Chapter 26.
Early birth?
Rhuba walked around the perimeter of their wall of trees. Some primitive worlds would use tree trunks as logs to build fortresses. But their way meant killing the tree.
She found it ironic that she and Garagus, a pair of Saiyans known for their brutish nature, would opt for the method that kept the tree alive.
Their fort of living trees with various other invading plant life growing on the bark was still intact. In fact, it was encouraged.
While Rhuba was patrolling from the outside, Garagus was walking around the inside with a light.
Rhuba would mention if she ever saw even the faintest glimmer from his side, and the two of them would seal the gap with mud and moss.
After two laps of seeing nothing from either side, Rhuba flew up and over the trees and landed in the arms of Garagus.
"Satisfied?"
"Oh yeah. No one is seeing us from out there." Keeping her smile, she looked to the clear sky. "Unless they can fly of course."
"I didn't see any wings. And their power levels don't inspire much confidence that they can fly like us."
"What about vehicles?"
"I don't think they're that advanced. It's not like we're up against Tuffles."
Rhuba honestly wasn't too worried about the natives. The trees they rearranged did offer a lot of cover. This only meant that if they had to take off quickly, they'd need to knock out a few trees. A satisfactory sacrifice.
"Can we agree now that we're not going to get involved with the natives of this world? We're only staying until the baby comes so, let's not make attachments that we don't need."
"So what do I do all day? Stay at the ship, watch you be pregnant all day?"
"Yeah. This is probably going to be a very taxing experience for me so I'm going to drag you through the dirt too."
Garagus tutted as he tried to think of ways to occupy his time.
"Can I watch you be pregnant up close?"
"Ummm, yeah. I think that's okay. But how close?"
Garagus lifted her off the floor and pulled her chest to chest with himself.
"Like this, but closer."
"Any closer and you'll be inside me."
"Yes~" Garagus hissed in her ear.
Rhuba gently nudged him away.
"Forgive me, but I'm still on edge after last time."
"Why? What's the worst that could happen?"
"I could get pregnant again!" Rhuba frowned. "I don't want to birth two babies."
The smugness Garagus was sporting vanished in an instant. He hadn't considered that.
"I, I'm going to get stronger than you again. Then it won't be a problem."
"Garagus…" Rhuba sighed. "That isn't how it works! … I don't think…"
"Maybe… maybe it's because you got strong enough to be considered an Alpha? Maybe we can connect now that we're the same level?"
That seemed more plausible. Maybe there was more to the taboo of mixing classes beyond the massive stick up their Alpha butts over being the strongest there is.
"Come on. Feed me more fruit, then you can try your hand at beating me again."
"I don't feel comfortable fighting you. It's not a fair fight."
"I'm just pregnant." Rhuba walked with an almost skip in her step as she declared herself not helpless.
"That's not the point," Garagus stated, hugging her from behind. "It's two against one~"
"Oh ho, so you're scared of us?" She laughed, slipping from his grasp as she hopped up the ramp. "Sure it's not because I'm pretty much an Alpha now?" Rolling her eyes, she corrected her wording to Saiyan Elite. "Speaking of, would you say I'm stronger than Russell was when we fought back home?"
"I'm not sure. He was always the stronger but… With your help, it brought us victory."
Grinning brightly, Rhuba couldn't be more delighted he felt that way.
So many Saiyans would reject help against a strong foe, especially one with a personal score to settle.
Holding her fist out to him, they shared a smile while bumping knuckles together.
"s, sorry. I didn't mean-… He, he's still your brother."
"Rhuba please. I hadn't paid him much thought for years before that day, and when he beat you like that… we're brothers by blood only. Nothing else. So don't worry about offending me."
Setting a hand on her back, Garagus led her through to the galley.
Before the talk of sparring and elites, she off-handedly mentioned wanting him to feed her.
"I'll move the chillunit to the laundry for you to keep your food. I'll stick to the pot loafs in here so you don't have to deal with the smell."
