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'Housewives should make $115,000 a year.'

***

"'But there are no pixies!' the housewife protested. 'There's no such thing as pixies!'"

Fran's mom had told her this story more times than she could remember when she'd been a child. "'It was meee...!'" The young jackal had laughed. "But the villagers did not believe her," her mother had gone on. "Even after all this, they still thought the ritual had summoned the pixies, who had done all the chores when no one was looking."

It had been Fran's favorite bedtime story growing up.

***

"You gotta stand up to her," she said into her communicator. "Set some boundaries with her."

'Have you tried setting boundaries with Byte, Jackie?'

Fran heard the trilobite yell 'Stop playing with your comm!' somewhere in the back.

"For well over a hundred years, Kiwi," the roach reminded the bird.

'I'm not!' Kiwi was speaking to Byte, not to Jackie that time, but the jackal heard that too.

"Kiwi's at Byte's treehouse because she owes Byte furniture," the roach explained to Fran while the trilobite scolded the bird, "but while she's putting it together, Byte's trying to rope her into fixing a technical problem, too."

'That's put together just fine, Byte!'

"She's the one you helped with engineering problems earlier, right?" the jackal asked.

'No it's not!'

"She's messing with you, Kiwi," Jackie frowned. "She's better than she was, but Byte's an expert," she turned back to Fran. "She doesn't really need - tell her to do it herself!" she turned back to her communicator.

'She's saying it's not - I already built you a whole treehouse!'

"Byte's lying about the quality of work Kiwi's good at to make her do work Kiwi's bad at," the roach stuck out her tongue.

'And a desk!'

"Why would she do that?" the jackal asked.

'And a chair!'

"So she can set Kiwi up to fail so she'll owe Byte something else to pay her back for messing up something that's easy for Byte to fix anyway after that," Jackie explained.

'How about some shelves, maybe a footrest?'

"The thing is, Byte can afford to spend the time it takes to bring this in front of an Arbitrator - Kiwi, not so much," the roach went on.

'I don't need more furniture!'

"I've always sucked at putting together furniture," the jackal admitted.

'I need this fixed!' Fran remembered all those afternoons she'd spent back on Earth struggling to put together Ikea furniture always ending up with one extra piece she didn't know what to do with.

'I'm a carpenter, not an engineer!' the bird protested.

"I really respect Kiwi for being good at it, actually." To this day, there were still engineering terms that Jackie only remembered because the trilobite's insults about them had been so memorable.

'Thanks, hon!' Fran gasped, not having realized that Kiwi could hear her.

'Your furniture sucks!' To this day, the jackal still felt like that extra remaining piece of Ikea furniture herself, not knowing whether she'd ever figure out where she was supposed to fit in or not.

***

"Just because I'm an anteater doesn't mean I actually eat ants, you know," Dyson narrowed her eyes disdainfully.

"I know that," Orchid assured her.

"It just means I could eat ants," she went on.

"If you wanted to," the mantis finished.

"I don't, though," the anteater replied flatly.

"Let me ask you something," the Tracker raised a clawed finger as she started pacing. "Weren't you involved in research into biofuels a while back?" Orchid tilted her head.

"That was thousands of years ago," she waved off. "They were messy and inefficient."

"So you're no longer involved in this research now." Dyson knew a question disguised as a statement when she heard one.

"Officer... May I say something?" Orchid gestured at her to proceed. "Eating people to turn them into fuel strikes me as a bad idea." May as well get to the heart of the matter right off. "The energy costs associated with doing that and getting away with it..." She sounded highly dubious. "Let's just say that, even if I could get away with it, you wouldn't catch me trying to crunch the numbers for this particular cost/benefit analysis..." the anteater pretended to look at her nails. "... again," she finished under her breath.

"Didn't you have an energy converter put in for it?" The mantis had done her research.

"I had that taken out centuries ago," she countered. "Beaker will confirm it." Glory would, in any case.

"Why is that?"

"Sold it for parts," Dyson answered. "Everything's so expensive, you know?"

***

"How did this happen?"

Jackie had just barely had time to finish helping Kiwi fix Byte's technical problem when Glory had sent the roach an urgent message on her communicator. "Sponge wa - AGH!" Jackie had come running all the way back to the organ grove.

"She was watering the Biting Plants for Sponge," the bird of paradise continued for her, "so Sponge could water my organ trees like she owed me instead." The mammoth's trunk sprayed water from her tank-like torso.

"I thought I - FFFUCK!" Beaker blinked at Fran quizzically. "I thought I could do it." Words like 'carnivorous' or 'Venus fly trap' would have been meaningless in the System. "OW!" They were plants that bit. "It s-s-seemed... easy enough." Biting Plants were the size of a person.

"I should've been there," the roach lamented.

"It almost bit her foot clean off," the nurse showed Jackie the extent of the damage as she spoke.

"Sponge is mad at me," the jackal flinched.

"I bet, she takes mad care of those things," the roach shook her head. "Grew 'em from scratch, pretty much."

"She kicked it good," Glory said understatedly.

"It ate my foot!" Fran exclaimed.

"Feet are cheaper than Biting Plants, my friend," the bird of paradise gestured at a nearby foot tree, "speaking as someone who grows both." She gave the jackal more anesthetic.

