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CHAPTER 1

Sitting upright brought the world back into focus. I couldn’t quite feel my beak or the left side of my face as I looked down the rusted, crumbling hallway as a bug-like creature tried to flee. As everything came back into focus, I crawled to my feet and chased after him. This little shit got lucky with that sucker punch. The emerald bug man spun around. His four eyes widened in shock as he saw just how well I could keep up with him despite his much longer legs. He whipped out a small black handgun as he made it towards the window. Dumb ass should’ve led with that. I jumped and tackled him.

I should’ve thought this through.

We both tumbled out of the window and into the unpaved streets below.

I felt that, everywhere. The mantoid shrieked in its native language. To me, it sounded like garbled gibberish with a few grating clicks. As I rolled over on my back, he hopped up on his long, stilt-like legs and raised his scythe-like claws. I rolled and felt his blades chop a bit of my dark red hair. Despite my bruised ribs, I was on my feet and drew my sidearm.

Fucking mantoids.

He knocked my gun away, and before I knew it, I was taking a kick to the chest that knocked me into a pile of muddy water. I couldn’t breathe.

I am a penguin, and if you expect me to start tap-dancing on ice, well, sorry to disappoint, not sorry. My dark red hair covered the right side of my face and eye, as usual. Just as well. It was bruised up, but not as bad as this fucking guy was going to be once I got my flippers on him. I glared at him with my crimson eyes as my lungs remembered how to function. The cold mud soaked into my black shirt and caked my long red jacket. I shook it off and stood up.

The mantoid was already down the street and knocking random aliens out the way. I hauled ass after him, but the moronic bystanders, who always seem to get in the damn way whenever I’m trying to chase someone or something, slowed me down. One of them dared to get pissed because I knocked over his shitty caffeinated drink with a name I will not attempt to pronounce.

“Asshole!” He shouted.

I came around the corner; I was closing in on the bug. He turned around and screeched at me. Maybe I should’ve updated the translator implant for this one. Whatever, my job was to capture him and drag his ass to the spot, not interrogate. He crossed the street between hovering cars but had to stop halfway through as a car came past. That gave me the time I needed to football tackle him. We hit the ground hard, and I chopped at his face.

Fun fact about my kind: we have bones in our flippers, and getting struck by them hurts like hell. Soon, I saw purple blood, and the broken shards of his green exoskeleton. As I kept striking him, he brought two of his legs up, and I took another kick to the chest. I crashed in the middle of the street and everything spun.

I’m just glad there wasn’t traffic. Think I pissed him off now. He was on me before I could get up and swung his blades like an angry, living weed whacker. I scurried out of his reach as he kept advancing towards me. His attacks pushed us towards the bar’s entrance. I wished I had my sidearm. Instead, I did something stupid and risky. I rolled through his slashes: he sliced the tails of my coat, better that than my actual short tail. After rolling, I kicked off the ground and aimed for his face.

Once again, fucking mantoids.

His arm caught me in the gut, sending me through the glass window and into a bar. Pain exploded through the back of my skull as I struck the edge of the bar back, and someone’s goddamn beer spilled on me. If I wasn’t mad before, I was now. The mantoid jumped into the room and barreled towards me on his four legs. I looked up at the unopened liquor bottle on the wooden bar and grabbed it. The little three claws on the inside of the flipper gripped the wide neck. I struck the green bug with the heavy box-shaped part of the bottle as he tried to behead me.

I heard something crack as I struck him. He almost fell flat on his face. He attempted to sit up, disoriented by that. I swung the bottle like a baseball bat against his head, knocking out a few needle-like teeth. Now he hit the ground. I doubt he knew where he was anymore, could’ve stopped at this point.

But he made a fatal mistake.

He pissed me off.

I tested how sturdy that handle of booze was by using his body. The bar patrons glared at the two of us. They were taken aback. Others seemed curious. I pummeled him until he was barely conscious and couldn’t move. He was lucky I needed his ass alive.

