"The Graveyard Shift" by NobodyAtAll

Warning: spoilers for the Inhuman Alliance Saga.

Note: read “Where We’re Going, We Don’t Need Roads” first.


It’s a cool, cloudy night in the state so many of the ChaotiX call home.

In the small town outside Blueberry’s Forest, the local motel, as run-down and disreputable as a cheap motel usually is, four men gather around a table.

Four men in Dutch naval uniforms. One of them is obviously a captain.

The rest of their crew is on their ship, currently docked elsewhere.

It was a rather long trip from the ship to the town.

On the table, there is a hand-drawn map of the forest.

The captain speaks up.

Okee. Dit is wat wij weten. The doelwit wordt beschermd door kut-Pierre en de kut-ChaotiX.

Vergeet niet die kut-drones, Kapitein.

Nu dat je het zegt. Ik denk dat die dingen onze uniforms kunnen herkennen. Dus wij moeten omkleden.

One of the others, who looks like a new recruit, speaks up, sounding a bit nervous.

Um, Kapitein, ik besef net iets.

Wat?

Die Frans klootzak heeft die dingen gekloond, toch? Waarom vragen wij hem niet of hij wat meer voor ons kan klonen?

The captain shakes his head in disbelief that the crewman doesn’t get it.

Daar gaat het niet om.

Waar gaat het dan om, Kapitein?

The captain sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Sometimes, the idiocy of the new recruits frustrates him.

Het gaat om de jacht, idioot.

Maar er zijn niet genoeg dodos voor de hele crew, Kapitein.

…Je hebt een punt, jongen.


In the forest proper, Blueberry and Yin-Yang patrol the perimeter of the Brownie Palace, the exterior illuminated by an ample amount of Herd-Lights.

Those things are waterproof, too.

“It wook wike it am gunna wain.”

“Wawa am bad fow–”

“Bwuebewwy knu, Yin-Yang.”

“Sowwy, Bwuebewwy. Fowce of habit.”

Blueberry may be the smarty of the Fluffy Cartel, but he never forgot his days as a toughy. He’s more involved with his toughies’ duties than many smarties are. Many smarties are content to sleep soundly in the nest, in a nice warm fluffpile, while the toughies endure the dark, the cold, the rain, and of course, the munstahs.

But Blueberry has learned that the smarty taking a graveyard shift of guard duty here and there does wonders for morale.

As Marley has told Blueberry, a smarty who won’t defend his own herd is a shitty smarty.

And Marley learned that from Calvin. Neither of them were happy that they missed an invasion. They prefer to lead the charge.

Tonight, Blueberry is on… hoof.

Blueberry’s Blaukörper is currently in the shop. Pierre is repairing it, in his cabin’s lab.

With Calvin and Marley being occupied elsewhere when the Inhuman Alliance’s forces invaded the city, Blueberry took it upon himself to defend Judy and Snowball.

Blueberry was worried about the absence of the ChaotiX’s two heaviest hitters, and the thought of how Calvin would react if he returned to find Judy dead terrified Blueberry.

Blueberry privately thinks that, if someone killed Judy, Calvin would tear the planet to shreds to find the killer.

And Blueberry doesn’t want to imagine what Calvin would do to the killer.

When Judy and Snowball were surrounded by a group of Stoneheads, Blueberry went berserk, pounding the rocky bastards to rubble with big metal fists, and screaming the many insults he has learned by now.

The bastards didn’t go down without a fight, however. Which is why the Blaukörper is in the shop. It sustained heavy damage.

Even when the Blaukörper shut down, Blueberry still kept insulting the Stoneheads, and Judy had to teleport him home so he wouldn’t get turned into a blue smear on the ground.

He may be a genius by fluffy standards, but when outside his big metal friend, he’s physically a normal fluffy. X-Positive fluffies are always a bit hardier than X-Negative fluffies, but it wouldn’t have made a difference if a Silicoid stomped Blueberry flat.

Calvin later commended Blueberry for his courage and audacity, and commissioned a new statue for the Brownie Palace as a reward.

