Hey everyone! Thank you all so much for your detailed reviews! I have taken all of your advice into consideration!

Also, to IluvChips4ever, you got your wish! There is an M rated one-shot of what happened between Alvin and Brittany in the shower, which will be published just minutes after this chapter. So if any of you are curious and don't mind the sexual content, check it out!

But before you do that, make sure you read up on this chapter! I think you guys will like it…

Chapter 11: Plans Change

Brittany's POV

Still covering my eyes, all I could hear were the collective gasps of my family. I lifted a finger just enough to take a peek.

Two pink lines, one only slightly more faded than the other. The test was positive, and I was pregnant.

I felt the eyes of every crew member rest on me, to see how I'd react. I said nothing. I simply covered my mouth from shock, set the test down on the counter next to me, pulled a chair closer to me and sat down.

I stared at the floor for several moments, thinking about all of the ways that my life had just changed. Not all of them for the worst. But a lot of them, I felt.

Alvin finally walked over towards me and wrapped his arms around me in comfort. I acknowledged him simply by grabbing his left forearm with my hand and rubbing it. He planted a kiss on my cheek, and held it there for several seconds.

"Congratulations you two," Simon murmured respectfully.

We looked up at him, smiling thankfully. All of the others nodded.

"I'm so happy for you two!" Eleanor said with a huge smile on her face and a tear in her eye.

"Thanks you guys," Alvin managed so say.

Simon sighed. "Well," he said, "everyone pack up your things. Get ready for takeoff."

"Takeoff?" Alvin said, looking at Simon strangely.

Simon nodded. "We're going home."

"Simon, I'm fine, really!" I assured him. "This isn't going to affect the mission."

Simon ignored me and began washing his hands. "There will be no discussions, just get ready." And with that he headed for the exit to the infirmary.

"Simon, I-"

But I was cut off by Jeanette. "I'll talk to him, you guys stay here."

Jeanette's POV

Simon only seemed to pick up his pace as I began to follow him through the maze of hallways. "Simon!" I called to him, as he only kept walking. I jogged to make up ground and called again, "SIMON!" Still no answer. Finally, I pressed a button which closed the airtight door on the other side of the hallway in Simon's face, forcing him to stop.

"Ugh, Christ!" he shouted in frustration as he finally turned to face me. "What? What is it?"

I stepped closer to him. "Can't we talk about this?"

"There's nothing more to talk about, Jean. I've made up my mind."

"But why? Why do we have to just give up all of that hard work, training and money just because of this?"

He took a deep breath and finally gave me a look like he was opening up to me. "Look it's not just Brit's pregnancy. It's everything. It's everything that NASA never told us about. It's the guns in the cabinet. It's the giant war station just a few miles away that didn't even have any survivors. It's the ugly little turd that crawled into our air shaft."

"Well look," I tried to reason with him, "even if we wanted to take off I'm not sure we could."

"Why not?" he asked, raising an eyebrow at me.

"I haven't finished all of the repairs-"

"Like what?" he interrupted impatiently.

I was a little caught off-guard. "Well... for instance we're still blind on the B and C decks… the spotlight on one of the landing legs is still busted-"

"No no no," he interrupted me again, "that's a bunch of bull shit! We can take off without all that." He turned his back to me and pressed the button to open the door that I had stopped him with.

"I mean yeah we could," I said, getting frustrated. "Do you really think that's a good idea?"

He turned to face me just long enough to say, "look I just wanna get the hell out of here," before walking off again. "And make sure everyone's ready to go ASAP!"

I clenched my fists. He never listened to me. Never. I desperately wanted a punching bag or something to take my frustrations out on.

Theodore's POV

I knew it wasn't likely that Jeanette convince Simon that he was wrong. That almost never worked for any of us.

So, I was taking final inventory in the kitchen. Which was maybe a little pointless seeing as though we were leaving way ahead of schedule, but it gave me a chance to be by myself. That is, until Jeanette found me.

She walked into the kitchen without announcing herself. In fact, she didn't make a sound. So when she suddenly walked beside me while I was counting the packages of powdered eggs, I gasped and jumped. "Oh, it's you," I said in relief. "What's up, Jean?"

"Nothing," she said, shrugging. "Quite a day, huh?"

I nodded, wiping the sweat off my forehead from being startled. "Quite a day," I repeated.

"Do you know if that thing is still Alive?" Jeannie asked, as if I'd know. "In the vents?"

"That's what I heard," I said, being as helpful as I could. "I thought I heard the little bugger scratching around in there a little while ago but I couldn't be sure."

"Strange," she said casually. "How could it be alive still, without Martian air?"

I shook my head. "You're asking the wrong guy. To be perfectly honest, I don't think anyone knows exactly what that thing is capable of." I began to go back to counting, hoping she'd go away.

