[LOG] Rhea and Wang; Gravity
Characters involved: Rhea and The Prosperous King Who Rules By The Grace Of God; closed.
When: Just after Wang arrives.
Where: The entrance to the ship, moving to the kitchen.
Standing on the bridge of the ship was a man unlike any other. He was Chinese, wearing extremely stylish clothing, and seemed to radiate what could have been considered a glow of confidence. Even with the ship's computers being silent, the man ran his hand down the screen and over the control panel, looking over things almost as if they were something he'd seen every day of his life. After a moment, he turned and strode from the room.
For someone who had just awoke on an alien ship, he didn't seem too concerned or even worried. If anything, the man seemed to move about as if it were an every-day occurrence, walking down the hallway at a steady pace. He poked his head into each room to see what was inside, then moved along to the next doorway without lingering too long. He eventually found himself in the doorway looking out towards the spaceport, and considered going out of the ship to look around..
After a long day of attempting to capture the robots in the spaceport in order to...do things with them (she hadn't decided yet) Rhea was making her way back to the ship for food and possibly sleep. Maybe.
Strolling back to the ship, she stopped at the sight of the man in the doorway, giving him a confused look.
He seemed....oddly familiar. "Heya, are you new? Can I help you?"
Turning his attention to her, he idly shrugged his shoulders. It was a very nonchalant motion, as if the world meant little and that nothing in the universe could truly move him... so there was a good chance it came off as almost arrogant.
"It appears that we have come to an abandoned outpost." Ah, he always was the master of the obvious -- though, the way people were moving around, it seemed like no one had even noticed that there wasn't a single person on the facility. His eyes only slightly hinted something more, as if he was distracted by her at the same time as watching her. "Have you seen anything abnormal?"
"Apart from the robots? And the whole abandoned outcrop in space thing?" She smiled, raising an eyebrow. "It's all pretty normal apart from that, though. Sort of."
She shrugged a little, as though unsure of what else to say. "We haven't been here that long, though. We landed a couple of days ago."
Oh, that's right! He was new, right? "Oh, um-- we're on a, um..." She went a little red and gestured as though unsure of how to put it. "Uh...spaceship, I guess."
Would he want to know anything else? She dropped her arms to her side and swung them awkwardly. She was never too sure of what to tell people when they first came here. Pushing a hand through her hair to lift it out of her face, she smiled at him again. "You probably have a lot of questions, right? You can ask me."
Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a simple red cell phone. Even in his time, over a hundred years ahead of her own, the cell phones still looked the same... almost as if technology had been lost in time. He opened it up, and pointed it towards her.
Silence. A moment passed where he just pointed it, opened, as if something should happen. Time creeped by, he said nothing. Hundreds of thousands of light years away, a star exploded, and life began anew... but on the ship, there was a long, awkward silence.
"You are not a monster," He finally said. The cell phone snapped shut and was deposited back into his pocket, and he looked back down the ship. "How many people are on this ship? They need to be gathered together."
During this silence, the woman had tilted her head so far to the side that her ear was just about parallel to her shoulder, a deeply confused expression on her face, her arms folded across her chest. "I am relieved at that," she said dryly.
She uncrossed her arms."If you have a phone, then you might want to turn it off, to conserve the energy. And at our last count, there were- hm, around sixteen of us? But that was just me and Issac estimating; I'm not sure if it's accurate."
She gave him an interested look."Why do they need to be gathered together?"
"We will need it to make sure the others are clean." He crossed his arms over his chest, but not before he fixed the black and white striped scarf back around his neck. "It would only take one before this ship was completely over-run by the monsters. You would never even know if they had been changed..." He trailed off for a moment before looking back to her.
"You should not worry about it. I will take care of it if there becomes an issue." He began to walk down the hall of the ship, his feet lightly tapping on the floor.
Well, that was incredibly confusing.
"Hey, wait!" Chasing after him, she bounded up the steps into the command deck, landing lightly, reaching out to try and grab his arm, to stop him going further. "Wait- who are "they"? Who are you?"
She had managed to catch him by the left elbow, which paused him in midstep. Glancing back at her from the corner of his eye, he spoke with an odd authoritative tone, as if the name deserved respect. Slowly, he pointed towards the ceiling.
"By the Grace of God, the man who will become King of All. Wang-Fu Chen."
(Wang = King, Chen = Grace of God)
As her jaw dropped and her hand tightened unconsciously around his elbow, Rhea found herself thinking back on what Signius had said about alternate worlds and timelines. It had been just a cool fact back then, but right now the phrase "alternate world" was lit up in blinking lights in her head.
So it was pretty much her last rational thought before she fell against him, wrapping her arms around him. "Wang! Oh Wang- but you're not my-...oh god." She pulled back. "Oh. Oh dear- sorry, I..." She looked absolutely (understandably) distraught.
One moment he was telling her who he was, the next she was hugging him. Wang looked a bit confused -- no, actually, Wang looked very confused, the entire arrogant façade completely broken by this woman's emotional outburst. Slowly, the walls erected themselves again, and his face fell back to being rather stoic.
