There was a hollow shutter and an ear-piercing screech from inside

the escape pod’s engine. The strong smell of burning rubber filled
the shuttle, followed by it’s black smoke. Austin breathed in a lung
full of the engines final tries before spitting it back out and crippling
into a coughing fit. Austin stared out the window, his eyes stinging
and fogging as the view of a pink-blue planet filled his vision. Slowly
the hills became defined, then the trees came into view, and as the
beauty of this new world came to him in full detail, he held his last
breath, closed his eyes and waited for impact. Hopelessly.

Half a mile away, atop a pink grassed hill was an angry red-haired
boy taking notes on biotic self-aware plant life. Well, that was what
Hunter was meant to be doing. He was really just watching the plant-
moths as they danced around him and each other. Their bodies were
the size of small green peas but the span of their wings were 6 inches
wide. Wing to wing. The full day-light made the creatures ecstatic
because the sun was their fuel. One of the plant-moths flew over to
another and they began to dance, flying over and under in a friendly
way which interested Hunter. Even plants, which looked like insects
could have friends. He jotted down his first note for the day when
there was a load roar from the sky. A fast plash of orange light and a
trail of black smoke following it. Then, just a few seconds later, there
was the echoing sound of trees snapping and birds flying away in
every direction. Smoke started to bellow up from within the valley so
Hunter shoved his papers into his bag, flung it over his shoulder and
sprinted down to help whoever was dumb enough to not know how
to control a simple escape pod.
The plant life became thicker down in the valley. Most of the larger
trees stood an impressive 50 feet tall, showing the sky their pink
leaves with pride. Because of the grandness of the trees not much
light reached the ground, leaving it barren except for all the dead
leaves. Hunter raced between the trees, his footsteps were heavy as
the shrivelled dark red leaves flew up in the air behind him. The
smoke became visible through an opening in the trunks and Hunter
ran faster to see what he was going to deal with. Finally, he stopped
running and clung to a half fallen over tree to catch his breath. He
looked up through his curly fringe to see a smouldering mess
surrounded by freshly upturned dirt. The escape pod was
surrounded by many fallen trees, there was even a trail of flattened
trees from the direction that the escape pod had come. Hunter
looked around for a decent sized stick and then poked the escape
pods hatch door. The stick began to smoke and Hunter threw it on
the ground in annoyance. He had just told the Lab he didn’t need
help with anything so calling them to help with a potentially dying
person seemed a bit hypocritical of himself. He paced a little, back
and forth before thinking ‘Fuck it’ and taking off his yellow jumper.
He folded it, wrapped it around both his hands and wretched the
escape pods handle to the side with no success. He pulled back in
pain, his eyes watering and biting his lip so hard it went white. He
looked down at his hands which were now red raw, and his jumper
now had burn patched in it. His mind was racing, “the door cannot
open because the locks are jammed”
“but also they won’t open because the metal has expanded”
“do I have water?”
“no”
“is there water nearby?”
“yes”
“do I have something to hold it in?”
‘no”
“Dammit!”
He threw his jumper on the ground and held his head in his hands in
a very teenager-melt-down sort of way. Then he wiped his hands on
his shirt, winced, and picked up his jumper again. He wrapped it
around his hands, stepped forward to the escape pod, bit his lip and
them froze when he heard a familiar voice saying, “Are you stupid or
something, Human? Back off and let us handle is, alright?”

Austin weakly opened his eyes to a bright blurry room filled with
foreign technology. The lights were bright while, which was
complimented by the white walls, ceiling, floor and pretty much
everything else in the room. There was a white pad stuck to his
chocolate skin which was monitoring his heartbeat on the machine’s
screen next to his right. It made an irritating beep every second or so
which only furthered Austin’s throbbing head ache. The