outsiderslogs | welcome to omega, round two.

Entry tags:

welcome to omega, round two.

who. everyone!
what. in which the new arrivals join the outsiders.
where. landing pads for new arrivals, who then head through the markets to the residential area.
when. today!
warnings. n/a

This time, when the shuttles arrive, the landing pad isn't so empty. There was no saying these people wouldn't show up again, and though Aria isn't going to be happy that they appear to be coming on a schedule while the rest of the system is grounded, there doesn't appear that there's much to be done about it. A group of her batarian agents are there to escort incomers off the ship; some are taken aside for questioning, but when it's clear they know nothing of their origins, they're let go. Some new arrivals may notice that these shuttles don't simply depart -- a number of them are escorted off by other shuttles, deeper into the station.

After that, though, there's little the batarians can do about them. They're sent towards the residential district by way of the markets and financial sectors. The housing areas they arrive in aren't in the best of shape; while there are other outsiders to this galaxy already at work trying to repair the damage, others aren't bothering with it at all.

This is Omega. If you don't find some way to pull your weight, you'll be dead in no time.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Nothing? So you're like, screaming your head off and throwing a fit in the middle of the street because you have absolutely zero problems, standing there in complete perfect understanding in the most Zen-like way possible of the situation and just happened to feel like exercising your right to freedom of speech?"

Yeah, he's buying it. Wait, no. Marco folded his arms and tilted his chin up in his best 'nah not buying it' face.

"I'm not throwing a fit!" Kengo immediately bristled, looking more angry than upset at this point. While Kengo was usually in fairly good control of his emotions, the situation just before arriving had put him in an especially vulnerable state. Right now, he really didn't know what to do with himself. There was no point in bothering with such things as watching his mouth -- not that he ever did that anyway.

"I don't care where I am or what this place is! I can't be here!" His body was starting to shake again, the student running his fingers back through his hair and trying in vain to calm himself again. With his condition, staying in an angry state of mind for too long would drain him completely. Collapsing in a strange area was not on his list of priorities.

There had to be a way back... The gate had to be broken. That was why he'd ended up somewhere other than the moon, right?

"Uh-huh, and I'm the Queen of France."

Marco was pretty unimpressed with this guy. He was just as lost as the strange dude in the dorky jacket, but he wasn't about to have a breakdown in the middle of the street, either.

"You can, and you are, and--oh, come on, dude, people are staring. You wanna get us hauled off somewhere? 'cause if that nasty looking thing over there with the face-wibbly bits starts walking towards us, I'm outta here."

Not that he cared about blue-jacket at all. At this point, it was a passing curiosity for him, but Marco was ever ready to be on the lookout for his own hide.

If he had merely been dropped into the middle of a strange street on any other day, Kengo was sure he would have been in a much better state of mind. It was as though the universe itself was working against him today. There was a glare on his face as he approached the boy with the sarcastic mouth, grabbing at the other's collar with his free hand. His intention was to push the other back against the nearest hard surface and hold him there to let the other know he was serious. It'd been quite awhile since he'd done something like that, but the situation seemed to call for it.

It also seemed to escape Kengo's notice that a few of the creatures around them had turned to see what the fuss was about with the two humans snarking back and forth, though some turned away again once they realized how young the kids were. It wouldn't be a good enough fight to waste their attention on.

"Then you can shut your mouth and get out of my way, if it bothers you so much..."

Marco? Shut his mouth? Never! In fact, his mouth was actually wide open, as his jaw dropped at the sudden appearance of a fist in the front of his shirt and finding himself slammed into the nearest chunk of wall.

"Hey, chill out!" Most days, Marco wished he wasn't so puny compared to most other people, and this day was no exception. He put his hands up lamely, trying to keep them between his face and Kengo's free hand, but didn't attempt to squirm too much. "I'm just trying to like, look out for my fellow man out here, you know? In case you haven't noticed, we're a rare breed. Too much weird stuff happens, they take the two of us out, and the human species is that much closer to extinction. Right?"

He was babbling a bit, for sure, but he needed Kengo to see that they shouldn't be enemies. Mostly because he didn't want his teeth smashed in.

