Welcome to Gaia! ::

Nate Whitfield

A beautiful weekend day, clear with only a few puffy clouds hanging high in the blue sky, there wasn’t even the thought of rain, warm but not too hot, cool but not too cold. A perfect spring, nearly summer day. A fantastic day to go out and about into the city for some photography. Especially with the location the club had picked this time, a small park that was surrounded by historic-ish buildings. A real small town vibe, all surrounded by a city that loomed right in the background.

Nate walked up to a man who was crouched on the ground, lining up a shot with his exceedingly expensive camera, and waited until the photo had been taken. Nate offered a hand up even as he asked, “Where exactly did you find this place? I’ve been all over the city but I swear this street is like something out of a time capsule.” It had been a bit of a trip from the heart of the city but it was well worth it.

“Right? My girl heard about the small little craft store over there and dragged me here and I just knew it was a perfect place for the group. Just had to wait for the weather to stop trying to drown me in pollen.” The other male absently pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his nose. John had horrid, absolutely needed to be drugged horrid, allergies so for a while the photography group had been meeting inside, or in less verdant areas… or without John. He was quite glad that this area, while full of flowers and green things, were not enough to overpower his allergy meds. At least not yet.

“Well, tell your girlfriend that she found an absolute gem.” Nate assured John before turning back to his, much cheaper, camera himself. This time he was looking for an angle that caught both the two and three story brick and wooden buildings in the foreground with much taller buildings in the back. Tall structures of glass and steel scaring the blue sky, only slightly muted with their distance.

Nate was in the middle of snapping a few pictures away from the others when he spotted someone just walking up the sidewalk. Nothing special. A young woman carrying some kind of iced drink, but that little smile and the tilt of her head as she obviously looked up at the sky had him clicking the shutter several times. It was a very 'bask in the sun' enjoyment moment. A clear sky, old style buildings, a briefly empty street... he had been very lucky on that one, and just the clear joy on the face. It was a great shot. He checked the digital display and found the perfect one, where nothing had a movement blur, and politely approached the young woman.

"Excuse me miss," He stopped some distance away, trying not to startle her too much. "I am with one of the photography group and I just got a few pictures with you in them. Would you like to see them or would you prefer I remove them?" Nate hoped the younger woman would be ok with him using them for the club's display work but first he needed to make sure she would be fine with being the primary 'model' of the picture. Not everyone appreciated it. They might be in public, where there is no real expectation to privacy, it was still polite to make sure it was ok to do.

Fin was not quite eager for another summer under Earth’s less than friendly sun. It might be the same sun he’d dealt with back on Bacchus but at least it seemed to know when and how to impose itself on people there. Unlike here, where it wrapped itself and its heat and the obscene brightness and all the rest of its nonsense around anyone who was just trying to go about their lives. He pinched the bridge of his nose behind the pointy-tipped sunglasses he’d recently acquired. They did nothing for the air that seemed to want to attach to his skin but they muted the assault on his eyes. Rolling his shoulders he was grateful for the little tablets that chased away the worst of the pounding in his head. Somehow more grateful still for the fact that his clothes allowed the entrance of a breeze. A short, sleeveless shirt hung loosely to just below his sternum, a green frog reclining against the black fabric.

Traipsing once more through a small, familiar park, the glamoured alien found his attention drawn to a group gathered by a little shop. He’d dug around in there a few times, even paid for stuff on occasion.

He meandered over, curiosity piqued by…whatever human thing they were doing before he noticed a familiar face.
“Nate!”

Fin approached with a wave, “What’s all this?”

Thistle Myshonok

Thistle was nothing if not curious. He had seen the city through the cold of winter, but now that it was beginning to get - what was the word again? Greep? No, green! That was it! - Thistle wanted to see what else this planet had to offer.

To say that he earned some surprised looks from those around him as he pushed the heavy manhole cover aside and climbed quite literally straight out of the sewer would be an understatement. But he gave those people a big wide smile and they scurried on their way.

He figured that it was because Destiny City was already a pretty strange place that he didn't attract much attention. He was also pretty small and very good at hiding when he had to be - one time someone had called scary people with weapons on him, but he'd hidden in a dumpster until they'd gone on their way and they hadn't bothered him since. He wasn't sure what 'po lees' meant in Earthling, but he didn't think they seemed nice, which meant he was happy to avoid them.

What Thistle did not notice was the group of photographers down the street, some with cameras pointed directly at him, possibly catching his entrance to the world above on film. Granted, even if he had noticed the group, he would not have understood the significance of the tiny boxes in their hands, because he had never seen a camera before (at least, not one that looked like that - or one that worked, for that matter).

