Carrotia no1: Dawn In Fuchsia

The lumbering pink spacecraft slid quietly through the darkness of space, lighting it up, not only with its very presence, but, in fact, also with the presence of several billion kilowatts worth of carefully designed light.
It stood in the off-pink janitor's closets. It pulsed to life along the sides of beautifully crafted hallways. It hung from the ceiling in immaculately decorated bridge rooms.
It was, however, remarkably absent from Radar.
Radar was a large section. A giant dome located near the foot of this Intergallactic Class space vessel, littered with consoles and smashed lightbulbs, which by far outreached the length of the ship or, indeed, any sort of common sense. It had never stopped any of the designers from raving endlessly about Impossible Space Dynamics, Colour Balance and cupholders, at least not before the entire governing body of Carrotia unanimously decided to have them shot for bad taste.
Radar was not a particularly frequented area. In fact, safe for two members of the crew, no one ever really went there. It was a horribly unfashionable place to be, and the few inhabitants of Radar liked it that way. It was also dark. Very, painfully, utterly dark, safe for a slight blue glow that cast its flimsy rays from one of the viewscreens. It bathed Poll's face in tentative, azure light.
Blue was also horribly unfashionable.
If anyone had ever bothered to come and visit, which they didn't, they would have stated that Poll was being rather unfashionable as well, what with wearing all that black and not bothering to put any pink frills on her shirt at all. This didn't come from any sort of inability to dress on her part, for she was quite capable of this; it was simply that she truely, deeply, utterly despised artists, the melodramatic, pretentious wankers, and thoroughly enjoyed taking the piss out of them at every oppertunity. Currently, she was staring out the window at a cluster of Primari Deathscythes, which did not seem menacing as much as they seemed to be very, very tacky. Surrounded by Colour Reflector Shields, with Confetti Scatter Beams sticking out in every direction and decorated in Highly Lethal Twister Spots, they seemed to have escaped from the clutches of some sort of interstellar kitsch-collector gone completely bonkers.
They hadn't moved in a month.
Neither had the Carrotian ship. It was starting get rather boring.
"How long till they finish recalibrating the Effervescent Paint Gun?"
Tinn, appearing around the corner of the huge block of consoles and clutching a mug with an image of the Sacred Pink Bunny on it to himself as if it was the Holy Grail, shrugged. "When Armory finishes arguing about which shade of purple the explosion should be, I imagine." He sipped his juice, and winced. He gripped on tighter.
"Figures." She leaned further over her console, relishing the darkness. "I swear, if both sides didn't spend so much time trying to figure out what way to blow eachother up would be the most aesthetically pleasing, this war would've been finished nine hundred years ago." This, though she didn't know it, was in fact one of the fundamental truths that the Founding Rabbits of her kind had come up with back in the early days of their civilization.
It had also been written on the first and only piece of paper ever to get lost in Carrotian history.
If Poll had known this, she would, most likely, be slightly less bitter about the whole thing.
"Well, you know." Tinn threw himself down in the seat next to hers, and smiled apologetically at her. "You chose the job, y'know. You can't complain."
"Not like I could've done much else after failing my art classes," she retorted, then sourly prodded at her computer. Electronics were her only joy in life; they were efficient, they were powerful, and they very rarely showed an inclination to create pink kitsch, which was exactly the sort of thing she liked in a person. The console beeped up at her. She smiled at it, in the same way that one would smile at a cherished pet.
"The way I see it," she continued, "We'd be a lot better off if we just got rid of all the artists."
This was, in fact, not as original an opinion as she would've thought at this point; several dozen species had, in the past, loudly proclaimed such things, and a few had even gotten along to mass-burnings. This did not stop those of the artistic persuasion one bit; it is, after all, far easier to construct large tributes to your own suffering if you are being chased through a vulcanous region by a large amount of angry men wearing dark green and magenta sweaters.
She tapped some buttons, which lighted up in a satisfyingly dark shade of deep blue. "What time are we off?"
