29 days left until arrival at Mars.

What was Mars like? Arachna wondered to herself as she awoke from her nap. Her stomach was full from last night's delicious meal. She wondered to herself if the Yumen planet was dark and desolate or lush and flowing with biological lifeforms. Either way, it would be a neat place to visit someday—for harvesting Yumens, of course.

Probably not anytime soon, however.

She perused the Yumen engineer known as Xander's toolbelt. It had very interesting contraptions within it—so many curious items.

The first item she pulled looked like one of those things the Yumens called flashlights. She tried pecking at a button on the handle but then jumped back. The white light was so bright and—awful.

Horde, it was bad enough seeing the light from afar. To see it up close was terrible. She pecked at the light again to shut it off but missed the button. The cylindrical object fumbled around on the ground. Using her knobby forelimbs, she tried to pound it, but that only made her limbs hurt.

Stupid, useless limbs.

Why was she born like this? It seemed like the two bulbs at the end of her forelimbs were growing bigger. They were so uncomfortable.

Finally, she extended forward her open beak and crunched down on the flashlight. It snapped in half, immediately going dark.

There, she thought. That'll do it. Stupid, Yumen thing.

Now, what else did the Yumen have? There was some sort of rectangular glass object barely bigger than the Yumen's hand. She pecked at it. It lit up. There was a display of numbers and letters—Xander's Datapad.

Hmmm, interesting. Maybe it would come in handy. She wasn't entirely sure what it was for, but instinctively, she felt that it was important.

She pulled out a third item. This one was about the size of her beak. It had a handle that was attached to a long horizontal piece of metal that formed a slight arc. The handle only had one button on it. Using her beak, she pecked at it.

In an instant, a glowing beam of energy appeared along the arced portion of the object. She jumped back. The neon blue light was piercing and strong. It also let out a low buzzing sound.

What was it? She wondered. Daring not to touch it, she lifted up the Yumen's hardhat and dropped it on top of the glowing light. The slice of the hat that touched the glowing laserlike energy was immediately sawed off.

Horde, that was neat. It was a laser saw. That would likely be very handy at some point, though for what, she wasn't exactly sure.

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The Yumen also had a variety of other tools, including tiny metal spikes with various tips on them. Screwdrivers, the word appeared in her mind. She still didn't quite understand what they were for. They didn't seem particularly sharp. The screws that accompanied them did, though—in a strange twisty-turny kind of way.

Then there were the jars—three in total and completely identical. The scent of them was very strange—totally unlike anything else the Yumen had in his pack of tools.

Using her beak, she managed to gnaw off the cap of one of the jars. Food? It would make sense for the Yumen to carry snacks on him. Maybe they tasted good?

She dipped the tip of her beak into the jar, just to take a small nibble of the strange gooey substance.

Horde, that was disgusting. It didn't taste like food at all. Arachna immediately wanted to belched. The taste receptors near the front of her beak quivered in aversion.

Uh oh, she thought to herself. She couldn't open her mouth. The tip of her beak was shut tight, bound together by the substance she had just tasted.

C-k-c-k-c-k

She couldn't even click properly. She instead let out a series of guttural moans. Horde, now she was the one who'd fallen into a trap. This Yumen had tricked her into eating this strange, super-powerful glue.

Good thing she hadn't actually swallowed any of it.

The substance had already hardened into a rock-hard molding that attached to the top and bottom of the tip of her beak. How in the horde would she get out of this one?

Arachna used her forelimbs to try to pry her mouth open, but they were useless. Her limbs were just too bulbous to be of any use. What would she do? Her twin hearts beat rapidly back and forth as panic overwhelmed her.

She'd die now for sure. Arachna needed her beak for eating and fighting and just generally moving around. How in the horde was she supposed to do anything without it?

Rolling on the metal floor, she used her six hind legs to push apart her beak. But she couldn't free herself. The hardened substance was far too strong.

As she lay exasperated on the ground, sprawled out like a dead Krath, she eyed something—the laser saw.

It just might work.

She picked herself up and tilted her head. Using her closed beak, she pecked at the button on the device. The blue light flickered and turned on. A buzzing sound resounded from the luminescent device.

Judging by what it had done to the hardhat, she was nervous about what it would do to her face. One wrong twitch and her beak would be sawed clean off, or she'd wind up with a half-beak. That didn't sound very pleasant.

Arachna used her limbs to maneuver the device so that the glowing saw faced up. Then she positioned her head directly above it, staring down. Her beak was perpendicular to the saw that was flat on the ground.

Clenching her claws, she desperately hoped that she would not end up with a botched face. What Yumen would be scared of a Krath with a slice off her face? She needed to look her best when she took down her prey. It was the respectable Krath thing to do.

She positioned her beak vertically toward the floor as she lowered her head toward the saw. The center of her beak was precisely aligned with a laser beam at the center.

Slice.

She lifted her beak. It was a clean-cut—well, mostly clean. The saw cut through the rock-hard glue that had held her beak shut. She'd lost a few teeth, and a portion of her upper beak had been sliced off, but she'd live. Horde, she might even be able to regrow it with Xitherium. That saw packed some serious power.

Suddenly, the experienced gave her an idea.

Crawling toward the edge of the metal floor, she eyed the engine. There were long tubes that pumped purified Xitherium directly into it. Xitherium that she hadn't previously been able to access.

Yum.