"I left you instructions on your reader, on the fridge, and on the database in case you lose either of the previous ones."
"Yes, Lena."
"Do not give him any marshmallows and be sure to keep gummies away from him. He likes them, but they cause him stomach aches."
"Aja."
"If he doesn't stop crying, his blankie and a puppet he should be enough to calm him down."
"Lena, really, Rouge will be fine. He's in very good hands."
Tenn wished she could have agreed with Tallest Purple on that one. Tallest Red and Lena departed for Vacatio shortly after on the former's personal vessel . They saw them off at the hangar, then returned to their quarters to keep an eye on Rouge. He was currently napping, but Tenn knew that hell would be unleashed once he awoke and found his mother missing.
What was bugging her was that Tallest Purple has left her alone with the smeet. He went to Tallest duty while she stayed behind at the quarters, watching comedy videos and replays of previous organic sweeps. She replayed through the Meekrob sweep, her greatest achievement up to date, over and over again.
She wondered if there were any footages of Dren from his mission reports; Tenn surfaced through the databases for a good few minutes until she found one. One of the few reports Dren had managed to send to the Tallest before... she was momentarily torn in-between ignoring it or playing it. It had been a while ever since she saw Dren's face... eventually, the latter side won and she pressed the replay button. Dren's ecstastic expression appeared on the irkpad's screen.
"Greetings, My Tallest! Sorry for not reporting for so long, but I wanted to make sure that the Sobrekt wouldn't trace the signal back to my base. Besides, I wanted to wait until I had a plan worthy of your time and attention." Tenn sighed bitterly. If only he knew. "I'm happy to say I've made some progress in my mission. I've captured some minor-sized Hybrekts to analyze their DNA and I managed to determine the genomes used in each. I'll be sending you a copy of the results, sirs."
Tenn remembered the issue. Dren did send the report along with some DNA samples, but sadly the Hybrekts he chose were deemed unfit for being too 'small and uncool'. She wasn't present on the Massive at that time, but she did hear that the Tallest ordered him to get DNA samples of the 'cooler' hybrids. She passed to the next report.
"I have a theory regarding the Hybrekts, My Tallest, and for that, I shall obtain a DNA from their iconic specimen: the indokuro." Tenn felt her blood starting to boil as the image on the screen changed to information sheets of said animal. Dren was gone because of them. "They hold a very important place in sobrekt culture, especially in the military area. There's a whole branch of their military that focuses on raising and training these indokuros for a great variety of tasks. I shall call again once I've succeeded, sires. Invader Dren signing off."
Tenn's squeedly spooch dropped when she noticed the date this had been sent; days before his head was delivered. There were no further reports after this one; this was the last he ever sent. She couldn't contain a sob as she clutched the data pad close to her chest, pressing her lekku against her head.
She was dropped out of her mood by Tallest Purple's voice. "Oh, Tenn!" Tenn quickly wiped her eyes and tucked the irkpad under the cushions just as he came in, holding a dark blue bottle and two cups. "Guess what? I found a nice brand of Vortian blue wine, and I figured we could try it out."
Tenn snorted. She knew from the beginning that his offer of looking after Rouge was a rather pathetic attempt to be alone with her. She'd give him credit, though. It was, unfortunately, a smart move.
"What? Got bored of throwing people out of the airlock?"
"Oh, come on, my dear. I just want to spend some quality time with you."
"That's curious, considering you left me alone with the smeet. What would I have done if he woke up? He's not going to be happy when he starts calling out for his mother and realizes she's not around."
"Well, we could enjoy ourselves a bit until that happens, don't you think?"
Tenn's lekku perked up when she heard something coming from Red and Lena's bedroom. A squeal...? Or a whimper?
"I think Rouge awoke."
Tallest Purple didn't believe her. "We'd know it by now."
"No, really, I heard a whimper coming from the room."
"If it makes you feel better, go take a look."
"Me? This was your idea."
"Who's going to look after the wine if I go?"
Tenn muttered something under her breath and made her way towards the room. It was similar to Purple and hers, except this one's décor was mostly in shades of red. The only piece of blue was Rouge's crib located a few steps from the bed. Like she suspected, Rouge had woken up and was calling for his mother in-between whimpers.
