Chapter Text
When the voices stop, the sudden solitude in your head is almost worse than the endless cacophony. You have never known anything else; or if you have it was lost long ago in the chaos that is your inner world. Your only world. The abrupt, encompassing silence is like being plunged into ice cold water, muffled and frozen forever. Like you imagine death might be.
It’s as if you have ceased to exist, and you flail out randomly, desperately, scrabbling with claws grown too long, gnashing your teeth so you feel your lips sliced by the doubled row of your fangs. The sharp taste of blood fills your mouth. You choke, trying to gasp, but the thick gel that surrounds you coats your throat, your lungs, refusing to let you take the deep gulping breaths you crave.
Your reaching fingers encounter a surface and you snag your claws in the rubbery membrane, pulling and tearing until it gives all at once, expelling you into a cold outer world on a stream of green slime. Your face is pressed to smooth metal flooring, in a gooey puddle of gel. Your back arches and you cough out a lungful of the stuff in one long spasm, clearing your breathing tubes. It’s…not quite sopor. Stasis gel. You were in a stasis grubpod.
You work your limbs weakly, seeking purchase in the slippery mess, and finally succeed in flopping over onto your back. You blink thickly through gooey lashes but can’t seem to clear your vision. Blink. Blink. Blink. Blink. You feel helpless, caught in a loop.
Eventually your dazed mind catches up. Lifting a hand, you drag crooked fingers through the tangled black mess of your gel-caked hair, clearing the long sticky fringe from your eyes in clumps. This time, when you blink, you can see the pipes running the length of the ceiling, the block illuminated only by flashing control panels and the ethereal green glow of the wounded grubpod.
Your head still feels hollow, echoing with silence. For once there is a space for you to track your own thoughts, but the vacancy is so vast it’s like spinning uncontrolled through a void, unable to find purchase or stability. You feel dizzy and nauseated, and, overwhelmingly, panicky and afraid. And yet… you think somewhere else you don’t feel that way at all? In some parallel mind, overlaid on your confusion and panic, you are gripped by a kind of savage triumph, a fierce, rising antipathy. You want to hurl out streams of profanity and invective, scream the world blind and Make Them Pay. You want to curl up and hide, mouthing apologies, because maybe if you’re pitiful enough the universe will leave you alone.
You lie on your back, gripped by impossibly competing emotions, until another layer of awareness filters into your consciousness. The voices have not entirely left you. You can sense the remnants now, a few slender threads almost unnoticeable against the vast silence. But this third part of yourself, calm and detached, registers them, evaluates and catalogues them, documenting each tiny detail with relentless diligence.
…How many minds do you have? Two... two seemed alright, but three—you are certain three is too many. It’s uneven, unbalanced, and everything is wrong wrong wrong wrong!
There is a crackle of energy, your eyes burn hot and electric, and the dim lab lights up with a tumult of blue and red power, psionic force lashing out from your body in a mad, uncontrolled vortex. You hear shattering and crashing, but you are lost in the outpouring of rage and fear, spiraling up and up until it feels as if you will be torn apart at the seams, and you think this is it, this will be the time you’ll burn yourself out.
But then some internal switch trips, some instinctive, in-built safety valve, and the power drains away from you, fading into intangibility, steam escaping from a leaky boiler and vanishing into the air. You’re left curled on the floor, empty and trembling, and still with one mind whispering a blue haze of rage and one mind whimpering in red tones of shame and a third mind that just ticks and ticks along, heedless of anything else, feeding you data and analyses and listening to the mechanical chirp of imperial signs, those few remnant voices that each mark the presence of a nearby troll.
You need… four. Four minds would be alright. Four is two and two, and two can find balance and you need balance—you need it—need to fashion some bulwark to defend yourself because surely this relative quiet from your third mind can’t last, and you will be lost again when the storm of voices returns.
The few voices still in your head fade in and out, the electric pulse of the signs surging and dimming as the trolls that bear them move about, not so far away. Whatever loophole let you slip your confinement and cast off most of the voices must surely be noticed, eventually, and then they will come for you. If they return you to your stasis will the voices find you there again, howling and gabbling at you in the void? Will your life continue in the old, unending tapestry of chaos?
