((J. Dac: I'm currently being maimed by finals/crippling addiction to Pokemon Pearl. In the only good news in my life, I at least managed to send out 6 copies of a manuscript of mine to literary magazines … because this was all the postage I could afford. (Simultaneous submission, hollah.) Let the rejection letters roll.))
Finally, after what seemed like eternity, the Aisha home world hovered like an opalescent orb in our space shield. Of course, we couldn't enter their borders legally—the warrant for our arrest and the exact description and license of our ship was undoubtedly already in the hands of Aisha authorities. Thankfully, Gormos had the foresight to alter the code of our cloaking device to make his ship appear a friendly, anonymous tourist vehicle, complete with fabricated entrance codes. Once we stepped off the ship, however, our veil of fake identity would be lifted.
Much to my disdain, we resorted to magic to amend that. Hoshiya magically altered old repairman jumpsuits left in a cranny of Gormos' ship into extravagant, velvet black robes that I had to reluctantly admit were of excellent craftsmanship. Hoshiya and I would wear these to resemble a race of alien called Nyswans, an extremely religious—and humanoid—race that constantly covered their pallid flesh in drooping, ghastly robes.
Gormos, on the other hand, required a more elaborate disguise. Chanting a series of repetitive phrases, Hoshiya conjured a glass flask in midair filled with a thick turquoise-colored liquid. She held it out for Gormos to take with the stoic instructions, "Drink it."
"Hold your horses, honey," Gormos said, backing away from the flask nervously.
"I see you acquired your selection of casual pet names from Frank," Hoshiya said dryly. (Now that we were going into an atmosphere-entering sequence, Hoshiya had returned to her jerk persona.)
"I'm not gonna drink that," Gormos said stubbornly, crossing his arms powerfully across his chest. He rolled his shoulders backwards to extend to his full height, an intimidating one by anyone's measure. Hoshiya didn't back down.
"Look, it looks less objectionable than a lot of the water you drink in that blasted space station," Hoshiya said, clearly losing patience, if she had any in the first place. (She was right—our water, being constantly recycled and filtered to decrease the reliance on importation, was always of a slightly copper tint. "Our daily dose of heavy metals!" Gormos had optimistically described it.) "It won't hurt you. It's just a Transformation potion."
"That's a big mouthful for a little lady," I snorted derisively.
"Can it, Frank," she shot at me hotly, and returned to quelling Gormos' fears. "They're created by standard Faerie spells—very easy, early spells Faeries learn early and master easily. I made this one so you can transform into an Alien Aisha."
"Me?! Why me, specifically? Why can't both of you do it, too? Why am I being victimized?" Gormos whined, his ears pressed flat against his skull in more fear than anger.
"Because even though they're easy to make, the potion still takes a lot of energy to make, especially if you're converting such a large species to such a tiny one," Hoshiya explained, clearly glossing over certain details. I could see the deception gears spinning between those two cropped ears. Because I wanted to be able to freely travel the Aisha world, however, I didn't alert Gormos to what was obvious manipulation via omission. "I only had enough energy to make one for you. And think about it this way—you'll be much safer from detection than me or Frank."
Gormos' facial expression visibly shifted throughout her speech, falling from total resistance to faltering resistance, to leery consideration, to begrudging acceptance. He snatched the bottle out of the air gruffly, glaring at Hoshiya markedly. "Fine." He uncorked the bottle quickly and waved it under his nose like a wine connoisseur. He grimaced, and then looked at me over the lip of the bottle warily. "Frank, avenge my death, ok?"
"Don't have to ask me twice," I replied, giving a dirty glance at Hoshiya. Her eyes remained locked on Gormos about to drink the potion, a determination in her eyes. I wondered—and worried at—what she had been purposefully holding back.
Gormos took a deep breath in; considered Hoshiya, considered me; and then threw it back like a shot, downing the contents in a matter of seconds. He didn't bother to cover the lingering drops at the bottom, like he did with all other beverages. His face twisted into a sour expression, and he wiped his whiskers (dewed with droplets from the potion) with the back of his paw. "Sick," he coughed, his voice ragged. "So when should I start feeling changes?"
