Yup, I got a nice big chunk of chappie right

here. A BIG CHUNK! Infact, chapter eight

is so massive, I'm gonna break it into

three parts, so here's the first...



Chapter Eight: Three Days Away



"You mean...a time machine?" Ducky's lower jaw was dropped.

"In a manner of speaking, yes." Seraph nodded. The room was silent for a moment.

"What do you want to use it for?" Tyio inquired.

"Two reasons, one, we could use it to crush the Knn before they lay the field of radiation across Carrotous," she paused to se how they reacted to that, "and two, someone by the name of Asari wants

it, for reasons I can only assume, are evil."

"Asari?" Tymen nearly lept out of his chair.

"Yea...why?"

' "That was the person who tried to kill me!"

A field of energy emenated on the sword where it was about to meet the staff, keeping it at bay. Both combatants pushed there weapons forward, resulting in a titanic struggle.

"Who are you?"

"I am one they named the dark assasin, Asari. And you, you are from another time."

....

"Ahh-ah!" Tymen was distressed by his loss of a weapon.

"And so our paths intertwine again, eh?"

"What...what do yo mean, we've never met before..." She chortled, and pressed the end of the sword aginst his throat.

"How quickly you're mind has slipped away." She was about to kill the poor fellow when a double blaster blast from above blew her feet away from a scared Tymen. ' Memories from the day before flipped through

Tymen's mind.

"That...that's the person who tried to kill me yesterday!" Seraph's expression twisted in befuddlement.

"Why would she want to kill you?" Then a sinister realization dawned on her.

"Prehaps...in the future, she knew you were going to get the Archon...and with it went back in time to

prevent you from using it..."

"It's...plausable." Ducky scratched her chin.

"But...why do that?"

"Suppose...in the future you do something that terribly hinders her...in some way. Using the Archon she went back in time to stop you from...getting the archon before her?" Seraph drew her edgy hypothesis.

Tymen nodded.

"So...what do we do?" Tyio fell back in his chair, the weight of this ordeal finally impressing itself upon him.

"What do we do? We get to the Archon first and kill this...Asari along the way!"

"Alright...I'm in." Tymen stood up, sounding as defiant as he could.

"I guess I could give a hand." Ducky too stood. All eyes fell on Tymen.

"Oh...why not?"

"Excellent...we leave in three days, three days, I don't care if its on fire in the ice caps and hell's frozen over."



The fighter's engines flared up a moment, and a stack of smoke bellowed out. It hovered up in the air for a moment, before clanging down, uncerimoniously.

"Piece 'a junk!" BlackSheep threw a wrench at it, frustrated to tears with her damaged craft.

"Problems?" Ducky asked, standing on the other side of the rusted hanger

"It's...there problems with the fuel cells." BlackSheep explained meekly, lightly tossing a bolt. Ducky approaced BlackSheep, to the point were they were about three feet apart.

"I've got a proposition for you...but you'll end up facing awful torture, gruesome risk...and possible horrible death."

"And?"

"You'd get a shot at getting thease stinking Knn off our planet and kissing that radiation barrier good bye."

"You're...not serious, really?"

"Uh-huh."

"That's incredible! Sure, what do I have to do?!"

"Seraph is going..."

"Who?"

"The leader of the clan."

"Oh, okay."

"Seraph is going to get a ship that can breach the atmosphere, then we go and find this device that can take us back in time, and we can stop the Knn before they scour the sky."

"Time machine? So...travel known space, avoid a gigantic army of aliens, find a ancient artifact, blow up stuff, save the world?"

"Pretty much." A large grin grew across BlackSheep's face.

"Bring it on."

"Great...we leave in three days...and something about the ice caps and fire and ****and things."

"What?"

"Never mind."

"Okay." BlackSheep went back to trying to repair her ragged and torn fighter.



"Oh, how a loath you, Tymen." Asari muttered, plotting a date into the Cage. It chirrped and hummed and glowed, and after charging a moment, light exploded from it. In the beggining, it was just raw, unrefined light, but then it destilled into finer shapes and shades. It lay out the labryinth of history.

"Poor fool, you believe you'll smoothly exit the atmosphere, and blast away into the vastness of the void.

Unfortunatley, that wing of Buggers will attempt to usurp your plans, as they did before. And, if memory doth serve, that...wretched, arrogant boy will blow them into dust."

"This time, the Knn will have a little help." Asari trained her cold eyes to the rush of information that floated and bobbed above the Cage. After scanning a bit, she finally located the the proper time, spinning in it's endless path through infinity.

"Here we go." Having selected the time, she stepped into the swirling patterns.



All orders of buisness finished, our heros retreated to there collective room, as they didn't have enough credits to afford individual rooms, and Seraph wasn't going to pay the bill, as she slept in her lush, noble quarters.

"And in other news, the granola report today was somewhere over oatmea--" Tyio dropped the remote as the t.v. flickered off.

"Nothing good on, and thease two dimensional view screens are pratically antique!" He complained.

"It's called a t.v." Tymen noted.

"What ever the infernal thing is called." Tyio crawled further back on the bed he had claimed.

"Temper now." BlackSheep called up to Tyio, as she set up her sleeping bag.

"Never you mind me."

"I was only trying to help!"

"Settle down." Tymen began, "you're only angry because you got the floor tonight, BlackSheep, and Tyio...you're always angry...but..."

"Shut up!" Tyio cast there way.

"Shut up all of you, just listen to the storm guys." Ducky said in a serene, listening to the the sand swirling outside, ramming into the building.

"It is rather nice." Tymen said. And, for a while, amongst the group, there was peace. After about twenty minutes, the storm died down so much that listening it would be listening to the sounds of silence.

Tymen rose to use the restroom, while the others still sat, zoned out. After hearing water noisily swirling down the drain, Tymen made a bit of a squeak and said,

"Now wasn't that nice of Seraph."

"What?" BlackSheep asked.

"She sent us four bottles of radish beer." Tymen walked in, brandishing the four bottles and the four accompaning glasses.

"Woohoo! Go what's-her-face!" Tyio cheered.

And then the madness began.



"Kill....hubbie..." BlackSheep snored something that sounded rather like a morbid statment, but none payed mind to it. Probably because, everyone else had fallen asleep due to the radish beer. Except for Tyio, that is.

"Eeeeh, Teeoo, yer awake." Mumbled a very drunk Tymen.

"And you're intoxicated." Tymen, lying in a rather confused way on the floor, stared at a empty bottle for a moment, then turned back to Tyio.

"Yu-huh."

"That's very bad for you, y'know, kills braincells." Tymen climbed up to sit beside Tyio.

"You're one 't talkee...y' drunk mor'n me..."

"I'm a demon, I've refined my digestive control to the point at which I can decide what gets absorbed and what just...passes through."

"Wasat demon stuff about, anyway? *hic*"

"You don't read much into history, do you? My breed of demons are ones that separated from the main horde twenty thosand years ago. We've been living on Carrotous."

"Then why aren't you trying 't eat my soul or drink my blood or something like that?"

"We're not like that..."

"Y'knowww what I thinkin?"

"What?"

"That you guys aren't really demons a' all, you just pretend to be, to make yerselves more fierce."

"You liar! You don't know what you're talking about!" Tyio stood to strike Tymen, but he had fell asleep straight away. After a second, he slumped back down on the bed.

"I've got to get out of here."