Remnants of the Earth
AEDOLIS => Haviah => Topic started by: Anonymous on August 23, 2008, 03:18:39 am
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Now that he had the hang of breathing again (suck air in, blow air out, suck air in, ugh the air here was so foul), his ears stopped popping and he was sure he was alone; he could start thinking. What he needed right now was some sort of food (he looked longingly at the drying blood on his arm), some different clothing and information. The last thing he was completely sure of was the explosion in Crowa's lab.
Why'd they have to fight in the lab... Shame on both of them. Where ever the hells Villi was (it'd be lovely if he was in the hells) he hoped he was feeling every bit as foolish as he was now. They were just asking for something to blow them up, but definitely not something that would teleport them off to some place.
Samari tried to think of a place in Ketra that could have had such rough stone floors and held so many wooden boxes. No place came to mind. Must not have been in Ketra. Somewhere in Necromantia then? That wasn't too bad, but he couldn't remember any part of Necromantia ever smelling quite like this. And if he was in Necromantia, he should have been able to teleport back to Ketra. It was the first thing he did once he woke up and realized he wasn't in the lab anymore. All he got was a searing headache, and managed to teleport a scant three feet away, landing in a heap of curses. That's when he realized he was gasping, his limbs were aching a little long for taking a simple spill and that his stomach was growling.
There was a sensation he hadn't felt in a long time.
He pushed himself up into a sitting position and leaned against one of the wooden boxes. Which gave a little bit more than he expected it to. Odd, he reached a hand behind him and dragged his nails down it. Felt them catching and snagging. What cheap wood. Or maybe the explosion rattled his brain and made him think he was still alive. Samari held the hand in front of his mouth, sighed, and bit his wrist. Felt nothing but mostly blunt teeth and tasted a trace of the old, congealing blood that was already splattered on his hand. He bit down harder, wriggled his jaw back and forth and came to the conclusion that he should probably stop biting himself, just in case someone happened to walk into the strange room. It'd be a little hard to explain. He wasn't even sure he believed it.
Samari let his hand drop into his lap and stared at the boxes. Pirio Deluxe Home Computer: Online Gaming Model. What? He should have gotten up and tried to look for some way out of the building, but he had to see what was in those boxes. Samari crawled toward the box, or rather the box closest to the ground, since they all had Pirio Deluxe Home Computer: Online Gaming Model written on them.
He clawed the wood on the box, leaving little trails. This was going to take too long, there had to be a faster way to get the damn thing open. Samari propped himself up on his knees and punched the box. It buckled but other than having the slightest of dents in it, didn't look much worse for wear. What sort of wood buckled? Pirio Deluxe Home Computer: Online Gaming Model must not have been very important if they held it in these flimsy boxes.
A snarl from his stomach ruined his interest in the box's contents. Ugh... he'd forgotten just how uncomfortable and noisy food-hunger could be. Samari stood slowly, balancing himself against a box of Pirio etc. and began brushing himself off. Forget the jodhpur boots, they were old and broken in and he probably would have burned them if he didn't have to go rushing off to Crowa's rescue, needing a pair of good boots he wouldn't trip over himself in. No amount of brushing could make them look halfway decent. He gave his grey woolen slacks a few slaps. They had a few blood splatters above the knee, the left leg was more a collection of wool ribbons than a pant leg and the other had a few long tears above his ankle. His tunic wasn't too worse for wear, but it was more armor than clothing. Stiff, boiled black leather that clung to his chest, with a tail that refused to bow to gravity, sleeveless so he could move his arms around a little better. It probably had some blood on it, maybe a couple scrapes. He felt his collar next, probing the puncture marks on the side. They were deep, Villi had nearly bitten through the thing. It made him feel a little better about being in the room with the Pirios, if he hadn't managed to wriggle free and put some distance between them (clumsily falling against one of Crowa's work tables and triggering the explosion in the process), Villi would have been sucking on his neck.
Failure at its finest. Spending X many years avoiding a person while they were mortal and wanted to be bitten, only to get bitten yourself when the mortal becomes undead and his preferences shift. If that had happened, the best he could hope for was that Villi finished him off completely... and, if he was lucky, kept his hands to himself.
In a way, not being bitten, but being here was a strange turn of luck. Almost enough to be unlucky. Villi had better have been scattered in bits around that lab, if he wasn't; Samari was sure Crowa's little chit would be able to kill him in his hopefully weakened state. Good Riddance. His stomach growled again and Samari nearly collapsed.
"Sssssusssh," he hissed, picking himself up and looking around for any sort of exit. All he saw around him were more wooden boxes, but, when he looked up he saw- what in the hells?
There was a little sign on the wall just above the wooden boxes in front of him that said 'Exit'.
Insane. At least it fit in with everything else. Muttering how about how easily he could have jumped over the wooden boxes if he'd still been undead, Samari walked around the line of boxes. Walked past two of them, in fact, before he got to the wall. Underneath the sign that said 'Exit' there was a door. A strange door. It didn't have a doorknob. Just this metal bar. The door said 'Exit' too. Samari wondered if it was a trap. Only one way to find out.
Samari put both hands on the bar, lightly (taking them off quickly a few times before settling them down around the bar), and pushed. The door needed a little oomph to get it open, but it swung open like any other door Samari ever encountered. What was behind it was something Samari never encountered. A wall... a building... that seemed to stretch up to sky. It... gleamed and he could see people (people!) walking around a bunch of... stuff. To either side of the building were more enormous, gleaming buildings. He couldn't see if they had people inside them too, but they looked enough like the first building that he assumed they did. Samari stepped out of the box-building, took a couple steps forward (his neck starting to hurt from looking up at the building) and sat down, simultaneously coughing and feeling his ears pop.
What the hells was this place?
-
"Lookit that," Maekon drawled, helpfully pointing out the that. "Izzit a robber?"
Sunny didn't want to look at the that. Maybe if she ignored the that long enough it would just disappear and she wouldn't have to deal with the that. Dealing with that's wasn't... well actually it was in her line of work, just a part of it that she was never looking forward to confronting. It was why she decided to take this post at All-mart. Being a security guard at an All-mart was an easy way to make credits. All she had to do was show up, make sure her uniform was on point and either walk around the store, stand at the exits in case one of the alarms went off, or patrol around the parking areas in a little scooter. No one was supposed to steal from an All-mart. It was like, moving out of Adeolis, it just didn't happen unless you were absolutely crazy.
Of course Ash had to look at what Maekon was looking at. He was pretty gung-ho anyway though. "Whazzat? You see where 'e came from Mae-mae?"
"Yeah, from that place all the stuff's kept at." Maekon took a long drag from her cigarette and put it out on the side of the building.
Sunny groaned, taking a little puff off her own cigarette, stupid Maekon. If she was a proper security guard, instead of Ash's bored, jailbait girlfriend she would have known to appreciate a good smoke break. Someone else would deal with it. Who cared that they were a few minutes late, no one came out looking for them. The rest of the guys had it covered.
"Think we should 'ave a look?" Ash asked, spinning his stun-club around and grinning. "Might as well eh? They ain't even movin', just starin' like a druggie."
"Might be dangerous," Sunny took a few puffs from her cigarette, hoping to remind Ash of why they were out there in the first place. "Druggies ain't the most trusty sorts."
"Well, we need to break in these sticks sometime," Ash grinned.
Sunny scowled, he looked like a psycho. What kind of person wanted to hit someone with a stun-club? A psycho. You'd have to be especially psycho to give up a good cigarette break just go see if you could beat someone with a stun-club. Extra psycho. "Don't waste that cig bitch, or I'll test my stick out on yerr ass."
"Bitch!" Maekon squeaked, stamping a platform boot and crossing her arms. "You betta-" Ash put a hand down on her shoulder, which (thankfully) shut her yap. "No one said we were gonna waste a cig, we can keep smokin'. 'Ow're they supposed to know we ain't supposed to smoke on duty?" Ash grinned, raised his eyebrows a couple times.
Sunny considered punching him in the face. That would waste the cig... damn... "Lead the way, o' hero of Adeolis. I gotcher back."
Samari's neck was started to hurt from staring at the enormous building. It would probably be a good time to stop staring at it and try finding something useful. A nice thought, but he felt a little too overwhelmed to move. If he was lucky, this was just a hallucination. It didn't make enough sense for it to be real. Buildings couldn't be made that tall or made out of glass. The undead didn't just become mortal, just like no mortal just became undead. He probably got a nose full of fumes after the explosion.
But... he wasn't breathing then.
"I say we 'it 'em now and just drag 'em off somewhere. Who really cares about people that rob All-mart?"
Samari tilted his head back down to the ground, turning it in the direction of that voice. Three people were approaching him. A man with sandy hair in a low ponytail wearing blue pants, a light blue button up shirt with all sorts of strange metal bits hanging off it, a black belt rippling with pouches and carrying a black stick that was either making a hissing sound as he moved or his ears were starting to make a different funny noise. There was another man behind him, a little guy with short, curly blonde hair in the same outfit, only his stick was strapped to the belt. At his side was... hells, a freak. It looked like a young female wearing tall, fuzzy black boots with ridiculously high soles, a pleated navy blue skirt that barely got past her hips, a white shirt with some silver writing on it, fuzzy black gloves that went up to her elbows and a sleeveless, fuzzy black jacket that went down to her rib cage. War paint was the most accurate description of the bright makeup smeared all over her face, she wore her long black hair in a ponytail on each side of her head and they were dripping with charms. The hood of her jacket had bunny ears on it. All three had what Samari guessed were cigarettes hanging from their mouths, but he'd never encountered any cigarettes that smelled that bad before.
"Good job hero. You've given us up," The blonde man said in a very womanly voice. He stepped in front of the pony-tailed man and turned around slightly to blow a puff of smoke in his face. That's when Samari saw a slight curve on the 'man's blouse. Great... The pony-tailed man was probably female too, for all he knew.
The freak marched up to him with her hands on her hips and bent over, her skirt flipping up in the back ("Ugh, I think I'm gonna go blind now" the blonde female grumbled.) "Where you gonna rob All-Mart, druggie?" She had one lip curled under the other, her teeth hanging over it like some sort of demon bunny.
Samari scooted backward, his ears popped again and the smoke from her cigarette itched in his throat. If only her nose would start twitching, then he'd be sure this was some twisted illusion. It would be just enough nonsensical-
"Fuck off Maekon," the other female said, walking past the other female and giving her a little shove toward the pony-tailed man. The younger female began shouting, Samari ignored her and stared at the other one.
Sunny was usually nervous around other girls. The more feminine they were, the more nervous she was. She remembered reading somewhere that when something lacked something else it would try to suck it off something that had too much of it. The nervousness was probably a side effect of her bland, non-girly self trying to suck girly prettiness off another, more pretty and girly, girl. She had to be professional now, had to take control before Maekon made them all look bad or Ash started going all psycho-pow with the stun-club. She tried to imagine what the druggie would look like in a couple years when the drugs would sap all the prettiness and hell the life out of her. She took a deep breath and removed her scanner from it's pocket on her belt. "Ma'am, give me yer right hand, please."
Samari blinked at the blonde female, looked down at his tunic, then back up at the blonde female. He wasn't sure whether or not he wanted to give her his hand. The hell would she do with it once she had it? Besides, it had blood on it. It would probably unnerve her. He cowered a little when he heard the little freak pointing out the blood to the pony-tailed man. There had to be a way he could get this female's attention off his hand long enough to get away. Maybe...
"No."
"Scuse me?"
"No."
Sunny blinked. Weren't people supposed to follow orders when they heard them? It wasn't like she was asking the woman (she did have a bit of a deeper voice than she thought a woman that size would have, she thought she'd be a squeaker like Maekon) to do something perverted. Just, give me your hand. Simple. Not perverted. Other druggie shoplifters would give her their hands, no problem. "Just gimmie yer hand. I ain't gonna bite you. Just need to do a scan."
A what? Samari looked at the other two, the freak was giggling and the pony-tailed man was smirking. "No." He shook his head for emphasis. The blonde female gave him a bug-eyes stare and then looked at the other two. They, all toothy grins, looked at her. Samari pushed himself to his feet and ran, heading for the space between the enormous buildings, cursing his mortal slowness and his belly for choosing now to start rumbling again.
"'EY!"
That must have been the pony-tailed man, it sounded like a man. He could hear footsteps behind him. Two sets, maybe the blonde female and the pony-tailed man. He could hear the freak screeching "Get 'im Ash!! Wheee!" Samari went into a full sprint, which still wasn't as fast as he could have gone as a vampire and tried to remember to breathe as he made a mad dash towards the space between the buildings.
-
Cook had finally talked Aidrian and the Captian into a much needed re-supply stop. Personally, he was absolutely sick and tired of trying to get around on a broken biomechanical leg. The parts were gummed up and he hadn't had anything he could use to replaced it. Somehow, All-mart became their stop of choice, though he'd had no say in the matter.
Grumbling to himself he hobbled his way out of the building, taking the back way out. He didn't really enjoy doing supply runs on earth. People tended to stare at his less than fully human appearance. He had a human enough face, though partly mechanical. He had two arms, three legs at the moment and many tenticles that were at the moment, supporting much of the weight over his malfunctioning leg. At times, it was hard to tell which parts were replaced, and others, entirely obvious. Most of his right side seemed to have been replaced and what remained was somewhat scarred.
Busy grumbling, he wasn't expecting anyone other than perhaps security to be in the back of the shopping area, so when Samari came flying around the corner, he very nearly fell over, several tenticles morphing out of his body to right his heavy form. "Hey, whats your hurry?" He asked sternly, his eye making a clicking noise as it focused on the guards not so far behind. "What'd you do?" It looked to him as if the thugs were a little over-zealous about the whole matter, but then he could never be sure. For all he knew this kid was wanted for murder and had robbed a government building or something equally foolish.
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Corners were always good, if he could get around the one coming up and duck down another passageway before the trio caught up to him he'd be-
Where those tentacles?
It wasn't the best time to stare. It really wasn't the best time to stare, but stare he did. Samari actually forgot to stop running before he started staring and slipped, falling flat on his back, but still looked up at the... three legged, shiny (metal maybe?), tentacled man. That was talking to him. It was somewhat intelligent. The wonders never ceased in this hallucination.
Samari sat up and reached a hand back to touch his hair (it had been in a bun, but now a few strands were hanging freely around his face, the actual bun was flattened) looking over his shoulder soon after. "Being chased."
Tentacles' reply made his red eyes widen. Definitely intelligent. "I have no idea. They... ah... want to see my hand for some reason-" Samari tensed up suddenly and looked back over his shoulder, lifting his upper lip a little.
Ash was in full psycho mode now. He'd been swinging the stun-club around ever since he started running. If Sunny wasn't mistaken, he was also chanting something along the lines of 'gonna whack you good'. Psycho. Sunny was almost glad the druggie chick had collapsed. Now Ash wouldn't have any reason to hit her with the stupid stick and Sunny could just scan her hand, giver her a warning and be done.
Or rather, she could do that if the druggie chick hadn't fallen next to a customer. Damn, damn, damn. Sunny skidded to a halt, holding a hand out to stop Ash from immediately running over and 'whacking 'er good'. She hoped this customer wasn't the type that actually read rules and whatnot for various companies, so she wouldn't have to put her cig out...
"'Scuse us, sir. Please step back from this suspect," Sunny pointed at the woman on the ground. "Don't think she's dangerous, just a bit slippery. Maybe high too."
Ash started swinging the stun-club around again. The woman was staring at Ash's new buddy, then back at the cyborg and back and forth.
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"Suspect in what?" Cook asked, shifting his shopping bag behind him where a small tentacle morphed out of his back and wrapped around it, leaving his hands free. To him, it looked like the three 'security guards' were likely to be far more trouble than the little person on the ground.
He reached down and hauled the fallen 'suspect' to his feet, but placed him slightly behind himself. He was eyeing the club-swinger. He knew the problem with the hand-chips. He didn't have one either, but then again, even if they did implant one, he had so much other mechanical what-not in his body, it tended not to work for very long..or his body absorbed it, one of the two.
"You there, would you put that stupid thing down? I don't believe that's a regulation weapon to begin with, and I highly doubt it's to be used for a simple, non-dangerous suspect." He was of course talking to Ash and referring to his stun-club.
He leaned back and gave Samari a tug forward just enough to give him a sniff. "Not high" He assured. "Confused, and scared half to death I'm sure."
His tentacles seemed to be keeping an eye on Samari. If he tried to run, chances were they would snare him and keep him with cook.
"What is it you intend to do to this one exactly?" He eyed Ash "Personally, I wouldn't hold the running against them. I would have run too if that thug came after me with a club."
-
Samari flinched when when he was grabbed, but had the sense to look up at who was grabbing him before wriggling or struggling to free himself. It was the metal-tentacle guy, so Samari let himself be picked up, and stood when his feet were level with the ground. He shifted a little further behind the man, once he let go.
Sunny sighed. This was getting too difficult too quick. She was going to slap the taste out of Maekon's mouth once this was all over - and maybe steal her cigarette if she was smoking one. Stupid kid. "Robbin' All-mart. Saw her stumblin' out of the warehouse.
"Yeah, Ash. Damn! Put that stick down! Psycho!" Sunny scowled at Ash, then glanced back at the cyborg and took a drag on her cigarette.
Ash scowled and stopped swinging the stun-club around. "It's in regs. S'also mine, I can use it 'owever I please."
"Liar. Sir, don't listen to him. He's new and stupid."
Samari walked forward when he was tugged. Never good to make the person trying to save you frustrated, at least not while those two (he didn't see the little freaky girl) were around. He really didn't like the way the pony-tailed guy was watching him. Wait... did the metal-tentacle man just sniff him. Samari looked up at him, his expression just puzzled enough to confirm that he was, indeed, confused.
"Who you callin' a thug?" Ash seemed to bristle up somewhat. "I'm a security guard! I protect stuff from people that'd steal it! No one 'as a-
Sunny clapped a hand over his mouth and scowled when she saw his cigarette tumble to the ground. "Sir, my sorrys, he's new, stupid-like. We just need to scan her hand there. Didn't look like she stole anything, so she'd just a warnin' this time."
Samari sighed, it really wouldn't be appropriate to scream at the guard about getting his gender wrong.
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Cook glanced down at the boy, pursing his lips a moment as he considered something. "Well, most people who don't live here don't have one of those things stuck in their hands. Simple stop for a resupply doesn't require them."
He looked up at Ash. He didn't like the thug, but for the most part, cook was ignoring him now that Sunny was keeping him from saying anything stupider than he already had. "Kid, you got your papers on you? or you leave them in the ship again?" He asked, glancing back at the scared one, but he hardly waited for an answer. "If you really want to have to type in all that information by hand, I'm sure the captain wouldn't mind if you followed us back to the ship and let him present his papers proper-like." Cook assured.
He normally didn't go out of his way to help others, but this kid just seemed to be in way more trouble than he deserved. He certainly wasn't a typical thief. they normally had been at it long enough that they knew how things worked, knew how to fight and get away. This kid just seemed...completley out of place. Besides, Cook needed a new assistant anyway, and this kid needed a way off the planet.
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What did hands have to do with giving someone a warning not to steal? For all he knew, a warning meant cutting off a finger or something similarly awful. Pony-tailed man seemed eager enough to hurt another person for it to be possible.
Hold on... thing? Stuck in his hand? He was already supposed to have something in there? Samari raised both eyebrows and tried to keep from staring at the metal-tentacle man's own hand.
Sunny wasn't pleased. No chip required more work to find out who the subject was to make a profile of them. Ugh... she was really going to have to strangle Maekon after this. Wring that skinny neck and wring it good.
Samari's eyebrows settled back down when metal-tentacle began talking about leaving some papers on a a ship. Finally. Something that wasn't strange. He nodded when he was looked at.
The expression on Sunny's face slowly became ashen and horrified when the cyborg started talking about typing in the chick's information and worse - going back to their ship and waiting for them to get the papers which she'd have to type in right there. Ugh... who knew how long that would take. Ages. Forever. She wouldn't even get paid for overtime if she went, since she was still technically on break. Fuck.That.
"No need sir. I'm sure a warning'd be just as good." She looked in the woman's direction and crossed her arms. "Keep yer hands to yerself."
Ash looked dissapointed, but he finally scoffed and began stalking back to their alleyway. Sunny followed soon after, her grumbling too soft for them to hear around the corner.
Samari walked out from behind the metal-tentacle man once he was sure the pony-tailed man and that woman were gone. Even then, he peered down the alleyway so he could see them walking away. Now completely satisfied that they were gone he turned around and bowed, sweeping his arms out to the side and holding his hands palm up once they were fully extended. Once he was standing up straight again he crossed his arms and smiled a little. "Thank you. Mind if I borrow your ear for a moment?"
