"So.....this is everything you brought back?" the strange creature asked the Katri. The Collector was...strange. She had no true body, only a light blue mist in the shape of a body, a deep blue hooded cloak with a pair of glowing icy blue eyes beneath the hood, and a clear orb with a light inside of it floating before her. All of these aspects were the Collector, Ma'Chala."Every sort of creature you ordered, boss," Kami said a bit irritably with sarcasm on 'boss'. The weird floating clothed blob always did that to her, and she always brought back everything the ethereal had asked! "Oviraptor, Velociraptor, Compsognathus, pterasaurs, everything. Stop griping at me or I'll up and quit and you can go find your own friggin' poo-factories. Got it?"
Ma'Chala narrowed her eyes at the Katri in a dangerous-looking manner. Kami simply glared back, showing a bit of fangs.
"Where's my pay, you floating blob?" she demanded irritably, her tail lashing behind her. "You will get your pay when this series of missions is complete, not before then; but I assure you that your pay will not be late unlike some of the shipments you've brought me. Just be glad I'm even paying you at all with the poor service you've given me, bounty hunter. Several times have you failed to deliver what I asked for and often times late," Ma'Chala reamed loftilly, all the while giving her employee the 'evil eye'.
"Hey, it's not my fault that stupid hunk of junk you gave me doesn't function properly a lot of the time. It throws me into the wrong times occasionally and guzzles the fuel for it like no other thing! Not to mention you give me all that crap to look for and who knows what you do with those pests. The reason your "shipments" are often late is because that stupid time machine malfunctions and I get stranded. How do you expect me to get to and fro with a broken ship, huh!? What the hell DO you do with those critters, anyway?"
"It is none of your business what I do with my creatures in my collection, and if you ask again I will show you what I do with them by adding you to my collection. As for the time machine, if you have so many gripes about it I can always take it back and give you gold instead. It is, after all, part of your pay."
At this Kamikaze shut her mouth. No way would she want to lose her ability to travel back and forth over the temporal plane! Nor did she want to be put into the ethereal's collection. "Very well.........What is my next mission?"
Ma'Chala nodded in satisfaction seeing that the Katri's attitude towards her job had changed drastically at the mentions of the punishments for her complaints. "I wish for you to retrieve me three sorts of creatures from the world of Pern. A tunnelsnake, a wherry, and a firelizard. Stay away from the world's dragons, however. Not only are they too big for you to carry, but they are vicious and their riders follow suit."
Once the Katri had left the ethereal moved into her hallway with enclosures on either side, past all the different animals she had collected over the years, admiring them. Some had never been seen in the universe before, she had created them herself by genetically engineering. THAT is what she did with the creatures mostly, as did many of her kind. Attempt to create the perfect creature. So far none had succeded...they'd created the elementals and many others...but so far no 'perfect' creature.
She had lied, Ma'Chala knew that the dragons of Pern wouldn't actually be dangerous to Kamikaze....they might be...helpful to the Katri, but harmful to the ethereal. She had plans for the cheetah/falcon creature. After all, immortals were useful. If she had had a face she would have smirked, but all that was seen of a change in expression was a malicious glimmer in the creature's glowing eyes.
Kamikaze boarded the time machine and gave a strong swift kick to a metal wall. That ethereal absolutely PO'd her! She did her job, what was that floating blob's problem!? It wasn't like she was a deadbeat. How could she be expected to do a job with inadequate equipment. Angrilly, she jerked the eightball she'd tied to an air nozzle off and through it across the cockpit. It slammed into a door leading to the back with a loud BANG and left a dent in the door. Moodily she flopped down into the pilot's seat and got the machine online. She set the coordinates and time to take her to Pern then took off from the bay and entered the time portal the machine opened.The GXT-950 came out above the planet Pern. From up in space the place looked so much like Earth, but it certainly wasn't. A fairly small blue planet swirled with white and dotted with green where land and plants grew. It was rather pretty, actually, but Kami wasn't in the mood to enjoy the scenery. Then again...when was she? She sent the GXT-950 into descent.....a little too quickly. The time machine was about halfway down to the surface of the planet when the red 'WARNING' message flashed on the ship's status screen.
"D*MN!" the Katri cursed, and began to mess with the controls trying to remember how to slow the descent. She'd never actually had to use this procedure since training....and had forgotten it. "Was it this button...orrrr.........DARN IT!" Her temper finally completely blew and she slammed both fists down onto the control buttons. The ship slowed and uprighted. She breathed a momentarily sigh of relief--and then the ship shuttered with a minor explosion and down down down it went at a far greater rate then it had gone before to crash into a dirt area of the planet.
Kamikaze got up and brushed herself off once the ship had crashed to ground, and luckily had not blown up. She pressed the button to open the airlock door to the outside, but it only opened part way. With a hiss she banged on it repeatedly, still it didn't budge. Finally she strutted over and shoved the doors apart to exit into the outside world. The GXT-950 was in sorry shape, dented and busted, it would never fly again. This made the Katri hot with anger, of course, she wasn't the most rational creature around. In a huff she moved over to the panel that housed the mechanics for the machine and flung it open, checking to see WHAT EXACTLY it was that had malfunctioned.