[ Swiping... Annie looks back down at the blackglass, attempting the swiping motion. She keeps it small enough to stay on screen, and it half works, starting to go backward then returning her to the wrong menu. Trying again with a more firm press of her finger properly returns her to the menu before.
Arrows? She looks for something shaped like an arrow shot from a bow. She knows other kinds, too, it just takes that lapse of understanding to ping to the other arrow-shapes she can find. ]
You mean these ones.
[ She taps her nail over one, but her nail isn't enough to activate the interface. It simply points toward her recognizing what he meant in a context of the icons displayed on screen. ] If one stands for back, does the other move forward?
[Considering what he knows about her world, it's little surprise she'd have some trouble adjusting to the tech. Auldrant's level of sophistication wasn't on the same level of the CDC's, but there were some features this tech shared with his planet's. Guy nods as an encouragement.]
Yeah, you've got it. If you want to move between menus, you just hit those up.
[ Their world is a mecca for inexplicable technological mashups and lacks of just about anything sensible, with the insensible piled on high. She presses on the arrows in both directions, pushing down with the top of her finger rather than her nail. This registers, and she moves between lists - menus, as he calls them - with greater ease.
Now not to forget this little trick... She opens the information on the fauna. Now... wait. ]
How do you get out of one list of information back to the table of contents?
[ She's familiar with books, so that's where she chooses to frame her questions from. Annie tilts the blackglass his way for easier viewing, still maintaining that space between them. ]
What was this feeling...? It creeps in from the back of his mind, settles heavy on his shoulders. Familiar, yet foreboding. He remembers it from his days of working with Luke after his kidnapping, teaching him how to read and write after he had "lost" his memory. That's right. This was the sensation that this was going to take a long
[But he's willing to push forward. If he can teach Annie something once this is all over, no matter how small, he'll be satisfied. Small steps. He was the same when he first started out. Guy rests his hands on his knees.]
Remember what I told you? Swipe left, or hit one of those arrows.
[ She's a quick study... when not tired from a day of herding animals and pulling men out of giant holes. She's managed to make the arrows disappear. Swiping at first earns little more than a sidescrolling.
See, she's enlarged the screen without trying. The device is trying to respond correctly, but it's not understanding what she wants. ]
I don't see the arrows, and swiping left is making it all... bounce.
[ Annie complies, turning the screen for him to have a better visual. She doesn't verify if that's what he needs it to be at or not. He'll verbalize. (He seems the sort.) ]
[It's easier to figure out what's going on now that it isn't upside-down. Guy takes out his blackglass now, comparing its screen to what hers is. Maybe it'll be easier with a side-by-side demonstration instead of just talking it out.]
Here, try hitting the "home" button. [Let's pretend it exists at the bottom of the screen, okay, and that he's pointing at it.]
[ What a ridiculous name. Annie presses the place indicated after glancing at Guy's blackscreen, doing so upside down. It does get her to the home screen, for better or worse. ]
This is where it was when it first started displaying, isn't it.
[ANYWAY YEAH. Congrats, Annie, you made it home! Guy grins.]
Uh-huh. You remember the previous steps we did? Let's do them again. [Except this time, he'll be doing them along with her on his device. He taps on the menu once more.]
[ She does, and it's without looking to Guy that she considers her device and carefully retraces the steps forward to where she'd been. The same problem from before doesn't appear, so that when she selects one of the catalogs, she doesn't end up zooming in and changing the swiping interface. ]
It's working this time.
[ Note her swipe left, out of the catalog, then move her finger around, getting used to how the blackglass is responding to her touch. More careful motions have a slower response time. A swift swipe makes the text fairly tumble by when she goes up and down. Headache inducing. A little fascinating, too. ]
[It finally looks like she's getting the hang of it. Guy feels some pride in seeing her move around without much trouble and he tucks his blackglass back into his pockets.]
Yeah, you caught on pretty quick. It should be a cakewalk once you've got the basics down. The CDC's pretty diligent when it comes to labeling their information.
[ The odd phrase earns a sideglance, but otherwise Annie simply lets her blackglass rest in her lap. The visible and accessible information is well labeled? Good. She appreciates an efficient system. ]
So it'll be consistent going forward? [ She looks out toward the camp, away from Guy. Her lips press together as she considers how much that may or may not matter to her in the future. How long is she going to be here? She refuses to let herself get killed again, but she can't stop the machinations of transfers. Not that she knows.
