Welcome to Gaia! ::

A few hours had passed and Zed had only spent a couple of them actually asleep before the sun, which had only recently set, swept back over the horizon due to the altered angle of the planet.

The pilot left the sleeping quarters and headed back up to the cockpit, checking over the ship's status once again.
"I'm a ********' genius"
He leant back into his chair with a half-smile and stretched, yawning loudly as the monitor showed that the ship had mostly been repaired.

Zed, after being hit with a huge blast from the ship's core and sent through a rip in the very fabric of space-time, had not gotten away entirely without a scratch.
He'd been wounded, fatally if it weren't for the billions of tiny invisible surgeons that floated through the ship's recycled air and coursed through his blood vessels.
The ship was full of nanomachines, many of which including those within the pilot himself, were for medical use. They caused accelerated healing, greater resistance to injury, slowing of the ageing process and could release chemicals to improve overall health of the host body.

However, the pilot had re-purposed a couple billion or so of the nanomachines to repair the ship, each of the sub-microscopic units having access via the ship's main computer to a full schematic of the ship as well as taking direction of what to repair from the computer too.

Even so, the nanomachines would take at least 2 weeks to completely repair the ship, but it would be space-worthy within the day.

Zed watched Koko leave the ship once again on the CCTV monitors and sighed loudly to himself.
I wonder where she's off to this time?

He flicked several switches, activating the ship's short range radar and display then watched as the dot that represented Koko disappeared into a huge anomaly in the distance.

"What the hell could that be? Some kind of electromagnetic field?"
The pilot looked out of the window in the direction of the anomaly then flicked a few more switches and started the ship's engines, whatever it was, Koko seemed drawn to it, so it was probably rather interesting.

The engines hummed loudly then roared as the ship lifted off once again, slowly following Koko's trail through the long grass into the anomaly, where the ship's remaining navigation systems started to fail.

The ship ran into some turbulence, most likely caused by the electromagnetic interference from the anomaly.
Zed wasn't going to risk crashing the Aiolos twice, at least not within 24 hours, so he decided to land the ship at a safe distance and walk to where Koko had gotten to.

"Guess I'll be walking then..."
As the ship touched down, the pilot stepped out and onto the long grass once again, before taking a small device from his pocket which showed the direction of the source of the electromagnetic disturbance.
He noticed the way that the ground was raised slightly in circles around something, the impact perhaps? It would explain the strange magnetism, but not how the patch of ground that he was standing on hadn't been vaporized.

As he approached, he could make out two figures, Koko and someone who looked bizarrely familiar.

Thane looked back at Dimitri.
"Yes, there is a hospital, don't worry, we'll get you fixed up."
He gave the other man a reassuring smile.
"But I-"
"Imma reckonin' we should get movin'! Now!"
Thane looked in confusion towards Lance, and then to where his mentor was looking.
"s**t. Jaxxyx."
Thane removed his gun from the inside of his jacket pocket, all the while moving along the narrow edge. He was actually wishing he hadn't gone along the bloody path first.
"Down there."
Thane pointed to one of the maintenance ladders on the side of the ship, which lead down onto a wider platform.

((derp. I really have no clue so uhhhh ta~~da~~~ :'DD ))

Jackal inhaled deeply through his nose as he slowly regained consciousness, swallowing hard against the chemically taste creeping across the back of his tongue. Concentrating, he tried to focus on the area around him, tried remember where he was. He was lying on something long, probably metal, and he could feel the cold surface biting his naked skin. Inhaling through his nose he got a strong smell of sterilizing fluid. In the background he could hear a faint beeping. He could also hear voices, but they were muffled, distant, as if he were hearing them from behind glass.
Straining his ears towards the sound, he managed to pick up a few points of the conversation. "Subjects heart rate is stable... Nano-bots readied... awaiting orders to carry out the procedure... bullet removed from his back without a hitch, the damage to his lungs has also been repaired."
Jackal felt his adrenaline kick in, his heart near enough skipping a beat. He remembered what had happened to him now, the plan to hand that b*tch Koko over to the military, her escape and his subsequent change in plans, the gunfight; All of it. He could take a pretty good guess as to where he was now...
Opening his eyes, he balled his left hand into a fist and made to leap from the operating table, planning on killing anyone stupid enough to come between him and his escape. However, much to his dismay, all he felt was his body tensing against rough leather restraints.
Jackal's eyes frantically darted around the room, beside him lay a tray filled with surgical equipment, and next to that what appeared to be a heart monitor. Looking down at his scarred, naked body, he found an array of wires attached to his torso, some to monitor heart-rate, some to monitor blood-pressure, some with absolutely no purpose comprehensible to him whatsoever. Turning his head to the right, he noticed a drip attached to his arm. Looking at the label he attempted, momentarily, to work out the obscure compound of drugs being injected into his bloodstream, but to no avail.
As confusion, and a sense of helplessness crept its way into Jackals mind, so did an all too familiar feeling; Rage. Looking into the doorway of the room he was being kept in, Jackal found the source of the voices he'd taken note of whilst still partially conscious, one male doctor, one female.
Upon looking at the pair, the man smirked as if laughing at a private joke, and left the room saying only: "I'll fetch the commander."
Jackals eyes fell on the young girl as he strained against his bonds. She shifted nervously under his gaze.
"What the f**k is going on here?" He growled.
The girl cleared her throat and stepped towards the table, her hand reaching towards the tray of surgical tools.
"Don't come too close," the raider snarled, "I bite..."