You have, just this once, a single, narrow window of opportunity. If you can act quickly, if you can find the right tools, you need not be completely helpless against the tide when it returns, need not be overwhelmed by the torrent.
Yes, hisses your blue mind. Please, whispers your red mind. Do it now, they say together.
You scrabble again in the sticky, slippery puddle, clumsily gathering your legs under you, levering with arms that still spasm with occasional tremors as the connection between your mind and body skips and pops unevenly. Balance. Control. Wavering on your feet, you scan the wreckage your runaway power has made of the lab, machinery smashed and broken, pipes hanging askew, sheets of metal wrenched from the wall, the scraps piled everywhere in jagged, curling strips. A bank of silicomb has been splattered into a sticky yellow smear, like blood. The little broken bodies of the bees make you cringe, make you churn.
You find what you’re looking for tucked away in an alcove at the back of the lab, a row of programmer’s command helmets charging on a wall rack. Three are lightning-charred, twisted by external forces to near unrecognizability. In an auspicious twist of fate, the final, fourth helmet hangs untouched.
The debris littering the lab is worst along the walls, where it forms drifts of broken glass and metal. You’re forced to climb, picking your way cautiously over the unsteady heap. Something shifts underfoot, and your limbs pinwheel wildly, unable to correct your balance. As you topple headfirst, your right electronic interface dings and clangs against the debris and your two right horns crack hard against a fallen strut, sending a shock of pain jolting down your spine to vibrate in your fingers and toes.
Worse, the sharp, twisted edge of a torn metal panel drags along your thigh, tearing through your bodysuit to gouge your flesh. The long, shallow wound sheets yellow blood across the black fabric. You snarl, mind tilting blue, and spew out a stream of furious invective, cursing the world. The words twist and tangle in your throat, catch on the doubled tips of your tongue and emerge through your bared fangs as malformed sounds your audio canals can hardly recognize. The unfairness of your physical limitations stokes your fury higher until you’re shouting incoherent curse words at nothing, a hand clamped over your thigh to try to staunch the bleeding.
You’re caught in a spiral again, unsure how to stop the runaway feedback loop, and then your mind surges red with panic, reminding you of the looming threat, and you break off your tirade to whimper—sorry sorry please—creeping and stumbling forward towards your target.
You stagger and fall twice more, once barking your shins, once thumping your skull on the wall, and then you have your prize in your hands and you half-slide, half tumble down to the floor of the lab, to sprawl in an ungainly tangle, the programming helmet clutched tight to your chest.
You are cut and bleeding and bruised and your body shivers and twitches under the heaving tangle of conflicting impulses that constitutes your mind. But you remember the code. You remember the way the numbers talk to you, and it’s the language of the third part of your mind, the one that is throwing your entire identity out of balance. It speaks to you ceaselessly, endlessly, sometimes deafeningly, until the unfiltered flood of information subsumes your existence. Now you’re going to speak back.
Your name is Mituna Captor and you are going to hack your own brain.
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The last metal bolt drops from your outstretched fingers, clinking and rolling to within an inch of the closest of the disc-shaped bots. The little bot whirrs and moves up a bit, scooping your offering into its intake unit with a faint clunking noise. You hold your hand out a little farther, wiggling your fingers slightly to make the circuits inlaid in your palm glint. C’mon, li’l dude. Lookit the shiny. Your bent knees ache from maintaining your motionless position. The bot rolls a pace nearer. That's it. Let the nice cyborg get a look at your programming.
“Hey, Bro?”
The sudden presence at your back sends you spinning around, coming to your feet from your crouch at the edge of the alley. Behind you, the flock of feral cleanerbots scatters, white discs taking to the air in a flurry of electronic cheeps. The handful of tech scraps you were using as a lure mysteriously vanish with them, the alley scoured clean. You eye the small blond kid in the grey hoodie with disfavor. You’d spent half an hour looking for him and you’ve been fretting about him for the past ten minutes, so of course he’d turn up out of the blue after you’d given up looking, covered in dust and roof tar, the robotic bunny-ears atop his head perked hopefully. Your lips press into a flat line. “Seb. We’re supposed to stay together around human settlements.”
