Jackson had snuck out of the medical facility nearly as soon as he was unwatched and realized he was in a bit of a bind.

He was still fairly comfortable, now that his walking appendage wasn’t being damaged by a piece of wire, but the earth beneath his feet was...odd. It was actually painful to walk on for any length of time, containing many rough edges, which seemed to almost try to catch his feet as he scuffled. He actually had to stop every few minutes and find something to rest his joints upon, and even with frequent rests to allow the pain to ease, his feet things were starting to become red and damaged, with a small swelling filled with some kind of translucent fluid on his left appendage.

It didn’t help that the items he tried to rest on were incredibly warm from exposure to the sun… the garment he wore from the hospital was apparently designed for ease of access and to allow the body’s skin to have a large number of exposed areas, and probably designed to allow him to excrete easily, but the uncovered rear area had no protection from the hot metal surface where he tried to sit.

Why would humans create a hardened walking surface that was so uncomfortable for their ungainly gait? Was it because most of them seemed to have some kind of extra coverings for their appendages? He felt distinctly uncomfortable as he realized that his current garments seemed to expose areas that most of the natives kept covered, at least from the back, and were of far too flimsy a material to provide a protective covering of any kind.

Perhaps he should have tried to obtain coverings that were more in tune with the outside world. This may have been a uniform exclusive to the medical facility patients since, while he had seen the people with badges wearing outfits of similar material and color, they seemed to be separated into upper and lower coatings that did not similarly expose their bodies.

“Yo D, whatcha doing out here like that, you just escape from a mental hospital?” A dark-skinned local, presumably male and much smaller than him, said from nearby. Damned stereoscopic vision, he had completely missed the approach of a small group of what he assumed were juvenile males. This form’s olfactory systems similarly hadn’t warned him, since the place he was attempting to rest was filled with nearly overwhelming odors.

“No…” Jackson replied. It appeared that there were 3 juveniles. The one who was speaking was the smallest of the three, but there were two more, one that was slightly taller, and one who was both taller and much more...rotund. The round one was clearly the best fed and was being groomed as a breeding leader, so he was probably the leader, allowing the low-status male to communicate with someone that was clearly alien to the location due to both appearance and dress.

“I was...released, but I am uncertain where I should head C,” Jackson said, assuming that the creature assumed it had a higher status than him, it would only make sense to address it by a letter of the alphabet closer to the beginning. That would make round one A and the second one B.

“Yeah, man. I see ya fine. Did they let ya out like that? Dude, you don’t look like no bum. You aint even got no shoes.”

Jackson shook his head, apparently, they were having some trouble perceiving him correctly. “I do have no shoes.” he pointed at his feet, where ‘shoes’ were apparently the garment of choice. Or was he assimilating the local language incorrectly?

“Dude, you are high as shit ain't ya?” The male said, chuckling. “Why don’t you head down to the mission, two lights down.” He pointed down one of the travel venues. “They got some shit ya can wear until ya get back to Hollywood or wherever.”

The rotund one snickered, and Jackson nodded, “My thanks, I shall head to the mission and procure some shoes.” He got to his feet and started to walk in the direction indicated, and the middle-sized one laughed and said, “No dawg! What the fuck, don’t walk on that shit, are you fucking blind?”

He looked down, where the black flooring was speckled with brightly colored, reflective bits of some sort. He had assumed they were decorations.

“That broken glass will fuck your feet all up. Man, you are totally fucked up. Dude, fuck, stay on the fucking sidewalk.”

The round one shook his head. “He’s totally whacked. Hey, he’s probably gonna get hit by a car or something. I’ll go ahead and take him to the Padre while you get to class. Padre will write me a note if I show up with this guy, otherwise Shaggy will probably bust a cap in him or something. He ain’t white, but you know how Shaggy gets.”

The shortest one said, “Dawg, you just wanna hit Padre up for breakfast!”