Thoughts she doesn't want to linger over. She focuses her attention back on the here and now, shifting further back, lap holding her blackglass as it stares upward, flora information populated on its screen. ]
You weren't injured during your fall earlier today, were you?
[There's a lot of forces outside of their control. How long they'll be on Macha, what mission they'll be sent on next. It's tough to find your footing if you've been dropped in without any warning, like this batch of newbies had been subject to. But at least there's some relief, small as they may be. Files they can peruse, weapons they can keep close.
But it's never really comfort enough. Guy thinks too much about the end days of this planet and of their purpose here. It's helping people that keeps him pushing on, nowadays.
He eases back into his seat, folds his hands in his lap.]
Nah. It takes more than that to knock me out. [Actually-- something's off. He looks up in curiosity.] You saw me out there?
[ It's also easier and more difficult being resigned to the life of a pawn, seeing what next tugs on your strings since you're not the sort to plant your feet and fight with everything you have against the direction you're being lead. Stronger people, better people, might have resistance to offer to these things.
Annie breathes in and sees it as being part of the landscape to accept. This world will be made into nothing. Shuyi will try to prop up a tree that's been torn up. In Annie's eyes, it's cruel, and it's a joke, the kind that she can't find funny.
They were the kind of thoughts she had in the aftermath of sinking her blades into the spines of the Neraki children she'd helped clean up in her stint on Red. Her hands are already stained. She's a tool, just in someone else's hands now, and without the need to lie about it.
Unconsciously, her hands turn palm up. It's a decision she has to make every moment she faces it, owning in a sense what she is, even when it can't be flattering. ]
You could say that.
[ Her fingers twitch inward toward her palms, but she forces them flat. Empty handed - that's how she comes to so much of this. ]
[He doesn't make the connection at first. Comparing that terrifying figure to the small girl before him takes a leap that he doesn't make straightaway. He's still in the middle of fumbling with the pieces he's been given as he looks at her with blatant surprise.]
That was you? [He's seen a giant before: black haired and vicious as it tore through the harpies like they were nothing. When he thinks on it, he hasn't seen that giant around camp since. Not to protect the perimeter, not to interact with rest of the recruits. He figured it was a one-off thing summoned by someone with powers beyond his understanding. The more he thinks on it, the more he recognizes the similarities between the giant woman he'd seen and that creature.
But it's tough to swallow that Annie was the one who did it. Guy frowns.]
[ The surprise he shows is about what she expects, but it's not cutting and jarring like it had been in Stohess. Guy is no one to her. The difference is so strange, even if her audience is of one.
His opinion on things just... doesn't matter.
Her eyes close, brief as she breathes in and out, looking away from him, out across the unfamiliar shapes of this camp. She lifts her shoulders in a half shrug. ]
That was me.
[ There's no answer for how that she wants to explore with him. With anyone. ]
[It's all he says. Being on Macha--on the Neheda, even--has shown him a lot of things. Magic, technology, kid trainers and many forms of "people" he never thought could exist. Needless to say, what he would've thought of as weird has long since passed into the realm of the ordinary.
Which is why Guy says:]
Thanks, then. I don't know if I could've made it out of there myself.
[Regardless of her powers, she helped him. That deserves his gratitude.
Oh, but that's right... Guy's smile becomes a little embarrassed as he waves a hand.]
B-But, don't tell anyone about what happened back there, okay? I'm usually not like that.
[ Huh is going to go on file as one of the other more oh well isn't that a thing moving on responses she's had here. Then again, these people don't have a reason to carry the cultural context for what she is without having spoken with her former comrades in arms to an extent that informed them of such. He moves on from it; so does she.
Though she cants her head to the side at what he wants her to dismiss. She knows why. She just think's it's more bullshit to focus on the human nature of his reaction, since - ]
You're not usually brave enough to deal with an impossible monster that's driving you to scream when you don't know what it's intentions are, but that you accepted assistance from even when it clearly continued to terrify you to do so? I see.
[ - because to her, being able to trust or do any of that had been more markedly impressive than the rest. Screaming? Made sense. Losing control of bladder or bowels? Has happened. Vomiting? That too.
Guy had faced a Titan and he'd been terrified, and he'd still not completely lost himself. There was no shame in his response, not to her. Had he been persistently hysterical, she still wouldn't have blamed him... but that would have been actually embarrassing.
(Though his response earlier hadn't been in knowing this. Hmm...) ]
You'd prefer if people didn't have high expectations of how you work under pressure or when facing the unexpected.
