ruleswithvelvet | Pod-Person

Pod-Person

To say Nathaniel was surprised by the alert was... less than accurate. The person had apparently crashed through one of the thicker dimensional walls, something quite rare in and of itself. Stranger yet had been the device she'd done it in - a metal pod... not, so far as anyone could tell, at all designed for the journey it had taken. It had crashed straight through into the wasteland.

His soldiers had cleared the area quickly. They had escorted him out to it. Now they stood a respectful distance away as their leader frowned at the device. He gripped a pebble and casually tossed it forward toward the pod. With a small expenditure of power, he made the knock far louder than it should have been.

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YOU HAVE LANDED. PLANET; UNKNOWN. PLANET CLASSIFICATION; UNKNOWN. WAIT FOR STARFLEET CONTACT. DO NOT LEAVE THE POD.

Gaila groaned at the irritating clinical voice that filled the escape pod that was waking her from her state of unconscious unawareness. Irritating bitch. "Fuck. Confirmed. Won't leave." She grumbled at it. Mostly to get it to shut up. There wasn't a hope that she wasn't getting out of this stupid thing. If they didn't know where the planet was, how were they supposed to find her?

Gaila rolled her eyes, sitting up in the pod and checking herself for injuries. Sore back from how she'd been flung into the pod by the Engineering Chief when she'd refused to evacuate. But nothing worse than a few scrapes and bruises. She had been exceedingly lucky. She lay back on the padded seat, closing her eyes for a second to try and muster the will of force to get herself out of the pod. That was when a pebble hit her pod and snapped her out of her reprieve.

Pebbles meant something with opposable thumbs. Opposable thumbs normally meant humanoids. Humanoids generally meant civilisation. It took her a grand total of a minute to rip out the appropriate wires that let her kick the top doors open, heeled boots first.

But it was best to be cautious, crouched and holding onto her phaser tightly she yelled out to whatever had thrown the pebble. "Hey. If you're planning on killing me, I've gotta tell you, that ain't gonna end well for you guys." She yelled in Terran Standard. If they understood that she was in with a fair chance of survival.

Translator Stones were something of a standard for missions like this, thankfully. her words sounded perfectly normal to him, and those around him. Just as his words should be perfectly understandable to her as he responded - in modern English, for two thousand and thirteen - "I have no particular intention of killing you. Though frankly, if those heels on your foot are real, I'd be more worried about you..."

He let that hang there a moment, choosing not to come closer. he didn't want to cause a panic.

She deliberated for a moment whether to show herself in her full Orion glory or to use one of the small cloaking devices that would hide her true nature. It depended on whether they were a Federation civilisation or not. But then again, if the computer didn't recognise them then they probably weren't.

"'Course they're real. What's the matter, don't they have women on this planet?" She yelled back at him, stuggling over her choice.

"Most of them don't have heeled feet," he remarked, eyes still on the pod. "But, then... It's quite clear you're not really from Medoria." A heart beat pause.

"Which is, of course, why I've come to welcome you..."

Medoria. Not a name she recognised.

Fuck it. If it wasn't in the federation computers the realistic chances of her ever being found were next to none. And she wasn't going to waste her energy on the prime directive. Gaila gathered her things, the phaser, the emergency supplies backpack and every bit of electrics she could get her hands on.

Then she stood up, throwing her pack over the edge first and then a leg over the edge of the pod and sliding down to the ground. "Quite the welcoming party." She commented, hand going to her hip.

"We don't precisely get that many off world visitors," he admitted, eyes traveling up her form before resting on her eyes. It was good to have proprieties. He had already memorized her body, though.

"One a month, perhaps. Not usually in pods."

She looked around, careful to make significant eye contact with each and every male present. You never knew who might come in useful later on. The seeming leader however, she met his eyes and deliberately kept his gaze. He was welcome to look at her body. Male weakness was easy to prey on.

