The Stumble Inn

"Would you?"

Hal sighed, and rubbed his hands, before looking up bitterly. "I guess I still haven't. I had something similar happen to me. My mother was shot by some thugs when I was 18. I was just going off to join the Terran Fleet at that point... Last thing I told her was that I didn't need her directing my life, and that I could handle a little violence... Then some of those thugs I was talking about attempted to stop the shuttle so they could loot the people inside. One was shooting for me, so I tackled him... And his blast got redirected at my mother outside, instead. I feel Kasei-La's pain, I'm sure of that... Just, I guess I'm taking it better."

"You were also older. And are. To a little kid, losing a parent is the worst thing that could possibly happen to them, ever. They just aren't ready for it. "

Hal nodded, and twiddled his thumbs. "Say... Could you go talk to her? She won't listen to me when I'm mad, but she seems... Well, receptive to you at the moment. I'll watch the uh... Desk for you, in case anyone comes in. I know it's a lot to ask, but, well... I'm not sure I can connect with a young girl as well as another woman could." He looked at the ground, huffing.

Mel shrugged and stepped out from behind the desk, heading after the girl. "Hardly anyone comes in anyway."

She knocked softly on the door. "Hello? Kasei? Are you alright?"

Kasei-La sniffled, and sat against the door. "No! Hal is a gosh dang... Golly geep.... He's a GOD DAMN ASSHOLE!" She covered her mouth, not used to swearing that often at all. "...Sorry..." She snorted. "It's just... When he acts like that... Getting everyone's hopes up... He never thinks of what happens when he fails. He promised me my parents would be safe, and... and I believed the nudnik..." She inched away from the door, and sat on the bed, whiping her eyes with her forearm. "You can come in, by the way."

Hal gulped as he heard the shouting, and took the place behind the desk, hoping to high heaven that Kasei-La would forgive him.

Mel slips inside the door and shuts it softly behind her before going to sit next to Kasei-La on the bed. "I know. It's not right to get people's hopes up just to crush them like that. . . but I think he really did try his hardest. It hurts him pretty badly that he failed."

Kasei-La snorted again, and looked away as she brought her knees up to her chest. "He's still a jerk... You were right. He is full of himself... He never listens to me, ever. It's always 'stay here' and 'a young lady could get hurt in a situation like this' or 'maybe there's a better time to discuss science'. He never takes into consideration about how I feel when we're going on those adventures of his. We never even stop, either. It's always onto foiling another plot to conquer the universe at a moment's notice, right after we finish pounding the first bad guy."

Mel sighs. "Well, maybe that's his way of running away? I don't really know dear, I just only met the guy. But you can rest, here. That's pretty much what this place is the best at. Just resting and waiting. . . " Mel sighed again and shook her head. "Don't be too hard on him though. Seems that he just doesn't want you to get hurt."

Kasei-La let a smile crack, but she tried to hide it. "...Yeah, I guess you're right... Thanks for letting us stay after this outburst... I'll try not to do it again..." She played with her antenna. "But, uh... You seem really nice, Mel. Glad there's someone like you here." She got up off the bed, and bent forward. "Generally, we show gratitude by brushing antennas, in my species... Oh well, I guess there's no real way to do it with a human." She gave Mel a brief hug. "Thanks... Now I guess I should go say sorry to Hal, huh?"

"You two are surprisingly calm, despite being stuck here in Wayside. Trust me, we've had far more violent visitors." She returned the hug, kissing Kasei-La on the forehead. "And yes, you should probably apologize. Life is too short to be mad at family."

"Heh, I guess that's what we are, huh? A family..." She kept her smile, but it seemed even brighter now. Quickly, she hurried out the door and down the stairs, and hugged Hal. "Mel and I talked... And I'm sorry. It's just... I get annoyed sometimes."

Hal stroked her hair for a few moments, nodding. "I understand perfectly... I miss my parents too sometimes. But we have each other, and don't you forget that."

"I promise I won't..." Zippy hurried down the stairs, and leapt onto both of them.

"Hahah, woah there. Fine, we can make it a group hug." Hal let Zippy get in between them, but looked up so he could thank Melanie when she came down.

