“Well that’s a stupid name,” Pea said as she hurried to peel off the bits of damp couch innards that were plastered on her wet skin. She strode towards the control room, hoping the pod computer would at least allow her to open a comlink with the newcomer.

Before she even reached the door, a burst of fancy, musical static filled the air and Pod made an announcement.

“Matt The Egghunter has docked with Escape Pod A”.

“What the hell? I didn’t say he could do that!”

Her visions of sitting in a captain’s chair negotiating grandly with another player, evaporated into vacuum.

Pea spun around and realized that she had absolutely no idea where someone would dock to the escape pod. The only doors she had seen led to the closet, the bathroom and the control room, and that was it.

She herself had obviously entered the pod somehow, but how? The companion couldn’t remember embarking, only waking up already stored in the closet.

Stored in the closet was a phrase she didn’t want to think about too deeply, as it linked far too nicely with the word master.

She wasn’t an object to put away in a closet.

Was she?

A loud sucking noise interrupted that morbid line of thought. Water was swiftly draining out of the center of the spa pool, turning it briefly into a deep whirlpool. Pea barely realized what was happening before the water disappeared completely, leaving nothing but a big, tiled basin in the middle of the room.

The dim lights of the recreation room brightened, revealing even more starkly that a huge chunk was missing from the curving ring of brown velvet couches. Pea felt her face grow hot with embarrassment and struggled to think of a sensible excuse to be missing half a couch.

The tiled center of the room cracked open, revealing a wide hatchway. A ladder was just visible on one side of it, disappearing into the darkness below.

“What the hell?” Pea said. “Pod, what if I’m still in that pool when someone docks?”

“The hot tub and the docking mechanism are not designed to be used simultaneously.”

“For a dumb computer, you are awfully good at avoiding my questions.”

Pea was peering down into the hatch, wondering if she was supposed to climb down there herself, when a figure stepped into sight below. The top of its head was dark and glossy, but that was about all Pea made out before she leaped away from the hatch and rushed to stand by the control room door.

She tried to seem dangerous, straightening her spine and putting her shoulders back in a power pose, but quickly realized she only looked like she was thrusting her space-bikini-clad breasts out.

Crossing her arms just made it worse.

She HAD to find some better clothes.

Pea settled for putting her hands on her hips and scowling as fiercely as possible. Hopefully, this Matt The Egghunter wouldn’t notice that her stomach was churning with anxiety. Or that she was still damp from her unexpected dip in the pool. Or that a very scared child-alien was hovering overhead.

A soft, whirring sound issued from the hatch, and a tall, chubby figure rose up out of the spa pool floor.

Pea was pretty sure her scowl would have been impressive- stern and menacing- if not for the fact that it melted away into a look of confusion as soon as she took in her visitor.

It was a platypus.

It- he- was humanoid, with all the requisite limbs and digits, but he was also covered in sleek indigo fur, and had webbed hands and bare, webbed feet. He was wearing an orange t-shirt that read “Monotreme to the Extreme!”, and ragged-denim shorts. Most of his face was dedicated to a huge, shiny-black duck-bill that was almost a foot long. His dark eyes were round, like huge black marbles, and half-buried in blue fur.

They settled on Pea, who tried to twist her face back into a scowl, but suspected she only managed to look mildly horrified, then flicked quickly around the room.

“Not much here,” he said to himself, and stepped up, past the couches. He paused for a puzzled look at the destroyed seat, then shrugged and ignored it. He kept his head moving, swinging his bill around as if he were burrowing in a riverbank for bugs. Pea wondered for a second if he was actually insane, until the reason for his odd behavior came to her in a flash.

He wasn’t looking at the recreation room per se, he was staring at a display that Pea couldn’t see.

He was using a HUD.

He wasn’t literally a platypus-mutant either, she realized. He was just some random person who was wearing an avatar in the game, and was probably a completely normal guy in the real world.

Well, thought Pea as she watched the tall, chubby, purple man poking his webbed fingers at her food console, normal might be pushing it.

“Hi, um, look, I’m stranded here and I need a bit of help,” Pea said. Deciding it didn’t hurt to seem nice, since he obviously wasn’t responding to intimidation, she ditched the scowl altogether and let her chest fall where it would.

