Worse Game of Pictionary Ever

657 words


Balio frustratedly gestured to the spacebus schematic. He pointed to the picture next to it, shaking his head, and saying, “Blasters on front!” The Vidorian leader, name tag reading RrrrrtChjkaz, gestured in turn, pointing to a minuscule protrusion of the ship, then pointing at the other picture as well.

Balio rubbed his three fingered palm through his antennae. They were starting to hum electricity as his heat from severe annoyance reached peak levels.

“We can’t put blasters in the back! It goes against the treaty!”, yelled Balio, referencing the document number written on the board-the only thing that could currently cross language barriers. The Vidorian leader, however he pronounced his name, stomped his flipper.

“Translator, now!” He screamed in heavily accented Cadewren.

“They are stuck in an asteroid storm! I told you this!” Balio thrusted his finger once more at a stick figure drawing of Zedera and her ship hiding under a space bridge while the storm passed by.

The Vidorian leader turned to his second in command to mumble something in Viddi. Both of their scaly ears drooped while each simultaneously rolled all 67 eyes as they conversed for a few minutes. Balio felt bad, but there wasn’t anything he could do about a freak asteroid storm crippling the Interstellar Route 405101 and preventing their only translator from arriving. She had just enough time to call and let them know she was stuck before the storm knocked out reception. Now the two representatives were forced into negotiating interplanetary transportation via the worse game of Pictionary in the worlds. He wanted Zedera just as much as the other guy, but who knew how long this storm would last.

After a series of shoulder shrugs, drooping ears, flipper tapping, head shaking, then head nodding the second Vidorian finally reached for a sticky note and pen, drew a couple of lines, circles, and arrows. He crossed out the crucial but minuscule piece of ship and laid the sticky on top. Balio ripped off another sticky, trying to draw the function of the part, complete with cosmic gas and portable black hole.

“Emitters! All space busses have them!” Balio drew a bunch of busses, each complete with their own miniscule emiter.

The head Vidorian huffed and cuffed his partner around the head. He gestured towards the picture, his tone of voice sounding like he was chastising the man’s lacking artistry skills. He drew his own picture. It looked like a spacebus with spikey potatoes growing out of the back of it.

Balio couldn’t hide his confusion. “What is that?”

The other man took out his phone and tapped away. He pulled up a picture, showing Balio a bike. “So, no blasters. Now you want a bike rack next to the black hole?

Balio drew a bike on the board with an arrow pointing to the bus. RrrrrtChjkaz nodded his head excitedly. They could accommodate a bike rack, but he couldn’t put it on the back. He tried to communicate this by drawing the emitter sucking the bikes into a black hole and drawing an arrow to the front to indicate the better option.

RrrrrtChjkaz drew an arrow to the back, putting his hands on his hips. “Stubborn fool. The bikes will explode and get sucked into the black hole!” Balio drew a cloud of exploding spikey potatoes, pointing to the back. He drew another arrow pointing to a spikey potato in the front of the bus with a happy face. “Back means boom! Front means no lawsuit!”

The other man crossed his arms and growled. Obviously, diplomacy was failing and Balio rolled his eyes once more and threw his chalk on to his desk. He called for his secretary. “Nim, bring in the lunches. We’re going to be here a while.”

He forced a smile at the Vidorian, who returned it with one of his own sharklike grins. It was definitely going to be a very long meeting.