"What did I tell YOU!"

A chorus of shushing came from the humans pressed against the side of the hill watching as the massive creature unfolded itself from the yellow smoke.

A hand clamped over his mouth and his entire body vibrated with anger as Admiral Vir pressed him further down against the sulfuric dirt.

His glower went completely unnoticed as the human looked forward staring at the massive behemoth as if finally revealed itself fully to them. The deep moaning stound continued as the one before them lifted it's head as if to trumpet like an elephant, but the sound it made was so low, it shock the rocks beneath them. Krill couldn't hear anything at all, but he could feel the horrible vibration. Sunny clapped her ands over her ears.

The humans lifted their hands to their heads trying to hold their brains in their sockets as the vibration rolled through them and into their eyes.

The creature lowered it's head taking a step into the great boiling lake.

It didn't seem perturbed by the heat as the water bubbled and boiled at it's ankles.

The creature, whatever it was, must have been at least thirty or even forty feet tall with four massive legs in the shape of tree trunks with large flat feet about as wide as you average tractor tire. It had the body not dissimilar to that of a rhino, very compact and very muscular, but also stout. It's head is where it almost completely diverged from any sort of human animal. One might have compared the face to some sort of hammerhead shark with large protrusions out to either side, though weather those were some kind of horn or some kind of eye, It was hard to tell

It's snout o the other hand was comprised of a tight spiral of thick corded flesh, and as it walked out over the mat of orange and red algae, part of its snout unfurled, trailing almost twenty feet to the ground where it dipped into the water and slid along the stone, coming back up covered in the red algae before curling up again and receding back into the mouth.

Other of these same tendrils began to break away from the tight spiral, until at least twenty of these massive filaments were scraping along the ground trolling for algae. Then there was the creature's tail, if they had thought the rest of it was large, than the tail itself was oversized even for this creature, trailing out behind it for almost twice it's body length.

When the tail swished from one side to the other part of it would vanish completely into the mist. As the creature walked, it dragged it's tail through the algae picking up the stuff as it went. With that behavior, the back half of the creature was partially red with the growing algae, as were it's feet and much of it's face.

Running along it's back, were massive ridges covering large holes into the creature's body. As it breathed these holes flexed, puffing out large gouts of yellowed steam.

It was, the strangest thing to watch.

Water spilled from it's tail and extremities, falling down onto the edge of the lake where, what they had thought were rocks and gravel, began to open up into tiny brown and red mushrooms, or mushroom like things. Their little stems glowed with a reddish bioluminescence turning the fog above them orange. Below their bodies, the rocks began to twist and move and wriggle, and they looked down to find the mushrooms opening below them too despite being crushed into the ground by the weight of at least 8 humans and one Drev.

Their mouths were open in shock and delight as tiny pinpricks of glowing blue light drifted out from inside the mushroom canopies.

One of them landed on Admiral Vir's hand winking like a firefly.

The humans crowded in to take a look and found a small bug like creature, with miniscule wings and a glowing body sitting on his hand before up and flying away still glowing blue against the overwhelmingly red background behind it.

The longer the mushrooms stayed open the more the little blue flies drifted outwards, until there was a churning swarm of them that lit the ground blue.

They moved in great sweeping curtains out towards the massive algae eater.

To their shock, they watched as they landed in droves, clinging on to the edge of the monstrous alien, specifically latching on to the parts of it that were covered in deposits of the red algae.

Admiral Vir had shifted onto his belly and was using his implant camera to fil the scene.

Soon enough the behemoth was covered by thousands upon thousands of little blue dots so it was practically glowing blue. They landed mostly on its tail and back legs, but also around it's feet and it's face as it continued to gather up the algae.

When the fog of tiny insects cleared, the behemoth was left with only a few hundred blinking blue dots on it's body, which was now a dull sort of brownish color. The yellow they had seen earlier was some sort of buildup of mineral deposit that the little flies helped to clean off.

Off in the distance, they could see another curtain of blue flies wandering next to another sulfur lake.

One of the scientists was looking down at his boots watching as a small troop of those flies landed against the rubber of his soles, cleaning off the algae deposits that had ended up there as he leaned out over the water's edge.

