A young boy dashed over a glass tunnel on the left side of a road. One of multiple comprising the gas giant planet on which he and his family lived. The blue-skinned boy raced with speeding cruisers, but he always ended up losing. None of that matter for the delight came from the thrill of the race itself.
"Not too fast, Burter!" a blue-skinned alien of thin build and disproportionately enormous head for her body and red eyes exclaimed in light maternal worry. "You'll trip and fall."
Burter turned back with a rich smile. It was as if a rainbow ring of light gleamed off of his red eyes as he observed his mother press her head against his father's shoulder. The crossed, blue antennae present on the foreheads of the female members of Burter's species moved aside as the frail young thing pressed herself against her husband with an adoring smile as she looked at little Burter waste his childish vigor.
Little Burter pressed his head against the white mechanical door to listen in on the audible mumble from his mother's ward. His little heart pounded all across his chest as if looking for a way to get out. In such a state one couldn't have blamed him for prompting the door to open up, causing him to tumble inside where the blue-skinned doctor holding a widget in his hand and reading its data out to Burter's father and Burter's father turned at him.
"Burter!" father yelled out. His voice sounded unfamiliar from how it did not too long ago, just two months earlier when they were all leaving for long walks and mother and father were happy.
"Please… Let Burter stay… It's so lonely in here," mother muttered in a weak voice. She laid in the hospital bed in a strangely asymmetrical position. It must have been because of the spinal fracture. The antennae on her head also seemed separate now instead of connecting two different points of her forehead together. The doctors appeared to have covered up the loose ends in an adhesive medical gel to prevent bleeding and further nutrient loss.
"It's not like your mother could have been here. Your sister also passed away last year," Burter's father reached out to hold his wife's hand, but it froze there. He knew that if he touched his wife at this stage, he risked fracturing her hand and leaving it to crumble off her hand. "I guess it's just us here now…" the alien covered up his face, sinking it into the front of his elbow.
"As I was saying, we can't do too much. This is natural for females of our race. They aren't built for longevity. Their bones and body structure are fragile and their pores close up not too long after giving birth, leaving them to dry out eventually," the doctor scratched the back of his head, straining the medical bodysuit he wore with his strong musculature inherent in all male members of young Burter's species.
"You just had to pet that deer, didn't you?" Burter's father moved his elbow down to wipe the snot that just sort of ran down in a torrent into his mouth since his species didn't have an extending nose, just two breathing holes in the center of a flat face.
"I regret… Nothing…" Burter's mom closed her eyes with a smile. "Plus, Marjerrien fell apart exposed to strong winds when her husband opened the window. Seeing my son grow up was never in the cards…"
Burter cried out, jumping up to hug his mother, but he wasn't fast enough. The doctor rushed in and caught the anxious child in mid-air, subduing him and putting him down. He tried rushing through words and medical jargon that would have explained that even the lightest contact might have caused his mother more pain before her passing, but none of it passed through the stubby ears at the sides of little Burter's head. The young one just bawled his heart out as if it had only hit him now that he was seeing his mother for the last time.
"Bye, Burter. Listen to your mom, okay?" Burter's mom smiled with her eyes still closed.
"I will! I will listen to my mom, mom!" Burter yelled out, clenching his fists and tensing up his entire body. A delirious, hopeless attempt to activate any latent superpowers he might have had that could have healed his mother somehow. He'd have gone for anything now.
Burter's mother didn't hear it. Her smile didn't completely fade out, but it hung slightly ajar as her lower jaw relaxed first and her entire body followed in just mere moments. It took the present visitors a few moments to notice that Burter's mother had passed.
"Mother!" Burter yelled out while the doctor behind him typed up standard information about yet another natural female death and Burter's father sobbed uncontrollably, having chosen to abandon his tough facade in just about the peaking choice of when it was acceptable to appear weak to the outside world for a big, tough man.
"Burter, I'd like you to meet someone," Burter's father pointed at his companion. She was a tall, reptilian with a humanoid shape and barbecue-colored skin. Her stance was like that of a praying mantis, which was fitting for the exoskeleton that her species had. Still, she had two rows of pearly, constantly grinding chompers and massive, yellow eyes with a singular blank dot racing across the humongous orbs. "This… This woman might be your mother soon."
She wasn't a native to Planet Globula, or how it was called for four years now–Frieza Planet No. 24. Ever since joining the ever-expanding domain of the space emperor Lord Frieza, there has been an influx of different species from all over the empire roaming the aromatic gas giant and admiring its yellow, thick mists and the impressive infrastructure of monorails and road systems that Globulons had built over millennia of existence. Burter didn't hate them, though he wasn't sure why his father chose a foreigner as his mother.
"She's not a Globulon," Burter stated the obvious, hoping that his father would pick up the subtext without Burter having to say something rude to the woman who might have been his future mother.
