Somewhere in deep space, Grorax—known as Skullface Grorax in the galactic community—was calmly sitting in the circular cockpit of his infamous spaceship, the Skull Chomper. This spaceship resembles a shark from Earth but with an extra-large mouth.
His tentacle-like arms slithered out of his glass-covered head, adorned with a human skull tattoo. The rest of his body was safely contained in a glass bowl as he carefully explored his mechanical body, checking for any unexpected errors.
"Check the course, kids. Are we heading to our target?" Grorax asked in his high-pitched voice.
"Yes, Captain! We're on course and will arrive in a few days," said one of his crew.
"Good. Make sure we arrive on time, or your head will be blown to pieces!" Grorax said, pointing his weaponized left hand at the crew member.
Grorax was known for being careless and indifferent to life. He would kill for any petty reason that crossed his mind, and he was happy with that. He was also a cunning and sneaky creature, almost always finding a way out of any problem, no matter how difficult.
His crew was equally cunning, joining the crew for their own personal agendas. The only thing they didn't plan to do was backstab their captain because Grorax was the cruelest of them all.
*****
It was some time later when one of Grorax's crew suddenly shouted out loud to their captain.
"CAPTAIN! WE FOUND SOMETHING!" said one of them.
"What? Found what?" asked Grorax.
"We found some mysterious debris, captain! This area shouldn't have any debris," they said.
"Then we probably hit the jackpot! Get that debris in, FAST!" urged Grorax as he stood up from his seat.
Finding something in the empty void of space was always fun, especially for Grorax. It could be pieces of an important space vessel that was supposed to be hidden, meaning selling the pieces to the right person could bring him quite a fortune. It could also be a piece of comet or meteorite, providing extra resources for the spaceship.
Even in the most unfortunate scenario, where the thing they found proved to be dangerous, they could drag it to a good place and either sell it or use it to their advantage, especially since it was Grorax who found it.
As the Skull Chomper got closer to the debris, they started to get a better look at it and were confused by how it looked. It seemed like a flat piece of metal used to wrap something inside, forming a ball-like shape with a crumpled part on one side.
"Captain, this debris looks weird. It’s as if these pieces were ripped off from an unknown kind of spaceship," said the crew.
"Which means it could be pieces from a secret spaceship. We could be rich! Hahahaha," said Grorax happily.
Soon the Skull Chomper got close enough to the debris and opened its big mouth. The mouth led to a compartment room the pirates used as a hub for transporting items or trapping enemies.
The debris entered the compartment and landed hard, pulled by the artificial gravity inside the spaceship. Grorax and his crew quickly left the cockpit and reached the mouth compartment, where they found their prized debris.
"Cut it open, kids! I want to see how valuable this thing is," ordered Grorax.
Grorax's crew quickly took out their tools: a huge metal-cutting laser and a magical device for securing the debris to prevent anything dangerous from jumping out.
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The machine's whirring and the magical devices' humming were the only sounds for the next few minutes, as the crew worked at their fastest speed to cut open the weird debris they found.
Finally, after ten minutes, the debris was sliced open and fell to the side. Grorax and the crew quickly took a look and began to whisper among themselves.
"Captain, I think... I know which spaceship this debris came from," said one crew member.
"Don't make jokes like that! You know we are too far from their intergalactic nation, which means the chance of them appearing here is close to zero!" said another crew member.
"Close to zero is still a number, kid. And apparently, we got lucky with that number," said Grorax with chilling calm. "Bring this human to the cage! We can sell him later! Prepare to be rich, kids! Hahahahahaha!"
*****
"Hmm? Where am I?"
Elazul opened his eyes and saw a foreign ceiling greeting him. He slowly raised his body to a sitting position and realized he was somehow sleeping in a cage made of solid metal bars that glowed red from heat.
"How can I be here? What kind of sick joke is this?" Elazul whispered.
He still remembered being blasted away with the spaceship Celestial Voyager, pulled by the black hole, and watching Kathrina's escape ship fly to safety. Everything felt like it had happened just a few minutes ago, making his current situation even more impossible.
"Kathrina... I hope she’s safe," Elazul said with a slight smile.
As he reminisced about Kathrina and how wonderful it would be if she were rescued by the Earth Space Federation, he heard clacking sounds resembling someone walking and saw something that made him doubt his sanity.
“ajndownfo ndajnwdaw oawndaowbdaowhb,” said the creature with an octopus inside a jar for a head, tattooed with a human skull on its face, a robot for a body, and wearing a very nice noble-like attire.
'What the hell is this high-pitched sound? Is it talking? Can octopuses talk?' Elazul thought.