-
"You're welcome, and No, don't mind a bit, but let's get out of this alley. Cave man over there seems too likely to get bored again for my tastes" Cook pointed out. They needed to at least move to a new, less seen location with a better escape path. "You want to sit a spell and talk, or walk with me?" He'd give the boy the option. The poor kid had been scared half to death after all, it was reasonable for him to need a break, and heaven knew the cyborg himself never turned down a break, especially not with his leg acting up and parts needing replaced.
He headed off, shopping bag still held by a tenticle in his back. No matter what the Kid's answer, they still needed to go a little ways to make sure they were out of sight and earshot of the crazy security thugs, and if the kid decided he wanted to walk, the ship was also in that same direction.
-
Getting out of the alley was a splendid idea. Though... Samari could barely focus on keeping his eyes on the metal man, they kept jumping all around his strange new surroundings. There was no way he could concentrate if they were to walk anywhere. He'd see something odd that would distract him. He put a hand to his head and looked down at his boots.
"We should sit. I'll probably break my neck looking at this city. Is this even a city? Or does it have some other name?" The place was certainly much bigger than any city Samari ever saw.
Samari walked as close to the metal man as he could, his eyes traveling to the bag held in a tentacle. That certainly was a weird fabric. He'd have to ask- wait a moment.
"Speaking of names, I'm Samari Rilynund."
-
Cook nodded "Yep, it's a city. Aedolis is it's name...though the building you seemed to have come out of is simply All-mart, a store where you can buy just about anything you need."
Finding a more secure location, he came to a hault and settled back on tenticles that seemed to simply appear. "Name's Cook." He replied with a nod, extending his right hand. "You get youself in some trouble and wind up dumped here?" No one ended up in Aedolis without knowing where they were-- at least not for long.l
-
It was a little surprising that Aedolis could still be called a city. To Samari it looked like a forest of buildings with all the animals replaced by people and other odd looking moving things (there always seemed to be several large, star-bright... things zipping around the sky).
Samari jumped when the metal man stopped and spawned a few tentacles to sit on. At least he, Cook, did a familiar surface dwelling gesture soon after he introduced himself. For all he knew, people in this city licked each other's noses after they met each other. Samari took Cook's hand lightly and moved his arm up and down. Then his ears popped again and he nearly wobbled off his feet in the dizzy spell that followed, clinging tightly to Cook's hand and holding the other to his head. Samari slowly lowered himself to the ground and loosened his grip on Cook's hand.
Then took a look at his blood crusted hand and grinned nervously. "That was a different sort of trouble," he put both hands in his lap. "Exactly how can someone be dumped somewhere? Does it happen often in this city?"
-
As the boy tipped, Cook tried to help lower him to the ground. "Easy kid" He muttered. He wasn't about to kneel, he'd never get up again, especially with his mechanical leg being faulty at the moment. "Well, being dumped somewhere is fairly simple. Someone ends up with someone they don't like, or causes them too much trouble, and they just fly in something like those" He pointed to the zippy things around the sky. "And when they find someplace far enough away, they could simply dump them out of the ship and fly away. There are of course other ways to do it, and honestly Aedolis is a very strange choice for a dump since there are so many people...but then again, with all of their crazy laws, getting in trouble is very easy as you found out."
He lifted the kid's hand to examine the blood, turning the arm over and looking for wounds. "You have no idea how you got here?" He checked as his mechanical eye seemed to be busily scanning for injuries. Dizzies were not something he took lightly...after all, a set of the dizzies made the somewhat complicated process of staying balanced all the more difficult for him. He had too many things trying to keep his center to generally keep it while it was rapidly changing and making him sway. "What's the first thing you remember about this place?" Perhaps the kid was even beaten and was actually from Aedolis, but couldn't remember.
-
Samari made good on his omen about breaking his neck while looking around when he snapped his head upward to watch the zippy flying things. People flew in those things? Did they really 'dump' other people out from that high?
How did anyone live? The people that lived around here were definitely made out of sterner stuff than what they made their crates out of. Unless they weren't supposed to survive 'dumping', which is what he thought. It sounded like a very elaborate and obvious way to murder someone.
Most of the blood on his hand was on his fingers, caked heavily under his nails, but there were streams of it down his palm and wrist. His other hand had a few crusty ribbons of blood around the fingers and coiling down his arm too. His right arm had a few streaks of dried blood down the bicep that looked like the blood from a wound, but there was no sign of injury. There were a few splatters on his knees as well, but he didn't limp or try to keep them straightened.
When Cook began asking questions, Samari looked back down, easing his head down slowly since he nearly pulled a muscle looking up at the sky. "I don't. I couldn't even begin to guess why I'm here. For all I know, I really did fall through the sky. I only know one person that can fly... well could fly." Samari paused then, wondering if there was some way Oris would be able to find him. Probably not... it wouldn't have been that hard for him to ask about Thanatos, if Samari hadn't heard of Aedolis, there was a good chance Oris hadn't either.
The first thing Samari remembered from being the room with the Pirios, All-mart, was waking up in a panic, not teleporting somewhere familiar and realizing his was gasping for air while his stomach gnawed on itself and his head nearly exploded. "I remember waking up that All-mart place and lost my head. I wasn't exactly having a tea party before I ended up there."
-
Cook didn't really know what to make of the blood on the kids arms. Maybe he'd been in a fight and had been clawing at people, but in all honesty, Cook couldn't see how this kid could come out of a fight without having the snot beaten out of him. No, a fight didn't seem likely.
He followed the kid's gaze and then almost smiled at his comment about falling through the sky. "Normally they aren't very far off the ground when people are dumped-- unless they have a whole different goal." It was rather difficult to figure out where a body came from when the ship was simply zooming past at normal altitude, making no signs of slowing, lowering or otherwise drawing attention to itself.
"Alright then...first thing you remember is All-mart, that's a start I suppose." He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "But you remember things before that?" That was good. He straightened slightly "Were you in a crate?" If so, things were starting to make a little bit more sense. If he was drugged and shipped, of course he wouldn't know where he was.
-
Oh... so dumping wasn't quite murder, just a clumsy way of getting rid of other people. The best way to get rid of anyone was simply to murder them. Though, living among surface dwellers, even the ones in Thanatos, taught him that murder simply wasn't the option most settled on when someone was too, well anything. Too ambitious, too annoying, too stupid, too dangerous...
If only he'd learned that lesson after meeting Villi.
For a moment, Samari wondered if he should pretend to have amnesia. It'd be a lot easier for Cook to swallow then what really happened. That would have been a lot easier if he hadn't mentioned Oris already. Stupid Oris. Samari reached up to touch his collar, sliding a finger over the gouges in it. They weren't enormous, more like someone tried to punch through the leather with a large needle, twice, which was more or less what happened. He nodded. "The last thing I remember before waking up in... All-mart, was falling back into a table full of bottles-" and exploding. Samari wasn't sure about mentioning that last bit, sure it was more or less the most important detail, but that would lead to questions about why he was alive and whole.
He couldn't even answer those questions himself. Well, the alive part, he was supposed to be whole. He had good healing, emphasis on the had. Now he would probably be stuck hurting forever if he so much as stubbed a toe. Something that was the merest and most minor of injuries at the beginning of the evening, something more a danger to a shoe than his foot, would probably leave him hopping for a second while the initial sting faded away. It was hard to keep from rolling his eyes at the potential indignity of it all.
"I was fighting. My opponent grabbed me and once I got out of his grasp I fell into the table." That was the short version. Samari didn't think this would help Cook much. It was probably a good time to start asking some questions himself, to try to make some sense out of all of this.
"Do you know where Necromantia is? That's where I live, not where I was immediately before coming here, but I can find my way back there if you know where Necromantia is."
-
Cook considered this quite seriously for several moments, mechanical parts squeaking, tenticles getting restless and fidgeting. "I don't know where that is, but I am not the Navigator, nor the pilot. I keep everybody fed and sometimes help fix things. That's my job." Cook explained easily. "However, I know the navigator of the ship pretty well, if you like we can go back and talk to him, see about getting you headed back home." He offered. He didn't like this whole dumping business. A simple fight was no reason to drop a person off in a place where they didn't actually know how to survive. That was closer to murder then dumping in his opinion.
"Do you remember why you were fighting?" He was mostly trying to get a grasp on the kind of people they were dealing with-- or potentually dealing with anyway. More than once angry shiploads of people had caused trouble for them because they were unknowingly working for their rivals and had been hired to pick up something that they didn't want moved. He almost smiled at his own thoughts: He was glad Adrian wasn't aboard on this particular trip. That man always got annoyed when Cook did something like bring a lost person to the ship. It wasn't like Cook brought just anyone to the ship. He was pretty good at feeling out a person's intentions most of the time. This kid seemed nothing but confused and lost and in need of some serious directions and transportation.
-
What if he didn't know where Necromantia was? Or that there was such a place called Necromantia? Sure, he hadn't heard of a place called Aedolis before now, but he wasn't a sailor. He did keep a variety of maps around his manse, for divination, but there wasn't one that showed this Aedolis place. Samari watched Cook's tentacles fidget and tried to resist picking at the blood under his nails. He was so hungry that he might just try eating it. That wouldn't look good, whether Cook thought he was odd for eating dried blood or just thought he was chomping on his nails.
Cook didn't seem to know about Necromantia either, but did know someone that might. Samari nodded when Cook mentioned going and talking to him. "Yes, please. My housekeeper will have a fit if I don't return."
Samari's eyebrows crossed slightly when he was asked for more information about the fight. Maybe fighting for a certain reason got people out in Aedolis 'dumped'. Or Cook was trying to feel out what sort of person he was. "The one I was fighting was an... associate of mine. He threatened my apprentice to lure me away from my home. I suppose he was going to use my apprentice's life as a bargaining chip to get what he wanted from me. I don't bargain with annoying insects. I kill them."
-
Cook raised an eyebrow. He killed them? He'd been running terrified from rent-a-cops. Not a particularly convincing statement. "Well, let's see if we can get you home, but there will be no killing aboard the ship." He stated. "Especially since I'm bringing you aboard." They'd likely hold him responsible if the kid turned out to be a psycho. "Come on, on your feet. Ship's not so far off." Cook assured, rising to his feet, only to have his mechanical leg make a noise and a bolt pop out. "Grab that, would you?" He requested, giving the mechanical leg a smack to put it back in line. "I wish they'd quit upgrading. the newer ones just have more parts and break faster-- but they don't keep carrying the old ones." He'd probably just about rebuilt his leg more than once. He was pretty hard on the mechanical leg, partly because he was not a small man, and partly just the line of work he did.
A little less steady with his leg coming apart, he began a slow, lumbering walk towards the ship. "Bring the bolt and keep up" Cook requested. The kid didn't look old enough to him to have a house keeper, but then maybe he was one of those rich kids he'd heard about; parents never home, house keeper more nanny than housekeeper, life handed to him on a plate. Could be, made sense, and he could have been dumped to get at mommy and daddy. Seemed like a fitting enough Scenario. "You remember the last time you ate?" He was a cook, food was on his mind much of the time. If he wasn't eating, he was usually deciding on the next meal for the crew, or making a list of supplies to get at the next stop.
-
That eyebrow had to be doubt... or Cook was trying to imagine him killing someone. That wasn't something he felt he needed to reassure Cook about. Especially since he was going to try to get him back to Necromantia. Samari wasn't constantly fighting the urge to kill people, he just had a few radical ideas when it came to improving a person's disposition. Or got a little too hungry and carried away. Now that he only had one reason to kill anything there wouldn't be any trouble. He'd just have to hiss and bear it if there was anyone on their ship that would be a lot more pleasant with a knife in their chest. "I can control myself," he said, realizing afterward how silly it must have sounded; especially if Cook was just humoring him. Anything he tried to say afterward would just increase the inanity, so Samari put his hands on the ground to push himself to his feet-
-And jumped back a foot, his eyes widening when... something fell off Cook's leg!
He was definitely fearsome. One to make people quake in their boots when he went walking by. He wouldn't blame Cook for thinking he was an arrogant braggart after that. First few moments in Aedolis aside, it'd been years since he startled in response to something. Samari let out the breathe he'd been holding in and started to reach a hand out to fuss with the strands of hair that had come loose from his bun when Cook told him to grab the uhm thing. He crawled over to it, picked it up gingerly and sprang to his feet.
Since Cook was talking, Samari tried to pay attention to what he was saying, rather than investigate the piece of metal in his hand. It was hard for him to follow along though. What did he mean by upgrading? Or carrying old ones? Did he mean legs? Like the metal leg? He stole a glance at Cook's strange looking bag before he started to walk after him. Could a person just, buy one of these things? Maybe there were people here who specialized in making metal body parts. Maybe it was like Necromancy. What sort of purpose did this little piece have? Samari looked at it closely, narrowing his eyes.
The sound of Cook's voice snapped him out of his piece inspection. He missed the first couple words, but got the general idea from the rest of them. It'd been more than sixty years since he had anything widely thought of by the majority as food; and honest as it was, Cook would probably cuff him and demand that he be serious if he said it. His last 'meal' would have to substitute for that last time he ate... not that it was much better. "Yes, last evening."
-
"It's a bolt, it won't bite you" Cook said, muffling his amusement. After all, anyone would be jumpy in the kid's situation.
"Well, we'll find you something to eat once we board the ship." Cook assured "Nothing fancy, but it's filling and hasn't killed anyone yet."
A sharp creaking drew Cook's attention back to his leg. He slowed to a stop "Kid, give me a hand" He said, practically falling back onto his behind into a sitting position. He was not about to take his leg off in public just to get a bolt back into the joint. "See this hole? That bolt needs to go back in it" He stated "And your hands fit better'n mine" which was why he always had to take it apart to fix it. He'd hoped the leg would hold long enough to get back to the ship, but he wasn't going to risk completely ruining his leg just because he didn't like fixing it in public.
-
Samari tried not to seem so fascinated with the bolt after Cook teased about it not biting him. Cupping it in his hand and letting the arm fall at his side. Besides, he didn't need to look at it to learn about it. Right now he was poking it with a finger, to see how the bottom bit of it worked. All the grooves on it made it rough.
Any food sounded good about now. It'd probably take him a few days to get used to the tastes of normal food again, so for this first meal he'd take what was given and eat. Anyone whose name was Cook couldn't prepare anything that bad. He was probably just being modest when he said it hadn't killed anyone yet. It wasn't practical to bring nice, fancy food on a ship. They were out at water too long for any of it to stay good.
Samari nearly jumped again when Cook's leg made a loud noise and he stopped. This time he managed to contain himself, raised eyebrows aside. Samari took a tentative step toward Cook, hoping he didn't want help standing up. There was no way he could give him any sort of assistance with that, they'd probably both be sprawled on the ground in the end if he tried to provide a balance for Cook to stand with. Cook, because he wouldn't be able to heave himself up and Samari, because he'd be yanked to the ground from the effort.
That wasn't it though. Samari looked at the hole Cook pointed out, then looked at the bolt and back at the hole. Seemed like a simple concept, the skinny end of the bolt went into the hole. It was almost surprising that no one had invented something like this back in Necromantia or at least Serendipity or Adela. No man would ever need training to use it. Samari knelt down a little to get a better look at the hole, then placed the tip of the bolt inside and pushed. He was a little surprised to find that the bolt didn't just go all the way in. Maybe some training would be involved once bolts were invented back home. Samari wriggled the bolt, jiggling it up and down and sideways until he felt it shift in a little when he gave it a turn. Samari kept turning the bolt, watching it sink into the hole. "Is that good?"
-
Cook was watching the boy curiously. Bolts seemed to be new to him, but then if he really was a spoiled rich kid, he wouldn't know anything about mechanics of any sort, unless maybe it pertained to one of those rediculous nano models he'd seen in all-mart. How anyone could get their tools in one of those things, he didn't know, but they were apparently very popular as they were almost always nearly sold out when he walked by.
Once the bolt seemed to be in place, he flexed his leg. It gave a squeak. "Yeah, that'll do it for now" he said, trying to begin the rather laborous process of getting up off the ground. He wasn't as young as he used to be, and he'd never been particularly small or agile, but then with all the parts he'd had replaced, most people didn't expect him to be.
He looked the kid over, feeling a little skeptical about the idea of it, but sometimes, just a little push helped. "Alright, come around back here and give me a push, would you?" With Cook, requests were most often instructions when it came to getting things done. Tenticles seemed to be growing out of everywhere, preparing to help lift him upright. The mechanical leg was not very good at bending under his body and lifting him up. It just wasn't built or designed to support weight from that position.
-
The squeak made Samari tense up a little - until Cook said his leg was fine. He had to watch Cook when he fixed his leg properly. This metal magic would probably get good business back in Adela and Serendipity, hells even the Necromantians might appreciate a way to make undead servants that were falling apart work better. If anything, he had to find out what made him grow tentacles like that. That was something he could definitely try to incorporate into his work.
A push? Samari tilted his head to the side immediately after Cook asked for a push. If anything, it'd be a good time to check and see if he still had his enhanced strength. If he did, he couldn't use it to help Cook though, it'd be just too weird if little him managed to shove Cook back on his feet without much effort. He'd have to use as little as possible so he didn't look suspicious.
Samari trotted behind Cook, placed his hands underneath a pair of tentacles and gave a tiny little push, flexing his muscles a little. There was plenty of resistance against his hands. No more enhanced strength. He could mourn it later. He moved his feet apart slightly and pushed as hard as he could, trying not to dig into Cook's back with his nails. When he got the chance he was really going to have to take those pointy crystal nails off, he couldn't heal himself quickly if he accidentally cut himself now. Not that he could remember the last time he'd cut himself with the pointed fakes.
-
After a lot of huffing and puffing, Cook got himself back upright with some help from his new traveling companion. "Okay" He breathed, pulling out a square of fabric from his pocket and blotting his face and neck with it. "Onward we go" His gait was more uneven as he was trying not to put too much weight on the mechanical leg until it could be properly repaired. It was also stiff and squeaking and he suspected he had bent part of the joint near the bolt.
"Do you know anything about where your planet is?" Cook asked, still breathless. There was a reason he was a cook. He stayed in the galley and didn't get involved on the hairier missions aside from maybe operating the doors to allow the crew back aboard. "You don't have to answer me, but think about it, the navigator will probably ask you, unless he's already familiar with it, which is also possible."
((OOC: Is necromancia a place that the navigator would be likely to know how to get to? Is it set in history?))
-
For a second Samari worried that Cook wouldn't be able to get up, even with his help and he'd be sent to find another person. That didn't happen, definitely a good thing. Though, all those little noises couldn't have been good. Was Cook just being nice when he said the leg would work after the bolt was put in it? Why did surface dwellers do that?
Samari didn't get any time to think any further about it. Cook just asked if he was aware of where his planet was. His planet! He didn't even know about planets until he left his birthplace and traveled to the surface. Stars and planets never really interested him, so he didn't bother learning much about them. All he knew was that it was called Earth. Why he have left the planet anyway! Samari rubbed a temple and took a deep breath, took too deep a breath and had to stop for a moment to breathe out some of the air.
His planet, hells, knowing his luck Crowa was dabbling in something way out of league and he'd been teleported to some other planet. "Hypothetically... what if I don't know exactly where my planet it?"
((The Navigator would more than likely know where Necromantia (http://http://remnants.spiritsoftheearth.net/thanatos.php#hist) is. He might want to avoid going there though.))
-
"Well, hypothetically, if you have a name of the planet, the Navigator is almost sure to be able to hunt it down anyway, and it's not like you're going to be driving the ship." that was for sure. They'd chew him to bits if he so much as allowed the kid on the bridge without clearance. They were quite strict about that after some rather interesting encounters with new crew members. Pilot, Navigator, Owner and occasionally Cook, were about the only ones allowed on the bridge unless there was a mechanical issue, and then the mechanic or technition would be brought up.
His leg was working as well as could be expected given that it had bent slightly without the bolt holding the joint firmly in place, plus, it was needing to be rebuilt anyway, which was why he had been at All-Mart to begin with.
"There it is, up ahead" He puffed, nodding to a ship that was apparently just parked and waiting. Sometimes having a boss that knew how to work around laws and rules came in exceedingly handy. And bribery helped too.
The ship was not huge as far as ships go, but it was moderately sized, able to carry a significant amount of cargo if required, but it was not simply a cargo ship. It was also agile and fast, which was possibly due to various technologies worked into the system that might, or might not be legal in some planets.
"Thomas" Cook called up to the door "Send Richard down. I have someone here who needs to talk to him."
"Cook, you need to stop taking on the helpless. There's no money in it."
"You let me worry about that, just send Richard down." Cook barked, and it sounded like the com link had possibly been dropped. "He'll be down shortly" Cook assured Samari.
