The voyage to the Obelisk, with the three scientists, Stroheim, and their mystery passenger – who hadn't said a word yet – is a little tense, and he frowns with the feeling that this could all be handled a lot better. The boat ride out to the bottom of the Obelisk, for example, could be cut in half if the camp hadn't been set up in such an inconvenient position; unless there's a reef there (it doesn't look like it, from the way the waves fall), it should be easy to put a landing site a little closer down the coast line. Or they could even set up some sort of floating platform under the thing.

And yet, as the little boat's grumbling engine carries them towards their destination, he finds himself a little excited by the idea of meeting an entirely new species, undocumented in the history of the world up to this point; he can see it in the others, too, even through the suits, the slight twitching nervousness that comes from the potential of discovery. Even Speedwagon seems a little jumpy – or maybe that's just the motion of the waves.

And at last, they anchor under the Obelisk (he's a little tempted to call it the Jellybean, but Stroheim probably wouldn't approve). All five of them – not including the boat's faceless captain – look up, almost in unison.

And they wait. A moment, or perhaps a few minutes, and Jotaro is starting to wonder how this all is actually going to work – will the aliens be coming down? Will they all be beamed up like Scotty? Is it going to hurt –

There is an imperceptible change in the bottom of the Obelisk. A line through the blackness, widening slowly to reveal an even greater blackness. It's never occurred to him to think of shades of black before. More fool him.

The orange-suited Speedwagon takes a tarp away from the large obstruction in the centre of the boat – it's a rising platform whose railings have been neatly folded away to make more space. Looks like they're going to the aliens, then. Stroheim gestures towards it with a grunt, and everyone gets on obediently; the railings go up, and the platform slowly begins to rise above the deck.

(He's not scared of heights, per se. He's just… cautious, these days. With the slight rocking of the boat beneath them, he's a little worried that all of them, and their equipment, will be tossed down into the sea below. He's not sure whether he could stay afloat in this monstrous outfit.)

The platform stops just below the opening in the Obelisk. They… have arrived?

She goes through a rebellious phase in her late teens, staying out late at night with the wrong crowd, stealing his car for impromptu joyrides, getting into the kind of trouble that he remembers, vaguely, from possibly the worst years of his life, before college came up and straightened him up.

"Look," he tells her, quietly. "I get it. I did the same thing when I was your age. But –"

She rolls her eyes. "Here we go. I'm not a child, Dad. I've got a life. I can do what I want."

"It's all fun and games until someone gets arrested," he frowns. "Trust me, it's not easy to get a job with something like that on your personal record."

"I'm not gonna get arrested, Dad, god." She gets up and grabs her coat. "I'm old enough to take care of myself."

"You're seventeen," he replies.

"Fuck you."

"Well, boys," Stroheim mutters through the speakers, "just do what I do. Colonel Speedwagon will follow behind." With that, he grabs hold of an orange suitcase-thing and jumps off the platform –

Holy shit that is a very bad idea, they are multiple meters above the sea, he's going to fall and drown –

Stroheim looks down at him from his position on the inner wall of the obelisk. "Come on, we haven't got all day," he barks, as if he hasn't just broken every known law of physics. As if he isn't on a flat plane at a right-angle to the rest of them. Jotaro has never been particularly religious, but he has the overwhelming urge to either worship the aliens or burn Stroheim as a witch. Either is fine, as long as some part of the world starts making sense again.

Good grief. He swallows and tenses his body. If he were religious, now would be about the right time for an act of faith: a prayer, perhaps, or a blood sacrifice. Maybe a ritual, too, just to be on the safe side.

He jumps.

And lands safely next to Stroheim, his feet making contact with the solid black surface, and his whole world has, quite literally, been turned on its axis. Somehow, he's perpendicular to the boat, and if that isn't enough to make someone feel weird, nothing is.

"Don't throw up," Stroheim tells him, "these suits are a pig to clean."

He nods mutely and tries desperately to accustom himself to the unbelievable sense of wrongness in this goddamn spaceship or whatever it is. He's horizontal, and he should be vertical. His head spins. At this point, he's not sure whether that's metaphorical or not.

(This is, in a word, completely different from scuba diving.)

There is a faint thud a little way away from him, and the woman called Anne stares at him from within her suit. Her face is pale and drawn, probably to the same extent as his is. She staggers a little in her suit, but he's having enough trouble staying upright without making the effort to walk over and help her. They blink at each other in shared discomfort and unease for a while, and then –

Thud. Kakyoin lands neatly between them and looks around. He catches Jotaro's eye first, and the feeling is even more intense this time: a kind of queasy 'oh my god, I was never meant to access this dimension like this'. Kakyoin sways inside his suit, and this time Jotaro really does reach out with one hand to steady him. He's starting to feel a little less woozy now, so catching onto and holding the redhead's suited arm is only a struggle, and not a completely incomprehensible piece of Euclidian mathematics. He licks his lips, and manages to speak without also losing his breakfast (dinner? God, when did he last eat?). "You okay?"

Kakyoin nods and purses his lips together firmly. Ah.

"Stroheim said it's not a good idea to throw up in these things, so you should probably try and keep it down, y'know."

Another nod. For a while, the three scientists stand there, not moving, adjusting to the completely new experience of breaking the laws of the universe. There is one final thud, and the mysterious person known as Speedwagon lands just behind them. Jotaro can see an odd half-smile on the man's scarred face.

"It gets easier the more you do it, trust me," he tells them, looking as if he's just going on a walk in the park rather than into the most mind-blowing fairground attraction on the planet. "Although it never does lose its strangeness."

He frowns. "Er… right."

"Come on, fellers," calls Stroheim, from a little deeper into the tunnel, "let's get a move on."

They get a move on, into the black abyss.

