One moment she had been about to bring justice to someone who oh so richly deserved it, the next she was lying on the ground, covered in sweat and feeling generally awful.

She had left that strange fancy wooden room. (Why was it even there, anyway? It didn’t make any sense!) The area beyond the doorway had smelled of drab gray metal just like everywhere else on the meteor, and a tap with her cane had revealed a hard surface, but when she stepped through, her acid producing organ used in the digestion of food performed a series of death defying acrobatics and her feet briefly touched something oddly crumbly before everything went black.

She didn’t know how long she’d out, but the smells that greeted her when she woke up were unfamiliar. This wasn’t the pleasantly dark, cold lab she had been stuck in for so long. It was all… scorching heat and dirty brown. Her face itched terribly, probably a really bad sunburn, considering she could smell the brightness of it in the sky above her. Ugh.

Shakily, she got to her feet. A few more whiffs of air revealed some sort of structure nearby, and she managed to stumble the few feet to the edge before another wave of nausea overcame her and she vomited into the fountain.

Orion wasn't quite sure where he was, really. Not that that was all that unusual, for him, but he was even more lost than usual, in that he had no idea even how he had gotten here. Or where here was. He had already figured out quickly enough that it was very hot (obviously) and very deserted (apparently). Though he usually preferred to wander in his cat form, running about in this heat in a black fur coat wasn't really a great idea. Though, the downside was that he was probably going to manage to get a wonderful sunburn. He could have one of the queens fix it later though, he supposed.

And where were they? This wasn't the type of place they would generally choose to visit. Rina liked sun and sand, yes, but she preferred a nice beach, and Taryn liked dark places. And Khat was most at home in cool forested areas. He... Well, he was generally comfortable anywhere.

Well, almost anywhere, he reflected, frowning up at the sky and swiping the sweat from his brow again. This heat was a pain, even in his current outfit, jeans sliced up into shorts and a simple blue t-shirt, a snarling white tiger's head decorating the front. A strip of the former jeans had been used to tie his long copper hair up into a high ponytail. He suppose he could have removed the shirt, but it was his favourite. And his only, until he found the queens. And going nude was out of the question. While it didn't bother him at all, the natives tended to have issues. And he really didn't want to get that area sunburned, either.

He moved around the corner of a building and stopped as he came into an open area, apparently a gathering place of some sort. It too was empty, it seemed. No, wait. There, on the other side of the fountain. Not one of his queens, obviously, but a molly, just the same. A young one, it seemed.

"You alright, Kitten?" he asked, moving to help the strange grey-skinned girl up. His voice wasn't very deep, but it was obviously male, and the accent seemed to waver between Australian and Scottish, as if it wasn't quite sure which it wanted to be.

Everything tasted like smelly barf, and it was several minutes after she emptied herself of everything she had eaten before she finally managed to stop retching. Shaking, she collapsed against the edge of the fountain. If her eyes still worked, she’d probably be seeing double. Bluuuuh, stupid sun, making everything all hot and bright and awful.

There was someone there. She couldn’t smell them very well over the stench of sweat and nasty vomit, but she could hear them. They said something about kittens as they helped her up, but she had trouble focusing on their voice as she stood there, shaking and swaying.

“What?” she looked and sounded very confused.

Of course, even without her actually answering his question, it was obvious on close inspection that Terezi wasn’t doing well at all. Bright teal burns covered her face; the only reason the rest of her skin wasn’t in the same condition was because it was covered by her Redglare costume, which was soaked with sweat. Although she didn’t fall over, it was obvious she was having trouble standing. It might have been a bit easier for her if she had her cane (even if it was more for helping her navigate than for walking), but she hadn’t bothered to grab it when she woke up earlier, and even though she could still smell (now that her face wasn't next to a pile of puke), she was having trouble forming the different scents into a picture of her surroundings.

