draak on green
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The third planet of this sun has lights on the night side, and radio chatter.

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The ship's arrival is not dramatic. No burst of light or radio noise or spatial distortion. One moment empty space. The next, a near black egg of metal over a thousand feet long, if not by much.

It reappears much closer to the third planet after a cautious hour in the very far reaches of the system, curious about the odd patterns of high wavelength light.

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When it gets close enough, a space telescope is pointed at it. A few planetside sites send it messages.

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It's not just RADAR. Those are - communicative. Of course, he doesn't know the sigils.

People.

He is incredibly nervous and irresistably curious.

The ship drifts in space, letting off a merry glow of infrared that slowly fades and watching the surface for a few hours, trying to pick out patterns in the radio signals.

 

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They are starting with some numbers, it would seem. Checking if he's a person.

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He messes with his RADAR until it can send the same kind of signals back and completes the sequences, sending out some of his own.

Are any of the transmissions pointed at him near water?

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Yup, this one's from a coastal city.

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The ship will-

Hmm. That's a lot of things in orbit. Wouldn't want to hit any of it.

-Reappear directly above the ocean some fifty miles out and descend straight through the atmosphere to settle in the waves.

Then a shining blue creature emerges and flies in high expanding circles.

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There are people with cameras and boats very interested in this development as soon as they can get there.

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It dives close to the first boat it spots and settles on top of the waves a few hundred feet away, bobbing like an inflatable pool toy and watching.

Tailless.

Let's see what they do.

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They take so many pictures. One yells "HI DRAGON ALIEN".

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It is too buoyant to really swim but it manages to get closer to the boat, head tilting curiously.

"HI DRAGON ALIEN!" it shouts a voice recording back.

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The person who yelled laughs a little hysterically. "Welcome to Green!" they call.

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It approaches the boat maybe twenty feet away but does not say anything else, listening instead.

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There is another boat, over there!

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The shiny creature lifts off and lands again between the second boat and the ship.

The projection is not very capable of communication on its own but it can give crude and unnuaunced messages like

Stay back.

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The boat brakes hard, though this isn't sufficient to stop it right away, it was going pretty fast.

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That's okay, he just doesn't want them to come touch his ship. 

Approaching-your-territory-peace/parley. Desire communicate/music/thoughts.

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Music? The first boat has somebody with a portable speaker and now it is playing music, does the alien like that?

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That gets him to move over to the first boat again. Ah, so they do have Song! Of a sort. He is beginning to suspect that their overly complicated verbalizations mean things the same way Draak can scream simple messages into the air, but not sure what to do with that revelation yet. Because these are definitely the Tailless, as far as he can tell. They're not trying to kill him at the moment. Maybe they've forgotten?

He will have the projection croon along to the music with trilling purr-like oohs and aahs and uurs and see if they suddenly try to attack.

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They do not suddenly try to attack! They congratulate themselves on communicating-after-a-fashion and continue playing music that seem like it'd go well with the oo-aa-urr thing.

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Music can be uncomplicated fun for a while! He has a clear preference for slow songs.

If more boats show up the music time will have to end, though.

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Yup here's another boat.

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...Hmm. Well, no reward without risk.

The projection retreats and flies into the top of the ship. A moment later, a much bigger dragon, less shiny this time, emerges and tries to discern which boat is most important. He doesn't have much to go on besides size and shininess though.

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The newest one is the biggest.

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He roars - well, it seems to have some sort of vocal characteristics, it changes in pitch and tone. It's almost musical and lasts about thirty seconds.

Then he slinks into the water and swims to the largest boat. The clawed 'hand' at the end of one wing holds up a large engraved copper rod, and a talon scrapes one of the indentations.

Invitation/Request Music/Duet/Telepathy

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