The round one said, “Yeah, but I called it. And he won’t write a note for all three of us. Plus I get to skip out of Mister Snot-mayor’s class.”

the other two boys grumbled but turned in another direction, while the well-fed juvenile started talking to Jackson. “Yo, can you see the colors, that black and that white?” he was pointing at the black ground Jackson was walking on, and a short raised ledge to his left that was about half his height deep before it ended at a wall.

“Of course.” Jackson smiled a little, “That is a dark color, almost greyish black, and that is sort of a cross between a cream and brown.”

He nodded, “Well, ya gotta step up on the sidewalk there, 'cause you ain’t got no shoes, and it’s hot as shit out here. I use to run around barefoot too, and on a day like today, you could fry bacon on this shit.”

Jackson stepped on the ledge a bit awkwardly. He had good balance, but the act of walking, their preferred form of locomotion, still felt incredibly awkward. The youth was correct, though, the white ledge, or sidewalk, while still hot, was nowhere near as rough on his feet. It was also much smoother.

“Oh dude, your ass is totally hangin’ out. Yer going in the tank. Hold up a sec.” he pulled off some articles of clothing, and I realized he was nowhere near as rotund as he appeared. He was wearing some sort of oversize garment as well as a back carrier of some sort.

He leaned forward and wrapped the arms of the garment around Jackson’s waist, so that the majority hung back behind his waist, covering up some of his exposure from the rear. “Here. You can’t keep that though, that’s my dad’s jacket. But at least you won’t get rolled or stomped by the cops.” He grabbed Jackson’s hand. This native, despite coming from an extremely violent species, was surprisingly affable. He had half-expected them to attempt to attack a clearly alien presence. “My gratitude,” Jackson explained.

He shrugged, “Rich guy like you gets capped here, that shit’s all over the news, and the cops will be all up in our grills forever for it. My brother can’t handle that shit right now, so we get you to the mission, the Padre finds you an Uber home, and we’re clear. Don’t need thanks, need you gone from here.”

A lot of the terms he was using were… not coming across his localization very well, but he had to assume that it was some sort of local dialect change. He wasn’t sure he could match it easily, but he seemed to understand Jackson well enough, and he was already clearly marked as foreign due to his much-lighter skin tone and much more loosely-curled hair.

Jackson followed the youngster. He had been very right. There were strange lights, and fast vehicles were traversing, literally on the same paths, or across the same paths, that living traffic used! The danger level was insane, but Jackson eventually discovered that there was some weird pattern to it after they crossed the third hot, black area. Green or white lights meant to go in the direction behind them, while red lights meant that the traffic was opposed, and dangerous. There were also yellow lights, but he had to assume that they were a warning to vehicles to speed up and get across the intersections before they were forced to stop.

What if one of the vehicles were caught in the middle of the intersection when the light became red? His question was quickly answered when, at the third intersection, he saw the vehicle simply continue. Whatever traffic control software they were using was clearly prepared for random instabilities, good software.

“Hey, Padre!” The Youngster yelled as they entered a 3 story building with an oddly-lit symbol sticking out from the wall above it. It seemed similar to the large plus symbols at the hospital, but the bottom arm was extended to almost twice the length of the other arms, and it was a glowing yellow color. There were many tables inside, and a curious odor in the air. Not unpleasant, but very pungent.

A taller man approached wearing a black outfit of some sort, with a strange sort of collar in white in the middle, as well as the same symbol as outside, on a silver chain. His skin was a similar shade to the youngsters, but slightly lighter, and the hair on his head was white, as was a strange growth of hair on his face. Jackson had seen a few such growths at the hospital among the people sitting in chairs, but the uniformed ones had no frontal facial hair other than over their eyes or occasionally, over their mouths.

“Yes Marco, what do you need? Who is this?” he asked.

“This guy’s totally high. He was walking on broken glass and staring off into space and he’s like, mostly naked. He’s kinda close to the hospital, so maybe he was an OD or something, but he ain’t got no shoes and said he was released can I go grab breakfast and get a note for school telling them I brought this guy here and missed the first period?” he said, all in one breath rapidly.

