[01] Making Acquaintence

[nissa_revane]

WHO: nissa_revane and whoever is around
WHAT: Exploring her new surroundings
WHERE: Truth and Consequences
WHEN: Shortly after arrival
WARNINGS: None as of yet.

Comments

Have a troll.

[seeingtwofold]

Sollux, so intent on avoiding a series of awkward conversations that he just didn't feel prepared to deal with, had been making an art form out of side stepping interactions with his friends over the last week. Never in his motel room aside from when he was passed out sleeping - never making conversation passed what was a stilted base-minimum.

Have been rendered functionally insane for an entire week, he felt that he had an awful lot of eggs on his face and didn't really want to deal with that fact until he absolutely had to.

Needless to say, he wasn't indoors as Nissa went on her prowl. He was just hanging out on a bench somewhere, dicking around on his communicator in between bouts of coding. He looked up as she wandered by, picking up on the fact that she was a rare example of a new of arrival that looked as inhuman as he did.

"...you look new," he said in a tone that could be construed as slightly insulting, given how it seemed to imply the sentiment that she looked utterly clueless.

[nissa_revane]

Nissa was brought out of her contemplation by the voice that seemed to be speaking to her. Lowering her gaze, she saw the...man? sitting on a bench on one of the streets. The elf looked him over for a few moments, before speaking. "If you are referring to this plane, then you would be correct." There was no need to attempt to blend in; this place seemed to be crawling with humans, and devoid of all other sentient species. It made Nissa's spine crawl.

"You don't appear to be part of the local flavor either," she retorted, a hand moving to her hip as she looked to him. How she wished she still had her clothing from home - it was difficult to look dignified wearing the jeans and t-shirt she had found herself with. She would have to find something similar when she had a chance. "Were you summoned here, or did you make your way here yourself?"

[seeingtwofold]

Upon closer examination, it was pretty obvious that Sollux was no older than fourteen, if even that. His and Nissa's looks had a few things in common in that they both had off coloured skin (grey and green respectively) and pointed ears, but his fangs and horns were more than enough to separate them.

"Summoned? Nope, I came in through the tubes like I'm guessing you just did. Nobody seems to make it in or out of here intentionally."

[nissa_revane]

"I left Zendikar of my own volition...but when I began to planeswalk away, I was pulled out of the Blind Eternities prematurely, and brought here, finding myself in one of those...tubes." She shuddered visibly.

"What can you tell me of this place?" she asked him pointedly.

[seeingtwofold]

Her manner of speaking seemed to be causing him some degree of incredulous mental agitation, but in the end he just shrugged.

"It's called earth, it's almost entirely populated by humans, and reality kind of turns inside out and secretes something awful all over us every couple weeks." He thought for a moment. "And the desert doesn't actually go on forever, believe it or not."

[nissa_revane]

"That is a relief. I have seen deserts that DO go on forever," she replied. "The sand is a nightmare." Taking into account what he had told her, she thought for a moment. As were most elves, her age was fairly indistinguishable; one would hardly guess that she was over a hundred years old.

"Earth...an interesting name," she said. "The mana is odd here, too..." She looked back to him. "Then if you are not human, what are you?"

[seeingtwofold]

Well, she was obviously some kind of fantasy freak show, but Sollux didn't feel the need to express that opinion out loud quite yet.

"If by 'mana' you mean 'magic', then yeah. It an I are on bad terms. It shit all over me last week, and it isn't exactly offering any apologies. And fuck, it'll probably do it again, too."

"I'm a troll," he replied with a shrug. "I'm from a dead planet called Alternia somewhere in another dimension."

[nissa_revane]

She looked at him again curiously. "A troll?" she asked incredulously. "Forgive me, but you do not resemble the trolls that I am familiar with," she continued.

"The mana itself causes disruptions? Perhaps this plane is closer to Zendikar than I originally thought."

[seeingtwofold]

"Yeah, well, I figured that the multiverse can afford some flexibility in the definition of a troll. Probably not even close to the same thing." He gave the concept a pretty apathetic shrug.

"Anyway, I doubt it. This universe is completely broken. The magic. The dimensional fabric. Everything."

[nissa_revane]

"That...is good to know," she said. She looked away for a moment, lost in her thoughts, before her gaze returned to him. "This is perhaps a long shot, but...have you met someone here, a man with pale skin, named Sorin?" she asked him. While she knew that he probably knew nothing, it didn't hurt to ask.

[seeingtwofold]

He contemplated the question for a few seconds, then shrugged it off. "Nope, sorry. If you want to look for people, the best way is to ask about them over the Network. They could be anywhere at this point."

[nissa_revane]

She held out the cell phone. "The network. It is this artifact, correct?" she asked him, disdainful of the thing she held in her hand. "I have figured out the basic means to use it. Does everyone on this plane have one of these?"

[seeingtwofold]

"You access it with that, yeah." And suddenly, he recalled having a conversion with very similar terminology on the Network not all that long ago. "All the imports have one. It's kind of a gift from our benevolent overlords." That last part was basically seething with sarcasm. "But really it's just how people keep in touch with each other."

[nissa_revane]

"Does it also let us contact the overlords themselves? Or would that be too much to ask for?" she asked him, looking at the device again. Even though she was dressed as someone from Earth, the cell phone looked entirely misplaced in her hand, as if it didn't belong.

"There are others who have been 'imported', as you call it? How many?"

[seeingtwofold]

He shrugged as if to say 'how the hell should I know?'

"Maybe a hundred or more? I have no idea. Don't know the overlord's digits either, but if you post a message on the Network saying 'Hey Capekillers, eat a dick!' maybe you'll get their attention. I dunno, they seem pretty lackluster." He would have chosen a different slur normally, but from some painstaking research into humans he understood that 'eat a dick' was probably a more evocative alternative to the troll 'suck a bulge'.