trans_9 | Tavros: What problems? [OPEN]

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Tavros: What problems? [OPEN]

How long has he been on the ship, a couple of weeks? Three? Time's flown by for the dorky little troll, and he's stopped keeping track. It doesn't seem to matter much, anyway. People go about their business, drama rises and falls, and for the most part he stays out of it.

As much as he's gotten to know and like this mostly-human crew, he has to admit it sucks being the only Alternian on the ship. He'd love to see another grey face or be able to talk about his custodian without having to stop and explain what they are. And of course, there's the matter of the evaluations. He has no idea what to expect or what's going to happen if he fails. When he fails, maybe. Conversations with Alex have made it obvious to him how different troll culture is from the basic human one that governs the ship. Are they going to judge him by their standards? Will he be culled if he answers wrong?

But enough of these depressing thoughts. Alex has been spending time with Luna lately, which has left Tavros free to explore the ship by himself. Today he's decided to see what these sensoriums can really do. First comes the easy part, reconstructing his hive and the area around it purely from memory. Barn, cliffs, and far below, the strip of beach and glittering dark ocean beyond. He's done this before. The darkness is just as comforting as it was the first time.

Now for the hard part.

Tavros closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. Happy thoughts, that's how it works, think of good things, and...

He doesn't open his eyes until he feels the wheelchair drop away beneath him. He's still amazed to find himself suspended in the air, nearly seven feet off the ground.

He's flying!

He can't help it. Even homesickness and evaluations can't bring him down now. Grinning happily, Tavros takes off, swooping this way and that, only stopping near cloud level to have another look around. The forest, the ocean, the distant glow and thrum of a city just beyond the horizon, and above him...

Tavros smiles. He's spent enough time staring at these stars to replicate some of the constellations without Stacy's help. And let's not forget the moons, the huge baleful green one and the other tiny and pink.

None of this is going to fix any of his problems, but as far as distractions go, rearranging the stars is a pretty good one.

((OOC: Feel free to hop in! I'm never too busy for another thread. And don't worry, your character should be able to float or "walk" on the open air near him, unless you particularly feel like having them drop like a stone, in which case Tavros will do his best to save them. XD))

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She was a little quiet here. She thought she could trust Tavros here, and more than anything, she didn't want him to think her father was some kind of crazy lunatic, shooting at his kid.

"It was low velocity rounds," she said. "He told me that right before he died. I know he cared about me, and it was important to train me, but I didn't know he was holding back because he didn't want to hurt me too much.

She wanted to continue about training, but before she could, the scenery changed, and now Tavros could see exactly what had become of her father: his mask was off and the smell of burning flesh was in the air.

If he was looking at Hit Girl, he would have seen her pale, and mouth the word, "No."

"Oh, that makes, uh, a bit more se..."

The words die in his mouth as Alternia melts into a darkened room, two chairs, one empty but the other occupied by...

The larger form in the chair is definitely not a troll; the lack of horns makes it obvious. But the skin is almost the right color. But the smell, the man's expression... one look at Hit Girl's face confirms what he was afraid to find out.

"We, we can, um, think of something else," he stumbles over his words in a rush to get them out. This is awful. He can't even imagine what Hit Girl must be thinking, having to re-live something this traumatic where he can see. "Hang on. I'll, change it, uh, myself."

It was going to be really, really hard recovering here. She could lie about it until she was in the ground, but there was no point. Only an idiot wouldn't have been able to figure this out. She closed her eyes for just a moment.

"Go ahead," she said, her voice reserved. For that moment, just one, quiet, wounding moment, she thought Daddy. And that was the end there. He was gone, he was taken by D'Amico. She failed then.

Not anymore.

"My bad. I just have a memory to recover from."

Tavros hurries to fade out the horrific memory and replace the scene with a pleasant one from one of his books. The two of them are now surrounded by lush vegetation, trees and plants growing wild all around them. A crude plank bridge spans a nearby stream. Small glowing creatures, possibly fireflies, flit about and provide slightly better light in the dusky jungle.

He glances uncertainly at Hit Girl.

"I, uh, I'm sorry, that I saw that. I won't tell anyone, promise."

"Good." That was all she was going to say. He understood her reasons to an extent, and there was no need to keep going on.

"You can tell me what's happening here."

As far as she was concerned, what happened was just a fluke.

Trolls are desensitized when it comes to violence, and Tavros is already mostly over witnessing Hit Girl's last memory of her dad. He meant what he said, though. He had no intention of sharing any of what he'd seen.

