the wiki says you need to upgrade 10 individual gadget parts… but last time i checked you can’t upgrade them?? you just craft new parts which are better. i’ve already made like 30 gadget parts with shiver and i still don’t have it. does anyone know how to get this outfit?
It’s funny how most people assumed that Reid was the oldest, but he’s actually the youngest and most full of energy! That’s something I would definitely like to introduce into his personality, where he compensates for his baby face by taking on mannerisms of old people. (Btw, that stubble you see on his face took five months to grow! He really can’t beat the allegations.)
Prologue
Crashing, Burning
The blazing, bright sky blended in with the fiery rubble around me that it felt as if I were still falling. Like how one would strike flint several times to get a fire started, I stood up, stumbled back down, and stood up again several times before I was able to balance my weight on my numb legs. I limped over to a tall metal fragment of what used to be the ship we were just flying in and held on to it weakly, gazing upon the mountain that we flew into at an angle. Our initial impact created a massive crater at the midsection of the mountain, then a smaller line of unraveled terrain smeared all the way down to the foothills where I stood with what was left of the ship. The biggest chunk left was right behind me, about half of the main body turned on its side, one wing-like engine tilted up into the sky as if it were reaching out to space in its final moments
The prickly, tingling feeling in my legs grew more intense as I stood there, trying to get them to remember how to walk on again. I slowly let go of the metal scrap supporting my weight and walked further towards the center of the rubble, searching for any signs that the others were alive and okay. My pace was slow, hobbling around the rough, exposed lower soil and turning over the scraps I came across in hopes of finding the other Tiaero who was aboard that ship with me.
“Heiko?”
“Fye…?”
No response. The ringing in my ears had subsided moments ago, so I knew I would hear their voices if they could hear me.
“Please… anyone?”
“Let me know you’re okay… please…”
My calls turned to desperate cries as anything I said would be met with silence. I shuffled all the way to the base of the mountain, looking around for any signs of my kin. Turning my head to a large part of the ship that had broken off down the side of the mountain, I noticed a shaggy orange tuft poking out from underneath a big metal sheet. My heart started to race as I instantly recognized that as Fye’s tail, the closest friend of mine who was sent out into space with us. The numbness in my legs seemed to completely disappear as I recklessly ran around shards of glass and other sharp fragments to get to him.
“Fye! Can you hear me?”
I shout to no response once more, approaching the sheet covering his body. I crouched down and lodged my hand paws under the sharp metal before tilting it up, glancing under it to find Fye’s body limp on the ground. The sheet of metal was almost too heavy to lift, but the residual adrenaline from the crash allowed me to hoist it over my back and gradually tilt it over by hobbling over to its pivot point and throwing it upside down, revealing my friend in his entirety. His eyes were closed. He had a deep gash in the left side of his head, half of his ear above the gash was ripped off, and several cuts and bald spots were present on the rest of his body. I huddled close to him while observing his wounds, tears welling up in my eyes.
“Fye… no… no, no, no!”
I tried several things to wake him; lifting his arm, poking the unscratched part of his face, lightly shoving his torso… he was completely limp in my arms. My hope that he was okay dwindled the more I looked at him, sobbing through erratic breaths. With hesitation, I pressed my ear close to his chest to listen for a heartbeat- It was quick and faint, but it was there nonetheless. I gasped, a smile displacing the tears that were already streaming down my face while I hugged him as gently as I possibly could. He still showed no glimmer of consciousness, but at least I could take care of him while he was out…
~
A dozen or so minutes passed. I began to worry about the others as I sat beside Fye, since I cared deeply about them as well, but I refused to let the thought that they died enter my brain. Once I was able to see Fye awake, I would search for the others. A constant chopping noise started to fade in from the distance- quiet at first- but eventually grew so loud that it felt like sharp juts of wind being shoved into my mind. I held my ears against my head to stop the noise from hurting too much, still confused and wary of danger, but not willing to leave Fye’s side. I was able to pinpoint the source of that noise above me; a flying machine not too dissimilar from the ship we were just on, landing in the rubble about fifty meters away from us. My heart raced once more, as the technology reminded me of something the Hizals would use against us back on our planet… and if the Hizals were on this planet too, our attempts at escaping them would have all been in vain. I froze, completely overwhelmed by the conflicts from my past coupled with the dangers that were right in front of me. Four strange-looking creatures collectively stepped out of the flying machine, chattering amongst themselves in a language that I couldn’t even recognize. It sounded very low and gargl-y… almost like if a Hizal’s voice was slowed down and heard in reverse. They were facing the other way until one of them turned around and stepped into the sunlight, where I caught a clear glimpse of its features:
I see two eyes sandwiching a triangle-shaped protrusion in the middle of its face.
