[TheRaisin]

Three words, baby: I am back!

In one of the taller and more secluded towers of the Royal Palace, the king of Tak's nation sat signing documents. Suddenly something blocked out the light. The king looked up. Outside the stained-glass window, a golden blob was quickly growing in size, its edges sharpening. The image began resolving itself. Suddenly the king's eyes widened in realization. Before he had a chance to react, the police ornithopter smashed through the window with a tremendous crash. The individual panes of glass shattered and flew apart, falling to the floor and shattering further, leaving little more than glass dust.
Two guards rushed in, pausing when they saw the ornithopter. It was tilted to one side, with about a fourth of it's length still hanging out the window, suspended hundreds of feet above the ground. One wing was bent back and wedged into the windowframe, the other snapped off completely and spiraling down towards the castle. There were spears and bolts sticking out all over like quills, jutting out at crazy angles. The hull was splintered and bent from the impact.
As the three stood gawking at the sight, the hatch at the top of the craft flipped open. Plik hopped out, armed to the teeth with all manner of weapons. He overbalanced because of the tilt of the deck, tripped, rolled down the side, and caught himself of a protruding spear. Righting himself, he suddenly noticed the king and the guards.
"Oh, er, hello," he said.
Cedar sprung out after him, rolled swiftly down the side of the ornithopter, and landed gracefully on the glass-covered floor with a light crunch. Tak followed, sliding down the hull on his tail. Finally one of the guards recovered from the shock.
"Uh, er, you're under arrest!" he said.
"Hold on," Tak said. "We have an important message for the king."
The king took a step towards them. "So important you didn't have time to land, and instead smashed through my window?!" he demanded angrily.
"'S not our fault," Cedar said cheekily.
As soon as she finished her sentence, Imperial Guards started streaming in the window from around the crashed ornithopter. Cedar, Tak, and Plik took up defensive positions at the window. Cedar pushed a guard back out the window with the blunt end of her pike, where he hung on a line descending from a police ornithopter hovering just outside. A knife was thrust at Tak, who moved to the side. He grabbed the hand of the guard holding the knife, squeezing it until the guard was forced to let go of it. A powerstone beam sizzled past Plik's head and hit the wall, blazing a hole through a tapestry depicting an ancient D'naathi standing atop a pile of dead enemies.
"Stop!" shouted the king. They did. "You guards, stand over there," he said, waving at a corner of the room. "You guys, over there." He waved at the corner opposite. The Imperial Guards stood where they had been directed, shooting dirty looks at the messengers.
"First of all," the king began, "why did you crash through my window?!"
"Well," Cedar said, "if someone hadn't destroyed our wings..."
One of the guards growled. "You tied up three guards and hijacked their ornithopter. When we saw that this craft had the same number as that which had been stolen earlier, we couldn't help but be suspicious. When we tried to contact them, they took off, and we had no choice but to use force. And as for the wings, they would have lasted until you could land. You didn't have to crash into the tower."
"Maybe not, if a crossbow bolt hadn't shredded through the mechanism designed to allow us to pivot the wings," Plik remarked.
"Plik, Cedar. Shut up," Tak said. "This isn't helping."
The king sighed. "Look, forget it. What's this all-important message you three have for me?"
Tak began to relate the story.

When he finished, the king looked weary.
"You saw aliens grouped around a giant silver object, and one of them vaporized a kiradani. Then a benevolent disembodied entity possessed your village elder and told you that these aliens are, in fact, the Creators, and that they've come to destroy us. Is that all?"
"Um, yes."
"I see," the king said. He turned to the guards. "Throw them in a dungeon. They're obviously insane."
The mob of guards pounced as one on the hapless trio, and within seconds had them restrained. They dragged them out the door. A few seconds later, a secretary burst in.
"My liege, I-- wow! What happened here?"
"What is it?" the king demanded.
"Oh, there have been reports of strange creatures in the woods surrounding a giant metal object. A patrol noticed the meteor impact several days ago, and went to investigate. The survivors say that most of the squad was killed by small devices the creatures had that were similar to our beam weapons. I... sir, where are you going?"
The king was already out the door, in swift pursuit of the three messengers.