Mortal Protection Services X.GFL: Grounded for Life!
Grandpa Abstainer made us watch the replay from the second we left until Dad read the note... uuugggggghhhhh, I felt so guilty. They really thought I would take my little brother on a suicide mission. I suppose if I wasn't scooped up it would have been... but that was always the plan.
We caught up to real time. When dad was telling Jimmi and Ingamar about the note.
Aunt Jimmi made me feel a little better, "I fuckin' told you. I knew she had a plan!"
"I don't think her plan was to get trapped in hyperspace..." Dad was right, that part wasn't the plan. I truly expected to stay a night, maybe a weekend from our point of view, and show up back on the SAMWISE like we hadn't ever left.
Dad continued, "But she's still gonna be grounded for life when she gets back." That was according to plan. Whatever you may think of me as a reckless teen I did know there would be consequences to my actions. "You hear that Leia, LIFE!" A life sentence was always a possibility.
"Oooohh Leia, he's big mad." Luke laughed.
"And don't think you're getting way scot-free either, young man!" Dad added. "You didn't have to go along with her crazy plan."
Luke frowned, and I laughed at him. "Biiiig mad."
"Ahh, don't go too hard on them, Dilt." To my surprise, Uncle Ingamar also had our back. "They really did save our asses. That was a nasty scourge trap. I've been examining the sensor logs in the aftermath, it looks like it had a few dozen subspace interdiction organs that it hadn't finished getting fully back online when your kids sprung their counter-trap. Another thirty seconds of us being there and we weren't going to be able to form a warp bubble at all. Fucking Scourge has developed stealth biology. We couldn't see it at all under all that ice on the way in."
Lucifer, the robocat, had been charging a while, but he perked up when he heard Ingamar speaking. He must have been hanging out with Mafdet too much, because he just jumped right out of the window we were watching into Ingamar's bridge with and landed next to Uncle Ingamar.
"How the fuck..." Grandpa Abstainer said under his breath.
I sat up in surprise. Luke hopped clean out of his beanbag chair.
"Well dang, if it's that easy..." He tried to leap through the window onto the SAMWISE bridge and slammed into it like he was diving into a brick wall. He hit the ground with a whumph and groaned.
"Hahaha!" Grandpa laughed at him, "You think I ain't thought of that yet? Seems to only work for cats. We gotta wait for James and Jia, or Mafdet to come back and whisk you away."
Uncle Ingamar was on the floor, full blown ugly-crying, hugging his cat when I looked back at his bridge. "Oh buddy, I thought I lost you!" The robocat was purring and headbutting him in the face, as a normal flesh and blood cat might after several days gone missing. Lucifer exited and re-entered his lap repeatedly. Mixing meowing and purring with headbutts and snuggles.
"Oh what the fuck, Abstainer!" Dad swore. "Can figure out cats, but not kids?"
Lucifer sat down facing the screen, and started projecting a hologram out of his eyes, displaying everything that went down from the moment we arrived in Hyperspace, until he hopped up and left. He fast forwarded through the part where we sat quietly watching horse people, writing a letter, and reading a tablet. Then GGpa James showed up in a person suit, and you know the rest.
"I am f-" Dad seemed more than mildly annoyed, he stopped himself swearing more because he knew were still watching, "I am big mad. Yes."
Aunt Jimmi fell out, laughing her ass off. I'm not sure if it was at Dad, at James, at the whole universe in general, but I joined her in a bit of laughing like a maniac.
"Did I... Did we..." Uncle Ingamar stood there, dumbfounded on his own bridge for a moment. "Did we just get rickrolled by Jim's supervisor!?"
There was a bright flash of white light on the bridge of the Amish Papacies and GGPa James appeared, naked.
"Maybe you did, maybe you didn't..." He looked down and sighed, "Jia, I thought I explained clothing to you. I know martians are nudists but the rest of the creatures from this galaxy tend to wear clothes now. What I had imagined myself in was a fine tuxedo."
"Oh, Shit!" Grandpa Abstainer scrambled to get his remote and change the view so it didn't have old man junk on screen, and then paused outside. Just as he succeeded there was a flash of blue-green light in the office with us, and Jia showed up.
