Welcome to Gaia! ::

The vessel came into view, proving it was not of this world. It slowly landed, a ramp opening up from behind, As soon as it touched the ground, seven people in suits of armor that made them seven feet tall, sprinted out, forming a semi-circle around the ramp, weapons in hand, though they were pointed at the ground. But they wouldn't hesitate to shoot a hostile target.

The last person from the vessel was a man in golden plate armor and a matching cape. His white hair made him look older than he was. He had a small shield strapped to his right arm, but his short sword was still in the sheath on his right hip.

Amarissa

Amarissa managed to grab a fairly deadly looking gun and stuff a knife in her boot as she ran through camp. She came to a stop beside Gavin, keeping her gun ready but pointed low. She didn't trust these people, with their fancy looking armour. All she knew is she would protect the people around here with her life if it came down to it. She let Gavin take the lead, though he seemed to be in awe. That could be a dangerous thing. More pressing, to her at least, was this, "Are you friend or foe?" She was careful to keep her tone from sounding to demanding, but it was clear she wanted a straight truthful answer.

He coughed a bit, ostensibly from dust and grit floating in the air, like he hadn't gotten used to that stuff messing with his lungs already. No, he was working on scrubbing his voice to the way it should be. He'd noticed his tone too, and he didn't want that shown. They may be here to help somehow, but if they weren't they didn't need to know how what they'd done affected him and, honestly, probably the rest of the camp. Amarissa not having any trouble with that was pretty impressive, considering what they were presented with.

The man had a point, with his words. Maybe he used the word 'surface', but Gavin preferred the word 'ground'. He wasn't going to the assumption that they were seeing the first known presence of aliens or whatever right now, not quite yet. Enough time to process the fantastical later. The gold armored man had plenty to back up what he said. The people with the weapons hadn't raised or even twitched them at anyone, and something of that size was likely at least somewhat armed. Even if it was a plane of some sort and not a spacecraft, anything it was armed with would have enough 'oomph' to go right through anything in the camp. The buildings were corrugated steel and various light, weak metals. They could stop small arms, but larger calibers or the bigger guns put on aircraft would go straight through them. For now at least they hadn't demonstrated any sort of hostility. Maybe before that would have been enough, but one too many raiders meant it just wasn't enough for them to completely stand down in front of armed strangers. "Lets just cut this to the chase then, what are you and these marines doing here?" He'd managed to clean up his voice, putting it into the calm state he usually had on, seemingly unruffled by the proceedings here. Interested, yes, but not awed anymore. Just try to pretend they didn't look like they were from space, that helped.

He didn't know that accent, wherever it was from, he'd never been there, but it sounded like something from Earth. He'd heard some people with vaguely similar accents a few times before the war, and this sounded like something that could be a culmination of those somewhere else in the world. How weird was that, that the man from the spaceship had such a... not 'normal', but recognizable accent. As for his calm state, wearing enough metal to stop anything the camp had and a shield big enough to cover his head seemed like a good reason, and a bunch of supporters with enough firepower to cut the camp to ribbons seemed like another.

The statement of this being a rescue mission had a pretty clear effect, rippling through the crowds behind the gate. A rescue mission, now, after all this time? When there supplies were running short and word of a major haul just hadn't spread yet. It was practically a miracle. "The Captain of what? Nobodies caught the slightest wind of a ship still floating with working electronics." And why? What kind of shielding would it take for any electronics to have survived that hell-storm of fire and electromagnetic energy? Well, if the hardened computers under the crater that used to be the capitol couldn't, there wasn't much that could. Of course the obvious answer was sitting right there in all that space-age tech they had. But he couldn't just not ask. An assumption that major could spell a lot of problems.

