trans_9 | Meet-n-Greet

Alice seems to already be rather comfortable with the troll. He didn't alert her sense of danger, and his communication just made her like him a bit more. She jumped up to the foot support on the chair and made her way up to his lap, though a part of her was still looking for any of three people.

Alex wanted her to find them, but she couldn't get their scent. She wanted to go back to him. He was always so stressed in situations like this, but she wanted to find one their old friends first.

"Whoa, hey..."

Still smiling, Tavros gently strokes Alice's head with a finger. Good to know his communing works here, though it also helped him realize this little furry friend was never afraid of him.

"What's that on your back?" Fingers reaching to carefully take the cloth and unroll it.

Alice gladly took the petting and then waited patiently for him to take the message. The way he was so cautious reminded her a lot of her human. She was having such a hard time finding their friends from home, if they had more helping then it would be easier, wouldn't it? Besides, it wouldn't hurt for Alex to have new friends.

Tavros frowns at the presumably English message, then gives Alice an apologetic shrug.

"I'm... I'm sorry, I can't read this. ...no, hey, actually... just, uh, gimme just a second..."

Tavros retrieves his nifty new omnicom and starts poking around on it. It's a pretty handy little device, similar to a handheld he'd had back home but more advanced. It takes him surprisingly little time to find the translator and figure out how scan in the message. Being from a technologically advanced society has its perks sometimes!

Hmm.

He's definitely no Loretta, Mikel, or Amanda, and he has no idea who Alex may be, but he smiles down at Alice anyway as he replaces the cloth for her.

"Well, I'm sorry. I'm, uh, new here myself and don't know those people. I guess I could, maybe, keep an eye out for them?"

Alice has a better idea.

She had been trying to do this since long before the ship, getting Alex to run into people and make friends, but unfortunately he was not open to the idea of new friends until he had gotten on the ship.

She climbed down his leg and jumped to the ground, going ahead a little bit, then stopping, looking back at Tavros, hoping he would get the idea and follow her.

He'd lifted his hand to wave goodbye, but then he hesitates as she stops and looks back.

"What? You want me to...?"

He rolls forward a couple of feet, then waits for her reaction.

She moves forward and waits again.

Perhaps "Lassie" would have been a better name for her.

Tavros grins, shark teeth and fangs unfortunately on display again, and follows the furbeast at a careful distance. This is interesting. Where's she taking him?

Alice repeated this, bringing Tarvos out of the noisy obs deck into the comparitively deserted hallways around it. It seemed like just about everyone was either on the obs deck or busy elsewhere. At the first corner she turned and ran down it.

A voice echoed from around the corner, "S-still no l-luck Alice?" Alex was sitting a bit further from the edge of the corner, his knees up to his chest with one arm wrapped around his legs and the other streched out for the rat to climb up. He was wearing blue jeans, an off white tee shirt, and a grey hoodie with a hard to make out black design that was several sizes too large for him. The sleeves were rolled up to his elbow, showing countless scars up and down his hands and arms, as well as quite a long cut that seemed to have just recently had stitches removed.

Getting the living hell beaten out of you is basically an expression of friendship on Alternia, at least for normal trolls. All it really means here is that Tavros isn't as shocked by the signs of violence as he could have been.

Still, it's obvious this new person isn't okay. He moves a little closer so Alex can see him, but stays back far enough in case he isn't as friendly as his companion. Gotta leave yourself a little absconding room.

"Oh, hey. Uhh... are you all right?"

Alex jumps, scooping Alice up to his chest as he scrambled to his feet. His heart was racing, seeing this horned creature, though the wheelchair helped dissuade his fears to a certain extent. He takes a step back anyway, "Wh-who are you?"

Unfortunately in his scrambling Alex missed the question.

"Um. My name's Tavros. Tavros Nitram. ...Are you Alex?"

Alex seems to relax a little, though his guard hasn't dropped quite yet. "Y-yeah... S-so, I'm g-guessing Alice t-took a liking t-to ya an' h-had you f-follow her here?" He shot a glance at Alice as if he was trying to be annoyed at the rat, but loved her too much to really muster any menace into the look.

He crouched again, allowing Alice to go on the floor. She promptly ran over to Tavros to show Alex that she did indeed trust him. It wasn't until then that he seemed to really relax.

Tavros nods at the question. Jeez, and he thought he was scared. This guy looks terrified. He guesses he doesn't have any reason to be nervous and relaxes too.

"Alice?"