"You really don't look good..." Orion commented, mostly talking to himself, since it would obviously be clear to her that she wasn't at full health. He had never seen someone with her particular attributes, but that didn't really mean much. It wasn't like they had been everywhere in the universe. Strange, though. He had thought they were going back to Earth. Well, it didn't matter at the moment.

"Let's get you out of the sun, first." He said, guiding her to where a few of the buildings were casting their shadow out on the square. Really, she needed water, but even had she not fouled the fountain, he wasn't sure he would have trusted it. For all he knew, it could have been the reason why there was a whole settlement here and no one but a sick molly left alive in it. Really, it was a little surprising that there would be a fountain in a place like this anyway. Wouldn't the former occupants have wanted to conserve water as much as possible? Unless there was a plentiful source nearby, he supposed, maybe a lake.

But maybe there would be something inside one of the empty houses, he thought, moving to open one of the doors. It was as hot and dry inside as it was out, but on a shelf in the room he found what he had been hopping for, containers of what looked, and smelled, like water. Just to be sure, he took a taste, deciding it was safe finally and taking one of the bottles out to his unexpected patient.

"Here, Kitten. Careful now, not too much." Drinking too fast would only upset her stomach again, and they didn't need to waste what little they had.

He sounded like a guy, she decided as he continued to talk. Or at least, she thought he did. All the words sort of smudged together, and the volume faded in and out, so it was hard to understand his voice at all.

He was grabbing her again, trying to lead her somewhere. Normally, she might have protested against this, but she really didn’t feel up to it. She was actually sort of grateful for the help. Not only was she barely able to stand, but without her smellovision or her her cane, she was blind. Well, she was already blind, but now she couldn’t sense her surroundings very well at all. Disoriented and helpless, she tripped over every rough spot in the bricks that paved the ground, barely managing to stumble into the shade even with his assistance.

The moment he let her go, she collapsed, panting. It was still hot, even here, but the sun wasn’t burning her anymore. She sighed in relief, though it promptly turned into a groan as a sharp wave of pain went through her already aching head. Uuuuugh. She hated this place, wherever it was.

The guy was back again. She hadn’t really noticed that he’d left. He was holding something in front of her; several sniffs and curious touches eventually revealed it to be a container of water. She hadn’t realized how thirsty she was. Her mouth felt like it was made of sheets of bleached tree flesh. She grabbed the bottle with a shaking hand and took a sip. It was hot and it tasted gross, but drinking it felt incredibly good. She drank some more.

“Thanks.” Even with water and shade, she still didn’t sound all that good. Trolls weren’t meant to be out during the day, and they definitely weren’t meant to be out during the day in the desert.

"No problem." Orion answered, flopping down beside her and draining a bottle himself not, even flinching at the warmth. Water was water, after all, and he had tasted worse.

He glanced at her again, wondering what else he could do to help. Though it was more shaded inside, it was actually hotter, when one considered the absence of any breezes in the building. He had never really had any medical experience, had never even had to deal with cuts or bruises, since one of the queens generally ended up healing them for him. One of them would really be useful now. Even Rina, as annoying as she could be at times. He hoped they weren't in any danger.

Sighing, the redhead stood again, going back into the building to fetch another bottle of water. He noticed a bottle of green gunk that he had missed before and picked it up, reading the label.

"Aloe vera gel?" he read, mispronouncing aloe as a-lo-ee and putting a hard 'g' on the 'gel' as. Reading had never been his best skill, and he figured he did well enough, for a cat. Most cats couldn't even have been able to read their own names, after all.

But what was this stuff for? Some sort of food? He opened the bottle, and sniffed at it. It smelled kind of interesting, but then, he was a cat, so what smelled interesting to him might not to a human. He got lengthy lectures on that frequently, as well as warnings about things like anti-freeze.

Well, he could ask the kitten, he supposed. She might know what it was. She'd at least probably have a better idea of what it was then he did.

