Shin's P.O.V
Weightlessness. That was all I felt. A sense of weightlessness all around me as my pod plummeted through this blue planet's atmosphere. I could feel the warm air of the pod around me, then a sudden feel of gravity change that told me the pod was picking up speed in its descent. I lay back, still unconscious, still trapped in what felt like an eternal sleep. Peace. For once.

Until I woke up to three things that had not been with me when I escaped; a splitting sense of pain, and ravenous hunger that knifed my stomach from the inside along with thirst that burned my throat and mouth like lava boiling in a pit.

It was then I became aware of my current surroundings. I opened my eyes and was met with a blinding light that stabbed through my eyes like knives, seeing as they were still crusty and delicate after staying closed for so long. As the rest of my body woke up, I became aware of a few more things, the first being the smell of burning metal.

I've crashed, I realised at that moment, shifting my elbows underneath myself to get up. I tried, but suddenly collapsed as a sudden burst of pain shot up my right leg, and that was when a feeling of dread hit me.

Shit, I've been impaled, I cursed quietly, raising my head up to look at my now wounded leg that had several pieces of jagged metal piercing it, revealing silvery grey muscle and glowing blood pouring from the wounds like water. I struggled to sit up, making sure I didn't twist the shards any further into my wound. I lifted my arm to look at it and saw gashes lining it from the back of my hand up to my bicep. A burst of fire snaking up my back told my some of the jagged pieces had slashed my back as well, with blood streaming down my back from two gashes the same width as my wrist on my shoulder blades.

I managed to pull my wounded foot off the jagged metal pieces with some effort, groaning as I set it down closer to my still intact foot and took a moment to get my bearings right. Here I was on Earth, the blue planet, with (possibly) fatal or crippling wounds on three places, no food and no hydratable liquids anywhere in sight.

Good start, I grumbled sarcastically as I hauled myself out of the pod, feeling my body drop onto a patch of something black and rough.

Grass. An Earth plant. It dominated fields and was the main source of sustenance for herbivorous Earth creatures. Yet this particular patch was no longer green. My escape pod's accumulated heat had burned everything to a black-and-white crisp.

Then I caught the sight of three figures standing a few feet away from where I had crashed. Three female figures to be exact. Two were adults, one fair-skinned with short Tyrian purple hair and another with a tanned complexion and long jet-black hair. In between them was a shorter female, a young girl around five, who looked just like the second lady.

Then, for some reason, I blacked out.

-

Ichika's P.O.V
It all happened so fast I could barely process it.

First the 'pod' as I had taken to calling it was literally wrecked, with flames circling around and burning whatever inch of green grass they could reach and feast on. Then a strange humanoid shape suddenly hauled itself out of the broken pod, crawling a couple of inches towards us on the ground before finally passing out for God knows what.

"Woah".

"You said it girl", Seia nodded, backing up a bit.

"He looks hurt", Miko noted, peeking out from behind my shoulder at that moment. "We should help him"!

"Miko, hun, I dunno how smart that is", Seia mused, wary. "These are aliens, y'see. They can be mean and nasty sometimes".

"Maybe we can help him, and then he won't be mean and nasty anymore", Miko insisted, jumping down from my shoulders at that moment. "It's like what mom says. Sometimes, when people are hurt and scared, they become mean and nasty because they can't think straight, but if someone's patient enough to help 'em without blaming 'em for their nasty behaviour, then they'll turn into some pretty big mushes after that".

Seia raised an eyebrow there.

"Emphasis on 'mush', 'cause not everyone has to be a firework all the time", Miko added, blushing lightly.

"I dunno, sweet. I mean, don't get me wrong, but Seia is right too", I told Miko, giving the humanoid alien a wary look. "We don't know what it might be capable of, and like I've said before, wounded creatures can be pretty dangerous at times".

"Your mother's got a good head on her shoulders", Seia quipped, making me giggle a bit. "'Ight, I'll go check him and the pod out. You two stay put till I give ya both the signal".

"Yes commander", I saluted her, and she laughed momentarily before picking her way over the charred grass and stopping a few feet from the alien creature.

She picked up a stick nearby and carefully shook it free of dirt and soot before prodding the alien creature with it. Miko and I watched with baited breath as Seia gently prodded first the alien's bicep, cheek, leg and finally loin before she was convinced he was indeed unconscious and not just playing dead to trick her. She then gave us the signal (a double thumbs up) and Miko and I hurried over to the alien's side. Miko ran up to Seia's side and begin asking a ton of questions regarding what she'd just done. I left her to it and decided to have a better look at the alien myself.