I unscrewed the cap to the booze, threw my head back, and opened my beak. If they considered this shit good, I’d hate to see what’s bad. It tasted like a mixture of unpleasant medicines, but it dulled the pain. After a large swallow, my raptor-like toes stopped aching. However, my face and everything beneath it still stung. The mantoid groaned and tried to crawl away.

“Oh shut up,” I muttered before taking another large sip.

The bartender and the guy whose drink I just used as a mace stared at me.

“Fuck you looking at?”

The short, lanky blue alien with four eyes shrank back as I scowled at him and chugged more alcohol. The bar matched the shabbiness of Javin. Broken floorboards, missing wall panels, and flickering light bulbs littered the place. Just like the city, everything was falling apart. I reached into my pocket, pulled out the small little black cube, and pressed the button in the center, placing the call. To prevent escape, I used my foot to hold down the mantoid.

A tall humanoid in black body armor answered. His red helmet, like other Shard members, mixed medieval and sci-fi aesthetics. The helmet covered most of his face.

“I got the bug. I’m at a rundown bar.”

“Um…which one?” He asked while looking at nearby bars.

I looked over my shoulder. “What’s this place called?” The bartender’s answer was some weird language that I did not understand. “Please tell me you got that.”

“We have it, but we’re across town. So we’ll meet you halfway at the inn.”

I wanted to tell them to fuck off, but the boss man would withhold my pay. Using one hand to hold the half-finished handle, I grabbed the bug boy’s head and pulled him out of the crumbling bar. Dense clouds made it difficult to see the setting sun. Creatures of all shapes and sizes were in the streets, all of them glaring at the short penguin dragging the bleeding insect behind him.

While I’m dragging this sack of shit, I might as well explain what’s going on.

My name is Edgy. Some people call me The Edgy Penguin. I live in a region of the multiverse called the EdgeWorlds. Picture a stack of glass sheets, more than you can count. Each sheet is a universe housing millions of worlds and millions more creatures and its own rules. Now imagine if something dropped a weight at the very edge of the glass stack and all the pieces fell towards the bottom in a jumbled-up mess. Well, now you’ve got my home. Fragmented worlds in the same place. Some call it reality’s dumping ground. It fits.

We got our name because we are at the edge of the multiverse. You cannot go beyond that edge; if you try, you’ll just be moving in place like you’re on a treadmill. The distance won’t change. The collision of different universes was chaotic. Thousands of worlds got annihilated, and some only exist as fragments. Some are livable, others are not.

What caused these chunks to break off and crash together? No one knows. It happened billions of years ago. Because of that, this place is lawless. No governing body regulates the EdgeWorlds and its sectors. You got bandits, space pirates, crime rings, space monsters, and more. All efforts to unite the worlds here have been unsuccessful.

Where do I stand in this situation? Am I some hero on a noble crusade to unite this dumpster fire and bring order? Nope. I hate rules. I’m just great at killing things and blowing shit up. So why am I dragging this giant bug? Well, because right now it’s my job. I work with an organization called Shard; they serve a group called the Edge Lords. There are five of them. I work for one named Hylus. They want to get rid of the groups trying to control everything. I don’t care; they pay me, and I get to go around space doing what I do best. Right now, I’m supposed to hand over this insect to Shard for questioning.

The two Shard agents with energy rifles met me halfway. By the time I reached them, I had finished the handle and dropped it in the mud amongst the other junk. Both of them looked surprised as I tossed the target at them.

“Good lord man!” One of them shouted.

“What?” I asked.

“Uh…” the one I was talking with on the communicator tapped his ear. “I-I need the medical team prepped.”

I rolled my eyes. “Tell Hylus to get my pay ready,” I told them as I turned away and made a call.

A scrawnier penguin with green eyes and a longer beak appeared on display. A purple beanie covered his hairless head. He also wore black-framed glasses and focused on reading a Japanese comic book with some busty witch on the cover.

“Todd!” I shouted, startling him.