To be honest, Kengo didn't seem to be that strong either. His condition made him one of the weaker members of the Kamen Rider Club and any physical power he might have was kept in check by that. Except for his ability to push other people up against walls. He had a tendency of doing that and trying to exert authority over anyone who got in the way.

Kengo didn't respond at first, keeping his gaze locked with the younger boy's and holding him in place, trying the best he could to at least make himself somewhat intimidating. Trying to regain a hold on his normal behavior in a situation where his mind was focused on more important things was almost impossible. Once the words sank in, he turned his head slightly to examine the creatures standing nearby. While Kengo had glanced at them earlier, he had only acknowledged them as someone who wasn't the person he was looking for.

"I can look out for myself. Don't try to do me any favors." With that, Kengo dropped his hold on the other boy and took a step back. Even if this kid had a smart mouth, Kengo doubted that he would try something.

With the initial panic mode of searching for Gentarou subsiding, Kengo took a deep breath and found himself staring for almost a bit too long at one of the four eyed humanoid look creatures. ... these weren't Zodiarts. Too many of them looked similar. This didn't even seem like Earth. Great. Now he was going to start stressing out for an entirely different reason.

Though Kengo had been rather harsh up to this point, he felt it was best to ask the person he'd already been interacting with, rather than approaching a complete stranger. "Where am I?"

"I don't think you'd know a favor if it bit your ankle."

Marco wiggled his shoulders around after he was released, trying to pull his shirt back into some sort of order. Sheesh, this guy was a loose cannon as far moods go. He scooted away just so he was out of immediate arm's reach, wary of what Kengo might try next.

"You? You're right in front of me. Still about three inches too far in my personal bubble, if I'm honest." Not very helpful. "As for us, we're somewhere in space, right? Who knows why or how. Those weird guys with too many eyes and nostrils asked me a lot of pretty basic questions, which makes me think that they don't know, either."

Resisting the urge to roll his eyes, Kengo took another step back, flexing his fingers a bit to get the feeling of touching someone else to go away. When he glanced down, he only then seemed to notice the object around his wrist, shaking his arm a bit before bringing it up to examine it. Whatever it was, it was fairly indiscript. Touching it at the moment didn't seem like the brightest idea, but Kengo hoped it wasn't anything too dangerous.

"I doubt they're going to speak Japanese." For a moment, Kengo turned his attention back to Marco. There was a skeptical expression on his face. Judging from the other's age and race... "Are you speaking Japanese, or English?" Then, in English, he spoke again. The transition between one language and the other was barely indistinguishable. Kengo was, after all, a very dedicated and brilliant student. "You can understand me..."

"Haven't you watched Star Trek? Everyone speaks English in space. Duh."

As far as Marco could tell, they both were speaking English. As were all of the other weirdo aliens he'd encountered, even though if he thought about it a little harder, the sounds that were actually coming out of their mouths couldn't possibly have been English. He shrugged; it wasn't that big of a mystery in the grand scheme of this whole being kidnapped into space thing.

"Mi llamo Marco," he said in deliberately enunciated Spanish, but of course, it was just going to come out sounding like "my name is Marco" for whatever Kengo was hearing.

"I don't watch things like that." Now he really wanted to roll his eyes. This kid was treating the whole thing like a huge joke and not in Gentarou's naive and stupid way, either. Looking back to the device on his wrist, Kengo wondered it maybe that had something to do with it. Unless he'd suddenly developed the ability to hear multiple languages as Japanese -- including the alien speech going on around him. It wasn't worth it to try and figure it out right now, nor attempt to explain it to the other boy.

Taking a deep breath, Kengo looked around for the alien creature that looked the least threatening, deciding that the huge hump-backed armored creatures were the ones he wanted to approach the least. This was really going to make him look stupid to walk up to someone and ask extremely basic questions, but his circumstances didn't leave him much of a choice. "It's worth trying to get something out of them."

Rather than being the one who was being questioned, Kengo walked up to a nearby four-eyed alien and motioned to get the other's attention. While the alien seemed more intent on getting information out of Kengo, he offered up as much as he had to while getting as much as he could out of him. Sadly, Kengo hit the wall he had expected to. When he turned around, he was surprised to find that Marco had trailed after him. ... really, it was getting away from one puppy to another, it seemed.