There must have been about 50 of them in all. They looked around at each other & the room they were situated in, a low murmur of noise filling the space as the children whispered nervously to each other. Never before had they been called together like this, usually they would just be situated in their own rooms, not coming into contact with anyone but the researchers. Koko had positioned herself off to one side of the group, looking down at her feet nervously. It wasn't long before she heard a peculiar tinny voice over the intercom in the corner & she lifted her gaze instinctively towards the source.
Hello everyone, I'm sure you're all dying to know why we brought you all together like this. Well you're in luck, it's a group activity & you're all going to take part!
There was an excited babbling from the rest of the children at the prospect of a fun activity they could all be a part of, but Koko was anxious... something didn't feel right about this.
Now children, could you please kill each other?
As though a switch had been flicked, the entire room became a frantic buzz of activity. Koko seemed to no longer have control of her actions; she knew exactly what she was doing, could still see, hear & feel like normal, but felt compelled to do as she was asked, even though she was mentally screaming at herself not to do it.

The others were fast, but she was always faster, always stronger, more deadly. The others all seemed to be going in slow-motion to her, as though time moved differently for her. The girl's hands would close round their necks & twist, snapping the spine as easily as a twig. Other times her fist would connect with another child's throat, crushing the windpipe & causing suffocation. In a mere 30 seconds almost all of the subjects lay dead or dying, with only four others surrounding the girl. One of them tried to flit towards her, only to fail mid-stride & receive a massive blow to the jaw from her fist, the impact wrenching his jaw out of it's socket. Two of the others had turned on each other, they didn't even notice when she sped up behind them & she didn't hesitate to end their existence. Only one other remained...

Suddenly she couldn't breathe. The girl's hands came up to her throat, desperately clawing at the pressure there, trying to dislodge the child clinging to her neck. Luckily the other subject was tired, she could tell by the way their grip loosened whenever she twisted. With one final tug she spun round, coming face-to-face with her assailant. The other child had a look on his face that would be burned into her memory - a mixture of confusion, terror & despair, along with helplessness, the same helplessness she herself felt as she spun his head to the side, a loud crack resonating in her ears. All around her dead bodies littered the floor, some of them killed by her own hands... having fulfilled the request given to her by the man, Koko sank to her knees, she could feel tears rolling down her cheeks as the voice sounded again.
Well done 685! It looks as though you're the best of the group! I'm impressed!

The creatures above them seemed in no hurry to move, they didn't seem particularly bothered by the groups presence, though how long that would last Lance had no idea. The sound of Dimitri vomiting snapped his attention away from the creatures he knew now to be Jaxxyx.
"Oh bloody hell!"
The researcher knew the lad was in serious trouble with a wound like that & from the looks of it he could fall to his death at any second. Without hesitating the man rushed towards the wounded member of the group & reached an arm round his waist, practically throwing the younger man over his shoulder.
"Sorry lad, can't risk ya goin' over the side so yer gunna have to hang on fer a while."
Lance hurried after Thane now, as fast as he could without potentially dropping Dimitri or going over the edge himself. They needed to get this guy some medical attention quick or he was going to bleed out.

Aleksander ran his hand through his hair before speaking again, the tone of his voice changing ever so slightly as a small smile crept onto his face. "But there ain't no rest for the wicked as they say... There are times when I am required to return to the world of the living, now is one of those times." He shifted his gaze back to Zed, scanning over the pilot's metallic arm. "Your arm; what happened?"

Zed had almost forgotten the day he lost his arm to the airlock of an alien infested sleeper ship, it was either his arm or Koko. "Airlock... It could of gone one of two ways and I took the 'save the girl' option... Koko built me this new arm though, So we're even." He grinned as he moved the metal fingers of his robotic arm. "You be careful not to lose any more of yourself... Show me that arm." The pilot held out his robotic arm in front of Alek, who held his hand above it.

A second later, the metallic arm broke apart into each of it's component parts, suspended in the air around a strange blue aura and before Zed could react, the arm reformed, the blue glow still faintly visible though the small gaps between the metal parts. "What the hell did you-" Zed gasped.
"Made it better." Alek interrupted, pointing out the blue glow.
"Is that it?" The pilot asked, turning the arm over to look at the other side.
"Yes, I just made it glow... Like it?" Angelus laughed then pointed to it once again.
"What I did will become apparent soon enough, until then, it'll be just as it was before, if a little more responsive and a little more powerful." Alek said, turning his attention back to Koko.