"I'm afraid I don't know who you are, miss." With a pause, he spoke again. "Though apparently you know who I am." He reached out and placed a hand to her shoulder, trying to get her to calm down a little. He spent a moment mulling over his own thoughts before he squeezed her shoulder.
"Show me the kitchen."
As he mulled over his thoughts, she was working on calming down, staring at the ground and breathing in and out. Big breaths from deep down in her chest, in, out, in, out. She was so focused that she barely heard him when he told her to show him to the kitchen. So she gave him a quick sideways look, big blue eyes widened in surprise as she tried to process what he'd just told her.
"Oh, it's..." She waved him along. "Hey, um, this way, follow me..." and off she wandered down the hall, looking almost as shell-shocked as she felt.
Once they were in what the ship considered a kitchen he looked around at what he had to work with. After a moment he flexed and began to pull down pans and what appeared to be the same types of food he was used to working with on Earth. He glanced over at her from the corner of his eye while he began to prep.
"Have a seat."
In fifteen minutes the room -- and likely a good deal of the ship -- began to smell like that of a restaurant. While he had used some of the food that had been brought in by the others, he made a small meal, just enough for the woman who was looking shell-shocked. It smelled -- quite like, but not entirely -- like an Asian dish, but was made with some items that didn't quite fit their Earth counterparts.
He placed the dish in front of her and leaned back against the countertop, crossing his arms.
She watched followed him in in a daze, sitting down when directed to. She kept her eyes on him as he cooked, her hands folded neatly in her lap.
She stared at the dish as he placed it in front of her, and hesitated before taking a fork out of her pocket. She'd picked it up at the burger stall, with the hope that it'd come in useful. Rhea was hungry - she was very hungry, but had somehow forgotten that she was in all the commotion. Her growling stomach was reminding her now, though.
A few very hesitant bites later, and she let out a quiet laugh. "This is very good. You're a good chef."
He just smiled and shrugged, turning away to begin cleaning the pans he'd used and to clean up what was left that was dirty. After a moment of silence he spoke again. "Where I am from, we were attacked over a hundred years ago. Since then, humanity has been fighting a battle with monsters, monsters who can assume the form of a human." He began to scrub the pan he'd been cooking in.
"They attacked again over ten years ago." He fell silent for a moment, closing his eyes while he scrubbed. "I watched my father die in the attack." Letting out a breath, he stopped scrubbing and watched the water splash against the pan. "Those monsters can be anyone, anywhere. Once they see you, they can mimic you... they look like you and sound like you."
Scrub scrub.
"I'm not sure why I'm telling you this."
She put the fork down to listen quietly to his tale. Her heart went out to him. It was probably a problem - becoming so attached, so quickly to someone she didn't technically know. But she couldn't really help it - she was in love with him in a different universe.
"Is that why you want to check everyone?" Her voice was quiet as she leaned forward in her chair and placed her forearms on the table. "But what would you do if you found one?"
There was an odd sense of distance when he answered her question, though it was filled with muted anger and hatred. "I'd destroy them. Any monster that wants to harm humanity will be destroyed." He didn't explain how, but the tone in his voice said that he meant business.
He stopped scrubbing the pan after a moment and picked up a nearby towel to dry it, turning back towards her. "Tell me about yourself."
It seemed more a command than a question. She shrugged, leaning back in her chair until it rocked back slightly, not sure of where to start.
"My name is Rhea- um, I was born in Oxford and I'm a...well. Where I come from, I am what is known as a potential. That means I have some skill, or a talent that I'm very good at."
She shrugged again, unsure of what to say. "It allows us to- well, it lets us potentials kind of...bond...with supernatural creatures called Spirits. They lend us their power, and we give them our energy so they can materialise...it's a little complicated."
She stopped to lick her lips, suddenly self-conscious about how stilted and awkward her speech sounded. "There are also people called magicians - they control certain...well, I suppose you'd call them elemental powers. And there are other supernatural beings too, which often cause problems...like Demons- haha, they're nasty. They prey on humans and Spirits. And some Spirits cause problems too. But there's this agency called "The Order", and they're there to stop that kind of thing."
"I was recruited when I went up to university at Countshire to study archaeology, and was pacted to a Spirit named Quinten when the university came under attack from a hostile Spirit," here she stopped again, looking up at him with a wry smile. "That was when I met- when I met Wang-Fu Chen. Or...my Wang-Fu Chen. A magician studying law at Countshire university. And we uh-..."
Here she went completely red. "We dated. And then we got married."
Oh man, maybe if she stared at the plate of food long enough, the awkward that last sentence was probably producing would disappear. "And then I graduated and well, the Order seemed to be heading in a pretty violent direction, so I've been sort of avoiding them - it kind of helps, being an archaeologist-- I get to travel to a lot of digs, since my specialisation isn't specialised around a particular culture or people - it's more people in general - um, I think osteology is actually classified under anthropology in America..." Maybe if she continued to witter he'd forget the "we're married in a different world" bit?
"Ah, I see."
His words cut through the air like a knife, all while he placed the pan back down on the counter. He rubbed his hands dry for the moment. "That explains everything.
So if you are here, and I am here, that means we are from different worlds. That also means that there could be a lot of danger on this ship... and now we have landed on an outpost that looks abandoned but we do not know that for sure." He let out a sigh and shook his head, murmuring, "How irritating."