But suddenly, her tone went from casual to maliced and passive-aggressive. "And you're the one who let him on board," she said, smiling at me with anger in her eyes.

I sighed. "I guess you could say that."

"Theodore," she said, lowering her voice. "When Simon isn't on board, I'm commanding officer of the Caesar."

"Oh… right," I said shrugging passively. "I must have forgotten. Sorry."

That wasn't good enough for her. "Then you must have also forgotten NASA's quarantine laws."

"No, that I didn't forget," I admitted, knowing Jeanette wasn't going to just give this up.

"Oh," she said, "so you just chose to ignore them, then?"

"Look," I said, turning to face her, "what would you have done in my shoes? Just let them sit out there?"

"You really don't get it," she murmured in frustration. "This may come as a shock to you, Theo, but this whole operation is bigger than your personal feelings. If we don't have order, we don't have anything."

"Right," I said, getting annoyed. "I'll keep that in mind next time."

That seemed to be good enough, as she left my sight in disgust. But just before she rounded the corner of the kitchen door, she called, "I've got my eye on you, Theodore. Don't go behind my back again."

I rolled my eyes without looking at her or even acknowledging her. It's a good thing you're not the captain anymore, I thought to myself.

Simon's POV

The whole crew was assembled in the cockpit. The rations were all accounted for. The ship was primed and ready for takeoff, despite everyone's protests. I knew in my heart that I was doing what was right.

"Is everyone strapped in?" I called back behind me.

"Yes," Eleanor responded, apparently speaking for everyone.

"Brittany, inform NASA that we'll be making an early return," I said.

Brittany nodded and began to type into Motherboard unenthusiastically. I could tell she blamed herself for this, even though it wasn't all her fault.

I took a deep breath. There was a part of me that was extremely disappointed at the wasted opportunity of leaving the planet Mars early. But I wasn't going to risk the life or health of my brother's kid just for a mission. Without any more hesitation, I began the launch combinations.

The ship began to rumble and vibrate as the engines began to hum to life. As the motors broke themselves in, I leaned back in my seat, suddenly anxious to be home. As soon as the ship was ready, I fired the boosters.

The ship slowly began to lift off of the dusty red Martian ground. It slowly gained altitude, and I only wish I could have sped it up to get it over with. But just as I was about to lift the Caesar's nose towards the sky, Brittany piped up saying, "Simon, there's movement on the ground!"

"Movement?" I called back to her in confusion. "What kind of movement?"

"Like, something's moving down there!"

I rolled my eyes and put the ship in "hover mode" before spinning around in my chair to see what she was looking at on the motherboard screen. Everyone watched intently, squinting to see what Brit was talking about. The screen was on a feed from an outside camera, pointed towards the surface of the planet.

Suddenly, there it was. It was a pack of about ten or so dirty brown and red creatures, furry and crawling and scrambling around on the ground underneath and a bit to the side of us. We were pretty high up, so I felt safe in hovering above them and observing them for a bit.

But then two of them stood on their hind legs, crouching down and facing each other. We watched in confusion as one of the beasts seemed to step up onto their outstretched paws. By the time we realized what they were doing, it was too late. The two aliens at the base launched their buddy into the air, hurtling directly towards the Caesar. I only had time to spin around in my seat to attempt an evasive maneuver, before a great big thud rocked the ship.

Everyone began to panick. "Where is it?" Eleanor screamed.

Brittany frantically began to flip through the outside camera feeds. "Found it!" she exclaimed.

I turned around to see.

"That's the fuel tank!" Jeanette gasped.

The disgusting furry beast was using its long, razor-sharp claws to climb up the vertical cylinder-shaped fuel tank. Every spot its claws would pierce the tank, a small hole would be poked and a solid stream of rocket fuel would begin to pour out.

"Goddammit," I muttered, watching this thing ravage our ship merely by being attached to it. It looked not much bigger than us, but still terrifying.

The creature stopped climbing when it finally came across the long flexible pipe that was attached to the top of the tank. Every single one of us knew fully well that that pipe led directly to the engines that were currently keeping us above ground.

The alien sniffed the pipe curiously for a few moments, before suddenly grabbing it with one hand.

"No, no, no no!" Alvin begged out loud, as if that thing could hear him through the screen.

We watched as that beast took a flexible aluminum pipe that had been welded to its home on our fuel tank so well that it had survived deep space, and effortlessly ripped it out of its socket.

Gas began to spurt out everywhere out there, coming from both the hose-like pipe and the tank itself erupting like a volcano. The beast was suddenly getting drenched in rocket fuel, especially its face. It let go of the pipe in shock and disgust, attempting to wipe the stuff off of its eyelids with its hands. It let out a loud noise that was like a mix between a screech and a hiss as it lost its footing fell over the edge of the tank, presumably falling all the way to the surface of the red planet.

