The Interdimensional Spaceship

James inched closer to Maahes, speeding around to the other side of him to look at his arm and the scratch marks that he himself had inflicted. When he saw that he'd drawn blood, he looked up at Maahes with big, sad eyes.

He resented the thought that that probably made him look cute in Maahes's eyes, but without words, it was the only way for him to appear as apologetic as he was. He wasn't accustomed to having paws or claws or fur, or anything of that kind.

"I'm sorry," he meowed apologetically. He lifted a paw and put it on Maahes's arm.

Runi had to slow her pace down from what it usually was to make sure the now much smaller Dante could keep up with her, but they encountered little problems in the trek to the library. Magic was doing a pretty good job at giving them instructions, and Runi was pretty good at following them through. They eventually arrived at the library and heard noises coming from inside the closed doors.

"Well," Runi said, readjusting her blaster so it wouldn't be as prone to slowing sliding off, "we're here."

I have to duck out for a bit, Magic abruptly said, startling her so much that she jumped in surprise. The lights are acting a little weird in part of the ship, so I need to try fixing them. You'll be alright without me, right?

"Yeah, we'll be fine."

I'll let you know when I've fixed things there.

And then Magic was gone, leaving only an awkward silence in Runi's head. Runi turned to looked at Dante. "Magic had to leave to go fix things in the ship, so we'll have to go on our own now." She eyed the library door, then raised a foot in preparation to kick it open. "But we should be fine, since we're here."


Maahes looked down at the paw that James had put on his arm, then slowly looked into his friend's eyes. The look James was giving him was a very cute one, and the meow had also been fairly cute, but he understood that hadn't been the intention. "It's okay," Maahes reassured him. He knew that James was trying to apologize; he had been friends with him long enough to know that was how he ticked. "You're still not used to being a cat. And I've had cats as pets before, so it's not my first time getting scratched."

He glanced at the blood on his arm.

"It's just my first time getting scratched as a human-"

The door to the library suddenly swung open. Sune gave a startled cry beside him and instinctively threw his arms around Maahes as a more than a little intimidating robot stepped into the room with a gun on one shoulder. The door slammed into the wall adjacent to it, and the robot briefly turned to see the source of the sound before turning its attention back to the group gathered.

"James," the robot said, and Maahes immediately tensed up when it started to head past the animals. Sune mustered a little courage and tried to take a defensive step in front of Maahes, but the older spirit pushed him back behind his legs as he hurried to his feet. It came to a stop right in front of him, switching its weapon from one shoulder to the other. "We need to talk."

"We, uh, do?" Maahes nervously said.

Its voice was monotone and choppy. "Yes, we do-" The robot stopped, took a step to the side and stared at Sune. It placed the weapon down on the ground beside its feet. And then, a second later, Sune was struggling to break freak of the robot's grasp as it easily snatched him from behind Maahes. "Hi there."

Sune wildly looked over at Maahes, terror in his eyes when he realized he stood no chance of breaking free of the robot's grip.

"I'm not going to hurt you," the robot said, but the words weren't exactly reassuring with the tone that it used. It gave Sune a little pat on the head, and Maahes was shocked at how pale Sune's skin could get. "I just wanted to hold a cute kid like you."

Sune stopped struggling for a moment and crossed his arms. "I'm not cute." Ironically enough, he looked very cute as he spoke.

Maahes took a hesitant step in the direction of the gun, knowing that he'd be far better off if he had some sort of defense against the robot.

"My bad, then," the robot said, almost jokingly, before readjusting Sune so he was being held like the kid he appeared to be. Sune tried to break free again, but the robot was just holding him too securely. "So, James, we still need to talk."

Maahes awkwardly paused, only a few inches away from the gun now. "About what?"

It gestured back at the others in the room with a nod of its head. "Who everyone is. I'm really confused. Magic had to duck out, so I can't ask her who's who. And for some reason you're still yourself, so you're my best bet right now." It looked down and gave Sune pat on the head. "There's also this little guy, but I'm guessing she doesn't know right now."

Maahes stared. "You're...You're one of us?"

The robot nodded. "It's me, Runi! I got turned into a robot-Why are you looking at me funny?"

"I'm not James," Maahes said, letting out a heavy sigh of relief. "I'm Maahes. James is the cat. Ari's the puppy. Taber's the lion. And you're holding Sune right now."

Sune frantically nodded in agreement.

A moment later, Sune was abruptly being deposited into his arms. Maahes struggled to hold him; Arin was heavy when she was a kid. "Sorry about that, Sune," she apologized. "I didn't recognize you."

"It's okay," Sune informed her, giving Maahes a grateful look when he put him down on the ground. He peeked around Runi's leg to see a girl standing in the entrance to the library. She couldn't have been much older than he appeared to be right now.

Runi followed his gaze. "That's Dante," she explained.

Dante raised a hand and gave a small wave, internally cursing how her cheeks flushed as the group's attention turned to her. This form was even more inconvenient than she had assumed, she thought, blaming her social awkwardness completely on it.

"Hello." She murmured quietly, scooting unconsciously toward Runi.

Tasha growled at the robot, just as she'd growled at every single newcomer so far, and, unsurprisingly, also took a step towards James as she did so. But when Maahes sounded like he knew the...thing, she stopped, though she still watched it warily. Everything in her screamed that it was dangerous - she wasn't even sure what 'it' was, be it a golem or automaton or something else.

"The metal person is just Runi," James quickly explained to Tasha. "She was here before. She got transformed too. Into what, I don't know, but there's a lot of technology here that is foreign to your and my world alike."

"So what? Did people just start, turning into random things?! No, let's back up: where the Hell even are we, how did we get here, why are we here, and how do you know any of the answers to the previous questions based upon the assumption that you do know at least one of them?" she asked.

