Welcome to Gaia! ::

Ryan inhaled the air a bit, and noted that it was nothing like when he'd been in London, where he'd been quite short of breath and prone to coughing even on the outskirts - it was quite nice here, and Ryan could catch a slight whiff of salt blown in from the west. It was...nice. He also noticed construction nearby, where what appeared to be an elevated train station was being built near them, with one end going off to Vancouver, while the other end had a branch going to the airport and another branch heading southeast slightly to the city that Ryan had noted was marked on a map (mounted on the back of a small covered shelter with a bench inside it) as Richmond.

As the bus that was marked as going to the airport itself approached, Ryan wished he could see more of the glorious city of Vancouver, but he would get a good eyeful when he was in the plane, at least, he hoped he would. "You still have the ticket I handed you, Miss Envy?" he asked, looking toward Envy again as the bus came to a stop in front of Ryan, who held his own ticket in his left hand, with the handle of his lone bag in his right. Almost time... he thought to himself.

Ryan wondered for a second what to do with his ticket, that is, until the bus driver showed him how to insert it into the little slot that the tickets came out of. The machine beeped and the ticket came back out, with the driver nodding to him - it seemed that the ticket had gone through as okay.

The bus got moving, but really there wasn't much to see...aside from huge planes. Gigantic planes. He saw one take off and wondered how the thing could even fly, but before he could even come close to a conclusion, the bus stopped in front of the doors to the airport terminal. Pulling his bag with him, he nodded to Envy. "Come on," he said, exiting the bus and beginning to walk around the arc that was the outside of the terminal. US...US...International...International...ah, Domestic, and there's Air Canada. He stopped in front of the door to wait for Envy, hoping that she wouldn't get lost and wanting to make sure that she had all necessary identification.

(( note: going to puppet Envy here with permission to speed things up xP ))

Ryan nodded, pulling a wallet out of his own pocket, as well as a small plastic case with a birth certificate inside as he walked through the doors - which opened automatically - and into the airport. As he passed the doors, though, he saw an elderly man in military uniform sitting at a table just inside, with a tray of poppies in front of him as well as a collection box for donations to the Royal Canadian Legion. Almost without thinking, Ryan took two twenty-dollar bills out of his wallet (which was some of the five hundred dollars in cash he'd taken, even though five hundred dollars still felt like an extremely large amount to him) and slid them into the collection box, taking two poppies. Handing one to Envy, he pinned the other over his left breast, nodding to and thanking the veteran who was taking the donations.

Paying no one else any mind, he walked up to the airline counter with Envy, and they presented their tickets and identification to the woman behind the counter. "Two for the flight to Regina," he said, and the woman nodded. After they received their seat assignments (which were at the middle of the plane) and their gate assignments, the two of them cleared security (which seemed like much more of a hassle than it had the last time Ryan had flown), they were on the plane, and Ryan had taken the window seat. It was a bit cramped, but...well, it was nice.

What surprised Ryan was the engine noise, at first. It wasn't the drone of a propeller, but more of a loud screaming hiss. Speaking of that, Ryan hadn't seen any propellers...there were what seemed to be engines, but no propellers mounted on them. That, though, was forgotten when he felt and watched the plane accelerate...and even on the ground, it was faster than the bus had been going. Faster than he'd ever gone, in fact - the ground was speeding below them as the plane took off.

Of course...Ryan couldn't help but be lightly amazed when the pilot came on and announced the approximate flight time as one hour and twenty-five minutes with a cruising speed of some four hundred knots. He could never have dreamed a flight being so fast - the cruising speed when he'd gone to Europe had barely been a hundred and fifty knots, to boot. It was just so amazingly fast...but then again, things seemed to have gotten bigger. The sight of the city of Vancouver as they'd taken off had been amazing, and the same went for when the plane landed in Calgary.

The flight from Calgary to Regina wasn't too exciting, either, but it still was so blindingly short that Ryan couldn't even believe he'd been on a plane when he stepped out of the airport with Envy. A taxi ride brought them to a car dealership, and after walking through the rows of parked cars, he saw one that he wanted. Black, small...but something about it made him want it. It didn't take long to buy it, and he charged the car (which cost about fifty thousand dollars) to his squad. It was a new Mazda RX-8, with all the features that Ryan could have asked for. Then again, he was just happy that it was an electric starter.

