Waypoint

A Blazing Descent

Something in my gut drove me over to my workbench where I took each of the two blasters apart and improved them. I don't know what will be waiting for me at this signal.

When I almost accidentally test-fired it into the wall, I knew they were ready.Strapping both of them to my waist, I strode back over to the cockpit and placed myself down.

"Exactly 1 minute away from our destination." FTARI notified me.

"Thanks again, FTARI" I smiled. "Can you believe this is happening? Then, I was just some idiot willing to do anything for credits, but now, I almost feel completely evolved. Who am I kidding, you wouldn't understand..."

Anyways, at about the same time I was finished yapping was the same time an alert popped up on my main console screen, preparing me for the decent. It requested that I put on my helmet and manually steer my craft toward wherever I wanted to land.

Eyeing my golden visor helmet, I gripped the steering joysticks hard and carefully waited for the friction to reveal itself.

For those of you who haven't entered a planet's atmosphere before, if you're going fast enough, your craft or whatever you're in will start to heat up and burn as you create friction from hitting the air particles in the atmosphere.

And if you are not careful enough, you could burn up too. The chances of that are incredibly small, so I brushed my helmet away, but that was when yet another alert came up, this time from FTARI. Immediately after that, blaring red alarms filled my cabin. My craft started to shake quite violently as FTARI rang out, "ANOMALY, ANOMALY, ANOMALY. PLEASE EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY USING THE PROVIDED PARACHUTES TO THE RIGHT OF THE ELECTRICITY PANEL."

"Do you mean the parachutes that I wasted when I thought leaping from mountains was fun?"

Damn, I was stupid back then.

I didn't get any answer, FTARI must have automatically powered off before it could respond.

Panicking now, I witnessed the back of my craft violently tear apart, and the whole piece of junk started spiraling out of control. Uh-oh

All at once, I was sucked out of my craft as it continued to burn up in the atmosphere, before finally blowing up and sending a shock wave throughout the air.

Just after saying "professionals" like me don't mess up an entry, I was now flailing through the air.

It wasn't until I passed through clouds, screaming my lungs out, that I could see my landing (also my demise).

The problem was that the atmosphere was way too thick for my craft to handle.The whole surface of the planet itself was flat and bare, like a total wasteland, except I was able to make out a small gray smudge at least 100 miles from my landing place.

Then, I noticed it wasn't a smudge at all. It was a structure, possibly a creature-like-me-made structure. Is that where the signal is coming from?

Oh well, didn't matter anyway. Here I was, in a deadly situation for the third time, only guaranteed this time.

However, as I closed my eyes in disbelief, a familiar sound triggered a feeling of instinct and confusion. No matter how hard I tried to trace back to it, I couldn't remember where it was from. That was until it got closer.... Closer.

I lifted my head up—*CRASH*

It was a flying craft I had heard, and as I crashed through its cockpit window unwillingly, I was face to face with an orange-scaled creature. Its eyes were squinted, focused right onto me, almost as if this "accident" was on purpose, and I was his target. When I looked down at his badge, he reached down for his blaster and laid the barrel right on my forehead.

"Can you tell your boss I'm busy?—Oh wait, that's right."

As his finger moved closer to the trigger, I forcefully pushed the gun away, accidentally causing it to shoot the control panel in the process instead. The lights went off and I snatched the blaster, moving away from the creature with the barrel pointed right at him. "You got parachutes?"

He nervously shook his head no, moving away from the cockpit and hiding in a corner.

"Sometimes I wonder how you guys even get hired..."

Taking control of the situation, I pulled up hard on the steering joystick. I was losing altitude faster than before.

"Hold- On- Tight!" The front of the craft slowly but surely began lifting upwards, but the deserted wasteland was no impatient hazard. Seconds later- *SLAM*

We and the craft slammed into the sand, shredding the hull as we went. Moments after that, the nose of the craft dug into the sand and we simultaneously flipped over.

"Sweet nebula!" I cursed.

Once the craft was to a halt, gravity acted fast and I slammed my head on the hard cockpit window.

The cabin spun around me as I reached for the blaster again to ensure my safety.

"I'm filing a complaint when I'm done with some of my personal business, you better be here, damn Vendetta."

I stepped out. It was not too warm, neither was it too cold, it was suspiciously the exact right temperature for me.