"- But snakes aren't four-legged!" says the teenager in the black hoodie, leaning animatedly over the opposite side of the round table. They were apparently too focused on the guy pacing around up in front of the whiteboard, to notice the person materializing out of thin air in the seat across from them.
The other four people in the room have noticed, and are staring.
- Yeah, this… this does sound reasonable. And - I don't know what's your custom for this but I guess it will be somewhat easier for me to share the living place with a... female. Although I've had many roommates of all kinds, so if you live with something else, it's not a problem… I'm rambling again, ain't I.
Toy-Mun stands up and moves the chair away, carefully holding their sword's hilt by a clearly practiced movement so that it doesn't intervene.
- Let's go.
He rapidly starts packing his stuff, making eyes at the others to do the same so it looks like they were all going to leave at this time anyway.
Nod. "You . . . ready?
I don't . . . it'd be horrible if you felt like you're not allowed to go wherever you want, talk to whoever you want. We lucked into first dibs on making you an employment offer, and if we suck relative to other people you talk to, we actually wouldn't be up-to-Code people if you felt like you couldn't quit and go work for them, on account of us."
Several people had further last-second points of confusion about dragons but fine, they guess, it can wait. Unless Toy-Mun quits right here in which case it may have to wait forever. They'll still find out eventually-eventually, once the real scientists have sifted through it - wow what a painful thought.
Toy-Mun rapidly collects back the few possessions taken from the bag and nods.
Kwaiets's further words cause a slight smile.
- Thank you, but it will be wise of me to exercise caution at first. I don't know most rules of your world, written or unwritten, and I wouldn't want to accidentally give someone a reason to… what was the word, "shoot" me? You five at least already know that I mean no harm by such things. Well, unless I've managed to offend Asic already, in which case - apologies.
"You've offended the shit out of me, but I'd rather you walk now and tell the whole world what assholes we were, than think that anybody stands even a one in a million chance of shooting you over it. People don't do that, in the Future. Ever."
"- We just - you just materialized here from Somewhere Mysteriously Else, you could have been any kind of threat, you could have been anything, we might not have had the chance to draw our weapons later." Eyes wide, willing Toy-Mun to understand. It's true Scoryu himself didn't draw his weapon, but he would have if things had been just slightly different, even if he doesn't like how it all ended up looking.
- This was a reasonable decision, - Toy-Mun nodded. - I do not hold offence at you over that, I would probably draw weapons myself in your place. Hell, if you didn't draw your weapons immediately, I would probably draw mine, just out of fear. I apologize again, Asic… it is clear we might use some terms differently, even if the translation magic makes them sound the same. I hope we will meet again and clarify more… after we rest. I don't know about you, but for me It was already evening after a long travel - before I somehow blinked and found myself among you.
Nod. "Well, you can follow me, if you're ready. The others will - probably take a while to get going." (Read: they'll probably stay here for a few hours and finish the meeting as planned.) He grabs his backpack and shifts toward the door.
Toy-Mun follows Kwaiets, bag over their shoulder, sword nearly - but not quite - touching the ground with each step. They allow Kwaiets to go through the door first.
- "Highest power?" - Toy-Mun quietly asks Kwaiets as they go down the hallway. - Why… It seemed formulaic, like this is something akin to "farewell", but why "highest power"?
Oh, right. Toy-Mun has spent this past fraction-of-an-hour inundated with more cultural foreignness than the Refutation can realistically have been keeping track of to suppress. Not ideal congenial-subconscious-associative-conditioning work on their part.
"It means 'may you attain the highest power you can'. What do they say instead, where you're from? If-you-want-to-say.*"
(It's concrete, and fairly long, but friendly, punctuated at regular intervals by identical doors - presumably to more meeting rooms identical to the ones they were just in. At each end are enormous windows full of nothing but - starry? - black sky. It may not be clear that it's even sky at first. They round a corner and there's an alcove, from which, down an orthogonal hallway, another enormous black-sky window becomes visible. Through this one, there are the lights of the city, chaotic yet ordered, like a galaxy made impossibly tight and immediate.
The alcove has elevator doors. Kwaiets pushes a button.)
*Gahai is a more-guess-than-ask culture made up of insatiably curious, and also unpredictably intensely secretive, people. 'If-you-want-to-say' is an extremely common discourse marker there.
- …"Good luck", I guess? Or just "goodbye"... - Toy-Mun doesn't seem much interested by windows - whatever else, starry sky is certainly something they've seen a lot, and position does not seem good enough to estimate specific star map differences, not when they're on the move anyway. The new window, with lights of the city, is marginally more interesting. The elevator button seems more interesting, and they point to it. - What… what did you do? This looks like a trap trigger.
. . . Where the pyre is Toy-Mun from?
"It's - an elevator. It just - takes us up and down, faster than stairs. We can take the stairs if you want, there're just, eight flights of them."
The doors open. Nigh-perfect soundproofing was concealing an amicably chatting group of ten, mostly middle-aged, all lugging musical instruments - drums, or variously-sized wood-framed contraptions of strings andor hammers. A couple of them look curiously at Toy-Mun mid-conversation, but mostly they move around Toy-Mun and Kwaiets and stream down the hall.
Toy-Mun moved around and let them come through. The sword at her hip was probably somewhat surprising, while the instruments, while unusual in details, were basically recognizable as something one plays music on, even if hammer concentration was surprising.
- No, I like trying something new, - Toy-Mun declares happily, stepping into the elevator. - Do you… tell it where you want to go?
"This looks magical, but probably just some mechanical contraption", - she decides internally.
"Just -" he gestures at the panel with buttons labeled '1' to '10' - "what floor, but yeah. Can you - just automatically read, here, too?"
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