[justify]It had been nearly six years since the people of Neo Babylon had defeated [b][i]The Enemy[/i][/b] and there were still so many unanswered questions; Where did he come from? What did he want? Where did he go? Together with [b][i]The Dragon[/i][/b], champions from a thousand different earths had felled the great beast, but even in death he had scarred the last leaving great gaping cracks in reality through which many a wayward soul continued to stumble to this very day.

And if you searched deep enough into those cracks they say you could wind up in [b][i]The Nether[/i][/b].

This grimy underlayer of the multiverse was toxic to all forms of life; man, machine, or otherwise inclined. Even the gods were careful not to tread for over long in that place where ideas went to die. Nearly but not all forms of life, for there were always exceptions to every rule, for every trench there was a bottom feeder ready to sift through the filth for treasure. Enter the Krillians. As simple a species as ever there was in this vast multiverse, appears in every conceivable way as bipedal shrimp, waddling through the collected detritus of a countless universes on stubby larges with bowed backs, stubby arms, and elongated faces. They’d no mouths to speak of. Only ominous black beads for eyes and long fu man chu style whiskers that seemed at once brittle and exponentially more useful than the flailing-flapping things they called arms.

The amazons of Asteria had encountered them many a time, soaring through space in their junkers, each one an uninviting gray planetoid as terrifying in its simplicity as they were boring but there was little value in these galactic crustaceans. If they had discernable genders it did not matter over much. They were incompatible with humans of either gender through sheer force of apathetic will, unconcerned with carnal pleasure, each one devoted to the service of their endless mission to scavenge the scourings of reality and peddle them for prices as confusing as they were oft esoteric.

Sometimes the amazon’s stopped them for trade.

Sometimes the amazon’s stopped them just to see if they could get a reaction.

Never before today had they done anything stare--

[b]“WATAH!”[/b]

 --Where now one crushed the nose of a guardian.

Somewhere board the loading dock the Queen’s Guard had encountered what was very obviously not a shrimp, but a man wearing the coveralls of a Krillian Shrimper, gaudy yellow boots and gloves. And a big shrimp themed helmet what made him look like he’d just torn off the top half of a Krillian’s head and decided to wear it as a hat instead. Human or at least humanoid. Six foot two and well built beneath the baggy orange sweater to be working a job like this with a face that was ridiculously handsome for the splatter of grotesque purple nether that covered it, a gaudy kind of good looking, with ephemeral blooms of starlight born into the air around him only to die soon after even as he struck what one onlooker would politely describe as: ‘a very fake kung fu pose.’

“Why is there a man aboard your ship,” the Captain asked of the Foreman.

The Foreman stared at her in what might have been a shrug.

“I thought you were all…”

The Foreman stared at her in what might have been a shrug.

“He just broke the nose of one of my finest soldiers, the Queen will demand compensation.”

The Foreman stared at her in what might have been a shrug.

“. . .”

The Foreman stared at her in what might have been a shrug.

“How much for the man?”

Now they were doing business.[/justify]