Sure enough, not long after, a rather human looking man appeared "So you're Cook's new pet" He said with a sigh. "Well, what is it that you need?" Probably a ride, but how far out of the way, no one could be sure.
-
That was comforting. Samari never believed they'd actually let him steer the ship. They'd all be sitting on the bottom of the ocean if he tried to steer, somehow. All he knew about steering one was that it involved screaming orders to various crew members (something he could actually do, if he knew the orders) and turning a big wheel around (the mechanics of which he wasn't the slightest bit familiar with).
Samari looked in the direction Cook nodded toward and raised his eyebrows. That big metal thing didn't look like any ship he'd ever seen. How could that thing even float on the wa-
Wait... there was no water around here. There should be sea birds around and fishermen and the sound of waves. There wasn't anything like that around here. Samari looked upward for a second, watching the zippy things moving. Where those? Was that thing going to fly like some enormous locust! He felt the beginnings of another dizzy spell coiling in his stomach and somehow managed to follow Cook to the side of the ship.
Samari's knees felt weak when Cook stopped and began hollering at the ship (was the ship called Thomas? Could it talk and fly?). It was hard to resist sinking down to the ground and shrieking about how he'd already have wings if he was meant to fly. He had a similar conflict the first time he went on a proper ship that floated on the water, with himself, he didn't want to let Jerik or anyone else actually see him freak out. That was the only reason he got on that ship and would probably end up being similar for this one.
When the man appeared Samari looked up at him with wide eyes. An eyebrow raised a little when he was referred to as Cook's pet and for a second it looked like he was thinking. His eyes got wide again for a second after he was asked what he needed and then he went back to thinking again. "I need," the words came out a bit high and squeaky, so he cleared his throat and started again. "I need food, first, I'm starving. Then, I guess I need to look at a map to find where I'm from... and... I don't have any money but, I might be able to do something else, in exchange. Anything."
-
"He's the Navigator, you just tell him what the name of the place is, he can probably find it faster than you could-- he might even already know where it is." Cook stated easily, leaning against the edge of the open door. "We'll take care of the food while he takes care of the navigating." Cook had not let anyone starve yet, even with orders to let them starve-- which they finally gave up giving to him, in seriousness or not.
Thomas sighed "Slow down, Cook'll get you fed, have no doubt about that. Let's start with the where, and then we'll go on from there. It could even be on the way" He doubted it, but it was possible, however unlikely. He'd settle for something in the same general direction that didn't require using any warps or jumps or illegal technologies to get to in a reasonable amount of time.
Cook was casually watching the kid now. He had new questions, but he figured he'd ask them over lunch, let the kid sit down and get a bite to eat. No sense in making him stand outside and starve while interrogating him.
-
That was a good thing. Samari didn't have any idea what a map showing different planets would look like. Much less how to read one and find a specific one. He would also spend too much time looking at all the names and trying to remember if he'd ever heard a surface dweller call the planet that. The name 'Earth' stuck out, but that was also what they called the ground. Then there was the possibility that these people had their own name for it. Samari closed his eyes halfway and breathed in a out for a second to finish calming himself down.
"Ah... I don't quite know the name of my planet. I've heard it called Earth before, but that can't be it's proper name. How familiar are you with different countries? I know what country I'm from, on my planet. It's called Necromantia, every civilized place on my planet should know about it."
-
The Navigator took an abrupt step back, doing some bizzare, superstitious dance that got a raised eyebrow from Cook, who didn't seem to be easily riled. "Cook, you've brought me a ghost."
Cook shook his head. "He's not a ghost." He rolled his eyes, the mechanical one whirring. "Why would you say such a strange thing in the first place?"
Thomas grabbed Cook and pulled him aside "His city is dead, it's been dead for a long time. They wiped it out to kill a virus that was taking it over anyway."
Cook just raised an eyebrow at Thomas "Good, you know where it is then, go chart it out and I'll try to get to the bottom of it on this side."
Thomas looked rather upset about the idea and didn't move.
"Look, you don't want an angry ghost on your ship, we'll just take him home and send him happily on his way." Cook gave him a little push towards the interior of the ship before turning back to the boy. "He knows where it is" Cook assured "However there are a couple more questions to sort out before we can actually set course and take off." Cook motioned him forward, heading for the galley. "Do you know what year you last saw your country?" That would clear up a lot of things. Maybe he got into it with a time mage.
-
The Navigator's weird dance got a raised eyebrow out of Samari too. It dropped soon after, when the man said he was a ghost. A ghost? How could someone just blurt out something like that? As far as he knew, ghosts weren't supposed to get hungry, or feel relatively alive or... of course, he thought a whole bunch of nonsense about vampires too...
This time he couldn't just be guessing. The dead (the dead, dead, not the undead) were dead. Even if a dead soul could feel, he doubted it would do so if it was trapped in the living world. It would be unseemly.
At least Cook didn't believe that foolishness. Cook grabbed him, steadied him when he was going to fall, watched him carry the bolt thing. Surely, Cook would have also noticed if he didn't have a shadow or walked through something absent mindedly.
He crossed his arms and frowned when the Navigator began conspiring with Cook, feeling a little better when he saw Cook's eyebrow raise again. Good. Just to make absolutely sure he was still alive, Samari raised a hand to his neck and felt for his pulse. It was there. It was steady. It made his stomach growl. That had to be some residual instinct that wasn't quite aware that what it considered delicious, life sustaining liquid was now not-quite-so delicious.
Samari was still frowning and had just taken his hand off his neck when Cook turned back to him and began walking in the direction Cook indicated, crossing his arms again. "He better not come near me with any candles," he muttered, looking up at Cook and blinking vaguely when he asked about the year. "I'm not all that sure. There are so many different ways everyone counts the years. I know that it was in the summer though, thirteen years after the reign of Makatula ended, which doesn't help all that much. Let me think about it for a second."
-
"Alright, you think on that awhile" Cook said, leading him down a narrow hallway and into a very clean kitchen. Cook did not tolerate a dirty kitchen, despite the fact that he had no qualms about taking a seat at the table and working on his leg, he did it quite often actually, but it was always cleaned up after he was done, and was not actually done on the table itself, but on the bench sitting next to the table. "You got allergies to foods or anything like that?" They had probably been largely eradicated in the more affluent areas, but as far as someone thinking they were from a dead city, he might very well still have his allergies.
He began pulling things out of cupboards and drawers, arranging them on his counters. "Take a seat if you want" He offered with a nod towards the bench, putting water on to heat and getting the oven going. Most of their advanced technology seemed to be focused on the ship itself, not little things like the galley. Most of his gadgets were still fairly basic, but he didn't want to have to learn how to fix complicated electronics. He liked his old reliable contraptions, even if he did have to kick them back into working order once in a while-- or send a smaller lackey into the spaces behind the stove and direct him, since Cook himself would never manage to get back out of such a snug space.
-
Years hadn't seemed all that important after Samari came to the surface. Knowing the year wasn't quite as important as knowing what day of the week it was, or what season it was. As long as he didn't stare too blankly if anyone ever asked his age Samari thought he was fine. Why was the year so important anyway? Wasn't it late summer here? Well... maybe it wouldn't be if this were a different part of the world. He remembered some captain, a long time ago when he was in Cerenis, claiming to have sailed in from some island chain in the south where it was still winter while they were suffering through summer. He was going to have to ask about the year, it was a lot harder to guess about than Cook's next question.
Samari slowly lowered himself onto the bench, leaned back in it and propped a foot on his knee. "I don't have any." That was something he would have find out as he went along. This would be his first time eating surface food he was sure he wouldn't throw up afterward. At least he hoped he wouldn't throw it up, then he'd be just as hungry. Or worse, hungry and sick. He wanted to get over being hungry enough to think the table leg would make a fine meal and go back to being a little finicky.
He was going to ask Cook why years were important when he got a look at the... things in Cook's kitchen and his eyebrows raised. Where was the fire? There was a pot but it was just sitting on that counter. Maybe they couldn't have an open fire on these strange flying ships either. Samari already decided to eat anything Cook prepared, so he decided to save the complaining for when he was back in Necromantia.
Now, back to the important stuff. "Why do you want to know what year it is in Necromantia?" Wait, why didn't he think about this earlier, it made so much sense. "Do you have clocks to reset?"
-
"No, no clocks to reset" Cook said, whipping up who knows what quite easily. It was ship food. It wasn't meant to be identified. "We ask because there are people out there who can...fiddle with time. They can put themselves or someone else forward, or backwards, and Thomas rather thinks that's what happened to you." He made his way over and sat heavily on the bench once whatever he was making was in the oven. "Quite a ways back, maybe before you were born even, there was some virus that got loose in necromancia, and they couldn't get rid of it, and they couldn't fix it and everyone kept catching it and dying" Or something. He'd forgotten about it for the most part until Thomas had half freaked out. "So they steralized the entire city." He paused, glancing at the little clock above his stove. "So if you're from there, you're either from quite a way back in time, or you're with the crazy folk who are trying to live in it again just recently. That's why the year is important."
He began taking his leg apart, hoping to get it mostly fixed before the timer on the oven went off. He doubted he would, but then that's how it usually worked. He got to finish his leg in stages. He'd get it all taken apart, and then have to do something, then he'd get it straightened out and cleaned, and have to go again before finally getting it all together, and then lubricating the moving parts. It was definately a process and he was glad his arn and eye didn't require the same constant care.
-
So much for that idea. Samari sat up straighter when Cook began to explain the reason for the years. At first he was ready to tell Cook that there was no way this could apply to him. He didn't know anyone that could fiddle with time. Neither he nor Villi could do time magic, the fabric of time would have collapsed entirely if Crowa decided to dabble in it.
Then Cook began telling a story. About Necromantia. About a virus that got loose and was killing everyone. An ancient virus from the sound of it. Despite it being ancient he never heard anything about an epidemic, sure being in Necromantia had a deleterious effect on the more vibrant signs of life, but he never heard of anything dying from just being in Necromantia. There definitely weren't any plans to sterilize the city... at least from what he heard. What if this had already happened though? What if Cook's people knew more about the history of Necromantia than the Necromantians did? There were some that thought all the death magic practiced in Necromantia was what gave Necromantia it's atmosphere; but what if it was just the echo of that ancient epidemic, made more potent through all the Necromancy?
This was something he'd have to research once he got back home.
Samari still couldn't quite remember the current year in Necromantia, but he was already leaning towards thinking that he'd been teleported (and revived) to some obscure part of the world that had been avoiding Le'ranna because of the virus. Only one way to tell.
"How recent? I've been living in Necromantia for almost," he slumped back into the bench and pursed his lips a bit, his eyes drifting up and fingers drumming against his ankle. "Twenty-five years or so. I came there from Arca, and no one really seemed to think it was particularly new and interesting."
That didn't mean he was from 'quite a way back in time' did it? Maybe people here wouldn't think twenty-five plus years fell out of the definition of recent time. Hopefully they wouldn't. It just wasn't possible that he was from another time... Of course, it shouldn't have been possible for him to be alive again either... Samari frowned a little and began to twirl a loose strand of hair around a finger.
-
Cook raised an eyebrow. Twenty-five years seemed a very long time for someone who seemed as young as Samari, but then again, Cook had a tendancy to think everyone under the age of 35 was a 'kid' and sometimes even ones older than that depending on how they carried themselves. "I suppose maybe you could be from some underground civalization. There are those around still in some places, hiding from Adolis and what not." And underground seemed an appropreate place for a city full of death magic. "If I recall correctly, which I might not be" He was fully willing to admit he did not have a perfect time frame nailed down on the history of Necromantia "It's been laying empty for quite some time, people were afraid to go back, and the rest of the people were afraid to go there in the first place. Most people aren't too happy about the idea of 'death magic' and even those who don't mind death magic aren't happy about viruses that kill even zombies who aren't alive in the first place." Considering he lived on a ship, some of his facts were possibly rumors, but they were repeated consistantly enough that he figured they were pretty close to the general idea of what happened. "I hear some people are starting to go back now, probably death magic mages, wizards or whatever you like to call them." He shrugged slightly "You think you'd know your city if you saw it from the air?"
His brow furrowed a moment as he considered something. The kid had been afraid of a bolt. "You ever seen a ship like this before today?" That would give a decent idea of time, he thought anyway. "What kind of technology did you have back home while you were there?" Different places definately had different machines and technologies, but certain elements should be along the same general lines. One city did not have plasma cannons while another city still threw rocks by hand-- except perhaps in the situation of Tiener's underground city, but even they had turrets at the outposts.
-
Samari tilted his head to the side when Cook mused about him coming from an underground civilization. Technically, it was correct. The majority of his race lived underground, so he was born and lived his entire life (first life? Live-life?) underground. That was ages ago though, and they definitely weren't trying to get away from Adeolis. There were some crazies that preferred to live in the various catacombs around Thanatos, but Samari didn't want to give up his house and there was no way he could move it underground.
Cook's recollection about Necromantia didn't seem to match up to anything he heard. Except the part about people not being happy about 'death magic', there were some people back on the mainland that didn't approve of Necromantia's choice of magic. He never heard of anyone deciding not to go to Necromantia because of a killer virus. Maybe that was why no one from Aedolis came there, and why they didn't know anything about the virus - which had to be gone, because there were no cases of zombies dying. Zombies lost parts and had to be destroyed, but no zombies ever just stopped working because they got sick. Zombies didn't even get sick. Even the ones that died from illnesses didn't stay sick once they rose.
Whatever was done to Necromantia to get rid of the virus must have worked really well...
Samari sat up straight again when the questions started, letting the strand of hair trail off his fingers. "I'll be able to spot my home from the sky, I know what my grounds look like. I can just tell you, or whoever when we're over it.
"I've never seen a ship like this one. I've never seen a ship that could actually fly instead of float - I thought they all floated on the water. My neighbor has been trying to make a leather balloon big enough to carry people through the air - but only one and he wants to fly in a chair or something."
Samari paused then and blinked, running the unfamiliar word 'technology' over and over in his head. He didn't want to say that Necromantia had no kind of 'technology' just because he didn't know what the word meant. "What's technology?"
-
Oh boy. This was quite a puzzle. "Well, technology is...basically the stuff you use. What kind of weapons, what kind of machinery" He tapped his mostly disasembled mechanical leg. "Transportation...th at would be moving around, ships, boats, cars, carriages, horse-drawn wagons, those sorts of things" He pondered a moment "I suppose medicine could also be technology. Do you remember any weapons, how you got from one place to the next?" Considering the kid had never seen a bolt, he was either very sheltered and spoiled, from a completely different time, or from some completely magic based something or another of a place. Now, Cook was curious.
A leather balloon spoke of a previous time as well. Now, there were plenty of better fabrics and materials to try to hold air in. You would have to sew leather together, and that would leave potentual leaks in every seam.
The timer on the oven went off, and Cook eased himself up onto his one complete leg and hopped his way across the kitchen to remove the food from the oven. It would still have to cool, so he just grabbed the mits and set it on the stove top before laborously hopping his way back to the bench and resuming his work on his leg. "Food should be ready to eat in a bit. Still too hot right now, but if you want to serve yourself up a bowl of it, you can. Or, you can wait."
-
Stuff you use? Weapons? Ma-chinery? Was that anything like chicanery? He sure hoped it wasn- oh it was like Cook's leg. That must have been the name for metalwork like that.
At least he knew what transportation was... aside from that cars thing all the modes of transportation Cook named were used around Thanatos. Samari was about to answer, to rattle off a list stuff used in Necromantia, when something made a noise out of nowhere. He looked toward the odd sound, his shoulders tensing up somewhat, his eyes trailing over to Cook when he began hopping toward the kitchen.
Somehow, he managed to keep from drooling when Cook pulled food from one of the weird things in the kitchen. He wasn't usually the type to drool, but it'd been a long time since he was this hungry. Samari dug his fingers into the bench, trying to resist the urge to pounce on the food and begin eating immediately. The food wasn't going to run anywhere, it wasn't alive anymore. That train of logic didn't keep him from eying the food, squinting at it like he was focusing to get a good look at it before it bolted.
Control. He had to control himself, before Cook thought he was a barbarian. Had to act civilized. The first step was looking away from the food and answering Cook's questions about Necromantia. Samari sighed and looked up at the roof.
"I'll wait."
Samari's shoulders drooped and he slumped down low on the bench, bracing his head against the top of it. "There is no machinery in Necromantia, not many horses there either so there aren't many carriages. It's an island, so there are ships and boats aplenty. I didn't use any of them though, I either walk where I need to go or I teleport there. I don't have the funds to maintain a ship or the time to devote to a revenant steed.
"Weapons. We have plenty of those. Every sort imaginable. We even have... what are those strange things called. One moment." Samari blinked, crossed his arms over his chest. "Maybe you've seen them before. They're usually go up to the waist on a human male, made of wrought iron and wood. They launch these little round balls, one at a time, bit useless unless you can hit a target. If it hits there's no problem, usually kills immediately. I can't remember the name. I used to go to a place that had pit fighting matches, if a fighter got too unruly they would be killed with one of them. They're loud, like thunder."
Samari took a deep breath. The food smelled wonderful, hopefully it wouldn't take too long to cool down.
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Cook nodded as he considered it. "Well, I'm not familiar with those really, but then I have my favorites and generally stick with them." Cook explained, pounding the bent joint of the leg back into shape before putting the bolt back in and then getting his leg finally put back together.
He awkwardly made his way over to the stove and served up a bowl and brought it to the kid. "Careful, it might still be pretty hot" he warned, settling back down on the bench and started lubricating the machinery of his body.
"No machinery? Do you sail by the wind and teleport by magic then?" He was curious. Being half biological and half mechanical did make some forms of teleportation complicated. He didn't really want to arrive anywhere missing parts.
"Balls? Cannons? Looks like a tube" He demonstrated the shape with his hands "usually use fire to start them off, balls launch out and hit things?" That sounded rather primitive considering they were sitting in the galley of a space cruiser.
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((Sorry it took so long for me to reply. Work devoured me last week.))
Completely disregarding Cook's warning, Samari immediately speared a forkful of food and ate it. It was then that he was reintroduced to the particular awkwardness of having to choose between trying to swallow a mouthful of burning hot food before it seared your taste buds off or spitting the hot food out, saving your mouth but making you look like a barbarian. There was no way Samari was going to cough out the food, not in front of the man that cooked it. Samari chewed quickly, swallowed and exhaled deeply, trying to cool off his burning mouth with his breath. He didn't even get a chance to really taste it, he just felt the lingering heat wallowing around his mouth.
Samari nodded after Cook's first two questions, trying to resist taking another bite. The smell made it hard, but the growing rawness in the corners of his mouth were a decent enough demotivator. Another nod when Cook repeated balls. The weapons did shoot little balls. Where they cannons though? Samari would think about it after Cook was finished talking. It sounded like he was describing what a cannon was.
Looks like a tube, check.
Usually use fire to start them off, not that he saw.
Balls launch out and hit things, check.
"They do look like tubes. Skinny tubes. I think you pull something on them to make the balls come out. You can't see them go out, but you can find bits of them in the body of whatever they hit." Samari stirred the food, watching the last trails of steam rise from it. Burned mouth or not, he was going to start eating again in a little bit, his stomach was tightening like it was about to make some awful noise.
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((Gaaaaah. It ate my post. *kicks boards* But heh, np, Glad to have you back. Life happens.))
Cook knowingly rose and retrieved a glass of water and set it in front of the boy. He recognized that undecided look of to spit, or not to spit. He'd been a hungry youth once himself. Trying to inhail food that was too hot to eat was not a new experience by any means.
"Ah" Cook considered it a moment. It sounded more like a gun than a cannon now that he thought about it. One of the older guns that ran along the same principle, but it was at least a step forward in technology from just a cannon, but that still didn't put them on par with the rest of the civilized universe. Cook wasn't sure whether to continue with the thought that maybe this kid had managed to be skipped through time, or settle on the fact that Necromancia just didn't have much technology.
He looked up when Thomas entered.
"Course is set." Thomas informed. "Adrian is going to be furious."
"So we'll make it a scouting mission, take a look around while we're there. It's not like they're going to have many people looking to provide them with supplies." Cook replied calmly, apparently not worried about Adrian.
"I am NOT setting foot in that place" Thomas stated firmly.
"I didn't say you had to. You're the Navigator, you can just stay here with the pilot while the crew goes and has a look."
"What about the virus? If that gets brought aboard, we'll all die."
"The virus that has been sitting in an empty shell of a city for umpteen years? No virus has a shelf life that long." Cook replied, still apparently perfectly at peace.
"I still don't think it's a good idea. That thing was designed as a weapon, maybe they preserved it. They couldn't kill it with anything they had, you remember that?"
