Once they get tired of that, Lianne moves them both to Gauntlet: Dark Legacy, which is a fairly slow and easy beat-a-dungeon-together game, especially in the starting area.

This is cool and reasonably absorbing but much less Definitely His Thing.

Then they can move on to a game where it tracks the movement of your controller as you move through a fantasy setting - you can play a wizard and wave it as a wand, a warrior and use it as a sword, a marksman and point it...

Hmm, this game might be trying too hard. Or he's just had enough video games for today. Not sure.

"Want to take a break and do something else?" they'll ask when they notice his attention wandering.

Oh, his attention wanders all the time, but.

“Mm?”

They shrug. "I'm not good at entertaining other people, really," they'll admit. "But, hm, there's stuff to watch, books, I have some art things..."

He considers these options.

“Books? I could learn about things? Or, what would you do if you weren't out to 'entertain me'?”

"I'm not good at focusing to read, but I remember some books - on my own I usually spend time drawing, or exercising, or watching anime."

He considers these things for a moment.

“Let's see the books!”

"Sure!"

And they'll lead the way to the library. It's mostly nonfiction reference manuals, with a heavy focus on biology of humans and the physiology of weapons. Still, there's a small section of science fiction novels, and some nonfiction books that don't assume you have a medical degree.

“Okay, so the reality of books may be more complicated than the concept.”

"Heh. I think Marian's just a nerd, most library and all books are easier than this - actually if you want to swing by a library, I don't mind getting out of here."

“I was thinking it's probably worth trying anyway, but the library sounds like a better idea. Assuming a library is in fact a place with books of all sorts including introductions for people who don't know anything about anything, something, in particular.”

"It is! And the one we're near's pretty big."

“Let's go!”

They can head to the car then. Lianne will explain libraries - and the distinction between public and university libraries. There's a university library Marian could get them into, but the public library is more likely to have what they're looking for.

The library's fairly close - despite how secluded Marian's place is, it's actually fairly close to a major road, which feeds into a college town nested in the valley.

He is distracted through this explanation by the experience of being in a motor vehicle!

They're fine repeating it, and know a lot more about motor vehicles than about libraries, so can answer questions there, too - they're no licensed mechanic, of course, but they have a good grounding.

The possibility of driving may make him less unenthusiastic about the prerequisites for interacting with government and whatnot. Anyway, there was a library?

Library!

It's two stories, and has a fantastical sort of woodland cottage architecture, and the walls are decorated with woodland mythical scenes. The first floor has fiction, plus a fairly big children's section, and a few kids quietly reading in nooks there, and a row of computers, and large desks that're popular for group writing events, and meeting rooms for group projects. The nonfiction, including the guides for weapons who're new to being fully awake, is on the second floor. (If he ends up disliking reading, everything geared towards weapons is available as an audiobook, too.)

He approves of this library's theme.

He will read the regular text version of a guide without apparent trouble, at a fairly quick pace. What do guidebook authors think new weapons probably need to know?

There's different guides, but the very basic guides lay out that weapons wake with different knowledge levels, and different amounts in different fields, so the most important things to know are really common and major laws ("wait that wasn't free?" is sometimes a problem with new weapons), how money works, where to go and how to interface with the government, how to navigate buses and road crosswalks and taxis, how to tell if a neighborhood is likely to be safe or unsafe... It also says some weapons have trouble telling what's safe to eat, but that's beyond the scope of this guide.

Plus how weapons work - you can revert to your natural shape without the help of a wielder, but changing from your natural shape requires aid. Make sure you trust your wielder! Weapons don't need to sleep, not like humans do, but you'll start having trouble forming new memories if you don't sleep at least a few hours every week. And sleep's often recreational - for some reason, weapons don't tend to have nightmares like humans do. Most weapons can half-sleep, going into a meditative trance that they can easily rise out of.

He has several thoughts on this education! One of them is: that sure is a bunch of rules to substitute for being nice to each other. Another: It hadn't quite sunk in just how much — he thinks he can trust Lianne, but it itches to know that his newly-discovered freedom to act is dependent on another person.

There are things that can help with that. “You mentioned books of names?”

They look up from their book. "Yeah. Not super sure where they'll be, but librarian should be able to help, or we can get on the computers and look for a name site."