"Hey, Do you know what... aloe vera gel," mispronounced again, "is for?"

On Alternia, the sun hadn’t been all that hot (not in her forest, at least), but it had still burned; bright enough to blind her instantly, it also scorched the entire surface of both her eyes and covered her carapace in horrible, itchy sunburns. It had taken more than a week for said sunburns to stop aching and peeling, and her eyes still hurt even now. On Prospit, it had been similarly light, but the glittering honey planet and its moon were almost welcoming in their brightness, radiating a gentle warmth that didn’t hurt at all. This was probably a game mechanic in place to keep the Prospit dreamers from roasting to death and being unable to reach the god tier or use their dreamselves as extra lives. Here, however, it was not temperate forest, and there were no ridiculous invisible means by which the sun was rendered harmless. Even in the shade, Terezi felt as though she were being baked in an oven.

She was able to think slightly better now that she was resting and out of the sun, though it was hard to hold onto any train of thought for very long. Images and ideas would form, but then they’d just break into tiny pieces that scattered across her thinkpan as another wave of pain and dizziness hit. Blar. Her mouth still felt really dry, and she was all gross and sweaty like Equius. She should probably change out of her costume. She was fairly sure that a skintight suit wasn’t a good thing to wear in weather like this, and that it was preventing her from cooling off.

Thankfully, her only other outfit was a very conspicuous black licorice, so even with her headache making it hard to concentrate on things, she didn’t have much trouble finding it in her sylladex. Her strange and mysterious savior had left again, but if he had been there, he would have seen her pull out a coin and use it to scratch and sniff at what seemed to be thin air. Hmmm... the fruity scent was her chalk, or possibly the pile of scalemates she’d found, and she wasn’t really sure what that was but it definitely wasn’t licorice… oh, there it was! With a few hand motions and the briefest of gray blurs, the vivid costume of teal and candyapple red vanished, a considerably plainer outfit consisting of a black shirt and jeans covering her in its place. There. That felt so much better.

And he was back again. She still couldn’t concentrate on the smells well enough to pinpoint exactly where he was, but his footsteps were pretty loud, and when she turned her gaze to him, she was only slightly off to the left. He started to speak again, and this time, thankfully, she didn’t have trouble understanding what he was saying. She still didn’t have a clue what he was talking about, though.

“Alloeee vera gel?” her expression was a rather amusing mixture of confusion and concentration. She couldn’t remember anything called that, it was such a weird name to call something. Perhaps if Orion had said something like ‘gelatinous plant substance used for the soothing of damaged carapace’ she might have known what it was, but she had never heard of Aloe Vera gel.

“I have no idea.” she took the container from his hands and opened it, sniffing at its contents. Smelled clear and possibly sort of planty, though she couldn't tell much else. A series of pokes revealed it to be soft and gooey. What was this mysterious gunk of unknown origin? Carefully, she scooped up a tiny bit with a clawed fingertip and popped it into her mouth…

“BLUH!”

Orion didn't even blink at the quite obvious change in outfit. Random and instantaneous changes were something his Queens did on a regular basis, so it was no surprise that someone else might be able to do it as well. Though, he didn't think black was really a good idea in this heat. Then again, they were out of the sunlight. As for the name he had given the gel, he wouldn't even have understood the first word. As with his reading, Orion only had a general grasp of human languages, though it was certainly better than his grasp of a number of other languages.

He watched curiously as she opened the jar and sniffed at it. So she didn't know what it was either. Pity. Though it didn't seem to be something that tasted good, by her response to it. Still, what didn't taste good to a human might to a cat, so he took a bit of his own and lapped at it, tilting his head consideringly.

"Hmm, tastes kinda like a plant I ate once, at this Earth-molly's house." He rambled on, quite happy to tell what would have seemed to most to be a rather odd story. "I got yelled at for it, but then it was okay, cause the molly said it was safe to eat. But she said it was supposed to go on burns and stuff to help them..." He blinked, thinking that last sentence through again.