He glances down at her as she runs over, then smiles again.

"Hi, Alice. I think that's a pretty name."

And back up at Alex.

"Yeah, I followed your, uh, your furbeast. What is she?"

"A rat," he smiled weakly, "th-though I don' know i-if she's a furbeast. We c-call animals th-that are friendly with us p-pets."

Alice made her way back up Tavros's chair, climbing up to his shoulder.

Tavros snorts and tries not to laugh as she climbs. Alice's whiskers tickle! He pets her again before turning back to Alex.

"A rat?" That's not a very pleasant word. Still, who's he to judge? "I had a lot of, um, friendly animals at home. I didn't get to bring any, though. I don't even have my lusus."

"Th-that's r-really sad. I d-dunno what I'd do without Alice." It is becoming more and more apparent that the stutter is at least in part a standard part of the boy's speech, as he seemed to be as relaxed as he ever got- which was about as relaxed as a rabbit as it grazed in a yard it knew a cat sometimes prowled.

"Wh-what is a lusus?"

Tavros knows people with much more noticeable speech impediments, and even if that weren't the case he's too nice to point out Alex's. At the boy's question, he stops petting Alice. Not having his custodian here was crushing, but he's dumbstruck for a moment as he tries to imagine never having one at all.

"Y-you don't know what a lusus is? Who takes care of y-- oh. Oh I'm so sorry."

Orphans are just the saddest thing. Though without Tinkerbull, he technically is one now.

Alex looked at Tavros rather baffled. "I-I don't think we have lusus where I c-come from. Y-you're new on the sh-ship, a-aren't you?" It would explain why he seemed to think that Alex ought to have a lusus. "I-I mean, mum usedta take c-care of me, b-but I g-guess you r-really couldn't s-say that F-Father ever did mucha that." Though he didn't speak with an accent normally, the bare traces of a german accent could be sensed on both 'mum and 'father', turning father into something more like 'vahder'.

Tavros has no idea what a vader or a mum could be. Or Germany for that matter. But he guesses there's a similar concept at work here, a creature of some sort that acts as guardian. And since Alex is using past tense, he figures the guy doesn't want to talk about it.

Time for a subject change!

"Yeah... I basically just got here. I-I don't really understand, what's going on, or why I'm a chosen whatever, or any of that stuff."

Alex smiles warmly, trying to be reassuring. "M-mosta us w-wonder the same thing. B-basically, best thing ta do is ta j-just g-get settled an' l-learn h-how ta live here." He had only gotten here during the last set of people to pop himself, but he already had begun to feel rather comfortable here. "H-have you t-talked ta anyone who's explained anythin'?"

Tavros nods. "Yeah, so I know that Al-- that my planet's, um, gone and everything. So I guess the only thing, I can really do now, is... try to get used to this."

Easier said than done. There are definitely similarities between the two races, but Tavros has a lot of culture shock ahead of him.

"Um... do you know where I could, uh, find the blocks?"

Culture shock became commonplace on the ship it seemed. At first Alex looked confused, and then blushed as he thought he pieced together what the guy meant. Where the bathrooms were was one of his first concerns, and it only made sense for it to be other peoples' as well. Still he wanted to be sure before he made himself look like a fool.

Looking away while being rather red he said, "Y-y-you m-mean, th-the p-places wh-where y-you, e-er... r-relieve y-yourself?" Hopefully at least the euphemisms were the same, cutting down the time they spent in this awkward moment.

Tavros flushes a bit in embarrassment, his complexion going slightly browner as he realizes they've found another slight language gap.

"Huh? Oh, no, that's, uh... I don't mean the load gapers. I mean, um... like, the place where you get into your recuperacoon and sleep...?"

Alex's ears go red too now, realizing that he had confused 'bedroom' and 'bathroom'. "A-ah! W-we c-call t-those e-either b-bedrooms o-or o-on the sh-ship, th-they're c-called 'c-crew qu-quarters'. Th-that, o-or there's th-these c-creepy h-hole things y-you c-can sleep in."

He pauses for a second before walking closer to Tavros and extending his arm for Alice to crawl up. He could use her emotional support at the moment. "The qu-quarters a-are scattered, b-but I c-can show y-you mine i-if you'd like."

A pile of data disks and a laptop was currently occupying the other bed in his room, but he was still lacking an actual room-mate.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

((This can happen after you talk to the Master Chief))

no subject

no subject

no subject

((Just wait till Tavros sees that Alex was playing an RPG on his laptop before he rushed here))