Ryan got in, pressing the pedal furthest to the left out of the three about halfway in. That was supposed to put the car in neutral...but when he tried to start it, nothing happened. All of the lights lit up as if the car had stalled, but there wasn't even a click from the engine. "What the hell..." Ryan muttered something and then tried starting it again, reaching up a bit awkwardly to the lever above the ignition to pull the throttle...and that started the windshield wipers. "What...that's supposed to be the throttle!"

Ryan looked over at Envy, turning the ignition off. "Okay, Envy...how the hell do I drive this?"

Ryan nodded, pushing down the clutch again and turning the key. This time the car cranked over and started, with a nice, soft sound - almost inaudible, in fact. Keeping the clutch pushed in, Ryan tapped the right pedal, watching the tachometer jump all the way to 2000 RPM (marked, of course, as 2) even with the light tap. Nodding, Ryan finally noticed the shifter in the middle and the pattern on it - he ran through the pattern twice then engaged first gear, slowly pulling out of the space and then out of the lot and onto the road. He did, of course, know to shift at 3000 RPM, and when they were on the road, he found himself lightly surprised - he was traveling at the posted limit of...well, it was 50 kilometres per hour, but that seemed to be roughly 30 or 35 miles per hour, but the engine sat at about 2500 RPM in third gear.

Of course, Ryan then actually decided to read the speedometer, which was in kilometres...twenty, forty, sixty, eighty, one hundred...one hundred sixty...two hundred...three hundred...in miles, it went all the way up to 220! "Impossible..." he muttered. "The Ford could only go up to 45...two hundred and twenty is a dream. Not even a train can go that fast!" Shaking his head a bit, he tried to remember the route to Greenvale. It had always been southwest...

Of course, Ryan had also never driven on a freeway before. Not like it wasn't self-explanatory - he saw the cars travelling what looked like impossibly fast as he went down the ramp and onto the highway, seeing the posted speed...a hundred kilometres per hour. And really, going that fast was fun. He liked it, and he hoped he'd get an opportunity to go even faster. Right now, though, he needed some music, and he tried twisting the volume dial on the radio, which was mounted in the dashboard between the driver and passenger seat. Though nothing happened, he did accidentally push the button in, which turned the radio on...and all Ryan could do was smile. "Football. I haven't listened to football in years."

"...back to the West Semi-Final here at Mosaic Stadium, the Lions lead the Riders by a score of 26 to 12 in the ********," Ryan muttered under his breath. "Get going, dammit, this is the playoffs!"

"First down Riders inside the BC thirty. Bishop under center, now drops back to throw, looks, fires--picked off by Korey Banks! Banks is down to the forty, across midfield..."

"Get him, you assholes...GET HIM DAMMIT!"

"past the forty, the thirty, gets a block and he is gone, touchdown! 32 to 12 for BC with the convert to come."

Ryan smacked the radio, turning it off as he screamed loudly about the incompetence of the quarterback, where the hell the receiver was, where the hell the Riders had been to tackle the Lions player that had scored. He also pounded on the horn more than a few times even as he took an exit and went through the town of Moose Jaw. "********, ********, ********! What the hell do they think they're doing...this is the god damn playoffs and they're dancing around like prissy little pansies that can't catch a fly with a house. Eugh..."

Turning the radio back on, he fiddled with it a bit, trying to change the station to anything but the football game - he really didn't need to be pissed off right now. After some seemingly random button pressing he actually managed to find the station he'd always liked, which was still on the air even though it had started in the 1930s. It was playing a nice-sounding song, and as Ryan made one last turn onto a road that went straight to Greenvale, he found himself singing it softly as the car accelerated. The engine wasn't humming now, it was roaring as the tachometer needle reached five, six, and then seven before Ryan shifted, keeping the engine's RPM high as the speedometer passed 100, then 120 as Ryan shifted into fourth, then 140, 160, 180 (Ryan was in 5th now), 200, 220 (now 6th), 240...before finally coming almost to a rest at 250 kilometres per hour as the car headed straight down the road, with Ryan singing softly: "Marilyn, my bitterness, I'm falling to a strange nightmare..."

