The Adventures of Treble Cleff and Sugar Bullet

Part 5 - Crash Landing

Rosanna stumbled out of her escape pod - the tiny blue sphere, having to squeeze out. It was made for a 19-year-old girl, not a... she did the math in her head. 29-year-old woman. She looked off into the distance, where she could see a city skyline. It wasn't anything like back on her planet, but still fairly advanced. 

She didn't exactly understand what was happening when her ship, adrift in space, had started to pull down to the planet, but she didn't like it at all. When she saw what she assumed to be press, and men and women in white coats, she remembered all the stories told on her planet as a child; "on other planets, they disect us, treat us like lab hamsters." Ro waited until she was inside the atmosphere and climbed into the escape pod.

But she had managed to grab one thing before she escaped. She reached into the pod and pulled out a metal box. Just before exiting, she managed to chip off most, but not all, of the crystal powering her ship.

She had managed to pull it off, but it wasn't an easy task. For one, she didn't have her work gloves on, so the crystal physically weakened her when she touched it. But she couldn't let these people have it. She grabbed the crystal with her bare hands and shoved it into a containment unit. This one crystal had all the energy from her ship, since the crash in the asteroid field had caused it lock up all it's energy.

But something worried her. One shard of the crystal had been stuck in the energy unit. They could have gotten that when the ship crashed. She had to find where that crystal was, and get back to her own planet, before these people figured out that she wasn't like them. But then again, proper procedure when a pilot went missing, escpecially one that also happened to be the Princess, was to send someone out to find them.

If she had gone missing 10 years ago, someone should have been sent after her. Perhaps they had actually managed to land on the planet, rather than drifting around it, like Ro had. Ro decided that had to be the case. Which meant...

There was another Kesian on this planet.

"Whoa, you alright there?"

Ro whipped around. Behind her was a young man, with dark skin and an unshaven face. "You seem hurt. And what's with the costume? You know it's like, 4 sizes too small, right?"

Ro looked down at her pilot uniform, then back at the man. He was clearly from this planet, a farmer of sorts, but Ro was relived to realize that the inhabitants of this planet looked very much like her, almost identical. 

Looking around, Ro finally took notice of where she landed. Right beside an apple orchard. Her heart went aflutter - she loved baking.

"I'm okay," she said. "I was um..."

"You don't need an excuse."

"Wait, what?"

The man shrugged. "You're one of those Kesian-people, right?"

Ro was taken aback. "You know about us?"

"Course I do. Another one of you landed here 10 years ago. He was looking for his princess. I'm going to assume that's you?"

Ro sighed in relief. "Yes," she nodded calmly, "that's me. Princess Rosanna of Kesi. I was adrift in space for 10 years. That's why my clothes are too small, they were made for a 19 year old."

The man smiled and gave a bow. "Well, your highness, We'd be happy to have you here until we can track down the guy looking for you. I'm living here with my stepbrother, James, but he knows about this whole mess, too."

"Thank you, Mr..."

The man rubbed his neck. "No, please don't call me by my last name. It's Adam. Adam Ortiz."