Cook sighed "Fine, I'll go and you can sterilize me before I come back aboard."
"Fine" Thomas muttered and headed back up to the bridge.
Cook shook his head and looked at the kid "That one takes superstition to a whole new level of paranoid" Sailors of any sort were notoriously superstitious, himself included, but some of them were more worried about it than others. "There's a legend that says it's cursed. I don't think it's true, I think Aedolis made it up to scare people away. They're known to do things like that."
-
Watching Cook and the Navigator talk was an excellent way to distract him from burning his mouth again with the hot food. Samari managed to sip the water, instead of gulping it down. His eyes trailing from Cook to the Navigator as each once spoke.
Hearing them talk about Necromantia was unreal. They called it Necromantia, but they kept talking like it was a backwater. Full of mysterious viruses that would devour the living and all alone in the endless ocean. It was a little strange that they would know about Necromantia and not Adela or Serendipity, or even Connlaoth. Very strange.
On a more positive note. By the time the Navigator scurried back off to wherever his hiding place was, his food would be cool enough to eat without scalding off more of the lining of his mouth. Samari was taking another bite as Cook turned to talk to him, and nodded while he was chewing. "I suppose it never crossed his mind that I'm still functioning quite well. Breathing and everything, and I've been in Necromantia for years."
Of course, he didn't do any breathing or any such living thing while he was in Necromantia. Cook didn't need to know that though. It would only make things more complicated. The rumor about the curse was definitely interesting though. It might explain why there was no killer virus on Necromantia that he could remember.
"Maybe the virus is just a rumor," he mused, taking another bite of food and chasing it down with more water. "I've never heard of it and I lived there."
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Cook nodded "It would make sense. Stranger things have happened." He agreed "Don't mind Thomas though, he's just a little nervous. Our boss usually likes things to go as planned, and making detours doesn't usually fit into that. Adrian'll get over it though. He always does." Cook winked with his good eye. "You need another helping?" He asked, nodding to the meal in front of the boy. No one went hungry in Cook's kitchen.
He shifted slightly. The problem with the table and benches was that there was no back for him to lean against. His body was a little older and didn't appreciate holding the same position for long periods of time.
"How old are you? Do you know?" He finally asked. To Cook, the boy seemed rather young, but then, everyone seemed young to him. It was a matter of perspective.
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Samari ate another bite, nodding when Cook explained that the boss wasn't the sort that liked their plans changed. Anyone that ever had control over another living thing probably wasn't fond of plan changes, Samari was sure he never met anyone that didn't. Even he liked things to go smoothly within his own household. It was like being chucked into deep water for the first time. Once you survive the initial kicking and struggling and panicking you found yourself floating.
Learning to accept a change in plans was hard though. Nothing was worse than a plan, nurtured to perfection, getting uprooted by anything. Samari wasn't even sure if he could say that he got over it in time when his own plans failed.
It'd been awhile since Samari had to estimate how much food it would take to fill himself up. Samari had a glance at the remaining food in his bowl, then figured it wouldn't hurt to eat as much as he could, while he could. "Yes, yes. Once I've finished with this one." He took another bite and began swinging a leg idly back and forth.
He stopped chewing when Cook asked his age, his lips pursing a little as he thought. Did the years he spent undead still count? He technically existed through them, just didn't age or anything. Giving his entire age wouldn't be that odd, if Cook knew anything about Drow. He'd just look like the sort that aged slowly.
"Two hundred-sixty," he replied. There was no need to add in the extra couple years, they'd just seem a little ridiculous at the end anyway. Then, just in case, he added. "My kind live a long time." Then he took another bite of food. If he was going to have a second serving it'd be best to start it while it was still warm.
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"Apparently." Cook said with a squeak of his leg as he rose to get the other bowl cooling down a little as the pan tended to hold heat pretty well and he didn't want his charge burning himself anymore than he already had. "You look....young" He admitted. Or maybe it was that he carried himself young and that's what Cook really saw. That confused and perhaps rather frightened boy who had found himself in a very strange place and time. "My people aren't so good with keeping track of time really" He admitted "You get past being a kid and then you just" He shrugged "are, and then after that, you head towards old." He'd been better than most of them "I estimate myself to be around sixty years old. My people start considering that old, but I suppose it's not really." He shrugged and carried the bowl back over to the table so he wouldn't have to get up again to retrieve it. If the boy decided he didn't want to eat it, Cook would. He hadn't had lunch yet himself, he was just more interested in learning about their new passenger.
"Sixty isn't so old I guess" He shrugged and dropped back down onto the bench. "Wouldn't have made it this far without help" He lifted his mechanical arm to indicate he meant his bio-mechanics. "Technology is a good thing sometimes. I don't know that I could live in a place that still worked off pellet/ball based ammunition and sail boats." He shrugged "So what was it like there?" He'd never heard any stories about necromancia from someone who had lived there. In his opinion, all the stories he had heard were Aedolis propaganda to scare people off...but then he always thought Aedolis was up to something, and normally, they were, even if he didn't have the 'what' quite right.
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The corner of Samari's mouth twitched when Cook called him young. He managed to keep it from becoming a full grin - or whatever else it was growing into by taking another bite of food. Since he was technically in the prime of his life when he stopped aging, was short, not very masculine looking and (here at least) confused and out of his element he would have appeared a lot younger than he was supposed to look. Not that he knew what that would be like, all the relatives he knew died before they reached two hundred years old.
Usually he would have had a cooler head under such strange circumstances, but the circumstances were far too strange. He didn't have the right kind of personality for it, when he was overwhelmed with wrongness he tended to act emotionally before logically.
When Cook told him his age, Samari busied himself trying to equate it into his race's set of age categories. Assuming Cook was human. Samari couldn't entirely be sure, since most of him was already made of metal, why couldn't they have replaced something with more fleshy bits? Thinking Cook was human made it a little easier. His own words, that he was just starting to be considered old fit. A drow that reached human sixty would be considered getting old and would probably be watched for a good time to put a knife between their shoulder blades. Humans didn't do that though.
Apparently, in this place, Aedolis, they just put metal parts on to help them get by. Samari watched Cook's metal leg a bit too closely when the man began walking back to the bench with the second bowl of food. Later, he was going to have to ask some questions about how the metal parts worked so seamlessly with his own body. He paused mid-bite to pay better attention when Cook began talking about technology, raising an eyebrow. He ate the forkful of food and wondered if Cook was overreacting. Surely he could have found some way to keep living if he was in a place like Necromantia.
"We may not have machines," Samari took a few sips of water. "But, I don't think we're completely hopeless. We get by with, well, necromancy. The way machinery does metal, necromancy works with death and flesh." Who knows what people in Aedolis were told about necromancy, better get him on the proper page before continuing. "Some think that Necromantia is a gloomy place. Most of the inhabitants embrace death instead of fearing it. Some of them are actually between life and death. We call it undead in Necromantia and the countries around it.
"It isn't that dangerous though. No more than most places on the surface can be dangerous. Sorry if that sounded redundant, I was born underground. Hmm... sorry to break subject, but, since you know a little about Necromantia... do you know anything about Serendipity or maybe Adela? Perhaps a strange place called Connlaoth? They're nations that are near Necromantia."
Samari glanced in his bowl for a second, swirling his fork around to fill it with more food.
-
Cook caught him watching his leg. "I was blown up." He explained "And because of the work I do, I needed something I could fix myself with scraps and bits. If I had to go into a medical port every time part of me broke down, I'd be tossed right off this ship. No crew is going to put up with a member that constantly causes delays." He shrugged
"I think it's the fact that you use magic and make the dead do your bidding that creeps people out. Most places still think death is permanent, and people should be respectfully laid to rest, in whatever way their culture says is the right way, and then left alone. Horror movies since way before earth started dying, had what they called 'zombies' which were dead things that came alive and...generally tried to kill everyone else." Cook explained "It sounds like your culture views putting them to good use is the right thing to do." Thankfully, Cook was generally an open minded person, though often a grumpy one. "Undead....brings up thoughts of vampires." He tilted his head slightly "Do the undead happen to drink blood?" Maybe there was more to this vampire idea after all.
"Mostly just legends. I think they are also cities or countries that have died or been taken over by Aedolis." He shrugged, and his little tentacles fidgeted with a life of their own. "I've never been great with remembering which cities are on what planet or any of that stuff. That's why I am the cook, and not the navigator."
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Interesting, Samari thought as Cook explained that he could fix his metal bits instead of going to a medical port. If Cook hadn't said he had to go into the medical port, Samari would have though that was the proper title of a person that worked with the metal bits, machines. That was a question for sometime later, what did you call a person that's work was in machines?
Right now he considered that taking machinery back to Necromancia might not be the best idea. Necromancy could only work successfully when someone was trained in it - unless Cook was also a sort of machine worker, that meant anyone could work a machine. Someone else could bring in machinery then. Though, it definitely wouldn't hurt to study it a little.
That was a thought for later too, now Cook was explaining that it was the necromancy that scared other nations. Samari tried hard not to roll his eyes, smirking wryly. Of course it was the necromancy, it wasn't like people in Necromancy were particularly vicious or xenophobic as a whole. The smirk was rubbed off his face in a wave of curiosity when Cook said something about moovees and something even more interesting about the earth dying. Samari's eyes widened and he blinked vacantly, coming back to himself when Cook asked about undead drinking blood.
That they did. Well, those among them that were vampires. Samari, curious, raised his tongue up under his lips to feel his canine teeth. They were still somewhat thin and felt sharp on the tip, but he couldn't feel the muscle that would push them down for easier purchase into flesh. Samari pulled his tongue back into his mouth once he was sure he couldn't grin without giving Cook the idea that he might want something else to round off his meal and ate another forkful of food. Once it was swallowed he nodded, saying. "Yes, vampires drink blood, but there are other types of intelligent undead that don't. Most siege undead don't need any sort of sustenance - that would be your zombies. Only small animals are in danger around a zombie, they usually need orders to start killing everything they see."
Samari got confused again when Cook said that the other countries were legends, dead or conquered by Aedolis. Those second two were definitely false - he just came from Adela and never heard of Aedolis until he came to it. "They're not dead. I can't speak for Connlaoth, but Adela and Serendipity are alive and flourishing."
Samari fiddled with the last morsel of food a few seconds before scooping it up and eating it. He set the bowl down next to himself on the bench and looked up at the ceiling, leaning back as far as he dared on the bench. "Is it possible that Aedolis has never traveled beyond Necromantia? If you aren't approaching from the Tuor Ocean, then you might come across Necromantia before you reached the others."
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"Well, Aedolis has been in war with other planets, so they've definately gone beyond their own city. Some folks figure they want to take over the universe, and well, I wouldn't be surprised if that were actually the case." He shrugged. "They tend to be a little power hungry there-- one of the reasons I hate stopping for anything on that planet. One of these days they're going to catch us and force us to stay. They've got some dragon or something as part of their army. Not something I really want to try to fight." He stretched a little and settled back.
"Ah. I'd never put much stock in vampires being real and blood drinkers and all, but that's very interesting. Did you have a blood bank or the like, or do you bite people on the neck and just take it?" The boy had managed to peak the man's curiosity.
When he started speaking about how alive and well all the other cities were. This once again, made Cook wonder if the boy had jumped time. It was seeming more and more likely. If he'd been in Adela and never heard of Aedolis, it would make sense. "Do your people, or anyone you know of have time magics?" He finally asked. That was also a good thing to know before just showing up at a city. Time magics could be nasty things to encounter depending on how they were used. Some cheated in Cook's opinion and used it to jump around a fight they had already seen once. Despite how unsportsmanlike that was, Cook also worried about the so-called 'fabric of time' and what people messing with it all the time might actually do.
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Samari stared blankly at Cook when he described Aedolis' plan to take over the universe, whatever that was. The way he kept changing planet and Aedolis had him a little worried though. Maybe he was somehow teleported to another planet... one that knew about Necromantia's planet. It was a good thing they thought there was a killer virus. They probably just set one of their strange ships down in some paranoid necromancer's property, one that killed first and asked questions after you rose from the dead. Their dragons might be a problem if they decided to invade, though beneficial once they were dead and could be raised. Samari had no idea what use they could put their machinery to though.
It'd been awhile since Samari blushed without willing it. Why did Cook have to say 'you' when he was talking about vampires? He probably saw something when Samari was poking his teeth, or he didn't and was able to put together what a person mouthing around their canine teeth when vampires were mentioned might suggest. At least Cook wouldn't see him blushing... unless he could pick out the difference between his usual darkness and black with red underneath. He should probably stop holding onto the bench like he was about to fall off the roof of a building. "They bite people. Blood wouldn't keep well in a bank." He would have gone on, explaining how there were people that either sold their own blood or the blood of people they owned in Necromantia, but that was too much information. It would invite the inevitable, how did you know that?
Which, hopefully, wouldn't come up if Cook asked whether or not vampires attacked their victims and he answered.
It sounded like he was going to ask some other question though. Good. Or... Samari blinked and looked at Cook blankly. After two more blinks he tilted his head to the side a little. "No... Unless they were hiding something. Time magic is even dangerous by Necromantian standards."
Samari glanced at the other bowl of food Cook made, unsure of how hungry he was. He'd wait for the growls before he dived for it. The last thing he wanted was to eat so much that he threw up his first proper meal.
-
Cook had used 'you' in the broad sense of the term. He was from necromancia and so Cook had just lumped him with the undead vampire people temporarily. The fact that the boy was eating real food put him off the thought of him being a vampire for the moment, but that might change as the conversation went on.
"Well, that's good to know" Cook admitted "I always did think it was irresponsible and rather stupid to go fiddling with something as vast as time. You screw that up and everybody's clucked." Cook pointed out "Have known a couple people though that don't care enough about anything to be worried when something is 'dangerous'" a certain city came to mind actually.
"Some cities do have blood in banks, but they don't drink it, they use it to keep people from bleeding to death when they get injured" He should know all about that. He flexed his mechanical hand. "I think it's another one of those technology things. They have to do something to it so it doesn't spoil...and they keep it cold too." This brought up another question. "How do you store food on your planet? And what sort of things did you eat?"
It had been a very long time indeed since Cook had actually been curious, but then again, it had been a very long time since he'd run into something completely new also. Besides, normally he considered it his job to be surly, and it was difficult to be surly and curious all at once. He was actually rather surprised none of the crew had come in yet, but then again, maybe his last berating of his kitchen help had temporarily scared them off again. He didn't mind. Most of them were more trouble than help, but the captain kept sending them down to him.
"Are these vampires regular citizens there?" Cook asked "In the human stories, they're always...lurking. People are scared of them so they just sort of hang around in the dark, not letting themselves be seen until they find their victim, then they bite their necks and drink their blood...and sometimes turn them into new vampires, depending on which legend the author of the story is basing the vampire off of." Sometimes, he really did wonder where he came up with some of this useless information. Mostly the overly-talkative kitchen help, he guessed. They had had a vampire obsessed one, and Cook had been stuck with him for longer than usual.
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((Bah, December is too busy @-@. My apologies for taking a second to reply.))
Samari nodded. Tinkering with life and death magic was risky enough, he didn't want to imagine what would happen if a time spell went wrong. The most horrible thing was that no one would know something went wrong and be able to fix it.
Blood banks were another thing to add to the 'interesting things about Aedolis that Thanatos could use' list he was compiling. Of course, if they were to keep blood that wouldn't clot up and become useless, someone would start selling it to vampires or to necromancers who wanted to experiment on it. He wasn't sure how much would be used to actually save lives. Not when the person could be 'saved' (in a sense) by a necromancer. Keeping it cold was an interesting idea. They could probably manage that without difficulty, at least in the winter. Summer would require them stockpiling ice and keeping it cold. He had to fight to keep his eyes from widening when Cook asked about what sort of food they ate. Since he couldn't get any use out of it, Samari usually ignored food while he was in Thanatos, unless it smelled good. "How to store food isn't my strong point. We can keep it cold in an ice chest, smoke meats," Samari watched Cook's eyes for any sign of understanding so he could skip onto the harder question. "Keep it in a larder... that sort of thing."
Samari looked into his empty bowl for a heartbeat before continuing. "We eat... a lot of plants. Grain, root vegetables, fruit from trees and a lot of mushrooms. Mushrooms grow easily in Thanatos. We have to have meat delivered by ship most of the time, but we can fish for seafood."
It was a fairly generic description. He could probably remember the names of a few dishes if he thought about it, but chances were he'd remember something from his home town instead.
He was almost grateful to be back in familiar territory again.
"Vampires are citizens," he said, nodding. "It's easy enough for them to get blood without having to hunt for it. If they aren't hunting, there's no reason for living people to be scared of them, unless they're scared of everything." He paused for a second, wanting to look like was remembering something, when it was something he already knew. "If I recall... a vampire needs a license to turn a new vampire."
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"Not so different from the way things used to be done on earth way back when" He commented. There were lots of books and such on earth, granted they might or might not be known about by some of the officials, but they definately had survived over the years. Plus, they had been passed down through the generations. He wasn't from earth himself, but he'd had a neighbor who liked to tell stories passed down from a long string of relatives.
"Here in the ship, some things are kept cold in a refrigerator, or a freezer. But we have a lot of freeze-dried foods. Basically, all the moisture is taken out of the food, so it can't spoil." he explained with a shrug. "Without all that water, it's not so heavy and we can take more onto the ship without weighing her down much."
"Sounds almost like a vegetarian sort of a place" Cook mused "But, I suppose when you can't get much meat, you eat what you got." He rose "You want any more of that?" He asked, pointing to his empty bowl. "I'm going to get myself some." His tenticles wriggled a moment, as if anticipating having something to do. It seemed they had a mind of their own half the time. And maybe they did. No one ever dared to ask him. He wasn't always as nice as he was being to his little guest. Normally, he was known for being quite crotchety and grumpy-- but that was also when he had a kitchen to run and was trying to get inept assistants to do things like they were supposed to.
"A license you say? Now that's an interesting idea. I never thought a vampire would get a license to turn people. Do they just turn when they get bit, or do they have to really mean to turn a person?" Of course, no one else had managed to make Cook curious either.
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Somehow, Samari managed to keep from asking Cook what he meant by 'way back when'. He didn't like the way that sounded, especially when it was about Earth. Even more because he knew that Earth was the planet that Thanatos was on. There was nothing 'way back when' about how they stored their foods... it was very much a 'this day and age' sort of thing. In the end, Samari wrote it off as Cook forgetting to say that on this part of Earth, people stored food like that way back when. It wasn't that hard to imagine, they did have ships that flew and all sorts of weird metal gadgets.
Samari understood the concept of keeping food cold, they did that in Thanatos too. Not with a 'refrigerator', but with blocks of ice and sawdust. They called them ice houses, maybe the 'refrigerator' operated on a similar concept. Or... not, Samari raised an eyebrow when Cook mentioned freeze-dried food. He didn't even know it was possible to take the water out of food without ruining it completely. It made him wonder if the food he just finished eating was freeze dried.
"Was this food freeze dried?" He put a hand against his empty bowl and tilted his head toward it briefly.
Vegetarian? That must have had something to do with not eating meat, from what Cook said. Samari wasn't quite sure if that applied to all of Thanatos. Those that were rich enough could eat all the imported meat they wanted, and the seafood was plentiful enough that everyone could afford to eat it at least once a week. He shook his head when Cook offered him the second bowl, he didn't feel quite as hungry as he did before and wanted to know whether or not the food was freeze dried before he had more. He wanted to see what food without any water tasted like.
"It helps keep the vampire population in check," Samari explained. "Helps keep people that don't want to be turned from being turned against their will and that keeps the living and other undead satisfied. As for how," Samari paused, pretending to think again. "It really depends on the vampire. I've never heard about a person being turned from being bitten. Be a little hard for the vampire to feed if they had to worry about their meal growing fangs and hunting humans once they were finished. They would have to kill anyone they didn't want to turn, or drink the blood of the recently dead - and from what I hear, a dead person's blood is terrible." Samari winced a little. A dead person's blood, or worse the remnants of an siege undead's blood, was like a bottle of sparkling champagne that was allowed to go flat, complete with clots and bits of dried crusts worked loose by the liquid blood moving.
Just thinking about it was enough to make him feel a little nauseous. Samari tried to contain his expression though. Couldn't have Cook thinking that his food made him feel sick.
-
"No, this wasn't freeze dried. This was what they call a 'protein' block. Basically, it's got the nutrients, but isn't anything in particular. I mix it with other stuff and it mostly takes the place of meat. The freeze-dried meats just don't seem right in a casserole like this." He explained, dropping back down on the bench where he'd been.
