trans_9 | En-Light-enment

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En-Light-enment

Title: En-Light-enment
Location: Stacy; Engineering

Duty.

To some, it's just a word, an obligation. To others, it's an honour-bound pact and to others still, it combines knowledge with honour with the passion of doing that duty. To Renne, it had for many years, become a reason to keep on breathing, to keep on searching.

Now, Duty gives way to Curiosity as he sits on the floor of Engineering with little bits, bobs and parts surrounding him. Along with this, stands the audio-adaptation Billy had created so that he might utilise books successfully.

And yes. Renne had gushed considerably over that.

With the reader babbling merrily along about circuits and light bulbs in a way that can be understood by one who has never been exposed to such technologies, Renne carefully retrieves some of the bits and pieces around him. Hey look, Einstein. He's trying to build a circuit!

Just don't laugh at the wire "glasses" perched on his nose.

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And as it so happens, a being come upon him that is hardly likely to laugh, period. Then again, years of living on Earth and seeing things as they are tend to put the demon hardly in a jolly mood. What drew Alessa in was the power being utilized by someone on the ship: it was somehow different from the other things she'd felt, and that was no surprise considering how typical the usual expenditure of human beings were. The power drew her, and she appeared looking over Renne, observing for a moment.

"What are you doing?"

She watched him with rapt curiosity. It was not often she saw an alien species mimicking human innovation.

"Eee?"

Mid-squeak, his ears come up in a curious perk. The "glasses" on his face slip down a bit from the motion but manage to stay relatively in place. Just don't mind if he can't actually look through the empty wire frames, for his nose and ears do the work for him. Renne sniffs, tilts his head a bit and holds up an end of wire.

"Rrrrr-enne ma-ke Ligh-t Bull. Rrrr-enne trrry, be smahrrrt, like Nurrrrd."

Nerdly aspirations? Quite so!

A light bulb. Well, she could see the interest in things like that. Human innovation was not without its merits, and the creation of a continuing light source had always been a source of fascination for Alessa too: mostly because of the human fragility of its loss in Silent Hill at random times.

"A nerd?" Alessa cocked her head to her right side. "Isn't that an insulting term for humans that are too smart, making the one calling the name look inferior? Who influenced that decision?"

"Nurrrd mean Smahrrrt. Smahrrrt, is good thin-g."

His understanding of the word doesn't go beyond that and doesn't encompass anything insulting. Rather, there's the faint glow of hero worship in his swirling eyes as he defines the word. At her question, he can't help but giggle a little.

"Bee!"

"Of course it is," Alessa answered. "I was just surprised you aimed for that particular title. It isn't one that is regarded kindly."

Humans had their own strange hangups, after all. In their society, it was easier to ostracize intelligence rather than embrace it. Humans with physiques that were pleasing to eye according to social dictation were somehow stressed.

Here Alessa was confused. "Bee? What bee?"

"Eee. Bee noh li-ke o-therrr Hew-mahns. Bee, good-errr."

Chirp. Of this, he's quite certain. While Billy is one of the two exceptions to the rule..."the rule" as Renne had learned, is that Humans aren't to be trusted. Period.
Upon hearing her puzzlement, Renne just keeps that grin on his face and proudly shows off the plushie made in Billy Cranston's likeness.

"Bee. Is Bihll-Eeee. Is Bee."

Alessa, who made it a habit of jumping around the ship, recognized the person. It was that boy, Billy, the one with the glasses. How interesting, that even this being would describe him as being "good-err" than most humans. She felt the same when it came to someone like, say, Nanoha and Vivio over pretty much all the humans she'd met on the ship.

"I don't befriend too many humans," Alessa said flatly. "They fear or hate me...or both."

That...earns a flash of deep indigo across his skin. Putting down his unfinished "experiment" and tucking his plushie safely away, Renne carefully crawls closer toward her voice. A squeak later, he offers a brief, gentle nudge.
Empathy. He knows quite what that's like.

"Rrrr-enne do sa-me. Hew-mahns do fearrrr. Bu-t Bee noh do tha-t. Rrrr-enne noh do tha-t to krrrit-terrrr."

Alessa, thanks to Sasami, is receptive to the nudge. She looks down at him, recognizing him fully.

"I have never allowed human fear of me to make me less than them. In their eyes things that are normal are the only things permissible to them. If you see that and proclaim your Billy to be unlike them, I would conclude you know what you are talking about."

She paused. "But I will not call you critter unless that is your actual name. I am not that lacking of manners."

"Man-urrr? Wha-t tha-t be?" Squeak-chirp.

"Eee, Bee is good. Is R'tel. Is Brrrro-therrr." There's still, probably always will be, a sense of awe and adoration when he thinks about that.

A moment later, Renne nods and extends a webbed, almost paw-like hand in an attempt to offer a handshake.

"Eee, is Rrrr-enne. Who yeu is? Wha-t yeu is?"