He glances around, and shrugs.

"Um, nothing, really. I just, made Neverland, I guess."

It sounds so ridiculous now that he's said it out loud. He shrugs, a bit embarrassed.

"It was just, uh, the first thing I thought of."

It was for the better: Hit Girl was not at all willing to relive that moment, let alone talk about it at the moment.

"Neverland? Well, that means something different in my world, so why don't you tell me what it is here?"

If he thought HE was embarrassed...

Tavros is happy to have the distraction. Especially one as appealing to him as this.

"It's, from a storybook I like, called Pupa Pan. It's definitely my favorite one. Adventures in a legendary paradise, swordfights with pirates, treasures, and, uh, a pretty scary villain, um, who's missing an arm and an eye."

He starts to rise up through the thick foliage, and predictably his horns get caught in the branches. It takes him a moment to shake them off and break through anyway.

Smooth move, boy skylark.

PUPA PAN? Seriously? She had to see what kind of comic book this guy was from. Not that she had any right to say that, really: for all she knew, she might be a comic character in someone else's world too.

"I know something about it," she said, looking a little amused. "We have a story like it on our world too, except that its called Peter Pan. It's a pretty good story though."

Whens she gets near the branches, she cuts them away with little effort.

The same could be said for a lot of the meatship crew! Tavros included, unfortunately. He smiles back as Hit Girl follows him. Once they clear the trees... yep, it's basically Neverland. Overgrown jungles, a mermaid lagoon, a pirate's cove, and so on. A ship flying a black flag sails off in the distance.

"Yeah, I saw it, or some copy of it, in the media center." He makes a face. "It, um, kind of sucked. Your human Pan had the pirate right there, and, uh, he let him run away after... calling himself a fish, or something."

She could appreciate this place, actually: she'd always liked the background in Peter Pan even if she had never really liked the story that much. She figured some people liked it though.

"Well, I guess they try to make it all nice for kids or something. Can't really have the main character offing the main villain. I always though Peter Pan was kinda gay though, with those tights and all. I'm more a comic book fan anyway."

...Yeah Hit Girl. Your comic book characters aren't that exempt from tights either.

Hey, it's his favorite story. He's drawn a lot of parallels between the sort of life he'd like to lead and the one Pupa Pan leads. He's always looked up to the character and tried to emulate him. Shame he's just not that bold and brave, though.

Hit Girl's descriptive term gets a head tilt of confusion from the troll, though.

"Gay? We must be, uh, operating under different definitions here. I've never heard of, happy tights before."

And honestly, Tavros thought the tights were ridiculous too. At least Pupa Pan has the sense to wear pants.

"Nevermind," she said, realizing she didn't know WHO was gay on this ship and might actually take offense to that. Not that it mattered that much when she was Hit Girl, people were supposed to hate her anyway. At least, she figured a good hero had to have a personality completely different from who she made herself to be. "It was slang."

"So what does this Pupa Pan do, that makes you want to picture this kind of place?"

"Oh," Tavros responds lamely, looking a bit confused. For once it can't be blamed on childish naivete; trolls don't have any concept of homosexuality and don't have words like "gay" or "fag" in their vocabulary. Not as insults, anyway.

He hesitates at her question. Nobody's ever really given enough of a damn to ask before, and he's never really had to think about it.

"Huh. Well, he..." Tavros shrugs and smiles. "He's brave, and smart, and... he doesn't really have to worry about, um, difficult stuff, like growing up. It's hard, after all. Being a kid, and having to grow up. I think, a lot of people, uh, on the ship, have gotten too old to understand, or even remember."

It'd be too long to explain what she meant anyway, even she knew that.

Oh. That was why he liked him. Well, that was something she was going to relate to pretty easily: she knew what growing up entailed, and it was a bitch having to act like someone who was starting to grow as opposed to someone who already WAS getting there.

"That's one thing you and I can agree on then," she said. "Then again, I guess that really depends on the kinds of stuff we have to see, whether we get forced to grow up fast or slow."

With Tavros it's nearly the opposite. His culture expects a lot more maturity (and hostility) from someone his age, which has resulted in him escaping to games and books. He finds the oddly coddling nature of humans to be weird, even insulting sometimes, and yet... not totally unwelcome.

"Yeah, I agree about that..." He falls silent for a moment, thinking about her response. "I kind of take it for granted, uh, that there's death and violence around, but I guess it's different for everyone. How they were raised, or what they've been through. Makes things interesting, though."