This one is of Blueberry in his Blaukörper.


The four sailors creep through the forest.

They’ve changed into black clothes, hoping the drones won’t recognise them as Dutch sailors, or as sailors at all. And they’re wearing night vision goggles.

What they don’t realize is that Athena, the AI in Pierre’s cabin, is the one controlling the drones, and it takes more than a change of clothes to fool a Faucheuse AI.

Hey jongens, zien jullie dat?

Wat, Kapitein?

The captain points at a large boulder.

Surrounding the boulder, there is a fence, too tall for a fluffy to scale, too sturdy for a fluffy to break through. A concrete foundation prevents fluffies from burrowing in.

The fence is painted with many scary faces, in glow in the dark paint. At least, they’re scary to fluffies.

Waarom denk je dat die hek daar is, Kapitein?

The captain shrugs, and clambers over the fence.

Ik zou het niet weten. Het is maar een grote rots.

The captain turns around, and leans back against the rock.

Zie je? Niks te vrezen–

Then the captain goes through the rock.

And doesn’t come out the other side.

…Kapitein?


In his cabin’s lab, Pierre works diligently on repairing the Blaukörper, despite the hour.

As Calvin suspected, one of Pierre’s many cybernetic implants eliminates the need to sleep.

But since retiring, Pierre often disables that implant, as he retired to do normal things, or at least relatively normal things, and sleeping is as normal as it gets.

Plus, the bed in Pierre’s cabin was rather expensive. Not sleeping at all means that bed would be a waste of money.

And there is a way to use a bed while awake, of course, but Pierre doesn’t exactly have that option anymore.

Not because he physically can’t. That’s one of the body parts he didn’t replace.

Did you think that the stork brought Bertrand, Valerie and Susan? Pierre may be a prude, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a libido at all.

He’s still reluctant to try dating again, though. Which is understandable, considering how both of his marriages ended.

Pierre’s life extender is on a table. Pierre’s considered reinstalling it again, purely for Victor’s sake.

He doesn’t like thinking about what Victor will do when the best friend he’s ever had dies.

Pierre notices something on a screen.

Live video from a stealthed drone, displaying three Dutch sailors going through the nearby portal to Primal Earth.

Pierre sighs, picking up his phone and making a call.

“Victor, I need you to run a brief errand for me.”


As Blueberry and Yin-Yang pass their herd’s burial grounds, they run into an old friend of Blueberry’s.

GUD EBENING, BWUEBEWWY. YIN-YANG.

“Hewwo, Bone Fwuff. Yu nu am hewe awn biz-niz, wite?”

NU TU-NITE, BWUEBEWWY. JUS WAN-ED TU DWOP IN.

By now, Yin-Yang knows about his connection with Blueberry.

That they were both in the Smarty Herd. That the bad Chris Oldman killed them both, and that they were reincarnated together.

Yin-Yang suspected for a long time that Blueberry knew something Yin-Yang didn’t.

And Yin-Yang is the only other member of the Fluffy Cartel allowed to see the Death of Fluffies on a regular basis.

Of course, many fluffies know of the Death of Fluffies. Even before the public reveal of the Deaths during the Alien Invasion, word had spread among the world’s fluffy population, of the Bone Fluff, who comes for fluffies who have gone forever sleepies, or will do so soon.

But most fluffies don’t meet the Death of Fluffies before they die.

Some fluffies who have narrowly cheated death claim to have seen the Bone Fluff, and boast of spraying sorry poopies in his face.

A lot of feral fluffies, who tend to be more skeptical than house fluffies, doubt if the latter is true.

Certainly, the Death of Fluffies has dealt with ghostly poopies, sprayed by recalcitrant ghostly fluffies who haven’t yet realized that they don’t have the parts for making poopies anymore.

They don’t take it with them when they go.

But belief is more powerful than you think.


On Primal Earth, a hooded, masked mystery man drags the Dutch captain towards the portal home, the other three sailors following them.