He managed to make some sort of tea while the silence dragged again, placing a cup of it next to her food. "Once we know that the people on this ship are of no danger to each other, we will work on getting home."
She looked up at him quickly to try and gauge his reaction, but her nerve failed her and she looked back down at her food and the new cup of tea by it. "We've been working- um, we're trying to translate the writing on the dashboard-thing, so we know how to use it. And working out the other things on here..."
Her fingers rubbed against the piercings in her ear, mostly for comfort as she took a polite sip of tea. "We don't have much to go on, but we're trying."
"What other things need to be worked out?" He was leaning against the counter again, though his eyes weren't on her, but instead focused on the wall across the room. He was thinking, the gears and pulleys of his mind grinding and spinning as he tried to piece the puzzle together, as if it might just click at some point and everything would be solved.
He then absently wondered if he could call upon his Zecter here, and he almost reached up and out towards the sky to see if it would come. However, he knew that the Zecter would come to him if it was needed, and as it was a sentient being, he didn't want to wear it's patience thin -- even if the Zecter had never shown any irritation or ill intent towards any of his family members in the past.
She took a deep breath. "No clue...hm, we have a rota of cooks and cleaners, a doctor, and we have our researchers - um, I'm one of them...and some dependents. There's not much for us to do but try to keep control and research."
He nodded, then pushed away from the counter. "Then I will act as this ship's bodyguard."
That in and of itself should have been amusing enough, as Wang probably only weighed a total of 150 pounds when wet. He looked more suited to be either a chef or an actor or something, not a fighter, and it didn't appear he was armed at all. Even so, the man seemed to be rather calm and confidant when he said that, as if he meant it and wasn't just boasting.
He glanced over at Rhea. "Someone needs to protect this ship, so we can all get home safely."
She couldn't help but smile at that. As she took another forkful of food, she tried to hide it, but that turned out to be a useless endeavour. "You'll probably do great."
It was true he looked like any threat could easily steamroller him, but she didn't see that. "You're really strong- my you is really strong. So...yeah."
"You'll probably be a great bodyguard. Although I don't think even you could help against asteroids. That was our last threat. We got hit pretty bad - some of us got hurt." She frowned at the memory. "It was a little scary, to be honest."
"That's true, but I can protect this crew from other threats." He looked over at her and smiled. "Do you want more, or are you full?"
She was right, however. There was nothing he could do to threats outside of the ship -- he wasn't certain if he could breathe in space, quite like he wasn't certain if he could spend long periods of time underwater. Granted, he could probably use his abilities to move around outside longer than any of the others, the issue still remained that without oxygen, he'd die just like everyone else.
Eventually, he changed the conversation. "From what I can see, he is lucky."
"I'm fine, thank you. You're very kind." She smiled back, finishing her tea.
Though she nearly choked on it at his last sentence. "Wh-what?"
When she had finished her food he took the plate and cleaned it, scrubbing it clean then drying it. When he was finished and everything was put away, he wiped his hands on another towel.
"You obviously care a great deal about him. It's easy to see." Wang shrugged, walking over to lean on the table beside her. "My grandmother once told me that when people are great distances apart, they are even closer together. That's very true."
Placing a hand on her shoulder, he gave a light squeeze.
She allowed herself to touch his hand quickly. "That's a nice thought. I hope it's right."
She stood quickly, feeling a little surreal. "Um, there are other rooms and stuff...but the bedroom is kind of blocked off at the moment. And the library's a mess. But it's a pretty cool place, apart from all the kidnap."
He nodded, thinking for a moment. "What is blocking the bedroom?"
"Oh, something..." She waved her arms up and down, unsure of how to say it. "Um, these asteroids smacked into the ship and I think they took out the doorway - it collapsed. Or something. Um, the others managed to make a hole to get some beds out, though."
Her arms dropped back down to her sides, and she pushed her hands into her pockets. "You can get in there, it just seems a little dangerous right now."
"Show me." He placed his hands in his pockets and let her lead him towards where the bedroom was. When they would finally arrive there he looked over the hole they had made and thought for a long moment. He nodded to himself afterward, then pulled his hands out of his pockets and stretched.
"Alright, I'll fix this. Stand back."
She gave him a confused look, but took a few steps back anyway, crossing her arms nervously over her chest. "What are you going to do?"
Wang held up a hand towards the ceiling, which in and of itself looked a bit odd. After a moment, the air around the ceiling of the room began to shimmer, then ripple as if it were made of some sort of water. Suddenly, a red object flew out of this ripple, flying around the hallway and buzzing Rhea's head before it came to land on his open hand.
Shimmering in the lighting in the hallway, the red object was exposed to be in the shape of a Japanese rhinoceros beetle, only it shimmered and moved as if it actually were alive. Like a robot, it blinked and flashed multiple colors from little lights, yet the object seemed to be sentient, moving back and forth in his hand before turning to point towards the woman in the hall.
"I'm glad that you could join me," Wang said to the creature, which turned back to him.
Her jaw dropped again as she ducked to avoid the incoming projectile. What the hell was that?! It looked like some sort of giant robot bug, or the controls for her nephew's robot dinosaur.