Or, well –

Not totally black. In fact, there's a white line ahead, expanding slowly into a white square, and then a white rectangle.

They move forward, into the blinding white abyss.

"…and that's me, and that's you, Daddy." She points to the sets of scribbles authoritatively, and grins. "And that's a bu'fly."

"I see," he nods. "Very nice."

A voice calls from somewhere else inside the house – "Dinner!"

The little girl perks up. "I wanna eat!"

"Yeah," he nods, taking her hand. "Let's go."

They enter a large, square chamber, already with a few boxes and pieces of equipment set up for them. He notices the video camera, the decibel meter, the birdcage with an ugly-looking hawk-like thing (the space alien equivalent of a canary in a coal mine?), the computer and the various dials. And at the end… no wall, but some sort of barrier like a window into a bright, cloudy space. (How big is this place, anyway?)

Stroheim turns to the bird and taps the cage. "Keep an eye on this one, lads," he tells them, "Pet Shop here is how we'll know if anything goes wrong. If he keels over, stop what you're doing and run, clear?"

Jotaro swallows. So they really are at risk here. Jesus.

(But what kind of a name is Pet Shop for a bird?)

"So…" Kakyoin clears his throats. "Where are… they?"

Stroheim checks the time on the computer. "They're on their way. In about… three…"

"Minutes?"

"Two…" Stroheim holds up one orange-gloved finger. "One."

Boom.

Out of the mists on the other side of the white clear panel come –

(he should have brought his camera)

The things.

Like great hands crawling over an unseen landscape – like giant, floating baobab trees – like some sort of spider on stilt-legs, stepping slowly through the clouds of white –

They come. Slimy skin – smooth, like a dolphin or some other type of marine mammal – and shiny, as if wet –

He remembers his notepad, takes it out almost in a daze, and begins scribbling half-coherent nonsense that'll give him a headache to decode later –

One, two, three – seven limbs in total, possibly, although the mists are making it hard to see – some sort of large construction on top, either a head or another body segment – something like an octopus, but no eyes that he can see –

(he writes the words 'eye spots?' in his notebook half-absentmindedly –)

There are two of them. At first, his irrational mind sees the two giant hands of one massive creature; then he realises that no creature, or at least very few of them, would have arms in two different colours.

And they are beautiful colours. The one on the left is tinged entirely in some bright and radiant emerald green; on the right, the colour is a darker royal blue, with faint but distinguishable white freckles dusting the entire surface of its skin. It's like looking at a painting, or –

('chromatophores?' he writes, underlining it in a darker hand.)

They come to a standstill, about the same distance away from the barrier as the humans are, but in the other direction.

"Wow," breathes Kakyoin beside them. "They're beautiful."

"Yeah," he agrees.

"Nah, they're kinda ugly," shrugs Anne, and both of them scowl at her. "What? They're giant tentacle monsters. I'm not gonna…" She trails off and looks at Stroheim. "Well, anyway, I'm going to… try and figure out some of the physics going on in here. You two have fun droolin' over the aliens." She gives a casual wave and wanders off to poke at the wall.

"Well," mutters Kakyoin. "I guess I have to… talk to them? Establish contact?"

Stroheim nods. "Get on with it."

"Er… right." Kakyoin clears his throat. "Okay. Um." He holds up a small whiteboard in front of himself and writes something on it.

(Jotaro remembers he's supposed to be taking notes, and guiltily adds the phrase 'seven limbs' to his page.)

Kakyoin holds up the board, which has the kanji 人間 on it. 'Human'.

"Ningen," Kakyoin says, loudly and clearly, patting on his chest with one bulkily-gloved hand. "Ningen."

(Why speak Japanese here, of all places? It's an English-speaking country.)

(On the other hand, he's been known to accidentally use the one when he should use the other, so perhaps Kakyoin is the same: the risks of being bilingual.)

The creatures sway from side to side for a moment; he can't tell if they can actually see or hear Kakyoin (they need to do more vigorous tests following a stricter scientific process, he thinks; he makes a note to devise some way of discovering what they can and can't sense).

Then –

One limb – a green one – folds itself up and snakes forward towards the barrier –

(he sketches, as best he can, each angle and joint as it presents itself, indicating with the best guesses he can make the creatures' range of motion –)

And then the limb splits into – one, two, three… seven parts (holy shit, what the fuck?), and releases a circular rope of ink from what must be a siphon inside the limb. Jotaro stares.

For a few moments, the circle of black ink hangs there like a coffee stain, covered in little ridges and blobs (what on earth is the ink made of? What about the mist inside the chamber? How the fuck does it hang in the air like that?).

"What's that?" barks Stroheim from the corner. Jotaro had forgotten there were other people in the chamber, what with how quiet everything had gotten. He blinks.

Kakyoin doesn't look away from the gigantic creatures, his face a picture of awe and admiration. "I think…" he murmurs, just loud enough to be picked up by the mikes, "that's the name of their species in their language."

Jotaro stares at the slowly dissolving black circle. Holy fuckin' shit. They just communicated with an alien species.

She bangs her little fists against her high chair. "Mo!"

"More, please," he corrects. "Can you say please?"

"Papa!" she yells. "Papa, mo!"

He shakes his head. "No need to shout."

She squirms in her seat, reaching out for the spoon impatiently. "Nata mo!"

"Anata mo?" he echoes. "But this isn't my food. Anata no tabemono."

"Papa no tab'mono!" she insists. "No me food!"

"What if…" He holds the spoon beside his head. "What if it's a rocket-ship? Whoosh!"

"Aah…" she says, before realising she's been tricked. "No me food," she grumbles, with a mouthful of mush. "Watash' no tab'mon' janai."

She learns more and more every day, doesn't she?