Padre nodded, “Yes, I will write you a note. Go grab some food, but I expect you back in fifteen minutes and then on your way. I will give you half an hour's leeway, which should be more than enough time to get to class fifteen minutes late.”

Marco nodded and held out his hands, and Jackson carefully untied the jacket from his waist and handed it to Marco. “Thank you.” He stated gravely.

Padre coughed a little and put a hand on Jackson’s shoulder, and turned him slightly so that his back was to a wall with some sort of folded object up against it. “You seem to have misplaced your underpants, son. Some of the volunteers are female, and some are children, we should be careful about not exposing our backsides.”

Jackson nodded, “Of course. I would not wish to violate a nudity custom, but unfortunately, my current clothing appears poorly designed to maintain it, and I have no shoes.”

He peered closely into Jackson’s eyes. “You don’t really look like you’re high, son, what is going on?”

His mission required discretion, so he kept his answers short. “When I awoke, I had no clothing except this. I was confused and was trying to find my way, and my feet were hurting from… broken glass, and the young people found me and directed me here.”

He nodded, “Looks like you were rolled, son. Do you still got all your body parts? You’re dressed up in a patient gown. Do you have any strange wounds or anything, or did they just strip you and go?”

He looked at his status carefully. “No, Padre, I appear to be completely intact.”

Padre nodded, “Well... if you didn’t wake up in a bathtub full of ice I guess that’s a good sign. Where are you from? Can I call someone for you?”

Jackson responded confidently, “Earth. I am from Earth, but I am not from the local population, obviously. My skin color is wrong, and my dialect is off.”

“Earth huh?” Padre responded, eyeing Jackson carefully. “What planet did you come from originally? Xanax? Meth? Lithium? You don’t smell like booze, so I assume you aren’t from the Big Rock Candy Mountains.” he held up his hand, fingers and thumb spread wide. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

Jackson was confused. Was this a Math test of some sort? A sapience assessment? “Four of course.”

Padre closed his hand and scowled. “So what are you on?”

“Did I fail the test?” Jackson asked. “You were holding up four fingers and your thumb.”

Padre relaxed a little, “Oh, you were being literal. No, I thought you might be hallucinating. Did you hit your head or something?”

Jackson shook his head, “Not in the last two hours, however, when I awoke I was very cold.”

“And you don’t remember anything before that?”

Jackson spoke very carefully. “There was a blinding light and space, and then I woke up in the cold and darkness and in pain. Before that, I...couldn’t say.” by the great black hole in the center of the Galaxy, this discretion thing was far more difficult than it appeared! The Sintar were, by nature, incapable of stating falsehood, unless they were soulless, so by its very nature, the notion of intentionally misleading something was the center of a black pit of evil.

“Do you have a name?”

“Yes, Jackson Winters. I am here to stop a great evil being from corrupting this world’s souls and trapping them forever in a black pit and turning the world into soulless monsters consumed by their own appetites and instincts for destruction. In time, This world’s savior shall arrive, but until then the enemy must be fought at all costs, and I must become stronger to stop its evil.”

“Oh!” Padre said, “A man of God huh?”

Jackson shook his head, “No, I am only a human now, not a god. But I still believe I can help stop my adversary from destroying the world until the protector can arrive and help humans get judged.”

He chuckled, “Then it appears we may be in the same business, son. I try to save souls also. You clearly aren’t catholic, but I am not as hardcore as some, I figure as long as we are all headed in the same direction we are likely to arrive at the same destination.”

Jackson nodded, “That is a statement of fact.” he said with relief. “I have spent my whole life fighting against the creatures that enslave souls, and we have had a great and tragic victory, but The Game of War continues.”

Padre sighed and nodded, “Yep, for every victory, there’s always a setback. Two steps forward, one step back. Still, you are a little out of it. I am going to go get you some togs real quick. Are you hungry?”

