“Sorry about the mess,” Rick meekly shrugged.
Asha only smiled back in reply though, and then she reached up and touched a glowing button on the headband she wore with the lights on it. Instantly, the antennae on the headset shot out on either side of it, and the long, spiny antennae turned around in circles and automatically adjusted themselves. The next second, Asha spoke in some alien tongue Rick didn't understand, and then she pulled her circular goggles down over her glowing eyes.
Rick then heard a different female voice suddenly respond over her headband, and he realized the headband was actually some kind of flashlight and telephone all in one. As he privately wondered what else it could do, Asha said another couple alien words in response to the voice over her headset, and then she turned and smiled up at him.
“Are you sure about this, Rick Hancock? You may never see your home again,” Asha asked him.
“Fuck it! Let it go into foreclosure! The universe awaits!” Rick happily answered with an giddy smile on his face.
“Very well,” Asha nodded, and then she spoke a few more alien words.
The next second, a bluish, oval light instantly appeared at the back-end of his walk-in closet, and the queer light looked like a stand-up oval mirror just suspended in midair. The light emanating from it barely lit up his dirty closet and no sound at all came from the queer light. For the first time, Rick felt nerves tensing up his gut, and he swallowed hard, wondering to himself if he really was ready for what he was jumping into.
“Keep your glasses on and follow me,” Asha plainly instructed.
Nodding his head, Rick then watched the saucy alien walk up to the light, and then turning and smiling at him a final time, Asha then stepped into the glowing luminescence and completely disappeared in a burst of white light, like a giant camera flash going off.
“Holy shit! This is for fucking real!” Rick breathed, nodding his head repeatedly and psyching himself up for what he was about to do.
Stepping up to the light himself, Rick could see its bluish aura bathing his body, but he couldn't feel anything coming from it and didn't hear anything at all from the other side of it.
“Who would have guessed, I had a portal to a sleigh spaceship in my fucking walk-in closet all along?” Rick mumbled to himself, just to take a bite off the growing anxiety he felt inside.
Taking a final deep breath, Rick steeled himself, held his breath, and then took a purposeful step into the light. The instant he stepped into it, there was a suddenly bright flash, and he was temporarily blinded. At that same moment as the flash enveloped him, Rick felt like he was suddenly in a falling elevator in the middle of a tempest. His ears were instantly overcome with the sound of rushing wind, and his stomach leaped out of him as he felt like he was just free-falling in open air.
Though this was all very traumatic, the whole experience actually lasted only a heartbeat, and then the next instant, he felt himself standing once again on something solid. Even though his eyes were wide open, he immediately realized that he couldn't see a thing, and he felt the muscles of his chest reflexively lock up in fear. As panic instantly seized him, Rick desperately called out.
“I... I can't see! I can't see!”
“Take it easy! You're all right! You're all right! Give it a minute! Give your eyes a minute!” he heard Asha's soothing voice, and a heartbeat later, he felt her four slender hands on him, steadying him.
As Asha continued to console him, Rick gradually quieted down, and he curiously felt like he had just stepped into a hot oven. Wherever he now was, the temperature had to be over a hundred degrees, and he could feel strong gusts of wind whipping here and there and slapping him in the face in sporadic waves. The wind was so hot, in fact, that he honestly felt like he was standing in front of a giant hairdryer blasting away on him. Nearby, he could also hear what sounded like a massive sail on a sailing ship flapping in the breeze. Within seconds, Rick could feel his body react to the pressing heat, and he could feel himself starting to sweat.
Out of nowhere then, Rick suddenly heard that other female voice nearby speaking in some alien tongue, and her tone was urgent. A moment later, Asha replied to the other woman, but Rick had no idea what the two were talking about. A heartbeat later, he heard what sounded like a giant bug-zapper going off nearby, and a few seconds after that, he then gradually began to get his sight back. Reaching up, Rick sought to take his sunglasses off, as he blinked his eyes repeatedly to stimulate his vision returning, but Asha seized his hand before he was able to do so.
“No! No. Leave your glasses on for now... until your eyes fully adjust,” Asha instructed.
“Where...? Where are we?” Rick asked, as he blinked several times.
“We are on the kull homeworld... a different plane of existence than your own,” Asha answered, still holding him in her strong arms.
“Isn't... Isn't that a wee bit dangerous?” Rick timidly began, but then his eyes suddenly came into focus. “Wow!...”
Before she was able to answer him, Rick could suddenly see again, and he gave out a breath of wonder, broke away from Asha's grasp, and spun all around in a circle, taking in all the new and amazing sights around him.
As far as he could tell, he was standing on the metal deck of what looked like a chrome futuristic sailing ship of some sorts, complete with sails and metal, cord-like rigging. The ship wasn't that big though, but all along either bow were several long, spiny-looking turrets, which he guessed must have been weapons of some sort. The ship was maybe only thirty feet long, with one mainmast in its center holding up a couple massive sails, and the shinny ship had a raised aft-deck, which had a large circular steering wheel on top of it. The aft portion of the ship also appeared to house a cabin, as there was a door attached to the front of it.
