Disclaimer:
I do not own Planet of the Apes or Cat Planet Cuties (aka Asobi ni Iku yo!), or any of the characters contained herein. They all belong to 20th Century Fox, Media Factory and Funimation.
Summary:
Blown off course and lost amidst the stars, test pilot Kio Kakazu crash lands on a terrifying world. A world whose feline rulers intend to make him their plaything. A world of hidden danger and unexpected beauty. He has come to the Planet of the Cats. Rated PG-13 for Action Adventure and Romantic Comedy, plus more than a little Sexual Innuendo.
"T-minus twenty minutes and counting..."
Kio nodded, only half paying attention to the words. He tried instead to focus on his breathing. In and out, in and out. It didn't help, his heartbeat was still racing, and his hands felt clammy. He wished he could take off his gloves and wipe them against his pants, but alas, there was no time for that now.
Plus, they were currently sealed to his suit's sleeves. The whole outfit was designed to be vacuum sealed as soon as he closed his faceplate. It was the very latest design come up by the program's engineers, so lightweight it almost felt like he was wearing nothing at all, yet it was fitted with all the latest features, including a heart rate monitor, personal temperature control, and even its own limited oxygen supply.
And of course, thankfully came in his size and a most flattering shade of gray.
For Kio Kakazu was a boy still just on the threshold of adulthood, no more than seventeen or so. Although an average height for his age, he still stood just a little shorter than most adults. However, he was blessed with a remarkably fit body still being grown into. He wasn't quite muscular or broad-shouldered, but there was a definite lining of muscles along his limbs from good exercise, and not even an ounce of fat. His features, but contrast, were remarkably soft and gentle, almost feminine, touched by a kindness evident in his wide eyes and his easy smile. His brownish hair was cut short to keep out of his face.
Hardly the face of some great astronaut, he thought to himself ruefully.
"Kakazu? Are you there?"
The voice came out of nowhere, startling him out of his reverie. Idly, Kio flipped the switch by his arm and nodded. "Reading you loud and clear control. Is something up?"
"Just making sure you're ready for this."
Well gee, he thought, I'm dressed up in an ungodly amount of plastic and spandex, strapped to a chair on an experimental space shuttle about to be launched into deep space. What could possibly go wrong?
"I've got some butterflies in my stomach," he admitted over the comm. "I think I'll be fine though."
"Hang in there," the technician said. "We're completing final checks, we should launch in... less than ten minutes."
"Roger," Kio replied. He flicked the intercomm of on his end, leaning his head back against the headrest of his seat, and took another deep breath. It did nothing to settle his nerves, which were rapidly becoming badly frayed. More than anything else, he just wanted to get this over with.
It barely even occurred to him that he was going to be a part of history in the making. No manned shuttle launched by Earth had ever travelled this far. This was an event on par with Neil Armstrong landing on the moon, and yet here he was wondering how long it would be until the mission was done and he could go home and fade into quiet obscurity. He still wasn't even one hundred percent certain why he, amongst countless other better qualified – and older, more experienced - applicants, had been chosen. He wasn't even a proper astronaut until they trained him. He had a little military experience dealing with the transport of nuclear weapons, but that didn't qualify him to work in outer space.
And yet, the program was quite insistent. His connections, experience, age, and unique physical make-up was exactly what they were looking for in regards to this project. And they had made quite the rather generous offer in order to get him to sign on the dotted line. He'd reluctantly agreed, but now all he wanted to do was go home and play with his pet cat Dara.
Oh well, no time to worry about that now, he mused. They were going over the final checks.
"Go for launch," he reported succinctly, giving a thumbs up and snapping his faceplate down. And then immediately grabbing the armrests of his seat and holding on for dear life.
"Seven... six... five... four... three... two... one... ignition...!"
The whole shuttle began to vibrate violently, and Kio tightened his grip on the armrests until his knuckles went white. The experimental shuttle slowly but steadily began to break free of gravity's embrace and climbed skywards, trailing fire and smoke in its wake.
"And we have lift-off!"