His head tips up, that small, expressionless face considering you from behind pointy red lenses. “I knew where you were.”
You show him your teeth. “Not really the same thing, li’l bro.”
Seb takes this in with an air of baffled tolerance, his head cocking and metal ears tipping forward like he’s waiting for the end of the story. You’ve come to recognize this as his usual approach to situations where he doesn’t grasp the issue and has decided to classify the problem as inexplicable organic-being oddities that must be worked around.
You rub fingers into your right temple, just in front of the ellipse of embedded tech set in your skull. Trying to work out Seb-logic always makes your head ache. You wonder if it’s physically possible for you to fry a circuit in your brain from aggravation. If anybody could assist you with this discovery, it will be Seb. “Just…stay in calling distance, okay? My hearing range, not yours. Shit could turn bad fast, one of these places.”
He nods firmly and tosses you a salute. You’re not exactly sure who he thinks is looking after whom in this relationship but it’s clear he thinks he’s responsible for protecting you. Which is…uncomfortably close to the truth for all that he’s this little kid who doesn’t even come up to your mid chest. You may be more familiar with the concept of being human, but he is infinitely more experienced with the reality of having a physical body.
You’re working on it. You’re even making progress. But the gap between where you are and where you want to be—where you should be, hardly seems to shrink at all. So much of everything you are is all wrapped up in theory with nothing tangible to back it.
Fuck it. That just means you have to take even more care that you don’t fail at what you are good at.
Sighing out a breath you let the issue go with it. He’d have shown up quick enough if trouble had started or if you’d headed out of town. And as for him running into something he couldn’t handle on his own…well, you suppose that’d be pretty noticeable, too. If Seb’s figured out how to cause trouble on a less than catastrophic scale he hasn’t demonstrated this noteworthy talent anywhere you could admire it.
You cast a last glance over your shoulder at the emptied alley and brush dirt off the circuit-interfaces on your palms, pulling your fingerless gloves back on. “I got the replacement coils for the rocket boards half an hour ago. Let’s head out before someone decides they’ve got an excess of tar and feathers and decides to throw a piñata party.”
“Oh.” Seb sounds rather disappointed. He shifts his weight back and forth between his feet, clearly contemplating further elaboration.
You give him a slow count of five to try to untangle his words on his own. Then you apply a pointed prod. “Spit it out, li’l man.”
“Can I have a few caegars to buy a cake?” he ejects on a single breath.
You raise an eyebrow, and try to work out which of many questions to address first. You could ask him where his own money went, or why he needs to buy anything when he’s a shameless little sneak-thief, or what he wants with cake when he treats eating like the most tedious of chores. In the end you elect what would seem to be the most relevant observation.
“The last time I gave you money for sweets you started a riot.”
Seb pulls up his shoulders and drops them, flicking an ear dismissively.
You lift your eyebrow higher, the corner of your mouth quirking back sardonically. You’re morbidly curious to find out what he might have to offer on the topic.
“The General’s not even here this time.”
If you keep raising that eyebrow it will float right off your face and loft gently away into the firmament to join its brethren in the upper pantheon of entities entirely too cool to be restrained by mortal planes. You settle for a skeptical glower. “Riiight. Blame the guy who was chained to a post at the time.”
In truth, you consider yourself extremely fortunate that your trigger-happy carapacian travelling companion has so far preferred to remain well clear of humans and their habitations. Instead, he fulfills his unofficial role as native guide by finding out-of-the-way routes through backcountry and pointing you and Seb at the settlements least likely to take mortal offense to your technological enhancements and/or decide to report a pair of rogue cy to the human government.
At least, you assume those are the criteria. You can’t understand a word that guy says.
Over the past few weeks you’ve had the opportunity to hone your skills wrangling potentially hostile humans and you’ve mostly worked out how to get through the encounters with a minimum of violent outcomes. Your favorite tactic is to just brazen straight through and let them be the ones struggling to fit everything into the neat little boxes of social norms. Sure, they might be as uncomfortable as hell dealing with you and your li’l bro and your sweet mechanical enhancements, but if you can get the initial momentum of the encounter moving the right direction you can generally keep even the more hostile groups off balance long enough for you to trade some supplies or fish out whatever bit of information you came looking for.