She half-straightened up, keeping low in case the bug-thing tried to buzz her again and she needed to move, most of her attention focused on the...whatever it was. Magic bug monster.
He twisted the little robot bug around and pushed aside his shirt, exposing a rather large belt with a flat slot on the front. "Henshin," he said rather quietly, and while it was a Japanese phrase, it was universally spoken by all of the Riders in his world. With that, he plugged the little robot bug onto the belt, and the transformation began.
Breaking out from the belt, silver armor began to spread over his body, molding into the shape of some sort of alien combat armor. He took a few steps back before he switched the beetle's horn over, "Cast off." The armor that covered his body suddenly blew off, though he was sure to twist so that it didn't strike the woman. Moments later he stood in a thin outfit of red, silver and black, a red "horn" slowly lifting up to click in over the mask. He actually looked, more or less, like a Power Ranger from the 1990s television series.
Turning to glance towards the bedroom, he reached down and touched a square button on the side of his belt. "Clock Up." The moment he did that, he took a step forward towards the ruins of the bedroom and began to pull apart the ruins. A Rider using Clock Up moved quicker than the human eye, able to dance between raindrops before they moved even a foot. Normally. But on this ship it wasn't as fast. By the time that Wang stopped back beside Rhea and the armor broke off of his body, the doorway stood back intact, though braced now by using some of the debris. "Clock Over."
Rhea stood up straight and slipped her hands into her pockets, looking over the scene with a blank expression which slowly slipped into a nonchalant sort of expression. She turned to look him up and down quickly, and then looked back at the room she'd watched him fix.
All the while, a little voice in her head said "oh my god, my husband is a power ranger in a different universe."
"I like the suit," she offered. "It's very...red. Nice." Then coughed. "Is it safe now?"
Don't call him Red Ranger, don't call him Red Ranger...
The armor began to fade away, and the little beetle disconnected from his belt and flew off, disappearing through the void it so quickly arrived through. He turned to look over at her then back towards the door, before he nodded. "Should be sturdy now. The hardest part was trying to brace the door while moving things, but it wasn't too much of an issue." He shrugged slightly, as if it was something he did every day.
"They call us Riders in my world," He finally said. "The Kabuto Zecter has been in my family for three generations now, if not longer. They were gifts from an alien race that was attempting to save us before we were attacked."
"They failed?" She asked quietly, reaching out to touch his arm. She couldn't understand that sort of world - it sounded difficult to live in; horrible, dangerous.
"At least you're used to fighting aliens. The rest of us don't have much combat experience, I don't think." She gave him a small half-smile.
"I don't know what happened, because a lot of information was destroyed in 1999 when they attacked. From the legend passed along, they crashed on our world due to some problem with their ship, and died before they could explain the Zecters to us. Somehow the Zecters were stolen and people came to learn to use them on their own... but the aliens still attacked and nearly wiped out humanity."
He turned to her and nodded slightly. "The first Riders protected humanity, but some were later corrupted by their power. Then there is no information about them for a long time. My grandfather told me that the Zecters could talk to their Riders, and Kabuto has told me a little of their history, but not much more than we already know. It's rather tight-lipped about some things." He smiled dryly, then changed the subject.
"Don't worry about fighting. You can leave that to me."
"Okay," she said, frowning thoughtfully. The "power ranger power ranger powerrangerpowerranger" voice in her head had been joined by another voice that was telling her to somehow study the Zecter. She forced them down with a little difficulty.
"You take care of the fighting."
She took a step back, pulling her arm away. "But what'll we do if you get corrupted by power?"
"I have no reason to be corrupted by the power of Kabuto. True power comes from the heart, not from an object given to help you." He crossed his arms over his chest and looked down the hallway, as if watching for another person on the ship to arrive. "Those corrupted by their Zecter were corrupt to begin with. The only thing the Zecter can be blamed for is giving them the ability to act on their emotions."
Wang knew he needed to check the ship to make sure none of the other crew members were monsters, but at the same time he was feeling tired, and he wanted to find some supplies himself. He also knew that the longer he was on this ship, the longer his own world was short a Rider...
"You're very wise," she remarked, leaning back against the wall. She looked back down at the entrance to the bedroom again, trying to muster up something else to say. She looked down at her deck shoes, then back down the hall. Now that they had stopped talking, she felt shy and awkward, slightly lost.
"Look, I..." She touched her lips, then moved her hand up to touch her piercings again. "I...look. I know this place pretty well by now. Is there anything I can get for you? To thank you for opening the bedroom and- cooking, and all..."
He began walking down the hall, towards the hatch that lead out of the ship. While walking, he shook his head slightly. "You do not need to thank me." He stopped, just before the turn that would lead him out of the ship, and looked back towards her. "You should get some rest."
She watched him go, and nodded at his suggestion. The past - what had it been? No more than an hour? This encounter had been emotionally draining - she'd gone through something of a rollercoaster in the past probably-not-quite-an-hour, and her limbs felt leaden. "I will. Just...make sure you don't overdo it. I don't want to find you passed out somewhere."
She span on her heel and began to walk back towards the beds in the bedroom, and the promise of a release from the really fucking weird day she was having.