"Squeak! Squeak!" He noticed Tenn.
"Hi...." She waved a nervous hand at him, unsure of what to do. She quickly surfed through the interweb with her PAK for any information regarding smeets whose mothers were absent, but all it said was that they should be held and comforted.
"Hey, what's taking you so long-?" Tallest Purple stopped in his tracks, raising his lekku. He smacked his forehead. "Great. Just great."
"What do I do? He's staring at me."
"He's curious. From what I heard, he likes you for some reason." Rouge held his arms up to Tenn. "See? You should pick him up before he starts to cry; once he does it'll be very hard to calm him down."
"How do I do that? I've never held a smeet in my life!"
Tallest Purple sighed and floated closer to the crib. "You just pick him up like this." His long, thin fingers wrapped around Rouge's waist and lifted him off the cradle, making a makeshift 'crib' by cupping his hands. Rouge rolled onto his belly and waved his little arms at her again. "See? Now take him."
Tenn gulped internally when she cupped her hands so Rouge could be placed in them. Even there, Rouge was not happy and continued to squirm and whimper.
"What now?"
"Bounce him a bit, he loves it. Yeah, like- No, no, not like that! He's going to-!"
PUAJ!
**SoP**
"Way to go, Tenn."
Tenn growled as she dropped her vomit-covered dress into the laundry chute and slipped into a clean one.
"If you are the expert, why don't you take care of him since this was your idea, to begin with." she hissed. Tallest Purple smirked.
"Oh, no. If I sink, you come with me, my dear."
"I hate you."
"I love you too!"
Tenn felt her eye and lekku twitching. She covered her auditive holes as Rouge continued to cry loudly, squirming violently in his tiny smeet basket. His fists were clenched and his lekku were flat against his head to show how unhappy he was.
"What do we do now?"
"Well, Lena's instructions state that if he starts crying we should either give him some candy, his favorite toy or something to distract him." Tallest Purple went to the snack bar and returned with a bag of cheesy puffs. "Here, Rouge! I got a snack for you!" He waved one of the puffs just above his head. The smeet didn't pay it any heed. "Nop, that's not going to work." He flung the puff into his mouth.
"Don't eat his snacks!" Tenn snapped.
"We can get more. Besides, wasting snacks is a crime punishable by being tossed out of the airlock!" Another cheesy puff. Tenn sighed.
"Okay, what's his favorite toy?"
"I don't know."
Her eye twitched again. "Are you kidding me? And you have the cynicism to say you 'love' smeets?"
"Hey, I do, but Rouge's with Lena most of the time and I rarely get to see him out of her pouch!"
The next hour consisted of showing Rouge all his toys, one by one, to see which one was his favorite, but he rejected all of them. He did show preference over a stuffed bee (courtesy of Zim), but in his current state swatted it away after a few seconds and went back to crying. Then Tallest Purple tried distracting him with some puppets, playing some smeet videos on Irktube, but nothing worked.
By Irk's nighttime hours, Tenn was having a headache from all the wailing. What was she to do to get some peace and quiet, for Irk's sake?!
"Please just go to sleep...!" They put Rouge back in his crib and turned on the rocking mode, but he was still wailing. It was a good thing she wasn't used to sleeping much. Tallest Purple, on the other hand...
"Here, Rouge..." He shook a rattle over the smeet to no avail. The area under his eyes was dark from exhaustion. At the very least he was having a hard time too.
"What a good idea you had, My Tallest."
"Not now, Tenn. I'm not in the mood for sarcasm on your part."
Tenn grabbed the pacifier and tried to put it into Rouge's mouth, but he spat it out and it flew right into her eye. She had to bite her lip to contain the curse that nearly escaped her mouth as she rubbed her ocular implant; Lena wouldn't forgive her if she taught her smeet a 'bad word'.
She frowned when she heard a chuckle. "What?"
"Just look at us. We look like a family."
Her frown deepened. "We're not a family, we're just two irkens trying to put a smeet to sleep."
"On the bright side, this is a good practice for when we have our own."
"I don't want smeets. I thought you'd have it clear by now, especially after this."
"Ah, Tenn. Tenn, Tenn, Tenn." Tallest Purple shook his head, chuckling. "I'm not asking you. I'm telling you what's going to happen."