There’s a kind of group inertia to dealing with the out-of-place, with everybody waiting for someone else to be the first person to point out the elephant in the room. When you act like you can’t possibly imagine any interaction not falling out to your expectations things generally do.
It’s not 100% effective, of course. But really only 80% of those fights could have been said to be within your ability to prevent. Down from 90. Progress.
Seb shrugs again, rolling his head in dismissal of the whole subject, and bounces on his toes. “Cake?”
“Of course, because the only thing I find more fulfilling than wandering unfamiliar streets looking for little boy robots is risking life and limb in teeming crowds of humans to purchase confectionary items.”
Seb just locks his gaze on you, still bouncing slightly. You cave like an antique trampoline.
“Okay, fine. We’ll go indulge your suddenly acquired fascination with cake. If you can catch me one of those little bots buzzing all over the place.”
“ ’Kay!”
Five minutes later you’ve got a loudly cheeping cleanerbot stashed away in your sylladex, Seb bouncing smug and excited beside you, and you’re wrestling with a mixed bag of satisfaction and annoyance, irritation and pride.
~*~
This settlement—town really—is something of a trading outpost, and the maps place it at the fringe of the unclaimed territories, where neither the human, troll, nor carapacian Empires maintain a strong presence. This means people in the area tend to a practical outlook, at least when they’re not expecting an imperial squadron to drop by. They may side eye you and make it clear you’re not welcome to linger, but they’re happy enough to take your coin. This town’s even got a few sellers running troll and carapacian goods—a lucky find, since the area, though officially unclaimed and sparsely populated, is predominantly human. The few members of the other species you’ve seen travelled alone or in small groups, solely at night, and the General kept you well clear of them.
The cause of Seb’s unusual culinary interest becomes clear when you reach the marketplace.
She’s a good few years younger than you, but still older than Seb, dark-haired and round-faced, with a frame that looks like it wants to run to plump but doesn’t get the nourishment for it. Her blanket spread of baked goods has been relegated to a mostly overlooked street corner at the edge of the market, where she’s hard-pressed to both maintain her territory and attract customers. You suppose she looks a little like Jane, albeit a Jane improbably depicted as a helpless, waifish street girl. Honestly, even at her saddest and most vulnerable, Jane mostly just got porcupine-prickly.
You are torn between competing urges to smirk and rib Seb mercilessly or to turn straight around and drag you both out of town on the instant. Your stomach roils, hot and acid in your gut. Seb’s gone before you can settle your internal cage match, dodging through the crowd in a flashing series of indirect zigs and zags that circle inexorably closer to little baked-goods seller. He’s either feeling shy or he’s decided this enterprise is complex enough to require reconnaissance.
There aren’t any solid surfaces handy, so you lift a fist and bang your forehead against it in three repeated beats.
He’s too young to have a crush, you console yourself. He’s just missing Jane. You’re spared that particular brand of Strider-stubborn fixation for at least a few more years.
…Unless you contract thinking-with-your-dick syndrome. Horrorterrors preserve you from ever falling as hard and stupid for anyone as Dirk did. If legendary tentacled sky monsters can help you out on this you’re more than willing to perform whatever dark rituals might be necessary. Maybe a virgin sacrifice? You’d be happy to katana your own head free if you ever get that stupid.
With mounting irritation, you slip closer to watch the drama play out. Seb’s lurking a few stalls away, pretending to examine a cart of carapacian gene-modded fruit under the suspicious eye of its human vendor, because apparently buying cake from a random human girl can’t just be done and gotten over with. It’s some kind of elaborate siege. There’s a lull in the crowd, random fluctuations leaving the area mostly unoccupied, and Seb zips across the gap, popping up directly in front of his target.
Who utters a stifled little shriek and scrambles back in alarm, knocking cakes and blanket askew. Ah. Right. He’s done that appearing out of nowhere routine to you so often you’d kind of forgotten how unsettling it could be. Well, Seb’s little and cute and harmless-looking. She’ll get over it.
