The Smeet

The Camp

"Couldn't we just leave it there, My Tallest?" Bob asked.

"So it reproduces? Do you know how long it takes them to make babies?!" Purple snapped. "Besides, it'll go after my doughnuts!"

"Then wouldn't it be easier to squash it?"

Purple grumbled. "Oh, right, and spread all of its insides on top of the snacks? Why don't you also poison my drink now what we're on it? Just get it over with!"

Bob sighed. There was no way out of this, so he better get done. As he removed the power plug, however, he jumped back in fright when instead of one, a dozen of tiny space-roaches crawled out, causing him to jump on top of a chair.

He wasn't the only one as soon Purple and the cooks shrieked like smeets and scrambled to climb unto the counters.

*IZ*

And so, with the topic of Purple aside, Red decided they could take a walk around. Actually, Ilk was on top of his head and he merely moved around on his PAK's spider legs to save battery on his hover-belt.

"Hey, daddy, when will I get my own spider leg on my back thingy?" Ilk asked after a while.

Red chuckled at her lack of vocabulary. Like father, like smeet, right? "You mean a PAK? When you go to the Academy you'll get one from the Control Brains."

"How's the Academy like? Everybody talks about it."

"You see, usually cloned smeets spend their first ten years in Irk's underground getting the basic information in their PAKs before going to the Academy to formally finish their training. In your case, however, you'll have to learn most from scratch."

"Sounds boring."

"It's not that bad. If you're really good at it, you'll become an Elite in no time. Who knows? Maybe you'll even get to become an Invader! Invader Ilk has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?"

Ilk was pretty sure her squeedly-spooch squirmed. "Yeah. Too bad Operation Impending Doom II will be over by then."

Red chuckled. "Who knows? We haven't fully explored the whole galaxy, maybe in the future there will be enough newly discovered systems to consider an Operation Impending Doom III."

Hopefully not, Ilk thought secretly to herself.

The landscape was not that bad. Most of the terrain reminded her in part of ancient plants she had once read about in the Irkenet, mostly from the planet Zim had been sent to. The main difference was that the sky in this planet was of greenish hues swirling around in the heights, and up to now they hadn't yet seen any wildlife.

She was momentarily distracted when she noticed they had passed by a very familiar tree with white bark and black stripes. "Uh, daddy..."

Red didn't hear her. "Or perhaps we could assign you to Earth. I mean, from what I've noticed, humans don't look that brilliant, it would be a piece of cake for you!"

"Daddy..."

"Purple says it should be a bakery/zoo thing, but I think it should only be a bakery. I mean, those animals must carry a lot of bacteria."

"Dad!"

Red looked up at her. "What is it?"

"I think we're lost."

"Oh, come on, Ilk," Red chuckled. "What makes you think that?"

"We've passed by that tree four times already," Ilk pointed at said tree literally, and then at the ground. "Plus, those are your spider legs' prints."