"Ah, that makes good sense. If everyone was running around drinking every one else's blood and turning vampires left and right, the world and universes would be overrun in short order. Still, I am curious how they went about turning people." He admitted. Here he was learning about what he'd thought was just made up stories. But then again, for some reason he trusted what this boy said was true.
Lights overhead blinked on and off while colored lights on the wall, near the intercom flashed in a sequence of colors. "Ah, well, I best get this food stowed quick. We'll be taking off shortly." He explained, rising yet again and quickly storing the left overs in what looked like a drawer of some kind. He checked the stoves and hit a couple buttons above them to make sure the power to them remained off before he motioned the kid up off the bench. "Come on, we'll get you strapped in."
-
Samari began eying the other bowl of food with more curiosity than hunger when Cook explained what it was. Just nutrients that took the place of meat. He was going to have to ask Cook how they were made. Flesh would be a lot more valuable if the nutrients could be taken out of it and the tissue left over to be forged or studied. He'd wait a little before asking, after eating some protein block when he wasn't completely famished. It had to be somewhat palatable if he was going to be associated with it.
Having explicit knowledge about turning would either give Samari up, or make it seem like he researched vampires or was otherwise fascinated by them. The last two were as possible as the first, but Samari didn't want to give anymore hints.
There was also the possibility that he was reading too much into this. Just knowing a little information about something didn't necessarily mean you were that something. Nothing wrong with a nice dose of paranoia though. Nothing was more gauche than leaving big obvious hints about a secret you'd rather keep. Samari shrugged. "I know theories, but I don't know anything that will cause a mortal being to become a vampire."
There was a human saying, something about being struck by lightning for telling a lie. Samari knew why it crossed his mind just now, but he was glad that it was just something to tell gullible people to put their foolish hearts at ease.
Speaking of foolish hearts, his own began beating harder when all the lights went crazy. He stared wide eyed at them, digging his hands into the bench and shrinking down slightly. This was, apparently, normal judging from Cook's reaction. That rational information didn't help Samari, especially being told that they were 'taking off'. That meant moving. Being moved by anything that wasn't another person always unsettled Samari a little...
A lot.
Samari's shoulders were trembling when Cook put the food away and turned his attention back to the bench. As much as he would have preferred to hide under the bench, Cook was the one familiar with this sort of travel. If he needed to be strapped in like a poor victim on a torture rack, then so be it. No use getting hurt while traveling in an over sized people carrier. Samari slowly detached his hands from the bench and stood, one hand immediately slapping out to rest on the nearest wall, which he followed as he walked over to Cook.
Feeling his heart throbbing again was definitely an odd feeling. It felt like his heart would jump out of his mouth if he tried to say anything.
-
Cook finished up with the kitchen, making sure everything was stowed and powered down before he turned to face the boy, but paused curiously and watched him a moment. "You scared?" He asked plainly. He didn't seem likely to poke fun, but he didn't beat around the bush much either. Simply ask straight forward and get the answer hopefully in a similar manner.
He put a hand on the boy's shoulder and started trying to gently steer him towards his own quarters, though it was decidedly awkward as Cook's stride was almost always uneven and jolting as he had to adjust his weight for every step, so half the time, his guiding was almost a push.
"It'll be fine. You just sit in a chair, and I'll strap you in, we'll go shooting off across space and arrive at our destination at some point. After we get up to speed though, we can move around if you want." He didn't sit still very well some days. Sitting and waiting to arrive annoyed him. He always had work to be done. Something needed de-greasing or repair or prep.
"Here" Cook said as they reached his room, which wasn't far from the kitchen. "Just have a seat."
-
There was no way Samari could tell Cook that he wasn't scared without looking like a fool. He was trembling, his hand on the wall like it was a life-line and his eyes wide. Samari imagined his irises looked like drops of blood floating in a pool of milk as he looked up at Cook and nodded. Opening his mouth to reply would probably get his teeth chattering.
That would just be pathetic.
Then again, the mortification would be enough to get him walking faster so he could get strapped in and be safe. That's how it played out the first time he traveled on a ship. He dug his heels in when the gangplank went down and started chattering soon after Jerik picked him up. Then Jerik made that dumb comment about using him to cut lumber and he wriggled his way free and marched up the gangplank.
Cook's hand on his shoulder beat being scooped up and carried like a bride. Even if it was a little jerky. Samari had no idea where Cook was going, so he tolerated it. The alternative was whatever would happen if he didn't get strapped in. Which just might be more humiliating than not walking onto a boat. At least it wasn't a long walk.
Samari grabbed onto the back of the closest chair he saw in Cook's room and eased himself on it with one hand grabbing the back. Once he was seated he hooked his ankles around the bottom legs and placed his other hand behind him on the back of the chair so Cook would have an easier time strapping him down. He looked up at Cook, still wide eyed.
-
"Ships are a little strange if you haven't been on them before" He admitted casually as he arranged the harness and began adjusting it for fit before snapping it in place and adjusting it some more. "You'll be fine. When we take off, you'll feel like you're being shoved down into your seat, that's normal. You may see some black spots, some people do, 'specially when they aren't used to ships. Occasionally people pass out, but you'll just wake up once we're up out of the atmosphere and be fine. Mostly, all you need to do, is just sit there." He said as he dropped into a seat across from him rather unceremoniously before strapping himself in. His harness was a little different, but then again, he did have a much thicker body and odd tentacles that appeared all over without consistency.
"Close your eyes and count backwards slowly from twenty, and try to breathe evenly." Cook suggested, leaning back in his chair, apparently at ease with the situation.
Engines started reving as power gathered to propel the ship into the atmosphere, G-forces baring down on the occupants of the ship as it struggled to escape the gravity of the planet before finally easing up as the ship hit space.
Cook seemed to be simply waiting for everything to be finished so they could get back to the things that had to be done, but he didn't seem scared or upset. "See? Generally, things go smoothly after that bit. Landing is the same sort of idea, but in reverse."
-
Samari watched Cook attach the harness, taking his hands off the back of the chair and kicking his feet in front of him. A chest harness? Samari poked one of the straps across his shoulder, listening to Cook explain about some of the effects.
Black spots in his eyes? Passing out? Samari set his jaw and decided he wasn't going to pass out or stare blankly ahead if he saw any black spots. It was bad enough that he was so nervous about the flying ship moving. He had to regain some dignity. So he nodded when Cook suggested he close his eyes and count.
It'd be like meditating. The ship would get out the atmosphere before he even realized what was happening. Samari closed his eyes, leaning his head back against the chair and took a deep breath.
Twenty...
Then the earthquake started. If the end of the world had a sound, Samari could imagine it being like the sound that accompanied the rumbling. Samari held tight to the straps of the harness and tried to maintain his breathing.
Nineteen... ...Eighteen... ...Seventeen... ...Sixteen...
His stomach felt like it was set free to ooze around his gut, then tripping and falling, and, begin unable to get up, lashing around helplessly. Now he was acutely aware of the food in it. Puking was quickly added into his list of things he didn't want to do on this trip.
Fifteen... ...Fourteen... ...Thirteen... ...Twelve...
How long was this going to take?
Eleven... ...Ten... ...Nine... ...Eight...
Now his stomach felt like it was floating. At least that would help it get back in it's proper place. Hopefully without letting out any ballast out.
Seven... ...Six... ...Five... Four...
Things were starting to feel normal again. Even the nausea was starting to fade away a bit.
Three... ...Two... ...One...
Samari took another deep breath and opened his eyes. There were a few black spots floating in front of his eyes. Either they were lingering or it was because he had his eyes closed so long. Samari let go of the harness and looked back at Cook. "I don't think I'm going to look forward to that," Samari admitted, his voice soft. "Is it safe now?"
-
Cook had been watching the boy, trying not to be too amused by the sight of a newbe on a ship. It had been a very long while since he'd been one. He scarcely even remembered it anymore. It had also been awhile since he'd seen a newbe on a ship, at least one as fresh as this kid. Most of them had at least been on a ship of some kind. They had to get around after all.
"Yeah, it's safe" Cook began unstrapping himself, occasionally shoving tenticles out of the way as they seemed determined to try to help him. He hoisted his heavy frame up out of the chair and made his way over to the kid. "Alright, hold still, I'll let you loose" He didn't really want to have to figure out how to reset the harness if the kid got himself worked up and ended up messing it up some how. A couple of clicks though and the harness came apart. "How you feeling?" He didn't care to clean up vomit, though it wouldn't have been the first time. There had been a couple guys on board at one point who never quite seemed to get used to the whole taking off and landing portions of the trip. As far as Cook remembered, they'd finally gotten out of the business.
-
The black spots were still there... They better not be permanent. Samari held his eyes open until the edges began to water, blinked and repeated. By the second time the hazy spots were gone. Samari would have breathed a sigh of relief if Cook wasn't close enough to hear it.
He nodded when Cook told him to stay still and followed it from the neck down, leaning his head sideways to watch Cook fuss with the straps. Those fasteners were interesting. He was going to need a pen and paper to start writing down all the interesting things Aedolis had. Then he'd need time to sit down and look at them all too - figure out what they were made of and how they operated.
Once he was free, Samari slumped back in the chair and looked up at Cook. For now he was in now hurry to go walking around. He didn't trust his knees to hold him up, and something in his gut was still slowly turning around. "Alive," he answered, trying not to raise his eyebrows or smirk. "Am I supposed to feel like my legs are made of ribbons and my stomach's come to life?"
Hearing him talk about it seemed to have attracted his stomach's attention, it pulsed, sending up a wave of discomfort. Samari tried, but failed, not to make a face. "Do you have any ginger?"
-
"Yeah, legs like ribbons and a stomach on a rampage are fairly normal at first" Cook admitted "And no, I don't have ginger, but I have stuff to settle your stomach. Sit here and I'll be back in a minute" He said, lumbering off towards one side of the room where he pushed a button and a small door opened out of the wall, revealing bottles of tablets. He picked up one of the bottles and shook two tablets into his hand before he left the room briefly and returned with a cup of water. He dropped the two tablets into the cup and they started fizzing. "Alright, drink on that awhile. It'll settle your stomach. It might even be derived from ginger originally, I don't know" By this point in time, they probably didn't have anything from a natural source, they had the chemical compounds that had been learned from a natural source and then improved-- or that was his understanding and assumption for the time being between what he had read and what he had heard.
Cook settled back down in his own chair. At least for the most part, 'sailing' wasn't generally too nausiating. Mostly, it just 'was'. It was part of the trip but nothing exciting or note worthy, not a lot of rocking or jolting as long as everything went as planned.
-
Flying was no fun. If he ever got back to Necromantia he was going to ask Oris if flying on his own made him feel funny after he landed. Probably not, at one point he was made to fly around. Hopefully it wasn't possible to get flying sickness like sea sickness. He was able to avoid being doubled over the side of the ship because he didn't technically have anything in his stomach to empty.
Samari could only hope whatever Cook had for an upset stomach would keep his calm until he was back on solid ground again. If he was lucky, he would never leave it again after that.
Who was he kidding. If he was lucky he wouldn't have been fighting in an alchemy lab in the first place. If he was really lucky he wouldn't have had a reason to go fight another vampire in an alchemist's lab.
Samari watched Cook while he moved around the room, to keep his eyes from rolling up into his skull, if anything. Watching the door he disappeared behind when he did, his head lolling to the side to rest on his shoulder. He managed to push himself up into something that looked like the basics of the proper way to sit in a chair when Cook came back with the glass.
The glass with bubbly liquid. Bubbly because of the little tablets. Samari took the glass and watched the liquid pop and sizzle before taking a little sip. A bubble popped on his upper lip and send a little drop into his nose. It wasn't that bad. Samari drank the rest slowly and slumped in the chair again.
"That was a-" Samari sat up and clapped a hand over his mouth, his eyes widening. Then his eyebrows rose and the hand came down, his mouth curled up in confusion. "Thought I was going to be urp" Samari looked mortified for a second, then relaxed, a little grin working across his face. "Pardon me." He sat quietly for a moment, waiting to see if anything else tried to escape. When the coast seemed clear he asked. "Do you have a hard time keeping children away from those tablets?"
-
Cook settled back against a button-free portion of the console, leaning lightly and allowing Samari a bit of space, which was for both of their benefits. No one likes to be crowded, and no one wants to risk being vomited on either.
He gave an odd sort of smile when Samari burped. It was almost as if the boy was not experienced in burping, which he found a little odd, though perhaps if whatever they ate at necromancia was specially engineered, burping was not a common practice, but somehow that seemed rather unlikely.
"Well, here we certainly don't. We don't have any children within several thousand miles in all likelihood." Cook stated. "But I suppose it's possible in a normal household they might, but I wouldn't know for sure. Haven't lived in a house with kids since I was one myself." He admitted, his little tentacles curling around various bits of the console in an absent fashion. "but I'm sure occasionally they get into them, if nothing else, to watch them fizz. It's definitely not to drink the stuff. There are carbonated beverages that taste much better than that medicine stuff, and those are probably what kids would rather get into." He considered something. "Did you have candy, or desserts where you came from? sweet things other than fruit?" Somehow, he was still curious. Generally, he couldn't care less about gleaning information. He did his job and that was good enough for him. Maybe it was the enormous mystery and urban legend surrounding the entire country. No one knew anything about it...except this boy, who had never seen fizzy tablets.
None of it really made sense, unless he was a time jumper. He couldn't really think of any other good reason, unless he had been frozen until just recently, but he didn't think cryogenics had gotten that advanced before Necromancia had been wiped out, but his knowledge in the history and advances of Cryogenics was not extensive, so it was entirely possible he had his time line wrong, but that made marginally more sense than time jumping. After all, there were very few ways to jump time, and none of them were good. It was too easy to screw things up that way.
"You need to lay down or anything? I can find you a berth if you want." Cook offered, his leg creaking as he shifted more of his weight to the console behind him. He at least knew that it wasn't going to break. His was reinforced. He didn't want to walk through his room, stumble, and catch himself on the console, only to have the entire thing come crashing down in a shower of electrical sparks. The captain would kill him, not to mention the owner. Over time, he'd reinforced most of the consoles. Falling against them was not an altogether uncommon occurrence.
-
Just a quick post to let you know that I'm still around.
I got devoured by work... I'll fill this up with the real post soon!
-
((*headdesk* So sorry for taking so long to respond here! I'll actually be going on vacation in a couple weeks, so I should be able to post a little more regularly.))
Samari raised an eyebrow when Cook said that children wouldn't drink the tablet water. it seemed odd, most children he knew wouldn't pass up the chance to drink something that would make them do something disgusting. Were they just kept in line better here. Or were they sneakier. The second possibility was horrifying...
Remembering different kinds of sweets available in Necromantia was a welcome diversion to an inevitable day-mare about sneaky kids. Samari drummed his fingers on the side of the glass and chewed his bottom lip, trying to think of some of the stuff Crowa used to eat. "I'm not that big a fan of sweet food," he half-lied. "So I'm not the best person to ask about dessert. Most Necromantian desserts use syrup, honey or berries. Children usually don't get anything more than a crumb or two though. It destroys their teeth after wrecking their parents' nerves." Of course, there were parents that over-indulged their brats with all the sweet food they could stomach. Which usually made them go berserk shortly after. Maybe it was the same here too. That sweets weren't intended to be wantonly devoured by children, but still happened to the annoyance of everyone that appreciated a moment of peace and quiet.
There was still a mouthful or so of the bubbly stuff left in the glass, which Samari swirled around before drinking. Sucking it down in two separate mouthfuls instead of one to avoid burping again and setting the glass down on an armrest. He put a hand up when Cook asked if he wanted to lie down and shook his head. "I should be alright."
After a few seconds Samari grinned. "You're pretty lucky, never living with children. I don't like them, but the smaller they are, the more they seem to like me." Samari shrugged. "Once, an associate of mine tricked me into watching his children for a few days. I'm not sure how any of us survived."
-
((Well, I'm glad you're back. I thought you'd poofed. :) ))
"Well, Children don't much belong on ships" Cook said lightly "So I haven't had to bother with them for more than a few days at a time, if that. I have a sister who has children. Met them a time or two. Mostly well behaved, but children in general have a knack for getting into stuff." He looked up to the boy again. "No dental care out there?" that was odd, considering how far dentistry had come over the years, to have a place that wouldn't give children sweets due to teeth rotting away was interesting indeed.
The ship shuddered a little and Cook examined the console a moment before picking up a radio "Thomas, you're too close."
The radio crackled in response. "How'd you know it was me?"
"It's always you. Take care of it." Cook retorted, putting the radio aside. "There are gravity fields around some planets, get too close and gravity is trying to pull the ship into the planet, and the ship is trying to continue forward." He explained to Samari. "Usually nothing to worry about. Thomas just has a knack for clipping the gravity fields. He's our navigator." He didn't usually end up driving either. He navigated while the pilot, or the captain drove.
"Anyway, your babysitting sounds like quite an adventure" Cook admitted. "Were they horrible? Or were you just not particularly equipped to take care of children, given you already didn't like them and all?"
-
Dental? Samari tilted his head, trying to figure out what that word meant. It was some sort of care and possibly related to chil-
When he thought about it afterward, the rocking that passed through the ship wasn't that terrible. It was unexpected. While it was happening Samari slid upright in his seat and gripped the sides, glancing around for where the harness was stored. It was over before Samari could find them, which made him feel a bit embarrassed for overreacting. Cook's relative ease could only mean that sort of thing happened regularly and wasn't anything to worry about.
Or, from listening to Cook talk through a box that had been on the thing he was sitting on, it happened whenever Thomas, the superstitious navigator, was steering. He wondered if the rocking of this air ship was anything like the rocking a sea ship did on the water. That's probably what Cook meant when he was explaining about gravity fields. Oceans had their own special phenomena, why would the sky be any different?
Samari grinned when Cook asked about the worst favor ever. He slumped back in his seat and put the back of his hand against his forehead, sighing dramatically. "I was the worst person to watch them, and they were the worst children for me to take in. They were twins, completely doted on by their father. The mother died in labor, so my associate thinks these children are going to grow up to be mighty necromancers. Somehow he also gets it into his head to raise them himself instead of hiring someone to take care of them, because they're too good to associate with 'lesser people' or some nonsense. The twins, there was one boy and one girl, completely ignore my apprentice and housekeeper. The boy is getting into everything - and my house is not the safest place for curious people, insisting that he's not going to get hurt because his father always lets him investigate anything. The girl spends the first day asking me where my husband is and once she realizes I'm the master of the house she attaches herself to my leg and stays there." Samari rolled his eyes. "Five minutes couldn't pass without them needing something. They didn't like the food my housekeeper prepared and refused to sleep in my guest room. If I could have, I would have sent them back to their father black and blue."
Samari eased a little further up the chair. "I might have had more than their father cross with me if I hit them though. Most people liked the twins, probably because they never had to take care of them. Or maybe their staff was better prepared to handle them."
-
"It's amazing how well people like children before they really meet them" Cook admitted, glancing at the dials again, but seeming apparently satisfied with them as he settled back to chatting with Samari. "I've never taken care of children for more than maybe a few hours at a time. Not too many people even trust me to watch them that long, but that's probably in my favor. I don't have a lot of patience with most people, and I'm not used to dealing with children-- and I don't think about things like them getting into fizzy medicine, or the like, so if they were at my house, they'd probably be half drowned in mechanical fluids and choking on bolts and spare parts for my leg." He laughed. The idea of him caring for children was rather absurd, though they would have a darn time sneaking past him. His tentacles seemed to have minds of their own.
"You feeling better yet?" Cook asked. The boy didn't look like he was going to puke at least, but you never could tell with people. He glanced at the time and went and retrieved something else from the little medicine cabinet, mixing it up and returning to the console to drink it. There was more to having a mechanical leg that responded to your own nerves than just tying it on. At least he'd had it long enough, if he missed a dose of his meds it wasn't such a big deal. There were definitely times when getting the medicine was difficult, and then others when having it even on board was more trouble than Cook really cared to bother with.
"You mentioned you had an apprentice." Cook pointed out "What did you teach?" This boy didn't look like someone Cook would generally think of as a master of a trade, but then again, Cook hadn't gotten past the point of feeling that Samari was a boy, and not a man, but Cook's perspective was tainted by apparent age differences. He was heading for old by his species standard, while Samari seemed quite young-- though perhaps that was because the poor man was scared and vulnerable.
-
Cook's statement about people liking children before meeting them made Samari laugh out loud. He sat up a little straighter and propped one foot on his knee. No one back in Thanatos would have called him patient or good with children, but most of his associates weren't patient with living (or unliving) creatures and most of the parents among them didn't have anything to do with raising their children. Having an apprentice was probably what damned him to being thought of as a babysitter in the first place. Never mind that there was a difference between your own apprentice and another person's darling brat.