James smirked, which only really translated into another tail flick and a raising of his chin.

"Good questions. It was already explained to most of us before, which is why I know. Basically, there's someone who exists who is basically the physical embodiment and personification of magic. We call them Magic - or at least I do - for short. Somehow, they messed up stuff with magic and time and long story short, they got stuck inside of a massive metal ship that travels through space. Let's just say it's like uh... they're inside like, the energy that powers and fuels the ship. I'm not familiar with all of the terminology yet. But I digress-"

He shook his head a little and sat down, tail curling around himself.

"I can't say that Magic is doing a very good job of being magic, but since magic, at least, conceptually, can be very chaotic or easy to lose control of, it makes sense in a way. Apparently, Magic's magic drew different people out of their respective places in space and time and brought them here. Why is still something of a mystery to me, but I don't think Magic understands the specifics either. It may be completely randomized, but I do wonder if it's chance that there are at least, for me a good handful of people I do know here. But in any case, we're essentially stuck here until time and space works out whatever was messed up on its own. And because it's messed up, things in reality will get... messy, I suppose. Trouble and chaos will probably come in waves, and I guess the first one is that we're transformed into something we're not. So basically, we're stuck here to wait this out until the chaos blows over, and hopefully stay sane and survive it 'til it does. Overall, a terrible situation, but one we have no real control over."

She snorted. "How long until...this wears off? You'd make a much better you than Maahes. Though, I must say, you're a very handsome cat, even if in reality you look like a homeless dude."

James blinked, and was again very grateful that his face could not flush as a cat, because if it could, he would probably be red.

"Well, it keeps me from being noticed," he answered, voice coming out much less confident than desired. "Most people turn a blind eye to people who look disparaged and poor."

"I think you should go for something, I dunno, classier. How about a goatee? Or a mustache? Or literally anything that doesn't look like a shrubbery growing on your face?"

He looked up at his current duplicate of himself - aka Maahes - in an effort to avert his eyes in a way that made sense and didn't look like he was getting more embarrassed. The tip of his tail flicked up and down with a nervous bounce.

"I've done all of those things," he admitted. "I try to do something different each time."

"It just seems like it'd get in the way." She paused. "I had to have a fake beard once. Never again."

Runi glanced between James and the large dog, watching as one would respond with a bark to the other's meow and vice versa. "Are they having a conversation?" she asked. She meant to sound incredulous, but the robot tone didn't really get that across. "I didn't think they'd be able to understand each other, since it doesn't look like they're the same sort of animal."

Maahes nodded. "I think they are," he confirmed. Runi wasn't going to lie. It was weird hearing James's voice come out of his mouth. She didn't really know James or Maahes that well, but it just was really disconcerting. Which was a bit ironic, considering that she could change her form and that the Alteans had been able to change some aspects of their bodies, too.

(Though it never really involved taking on the form of another person.)

She shrugged. "Eh, I guess it makes sense," she decided, plopping herself down on the ground and watching as people talked. She noticed that Dante had approached her, but she didn't bother drawing attention to the fact - she didn't think Dante would like that. She threw herself onto her back and stared up at the library's ceiling. "Animals having an universal language would explain why I can understand what they're saying. Less stuff to remember."

She could see Sune staring at her out of the corner of her eye. "You can understand animals?" he asked; hearing a different voice coming out of a different body and still knowing it was him was just as weird as with Maahes, and possibly even more so because this current version of Sune was so different from the original.

She froze. "Uh, yeah?" Shoot, she shouldn't have said that. She was supposed to be a Galran, and the Galra couldn't understand them like she could. Then again, hadn't she already slipped and mentioned how she wasn't high-ranking thanks to her not being a regular old Galra?

Now Maahes was staring, too. "Runi, how old are you?"

She stiffened even more, then frantically dismissed the question with a wave of her hand. "Oh, you know you're not supposed to ask a lady her age-" Sune and Maahes both gave her a look. Sighing in defeat, she admitted, "I'm going on 15,000 years."

The two shared a look, eyes wide for the briefest of moments before they went back to looking at her instead.

"Can all of your people live that long and talk to animals?"

She shifted uncomfortably. "I, uh, can't really answer that question. It's been a really long time since I met someone like me." She turned around so her head was closer to them than her feet, and then propped herself up on her elbows. "And I bet if I said what my kind is, you'll never have even heard of it-"

"You're a spirit, aren't you?" Maahes quietly asked. "A demon? A djinni or an afrit?"

Now she was the one doing the staring. "I...I am. How did you...?"

Maahes smiled. "Sune and I are both djinn."

If robot eyes could have widened, hers would have.

"Oh White Lion!" she cried out, suddenly knocking both the two of them to the ground as she threw her arms around them in an impromptu embrace. Both gave little startled cries, but neither seemed that bothered by the sudden show of affection. "I've always wanted to meet other people like me. I thought I never was going to after Zarkon destroyed Altea. But here you two are! How old are you two? Where are you from? Who's your summoner right now? And I'm a djinni, too!"

She gave them a tight hug, both giving little squeaks when she probably hugged them a bit too tight.

James's gaze flicked back to Runi the robot giving Maahes and Sune a hug. All he caught was "I'm a djinni too!" before the embrace. Runi being a djinni didn't pertain to himself, but he figured it was important to both Maahes and Sune. It was certainly something to be celebrated, since the last time he saw Maahes, he was pretty sure Maahes had never met anyone else like him. It was a deep breed of loneliness.

He was tempted to interact, but since he couldn't talk to them anyway, found himself more distracted by Tasha's comment than anything else.

"You had a what?" he asked, turning around to look at her again. "A fake beard? What for? A disguise?"

"Yes," she affirmed, without bothering to elaborate. "What's a djinni?"