Song: Lord Huron - Hurricane; Amadou & Maryam - Senegal Fast Food
"Wow." I gasped as I stared out the window of the shuttle that brought us down to Artemis. I had been sleeping for half the trip, because I spent half the night before packing all our stuff together and it was pretty stressful, since I never had that much stuff to take care of. The other half of the night we tried calming down Talon, so he would move into his cage again.
But now we were quickly approaching Artemis and all I could see was green, green and more green. There were some grey spots in between, which must be the cities and obviously there were lakes and seas, but mostly I saw green. Half the planet must be covered in forests. I had never seen that much green in all my life, it was amazing. As soon as the grey spots ended, the green began.
"Mordecai, why did you never tell me how beautiful your home planet was?" I asked. I probably had the most stupid looking fascinated smile on my face, but I just couldn't stop it. I was pretty amazed to be seeing that many trees.
"Guess you kinda lose appreciation for it when you live there." he replied with a shrug. He seemed indifferent about it, but I knew he was pretty excited to be back. I could see it in the way he sometimes caught a look out of the window.
"Eden had some really nice forests, but this is more forest than I've ever seen. It's pretty cool." Gaige agreed with me.
"It is amazing! Oh man, I can't wait to see all the stuff down there!" I exclaimed. I was really excited about this.
"It's literally trees. Not like y'all haven't seen trees before." Mordecai replied, looking a little bewildered and amused.
"Yeah well, I'd be saying the same about Aquator and water, probably, but I can imagine you'd be blown away by it anyways." I argued. Mordecai shrugged and it was then that Axton came back from chatting to the pilots.
"Okay guys, we're gonna be landing pretty soon, so no one get up now." he told us as he sat down in his seat.
"Oh God, last time I landed, I ended up in some frosty ice desert and was chased by bullymongs." Gaige said.
"Yikes. How'd you survive?" I asked.
"We found her." Axton answered with a big grin.
"If the first thing greeting me on Pandora was a bullymong, I'd piss my pants. I probably would have died." I said.
"What was the first thing greeting you?" Mordecai asked me.
"Skags, but they were only puppies and I managed to outrun them, so I was good at first." I replied.
"Huh. The first thing I met on Pandora were bandits, then Marcus, then Claptrap, then bandits again. Fun times." Mordecai commented. It was just then that the shuttle finally touched the ground. The landing was a little wobbly, but nothing too bad. I was pretty sure that getting down to Pandora was worse, but it was so long ago I could barely remember the landing.
"Guess, we're here." Axton commented and got up once the shuttle had come to a standstill. We all got up and grabbed most of our stuff - anything we could have on us in the shuttle, really.
"Hey, Mordy. How are you doing? Nervous? Excited?" I asked him quietly while everyone else was busy. I could imagine it was a weird feeling for him to be back on his home planet.
"Kind of a mix, I guess. I dunno, really. I just wanna get Talon out of his cage already, he really doesn't like it. But it's necessary for travelling, so what can I do?" he replied with a slight smile.
When we were finished gathering up our things, there was already a small line in front of the shuttle doors. There weren't too many people travelling on that cargo ship, to be honest, so it wasn't a massive queue, but we were one of the few people that had so much stuff all over the place, it took us ages to finally get everything together and ready for getting off the shuttle.
It felt like a complete relief when the shuttle doors slowly opened. Finally, after all this time in space, I could breathe in some fresh air again and see some daylight. It made it even more exciting that it was a completely new place that I had never even seen before. This was what I had left home for - seeing new places, travelling, finding some sort of purpose somewhere.
When we finally stepped outside, I was pretty overwhelmed. The sun was shining outside and it was warm, but not as scorching hot as it was in some parts of Pandora. And the air was so much cleaner. I hadn't realized what I had been missing the last 15 years. There was a light breeze that made the heat feel nice and mild.
"Well, the weather's already good, so at least we're gonna have a good time trying to find Aurelia." Gaige commented and tapped on her robotic arm. A pair of sunglasses got digistructed over her eyes.
"You can do that with cybernetic limbs?" I asked. It was pretty cool and I had to admit I was a little jealous.
"Yeah. There's a whole lot of stuff you can do with cybernetic limbs and I tried telling you all this time, but you never listened. I mean, you can basically get them to digistruct anything, really." she said.
"Huh. You know, thinking about it like that... it doesn't seem too bad. Can you get customizations like that anywhere?" I wanted to know. Gaige shrugged.
"I dunno. If you can't get them, I can build them into your new leg if I have a bit of free time, anyway." she replied.
"That's really cool. I'll have to think about what I'd like to have... man, it would be handy to just be able to digistruct anything on you at any time..." I mused. Gaige grinned at me nonchalantly.
"Cybernetic limbs are the thing for you, I'm telling you. I'm glad you're beginning to see the opportunities."
"Okay, your robot arms and legs and whatnot are nice and all, but where do we go from here?" Axton chimed in. I was looking around myself. The few people with us had already walked ahead towards a modern looking building.