I couldn't answer him immediately due to being shocked speechless by four ear stalks sprouting very suddenly out of the crest of Gormos' head. They swayed of their own according, sensitively adjusting to discreet, individual sounds in the room. From their roots the change spread, shriveling Gormos' thick coat of fur into the short coat of a green Aisha. His facial features restructured, softening into a pint-sized muzzle, more domesticated housecat than Gormos' feral feline profile. Meanwhile, his body shrank considerably, his tail slurping into his rear end and his muscles visibly deflating. The contours of his eyes squeezed together until they achieved the infamous Aisha squint while the rest of his body finished transforming.
In mere instants, Gormos had been reduced from a creature I couldn't combat in a fist-fight to save my life to one I could kick over with relative ease. His clothes pooled around him like a tent with its interior skeleton knocked out, quietly drifting to the ground.
When the initial shock of it wore off, I bit my lip to repress a laugh.
"Screw you, Frank," Gormos said lowly, his voice clearly his own but tuned an octave higher. The voice change was wholly unexpected, and caused me to be unable to restrain my laughter. It exploded from me with a force that bent me at the waist, covering my eyes to cover the tears threatening to spill over onto my cheeks.
"See? No adverse reactions, right?" The slight twang of anxiety in Hoshiya's voice alerted me to something sketchy, but I decided to ignore it for the time being in favor of humiliating Gormos.
"No, if you don't count how stupid I feel right now," Gormos murmured, struggling to free himself from the loose knot of his clothes. He jumped out from them, naked—acceptable for Aishas. After shaking himself off, he scampered past us to the bedrooms, Hoshiya's containing a mirror. A long groan issued from the open door down the hallway, followed by the sound of things crashing to the ground. Even Hoshiya couldn't suppress a smile: her teeth grasped tightly to her lower lip to prevent it from spreading into a full-on grin.
Gormos emerged eventually, panting heavily (which was quite amusing in itself, because it came off as a toddler coming down from a fit). Trying to act as nonchalant as possible, he walked over to his swivel chair. After a few minutes of unsuccessful hops in an attempt to mount the chair, Gormos turned around and looked at me darkly. "Frank, you want me to land the ship or not?"
Biting the inside of my cheek to ward off a spasm of chuckles, I lifted Gormos under the arms, not unlike a teddy bear, and placed him securely in the swivel chair. Coolly, Gormos reached for his headset and readjusted the headset to comfortably fit his tiny skull. Hoshiya made some poorly advised attempts to assuage Gormos' pride, but that element of Gormos' psyche had already been thoroughly trashed. I, however, knew the cold-shoulder treatment would last twenty minutes at best. It was in Gormos' nature to be a loudmouth, and he suffered more from the silent treatment than the person he was trying to punish.
Hoshiya and I pulled up our hoods to conceal our fugitive faces as we pulled into port. Our landing was relatively hassle-free, save for the fact that Gormos wasn't exactly fluent in Aisha tongue (highly suspicious, considering all Aishas were, by rule, born on their home planet), which forced us to create an impromptu story about pirates cutting out his tongue. Security and customs treated us with the respect due towards devout Nyswans, which worked to our advantage: thanks to their complex and rigid dogma concerning touch—and thanks to intergalactic commitment to political correctness—Nyswans could bypass a full-body frisk before entering a foreign country. Gormos was the only one unfortunate enough to get a pat-down, wearing the sourest face as Aishas he could've punted as a Kougra manhandled him impersonally.
I'd never been to a world outside of Neopia, and entering into Aisha City was overwhelming. Aisha City had acquired the nickname "the center of the universe," and the bustling metropolis lived up to its name. I thought the interior of the space station had been mind-boggling large; yet just in Aisha City alone, I witnesses structures double that size—even more bizarre under an atmosphere, for gravity weighed on these behemoths. Although Aisha City was terrestrial, the technological feats of the Aisha species allowed Aisha City to transform into a literal stainless-steel jungle, distinct levels distinguishable if one rode through it in a hovertaxi.
My first view of this teaming ziggurat came from the hallway-length windows leading us from the landing dock towards the visitor's center. Buildings like beanpoles climbed the sky with ease—their height almost gave the impression that they originated not from the ground, but from heaven itself: a ray of light made from metal. These buildings varied in size, but many had middle levels that bulged out into round disks punctured in the center by the main shaft of the building, allowing for a greater congregation of people and offices on a single floor. Some buildings crested in large domes, seeming to balance precariously on their too-small stem. At times, it gave the impression of being amidst a field of flowers at eye level: flowers that had forsaken their chlorophyll and love for sunlight for steel shields and sleeplessness. Taxis, and other flying vehicles (but primarily taxis, manned by insane intergalactic immigrants with indecipherable accents and potent body odor) hovered and darted about these structures like gnats around an animal's eyes, dipping in and out of landing docks.
