The sun was high in the sky. Jason and the mobs that decided to follow him had been walking for several hours. There were already tensions that were beginning to rise between the groups. Many of the aliens could move much quicker than Jason’s party, but they were to move slower even still due to the Humans and Thesin being malnourished and unable to walk very fast. They were already finding themselves to be dropping to the ground and having to stop, resting or be carried by another which only ended up making the helper to wear down quicker, which made everyone slow down.
When most of the caravan had started to lag too far behind to make any more progress impossible Jason called for everyone to take a break. The grumbling among the groups other than the Humans and Thesin increased. Many of them had never spent any time out of Gondaluke despite the fact that to the Human eye they all looked more or less like wild animals that never should be found in any place civilized. To say they were nervous was an understatement and now being slowed down from reaching their destination as fast as the could was already creating a rift between the groups. Jason would have to do something before they turned back or worse, decided to attack each other. That would be a massacre if that were to happen.
Jason remembered from his time working as a logger that the Sil`phane would kill the animals that would encroach on their work area. He scanned the crowd of aliens to find the Sil`phane that came with him and approached them. Among those that came with him were mainly females that stayed within the town limits from what he had learned of their culture, but to his surprise there were many that they’d consider oddballs and males that had followed the females, despite not living in settlements themselves. They’d decided that it was a good idea to establish and get first claim rights to a new territory if there were no others of their kind in the area. It didn’t occur to them that there might be a reason that others like themselves hadn’t claimed a given territory, but that wasn’t of much concern at the moment. What Jason wanted, and needed, was for them to hunt some food down so that they could resolve the malnourishment issue. At first they objected to doing any such thing. He got them to agree to hunt, but then they only wanted to provide food for themselves. It took a while, but eventually he got them to understand that providing food for all would benefit themselves by allowing them to move faster and whatever territory that they claimed in the future would be made that much better if the settlement that they surrounded was thriving, rather than dying before it had begun to take root.
With that task out of the way, Jason thought of how else he could handle the situation while they waited and to keep the others from ripping each other apart. He looked around, taking in the site of hordes of people around him and realized that there wasn’t a single cart or wagon that had been brought. It was as if they had never heard of them, but that wasn’t true, the slave merchant had used them to transport his products. Surely there had to be a way to get them. There were woods all around the town. He hadn’t realized that the average person doesn’t travel much, if ever on Debris. It was even less here than it was on Earth during the middle ages, but it would have taken Jason spending more time in Gondaluke and studied more about life in the middle ages than he had ever done. He was too busy ever since he got to this alien world trying to survive than sitting around in a peaceful town like Gondaluke. There was only one thing to do; talk to those that could fix situation and see if they’d be willing to do it, the T`kata.
The T`kata were easier to deal with once you got past that discomfort that all Humans had around insects, let alone gigantic humanoid insect like aliens that stood roughly at the same height as your average Human. Generally speaking, if you got one of them to agree to do what you wanted them to do then you could be sure that it would get done, even if they died. Their sisters would take up the cause until it was finished. Jason wanted to convince them to quickly construct a number of wagons, some to carry those who couldn’t manage to walk the whole way themselves, other to carry the goods and resources that they had brought with them or found as they went. There was no sense leaving behind anything that could help them at their destination. It didn’t take much to convince them. They liked this type of job and the whole reason that they had come with Jason was that they wanted to help him and establish, not just a new colony, but a unique colony that integrated Humanity. The queen of the Gondaluke colony felt that Humans were something worth investing in and so they agreed to build Jason’s wagons as they went, but first he would have to figure out how they were going to pull them. In the meantime they would begin logging and bringing wood to work with back to their camp.
The draft animals of Debris were not a thing that Jason was familiar with. He knew that there were draft animals, but he hadn’t come across any or the need to ask about them, other than the few that the slave merchant had used, but were now long gone. There were two places that he could look to get answers that were likely to be reliable. One was Xev. She’d been around enough of the world that she was bound to have a good suggestion or two, laced with innuendo, but still good suggestions. The other was Mittana. It was her job to help people acclimate themselves to Debris and answer their questions. Although, there was supposed to be some sort of cost associated with getting that information and of the two sources that he could ask she was the more annoying. The choice was obvious. He’d go see Xev.