"I dunno, I guess we follow them?" I answered and gestured towards the building. I looked over at Mordecai, waiting for some sort of confirmation. I somehow figured he'd know what was going on and how things worked.
"Sorry, I was... distracted. Yeah, we're supposed to go in there." he said quickly and gave me a smile. He seemed to be a little overwhelmed himself with being back on his home planet. From what I knew he hadn't set foot on the planet since he was 17. I could barely even imagine what was going through his head.
"What do we do when we get there?" I asked.
"Well... what you do when you arrive on most planets. Go through the terminal, customs if they pull you out, all that. And then you can get to the Fast Travel Stations or get a car or walk away or do whatever you want, really." Mordecai answered.
"Huh. Okay. I never travelled anywhere but Pandora. And Elpis, but Elpis doesn't really count. And on Pandora there was nothing like this." I replied and gestured towards the building.
"I know, I know. I've been travelling around a good bit with the prize money from all the competitions after I left Artemis. It's kind of old news to me at this point." he said. Gaige looked excited as we walked into the terminal. It looked really fancy and modern and to be honest, I had seen places like that on Aquator, but it was still a strange feeling seeing something like that again after such a long time.
"Okay, so are we taking the car or are we taking the Fast Travel and where do we even need to go?" Gaige wanted to know. She sounded really excited, as if she would love to walk to wherever we needed to go, even if it took her two weeks or more. And to be honest, I was looking forward to seeing more of this place, too.
"We fast travel to the registration office and then we'll see. They source accommodation for Nova and me, but you guys might wanna find a place to stay. Somewhere close by, if possible." Mordecai said.
"Alright, let's go then. The Fast Travel is over there. Let's go before they decide to stop us for whatever reason." I replied and walked over to the Fast Travel station quickly. The rest of them followed me. It actually took us quite a while with all our luggage, but we finally got there.
Mordecai quickly checked something on his ECHO device and then put a Fast Travel code into the station quickly. It didn't take long until we were materialising again inside a nice building, almost as modern as the first one. I mean, they all had air conditioning - which was something I hadn't seen in years. It was somewhat comforting that the Fast Travel still felt the same and just as crappy on Pandora, though.
"Okay, Gaige and Axton, you guys wait here, Nova and I will go and register real quick and then get back to you, alright?" Mordecai told them, right as we materialized.
"Okay. We'll just be sitting here, then." Axton replied and walked over to a small bench. It didn't really look too comfortable.
"Have an eye on all the stuff, alright?" Mordecai added. Gaige nodded and gave him a thumbs up, before Mordecai headed for a small window in the wall. I followed him and could make out a person sitting in a room behind that window. I really hoped, Mordecai would do all the talking for me, because I had no idea what was going on and how this worked.
"Good morning, how can I he-" the man in the small room greeted us. He stopped once he looked up and saw Mordecai standing in front of him. He stared at Mordecai for a while and then shook his head and cleared his throat.
"Didn't think you'd ever turn up on Artemis, Mordecai." he said. Mordecai shrugged and held up his hands.
"Well, here I am. I wanna register for the contest." he replied. The man seemed taken aback, but then nodded and tapped through some sheets on a data pad. I looked at Mordecai, who seemed pretty annoyed.
"You know they took the bounty off your head 'cause they all thought you'd never return to Artemis? And that you'd probably have died anyway or would die pretty soon at least?" the man in the office remarked.
"I never die." Mordecai replied with a deadpan expression.
"Yeah, yeah, that's what you were babbling about all the time, but someone like you? I'm surprised you made it for that long. Anyways, I got you on the list here. What's with the lady?"
"She's with me." Mordecai answered, doing his best to ignore the comments the guy in the office made.
"What, she's signing up, too? Where'd you find her?" he asked, looking me up and down disparagingly.
"How 'bout you focus on doing your job?" I snarled. This guy was really annoying me, acting like he was somehow better than anyone else.
"This is my job, I'm gonna need your details, sweetie." he replied with a condescending smile.
"Well, then why don't you ask me for whatever you wanna know? And don't call me sweetie."
"She's a fiery one, huh?" he said to Mordecai with a grin. I rolled my eyes.
"Well, what's your name then?" he asked, after clearing his throat.
"Nova Haile." I answered, grimacing a little.
"And you're from?"
"Albion, Aquator. I'm contesting for Pandora, though." I replied. He gave me a look as if his eyeballs were going to fall out of his eye sockets any time, after he heard I was from Aquator. Especially that part of Aquator. It wasn't a super rich area, but a good middle class area and close to some of the most touristy areas. Which was logical, since my parents both worked in the resorts.
"Aquator, huh? How'd you end up on Pandora? And with this one of all people?" he asked. I gave him a forced smile.
"None of your business."
"Okay, okay, whatever. Gimme a second to finish this paperwork." he said and started tapping on his data pad.
"Alright. You two can go in they'll go over the schedule and the rules with you and give you the Fast Travel codes for your accommodation. You know the procedure, Mordecai. Have fun." he told us with the most sarcastic smile. Mordecai just sighed, took my hand and walked through the door next to us.