Jongens, jongens, jongens. Jullie hebben mazzel dat ik in de buurt was, anders waren jullie een hapje voor de dinosaurussen.

Laat me los, klootzak! Ik wil die dodos! Ik zag ze! Er zijn dodos zat hier, ik wil nooit weer naar huis gaan!

The mystery man laughs.

“Why do you idiots keep doing this? You risked your lives and came to Primal Earth to eat dodos? I’ve had dodo, it’s not that tasty!”

Jij snapt het niet!

The new recruit speaks up.

Hey, meneer de masker?

“What?”

Die Pierre heeft toch die dodos gekloond?

“I don’t know how you guys found out about that, but yes, yes he did.”

The captain smiles smugly.

Wij zijn Nederlanders. Wij zijn altijd op de uitkijk voor dodos die wij hebben gemist.

“Shut it, you. What’s your point, rookie?”

Mijn punt is dat hij wat dodos voor ons kan klonen, toch? Dan kunnen wij hem met rust laten!

The captain scoffs at the new recruit.

En jij noemt jezelf een Nederlander? Ik zei het toch, het gaat om de jacht! Dodo smaakt zoveel lekkerder als je het hebt verdiend!

“So that’s what this is about. Christ, it’s like Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner. Only instead of a train coming out of a painted tunnel, there’s a hungry tyrannosaurus rex. Boys, listen to me. Primal Earth is a dangerous place. You got lucky, but the last group of idiots who came this way to hunt dodos didn’t. You wanna know where they are? By now, probably in one of those many piles of feces you boys smell.”

Daarom hebben wij niks van ze gehoord!

“That’s right, Captain No-Beard. By the way, you probably should have run a background check on those guys, because they came back as demons. I’m guessing they had some serious skeletons in their closets to embrace demonhood that quickly.”

Zij waren niet echt populair thuis.

“Buddy, I’m not fond of you guys either.”

The hooded mystery man stops, outside of a boulder.

Het gaat niet lukken, geloof me. We hebben het geprobeerd, maar we konden niet weer doorheen gaan.

The mystery man laughs again.

“You just didn’t know the secret.”

The secret is having a piece of the Chicxulub Impactor on one’s person.

A piece of the asteroid that created Primal Earth when it crash-landed, sixty-six million years ago.

An impact of truly phenomenal force, that echoed throughout the ages.

Strangely, while a number of fragments of the Chicxulub Impactor have been found, most of those fragments being safeguarded by the ChaotiX, the Cabal, and in one fragment’s case, the Iokans, the actual asteroid itself remains unaccounted for.

The mystery man tosses the captain through the portal home, Philip Banks style.

Then he does the same to the other three sailors, ignoring their protests.

When the last one is through, he sighs.

“We’re gonna need to human-proof the fence too. These guys just don’t know when to quit.”


As Blueberry and Yin-Yang return to the Brownie Palace, they hear a cry ring out from within.

“BIGGEST POOPIES!”

The duo runs inside the vast nest under the hollow tree, knowing what this means.

There’s more Herd-Lights inside the Brownie Palace, lighting the way.

On the way, the duo passes a sheet of stickers, propped up against one wall for any fluffy to look at whenever they please.

Blueberry’s been thinking about getting some more decorations for the Brownie Palace. Pierre and the ChaotiX would happily help Blueberry give the place an Extreme Makeover.

As smarty, Blueberry oversees every birth in the herd. To ensure that the foals are happy and healthy, and, if necessary, to put any runts down.

It breaks his heart to have to give a foal forever sleepies, but Blueberry knows that runts won’t live long anyway.

So he’ll do it, so nobody else has to.

But these days, runts are few and far between.

As the duo reaches the room designated as the maternity ward, words Blueberry actually knows by now, they see a dam, giving birth to her first litter.

A midwife mare is coaching her, and the mare’s special friend is pacing back and forth.

Blueberry giggles as he waddles inside, leaving Yin-Yang to guard the entrance.

He did the same thing when Muffin was giving birth to the little Animaniacs.

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