((XD Man, little comments like that just make my day when I'm RP'ing. It's a pretty big reason I love RP'ing with old freinds, remembering what we've done, especially something almost exactly like this before. At least now I know a bit more and have improved my RP'ing))

Three transports and a spaceship, all of them space capable, and this little thing able to put out enough power to get back into orbit? That certainly sounded plenty science fiction-y to him, no matter what they had to support it. Even true, it was all still something right out of a book, not real life. The mans gesture to one of his Marines had Gavin's hold on his gun shift slightly, not moving the gun to bear at all on them, just a little tighter, a little better placed... just in case. Then the man explained that he wanted his Marine to demonstrate their weapon on the ground, which got a small nod, although the grip on the gun didn't loosen, it didn't move up either as the man raised his weapon, not aimed at the crowd but close enough to have everyone with guns edgy now, although the other six showing no sign of doing the same kept any nasty misunderstandings from happening. That, and it was kind of hard to not hear the voice booming out of those microphones.

The Marine squeezed the trigger mechanism of his gun, and a streak of bright blue-white slammed into the ground right where the man had been aiming, somehow simultaneously just as fast as any bullet yet slow enough to see the vague shape of the semi-liquid plasma projectile. Maybe a trick of the eye, but it was impressive, as was the hit and the nasty scorchmark and the hole in the ground. Something like that on the packed dirt, oh yeah, those would be ugly in an actual fight. And he had a damn valid point, nothing had ever spread about plasma being weaponized beyond theory and rumored testing.

"Alright, you have a point there. I never heard of anything beyond rumors of testing. But why would you be down here on a rescue mission if you have some sort of starship in orbit?"

Or rather, why now? Had they shown up before and it was just covered up?? He wouldn't put it past them, the government usually seemed horribly inefficient at a lot of things, but if the military was put in charge of it, they might be able to put together a total cover-up of meeting with aliens. In any case, what reason would they have to come down now to pick up the last remains of civilization quite possibly in the entire country? Purely humanitarian, did they have other plans for them? It was exactly the sort of thoughts he both hated and loved, running through negative scenarios in his head without even consciously thinking about it except for the end results to pop to mind along with the more hopeful ones, tempering down a certain enthusiasm in front of the strangers he didn't know.

"Don't think were ungrateful for the offer, but you showed up at an awfully convenient time for both the camp and the world."

((I'm glad to be here, even if I admittedly was a little iffy at first, I've always enjoyed RP'ing with you. I certainly hope this time we can go all the way, this is going to be a ton of fun if we do!))

Gavin stood there, listening as the man shook his head then went on talking about his star-government thing, specifically about how one of their major founding principals was rescuing sentient life, talking a bit about their ship... If he was spinning them lies he was damn good at it, he didn't even seem like the sort that would. He seemed honest and trustworthy and lots of other nice words. But then he said the world would only sustain life for another 36 hours. Claiming you had a starship with all this to back you up was one thing, but claiming the entire world was completely dying? The man stopped after saying that, giving them a polite pause to process that before speaking again. And now he was talkign about their ship being damaged, crew dead, not the sort of thing you pitch to convince people to come aboard. But then, if they had life support up there, food, water, clean air? Even with a wrecked frame surrounding it, those circumstances were a sight better then theirs anyway.

"It's convenient because we aren't in the best of shape ourselves. Your telling me that the entire planet is going to lose it's ability to sustain life soon? Do you have anything you can offer to support that?"

Maybe they did, maybe they didn't. But functional craft and plasma weapons made him willing to buy their story about being aliens. It didn't give him any reason to believe that the planet was going to roll over and die on them. Now, they did have the fact they seemed peaceful and had been honest and courteous to them so far, but he wanted to at least know if they could offer some kind of proof before he went taking or dismissing their blind word for it. But then, was dismissing it even an option? He didn't even need to glance over his shoulder to see the faces behind him. Doubt and mistrust on some faces, but hope on all. Their situation was bad, and this offer was a godsend. Even if their planet wasn't going to die, every day of life was eked out trying to survive, to find food and water. Even the contaminated stuff was a blessing.

((Neither, it was me actually. This is a roleplay that takes a lot of commitment, and I've been wavering on and off gaia for a while, I wasn't sure I could give it the commitment it deserved.))