Gaila picked up her pack and slung it over her shoulder. She made quite the sight with her high heeled boots, red curly hair piled up on her head and red uniform dress. Even if she did look a slight roughed up. "That's fine. This is a flying visit. I don't intend to screw up your population numbers. Lieutenant Gaila. Engineer." She announced herself. "Care to tell me who I'm talking to?"

"Nathaniel Dorns," he responded, eyes steadily on hers. "Lord of Medoria..." he glance at his men, gesturing for them to walk back toward the palace. "And from the looks of your device, it doesn't look as if you'll be capable of going anywhere for a few days."

Another pause.

"You're welcome to stay out here, of course. But the palace is open if you'd like."

Gaila looked around at the wasteland around her with a twist of disdain on her lips. Like hell was she staying with the pod and waiting for Starfleet to never pick her up when there was the comfort of a palace beckoning her instead.

"Y'know, I think I'll take you up on that offer. Never been one for roughing it in all honesty." She replied.

"A girl after my own heart," he promised, holding a hand out to her. "I've never really seen the point of it, when there were better options available..."

She took his hand. Better not to bite the hand that fed you after all and with this being an alien planet she couldn't deny in case it was some great offence not to hold hands. "I've never been one to make things harder for myself than they strictly have to be." She replied.

He took it to his lips and gave it a little kiss, smiling faintly. "It's something of a walk," he admitted, parting from her.

"Perhaps you could tell me about where you came from?"

"The stars." And that was all that he would get until she ascertained whether their culture was warp ready or not. If she said any more about Earth or Orion it might give away the kind of tech in her pod.

"You'll find those don't really exist on this world," he informed her, starting to walk toward his world. "We live in something of a dimensional bubble. The entire universe is little more than a few hundred square miles, total."

Shit. Not what Gaila had wanted to hear. She walked alongside him as she silently considered how she was going to get out of here. "It's a small world after all." She dryly commented.

"Disneyland," he responded, arching an eyebrow as he glanced at her. "Are you familiar with earth, then?"

"It sure seems you are." So post 21st century then. Gaila gave him an assessing look.

"As I told you..." he continued walking "...it's a bubble dimension. We intersect with a great number of other universes, as it happens."

Gaila kept step with him, eyeing him speculatively. "Including Disneyworld?" She dryly replied. Brought back a whole new meaning to it's a small world.

Edited 2013-07-25 08:18 (UTC)

"You'll find there are several Americas you can reach from here. You'd be surprised how many of them have a disneyworld." Sudden greenness was looming up ahead, the end of the wasteland in what seemed to be a clear cut circle.

Gaila's hand ached for her tricorder to find out what the heck was going on with the sudden environmental changes but she resolved to keep it in her pack. It would do her no good to go flashing her tech.

"I'm really not. It's an unheathy obsession they have with that mouse."

"It could be worse," he promised her, leading her toward the green and holding out a hand to stop her. The soldiers spread out, none quite touching the grass.

"The ones who use a cat are even worse."

Gaila paused when he held his hand up, arms folding over her chest as she looked over the other men who had also paused before the greenery. Interesting.

"What? Are we not allowed to step on the grass?" She questioned.

"It's the barrier you need to watch out for," he told her, lifting a device. It glowed, sounding out a beacon of light that pooled against the wall for a moment before bursting through and disappearing into the distance.

"We've had to raise security of late. There's been some suspicious activity around the borders..." There's a shimmer as a seven by seven square foot of the air seems to shimmer.

"It should be safe now."

Gaila surreptitiously eyed the device that he used to make the border safe to cross. Interesting. Hopefully it was only designed to keep things out rather than to keep things in as well. Gaila didn't do well with being trapped. She brushed her arms against the phaser at her hip, reassuring herself that it was safe and still there.

"That's one hell of a big fence you got there." She commented, not able to help but to say it as she stepped forward.

He slid it into his pants pocket, reminding himself to hook the shields up to a new fob as soon as possible. Beautiful this one might be, but that made her no more trustworthy. "It's only partially for security," he admitted, as they stepped through - the dry arid air turning instantly to a more moist atmosphere, with a cool breeze."We like our land somewhat... temperature controlled. The wasteland has a tendency of spreading if we let it."

