Home 20: Refurbished

[Recaiden]

[Skullfort]

"There's another place, one I made, but it's not exactly comfortable. It's actually kind of dangerous, so, another time?"
Leah draws a little bit away.
"Let's just collect the knives and head inside, ah?"
And she'll go to do just that, collecting the practice throwing things.
"Oh! You could see the observatory. It's nice, and no one will be using it right now."

[Deathkeeper]

Skullfort

Mist's ears perk up.
"Observatory? Like, for stars? It's not the right time of day for that but it sounds nice. Let's go." he says excitedly, standing up straight.

[Recaiden]

[Skullfort]

"More for meteors and comets, but yeah!"
Leah comes up by the newly straight-standing Mist, puts an arm to go around his shoulders, and strolls off towards the observatory.
Which Mist could probably have found on his own, honestly. It's the place with the domes and the telescopes and the radio dish.

"No stars to see, but you can see the past things and all the equipment and it's just a nice place."

There's not a single large predatory cat in the observatory.

[Deathkeeper]

Skullfort

Mist looks up at Leah as they walk. Gosh she's tall.
"It's okay when I lean on you like before, right? It's just sort of a tendency. You're really sturdy." he says, a little embarrassed.
Leah has a sword-swinging physique before you even consider the several-hundred-pound animal-for-legs angle. Sturdy is an accurate description.
"And what kind of past things?" asks the fox.

[Recaiden]

[Skullfort]

Leah glances down at Mist and nods. Too tall sometimes, but it beats being too small, it really does.
"It's fine. In fact, I could probably carry you without trouble."

"I mean like the star charts and rendering from the non-visible scopes."
Leah comes to the door of the observatory and does...something to open the door, as one can hear a lock clicking open.

[Deathkeeper]

Skullfort

Mist chuckles.
"Oh, you definitely could. Your lower body is slimmer than a pack horse, but a hundred or so pounds of me shouldn't be a problem at all. I think your full loadout of plate mail and weapons weight almost as much."
That being said, he'd never ask for her to do that. It just seems...rude, somehow. She's a person, not a horse, so it wouldn't be appropriate to make that kind of request, would it?
"Woah. Is the door magically locked? Or is it just motion-sensitive?" he asks.

[Recaiden]

[Skullfort]

Leah nods.
"Exactly."
She can be both, can't she? It's a lot less of an imposition for a centaur to carry someone than for another human to do so. Still might be rude to presume to ask in general, but since she suggested it, there's no harm.

As for the door, she sort of shrugs.
"Supposedly, it reads your mind to see if you know the key. All I know is it works."

Inside is a wide, tall, curved hallway and wedge-shaped rooms. Posters about the importance of astronomy (and one about the danger of robots) line the halls, while the rooms have images of the night sky and various celestial bodies of the Nexus System. There's racks of movable maps, a coffee-machine waking up in surprise when it notices people in this early, computers and associated of various levels of sophistication.
Leah waves to the coffee-machine and assures it they don't need anything to drink.
"This is actually how I got the fort, on account of watching this observatory. You know how things just sort of appear in the Nexus, through every sort of portal? Lots of them are up in orbit or further and rain down." She points out a trio of printings showing a skull-shaped shooting star.

[Deathkeeper]

Skullfort

Mist looks around, wonder in his eyes. "Wow. This place is awesome. Uh, is your vending machine sapient? he asks, a bit overwhelmed at all of this.

[Recaiden]

[Skullfort]

Leah shakes her head.
"It's just pretending. Has a bunch of scripts it follows."

She grins and heads out of that room to the central area, which is much more sciencey. Telescopes, scaffolding, a closed dome overhead, computers and controls and sleepy robots and stranger things.
There's a single giant telescope that's clearly the thing this place was built around.

[Deathkeeper]

Skullfort

Mist looks around, pausing here and there to stop and look at the strange things.
"Wow. I haven't been in a place this sciency in...possibly ever. Certainly not since coming to the Nexus. Obviously you can't use a giant telescope like that in broad daylight, but what is here that you can show me?" he asks, excited.

[Recaiden]

[Skullfort]

"Mhm. This is the only one I've been to."
Leah goes over to a display and motions to it.
"You saw the big dish? It can see fine during the day."
The screen shows some outer space.

[Deathkeeper]

Skullfort

Mist peers at the display. He tilts his head in a very canine manner, stares some more. And then he just bursts out into laughter.
"I'm sorry, but I have absolutely no idea what I'm looking at." he manages to get out.

