She shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe," she replied. "Careful, though. We don't want to set off any security systems or anything of the sort."
"Perhaps they can be double agents… working for the humans but really working for us undercover. I don't know if that would work well though, considering they are humans." Beta voiced aloud.
"Right, right…" Emanuel tilted his head a little and tapped the vehicle a bit before knocking on it. "Hellooo?"
"How could they be on our side undercover?" Vega continued to watch the humans. "We're the only ones who were sent to this Star-forsaken planet, weren't we? And I'm not hearing a direct objection to the laser."
"I'm going to scout around, keep an eye out for me?" Stephanie asked, and didn't wait for an answer before putting one hand on the vehicle to guide her.
"Well, no, the laser might work…" Beta said. "I guess we could do that…"
Vega huffed as he dialed down the laser's intensity. He aimed at the ground in front of them and fired twice; as he hoped, nothing caught fire, but there was a dark, smoking singe in the grass now.
Emanuel watched her, glancing around every now and then to make sure they were still the only ones around. Then a blue light shot out from what he guessed was the front of the vehicle. "Whoa- jeez!" He jolted backwards and rushed over to grab the girl, pulling her back as well.
"Hey what-!" she started to protest before realizing why he'd done that. "Oh, um, thanks…" she said, but trailing off when she realized she didn't know the guy's name. "What's your name again?" she asked a bit more quietly.
"Well, that seemed to scare the humans," Beta remarked.
"Oh- uh, Emanuel." He let her go and gazed at the scorched ground before looking back at her. "And you?"
"Good." Vega left the co-pilot seat and sat in his own, taking a breath. "Should…we wait until they leave to take off again?" He wondered aloud.
"Yeah, thanks Emanuel," she said quickly. "Stephanie," she returned.
"That might be a good idea on one side, but on the other side, the humans might tell other humans," Beta replied, conflicted.
"Nice to meet you, Stephanie." Emanuel smiled briefly, then looked nervously between the grass and where the blast might have come from. "S-so, I'm guessing that was the possible security system you were talking about?"
Vega nodded. "They don't seem to be going anywhere at the moment, though… Beta, what if they don't leave? Wh- what if they're too curious to leave and end up staying longer than needed just to see if we'll reveal ourselves? I wouldn't put it past them, given what we know about human endurance."
"Per-perhaps we need a cover story?" Beta offered up. They didn't really have any ideas either. For the moment, they seemed to be stuck.
"Probably?" Stephanie said. She wasn't sure. "Well… I don't know about you, but it's going to take more than a laser blast to scare me away," she said defiantly, her mind already made up, and half hoping the aliens could hear her.
"Ugh…" Vega sunk down in the seat, putting his head in his fuzzy hands. "Not even one day in and we've already been compromised." He complained.
"Well, someone's persistent." Emanuel crossed his arms and took a few steps towards the direction he came from. Instead of leaving, though, he sat down against a tree. "But I'd rather not challenge the may-be-aliens, so, y'know, I'll be over here."
"Alright then," Stephanie laughed and felt around the spaceship in the opposite direction.
"Well this is… not going according to plan," Beta stated the obvious aloud.
"Be careful." Emanuel called, leaning to keep his eyes on her. After a moment, he pulled out his phone to look up what to do when you find something like this.
Vega huffed, looking up to watch the human feel around their ship. "The smaller one seems to be more interested than the other, now." He glanced at Beta. "Maybe we could try communicating with them, somehow? Is there any way we can tell them to stand down without showing ourselves or…upsetting them?"
"Hmm?" Stephanie looked up. "Oh, yeah, of course," and she continued exploring the ship.
"Is there a speaker on the ship?" Beta wondered. "And if it comes to one of us has to go out, at least we could be disguised, perhaps."
"There is, but it may be too loud; our ships' speakers are meant to carry through space and are typically not used on a planet like this." Vega checked the system anyway. "We could possibly lower the volume enough to not reach outside this small area."
Emanuel scrolled through a website - one of the very few he found about dealing with an actual spaceship. "Hey, so, what I'm getting is that if we're certain this ship contains extraterrestrials and not people - like if it's a satellite ship or something - we should stay at a distance. Some aliens can be hostile, some are friendly, some can understand our language…we're taking this much better than the internet says we should be."
Stephanie wasn't really paying attention until she heard the word "hostile". She withdrew her hand and took several steps back. "Oh. Um, you can explore the spaceship then. I don't want to get blown to pieces."
"Perhaps," Beta mused. "Let's try anyways."
Emanuel looked up and smirked. "Really, now? The laser gun didn't give you that 'stay back we might be dangerous' vibe?" He said.
Vega turned on the ship's speaker, tweaking the volume until it was low enough, then handed the small input device to Beta. "Here."
"Yeah, well that was probably security," she protested, glaring slightly at Emanuel.
Beta hesitated slightly. "What do I say?" they asked in a low voice.
"Probably." Emanuel shrugged and leaned back, looking back at his phone. "Or there's someone in there and that fire was intentional. I mean, if whoever - or, y'know, whatever - is in whatever this invisible ship is, they may very well be unfriendly."
"I don't know." Vega replied. "Tell them that we aren't here to cause trouble and that we need to them peacefully leave us be."
"Attention, humans," Beta spoke into the mic, after giving a nod to Vega, startling the humans a bit, as this was unexpected. "We are not intending- Our purpose here is not to cause trouble. If you may, we respectfully ask all humans to vacate this area, thanks." They looked at Vega. "You think that's okay?"
Stephanie jumped at the sudden sound. "O-okay…?" she replied. Her brain was conflicted. Should she run, or should she stay? She hadn't seen anything this interesting, since, well, never. But, if she stayed, she might get lasered to death or something.
Vega nodded, watching the humans. "As good as we can hope for." He said.
Emanuel jumped up and looked around carefully. "Whoa, okay, nope." He made his way over to Stephanie and gripped her arm. "So, uh, definitely someone in there. M-maybe we should go.."
"Yeaaaah okay let's run," Stephanie remarked. So that was two for run. Running it was. No matter how much she wanted to stick around, her decisions were based on a majority vote. She took off running, but didn't go far. No matter how much she wanted to run, her curiousity was so strong that she couldn't bring herself to leave the ship behind and she hid behind some bushes.
"Okay," Beta replied.
Emanuel rushed after Stephanie, only stopping when she did, though hesitantly. He hid between two trees near her and waited. "What are we doing? Why aren't we, like, getting to safety?" He whispered to her.
"Ah ha, see? Danger averted." Vega sighed. "Now let's go before they decide to come back." He started up the ship as he waited for Beta to take their seat.
Beta took their seat and the ship took off.
"I-I'm sorry… I'm just too curious, I can't help myself!" Stephanie protested. As the ship took off, Stephanie stepped out from the cover. "Wow! Can you see that smoke? It must be powerful!"
"Y-yeah, and dangerous…" Emanuel watched the grass and foliage in he clearing get blown around by the strong wind and smoke coming from seemingly nowhere. Then, he glanced at Stephanie. "You wanna see if we can follow it? We can't see the ship but we can clearly see its exhaust, and..maybe we can see its shape in the light's reflect once it's in the sky."
Vega scanned the area once more, double checking before finding a place that had to be void of humans. Once he found it, the ship was off again.
"Alright, yeah that sounds cool!" Stephanie replied enthusiastically.