There it was, the venom from before. It was notably sugar coated because Rouge was present, but it was there. By then she was used to it, so it didn't really frighten her. The tension in the air seemed to frighten Rouge further as his cries augmented in volume.
Tenn sighed in dismay. "How do you expect us to have smeets when we can't even put this one to sleep?"
"Wait... If the problem is that he misses Lena..." Tallest Purple searched through some drawers and returned with another puppet. This one was almost identical to Lena; a mini-version of her. "Hi, Rouge! I'm the miniature version of your mama!"
Tenn watched in awe as the crueler and more feared of the two Tallest spoke in a high-pitched voice and motioned a puppet over a smeet in a playful manner. Even more surprisingly, it seemed to work; Rouge stopped crying and stared at the mini-Lena with wide cyan eyes, reaching out for it. Tallest Purple let him grab the puppet and the smeet was fawning over it. Oh, sweet, wonderful silence! Even Tallest Purple seemed relieved.
"It's a good thing that Red made a Lena puppet."
"Why did he make a puppet of her, anyway? Is it a habit of his to make puppets of people?"
"Just people he either likes or people he likes pummeling. In Lena's case, it's for when she sends him to sleep on the couch."
"What's your obsession with puppets?"
She still couldn't understand it. She still recalled the last Probing Day. She had initially prepared a nice presentation until it turned out the Tallest wanted a puppet show instead. She had to make an improvised show with napkin puppets and whatever she had at hand at that time. She still remembered that pummeling.
"Hey, everyone loves puppets!"
"I don't."
Rouge let out a big yawn, rubbed one of his eyes and fell asleep, much to Tenn's deep relief. Sadly it didn't last long, as Tallest Purple returned with his bottle of wine and the two glasses alongside a big grin.
"Okay, so where were we?"
**SoP**
If there was something she could thank alcohol for, it was dulling her senses for when he touched her. It was the only reason she accepted his offer in the first place. Besides, she had never tasted Vortian blue wine before. She might as well try and get more positive experiences out of this situation.
Of course, this had its downsides as well, such as the damn hangover next morning. Her PAK sent some painkillers and other drugs into her system to neutralize the splitting headache, vomiting and other symptoms, but this also caused her to become especially sore and drowsy. To make things worse, Rouge decided to wake up at that moment and started to cry. She, of course, had no intention of leaving the bed.
"Tenn, Rouge is awake."
"Well, good luck." She imagined him rolling his eyes as he got out of bed and left the room. Tenn smirked.
Even better, he didn't come back for the past two hours. By then she felt better enough to go get a glass of water. She found her husband on the kitchen alongside Rouge. He was trying to feed the smeet with spoonfuls of a strange fudge-like substance, but Rouge sealed his lips shut and moved his head away. She noticed mini-Lena was still tightly held in his grasp.
"Come on, Rouge, here comes the... voot cruiser! It's very tasty! Hey, Tenn, don't just stand there and help me!"
Tenn frowned. "After he threw up all over me yesterday? Forget it." She poured water into a glass and took a refreshing sip.
"Squeak! Squeak!" Her lekku perked up. Looking back, she saw Rouge holding out his arms for her.
Tallest Purple smirked. "See? He wants you to feed him so his uncle Pur can go to work."
Tenn was about to refuse a second time when Rouge started to whimper. It made her squeedly-spooch squirm. She sighed.
"Fine." Reluctantly she stomped over to the high chair and snatched the spoon from her husband's grasp. "How do I feed him?"
"You just put the spoon in front of his mouth and put the contents inside when he opens it. Just make sure to give him small amounts and wait twenty seconds in-between spoonfuls. See you later, my dear!" That said, he pulled her close for a quick, half-forced lekku 'kiss' and departed, leaving her alone with Rouge.
"Squeak!"
"Okay, okay, I got it, you're hungry." Tenn took a look at the jar of smeet feet, labeled with the brand 'sweets 4 smeets'. She had heard of that company; it provided the smeeteries with fudge-based food for the young smeets until they could process calories, and additionally sold it to Irkens who raised their own. She couldn't help it and took a tiny spoonful. It tasted just like she remembered.