Except she doesn’t. She’s clearly unnerved, crouching back further on her hands as Seb flashes quickly over to right a particularly tall pastry arrangement before it can topple. When he bends helpfully to tug the blanket straight and push the cakes and pastries and pies back into order she actually scooches backwards a few inches. Seb stops, yanking his hands away and taking a step back himself. They stare silently at each other in mutual uncertainty for a few moments, Seb bewildered, her alarmed.
Rallying, Seb thrusts a few copper coins toward her, holding them out two-handed, like an offering or a supplication. She flinches, recoiling from the movement toward her face as if he’d tried to strike her. He freezes and she freezes. He takes a step forward and she shrinks back. Her wary eyes are fixed on Seb’s face, not his body language, and her discomfort only seems to coil tighter as she’s met with blank lenses and a blank face.
She doesn’t seem to notice the way he’s folded his metal ears back flat, or the way he grows stiller and stiller, drawing in on himself, shortening his movements and trying to make himself look even smaller and non-threatening. In the face of her reaction, Seb’s gone tongue-tied and silent and your heart clinches and flops uncomfortably in your chest as he shrinks down even further, trying to rearrange himself into something acceptable and subdued.
You skulk closer, lingering on the peripheries, uncertain whether your presence would help or hinder, or even if you should interfere at all. He won’t thank you for it. He’s standing there in front of her, vibrating with silent frustration and helplessness. His hands twitch in an abortive movement to offer the coins again, but he halts himself, holding his arms in close to his chest. Pointing with just his hand, he gestures with hopeful emphasis in the direction of a small, blue-frosted cake.
“It’s a cake,” the girl says, like maybe providing obvious pastry-related information will be the solution to being accosted by a small cyborg bunny-boy.
Seb points again, more insistently, and makes a small movement, jingling the coins in his other hand. This is pretty clear, and you think for a moment progress will be made and the encounter can end, if not without extreme awkwardness, at least on a positive note, but—
“Miss, is this kid bothering you?” One of the nearby vendors has stepped away from her stall, and now moves over, stepping up behind the blanket to align herself with the girl in a physical show of support. Knight in shining armor.
The girl turns instantly, looking up at the newcomer with a face full of gratitude. Seb goes completely motionless. Sorry, little bro. You don’t get to be the prince in this story. “I think he wants a cake,” she says, evidently relieved to share this thorny problem with a supportive (human) individual.
Her savior, a sturdy, matronly woman turns back to Seb. “Well? Are you going to buy something or not?”
Seb doesn’t speak, doesn’t even move; he’s a frozen, blank little shell, like the situation’s gone so far afield from the scene in his head it’s shut him down completely, his voicebox ransacking his frame for spare gestures on its way out.
“Kid,” the vendor growls, “Either buy something or move off. Don’t make me call the guard on you.”
Okay, that’s enough. You do your own little sudden-appearance act, shadowing into view at your li’l bro’s shoulder. The way the two humans jump puts a smirk on your face, but you curve the edges up a little more and pretend it’s a friendly smile. They can’t see your eyes; maybe it’s even convincing.
They do not look convinced.
“Hey there,” you greet them. “We’ll take all of them.”
~*~
As the pair of you head out of town, Seb stalks along at your side, not acknowledging your occasional color commentary on the passersby with so much as an ear twitch. He’s pretending to be busy keeping a look out, but since no one’s done anything more dramatic than cross to the other side of the street to avoid you, you’re pretty sure he’s just pissed.
“It seems you’re angry at me.”
Stalk stalk stalk.
“Which is particularly illogical as I cannot discern any method by which I could be perceived to be the party at fault in this little burlesque. In fact, I helped.”
“I didn’t need help!” he snaps.
“Ha ha. Yes you did.”
“Didn’t!”
“Did.”
“You made it worse!”
You cut short a breath. That stings, if only because you’ve had that accusation thrown in your face so many times before…and because of the niggling voice in your head that says it’s true. “Newsflash, li’l dude, you were already sinking. That ship had met the iceberg. The ship and iceberg had exchanged chumhandles and gone to a nice seafood dinner. They had fallen in love and run away together and got all up in each other’s businesses and it was all an epic fated romance that no mortal force could withhold leading inevitably to the watery death of thou—ow!”