It seems to be hairless on most of the face and on the arms, with long, thin strands of hair atop its head.
The face is very wrinkly. Their skin had a strange color that I had never seen before on a living creature.
These creatures look like they’re wearing matching clothing and headdresses, although I’m unsure if that is part of their natural bodies or not.
They are tall. Shorter than Hizals, but much taller than us, and all four creatures vary in width.
They appear to have no tails. Though they could have very small tails that would be covered up by their clothes.
They seem to understand each other very well. They use mostly verbal communication, but also wave their limbs around as a form of visual communication.
At the end of their front limbs are incredibly thin fingers, almost like bones themselves. And five of them, at that.
I remained frozen as my eyes roamed over their bizarre shape, trying to understand as much as I possibly could about them without moving a muscle. Some of their features made me shiver, a fear that was instilled even harder by the fact that they were real- and in front of my very eyes. I didn’t notice until now, but I had been cowering close to Fye’s fragile body while I observed the four aliens. One of them came terrifyingly close to us, its eyes scanning the area past us once or twice before eventually locking on to mine, flinching as it did so.
Its eyes were small but intense, burning as hot as the fire that blazed over the pile of debris surrounding us. I couldn’t help but stare back, unmoving and silent as he did the same. The longer we stared at each other, the more its expression gradually morphed from neutral to frightened, as if it were experiencing its own emotions at half-speed. I was in no state to mentally connect with anyone, especially with a life-form that lived halfway across the universe, but just as I’d hoped it lost interest, it screamed at me. A bone-chilling, raspy cry that instantly sent me in a state of panic. Skittering out of the rubble on all fours, fear took over my mind while I sprinted as fast as my legs could carry me out of there, glancing back to see the other three lanky creatures rushing over to the screaming one, who was still looking at me while I ran.
My thoughts raced like a flooding river. Where do I go? Where could be a safe place to hide? Did those creatures want to kill me? Are they going to kill Fye and the others? Should I go back and fight them? I’m in no condition to fight… Where am I? How far is home?
It felt as though a needle had been inserted into my head. The pressure from so many new stimuli completely overwhelmed my senses, but my body couldn't do anything but run. Past rocks, grass and rivers, past strange, unfamiliar figures in the distance, into a forest of short, oddly-shaped triangular trees and prickly mulch. My mind and body were so utterly out of sync that I couldn’t process where I was going, I just went. Under a fallen trunk, over a boulder, around scattered shrubby plants, through a brief clearing… running, running, running furthermore until the forest with triangular trees were left behind and I found myself in a grassy field once more. My surroundings seemed to repeat forever until the mountains in front of me grew to a single, menacing alp, leaning over my view as if taunting me for being small. I thought if I could run fast enough up its sharp surface, then I would be able to outrun the force of gravity and I’d jump off this rock entirely. Another rush of adrenaline hit my body at that thought, fueling the fire I needed to push myself even harder up the hills of the mountain base. At a certain point the incline became steeper, and the tall green-yellow grass under my paws became shorter. I turned my head up at the snowcapped peak in front of me that almost seemed like an arrow pointing up at the sky, telling me exactly where I needed to go. The ground tilted steeper as I kept climbing, thrusting myself forward stride by stride as my breathing became shallower and quicker. The air around me even started to change, whipping through my fur and chilling my skin underneath. The grass underneath my paws faded away, leaving only bare gravel and then snow. The pointed arrow on top of the mountain inched closer to my reach, only a little more to go before I was out of here. My muscles strained themselves harder than they ever worked, but I felt nothing.