"Squeak!" Rouge protested with flattened lekku and a small frown.
"Sorry, I couldn't help it."
Tenn took another spoonful and fed it to Rouge; this time he did open his mouth and ate all the contents, licking his lips. "Mmmm!"
Tenn sighed. "Well, at least one of us is happy."
Soon she got hungry. She could have had a service drone bring her snacks, but she didn't like the idea of being stuck in here all day, so she picked Rouge up and made her way down to the cafeteria. After choosing a table to sit on, she placed Rouge down and watched him toy with mini-Lena curiously, even going as far as to bring its head into his mouth.
She was enjoying some nachos when she received a PAK-mail from Ilk. Guess she had made significant progress since her last call and wanted her opinion on her conquest plan. She opened the message.
To: Invader Tenn
From: Ilk
Subject: Invader Dren's research.
Hi, Tenn! I wanted to let you know that everything's going smoothly so far, thankfully. DIR has been observing some frill-neck lizards sobrekt tend to have as pets to learn its proper behavior and record some vocalizations for her disguise. Cool, I didn't think she could do that!
I've finished the prototype of the prosthetic-tail to use alongside my holographic disguise and now I'm working on fake claws and teeth to; turns out that Sobrekt would rather fight with their bare hands and teeth if they have the chance.
Anyhow, I wanted to ask you something. Invader Dren (may he rest in peace) had a theory regarding the hybrekts and managed to make some significant advances before his discovery. Did he ever mention something to you about said research? It would save me a bit of time.
PD: I'm not sure how I should refer to you, considering you're technically my aunt now. Could I call you auntie or should I keep calling you Tenn?
Tenn sighed, though she couldn't help but smile a bit. She really was a nice girl.
Regarding her question about... Dren, he did mention something in one of their transmissions. Invaders usually never share information about their missions with each other, given the Irkens' solitary nature and not wanting to risk their plans being plagiarized, but she and Dren had been different. Their trust in each other had been so strong that they always shared everything. In fact, it was thanks to Dren's advice that she had successfully conquered Meekrob; only on part, of course; it mostly had to do with her own merit.
Dren thought that all Sobrekt hybrids had something in common, a sort of genetic 'patent' that linked them all together even if they were made of different genomes. He had captured a frill-neck-one of the least dangerous hybrekts- and put it together with a genetically-pure native creature from Sobr. The frill-neck hunted and ate it. But when he repeated the experiment, this time with a hybrekt of a different type, they didn't show hostility and instead coexisted rather peacefully, except for the occasional quarrel.
Tenn sent her reply a few minutes later explaining this theory and some data on the research previously sent by Dren to the Tallest, including the videos. She additionally added that Ilk could call her 'auntie' only when not on official business.
**SoP**
Okay, maybe offering to look after Rouge was not a completely good idea after all. He was alone with Tenn, okay, but Rouge didn't give them much time to get 'cozy'. Every time he managed to get a romantic atmosphere, he started to cry or demanded any sort of attention. It wasn't that he didn't love his nephew, but the whole point of this was to be alone with his wife, and he couldn't do that with a smeet present. Not only that, but it even seemed like Rouge did it on purpose.
That smeet is smarter than he gave him credit for.
Yet a part of him liked that. He had always liked smeets. Not the ones from the smeeteries; those could already talk, think and do stuff thanks to the PAK. No, he was talking about natural-born smeets; the cute, innocent little things. He had no idea where it came from or when it started, but he always desired to have smeets of his own. This only strengthened after Ilk and Rouge were born and he helped take care of them.
Sadly, it seemed he'd have to wait a bit longer for his wish to come true. The latest pregnancy test on Tenn was negative. Damn it! He ordered some curly fries and a can of whipped cream be brought... What? It's a good combination, regardless of what Red said.
"My Tallest, incoming transmission from Vacatio." Purple sighed. Of course, Lena couldn't spend five minutes without news from her smeet.
"Patch them through." As he suspected, Lena was the one on the screen while Red was nowhere to be seen. It had been a while ever since he saw her in a swimming suit. She looked dazzling. "Hey there, Lena."
"Purple, is Rouge alright?"
"He's perfectly fine, Lena. He's just having breakfast with Tenn."
