The Hatching of Katie

It has been nine months since the cease-fire was called. When planet Paffy exploded, faster-than-light radiation spread across the galaxy, making lab equipment go haywire. Most of it is still spreading across the galaxy and will for centuries to come. The boys now have a clear advantage in firepower, while the girls still have the advantage of numbers. Neither side dares to fire on the other or invade any new planets. By this time, the boys and girls on mixed planets have fully segregated themselves anyways. The question remains about what to do with uninhabited planets.

Some boys have recently discovered a Mars-sized planet, covered in trees bearing explosive fruit. They return in harvesting ships that can convert the fruit into cherry bombs, peach bombs, pear bombs, apple bombs, lemon bombs, lime bombs, and orange bombs. The boxed bombs are stacked on shelves in large warehouses. These warehouse ships are roughly rectangular boxes covered in hinged scales that are solar panels on one side. Long tethers tie the ships to the ground and are used to transport the goods to orbit. There exists evidence that long-dead beings once bioengineered these trees to grow bombs for them and it ended up destroying their civilization.

This is when the girls arrive, claiming to have returned to harvest the bombs they previously discovered. It is not clear who discovered the planet first or who fired the first shots, but in the skirmish a boy ship crashes onto the planet, igniting a chain-reaction that destroys the biosphere.

What follows is a series of tit-for-tat raids in the region that gradually start to become bigger, threatening to drag the galaxy back into war. Nathaniel, Haticat, Fred, and Doctor Bill are sent to the area to observe and advise.

The moment they arrive, they find themselves in the middle of a full-blown space battle. The ship is damaged and leaking air, unable to engage its engines or return fire. Another ship arrives to teleport them out. Nathaniel feels the familiar brief loss of consciousness as the teleporter beam catches his substance.

Nathaniel blinks himself awake, still very groggy. He is lying on his back. He cannot remember who he is, where he is, or how he got here, but he knows he has been asleep a long time. As it gradually comes back to him, he realizes the pattern on the domed ceiling looks familiar. He is inside The Mama-And-Daddy!

He gets up and wanders through the curved hallways, which have changed much since he was last there. “Haticat?” No one responds. The polyp-heads at each doorway are dormant. Why was he brought here? How long had he been asleep? Eventually, he finds a window. The Mama-And-Daddy has landed in a forest. It is nighttime, but a bright moon illuminates the trees. He does not recognize the species. He keeps walking until he hears footsteps. He holds still. The steps stop just after he does. He grabs his gun and jumps around the corner. Allison stands there, scowling. “What are you doing here?”

“What are you doing here?” she asks back.

“I was kidnapped,” Nathaniel says.

“Me too,” Allison says.

Nathaniel puts his gun away. “Let’s find a way out.”

Instantly, Allison grabs Nathaniel’s gun out of his holster as he turns around, but Nathaniel’s lightning reflexes knock it from her hand and throw it into a wall. “Why did you do that?”

“We’re enemies. We’re at war. You blew up Paffy. President Melissa was my friend,” Allison explains, still scowling.

“Okay, okay, let’s fight!” Nathaniel says before lunging toward her and biting her nose. Allison screams and scratches him with her claws.

“STOP FIGHTING!” The walls shake slightly as The Mama-And-Daddy yell together, their nearest polyp-heads now awake. A door opens several meters away. “We have an important gift for you. Go into the new room.”

Nathaniel and Allison walk slowly, not sure what to expect, but wary too of disobeying. The room is dimly lit. Inside is a large, round pillow atop which sits a large, purple egg. “What is it?” Nathaniel asks.

“Together we have created life. This is your sibling, Katie.” The shell begins to crack.

“Katie is a girl name. That means it’s a girl,” Allison says.

“Is it another Dromaeosaur?” Nathaniel asks.

There is no answer. The Mama-And-Daddy is silent as the shell continues to crack. Thick, green slime drips from the hole. Then a clawed hand pops out – but these were no Dromaeosaur claws. Nathaniel and Allison stand transfixed as more of the shell breaks off and the creature stands up. It is a shmizzex. Nathaniel recognizes the animal immediately from all the books he has read. It has very long, very sharp claws and long, jagged teeth of every shape pointing every which way. It looks more goofy than scary, but Nathaniel also knew that one scratch from those claws meant infection by flesh-eating macrophages. Every cell in the body of a shmizzex is a killer. Bacteria, viruses, and parasites don’t stand a chance against them. Nathaniel starts backing up towards his gun.