Jackson was a little confused. How did this body determine if it was hungry? There was a vague discomfort from his middle, so perhaps? “I think so, maybe? He noted the various people at tables around and quickly consulted his biology files. Wait, so they did not eat by covering their food, and had two separate organs… their communications organ was also used to consume food, and it went through a tube right in the middle of their bodies, only to leave by a completely different orifice. Right, he had noted that before, and apparently hadn’t given it a complete thought.

Disgusting, it was like looking at a jellysquid. In one hole and out the other, although it appeared that at least they did not use their excrement as an emergency escape mechanism. And the idea that they would waste valuable hydrox through that pseudopod was woefully inefficient.

Still, he was a human now. He was going to have to live, think eat, excrete, and possibly even reproduce and die as a human. His instant disgust for human things had to be conquered or ignored at all costs, after all, they probably believed that using a single orifice to consume, digest, and then sanitarily excrete the depleted and sterile remainder was probably similarly disgusting to them.

Then again, they seemed to split their sensory organs oddly, which may be why they were so weak. It looked like instead of strong taste sensors, so they could probe a substance to determine if it was nutritional or poisonous, they had it split into two senses, smell and taste. Smell was clearly superior because they could actually detect minute chemical changes in their atmosphere, but taste was woefully underdeveloped and required that they actually consume something before determining if it was food!

It was possible that they memorized the visual and ‘smell’ tastes of foods in advance, but he wondered how many of them had died until the species had built up a sufficient catalog of non-poisonous consumables! It appeared they… he… didn’t have any way of determining their chemical and nutritional values at all, other than a vague sense of ‘good’ or ‘bad’.

A dangerous situation, all told. A species prone to deception and violence would be difficult to trust, but he had to, at least when it came to food.

Padre nodded, “Well, Jackson, I am Father Williams. I am going to pester Brother Silas for a few things for you to do, and hopefully, he has something. We keep a drop box for boots, coats, and blankets, but other things wind up there on a regular basis as well, so how about you head into the changing room while I look, alright?” he gestured towards a nearby wooden panel, that apparently was a portal of some sort, and after Jackson entered he returned in a few minutes.

He handed him two plastic packages with several white fabric garments inside. “The mission buys these, so they are new,” he explained, and then offered him several other pieces of apparel that were worn, but had an interesting fragrance that did not smell like the prior occupants. “We wash everything we get, and hopefully this stuff will fit you. You aren’t the usual sizes that get left behind, though. Too much… ahh… everything.” Father Williams gestured towards Jackson.

The clothes were fairly easy to puzzle out when he realized that the plastic package had an illustration of a male torso with the appropriate method of wearing them displayed on the front, but it took a few moments before he realized that the outer garments were intended to be buttoned from the front, for easy accessibility. The whole internal skeleton thing was challenging, but eventually, he realized that the picture on the second package was a human foot wearing the tube. A few moments later, he emerged from the changing room in attire that was not completely unlike that worn by the males at the tables, albeit very much cleaner in many cases.

The lower garment, made of some heavy, but faded, industrial material was a bit longer than truly convenient, but he tucked them up to leave his stocking-clad feet exposed. The upper Garment, however, was a little bit overly confining, the buttons of the fuzzy plaid straining slightly across his frame, and the sleeves unable to button closed at his wrists. He noted a man that had the sleeves of his own upper garment gathered above his elbows, and Jackson adjusted his own sleeves to match.

Father Williams returned after a few moments, smiling. “Much better. Our bodies may be what God gave us, but in general, it’s better to keep them to ourselves. Sorry about the shirt, but it’s either that or a tee shirt. Come and have some food. We are closing up till the evening in a few minutes, but there's still some eggs and waffles left if you are hungry.

