Debut

[jannikarr_mahliah]

Mahliah's ship had spun out of control through the jump, but all safety features fired off properly and she was cushioned in a sphere of anti-grav until the crash. The smooth, sharp edge of the craft had bitten deep into the ground. In the cabin, every surface was crackling with spidery runs of electricity. She looked all around in the chaos, but every sensor was reading nonsense. The ship was done for. Mahliah grabbed her disruptor--half laser rifle, half glaive--and picked her way back down the slanted corridor only to find the landing hatch crumpled and useless. She picked her way skyward and pounded, kicked, and shot at the escape pod hatch until it gave way.

The sweat she had worked up turned bitter cold on her skin when she climbed out into the lazy autumn sunshine. She gripped her 'ruptor closer. What was this frigid, alien landscape? The buildings as far as she could see looked antique. The river that coursed beside her crash site smelled of trash and chemicals.

(new player, new character. Mahliah It's nice to meet you all!)

Comments

[callmevod]

It was hard to miss the sound of a falling spacecraft, especially when the sound of the engines, not to mention the silhouette, struck so close to memory. Vod was just glad he'd hopped out for a quick smoke when it happened.

The run was a hard one, but one he was willing to make; whoever was coming down in a Kathaari patrol ship was likely to be Kathaari, or at the very least would know what the hell Kathaari were.

It was a gamble, but one that Vod figured was in his favor. He had his revolver holstered under his arm, underneath his heavy leather jacket. The smoking wreck looked worse than he thought was going to happen, but when he saw the hatch blow open, he was on his guard. He couldn't quite make out who was coming out, though, what with the smoke and such.

"Hey," he called, hoping he wasn't inviting getting shot. "I'm assumin' someone's alive in there?"

[jannikarr_mahliah]

Mahliah bent one leg beneath her and slid down the ship's exterior. At first she had just been happy to hear a welcoming voice, but...

She froze, and every hair on her body prickled and stood up. "Prince Armon?"

[callmevod]

Vod blinked at her. "Don't call me that?" he asked, more than said, surprised as he was to see her. "Mahliah?" he asked.

Then he sputtered past suppressing a laugh. "Farm-girl Mahliah?" he asked, grinning just a bit.

[jannikarr_mahliah]

Her expression quavered. "Jannikarr Mahliah, now," she said. "I found you." Her head was swimming, she could hardly believe this.

[callmevod]

"So you did," Vod said, sobering a bit at the mention of her rank. An Imperial Guard? That explained the high-tech weapon she was toting.

"A lot of good it does. Your ship's down, so is mine." He blew out a breath. "Coincidentally, we need to move," he said, gesturing for her to follow. "They don't take kind to aliens around these parts, apparently. And trust me, nobody here, except for me and some people I've run into, got any idea what a Kathaari is. C'mon."

He'd use Hex's flat to put them both up for now, he figured.

[jannikarr_mahliah]

"Don't worry about the natives, Your Highness. I'll keep us safe." She tightened her grip on the disruptor. He was right, though; there was no sense lingering around the ship. "I'm at your command."

[callmevod]

"Yeah, uh, don't shoot anyone, okay? We kind of have to live here. Possibly for the rest of our lives," he pointed out. "I've got a pretty sweet thing going, here, so don't fuck it up, 'kay?" Vod asked, wondering if this was more trouble than it was worth.

"Also, tuck your tail, like, now. The less we stand out, the better. I don't have a spare cap for you," he said, indicating his own.

[jannikarr_mahliah]

She scurried along beside him, trying to keep up with his lanky stride. "Live here? What are you talking about? I can take you home now, Prince Armon. Things are dire in the capital...your people need you now." She took her tail in her hand and looked back and forth hopelessly. "Tuck my tail where?"

[callmevod]

"In your--" he sighed, frustrated. "In your damn pants, Mahliah. Your ship is busted. Think you can fly that?" he asked, pointing at the wreck. "Think you can fix it with parts that don't exist yet?" he asked again.

"You're stranded, I'm stranded. However you tried to follow me, you did way too damn good of a job. So please, for right now, no 'your highness'es, 'sirs,' or 'my lords.' It's just Vod, okay? Just like it was supposed to be in boot camp."

