Welcome to Gaia! ::

There was a certain peacefulness to Destiny City in the midst of a fresh snowfall, the city sounds muffled and the chaos of color rendered, by white blankets, to a shapeless softness.

More soft than usual, as a matter of fact. Maus - vaguely aware of approaching footsteps but unconcerned by the lack of any hostile energy signature - leaned on his elbows against the low wall that went around the empty lot, watching the snow move in a somewhat concerning way and waiting to see whether it was about to erupt into violence or something more benign. The latter seemed more plausible after repeated run-ins with the bunnies and given that he had, thus far, avoided any wolves (although he'd certainly heard of them), and so he was at his ease, enjoying the quiet and a cigarette. Elaine's lectures had driven him to smoking again, or at least that was the excuse he'd given himself for yet another failure to quit, and through the film of his own breath and the smoke he watched what seemed to be the stirring of an entire hillside growing more and more turbulent.

"Like watching an overheated soup boiling, don't you think?" he called out, being of the opinion that it was generally a good idea to make your friendly intentions known as early as possible. "What's are our odds on it being something awful in there? 70/30 in favor?"

He had barely turned to take note of non-human features when the stranger had uttered the words "my homeworld," and had actually been opening his mouth to formulate an offer of his cigarette - out of pure scientific curiosity of course, and nothing else - when he was interrupted by the snow doing something that snow decidedly shouldn't.

"I don't know," he said very cheerfully, sticking the mostly-spent cigarette into a pile of snow on top of the wall before heaving himself onto it and offering a hand to Tianyi to help him up as well, as amiably as if they were lifetime friends and this nothing but a walk interrupted by a branch in the road. "Let's find out. The rabbits packed a pretty big ******** punch."

He had just picked the cigarette back up, and so this necessitated juggling it into his other hand to stick one out to shake, very companionably. "Maus," he said. "And I guess they're sheep, but you don't usually see sheep hiding in snowbanks and hanging out in the middle of the city. But it's this city, so what you usually see is irrelevant, I guess."

He did not seem quite as delighted as Tianyi, but he was by no means unhappy with watching the fluffy things cavorting. It was only that he was skeptical and expecting one of them to barrel into him with horns and sharp teeth at any moment.

He thoughtfully turned away from his new friend to exhale, somewhat undercutting the gesture by sticking the cigarette out towards him with the gutter generosity that only very broke people can ever offer. "Have a drag? Warms the lungs right up."

What was it about these interstellar senshi being all soft and cute and vulnerable looking and fairly crying out for some benevolent pranking by way of educating them about the world? It seemed to be a universal quality.

He thought of Grieve.

Well, almost universal, anyway.

"Ah. One for, one against," he said, without bothering to clarify his meaning. He was going to have to find a third alien and see whether they'd bite, as a tie breaker.

He reached into his subspace after a moment more, and then leaned down a bit to hold out something in the palm of his hand - a bit of granola bar - and entice one of the sheep nearer, despite the threat of possible danger. It gallumphed over, docile enough from what could be discerned of its body language beneath the cloud of fleece, and he gestured vaguely with his cigarette-occupied hand as it began to munch away at the offered treat.

"If you wanna hazard petting one, it's distracted. Be careful. Maybe they bite acid or turn into weresheep something," he said drily. "And there's more of them than there are of us."

He didn't seem that pressed, however, whether out of resignation to the vagaries of Destiny City or because he figured he could probably outrun the stranger, and as everyone knew, you didn't have to outrun a monster - only the slowest person fleeing.

Ah, well. There was something pleasant in knowing that there was no threat of imminent violence, even though he would have liked to have seen something in the middle ground - maybe a sort of wool avalanche entrapping the unsuspecting, very naive-seeming senshi.

Having not been privy to the chicken incidents, he did not quite catch the drift of the last comment.

"Imagine how cute the baby ones are, though," he pointed out, stubbing out the cigarette in the snow - and kicking more snow over it to cover it, I am sorry to say - and making as if preparing to get up and go. "Can you get out on your own?" he asked, pausing and extending a hand, just in case. "This is very pleasant. I have found, in Destiny City, it's good to leave while things are still looking up, before they can start looking down instead."