Chapter 3: Questions

When the girls went out to check what had fallen, the Professor's first thought about the situation was that it simply was a combustive reaction, given off by the gases in the asteroid. However, he had quickly dismissed that option, due to sheer improbability. His second hypothesis was that a satellite had gotten hit by one of the asteroids, and that it had malfunctioned and crashed. He doubted that one also, again because the improbability factor was high, and there was the added fact that explosion shouldn't have been quite that big. The more likely one, the third and final one, was that it in fact was an alien ship, and he was worried that perhaps there was an alien being on board, and it would most likely be hurt.

Believe it or not, that, for some reason, made the most sense in this situation, so he had gone inside to prepare his laboratory for whatever kind of patient it was. Truth be told, he wasn't sure what to expect, so he readied himself for pretty much anything.

Unfortunately, "anything" in his book didn't exactly include a six foot anthropomorphic eagle-like creature who was unconscious.

He had no time to ask what they were doing with it, or even how he was going to help it. All there was were the girls throwing open the door, a quick scream of "Professor! Hurry! You have to help it!" and next thing he knew, he was making an attempt to fix up a broken alien. The Professor had taken a quick scan, and found that its bone structure was just similar enough to that of a human's to actually have an idea what he was doing to it.

It was an hour after the ordeal, and while to Girls had been ordered to go to bed; the Professor was in the kitchen sipping a cup of hot chocolate, going over recent events. It still seem like a blur to him. In roughly 2 hours, he had met an extraterrestrial, and actually operated somewhat on it. He smiled at that last thought. "First scientist to operate on an alien life form…Heck, that could win me a Nobel Prize! I'll be the envy of all the scientific world. " He allowed himself a small, self-satisfied smirk at that thought. "Speaking of which…" He got up to check and see if his patient had awoken yet.

As he opened the door to his laboratory, he still could get over the suddenness of it all, on second, he was standing, watching a meteor shower, next, he was doctoring an alien. He looked at his bandaged up patient laying on the medical table, and took this time to note a few things about it.

It was tall, as previously said, and looked very buff. Not overly so, but just enough so that its muscles managed to accentuate its size just right. It looked very similar to a human, although it was covered with russet-gold feathers from head to toe, which were actually sharp talons on its feet. Its "hands" also had claws for fingers, and both hand and foot claws were sharpened to a fine point, he noticed.

The beak was short and curved, much like an eagles' beak was, and the feathers on its head was arranged in something of a scattered fashion. It was dressed in some sort of bluish-gray spacesuit, which had a design on it that could best be described as a seven-point star with a pair of wings overlapping it.

Another one of the more noticeable things about it was that it was female.Yes, as previously said, it was muscular, but it also had feminine curves that, once again, resembled a human's. This told the Professor that while she exercised a deal, she was also probably seem to have a muscular beauty to her kind, so to speak.

Figuring that she wasn't going to wake up anytime soon, he decided to get to bed. Hopefully, she would be up tomorrow.

----

Later that night…

The bird-creature gently opened its eyes, and looked cautiously around. The first thing she noticed was that the place was full of beakers, tubes, machinery, and medical equipment, and from that, quickly surmised that she was in a laboratory, and subsequently started to panic. "Great! Now what do I do?" she thought. She couldn't break the restraints holding her down, nor could she reach her blaster stored in her back pocket of her suit. "At least they didn't disarm me. They probably forgot to do that." That's when she noticed the numerous bandages around her leg and torso. "Say…what are these here for? They actually tryin' to help me or something?" She pondered this for a moment. "Hmm…if they are, maybe this means that they're not going to do experiments on me? Oh…hope that's the case…well, I'm probably not going to find out right now. Might as well get some rest." Deciding that she would hope that these were good Earthians, and not bad ones, she let the topic fall for the time, and fell back asleep.

----

The next morning found three special little girls standing outside the door, eager to check up on their unexpected visitor.

"So…what do you think it'll make of us?" asked Buttercup.

"I hope it's nice…" commented Bubbles.

"Nah, it'll probably be pretty scared of us, until we convince it that we're okay." said Blossom.

"Say, I just thought of something!" said Buttercup. "What it it's got some sort of weirdo alien powers, like it can read minds or something, huh? Ya think it might use that stuff against us?"

