Yea, I let in, I'll post it early

CALL ME A SOFTIE AND DIE









DAY 3



Today was the day, Seraph thought, as she stood in the hallway of the hotel, dressed in the finest silver Konitar attire. As she tapped her foot waiting for her crew to get ready for the runaround of the Penultimate before the launch. She tapped, and waited, looking out the balcony over the desert sands, bathed in the early morning light. She stayed in this serene for going on twenty minutes, until the foursome burst out of the door.

"It's well about time!" Seraph shouted, as soon as they were out. All of them were now like her, dressed in the silvery clothing with purple capes held only for the highest officials of the Konitar clan.

"Eheh, sorry...let's just go." Tymen stammered, as they all filed out of the room.

The five of them walked down the streets. The sand from the yester-yesternight's storm had been baked in the previous days suns, and now was beggining to crack and chip in clumps. It was a good deal more ugly looking of a city now, because of it. Rabbits that walked about at this early time of the morn stopped and gawked at the lot of them, striding through the streets. It was not often something like this happened.



Finally, they arrived at the hanger, and Kaz had been so gracious as to set the Penultimate out on the street so they would not have to trifle with the cramped quarters inside.

"You're all quite late!" Kazooie shouted from a distance, flying up to greet them.

"Don't look at me." Seraph hissed, staring daggars into the others. Kazooie sized them up for a moment, with a rather severe look, before saying,

"Well, we better get going, they say a storm is coming." He hurried them aboard.



"This, is the heart of the Penultimate, the cockpit." Kazooie made a sweeping motion over the cockpit. There was fine, tough window, set up in two bubble like shapes, with a metal line bordering the two.

"Thease are the displays." Kazooie hopped up to the panel just below the windows. There were four or five small, kathode ray screens (standard t.v.s) and one holo-emitter off to the left side, which currently displayed a rotating image of the Penultimate.

"This one displays damage, this one weapons, this one scientific data for inside and out, this one shows any incoming messages, this one radar, and the holo-emmiter can show just about anything, but it usually remains a star map. He backed away from the panel, stroking the two flight sticks, which were spheres on poles with two joysticks with buttons attached at either side.

"Thease are the flight sticks, and thease..." He fell into a chair, "are fine, Chinkallian leather seats, with heating, automatic massage, and the ability to lie back..." He began to drool over the seats.

"Gee, musta cost a bundle." Tyio noted.

"It did, but the Konitar clan is flipping the bill, so I don't have to worry about it." Kaz laughed, but Seraph's scowl silenced him.

"Hehe.... moving on." He scuttled back down the main hall way.

"Thease are the quarters." He pointed with his winds to two doors on each side of him.

"There...only two?" Ducky sounded a little nervous.

"Yea... I was going to make more but Seraph insisted I kept the price down..." Seraph scowled again, harder this time,

"scowl, scowl, scowl, bleah *ahem* one is rather larger and rather nicer, I guess you'll be taking shifts."

Kaz postulated, and then led them deeper into the bowels of the ship. The came across four cylingers hanging from the ceiling about a foot from the ground, with a seat in the middle.

"Thease are the seats to the retractable gun turrets on top." Kaz stated, while lifting up a door in the grating

"And this leads to the one on bottom."

"What sort are they?" BlackSheep asked, who'd been rather quiet for most of the tour.

"The bottom one is four repeater heavy blasters, and the ones on top have two repeater medium blasters." Kaz said, wings on his hips, looking rather proud.



They continued on, down the sizable ship, until they arrived at a junction of ten large cylindars, filled with a slowly moving, black liquid.

"Thease are the power cells, they run off a fusion/fission reaction that can keep this baby running for near a thousand years, Knn technology, y'know, neseccary for those long space flights." Kaz labeled them,

"Eight of them, the smaller ones on either side, fuel the ships functions during normal flight, and the big two in the middle fuel Hyper-Space flight." At the far end of the power cell room, there were a great number of bombs and missles.

