Chapter 13
On our way to Wyterra, Maja looked at me with puppy dog eyes and tried to keep coaxing me to touch her boobs. I smiled at that and looked her in the eyes despite her trying to get me to look down at her chest. "I appreciate that you want me to touch your chest, Maja, I really do, but I'm just not comfortable to do that yet, sorry," I said to her honestly, Maja smiling at me and nodding her head.
"You're such a gentleman, Rallen. And so you know, that was a test," Maja smirked at me, which I chuckled warmly at.
"Good to know I passed," I smiled back as we finally touched down on Wyterra and Jeena looked at us with a smile on her face.
"Okay, lovebirds, let's go find Radeese and ask if he found anything out about the shards," Jeena said, our group moving out to Haven Village and entering Radeese's house, where we saw he had the shard on his desk and it glowed just as brightly as the one we had.
"Oh, I see you have returned from Kogoeria. Did you meet with Kamtoga?" Radeese asked us with a smile.
"Yes, we did. And we actually found the shard there as well. Have you uncovered anything about the shards in the meantime?" Jeena asked.
"Indeed I have. There are 5 shards total, one on each planet minus Wyterra, all of them sealed in ruins. Only by reuniting all 5 shards in a special place on Wyterra will the Beast King finally wake," Radeese explained. "Do you have an idea of where to go next?"
"Well, Kamtoga suggested Menehat, so why not there?" Maja smiled.
"In that case, here are the coordinates you'll need... I also have an expansion cube you can use for your machine on the ship. You'll need all the Spectrobes you can find if you wish to face the stronger Krawl on the other planets," Radeese smiled.
"Thanks, Radeese. We'll be back with shard number 3 in no time!" I smiled at him as we went back to the ship and Jeena got to work on installing the expansion cube, her managing to do so in less than 30 seconds.
"Now we have 5 more rooms to hold Spectrobes in and we can change the room type to better suit certain Spectrobes," Jeena said with happily.
"Nice job, Jeena. Now let's head off to Menehat," I smiled, me rushing to the controls before Jeena stopped me.
"Wait, I want to try contacting Neal with these transmission coordinates Kamtoga provided. Maybe we can have him help us find out where the shard is located," Jeena suggested.
"Good idea. More brains means more firepower and less time spent. And the less time spent means that we can help keep Wyterra alive longer," Maja said as Jeena input the coordinates and she looked confused.
"Huh... I'm getting a strange signal... it sounds like a voice, but I can't really tell... here, I'll turn up the volume," Jeena said as she did so and we heard a voice on the other end. That sounded like he was in distress.
"Heeeelllp... heeeaallllp... Somebody?... Pleaheeheeaasse..." the message said, Maja looking concerned by it and her strapping herself in immediately.
"No time to waste standing around! If that was Neal, he sounded like he was in a big heap of trouble! Let's get going, guys!" Maja said.
"Agreed. No time to waste, let's go rescue him," I said as I also got strapped in as Jeena started the cruiser, us jetting off into space and towards the coordinates for Menehat, us gawking at the size of the planet as well as the vast amount of nothing on the planet. It was nothing but desert all over! We eventually landed in a spot close to the specific coordinates, which was right outside of a gigantic crater that Maja looked a bit tense about.
"Hmm..." Maja frowned as she looked at the crater before gasping.
"What is it, hon?" I asked her.
"I sense... a terrible power within this crater... a Krawl... one much larger and more aggressive than all of the other Krawl we'd ever fought before... it's not dead, nor alive... it's in some kind of comatose state within this crater," Maja said, her words making me and Jeena look concerned.
"If Krux very well wanted to, he could wake that monster up and make this planet become even more lifeless than it already is! Let's hurry and find the ruins. Maja, you stay here and stand guard for a bit. I have a feeling that Krux may contact you again, or even worse, may try to wake up this giant Krawl. You think you can try to stop Krux if he tries to make the Krawl wake up?" I asked her.
"I'll do it on one condition, Rallen," Maja smiled.
"What is it?" I asked her.