"Hmm…" thought Blossom. "I guess it's possible, but to be honest, I don't think that it has any powers."

"Actually, it might. We don't know for sure," came a voice from behind them. "Professor! You scared us!" said Bubbles.

"He didn't scare me." said Blossom. "Me neither." added Blossom.

Bubbles look a mite embarrassed. "Okay… so I got scared. Happy?"

The Professor simply smiled. "It's okay, Bubbles. Now, since we all seem to have the same idea, let go check our "visitor", shall we?"

They opened the door cautiously. The alien was staring directly at them, with a fixed scowl on its face. "If they came for info from me, they're not getting anything!" Thought the she-alien. The scowl remained on her face, stern as ever.

Actually feeling a bit intimated by this, Blossom made a try to talk with it. "Uh…hi there," she started uneasily. "Uh…we're not gonna cut you up or anything, in case you were wondering…" She raised a feathered eyebrow at this. "Okay, how can she speak Rylian, and how'd she know that's what I was thinking?" She shrugged the question off. "Eh, probably just a lucky guess."

Bubbles took it up from there. "We sorta found you at your wreaked ship, and you were looking pretty bad, so we bought you here, and the Professor fixed you up!" The alien's gaze moved from the currently speaking blue girl, to the taller one in the lab coat, most likely the "Professor" as they called him. He couldn't help but shift slightly under her stare, and began to speak himself. "We…we really don't mean any trouble. I mean, I am simply a man of learning. I mean you no harm whatsoever." When she didn't say anything back, logic finally caught up with Blossom. "Wait a minute, why are we trying to talk with it like this? She probably speaks some other weird language."

The Professor nodded. "Yes, I see your point. I suppose we'll have to find so other way to communicate with it. The question is, how?"

"Say…" thought Buttercup, "Maybe she can't talk! Maybe she's…muted, or whatever you call it."

"What?" Though the alien. "Me, can't talk? That's ridiculous!" She decided to end that perception of her ASAP, but, she had a fun idea of how to do it. She pointed at Buttercup with her claw, and motioned for her to come closer. She was confused. "Hey…what's it want me for?"

The others could only shrug.

Carefully, Buttercup stepped closer up to it. The bird-thing looked her squarely in the eye, and…

"BOO!"

"Yahaaaaa!" Buttercup bolted behind a nearby table, and the next thing she heard was raucous laughter, coming from the bird, no less. A few seconds later the rest were laughing, too.

Two things dawned on her real quickly. 1: The bird could talk. 2: It had just embarrassed her. She didn't like to be embarrassed.

"Why you…C'mere!" She lunged for the alien, but was held back by her sisters.

"Huh, so…you speak English!" Blossom exclaimed. The bird couldn't help but chuckle. "I suppose, if that's what you call Rylian around here."

"What-an?" Blossom asked.

"Rylian," the bird corrected, "is the main language on my home planet. I guess both it and this "English" are about the same." About now, Blossom noticed that she had a tomboyish tone of voice.

Buttercup whistled. "Man, what are the odds of that?" The bird shrugged nonchalantly. " 'Bout one in a million, I'd guess." Blossom took this time to get the conversation back on track. "Okay, now that we know we can communicate with each other, would you mind if we asked you a few questions?"

She thought about this carefully. She couldn't reveal her true purpose to them; they might know the warriors personally! But, if she chose her answers carefully…

"Shoot."

Blossom smiled. "What's your name?" "Reia. Reia Skykin." A lie, of course, but she wasn't supposed to be even seen in the first place. Besides, she had used this alias for more than one undercover mission, which this was turning out to be.

"Okay… why are you here?" "I'm a traveler. I like to explore space." That was only a partial lie. She did like to explore…when she wasn't on duty.

"Where'd you come from?" "A planet far away from here called Alkeria." That one was a true answer. "Is that it?" she asked. " Cause now I'd like you to answer a few questions of mine."

The Professor nodded. "That's fair. Go ahead." "Reia" smiled. "Okay, I know that the one in white is the "Professor", but exactly who are you?"

"Oh, my name is Blossom."

"I'm Bubbles!"

"Buttercup."

"Together, we're known as the Powerpuff Girls!"

"...Okay, no need for an intro. So, now that we've got the "who's who" down, what kind of food do you guys have on this planet? I'm starved!"