Author's Note: For those of you who have been skipping around (I know who you are !), thus far, while Stan and Vlad are getting along in some weird sort of way, Kai's not only starting to have human thoughts, but he's been getting dizzy and passing out more than your drunk uncle at a Christmas party, except for one thing: He's not drunk, and he hasn't the slightest clue as to why; plus he's keeping it from Xev and Stan, is Xev gonna kill him (again, might I add) if she finds out!
Nothing was precisely what was going on inside or outside the Lexx. Absolutely nothing, as in not even a squelching sound from the hull, and Kai found that he preferred it that way after this morning's sudden insanity. Stan and Xev were in the galley, cleaning up the spew from a broken nozzle. Somehow, the end of it had been sliced up the center, and of course only one name was on the list of suspects; Vlad. Things always got sliced to pieces when she was around, and luckily for them she'd been quietly minding her own business for the last few days up until now, even though signs of her presence were everywhere.
It wasn't that he hadn't helped them clean up the mess, in fact they had less to clean up because the nozzle had explosively spewed on him the minute he walked through the door. Even though Stan had been the first person in, followed by Xev, Kai had walked in, hearing the weird gurgling noise that Stan had been complaining about, saw the piles of congealed food on the floor, table, stools, and walls, and about 2.3 seconds later the front of his shirt went from being black to green.
After being covered in worse things than Lexx food (blood; both his own and other peoples', insect slime, and Lyekka remains all in a matter of days), it wasn't such a big deal. He just preferred to eat food rather than wear it, so he got to fix the shower instead, which had also been conveniently sliced up the center, courtesy of his knife-happy, so-called destroyer. Instead of a light trickle within the actual shower, a deluge met him in the passageway. Even someone as indifferent as Kai didn't want to know what the shower or the nozzle did (Xev seemed a bit disappointed with the fate of both appendages, while Stanley's priorities switched to protecting the one part of his body he favored the most), or tried to do to Vlad in order to merit such a fate. As far as he knew, that particular passageway was still flooded, and would be for quite some time, even though he had indeed sopped up a great deal of the water (he preferred to think of it as water, anyway), just by being in the right place at the wrong time.
He lay on the bridge, staring blankly up at the impossibly high ceiling, mentally willing his clothing and hair to dry out, checking on the screen at certain intervals to make sure nothing came up. He'd since given up on Prince's dream box, and it sat in the cryochamber, taking up what little space there was. Boredom was something he'd noticed early on since becoming alive again, though admitting to it was hard just like everything else. He supposed he shouldn't be bored since the room wasn't spinning, he didn't feel any internal pain, and he was on the floor voluntarily for the moment. He found that in death he couldn't appreciate that fact, but then again, he didn't need to hide mysterious bruises from anyone because he had none back then. Dead thoughts he understood; human thoughts were another thing entirely. He vaguely understood he was protecting Stan and Xev by not telling them, simply because of what might or what might not be ahead. The HDS factor that loomed over their heads was always in the back of everyone's mind, so really, his problem was minor.
He sat up abruptly when the screen started buzzing. A signal was being sent, and sure enough the Lexx had already zoomed in on a ship coming toward them. He lazily peeled himself off the floor, and made for the galley, before the Lexx decided to have a snack.
Xev walked up ahead of Kai and Stan, even though it was almost too dark to see in the ship's corridors. The narrow catwalks creaked under their weight, which had Stan gripping both sides of the rails unsteadily. Kai didn't care very much, since he was more amused by watching Xev tinker with anything they happened to pass. Sometimes she'd tap a chain that was hanging from overhead, or just kneel down to inspect an object that was simply lying on the path in front of her. He didn't understand the feeling it gave him, and most of the time he was oblivious to the fact that he was staring at her. Stanley on the other hand noticed it right away, and smirked, even though he was terrified of heights. "Getting ideas, dead man" he asked, making sure Xev still had her back turned.
"The dead rarely get ideas" said Kai.
"There's something weird about this ship" said Xev, shining her flashlight about the ceiling, and the floors below them. "There are toys all over the place"
"Toys, whaddya mean toys" said Stan.
Xev turned around, and rolled her eyes at Stan, as she held up a small rag doll. "Not the kind of toys you'd be interested in, Stan" she said sharply.
"Perhaps we should check the bridge" said Kai.