[jannikarr_mahliah]

Mahliah fumbled with her tail for a moment before just wrapping it around her waist in frustration, holding it in place awkwardly. "I don't understand. Prince Armon--can we--just stop walking for one second. She stuck in place, surprised by her own outburst. "What do you mean 'the parts don't exist yet'?"

[callmevod]

"Look, I don't really know, okay? Either the Kathaari Empire just doesn't exist yet, isn't here, or something, but the year, according to these humans, is 2016. I don't know the conversion from Terran to Xhia, but nobody's heard, seen, or even thought of a Kathaari here," he tried to explain.

"Your ship? It's going to attract interest. Interest of people who got more of a mind to put people like you and me on an operating table so they can figure out what we are. I got lucky by landing in the shit-river they seem to call the Thames. And that was just my drop-pod." He shuddered only slightly at the thought of it again.

"I got a place we can lay low. Get you some modern clothes, a hat to cover your ears. Maybe I can hook you up with some work."

[jannikarr_mahliah]

"This is...Terra?" She'd never been, and by the time her ship was spinning toward this planet all of her navigation systems were malfunctioning as hard as they could. "How long have you been here?" He had a job? A place to live? She'd read his ship disappearing into the rift only a few hours ahead of her own.

[callmevod]

"Not long. And yes, but call it Earth. Humans seem to like that." He couldn't fathom why. Earth was kind of vague, and not to mention it was the English word for dirt. Who wanted to call their planet another word for 'dirt?'

"Some folks around here have been great to me. I'll introduce you, if they don't find you out and about first. But either way, we either managed to travel back in time or skip across a dimensional barrier, hell, maybe both. I don't know, but it don't much matter."

[jannikarr_mahliah]

"I can't believe it," she said. Her eyes were widened now, and she tried to take in as much as she could. There were wheeled vehicles everywhere running on combustion engines from what she could smell. And yes...every face that they passed was Terran. This explained the cruelly frigid weather, at any rate. "And we're the only two Kathaari on the whole planet."

[callmevod]

"Yep," Vod said, shrugging. "Good news, though. I'm still sterile," he said bitterly. "C'mon. It's this way," he said, leading her down the street.

"And yeah, the shock will take a bit to wear off. But you can at least drink some of my booze to take the edge off."

[jannikarr_mahliah]

"You're taking me to--I can't 'drink your booze,' your highness. That wouldn't be...I..." Mahliah's head was spinning. Seeing him the first time had thrown her into shock. Now everything was becoming terribly, terribly real.

[callmevod]

"Less talk, more follow, soldier," Vod grunted, trying his best to put on some authority. It fit like a shirt three sizes too small. "You'll drink my booze and like it. And like I said, I'm not 'your highness' now," he hissed. "I'm just Vod."

[jannikarr_mahliah]

He may have felt awkward, but Mahliah put on speed with automatic obedience. "Yes yo--Vod," she tried on. It left a funny taste in her mouth.

[callmevod]

"Just a few more blocks," he promised her. "I didn't even know you were on my tail, by the way," he pointed out. "Your dedication's impressive. Misplaced, but still impressive."

[jannikarr_mahliah]

"I've been looking for you for a long time," she said. "Once things started going bad...I thought to myself, if it was anyone's duty it was mine."

[callmevod]

"Because you were squad leader," Vod assumed. "You were hellbent on getting accepted into the higher ranks from the get-go, weren't you?" He kind of admired that kind of gumption.

[jannikarr_mahliah]

"I just wanted into the warrior caste, at first." She looked away, trying to breathe through her rising anger. "After, I just thought that I would become so strong I'll never let anyone down again."

[callmevod]

"Uh-huh. Never occurred to you that I was a fugitive?" he asked, looking at her, briefly. "You had to have heard about what I did. I'm not even actually technically the heir, anymore." Last he'd heard, there wasn't one, because Karsh was on the run, too, after breaking him out. The Emperor only had daughters, otherwise. "I got disowned when I got convicted."

[jannikarr_mahliah]

"The Emperor's gone mad," she said. "With Karsh gone, there was no one left to talk sense into him. The people need you now more than they ever did. They would welcome you back. I came to tell you that."

[callmevod]

"Well, they can't get me back, now. And now they can't get you back, either." He'd always known that his father was unstable, but between him and, somehow even Karsh, they managed to keep things stable.

"So let's just focus on what we can do. Which is get you a hard drink, and some time to sort shit out."