By the time the puppies on the Garax ship had sniffed out the Shiv, it looked a little worse for wear. It had suffered some damage, but it was still whole and that is all that really mattered to the crew. They rather enjoyed breathing oxygen.

Luckily the Shiv had been faster than the stolen Vexian ships and had outrun them before its shields had been depleted. It had not been immobilized, but it wasn't moving. It was now hiding in quiet contemplation. They needed to think. They needed a plan.

"There is a ship approaching. Wait. No. There is something other than a ship approaching. No, no, it's definitely a ship. Well, it's ship shaped, anyway. Yes. There is a ship shape approaching," Knutt calmly reported.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Teeg fired back.

"Hmmmm..." Knutt answered. "Well...there is  something approaching that looks very much like a ship, but I can't confirm that it's actually a ship. It's reading as more of a concept than a solid."

"Well, that's just strange."

"Yes, but that's not even the strangest part. I thought Quarols were extinct, or at least lost forever. Apart from ours, of course. I'm reading that there are seventy-three on board."

"Okay, okay, okay. So, seventy-three Quarols flying through space on a concept? I think you need to be switched off and back on again," Teeg chuckled. "As long as it's not a Vexian ship..."

"Regardless, Potto is on whatever that is. I can feel him," Clory added, telepathically.

"Well that's all I need. Let's go get him!" Teeg sighed with relief.

"I also detect one Towerscapian, several baby doggies, and an ostrich," Knutt said hesitantly. She didn't want to be turned off and on again. She had never been rebooted, but it sounded weird and uncomfortable.

"Well, why not, yeah? Go big or go home, right? Any tigers? Manatees? Clarinet players? Talking loaves of rye bread?" Teeg said in jest, but she was getting a bit worried. Not worried about the approaching "ship", but about her own ship's mental health. "Maybe a French New Wave film festival going down on board?"

When the ship hailed them, things just got more confusing.

Teeg could see the ship because Knutt had given her the idea that it was there, but she had no idea what a Garax looked like. Upon hearing that there was an ostrich on board, she immediately thought of one. Therefore, the Garax on her screen had the look of a large, fierce, long extinct, flightless Earth bird. In a snappy dress suit.

"Crew of the Shiv! We are the peaceful Garax," said Nux, looking down at them from their flight deck screen. There was nothing peaceful looking about an ostrich. "We would like to gift you your friend the Towerscapian, and seventy-three Quarols. Or at least the one you call Potto. Really, you can have as many as you like. Don't feel pressured into taking the lot. We need to find nice, caring homes for the puppies anyway. Any Pottos you don't take, we will find nice, caring homes for as well."

Teeg did not know how to respond to this. Behind the ostrich man she could see a number of red-headed Pottos rewarding hyper puppies with treats for "doing suuuuch a good job, you cutie-pie nummy wittle wuv-wuvs!"

"Ummm. Thanks...?" she finally muttered.

"Perhaps it would be a good idea if they were each wearing brand-spanking-new TDX-30 space suits. And perhaps it would be a good idea if those space suits had thrusters."

"Why?" a Potto clone behind him asked after finding himself in a brand-spanking-new TDX-30 space suit.

"Well, then they could fire you guys directly at the Vexian ships and you could climb into them and take them over. You'd have your own ships then. Seventy-some Quarols on one ship might get a bit crowded, and you could use the fire power," Nux answered the Potto clone.

"Oh! That's a great idea!" the clone laughed. He then went back to praising puppies while sipping on a sandwich.

A small part of Teeg (one of the few parts that wasn't incredibly befuddled) felt a bit of relief upon hearing this idea. The thought of being surrounded by seventy-three Pottos was not a welcome one.

We will send the Quarols over to you now. And the Towerscapian," ostrich Nux said to the crew of the Shiv, pulling Aye into view to assure them he was alright as well.

"What happened to his horns?" Teeg inquired. "They seem shorter. As does he. Did he always have that hunch?"