Gaila definitely wasn't trustworthy. She only ever had her own interests at heart and if that meant screwing everybody else over then she was entirely fine with that.

"Sounds like one helluva border dispute if you're arguing with the actual ground." Gaila commented, silently wondering if she'd be able to get enough sun with the barrier being there.

The other plants certainly didn't seem to have a problem. The grass grew normally, as she could see - as did the orchard trees, and the vegetables. Such plants were actually quite the staple in his people's livelihood, with wild meat being so scarce and domestic herds being relatively few. There wasn't precisely a lot of grazing ground, after all.

"We manage well enough," He promised her. "And the trees don't seem to mind - though I admit, we've had to get rather creative with our orchids. I could give you a tour if you'd like?"

The sight of the lush growing plants calmed her slightly. Gaila raked a hand though her dyed curls and gave a sigh of relief.

"Mm, that would be nice. Might as well say hi to the distant cousins." Gaila, after all, did consider plants to be near relatives of Orions. With their sharing of chlorophyll and distinctive colouring. It was always relieving to see them. It meant wherever she was could be habitable in a pinch.

"So, you take in wandering strays often?" She asked with some curiosity.

"We don't have many strays," he told her, guiding her forward onto the grass. There were houses about, some grazing animals - not many in sight - and a few farms. He led her past trees and houses alike, though, toward the large castle on the hill top.

He veered to the right before the reached it, circling around the castle and to the orchards. She should be used to seeing strange plants, by now - with all those worlds. Trees.

"Care to try one?" she suggested, gesturing to the fruits. "Or would that be a faux pas, for you?"

"You're okay." She waved the offer off. "My species doesn't physically imbibe anything. It wouldn't have any benefit." That and it was one of the biggest social taboos that existed in Orion society.

All the time that they were walking along Gaila was looking over the landscape, hand dipping into her dress pocket at her hip to play with something inside it. Readings would help her figure out just who what where when and why was going on.

Nathaniel noticed, though he didn't comment. He simply smiled faintly, holding the fruit up into the light. "I envy you," he admitted after a moment. "Perhaps if we were so lucky, we would have fewer troubles living on this world." He squeezed the fruit faintly, and then placed it in his own pocket. "Fruit has become the staple for my people. Meats, and juices, and alcohols - spices, herbs. We've had to be quite careful in cultivating it in order to match our needs... but few things grow as well, or produce as much, as our trees."

The air was clear. The soil fertile. And there was an energy that practically hummed through the air - concentrating in the people around her. Magic.

Gaila nodded politely to show she was listening.

"Yet to hear most humans I'm missing out of the great pleasures of physically imbibing." She sarcastically commented. Yes, perhaps she was missing out on a physical sense but if it came down to it, Gaila could last far longer than any of her classmates at the academy in a disaster situation.

"There are far worse forms of... imbibing to miss out on," he remarked, voice a little amused.

"I admit, I'm quite fond of "imbibing" - but I don't doubt you have your own pleasures I can't share." He glanced over to her. "Perhaps you can tell me about them some time."

"Perhaps I can show you them sometime."

It was probably a very bad idea to be flirting with the only person around here that seemed to have any power. But unfortunately flirting was in her nature and people with power were usually easy targets when it came to her pheromones.

"Perhaps later..." His eyes trailed over her form, taking in the details of her body - letting his eyes drink in every curve. Perhaps he was wondering what she would taste like.

"We are still in the middle of your tour. If there's anything you'd like to see next...?"

"Well unless we're camping out, I'd like to see where you propose I stay until I can fix up the pod." Gaila bluntly asked. She never had been a shrinking violet. And while she knew there was nothing she could do to get the pod flying she could amplify the signal it put out.

A slight smile, as he pushes away any irritation he feels at being rushed. He's used to setting a more even pace. He'll have to adjust.

"I usually wait another hour or two at least before trying to see a woman's bedroom..." She moved through the halls, and toward the bedrooms. Large bedrooms, with a large bed to match. Mirrors, dresser. Everything she might need.

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