[Recaiden]

[Skullfort]

Leah laughs along, and pats Mist on the shoulder.
"Sorry, it takes some getting used to. Let me see if I can find some nice normal stars to start."

She presses a number of keys in quick succession, and the image is replaced with a
"Collecting..." wait image.
Eventually they get something like this.

[Deathkeeper]

Skullfort

Mist tries to pull up a seat.
"Well, I can see the stars...but which ones are they? The Nexus sky always seems too chaotic and protean to have the same stars consistently." he ponders aloud.

[Recaiden]

[Skullfort]

Leah shrugs.
"They move around a lot, but they're consistent enough in their patches. Some days, all these stars will be there, some days, some whole other set might, but they come on back."
She points out a bright point near the nebula.
"That's where Kes came from. That blurry one down below is another planet near here, cold and poisonous."

[Deathkeeper]

Skullfort

"Kestrel? Huh. I guess I never thought of normal space travel in the Nexus much. It actually doesn't seem all that common." Mist says.

It's actually a bit odd, that.

[Rebonack]

Jace's Place

Spoiler

Show

"Oh. That's a nice name. Jace's last name is Vallarm. I guess it's yours, too." says Nick, as he pulls the curtains closed on the big window in the room, darkening it quite a bit. Then he goes into a nightstand nearby and opens the draw, taking out a burned-looking gray rock. He hops back onto the couch and grinning, holds it up to Khannie's face.
And lets it go.

The little stone quivers but doesn't fall. After a moment, it lurches and begins to orbit her head, throwing light everywhere around her (but not back into her face) like a torch.

"Jace calls these ioun torches. He makes tons of them for the locals." Nick explains.

Khannie blinks quizzically. "Why does daddy need two names? Why do I need two names? What's the second one for?" she asks. Personal names are weird enough in the pokemon village. What's the point of having TWO names? That seems like personal identification overkill!

And then a rock.

The little kangaskhan gives a gasp of delight!

"Oh! It's so cool! It's like a little will o wisp!" she giggles as she tentatively reaches for the stone, only to pull her hand back, biting her lip. "It does feel hot. Will it burn me?"

[Deathkeeper]

Jace's Place

The ioun stone isn't very hot at all and should be safe to touch.
"The first name is for the person. The last name is for the family, and is passed down from father to kids. It's generally so you know who's related to who.

And the stone shouldn't be too hot. You should be fine."

It produces about as much heat as a fluorescent bulb. That is, not much.

[Rebonack]

[Jace's Place]

"So... that means I'm Khannie Vallarm?" the little khan asks. "Are you supposed to use both names when you talk to someone? What's your last name?" she continues to quirey, shortly before snatching the floating stone out of the air. She cups her paws around it, watching how the light streams out between her claws. And then, slowly, she eases her digits back, letting more and more illumination free.

The glow from the stone does a good job of illuminating the childish wonder on her face.

"It's so pretty! I've never seen anything like it before. This is so much nicer than a fire since it won't set your bed on fire."

Very true.

And that, children, is why you shouldn't ever build a fire under your bed to try to make it warmer.

Nothing good comes from it!

"I wonder what move daddy uses to make these..." she ponders aloud. "Is it an HM?"

[Deathkeeper]

Jace's Place

"Using your full name is formal. You don't usually do that. Mine's Richards. My big brother's name is also Nick Richards. He knew a lot about me, and someone joked about us being the same person due to time travel once. I snuck into his closet once and found his dog tags. They have my birthday on them, so maybe we are."

One thing Nick forgot? He was good at sneaking since he was five.

"You don't need moves to do everything. You just do them. You don't need a move to build a house, do you? Or walk?" the dragon tries to explain to her.

[Rebonack]

[Jace's Place]

Khannie doesn't reply, instead pondering all these neat things she has learned whilst admiring the glowing stone. Humans don't need moves to do cool things. Maybe that's what makes them so special? Maybe she can learn to be like that, too? She IS still a pokemon, but her daddy is a human, so maybe that will work out? She'll just have to ask.

The stone is released again, allowing it to once more begin slowly circling around her head.

She can't help but smile at it.

"So... you're dragon water-type, right?" she asks, sounding a bit more confident this time around. "That's a really tough typing! I bet you aren't afraid of anyone!"

