"........Shapelord......."
***
Chasing something.
Captain Resquilatron Ooglespooglesburgh had, for as long as he could remember, been chasing something. Even before his days in exile from common society, those days half-forgotten, only to be remembered in the mists of half-sleep, he was still chasing after it. For all these years.
In his mind's eye, he could almost see it.
His grasping hand reaching out in a void blacker than the space he so fearlessly confronted, deeper than the depths of the abysses he had explored. Yet somewhere there, past its horizon, his heart longed for it.
And so, without question or thought, he chased after it.
That was, in the end, all he could amount to.
The silent darkness of his so-called office was shattered by a loud crashing noise. The sleeping jellyfish adjusted his noise-cancelling underwater-proof Orion-Sirius Omnicorp trademarked headphones and went back to sleep.
And so the pitiful figure of the Captain was left to stagger to his feet alone. He had fallen off his chair, somehow launched himself over his desk and face-first into the door, in the process making a mess of his extremely messy desk.
Shaking off the confusion with the durability a dense meteorite would be extremely impressed at, he noticed the rays of light shining through the curtains and cursed.
"Gratches Great and Glorious Gletrious. How long was I asleep for?"
No-one responded to him because he was talking to himself. Grumbling, he staggered out of the room and followed the corridor drowsily to the common room. He was uncharacteristically silent, his limited mind pre-occupied with the dream it had conjured up. Unlike most flimsy and fragile things, this one had been stabbed into his brain like an iron pick.
He scowled at the bitter aftertaste of a long-suppressed memory forcing its way back up his throat and promptly decided to put it all behind him.
Bah. [Fractal] this, [Fractal] that. How about I [Fractal] him huh? How would that feel?
Feeling better after his rant at which he firmly ignored the stretching and warping of right angles that followed him briefly before disappearing, he entered the common room, and his short period of composure immediately shattered.
"WHAT IN GRATCH'S GLORIOUS NAME IS THIS?"
He screamed, spittle flying all over the place without a visor on his head to protect the world from his vitriolic spit that sizzled as it hit the ground. Before him, Circleface and Trianglechest were, using Squareface himself as a net, playing what seemed to be badminton.
Now this in of itself would not usually have been a problem - there was a long, long, long list of other problems the Captain had to worry about. No, the problem therein lied with their particular choice of shuttlecock.
Namely, the anomalous object of immeasurable power that had just the previous night been responsible for creating two minor Abysses, within which Euclidean geometry was dashed out the window for a more spicy variety of logic.
Said object that they had, by the barest of margins, managed to survive, through the timely, if risky in another sense, intervention of Circleface. That silvery-orb that had been pulsating with power capable of tearing through timelines was now a simple projectile.
Of course, the Captain's outburst had interrupted their point and startled the jumpy and extremely cowardly Trianglechest, causing him to lose track of the 'shuttlecock', catching it with his face instead of the dinner plate they were using in the place of rackets.
In response to this, Squareface, laid face down across the room with a laundry rack on his back as a net, in a tone that would make the cold death of the universe seem like a furnace, called out the score.
"312-3. Circleface wins again. Can I- can I go now...please?"
His voice broke at the end of his sentence, heavy with grief. He was ignored.
Circleface threw his hands in the air in a silent exclamation of glory. He pranced over the other side of the net, gloating over Trianglechest's fallen form.
"Bah," Trianglechest dismissed in an attempt to make it seem like he didn't care (he did). "I just let you lose. It is the heavy responsibility as the oldest sibling after all. Ahhhh, woe is me, woe is me."
Squareface attempted to protest that statement, no doubt he had the greatest claim to the concept of 'woe' amongst them all but, of course, Circleface took his helmet as a seat and his face was squashed against the floor, rendering his attempt null.
Circleface made an X with his arms, holding up three fingers to himself, two to Squareface and one to Trianglechest.
"Wait a second," Trianglechest stopped him in sheer confusion. "You think that you are three years old, I am two and that guy is only one year old?"
Circleface nodded, as if it was obvious, turning to the Captain and gestured to his head as if worried for Trianglechest's state of mind. Captain Resquilatron, who had been slowly collecting fury like potential energy until it was about to sublimate from the crown of his head in a burst of fire, found his wind entirely taken from him by Circleface.
"In the name of Gletrious' Gargling Spit, Circleface, please. What in the cosmos are you talking about? No, no, wait forget that. Don't try and distract me from the fact that you're using that...thing...as a shuttlecock in your little game! I thought I told you two to keep an eye on him, and to make sure that nothing happened! Is this your definition of 'nothing'? Is it? Well?"
Circleface ignored the Captain, stuck trying to do some insanely complex arithmetic using his fingers. Trianglechest sighed and slowly got up.
"Yeah, yeah we know Captain. Trust me, I would NOT be here if there was any risk of anything going wrong. In fact, I'd probably leave you guys all and run away. As fast as I possibly can." He preened a little. "Heh, I am pretty fast."
He is not.
Captain Resquilatron, in an act of such restraint that any other man would have immediately transcended to Buddhahood decided not to smite Trianglechest with all he had in that moment. Of course, with the Captain's karma, all that happened was a build up of air in his intestines released itself and the constant pain in his stomach lessened. A favour from the universe, if slight.
He farted. Out loud. Continuously for 3 minutes and 43 seconds.
"Whatever," he let out a bone-deep sigh. "If the anomaly isn't doing anything, then it's not doing anything. If it is and we all die horrible deaths, I hereby vow to destroy you first, and in increasingly enjoyable ways. I can't be bothered to deal with this any more so early in the morning. "
"It's past midday, actually Captain," the still muffled voice of Squareface was ignored as the Captain continued in a weary voice.
"One of you go check on Starshoulder in the engine room. I want off this godforsaken rock of a planet as faster than I can say Gletrious!"
Circleface stood up abruptly, Squareface finally able to breathe now the weight was off his head, and saluted. Only with one hand though - it wasn't quite a 'double salute moment' you know?
Regardless his other hand was occupied, holding that silvery orb. It appears he had noticed the Captain looking at his shiny new toy, and after thinking for a very long time, decided that being generous was what his mother (?) had always taught him. Besides he had played with it with his younger brother already for quite a long time.
So with reluctance, he held it out, gesturing at the Captain to take it.
Behind him, Trianglechest stifled his laughter and Squareface snored, apparently fast asleep face-down on the floor, no doubt from sheer exhaustion. The Captain, merely, sighed.