"Manners are things that humans observe as acting in a way that is becoming, a way of presenting yourself in a dignified way. It means...a way of looking acceptable, of belonging."

Unlike most on the ship, Alessa could relate to someone speaking broken English, as it was feeling and conviction she understood most. R'tel, for instance, was a word that, though unfamiliar, made its definition known by the emotion behind it: a bond.

"Renne. I am Alessa. I am a demon. One might call me...a monster of the human world."

"Eeee, noh ahll Dee-mon be bad. Ess-uh. Ess."

He offers a small smile and an ear-twitch, mostly as an instinctive way to signal that he now understands the word he'd not been familiar with.
The concept of demons...it's not foreign to him. He's met some good ones and some bad ones.

And look, Alessa. You have a Renne-ified name now.

Ess? That was...new, almost as of it were a term of endearment. She had never heard anything of the like before.

"I'm not good." Might as well be clear on that. "What I am is surviving, at most. This is the only place i guess I can call home, and while being hated is not an unusual thing for me, it is worse in a place like this. There is too less of space for it."

"Eeee. Rrr-enne noh do ha-te, 'less Ess do earrrrrn. Wha-t Ess do on Big Ship?"

At this point, he offers another nudge. Well all right, it's more along the lines of a nuzzle, something cat-like. He's being honest though -- He doesn't hate unless it's earned, just as he doesn't trust unless it's earned.

That was a practical way of looking at things: yet another way this creature Renne was different from humans. As for what she did on the ship, that was a bit of a harder question to answer.

"I watch people," Alessa finally said. "There are many beings from various worlds here that I look at, seeing what they are capable of. What I find most interesting is the struggle to maintain a sense of normalcy on a rapidly chaotic situation."

"Why yeu do tha-t? Is like gahrrrrd?"

He can't help but almost-smile at her last words and nod as if he's familiar with such a situation. In reality, he is familiar with it -- a need for order in an environment of chaos, where the only consistencies were exactly this: Chaos, uncertainty and survival.

"Why is...In-test-errrr-ing?"

"I do it because its my nature," Alessa answered. "More importantly, because I have to ready myself for the next fight. If people threaten you, wouldn't you want to make sure that you know who is who, and what they are able to do. In a way, yes, its like a guard."

She smiled. "A new existence, a new way of living is always interesting. I don;t know nearly as much as I should about the different things on the ship, including the enemy we're fighting."

"Oooh. Eey-ess, is good, kno-w wha-t do wha-t. Haow Ess do leahrrrn? May-bee, Rrrr-enne, Ess do leahrrrrn too-geh-therrr?"

He's a good little multitasker. Already, Renne returns to his not-finished, almost-contraption of wires, a battery cell and unidentified bits-and-bobs. He's still listening intently, both to her and the audio-translated-by-Billy's-ingenious-device-book.

"I would have no objection to that," Alessa said, "But it would also depend what you wanted to learn about. I've lived on Earth for a very long time,s o I'm sure that I could help you learn what I know. I can only take you so far, of course: you aren't a demon."

She observed what Renne was doing a moment, then brought her hand up, and a similar contraption appeared out of thin air, lit but dimming.

"Rrrr-enne noh know wha-t Urrrff be. Rrrr-enne know Hew-mahns is Urrrff. 'Chee ahn-d Bee is Uhrrrff."

While he misses the contraption coming into existence with its dimming light bulb, the scent of magic (or what he registers as magic) sends a thin amber streak across his skin.
His hand/paws almost give a small start, nearly dropping the two wires his fingers hold.

She understood most of what Renne was saying, although there were a few things she was unclear about. "Earth is just a place where I lived: a world mostly of water, with many, many humans and some demons and monsters. Who is 'Chee?'"

She noticed Renne's reaction, and lowered her hands to Renne. "Sorry. Did that startle you?"

"Mah-gic hurrr-t." His face tints a little right then. It's a weakness of his he's not readily assured to admit but recollections of Cargn's words offer a point of logic.

As for "'Chee", out comes his other plushie; this one reminiscent of an eighteenth-century British Navy-type bloke.

"Is 'Chee. 'Chee....'Chee noh be hee-rrrre."

"Oh." Well that was new. She had never heard of a person or a being being hurt by magic. "In that case, I'll try to keep it to a minimum."

She observed the plushie a moment, then looked at Renne. "A friend of yours?"

"Eee, Rrr-enne say than-k yeu, Ess. Eey-ess. 'Chee be Kap-tin, on Big Ship ah-forrre Rrrr-enne get to heerrrre."

Chirp. For a moment, he smiles, remembering that pretty little ship, A Midsummer Night's Dream, so named after the Shakespearean classic.

"You are welcome." Renne was a polite creature, so it was only natural that she address Renne in a similar manner. She hadn't known Renne had traveled on a ship though.

"How did that compare to this?"

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