While Asha's sleigh spaceship was quite a wonder, the ship wasn't on water, but instead was on what appeared to be endless waves of red and golden sand, as far as his eye could see in all directions. Rick literally couldn't see a tree, bush, blade of grass, or any sign of life anywhere around them. In addition to that, he couldn't spot any footprint of man or civilization for as far as his eye could see. They appeared to be literally on an ocean of hundreds, maybe thousands, of rolling sand dunes stretching to every horizon.
After gawking at the dunes, Rick then saw something that didn't make any sense to his eyes, and as he raised his head and stared up into the heavens, he was shocked by what he witnessed and stared in wonder for many long minutes. The sky overhead was unlike anything he had ever seen before. Massive worlds and clusters of stars appeared just within reach, almost as if he could reach up into the sky and pull them down with his bare hand. It was as if the entire universe was magnified right above this infinite sea of sandy dunes and easily accessible by flight. Distant stars suddenly appeared very close, and planets and colorful nebulae looked just within reach. Not only that, but he saw other ships, shinny ships like the one he was on, sailing up into the sky with all their many sails full and open, as if they were traveling to these other amazing worlds. All in all, Rick was completely stupefied and overcome with amazement, and just stared up in wonder for several minutes and ignored everything else around him.
“That's worth the price of admission right there!” Rick breathed, and then he heard Asha clear her throat behind him.
Swinging around, Rick then saw another beautiful female, clearly of same race as Asha, standing right beside her. While she might have been a Ryza as well, this new female was much taller than Asha, and she was more slender around the hips, longer in the leg, and a whole lot fuller in the breast. While she was dressed in the same pearl, skintight suit, she didn't carry a sword like Asha, but instead she carried two much more formidable looking pistols in either holster on her narrow hips. Even with her goggles over her eyes, Rick could see she was scrutinizing him closely, and unfortunately, her expression did not look favorably disposed towards him.
“This place is fucking awesome!” Rick exclaimed with a childlike smile on his face, still blown away by everything he was experiencing and seeing.
“Here, put this in your ear,” Asha instructed, having reached into one of her belt pouches and produced a tiny, black gumdrop-looking instrument.
“What is this?” Rick asked, taking it in hand.
“It is what my people call a poopma...” Asha began.
“A poop-what?”
“A poopma,” Asha patiently repeated. “It will allow you to understand other languages spoken around you.”
“Oh! A universal translator-thingy. I seen the movies. I got you,” Rick told her with a confident wink and shoved the tiny gumdrop into his right ear.
“Now tell me, who is this... this man?!” the other woman demanded of Asha, putting her hands on her slender hips and giving him a disgusted snarl of an expression.
“Who is that?” Rick innocently countered right back, nodding his head towards the slightly taller female.
“My lover,” Asha simply replied to both of them, and both Rick and the other alien blurted out at the same time, “What?!”
“Rick Hancock meet Seeka, my lover. Seeka meet Rick Hancock, my lover,” Asha introduced, turning from one, to the other in turn.
“Oh...” Rick simply managed, suddenly feeling very uncomfortable.
“How can you do this to me, Asha?! How can you take on some wimpy, pink-skinned, pot-bellied alien without telling me. You are so willful, Asha, and without thought for me!” raged Seeka, genuinely upset.
“Hey! I got poop-moma in my ear, lady! I can hear everything that you're saying!” Rick accused.
“I care not!” barked Seeka, dismissively waving him off. “Does this fat alien even have a spine?!”
“Whoa! Hold on there, lady!” Rick indignantly countered, raising his hand to protest.
“Seeka, my love! Please, let me explain. Give me a minute,” Asha got between them and pleaded.
“What do you mean, hold on?!” Seeka raged, and Rick noted her full breasts jiggled delightfully in her pearl bodysuit.
“Hold on, just for a minute, Seeka! Now, I have thought of you. I have! You must trust me!” Asha insisted, stepping forward and trying to put her arms around her.
“Leave me be!” shouted Seeka angrily, pushing the smaller woman away.
“No! Seeka! Calm down! You are, as always, being overly emotional! Calm down for just one minute,” Asha begged.
“Ya, and chill out on the fat insults. I've been hitting the gym lately... Well, I have... kind of... been thinking a lot about it anyway,” Rick meekly muttered in his defense.
As Seeka just stared at him and growled like an angry dog, Asha wrapped her arms around the taller, more slender woman and tried to calm her.
“I have thought of you, Seeka. I have! Watch,” Asha insisted, then she turned to Rick and gave him some instructions he couldn't believe. “Take out your dick.”
“Pardon me!?” Rick inquired, bending his ear toward her with the poopma in it. “I don't think I heard you right.”
“Yes, you did. Take out your dick,” Asha encouraged with a repeated nod of her head.
“Wait! Look! I mean, we've just met and everything. This is definitely...
not
an Earth custom...”
“It is a custom among us Ryza when introducing a possible mate... Whip it out!” Asha interrupted.
“Show her my dick?!” Rick asked, and Asha nodded her head. “Wow! This is a first.”
“You have nothing to be ashamed of. It is a wonderful specimen of the male anatomy for any alien creature,” Asha noted.
A sudden smile then crept onto his lips, and Rick's eyebrows cavalierly bounced as he said, “I think I've just been universally complimented on my manliness... even over other alien species. Right on! Right on!”
“Yes! Yes! Show her! Show her!” Asha eagerly encouraged, bulging her eyes and nodding her head repeatedly.