"Oh dear," Nux winced.

~~~

Installing sliding frosted shower doors on pre-made moulded tub surrounds didn't call for much space travel. In fact, Bisher Donut had never even been in a parked spaceship before. Vexian authorities had let him come with them to find (and identify) the home-invading Quarol, and he felt quite honoured.

He felt important, and that was a something he hadn't felt since he got three of his co-workers fired for doing Pyst on the job. He had been the one to sneak it into their morning coffees, but that was hardly the point.

Officer Steve Lasagna was glad to have someone new to talk to. His partner Officer Frett Pear was always going on and on about his ever-oscillating relationship status, uninteresting sports scores, his amazement at the never-fluctuating weather, or some television show that no one but Frett had ever watched. Any conversation that wasn't based on one of these topics was more than welcome. He longed to talk about himself just once: his crocheting, his dead insect collection, his carnivore-only cooking classes, or the ghost he was almost certain haunted the flooded basement of his bungalow.

Once they had left Vex 4's atmosphere and were comfortably in space, he tried to ease a very nervous Bisher by working one of these topics into casual conversation as subtly as he could.

"You like crocheting?" he loudly blurted out.

Bisher ignored this and threw up into an old plastic grocery bag. He wasn't enjoying this honour as much as he thought he would. Space was bumpier than he had guessed, which he found odd considering it was lacking potholes. Officer Steve took this sudden vomit as a hard "no" and was crushed.

Vexian authorities did not know that Potto had escaped on a Garax ship, because they didn't know what a Garax was. They merely assumed that he had escaped in one of the many, many Vexian warships that had been stolen from the Krank City militia base with one of the many, many invading Kancorians that had stolen them.

Bisher was just starting to feel a little better when Officer Frett ran up from a galley below the bridge.

"We gotta get out of the way, Lasagna!! OUT OF THE WAY, LASAGNA!!!" he screamed to his delicious-sounding piloting partner.

"Wha?? What's wrong???" Officer Steve returned, matching Officer Frett's panic at a jarring speed and volume.

Officer Frett ran ahead, shoving Officer Steve out of his chair, and pulled the controls of the ship back hard. The ship pulled up, narrowly missing an entire flying Lyme Node prison as it barrelled through space, not seeing them.

They all stared blankly for a moment before each of them started throwing up into the plastic grocery bag.

~~

Vark Burk had wasted his life digging a tunnel behind his motivational kitten-shitting-into-a-saxophone poster. Now that tunnel was sealed off, and he was heartbroken.

He couldn't see the silver lining: if it hadn't been sealed off, he'd have been sucked through it into space. Now the poorly taped-up poster, a bad back, and years of calluses-upon-calluses were just a bitter reminder. With the masking tape, it was hard to even tell it was a saxophone. Or a kitten. It now looked like a baby muskrat recovering from plastic surgery lounging seductively on a giant kazoo (a giant kazoo which was also recovering from plastic surgery).

Several floors up, and from the now-deceased Warden's office, Vrume T'cha T'cha snickered to himself at the absurdity of flying a large prison complex across the galaxy at top speed. He was amazed at how fast it was going considering its size.

But it needed to go fast. He knew damn well that Eppie and an army of Node Guards would be following him. He knew that if The Node had enabled the prison to go so fast, the newer, smaller war ships would be even faster, and he needed to get to Hephmote without being followed. He needed to hide out on his secret planet, motivate his army, and maybe take a long-overdue nap.

They passed Vex 4 without refuelling. There were fuel reserves in the sub-basement, a sub-basement that the now-deceased Warden didn't even know existed.

"According to our scanners, there seems to be a plethora of Vexian ships in this part of space. Way more than what would be considered normal. Well over one hundred!" Breva Floodman reported from her navigation post.

"Maybe some kind of celebration? Is it Cinco de Bungalow or something?" Vrume joked. Most of the known universe made fun of Vex 4's obsession with the Vexians' favourite style of dwelling.

"No, no...it gets weirder. A good number of these ships do not contain Vexians at all..." Breva added. "Something cold-blooded..." She pressed a few more seemingly random buttons. "Kancorians!"

"Whaaa? Kancorians are solitary creatures. They don't travel in packs...and they certainly don't travel in ships that aren't theirs. That is very strange," Vrume continued. He checked his own console. "They seem to be ignoring us. We're not who they're after, and who wants to pick a fight with a ship this big for no reason? Fly past. Towards Vex 7."

He had only had a brief encounter with the Quarol and the Topher and it had ended with the strange destruction of Euphoria. He suspected "strange destruction" was a force that followed his prophezied heroes around like a strange and destructive shadow.

"I have a strange, and possibly destructive hunch," he added, wagging his finger because he hadn't in a while.

~~~

"Eureka!" exclaimed Mel Million Max as he finished his new I.C. (Impatience Chip).

Upon realization that he had been too patient before, he decided to create this new chip to get him going. He needed to act faster. Waiting was getting way too easy.

Through a panel on his chest, he installed the chip and immediately felt an amazing surge of urgency. He had only spotted the Garax ship because it had shown up on his sensors, just as it had on the Shiv. These were sensors much more advanced than those on the seemingly blind Vexian ships. He didn't need to have an idea; he was a computer. And it didn't show up on his scanner as a ship either...but Mel didn't care. Whatever it was, he could tell it had a Topher on it.

He flew his ship as quickly as he could in the direction of Emperor Reginald Zophricaties' floating ruins.

The hazy blue holograph of his old head bobbed above its killing-machine body, metaphorically smiling the smile of a crocodile. He was going in for the kill and his new I.C. was causing him to rock back-and-forth with anticipation. His H.P. (Happiness Chip) was humming.

When he was finally (finally!) flying amongst the space station debris, his crocodile smile was accompanied by a crocodile-sized laugh. It was as if his birthday (if he indeed still had one) had come early: scans showed that on one piece of debris, there were ten Tophers! Ten!

His glory would be restored for sure if there were nine other Towerscapians there to witness him finally kill his son.