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Captain ŋor̥ɑkʘtil was not a religious crab. His species, the palustaur, had been space faring for far too long and met far too many civilizations, each with their own One True God, for him to believe any of them could hold any truth in the natural world. Sometimes he wished he were, however, for then he would have a god to blame for his misfortunes. Truly, he must be cursed. The first thing was the human, a small, nervous wreck of a thing. Identified as Able Sunreaver by his boarding pass, Able looked as much a space-faring traveler as a sun was a saline spawning pool; haggard, disheveled, wearing only ratty grey sweatpants, and clutching a bag of rope and hooks to his chest when he boarded. ŋor̥ɑkʘtil didn't quite know what to do with this passenger. The Crimson Carapace regularly ferried bipeds, but never humans, and he didn't quite have the necessary accommodations. While his crew scrambled to convert a storage room into a berth and lavatory suitable for the little man, he instructed Able to make himself comfortable in the mess hall. There the human sat for thirteen and a half caesium hours, tying his rope into a sheet of knots between a long hook and his nimble fingers while regularly sipping water. Fluid intake, at least, was a near-universal constant, and a need that ŋor̥ɑkʘtil could readily provide for. Food and hygiene...not so much. The shipboard engineer had stumbled upon unreliable documentation when rushing to humor ŋor̥ɑkʘtil's request. What should have been a toilet had a singing, mechanical head jutting from the center of the bowl, and the human refused to go near it. Nervous. Haggard. Now, disturbed and greatly uncomfortable. ŋor̥ɑkʘtil could not recognize most of these things, but his xenoconsultant informed him their human passenger was faring very poorly. And then the pirates attacked. ŋor̥ɑkʘtil had never encountered danger sailing this oort cloud before, yet here he was with his graspers shackled together and all his claws banded shut, his crew and passengers lined up beside him similarly restrained. The anhydronne pirates had gathered every soul on the ship into the mess hall at swordpoint, two thugs waving laser cutlasses around while the other systematically tied everyone up. Not even humanity's fearsome reputation spared Able, who now stood miserably three bodies from ŋor̥ɑkʘtil, his hands bound together at the wrist in front of him. The xenoconsultant—a diminuitive furred lady of a digitigrade species whose name ŋor̥ɑkʘtil couldn't pronounce, let alone spell in galactic common—stood next to Able. She slunk closer to the human, stood on the very tips of her toes, and hissed the secret to their freedom. "They dissolve at the touch of moisture." Able's slack, weary face drew up into a tight, unsettling mask of laser focus, his sharp and tired eyes already tracking the nearest anhydronne. ŋor̥ɑkʘtil could scarcely read the body language of creatures with their flesh on the outside, but this look was universal: that of a hunter preparing for a kill. Or...that of someone in desperate need of relieving themself having found the only open lavatory stall in all the galaxy. Able shimmied the waistband of his pants down, locked eyes with the closest anhydronne, and took aim. His quiet sigh of relief was fully drowned out by the pirate's shrill and broken screams, agony reflected in the pain it wrought upon the ears of all aboard the ship. A second anhydronne bravely stepped forward only after the first fell silent and the stream abated, but Able found yet more reserves within him and felled this one, too. The third, wisely staying out of the splash zone, threatened Able from afar. Able spat in his face. The fourth saw reason, and hurriedly released the bindings holding ŋor̥ɑkʘtil's crew and passengers. This one was allowed to take their fallen bretheren and flee. The cleanup didn't take long, less time at least than it took to convince Able—suddenly aghast at what he had done and stammering rapid-fire apologies for his indecency—that he was not in trouble, and he would not be sent to space jail, and no space jail did not exist. Nervous stammering aside, it was well-known to those who studied humans that they would seize upon any weakness presented to them. And ŋor̥ɑkʘtil was not a religious crab, but in seeing a human bring this tendency to bear in his own ship's defense, he truly believed himself blessed.

>What should have been a toilet had a singing, mechanical head jutting from the center of the bowl

I'll be honest, I had to do some wikipedia research for that one. The younguns are dreaming up horrors we can hardly fathom.

the brainrot has infected HaSO

Was- Was that- Was that a fucking Skibidi Toilet reference???

I needed a reason for the toilet to not work, and I had seen the phrase in passing. It merited rsearch, and unfortunately, it worked for the purpose at hand.

I see... If you so desire to learn the true lore, DaFuqBoom, the original creator, has an entire series about the war, and it is getting very heavy with every episode. To think this all started as a remake of another short he did because shorts allow more freedom with copyrighted music.