The Only Way Out » Places

         After the expedition to the captain's cabin failed miserably, The'San recounted his options. Either he'd go back and find another way or he'd call for help from here. But he was so far from them-- and a plexiglass surface separated them-- he could scream all day and not be heard. In any case, Kafkan Minotaurs never did scream much. "The prey would run away otherwise," he said to himself before turning away.

He noticed a instrument on the table. Captain's manual it was, a book reader of sorts, covered with goo, or blood. He picked it and cleaned it with whatever clean cloth he found, that didn't belong to him. And boy, was there such a shortage of clean cloth. Finally he had to use the his own cloth, slightly angering him. What was he even going through the book for anyways? The ship was down and out and ready to explode and he was, in most likeliness, going down, or rather up, with with. But why should? He wasn't the captain. He looked at the captain. "Useless piece of trash," he said.

He rummaged around for a while. There was really nothing here. A few batteries, a torch ( broken if you are wondering), and some other stuff that The'San did not recognize. For the second time he felt like calling someone, or rather something, as a useless piece of trash. He read a few pages of the electric-book and closed it when he realized he wasn't in the right frame to read super advanced Common. After taking all the batteries, one in total, that weren't destroyed, he started moving. The corridor where he had woken up after the crash had only one other door, the Lieutenant's office. But before he went inside he decided to go back to the place where he had turned back from.

The three minutes it took him to reach, he had spent hoping that the impassable mess hadn't really existed and that he would be able to pass with no problem. Alas! It was still there and actually looked more menacing. The entire corridor had crumpled on itself, onto a singularity. Sharp metal protruded from the mess, and it looked like a bunch tiny-people were pointing spears at him. But unlike the tiny-people's spears, these would kill with no trouble. A wire hung near the metal and sparks occasionally flew between it and the metal. Somewhere, there was still a working generator. And that meant one crucial thing. No, not that he could possibly repair this ship. It meant that the ship will explode in all likeliness if they didn't shutdown all the systems. The'San would love to be a gazillion miles away, on Earth solving a crisis, when they tried that.

He stood now before the door of the room the lieutenant had been given. The Only way out, is in, he thought and walked inside. The room was, barely illuminated by the little light that the light-machines in the corridor provided. He walked inside and by the grace of whatever devil had decided to make his life miserable that day, he stepped on some goo, most likely blood. Of course, there'd be blood. What he didn't understand was why he was the only one breathing on the ship ( as far as he knew). What had saved him? Maybe he had a guardian angel? Or maybe the devil wanted to play with a little longer. His ribs did hurt a bit, now that he thought about it. His head too ached, but that did not stop him from getting exceedingly happy when he saw a way out.

It was small and dirty, and dangerous, but he had to do it. All that clear enough path had given him a tunnel of twisted metal. He wadded through it.

---

The first breath of the air of the surface of the planet would have been wasted in laughing, if Kafkan Minotaurs could laugh. In reality, they too have "We are safe" expressions but that involved his tentacles, which worked as sensors. He had once heard that people on a small island on Earth loved tentacles. Maybe after solving a crisis, he'd go and enjoy some time there?

Before him stood a great cave. And survivors, too. He saw a Galappa, a Durospex and a- a something. For the most part, it was humanoid. However, its skin was a lot smoother, and it seemed to have some kind of camouflage, possibly natural. It was also much smaller than the average human, in both height and weight, but had longer arms, legs, fingers, and necks. Its ears did not poke out separately from its heads like those of human's, but rather appeared as small bumps on the sides of its head with holes in the center. What an weird creature it was. He stepped towards it.