The others sat up to watch in shock and fascination.

A loud rumbling took their attention back to the great behemoth, which slowly lowered itself to the ground, water bubbling around its body, submerging the lower half of its chest and legs and tail inside the boiling water.

It looked rather content where it lay, and more algae began to accumulate over it's body.

The longer the mushrooms were open, the more life appeared around them.

First it was the behemoths, then it was the flies, but with the flies out, that attracted another strange predator.

This one was about as large as the average human hand and walked on three stumpy legs set under a n almost plant like stock. At the top of this was a diamond shape that would open wide like a flower, and had a bright red interior. Upon seeing the red interior, the flies would come buzzing, to land in the creature's wide-open mouth.

It would wait until most of the flesh was covered before closing and scuttling away. In this way little blue spots of light began winking on and off through the yellow mist as a strange circle of alien life went on around them.

The behemoths seemed to activate it, and the other creatures followed.

Another creature appeared from the fog large and toad like, though it scuttled rather than hopped. Most of them would wait very still in this field of mushrooms opening a little hood on the back of its neck which then glowed with that same red bioluminescence as the mushrooms. When it did this it attracted the flies, and with the flies, it also attracted the Venus fly trap creatures. It would wait until one of them was close, and then shape like a speeding cobra, picking one up and swallowing it almost hole.

One of the toads did as much, but half of the creature's body was left dangling out of it's mouth like some sort of comical cigar.

It was a magical almost fairytale moment, with wide eyed humans sitting on a bed of mushrooms turning in a slow circle as the world erupted with life around them.

That was probably when things really went wrong.

The algae and sulfur compound which the flies were eating happened to have a very high sodium concentration, which none of them had failed to notice as the mineral deposits tended towards red, which was common in bodies of water with unusually high salt concentration.

"What could go wrong." Krill muttered

Most of the humans would later blame him for jinxing the moment, though with humans something was inevitably bound to go wrong.

It stared with an.

"Ouch!"

Admiral Vir slapped at his arm, and the group watched as one of the little blue flies fell to the ground dead.

They looked at each other.

It was a very humid, hot planet, and the humans were growing very sweaty.

Of course one of the main and most noticeable components of sweat, is the additional growth of bacteria, and the high concentration of salt, which, though they couldn't have known, was exactly what these little flies were looking for, though their bodies were used to consuming it through the algae they ate.

To find it there in convenient saltwater form, without having to land on a boiling lake was just too tempting.

Maverick hissed, and slapped at her arm as well.

Soon enough all the humans were trying to brush bugs off their skin as they were invaded by thousands of glowing blue specs.

The gas masks covered their faces for sure, but their skin was open to the air in some cases.

They all jolted upright slapping at the skin on their hands and arms attracting an entire swarm of the creatures receiving pheromone signals that there was salt nearby.

"Everyone RUN!" Admiral Vir shouted, and the group of them broke off into a dead sprint, chased by the flies.

That left Sunny and Krill to walk after them at a leisurely pace.

Neither of them had the issue of sweat.

Sunny, for her part cooled down through pumped blood just under the surface of her carapace, acting as a coolant system around her body. The blood which was cooled by the breathing holes on her neck, which she had removed upon realizing the sulfur content of the air was not to bad for her to handle coming from a volcanic planet. Krill, didn't have any internal cooling methods and would probably just die if he overheated, but the place was nice enough.

Sunny grabbed him by one of the arms and broke into a jog after the retreating humans, who left a trail of bright blue light with them as they ran.

The little flies took some interest in them as they passed, but when they found nothing to eat, they soon lost interest. Krill was, of course, very annoyed with the humans. He felt like there were some protocols they could have followed to get out of this problem though that didn't seem to be the case

The humans liked going around without space suits, and used a decontamination gel on their skin to avoid spreading their won bacteria to a new environment, and before it was deemed safe, they always wore masks and eye protections

They were very conscious about their impact on alien planets, but were not, however, very conscious of alien planet's impact on them. The amount of times he had to treat rare alien fungal infections was on the top of his priority list of things he had no desire to talk about in much detail.