There didn't seem to be much reason to seasickness on a water going ship, the strongest would spend the trip doubled over the rail, while the person who was always sick would be relatively comfortable. If airsickness was any way similar there was no reason to assume that he was clear just yet. It could be the fizzy medicine that was keeping him from being doubled over the... whatever he'd be doubled over on this air-ship. For the time being, he was good, so he nodded. "I think I'll be alright," he added - a bit of wishful thinking, but it couldn't hurt.
Samari wondered if Cook needed to get medicine to help him combat airsickness. If this was the time it would usually show up on an air-ship. This medicine didn't sound like it was fizzing though, and Cook stirred it. The fizzy medicine just dissolved on its own. He was about to ask about it when Cook asked what he taught, and Samari saw opportunity knocking. They had to know what he was good at so he could work on this ship.
"With my apprentice - I taught just about everything: How to read, how to write, how to clean, to cook, to dress properly, to speak properly. He was a quite a challenge, that Crowa." Samari paused, tilting his head to the side slightly and watching Cook's expression before continuing. "I was supposed to teach him Necromancy, but he didn't have the knack for it. So I taught him enough basic alchemy to get into a guild in Ketra."
Where, Samari thought afterward, he's lying bloodless in a gutter somewhere with that shrew of his and the child... unless Villi was teleported somewhere too. Samari exhaled through his nose, a puff that came out a little louder than he intended.
-
Cook grinned and nodded, glad to have him doing alright for he time being "If you start feeling queasy again, let me know, I'll get you another dose" He assured, leaning back as best he could.
Cook listened intently, drinking down the rather thick medicine diligently, but without enjoyment. He was used to it by now, so there was no gagging, or choking or making faces, but he still didn't consider it to be pleasant under reasonable circumstances.
"Does a person have to be born with some skill to become skilled in Necromancy, or is it something that can be learned?" Making the dead undead was a taboo in most cultures he'd come across, so it was fascinating in a morbid and forbidden way. He had questions about alchemy also, but they were sure to come later, as long as they didn't get to dropping Samari off before then.
Most of his knowledge was just what he'd picked up along the way, and stories shared between sailors. He could read and write, but he hadn't taken any real interest in mechanics until he decided dragging himself back to the hospital to be refit any time his bits broke was going to get very old, very quickly. To his surprise, he'd discovered he was actually pretty good at them when he wanted to be.
"I suppose eventually we'll have to find you someplace to sleep" Cook said, mostly thinking aloud. "Unless you don't need so much sleep" There were those species also, the ones that slept an hour or two when they felt like it and not much more.
-
The second Samari thought he could feel his head spin he was going to ask Cook for more of that medicine. There were no rails he could double over to air out his insides and vomit was the only thing that could ruin his clothing any more. He had no desire to clean vomit off the floor if he couldn't get to whatever people got sick in on an air-ship either.
Samari fussed with the tear at his knee, rubbing nails that couldn't quite be considered claws anymore over the frayed ends of the cloth. "It's a little of both. A person needs to have a little spark, I've heard it called, in order to do any type of magic. In most, it's the potential to do magic. The same as a person having the potential to be a good swordsman or good baker. Crowa had the spark, but it wasn't enough to be any good, at least at Necromancy. I'm not good enough at other types of magic to teach them.
"Alchemy doesn't need anything other than a willingness to learn. Either that was good enough for him or he believed me when I said there were worse masters to apprentice under."
That seemed a lot more clever in his head. Oh well, he was sure Cook knew someone that went through a similar experience. If cooks took apprentices then maybe he had one himself.
Samari looked up and blinked when Cook mentioned finding him a place to sleep. Was it about that time? What time was it anyway? He slumped a little further in the chair and grinned. "I've tried sleeping little once, it didn't work out well." Of course that was back when he would start feeling groggy as soon as the sun came up. There was no need to stop getting that much sleep. With all this madness going on, he needed to spend at least five undisturbed hours curled up in a ball on whatever there was to sleep on.
-
Cook nodded "Makes sense. People've got skills of all sorts" He reasoned. "Someone who's good at Machines might not be any good at Navigating." He shrugged. "Course, most people don't think of cooks as mechanics, but everybody's got their skills."
He set the cup aside, pressing his tongue against the roof of his mouth to try to force the taste away a little faster. "No, it's not that time just yet, but I figure, once we find you a suitable place, if you get tired, you can just make your way there, and I won't have to worry about showing you where it is if you need to fall into bed around dinner time." He was a cook after all. If he didn't have dinner ready in a timely fashion, the crew got put out with him, and while that generally didn't bother him, he did like to do his job well when he was able. "What kind of place do you need to sleep?" He'd run across some odd needs. There was the one who needed it completely dark, there was one who needed light, one who had to have a hard mattress, one who needed a soft one, the hammock guy, the floor guy, the one who needed one high up. The list went on and on. He himself slept anywhere the opportunity arose, but he was perhaps a special case. His tentacles replaced the need to have a specialized bed everywhere he went, though his berth was indeed specialized to support all of his mechanical parts and ensure his bulk was supported evenly and allowed him the best night of sleep. Most of the berths in the ship were narrow, taking up as little space as possible, which meant if he was going to sleep in them, he was perched precariously on his side. After falling off once when the ship hit a pocket of rough space in the middle of the night, Cook had remodeled his room, and the owner of the ship had eventually allowed him to order a bed that suited his needs, and with Cook in a better mood, the ship's crew was also happier in general.
"You don't sleep much then, I take it?" He enjoyed his sleep, but being on a ship, he generally got a few hours a night and then catnaps here and there between meals when things were going smoothly. Otherwise, he was on the go, getting things done, cleaning, scouring, preparing and repairing and occasionally building. He loved when they got to pick up a load of scrap. It made his life so much easier when he had to rebuild things, whether it was his kitchen or his limbs.
-
That made sense. Better to find a spot now, when nothing seemed to be happening, then later on when something might get in the way.
The last time Samari was on a ship, he slept on what he called a shelf and the sailors called a bunk. It was narrow and had nothing to protect its occupant from any sort of motion. Which, on a ship, was constant. If one wasn't being rattled around the three solid sides of the shelf, one was falling over the edge and onto the floor. Samari never figured out how the sailors managed to stay in them. It probably came with the package when a person decided to become a sailor. Sleeping on a shelf, walking on a rocking surface, not getting sick, living off leather for... something, getting to live a half dozen places in a year or some other nonsense.
The beds on the air-ship sounded much better after Cook asked if there was anything he'd need. That wasn't an option on a normal ship. Samari raised his eyebrows, grinning a little. "All I need is peace and quiet. If you have any pillows collecting dust, I wouldn't mind putting them to good use."
Then came the bit about him not sleeping much. Samari blinked and tilted his head to the side. "I don't need to sleep much, but I like to sleep, whenever I can."
Samari leaned forward in the chair and gave the floor a suspicious look. "This ship doesn't move around too much does it? I don't have... well... on a water ship they call them sea legs. I don't have them. If I'm not crawling, I'm stumbling around like a drunkard."
-
"I think I can find you a pillow" Cook said with a bit of a crooked grin. "We usually keep a few around this place." They came in handy when an injury occurred and the wounded needed to be padded. Nothing worse than being beat all to hell and then being rattled around a ship.
"Like me then. I enjoy my sleep, but don't get to indulge much, but I get along fine with a few hours" Being on a ship meant being able to roll with the punches. Sometimes things came up and the crew couldn't sleep for well over 24 hours. People usually got cranky and fights were more likely to break out, but thankfully, it didn't happen often, and crew taking shifts were generally able to overcome most difficulties they encountered.
"Ah, sea legs. Well, generally, it's not too bad as long as we aren't taking off, landing or doing a hyper jump-- that's when we all strap into the chairs" He explained "Once in awhile, we hit rough patches. There's stuff floating around in space, and sometimes it gets in our way and makes our path a little bumpy, but there's rarely any rocking." He shrugged "Don't feel too bad though. I can't stand on a ship in the water either." His leg was made for walking and standing, not swaying from side to side all the time. It had been like taking a piece of thin metal and bending it back and forth repeatedly. He'd been furious, but not being able to walk around properly put him in a foul mood very quickly.
"Come on, we'll give it a try. If you can't do it, I'll find a way to get you into your room without making you crawl there." Cook assured, rising from his perch against the console and offering his 'real' hand to Samari. No need to accidentally pinch any of his fingers or anything.
-
If Samari was with Cook when he found the pillows, he could always sneak back there later and grab more if his sleeping space wasn't cozy enough. Or if these beds were the same sort of shelves that a normal ship had. He'd need some padding to fall into now that falling was more than an embarrassment.
Samari nodded. "I've been told I'm not pleasant to be around when I haven't been sleeping well," he shrugged a shoulder. "Of course, I wasn't very civil with a couple of them to begin with so I'm not sure how honest a fact that is."
If Cook couldn't stand on a normal ship and was able to make his way around an air ship without a problem, he shouldn't have too much difficulty. Of course, this would be his first time walking around on an air ship. It couldn't be that hard, not if another person that couldn't walk on a normal ship could do it. The chair was right here if he felt shaky anyway.
Cook was offering his hand too. There was no way he could fail at this. Samari took Cook's hand and stood up. The light, wobbly feeling in his knees had to be shot nerves. All he had to do was stand a while and they would straighten themselves out. Samari stood in front of the chair for a few seconds, his other hand held out for balance. Once he was sure his knees were going to behave, Samari took one step. Followed shortly after by another step. Then another and one more until he was standing near Cook. After the second successful step, he put his free hand back at his side.
"You know," he said. "I think I might have been fussing for no reason."
-
Cook watched him curiously. It seemed odd for someone to be so worried about falling on a ship, but then again, if they'd been on the water and made a complete fool of themselves, Cook understood the need to avoid repeating the event. "This way" Cook invited, heading in his lumbering fashion out through the kitchen and to the hallway. Down the hallway he went, making sure Samari was doing alright still and adjusting his speed accordingly. He stopped at the bottom of a ladder that lead to an upper deck.
"You any good with ladders?" He hated them and rarely was found on the upper deck unless he had to be there for some reason. There wasn't usually any reason for him to leave the lower deck anyway. The engine compartment, his quarters, the hold and the galley were all perfectly accessible to him without climbing up the blasted ladder.
His mechanical foot did not have sensors that gave him enough sensation to feel the rungs under his boot, and it made him quite likely to fall. Then his tentacles got nervous and latched on and essentially wove him into the ladder and railings. It had been unpleasant and quite humiliating for him to be rescued off a ladder that was really not that tall.
"At the top of the landing there is a door on the left, in it is the bedding." It would definitely be easier if Samari could do it himself, otherwise he had to actually get someone to respond to him and leave what they were doing to help him out, but, given the boy was afraid to walk, Cook wasn't holding his breath by any means.
-
The first two steps, when he wasn't sure if he was going to stay on his feet, were the hardest. Now he was sure he was going to stay upright, so Samari didn't have any problem walking after Cook. There was the threat of rough patches though, which made him reluctant to let go of Cook's hand.
The ladder, a normal familiar ladder even if it was made of metal, surprised Samari. All the strange things he saw or heard about since coming to Aedolis made him think they had their own way of getting up to another level of their enormous buildings, which would be copied to the ships because they were used to it. Or maybe ladders were more useful than anything they had in those big buildings and were going to be a part of any ship, whether it was normal or flew.
Or maybe they were only on ships. Why else would he ask if he was good with them? Then again...
"I haven't fallen off one yet," he replied, letting go of Cook's hand and scurried up the ladder, putting his hands against the wall once he was on the next floor.
A door on the left, Samari inched along pawing the wall in case he missed the door, to feel for the frame. Lucky, it stood out enough for him to see it. Once he opened it Samari reached for the closest thing to investigate. It was blue and folded into a square, it was also slicker and shinier than any bedding he'd ever seen. It gave when he pushed a finger into it so there was some chance that it was comfortable. After giving the blue square a good poking, Samari looked back up and noticed that everything in this closet was shiny and square.
Did he need to take a stack of these things and lay them flat on the berth? Samari peered over the ladder and held up the blue square. "How many of these things do I need?"
-
"I've had a couple mishaps with ladders, and try to avoid repeating them as much as possible" Cook admitted. There were all sorts of ways to get around in the cities, on a ship though, the mechanics to operate an elevator or anything of that sort just wasn't space efficient when a ladder served the same purpose and was much simpler. Besides, who wanted to risk being trapped in a lift if there was a power failure?
"I'd grab at least two of them, but if you need more to make yourself comfortable, you're welcome to as many as you like" He assured, leaning against the base of the ladder. It was all securely welded in place, so there was no risk of it simply tipping over.
"You may also want to grab a blanket or two. Some of the crew finds it a little chilly in the bunks" He was not particularly prone to being cold, but his heavier body style and the fact that two of his limbs were not expelling body heat with no blood pumping through them, which reduced the distance his heart had to pump blood also.
"There should also be shirts on a shelf to your right. You're welcome to grab one of them if you want something else to sleep in-- something fresh" and cleaner. He hated having a bed full of grit after being too tired the night before to go through his nightly cleaning rituals.
There were also spare mattresses stuffed all the way in the back, hidden by the pillows, but they were generally not used unless something happened to one of the existing ones while they were on a job. "You can toss them down if you like, so you don't have to carry them down the ladder" Cook suggested. "Don't want you falling off." They might accuse him of having a ladder jinx or something. He'd certainly had enough of them before he decided he really didn't need anything on the second floor badly enough to make him climb a ladder on a regular basis.
-
Two or more, Samari liked that option and turned back to the room with a grin, trying to work out how many of the little squares would make a comfortable bed. Since he didn't know what the 'bunks' looked like he was going to have to guess and make do with whatever he had. Until he was sure he could sneak back to the closet and get more.
Samari pulled the blue square up into his chest and squeezed while he looked and thought. Until he felt the edges of one hand's nails catch and tear on the slick outside bit. Odd, it reminded him of the flimsy wooden crates he saw when he first came around. Samari investigated the tear, pulling at one of the edges and gasping at the thin, clear... stuff that made up the shiny cover. The insides didn't start flowing out while he rent the cover, even when he gave the square another squeeze. When he slid a hand through the hole, the softness of the inside surprised him.
Skin. That was what the cover reminded him of, it's thinness and how easily it peeled away with the touch of something sharp. Later on he could experiment with how the fake-skin could be manipulated. Samari began poking the rest of the squares with the back of one knuckle, eventually finding some that were fluffier. Along with the torn blue square, he took two of the fluffy squares (which didn't look folded) and stacked them while he investigated the shirts. He unfolded and refolded them until he found one that was billowy enough to sleep in comfortably and set it down on the stack of squares. That, he picked up and carried to the ladder.
When he was sure he wouldn't drop the stack on Cook's head, he dropped it over the edge of the ladder. For a brief second he wondered if he could jump off after it, then scurried down the ladder. "If you've got any pants lying around I might need them in the morning," he picked at his torn and bloody pantleg. "These are shameful."
-
Cook watched Samari curiously, his mechanical eye twitching as it focused on the situation, wondering what he was up to in there. "I'll find you something to wear. If all else fails, I can get you a tunic" He assured. It didn't work well for him, due to the mechanical parts getting caught in it,but other people, with normal limbs seemed to work just fine with it, for the most part.
"Alright, I'll put you in the spare bunk off the kitchen" He said. The rest of the crew seemed to be leery of sleeping so near to cook, but then again, Cook was up early in the morning, making breakfast, and was notoriously crabby when people came drooling through his kitchen, half asleep and getting in his way.
He picked up most of the blankets and pillows and headed back the way they had come, leading the way through the kitchen and to a door that looked more like it would be a utility room rather than a bedroom, but when he opened it, it revealed an organized room, that while not entirely empty, was not overcrowded and the bunk was still undisturbed. It looked rather like a large shelf with a mattress resting in a recess of the shelf to prevent it from sliding off. "You're welcome to sleep in here, make yourself comfortable. I'm up early, but you don't have to be, just don't be alarmed if you hear me banging around out here. I have to make meals at random times throughout the day." He explained easily, setting his armload of things down on the bed.
-
A tunic was fine too. Samari would have found some way to wear a curtain if Cook offered him one, it'd be a step up. Add a little water and a comb and he'd have just about everything he'd need to stay halfway presentable.
Samari picked up everything Cook left behind and followed just behind him. Being close to the kitchen didn't bother him. Kitchens and the areas around them were usually kept clean and the kitchen should be close to other things the crew might need, the washroom for one. That was something Samari wasn't looking forward to again.
He shouldn't have been surprised that the bunk was another shelf. If it worked for a normal ship it should work for an air ship. Whoever designed this shelf had the good sense to set the bed a little lower than the edge of the shelf. That, along with the air ship's smoothness, should keep him from waking up on the floor. Samari paced around the room once he had a good look at the bed, taking note of what was where in case he needed to go somewhere in the middle of the night.
"It shouldn't bother me after hearing what it sounds like. This isn't a place where people can just walk into any room they like is it? I can handle anything taking place outside a room I'm sleeping in, but I've never had any luck sleeping when anyone around me is awake."
-
"I would be the only one coming in here if I ran out of something that I'd stored." He gestured towards the boxes slightly "But I just replenished yesterday, so I doubt I'll be poking around in here and disturbing you unless something quite out of the ordinary happens." Cook said, glancing around the room himself to double check his list of things in the room, and make sure the kitchen supply was indeed full as well. He didn't want to have to come wake the poor boy up. No one liked people poking around your room while you were trying to sleep in it.
"The crew doesn't spend much time in the kitchen, unless they are assigned to me, and unless given orders, they generally don't go into any of the rooms or closets, other than their own." And that was usually only when it was time to sleep, or they had to put their laundry away.
"I'll be just in the other room if you need anything" Cook assured. He was feeling unusually generous in his attempt to make sure Samari had what he needed to be comfortable. Perhaps it was simply the poor boy looked so lost and alone, like he desperately needed a dose of kindness. Or maybe Cook had a soft spot and it was simply the crew that never got to see it.
"Oh,and when you're ready, I'll show you how to get water, in case you get thirsty." Cook said, feeling a little slow for having not thought of it before.
-
Samari could live with that. It shouldn't take Cook too long to get supplies when he came in. He had a hazy idea of how long it took him to fall asleep after being awakened and an even hazier one of how long he'd need to stay awake before he wasn't going to go back to sleep. Those were just a few things he was going to have to learn over again, unless he was still going to sleep like the dead.
He circled the room again, digging a nail into the shiny part of a square he was carrying and trying to figure out what he was going to do with them. Then Cook offered to show him where the drinking water was. Habit kicked in, which nearly had him thanking Cook and making a mental note to ask later so he wouldn't get suspicious about why he wasn't drinking water. He actually needed to know where the drinking water was. Better now than at some late hour when Cook was already asleep.
"If you don't mind," Samari set the squares he was holding down and walked around them. "Could you show me now? That way I won't need to bother you later." Then, just to make sure he added. "Do you have any bathing water on this ship?"
-
Cook nodded. "You can put the pillows down on the bed there." Cook suggested before turning to show him the water spout in the kitchen. "Yes, we have bathing water, though it's used sparingly since we never really know when we're going to return to port" He admitted.
"Drinking water is fairly simple" He assured, motioning him over so he could see. "Just get your container" He opened a cabinet to show where they were. "Hold it under the spout, like this, and push this button here. See the little lines? that's supposed to be a picture of water coming out, I guess." The glass began filling. "Then, when you have the amount you want, push this other button, it'll shut off." Cook shrugged "Fairly simple. Just make sure you remember to turn it off before you walk away." After all, they needed water.
"As for bathing, we don't usually have a full bath or shower. I think sponge bath is the term most of them use. Basically, a wet cloth and some soap. We have a limited supply of water, so we try to conserve it as much as possible." He shifted to get moving again, his leg giving a squeak. "And that, is this spout over here" He said, showing him a spout that was much closer to the floor over a drain of sorts. "Same thing as the other spout though. Push the button with the water lines for on, and the other one for off. Buckets are under the sink, towels and wash cloths are....well, they're in lots of places, but there should be some in your room on the second shelf by the door." Those were usually the ones Cook used. The other crewmen generally had their own supply near their rooms.
-
Eventually the little squares, pillows Cook kept calling them, were going to end up on the bed anyway; so Samari picked them up and began tossing them onto the shelf-bed. Once that was through he bounded after Cook.
He expected the water to be stored in it's own room, stacked high and secure with a little tap in the barrel the crew was using to drink from. What Cook showed him was a tap, but he couldn't see it going into anything but the wall. Samari raised an eyebrow. It was soon joined by the other and his jaw fell open when Cook pressed the little decoration called button, which did look a bit like a button on a coat, and water started flowing out of the tap. Pressing the other one made it stop.
