And thus ends the Great Exposition.

We now finally have our scenario fully set up: Fris and a virtualized instance of a Kaeh by the name of “Avie” are stuck in hostile space with a ship on the verge of catastrophic breakdown. There’s no hope for quick rescue, and inaction will result in death by one of several possible fun means. At this point, the two young ryka have nothing but each other to rely on if they wish to survive this war-torn and hostile galaxy, and by the looks of things, the journey home will be long and arduous. This is the story of AAiS. Here we go.

Website-Exclusive Author’s Note:

I’ve been sick for the last few days, and honestly, I still feel like total dog shit. No idea what exactly I managed to catch, but I feel like I should be put into bio-containment at this point.

Oh, well, at least I finally managed to put this page out. Final verdict? Kinda pretty bad. Things are definitely more dynamic as compared to the last page, but I wanted to go for more and kinda lost the plot somewhere along the way. Once more we have several repeating panels, but this time with a total of three different rear shots of Fris that give us a great view of pretty much nothing.

I’m honestly not sure how I even managed to go so wrong with these sketches, since I had completely different poses and perspectives planned out beforehand. Actually, to be entirely fair, I can’t even really remember drawing these sketches to begin with. I only remember the pain of an extreme fever and the sickness I felt after taking enough Ibu to dull the pain.

Yeah, I guess I’ll take that as my excuse for the week: “Super-Flu” or whatever it is that has been rampaging through my body over the last week or so. Maybe my art will improve again, now that my brain has cooled down to below 40 degrees for the first time in ages, or maybe enough brain cells have died for the damage to be permanent at this point. I’m putting my bets on the latter option for now, but time will tell.