Tinn made a big show of looking at his watch, during which he completely failed to notice that he wasn't wearing one. He shrugged. "Right now."
"Good enough for me." She pulled herself up out of her chair, smoothing her ears backwards and raising a single eyebrow in Tinn's direction, all at once. "Oh, put that down."
The mug was dropped in a manner that suggested that he was well used to taking orders. In a moment's time, he was already standing at the door.
One of the screens beeped. Poll stopped mid-stride and twisted right around on her ankle, a nifty trick that she'd done up out of pure frustration. She pressed a button.
"What?!" she growled.
"Oh," she muttered.
"Well, of course, sir." she agreed.
"Right away, sir!" she barked.
"They want us to recalibrate the radar net so that it'll match better with the Infinity Cannons," she sighed, the loud, practiced sigh of someone who has long since given in to the inferior minds around herself. "We'll do it next week. Open the door. Might as well get it over with."
Tinn smiled briefly. "Don't mind the orders, they'll probably forget all about it tomorrow anyway. C'mon, I'll get you a soda on the way back." He glanced at the door.
It opened, casting rays of carefully designed light into the Radar room. This was Poll's least favourite part; it wasn't as if her life wasn't already bad enough without a variety of kaleidoscopes encroaching upon her territory. And Radar was her territory; she'd personally redecorated it the moment she entered it. She'd been the first one there. Apparently some people got punished for it, or something. She didn't really know; it wasn't her business.
Most of the carefully designed light aboard the Incense was pretty, hypnotic, and stunningly unpractical. It illuminated all the corners that were most aesthetically pleasing, but completely failed to cast light on tables, computer consoles, people, and any Terrifying Deathtraps that might be lying around the place. The designers fully believed that this was not deterimental to the effectiveness of a warfaring spacecraft; being unable to see whatever was about to kill you, while keeping your eyes on a Tri-Deviating Curling Lamp, would make, they felt, death a far more enjoyable pass-time, and would finally remove the artistic stigma off of the whole thing.
Poll stared at the three pulses of pink light that travelled along the sides of the wall towards a distant point. She wished, for the umpteenth time in her life, that someone would've at least installed some sort of a proper time mechanic into it - running through the hallways trying to follow a burst of pink light was probably one of the most humiliating things she'd ever done in her life.
And she had to do it every day.
She sighed, loudly. Tinn smiled apologetically at her again, but the entire effect was lost because of the complete darkness. "Could be worse, you know." he added, conversationally, "Could be.. You know. Something." he finished lamely, and attempted to smile at her again.
She punched him in the arm, ripping the last stitch out of his pink, fluffy rank pass in the process. It drifted peacefully to the floor, where it curled up into a little ball and caught a tiny, fluffy pink fire.
The only thing she'd ever enjoyed doing in her life was violence, but that had gone out of fashion some ten-odd centuries ago, and none of her teachers had felt that it was anything worth specializing in. She'd protested vehemently, but all that had accomplished was that she'd earned several more reprimands for poor grasp of style.
Before meeting Pollin, Tinner had been an entirely normal member of Carrotian society - artistically inclined, sensitive, and entirely unfamilliar with pain.
When he was stationed at Radar, that had been the first thing to go.
He winced. "Didya have to do that?"
"How else are you going to learn?" Ah. The triple pulse was coming their way again. "Ready? Set.." The world seemed to burn away in an inferno of pink. "GO!" She dashed through the corridor, passing by several other crewmates who'd been just a little bit too late, and then came to a full stop.
Not because she'd wanted to, mind you, but because the entire ship was shaking like a thing possessed. She glanced around, cursing the pitch dark once again and coming up with several creative death threats in the process. Something slammed into her.
"Tinn, you fool, be careful!" Another full-on body slam was her response, and she crashed to the floor, banging her head against the wall. If she'd been able to see, the world would've started spinning, then slowly retreating to a tiny nub before snuffing out her consciousness.
Instead she fainted testily, much like everything else she did in life.
The world went silent.
The lumbering pink spacecraft slid further into the darkness of space, slowly blending into its surroundings.