milliways_bar | (no subject)

"See how...?"

His expression was wary.

But it was also curious; wondering.

Divesting himself of his solid body...well, given how he blinded several patrons when he accidentally entered Milliways in that form, it is perhaps not the best of ideas.

Instead, he cups his hand and white light seems to pool inside it, growing steadily brighter.

"Let us just say that we are not just 'this too solid flesh' as Hamlet once depressingly put it."

"No," Danny said, and he looked somewhat amused. "We aren't always all that solid, are we."

Hesitantly, he held out his own hand, cupped, and a little ember of green light flickered there and filled it, just as the white light had pooled in the man's hand.

Then he closed his hand around it and snuffed the light out, before phasing a hand right through the teapot.

The Ranger grins as he watches the boy's demonstration. There is an unlit oil lamp on their table. Suddenly, the wick bursts into flame.

"I suppose it's clear now why I mistook you for one of our children."

"It was an accident that caused it," Danny admitted. "In my parent's lab. They built a portal to view the Ghost Zone--the spirit world, and I accidentally turned it on when I went inside it, and I've been this way ever since."

So that's how it happened - a form of high-energy, spectral catalyzation? Spirits existed in the Ranger's world but...he firmly steered his mind away from that track. For the moment, how it happened was unimportant.

"Where for us, it was the long, painful pressures of the universe," he says. "And it placed you in your 'position to judge' as well, I take it."

At first glance, Danny's holding up under it well, but it makes the Ranger's heart ache. Children of any race do not need to be so burdened...but sometimes there is no choice.

"There are some nasty things in my world, and nasty things that try to break into my world and cause chaos--things that try to scare and hurt people.

Some aren't so bad, but others..."

His eyes were fixed on his cup of tea.

"Somebody needs to fight for everybody else. I may be a spazz, but anything that wants to get at Amity Park--get at my world--has to go through me first."

So there it is. The Ranger's look is compassionate, but there is something else in it as well.

Kinship.

For this boy, regardless of time and training, is Anla'shok for his world. The only one?

Valen help him, don't let him be alone in this.

He would like to touch his mind directly once again, but he cannot. Danny is not accustomed to that level of casual-intimacy. Instead, he sips his tea and says, "It seems we have more in common than I first realized."

("Dude, you can't blame yourself for this. It's not your fault." "Maybe not. But it is my responsibility.")

Danny finally sipped the tea--it was good.

"What, are you a superhero, too?"

"Perhaps not in the way you're thinking," he says. "I am Anla'shok - a Ranger. We do many things for my home, but our primary responsibility for generation upon generation has been to protect those who cannot do so themselves and to work for peace.

"And I believe I understand what you said earlier about wishing you were not in a 'position to judge'. There have been times when I've wondered if I made a terrible mistake by taking this path."

"Where were you?! You could have stopped this? Where in Shavk's name were you?!"

"Are you, like...like an alien?" Danny asked curiously, the inner Space Camp Cadet surfacing and poking up its nerdy head.

Anla'shok sounded like an alien name, after all, didn't it?

"I know some look nothing like humans, even if some look nothing like humans..."

A chuckle.

"No, still quite human. Though I admit to a great deal of space travel and not living on Earth. And I deal with those you would call aliens quite often."

Though no one's living on Earth anymore in his time, but perhaps it's not the best time to bring that up.

"Anla'shok is my title...my job. They were founded thousands of years ago by the Minbari. After a time, humans and other races were permitted to join as well."

"So...you're like space superheroes then. Instead of protecting just one city and one world, I bet you fly around in spaceship and protect a lot of worlds," he said, quickly grasping it.

Then he paused.

"What do you have to protect them from?"

"Sometimes from the fickle whims of nature - though that is more often rescue and relief. It is hard to predict such things well enough to have time to act before they hit."

He stares into his tea for a moment. "Most often from each other."

Sorrow contaminates his smile. "I'm sure you know how it is. Some group wants something the other has and doesn't want to obtain it through civilized means like trade, negotiation or perhaps wager a good game of Fireflight. Or sometimes they simply hate the other group for reasons that defy logic. When they act on this, it is our job to protect the innocents they will harm."

A sigh. "We do a great deal of negotiation and mediation...but sometimes..."

"You have to protect the human race from the human race," Danny said flatly.

"So far I've been--almost lucky, I guess that my enemies aren't quite human. It'd be harder to work out the problems people have."

"And the Narn from the Narn. And the Pakesh from the Pakesh. And just about everyone from the Zarg. Thank Valen, human hasn't fought human on a large scale in generations, but we still have our bad apples."

He looks off into the distance. "We hope we've learned enough to never do that again, but, as long as we have choice, the possibility exists."

He glances back to Danny. "And I wouldn't be so sure that it is 'lucky' to have enemies that aren't quite human, but you are right. We tend to be our own worst enemy."

"We tend to be our own worst enemy," he said.

Ha.

You have no idea.

("Nice try, Jazz. But me, my future... I'm inevitable.)

"How did people...come to have powers? Were you born that way? Is it something that might happen in my world over time?"

He ponders possible answers for a moment. He will not lie to the boy, but how much of the truth should he tell?

"For the most part, it has been the 'long painful pressures of time', as I said before. However, a very long time ago there was...interference. Another race took some humans and altered them."

He looks toward the window. Toward the destruction.

"The first certifiable telepaths were born not half a century later."

"So. The human race evolved...because we got probed by aliens."

That almost made him laugh.

It does make the Ranger laugh, or at least chuckle.

"Oh, we probably would have evolved in any case, but the interference certainly speeded things up a bit. Once an advantageous trait has been introduced, it tends to spread quickly."

Too quickly...or perhaps not quickly enough as the strife leading to the Telepath War showed. Behind his impartial mask, the Ranger begins to wonder if this boy might not be a similar catalyst for his world.

And what kind of change might he bring?

Peace? Protection?

...Or widescale mass destruction?

Danny would've had a few things to say about it if it'd been said out loud, but as it hadn't been, his gaze was occupied by the door.

"I really don't want to, but I probably should go," he said ruefully, and then he shot the man a grin. "It was...interesting meeting you."

"Are you around here a lot, because I totally have more questions and it's not every day you meet a super-evolved human space ranger."

"Ahhh, duty calls, I take it," he says. "I know the feeling well."

He smiles at Danny and nods his head. "I'm here when I can be, but I think we'll see each other again quite soon, Danny.

Who is Bearach to my eyes, he adds silently. "Valen watch over you."

His report to Entil'Zha about this most recent stay in Milliways should be...interesting.

"Um...whoever that is watch over you too, I guess," Danny said, and he made his way to the door, took a deep breath...and made the jump back to reality.

Hooray reality.