"aw, that's sweet of you," As they entered the room, Rhuba went to the chillunit to pick out some of her choice fruits while Garagus took the drying plates from the rack to the cupboard.
While near the sink, however, Garagus had a moment of pause.
It was ever so faint but there was definitely a sound coming from the drain.
Not a gurgling, but something else.
"Rhuba, come here. Do you hear this?"
Even with their ears as deep into the sink as they could lean, neither could discern what it was.
"Try running the tap? Could be…" She had an idea of what it might be. But putting the theory into explainable words was harder than she suspected. "Just run the tap." It was better than nothing.
As Garagus ran the tap for a few seconds, the sound did get drowned out, literally.
But that became the least of the troubles as water started filling the sink.
"Oops." Garagus cut the water.
Both Saiyans stood looking at the tiny bubbles floating from the drain to the surface.
"Why isn't the drain working?"
"Manual… This happened a few times before, Granate dealt with it."
Rhuba stared into the drain as Garagus fetched the collection of books that detail every component of the ship.
While he was flicking through the sections on maintaining the reactor, the navigations computer, the software, each one laced with coupons and advertisings for the repair station.
"Wonder if they're still valid." He chuckled, right before hearing Rhuba howl the loudest scream he'd ever heard.
The manual hadn't even hit the floor tyle before Garagus was trailblazing towards the galley, colliding with Rhuba on her way out.
Between her screaming gibberish and him trying to ask what was wrong and trying to get her to calm down long enough to tell him, Rhuba broke from his grasp and hid behind him as she pushed him into the Galley to see for himself.
"What…?" Garagus backed away from the sink.
As he first approached, the standing water appeared to turn black, but when he got closer he saw shiny black leach-like creatures swimming in the water.
They were disgusting-looking. They were creepy. They slithered among themselves and would occasionally protrude from the water as more swam up the drain looking for air.
"Is that it?"
"WHAT?"
"You screamed."
"They're freaky!" Rhuba slammed his back with her fists. "Get rid of them."
"I was eaten by a snake once. Do you remember that?"
"You don't even remember that."
"Because I was asleep, that's how calm I was~"
Garagus grinned as he walked up to the sink, ignoring Rhuba's growling along the way.
"Big, Brave, Bold Saiyan Elite, scared of, worms?" He mocked, taking two handfuls and turning towards her with his arms extended.
But Rhuba took a huge step away from him, shivering all over as she skipped to the back wall.
"Take them out! Take them out! Take them out! Take them out!"
"There's only room on this ship for one baby, Rhuba."
"Shut up." Her heart stopped when one of the wigglies slipped from between his fingers.
It landed on the floor and started slithering around aimlessly.
But this alone was enough to send her screaming across the room and curled on top of the chillunit with her tail wrapped around her legs.
Covering her eyes with one hand, she frantically directed him to the door.
"I'll throw them out in a minute." Garagus laughed, plucking the one from the floor. "I'll put them in the waste bin and throw them all out together."
Rhuba kept shivering on her perch.
She knew herself she was overreacting, but she couldn't help it.
When she looked down the drain, the wigglies started flooding the sink as they swam around.
"Just keep them away from me…"
"oh…"
"Oh?" She peaked over her hands, to see Garagus staring into the waste bin. "what oh? Oh what? What's the oh?"
Garagus tipped the bin ever so slightly, giving Rhuba a perfect view of thousands of the wigglies wiggling around in there.
He didn't even make a joke. Her face had turned white as snow as she sat in frozen horror.
"I'll be right back." Garagus took the bin of wigglies outside and flew far across the jungle to tip them out so they wouldn't be making their way back.
As he returned, Rhuba had left the galley and was sitting on the ramp with a blanket over her.
"I'm not going in until they're out."
"Well, I need to keep one." Garagus felt her reach for his back, but missing her target. He guessed she was reaching for his non-existent tail.
"WHY?"
