Welcome to Gaia! ::

Alex had his new found cloak, and was making his way through the folks in the town, making a nice little bee line towards the forest outside. His large ears were nice and hidden under the hood of his cloak, and that was a plus, but his clawed feet felt very uncomfortable crammed inside his shoes. Oh, sure, he could have taken them off, but that might make someone spot the awkward claws he sported there.

And then there was his tail. He'd tried to hide it the best he could under his cloak. Even his normally comfortable coat felt awkward with those new found feathers on his elbows. But he wasn't sure the locals would react well to his appearance, so he was set to endure some discomfort till he got out of town.

He'd left a note for the others, with the firefighter, on roughly where he'd be in the forest, and that he'd meet them there, if they needed to see him, but he was sure as soon as the story of what happened to him spread to the others, he wasn't going to be very popular. He was a freak after all.

Either way, he'd managed to sneak along well enough, avoiding anyone's attention too badly. At least for now.

This wasn't what Alex wanted to do, to leave the town without a way back home, to leave the others at the inn while he went scurrying off to the forest so someone wouldn't decide he needed to be burned at a stake as some sort of tailed witch or something. No, this wasn't going the way he'd hoped at all, but he had to deal with the hand he'd been dealt, and find someway to get home, or be normal, or both.

All this thinking didn't help the pilot's concentration on not being seen. Maybe someone or two might recognize his pant legs and shoes perhaps, or his shirt emblem that was still partly visible. Solid Snake he wasn't.

What the distracted Coren had run into was one distracted pilot, who stumbled back a few feet as he realized he'd just walked right into someone, it would seem. So much for being sneaky. "Uh, sorry....", he said, as he looked at her, then blinked at her appearance.

Ok, he wasn't expecting to run into someone quite like her. It was probably her pants that screamed "I'm from someplace that isn't Hicksville, Athlaias". It was that fact that made the pilot's ears perk up a bit, even as they stayed nicely hidden under the hood of his coat.

"Uh, sorry about running into you miss. Uh..." He looked left, then right, making sure no one was staring at him, before he looked back to her. "Uh, you're not from around here, are you?", he inquired. Oh well, he may have been distracted by the stranger, and not his immediate need to get out of town, so folks don't see his fuzzy tail.

The pilot blinked and looked at Coren, his tail twitching under his cloak in a bit of annoyance. Why is it that half the folks he ran into seemed to have no sense of respect? He didn't get it, but he had other things to deal with.

He muttered to himself, "Oh, How W'rin Bu Lai Whai W'rin Bu Jwo*, do they?" Coren might recognize the words, or at least realize they were chinese, which was obviously not the local dialect. He took a deep breath and sighed, "Ok, Coren, keep your voice down, okay? And my name's Alex Barrett."

Alex wiggled his clawed toes around inside his shoes, feeling them slowly working small grooves inside the leather footware. "And let me guess, you fell through a big colorful sky that would make a hippie give up smokin'. It happened to me, and a bunch of others. And before you ask, no, I don't know why."

Funny how he didn't tell her where he was off too. If this conversation keeps up, it probably wouldn't be that hard for someone else to recognize the sound of his voice, or at least take interest in the two as they talked.



*Chinese for "Things never go smooth"

The pilot sighed, as he looked around some, then back. "The inn? Oh, yeah." He pointed off towards the way he'd come, his scaly yellow finger pointing the way. "Sure, you just go down that way about 7 blocks and take a left. Its hard to miss."

It took Alex a few seconds he'd just shown her his hand. Maybe she hadn't noticed, as he pulled his hand back under his cloak. "Listen, there are a few others there, who are in the same boat. Just tell them that I sent ya. They're hard to miss. At least compared to the locals anyways."

His tail twitched under his cloak some more, and his ears laid back. "I was going out to the forest." That was the truth. He was hoping she wouldn't ask why, or more importantly, why he had a scaly hand. Not the type of questioning he was hoping for.

He nodded, "Uh, thanks for the info. Take it easy." The pilot pulled his cloak around himself a bit more, and started to walk off. He would rather have found out more about the newcomer, but he figured that it was easier to let her meet the others. He could find out stuff later.

Right, back to the job at hand, or talon, or whatever he had at the moment. He had to get out of town, and hopefully without running into anyone else that might want to stop him. That wasn't very likely, with his luck, it would seem.

The pilot walked along, and looked over. "Huh? What happened?" That was a question that had more possible meanings, and he wasn't sure he knew how to answer them all. He didn't really mind the fact that she wanted to help escort him on the way out.

"If you mean how we got here. No clue. The baron said this happened before, way back in the days. So a lot of folks from our world ended up here, but now its happening again or something. Supposedly magic works or some junk like that. Hell, I heard that there's some floating capital city around here. If you meet someone named Bones, he's got a ton of stories about stuff around here." He felt his tail twitching back and forth under his cloak.

"If you want to walk with me, thats fine. So, where are you from, exactly?" Yes, better to talk about something that didn't involve his hands or other animal-ish growths. "I'm from Manila, myself, although thats just where my company is located."

He walked along, and smiled a bit. "I'm a pilot. Actually I own Pan-Asia Cargo, based out of Manila. I run a PBY from there, shipping small loads of cargo around most of South Asia. Its sort of a niche market at times, but sometimes it helps being one of the few pilots to own a large seaplane, instead of one of those tiny Cessna airplanes with pontoons."

Ah, planes. The perfect subject to distract the pilot from his bad situation, and ramble on about something he loved. "Getting parts for the plane isn't exactly easy though." Alex's ears perked up a bit, and his tail twitched a bit more happily behind him, still covered by his cloak. "I'm originally from Long Beach though."

"As for the woods, I spent two days out there lost and disoriented. Finally had some guy help me out since he was out there chopping down firewood or something like that. Those first few days were sort of a blur."

It was nice to be able to talk a bit about home, and planes. Sure not many around the village knew what the hell he was talking about anyways. "A PBY is a World War 2 seaplane used by the US. It was used for long distance ocean recons and stuff like that. And I use it to deliver cargo all over the south asian seas."

"It was a real wreck when I got it though. Needed months of repairs." The pilot sighed softly at the thought. "Damn, I miss it. Seriously, my employees are probably having fits because I'm gone. Oh I hope Chan can keep the place going while I'm gone."

He rather doubted that Chan could. Not many folks were trained pilots for multi engine seaplanes, and if there was one or two around, they'd be expensive, and the company was already in bad shape. "Oh well, anyways, I'm sure you don't want to hear about the boringness that is running a foreign business while trying to stay out of debt."