Planet Robinoso

The shriveled tube of Gelenium sunscreen spat out its last glob of fluid. Jacko scrimped the green gel-cream into a petri dish. Exhaling circular smoke rings, he eyed the blinking camera sideways.

As planet Robinoso's ruler and manufacturer of the alien mineral sunscreen, he'd failed to stock up. In half-second, this hilarious folly of his would become a chatter matter amid his crossed-eyed team. They were twenty-something alien geniuses who hacked his home recordings for fine-tuning their funny bone. Jacko visualized another laughing air meme of his leaping around. This time, too, in speedos, massaging a bouncy tube using thumbs.

His funny bone, unlike theirs, strengthened by oscillating. It magnetised, tagging on him the labels they mouthed: spineless, one-dimensional, pompous, and many more backchats.

Jacko often cursed at his hollowness and shallowness: part alien, part human combo. His physical traits, a debilitating burden he wished upon his ninety-nine-member alien team. It abled him to stay afloat on water, jet over flaming volcanos with no garb on. He often landed on Earth chewing on a bliss gum instead of punching open a strapped parachute.

After his former mentor, Viido ascended to alien heaven: time seized orbiting around Jacko. He longed to inhale his best friend's wispy, ebullient aura and share spacetime, exchanging planetary wisdom and energies.

At Viido's entombing on the moon, the rest of the team whimpered, shedding rainbows through their ducts. Jacko froze his conduits. Sorrow slipped through his hollow core, and chafed his two hearts. It erased the emotion of grief. With the exposure of his glacial character, none of the teammates willed to respect him.

Dabbing the sunscreen on the neck, Jacko glued back his peeling skin. The plastic-wrapped sun had scorched him on their mission to the center of the planet.

Jacko's beady eye scanned his gastropod bedroom for the zapping remote to dispose of the tube. He hated scouting for the wandering objects playing the grueling game of hide-and-seek. Spotting the yellow control perched atop the drone, he blinked twice, telepathically conveying his command. The drone descended, shaking the object off its back. It dropped on his webbed foot, and Jacko stretched to pick it up.

The sleeping robot on the bed howled like a rooster, startling him. He accidentally pressed the purple button, and a bright light drew across his spiky nose. Leano, the propelling garburator, tossed him around in the dispenser, screeching in his brooding face.

The temperature in the expedition monitoring room dropped to minus levels- a convivial sign the team neared uncovering an unknown planetary element. Clumps of ice formation on the tracks of the automatic sliding doors, foiling its shutting action. The hooting alarm clashed against the aliens' endless yammering. Jacko almost slipped over the hoar frost coating the podium. He intended to repeat Viido's two-line mantra addressing the team before any discovery.

"My fellow explorers, you must lose hope if we find nothing. This is the only way for hope to bud anew between our solidified heart."

"And next lines?" Santo, the cheeky pilot loured, his aura blackening.

"Be…." The red pimple on Jacko's left cheek, his human side, flared.

"Be ready to die like Viido, Zamo, Chado, and Betto." Santo interrupted, his puckered forehead straightening.

On every discovery trip, the inevitable death of an alien member was a mystical mystery. Jacko concluded two theories after Viido's shocking death unearthing floating water.

The first theory being that an alien must die without warning as an offering to Deamono: The Goddess of elements. And the other that each exposed Robinoso element possessed a personality of its own.

The plastic sun enjoyed searing, and Zamo's frozen heart repulsed the sunrays. The dense water rejected Viido's sanguine ego, drowning him. During the exhuming of Earth, Chado and Betto, both chronic complainers, compared the destroyed planet and its polluted atmosphere to their globe home. On their way to orb base, the air bubbles Chado stole from Earth escaped from the glass bottle and suffocated them.

"My fellow aliens, we may dwell in alien heaven today. Don't put your needs first, but our Goddess wishes. Share your gifts and copy each other well." Santo waved his three webbed fingers and clapped. "Cry out."

His cryptic optimism invited yowling cries as cheers, and his buddies tossed drippy memes at him. Jacko stirred zero sentiments.

Two beeps, then four continuous beepings, the drilling rocket warned them. They were approaching the element's home. Santo swerved across the pockets of craters, twirling into a massive green teardrop. Once trapped in, Jacko punched a few overhead buttons, and the rocket gyrated, purging itself out the belly, cascading into voidness. Darkness hooded his eyes, and a burning sensation swept across the scaly right side of his body.

Without warning, the silver-haired woman draped in stars appeared next to him. White halos covered her head, distorting her facial features. In one hand, she gripped a black moonstone, and in the right, she held the stone of rebirth, Unakite. Immediately, her thin lips shown, and he read the words flowing out. The Goddess allowed Jacko to choose between healing and rebirth. And he wished for death instead.

Jacko woke up in alien heaven, on a cushioned cloud, floodlights surrounding him. He had a complete set of ten human toes. Dropping his legs onto the fluffy floor, he wobbled, placing one foot next to the other. An excruciating pain permeated through his whole being from under his feet, spreading to the inner parts of his being.

Void, the newfound integrant had punished him for discounting the Goddess Deamono's kind gesture for new hope and new beginnings by awarding agony.

Tears dripped like raindrops he slurped on Earth. Jacko kneeled, pressing his chest, and smiled for the first time.

Pain, the one precious element Jacko finally owned.