[Social] I'll Gladly Pay You Tuesday For a Beer Today

[Thraxion Ord'Rakar]

"Why? Have you got an idea?" he asked with eager slyness.

[Robin Stanton]

"I mean, nothing in particular. Just wondering what kinda shenanigans you're looking for. I assume you don't wanna, like, actually break a bunch of laws." she chuckles.

[Thraxion Ord'Rakar]

"Yeah, I'd like to stay on Minamida's good side. I'm just so booored laying low." He sighed dramatically.

"I need some excitement or I'm going to go insane. If there's any way to distract myself without drawing unnecessary attention, I'm all ears."

[Robin Stanton]

"There's always the Danger Room, but there's plenty of exciting stuff out there! Just tell people you're a mutant and no one's gonna bat an eye. Okay, some might but not for alien-related reasons, just cause they're bigots."

[Thraxion Ord'Rakar]

Honestly, he stopped listening after the words 'Danger room.' He had no idea what that was but it sounded exciting. "Wha-ha-ha-what--" He laughed with excited curiosity. "--is a Danger Room? Other than, yanno, a room... that is dangerous."

[Robin Stanton]

"Way to sabotage the obvious joke." she huffs. "It's a room rigged with hardlight emitters to create training scenarios. Or recreational scenes if you're willing to risk catching the heat for that." she chuckles.

[Thraxion Ord'Rakar]

"That sounds suspiciously like alien technology," Thrax said quietly, suddenly all the more interesting in seeing it. This Danger Room had to be why Minamida didn't blink at the hardlight capabilities of his Tiruga.

[Robin Stanton]

"It is where I'm from. Shi'ar. No clue about this universe. Ash would know."

[Thraxion Ord'Rakar]

"I mean I would know," Thrax responded. "At least, I think I'd know it if I saw it."

"Not that I actually understand how it works, mind you. I just... kinda have—had hardlight tech with me. It was suggested I let the school store it for me, because nobody wants some rando stumbling across something alien in my room."

[Robin Stanton]

"Pff, screw that. We got folks fiddling around with high-tech doodads, no one's gonna jump to 'alien' from that."

[Thraxion Ord'Rakar]

"Yeah, I didn't really get it either. But what's a guy to do when relying on the kindness of strangers, right? Gotta give trust to get trust or some crap like that." Thrax shrugged.

"I can trust your headmistress with it, right? Did I make a mistake?"

[Robin Stanton]

"Nah, she's cool. Don't know her that well, but my Dad seems to like her and he wouldn't if she was lame enough to sell you out. If you're really worried you can talk to Shari. She's been here a while and her folks tried to pull some shit, so if she hasn't tattled on the Skrull..." she chuckles.

[Thraxion Ord'Rakar]

"It would be helpful to get some pointers from someone else from off-world," Thrax nodded thoughtfully, scratching his ear. "I mean, I've been warned Skrulls but I don't judge people by species. I'm a very deed-oriented kind of guy."

[Robin Stanton]

"They do tend to kinda suck. This one's cool though."

[Thraxion Ord'Rakar]

Thrax grinned. "Well then! Introduce away!"

[Robin Stanton]

"Sure, lemme just... Oh right..." she says, fishing a phone out of her pocket. "I think I got everyone's phone number in here..." And like a true post-Gen Z she sends a text-message rather than call. She'd have send a brief video clip of herself along with location data but alas, this backwater world doesn't have the wonders of the Engine she's used to connecting everyone much more easily.

"I told her where we are. Guess we can hang around and see if she responds or shows up."

[Thraxion Ord'Rakar]

"Another drink while we... Wait, wait, wait; you have these personal comm devices that fit in your pockets but you only use the least advanced feature to communicate?" Thrax was mostly teasing but was also genuinely perplexed by this. "Are humans shy?"

[Robin Stanton]

"In this time-period? Yeah, I guess! Where I'm from most people got a retinal display and camera and when you link up it projects an image of them into your field of vision. It learns how you move and stuff to approximate you or you can customize it or control it manually too. Video-calling somebody is so old-fashioned it makes me feel old." she laughs.

[Thraxion Ord'Rakar]

"Pfft, retinal displays are so a century ago." Thrax grinned.

"Might not be the same for humans, but the implants started making people go blind so we scrapped the whole idea. Which is fine by me. Just the thought of jamming something in my eye gives me the heebs." He shuddered dramatically. "But, then, the order didn't allow cybernetics unless medically necessary. So I'm biased."

[Robin Stanton]

"Oh then you're definitely not gonna like this replacement Ash helped me put together." she says with a grin and reaches for her eye. The whole side of her head turns to pink protoplasm and she pulls out a walnut-sized bit of tech with a lens in front and bristling antenna and connectors in the back. "Definitely less elegant if you don't have the cloud running the Engine." she chuckles at the potential body horror on display.

[Thraxion Ord'Rakar]

The sight of her casually pulling out what looked a lot like a mechanical eye, he averted his eyes. He couldn't tell her that the Crocutan man that led the attack had a cybernetic eye, that besides being grossed out he was reliving the moment his master was struck down, or that the man was accompanied by a brother that had betrayed the order. None of that had anything to do with these people.

