it all. "I'm not so easy to kill," said Lyekka.
They'd had this exact conversation before (minus the slurping the last time), and she could have fooled him, because it hadn't really been that hard to get rid of her on Earth. Kai simply raised his brace to her head, and a second later the plant dropped to the ground, and turned to dead leaves. He casually stepped over them, and resumed searching for Xev.
Vlad woke up in a black void of nothingness. Normally, she wouldn't have thought anything of this, except that she had been insulted by that plant's insolence moments before, and she felt that not being able to resolve the conflict was not what was. She was a hunter, and the only way to resolve such a conflict was to draw the blood of that pathetic mortal being.
She stood, straigtened her skirt, and began walking. No direction in particular, since there was nothing all around her, but the fool of a captain was missing, so that meant he was with the Lyekka plant. That didn't sit well with Vlad; Stanley was a fool, yet taking something without asking irked the executioner, even if the plant seemed to once have belonged to him. Then again, she hoped that the fool was with the Lyekka plant. That way, she could hunt the fool's plant, kill it, and then resume her initial hunt for Kai and his whore. She knew that she was on the frigid rock planet for a reason, and the situation had not bored her yet; however, it was starting to, and the cycles of time had told her to carry out the mission quickly, so she wouldn't get jaded.
"Don't you want me to make you happy?" a voice behind Vlad asked.
Lyekka was standing behind her, staring at her questioningly. This time her hair was combed loose of their absurd knobs, and the color of her idiotic mammal-like garment was white. "I am a destroyer," said Vlad. "I live to destroy things like yourself,"
"But how is it that you do not dream?" Lyekka asked sniffing around Vlad like a dog. "Everyone has dreams...and I can...make those dreams come true,"
"I do dream," said Vlad, losing her patience with such a stupid creature. "I dream of the destruction of those who annoy me. You are one of those who do. I cannot allow you to substitute a fantasy for that,"
"That's too bad," Lyekka said thoughtfully. "I will have to eat you anyway, and it won't be so pleasant,"
"Where is Stanley?" Vlad said systematically, thinking it better to use the fool's real name, to make sure the plant understood.
The plant kept advancing toward her, and such boldness was something Vlad was inexperience with, since most cowered in fear before her. "I like you," said Lyekka.
"Where is Stanley?" Vlad asked forcefully.
"If I can't make you happy...then I'll just have to eat you now,"
Lyekka leaned forward as if to taste Vlad, but the executioner grabbed the absurd plant by the shoulder, holding her at a distance. Taking one last repulsed look at the repelling life that nature could produce, Vlad drove her knife into the temple of her prey. "I kill you in the name of His Divine Shadow," she said.
The blackness around her faded back into the jungle-like environment that she had remembered herself being in. There were two floating pod-like creatures squirming to hold her down, which she quickly dispatched with a few movements of her blade. Though this Lyekka beast could take any form it pleased, its true form was laughable through the Divine Executioner's eyes. The Stanley fool was nowhere to be found, and neither was his air-headed plant.
She stood up as a few more of the Lyekka pods began to open, and calmly walked out of the chamber, before the Lyekka creatures could take their shape. The Stanley fool was not squealing, so she either figured him missing or dead, whatever the case she didn't care, but he was not her main concern. Should she find him during her search for Kai and his whore, perhaps she would spare him from whatever harm if she felt like it, but it didn't really matter. The cycles of time had shown her nothing of him, just of the other two worthless mortals, and if she was familiar enough with them, Kai had already lost his whore, and was somewhere in this concrete and steel tunnel, searching for her.
Xev woke up to the noise of things squelching toward her. Her cluster lizard instinct shook her out of her coma, and she found herself squashing a small creature of some sort. She turned over her hand, and saw that it looked like a plant pod with minute tentacles on its southern end. In a sudden fit of aversion, she shook it off her hand, wiping its slime on the floor, of which she was lying.
Looking around, she saw that this place was not only unwelcoming with its dim lighting and drippy growths, but even with its seemingly endless dimensions, it still felt eerilly like a tomb. She saw that the same slimy vine-like substance that covered the walls and floor was wrapped around her body. She ripped it off effortlessly in extreme distaste, and stood up.
Kai wasn't anywhere close by, and she had no clue as to where he might be. She hadn't seen it very clearly but she had seen him fall shortly after those tentacle things attacked him, and not get back up. She was just hoping that he was still breathing, since he seemed so against being called alive.