Todd yelped and tossed his comic into the air.

“Y-yes!?” He asked in his usual soft voice.

“Get the ship ready. I’m coming back.”

Todd adjusted his glasses and his anime T-shirt. “Um…okay.”

“Thanks, and quit looking at that trash.”

“Leave me alone!” He whimpered.

I laughed and ended the call. Todd was always a gigantic nerd, but he took a liking to Japanese entertainment after Hylus sent us to Earth for a bit. He pirated so much anime and manga that it hogged all the bandwidth during our stay. Then again, I can’t talk. You guys have some good ass alcohol, and the video games are pretty good. After we left, Todd bought more anime, and we discovered other means of getting Earth goods in the EdgeWorlds at a premium.

It didn’t take me long to reach the Vermillion. It was a red ship, with the occasional black panels here and there. The body’s center was broad and tapered to a sword-like point. The front had a long neck ending in an angular V-shaped visor-like window. Its “chin” ended in a sharp horn, as did the top of the “head”. Two yellow-orange patches illuminated the lower sides of the ship’s neck, mirroring its face.

Long arms branched out from the sides of the ship’s main body, and they split into two smaller arms ending in long, pointed structures. These were the thruster units. Without them, we couldn’t fly or hover. Although they were a clear red now, when the ship was in the air, they glowed a deep red and emitted matching particles. On the underside of the main body were two laser cannons; they kind of look like bird talons to me. People have told me the entire ship looks very bird-like. The back held two ovals for missile pods and two triangles concealing the heavy cannon. Working with Hylus had its perks.

Jeff, the second freeloader on my ship, greeted me as the back ramp came down. Jeff was a penguin too. His eyes were blue but glazed over from all the weed he smoked. He tied back his long blond hair, but he left some of it loose in the front. As usual, he wore his blue hoodie with white wave patterns on the sleeves and shorts with the same pattern at the bottom.

“Yo, you look like shit,” he said in his usual slow, sleepy voice.

“You should see the other guy.”

He raised his flipper, and I slapped it with mine as I entered the ship. I passed through the black and red airlock. Since we weren’t in space, it was just a door. The cargo area was overflowing with dehydrated food and other necessary supplies for space travel. I climbed the steps to the living quarters. To my right, a kitchen area in red and black had a stove, microwave, and small oven. Ahead of me was the couch and a large black wall where videos would play in full 3D. Someone had connected one of our game consoles to it. With chips in hand, Todd stepped down.

“H-hey Edgy.”

“Hey, time to go.”

“Where we going now?” Jeff asked, while heading for the fridge.

“Away from here.”

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CHAPTER 2

We left Javin behind in no time. I set the ship towards an asteroid dive bar, glancing at the dull planet behind us. The autopilot kicked in after pressing a button. I had the urge for a stiff drink and a nice bucket of something fried to help me forget this crummy job. I double-checked our sub fuel and saw we had enough to get there without refilling. Pushing the last button, I kicked us into subspace. Seeing the endless sea of lights was a sight that never got old, despite traveling through space since I was a teenager. Todd could tell you all the science details about subspace.

It’s a forbidden sub-reality where things move much faster than usual. Think of normal space like the surface and subspace as pathways through the underground. In subspace, any object moving through it can move faster than light itself, but there’s a catch. That fuel isn’t to keep your ship going in subspace; it gets you in and out and powers the shield, keeping this place from affecting you. If that barrier falls, you are vulnerable to what we call sub blight. Remember when I said we weren’t supposed to be here? Nasty things can occur, like fusing with your ship’s hull or worse.

If that wasn’t bad enough, you better hope you plotted the fastest route to where you’re going, as you’re not alone out here, and I’m not talking about other ships. Sub beasts exist. They’re said to be planet-sized and terrifying; few have survived encounters. They seem drawn to us when we cross over into their turf like they can sense it, and it’s not a matter of if they find you. It’s when. I had caught a brief glimpse of one, nothing more than a limb, and our ship would have been too small to be its dental floss.