"I need to calibrate one of our scouters. If those things are in our bin and our drain, where else might they be?"
As Garagus walked away, Rhuba sat in quiet thought.
Now that she was 'safe' from having to look at them or be near them, she was able to observe that the perimeter they made wasn't slithering with wigglies. The floor inside was clean with no trails of where they got aboard.
Carefully walking around the outside of the ship, Rhuba tried to find a breach. Any breach.
Leaning against the hull, she tried to remember when she last heard the boilers start.
Water waste from the onboard facilities get filtered and recycled every five hours.
She believed she last heard the boilers just before landing in the Canyon when they were blasting a space for the ship to hide in.
That was around three hours ago.
Any wigglies living in the drain at that time would have been filtered and incinerated. So in the last three hours, wigglies got on board through the drains.
"but how?"
Rhuba checked every inch under the hull. There were no breaches. Not even the mechanisms for the landing gears had a noticeable entryway. Certainly not one that leads to the drainage system.
"or the bin…?" She thought for a moment. That one doesn't make sense, but it's surely vital.
"Garagus!"
As she ducked out from under the ship, he was just walking out, ready to fly away again.
"Garagus."
"Don't worry, it's safe to go in. The water in the sink was draining away so I think they all swam out."
Tapping the side of the bin, he made a face at her, almost daring her to take a look inside.
"Garagus, did you bring anything on board when you came from the jungle?"
"nnn-nope. Just the fruit."
"What about soil?" She looked at his boots. "Did you step in anything?"
Now that she mentioned it, she started looking at her own.
The ground was damp and leaving her boots dirty.
"It's not like we keep our boots in the sink." Garagus laughed.
"yeah… good point." Even if they did, it wouldn't connect to the bin having wigglies in them.
"I need to go, drop these off. Back soon." Garagus took off again, leaving Rhuba alone with the ship once more.
Swallowing her desire not to see one of them again, she walked through the ship to find a single wiggly appropriately trapped under a beaker.
"Gross little shit…" She hissed as she pulled out her scouter.
In general, scouters don't alert the wearer to anything lower than a preset safe level.
To get it to pick up on something as low as a common invertebrate, she'd have to narrow the scope to immediate proximity otherwise the whole world would start sending off signals.
On her first scan, she picked up herself first and foremost. She was like a supernova before a candle.
Narrowing the scope to filter out anything higher than a power level of 1, there was still a lot of background noise.
A power level of 0.4 was showing up.
Tiny, but still much higher than a wiggly has any right to be.
And it was close. Very close.
"oh…" Smiling warmly at herself. Rhuba felt her tummy. "I want you to be much hire than that when you come out…"
After more narrowing and scanning, she was finally able to get the scouter to pick up a power level of 0.0000001.
"Gotcha…" Once locked, she indexed the reading as Wiggly Freaks. Then with the scouter calibrated and tracking, she walked around the galley. Scanning the walls, the floors, the pipes, the cupboards.
"how is that possible?" She didn't understand how there could have been an infestation so specific to the sink and the waste bin.
"How is what possible?" Garagus asked placing the bin in the corner as he entered. "Surprised you're so calm with your nightmare so close."
Rolling her eyes, Rhuba offered him the scouter.
"I've already calibrated it, but I couldn't see any." As the scouter changed hands, it flashed up. "I'm going to wash the bin. Can you override the safety for hot water?"
"Sure, sure." Garagus grinned as he opened the wall panel that keeps the safety valves. "Safety off!" He called through before putting the scouter to his face. "Wow, you are terrible at this~!" He laughed, picking up Wiggly Freaks by the dozen.
"What did you say?" Rhuba asked, not hearing a word he was saying as she blasted the inside of the bin with the shower hose. Steam was spilling out of the room but was getting sucked into the vents to be collected and recycled.
Once she was done blasting the bin was scolding water to make sure any contaminates were gone, she returned it to where it belonged.
"What are you doing? I already scanned that area."
