“SPACE PEW PEW” started as a short story called, “Alex and Toshiro are Totally in Space!” So it is only natural that you get to know the Captain, his O-Class ninth generation dark-matter-powered android companion, the girl of his dreams, their resident war commander, and a mad scientist – all of them packed like sardines into Alex’s ship, the Sotally Tober!
Welcome aboard the S-T, call sign Gen-E 8675E-O9! Powered by the N-E-T (Nano-Electrokinetic Thrusters) and a dwindling fuel supply, the S-T is Alex and Toshiro’s home in the universe. An old, rudimentary ship, the S-T is held together by questionably loose fittings, some random patch jobs, and lots of luck.
Alex has been up to all kinds of nefarious deeds in the S-T, including impromptu android surgery. The S-T is old reliable – it’s able to escape, outmaneuver, and blend in with random space junk unlike any vessel in and around the Interplanetary Government. It’s not perfect, it’s not state-of-the-art, but it’s home.
Alex is the captain of the S-T, smuggler, swashbuckler, troublemaker, instigator and occasionally cranky cosmonaut. He’s been among the stars his entire life, and only desires the answer to one question:
Where is home?
With his companion Toshiro, and girl-of-his-dreams Andromeda, Alex is finding out that home may be closer than he thought. Or maybe he just blew it up by mistake awhile back. We’re all figuring it out as we go!
At some point our luck is going to run out and one of those rail-rifle rounds is going to do more than knock off a groin. Hell, a few inches to the left and my brains would be back on that planet getting covered in foliage dung.
Alex Aurora
The other half of the space-faring odd couple, Toshiro is an O-class ninth-generation dark-matter powered android of limitless capabilities and a newly patched up groin.
Toshiro has been with Alex for the better part of 20 years, and while the pair mostly argue and ponder launching each other out of the airlock in their sleep, they’ve managed to co-exist and survive – even thrive – this entire time. They can’t stand each other, they can’t live without each other, and Toshiro and his human companion are the very definition of toxic co-dependency. Toshiro is sarcastic, logical, and has a penchant for ancient Terran slang. OH SNAP, BRUH.
IT IS ME TIME. I NEED IT BLEACHED WITH A BOB. HAND ME MY LOUIS VUITTON HANDBAG AND A MIMOSA. DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I SPEND HERE EVERY WEEK? THIS IS LITERAL TYRANNY!
Toshiro, Speaking the ancient terran “Karen” dialect
After Alex takes a rail-rifle round to the head, he meets the girl of his dreams — in his dreams.
Andromeda.
Not long after, a random happenstance brings him face-to-face with the real thing.
She is resourceful, creative, sometimes psychotic, and possibly royalty. She’s an enigma wrapped up in cascading, caramel-colored hair, and a desire to avoid an arranged marriage that ends up getting her traversing the stars in the S-T.
One false move around this mysterious cosmic beauty, and everything gets scorched. Especially Alex.
Play along, or I’ll tear out your innards and shit in your carcass hole.
Andromeda
You wouldn’t normally think of a space-capybara as a battle-hungry killing machine, but then you haven’t yet met Commander Boom Boom.
Hailing from the war-torn planet of Kudzu-Beta, the Commander was thought to be a casualty in the Harvest Wars. When he ends up on the S-T being escorted across hyperspace, Alex, Toshiro, and Andromeda realize that within small packages there is a boundless opportunity for chaos and mayhem.
Nothing is safe around the machinations of Commander Boom Boom Der Supernova. Including planets.
If Boom Boom cannot violence something soon, Boom Boom will violence everything much sooner.
Commander Boom Boom Der Supernova, on his favorite activity
As a fungi-based, supremely intelligent alien life-form, Leopold has one goal in this existence — Transcendence with the assistance of drugs. To those ends, there is nothing he won’t advocate for ingesting, imbibing, or absorbing in the name of “science.” A brilliant biologist with an understanding of the universe more vast than entire civilizations, he lives by a simple creed: You’ve gotta break a few neurons to bake your brain.
When Alex and the crew need a little boost for an edge against the nefarious space-faring villains they face, Leopold is there with whatever experimental substance may or may not help.
Alex. Ingest this. You will either grow an additional rectum, die, or feel nothing. Do not fear, the chance of growing a second rectum is exceedingly low. Thirty-three percent.
Leopold Mycelium Zonation VIII – Experimenting