Lionshine coughs slightly as she pilots the ship, paws sliding up and down the panel of controls. Shadepelt is humming to herself, casually batting at a dust bunny that is getting blown toward her by an open vent.

Pebblepounce padded into the room, his tail slowly swaying back and forth. "I'm bored," the gray tom complained. "Can we do something for once?" For once, it seemed like the tired tom wasn't slipping in and out of languages.

Lionshine turned toward him, still tapping on the dashboard. "What do you want to do?" she asked snidely. "Play Monopoly?" 

Pebblepounce titled his head to the side. "I mean... if you have the g—"

Lionshine interrupted. "Okay, that's not the point," she meowed sharply. "What do you want to do?" she reiterated. 

Pebblepounce tips his head to the side again, pondering. Lionshine turns back to the ship's dashboard as silence lapses over the room. Finally, the gray tom clears his throat, gathering the pilot's attention.

"I want to go on a spacewalk!" he declared brightly.

Lionshine sighed. "To do what? We don't have an endless supply of energy, ya' know... " she trailed off, staring at the screen that covered the wall. It was projecting the front view of the ship, on top of a colorful background.

Pebblepounce shrugged lightly. "We do have fifty blocks of the fuel cells left," he pointed out. "And a cell lasts for about twenty-four hours of flying." His tail was twitching anxiously now, like energy was returning to the usually-hyper tom's body.

"Well we need that energy to run the ship and heat Alderwood's water-bed and charge the rovers," Lionshine meowed with a bite in her tone. "Can you just go 3D-print a Monopoly set and quit bothering me? I'm trying to reset our travel course, since our delays have made the adjustments in solar positioning rather annoying." The golden-furred she-cat let out a dramatic sigh.

Shadepelt piped up from her seat next to the vent. "Speaking of solar... why haven't we set up the solar panels?" She grabbed a scrap of paper and started scribbling as she muttered to herself. "If the solar positioning... speed of light... kilowatts." A second later, she looked back up. "Yeah, we could get some decent energy by the time we get to the Astro Belt."

Lionshine rolled her eyes. "If that's such a great idea, why haven't we done it yet?" she asked sharply.

"Because you've been piloting the ship," replied Shadepelt dryly. "Besides, we won't have to worry about energy cells. Don't you remember—the floor and the walls having tiling that is made up of energy cells. It's a new design that I submitted a few seasons, and that Greenface actually built, since he was in control of the lab." Her eyes narrowed.

Greenface lets out a moan from his position in the bathroom to signify his repressed guilt over the whole ordeal. Shadepelt ignores him.

"Whatever," Lionshine muttered. "Who will we send out to fix them?"

"Can I go?" begged Pebblepounce, bouncing up in front of her and pleading. "Palihug—er, please!"

Shadepelt didn't pay attention to the gray-furred tom, musing aloud. "I should probably go, since I worked on the solar panel design team. And anyone but Alderwood could come with me."

"How about Greenface?" suggested Lionshine. "He's an engin—"

Shadepelt's eyes lit with anger. "NO!" the she-cat hissed. "Never, ever, ever! He'll spew vomit in his suit and mess everything up! He doesn't deserve to go! He never deserves to go, and he doesn't deserve his place on this ship because all he does is build the stuff that I come up with!" 

"Hurtful," moaned Greenface from the bathroom.

Lionshine ignored the sick tom, sighing slightly. "You have to put your anger aside and work as a team," she calmly explained. "We're stuck here for another year, so get used to being with him."

Shadepelt let a hiss out. "Fine! But don't expect this to work when he pukes all over the instruments!"

By Rio ⛈