Glitches in My Code

Monkeys

(I may or may not have started out writing this for school, then ended up taking it way overboard... Well, here ya go anyways!)

I walk into the room, only glancing at the wide, crystal clear windows. They're stronger than they look because they need to be. They need to contain planets, after all. Well, not actual planets, just their astro-forms. However, the astro-forms are just as powerful as the planets themselves, if not more. The planets, well, they aren't what most of the creatures inhabiting them think they are. They aren't simple balls of rock and molten rock, metal and molten metal, gasses, liquids, and who knows what else. They think we're lifeless, dead, or incapable of anything other than what they see us do. We're not lifeless masses hurtling through the infinities of space. We aren't dead, we're just alive in a different sense of the word than most might think.

"Terra! There you are! We've been waiting for you!" I glance upwards, looking at the hulking figure in front of me.

"Oh, hey guys! How've ya been?" I ask, directing my question at the figure, noticing a small one behind it. Jupiter and Venus. I glance at Jupiter's shoulder, seeing the swirling mark glowing slightly through the fabric of his shirt. "Still got the spot, I see." He grimaces, looking down at the dark red spot spiraling there.

"Yup... Still no idea when it plans to leave if I'm being honest. How about you? Still got the monkeys?" Jupiter replies, successfully getting the conversation onto the bane of my existence, and not bothering to hide his glee at the predicament I had been complaining about for ages.

"Sadly, yes. They're such a nuisance! They keep digging holes in me... Seriously, what the heck, guys?!" I glance down at my hand, the one that has been twitching almost this entire time. "Pretty sure they still think Pluto isn't a planet, the nitwits. I feel kind of bad for her..." We all get quiet for a moment, Venus nodding somberly. When I notice the movement, I ask "How're things for you, Venus?" She starts, seemingly surprised that I would ask.

"I'm doing fine... I do wonder when the rest will get here, though..." She has a quiet voice, slightly high and childish, oddly befitting her tiny frame.

"The rest of who? I was thinking we were the only ones left who weren't here yet, but I guess I was wrong!" Jupiter, Venus and I all whip around to face the origin of the voice.

"Mercury! Ares! Si! Saturn!" Venus exclaims, running and giving each a hug in turn.

Mercury and Ares are the only ones smaller than her, both with dark hair, though Ares's is red, while Mercury looks almost brindled, what with the many streaks of color in his hair, though all surprisingly natural.

Si, also known as Poseidon, has deep blue hair and startling pale blue eyes, though she keeps her hair short, close to her head. She always says that it's too wispy to be long, but the few times I've seen it grown out, it looks amazing, tumbling down beside her face, framing it in an azure frame, with hints of darker blue. Great... I still have a thing for her... She's surprisingly humble for someone of her stature, taller than me, though she's still a good bit smaller than Jupiter.

Saturn, on the other hand, is only made more extravagant and show-offish by her size, not to mention simply vain. Her hands, for example, are covered with rings, four on each hand, made of stardust, and she always tends to tread the line between dazzling and gaudy. Her voice drips, but not with honey. It's never hard to tell if she wants something. Why? Because she always does.

"Wait a minute, where Ura?" Si wonders aloud, causing the rest of us to look around. "We thought he would be with you guys, here already!"

"We thought he would be with you guys!"

"Did we really lose Ura? Come on, guys! We're planets, for Sol's sake! How do we lose another planet?"

"Wait a minute, are you guys talking about me? I'm over here, folks! Jeez, turn around when you're looking for someone! It's almost like you don't actually care!" A slow, lazy voice creeps over my shoulder, sliding into my ear, leaving a trail of cold, wet, disgusting slime wherever it goes. I whip around to face the voice, knowing exactly who it is, and where they are. Ura.

"Ura! There you are!" Si exclaims, running over to the couch he had been laying on. How long has there been furniture here? I don't remember it from any of the other meetings... I glance around at the other astro-forms, finally looking directly at Ura. The smirk on his face tells me everything. He did this on purpose. He snuck in and didn't reveal himself until Si started wondering where he was. He knew exactly what he was doing, and he was enjoying every second of it.

There was only one other planet I had told about my thing with Si. No prizes for guessing who. He had immediately started flirting with her, claiming it was "for my own good". He wanted me to stand up for myself, even though he knows I'm not like that. If I was, I wouldn't be dealing with the monkeys. They'd have died a millennium ago because that's what happens when you annoy the planet you're living on. The earthquakes that always mess them and their cities up? Usually annoyance at them.

One of the best things about astro-forms is that they are much easier to move around, and they allow us to interact and be around the same size. They also allow us to do whatever we want and not have to worry about messing ourselves up, or the creatures living on us, though there have been some of us who have killed off entire species, or even caused a single mass extinction that killed everything, simply out of spite because of how badly they had been messing with the planet. One of the worst things about being a planet surrounded by other planets? Everything takes - and lasts - forever. Grudges are the worst in this regard, and general petty conflicts are a close second. Every time we meet up, there's an extremely low chance of the grudges that grew up the last time being gone. Ura and I have been silently fighting over Si for multiple millennia, and Pluto still hasn't gotten over the monkeys no longer considering her a planet, but that wasn't actually that long ago for us, even though it's been years for the monkeys.

Our meetings are "annual", which just means that we meet whenever we feel like it, but whenever something happens, like an asteroid hitting one of us, we have an almost immediate meeting. Those meetings are rare though, and the time between "whenever" meetings varies in an almost scary amount. There is no set measurement of time for the intervals between meetings, so they can range from less than Mercury's year to multiples of Neptune's.