You hop on one foot for a step and rub at your shin, frowning at him.
Seb gives you a particularly blank, level stare in response that you think is supposed to be a glare. Turning back to his forward stomping, he hunches his shoulders and directs his shades ferociously at the ground ahead of him. “I can talk to people by myself.”
You narrowly bite back telling him that no, he really can’t. That would not be productive. Anyway, he talks fine to people that aren’t heinously narrow-minded human dumbasses. He and the General chatter at each other all the time, although maybe it doesn’t count when only one person can understand the other. That pidgin sign language the General’s been teaching you is really only suited for simple trade arrangements, not conversation.
You pass the town’s outer walls in silence, and find yourself with the usual mixed feelings. Relief to be away, safe, free, alone, back in your own, less oppressive headspace; bitterness because they don’t want you, you don’t fit, you’re never going to fit.
Seb’s ears flick forward and back, and he steps in closer to you, finally deigning to break the silence. He takes his responsibilities seriously. “Bro.”
“Mm. I noticed.” You keep your reactions casual, not looking around. “Let it ride a bit.”
He shrugs acquiescence and falls back to his previous position, his ears still swiveling alertly. You’re keeping your own eye out, but at the same time another part of your attention is still niggling at the Seb problem. When you get into the treeline, you blow out a breath, uncomfortable with the smog of unhappy silence hanging in the air. Keeping your voice to a low murmur that won’t carry far amid the thick tree cover, you take a stab at adjusting the mood thermostat. “You know it’s fine if sometimes you don’t feel up to dropping down some fine words for the unworthy masses, right?”
Seb makes a cut short hissing noise, and you think for a minute he might be going to try to kick you again. Instead he takes a few quick steps into the lead, giving you his back.
Right. Stop trying to be helpful.
You suppose if someone tried to pull a bullshit line on you about how failure was a natural part of life and didn’t represent any flaw in yourself you’d probably get your back up, too. You want to fix it, but you don’t know how. Maybe you can strife it out. …Later.
Frustrated, you run your hands up into your gelled-back hair, but stop before you can throw everything into complete disarray. “Does it bother you at all that we have no clue why we’re doing this?”
You don’t really expect a response, and he obligingly doesn’t provide one.
“And I don’t just mean why are we dinking around in a random human town trying to grunge up spare parts for the rocketboards once-a-fucking-gain, although that is a pertinent and relevant question. I mean, why are we doing all that here, specifically, on the edge of nothing and nowheresville in mystery-apocalypse-land for yet another day?
“Because Sawtooth said to,” Seb says shortly.
“Inaccurate.” You stab a finger at the back of his head, glad for the excuse to vent. And also shift some blame in this mad ridiculous situation. “Sawtooth didn’t say anything at all. Sawtooth sent us a list of marching orders. And what did the good little soldiers get when they reported in for duty? No Sawtooth, no Squarewave, no explanation of where they are or what the fuck is going on. It seems he left us more freaking orders. Go here. Find—“ you censor yourself on the fly “—whatever. Wait indefinitely for clues. In fact, scratch what I said, that wall scrawling doesn’t even qualify as orders. It’s more like we’re solving puzzle quests in a shitty videogame rpg. We are the mindless videogame characters, jumping through hoops with no conception why. You can’t tell me that doesn’t bug you.”
Seb’s unmoved. “We’re helping Sawtooth.”
You eye the back of his head with disfavor. “Hm. I suppose you could be the mute hero character. I don’t know what that makes me. I guess I’m the talky support character that everybody dislikes just because he points outs the obvious.” Whoops, did you get a little pointed there? Surely not.
“I’m useful.”
Ouch. Kid knows just where to land a blow. “Do you want a cookie? Or, oh, I know.” Your smirk turns evil. “How about a cake?”
He does kick you again, and you shove him on the shoulder, and he jabs his elbow low into your side, and somehow, even though nothing has been accomplished, everything is marginally better. Not fixed, but fixable. You’re just going for a headlock when Seb comes alert again, ears pricking up, and the two of you fall back a few steps.
