Horns, Montrals, and the difference between them. (Aalzorin)

[Jasper Felinus]

I grinned jauntily at the pretty Togruta, and spun in my chair again.

"I'm not sure strange is the word you're looking for. Handsome, maybe? Or possibly even magnificent?"

Grabbing another open beer, I took a sip and my smile slipped into a smirk.

"You've been my guest this whole time, and you don't even know my name! I'm Jinxer."

[member="Aalzorin"]

 

[Aalzorin]

The woman chuckled at the man's behavior. Everyone in her village always seemed so stuck-up and this was a pleasant change. She still felt uncomfortable in a giant hunk of metal hurtling through space, after all, just a few hours ago she thought travel among the stars impossible. How much could change.

"See? Even your name is strange," she jested. "They call me Aalzorin."

 

[Jasper Felinus]

I chuckled again, indulging the urge to spin in my chair another time.

"Aalzorin, huh? Pretty name. But if you think mine's weird, you should hear normal Zabraki names. Lotsa x's and z's and oddly placed j's."

Downing the rest of my beer, I stood up, and gestured towards the door to the cockpit.

"If you've never been in a ship, before, perhaps I should show you the inside of this one. Or at least where you can sleep. I don't imagine that those boxes were the most comfortable bed ever."

[member="Aalzorin"]

 

[Aalzorin]

[member="Jinxer Ticon"]

Lots of strangely placed letters. That sounded a little like Aalzorin's spelling, but she wasn't going to say that out loud. She rose to her feet after the Zabrak and spoke up again. "Hunting trips around Kabhour-Haai can last weeks. I've slept in worst places."

 

[Jasper Felinus]

I smirked, and glanced sidelong at Aalzorin.

"I have, too. A certain tree I got chased up by an angry Kath Hound comes to mind. But why deny yourself actual comfort when it's there to be had?"

I had a sudden urge to laugh, as I remembered another occasion on which I had spent the week on the roof of a restaurant after I'd managed to crash a starfighter into a nearby building.

"And I'm sure I've slept in stranger places than you. Desperation leads to odd things."

[member="Aalzorin"]

 

[Aalzorin]

"Maybe so," she responded as she followed the Zabrak out of the cockpit, ready to learn everything she didn't want to know about this hunk of junk.

 

[Jasper Felinus]

Walking out into the main hallway of the ship, I pointed jokingly at the cargo hold.

"I'll take a wild guess and say you've seen enough of that room."

I walked over to another door, which opened when I stepped in front of it, then got stuck halfway. I kicked it, and it finished opening. Stepping through, I pointed at the engine room.

"That's the place where I mess with the bits that keep this bird moving. Long as you don't stick your hands in anything that looks suspicious or possibly about to light on fire, you should be okay."

I looked across the hall, to the kitchen, and pointed at that, too. I smiled wryly, and shrugged, as I realized how disused it looked, with its empty transparisteel cupboards.

"That is the room I step into the least out of any of 'em. I can't cook for anything. Can you?"

[member="Aalzorin"]

 

[Aalzorin]

She shifted her toes uncomfortably at all the future stuff around. Not an ideal place, but far better than Mantessa, to be sure.

"Not with that," she replied. All she needed was a spear and a fire and she could cook whatever she wanted. But fancy machinery was not her thing, and she couldn't be bothered with it.

 

[Jasper Felinus]

I shrugged, and closed the door to the kitchen, again.

"Well, neither can I. I've got a little buddy around here, somewhere. He does most of the cooking. Just rolls around on his wheels, and cooks with a welding torch."

I winked, and walked away from the kitchen.

"You see why I was eating candy, eh?"

[member="Aalzorin"]

 

[Aalzorin]

[member="Jinxer Ticon"]

"I'm sure if I knew what a welding torch was, I'd be very confused," she replied, looking around at the metal tunnel she was in, inside this metal case of nothing flying around in a blue tunnel.