"Y'know, maybe that's what you're supposed to do with this stuff. Like a... smeary on your fur stuff. Uh, skin, I mean." Most people would have said cream, or lotion, or something similar, but again, the redhead's lack of knowledge was showing through.

Black may not have been the greatest choice, but loose clothing was probably better than a skintight costume, and she had no other outfits. Of course, there was always the option of NO clothes, which was sometimes done in cases of people getting sick from the heat, but she was six sweeps old and this was a public area. Probably not a good idea!

Her headache felt even worse now, thanks to her outburst, and she set aside the container and lay down again even though the dirt and sand kept sticking to her sweaty skin. It itched horribly, but sitting up and moving hurt even if she didn’t do anything to show it other than moving slowly and not grinning like a maniac with six million teeth. The latter alone would be a sufficient indicator to any of her friends, and had this guy been someone so familiar with her, she would likely have attempted to fake such a terrifying expression.

But she had never met this guy before in her life. She was pretty sure she’d remember if she had, with his bizarre mannerisms and the weird smells that weren’t Troll but were still somehow familiar, though she wasn’t entirely sure as to why. This problem with her nose was getting really frustrating and if it didn’t clear up soon she was gonna give him a lick and taste what made him so unusual!

Did he just say fur? Yes he did! Now that she thought about it, he had called her a kitten earlier. Nepeta liked to use feline related terminology in her speech too, though it was always cat puns with her.

Nepeta…

Things she was not dwelling on right now: good friends getting brutally murdered! She sat up and reached for the jar of goop perhaps a little faster than she should have, pausing and clutching at her head as pain levels soared yet again. Ow. Thankfully, the feeling of holes being drilled into her cranial nook was short lived, but she was having a bit of trouble figuring out exactly where she had set the Aloe Vera and so her hand went from clutching at her head to fumbling awkwardly in the general area around the jar like a blind person. Which she was, of course.

It should probably be noted by now that she hadn’t even noticed that he’d mentioned Earth in his weird story about eating plants.

(Sorry about being so slow)

Orion had continued blabbering on after his suggestion about the gel, telling her about another story, this one on a different planet, where he had swallowed something a little less harmful. He did pause, and blink curiously, when he noticed her reaching blindly for the container again. After a second's thought, he nudged it into the path of her hand, then reached one of his own up to wave it in front of her face slowly.

"Hey..." He drawled thoughtfully. "You can't see. Is that normal, or just because you're sick?" He had met people who were blind before, of course, but only a few times, and it generally surprised him each time. In nature, a blind animal wouldn't generally have survived to become an adult, after all. Prey animals were usually picked off and killed long before then, and predators would never be able to manage to feed themselves without that important sense. Though, he supposed something like a bat might be able to manage all right.

He wouldn't really have been upset if she had licked him. A little surprised perhaps, but more because they didn't know each other than because of the action. Cats, after all, often bathed each other if they were close. And speaking of knowing each other...

"I'm called Orion, by the way. Well, at the moment, I am. Sometimes I'm a cat, and then I'm called Heru, and other times I'm the Firelord, but that's just a real nuisance all the way around." One would have easily been forgiven had they decided the redhead was insane, with his tendency to ramble on and odd stories. Orion probably wouldn't have bothered to correct the error, either. It had happened plenty of times before.

(Pretty sure I’m the only one who should be apologizing.)

Playing Sgrub had been a convoluted clusterfuck of ridiculous bullshit time and space shenanigans that piled on top of each other until eventually they culminated in the creation of a new universe, the inhabitants of which then created a demon who escaped from said universe into the Troll’s game session, prevented them from entering the universe they had created, and ruined their lives forever. With such catastrophic strangeness already in her life, Terezi really wasn’t all that impressed by Orion’s stories. Whether she was even paying attention still was anyone’s guess, she was pretty unresponsive after she flopped back down on her stomach, though she did shift around a little in a sort of lazy, futile effort to find the Aloe Vera. It was pretty stupid of her to just set it down and lose it like that. Her glasses were skewed-a result of shifting so much-but she didn’t seem to notice. This was unfortunate, as the surface of both her eyes was a mass of searing red scar tissue.