"She is not…" Burter's father stroked the back of his neck, looking distraught. His teen-aged son had hit a sensitive nerve there.
"Of course not!" the mix between a reptile and a praying insectoid chortled with a snort. "Only a madman would choose to bond with another Globulon female! I can understand partnership for the sake of producing kids, but family life? With that biology and pathetic life expectancy? Impossible! I wouldn't have picked your father up if he was that much of a fool."
The discomforted father faked a laugh while rubbing the back of his pointy elbow with his large hand that might have wrapped around the insectoid's head and popped it out of her body, pulling it out with the sticky, reptilian innards that the outer layer of exoskeleton protected for the woman's species lacked the property of scales.
Burter scowled at the woman, clenching his fists. He would have loved nothing more than to jump at her, knock her down and press against that exoskeleton shell until it choked the life out of the female alien all of itself. Rip out a piece of her exoskeleton and use it to slash her to bits for mocking her mother indirectly like that.
"Anyway, sorry for letting you know only now. I just… Didn't know how you'd take it so I postponed it repeatedly. We plan to get married in two months," Burter's father explained to his son.
"Don't blame yourself. You know how angsty children can get after losing a parent. Though with Globulons you'd think that they'd sort of get used to it with how often they lose mothers, aunts and friends because of a mean biological factor like that," Burter's future mother shook her head, wrapping her praying arms around his father from the side and pulling him closer to her. "Nobody's safe from it. Our males have their testes bulging on the outside as a blue pustule sprouting from the chest. We just have to deal with it."
"Really? On the outside? How do they conceal it? How do you call underwear if it isn't really under the belt?" Burter's father became engrossed in existential thoughts. An alien seductress stole all of them by rubbing her still gritting teeth against his mouth while she secreted goopy pink substance through the filtering chompers. An odd case of extraterrestrial kissing, though it fulfilled a similar function.
"Say, how about you be a little treat and run to the store to get some radish wine?" the female alien turned to Burter just after leaving his father to deal with what had happened and get used to the way his wife would kiss him for the rest of his life. In either case, it was worth it, because he'd never have to say goodbye prematurely again, right?
"Radish…?" Burter shook his head.
"Oh, yes, Sodulla's species can only digest foods that are made of radishes. It is the only plant that grows on her planet, I believe," father pointed out something that he had to learn and shake his head in awe at too.
"Yes, anything that is not a bloats our flesh until we suffocate at the pressure of our own exoskeletons. You might think that's something we learned recently, but it's a long-known factoid as some Cloraltians have tried resorting to cannibalism and the food-to-radish ratio wasn't enough to prevent a gruesome allergic reaction," the female alien pointed out, looking excited to discuss cannibalism and terrible ways to go at the same time as she prepared her pearly chompers for another smooching session.
"Y-Yes, mother…" Burter looked down and then away. "I'll listen." He muttered, doing his best so that his resolution would only be audible to him.
"I'm… Back… With the radishes, mother!" a half-grown Burter panted as his wobbly feet struggled to keep his muscular upper body steady while the young man leaned halfway down just because he physically couldn't straighten his back out.
"Are you serious?" mother jumped up and gasped in grave offense. "You realize you still must prepare the radish stew, right? Not to mention the fact that the floor is still unclean and the entire house is full of dust you haven't wiped!"
"S-Sorry, mother. But you know that the nearest store is two hundred and forty-four kilometers away because Globulans commute by cruisers and use the roads to move around, not run around on their feet," Burter tried explaining himself, which only earned him a deafening slap across his cheek. Blood trailed down the cut that the backhanded smack had left on the blue-skinned teen's cheek. Burter touched the scrape and stared at the droplets of blood staining his fingers.
"You're burning daylight, brat, and I'm starving!" mother howled, waving her hands about as she threatened to smack him again with a whole barrage of slams if he didn't move it along. "Ugh… What a slowpoke of a child! Just how are you going to make up for this, I have no idea!"
"I'm… Sorry, mother…" Burter's lips quivered as he struggled not to break down crying. He would have preferred if his mother smacked him repeatedly instead of just standing there berating him. Disapproving of him. Seeing those angry, yellow eyes and the lone bead rolling all over the place in them, when the woman beat him over and over again, sometimes it felt like his own mother looked at him with those same eyes.
As Burter hauled all across the floor and furniture with a feather duster, he realized he couldn't see his late mother angry or disappointed. He couldn't even imagine that face. When his vision turned blurry from the daze and his own salty tears, the two mothers fused into a mish-mashed monstrosity that defaced his precious memories. Who knew? If this lasted any longer, maybe he'll once forget the true face of his late mother and only the melded monstrosity of the two would haunt in Burter's nightmares that were once the sweetest dreams.
"Ugh… Is it even worth eating dinner, I think we should hit the beds now…" father looked at the clock, rubbing his tummy, wondering if he was tired or famished more.