"Once we're done on Menehat, you fondle my chest the whole trip back to Wyterra," Maja said, me becoming a bit dumbfounded by that, but blushing as I nodded.
"O-Okay, we can do that," I smiled at her nervously, Jeena smirking at my bashfulness, which only made me more embarrassed. We then walked off and Jeena started to talk to me once out of earshot.
"Real smooth, Rallen. She's practically throwing herself onto you at this point. Maybe Krawl have urges like other creatures and humans do?" Jeena smiled at me, which only added onto my embarrassment.
"W-Well... it's kind of awkward that she's showing this much sexual tension towards me... I mean, she tried to kill us in the past and now she's a completely different person, now developing a sexual interest in me... it's a bit embarrassing for me to admit this, but I do like her... but I don't know what could happen if we went ahead and did any kind of regular sex, which I fear may end up happening in the end," I admitted to Jeena.
"What better bit of experimentation could you ask for, though? After all, if she has free will from being a Krawl, imagine a kid of you two running about," Jeena said, me throwing sand at her shirt in response to that.
"A bit early to be talking about that, Jeena," I frowned at her.
"You're paying for my laundry when we get back home," Jeena batted back as we saw a large work site ahead of us. And when we entered, we were stopped by three different people, all of them looking ten times of shady.
"Oi! We don't like no outsiders! You lot seem shady," the little one of the group said.
"It looks to be the other way around. You lot seem even shadier than Cyrus back home in Nanairo," I said to them.
"Ey! Don't say we're da shady ones!" the littlest one said.
"Well, he's kinda right, Zig," the taller, skinnier one said.
"Shaddup, Beht! If I says they's shady, then thems is shady! Just stay outta our way! We're gonna strike it rich!" the little guy said, him being Zig.
"Riches? We don't care about that. Our paycheck is plenty good enough where we work anyways. Besides, we're looking for a guy named Neal. You seen anyone other than us come through here?" Jeena asked.
"Nope, not seen a single outsider 'ere for a while. If youse wanna learn more, ask da udder woikers," Zig said again.
"We need to git back to work soon, Zig. We don't wanna be on drill cleaning duty again," the big one said.
"Oh crap! Yer right, Gorrik! Let's scat and find dat loot!" Zig said again as he and the trio rushed out of the place and towards the north.
"What was that all about?" I asked Jeena.
"No clue. We should ask around a bit to see where Neal went off to," Jeena said. We then proceeded to ask the various workers, some of them saying that they had seen an explorer named Neal and that he had disappeared to an area to the north called the Great Desert. But we couldn't gain access to it unless we got clearance from their boss, Dyrus.
"You think that this Dyrus is just as shady as Cyrus back in Nanairo?" I asked Jeena outside his building.
"No clue," she said as we approached him and he looked confused at our presence.
"Huh? Who are you and what are ya doing here?" he asked.
"Well, we wanted to know if we could possibly have clearance to the desert," I asked him politely.
"And why would I do that? Wait... yer here to steal my secrets, ain't ya?! Try to take my flow of cash!" Dyrus exclaimed, Jeena holding me off as she explained the situation.
"No, we don't want any kind of money ventures. We want clearance because we're searching for someone that sent a distress signal in the desert," Jeena said.
"Huh? Lookin' for someone? Why didn't ya say so in the first place? Go ahead, you've got my permission. Give this paper to the gatekeeper. He'll let ya through. Just don't meddle in my business and I won't meddle in yours, got it?" Dyrus asked.
"Understood," I said to him as we then went out of the place and to the gatekeeper, him opening the gate upon seeing the paper in my hands.
"Be careful out there, newbies. The Great Desert doesn't get its name for being a small oasis. It's the largest expanse of pure sand and rock near this base of operations," the guard stepping aside as we proceeded into the desert.
"Time to find Neal... but where to start searching?" I asked, Jeena noticing that the Spectrobes were looking to be sniffing the ground for something. They then started to run off, me smiling as they must've caught onto Neal's scent. "Let's follow Paga and Hananomi, Jeena. They look to be leading us to Neal," I smiled.