"I'm sorry, Jackie."

"Sometimes in life you just try your best to help someone, mess up, and end up worse off than when you started, you know?" The dodo nodded sagely. "Speaking as someone who has."

***

Ghost covered her mandibles with the back of her trenchcoat sleeve, clearing her throat as the short hairs on her chitin stood on end. The sawmill was a loud place.

"Sawtooth?"

The mantis' faceted eyes scanned the sawmill for the antlion's silhouette through the floating sawdust that permeated the atmosphere.

"I'm looking for Sawtooth!"

The sound of the Tracker's voice was barely audible over the sawing's din.

"Does an antlion work here?"

She switched to pheromonal communication, hoping to reach another insect, but her antennae flailed as the smell of sawdust also got in her way...

***

"If you look at it from a class perspective," Fran's roommate had said, "animals do a ton of unpaid labor for us." The jackal had nodded. "They got no workman's comp, no union, shit pay, shit conditions."

"And a shit retirement plan," Fran had chimed in.

"It's a shit deal," her roommate had summed up. "I wouldn't take it."

***

"Can you hand me that, Loom?"

The brontosaur, head among the treetops, had to reach all the way back down to hand Jackie her cutter. "Here." The roach measured the scarf twice, and cut once.

"It's the right size, right?" Loom wrapped the longest piece of the scarf around her neck casually, but enough to be able to tell it fit.

"Seems to be." Music to Jackie's ears.

"Can I get one of those branch trimmings you've been cutting off maybe?" The brontosaur made the journey back up and down among the treetops as quickly as she could, careful not to hit her head on the way.

"Done with that?" Loom didn't find scarves her size all that often.

"Here," the roach handed the brontosaur her cutter back. Looks like she'd found a use for those extra meters of scarf she'd knitted after all.

***

"Oh, it's for a pickax!"

Gasmask glanced at the look of dawning understanding on Fran's face as she affixed the handle that Jackie had carved out of Loom's branch to it. "Yup, off to the salt mines with me," the canary answered. "Don't like the salt desert much, but it beats gas mining," she added, testing the handle's resistance.

"Everything good?" the jackal asked.

"Seems to be," Gasmask assessed. "You needed some botworms, right?" Fran nodded. "Good, good." The canary dug around in her satchel for them to hand them to the jackal. How in the world did you tell a good botworm from a bad one?

"Have you used them a lot?" They did seem a lot more structurally complex than a handle.

"They work great here, just not where the earth's salt," Gasmask explained. "I know a thing or two about the importance of oxygen underground, believe me."

***

"Oh, you got it cut!"

Jackie handed Ghost her scarf, now the correct length for her to wear. "Better late than never, right?" The mantis threw it on then and there.

"Not bad." The Tracker lit up.

"Thanks for bringing me here, really," the roach told her. "Sorry about the stress." The smoke dissipated in the steam of the jungle around them.

"Eh," Ghost waved off, "we were coming here anyway." Jackie's hand twitched around her pocket knife.

"That case you've been working on?" The roach could've sworn she'd just seen a vine move.

"That's right," the mantis sighed. "You wouldn't happen to know where Sawtooth was when Kacey was killed, do you?"

"Kacey was killed?"

***

"You'll want to get as much of a random distribution as possible." Scattershot showed Fran the organ tree seeds in her hand. "It's a bit counter-intuitive but I'm sure you can do it." At least the rhipicerid beetle seemed nicer than Byte or Sponge so far. "I like to use these to spread them around jumping in treetops," she indicated the modified multi-pronged protrusions on her shoulderblades, "but you can just eyeball it."

"Thanks!"

Scattershot looked her right in the eyes. "See these?" The jackal nodded as the rhipicerid beetle pointed at her seeds. "These were all grown in several different areas far away from here." Fran had worried she might end up like an invasive species to the System and its people. "That's good!" Maybe cross-pollination really was a better way to look at it. "You want that." Maybe the jackal would find a way to fit into her new environment after all.

***

"Why do they call it Earth, come to think of it?" Fran had joined Jackie in a clearing that the roach was working on so it could be made into a grove someday. "What is it more like, the rock planet, the forest planet?" Jackie was using a remote to control the botworms that the jackal had gotten from the canary. "What other planets do people live on where you live?"

"Earth is a rock, forest, ice, water, and desert planet, in different places at least," Fran explained. "There's only one of it though."

"Wow," the roach's jaw gaped, "that must be so weird."

"You know, I guess it is," the jackal decided. "What do botworms do, by the way?"

"We use them to aerate the soil underground so trees and plants can grow, you know?" Fran shook her head. "They handle like pollinating drones."

"We don't have those on Earth either," the jackal admitted.

"But who aerates your soil, then?" Jackie asked. "Who pollinates your plants?"

"Animals do that."

The roach furrowed her brow. "What's an animal?"

***

"Pets don't work for us, and we still take care of them," Fran's best friend had pointed out. "We take care of them just because we love them, you know?" The jackal had nodded.

"Why wouldn't people deserve as much, right?" Her best friend had pointed at her pets.

"Look! They're grooming their plush animal," she'd observed. "It's never groomed them, and it's never going to, but they're good to it." She'd petted the animal, and smiled. "Good girl."