"According to him, we're one hundred and seventy-five earth years in the future from where I came from and somewhere in the omega nebula on an asteroid colony known as Omega." Kengo tilted his head back and took a deep breath. "So if he's telling the truth, that means we're about five thousand light years from Earth, somewhere in the Sagittarius constellation and closer to the galactic core than the Earth."

Marco twiddled his thumbs as he let the other boy go do the annoying work of digging for information. He almost even started whistling to himself while he waited, but then discovered that he could poke at the sweet little holographic computer thingie given to him.

So while Kengo busied himself with attempting to interact with the locals, Marco accessed all sorts of fascinating things once he figured out how to get onto the network. So little lag time. So many shiny blinkies. So few content filters. Ooooh.

He quickly flicked the screens closed once Kengo returned, a slightly guilty look crossing his face that soon disappeared once the delightfully useless and depressing information was reported to him. "Sheesh. Not in Kansas anymore, huh, Toto? Anyone offering rides home? Because I've got like, things to get back to. Think they'll let me take this baby with me, though? I bet I can run Quake in a resolution so high it'll make your eyes bleed."

Kengo had only caught a momentary glance of the boy turning the device attached to his wrist off. Well, that answered Kengo's question on whether or not it was some sort of device meant to monitor them or kill them. It could still be something dangerous, but if it had been truly dangerous, he didn't doubt that the other would have been the one to detonate it by some sort of accident.

Pop culture references seemed to go right over Kengo's head, the older boy just staring blankly for a moment before returning his attention to the object on his wrist. "Whatever you have going on at home, I'm sure it's not as important as what I need to get back to. It doesn't seem like anyone knows exactly how we got here or how we're supposed to get back. From the way he was acting, I'm sure they'd be more than happy to get rid of all of us as soon as possible if they could."

Kengo adjusted his hold on the case, holding it a bit tighter, his chest feeling pained again at how much he was stressing over the situation. It was hard to remain calm when so many things were going on.

At Kengo's dismissive statement, Marco's smirk dropped. "Hey, Toto, listen. You have no idea what I've got going on back home. Trust me, I care way less about your life than you care about mine. For now? I think we're at least from the same planet, so that's better than anyone else I've run into."

He paused for a moment, considering something he just said. "We are from the same planet, right? What year is it?"

Only now did Kengo seem to realize that he had gained a nickname, still not understanding the reference at all. He stared blankly at the other boy before sighing deeply. Really, was this kid going to argue with him about who had more of an issue back home? Kengo was tempted to try to one-up the other, but he didn't feel it was worth it to try and explain a complicated situation back home. No one here was his friend, or even his ally.

With the fact that time travel seemed to have taken place already at this point (as much as it was making Kengo's head hurt, but there were plenty of scientific reasons for this), assuming that they were from the same year seemed something that was an actual concern at this point.

"Two thousand and eleven. Heisei year twenty-three. I'm from Takasaki in the Gunma prefecture of Japan, on Earth. Does that sound about right to you?"

"I have no idea what most of those words mean. Except for 'Japan', and 'Earth'. Do you have Hello Kitty there?"

The question may have seemed frivolous, but Marco's trying to find some common ground here, okay. He also felt no need to offer any information about his own time and place.

"It's the name of a city and a prefecture. Sort of like a state, in America." Kengo felt it was necessary to start dumbing his talk down a bit, but 'dumbing down' for Kengo was still rarely simplified enough that anyone could understand him. At the mention of Hello Kitty, Kengo let out a breath of air, seeming a bit more frustrated.

Also, with his tendency to attract traitors and suspicious people, he didn't want to let this boy get away with not giving up an equal share of information. "You should tell me where you're from."

"Why? It's obviously not the same place you're from, so I'm not sure it could possibly benefit either of us if I did."

See, even after being pretty sure he was way, way, way far away from anyone who might know who he is, Marco's level of paranoia wasn't any less. Until he had absolute, indisputable proof that this wasn't all just part of some crazy alien invasion superplot, he wasn't going to make it easy for anyone to trace him.