He was a humanoid being covered from head to toe in what I assumed was some sort of silvery space metal that creased in certain parts of his body like normal human skin. There were bright red markings on his body, with red completely shading his neck and forming some sort of corrugated 'brace' around his shoulders and chest. The red markings left his shoulders bare, but snaked down his arms in a pattern similar to his chest before ending in points above its wrists. His lower body had red markings forming a pair of 'shorts' that stopped above his knees, and on his shins were red, upward-pointing arrowhead curves. On its chest was a circular device that was glowing red and, for some reason, beeping loudly.

Cautiously, I turned over and found the source of what was probably causing the device to klaxon. There were deep gashes in his right leg, so deep it was evident they had been caused by something more than blunt-force trauma. Similar gashes, but not as deep, ran up his left arm from the back of his wrist to his bicep. Similar gashes bled from his shoulders blades, oozing what was probably a glowing equivalent of human blood that was white instead.

But what surprised me the most was his face. He had a disturbingly perfect male humanoid face, with well-defined lips, cheekbones and other facial features that looked like they had been sculpted out of clay by a skilled sculptor from the Heavens. His eyes were shut tightly, and he had no visible nose. Instead, on his head was a short, thin crest, and an equally short and thin dorsal fin ran from his nape to his tailbone. A thin protruding line was in place of where an obvious nose and nose bridge should have been.

"What are you? Who are you"? I asked the unconscious alien, pressing my face as close to his own as I could. He didn't answer, since he was still unconscious, but my instincts were ready to run high and they were telling me I should help this guy, alien or not.

As if to reply my question at that moment, I felt some sort of pressure at the back of my skull. It wasn't painful, nor was it annoying, but it felt...calming, for lack of a better word to describe it. It was as if he knew I was anxious about his current condition, and was assuring me that he was alright, albeit unconscious and not moving.

Maybe he doesn't talk, I thought as the pressure pulsed. Maybe his kind uses telepathy to speak, or maybe he's resorted to telepathy now because he's so weak and already injured.

"Maybe we can leave him here, let the military deal with him", Seia suggested at that point, to which Miko pretty much freaked out.

"No no no no no no "! she shrieked, already on the verge of a panic attack. "We can't! They'll lock him up in a cage and open him up and they won't care if he's in pain! To them, he'll just be another doohickey in the lab"!

"To be honest, she does have a point right there", I quipped at that moment, shifting my gaze from the alien to Seia and Miko. "I mean, the military isn't going to treat his wounds if they find him or anything. They'll just sedate him and dissect him till there's nothing left of him on an operating table. Heck, for all we know this guy might have a family back home waiting for him. You know, wife, kids, parents, maybe siblings".

Silence.

"Besides, if they do kill him, then we'd all be in trouble", Miko added, me taking a moment to check on his wounds to see if they were still bleeding. "Who knows what his job is? What if his superior or boss or whoever it is he's reporting back to gets wind of his death or at least imprisonment? They'll probably attack all of us while looking for him".

That seemed to trip a switch (not the wrong one) in Seia and for a moment she pondered the possibilities. I took a moment myself to fetch my first-aid kit and bandage the alien's wounds as best as I could at the moment. There wasn't really much I could do, short of just wrapping his wounded leg, arm and most of his midriff and back in bandages. I wasn't sure if his body would accept an antiseptic that wasn't from his home planet-wherever it is he came from-so I didn't use the iodine solution. The last thing he needed was an allergic reaction towards something foreign entering his body.

"How are we going to get him home anyways"? Miko asked me at that moment. She gestured to the alien's whole body. "No way we can lug him home without someone seeing us and him".

"And none of us drive, to boot", Seia added. "Hate to say it, but unless he shrinks or we get someone to help us get him home, we're going to look awfully conspicuous".

I fingered the edge of my jacket's hem in reply. How were we going to get this guy home without looking conspicuous?

Then, as if answering the question, a shroud of white light covered the alien from head to toe. It glowed brightly, lifting him a few inches above the ground, then the glow begin to intensify. As we watched, the alien's body begin to shrink from six feet to a tiny levitating ball the size of one of those plastic balls found in children's ball pits. I held out my hand, and the ball landed on it. It glowed brightly, and it felt warm to the touch, almost like a tiny handheld heater.

"Woah", Seia gasped.

"That solves our problem now"! Miko squealed happily.

I sighed and placed the alien-as-a-ball into my backpack, making sure he wasn't in the path of anything that might hit him in the bag before I zipped it up, slung it over my shoulders and left with Seia and Miko. Miko and I caught the bus again, this time back to our apartment, and after saying a hasty goodbye to Seia we went back up to our unit. Miko raced off to her own room to crash for awhile, while I went to my own room, gently pulled out the alien-as-a-ball from my backpack and put him on the other side of my double bed gently. Then, I grabbed my phone and begin to dial a number.

I stopped halfway, pondering if I should go on, then figured I had better do this fast and finished dialling the number down before tapping the 'call' button.