Revived, the team floated through the corridor. They made their way along miles and miles of passageway, the alien voice only ringing out once.
"Yes, just keep coming, my prey," it said. Slippy nearly passed out. Falco immediately flicked his head around, looking for the source.
Further along the way to the cockpit, the presumed site of the invader, the team stopped to eat and drink before they continued on the way.
And so they continued. Very little was said, and Slippy barely avoided fainting four times.
Finally, they reached the cockpit hatch. Fox moved to the scanner, swiped his card, and pressed a thumb onto the DNA pad. Nothing happened. He repeated the process. Still no response. He tried it once more. Still, the door stood, sealed.
Borrowing Falco's knife, Slippy popped loose the front panel, containing the scanner and DNA pad. The circuit boards were missing.
"Shit!" exclaimed Falco, and Slippy proceeded to search the floor and storage compartments nearby for the missing circuitry. He found nothing. Then, out of curiosity, Fox gazed into the porthole.
Inside the cockpit, there were about ten techs, all secured to the front console with some sort of green elastic-looking substance.
"Let me see!" commanded the toad. He screamed as soon as he looked. At least two of the techs were dead, massive, jagged holes in their throats, blood slowly seeping out of the wounds and dripping through the air. Fox then turned away from him and back at the window. Then, he saw it.
The thing was about seven feet tall, blue-skinned, with a wedge-shaped snout and two antennae. All over it, in patches, or just seemingly protruding from nowhere, were green tendrils, and a mass of tentacles sprouted from its back. It moved, just its movements threatening and intent, toward one of the techs. It opened its mouth, revealing a set of huge curved fangs. Some vile tongue-like appendage slid out of its mouth, and it floated down towards the screaming tech.
The thing sank its fangs into the helpless rabbit's throat. It made a sound of pleasure, as if it was eating something delicious. When it was finished, the tech was stone dead, drops of some yellow-green substance mixing with blood dripping from the fangs. Slippy fainted.
"My god! It's a fuckin' vampire!" shouted Falco. The thing was turned around, cleaning up the last bits of blood left behind, revealing the disgusting knot of tendril-covered flesh from which the tentacles sprouted.
"This is serious. We may have a real problem on our hands," stated Peppy.
"May??" shouted the avian, "That thing would kill us like fukcin' ants!"
"Yeah, Falco's right. This isn't going to be easy."
"What? 'Not easy??' We're talking impossible. Did you see what that thing did?" Falco shot back. Fox winced and put his hand on his throat. Slippy came to behind them.
"So…so wh-what're we gonna do??" the toad eagerly questioned.
The others could think of absolutely nothing to say. Falco just narrowed his eyes, and Peppy looked back through the window in disbelief.