"Good night, Wang."
When: Just after Wang arrives.
Where: The entrance to the ship, moving to the kitchen.
Standing on the bridge of the ship was a man unlike any other. He was Chinese, wearing extremely stylish clothing, and seemed to radiate what could have been considered a glow of confidence. Even with the ship's computers being silent, the man ran his hand down the screen and over the control panel, looking over things almost as if they were something he'd seen every day of his life. After a moment, he turned and strode from the room.
For someone who had just awoke on an alien ship, he didn't seem too concerned or even worried. If anything, the man seemed to move about as if it were an every-day occurrence, walking down the hallway at a steady pace. He poked his head into each room to see what was inside, then moved along to the next doorway without lingering too long. He eventually found himself in the doorway looking out towards the spaceport, and considered going out of the ship to look around..
After a long day of attempting to capture the robots in the spaceport in order to...do things with them (she hadn't decided yet) Rhea was making her way back to the ship for food and possibly sleep. Maybe.
Strolling back to the ship, she stopped at the sight of the man in the doorway, giving him a confused look.
He seemed....oddly familiar. "Heya, are you new? Can I help you?"
Turning his attention to her, he idly shrugged his shoulders. It was a very nonchalant motion, as if the world meant little and that nothing in the universe could truly move him... so there was a good chance it came off as almost arrogant.
"It appears that we have come to an abandoned outpost." Ah, he always was the master of the obvious -- though, the way people were moving around, it seemed like no one had even noticed that there wasn't a single person on the facility. His eyes only slightly hinted something more, as if he was distracted by her at the same time as watching her. "Have you seen anything abnormal?"
"Apart from the robots? And the whole abandoned outcrop in space thing?" She smiled, raising an eyebrow. "It's all pretty normal apart from that, though. Sort of."
She shrugged a little, as though unsure of what else to say. "We haven't been here that long, though. We landed a couple of days ago."
Oh, that's right! He was new, right? "Oh, um-- we're on a, um..." She went a little red and gestured as though unsure of how to put it. "Uh...spaceship, I guess."
Would he want to know anything else? She dropped her arms to her side and swung them awkwardly. She was never too sure of what to tell people when they first came here. Pushing a hand through her hair to lift it out of her face, she smiled at him again. "You probably have a lot of questions, right? You can ask me."
Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a simple red cell phone. Even in his time, over a hundred years ahead of her own, the cell phones still looked the same... almost as if technology had been lost in time. He opened it up, and pointed it towards her.
Silence. A moment passed where he just pointed it, opened, as if something should happen. Time creeped by, he said nothing. Hundreds of thousands of light years away, a star exploded, and life began anew... but on the ship, there was a long, awkward silence.
"You are not a monster," He finally said. The cell phone snapped shut and was deposited back into his pocket, and he looked back down the ship. "How many people are on this ship? They need to be gathered together."
During this silence, the woman had tilted her head so far to the side that her ear was just about parallel to her shoulder, a deeply confused expression on her face, her arms folded across her chest. "I am relieved at that," she said dryly.
She uncrossed her arms."If you have a phone, then you might want to turn it off, to conserve the energy. And at our last count, there were- hm, around sixteen of us? But that was just me and Issac estimating; I'm not sure if it's accurate."
She gave him an interested look."Why do they need to be gathered together?"
"We will need it to make sure the others are clean." He crossed his arms over his chest, but not before he fixed the black and white striped scarf back around his neck. "It would only take one before this ship was completely over-run by the monsters. You would never even know if they had been changed..." He trailed off for a moment before looking back to her.
"You should not worry about it. I will take care of it if there becomes an issue." He began to walk down the hall of the ship, his feet lightly tapping on the floor.
Well, that was incredibly confusing.
"Hey, wait!" Chasing after him, she bounded up the steps into the command deck, landing lightly, reaching out to try and grab his arm, to stop him going further. "Wait- who are "they"? Who are you?"
She had managed to catch him by the left elbow, which paused him in midstep. Glancing back at her from the corner of his eye, he spoke with an odd authoritative tone, as if the name deserved respect. Slowly, he pointed towards the ceiling.
"By the Grace of God, the man who will become King of All. Wang-Fu Chen."
(Wang = King, Chen = Grace of God)
As her jaw dropped and her hand tightened unconsciously around his elbow, Rhea found herself thinking back on what Signius had said about alternate worlds and timelines. It had been just a cool fact back then, but right now the phrase "alternate world" was lit up in blinking lights in her head.
So it was pretty much her last rational thought before she fell against him, wrapping her arms around him. "Wang! Oh Wang- but you're not my-...oh god." She pulled back. "Oh. Oh dear- sorry, I..." She looked absolutely (understandably) distraught.
One moment he was telling her who he was, the next she was hugging him. Wang looked a bit confused -- no, actually, Wang looked very confused, the entire arrogant façade completely broken by this woman's emotional outburst. Slowly, the walls erected themselves again, and his face fell back to being rather stoic.
"I'm afraid I don't know who you are, miss." With a pause, he spoke again. "Though apparently you know who I am." He reached out and placed a hand to her shoulder, trying to get her to calm down a little. He spent a moment mulling over his own thoughts before he squeezed her shoulder.