As Kio climbed higher into the sky, the g-force felt impossibly strong, mitigated only a little as it was by his suit and the cabin of the shuttle. However, once he cleared the atmosphere, it abruptly ceased, vanishing altogether. The light faded from his viewscreen, leaving only a star-filled horizon of inky black. Outer space. The final frontier.
Kio breathed a sigh of relief, relaxing in his seat, and began checking the systems of the shuttle to ensure everything was functioning properly.
"Control, do you read me?"
"Loud and clear, Kakazu."
"Well preliminary reports are all coming in green," he said eyeing the consoles and flicking switches. "Getting something a bit odd on long-range though, confirm?"
"Confirmed, it's nothing. Just some stray meteorites. They shouldn't pass anywhere near you."
"Roger, control. Over and o-"
The shuttle shook violent, and alarms blared to life. Bright red replaced the tranquil green of many screens, as warnings flashed over every surface.
"What the hell was that?" Kio asked, squirming in his seat, trying to see. "Control, what the hell is going on? My sensors are out, I'm flying blind up here!"
"The meteor swarm is off-course. You're right in their flight path. Alter your bearing, zero-six-seven...!"
Whatever else he'd wanted to say was cut off as a fresh rocking hit Kio's shuttle, sending him tumbling out of control. Although he was in a zero-gravity environment, his eyes couldn't stay focused on the horizon outside the view screen with it spinning wildly in all directions. Fighting back a wave of nausea, he tried to look down at his controls and focus on what to do in an emergency situation. In this situation, there was really only one option.
Ejection.
"Abort! Abort! KAKAZU!"
His fist came smashing down on the glass covering, and he yanked on the emergency launch. The escape pod jettisoned seconds before the main shuttle erupted into a ball of flame. Meteorites slammed right through it with such speed and ferocity they ripped the entire vessel to pieces. When they hit the fuel tanks in the engines, the whole thing erupted. The blast sent the escape pod spinning out of control, and Kio winced as the gravity pummeled him in his seat. Alarms and red lights flashed all around him, but he couldn't see properly what they were trying to tell him. Voices continued to scream in his ears but they faded to a dull cacophony of sound, impossible to make out.
Which may have been for the best, as they were warning the coolant system had been ruptured. A spray of liquid nitrogen washed over the cockpit, coating Kio in his seat as he continued to spiral out of control. Within seconds he was coated in a layer of fine ice, perfectly preserved. His suit tried to compensate, but the internal heating was badly shaken up, and could only compensate by putting him in suspended animation. Various drugs were injected into his system, slowing his heart rate and preserving his higher consciousness, letting him drift off into a dreamless sleep. His last thoughts were of his home.
A home he would never see again.
For a small eternity the helpless craft drifted through the darkness of space, floating helplessly at the mercy of the void. A year, a decade, a century. Time simply passed in the blink of an eye for the lone occupant of the pod. The computer, equally damaged by the accident that had thrown it off-course, could not calculate how long it would be until its fortune would change.
As it would happen, it may have been doomed to float through space for the remainder of eternity, had Fate not intervened.
A passing comet's wake caught the small pod in its gravitational pull, drawing it off-course and towards a nearby blue and green planet. This proved sufficient for the gravity of the astronomical object to draw the spacecraft down towards it. Flames flickered along the hull as it sped through the atmosphere towards an island in the eastern region of the globe, before finally splashing down on a beach at the very edge between land and sea.
Thankfully, the crash landing left no damage that hadn't already occurred. The pod's designers and engineers had done their job well. Its occupant continued to sleep peacefully within as the gentle rocking of the waves lapped against its hull. However, while undamaged by its crash, the pod had begun its boot up sequence prematurely, and the air began to thaw around the pilot. Suspended animation came to an end, as the monitors lit up, beeping a steady rhythm as the pilot's heart rate steadily rose back to normal.
After so long asleep, Kio finally opened his eyes, awake once more...