Fairly simple. Samari thought it was fairly amazing. He was tempted to spend some time hovering over the tap, pressing the buttons until he was tired of looking at water. Which, if it wasn't coming from nowhere wouldn't have been too long. The water wasn't for playing with though... unless they could suck it out of the rainclouds. Then again, the sailors couldn't just collect rain in pans, so getting it from the clouds might not work either.
Hearing about sponges surprised him nearly as much as all the other strange things he'd seen. Sponges weren't strange and new though, they were expensive little bathing things that were the dried bodies of some sea animal. They were good for holding water and soap and Samari was just a little disappointed that the name didn't imply that the crew used a sponge when they wiped themselves down. Water for cleaning seemed the same as water for drinking, only it went into a bigger bucket.
"Where does the water come from? I don't see any barrels or anything else it can be stored in." Samari couldn't resist asking the question. If he didn't ask, he would have been trying to find the location, and that wouldn't lead anywhere good.
-
"The water is stored in tanks in the interior of the ship-- kind of like a giant barrel, made out of metal instead of wood, then pipes run from the tank, to the taps." Cook explained with a shrug. "How did you get water back home?" His question had made Cook curious. After all, if he'd never seen an indoor tap, that was adding another support to Cook's theory that Samari was out of his time, not just off his planet-- but then there was also always the possibility of Samari's planet just not being as advanced in some things as other planets were.
Not every planet could be good at the same things. One worked death magic, while no other planet would touch it, another was bent on universe domination and having total control over their citizens. Everyplace was different, and Cook felt that was probably a good thing-- as long as you could avoid angering the natives when planet hopping. Getting picked up by law enforcement on any planet put a cramp in the mission, whatever the mission may have been.
"I should probably show you the toilet" Cook said a he registered Samari's complete lack of knowledge connected to modern indoor plumbing. He didn't really want to have to fix or clean anything due to a misunderstanding of how it really worked, and poor Samari just trying to figure it out on his own. "What sort of toilet did you have back home?" He wanted an idea of just how unfamiliar Samari might be with the concept so to hopefully avoid making him feel like he was being treated as if he didn't know anything at all.
-
"The water doesn't start tasting like metal does it?" Samari looked back at the tap and then the glass of water Cook filled. Water in a tin cup would start tasting like the cup if it was left in there long enough. Whether or not the water tasted like metal, it was a good system. Once you filled up the tanks, you didn't need to go to them whenever you needed water for anything, just pressed the button and got whatever amount of water was needed. Maybe if they lined the inside of the tank with clay it would do something about the water picking up a metallic taste.
Samari perked up a little when Cook mentioned the toilet. That was something he was going to need. He was a little surprised they had space on the airship to devote to one. Maybe people in this city took more care in their appearance than most sailors back in Thanatos did. "Mine was a little extravagant, but I've always been a little fussy about my appearance. I had the basics: a brush, a comb, a mirror, a basin and a pitcher to clean my hands and face. Then I had various potions for the hair and skin and a toothbrush, I never liked having... food on my teeth. I had a little brazier too, in case anything needed to be warmed up."
-
"No, the water usually doesn't end up tasting like metal. I think it's lined with something to protect it from rusting and leaking and all that. I was on a ship once where the water did taste like metal...but that ship was in such a decrepit state, I got off the first stop I could. It rattled and smoked and bits were falling off. I figured they'd lost more than half of their bolts---those are bits like the thing you helped put back in my leg to hold it together-- and without the bolts one of the wings were bound to go flying off some time if we attempted reentry into any atmosphere." Cook shook his head. "They dropped me off at a space station, and I learned to inspect a ship before I agreed to sign on as crew." The captain had been decent enough...but apparently with no pride in his ship, which irked Cook.
"Well, most of that sort of thing, the grooming and all, you'll have to do in your room. We have a lot more crew than we do toilets, so mostly, they take care of their business, wash their hands and move on, so other people can use it also. I'll find a mirror to hang on the wall in your room along with a comb and a toothbrush. You can use the bucket as your basin. If you need a razor for shaving, I can find you that as well. Potions, unless you mean something like lotion, or aftershave, you're on your own. We don't have any potions on the ship."
"There's one down by the men's sleeping quarters." Cook said, heading for the hall again. "They all share it, so try not to be in there longer than you need to be, but don't be shy about using it. They've all needed it, and most of them have managed to drink themselves sick at one time or another and have had to spend a good portion of their day in there, so none of them can begrudge you needing to use it." Cook assured. He occasionally might swig a drink or two, but normally, he avoided it. He had to cook meals and if he was hung over and throwing up, he couldn't do his job-- plus, in his opinion, it was never a good idea to mix alcohol and medicine. Before he'd needed to be repaired with bio mechanics, he'd drank right along with the best of them, getting drunk on leave and such, but he'd always taken his job very seriously. People needed to eat, and it was his job to feed them.
-
Samari wasn't sure which visual was worse. A normal ship breaking down in the middle of the ocean or an air-ship losing a wing while it was practically on top of the sky. Thankfully this ship didn't seem like it would do that, he took Cook's word that he wouldn't have been on there if it might. Samari pushed the thought out of his head before it got a chance to cling there and replay itself every time the air-ship leaned too far to one side or made some strange air-ship noise.
The confusion certainly helped. Samari stopped and blinked, trying to figure out why they had a toilet but didn't do anything in it. Was it just for show? Just to hold items they would need to tend to their hygiene?
Wait. Samari leaned against a wall and tried to remember something that was dancing around on the tip of his head like a mute messenger without anything to write with. He was forgetting something, that much he knew. It didn't help that he could only remember that he forgot it. So pushed himself off the wall and began trotting after Cook, listening to what he was saying about this toilet and trying to add that in with what he was forgetting.
It was mentioning the drink that did it. Samari put his hand against his head and groaned softly. "I forgot toilet had another meaning," Samari ran the hand up into his hair and laughed. A few short 'heh's. "It's been a strange day... my head's not right." He ran his hand back down his face and let it flop back down at his side. "I won't need a razor and I can make do with just a mirror, comb and toothbrush."
He walked in silence for a little while, looking at his fingernails and wondering why he didn't ask for a file and clipper when he had the chance. It would have to wait until later. "Maybe once we get close enough to Thanatos I'll have a few drinks myself. I'll need to be a little drunk so I can explain everything that's happened so far."
-
Cook glanced back at Samari. He certainly was a strange case. "I suppose it does" Cook said, though he'd never had anyone else get confused about it yet. "On the planets, lots of folks have a bathroom/restroom/washroom or whatever they call it to pretty up the fact that it's a toilet, and they do all their grooming and hygiene in there. It's a common practice, but not so much on ships. There just isn't the space." He admitted
"What was it called back home?" Most people's first thought was not hygiene practices, particularly not while they were zooming around in the air for hours at a time.
"I am very curious about your strange day, and hearing everything that happened would be fascinating." There really wasn't supposed to be alcohol on board other than for medical purposes, and for the most part, they followed that rule. After all, a drunk crew would be of no use to anyone, but, there was always the off chance you were going to die, so most of the crew had a secret stash that they didn't tap into regularly. "I might be able to hunt something down for you...what's your drink of choice?"
-
Samari raised an eyebrow, almost forgetting again that Cook was talking about the other meaning of toilet. He could see why they would want to have another, lighter name to distinguish them. Not that people should talk about what they were doing in either room. That was personal and not the sort of thing to broadcast. Though, getting directions to the one that would help most was practical. If the host didn't set up a toilet for basic hygiene in his guest rooms.
"We call it a chamber pot and most houses are designed so it is in the same area, so there's no need to ask about it."
Where to start about his day? Unless he was careful he was going to end up giving away that when he got up this evening he didn't have a pulse. As tempting as it was to start drinking, the booze might loosen his tongue just enough to let that little detail slip. He could always get the basic details out of the way while they were scavenging for some. "I usually drink wine, but now I'll take anything you have. Just let me know if its strong, the last thing I need is to get sloppy drunk."
Samari made a show of looking at his nails again, letting a few seconds trickle past and then spoke again. "I can start now, just follow you around while you look. Then you can decide if you need anything to help swallow it." He cleared his throat, glanced up at Cook and began. "I knew someone back on Thanatos. A very annoying man, let's leave it at that. That annoyance was between us for the longest time. Years. Earlier this year this very annoying man got an advantage that made him bolder and he decided to draw others into our little game."
-
Chamber Pot. Cook suspected he might have to give lessons on how to operate most of the equipment in the ship. The poor boy had been fascinated by tap buttons for goodness sakes. More and more evidence had Cook thinking he'd somehow come from a different time-- though again, there was still the possibility it was simply a less advanced planet in that particular area, but considering Samari had asked for his home planet by it's former name, it seemed the less likely possibility.
"Ah. Wine I think I do have" Cook admitted, poking around his cupboards and under the counters until he came to a cupboard that seemed mostly empty. He reached in with his mechanical arm and there was a bit of a whirring noise before he switched hands and pulled out a couple bottles of wine. He offered them to Samari before reaching back under and 'whirring' again. He didn't drink wine often, but he cooked with it, and kept it stashed for the off chance that while they were in port, he wanted a drink. He wasn't so fond of the night clubs anymore.
A guy you didn't get along with. That was often the start to a lot of not-so-happy stories. "Had the two of you actually had a fight? or did you just never get along?" If they just never got along, it seemed horribly unsportsmanlike to pull in other people. It was unsportsmanlike in a fight too, but didn't come across as quite so petty in Cook's mind.
-
Samari took both bottles of wine, tilting one to read the label. Must be nice wine if they had a printing press to make the labels, or could commission a calligrapher to make such neat labels. He set one on the counter and looked at the other, wondering if he should open it now and start drinking now that the beginning of the story was set up, or wait.
Wait. He had to keep control.
"There was no violence between us until today. He threatened my former apprentice, his wife and his child, not to hurt me... just to see if he could force me into... making a decision," Samari drummed his fingers against the bottle of wine. "That was when I realized that he was more than a nuisance. We met. We fought." Samari grimaced. "We could have found a better place to fight than a working alchemy lab. He had me by the neck and when I got loose, I fell back into a table and boom," Samari gestured, spreading his arms out. "I'm here, in this odd country."
Samari leaned back into the counter, tapping his nails against the wine bottle in his hand. "It was everything that happened after that was strange." Like being alive again. That was going to be awkward when he woke up.
-
"So...any number of things could have happened when you fell, I imagine" Cook said, retrieving a glass for Samari. "Are you particularly familiar with teleportation, or the fabric of time?" He was a little concerned that a hole had been made and things could start to unravel.
He set about his tasks, preparing for the next meal, but was paying most of his attention to Samari. After all, he cooked several times a day, often the same food for each meal, depending on what their supplies were like. He could practically do it with his eyes closed
"Are there authorities that should be contacted about this man and his threats? Do you suppose your friends are in danger?" They did have radios after all. Maybe they could send a message if needbe.
-
"Whatever happened, it won't be easy to explain... or even understand why it did," Samari drummed his fingers against the bottle, flicking the cork with his thumbnail. He looked up at Cook and tilted his head to the side after his questions. "Teleportation, yes. It's the best way to get around my area. The fabric of time... I know as much about it as anyone can. Which isn't much."
That was an odd thing to ask. He tapped again, stabbing his thumb into the cork and wriggling it back and forth. "What's time got to do with it? I can't have been unconscious for that long after the explosion transported me here..." He pulled his thumb out of the cork, swallowed, tried not to think about any other reason he could have been transported. "Unless... it wasn't the explosion. It doesn't make sense... Villi doesn't want me half way across the world."
Samari began tapping a heel against the floor and paced over to the other side of the kitchen soon after. "I was supposed to be the authority that took care of him. There was a chance that it could have been an idle threat, that he wanted to scare them and make me think that worse would come later. Humans are weird like that."
-
Cook glanced over and realized he'd neglected to provide Samari with a corkscrew. He himself didn't usually need one. He was part swissarmy knife with that mechanical hand of his. He had to think for a minute before he pulled it out of a drawer and laid it on the table beside the bottle.
"Well, from everything you've told me so far, I think time could very well factor in. It's a possibility worth at least considering, that you might not be in your own time now." Cook said as gently as he could, which he wasn't very good at, but he didn't really want Samari to go crazy on the ship either.
"Yes, humans are weird like that. Was he human? the one you had an annoyance with? And what are you again?" Humans said 'people are weird like that' there was no need for a human to specify that humas were weird.
-
Once Cook went on about how he could have teleported through time, Samari needed to do something more with the bottle than rap his fingernails against it. He took the corkscrew, drove it in, twisted and yanked. Poured enough to fill the bottom of the glass and downed it. No swishing to contemplate any niceties, if there was even the slightest chance that Crowa's vials "cured" him and blew him halfway around the world through time he needed to get drunk.
"I don't think so," he poured a little more wine into the glass, but didn't drink it immediately after. "We're just... different than you are here. There's nothing primitive about Thanatos. You'll see when we get there."
So a lot of things were better here in Aedolis. They didn't seem to have magic, magic seemed to make people complacent. Since magic could do anything, why waste time figuring out gadgets to do something, get a mage. They had that asinine rumor about the super plague keeping anyone from trading with Thanatos, or Adela and Serendipity beyond. It was no surprise they had things that they didn't. Samari drained the glass again.
He was all too happy to answer questions that didn't have anything to do with time. "Mmmmhmmm, human. Once. I don't think I told you what I am," Samari laughed, a quick chortle. "We call ourselves Drow. One the surface, the nicest thing we're called is dark elves. Dark," Samari looked at the back of his hand. "Not sure why they don't just call us black elves... or night elves." He shrugged, grabbing the bottle of wine and pouring another glass. "What do I know? I'm just a-" Samari paused, set the glass back on the counter and nudged it away.
-
Cook glanced back at him casually, but continued cooking. Now he was curious. Cutting off mid-sentence seemed to suggest Samari was hiding something, and Cook wasn't really sure he wanted to know exactly what it was.
"What do I know? I'm just a cook" Cook pointed out easily with a shrug. "I've never actually been to a place that lived off magic like that. Gadgets keep me alive, Gadgets let me have a job, travel from place to place." He paused contemplatively. "I suppose people who rely on gadgets can't really understand magic...it's probably frightening for the rulers of the countries to have their citizens able to do just about anything with magic...." Adolis was extremely strict about their magic, and Cook suspected that it was largely a form of control, but of course that's what Adolis was known for aside from their insane military and caste system.
"In any case, I suppose it doesn't matter much" He admitted "Did you have animals there?"
-
Samari forgot just how fast alcohol could hit when you were sober long enough. Technically he could become impaired while he was undead, it was never the same though. It just made him sick then, now he could go through all the joyful mood swings alcohol brought.
Or, he would if he picked up the glass and began drinking again. Which wouldn't be for a while.
He leaned back against the counter and raised his eyebrows slightly when Cook started talking about gadgets. Those could only be the endless things these people used to get through their daily lives. Citizens in Thanatos could get by well enough without magic, taking the gadgets away from these people might be a telling blow. He was about to tell Cook that a small percentage of the population had the sort of magic power his country might be fearing.
But Cook asked about animals. Odd, but it would take the conversation even further away from time. He couldn't complain. Samari rapped a finger against the counter. "Not many. I've been told that most animals can't stand the aura around Thanatos. Not many useful draft beasts can stand being around the undead too long either. I think there are people that breed animals that don't have problems. That's something I never needed to worry about.
"I keep a pair of ravens at my home. Scavenging birds love Thanatos, they're almost as comfortable as the rats."
-
"Well, I suppose that makes sense" Cook agreed as he considered it. Ravens liked death. They ate dead things, so there was no reason for them to be uncomfortable around the undead really. Rats were just comfortable everywhere. It made no difference what creatures lived about, as long as there was food. He frowned just briefly, recalling finding a nest of them in a ship once. He'd been absolutely furious. Rats could bring a ship down rather easily if they got to certain wires or engine parts.
"Sounds like most people there didn't have pets. Some planets are really attatched to keeping animals as...companions I guess. I don't think anywhere is really using them for heavy labor, at least not like they used to, back when earth was alive and they didn't have their motors." He always wondered what it would be like to have lived back then...though he probably would be dead already.
Cook rose, filling two water glasses and setting one near Samari before sinking onto the bench. He needed a short break from standing.
-
There weren't many things worse than rats, Samari thought watching Cook's face. They were even worse as undead. Zombie rats would eat and eat and eat to fill stomachs they couldn't feel anymore, until they were stretched fat, eventually tearing open and leaking whatever they got into. Ghoul rats were a terror, ever hungry with an appetite that would only be slaked by hot, bloody flesh. Thankfully, no one was curious enough to see what a vampire rat would be like, or attempted to turn one into a lich.
"Oh, we're still sentimental enough in Thanatos to keep pets. We just don't have as many options as a person in other countries," Cook's talk of planets was starting to unsettle him. It was starting to make too much sense that he was sent to another planet. That those few crazy astronomers were right. "We don't use many animals for heavy labor, it's impractical to get them out to the islands and there isn't much space to keep them."
Samari set the empty wine glass down and picked up the glass of water, cradling it in both hands. "What's a motor? Is it a device that uses water to operate? There are a few of them in Thanatos and they do jobs other countries would use animals to help with." He couldn't remember what the proper name for those things was, never took more than a passing interest in things that couldn't benefit him directly.
-
If Samari had actually spoken about all the horrors of rats in his home land, he might have actually succeeded in the rare feat of giving Cook a chill and making him squirm just a little. He didn't like rats, mostly from a cook and crewman's point of view. They were unclean, brought disease to kitchens, brought destruction to ships and belongings, and could give some nasty bites besides.
"Some old motors were run off water, that was awhile ago, at least for places I'm familiar with. Motors are another kind of machine. They make things work. There is a motor in this ship that lets it move forward. Without the motor, along with other things, this ship would basically be just some sort of building or shelter, couldn't move." He considered where there might be a motor that would be easy to reveal in the kitchen. Most of them were pretty well enclosed, or very small. "If you want, I can show you the machine room. That's where the motor for the ship is located." It was usually locked, but he had the code, plus he could unlock most of the doors in the ship with his mechanical hand-- which was mostly because the captain and pilot didn't really care. He'd been on ships longer than they had in most cases.
-
Old motors? Samari drank a few mouthfuls of water, swishing the last one around a little bit before swallowing it. These people must have figured out some other way to get the motors going, other than water. He had a feeling it would be so obvious once he knew, that he'd regret not spending more time staring at the water-motors and thinking about ways to make them better. Well... in theory. In the world where he paid attention to things like motors and would have wanted to make them more useful. A motor that needed to be attached to a river wasn't practical enough for him. A motor that didn't need it could be useful for something.
He couldn't get too excited and tried to keep from looking overeager to go and see the ship's motor. Didn't succeed quite as nicely as he would have liked. The raised eyebrows, that little hint of a grin. Oh well, better than seeming entirely disinterested. There was always the chance that the motor ran on something easily available.
"I'd like to see that," he said, setting the glass down and propping his elbows up on the counter. "You know, I'm sure there will be plenty of people in Thanatos that would be willing to trade with Aedolis. I could introduce you to a few such people once we get there. I'm sure Thanatos has something that this country could use."
-
"The captain and his boss sure might be interested in trading" Cook agreed, though he very much doubted Aedolis would be happy about trading-- especially if that whole virus of death thing was just something they had made up. It was hard to tell with them. They were certainly not above making things up to scare people into staying away from things.
He rose, flexing his arms slightly. "Come on then, just make sure to keep your hands to yourself." He didn't really want to have to explain to the captain that the motor was jammed up and wouldn't work because it had Samari's fingers caught in the gears. And he preferred to return Samari to his planet with all his pieces intact. The poor boy couldn't just get mechanical fingers to replace his own like Cook had, though they perhaps had other...less commonly accepted methods of replacing mutilated parts.
Cook lead the way down a series of halls. As they got closer to the machine room, the halls became less brightly lit and well kept, though they were not in disrepair. They were simply not cleaned and polished like the main halls were. There was grease on the floor, tracked from the machine room by boots. He reached a sturdy looking door and began typing in codes until finally, the door issued a 'beep' and the lock disengaged with a 'whoosh, clunk'. Cook pressed the door open to reveal the machine room. It was a somewhat noisy contraption with parts moving all over it.
-
Samari gasped, slapping his hands on his thighs to keep from reaching out to touch the motor.
It was unlike anything he'd ever seen, heard or smelled before. So much metal, all shifting and writhing and moving around like it was a living thing. Only the sound made it seem like a device, no living creature made that kind of sound without being in pain and squalling. It wouldn't have kept on moving afterward in steady, constant motion. Even though it would mangle his fingers, Samari was tempted to touch it. See what the different portions of it felt like. The slick turning pieces, the parts that weren't moving, the fast spinning little bits.