"Blame that sluggard of a child of yours!" mother crossed her praying arms in an almost comical looking diagonal crisscross. "He took two whole hours to be back with the turnips for the stew. Of course, he left the house uncleaned and we cannot eat in a dusty home."
"Oh, does your species have a thing against that?" Burter's father wondered.
"No! I just don't like dust! Especially not thinking of dust when I'm eating. You can't see it, but you know. YOU KNOW it's all around you!" mother went on and on about the perils of a non-pristine household during dining time while Burter served the food and stretched out on the white, plastic platform in the living room, feeling too overworked to eat.
"Maybe you could have helped him clean if you hate dust that much?" father wondered as he took the first wary taste of the all-radish stew.
"Excuse me!? If I cleaned and cooked, then who would manage the chores in this household? Who would assign who does what around here?" the female alien went on and on about the importance of her managerial skills. Burter couldn't keep up with it. He felt himself snoozing almost halfway through the second sentence.
"Gimmie that buttery grilled steak!" Burter tapped his feet in a blurry jog in one place as he couldn't afford to lose his prime dashing shape.
"Huh? I thought your family only eats radish?" a blue-skinned alien with a beanie cap slid his cap around his round head.
"Yeah, that isn't for the stew, that's for me to eat on the road. I probably won't even unpack it before I get home…" Burter laughed out with his arms clutching his sides. "It takes the fastest being in the universe to keep the house spotless and the dinner served in time, the dishes from lunch washed, the laundry done, take the trash out, etc."
"Can't you just eat with your family? Are you that hungry?" the clerk wondered as he pulled the grilled steak wrapped in tinfoil from the oven and handed it to Burter.
"Are you kidding me!? Time spent eating is time spent not doing the chores! Every time I finish the chores, my mother finds one more detail to be disappointed by. She can't ever be happy and it pains me! No more, mother. I'll become the fastest in the entire universe and do all the chores in time!" Burter proclaimed as he lifted the greasy, wrapped steak over his head as if making a noble proclamation holding a refined sword.
"Whoa there, buddy, seems like a bit of an overreaction that's all… Maybe your mother's just…" the clerk was about to finish his sentence before he realized that only a trail of a blue blur and a mirage-like afterimage stayed behind his companion who had bolted off, outracing the cruisers and space cars darting around in the myriad of complex highway junctions.
"I've walked the triceratops, did and hung the laundry, washed the dishes from lunch, pre-heated the water for a nice boil by the time I get home, bought the salt, bought the turnips, bought the juices for flavor and seasoning… Just you wait, mother, you will never be disappointed again, I have a good feeling about today!" Burter's red eyes shined with determination as he disappeared in a tunnel of pure speed. The bursting shock wave from his dash sent the surrounding vessels waving and turning around, slamming against the border guards while Burter left them all in the dust.
Fast, too fast, all the fast! Oh, if only he could somehow learn to be faster with having the laundry machine do the laundry faster. He already stopped using the dishwasher because doing it himself saves him 99,98% of the time that he could spend heating the water. Burter hadn't learned to heat the water faster either yet, but he'll get there. The striking, blue-skinned lad turned his curious eyes up to look at an ad on a passing spaceship, featuring a smiling, purple-skinned, horned alien with a cool and flashy pose accompanied by symbols advocating powerful guys from all over the universe to come to join the Frieza Army military.
Maybe there was more than one way of making his mother proud?
A white cruiser stood near Burter's home. Doctors in medical bodysuits carried off mother's bloated, red body that misshaped the exoskeleton shell because of the sheer pressure against it. Burter's shopping bag with groceries fell flat on the floor with radishes rolling all over the apartment district he lived in while the young man's mouth shook in fright of being alone again. As mean and disapproving his mother was, she was the dominating presence in his life. Listening to her and making her happy was the only purpose in life he ever had.
"Damn, that lady looks nasty. What the heck happened?" one of the blue-skinned doctors wondered as they barely shoved the bloated corpse into the cruiser's cargo section unceremoniously.
"She's a Cloraltian. The husband said that in her old age and poor eyesight she must have confused a carrot for a radish. It's a very common mistake. In fact, carrot-radish confusion related fatalities comprise 43% of all Cloraltian deaths in Frieza Planet No. 24," another one pointed out.
"I see, it's almost like dying after eating anything other than radish is just a very mean evolutionary dead-end or something…" the first one reflected as they hopped into the medical cruiser and started the vehicle.
"Oh yeah, really makes you think, huh?" the second replied with great vigor as the two enthusiastic medical professionals blitzed off through the tube scooping up cruisers and leading them up to the higher levels of the highway.
"M-Mother…" Burter's face twitched as he observed his only reason for living these past thirteen years disappear from sight while the military enrollment advertisement just hovered over all the highways up in the atmosphere, covering one of two competing Suns in the heavens but compensating for it with its own artificial and flashing, alluring lights.