Melanie watched them from a distance for a while, smiling. But she quickly looked away, feeling a pang of guilt and loneliness when she thought of her own family. She made herself smile again, and went back to the desk.

Hal slowly released himself from the hug, while Zippy clung to his side. He held out his hand for a handshake, in gratitude of Melanie's help. "I really appreciate you talking to Kasei-La for me. She's very important to me, and... Well, unfortunately I'm not good at expressing affection in words. But you seemed to really help, and I can't thank you enough for that."

Kasei-La smiled at Mel, before looking around the inn.

Mel hesitantly shook his hand. "Yeah. No problem."

Hal shook it for a few moments, and pulled it back. "Well, I suppose I should get used to this place..." He stretched, and stroked his chin "Well, what sort of world did you come from before you ended up here? Oh, and... should I leave my ship in the middle of the street, like that? Is it going to disappear, or suddenly change shapes, or become inhabited by strange creatures... Stuff like that?"

Kasei used the light on her head to attract a mouse from its hiding hole and tickled its nose for a few moments until it scurried back into the hole. "D'aww... He was so cute, too."

"I came from a pretty normal world. Nothing fantastic. The kind of people I meet here are the sorts of things I would see in movies or in comic books. . . but you should probably move the ship. Blocking traffic and all that."

Hal nodded, taking that in for a moment. "Well... How to explain my world... I suppose I should start at the beginning of the 20th century, since that's where the biggest changes happened. Around... 1890 or so, aliens from Mars attacked Britain in giant, three-legged robots that used heat rays. However, it turns out that they were weak to Earth germs, and were decomposing from the moment they reached the planet. When they died, we managed to produce the same space-travel, flying technology, and weaponry that they had. Not to mention advance medical sciences once we made it to Mars. The average human in the 1920s lived ten times longer than his counterpart in the 1820s." He took a breath. "Well... Britain took over the world. It had no trouble with America or Asia, but Germany was a huge problem. So much that they managed to colonise their own planets and we've never managed to reabsorb them into the Terran Empire. Around 1950 or so, we had managed to control the entire solar system and all its inhabitants, when two aliens, a robot and one that looked rather human, tried to bully us into not using our weapons. We fried the robot, and managed to reverse engineer HIS weaponry and their faster than light technology, then took over the coalition of alien races that sent him. Fast forward to my time in the year 2019, and we have over 100 planets in our control. The enemy planets that managed to hold off our take over of the Coalition seemed to have had a mass economy collapse, and are relying on raiding our own planets in revenge of what happened so many years ago. Thankfully, cheap American labour has managed to keep our weapon stocks up so they can't take us over. Still, you can't help but feel bad for the enemy, sometimes. That's why I deal with the internal threats..."

". . . Wow, that's pretty brutal." Mel commented, getting comfortable in her chair and leaning forward in interest.

"I actually come from Wisconsin... America is pretty much one big labour camp. They say there used to be a government in the District of Columbia, but there's only the Monument of Repatriation there now. As well as a grave honouring the losses of all the loyalists and Canadian soldiers that lost their lives to take it. The rest is pretty much cheap tourist stuff. Well, that's what you get for living in one of the poorest nations in the world... Ever since they joined us with Canada and Mexico, things have gone even more downhill. America could at least support itself, then, but Canada is just dead weigh, a failed state..." He looked up. "But what's America like in your world?"

"In my world, America is the most powerful country. We have the most weapons, though maybe not the best technology. We're very much in debt, but no one would be stupid enough to try to take back their money by force. Word has it that we have enough nukes to bomb the world several times over. . . "

"If I've learned anything, someone is always willing to take what they want by force. Some people really don't care if they burn, as they as their enemies do. Germany stays on the offensive because they know the Terran Empire can't use their most powerful weapons. It'd be suicide."

"Yeah. A lot of the powerful countries are at a standoff because of that in my world. Everyone's sort of on edge. . . Or were. I don't know anymore."

"Seems our world has parallels. I wonder... Maybe, the people of our worlds actually have similar types on each... Was there an inventor named Henry Ford in your world?"

"Yes, there was. Made cars."