“Human Earth?” Yeah, that was pretty much the only part of his stories she actually got, but considering her current condition it was probably pretty miraculous that she even picked up on that. Earth had been destroyed by meteors, hadn’t it? Unless he went there before it got turned into an apocalyptic wasteland, but according to Dave the Earth had remained blissfully unconquered by aliens (visiting a planet with intentions other than conquering it was silly and absurd) throughout the entire pathetically short existence of human civilization. Also, Earth was in a completely different universe. Ugh, now her head hurt even worse and she was just going to stop thinking about this stuff until she could actually think again.

Which was perfect, because he’d just oh so considerately provided a distraction for her! The jar scraped roughly against the ground as he nudged it pretty much directly into her left grasping appendage. Her other hand swatted idly at him when he waved in her face, missing entirely. She rolled over and pulled the jar closer to herself. She didn’t bother with sitting up; instead scooping out a gob of goo with her claws and dumping it unceremoniously onto her burning face. It was… really weird, all cool and… tickly.

“Hehehehe-ow.” Wiggling and giggling probably wasn’t the best idea.

“I’m not sick.” Actually, she was pretty fucked up, but she wasn’t going to admit it, no matter how obvious. Nor was she particularly inclined to explain her blindness, though his mentioning it did help her finally notice that her glasses were messed up. She reached up and adjusted them with a clawed hand, sparing Orion from having to look at her creepy blind eyes through use of a pair of shades that looked exactly like them.

“You’re a cat?” That she should probably give him her own name, and possibly her species, in return, didn’t occur to her in light of this revelation. Instead she just sort of… sat there. And blinked. She was sure he was telling the truth; she had absolute faith in her ability to smell lies even though any information she got through her nose right now was dubious at best. No lie could slip past Terezi Pyrope! She would sniff out all of the lies. “That’s really weird.” How could someone be a cat only sometimes? And what the fuck was a Firelord? Maybe she was in an alien session, and it was his game title (Lord of Fire?). Though she didn’t know how someone could be only that sometimes either. Blar.

“Hey, is there any more water?” Ugh. Asking left a bad taste on her tongue, like spoiled grubsauce and failure. True, she’d already accepted quite a bit of assistance from this guy, but she hadn’t actually asked for it. He’d just given it to her like some weird nice guy chump. But she really didn’t want to continue feeling like she’d accidentally consumed sopor slime, and she also didn’t want to try getting up and finding the water herself just yet, so she guessed she’d just have to deal.

Human Earth?

"Well, There's humans living there, so I guess it's a human Earth. Is there another Earth somewhere?" He hadn't been to it, himself, but that wasn't too surprising, considering the size of the universe. For all he knew, there could be a dozen of them.

Heru tilted his head and watched the creature curiously. She certainly was very odd, wasn't she? And who was she to be calling him weird.

"What's weird about being a cat? There are tons of them on Earth. Of course, most of them haven't been rescued by Goddesses, I suppose." He frowned, considering. "So a lot of them can't do some of the things I can, but there's nothing weird about that. I'm just special." And here was where Taryn would have jumped in to state that yes, special was one word for it. Of course, she wouldn't have meant it in a complimentary way, she seldom did. And Rina would have giggled and completely missed the insult in there and gotten him a bowl of milk or a nice fish, or... He really needed to find them...

"Water?" The redhead blinked, broken out of his thoughts by the question. "Sure, if you think your stomach can handle more." And he got up quickly, darting back into the building to return with a few more bottles. That was the last of it in there, but animal logic insisted that the other buildings must hold similar items.