She almost jumped out of her skin, as something seemed to scream out her name. She rushed over on the other hand, to see that it was Stanley wrapped up in a coccoon of those slimy vines up against the wall.. "Oh, Stan," she said sympathetically, pulling the extremely disliked fungus off him. "Are you okay?"
"Oh good," he sighed, peeling the last of his restraints off. "Listen, Lyekka's family lives here, and they're hungry, we gotta leave. Now,"
"Stan, move!" said Xev.
Another pod-creature was hovering around their ankles. Stan screamed and stumbled backward, while Xev screeched and stomped hard on it with her boot. "You killed it,"
A Lyekka dropped down from the ceiling, this time wearing an icy blue fuzz dress. "Why?" she asked.
"Because it's evil," said Xev.
"It was just a seed," Lyekka said sadly. "You're very mean people. I would eat you myself...but I won't,"
"What do you want with us, then?" said Xev, backing a whimpering Stanley away from Lyekka. "I thought you were always hungry,"
"I am," said Lyekka. "We all are...but there aren't enough of us,"
"Not enough?" Stan asked. "Whaddya mean not enough?! There's hundreds of you in that room me and Vlad were in, thousands even!"
"No," said Lyekka. "There aren't enough of us. All the people here were so yummy, and now they are all gone. Even though we can't eat you...you will help us,"
Kai looked above him, and fired his brace into a sleeping Lyekka pod. He stepped back a little as the pod's various fluids spattered him lightly, and the Lyekka dropped down, this time in a yellow dress. Before she had a chance to eye him as her next meal (or slurp him), he unceremoniously shot her, and stepped over the dead leaves. "Kai?"
He spun around to see Xev staring expectantly back at him. "Hello, Xev," he said.
He wasn't at all prepared for Xev to suddenly push him up against the slimy wall and press her mouth against his. She pulled away almost as quickly as she'd kissed him, and smiled. "This is what you want, right?" she asked, kissing him again, this time a little longer. "You don't have to lie to me,"
"How would you know?" he asked, pulling away.
"You dream about it all the time," said Xev. "You have a lot of bad dreams...but not all of them are bad. This should be pleasant for you,"
Everything about this was all wrong. Xev was a love slave, sure, and she was prone to doing these things to other men, but never to him. She'd always remembered herself around him. The problem was, until her words grabbed him by the throat and shook him, he (or at least his body) had been ready to accept her as the real Xev. Kai looked at her closely for a second, and then fired his brace into her belly. "You are not Xev," he said.
The plant staggered backwards as her form melted back into a Lyekka wearing dark purple this time. "Don't you want me to make you happy?" she asked.
"The dead do not have wants," said Kai, this time making sure to shoot her in the head.
As the dead leaves scattered across the floor, a cold voice said, "That angered you greatly, did it not, assassin?"
Vlad stepped out of the shadows, covered in Lyekka slime just as he was. Her knife glistened in the poor light, covered in various plant fluids. "Go on," she said. "Admit it. It angered you to see that Lyekka beast take the form of your whore...and it angered you even further that the plant beast was only speaking the truth about your dreams. There is nothing you can hide from me, assassin...it has happened before, and it is happening now,"
He turned around and continued on, even though something in his brain was nagging him to shoot her right through the sternum. There was no doubt in his mind that this was truly Vlad; Lyekka aside, even Prince couldn't put on an as convincing performance as the real Vlad could. "Why do you not answer me, assassin?" she asked somewhat coyly, following after him.
He casually turned around, shot an opening Lyekka pod along with its contents behind her, and continued walking. "Xev was dragged in this direction. I gather that since you are here...Stanley is here also," he said simply.
"You see," said Lyekka. "My sisters and I need to eat...but we also need to make more of us. Those seedlings need food. There were lots of yummy people for them to eat here, but now they're all gone. You're all we have,"
"You're not puttin' one of those things in me!" said Stan. "No way, no how!"
"Too late," said Lyekka.
"Whaddya mean too late?!?!" said Stan.
"Those seedlings that you killed," said Lyekka, looking sadly at the place where the squashed one lay. "There were only two...but I have lots and lots of sisters. That's why I like you, Stanley. I knew you'd carry one,"
"But I don't wanna carry one!" Stan whined.
"And what about me?" Xev asked.