It was sunny that noticed their second problem.

It came because of moving mushrooms, and the slight variation In color from one to the other.

As a Drev she was likely the only person on the planet who would have noticed it. Even with human color differentiation being as exceptional as it was. Hers was better with her almost twenty different varieties of rods and cones.

This red color had a sort of softness to it, making it almost cool and giving it a sort of purple tinge that she didn't really like.

She wasn't sure why until she saw it shift just a little.

It took up a large swath of the ground, maybe ten feet long and three feet wide.

The humans were approaching it from one side as they ran.

"WAIT!" She shouted, but it was too late.

Ramirez stepped right up against the patch, and there was a sudden eruption of earth and rock as the creature opened a massive mouth full of razor-sharp teeth.

Ramirez shouted as Admiral Vir grabbed him by the back of the shirt and hauled him backwards, both of them tumbling into the mushrooms as they rolled backwards.

The creature writhed and bit at them missing Ramirez's foot by barely an inch.

It looked like a pancaked alligator, with a very very flat body and a flat snout almost four feet wide. Its back was covered in protrusions that mimicked the mushrooms, and when it roared it made another deep thrumming noise that rolled through the ground and into their feet.

The humans scrambled away faster, luckily than this creature which was too flat to move at any real speed.

It burred and snapped at them with it's open jaws.

The humans were covered in the little blue flies now dancing and slapping at their skin even as they backed away.

"Follow me!" Sunny shouted and she ran forward dragging them out and around the areas of strange color, which only she could differentiate.

The way back to the ship ended up being almost twice as long as their way from the ship, And the humans threw themselves inside slamming the door shut as soon as possible and filling the cabin with fresh clean oxygen. As soon as they had done that, the flies grew lethargic and then began to drop off their skin.

The humans themselves were covered in hundreds of little red dots.

Maverick had an ugly rash that looked almost like stinging nettle.

Ramirez

Was not doing so well.

He sagged against the wall, the skin on his arms was growing red and enflamed puffing up around his hands.

"I don't feel so.... Great."

"I think he's having an allergic reaction."

Krill floated forward, "No shit, I didn't realize you had a medical degree, where did you get it the Interplanetary Academy of stating the Obvious." Ramirez's breathing was growing labored

Adam frowned, "No need for sarcasm."

"You know what, you can shut your face. The next time you guys actually listen to my warnings is when I wont be sarcastic." He broke open an epi-pen from their emergency kit and stabbed Ramirez in the leg with no undue amount of force, There was a sharp metallic his as the injection component worked it's magic.

Their equipment had to be a little more robust these days to deal with the marines, so with the help of Narobi he had designed this delivery system himself. The marine grunted but the reaction seemed to ease up as Admiral Vir hurried to the cockpit. Maverick sat with him, "You'll be alright you big idiot." Ramirez grunted.

Krill looked at the rash on her arms.

It would probably ease up as soon as she washed some of the residue from her skin.

Admrial Vir for his part was very, very itchy, but he thought that was a pretty good price to pay for seeing cool aliens. Granted he wished that it hadn't turned out the way it did with Ramirez and he felt pretty guilty about that, though he tried to squish it down knowing none of them could have anticipated being attacked by alien mosquitos or pancake crocodiles.

Accept maybe Krill that is.

How he always seemed to know when something bad was going to happen was beyond him.

It's like he had some sort of sixth sense.

Adam wished he had that.

If Krill had heard his inner monologue he probably would have had some sort of fit, weather it be medically induced or emotionally induced.

Still, he thought, flipping through his new pictures and videos. Aliens were cool, meeting aliens was cool, taking pictures of them, talking to them, adopting them as pets, and.... He glanced over at Sunny who sat in his copilot chair, dating them, or at least one of them.

She turned her head to look at him.

"He grinned."

"you look like raw Ham."

He frowned, "ouch."

"it looks like it." She shrugged and turned towards the front of the window, "Not a good look."

"Remind me next time to wear a full suit when we got down here again. That was fun, but I don't like space mosquitos."