Daddy begins speaking by himself. “At last, my three Arbishas are together. My trifold creation is complete. Out of synch with the rest of creation, able to escape all systems of control and conquer everything across the first five dimensions, may one of them fulfil the prophecy of the Grand Radisha.”

Nathaniel is not listening. He is running. He grabs his gun and runs down the hallway. Allison is not far behind. “That thing is disgusting! It’s a horrible sister!”

“I don’t want it either,” Nathaniel says.

They turn a corner and run to the next corner. Suddenly, Katie races in front of them. She is fast. Nathaniel fires, but she is gone in the blink of an eye. He sees her hanging from the upper wall in his peripheral vision and fires again. She dodges and runs out of sight along the ceiling, her claws digging into The Mama-And-Daddy and leaving holes.

“It’s against the rules to call your sister horrible! It’s against the rules to fire guns inside! It’s against the rules to run on the ceiling!” Mama yells.

“This is bad. We need to get out of here!” Nathaniel says.

Nathaniel and Allison spend the next few hours keeping out of reach of the creature. It continues to trash the inside of the adult. Then Allison uses her augmented brain to get an idea. She has her silver lipstick with her. She smears it all over one section of the wall, creating a mirror. The siblings stand off to one side and wait. When Katie sees their reflections, they beckon to her.

Katie is upon the wall in a flash. Nathaniel hits the button to close the door in front of him before she can turn around and see them. Katie tears at the wall, thinking it is keeping her from her elder siblings. Within minutes, she has torn a hole in the wall and crawled outside.

“Now’s our chance!” Allison yells. She and Nathaniel squeeze through the hole and escape The Mama-And-Daddy, running into the forest.

They stop to catch their breath under a large tree. Nathaniel points his gun at Allison. “Now we can go back to our war.”

“You’ll never leave this planet without my help. This is Monorat, home to a million girls. I had tea here once. Great party. Great biscuits. You’ll need me alive to help steal a ship,” Allison says.

Nathaniel stops. Is she lying? He can’t tell. Since she had her brain augmented, she might be good at tricks. Then something drops from the tree onto his gun. The two of them stare at the glob of thick slime at the end of Nathaniel’s laser pistol with raised brows. It is still attached to a strand of mucus from above. They look up.

Katie snorts and sucks the mucus back into her nose – with the gun. She chews on it, her deadly saliva making it untouchable. Nathaniel and Allison run.

They hide in the crevice of a large rock and keep quiet. Katie runs by several times, but never thinks to check the crack. Eventually, they are detected by a boy ship that teleports them on board. The boys had been tracking The Mama-And-Daddy ever since Nathaniel was taken. Allison is held at gunpoint while Nathaniel speaks. “There’s a shmizzex in the forest. I want to capture it. It’s special.”

“Can do,” the captain replies.

Shortly after they find and capture Katie, a girl ship arrives, also having tracked The Mama-And-Daddy. Before the boys can leave orbit, the girls teleport Allison and Katie onboard and speed away. Thus begins a period of several months wherein Katie is kidnapped back and forth.

Nathaniel explains to the Girlbusters that this shmizzex is more than an animal. It is a fully conscious blank slate that can be molded into either a boy or a girl. “If we can learn how to duplicate this transformation, we can convert all animals into boys, giving us an advantage of numbers.”

“We can’t allow the girls to discover the secret first,” Jash comments. “Find her and bring her back.”
At last, the boys are successful in nabbing Katie and hiding her away where she will not be found. Unfortunately, they find that the girls have already started to fill her mind with garbage. She wants to be “pretty” and “cute” and wear makeup. With no makeup available, she kills a bird and sloppily spreads its blood all over her face.

In the meantime, the war has fully restarted. Boys have upgraded their planet-destroying superbombs to superbombs that can destroy whole stars and star systems. However, building superbombs is difficult. Their factories can only make ten to fifteen superbombs per year and there are six hundred billion stars in the galaxy. The girls learn to spread their forces thin to avoid becoming targets.

There is no need to teach Katie how to fight. She knows every fighting style by instinct. Eventually, the Girlbusters let her loose in battle. She rips through dolls easily. This tips off the girls where she is and they plot to get her back. The Girlbusters order pizza to celebrate their latest victory, but the pizza has very stretchy cheese that cannot be cut or chewed. At the same time, it is so irresistible that the boys cannot stop pulling off more slices, getting each other very tangled. Then the girls sneak in and steal Katie once again. The war continues.

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