"Thease are the bombs and missles and thease," He pointed two protruding tubes, "are the launchers." He turned to Seraph, "you said you wanted a lot of firepower, right?" He smiled broadly at his accomplisment,

whilst Seraph was giddy like a little school girl,

"Oh, it's quite enough indeed, Kaz."

"Heh, one last thing to see." He located a ladder and began climbing down it, into a lower level, the others deciding to follow.

Eventually, they arrived in a large, open room, with lots of gadgets in it.

"This is the repair bay and hangar, here is everything you could possible need to repair the ship, the EVA suits, and the ships personal fighter, the Albatross." Kazz patted the fighter, which looked like a 'T' in a way, it had a back with a sort of fin, which increasingly got wider, and had a small little window on front, and abruptly stopped, where the guns and subspace escape device was. On it's bottom were long, broad wings.

"Well...that's it."

"You certainly have outdone you'rself, Kaz." Seraph shook his wing, abit to hard I might add.

"Thanks...when do you launch?" Kaz asked, nursing his damaged wing.

"Tonight, midnight, sharp." Seraph said back to him, as they all began climbing back up the ladder.

"Don't worry, it'll be ready!"



They all climbed out of the Penultimate rather uneventfully, begging the trek back to the hotel. Silence passed between them, until a boom of thunder was heard, and a dark cloud began to pass above the city.

"What the...what's that?" Tyio pondered.

"Kazooie said a storm would be coming." Tymen replied nonchalantly.

"But...I thought he ment a sand storm."

"Nope...a thunder storm." Tymen began to get excited, he always liked thunderstorms.

"But I mean...in a desert, wouldn't it like...not be a desert anymore?"

"We get rainstorms often, but thanks to the radiation, there's hardly and cloud cover, it all evaporates."

They continued back silently, until raindrops began to fall.

"Crap! It's starting to rain, we've got to run!" Seraph exclaimed, and took of running.

"Why is raining bad?" Ducky asked, as they all took of after Seraph."

"Rain will turn all this sand to mud, and we'll get stuck in it!" BlackSheep responded.

...

"Crap! Run!"



Luckily the troop had returned to the hotel just before the streets transformed into the foaming, muddy river they now were, as the whole desert now was. Lightning crackled and whipped above in the sky, as water fell in torrents.

"Who'da thought it would rain this hard in a desert?" Tyio commented, listening as the rain banged itself aginst the door and windows. The only other noise in the tiny room was the t.v. drawling on.

"When do you think it will stop?" Ducky asked Tymen.

"In about five hours." Tymen guessed.

"FIVE HOURS! Egads!" Ducky fell back onto the bed.

"When it rains, it rains long and hard." BlackSheep noted.

Time passed slowly, as the rain continued to fall, for the next few hours. Not many words were spoken, everyone was either zoned out, asleep, or watching the t.v.(I'll just let you guess who was doing what.)



Then, after a long time, the rain finally stopped.

"Hey...it finally stopped!" Ducky exclaimed. Soon, they all ran out to the balcony to see how the landscape had been affected.

The desert, once made up of slopes and rocks and dunes, was now just a flat, wet plain. But that was not the only thing to see out that balcony, there were atleast twenty lines, being sillhoueted by the setting sun, which set the sky and sand entirely orange.

"Oh no...those are...Knn ships!" Tymen ran inside, snatching up the intercon Seraph gave them.

"Seraph, are you seeing what I'm seeing?" Tymen grabbed the intercom tightly.

"Oh yea," Tymen could hear some rustling, then a flip of a switch.

"Kazooie's fighter hanger, you bust 'em, we fix 'em, how may I help you?" Tymen could hear, obviously coming from a seperate comm.

"Kaz, cut the chit-chat, looks like we'll be having some guests."

"Are we...in good company?" Kaz sounded quite nervous.

"That's a negative, I'd say we fell in with a very bad crowd.

"Roger that, what will we do?"

"That ship better be ready by the time I get over there, Kaz, 'cause we're launching now! Tymen, I''ll be there in a minute, and YOU better be ready to go straight away!"