AN: As I have this chapter written already I'm gonna give it to you. I'll probably have the next chapter up next week if my muses don't abandon me. any way R&R dozo and arigato.

Two and a half months later

Tsuchi sighed as he walked across campus to his next class. He and the rest of the Ryana observation crew had survived the crash. The ship hadn’t faired too well though. On top of the damage from the missile, the ship also sustained damage from the crash. Most of the crash damage was superficial and easily repaired, and they had done so within the first month. The communication array was a bit more difficult as it had completely broken off as they entered the atmosphere. Shiro had been working almost non-stop to fix it.

Since they were stuck on the planet, the crew had decided to get hands on observation. Everyone except for Shiro had been given Earth identities and been enrolled in various schools in the area where they’d landed. Zoc had gotten everything set up for them, from official housing to money. It had been surprisingly easy to get the human records to show they had everything they needed.

When Zoc had given them what he assured was an astronomical amount of money, the entire crew had been baffled. Back home they’d traded for what they needed, but it was very rare for anyone to give metal or paper as trade currency. The other baffling thing about this species was that the way they traded was unequal, in their estimation.

Tsuchi walked into the classroom where his next class was held about ten minutes before it was supposed to begin and took his usual seat at the back of the room.

“Did you do the homework for today?” a female voice from his left asked, breaking him from his thoughts of home.

“Uh, yeah. I did”, he responded as he pulled his Japanese workbook from his backpack. “It was really easy.”

The girl snorted in disagreement. “How can you find this all so easy? This chapter has the most confusing grammar yet.”

Tsuchi bit back a laugh, figuring it would probably make her angry with him. He couldn’t help the fact that the Japanese language was so similar to his own that they could almost be the same language.

“If you find Japanese to be so difficult, why did you continue taking the class, Alex-san?”

“Because I can use it later in life and it’s the only language that really drew my interest”, she said with a sigh. “I get the grammar, I just have issues remembering al the vocab.”

Before he could respond, the professor walked in and started class. Everyone was busy taking notes and doing textbook exercises to talk about anything not pertaining to the class. At the end of the hour, the professor gave the homework assignment and dismissed the class.

“Hey, Chi-san”, Alex said gaining his attention. “Do you think you could help me with memorizing the vocab. Emoto-sensei says I really need to bring my quiz average up if I want to pass this semester.”

Tsuchi’s mind blanked for a moment as it tried to process that someone outside the Ryana crew had used his nickname. “Uh, yeah”, he said slowly. “Would tomorrow work for you? I have to let my crew know I’m gonna have company over.”

“Yeah, that’ll be just fine. I have to work today anyway.” She slung her bag over her shoulder, not giving a clue that his wording sounded odd to her.

They walked to the door together. When they reached it, he allowed her to exit first. She did so with a bow.

“So does your ‘crew’ have some weird habits that they’re gonna need to curb while I’m around? Is that why they need to know you’re having company over?” She asked with a grin, as they exited the building and walked towards the Commons building.

“Something like that.” He said with a laugh. “Nothing for you to worry about.”

“Ok, well this is where I jump off, I gotta get to work.” Alex said gesturing to the building.

“Where do you work at?” he asked following her inside. “I don’t think I’ve seen you working around here before.”

“I work upstairs at Fresh,” she said pointing to the ceiling.

“Ah”, he said looking up. “Well, I’ll have to stop up there sometime. What time do you get done working?”

“Three.”

“Hmm. Well, you should get going, before you’re late.” He said. “Ashita ja.”

“Hai, ashita da.” She waved as they went their separate ways.

Tsuchi made his way over to the bus and make his way home. He caught the off campus bus and rode it to the first stop it made. From there he walked the short distance to the house he shared with the rest of the Ryana crew.

“Hey, I’m home”, he shouted as he walked through the front door and set his backpack down.

“Where dies the wise Ryana hide?” he called as he walked farther into the house.

“The wise Ryana does not hide, for then he knows not where the enemy lurks”, Shiro responded from the rear of the house.

Shiro had been working nonstop on repairing the ship, but it was slow going. Shiro had to improvise some of the parts from materials they had on board and the less than adequate human materials. It probably would’ve been easier to get the parts they needed if the ship’s communications array hadn’t been damaged in the crash.

“Hey, old-timer”, Tsuchi said as he walked out into the garage, which Shiro had appropriated as his workshop. “How go the repairs?”

“Well, I think that I may be able to have communications up and running in the next couple of days, cub”, Shiro said, not looking up from his work.

“Cool, then we can call home and get off this barbarian infested rock”, Tsuchi smiled with relief.

“Yes, but it’ll probably be a while before the fleet can get help to us”, Shiro glanced up at Tsuchi. “So what brings you home this early? I thought you usually stayed on campus to do your homework.”

“I usually do, but I wanted to ask if it would be cool for me to have someone over to study.”

I have no problem with it. You just need to let the others know, so that they'll keep their halo bands on when they come in.” A smile crossed his face. “We really don’t want to be frightening the natives.”

“Yeah, that might make our stay a little less enjoyable.” Tsuchi said with a smile. “Well, I’ll see you at dinner.”

“Will your friend be staying for dinner tomorrow?” Shiro asked.

“Possibly, I can ask Tei to prepare extra in case she does.”

“Ok, I’ll see you at dinner.”

Tsuchi retraced his path through the house and grabbed his bag from the entryway. He went up to his room to work on a couple of papers before dinner.