It was nice to go this fast. The scenery was blurring by, but it was as if Ryan had no troubles at all and was racing away from them, leaving them to catch up with him some other time. He could beat anyone with this kind of speed, and not break a sweat at all while doing it.

It wasn't long before they got to the town itself and Ryan slowed. The town was like stepping back forty years, but it was a lot quieter than before. It seemed empty, almost deserted now. No matter. Ryan passed the town and slowed to about fifty kilometres per hour, checking the boxes until he came to one marked "Feldric", and here he turned left up the drive. It was a fair bit before they came to a small house, blown and bleached gray by the wind and sun, but built to last even in a hurricane. Ryan got out, locking his car door behind him, then stopped at the front step. Kneeling down, he lifted a board and took out a spare key, which he inserted into the lock. The door opened as if it had been oiled yesterday, and the kitchen was, while fairly musty, clean as it had been left, as if whoever had lived here had cleaned up and closed up shop, leaving the house to await a new occupant.

Turning back toward Envy, Ryan dropped to one knee, extending his left hand forward as he remembered how to greet new guests. "Envy...I humbly welcome you to House Feldric."

Ryan let out an involuntary laugh. "I would have liked it if it hadn't been so sad for me here. Besides, it got a little tiring after the first decade or so." Ryan checked the icebox - empty, of course, but clean. The wood stove was also clean...after he checked the stove, though, he walked to the dusty rug at the room's center. Tapping the floor with his foot, he knelt and pulled up the rug. Some of the floorboards were laid perpendicular to the rest, in a small square that had been under the middle of the rug. Walking to the cupboard in the kitchen portion of the room, he took out a small knife and inserted it into a crack between the square and the rest of the floorboards. There was a click, and then the square came up, with Ryan pulling open the trap door that the square had been. Going back to the kitchen, he took a lantern from another cupboard, and also took a box of matches. Even after sixty years, the lantern still had oil, and it lit like he'd used it yesterday. Holding it carefully, Ryan went back to the trap door and descended a ladder. "Let me show you something, Envy. Follow me," he said, before disappearing down the ladder to the tunnel below.

Ryan also shivered a bit as he reached the bottom, pulling a cord to pull the trap door shut when Envy was safely below it. Holding up his lamp, he placed it in a wall holder and took a pack of matches. Lighting one, he lit a candle that sat next to where the lantern was. That candle being set alight lit a string that, as it burned, ran down one side of the hallway and up the other very quickly, lighting more candles. On the left, immediately in front, was a flag. It was like the British Union flag, but with only the blue and white St. James' Cross of Scotland with the red X of St. Patrick's cross lay within St. James' Cross.

On the right was a coat of arms. The crest was the red, erect lion standing atop a royal crown, which stood upon the shield. It was divided into four sections, with the top left and bottom right sections displaying a red lion, with the top right and bottom left displaying a harp. Supporting this shield on the left was a silver unicorn with golden hair and a golden horn, and on the right was another red lion. The ribbon below the crest displayed a Gaelic motto, Nior Mill, which roughly translated to "Never Miss". Just above the ribbon were a crossed rifle and bow. Ryan touched the crest almost reverently, thinking about what it meant to him, before he walked down the line of his house. Ancient names sprung up: Stephen the Elder, Edward I, Stephen I, until he got to one that he stopped at. The portrait held some resemblance to Ryan, and the king in the portrait stood in front of a flag that looked exactly like the one hanging further back in the hallway. The plaque in the frame named the portrait:

RYAN I FELDRIC, THE STRONG
KING OF SCOTLAND
KING OF IRELAND

Ryan touched the frame gently - the portrait was under a glass covering - and sighed. The portrait king was not robed, he was in battle mail and carrying his bow and arrow. "My namesake..." Ryan muttered to himself as he slowly ran his hand down the frame.