A SUPER tough typing!

Though not quite so tough when Fairy suddenly started being a thing.

[Recaiden]

[Skullfort]

"Kestrel? Huh. I guess I never thought of normal space travel in the Nexus much. It actually doesn't seem all that common." Mist says.

It's actually a bit odd, that.

"It's a bit of a weird place to go. Not a ton to offer high-tech places, and I gather a lot of FTL breaks down far from here, so it's dicey even from continuities that support it to come here."
Leah shrugs.
"There's spaceships that people here have put together and all, so I guess it's not that weird."

"So...that's my places."

[Deathkeeper]

Skullfort

Mist grins widely.
"Well, your places are awesome. Really, you're going to make me embarrassed with just my inn. Which one is your favorite?" he asks, still awed by all of this stuff.

Jace's Place

Nick blinks.
"Khannie, people that aren't pokemon don't have types. I'm just me." he says flatly.
Explaining things is so hard!

[Rebonack]

[Jace's Place]

Khannie gasps!

"But... but if no one has types then how do you know which moves will be super effective?" she asks.

The human world is crazy!

People can do neat out of battle things without HMs AND they don't have types?

This is just...

Everything is so different!

She slumps against the couch, staring off into space while the little heatless torch continues to orbit her head. This place is going to take a WHOLE lot of getting use to. "Umm... can you show me how to do things without an HM? Something neat?" she asks, doing her best to throw off the daze of shock and confusion as her world is turned upside down.

[Deathkeeper]

Jace's Place

"Well...most people don't do much fighting, if at all. So we don't need to worry about moves.
And what do you want to see? I don't know how to fly yet. I could cut something? I could show you some tech you probably didn't have back home?" Nick offers, his opinion on how hard explaining things is not changing in the least.

[Recaiden]

[Skullfort]

Leah nods.
"Thanks. I'd have to say the fort itself. Not like I made it like the roost or anything, but it's; that was one of the better things I did."
She adjusts the keyboard to send the dish back to just listening, watching for any movements that aren't the slow turning of the stars.

"I don't go up to the roost much anymore, because you know, stairs."
She nods to her not-so-stair-friendly new feet.
"And you haven't even seen the jungle, that's the dangerous place I mentioned. But I'm glad you like these places." Looks over to Mist with a playful smile.

[Rebonack]

[Jace's Place]

"Umm..." Khannie mutters, glancing around the room as she snatches the floating torch out of the air again. She's release it again soon, watching it bounce up to her head is fun! Her eyes wander about until at last they settle on the strange device on Nick's wrist. "What's that?" she asks, pointing at the PIP.

Oh no.

She's about to be introduced to video games.

There's no way this will end well.

"Does it do something special? That's what you sent a message to Miss Fortuna with, right?"

Haha!

Yes.

Yes, it does something special alright.

[Deathkeeper]

Skullfort

Mist chuckles and puts an arm around her waist.
"Well, I guess that's just part of the trade-off.

But I think the jungle probably isn't for me. I don't respond all that well to danger, I think. Not like you, Miss Brave Knight." he says, just trying to imagine walking through a jungle with his fur. Nope.

Jace's Place

"This is my Pip-Drake. Forte has a pip-Colt, though it looks more like mine when she's in her natural shape. It gets pokemon-themed when she's a Mew. It has a magic spell to store my things, and keeps track of them all. It lets me contact other people when I need to, and it monitors my health. And I have a few games on it." Nick explains, indicating each menu with the dials and such.

[Rebonack]

[Jace's Place]

"So... it's like an item bag that you wear and it can talk to people?" Khannie inquires, scooting up along side Nick for a better look.

For good measure, she releases the floating torch again.

Be free! Be illuminated!

"What do you mean, it can play games?" she asks, wrinkling her nose. "Like... tag? How could that thing play tag with you? It looks like a hold-item to me."

She has a very different view on what constitutes a game.

[Recaiden]

Skullfort

Mist chuckles and puts an arm around her waist.
"Well, I guess that's just part of the trade-off.

But I think the jungle probably isn't for me. I don't respond all that well to danger, I think. Not like you, Miss Brave Knight." he says, just trying to imagine walking through a jungle with his fur. Nope.

"Okay. But you know, I'll keep you safe if you need, Mister Innkeeper." Leah reaches over to pet the top of Mist's head, brushing his ears, as she walks then, slowly, out of the telescope room.