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He was so caught up in his own world he hadn’t noticed that a cat girl had shadowed him from the Sil`phane group and had quietly listened to everything that had been said. Every time she wanted to hop in she had taken just a little bit too much time to speak out and by the time there was a gap long enough for her to interject the conversation was over. Still, she did have important information she thought Jason would need. She was about to call out to him, but in the next instant she found herself on the ground. He had run directly into her and knocked her down. And unfortunately for her, she hit her head on the ground, dazing her. Jason blinked, having been tanked from his thoughts. At first he looked around and saw no one, but when he looked down he saw a familiar face. Her eyes were spinning.
He wonder what she was doing around the T`kata, but knowing her it had to be trouble and if he didn’t put a stop to it now she could cause more problems in the future, so, he reached down to her, grabbed her by the arm, and yanked her up. Unexpectedly she was so light and his strength had grown so much that he had applied too much force. She flew up off the ground, bashed her head against his, before both of them fell to the ground where she landed on top of him.
“Ow Ow Ow Ow” the Sil`phane cried as she straddled a prone Jason, holding her head in pain. Jason’s hand went to his head. His eyes were close and there was a good chance that he had been concussed, but there was nothing that anyone could do about it at the moment. Rina was busy treating those who had been injured on the march from their carelessness in their weakened state. Jason, without thinking, reach out to push the weight off his chest so he could get up. His hand landed on the Sil`phane’s chest. She stopped shaking her head in pain, looked down, and suddenly a scream burst forth from her lips, “PERVERT!”
Jason’s eyes flashed open and to his hands, then up to the face of the Sil`phane. His hand followed suit, cupping it over her mouth to quiet her down, “Sorry! I didn’t meant to. It’s not like there’s anything there to…” That’s as far as he got before the cat girl’s fists came down on his arms and chest, “You meanie! I’m gonna tell sister on you!” She got up and started to run away, but she didn’t get too far before she ran into Mittana. “Mya, what are you doing? Are you being a nuisance?”
Jason couldn’t believe his ears. “There was someone in this world that Mittana thought could be a nuisance even though she didn’t include herself in that category?” Jason thought. He slowly, uneasily, stood. He tried to stand up straight, but the world kept on shifting beneath him and he had no choice but to try to compensate for it. To the rest of the world this looked like stumbling, trying to maintain his balance, but to him, it was the rest of the world that was topsy turvy. He was convinced of this more so when he looked to Mittana and saw that there seemed to be two of her. Although the double was a bit shorter, had a smaller chest, and short brown hair. The effect was sold even more by his eyesight being blurry at the moment, but focusing, he noticed a different disposition between the two. The shorter new one had filthy clothes covered in dirt and grease and she clearly had no care for how she looked. Despite all of Mittana’s other failings she had alway maintained a fairly prim and proper appearance. She just didn’t act like the lady her looks said she was. “Mi- Mittana, do you know this one?” he said through the splitting headache and ringing in his ears.
“Y- y- yes. She’s my sister. Mya, apologize to Jason for whatever you did,” Mittana was quick to jump to assume that her sister was the one at fault for whatever was happening which sparked anger in Mya. She took a firm stance, “I didn’t do anything wrong! This pervert t-touched my b-boobs!” she blushed a little as she defended herself.
“N-now wait a minute. I wasn’t t-trying to do that, but it’s not like you have anything there to begin with,” he said, remembering what he had felt and comparing them to his library of women’s chests that he had felt which had grown rapidly over the last few months. It occurred to him that he might be Humanity’s greatest expert on alien women, but he quickly put that out of his head.
“Now, what did I tell you about interacting with Humans? We don’t know anything about them. You have to be careful around them,” Mittana scolded her seemingly younger sister.
“But I just wanted to help… And he’s a friend of yours so…” Mya bawled as Mittana attempted to comfort her.
Jason didn’t know what to say to the seen that was playing out in front of him. More importantly, since when had he and Mittana become friends he wondered.
“I wanted to help with the wagons,” Mya continued, “he needs a way to pull them and I can help design them!”
“You know we don’t talk about your hobbies in public, Mya. They just wouldn’t understand.” Mittana told her sister.
“Wait… Hobby? Are you saying that your sister is some sort of engineer?” Jason asked startled. He had understood that the Sil`phane were not much into building new technologies, or even older ones, and especially not the female ones, that it was rare among males and almost never among the females, but here, in front of him, in the same family, there were two it seemed.