Alex went through her work shift in her usual fashion. She showed up got something to drink and spent most of her time alternating between talking with her coworkers and trying to keep up with the dishes coming through the dish room with the varying size of the crew. Over all it wasn’t a bad job, still she wouldn’t choose to work here, if she had enough money to survive on her own. Thankfully her shift passed rather quickly that day. So before she knew it, it was time to go home and wade through her homework for the next day.

After she got done with work, it was a short fifteen-minute ride off campus and another twenty minutes to walk to her apartment. She shared the apartment with a friend she’d made in high school, but like her job it was an arrangement of convenience.

With a weary sigh, Alex entered her building and trudged up to the second floor where her apartment was located. She unlocked her door and pushed her way into the living room. The first thing she saw was that her roommate was in his typical location on the couch watching a movie.

“Hey Alex.” Ben said cheerily giving her a quick glance.

“Ugh.” She groaned, sliding her backpack down her arms to land on the floor behind her.

“How was your day?”

“School, work, homework.” She replied pulling her coat off and throwing it over the back of the chair by the door. “I so wish that college professors wouldn’t all assign a shit load of homework at the same time.”

“They really don’t have a choice.”

“Yeah, they do.” she kicked her shoes off and picked her bag up. “I’ll be in my room wading through homework.”

“K, have fun.”

Alex walked across the apartment to her room and closed her door. She set her bag down and flopped down on her futon. She lay there for a few minutes feeling her muscles complain about the last few hours of activity that she’d put them through. Finally, she sat up and began to pull her laptop out of her bag and plugged it in before turning it on.

She set the computer on her bedside table while she waited for it to boot up. With a sigh, she pulled her t-shirt off, threw it into her clothesbasket and flopped back on her bed.

Once her computer finished booting up, Alex checked to see who was online. All of the people that were online, she didn’t talk to very often so she closed her messenger windows and opened an Internet window. It took her about half an hour to check through her e-mail and the half a dozen other sites she frequented. After she finished with that she went to a fan-fiction site that had become something of a guilty pleasure of hers.

She did a quick jump around to find the last story she’d been reading and looked through the chapter list to find where she’d left off reading at. She’d just gotten comfortable and started reading the story when a conversation window popped up on the screen.

“Hey, sexy”, it said.

Alex frowned and leaned forward to type a response. “Can I help you?” she responded. “You seem to be just a bit lost.”

“Yeah, you can help me, but I’m most definitely not lost. I’m right where I want to be.”

“Who are you and do I know you?” she continued to frown at the screen, as if she could convey her annoyance to the other person through it.

“Yes, you do know who I am, but not as well as I wish you did.”

Alex’s frown deepened, if that was even possible. “Who are you?”

“You know who I am. If you’d like to clarify your understanding, you can come over to my house tomorrow.”

“Chi-san?”

Dragonman 13 has gone offline.

Alex growled at her computer as if the machine was the source of her frustration. Before she gave into the urge to break the machine, Alex decided that getting away from said computer would be a good idea.

She stood up and went out to the kitchen, hoping that some food would help her out. She looked through the fridge and found a Styrofoam box from Applebee’s that she’d brought home the night before. She grabbed the box and walked over to the living room to eat and finish watching the movie Ben had in.

“Scoot over.” She said, standing at the end of the couch.

Ben scooted over giving her some space to sit down and she did so. She brought her feet up on the couch so she was half sitting on them and opened her box.

“Oo, food.” Ben perked up and looked into the box.

“It’s chicken.” She responded curling her arm around the box.

“Oh.” Ben deflated a little.

She knew that her friend’s disappointment wasn’t from her lack of sharing but because he was vegan. Therefore, she didn’t feel guilty about making him sad.

“So I’m going over to a friend’s house tomorrow to do some studying. I’m not sure when I’ll get home.”

“That’s fine. I’ve gotta work tomorrow.”

“Cool.”

After the movie ended and she’d finished eating her chicken, Alex returned to her room to finally start on her homework. She turned on some music and zoned her way through her work. Around midnight, she finally called it a night and went to bed.

Tsuchi worked on homework for a couple hours, until he started to feel a bit burned out on it. He turned to his computer and pulled it out of sleep mode. He checked his messenger windows and saw that Alex was online. He knew that she didn’t know what his screen name was so he thought he’d test the waters see how she’d respond to him. He found that she was wary from the start, probably because she didn’t know who he was.

He had found that humans tended to be very distrustful of those they considered to be strangers. The Ryana knew no strangers. They viewed all as friends and only those that had broken their trust to be anything close to enemies. As she began to guess who he was, Yoru called everyone down to dinner so he quickly logged off and headed downstairs. He knew this wouldn’t go over well with Alex, but he was starving.

Yoru had been the mess expert on the ship and that hadn’t changed after the crash. Yoru had embraced the variety of food that they’d found and had set about systematically experimenting with everything. Tsuchi was glad to see that she’d fallen back on one of the crew’s known favorites, a dish called gumbo.

Tsuchi arrived at the table to find everyone already there and tucking into the meal. He grabbed a bowl and served himself before taking a seat. He ate a few bites before he turned to Yoru.

“Hey Yoru, what’re fixing for dinner tomorrow?” He asked around a mouthful of gumbo.

“I was thinking of trying something new”, she responded. “I found some new stuff at the store that looked like it’d be good.”

Tsuchi looked at her nervously. “Uh, could we stick to something relatively normal? I have a friend coming over tomorrow and she might stay for dinner.”

Everyone, but Shiro, turned to look at Tsuchi in shock.

“She?” his sister looked dumbfounded.

“Has the cub finally grew up enough to catch the attention of a female?” Tei asked with a grin on his face.

“I don’t think we need a human to cubsit”, Yoru