7… Never Try to Ride a Sandworm

I arrived at Oasis not long after I left. It took about five minutes. I got an echo message from the person I was set to meet. "I apologize for the secrecy, but i'm just going to load our rendezvous point to your echo. I'll be there, and remember: alone." Her accent was amazing. I loved it. As I walked through town I noticed that everyone was dead. Then I noticed one man all alone standing behind a counter. "Hello there!" He waved at me, so I waved to him. I don't know why, but he was kind of scary. As I walked past, he leaned over the counter and grabbed my arm. "Listen, If you find a pirate lady by the name of Scarlett, beat the living sand out of her!" I pulled my arm away and nodded.

I began to walk across the sand, and something swiveled underground. It popped its head out, and I ended up right on top of it. I didn't move. I froze and didn't touch it. I feared it, which was probably the wrong choice. It began to slide across the sand, and I was stuck along for the ride. It went over a few rocks and almost fell off a cliff, but I kept hold and didn't scream. When it finally dove back into the sand, I fell face first into the grains, but I just flung my head up and looked around. It was gone. I sighed in relief.

I looked at my echo. That thing had put me almost right on top of the rendezvous point! I looked over my shoulder. The thing was a sandworm, and it waved its tail at me. I waved back. It swam away through the sand. Was I just helped by a wild animal? On Pandora? I thought about it. I shook it away and stood. I was covered in sand, but I was too amazed and confused to care.

I walked to the cave, but was stopped by a warning. "You are in an unsafe zone. Please return to a safe area." I stepped back. The red dots disappeared from my back and I relaxed. I looked at the cave. Someone popped their head out and held up their arm. I did the same and lit it up. She pulled a switch and the towers deactivated. I ran to the cave, and as soon as I got there, the towers reactivated.

The woman bowed. The hook on her hand looked oversized and very high tech for being Pandorian, but it might not have been made here. Her peg leg looked equally high tech, and the bottom looked like a boot, but more sized for a mouse's foot.. She had flipped red hair and her robotic eye looked pretty epic. Her ear and lip were pierced, and rings hung from them. Her clothes were bland compared to her face.

"You're the gold Siren." She held out her hand. "I'm not exactly on good terms with Miss. Blue" I took her hand, and instead of shaking it, which I had expected, she pulled me deeper into the cave. "I mean, she changes so much about herself in so little time. You've gotta be careful with people like that." We came to a door. "Uh, my name is Alice." A man stood in front of it. He handed the woman a hat covered in piercings and she put it on her head. "Thanks for telling me." She waved at him and he pulled the door open. She grabbed a gun from him as we walked through the door and strapped it to her hip.

"Welcome to our little hideout. This is where we've been since we betrayed your little group. I brought you here so I could apologize and, um, ask of you another favor." I let go of her hand. I looked at her in astonishment. "You tried to kill them? How are you not dead? I saw how they fight! You must be really good! Respect to you!" She smiled. "Well, thank you. I may have caught them off guard, though. And they did kill my pet. Poor Roscoe. It was sort of payback for them. Hey, we laugh about it now, at least." She gestured towards the other pirates. They went on with their work. "Scarlett." I looked away from the crew, and back at her. "What?" I asked. She smiled and laughed. "My name is Captain Scarlett."

I put my hands to my mouth. "Oh! I'm supposed to beat the living sands out of you, and you seem so cool!" We laughed. "Are you going to? I mean, you are my special guest. Who did you get these orders from?" I put my shoulder on the wall. "Course not! I got them from some crazy hallucinating guy in Oasis." Scarlett put her hook on a chair and leaned on it. "Oh, Shade. He's not totally nuts, if, you know, you don't mind him talking to himself as if the people there are still alive."