"Show me the kitchen."
As he mulled over his thoughts, she was working on calming down, staring at the ground and breathing in and out. Big breaths from deep down in her chest, in, out, in, out. She was so focused that she barely heard him when he told her to show him to the kitchen. So she gave him a quick sideways look, big blue eyes widened in surprise as she tried to process what he'd just told her.
"Oh, it's..." She waved him along. "Hey, um, this way, follow me..." and off she wandered down the hall, looking almost as shell-shocked as she felt.
Once they were in what the ship considered a kitchen he looked around at what he had to work with. After a moment he flexed and began to pull down pans and what appeared to be the same types of food he was used to working with on Earth. He glanced over at her from the corner of his eye while he began to prep.
"Have a seat."
In fifteen minutes the room -- and likely a good deal of the ship -- began to smell like that of a restaurant. While he had used some of the food that had been brought in by the others, he made a small meal, just enough for the woman who was looking shell-shocked. It smelled -- quite like, but not entirely -- like an Asian dish, but was made with some items that didn't quite fit their Earth counterparts.
He placed the dish in front of her and leaned back against the countertop, crossing his arms.
She watched followed him in in a daze, sitting down when directed to. She kept her eyes on him as he cooked, her hands folded neatly in her lap.
She stared at the dish as he placed it in front of her, and hesitated before taking a fork out of her pocket. She'd picked it up at the burger stall, with the hope that it'd come in useful. Rhea was hungry - she was very hungry, but had somehow forgotten that she was in all the commotion. Her growling stomach was reminding her now, though.
A few very hesitant bites later, and she let out a quiet laugh. "This is very good. You're a good chef."
He just smiled and shrugged, turning away to begin cleaning the pans he'd used and to clean up what was left that was dirty. After a moment of silence he spoke again. "Where I am from, we were attacked over a hundred years ago. Since then, humanity has been fighting a battle with monsters, monsters who can assume the form of a human." He began to scrub the pan he'd been cooking in.
"They attacked again over ten years ago." He fell silent for a moment, closing his eyes while he scrubbed. "I watched my father die in the attack." Letting out a breath, he stopped scrubbing and watched the water splash against the pan. "Those monsters can be anyone, anywhere. Once they see you, they can mimic you... they look like you and sound like you."
Scrub scrub.
"I'm not sure why I'm telling you this."
She put the fork down to listen quietly to his tale. Her heart went out to him. It was probably a problem - becoming so attached, so quickly to someone she didn't technically know. But she couldn't really help it - she was in love with him in a different universe.
"Is that why you want to check everyone?" Her voice was quiet as she leaned forward in her chair and placed her forearms on the table. "But what would you do if you found one?"
There was an odd sense of distance when he answered her question, though it was filled with muted anger and hatred. "I'd destroy them. Any monster that wants to harm humanity will be destroyed." He didn't explain how, but the tone in his voice said that he meant business.
He stopped scrubbing the pan after a moment and picked up a nearby towel to dry it, turning back towards her. "Tell me about yourself."
It seemed more a command than a question. She shrugged, leaning back in her chair until it rocked back slightly, not sure of where to start.
"My name is Rhea- um, I was born in Oxford and I'm a...well. Where I come from, I am what is known as a potential. That means I have some skill, or a talent that I'm very good at."
She shrugged again, unsure of what to say. "It allows us to- well, it lets us potentials kind of...bond...with supernatural creatures called Spirits. They lend us their power, and we give them our energy so they can materialise...it's a little complicated."
She stopped to lick her lips, suddenly self-conscious about how stilted and awkward her speech sounded. "There are also people called magicians - they control certain...well, I suppose you'd call them elemental powers. And there are other supernatural beings too, which often cause problems...like Demons- haha, they're nasty. They prey on humans and Spirits. And some Spirits cause problems too. But there's this agency called "The Order", and they're there to stop that kind of thing."
"I was recruited when I went up to university at Countshire to study archaeology, and was pacted to a Spirit named Quinten when the university came under attack from a hostile Spirit," here she stopped again, looking up at him with a wry smile. "That was when I met- when I met Wang-Fu Chen. Or...my Wang-Fu Chen. A magician studying law at Countshire university. And we uh-..."
Here she went completely red. "We dated. And then we got married."
Oh man, maybe if she stared at the plate of food long enough, the awkward that last sentence was probably producing would disappear. "And then I graduated and well, the Order seemed to be heading in a pretty violent direction, so I've been sort of avoiding them - it kind of helps, being an archaeologist-- I get to travel to a lot of digs, since my specialisation isn't specialised around a particular culture or people - it's more people in general - um, I think osteology is actually classified under anthropology in America..." Maybe if she continued to witter he'd forget the "we're married in a different world" bit?
"Ah, I see."
His words cut through the air like a knife, all while he placed the pan back down on the counter. He rubbed his hands dry for the moment. "That explains everything.
So if you are here, and I am here, that means we are from different worlds. That also means that there could be a lot of danger on this ship... and now we have landed on an outpost that looks abandoned but we do not know that for sure." He let out a sigh and shook his head, murmuring, "How irritating."