However, he barely glanced at her as he walked straight past and into the control room.

“Look, friend, I’m talking to you,” Pea said, following him in.

“Computer, please display logs from the last three days,” he said, in a deep, human voice that didn’t sound at all like something that could come from a gigantic, rubbery beak.

“A Captain Assignment is required to display ship logs,” Pod said in her usual cool tone, and Pea had never loved the stupid, robotic AI more.

“I’ve already tried to work the ship,” Pea said. “The captain isn’t here. Look, I just want to go home…”

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As she was talking, she placed her hand on his arm.

Whirling to face her, the platypus leaped back, almost stumbling over one of the control chairs as he did. He crouched in a fighting pose, while a huge, glowing, red sword appeared in one of his hands and a tiny, round, wooden shield in the other.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Pea said and backed up as fast as she could. Unfortunately she managed to miss the doorway and ended up backed against the far wall, across the room from her adversary.

The platypus stood there for a moment, moving his head up and down as if scanning her. She couldn’t see a hint of neon green around him, except for her own small, bright button still throbbing gently in the upper right-hand side of her field of vision.

Pea wondered if the HUD could tell her anything about this Matt The Egghunter if she opened it. However, she was afraid to move, in case she provoked him further. The sword looked viciously sharp and Pea had her aching hands to testify that this game didn’t soften blows.

Would she die if he hit her with it? Would she feel pain, as if she had actually been cut by a sword?

It had occurred to Pea that if she ‘died’ in the game world, she might wake up in the real world. However, since she still didn’t understand exactly what was happening, it was just as likely that she would cease to exist altogether.

Fear mixed with the anger that seemed to be constantly simmering under the surface of her mind, and for once, she did the rational thing and let the fear win. She stayed still against the wall, with her hands held loosely by her sides, and waited for him to realize that she wasn’t a threat.

“Computer, what is this… thing in here with me? An NPC? An Item?” He paused and his voice seemed to become charged with an emotion she couldn’t name. “Is it a rogue AI?”

“Excuse me, I’m right here,” Pea said. “I’m a person!”

“There is a Bright Companion in the Control Room.”

“But it just touched me,” Matt protested. “An Item can’t touch a player in a weapon-locked zone. This is supposed to be a Sandbox.” He paused and wiggled his head around again. “Besides, I can’t read its stats. There’s something wrong with it.”

Pod, predictably, said nothing.

“Stupid escape pod computer,” the platypus mumbled.

Pea wholeheartedly agreed.

“I’m sorry I touched you,” she said, trying to make her voice gentle and soothing. “I won’t touch you if you don’t want to be touched. I’ll leave you alone, but please don’t hurt me. I promise you, I’m a human. I’m a person.”

He continued staring at her, with his dark, round eyes that were very difficult to read. It made Pea’s skin crawl to think that the mind behind those eyes didn’t see her as human.

Bloody ironic, she thought bitterly. Considering his stupid furry getup.

Just as he seemed about to lower his sword, the whole ship shuddered and a loud BANG sounded from the viewscreen.

Pea and the intruder both whipped around just in time to see Junebug revving up to smash against the front of the escape pod again.

“Leave Mother Pea alone!” A static-distorted voice burst through the speakers.

Pea suddenly realized she hadn’t heard the bubbly little alien at all since Matt had docked with the escape pod. She had thought her alien friend was just too scared to say anything. However, now she wondered if Pod had dropped the connection. Perhaps linking with two ships at the same time was just too much for the escape pod computer, especially when it didn’t seem inclined to link with Junebug in the first place.

The alien child had been left unable to comment on the situation until it was sufficiently riled up to force its way in again.

“What the hell is going on here?” Matt was gaping at the viewscreen.

BANG!

He and Pea both stumbled as the ship was rammed again. Pea caught herself against the wall, but this time Matt fell over an armrest and into a command chair.

“ARC damn it,” he swore as his sword bounced out of his grip and his shield wacked him in the shins. “Doesn’t this thing have any inertia dampening?”

A long, braided whip with a sharp metal barb on the tip appeared in the hand that had been gripping the sword.

He glanced at it and shrugged, then narrowed his eyes at Pea.

“Don’t you dare,” she shrieked and attempted to fling herself out the door of the control room.

