There was a small mining planet some ways off from this designated luxury cruise; the planet had been deemed unsuitable due to the excessive mining and desertification; this place was little more than a dumping ground now and perhaps a good place for a crash landing every now and then.

“leeeeetttsss goooooo!!!” A voice bellowed just before their bodies slammed into the ground, raising up a cloud of dust and debris and causing the people on the ground to cover their eyes.

‘This madman is misbehaving again.’ One of the people closest to the crash site dusted off his clothes, approaching the edge of the crater with a look of mild irritation. “I hope you enjoyed yourself.”

“Oh certainly” A voice came from a crater, a pair of glowing red eyes from behind the dust clouds, and a vague outline for a body swayed its body before leaping out, bringing with it a pillar of red dust before landing in front of the slender man in front of him, or perhaps the man only looked slender in comparison to the creature in front of him.

The thing in front of him was tall exceedingly so, its shoulders were broad, and its bronze-like skin was covered in scars. The thing in front of him would have looked quite human, if it wasn’t for the creatures knife-like ears and large tusk-like teeth it had at the lower part of its jaw, as it bore the likeness of a beast.

“How many times have I told you not to slam into the ground like that?” The slender man straightened out his hair, but it always seemed to go back into its original unruly form.

The giant creature laughed, a deep and hearty bellow from the trenches of its soul. One could feel the very air around it vibrating as though it were celebrating with him while he continued to amuse himself. “My apologies, I was too excited.”

The humanoid creature, in spite of its brutish demeanour, spoke quite eloquently; this would often baffle many of the people who would interact with him.

The gentle giant Simon is what they called him. The much leaner man, however, was called Chris and was well known for his intolerance.

The two had a rather strange way of complementing each other as their success rate spoke for themselves: “Lets try not to get the base blown up like the others.”

“That would be quite unfortunate.” The other scientists and guards Whispered amongst themselves, wondering what it was that made their personalities differ from each other so drastically.

The man named Chris had started to walk in the direction of the facility while engaging the giant in some mild conversation. “Did you hear about the other facility being erased?”.

The giant nodded his head slowly before scratching his chin seemingly deep in thought. “I heard a facility was erased but had assumed it was a hyperbole of some form.”.

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The leaner man waved his hand as though to swat away the giant’s doubts without so much as turning around as he continued to walk forward, the giant following behind him closely.

“The facility was actually vapourised; at least that’s how it looks.” The man dug through his pocket, pulling out his communicator and showing what was left of the facility as he studied his reaction.

"Well, what do you think?”

The giant closed its eyes for a bit and took a deep breath before he replied, “I would be able to survive something like this.” His companion shook his head.

“No doubt Simon, but I was wondering how you would handle it.” The giant was about to respond when they got a notification saying a luxury cruise was passing through the sector.

Procedure demanded they should have scared them off; however, it was the super stellar cruise, a ship that often had high-ranking officials of different planets on board.

There was no need to unnaturally aggravate the government and potentially have their actions delayed for another five years due to one cruise ship just happening to pass through the sector.

These were the thoughts that crossed the giant’s mind as he snatched the communicator off his rather brash colleague.

“Why do their personalities differ from how they look?” The guards all talked amongst themselves, watching the much smaller man rain blow on the behemoth-like creature, whom unflinchingly just continued to allow his friend to vent his anger.

They were all aware that the so-called executives could be rather eccentric, and many of the guards had grown used to such behaviour having interacted with many of the executives over the course of their service, most of them having been promoted due to the deaths of the prior guards.

This one-sided assault continued until the cruise ship had left their reach and the smaller man seemed to be getting tired. The giant Simon just gently handed him back the communicator and sighed as his partner stormed off to the facility entrance.

On the cruise ship, a red-eyed boy was staring out the ship’s window as he eyed the desert planet. He couldn’t help but reflect on the fact that he could now leisurely be on a cruise ship like this without worrying about money.

He also thought about the people in his life and what would become of them after he had disappeared; perhaps they had forgotten about him in its entirety. He sighed, thinking about what his so-called best friend must be doing around this point.

“Enjoying the view?” A soothing feminine voice invaded his ears as the doll-like woman strolled into the room, a rather peculiar smile on her countenance as he carefully watched her dust off her clothes.

“Do people actually find that endearing?” He was referring to her plastic-like smile that didn’t seem to have any emotions behind it.

“The perverts do." She brushed aside her hair and took a glance out the window at the desert planet with curiosity.

“My father says this planet is where aliens appeared for the first time.” Zed adjusted the sleeves of his shirt before voicing his thoughts.

“That’s not what the records say.” The doll-like woman giggled at his reply, almost wanting to pat his head.

“Well, there’s no better record than my father. The boy raised an eyebrow, the sentence having peaked his interest as he turned away from the glass, his mind already attempting to micro-analyse her every move, but usual, like an actual doll, she remained an enigma to his scrutiny. “How so?”

She placed a finger to her lips as a genuine smile crept its way to her face. In the dimly lit halls, this only made her appear all the more frightening as she laughed, “He was there after all.”