Right. That other matter.
You’ve probably let it simmer long enough. Brushing dirt off pants and jacket and discreetly checking your katana, you wave Seb on. “Give me a tick, okay?”
Seb’s head tips, glancing sideways at you, and then further behind. He gives you a level look.
You return him your own firmest look, and raise your eyebrows meaningfully. “I got this. Go give the General a heads up. We might need to catch a little something extra for dinner.”
You see his ears straighten in comprehension, and he jerks his chin. “Mm!” After one final moment of hesitation, he takes off, moving purposefully in the direction you left your carapacian travelling companion.
That detail arranged, you give Seb enough time to pass out of sight into the trees, then turn around and face the woods behind you. You fold your arms, tap your foot, and finally speak out flatly.
“It seems I’ve acquired a secret admirer.”
Half-hidden behind an oak tree, an indistinct figure twitches in surprise, drawing further back into the in the long, sunset shadows of the copse.
“C’mon, bro, you’re making me all shy over here. Iyaaan, does senpai like me or is he just waiting to murder me in my sleep? I’m so flustered, my poor little heart. If you don’t lay off the stalker routine I might get all shy and cut you off at the knees.”
That fetches the stranger out, though the fading evening light finds little to reveal. The figure is enrobed from head to toe in a concealing brown cloak, face obscured in the shadows of the deep hood. You’re being stalked by a jawa, apparently. Full length gloves, black clothes, and sturdy boots cover what the cloak doesn’t. You click the contrast on your shades up a few more notches and can just make out the soft, rounded contours of a young face, sharpened by the stubborn tilt of a forward-jutting chin.
The voice, when he starts speaking, is identifiably male, a light alto with slightly raspy undertone that takes off and doesn’t stop. “I beg your pardon; it was not remotely my intention to convey any malicious purposes or render you uncomfortable in any way. I apologize most sincerely for my questionable means of approaching you and for any discomfort or concern I may have inadvertently caused you. My only goal was to find an opportunity to speak with you privately.”
Blinking a bit under the deluge, you fix the visible parts of your face into a neutral expression. Or at the least, something not more than faintly mocking, which is often as close as you can get these days. You fold your arms and lean back against a tree, propping up one leg and letting your sword dangle with misleading carelessness. He’s too far away to get to you before you can react and you’re curious to see if he’ll take the bait.
“It seems you have a very strict definition of privacy. You’ve been following us since the outskirts of town.” From this angle you can just make out a faint gleam in the depths of the hood, paired ovals reflecting light in planes too large to be eyeshine. Glasses, maybe? “Just how private are you looking for here? Because I ought to warn you, my li’l bro might pop out of a leaf pile or some shit any moment. He does that.”
“Oh, no, I appreciate your consideration, but that’s not necessary. I had just hoped to postpone the encounter until after dark.”
Your raise a mocking eyebrow. “You wanna do it after dark, hm? Whoa there, slow down, stallion. At least buy me dinner first.”
There’s a few moments of silence preceding the baffled response. “My apologies, I wasn’t aware of that social convention. Of course I don’t want to be insensitive…. I have some field rations I could offer you. Would that be an acceptable substitution to facilitate this intercourse?”
Your other eyebrow goes up with no direct command from central control. “You are forward.”
“Forgive me; was that rude? Is it important that I buy it? I am certainly willing to fulfill my part in any cultural rituals as necessary. Is a financial transaction required or would barter suffice?”
Oh god, straight face. “Depends. Are you still talking about dinner or have we moved on to dessert? You start trying to buy a guy’s dessert and he might think you don’t respect him.”
“I—no, I’m sorry, of course I wouldn’t want to do anything that breached your boundaries. I just want to get the appropriate courtesies taken care of so I can present my proposition.”
“You want to proposition me.”
“Yes, exactly; I—”
“But you don’t want to breach my boundaries.”
“No, not at all. You see—”
“Is this a complicated way of saying you want me to top?”
You’re rewarded with another one of those bewildered pauses, before he plunges back in. “In fact, I have a task that I would like to engage your assistance with, and in exchange I believe I could be of some service to you.”