"Badly." Garagus was taking a step, spinning on the spot, then scanning the other way. "where are you…" He said, speaking to the wigglies he was tracking.
"There's nothing there." Rhuba sighed, watching him from the door. "Oh, you'll like this. Our baby. Power level of point four."
"Point four?" Garagus made a face. "Kinda low, isn't it?"
"Watch it, that's my baby you're talking about." Rhuba had to laugh at herself. Not a few hours ago they were discussing weather or not to have the baby, now she's protective.
"Garagus stop spinning for five seconds and acknowledge what's happening in here." She demanded, holding her tummy.
"I can't find these damn wigglies!" He stated with frustration. "It's like they keep moving."
"There's no wigglies, I already checked…" She sighed. "But tell me. In the last few hours, what did we wash in the sink, and put in the bin?"
"uh, nothing? That would be pointless."
"Well those are the only places we found wigglies."
"Not true, there's some close." He said, dropping to his hands and knees, trying to find the wigglies. "There must be pipes under the panels," He thought about grabbing the tools, but running the hot tap while the safety is still off ought to take care of it.
"Garagus, there's nothing there." Rhuba pulled the scouter from his face to check for herself. For just a moment, she picked up dozens of signs. But they weren't in the floor.
And with her mouth hanging, she watched Garagus walk to the sink.
"Garagus, where did you get those fruits?"
"in the jungle." He said, letting the water drain for a few seconds as a plume of steam engulfed his vision. "why?"
"And you're sure they were all fruits?"
"What else could they have been?" He asked as Rhuba took a hard look at his upper tummy with the scouter.
"… an alien egg pod?"
"A what?"
"The sour fruit… I spat it out, you ate some…" She gulped, pointing out that the rest of it was thrown in the bin, while the plates with seeds stuck to the metal were washed in the sink. "Three places where wigglies were found. Sink, Bin, Garagus…"
With a sweat bead flowing off his brow, Garagus ran to the sink and poured a cup of water. It was hot, but he didn't care. Pouring in a ton of salt before chugging as much as he could, leading to him throwing up into the sink, and sure enough, there were wigglies.
"oh my g-"
Rhuba watched from the table as Garagus entered a perpetual cycle of throwing up, seeing wigglies shoot from his throat, then throwing up again.
Gently walking up behind him, but being very careful not to look in the sink, Rhuba patted his back.
"This is for the best, good job."
"This is complete sh-"
Rhuba had to look away before she ended up in the same state as him. Though she did give herself a quick scan to make sure she was clean.
After confirming that she was, she scanned him again to make sure he was cleaning out.
"you're doing good." She slipped the plug in.
Last thing she wanted was the little bastards making their way back down the drain.
After a traumatic, sickening, and painful half hour, Garagus retired to his bed to lie down while Rhuba took a turn of moving the bin outside, far from the ship.
Her fear of the wigglies was truly overshadowed by observing what Garagus had to endure.
On her return, she climbed in beside him, reaching over to leave things on his bedside table.
"Water, food. Mouthwash. I have to insist on the last one."
"yeah…" He was in a pale sweat after everything that just happened to him.
"So I was thinking. Remember how I threatened to punch you in the balls?"
"yeah…?" He asked, terror in his eyes.
"I, I changed my mind. I think we're even." She cleared her throat. "I mean, I didn't do this to you, you definitely did this to me, but I think you're fine now." Smiling weakly, she offered her hand to him.
Clutching her tightly, Garagus whispered.
"we did it to ourselves."
"You Got ME Pregnant, You Idiot!"
"no… you did it…" He slowly lay back, a proud smile frozen on his face as Rhuba cuddled up to him with a frown frozen on hers.
Author's note:
So um... this is embarrassing to ask but, Fanfiction has told me that 0 people have read my stories in the last month. 0.
Could someone let me know if they are reading?
Maybe it's a glitch, or maybe ya'll are striking against me for something I did :/
