Pint-size Pineapples and a Great Big Cosmic Conundrum

His Holiness Ozzy Osbourne

The past few hours had passed somewhat uneventfully – minus a few battery acid-ketchup smoothie mishaps and a rather out-of-tune and rather dusty explosion involving a vacuum cleaner and a kazoo – and by then, Toxy was all huddled up and reading in one of the ship's boarding rooms. The book almost swallowed him whole like a Chernobyl wolf, but he was a good little reader so he carried on, as per usual for the tiny intergalactic trooper he was.

Half a smashed mirror slouched sullenly against the wall across from him, but he was trying hard to ignore his own reflection in the chipped glass. He had a love-hate relationship with the way he looked, except there was no love and he basically just hated it. 3'2'' with basil-tone skin and cordate ears tipped with dusty pink. Any shorter and he was afraid he might fade out of existence and ascend into the fifth dimension like a kind of alternate-reality Charles Stratton. His way-too-bright mandated orange uniform added to his looks in the same way cotton candy adds nutrition. He kept his double-pupil fuscia eyes trained resolutely on his book and tried to ignore it.

"An average hobbit is three-foot-six?" he mumbled to himself, his frown intensifying. "Oh, my hearts bleed."

"Right, me ol' jammy dodger! Dicks out, bombs away!"

Toxy rolled his eyes. There was only one person ridiculous and outspoken enough to come out with that in place of a simple "hello."

"Hel-lo, Flyk," Toxy sighed, setting his book aside and cringing as Flyk kicked the door down. "Why can't you ever just... knock?"

"Knock-knock, who's there, fuck you, that's who. Listen, Tox, we have more impotent matters."

"It's Tox-y, and you mean important."

Flyk looked up earnestly. Genuine curiosity sparkled in his eyes. "What's the difference?"

Toxy flushed dusty pink and looked down. "It – never mind. What's all this, anyway?"

He clambered down off the bed – he was starting to wish he hadn't picked top bunk, especially since a five-foot drop was a death-dive for him – and sat cross-legged near Flyk. He'd brought with him a haphazard nuclear detonation of papers and spreadsheets, and it was making Toxy's third brain hurt (the third Turiconian brain, of course, being solely used for paperwork and unwrapping those really tricky Chuppa Chup lollipops which you needed a BA Hons post-graduate degree for).

"These are the charts for where we need to be," Flyk explained. "There's a diagram of how to make the ship shift between galaxies – something to do with wormhole technology, or something, I think – and I... kinda need your help. Ish. We need to get to Cosmos Redshift 7."

"Well, I've got things to do and memories to repress, so let's get this over with."

Toxy hunched over the diagram and traced one of his webbed fingers along a line. He had no idea what he was looking at, but he hoped it looked like he might by some stretch of the imagination.

"I think this line goes here," Flyk mused, "but... no. No, thought I had something there. Scrap that."

"Look, do you even know what the bunderhingles is going on?" Toxy sighed in exasperation. He didn't like swearing.

"Mate, if I had a fiver for every time I didn't know what the fuck was going on, I'd be like: why are you giving me all these fivers...?" Flyk was less conservative.

Toxy scooped his hands tiredly across his face. He could really use a nap, but if they didn't figure out how to cross the Transgalactic Motorway (third exit on your left) soon, they might miss their chance and Flyk's promotion would be blown forever. Toxy didn't care about that, but he wanted to see his Thinking Fish again. They'd need some food right about now, and if they got too hungry they'd start chanting about how if you live in a car, you'll always have a place to crash. He hoped he could trust Yaz to feed them, but... knowing that guy, he was probably snoozing in the back of a police van wearing bright pink fishnet gloves and orange socks with white cowboy boots. Yaz was chaotic.