Hit Girl chuckled here. "Believe me, I definitely know something about death and violence being around, but its definitely not the norm in my world. In fact, I pretty much would be someone a lot of other people would want to go into a psychiatrist or something. Girl's my age play with dolls or allow themselves to be overruled by the media to tell them what they should and shouldn't like."

Not that it would matter here, from what she saw. a dangerously violent girl seemed to be exactly what these people needed, if there was any work to be done.

"Which is weird, because you'd probably, uh, fit in perfectly, where I'm from. Most of the girls I know kill things, or people. For food, or to get justice, or to stay in practice. But I guess, that's the kind of stuff our media glorifies, so maybe, our worlds aren't all that different."

Well, for what it's worth, Hit Girl, Tavros appreciates what you're trying to get done.

"Every world is a little different, I guess," she said. "Hell, in my world, we kinda know some of the people in the ship, either from things we've seen on our televisions to comics we've read. I'm starting to wonder if some worlds aren't able to be seen by others and then they make them into stories or something. It's really weird. But at least I know I wouldn't be considered a freak in all worlds."

It was hard to be a hero when people assumed that meant being NICE and bloodless. That usually got you killed if you didn't have superpowers. Kick ass had to learn that lesson a few times.

Tavros of course doesn't fully understand. He's not familiar with the same superheroes and movie characters, so it hasn't really occurred to him to question anyone's existence. There are enough aliens and mutants among them that he hasn't even questioned their origins.

"I think it makes sense, that there are, uhh, other worlds out there that we don't know about. I mean, a month ago, if someone had told me about a race of hornless pink aliens who live with their genetic donors, I would've thought they were crazy."

There isn't really such a thing as nice or bloodless on Alternia. Tavros is about as close to pacifism as his race gets, and he's not totally willing to kill, but he could if there was no other way.

"The idea of aliens and monsters are usually something of a myth in my world," Hit Girl admitted. "We have our own race to worry about. I'm sure if there is anything that's universal, its greed. In my world, greed brings about people who want power, and that power is easily reached when you scare people, intimidate them, and eventually kill them. So you can see, the idea of aliens and monsters would shake them up pretty badly."

Not that SHE was like that, but she had always thought that thanks to reading all those comics and stuff, the idea of a bigger world was much more easily acceptable.

"Heh, pink aliens. I never thought of my skin as pink, to be honest. More pale."

Tavros laughs a bit nervously at her talk of intimidation and scare tactics, but it's something he never really stopped to think about before. Is that what the galactic Alternian war really was? A grand-scale bullying campaign? True, it's not like they needed the resources from all those conquered planets, but...

Oh, shit. Hit Girl was probably right. Greed, pure and simple. Like the hoarding practices of a certain bloodthirsty girl he knew but would rather not think about.

He snaps out of it as she speaks again and tries to wipe the "oh shit" look off his face.

"I don't think, any trolls would call you that, though. Maybe 'pink' isn't exactly right, but... what color do you guys, uh, use to describe yourselves?"

She could see that she was giving him food for though, and that was always a good thing. Hell, if there was something she was starting to learn about living on this ship, it was how other species had a way of putting others in their place. There was nothing quite as sobering as knowing that someone else on the ship could make you realize how small your place was in the universe.

But whatever. Hit Girl wasn't the type to start agonizing about "her place" in the universe.

"Well that's a hard question. See, in my world, we all tend to have different skin tones, some darker, some lighter. I don't know how many people you've met on the ship, but there's someone here with a skin tine like mine, and she thinks that makes her better than, say, someone with darker skin tone in my world. It's sad, but some of our species act more backward than others."

Yeah, Tavros has a lot to sort out later. It's always just sort of been taken for granted that his age group was the next generation of soldiers. It was just the way things were, and he had never had any reason to question it.

"I've noticed that. I mean, that some humans have brown skin, or nearly white skin, but, uh, they're all mutations or adaptions from the same basic species. If it's, any consolation, that sort of power system, uh, exists in my world too. We all have the same color skin, but having certain blood colors means you're better than others."

She shook her head. "Like we didn't have enough problems. Well, now we have one other thing in common: both of our worlds are toast, so all of those stupid things that are supposed to divide us mean shit now. The only thing the Om care about is eradicating all of us now, so that should at least be something that counts more than anything."

Yeah, if they were to start talking about exactly what they were expected to do in their worlds, likely they might be surprised at what they would find.

"I like this world," she said honestly. "I'm used to more buildings and people, like you saw, but I guess I always dreamed about places like these, you know?"

Tavros: What problems? [OPEN]

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