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 Posted: Thu Sep 30, 2021 2:46 pm
“These all look the same,” Fysarius huffed softly as he scrolled through the parameters to design his human on his ComTech. The holographic screen flickered as he adjusted the color tones that had been downloaded from the sample humans, and he dragged his finger in brisk up-and-down strokes to try and get a wider height range. “They’re all various shades of beige and short. Why are they so short? What if you won’t be able to tell me apart from anyone else?”
He paused only briefly to glance from his screen, adjusted his position where he lay on his back on the makeshift cot and propped himself up on an elbow to peer over at Ny.
They hadn’t strayed very far from camp, yet, despite the weeks they’d been there. Enough of the senshi humans were coming to the edge to visit that they could collect their own personal information without needing to go anywhere. There were many stories to hear from any one of their species, both involving the enemy and otherwise. And the reports from those who had left camp to scout the area were… daunting.
A bizarre place their city was, with many peculiar sounds and smells and sights. A very active place during the day, and so many of the denizens seemed less than thrilled about that. Some of the reports had said they’d had to evacuate the premises via the warp pad after a few close calls of being chased by animals or uniformed humans… It seemed like it might be too much for Fysarius to take in and painful to navigate effectively.
But it was their duty. They had to go eventually. Even if the thought of being separated from his own was daunting…
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Posted: Thu Sep 30, 2021 2:49 pm
Ny sat on the floor, scrolling through files that had already been logged about Earth. There were many practices they were unfamiliar with, but the issue reported the most often was about currency. They seemed to have some available to them, from somewhere, but it was probably easier to not tangle with the problem. To circumvent it, they simply had to avoid touching anything. She glanced to Fysarius.
He was not very good at not touching, and he seemed… frustrated.
She slipped closer, barely lifting herself from the ground as she moved to sit next to him. She tapped his wrist, drawing it so that his ComTech was facing her more than him. The humans did all look very similar, besides their garments. But most species did, didn’t they? All cows looked kind of the same. All cats looked kind of the same. Why would humans be any different? If he was concerned she would forget his human appearance, she would simply have to pick something for him that she could recognize in an instant.
Nothing about their skin tone or their height spoke anything to her. They didn’t look like him, like something she would see and know, immediately. She could pick out gold eyes, like his, and a pretty deep forest green for his hair. There weren’t many styles to choose from, but he could put it up or leave it down once they were in disguise. Ny carefully selected some short bangs parted down the center and framing his face. It looked like Fysarius’ hair when it was down, though the rest was shorter than she was used to.
She liked it, as much as she could like some unfamiliar body.
She lifted his wrist, turning it so that the ComTech was fully facing him again, and gave him a little smile at her selections. She liked these. She would not forget these. She offered her own band to him. Ny was not any more thrilled about being separated than he was. It was dangerous to go alone.
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Posted: Thu Sep 30, 2021 3:10 pm
He was perfectly content to allow her to pick out traits that were meaningful in some way. He didn’t know what rituals humans had that revolved around their appearance (mating rituals? Threat displays?), but he hoped Ny picked some that were practical. ...Though she probably had no more idea of what that entailed than he did. They didn’t want to stand out. He knew that much.
She turned the device back to him, and he inspected her work. The shape was not unlike his own, colors a bit more muted, sparkling eyes, dark hair. If that was her preference, he would oblige. He set them to his default, locked the choice in so that another push of a button would cloak him in the glamor when he was ready to utilize it. But first, he could tend to Ny’s options.
Right away, he knew he’d set her to the tallest setting. His fingers tapped to the upper limit of that parameter. She towered over him, usually. No reason to change that. He was used to tall girls.
...He liked tall girls.
A furious blush painted his cheeks as he rapidly side-eyed her, wondering if she noticed how immediate that choice was, but he was quick to continue to the rest. A flick of his finger to randomize colors (landing on darker skin and pale eyes and icy-colored hair). He took more care with the style, as she had done, expecting that it was a matter of comfort. Fysarius didn’t want to force her into anything that felt substantially different from what she was accustomed.
So he selected a long, flyaway mane, as hers was. It wasn’t neatly bound, and as he slid to the selection, he murmured out a quieter, “We’ll make sure it’s tied away, before we go out?”
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Posted: Thu Sep 30, 2021 3:18 pm
She pulled her arm back to herself, more briskly than intended. Ny didn’t think twice of his selections. She’d picked some things that reminded her of him, and it seemed perfectly reasonable that he’d pick things that reminded him of her. A tall, beautiful woman with trailing tendrils of hair. She quirked him a little smile and prodded a finger into his furiously pink cheek.
These would do until they returned home. The more difficult part was picking clothes, anyway. Absolutely none of their senshi visitors had been wearing anything like what the Vanguard wore. They were all very different and very colorful, with varying degrees of sparkliness and accessories.