Dear god this guy is easy. It’s kind of like playing tennis with a brick wall—he just lobs them straight back at you. About as rewarding, too. You let that last statement hang in the air for a few seconds before you take pity and stop stringing this along. “Okay, so. Are you just painfully conversationally inept or are you actually hitting on me? Because I gotta say, this is one of the weirder come ons I’ve run into and, believe me, I know from weird. I’ve seen severed heads make a smoother pass.”
“Hitting on…what? No!” He’s actually sputtering now, completely flustered, and his voice almost vibrates with alarm. “I’m not—that’s not what I meant at all! I had no intention of—of inadvertently conveying any kind of—solicitation, or inappropriate—which isn’t to say that there would be anything wrong with—in a proper context between two consenting adults—or more than two if that’s their preference, of course, I don’t mean to imply any judgment—but I wasn’t—what I mean to say is—I can see that ‘intercourse’ was a problematic word choice; I should have borne in mind the implications in the casual lexicon and how that could be misperceived to construe—“
Secretly you’re kind of captivated—it’s just such an amazing verbal trainwreck—but after a few moments you cut in on the catastrophe with your blandest voice. “Right, well, word to the wise, bro, pick ups usually go better when you aren’t creeping around stalking people while cloaked head-to-toe like the last lonely larper at the con. You got some self-esteem issues that need to be addressed? Because there’s body-shy and then there’s body-paranoid and you are definitely encroaching on the mentally unsteady end of the spectrum.”
There’s a sharply indrawn breath and the figure pulls up to his full height, his previous agitation falling away from him. He’s still more than half a head shorter than you, but he stands like he thinks he’s taller. Or like he wants you to think it. “There’s no need to engage in shaming dialogue. As a matter of fact I have an extreme sensitivity to sunlight which is particularly common in my species, although, of course, not universal; I wouldn’t want to assert my experiences as default—“
His species. Not just the full body cloak against the light, but the odd rasp and trill of the voice; the cultural disconnect. You are slow today. “You’re out pretty early for a troll.”
You hear him sniff. In an excessively stuffy tone, he answers, “I find with appropriate accommodations there is no reason my species should limit me to any particular nocturnal or diurnal cycle.”
You glance around, where the sunset shadows of the forest have transmuted into the complex tangle of shadow and form sketched in the bright cold light of multiple moons. “Well, the sun’s pretty well put to bed now. Think I could get a peep at who I’m talking to?”
“Very well.” He strips the gloves from his hands, revealing grey skin and a neat set of delicately pointed black claws. The gloves get tucked away in a manner you don’t quite follow—the sleight of hand reminds you of the General, and his weird carapacian item duality tricks. The—quite evidently—troll’s hands come up to fiddle with some complicated lacing at the base of the hood, and he starts talking again, reflexively, like he’s not comfortable without a buffer of words filling the air. “…apologies, these garments are designed for protection and are not particularly accessible or convenient to manage. I’ve told her and told her how potentially problematic that could be for trolls with physical limitations but she gets so touchy about her designs. It’s such a waste I can’t convince anyone else to…”
It’s kind of interesting and probably a good way to pick up some passive intel but you’re an asshole, and also kind of impatient with curiosity so you interrupt him with a toneless, “Ooh, senpai. The anticipation is making my poor little heart go doki doki. I may swoon.”
His fingers twitch slightly, and you can recognize a face that’s only pretending to be above irritation. Under a façade of calm, he finishes out the laces and yanks loose the guard cloth fastened loosely around his shoulders and throat, his voice lilting up into a full on patronizing register. “Of course I don’t wish to cause you any physical or emotional distress.” He pushes back his hood in a single smooth motion, using his other had to raise a pair of darkened goggles from his eyes to his forehead, where they half disappear under a fringe of spiky black hair.
He rubs a little at the marks around his eyes, blinking owlishly in the moonlight, and turns his gaze back to you.
You recoil in surprise. “Vantas?”
The troll tenses, pulling back a bit from you as well, before he sucks in a breath and firms his stance. His shoulders go back, his chin comes up, and he draws himself up to his full, if still rather lacking, height, puffing up to look down his nose at you like a proud cat. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”