 

[Jasper Felinus]

I grinned at the Togruta woman, and spun on my heel, facing her, along with the rest of the hall.

"You look a little confused, already."

And then I chuckled as a little silvery astromech droid rolled into view. He squawked like some kind of tropical bird, and raised a nasty-looking blade out of his chassis.

"No, Arty. She's a friend. Why don't you go burn me some more food. That usually makes you happy."

The small droid raised an equally nasty-looking arm with a few varieties of flamethrower attached, and spun it until he found the smallest one. He waved a manipulator arm at [member="Aalzorin"], and quickly rolled off to the kitchen. I sighed, and smiled weakly at her again.

"The pyromaniac is my 'little friend'. R19-25T. Call him Arty. You'd like him. He greets new people the same way you do. With sharp objects."

 

[Aalzorin]

The Togruta watched the silver machine roll along, with much confusion in her face. "Charmed," she said as the little droid made its way past, still in awe of such a machine.

 

[Jasper Felinus]

I grinned, and put my hand gently on Aalzorin's shoulder to lead her away, not sure if she would recoil from the contact.

"So, there's a whole bunch of other cool stuff to goggle at, but I have a couple of rooms you might enjoy. The place where I keep all the sharp things, and the objects that go 'boom'. The other one is the databank. Information on any planet you want, at the wave of your hand."

[member="Aalzorin"]

 

[Aalzorin]

The woman scowled at the hand on the shoulder. Unwanted contact. "Ah, yes, the room with the sharp things. So I can slice that hand off if you put it on me again."

She pondered the second half of the statement with a small frown. "I think you mean, information on any planet I want, if I can figure out how to operate your future machines."

 

[Jasper Felinus]

I winked and smiled slightly, but the hand stubbornly remained on the pretty Togruta's shoulder.

"It takes a bit more than blades to cut through these things I have around my wrist. But, yes, sharp things."

Waving at the door to the databanks, I smiled wider.

"What makes you think you were going to have to figure out, yourself?"

[member="Aalzorin"]

 

[Aalzorin]

[member="Jinxer Ticon"]

She shook free of the hand on the shoulder and scowled as she entered the databanks. "My independent attitude and the large ego that goes along with it," she responded to the alien man's cheery inquiry as she looked around the room.

 

[Jasper Felinus]

Smiling crookedly, I walked in behind Aalzoran.

"I've found, to my own detriment, that there're a few things out there that ego and attitude can't get you through. Using this moody little room is one of those. It took me two months to get the computer to tell me how to crack the coding that the databanks seem to like. Took another two years to categorize the files into some semblance of visible order."

I ran my hand down a computer console, and sat down, gesturing to the other chairs around it.

"Have a seat, and let's see the galaxy."

[member="Aalzorin"]

 

[Aalzorin]

She sat down on the chair and crossed her arms. She took in more of the room as she relented. "Fine, let's see it."

[member="Jinxer Ticon"]

 

[Jasper Felinus]

Spinning in the chair, I hit the activator switch that brought up the map of the galaxy, with marks denoting population of systems, and the capitol worlds of major governments. I pointed at the Togruta homeworld.

"That is where your all-powerful 'savior' came from, beautiful. And probably where your ancestors flew out from, too. Sephi. Bit of a hole, really, but I think it'd be cool for you to see it."

Then, I marked Corellia, Nar Shaddaa, Coruscant, Voss, Antecedent, and Mandalore.

"Good places to get jobs. Corellia is full of pilots like me, except way less handsome. Nar Shaddaa has the best bars in the galaxy. Coruscant is a huge city. Voss is chock full of crazy Jedi who need mercs. Antecedent is the home of the second most powerful criminal syndicate in the galaxy, and Mandalore is the home of the greatest warrior society ever."

[member="Aalzorin"]

 

[Aalzorin]

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," she groaned. "Future stuff, future stuff. Blah blah."

"It's all gibberish to me," Aalzorin lamented. "You can count on me not having anything to do with any of those planets."

[member="Jinxer Ticon"]