"Good luck findin' it" said Stan, looking down cautiously. "I dunno about you two, but I'm starting to wonder how long these walkways are gonna hold our weight"
"They seem perfectly functional" said Kai.
"It's up there" Xev said simply, shining her flashlight to the floor above them.
"What, what's up there" said Stan.
"The bridge" said Xev.
"Well how do ya figure that" said Stan.
"We climbed up twelve floors exactly and found nothing, so that door up there's gotta be the bridge" she said. "Coming"
Kai wordlessly followed her, as he did in pretty much every situation, while Stan shook his head and sighed. He couldn't understand her cluster lizard logic; what did she do, just pull ideas out of the air that sounded good!
Kai shot the lock off the door with his brace, and the automatic mechanism made the heavy metal panel slide with ease. Xev went through first, but was taken by surprise when she was accosted by several flying rubber balls. "Hey" she said.
"Get 'em, guys" said a child's voice. "That's what they get for barging in here"
Xev screeched as loud as she could, and snarled, which effectively stopped the barrage. The "crew" of the ship all ran and hid, either under some of the control consoles, or behind chairs. The room was a mess. There were opened packages of food, and the wrappers were all over the place, and toys were scattered all over the floor and console tops, plus there was a holoscreen blasting out some kind of inane children's program. "Please don't hurt us" said a little girl. "We're sorry, we really are! We promise, we won't"
"Hey, it's okay" said Xev, holding up her hands in defense. "I'm sorry if we scared you. My name is Xev"
A girl of about nine popped up from behind one of the machine, and stared hard at Xev. "Ugh, don't even go all motherly with us, we know what you guys are" she said.
Kai stepped forward, making the girl back toward the wall. "And what would that be" he asked.
A boy came out from under one of the consoles, and threw a small orb at Stan, which exploded a jade-colored paint all over the front of his uniform. "Hey" said Stan. "What was that all about, you little skid mark"
"We ain't never had grown-ups and we don't wanna start now, okay! Just go away" he said.
"Look" said Xev, kneeling to the child's level. "We came in here because our ship, the Lexx, picked up your distress signal"
"Distress signal" the first little girl asked. "We didn't send out any signal"
Kai turned to one of the consoles and brushed off the garbage to find a blinking red light. "I believe that this is the mechanism that sends and receives signals from other vessels" he said.
"Hey" said a boy, that looked identical to the first. "We've been using that as a stool"
"For what" Stan asked.
"Candy" said the girl with the pink bow. "What else? I'm Stormy by the way. The twins over there are Len and Spaz, the other guy's name is Quet, and this is my little sister Gilly"
"And you've all just been...living here by yourselves" Xev asked skeptically.
"Yeah" said Len. "Got a problem with that"
Hours later (hours considering that's how long it took to finally convince the group of children that they weren't going to take them anywhere they didn't want to go), Stan had managed to shuttle the kids back to the Lexx with promise of a big bug tour, while Kai and Xev decided to spend the night aboard the mysterious ship in hopes to find information as to why these children were seemingly orphaned. Stan didn't seem too pleased about having to babysit five kids, after the last two scenarios in which five young people came to the Lexx, but he begrudgingly agreed, since he was the only one Vlad halfway listened to (even the formerly dead did not think it was a good idea for her to be alone with anyone, let alone kids that age).
Since Stan's departure, they'd managed to clear away the garbage, except for the cake-like substance jammed into the buttons of the mechanism that controlled the ship; so it was obvious they had been drifting. Xev had gone through their inventory, which contained a decent amount of food and water, but was mostly just toys. Kai had to search for the ship's log, which was a screen inevitably obscured by what seemed to be one of Len's larger paint bombs. The walls were also covering in paint spatters, and rude drawings of men and women. For such young children, they seemed to be ahead of themselves.
Xev finished pulling the last of the rubbish into a bag she'd brought over from the Lexx, and came to see what Kai was up to. "Who taught them to make messes like this, even I was taught to clean up after myself" she griped.
"Or who didn't teach them" said Kai.
He was sitting in the chair next to the controls, which he'd draped a second bag over, since it seemed to be covered in foreign substances. "What are you doing" Xev asked, leaning over his shoulder.
"I am checking the ship's log to find that there is no sign of any, except images of the crew engaging in...recreation" said Kai, scrolling through the different recorded files. "I have repaired the holoscreen"
"Why was it broken" Xev asked.