"Yes," said Lyekka. "You are different from Stanley. But I still like you...you can carry more than one,"
Lyekka's arms suddenly liquefied and turned to viny tentacles. They dropped off several pods, and the very sight of it made Xev's cluster lizard side strangely hungry, while her human side was wanting to turn and throw up. She stood in front of Stan, and moved backwards, since he wouldn't move unless there was something urging him to. "Stan, run," she said.
"Run where?!" said Stan.
"Who cares?!" said Xev. "Go!"
She grabbed his arm, and yanked him in the opposite direction from Lyekka. She could run faster, except that it was nearly impossible to do so without Stan falling down. Even as they ran for their lives, she couldn't understand how the one person who was into self-preservation couldn't run like a coward! She then took a sharp turn, and pushed Stan through a hole in the wall.
It must have once been a corridor, since in was indeed a hallway covered in Lyekka pods and various types of plant growth and muck. She pushed Stan down another turn, and then Stan stopped, putting his hands on his knees. "Stop Xev," he panted. "I'm not part cluster lizard, I gotta rest,"
"If we stop, we'll be dead," said Xev.
"Look, if we keep going like this, I'm not sure I'm gonna make it back up to the surface," Stan griped. "Besides she put one of those things in me!"
"I know," said Xev.
"Where's Kai?" Stan asked.
Before she could provide the answer to that question, the walls started crawling with larger Lyekka spores, that now were about the size of small dogs. "Let's go!" said Xev.
She went to turn a corner, but slammed head-on into Kai. He caught her in one arm, and unceremoniously shot them, until the ground was littered with dead leaves. She looked over his shoulder to see Vlad smiling smugly as he killed the spawn. Xev couldn't tell if it was out of spite because she had been with Kai the whole time, or if it was just because she was enjoying the rather violent turn of events. He then looked directly at her, aiming his brace. "Are you Xev?" he asked.
She grabbed his face and gave him a quick kiss. "Stan's in trouble," she said. "Lyekka put some weird spore into him,"
He released her, and then looked Stan over. "Where is Lyekka?" he asked.
"I don't like you anymore,"
Looking beyond Stan, Lyekka's absurd furry outfit had turned black, and her face looked anything but sweet and angellic. "Why not?" Kai asked.
"You're killing us," she said.
Kai pushed Stan out of the way, and turned to Vlad. "Take them back to the moth," he said.
"I will do no such thing," said Vlad, looking up. "I wish to see her kill you. And then I will kill her,"
"You killed a lot of us...we need to replace them,"
Kai fired his brace at the ill-tempered Lyekka, but instead of connecting, it simply splashed through her liquid form, and she returned to being solid. "I'm not like my sisters," she said. "I'm a big sister Lyekka,"
Her arm stretched out and a few seconds later, Kai found himself slamming into a wall behind Xev, Stan, and Vlad. He rolled to the side as Lyekka's rubbery fist nearly crushed his head, and called out to Vlad, "I believe you should rethink returning Xev and Stan to the Lexx!"
Vlad glared at him defiantly, but then Stan grabbed her arm. "You heard him!" he said. "Let's go!"
She took once last angry look at her enemy, and then was nearly dragged by the arms down a passageway with Xev and Stan. Kai caught Lyekka on the end of his brace and retracted the cord, as to duck and slam her into the wall behind him, except that she liquefied herself again, and slid off the tip of it.
He'd forgotten that even though Lyekka creatures were little more than something for the common addict to smoke, they were freakishly strong, and trying to think of a way to kill her was becoming quite difficult when he actually needed his windpipe to breathe. She was crushing it at the moment, and she was smiling at him. "I don't care anymore," she said. "I'm too hungry,"
Kai could feel her tapping into his mind, so she could start devouring him, except instead of being plucked from reality and into some meaningless dream, there was a brief flash, and the passage around them gave one of those spontaneous lurches. Lyekka gasped as she dropped him, and recoiled in what he supposed was fear; he couldn't quite tell, since he was willing himself to stay concious. Since the illusion of a spinning room marred his vision, he could see beyond the confused, suddenly deathly pale Lyekka, that everything was turning from a disgusting green color to an equally disgusting brown. "You're killing us," she said. "How?"
One shot from his brace, and the head of his adversary dropped to the ground before turning to dead leaves. He stood up, blinked a few times as the dizziness wore off, and looked around. There were numerous dead Lyekka pods hanging above his head, along with all of the nesting vegetation that had been plastered to the walls and floor. As he checked himself over for additional wounds, he couldn't help wondering why everything had suddenly died the second she had tried to consume him.
