Vassa awoke suddenly. She then began hacking up a lung.

It took a little bit, but once her coughing fit wasn't as bad, she looked around.

It was pitch black, and she felt like she was sitting on cold, hard metal. The room was so dark she couldn't see the walls even with her tail flame, making the room feel almost as if it stretched on forever. It did not, of course.

As she attempted to walk over to where a wall might be, she heard a voice.

"Hey, hey, Vassa." The voice told her. "Stop, sit back down. You haven't been transported before, so the process probably took a bit of a toll on your body. It'll get better the more you do it, though."

Vassa was surprised, but laughed a little and flopped back down on the ground. "You startled me, Kaleek."

The lights then suddenly turned on, flooding the room with a brilliant white light. Vassa felt as if she was blinded, having gotten used to the darkness.

Once her eyes had adjusted, she looked around the bright room.

There was... nobody there?

"...Kaleek?" Vassa asked, now slightly worried. "Kaleek?"

...

No response.

"Kaleek?!" She yelled, now worried. She swore she'd heard his voice but couldn't see him.

...

No response again.

Vassa was about to yell his name again, but out of nowhere he reappeared and started laughing.

"Ha... ha... oh boy the look on your face!" Kaleek said before laughing again, his grey-furred chest rising and falling.

Vassa got pretty annoyed, a common trait amongst charmeleons, generally teens, like herself had. "Oh shut up! You really had me worried there you prick!"

Kaleek slowly stopped laughing. "Heh, sorry about that."

"Sorry for yelling," Vassa apologized back. "But now isn't really the time for jokes. Y'know, with the end of my world and everything I know happening right now."

"Yeah..." Kaleek replied. "Sorry. I still thought that was very funny, though."

"Of course you did."

Just as Kaleek was about to respond, a voice came over some kind of loudspeaker.

"Hey, travelers." The loudspeaker voice, different from simply 'the voice' at the beginning of the chapter, said. "We picked up your signal and picked you up, as you can probably tell. Right in time, too, if we'd been a second later you'd have been blown to smithereens. We'll come and show you around the ship in just a minute."

Then there was a short, sharp click and the voice stopped.

Now that she'd been given a little bit, Vassa began to think. Jeez. She thought. Everything. Just... gone. Like that. Everyone I've loved or cared about is dead. Every artificial monument I've visited or wanted to visit is gone.

As she continued, a door in the room opened.

On the other side of the door stood yet another species of alien that Vassa had never seen or heard of before.

It looked like some kind of bird, bipedal, and with red and beige feathers. Their feet were surrounded with thick yellow feathers as well. They were relatively skinny, but not as skinny as Kaleek, and had a red face with a thin v-shape above their yellow eyes. Their hands were brown and claw-like as well.

"There you are-" The alien looked surprised to see me. "...I see you've brought a primitive guest from that there dying moon."

Kaleek nodded. "Her name's Vassa, and I'm Kaleek. Her species gets angry pretty easily so I wouldn't call her 'primitive' in her face."

The alien nodded slowly as well, before turning to leave. "Alright then. Come, I'll show you around."

So the two followed this alien, who was actually called a 'Blaziken', but Vassa had no idea of this yet. Fortunately for her, she was about to find that out.

"Who are they?" Vassa whispered to Kaleek as they were led down the hallway.

Kaleek rolled his eyes in an exaggerated way. "That's a Blaziken, for your information."

Just then, the Blaziken stopped, before pointing to a door. "That's the crew quarters. Don't go in there, it says crew quarters, and you aren't crew. There are hitchhiking quarters, though." They said before pointing to a door on the opposite side. The 'Hitchhiking' part was underlined several times in black permanent marker.

If I continue on like this it'll take forever, so I'll just summarize it all.

The Blaziken led the two across the ship, showing them the showers, the canteen, the bridge, and many other rooms. Most of them were, unfortunately, off-limits to the two. It's not really like they would want to visit those rooms anyway since most were boring-sounding.

Vassa and Kaleek then made their way all the way back to the hitchhiking quarters. Kaleel wasn't very tired and honestly was quite relieved to not have to deal with the heat of Rafad any longer.

Vassa, however, continued dwelling on Rafad as she went to the bunk bed Kaleek was on. Since he had chosen the top, she took the bottom bunk and fell asleep. Consciousness soon slipped away from her for the second time that day, and she began to dream.

"Surprise!" Several of Vassa's relatives shouted as she walked through the door to her house.

That day was her 10th birthday, a Thursday. Coincidentally the same day that terrible, stupid disaster occurred on Rafad 5 years later.

She was... well, surprised, but was feeling very happy for herself.

Her father walked up to her and lifted her up to hug her. "My girl's ten years old! You're 10 now, Vassa!"

Vassa laughed and kissed her father on the end of his snout.

He put her down, and Vassa ran over to her younger brother and their cousins. They began playing several child games, such as tag or hide-and-seek.

Soon after, she was sitting down at the end of a long wooden table, with her family and relatives sitting on the sides and opposite end of the table. There was the equivalent of a cake with wax candles in front of her.

They began singing a birthday song, coincidentally the same one humans sing to their children on their birthday. When they had finished Vassa attempted to blow out the candles, but accidentally breathed fire and made the candles burn hotter.

She only just became a charmeleon and was having trouble with this. However, she just laughed it off and blew again, this time correctly, and blew out the candles.