I knew it was only a matter of time before the engines would give out, so I took action and began the landing procedures. But it was too late.

Just as the landing legs had begun to stretch out, the first engine died. I jerked the stick in the opposite direction, but that actually proved to be an overreaction. The whole ship leaned heavily to one side just as the rest of the engines gave in!

The whole crew screamed as the whole ship began a free fall towards the ground. There was nothing I could do, and that was the scariest thing. The tingling sensation only added to the feeling of helplessness.

The Caesar hit the dusty surface first by just one of its landing legs, snapping it instantly, then colliding violently with an ear-piercing crunch with something that kept us partially upright. Our heads snapped every which way imaginable as we crash landed.

Sirens began to ring out through the whole ship instantly. Although we were all recovering from the shock of the hit, I knew we had to act fast. "Brittany, close all airtight doors!"

Brittany looked ready to throw up again, but she held it in long enough to press the emergency button that sealed off and isolated all oxygen losses. But the sirens still didn't stop until I shut them off manually.

"Jeanette, give me a damage report, stat!" I barked.

She looked at me in confusion with wide eyes, and then as if she just remembered where she was she began to search her station for alerts.

I looked out the cockpit window. To our left, the side we were slightly leaning on, I could definitely see some sort of tall red cliff. We were at about a 30 degree angle, very fortunate that that crash had not been worse.

"It's unable to give me a reading on how much fuel we've lost," Jeanette said. "Landing leg number 3 is toast. There's a ton of hull breaches on that side of the ship, but they've all been contained…" she trailed off. "Can't really give you any more specifics right now. It's a bunch of busted cameras and stuff."

I nodded, knowing how grim the situation was. "Alvin and Jeanette with me," I suddenly said, unbuckling myself and standing as well as I could with the tilt of the floor.

Suddenly, we felt a thud come from outside. We all gasped, clenching the nearest solid object tensely. We felt heavy, scratchy footsteps above us. We heard a menacing hiss. Then, out of nowhere, one of those creatures jumped from the roof above our heads onto the nose of the ship in front of us, just outside the window.

This one was at least twice as big as us, and I so feared the damage it could do to us or our ship. It turned around to face us, and we could see it was carrying a newborn alien in its mouth, not much bigger than the one we had trapped in our vent system.

The giant beast strutted forward towards the window with great confidence, eyeing us down threateningly. I legitimately wondered if this was the end, as it could smash that glass easily if it wanted to.

Instead, it stared at us with what looked like hatred in its eyes. Finally, it pointed to the confused cub in its mouth with one claw. Without waiting from a response from us, it looked up towards the sky and pointed directly at the sun. It then turned its attention back to us with another hateful glare and simply held up one of its sharp claws for us to see.

I got the message clearly. It wanted its baby back. And we had one day to have it ready to be returned to her.

As if wanting to make absolutely sure that this was a life or death deal for us, she took that one claw that she was holding up and pressed it against the window. As we all held our breaths, she began to let it slide casually down, leaving a clear scratch mark as it went, until her paw rested on the Caesar's nose once again.

And with that, she turned and jumped off our nose, away from us and out of our site. Her hopping off of the ship entirely caused the whole thing to rock and creek, and left the rest of us speechless.

Alvin's POV

"We need to check the damage to the ship," Simon insisted as we threw on our Mars suits in a hurry. "We need to see with our own eyes… and pray that the damage is repairable."

I wanted to wait at least a little while until we were sure that that squad of aliens had left us alone, but Simon was probably right that the damage was too urgent.

Brittany had stayed in the cockpit, as usual, watching us on the camera feeds and listening to our conversations through the headset.

"How's the view from in their, Brit?" I said, having finally gotten the whole suit on. "Can you hear us ok?"

"No, Alvin, I can't hear you," she snapped back sarcastically.

"Now's not time, you two," Jeanette interrupted.

Simon was the last one to get his suit all the way on. "Let's hurry this up."

Simon led the way, followed by Jean, and trailed by me, down the ladder to the hatches that led out to Mars' surface. That ladder was made even more difficult by the fact that it was almost upside down with the angle the ship was resting. It made me think back to when I had fallen on my ass as the first Earthling to ever touch real Martian soil.

We exited through the hole on the bottom of the ship one by one, neither of us falling on our asses. The first thing that caught our eye was that although two of the landing legs seemed to be intact, the one we had landed on first had been completely crushed and looked to be in multiple pieces scattered across the desert. Instead, the corner of the ship had propped itself on the giant red cliff that had probably saved our lives.

We walked out of the shade of the ship to get a better look.

"You still getting all this, Brit?" Jeanette spoke into her headset.