Back on the bridge, Kai and Xev made for the cryochamber, eager to remove any saplings Lyekka may have planted in them. Since everything that was a part of the "big sister" had died the second she came into contact with Kai, he had few qualms with the seedlings, but just the same it didn't belong in their bodies, so better out than in. Stan had been worried, but had since calmed when Vlad had threatened to make a trophy of his tongue if he didn't stop whining.
Now the Divine Executioner was looking around the bridge, as if she were searching for something. Stan stopped in mid-stride, and looked at her. She had dragged him down to that planet with her for a reason, but she was still being secretive about what that reason was. Lyekka seedling or no, he was still curious.
"So...Vlad," he asked. "Did you...find what you were looking for?"
Vlad's head jerked in his direction and stared at him with those eerie dead-but-not-dead eyes. "No," she said firmly. "I was wrong,"
"Whaddya mean you were wrong? I thought you were the Time Prophet, and a Time Prophet can't ever be wrong, it just doesn't work like that!" said Stan, irked over almost getting killed for no reason.
"Time is still time," Vlad repeated. "Time will tell soon enough,"
"Time?" Stan asked. "Well, it better be a short amount of time, or Captain Stan's gonna-"
An "OUCH!" from the Lexx, and a knife in the command pedastal that dangerously buzzed past his head pretty much signaled for him to stop trying to interrogate her, unless he didn't want her to miss the next time she threw that knife.
"Stupid Lyekka," Stan grumbled, as he leaned back in a cryopod while the protein regenerator cleansed him and Xev of the seedlings. "Stupid Vlad, and her stupid premonitions,"
Vlad had dissappeared again, and now Kai was running the regenerator, even though he looked a bit off-color. For some reason, the former assassin had been the only one aside from Vlad who hadn't been inhabited by one of the seedlings. Xev waved it off as just being lucky, but Stan wasn't so sure. "You mean that she had another one?" said Kai, looking up from the protein regenerator.
"Another one? Whaddya mean another one?" said Stan. "She's only had the one, and she's not tellin' us anything about it, so c'mon, what is it?"
"Shortly after you freed us from the effects of Prince's dream box, Vlad came into the cryopod and attempted to engage in combat. After I neutralized her, she revealed to me that the cycles of time have started again," said Kai.
The machine stopped whirring around and Xev plucked the suction cup off her arm. "Of course," she said. "Time moves in a circle, so what?"
"Time does move in a circle, but it was not supposed to happen this fast," said Kai. "Though I cannot determine whether or not she is lying, she has revealed to me that my resurrection and hers have sped up the time cycle, thus creating a paradox in it, and since we are here, it means that everything is about to happen once again,"
"It makes sense," Xev said quietly, pacing around. "The insects, the Time Prophet...you; everything,"
"Whaddya mean everything?!" said Stan, hopping off the cryopod. "Sure things have been a bit more chaotic than usual, but that's no reason for something big to come up!"
"On the contrary," said Kai. "Vlad and I are not supposed to be alive, as we were both killed at our respective times. I am the Last of the Brunnen-G and she is the Time Prophet. The arrival of His Divine Shadow, in whatever form he may take, will trigger another Insect War,"
"But Vlad just told me that she was wrong in her last premonition, that's gotta count for something, right?" said Stan. "She could have just messed up!"
"Though it is probable, it is certain that Vlad saw something. She would consider witholding such information boring, as she enjoys to watch people suffer," said Kai. "She looks forward to what is about to come,"
Xev sighed, and nodded. She knew it was a bit strange that Kai should just pop up out of nowhere, and Vlad with her shiny new ability to see into the cycles of time was more than just unexpected. Plus, the dead did not lie. The best thing to do was to just accept it. It wouldn't be normal for them to continue living without something evil pursuing them at every second.
"How much time do we have until it happens?" Xev asked.
A burning feeling shot up his right arm, and settled in the middle of his back. It was almost identical to the pain he received when he became disoriented, but at least this time he wasn't going to wake up on the floor. "I am...uncertain," said Kai, calmly turning his back, and rolling up his sleeve.
The skin around his brace was bruised a deep purple, and normally he wouldn't have been concerned, since being alive meant having to endure all sorts of injuries, but the only wound he'd sustained from that planet was the wound in his side from the glass. He slowly pressed a finger into one of the contutions, and found that it stung, not just in one place, but all through his nerves. "Hey, are you all right?" Xev asked.
Kai quickly pulled his sleeve back down, and faced them. "Why would I not be?" he said calmly.