He managed to make some sort of tea while the silence dragged again, placing a cup of it next to her food. "Once we know that the people on this ship are of no danger to each other, we will work on getting home."
She looked up at him quickly to try and gauge his reaction, but her nerve failed her and she looked back down at her food and the new cup of tea by it. "We've been working- um, we're trying to translate the writing on the dashboard-thing, so we know how to use it. And working out the other things on here..."
Her fingers rubbed against the piercings in her ear, mostly for comfort as she took a polite sip of tea. "We don't have much to go on, but we're trying."
"What other things need to be worked out?" He was leaning against the counter again, though his eyes weren't on her, but instead focused on the wall across the room. He was thinking, the gears and pulleys of his mind grinding and spinning as he tried to piece the puzzle together, as if it might just click at some point and everything would be solved.
He then absently wondered if he could call upon his Zecter here, and he almost reached up and out towards the sky to see if it would come. However, he knew that the Zecter would come to him if it was needed, and as it was a sentient being, he didn't want to wear it's patience thin -- even if the Zecter had never shown any irritation or ill intent towards any of his family members in the past.
She took a deep breath. "No clue...hm, we have a rota of cooks and cleaners, a doctor, and we have our researchers - um, I'm one of them...and some dependents. There's not much for us to do but try to keep control and research."
He nodded, then pushed away from the counter. "Then I will act as this ship's bodyguard."
That in and of itself should have been amusing enough, as Wang probably only weighed a total of 150 pounds when wet. He looked more suited to be either a chef or an actor or something, not a fighter, and it didn't appear he was armed at all. Even so, the man seemed to be rather calm and confidant when he said that, as if he meant it and wasn't just boasting.
He glanced over at Rhea. "Someone needs to protect this ship, so we can all get home safely."
She couldn't help but smile at that. As she took another forkful of food, she tried to hide it, but that turned out to be a useless endeavour. "You'll probably do great."
It was true he looked like any threat could easily steamroller him, but she didn't see that. "You're really strong- my you is really strong. So...yeah."
"You'll probably be a great bodyguard. Although I don't think even you could help against asteroids. That was our last threat. We got hit pretty bad - some of us got hurt." She frowned at the memory. "It was a little scary, to be honest."
"That's true, but I can protect this crew from other threats." He looked over at her and smiled. "Do you want more, or are you full?"
She was right, however. There was nothing he could do to threats outside of the ship -- he wasn't certain if he could breathe in space, quite like he wasn't certain if he could spend long periods of time underwater. Granted, he could probably use his abilities to move around outside longer than any of the others, the issue still remained that without oxygen, he'd die just like everyone else.
Eventually, he changed the conversation. "From what I can see, he is lucky."
"I'm fine, thank you. You're very kind." She smiled back, finishing her tea.
Though she nearly choked on it at his last sentence. "Wh-what?"
When she had finished her food he took the plate and cleaned it, scrubbing it clean then drying it. When he was finished and everything was put away, he wiped his hands on another towel.
"You obviously care a great deal about him. It's easy to see." Wang shrugged, walking over to lean on the table beside her. "My grandmother once told me that when people are great distances apart, they are even closer together. That's very true."
Placing a hand on her shoulder, he gave a light squeeze.
She allowed herself to touch his hand quickly. "That's a nice thought. I hope it's right."
She stood quickly, feeling a little surreal. "Um, there are other rooms and stuff...but the bedroom is kind of blocked off at the moment. And the library's a mess. But it's a pretty cool place, apart from all the kidnap."
He nodded, thinking for a moment. "What is blocking the bedroom?"
"Oh, something..." She waved her arms up and down, unsure of how to say it. "Um, these asteroids smacked into the ship and I think they took out the doorway - it collapsed. Or something. Um, the others managed to make a hole to get some beds out, though."
Her arms dropped back down to her sides, and she pushed her hands into her pockets. "You can get in there, it just seems a little dangerous right now."
"Show me." He placed his hands in his pockets and let her lead him towards where the bedroom was. When they would finally arrive there he looked over the hole they had made and thought for a long moment. He nodded to himself afterward, then pulled his hands out of his pockets and stretched.
"Alright, I'll fix this. Stand back."
She gave him a confused look, but took a few steps back anyway, crossing her arms nervously over her chest. "What are you going to do?"
Wang held up a hand towards the ceiling, which in and of itself looked a bit odd. After a moment, the air around the ceiling of the room began to shimmer, then ripple as if it were made of some sort of water. Suddenly, a red object flew out of this ripple, flying around the hallway and buzzing Rhea's head before it came to land on his open hand.
Shimmering in the lighting in the hallway, the red object was exposed to be in the shape of a Japanese rhinoceros beetle, only it shimmered and moved as if it actually were alive. Like a robot, it blinked and flashed multiple colors from little lights, yet the object seemed to be sentient, moving back and forth in his hand before turning to point towards the woman in the hall.
"I'm glad that you could join me," Wang said to the creature, which turned back to him.
Her jaw dropped again as she ducked to avoid the incoming projectile. What the hell was that?! It looked like some sort of giant robot bug, or the controls for her nephew's robot dinosaur.