"Oh, Storm—" He gagged. "—Don't do that."

[Robin Stanton]

"Monoforms are so squeamish." she laughs. "But yeah, fair."

[Thraxion Ord'Rakar]

"Yeah, cybernetics are a much bigger deal to those of us made of fragile meat." He shuddered again.

"Not that having information a thought away wouldn't be incredibly useful, I just can't imagine getting something like that implanted. But, again, monastery. I mean, I had a life before I went there; it was just an improvement. Nobody makes fun of you for being short at a monastery."

Wait... Just how big are his people if this guy is short?

[Robin Stanton]

"Well, welcome to being taller than most folks." she chuckles. "And this is really just a crude facsimile. Doesn't even really count as cybernetics, just a camera I can hold in my head." she says and makes the side of her head open into a large hand to give the camera thingie to.

[Thraxion Ord'Rakar]

"Yeah..." He grinned in satisfaction. "It was fun to discover that most a very large percentage of the interstellar population is smaller than me. Though, I did see a couple of humans taller than me. And that super tall cat guy I spotted in Mutant Town who would even be tall back home. Seriously, you Mutants are all over the place."

He smirked. "But then I have a fondness for chaos."

[Robin Stanton]

"That's humans for ya in general. All over the damn place. You know the smallest human adult is only, like, two feet tall?"

[Thraxion Ord'Rakar]

He turned his head to give her a dubious sidelong look. "Two feet? Really? You're not pulling my leg?"

"Also, how much is a foot? All your feet are different sizes."

[Robin Stanton]

"Ah you see, it's the length of the King's foot." she informs him, technically correct historically speaking but horribly misrepresenting the malleability on purpose. "About this tall." she says, shrinking down to the aforementioned size.

[Thraxion Ord'Rakar]

"Okay, wow," he laughed. "Two of those is tiiiny."

"I'm, like, almost seven of those. Also, the king had big feet for a human. Just saying."

[Robin Stanton]

"Hey, like I said, all over the damn place. But yeah, most of them are gonna have to crane their neck at ya." she chuckles.

[Thraxion Ord'Rakar]

"So..." Thrax said as he twiddled his thumbs.

He suddenly perked up again. "Oh! Okay, so I keep hearing that I look like something called a hyena. What is a hyena? Something cool and popular, I assume."

[Robin Stanton]

"Weeeeell... I think they're neat but most people probably see them as... villainouscarrioneaterscauseoftheircacklingbark." she rapidfires through th awkward part of the sentence.

[Thraxion Ord'Rakar]

"Oh, well that's not good." The alien barked a laugh—not like a hyena, an actual laugh. "I mean, my people were pretty savage once upon a time but that was a really long time ago. It explains some of the reactions I was getting."

It felt like a lie to put his kind's savage side in the past in a way that never seemed dishonest before the rebellion and resulting purge. Practically in an instant, Crocutan society had regressed millennia to a time when war and death were considered virtuous. He often stretched the truth or omitted details, but rarely did he do so without something more at stake than his pride. Of course, lying to himself that he was being dishonest about his past to protect these people was simply a perfect example of Thrax's tendency to avoid talking about anything real.

[Robin Stanton]

"Oh humans are so much worse than hyenas, dude. But yeah, image problem I suppose. Hell, if anything the reactions you've been getting just show you how savage our species still is sometimes."

[Thraxion Ord'Rakar]

"Eh, the universe isn't so enlightened that your species is that bad. There are much worse intelligent species out there. Of course, even some of them know that having people with powers makes the species stronger. If your planet at large knew what was out there, I bet they'd feel different."

"Not to say there isn't still sometimes resentment under the surface, but it's more 'why them and not me?' than 'they want to replace us'." Something about the clarification seemed off, but maybe it was just because they were just talking about 'villainous' hyenas.

[Shari]

"To be totally fair..." a quiet voice chimes in from near the door. "Some races don't set a great example about replacing people."

[Thraxion Ord'Rakar]

Thrax looked towards the new voice with a smirk. "Well, we can't all survive without some degree of trickery. I mean, we don't all build our entire culture around it, but I get it."

[Shari]

"Really? Because I don't. It's fucked up and not what our shapeshifting should be used for." Shari frowns.

[Thraxion Ord'Rakar]

"Actually, that was me spouting bullshit to be diplomatic." Thrax smirked. "But I see you're a rebel so forget that. Yeah, your people took a wrong turn somewhere."

Like mine just did... Oh, shit, she might have heard about that. I really hope she doesn't say anything.

[Shari]

"Should have expected that." she admits and her skin warps and shifts into that of a young black woman, her hair curling until it turns into a somewhat unruly mob. No one on campus held her family's doings against her, for the most part, but she still avoids her natural shape most of the time. She really should have known better than to think she'd get a good response from a fellow off-worlder.

"They just... yeah. Not like your people. Crocutan, right?"