So out of the sewer he emerged, plunking the manhole cover back into place with a careless clunk behind him. He was building up a pretty good nest down there, but now that the weather was nicer, he thought he'd have even better luck finding treasures and trinkets that other people threw away.

You could take the boy out of Nemausa, but you couldn't take the Nemausa out of the boy, and so the boy began curiously examining the nearest garbage can, unconcernedly rifling through the waste of the city, blissfully unaware of how many people's perfectly lovely photographs he might be fouling up, because hey, was that food he smelled??

Why...it was maybe even the yummy triangle food! With the red liquidy stuff underneath the layer of melty yellow stuff! Thistle had no idea that these things in combination had a name, and that the name was 'pizza' - he just knew it was delicious, and that there was some (likely half-eaten) somewhere in this trashcan, and it was suddenly his all-important mission that he find it immediately. He was suddenly so hungry! Why did he never realize he was hungry 'til he was nose-deep in a pile of trash? Maybe it reminded him of home.

But food back home had been a scarce resource - and something that he had to share with all the rest of his brothers and sisters, especially as their Senshi. Of course he wasn't a Senshi (at least, not at that exact moment, not on the outside, even though he was always a Senshi on the inside). Here, people threw away all kinds including perfectly good (or, at least, mostly perfectly good) food. Thistle could barely believe his luck when he pulled out not one, but two half-eaten slices of Yummy Triangles.

Was it his lucky day or what!

Cynthia eagerly shook the hand that was offered to her. "It's nice to meet you John." She smiled at what he said, but did not make a joke about it on her end. "I took some on my way here. I got some good cloud shots and some shots of the scenery." While she didn't usually take portraits or liked to take people-pictures in general due to their presence usually spoiling the nature around them, but it was different in this location and this time of year.

One couldn't really spoil the beautiful spring weather unless they were trying to clean up all of the flower petals and other tree debris that fell off during this time of year. But it didn't happen in a park at least. And as it was a park it was expected that people would be here. It was quite different from say, winter when she wanted to take pictures of the freshly fallen snow and some jerk decided they wanted to interrupt her pictures.

She had only wanted to transform and hit them a few times. Maybe more than a few. But she had to remind herself that she was on the Order side and shouldn't be hitting civilians, so instead she would take a sh**** picture of them to post later. If they didn't want their picture taken, they shouldn't have jumped into hers!

"Do you want to see some? And let me know when you go to that building. It sounds like an interesting place to take pictures!"

Mlinzi

Mel was patrolling the city, or mostly just wondering since very little sketchy stuff happened during the day. Well very little magical things happened. Normal civilian things happened all the time but Mel didn't worry about any of that. The guardian cat eyed the crowd of people all wielding cameras, or at least most of them were, but what had drawn his attention was the person who had just pulled a TMNT move and crawled from the sewars, or something like that, and was pawing through the trash.

They actually reminded Mel of himself. It wasn't terribly long ago when he was doing the same, now he just pestered his human roommate... or his girlfriend but she was a bit meaner then the boy was. But that pizza did smell good, it was still pretty fresh. A gold star meal from when he had been dumpster diving himself. He had ended up drifting over from the shadows, looking at the found meal with big golden puppy dog eyes. He didn't want much, just a bite.... maybe.

Would the human share? Would he let Mel have a bite? Would he? Could he? Would that make Mel a bad guardian? Taking food from someone who needed it more then he did? But he was hungry! And one bite wouldn't hurt right? The large cat stare insistently at the found pizza, absently licking his chops, and tail whipping in anticipation.

Thistle was just about to start in on his - lunch? it was lunchtime, right? a curious glance at the sky revealed absolutely nothing to the newbie to Earth - when movement caught his eye.

"Oh!" Thistle said, and he couldn't help but start slightly. One thing he had learned and quick was that cats, on this planet, tended to make meals of his little Earthling cousins, which made Thistle apprehensive reflexively (what if there was one big enough to try and eat him???) but...

But this cat just looked hungry, and Thistle loved to share.

"It's okay," Thistle said, squatting down. He held out his hand to let the cat sniff it, then tore a bit of the Cheese Triangle off. "Here, do you want some?" The concept of something being 'bad' or 'unhealthy' was a foreign one to Thistle, for cats, for humans, for his own stomach. Frequently he found out what was good or bad to eat by...eating it, and suffering or not.

"It's okay. It's pretty clean!" Thistle said, giving the cat a wide, gap-tooth smile. "It probably smells weird 'cause it was in the garbage but it's okay otherwise! Probably!"