The octopus robot seemed to realize something and began to search through its pocket for a few minutes. Then it found what it was looking for, pulled it out, and threw it to Elazul while gesturing to its non-existent ear.
Elazul looked at the item the octopus threw to him. It was something like an earpiece, similar to what people on Earth use to listen to music. The octopus seemed to indicate that Elazul should wear it on his ear, but Elazul knew better than to put something from a foreign creature into his body.
“awndaowjnfa angkjd askdnaoj asjdnaownda!!” the octopus said, pointing at its ear, to which Elazul responded with a shake of his head.
“AJNSDA! ajndasjnda kansdbf oaenoj alndaskjbf,” the octopus said while walking away, leaving Elazul alone in confusion.
*****
Elazul spent some time alone in the cage, watching the creatures pass by. Aside from the octopus, Elazul saw a creature that looked like a gigantic lobster walking on a mechanical lower body, a weaponized clam shell moving with a robotic body, and a humanoid lizard with a backpack full of many tools that looked like a combination of machines and magic tricks.
"What have I gotten myself into? All these creatures are beyond weird," Elazul said to himself one day.
One day, the creatures suddenly became busy and started running around in haste. They didn’t talk much, but every time they did, it seemed like they were giving orders. Elazul couldn't help but feel curious and wondered how he could understand the creatures' conversations.
Then his eyes went down to the item the octopus robot gave him. The item had remained untouched since the octopus threw it to him. Elazul didn’t dare to even touch it, scared that it might bring him harm. Weirdly, after what seemed like days of laying around harmlessly, Elazul started to think that the item might not be dangerous after all.
Curiosity won over him as Elazul picked up the item and put it on his ears, where suddenly the world around him started to make sense.
"Move the cage! Put it beside the human cage but not too close, else the human might infect our product!" said one voice.
"Bring the equipment! The magical one for protection! We need that for the descent to the planet!" said another voice.
"Keep your machine arm in that backpack, you skinny excuse for a pirate! Only take it out when we ask for it!" said another, apparently directed at the standing lizard.
"Time to get busy, kids! We’ve got work to do!" said another voice that was so high-pitched it became annoying really fast.
It appeared that the high-pitched noise belonged to the octopus, who also seemed to be the leader of this whole band of creatures.
"Wow, I can understand these creatures," said Elazul almost in a whisper, which somehow translated into gibberish loudly by the device on his ear, attracting the octopus.
The octopus then looked at Elazul with its squishy face, which somehow made an expression of surprise, and started to approach Elazul.
"It seems you’ve decided to wear the translator, eh?" said the octopus to Elazul with an amused face.
"Wow... I can understand what the octopus said..." commented Elazul, not realizing it might be rude to say it out loud.
"HEY! I HEARD THAT! Say it once more and I’ll chop that hand of yours, human!" threatened the octopus.
"Wow! Okay! Sorry... I didn’t know..." Elazul said, almost instinctively before he continued with a question. "Where am I?"
"Starting to ask questions now, huh? So human!" said the octopus.
"Listen, human! This is what I want you to know. You are on my spaceship, which means you do what I tell you, or else I’ll throw you out into the void," the octopus said while banging the cage with his mechanical right arm.
"Now tell me where you are from! And what spaceship you boarded before you arrived here!" ordered the octopus to Elazul, who still couldn’t believe he was talking to an octopus.
"Ehmm... well, I am from Earth, and I was on a spaceship called Celestial Voyager," Elazul said, hoping that the names could bring him something good.
"Urth? What is that? Where is it located? In which sector? You are a spy, aren’t you? That Celest- something is your code, right?" said the octopus, bombarding Elazul with questions.
"Uh... I... mmm..."
Before Elazul could answer some more, one of the creatures suddenly appeared and called the octopus.
"Captain! We have arrived! We need to deploy soon, or else the security might notice our presence!"
"Gaahh!! Always about security! One day, I will buy a fully weaponized spaceship and kill all the security before doing my job," the octopus said while moving away, ignoring Elazul, who became more confused.
"Begin the descent! Kirix, prepare to go down and take down the beast! Lizard, take out your machine hand and start to support!" commanded the octopus.
Kirix, who appeared to be the lobster with robotic humanoid legs, began to move somewhere while the lizard started to panickly pull out four mechanical arms, each glowing differently. The atmosphere was charged with tension and anticipation. Each creature prepared its specialized equipment, reflecting a coordinated effort to accomplish whatever task lay ahead.
"You! Human! Watch what we are doing and think about it, because the next target could be you!" said the octopus, pointing its weaponized left arm at Elazul, adding a chilling reminder of his precarious situation.