His mouth was hanging open a little bit. Samari, still stunned by the motor, didn't care. This was the most amazing thing he'd seen since he teleported into Aedolis. "What's moving this?" he asked softly.
-
"Well" Cook said, gazing over the machine to try to decide where to start. "it's moving itself." He motioned Samari to follow him down the walk way to get to the starting point. "The power source causes that part there to move" He pointed "Which then moves that, which moves that, and that on down the line" He said, pointing to each one in turn. "Sort of like when someone pulls or pushes a cart, the wheels move." It was perhaps not he best example, but it was the only one he could come up with that he was sure Samari had seen, or could at least imagine. "They didn't move the wheels, but they caused them to move." He paused "Do you have anything back home that works by turning a crank?" He did still have some very old mixers that were hand cranked, which worked well when power wasn't reliably available, but he hadn't brought them on the ship. If there wasn't reliable power on a ship, mixers were the least of your problems.
-
It would have been a shame if Samari ground on Cook's heels in his haste to follow him toward the machine. So he tried to walk slowly, normally. He might actually hurt himself if he stepped on Cook's metal leg. These boots were old, they might not be able to handle scraping against their metal counterpart. He could almost feel every seam in the floor. Almost, he could be imagining them. Or maybe the floor was that bumpy. He wasn't interested enough to look down and check with the motor whirring above him.
Like a cart. Samari stared at Cook for a second. This thing was a lot more complicated than a cart. How did they make sure that all the parts would move like they wanted them to move? Unless a cart had more moving parts than just a wheel. Then the cart maker might be able to understand how different moving bits could work together. He might need to hire one when he got back to Thanatos. It would be good to get away from the same old necromancy for a little while. Refreshing to work on something that wasn't a sure thing anymore.
First he had to understand it a little better, so he could explain to the people that had experience with machines. A crank? It was also like a crank? A crank and cart, moving bits. "Some wells work with a crank, in better parts of the town. There are other things too. Smaller though. Nothing as big as this. What turns the crank? If it isn't water, is it a person? A beast of some sort?"
-
"Well, the fuel basically causes little controlled...mini explosions, I guess you could say. Just enough to expand" He closed his hand into a fist and opened it. "And that makes that part move, which starts the process"
He moved down the line a little to find a portion where the gears were not completely incased. "and this is the part that is more like a crank. See the rod there?" He pointed to a visable portion of a metal stick that had notches on it, which turned and interlocked with the notches in a gear and caused that one to turn. "It turns, like a crank, but instead of making a rope go around, it makes that thing there turn." It was difficult to explain mechanics to someone who didn't have any experience with the concept of machines, let alone the function of them. Samari was at least an eager student, which he found interesting.
-
Mini explosions... Samari didn't like the sound of that. Even if they were controlled, they were still explosions. Unless it was something like artillery, with fuses. He wanted to see what sort of chamber the explosions took place in too, it would have to be strong.
Samari inched forward, standing on his tiptoes when Cook pointed out a part. He squinted, studying how the notches worked. It... was cunning. The notches on the stick matched up with the notches on the... was that a wheel, it couldn't hurt to call it on. One bit turned and then made the other bit turn and all that made more bits turn.
Though... "What would happen if that, crank-rod piece were to become damaged? Will the explosions stop happening if that piece doesn't turn? Or does it have another piece that can do the turning for it?." Samari crossed his arms, shifting his weight onto one foot and leaned back a bit to look at something higher up in the machine. "Are all machines like this big?"
-
"If the rod were to be damaged, it would have to be repaired or replaced" Cook stated, looking Samari over with a rather calculating gaze. The Captain would kill him if he'd just given training to some hijacker/sabatour. "The mini explosions would continue for a short while, but without the turning, they'll stop." He assured.
"No, there are many machines that are all sizes. Some of them are bigger, and some of them are much, much smaller." Cook said with a slight smile. He wasn't really up to trying to explain electronics at this point. Electronic currents running through wires and somehow causing things to happen. He wasn't entirely sure he himself understood how electronics worked. He was more mechanical than he was electrical.
-
Samari missed Cook's suspicion, he was too busy watching the machine, trying to get a good mental picture of how everything fit together. Just because it made perfect sense and all seemed good and logical now didn't mean it would be easy to recall when he needed to remember it later on.
He would need some paper and a pen to make a rough sketch. Maybe get a few concepts for the parts that were hidden behind the other pieces.
It was good that the explosions would stop if the machine ever malfunctioned. Pointless explosions were never a good thing. That was another thing to figure out, how to make the explosions stop if there wasn't a rod for them to turn. Better was that all machines like this didn't have to be enormous room spanning behemoths. Smaller was the best way to start, even if it meant that parts would be closer to explosions. It would need to be tough. Thick, strong metal.
Samari took a step back, rubbing an eye with the back of his hand and looking down at his feet. "I'll be seeing this machine every time I close my eyes if I keep staring at it. It'd be better if I could draw it and let the paper remember what it looks like. Do you have any of these smaller machines? One that I could study a little in the morning?"
-
"Probably, I'll just have to think of what they would be. Many of the smaller motors and such are contained in a cover so you can't see them, but I'll see what I can find. I've got paper and a pencil for you to draw with in any case." He was one of the few that still preferred paper and pencil, but then again, with a mechanical hand, using those blasted touch screen hand held contraptions gave him nothing but trouble. He'd broken several before it was decided that he was not required to use them any longer and could use a media of his choice.
"Let's head back to the kitchen. Any motors I could let you study would be either in there, or in your closet." Spares of his various indispensable tools, like mixers. Maybe if he took the cover off the mixer, that would work. "Smaller motors can be more complicated, simply because they have to have much smaller parts, and don't work quite the same way, though the basic concept might be the same-- most common indoor appliances don't use the mini explosion method-- but that should make it a little easier for you to study up close, as long as you keep your fingers out of the gears" He reasoned, turning to lumber his way back towards his kitchen. He didn't spend much time roaming the ship usually, and for once he was actually anxious to get back into port, though that was only to get his leg repaired properly before it fell completely apart. And perhaps he could get some spare parts for it as well.
He was curious about this place that Samari had come from. It sounded to him like a little snapshot of history, rather old history at that, but with the potentially frightening aspect of reanimated dead wandering around. Thomas would have a fit, and Cook couldn't help but feel a smile tug at the corner of his mouth with that thought.
-
Excellent, excellent. Samari smiled widely, completely forgetting that this wasn't Necromantia. There, a set of incisors a little longer than normal wouldn't get more than a passing glance. A look just long enough to confirm that the teeth were long, the hour was late and that the person they were talking to was a vampire. Here, he wasn't sure of the hour, but he was flashing an incredible set of teeth and they just got through talking about vampires.
Fuck.
Samari let the smile fade slowly, maintaining eye contact, trying not to breathe too shallowly. Acting like he screwed up would only call unwanted attention to himself. Just because he had prominent fangs didn't automatically mean he was a vampire, he could just play them off as a racial trait. Long incisors didn't seem too odd with ebony skin, pointed ears and red eyes. Everything was good. Nothing was wrong.
There was paper and a little motor thing back in the kitchens.
"Great!" he blurted, a little too enthusiastic... or perhaps not. Studying a little motor would make this trip useful. He followed Cook when the other man began walking back to the kitchens, arms folded loosely across his chest. "Would the smaller motor work the same way if the parts were bigger? Or is there a size that you need to change the structure?"
Samari wasn't going to read anything into that smile. Cook could have had countless reasons to smile. As wound up as he was, Samari didn't need to start analyzing every other move Cook made.
-
Cook eyed Samari casually. He was certainly an odd man, but he had still given no good reason for Cook to be scared of him, fangs or not. However, once they got back into the kitchen, he said "It'd probably be best if Thomas didn't see you smile quite so big" He said. "He's already wigged out enough that we're going to 'the land of the dead' or something like that" Cook explained, rummaging through his cabinets.
"Some of the principles are the same, and it's not really a matter of size so much, as it is a matter of function. If you can make the pieces small enough, or large enough, you could probably make either type of motor for whatever you were looking for. Some of the really old motors were made of wood and powered by water running over part of it to start the first piece turning." Cook pulled a large mixer out and set about unscrewing the case before bringing it over. "It comes down to finding a way to turn the first gear and set the process in motion. Here." He set it down in front of Samari. "The most similar portion is probably this part" He indicated the series of gears that caused the beaters to turn. The motor itself was of a more electronic nature and so did not look quite the same. "Let me get that paper" He went into his room and returned with a couple sheets of plain paper and a pencil and sharpener. "Alright, you work on that, I need to make sure dinner gets done on time."
He set to work. Maybe he and Samari would just have dinner in his room. He wouldn't make the boy eat alone, but thought it was possibly best to keep him away from Thomas and his crazy superstitions. Cook didn't dispute at least some of them were possibly valid in some way or another, he simply didn't want to deal with Thomas' getting all worked up about it. Besides...vampires didn't eat food, did they? Cook mused as he cooked, looking up to make sure Samari had everything he needed. "We'll probably be getting close to your planet by morning." If the pilot used the jump anyway. They never did use it for long periods.
-
((Sorry for the delay, things have a little hectic over here.))
There was really no reason for a person to stare at another person's teeth without some reason, Samari mused as he followed Cook back to the kitchen. He put the issue out of his mind, made a mental note to restrain himself in case he felt the need to grin at anything else.
And got a pretty damn good reason to keep himself in check once they got to the kitchen. A good chance to try it out too - whenever someone put him on the spot his usual reaction was to smile. In his homeland it was a genteel enough gesture to keep most worries from spouting. In Thanatos it helped remind the other person who and what he was. Now he just let the corners of his mouth raise. Thomas catching sight of his teeth (he would have some reason to check his teeth, Thomas seemed the type that would be analyzing his every movement if they were in the same place) wouldn't result in anything pleasant. It could be as laughable as being dragged to a particularly sunny place and held until it was obvious he wasn't going to turn to dust. Or as final as getting the nearest sharp bit of wood driven through his chest. "I'll... keep that in mind."
It was a good thing he didn't spend his entire undeath in Thanatos. He had some long rusted practice on keeping his teeth to himself from when he lived in Serendipity. That should last until the irony of keeping his teeth covered when they weren't a warning sign drove him crazy and he tried to file them off.
Hopefully it wouldn't come down to that. Most of these people in Aedolis didn't seem too put off by a set of long, sharp teeth.
Samari took a quick, deep breath and focused on what was really important now. Getting to look at something with a motor. He almost felt offended when Cook called the only motors he was familiar with old. They were just slow in Thanatos. They had magic to develop along with motors. They would catch up when he brought these plans back with him.
It was hard to resist touching the little motor once Cook set it down and walked off to get a pencil and paper. Samari leaned in close and stared at all the little parts. Trying to find anything that was similar to the big motor, wishing he knew the little parts that made a water motor run so he could compare them. His nose was almost touching the little motor's pieces when Cook returned. Cook's voice was enough to draw him out of his fixation. Samari looked up, nodded and slid the paper, pencil and... thing close.
A quick inspection showed that the thing was some sort of blade holder. Samari didn't feel like figuring out how to get the blade inside, the pencil was already sharp enough. He sketched a square, leaned in close to the little motor and scratched some rough shapes. Then he sat up straight, biting his lip a bit. "Cook? Do your people think my entire... planet is afflicted with this virus? There are many other lands that are different from my home."
-
(that's okay. Sorry I took so long as well. I didn't see that you had replied)
Cook set about making dinner, some of his tendrils spouting and helping out as he multi-tasked quite well. "Well, that's the rumor anyway. Some believe it, some don't." He admitted. "Thomas, he's a smart man, but he believes a lot of things that...are a little odd, depending on who you talk to. He has things he does that I guess make him feel safer. I don't really understand it, but then again, everyone has their rituals I suppose." He cleaned his mechanics and made meals. As long as those two things remained the same, things felt like they were going alright.
"What does your planet think about the other planets?" He knew well enough that there was lots of false information flying around between species, races, planets or even cities. Rumors were made, spread and elaborated upon. Prejudices grew over silly, or even non-existent things. Perhaps this virus tale was just a silly story. It was quite possible. He'd come across stranger things in his time.
"Oh, and would you like to eat with the men, or have dinner in either your room or my room?" He didn't want to forget to ask the poor man and have him stuck uncomfortably in the midst of the often rough and coarse crew...plus Thomas.
-
Sounds like they thought the entire planet was bad then. That would explain why no one in Adela or Serendipity knew anything about Aedolis. As tempting as it was, he couldn't hold Thomas' fear against him. Not if everyone thought that was what happened... even Cook seemed to believe that something awful happened to Thanatos. Cook was just, thankfully, not the type that scared easily. Samari scribbled a few shapes on the paper, tapped the end of the pencil against the paper and tried not to be too distracted by Cook's tentacles in the corner of his eyes.
The planet question was enough to take his mind off them. He shrank a little, biting one end of his lips. "Before today I... thought there was no such thing as life on other planets. It just seemed..." Samari tapped the pencil, trying to think of the word. "Insignificant? There are so many things we don't know about our own... planet, why think about what's on another one?" He sketched a few more lines and looked down at the drawing. It was far from done, but still seemed confusing. Like he was sweeping the pencil around randomly inside the box. He needed to see the skeleton of this motor, then it might be easier to understand - and easier for the craftsmen back home.
Samari looked up from the paper again when Cook asked where he'd prefer to eat. "As long as I'm far away from the men... until we reach Thanatos and they see that it isn't a plagueland.
Cook?" he asked soon after, bracing himself on his elbows and leaning into them. "Is it easy to take apart a motor? Can you put it back together after?"
-
"I think that was the way on most planets for a good long while. I don't know how much life was on other planets before humans and the like started spreading to others than their own, but at one point or another, all but the most advanced planets thought they were the only life in space." He paused "I think you can find life of some sort on most planets now though, even if it's just a little outpost, or some wild beast."
"Well, it depends on what motor" Cook admitted, looking back at his mixer. He knew if he took it apart, he could (probably) put it back together. "Here" He said, drying his hands and coming over to the table. "Take it into my room and use the table in there. For it to work again, it has to go back exactly as it was, so if you want to take it apart, it's generally best if you diagram it as you go" Dinner was soon, and trying to move a partly disasembled little motor was not so easy.
"Go ahead and get settled, I'll bring our meal in there and then sound the dinner bell." Cook said, returning to the food and setting aside their portion before preparing the table for the rest of the men, scarcely taking note if Samari did as asked or not.
-
It wasn't meant to be a barb, but Cook calling the planets that knew about life on others advanced definitely found some nerve and stung. He was nearly overcome with the ridiculous urge to convince Cook that he, and Thanati in general, were perfectly civilized, despite not paying much attention to other planets. That was silly though. Cook saw enough of him to see that, dried blood and ragged clothing aside, he was a civilized creature.
Just... not an advanced one. Samari did his best not to shudder in distaste.
Instead he rolled up his paper and stood, cradling the motor against his chest. "All right, I'll see you in a bit."
Samari walked to Cook's room and set the mixer down on the table. As he unrolled the paper he wondered if it would be more practical to wait until they ate before littering the table with the little bits of metal that were inside the motor. So he rolled up the paper and sat down, holding the motor at the edge of the table and looking at how all the bits fit together so he'd have some idea how it fit together when he took it apart. He was going to need a scalpel. He wondered if there was any liquid in there too, then decided there wasn't because Cook didn't give him a towel.
After a couple minutes of looking at the motor, Samari nudged it toward a corner of the table and waited for Cook to show up with... what meal was this anyway? He'd have to ask once he came in.
-
The men could be heard coming down the corridors, tromping over the grates in the floor and chatting with each other. The bench was scraped back as they took their places, still continuing whatever discussion they'd had going, not bothering to stop for eating.
Cook got them served, quietly informed the captain that he would be taking dinner in his room along with the passenger and left them to their disorganized conversation.
"Okay" He breathed, glad to be done with the meal for the time being-- other than eating it himself. "Here" He set the plates on the table. "Don't mind them in there, sometimes their talk gets a little crass, but they don't mean nothing by it." He assured. He himself didn't much care. He'd been traveling around on these ships for awhile with all manner of sailors and pilots. He hadn't heard Samari use any such language. In fact, Samari seemed quite polite, and Cook hoped he wouldn't be offended by anything he overheard-- not that making sense of it was likely, as the men talked through mouthfuls of food, but one never knew.
He took his seat, making sure to keep all of his tentacles on his side to the best of his ability. "Go ahead and eat. Once they're done I'll have to clean the dishes and whatnot" But that could wait for a little while at least. He dug into his meal.
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Samari sat up a little straighter when Cook entered the room. Whatever he had on that plate was still enough to get his stomach growling. Out of habit he slid his tongue up the back of an eye tooth, which wouldn't be extended now. He waved a hand when Cook advised him about the men's smalltalk, sweeping his hand down to pick up the fork.
"Sailors are sailors. As long as they aren't planning to throw me... is it still called overboard?" He looked up, blinked and stabbed his food. "That would bother me. I'd have to start carrying around something to protect myself." Samari wiggled the fork, with the food stuck on the end, like it was a little sword and grinned.
Then he ate it, following it with a few more bites. This time he didn't burn his mouth, but this food wasn't as hot as the last meal. He hooked his ankles and swung them back and forth idly while he ate. "I didn't ask you what time it was already did I?" He asked after a minute.
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"Well, I suppose you could still call it overboard, though in space, it's not so simple as simply tossing you out the door. Don't worry too much. They might be a paranoid lot, but they wouldn't be likely to cross me, as long as I've got the captain on my side, and I do." The captain didn't hold to any such superstitious notions, or at least not like the men did. "Besides, you're perfectly safe in my kitchen." The men definitely knew better than to mess with the master of their food. It was widely accepted that the kitchen was Cook's domain, and if he asked them to leave, they were to leave. If he asked them to help, they were to help, and aside from meal times, they did not hang out in the kitchen unless invited.
"No, I don't think you did. Time don't matter much out here really, at least not in the usual way, but it's about 7pm or so, universal time, which just means we don't bother trying to adjust for the different orbits, day lengths, seasons, or any other anomalies we encounter around different planets. "You're welcome to go to sleep after dinner if you wanted. I'll be heading to bed after I clean up from supper. I have to get up early to make sure breakfast is ready and there's time to eat it before we start orbiting your planet in preparation for landing." He explained "If things go smoothly, we should be there before noon" But trying to cook and eat while preparing for atmospheric entry didn't work well.
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"That's good news," Samari twisted his fork to tear another bite free. "This little motor should keep me occupied enough to stay out of their sight."
His eyebrows rose when Cook told him it was seven pm and then went on about adjusting the time for orbits and... other things. So complicated! Back in Thanatos there was just the sun, maybe a clock if you could afford the time to maintain it. Then again... how did you tell the time from the sky when you were in the sky? Did they have someone to make sure their clocks were wound? "Cook... I know I ask you for a lot of things, but do you think you could show me what sort of clock you use here?"
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"Well, see those numbers up there on the console?" He said, pointing to a digital display. "That's one sort of clock. Instead of hands going around, it's just the numbers that change" He explained. "I don't know exactly how it works, just that it does" He shrugged slightly, rose and fished something out of one of his bags. Returning to his seat, he opened his palm to reveal a rather old looking pocket watch. "I don't use this one much, and most people now a-days don't either, but they're still around in some places, but digital" He motioned to the one on the console "are more common."
((sorry it took me so long to reply...and that it's so short))
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((No problem <3))
Samari pushed himself off the chair a little so he could get a better look at the thing Cook was pointing at. Oh! He never even noticed that when he first came into the room. It was so pretty, little slivers of bright light shaped like numbers. Almost like the magic lights back in his home town. "That's... that's really something... I've seen moving images like that before. They were from magic of course. Never one that could move through a series of numbers though."
He barely registered Cook getting up - and didn't look at what he was doing until he was finished admiring the clock. Then went back to eating until Cook came back to the table and held his hand out.
"Aaah," Samari slid a nail along the surface. "Why would anyone not want to carry something like this around with them? It's really nice..."
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"Well, they don't all carry them around because there are other ways of telling the time, and there are lots of other devices with digital clocks in them, and they only barely have to glance at it to tell the time. These, called analog clocks, take most people a couple of seconds to figure out exactly what time it really is" He shrugged slightly. "Plus, these old pocket watches can be a bit on the fragile side depending on what a person is doing. This one, for example, would probably break if I kept it in my pocket during a mission or anything of that sort. That's why it stays in the ship, often in my bag. The ship has a fairly constant pressure and temperature-- aside from take off and landing anyway, but those forces can't really be helped." He looked up from the watch. "How did you keep time back home?" He asked, allowing Samari to take the watch if he liked.