She was a beautiful green and blue being. Four main tentacles branched out into more below her, like a land-based, fractal quadrapus mermaid. On top she had a head with vaguely feminine features, to my eyes anyhow. A set of cute blue eyes, what looked like a mouth, and what was either fins, or maybe ears. She had a slender upper half, almost terran-torso shaped trunk, but no boob shapes, more like a smooth cylinder. Her torso had two arms, but they were tentacles too, and on the end they branched into six more, smaller, 'finger' tentacles. She was gorgeous and strange, and I'm pretty sure, naked.
I scrambled out of the beanbag to greet her. I had to find out if she was slimy.
"Hi I'm Leia!" I reached out a hand toward her.
She extended an arm tentacle to me, "Hello little Jimling, Leia."
I shook her hand, it was not slimy. Disappointing.
Jia looked at her hand after I let it go. "Interesting greeting ritual."
"Hey, how do I understand you?" Luke had a good question. He was struggling to get out of the beanbag, so I gave him a hand and pulled him to his feet.
"You are currently an energy form in a simulated reality inside a vessel that connects to your home reality through a series of chained hyperspace shunts in multiple universes. We station them deep in the void between galaxies that always forms. In other words, we are communicating in pure thought."
"Oh, neat." then Luke, being the gross boy that he is, pushed out a fart. "What's that then?"
I smacked him on the back of the head, and Jia made a sort of gurgling noise I took to mean laughter, or maybe she was choking on the stench.
"That was a fart, I believe. The simulation is rather complex. It smells quite foul. Fascinating. Is this also an appropriate greeting?" She lifted one of her four main tentacle and looked to be preparing to return fire.
"No! He's a rude boy, that's Luke." Grandpa Abstainer face-palmed, and Jia lowered he limb. "So Jia, I'm guessing James briefed you on my... issue."
"Yes, I've been briefed. You are ignorant, but willing to learn. Jim did warn me that eventually he might need my assistance with his plans. I did not expect James, gone native, to be the one to come asking though." She placed a hand on Luke's shoulder and asked, "Do you have a preferred window?"
Grandpa pushed a few buttons, and the other windows closed, and a new window opened up... I knew that room. It was the brig of the Sapphic Asemia. "That one."
"Not that one!" Luke said, but she'd already picked him up by the back of his neck with one hand. Her other hand, she placed on the window and it started glowing yellow.
"Tuck," She said, and then as she reared back and threw him through the window, added "and roll."
"Any chance I can just... walk out back into reality instead of being thrown?"
"You didn't fart at my guest, so that's fine with me if Jia doesn't actually need to throw you."
"Relative velocity doesn't matter for reinstantiation," Jia placed a hand on me, and I felt a thrum of power in her.
"Well, I was going to put you on your Uncle Ingamar's ship, but there's no brig... and a naked man on the bridge at the moment. Galley?" He opened a window to the galley. I frowned. "I'm sorry, I made that sound like I was asking your permission. Galley."
"Aww man, you know the guys onboard call that the fart factory, right?"
"I do. It's probably for a reason." He smiled. "It's either there, or I give you back to Dilt to be grounded immediately, for all time."
"Ugh, fine." I started to walk toward the window with Jia's hand on me. I thought about grabbing her arm and trying to pull her through with me, but the moment I did her grip tightened, and I heard her in my mind, 'That would be unwise, Leia. If I go down, no one will teach your grandfather to you help you down below. I have already met the cat, ten thousand years ago. She is a terrible teacher.'
'Can you hear my thoughts when you aren't touching me?' I thought back
'No. But I can reliably guess them with some accuracy.'
"Cool, I like you great aunt Jia. I hope we get to meet again."
I stepped into the fart factory, and as soon as I was all the way in, I felt the thrum stop and the stank begin.
"Intruder Alert!" One of the newbies shouted as time snapped back to normal speed again for me and I appeared suddenly.
"Oh shut up Carl," A gunnery sergeant said, "That's the captain's niece. Clearly back from Hyperspace. Follow the plot, mate. Read your fu- Ahem, read you damn briefings."
"Hello! You can swear around me, I don't mind." I waved at them. "Can I borrow someone's comm device, I need to call the bridge."
"Here kid." A woman with a massive facial scar and a bionic eye, handed me her device, and thumb printed it to turn it on for me.
"Leia to the bridge. I'm here, in the fart factory. Luke's in Jimmi's brig."
Posted Nov 14, 2025, 11:56 PM UTC