rattlerofthestars:

“Hua…Ping? I think I’ll just stick with Ping. Easy to remember.” He tapped the side of his head as he glanced back at the soldier. It was then that he noticed the boy holding a part of his board. In fact, it was a rather large piece. He walked over quickly and snatched it from his arms, almost in a possessive way. He gave Ping a confused and then insulted expression.

“Wings? As if.” He brushed a fine layer of dirt off the metal as he spoke matter-of-factly. “It’s a board and it runs on solar power. Battery power too, if I need to use it at night. Er-…” He stared down at the ground. Was he saying too much? He had no idea how this guy would react to that sort of knowledge. “Uhm, it’s like…a machine that can fly. I stand on it and use this wing to navigate easier.” He pointed towards a torn up piece of fabric that hung off the board in shreds. “It’s kinda…broken. I fell because I flew into the mountain by accident. Eh, don’t ask how I did it. It was dumb, I know." 

As soon as he finished speaking, a blobby creature came flying out from his jacket and morphed into an image of Jim. “Dumb, dumb, dumb!” It chanted while dancing around. Apparently hiding beneath Jim’s thick jacket was becoming too boring for the alien and he had to stretch his…limbs? Quickly, Jim tried to grab hold of the pink glob. 

"Morph!” He yelled. It giggled and flew around Ping before settling next to Jim’s shoulder. With a sigh, Jim pressed a hand against Morph’s head to calm him down. There went being secretive and mysterious. “Uh, this is Morph.”

Ping stared, arms still raised in front of him as the piece of metal was yanked rudely out of his hands.  Maybe he should have trudged over to Jim with the piece in the first place - instead of staring at it like the sheltered farm boy that he more or less actually was - but he couldn’t understand why the stranger was so surly about it when Ping was only trying to help.  He put his fists on his hips, watching Jim.  After all, who’d run to Jim’s side in concern when Jim crashed his…whatever-it-was?

It reminded Ping of Yao, the soldier who was so suspicious that he took any kind deed as a reason to pick a fight.  Considering that Yao still had it out for Ping, this did not make the recruit feel better.  Frowning, he opened his mouth to retort: something about people who made fun of you for not knowing any better when they’d just crashed their own invention.  But Ping was prematurely silenced by the fact that he didn’t really know enough about what Jim was talking about, to say anything clever.  Jim thought he was dumb to crash?  Ping agreed.

Suddenly, though, the young recruit was distracted by a miniscule version of Jim that soon resolved itself into a jabbering pink blob.  Though at first Ping had jumped one or two light steps back in alarm, he twisted one way and the other as the blob flew around him, only to step forward tentatively again with his eyebrows pitched in curiosity.  For now, Ping would let Jim’s rudeness go.  "What - what is he?“ ventured the recruit, extending a timid finger towards Morph.