Even the ComTech couldn’t provide anything that extravagant. It was all basic garments. Ny hoped that wouldn’t force them to stick out in a place like this…
But they wouldn’t know until they went out, and since everyone else seemed so enamored, maybe it wouldn’t be that bad. ...Enamored or overwhelmed. Those seemed like the two most likely options, and she didn’t see herself being the former. Everything here on this one plod of grass was weird enough!
The day-night cycle here was so strange, Ny hardly even knew when was a good time to go out. She puffed out a derisive sound and flopped backwards, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands.
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Posted: Thu Sep 30, 2021 3:25 pm
“Look, I one hundred percent agree,” Fysarius told her as Ny dropped backward against the cot. “But we may as well not have come, if we’re not going to do diplomacy with the others.” And that would’ve been a shame, to have missed out on the great amount of diversity in the bugs and plants. The only cost was helping further the mission, and it shouldn’t be that bad!
No one should be too wise to them exploring the city, so it shouldn’t even be dangerous, as long as they were careful and discrete.
It just would’ve been nicer if the mission was catered more to his interests. He didn’t really care about their city, or the humans, or their chaos problems. The bugs. Why couldn’t they have been here to take genetic samples of their specimens to further the sustainability of their own species on Velencya? That was part of the real living world they were striving so hard to recreate…
He shouldn’t complain. To go on those missions, he needed to be able to excel in these missions.
Fysarius flopped back to join Ny on the cot. It was a lot to be out here, on what was apparently the only living world in the universe. But they weren’t alone, and they had all the same preparations as anyone else. Fysarius touched the back of his hand to hers. “It’ll be okay,” he promised. “We can go… tomorrow, and once the first time is done, the rest will be easier.”
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Posted: Thu Sep 30, 2021 3:36 pm
She blinked at him, a slow, confused sort of blink.
They’d known nowhere they went would be like home. Everywhere would be desolate, maybe dangerous. And here would be beyond what they could mentally concoct. A world with billions of humans- millions of different species- all coexisting with a strained relationship. Ny could handle when things were different. ...She thought. It was a lot of different all at once, but she wasn’t… afraid of it, in the same way she thought Fysarius was.
“I know,” her voice was so soft, barely a scratch of sound in an otherwise quiet room.
They would have to go out, to partake in their assignments. It was wasteful not to. If they opted not to follow orders right now, on their first mission, she severely doubted they’d get a second chance in the future. It was a little daunting, but it was just work. This was what they were part of the Vanguard for.
Ny was happy to be able to follow him in all his adventures. It wasn’t what he’d wanted (and so not what she wanted by proxy), and that was upsetting, but she was still there to protect him and learn with him and experience with him.
If it was overwhelming- rather, when it became overwhelming, they still had each other to return to. An anchor to keep them moving on the proper path.
They would go tomorrow. She was fine with that.
In the meantime, there was lots of information to parse through that had been collected by others. Ny shifted to settle in more comfortably next to him. She pulled up her screen, flicking away the human glamor to point out some videos that had been taken of interactions others had had so far.
One of a long and stagnant line of vehicles in front of a school, where adults were picking up very young children, and the recorder was being chased away by an angry old woman in a bright orange vest on the grounds that he, ’Wasn’t a parent here?!’
One of some kind of stand- several stands, each with a variety of different colored fruits- where an older man had cut up a particular green and pink one and was offering little pink cubes to passerby.
One very quick one where a woman opened a door, shouted, and a brown dog suddenly bolted forward to the edge of a grass patch while making a horrible racket, while the recorder hastily fled.
One in a large building, where an excess of people were carting around great heaps of goods that they could not possibly consume alone. Whoever had taken this one called it “Wal-Mart” in an awed sort of tone and trailed a bit too closely behind a woman with eight cases of water and several youngsters with her. It took her about thirty seconds to notice the Vanguardian, and it became… progressively less amicable after that.
So… Yeah. It was a lot. The dangers were many.
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Posted: Thu Sep 30, 2021 3:37 pm
Fysarius watched the videos with slightly parted lips. Everything looked so… disorganized, messy. The Chaos truly was rampant here. And the people, yes, they were surely poisoned. It was alarming how often a Vanguardian with a simple curiosity was chased away or accosted. Questions did not seem to have happy or even willing answers here. ...For the most part. Maybe sometimes they were just concerned for their young.
Like animals, when something strange came too close.
The humans shouldn’t know the videos were being taken by foreigners, though. They looked just like them! Why were they being so hostile? “So they are… very inclined to aggression?” He prompted uncertainly, glancing back to Ny. “Then perhaps it’s best we don’t make any attempts to engage them, personally… We are supposed to be being discrete.”
