I Don't Seem So Bright in a Well-Lit Room

Chapter Nine

If there were but one humanoid species in the vast ocean of space more irritating and more despised than a Blankton clone, it was a Yaygher clone. 

Perhaps because, when Emperor Reginald Zophricaties had used his disastrous Master Cloner to make lesser-formed and far more inferior copies of himself to infest the universe, he got lazy partway through the process and started cloning the clones. What resulted was an even lesser formed and far more inferior version of Blanktons.

Zophricaties, realizing his mistake, tried to rectify the situation by exterminating as many of these "barely-sentient mistakes" as he could, but hundreds of thousands of them escaped and spread throughout the galaxy. 

He had named them Yayghers after his ex-brother-in-law Pixelle Yaygher, a small-town real estate broker on his ex-wife's home planet of Vex 4 that constantly made fun of his cleft palate, called him Reggie, and continually tried to sell him on Vexian bungalows. 

Most others simply referred to Yayghers as "Sewer Rats". They were only half the height as Blanktons, couldn't grow the moustache, couldn't work out how to put a patch on their eye without somehow blinding themselves in both eyes, and they had wispy bright red curly hair on their heads that extended to their backs and didn't match the rest of the hair on their bodies. They generally lived in sewers (hence the nickname), under bridges, secretively in corn silos, abandoned warehouses and they occasionally squatted in dilapidated Vexian bungalows thanks to a vengeful "Reggie". 

They were also known to commit crimes to intentionally get thrown into both big prisons and small stockades alike. 

~~~

K'ween's stockades looked like they were designed by the Spanish Inquisition's top prison interior designer. There were three main dingy cells beside a slightly less dingy (but more blood-stained) torture chamber. Straw was strewn about on the floors for bedding, and empty but filthy pig troughs were bolted to the stone floor of each for feeding.  There was a stinking hole of horrors in the floor of each for emptying one's self.

Potto and Aye were in separate cells, each with a different cellmate. In the corner of Potto's cell, a younger looking woman in filthy rags slept, curled up like a cat and covering her head with her arms. 

In Aye's cell a filthy Yaygher sat gnawing on a large and completely meatless bone like a desperate animal. Neither cellmate seemed to notice Potto or Aye. 

"I can't believe you," Aye scolded. "I was just about to have an eight-some. Probably. Maybe. I dunno. Regardless..."

"I'm sorry! I didn't do it on purpose. I think I might be irresistible," Potto said sheepishly.

"I don't think that's it, Quarol. Just in comparison to your friend," interrupted the guard standing by. Her name was Pannick, and Potto recognized her as K'ween's main guard and the woman who made the unsettling sound of an alarm with her throat. Aye winced at the insult. Potto smiled at the word "friend".

"You are both very lucky K'ween survived or you'd both already be dead, regardless of what The Node wants," she added.

"Can you make that noise again?" Potto asked. 

"No," coughed Pannick.

Aye sighed heavily and turned to Potto. "I know you didn't do it on purpose. I'm betting you don't do anything on purpose. I bet you haven't even gotten it up since...have you ever gotten it up?"

"Gotten what up?" Potto asked innocently. After a second, and a downward crotch-level glance from Aye, he finally clued in. "Oh!" he blushed, "Oh no, no, no. I don't kill. Nobody deserves that. Nobody deserves my kind of cruelty," he continued sadly.