Despite the danger, it can be very colorful and trippy until they find you. It’s like a psychedelic trip in a movie, as many pretty colors and shapes form around you. Right now, it looked like we were flying down an endless spiraling rainbow that would burst into countless random patterns. Beneath the ship was the path, a glowing beam of white and blue light. I watched it for any flickers. A flicker meant a sub beast was nearby.

As I sat back in the chair, I heard Jeff climbing up the steps and smelled the burning weed.

“Hey bro, you figure out where we going?”

“Yeah, Starkey’s, I need a good drink.”

Jeff’s grin widened. “Hell yeah! Bucket of jumbo celphos rings here I come!”

Celphos consist of tendrils and a large central mouth. Jumbos get as big as basketballs, while most are the size of tennis balls. They chopped the tentacles into rings because the central body is toxic and cooking the toxins out leaves a burnt tire for a body. They are an invasive species on most ocean planets and considered pests, but man, are they tasty when fried, and the best place to get them fried is Starkey’s. My stomach growled at the thought of that, but I’d have to wait an hour before our ship reached the bar. Jeff inhaled from his blunt and sucked the smoke into his lungs before coughing it up all over the co-pilot controls.

“Man, this place is always vibing!”

“Of course you’d say that,” I grumbled, looking at the ever-changing patterns. “You wouldn’t be saying that if you saw a sub beast.”

Jeff’s eyes widened. “They’re real?”

“I saw one back during a drug haul with Gary. Damn thing started eating the track behind us. If we weren’t close to our exit, we would’ve been chow.”

Jeff took another hit of his weed. “How big was it?”

“Planet eating big.”

Despite the weed in his system, Jeff looked worried and made his way down the steps. I followed and found Todd watching something on the screen. It looked like a news report. One he must’ve downloaded before we went into subspace. A news anchor with red skin and four arms from another world appeared.

“In local news, Union and their daring, heroic commander, Cissus Gnar, thwarted a pirate takeover on the colony vessel Spirit IV.”

I swear she was drooling as she said his name. Union was the group I hated the most. They operated in the Alpha Sector, the smallest and most controlled region of the EdgeWorlds, and served as a military and police force. Bunch of worthless boy scouts trying to force their will on everyone else. They’ve been struggling to control other sectors.

Cissus Gnar was one of their commanders and the face of Union, and I despised him. Gnar, as usual, had to pose for the cameras. He’s an ulteon, a race of ten-foot-tall humanoids, all of them with metallic, glistening skin and hair. Gnar was no different. He had the physique of a Greek god, silver skin, bright glowing blue eyes, and locks of golden hair that looked like metal. He had the typical comic book superhero thick square jaw as well. At the top of his forehead was a short shark-like fin. Cissus Gnar wore his Union uniform of white and blue that I assume they made as tight as possible, so he always looked like he was flexing, which he almost always was. There was always wind, so his hair billowed behind him like a shampoo commercial. Gnar stood atop a pile of imprisoned pirates with hands on his hips and chest puffed out. He had his head to the side and tilted upwards while flexing his arms.

“What can you tell us about these pirates?”

“They’re clearly from captain Death Head’s fleet.” He said in a theatrical campy superhero voice. “But fear not citizens of the EdgeWorlds, I, commander Cissus Gnar, and Union, will bring Death Head to justice.” As he spoke, he made a habit of showing his blinding white teeth.

“God, I hate that dude,” I growled.

“Yeah. He looks like an asshole,” Jeff remarked.

“Do you think he’ll catch Death Head?” Todd asked.

“He caught Rex Villan a few months ago. Man’s been out there since we were kids at the orphanage,” Jeff answered.

“True,” Todd replied. “At least he’s going after someone other than us.”

I suppose that was the silver lining. Todd switched to some anime he bought during our last purchase of interdimensional goods, and it kept his eyes glued to the screen.

I crashed on the couch next to him and shut my eyes. It wouldn’t be long till we got some food.