It just seemed like their information would be kind of limited if they couldn’t even speak to this planet’s citizens without causing an altercation. And how would they charge their source stones? He’d heard that a lot of the senshi were… uncomfortable with the idea of them, preferring they be used with permission only. Fysarius didn’t have any problem with that. Things taken should be done so with permission… But it was hard to be discrete and ask for permission both, and frankly none of these people seemed like they were willing to share resources.
And if the humans didn’t want help, maybe the Valencians shouldn’t force it on them? It was complicated. Way, way above Fysarius’ experience.
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Posted: Thu Sep 30, 2021 3:41 pm
They did seem very… energetic. Surely all amazing candidates for use of their source stones, despite how some of them looked somewhat old, relatively speaking. But they were certainly also very unwilling. Maybe it would be best to do nothing besides scope the scene tomorrow. Find a place where the humans were more at ease in their surroundings, mentally file the place away for later, and come back once they’d gathered appropriate information on how to proceed?
Because while the overwhelming majority of the current logs did seem somewhat terse or outright foreign, they were not all so terrible.
Ny flicked back to the fruit stand man, the one offering pink cubes to anyone who wanted them. He did not seem bad. Not all of the humans were hastily aggressive. Not all bad. Just mostly bad. Three out of four buttholes. She pointed at the man. Even if they couldn’t explain to him the situation (she was fairly certain they couldn’t), he seemed like he wouldn’t mind sacrificing some of his energy to someone who needed it. He was even already handing out food, when most everyone else seemed like a resource hoarder!
That boded well, Ny thought. The odds weren’t ideal, but they weren’t zero, either. They would be okay to just look around tomorrow and try and grasp an understanding of the culture.
She reached to reassuringly pat Fysarius’ head.
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Posted: Thu Sep 30, 2021 3:50 pm
Fysarius had no idea what he was supposed to be getting out of the video she showed him. To him, it seemed one of the most chaotic of all: an outdoor market with people pushing past each other and lines stringing in all directions. At least the line at the education institute had just been one line! And children filed into their vehicles as they approached the marquee. One of her other videos was a relatively empty residential area, and the “Wal-Mart” video at least displayed products divided into sections.
This one was all fruit, but it was… loud. Insane. One “nice” man didn’t make up for the horrific chaos happening around him!
But Ny was hopeful. She was hopeful, and Fysarius did not want to take that from her. The passion of an argument that bubbled in his throat settled as she patted his head. Ny had… such soft features when she was at peace… They would worry about it tomorrow, in the field.
He tried to settle, sighing quietly as he turned to face the girl next to him. “Should we try and rest, then?” He asked softly, golden gaze flitting to the nearby crystal. Truly a godsend in this time and place. He didn’t know how anyone could sleep her fitfully without it. Their stupid sun blinding them at strange hours. The air so dense with strange smells.
Enemies everywhere.
It probably wasn’t even wise to go to sleep. But it was necessary. And it would probably be beneficial to have some charge in their stones in case things took a terrible turn tomorrow. -Not that he hoped they would, but it almost felt like it was inevitable. He slid an arm around her hips, already very aware it would not bother Ny in the slightest.
He was here for her. She was here for him. They were better together.
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Posted: Thu Sep 30, 2021 3:54 pm
Finally, they were getting to be on the same page, or at least past the verbal complaining. Ny had her own doubts and concerns, she wouldn’t deny it, but a couple of helpful people was better than no helpful people. And maybe some of the senshi had seemed reserved, by Lyndin’s explanation. But some had been very excited! This world wouldn’t be somewhere they had to stay forever, so best to get out of it what they could, while they could.
She gave him a tiny smile, collected the little crystal from where her belt lay draped over a nearby chair, and held it close between them.
Ny did not have near so much trouble sleeping as her excitable companion did, and it caused her absolutely no stress to siphon off a little of his energy, enough for her to be able to visibly see the tension ebb out of his shoulders as his eyelids drooped. It gathered in a dim swirl before she set it aside, back on the table within arm’s reach.
But oh! Her head perked up quickly, peering around for Fysarious’ discarded garments because she should take a little for his crystal too.
But she’d have to climb from beneath his hold…
She peered at his arm, and then out to uniform laying haphazardly somewhere around the foot of the cot. Yes, she would have to get it. Better his crystal have a little extra charge for tomorrow. She slunk from beneath his arm, tipped her feet off the mat, and slipped to scoop up his crystal, before returning to Fysarius’ side and hunkering down again. Ny didn’t have trouble falling asleep, but that didn’t mean she had no energy to spare.
Better to preserve it while she was able. It would return after a rest, anyway.
Ny was careful not to drain to exhaustion, or even take so much that she noticed more than a little tug of feeling ready to go to sleep. She set the crystal aside, used her feet to scrabble for a sheet that she could pull up far enough for her hands to grab so she could tug it over them, and pressed her face close to Fysarius.
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