"And Ilk? Anything new about her state?"
"She can't call that often because of the situation in Sobr, you know that. But she did send a PAK-mail to Tenn to help her in her research." Lena relaxed visibly. "Hey, where's Red?"
"Getting a tentapod massage. I wanted to see if everything was alright meanwhile." Ah, tentapod massages are really nice.
"Everything okay between you two?"
She sighed. "You could say so. What irks me is that he doesn't seem to worry about Ilk!"
"It's not like that and you know it. He's just as worried as you are, maybe more, but he also knows that Ilk's more than capable of handling the lizards. You've seen it yourself, she's doing perfectly fine! Believe me, in a few months we'll be heading to Sobr to perform the Organic Sweep!"
"How about you and Tenn? How's she doing with Rouge?"
Purple carefully thought of the reply. "You should see her, she's such a natural! Rouge loves her!" It wasn't a complete lie, Rouge liked Tenn even if it wasn't exactly the other way around. Sadly, Lena seemed to see through the lie. She was never easy to trick. "Okay, she's still learning the ropes, but she's doing perfectly fine!"
The doors opened; Tenn rushed in, looking scared out of her wits. In her hands was Rouge, wailing hysterically. "My Tallest, I need a hand!"
Purple smacked his forehead.
**SoP**
Rouge whimpered as he clutched mini-Lena, whose head had been taped back into place.
"Thanks for making me look bad, Tenn."
"You're the one who left me alone with him when you knew I have never taken care of a smeet before!"
"You didn't have to take it out on mini-Lena, you know!"
"He was nibbling on its eye! He could have choked on it if it came out! But he didn't want to let go of it...!"
"But seriously, beheading her? Do you have any idea of the trauma you may have caused him?"
Tenn rolled her eyes. "You're exaggerating, it's just a puppet."
He would have given his wife a proper lecture on a smeet's fragile psyche, but Rouge's whimpers made something in him stir awake. He carefully picked his nephew up in his hands, crooning and clicking with his tongue as he bounced him carefully.
"There, there, it's okay, Rougie. Uncle Pur is here." It took him a few minutes, but eventually Rouge soothed down. He gently rubbed the smeet's head just in the spot he liked, earning a content purr in return.
"What are you...?"
He put quickly put Rouge in one hand and lifted the other to tell Tenn to be quiet, especially when Rouge stirred. He cooed again as he carefully placed him back unto his cradle and tucked him in, activating the rocking mode. Rouge purred contentedly as he fell asleep.
"How did you do that?"
Purple panicked and motioned her to keep her voice down. He walked out of the room and urged her to do the same. After turning off the lights, he closed the door shut. Once he was sure Rouge was out of earshot, he sighed in relief.
"He's got sharp lekku. The tiniest noise can wake him up, and if you wake him up during nap time..." He gulped. The last time it took them eight hours to get him to stop crying, and while that happened he was very aggressive as far as smeets go.
"As for your question, I had a lot of practice with Ilk when she was a smeet. Red and Lena were first-time parents and didn't have much experience, so I had to lend them a hand with my superior knowledge of trivial things."
Tenn narrowed her eyes. "Superior? From what I've seen of you, you're not the tastiest fry in the meal."
He frowned and loomed over his wife. Her lekku flattened even though she retained her defiant posture. She still feared him and yet did everything in her power not to show it. It was starting to get amusing. Purple smirked as he stroked her cheek and then inadvertently gripped one of her lekku-not tightly enough to hurt her, just enough to immobilize her- and pulled her close.
"Do not provoke me, my dear. You said it, I might not be as good in engineering as Red and I might be rusted in certain areas, but you seem to forget I'm also the most ruthless of the two of us. I'm sure you've heard what happens to those who dare cross me; being tossed out of the airlock sounds like sugar compared to my wrath. You don't know this, but even Red knows which strings never to touch to avoid making me mad."
He pulled her close until their faces were inches from each other. Her eyes were mostly defiant, but he could see a tiny bit of fear and hesitation edging into the corners. He decided she had enough for the time being.
"Well, honey, I'm going to bed. Love you!" he kissed Tenn's forehead and retreated to their bedchambers. He almost burst out laughing but managed to contain it in the last moment.