"Don't worry, I'm not going to follow you home or anything stupid like that. I don't even like sushi."

Kengo couldn't blame the kid for being paranoid. Kengo, of course, also had reason to be paranoid and keep information to himself, but this was a world where it didn't really matter. Fourze wasn't there and the Astro Switches in his case were valuable only to him. They wouldn't work without the rest of the system, so even if someone ended up with them, it wouldn't do any good.

"Good. I have enough idiots to keep track of back home, if they're still alive."

Switching the case to his other hand, Kengo lifted up the arm that had the unactivated omni-tool system on it, nearly jumping when he touched the right buttons and it came to life, the orange holographic system spreading out over his arm. ... oh, he really wanted to know more about this.

Marco didn't really want to think too much about his own pack of 'idiots' back home. One step at a time; right now he was focused on surviving and getting his bearings.

"Relax, Toto, it's just a fancy computer." He pulled up a screen on his own just to show off, including a panel forhis own post that he made to the extranet while waiting for Kengo to finish attempting to pump batarians for information. "Way faster and cooler than anything I've ever seen before, though. Hey, check this out!"

A map popped up from Marco's omni-tool, showing their current location in the markets. Poking at the projection scrolled and zoomed the map, and Marco amused himself for a moment by spinning the entire display around at dizzying speeds.

"Keep that name out of your mouth." It was better than the other referring to him by his first name, at least. Somewhat less annoying. But he didn't understand what he'd done to gain this nickname or what it meant.

Kengo observed the other for a moment, sighing heavily and shaking his head at the other's actions. It was like trying to get something done with JK being himself, except even slightly more annoying. He hadn't thought that sort of behavior was possible. Which reminded him...

"Are you going to tell me your name?" Kengo went through the menus on his own, seeing that a few people had been posting up messages. He skimmed over the text ones and skipped over the videos and voice messages, looking for some sort of settings feature. "If you don't tell me where you're from. It doesn't even have to be your real name."

"Okay, fine, you can be Dorothy if you really insist! Jeez." Kengo was earning himself nicknames just by virtue of never offering anything else as a method of address. Besides, Marco was greatly enjoying collecting ammo for causing irritation.

"I tried to tell you my name, but you wandered off before I could finish. So I guess you'll never know. Anyway, now that I know where I'm going, I'm not standing around in the middle of the street all day."

Oh. Pausing to think, Kengo stared at the other for a few moments before he suddenly seemed to realize what the other had said. So the boy really had said his name, but he'd been too pre-occupied to notice. There was no way he would apologize for it, of course. "Was that your last name or your first name?" Kengo outright refused to refer to anyone by their first name. It was far too casual.

"If you want to call me anything, my name is Utahoshi." Which, if this boy knew how it was written, he was sure he would be teased relentlessly. Kengo was sure hearing the name 'star song' would be endlessly amusing for this kid. "And I'm not keeping you here. You can go."

"Just Marco. You know. Like Cher. I'm a one-name kinda star." Because his last name might as well be Paranoia.

"Oo-tah-ho..." Damn it, Toto was easier. "Okay, Utah!" He settled on pronouncing it like the state. "Enjoy whatever it is you're trying to do here. I'm gonna go find some place with fewer aliens hanging around."

Marco gave a sarcastic little wave and switched off his omni-tool, then set off towards the other end of the market district.

Something that casual wasn't going to work with Kengo. For the time being, he would find something else to refer to the other as. At the very least, he wouldn't be calling Marco an idiot because that title was reserved for his best friend. Turning the omni-tool off, Kengo visibly glared at the other's back as he walked away, fighting down the urge to yell a correction at him. His pronunciation was just as bad as Gentarou's. That was saying something.

Rolling his eyes, Kengo sighed deeply before finally turning his attention back to the rest of the landing pad. If anything, the interaction with another human had calmed him down. He was thankful for that much.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

welcome to omega, round two.

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a true animorph can't go more than two books without referencing star trek

You've reached your required quota for this thread, then?

yes, but there's no shortage of horrible jokes to be made

it's marco. i wouldn't expect anything else.

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