Ha ha, I don't sound reliable when you put it like that.
[One of the upsides working with the CDC was that it prepared you for strange, strange things to either help or kill you. If it wasn't from the planet, and if it didn't attack you right off the bat, there wasn't much use in turning help down when it's offered. He'd been terrified of her giant form. There's no use in trying to cover that up when he'd been trembling in her hand just a few hours earlier.
Fighting huge creatures wasn't anything new. He didn't let himself hesitate when that tentacled behemoth broke the sky, hadn't let his steps falter when monsters attacked back on Auldrant. He's learned long ago doing so meant pain.
It'd been how she had looked that filled him with terror. That face looked too close to a woman's corpse for his liking. It's a miracle he hadn't passed out from that encounter. All things considered, he had handled it well. But it's not easy to undo shame when it sets its roots.
None of this will ever be shared. Guy cants his head with a sigh.]
But it turned out this "impossible monster" was something worse, if you ask me. [A beat. He cracks a smile, amused.] It's just my luck that she was a cheeky teenager all along.
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Arrows? She looks for something shaped like an arrow shot from a bow. She knows other kinds, too, it just takes that lapse of understanding to ping to the other arrow-shapes she can find. ]
You mean these ones.
[ She taps her nail over one, but her nail isn't enough to activate the interface. It simply points toward her recognizing what he meant in a context of the icons displayed on screen. ] If one stands for back, does the other move forward?
[ ... but to where? ]
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Yeah, you've got it. If you want to move between menus, you just hit those up.
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Now not to forget this little trick... She opens the information on the fauna. Now... wait. ]
How do you get out of one list of information back to the table of contents?
[ She's familiar with books, so that's where she chooses to frame her questions from. Annie tilts the blackglass his way for easier viewing, still maintaining that space between them. ]
1/2
What was this feeling...? It creeps in from the back of his mind, settles heavy on his shoulders. Familiar, yet foreboding. He remembers it from his days of working with Luke after his kidnapping, teaching him how to read and write after he had "lost" his memory. That's right. This was the sensation that this was going to take a long
long
time.]
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Remember what I told you? Swipe left, or hit one of those arrows.
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See, she's enlarged the screen without trying. The device is trying to respond correctly, but it's not understanding what she wants. ]
I don't see the arrows, and swiping left is making it all... bounce.
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Here, try hitting the "home" button. [Let's pretend it exists at the bottom of the screen, okay, and that he's pointing at it.]
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[ What a ridiculous name. Annie presses the place indicated after glancing at Guy's blackscreen, doing so upside down. It does get her to the home screen, for better or worse. ]
This is where it was when it first started displaying, isn't it.
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Uh-huh. You remember the previous steps we did? Let's do them again. [Except this time, he'll be doing them along with her on his device. He taps on the menu once more.]
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[ She does, and it's without looking to Guy that she considers her device and carefully retraces the steps forward to where she'd been. The same problem from before doesn't appear, so that when she selects one of the catalogs, she doesn't end up zooming in and changing the swiping interface. ]
It's working this time.
[ Note her swipe left, out of the catalog, then move her finger around, getting used to how the blackglass is responding to her touch. More careful motions have a slower response time. A swift swipe makes the text fairly tumble by when she goes up and down. Headache inducing. A little fascinating, too. ]
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Yeah, you caught on pretty quick. It should be a cakewalk once you've got the basics down. The CDC's pretty diligent when it comes to labeling their information.
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So it'll be consistent going forward? [ She looks out toward the camp, away from Guy. Her lips press together as she considers how much that may or may not matter to her in the future. How long is she going to be here? She refuses to let herself get killed again, but she can't stop the machinations of transfers. Not that she knows.
Thoughts she doesn't want to linger over. She focuses her attention back on the here and now, shifting further back, lap holding her blackglass as it stares upward, flora information populated on its screen. ]
You weren't injured during your fall earlier today, were you?
wow im sorry for sudden ~brooding~ thoughts
But it's never really comfort enough. Guy thinks too much about the end days of this planet and of their purpose here. It's helping people that keeps him pushing on, nowadays.
He eases back into his seat, folds his hands in his lap.]
Nah. It takes more than that to knock me out. [Actually-- something's off. He looks up in curiosity.] You saw me out there?
don't apologize i love this stuff so much aaah
Annie breathes in and sees it as being part of the landscape to accept. This world will be made into nothing. Shuyi will try to prop up a tree that's been torn up. In Annie's eyes, it's cruel, and it's a joke, the kind that she can't find funny.
