Welcome to Gaia! ::

There was a muffled shout from somewhere inside the apartment. "Coming!"

The visitor was kept waiting about another minute before the footsteps finally looped around to the front. Locks ground their way around to open and the door and a tall teenager with dreadlocks swung it open partway. He sized her up momentarily.

"Oh. You must be..." A pause stretched uncomfortably long between them. Khaldun glanced down for a moment at his open palm. Kaia had written their guest's name on it, apparently quite good at predicting he'd never remember it even if she told him a hundred times. Which she probably had. "... Heather."

He looked back up at her again with an expression like this entire process was slowly killing him. His hand was still being held awkwardly in the traditional cheating-on-the-exam fashion. There was some sort of internal debate as to how to follow up what was already just a fantastic one-sided introduction. Then he offered the same written-on hand for a handshake. "I'm Khaldun."

Oh.

Oh it was ******** on.

"Yeah you've got the wrong monkey. I'm the one that kicks a** and takes names." He continued to hang between the doorframe and the door and thumped one fist against his chest a couple of times. "Worst mistake you could ever make is eye contact. King Kong's got nothing on me. The scientific community's going to lose their s**t if I ever get loose."

But a hallway wasn't any good for discussing what the girl was actually here for. If she knew Kaia, then she had to have checked out as a Negaverser. He stepped aside to let her in the apartment, opening the door wider. "C'mon in then."

Khaldun waited till Heather had walked inside and then began meticulously locking and latching the door. Every girl seemed to hint to him in some form or another to watch his mouth. What was it with girls, anyway. Language was just words. Words didn't hurt people. If you wanted to hurt someone, you could punch them or something. That was so much more direct. But admittedly he was half-smiling. At least she seemed to have a semblance of a sense of humor."I'll try to remember that next time, Princess Semantics."

"Beats living in some corner of the Negaverse freezing your a** off." He had wandered into the room and sat down on one side of the couch. "Or even staying there a minute longer than you have to. We're going to take our calls here, thanks."

He pulled a deep purple crystal out of his pocket and stood it up on the coffee table. It could almost be mistaken for a big chunk of amethyst if not for a faint glow pulsing from the center of it. It was, for all intents and purposes, his cell phone, seeing as nearly all the people he talked to anyway also had one. Thanks to Kaia it was also one of the direct lines to GUARD now, and he was on call 24/7. Until it started going off, they just had to wait. Which really wasn't half-bad of a job.

"So," he began again, "How long have you been..." He waved both hands in the general direction of his sternum, where starseeds were. "... awakened?"

Khaldun seemed to recognize the names she threw out there, especially one. He grinned maliciously. "Isn't Zinkenite the... he's the short guy right? Like really short. Man, I remember when he was just a lieutenant. He and Scheelite were all over each other, he was afraid the old general-king was going to kick his a** for it. Man. I would have paid to see that."

"Uh." The question was actually surprisingly hard to think on. Some stuff had come back to him, like major events. And some things had kind of fallen through the cracks. But he probably knew enough to give a plausible answer. "I think it's been like... three years? Kinda lost track. I was a captain by the time we had teams, so I got stuck with Manice, Manice's senshi girlfriend, and Fayalite, who was actually not completely insufferable like the first two. Before that the most 'working together' any of us did for longer than an evening was me, Linarite, Obsidian, and Nealite running that youma farm called Barren Pines."

"Too bad I'm not still at Hillworth or I could give them both a congratulatory shove face-first into their lockers. Though I guess nothing stops me from teleporting over there to do that," he laughed wryly. Certainly wouldn't have been the first time for Zinkenite. "Just say the word."

"Manice, Uranophane. Don't tell me you haven't seen her before. Impossible to miss - she's the one in a mad scientist getup who always looks like she's been sucking on a lemon." He had retroactively chosen to un-forgive her and continue to leave her unforgiven her for breaking his finger a long time back, though he still forgave her disinterest in his advances. Better to leave her to the pink-haired senshi, she was a nightmare.

"Yeah," he confirmed, though he didn't sound entirely proud of the fact. More bored-sounding than anything else.

"I guess. All these low-ranking assholes just get on my nerves lately because of it. They have it pretty ******** easy now." It sounded like it was rant time. Yes, it was rant time. Khaldun didn't reminisce very happily. He leaned forward to the table and lightly flicked his communicator crystal, causing it to wobble. "You know we didn't used to have communicators. Or people with weapons that could actually do s**t. And nobody got to ******** off and collect 'energy'. You had to harvest starseeds, and you had to do it every week. There were like six of us out getting s**t done and all but one of us were just lieutenants, for a ******** long time."

"I don't think any of them are as bad as the senshi, though," he said furtively, watching her closely. Approaching things subtly wasn't a strong point of his, but he liked to think that he could at least read into her reaction. Too many people seemed to have been lulled into a false sense of security about those aliens already. Once an enemy, always an enemy. Those soldiers should at least have painted some nice big targets on their backs as long as they were at it. It would help their new friends stab them all in the backs so much more easily.