An hour into boarding the ship and the sorcerer was about to get his first taste of space travel. Anri first went through a curious process that cleaned him up of gore. He was then given a jumpsuit to wear. It was the only thing on the ship whose size would fit his teenage body.
Anri didn't trust the other humans yet but they hadn't done anything to make him feel threatened so far. Perhaps it was the sheer bizarreness of the place he found himself in that had him feeling completely out of sorts which in turn had him letting his guard down. If the man in the armour wanted him dead, he had no hope of resisting without mostly killing himself in the process. This thought had him calmly accepting whatever was to come as long as it wasn't torture.
"Gina," the pretty lady pointed to herself and smiled. Her eyes were the bright green of a spring leaf. Anri guessed her age to be in the mid-twenties.
"Gina," the young sorcerer repeated. It was obvious that was her name or title.
Gina's lips curved and she nodded. Pointing at herself, she again said her name and pointed back to the young boy while raising her brows.
"Anri," the young man told her without matching her warmth. He'd had a rather tiring day and wished to be left alone so he could understand how deep of a hole he had dug for himself when he'd decided to open a portal without specifying an exact destination.
"Anri," Gina said his name and wrote something down on a thin slab of metal she was holding. Putting it aside after a few seconds, she clipped a device around his wrist and then began to methodically check the exposed parts of his skin for what he presumed was injury.
Having guessed that she was a healer of some kind, the teenager let her go about her business while he looked around the pristine room they were in. He couldn't make sense of anything he was looking at. Could it be that he had travelled so far into the future that magic had advanced human life into something so unrecognisable?
While he was distracted, Gina took the opportunity to push a tiny needle into Anri's skin. He flinched but the woman pulled the needle out just as quickly as she had stuck it in. She then said something to him and patted him on the shoulder.
The young man looked at the spot on his arm where Gina had injected a transparent liquid. He would have been more concerned about it if he wasn't already so overwhelmed by everything that had happened to him.
More words were spoken in a language he couldn't understand. From the gentle tug on his arm, it seemed Gina wanted him to follow her.
____
"What's the status on the boy?" Red asked the doctor who had arrived with the boy in question. the soldier wasn't wearing his helmet at the moment.
"His vitals are normal," Gina told the blond man. "A bit on the dehydrated side but that's it. Even so, I'll have to keep an eye on any infections that might crop up considering his brush with ravage DNA."
Anri hadn't seen the armoured man unmasked so he stared, hoping to notice something about him that would indicate he wasn't human. Clean cut blond hair and blue eyes. The aura of power and confidence stamped all over the man's bearing had the teenager sighing in envy. Even with all his magic, Anri hadn't instilled in people the same sense of awe as the man in armour did.
"He said his name is Anri," Gina continued. "So far I've tried speaking in Terran, Federation, Outland, Xian, and even bits of Rakha but-" she shrugged helplessly.
Anri was a complete mystery to his rescuers. He was unfamiliar with any of the major languages that most of humanity at least understood if they didn't speak it. He acted like a tourist about everything he came into contact with. The decontamination chamber had caused a reaction in the teenager that was far from mild. Even the shower had startled him when Red demonstrated how he was to turn on the hot water. The boy behaved like he had come right out of some primitive society on a tier five planet.
"Thank you, Gina. Let me know if anything changes." Red wasn't much of a conversationalist. The doctor understood that. She nodded to the commander and led her charge towards the dining area so she could put some food inside him.
____
Anri was sat at a white table. Gina, his new caretaker, placed a tray in front of him. The teenager looked at the thick green soup, the brown-coloured finger-sized things, and the odd-looking apple on the tray. Was he supposed to eat it?
Gina held the same brown stick in her hand. Putting it in her mouth, she indicated to him that yes, it was food for Anri.
He was hungry, very hungry. Throwing caution to the wind, the sorcerer accepted a spoon from Gina and dug into the green soup which looked unappetising. To his surprise, it wasn't as bad as he had anticipated it to be. It was a pea-green soup so Anri thought it would taste like algae flavoured water but it was sweet and buttery. The next thing he did was try the brown sticks. They tasted nutty and smelled like soy. It wasn't bad but he wouldn't jump for joy about it. After that, he bit into the fruit that looked like an apple and he found it to be delicious.
For the first time since he had arrived into this strange world, Anri smiled. It was the only way he could think of to thank Gina for the food. She reacted by saying something and smiling back at him.
_____
The young sorcerer was leaving the dining area with the healer when he heard the sound of laughter coming from the hallway. Soon he saw the source of the laughter, two more armoured people without their helmets. One was a young woman, younger than Gina. She had raven hair and blue eyes. She was very tall and had deep dimples when she smiled. Her companion was a man who looked to be about Gina's age, a brunette with olive coloured skin and dark eyes like Anri's.
They both noticed him the moment he saw them. Curiosity in their eyes, the duo began walking towards him.