He was not going to whip her. Not when she was wearing this ridiculous outfit. Not when he was the kind of person who dressed up as an enormous platypus.

Not ever.

Pea was right about one thing. He wasn’t going to whip her.

Instead he flicked his hand, without even getting up from the chair, and the whip end flew through the air and wrapped itself around her middle, binding her arms tightly against her sides, and slamming her to the ground before she even reached the doorway.

“I don’t know what’s going on here,” he said. “But if you are a rogue AI, or some kind of weird, glitchy item, I’m not going to let you fuck around with my levels in a bloody sandbox.”

“I don’t even know what a sandbox is,” Pea said.

The angry scowl she had been trying to fix on her face suddenly showed up in all its glory, but far too late.

He wrapped the whip around her a few more times, like an old-timey villain tying up a damsel on the railway tracks. Then he picked up the sword and turned to the viewscreen. He pointed the glowing sword tip dramatically at Pea and said, “I don’t know who you are, but if you care about this Item, stop attacking this vessel.”

Junebug halted, mid-ram. The alien was visibly trembling on the screen and Pea felt a fresh wave of guilt, even though she had hardly asked to be tied up. Junebug was just a kid. A kid who barely knew Pea and still had tried to save her.

“Don’t hurt Mother Pea,” Junebug said. “Please. Just leave us alone!”

“I can’t get a good reading of this thing’s stats either,” the platypus said, his tone exasperated. “It looks like a Quentith ship, but…”

“I’m talking to you, doesn’t that prove I’m a person? You don’t need to see stats to figure that out.” Pea tried to wiggle into an upright position. “And Junebug is a person too!” She added somewhat belatedly.

He stared at her again with his big, blank eyes and shrugged. If he had been any closer, Pea would have spat at him.

“Look, you’re an Item,” he said, finally. “I can see that much. You’re obviously a very clever Item, and probably a highly illegal Item. Just like this sandbox is illegal. Look at all those stars!” He waved his hand at the viewscreen. “This sandbox is practically its own Cade! Hell, your player even managed to put something that looks like a Quentith ship in here. ARC knows that’s enough to get you kicked by itself.”

He crouched next to her and Pea tensed, but all he did was cross his legs and sit, resting the sword on his knees. He began to do the weird head movement that meant he was looking at his HUD.

“I can’t see who owned the Icarus, but whoever it was obviously had a shit ton of money and not many scruples. If they managed to create an Item that can break the weapon-lock in a sandbox…” The corner of his mouth at the far edge of his bill, twitched slightly.

“Hang on, someone who could do that… maybe that’s why the wormhole…”

He began muttering to himself and staring into space, looking far more suited to the straight-jacketing that Pea was currently experiencing than she felt she was. What the hell was he even talking about?

“I swear I’m not an Item,” she said, finally deciding it was better to keep him talking to her directly. “How can I prove it to you?”

“You can’t,” he said, snorting through the tear-drop nostrils on top of his bill. “You don’t have a player profile. The system might be broken but it’s not that broken. You obviously have a very sophisticated AI, but…” He trailed off again, lost in whatever he was doing with his HUD.

“Hey!” Pea said and kneed him in his thigh.

He jumped again, startled by the contact, and his shield clanged to the floor.

“Stop ignoring me, arsehole!” Pea said, her temper finally overcoming fear and reason both. “I don’t care what you think I am. Let me go and get off my escape pod!”

He sighed and made a sweeping gesture that Pea guessed was putting away his HUD. She wondered why he seemed to be able to read it so easily without a mirror… practice? Or was she the only one with a backwards HUD?

Was her HUD made to be read from the outside?

“I’m really sorry, but I can’t do that,” he said. “I can’t let loose an Item that can break a weapons-lock. It’s too dangerous.” He sighed and muttered, as if to himself. “If the ARC hadn’t been split this never would have happened.”

Afraid of his ominous tone, and suspecting what he was about to do, Pea wriggled and strained against her bonds until she the skin of her arms burned, but the whip that bound her was as unrelenting as iron. Changing tactics, she lashed out with her feet, but he was already upright and easily dodged her flailing.

He lifted his sword, and her stomach dropped.

“I’m really sorry,” the chubby, blue platypus said. “You seem like a very nice Item. But I’m afraid I have to destroy you.”