The burning desire of going back took priority over any physical sensation. Once it was over, I’d wake up in my den and tell my mother about the crazy dream I just had. I’d greet the townsfolk and laugh about how absurd it would be to fly through space. The snow beneath my paws felt thicker and crunchier right before the summit, and with one final stride, I leapt high into the air, kicking snow behind me as the peak gave way to pure sky. In that fraction of a second, I did it. I had leapt off this planet and would float back home where I was always meant to be.
But gravity grabbed me by the ankles and threw me back down into the snow.
~
I probably laid sunken in the snow for an hour or two, so still that if not for the fact that I was gasping for air, most might have seen me and assumed I had died. Everything was numb, even my eyes remained locked on to the shiny grains of snow in front of my nose, even my own thoughts that flooded my head were now completely dried up. I only felt the wetness of the snow in my fur and the subtle shifting of it beneath my weight as more time progressed. After one hour my breathing had returned to normal, and a deep aching pain in my muscles began to set in, giving me only more reason to stay put. After two hours, my thoughts began to drift back to me at a more reasonable stream.
At first I questioned if anything I just went through was real. The comfort of the snow reminded me of the south pole where I lived on my home planet, which- for a split second- relief washed over me as I second guessed if I were actually home or not. But that felt too good to be true. My foot twitched, signaling to me that I was, in fact, alive, so I slowly shifted my limbs to hoist myself into a sitting position. Even small movements sent pain up my shoulders, wincing as I planted my hand paws on the ground and slowly lifted my lower body to a sit. It was hard to make out anything while my eyes adjusted to the late morning light. Shapes in the landscape below faded in through squinted eyes to reveal a sight that took my breath away.
The peak that I lay on was the tallest mountain in a long mountain range, which stretched in an arc surrounding thousands- no- tens of thousands of triangle trees that looked just like fuzzy grass from this high up. Several bodies of water interrupted the trees, their blue surfaces shimmering like gemdust against the sun. An endless surface of triangle-tree grass and splotches of water, with even more mountains, like grey lumps poking through fabric, stretching further through the distance. My vision started to become distorted from the tears that gushed into my eyes and down my cheeks. It was so strange, so vast, so… beautiful… but it wasn’t fair. This planet presented me with the most stunning geography I had ever seen at the worst possible time in my life.
As if it were trying to give some kind of apology for trapping me here.
As if it were trying to entice me to stay by presenting its beauty to me.
But I didn’t want to be here.
It made me sick to even imagine living here.
I want to go home.
I want… to…
I wailed. A long, drawn-out, pathetic wail. And I cried until my eyes ran dry. It was too much to handle for a single Tiaero. I was lost. I was confused. I felt scared. Not even mother would know what to do. So all I could do was sit here and cry. I went from feeling absolutely nothing to feeling everything at once on that mountaintop.
Another two hours had passed. The sun sat higher in the sky, making the ends of my fur tingle with warmth. The first thing I noticed after arriving here is how the sun felt much warmer than it did back home, which seemed to absorb the emotional energy that I released while I sat there and cried. It felt… nice. I could gaze upon the vast forests and mountains with less hatred and distress, though resentment did not disappear entirely. With muscles that still ached, I propped myself up to a stand and felt the cold wind flow between my ears, taking the air into my lungs and slowly letting it go. My shoulders were able to droop down for the first time since before the crash. The next thing I had to do was return to the crash site and look for Fye and the others. The faint chance that my kin survived the crash gave me enough hope to keep pushing forward and left me with the sense that I wasn’t completely alone. With one final deep breath, I blinked good-bye to the landscape ahead and made my way down the mountain from which I came with a newfound purpose.
The worst thing about Wii is how the trick button bring d-pad requires you to claw grip to consistently hit it, but that really hurts my hands after a while. Is there any way to remap buttons on vWii to allow you to hold the controller normally while playing? Or any third party controllers that solve this issue?
i plan to use it for both games and animations, so quads are preferred.