At the visitor's center (more or less a tourist shop with tiny spoons emblazoned with "Aisha City" and tacky postcards with the city skyline and white shirts proclaiming "I HEART AC"), we scoured the racks of pamphlets advertising tourist traps to find directions to the Sacred Cavern. Hoshiya soon grew distracted, though, by plastic snowglobes depicting the skyline in hokey polystyrene, and the plushies outfitted in miniature I HEART AC t-shirts.
"Jeez-lou-weez, you think they'd make a holy site easier to find!" Gormos exclaimed irritably as we neared the end of the pamphlet rack with no new leads. I barely heard him; I was still fixated with the grandiose vision of progress and technological mastery displayed in the window I gazed at from the visitor shop. Here was the dream Feathers had carried in their fragile hearts for years manifest: to freely navigate the skies carried in the palm of a superior society constructed by science, and the power of the mind. I felt my throat catch with a wave of emotion; I fought back the lump swelling in my throat before it could metastasize to my tear glands and drain down my cheeks.
It took me a few minutes to register that the tiny fist pounding at my shins was Gormos and not some annoying child who had designated me their temporary parent. I looked down, my romantic reminiscing aborted. "You got any coinage on you, Frank?"
"Uhhh, besides some intergalactic marks left behind in these pants? Probably not," I mumbled. Nyswans spoke in low tones, careful never to raise their voices—I had to be mindful to follow this habit.
"Alright, that's all well and good, but how're we gonna get to the Sacred Cave?" Gormos demanded. "I brought maybe a handful. We gotta pay admission, and the travel fee …"
"You two worry too much," Hoshiya proclaimed, strolling up casually from behind Gormos. The sly look on her face told me she had done something illegal: the involuntary smirk of the self-satisfied criminal, always a useful expression to recognize if you were a penitentiary doctor and you wanted to hold on to the supplies in your exam rooms. "Haven't you guys ever heard the expression 'duck and run'?"
"So you're telling me we're going to get in the taxi, and then not pay the guy?" Gormos expressed the most shock at this deviant plan, his face aghast at the suggestion of such blatant illegal activity. I, having dabbled quite prolifically in the black market, was less phased by the suggestion. Of course I had considered it, but my few remaining strands of morals prevented me from doing anything beyond playing with the thought, unwilling to cheat a hardworking—if albeit annoying—taxi driver of their pay.
"That's exactly what I'm considering," Hoshiya said with a grin.
"Not very holy of you, Mrs. Nyswan," I commented dryly.
"Oh, like you're the picture of the Virgin Mother," Hoshiya shot back. "I've been to Aisha City before on an assignment. This isn't new to me. Just hop in, and as soon as the sucker docks, hop out. And if necessary, hold him off with some good paralysis. And always erase the memory. That's the key to not getting caught."
"An assignment, huh?" I smirked, adjusting the hood off my robes. "How many Aishas did you off in that one, Faerie?" In my blatant antagonism, I had switched over to the Faerie-Feather diplomacy language, very ironically named Peacetongue.
"None of your bloody business, Feather," she spat back, using the same tongue.
"Hey, hey, now let's not get testy you two," Gormos insisted, placing himself physically between us. While he couldn't directly understand our exchange, he could surmise through the sudden change in language that we were somehow jabbing ferociously each others' buttons. Unfortunately, given his diminuative height, him interceding on our argument did little to stop our exchange. Instead, he merely got tangled in our feet as we advanced threateningly towards one another, neither willing to back down.
We were about to engage in a child-like scuffle of vicious slapping and pinching (neither willing to go to the lengths of an actual fist-fight) with Gormos mercilessly in the middle when a drawn out "Hellooooo" spoken in heavily-accented Intergalactic Common interrupted our impending battle. All three of our heads swiveled around; our eyes fell upon a light blue Aisha, its gender inconclusive, all four of its ear stalks waving wildly in greeting.