"Yeah, I see it."

"So far, it looks like we might be able to throw something together and still get out of here," Simon observed out loud.

But then we got the big picture. A whole side of the Caesar had completely collapsed from the impact of the crash landing. The entire fuel tank had been crunched and its contents had spilled everywhere. And all three of us, as well as the three in the cockpit who were watching, knew deep down that the Caesar was never going to leave the planet Mars.

Eleanor's POV

As instructed, I had placed a cup of water in front of every single member of our family, including the spot where I would sit. Simon waited for me to take my seat, before shocking all of us by taking out his cyanide pill and dropping it into his water cup. The water sizzled as the pill dissolved with a bubbly reaction until it had disappeared, only making the water slightly murky.

We all gasped. "No…" I squeaked out through a broken voice. "This can't be it. This can't be the end."

Simon sighed. "I'm afraid we don't have a choice," he said solemnly.

"There needs to be another way," Brittany spoke up.

"This ship isn't repairable," Jeanette spoke up, agreeing with Simon. "Not with the means that we have. And there are no ships on Earth that have been built to make it this far to rescue us. We're just waiting around to starve to death."

"And that's assuming those Martians randomly decide to leave us alone," Simon added to the hopeless mood.

Jeanette sighed. "Right," she said as she also pulled out her suicide pill and dropped it into her water.

"Alvin," Theodore murmured, turning to his older brother, "help us out here. Tell them they're overreacting."

Alvin stared at him for a few moments as if he wasn't sure what to say.

Tears began to swell up in Theo's eyes. "Tell me it's going to be ok."

Alvin looked at the floor, then reluctantly pulled out his pill. "I'm sorry, Theo," he whispered in a cracked and mournful voice. "This isn't one of those times where everything just turns out ok. Not everything in life can be like that. And I see that now." And with that, he dropped his cyanide pill into the water, watching it dissolve with dread.

And that seemed to be the moment where it became real for the rest of us. At least for me. So many emotions ran through my body as the three of us followed our brothers and sister. Regret, sorrow, anger, fear of death.

"I can't believe I'm going to be ending my life…" Brittany began, just before she burst into an uncontrollable sob. "Just… just before I was going to be a mother."

Alvin's eyes also began to tear up, as did everyone else's. Alvin grabbed the paw of his counterpart lovingly and supportively. "You would've been the greatest mother in the world," Alvin said. "...And an even greater wife."

Brittany stopped crying just long enough to look into Alvin's eyes and to assure herself that he was being genuine.

"We'll do it together," Simon said, taking his cup in one hand. We all did what he did. "On the count of three." We all watched him intently. "One…" Alvin and Brittany locked hands, prompting Theodore to grab onto my hand and squeeze it tight. I also saw Simon take Jeanette's hand. "Two…" we all looked around the table, giving each other one last goodbye in a way. "Th-"

"Wait!" I interrupted. "I have an idea!"

Everyone took a huge sigh of relief, and then looked at me hopefully.

"That war station you guys found, that whole operation… it must have come here by at least one ship, right?"

Simon considered this, then said, "yeah, but we have no idea where it is." Then suddenly his eyes widened.

"There's a ship somewhere on this planet that transported all of those marines down here," I continued in excitement. "We know it has to be here, because the computer clearly said there were no survivors."

"But where?" Jeanette piped up skeptically.

"Who cares?" Theodore said. "We need to find it!"

"And then what?" Jean snapped at him. "That ship is human sized, remember? And the systems are all different and we probably wouldn't be able to pilot the thing anyway."

"And before we even go through any of that," Simon interjected, "we need to return that mother's baby to her and hope that she spares our lives."

We all looked unsure of ourselves. Finally, I broke the silence by saying, "our orders were to only use these suicide pill if there was absolutely no hope of survival. We have hope. It's just a little, but it's there. We can't just give up on ourselves." And with that I picked up my cup and poured it out on the kitchen floor, completely washing away any hope I had of a quick and painless death.

Alvin took one look at Brittany then followed me lead. Then he took Brittany's cup for her and emptied her water on top of his own spill. Theodore enthusiastically emptied his own cup, knowing that this at least meant that he'd live for a little while longer.

Simon and Jeanette knew that at this point there was no going back. Still unsure, they finally emptied their cyanide water onto the floor.

Haha! Gotcha! Ya'll thought I was just gonna end the chipmunks like that?

As always if you enjoyed the chapter, be sure to let me know if a review, and if you had any problems/concerns/advice I'm always open to hearing that too. Don't be shy and let me know what you thought!

Oh and don't forget that there's an M-rated Alvittany one-shot based off of the earlier "shower" chapter that I just dropped as well. If you're interested, give it a read.

Next chapter will be dropping ASAP!