She half-straightened up, keeping low in case the bug-thing tried to buzz her again and she needed to move, most of her attention focused on the...whatever it was. Magic bug monster.
He twisted the little robot bug around and pushed aside his shirt, exposing a rather large belt with a flat slot on the front. "Henshin," he said rather quietly, and while it was a Japanese phrase, it was universally spoken by all of the Riders in his world. With that, he plugged the little robot bug onto the belt, and the transformation began.
Breaking out from the belt, silver armor began to spread over his body, molding into the shape of some sort of alien combat armor. He took a few steps back before he switched the beetle's horn over, "Cast off." The armor that covered his body suddenly blew off, though he was sure to twist so that it didn't strike the woman. Moments later he stood in a thin outfit of red, silver and black, a red "horn" slowly lifting up to click in over the mask. He actually looked, more or less, like a Power Ranger from the 1990s television series.
Turning to glance towards the bedroom, he reached down and touched a square button on the side of his belt. "Clock Up." The moment he did that, he took a step forward towards the ruins of the bedroom and began to pull apart the ruins. A Rider using Clock Up moved quicker than the human eye, able to dance between raindrops before they moved even a foot. Normally. But on this ship it wasn't as fast. By the time that Wang stopped back beside Rhea and the armor broke off of his body, the doorway stood back intact, though braced now by using some of the debris. "Clock Over."
Rhea stood up straight and slipped her hands into her pockets, looking over the scene with a blank expression which slowly slipped into a nonchalant sort of expression. She turned to look him up and down quickly, and then looked back at the room she'd watched him fix.
All the while, a little voice in her head said "oh my god, my husband is a power ranger in a different universe."
"I like the suit," she offered. "It's very...red. Nice." Then coughed. "Is it safe now?"
Don't call him Red Ranger, don't call him Red Ranger...
The armor began to fade away, and the little beetle disconnected from his belt and flew off, disappearing through the void it so quickly arrived through. He turned to look over at her then back towards the door, before he nodded. "Should be sturdy now. The hardest part was trying to brace the door while moving things, but it wasn't too much of an issue." He shrugged slightly, as if it was something he did every day.
"They call us Riders in my world," He finally said. "The Kabuto Zecter has been in my family for three generations now, if not longer. They were gifts from an alien race that was attempting to save us before we were attacked."
"They failed?" She asked quietly, reaching out to touch his arm. She couldn't understand that sort of world - it sounded difficult to live in; horrible, dangerous.
"At least you're used to fighting aliens. The rest of us don't have much combat experience, I don't think." She gave him a small half-smile.
"I don't know what happened, because a lot of information was destroyed in 1999 when they attacked. From the legend passed along, they crashed on our world due to some problem with their ship, and died before they could explain the Zecters to us. Somehow the Zecters were stolen and people came to learn to use them on their own... but the aliens still attacked and nearly wiped out humanity."
He turned to her and nodded slightly. "The first Riders protected humanity, but some were later corrupted by their power. Then there is no information about them for a long time. My grandfather told me that the Zecters could talk to their Riders, and Kabuto has told me a little of their history, but not much more than we already know. It's rather tight-lipped about some things." He smiled dryly, then changed the subject.
"Don't worry about fighting. You can leave that to me."
"Okay," she said, frowning thoughtfully. The "power ranger power ranger powerrangerpowerranger" voice in her head had been joined by another voice that was telling her to somehow study the Zecter. She forced them down with a little difficulty.
"You take care of the fighting."
She took a step back, pulling her arm away. "But what'll we do if you get corrupted by power?"
"I have no reason to be corrupted by the power of Kabuto. True power comes from the heart, not from an object given to help you." He crossed his arms over his chest and looked down the hallway, as if watching for another person on the ship to arrive. "Those corrupted by their Zecter were corrupt to begin with. The only thing the Zecter can be blamed for is giving them the ability to act on their emotions."
Wang knew he needed to check the ship to make sure none of the other crew members were monsters, but at the same time he was feeling tired, and he wanted to find some supplies himself. He also knew that the longer he was on this ship, the longer his own world was short a Rider...
"You're very wise," she remarked, leaning back against the wall. She looked back down at the entrance to the bedroom again, trying to muster up something else to say. She looked down at her deck shoes, then back down the hall. Now that they had stopped talking, she felt shy and awkward, slightly lost.
"Look, I..." She touched her lips, then moved her hand up to touch her piercings again. "I...look. I know this place pretty well by now. Is there anything I can get for you? To thank you for opening the bedroom and- cooking, and all..."
He began walking down the hall, towards the hatch that lead out of the ship. While walking, he shook his head slightly. "You do not need to thank me." He stopped, just before the turn that would lead him out of the ship, and looked back towards her. "You should get some rest."
She watched him go, and nodded at his suggestion. The past - what had it been? No more than an hour? This encounter had been emotionally draining - she'd gone through something of a rollercoaster in the past probably-not-quite-an-hour, and her limbs felt leaden. "I will. Just...make sure you don't overdo it. I don't want to find you passed out somewhere."
She span on her heel and began to walk back towards the beds in the bedroom, and the promise of a release from the really fucking weird day she was having.
"Good night, Wang."