Interesting. Jackson thought as he found himself seated at a table next to a man that looked, and smelled like he would do well with a change of outer garments himself. He wasn’t sure exactly, but the man had vast sums of hair both on top of his head and on his face and appeared to have no eating grinders, with the way his entire jaw seemed to fold in on itself every time he took a bite of food.

The eggs were yellow and appeared to be non-poisonous when he ingested them. Oddly, the tastes seemed to be more vibrant, but carried vastly less information, than using a sensor tendril would provide, and he wished he knew what the substance was. Eggs appeared to be a euphemism of some kind, as his information files referred to them as oblong spheres produced by reproduction among birds and reptiles, and these were soft, foamy, and did not even remotely resemble the items in the files.

The waffles, however, were… they had a strange chemistry that was simultaneously appealing and repulsive. The brown gravy that was spread on them was clearly composed of some sort of sugars, which human bodies were apparently capable of metabolizing, but the initial flavor, while enjoyable enough, quickly gave way to a disgusting overabundance that was revolting.

Biting and chewing were a new experience, and he consumed the eggs until the hollow, somewhat discomforting feeling was reduced. Yes, he apparently was hungry. Then again, the amount of effort this body had to spend, simply to remain upright and mobile against this planet’s crushing gravity, must be huge. He was also presented with a liquid in a thin alloy cup of some sort, which was orange and tasted less sweet than the syrup, and he drank the cup. It was fairly refreshing, and he realized that humans apparently did not receive vital liquids through their foods.

Another female, similar to the doctor, approached. When you had an eye for detail, which Sintar did, noticing minor details such as body shape, throat configurations, facial structure, and even particular sub-odors and classifying them into simple categories such as male and female was easy. “We have to close up soon, but Father Williams said you might need some shoes or boots,” she said.

He nodded and noticed some of the men were moving their eating surfaces, made of some kind of fiber, into a disposal receptacle along with the cleaning cloths and tools used to eat the food. He duplicated their efforts, and then followed the woman toward the initial entrance. She seemed to be highly energetic, bouncing from foot to foot, and when she looked at him he noticed that she seemed to keep looking at his torso for a moment before looking at his eyes. It happened repeatedly, and she gulped slightly and said, “The father said your name was Winters. I am Lisa Lee. I volunteer here in the mornings.”

He nodded, “Yes, Lisa Lee, I am Jackson Winters.” She guided him towards several crates of some kind of slick, white material filled with footwear. “You can call me Lisa. Father Williams said that you are some kind of Priest and that you are having memory problems. We have to shoo everyone out until supper, but if you can pick out some shoes, I can probably help you get where you need to go, but then I have to get going to class.”

Class? Oh! Education, not Game category! Unless she were a specialist, that meant that she was probably a late-stage juvenile of some sort. She was shorter than many of the males, but her body shape indicated adulthood, without all of the lines and wear marks of many of the older individuals.

He was very glad that in this case, his pseudopod had not extended towards her, since sexually noting a juvenile would have been both awkward and possibly a social breach of etiquette. Unlike the F’lok’nyran, the Sintar were very protective of their young, since many personal and racial memories were chosen to accompany each bud, losing one was a tragedy and a loss of accumulated knowledge.

That was another reason to maintain his focus. The Butcher had cost his species the memories of each of the pilots that the witch had slaughtered, they were lost forever to the overminds and their species as a whole. Overminds were teachers, capable of refining and dispensing knowledge to the young buds from a thousand generations of wisdom, and each loss was a keen blow.

After trying on several items, he finally settled for what Lisa called ‘work boots’. They were not as soft as some of the footgear, but should protect his feet adequately from the pavement and were neither uncomfortably tight nor did his feet slide around in them once the buckles were adjusted and snapped closed. They were higher than most footwear, extending partway up his calves, but they were not particularly uncomfortable despite restricting the flexibility of his feet somewhat.

After he returned to his feet and made a few steps to confirm that his balance was intact, Lisa showed him bright white teeth within her sepia-toned face, and said, “Okay. Great. Let’s get to the station.”