They were the kind of thoughts she had in the aftermath of sinking her blades into the spines of the Neraki children she'd helped clean up in her stint on Red. Her hands are already stained. She's a tool, just in someone else's hands now, and without the need to lie about it.
Unconsciously, her hands turn palm up. It's a decision she has to make every moment she faces it, owning in a sense what she is, even when it can't be flattering. ]
You could say that.
[ Her fingers twitch inward toward her palms, but she forces them flat. Empty handed - that's how she comes to so much of this. ]
I did pick you back up, after all.
good ｡ﾟ(TヮT)ﾟ｡
That was you? [He's seen a giant before: black haired and vicious as it tore through the harpies like they were nothing. When he thinks on it, he hasn't seen that giant around camp since. Not to protect the perimeter, not to interact with rest of the recruits. He figured it was a one-off thing summoned by someone with powers beyond his understanding. The more he thinks on it, the more he recognizes the similarities between the giant woman he'd seen and that creature.
But it's tough to swallow that Annie was the one who did it. Guy frowns.]
How?
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His opinion on things just... doesn't matter.
Her eyes close, brief as she breathes in and out, looking away from him, out across the unfamiliar shapes of this camp. She lifts her shoulders in a half shrug. ]
That was me.
[ There's no answer for how that she wants to explore with him. With anyone. ]
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[It's all he says. Being on Macha--on the Neheda, even--has shown him a lot of things. Magic, technology, kid trainers and many forms of "people" he never thought could exist. Needless to say, what he would've thought of as weird has long since passed into the realm of the ordinary.
Which is why Guy says:]
Thanks, then. I don't know if I could've made it out of there myself.
[Regardless of her powers, she helped him. That deserves his gratitude.
Oh, but that's right... Guy's smile becomes a little embarrassed as he waves a hand.]
B-But, don't tell anyone about what happened back there, okay? I'm usually not like that.
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Though she cants her head to the side at what he wants her to dismiss. She knows why. She just think's it's more bullshit to focus on the human nature of his reaction, since - ]
You're not usually brave enough to deal with an impossible monster that's driving you to scream when you don't know what it's intentions are, but that you accepted assistance from even when it clearly continued to terrify you to do so? I see.
[ - because to her, being able to trust or do any of that had been more markedly impressive than the rest. Screaming? Made sense. Losing control of bladder or bowels? Has happened. Vomiting? That too.
Guy had faced a Titan and he'd been terrified, and he'd still not completely lost himself. There was no shame in his response, not to her. Had he been persistently hysterical, she still wouldn't have blamed him... but that would have been actually embarrassing.
(Though his response earlier hadn't been in knowing this. Hmm...) ]
You'd prefer if people didn't have high expectations of how you work under pressure or when facing the unexpected.
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[One of the upsides working with the CDC was that it prepared you for strange, strange things to either help or kill you. If it wasn't from the planet, and if it didn't attack you right off the bat, there wasn't much use in turning help down when it's offered. He'd been terrified of her giant form. There's no use in trying to cover that up when he'd been trembling in her hand just a few hours earlier.
Fighting huge creatures wasn't anything new. He didn't let himself hesitate when that tentacled behemoth broke the sky, hadn't let his steps falter when monsters attacked back on Auldrant. He's learned long ago doing so meant pain.
It'd been how she had looked that filled him with terror. That face looked too close to a woman's corpse for his liking. It's a miracle he hadn't passed out from that encounter. All things considered, he had handled it well. But it's not easy to undo shame when it sets its roots.
None of this will ever be shared. Guy cants his head with a sigh.]
But it turned out this "impossible monster" was something worse, if you ask me. [A beat. He cracks a smile, amused.] It's just my luck that she was a cheeky teenager all along.
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"Teenager?"
[ Your language is nonsense, sir, even if she could pick the word apart to guess that it's a reference to age. ]
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Yeah. You are one, right?
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[ Canting her head to the side. ]
Unless you're using it as another word for "young adult." I haven't heard "teenager" before.
[ You're the one with weird cultural barriers... in snk verse they've all been adults since 12... ]
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He figures some words wouldn't translate over well. "Young adult" is basically what he meant, but he'll elaborate on it a little.]
You're almost there. Where I come from, "teenager" would mean someone who's almost an adult, but not quite. They're just on that cusp.
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