Roused by the crashing of the waves against the beach, Kio blinked and sat up slowly, accidently bumping his head on the low ceiling of the pod. For a moment, the pain blinded him, and he wanted nothing more than to simply curl up and fall back asleep. As it was, it passed quickly, and he forced his eyes to open, gazing out at the bright light beyond the view screen.
He'd landed.
It sort of looked like Earth, but the sun overhead was huge, and tinted a warm reddish color. Fortunately, the same could not be said of the air. One of the working consoles reported it was about seventy-five percent nitrogen, nineteen percent oxygen, less than a fraction of a percent carbon dioxide, and small amounts of other gases. Breathable, to human life in any case. It even looked a little cleaner than it would have been back home. Without further waiting he reached up and tugged off his helmet, disconnecting it from the rest of his suit and tossing it aside, sucking in a lungful of air greedily.
Gravity was almost Earth-norm as well, maybe about point one in difference. Either way, he barely noticed as he climbed out of pod and surveyed the region. He did notice the heat though. It wasn't quite sweltering, but it was distinctly uncomfortable. Thankfully his suit would help to keep his body temperature regulated.
He'd landed on some sort of coastal region. Behind his ship was the crash of the waves, while in front of him was a barren wasteland, devoid of life. It looked craggier and hillier further inland.
Oh man, Kio thought. This wasn't part of the mission. I gotta radio for help.
He flipped some switches and adjusted the frequency.
"Control? Do you read me? This is test pilot Kio Kakazu, reporting in. Please respond."
He barely got static, and not very good static at that. Angrily he smacked the console. It sputtered weakly once then died down completely. Even the clocks were broken, it was impossible to tell what date it was. Or even what time, though given the location of the sun he'd guessed late afternoon or so. Either way, he was completely on his own.
"Great," he muttered.
Fortunately the survival kit had survived intact. Prying it out of its compartment he went through his supplies to see what he had. Very little, unfortunately, but enough. Kio couldn't stay here, he needed to find sustenance. So he gathered up everything he could use, stuffed in into a knapsack, and trekked off in a randomly chosen direction. But no matter how far he walked, which way he went, he saw nothing but an empty wasteland of sand, rock, and dirt. No animals, no plants, no signs of civilization.
Finally, he collapsed, unable to go any further. Falling to his knees in the sand, Kio rolled onto his back and sighed up at the early evening sky, breathing out slowly. Every single part of him ached, and his vision felt blurry. A shape crouched over him, partially obscuring the bright light. A very curvy blob of darkness.
"Are you alright?"
A voice like birdsong helped clear some of the fog, bringing everything back into sharp focus. Including the figure crouched over Kio. A girl, not much older than he was, with the most breath-takingly beautiful body one could possibly hope for. She stood perhaps half a foot taller than Kio, with an abundance of curvy hips and full breasts, put enticingly on display by the skintight red and white suit she was wearing. The design bore some similarities to Kio's flight suit, but it looked much more streamlined, as well as far tighter. It left absolutely nothing to the imagination. Descending down from atop of her head was long, lovely waves of copper-highlighted reddish hair. She had a face like an angel, sweet and innocent, with the most unbelievably bright ruby eyes and a beautiful smile.
And... furry triangular cat ears atop of her head.
Kio blinked in confusion at that last one. Something wasn't quite adding up in his brain. He shook his head in an effort to clear the cobwebs away, but when he looked again, they were still there. And to add to his confusion, a long furry tail the same color as her hair had peeked out from behind her back as well. He also noticed, for the first time, a great big bell hanging from around her slender throat.
"What's your name?" she asked sweetly.
"Kio..." he managed to rasp out. "My name is Kio."
"You know you really should have said something if you were going to drop by," she said, clasping her hands in front of herself and dipping into a demure bow.
"Welcome to Catia, Kio."
Authors Notes:
As always, please leave a review if you enjoyed.
This was never intended to be a serious, epic story, just something silly put together to amuse myself more than anything else. Expect silliness and camp galore in the chapters to come.
Xenokurisu deserves all the credit for the truly stunning cover art, go check them out on Deviantart.