"And what would you like to eat, sir?" questioned the attendant happily as she stopped her meal cart in front of me.

"May I have some steak, please?" I asked as nicely as I could, watching as she reached into her cart and pulled out what appeared to be an apple, sliced neatly into symmetrical pieces, and apparently taped into rough shape of a slab of steak.

"There you go! Nutritious and tasty!" she exclaimed as she set it in front of me and continued back to her station at the back of the plane. I stared at the "steak" for a minute before deciding that I wasn't that hungry.

Suddenly, the plane lurched violently to the right, nearly sending me flying from my seat. As I braced myself, I felt another huge rumble and frantically buckled myself in. The water heater started screeching again, and I noticed that the rumblings had been explosions, which were continuing to light up every now and then, all around us.

There was a brutal tearing noise, and I looked behind me to see the back of the plane begin to pull away from the cabin. The flight attendant came speeding up the aisle, grabbed me by the arm, unbuckled me from my seat, and nearly dragged me to the door of the plane.

"Unfortunately, there's been a problem sir, and you'll need to leave the plane at once!" she exclaimed in a pleasant tone, even as what passed as her face showed incredible concern and possibly fright. I noticed the sign on the door now said "Go." and I found this odd, but couldn't pay much attention as she began strapping something akin to a parachute on my back.

"This should help you reach the ground safely sir. And as always, thank you for flying Escape Airlines!" she said, bracing herself as another explosion seemed to have removed the left wing of the plane, and I could feel it begin to tip at a strange angle in the air.

"Plan your Escape!™" sounded again, from the strange mouse creature I figured, as the door literally seemed to be ripped off of its hinges by another explosion. I took a deep breath and jumped out of the plane, only to feel a sharp pain in my forehead as everything went dark.

-----//////////////////-----

When I awoke, I heard a lot of yelling and some more explosion noises, only they were of a lower pitch and sounded like they were contained in something. A man was tending to my forehead, apparently using a cloth on what I later realized were stitches. I sat up suddenly, feeling dizzy, and had to lay my had back at once.

"There there, you took quite a hit, friend. If it weren't for your life-cloth, you would have plummeted straight into the dirt," the man warned, frowning.

"Life-cloth? Oh, my parachute. May I ask where I am?" I dizzily queried, even as I felt darkness return to the edges of my vision.

"You're in the middle of the Torvano Fields. And we are currently in the midst of finally cracking the oppressive sky, and showing those accursed Torvanites that we can make it to their precious 'outer space'," he said, with a look of anger in his eyes, before he returned once more to fixing the bandage that he had placed on my forehead.

I looked at his shirt and noticed it had a red "X" shape on it, almost looking as if it had been splashed on there rather than sewn. The man's shirt was white, and I figured that he must've been a doctor of some sort. I sat up once more, slowly this time, and observed my surroundings. There must've been two or three dozen men, all in uniforms that gave them the appearance of soldiers, though they were all burgundy colored, with lines around the arms and legs that were a very bright yellow.

"Who are you people, and what is it that you're doing here?" I asked, wearily noticing that many of the soldiers had large artillery type devices, which fired nearly nonstop.

"We are the Rendfeldil, and we are currently attempting to open up the sky so that we may make our way to the next world," the medical man stated, then helped me to my feet and led me to one side of the "encampment."

"Skydrop!" yelled a soldier, and immediately several soldiers carted their weapons to one side or another, while other soldiers continued to fire them in what seemed to be a very dangerous sort of "dance." Quickly, the weapons were resettled, never ceasing fire even once. I noticed soldiers frantically reloading, in what looked to be a process that could allow one to lose a limb.

Suddenly, I heard a cracking, tearing sound, and a huge chunk of blue-white substance hit the ground with a thud and a slight splattering noise. The medical man left me to tend to a soldier who seemed to have been hit by a smaller piece of this strange material. I slowly walked over to it, and noticed that it looked like a tightly bound chunk of cotton, or some similar fibrous substance, and I also noticed that it was slowly melting into the ground. I recognized that this must have been their "sky" and that they were indeed destroying it piece by piece.