"This" said Kai, holding up a slightly charred yo-yo. "Their motive for shoving it in the mechanism is unknown"
Xev had to smile. "Didn't you do things like that when you were that age" she asked. "You know, just to see what would happen"
"No" said Kai, continuing to scan through video recordings of the kids rampaging all over the bridge.
"Then I guess...neither of us had much of a childhood, then" she said sweetly, moving to cover his free hand with her own.
Since he didn't pull away on the Lyekka planet, then she supposed it was okay to do this, but he quickly pulled away. "I would not remember" he said quickly. "Six-thousand years is a long time"
It wasn't that he was trying to avoid her at all costs, it was just that those stinging bruises were spreading beyond just his right side, and if she were to touch him, his body would react, and then she'd know. He knew he couldn't let that happen, or at least not yet. He supposed that the wounds would spread to a point where he couldn't hide it any more, but he at least had a bit of time before that happened. The problem was that the sad look on Xev's face roused another emotion that he couldn't recognize. He was starting to think that emotions were all the same thing; and if they weren't, the memo got lost somewhere.
His attention immediately turned to the second holoscreen, as Xev's elbox accidentaly moved over a glowing template. Images of a small blue planet popped up, and a string of information, complete with coordinates. "I believe that this is what we are looking for" he said.
"And" Xev asked.
"As I am seeing these images, I am recalling memories of a planet simillar to this one. It is a planet entirely composed of children, and the oldest inhabitants do not age over twenty years. It is...supossedly a happy place, however, with out experiences in the Dark Zone, I do not carry the belief that it is so"
Xev pulled her squaker off her belt. "I'm calling Stan" she said.
Meanwhile, the moth flew unsteadilly back to the Lexx, as the kids fidgeted incessantly inside it. Not only did Stan have to put up with the inhuman loudness of a five-year old's normal voice, but he had to cram all of the kids into one moth, or Kai and Xev would have been stranded on the empty vessel. "Hey, do ya mind getting your foot outta my ear! Please" he snapped, cutting off the incessant prattling.
The little boy known as Quet stopped harrasssing one of the twins with what seemed to be a miniature electric prod, and looked at Stan. One second and a kick in the ear later, Stan found himself ready to simply open the hatch and throw the child out, pressure suit or no. Sure it would kill him, but it would take the other protein sacks with him! But no...Xev would most likely hunt him down after reincarnation and beat him senseless if Prince didn't get to him first. "You little" he began.
"Meatbag" Quet yelled back.
The other kids all laughed, and then chimed in with "Meatbag, meatbag, meatbag"
Len then took this as his chance to pelt Stan on the side of the head with another paint bomb. As he reached back to grab the little beast in anger, Stormy screamed"Look out"
Stan swerved the moth, just as he nearly crashed into the side of the airlock, rather than enter it. "You almost got us killed, meatbag" said Stormy, slapping him on the back of the head. "Captain, my ass"
"Vlad, you better be far away from the bridge" Stan grumbled under his breath, knowing that if she wasn't already insane, she would be after this venture.
"Who's Vlad" Gilly asked.
"Our impending doom" Stan said through clenched teeth, as another paint bomb spattered on the back of his head.
"Really" Spaz asked. "Cool"
"Cool" Stan mimicked in irritation, as the speaker in the moth crackled with Xev's voice.
"You there, Stan" she asked.
"Shhh, quiet before I give you all to Vlad" Stan griped, and the kids all fell silent.
With a satisfied grin, he turned back to the screen on his moth. "Yeah, Xev, I'm here. Whaddya need"
"We're still looking around, but Kai's found information on our guests, plus he says he has memories about it. We'll be back in an hour, so sit tight"
"You know, for someone who isn't captain" he began.
"And Stan" said Xev.
"Yeah" he asked.
"Don't scare them. They're just little kids" she said, and the speaker clicked off.
Len climbed up into the front of the moth, and punched Stan squarely in the shoulder. "Punch buggy" he said.
"Owww, you little turd" said Stan. "That really hurt"
"Punch biiiiiiiiiiiiiiig buggy" said Gilly, burstingi into a fit of giggles.
"Don't hurt them" Stan mimicked again. "Okay...she didn't say anything about Vlad"