deercountry | The Heart is a Bloom (Open)

Entry tags:

The Heart is a Bloom (Open)

Who: Luca and open
What: Catch all for the month
When: Throughout the month
Where: Behind the Disaster House, anywhere in the streets, the Archives

Content Warnings: Injured fish/fish gets killed for food

[Growing Pains: OTA]

It takes him a minute to decide what he wants to plant. Everything he came here with is a reminder of his past. The herding staff from when he used to live on the farm herding fish, though Luca realizes if he buries that, it's going to take a very long time to dig a hole large enough. Then there were the pictures Alberto drew, but he doesn't want to get rid of those. Alberto's not a part of his past he's ready to let go of yet, and there's always the chance he'll show up in this place. The sea monster village, however, is clearly and distinctly in his past. It's not a place he can go back to, and it's a place he was moving on from even in his own world. It's a place he's willing to let go of. He picks up his seagrass shorts, an article of clothing that's unmistakably 'sea monster', and takes them outside. He grabs a shovel and starts digging a hole behind the house.

It's not long before a flower emerges. Posidonia, a sea grass flower. Of course, that makes sense. He's fairly sure the shorts were sea grass in the first place, so what else would grow out of them?. But, of course, he knows that means he'll have to keep the plant in salt water.

"I'll have to find a tank or a vase to keep you in."

[Around Town: OTA]

Naturally, being new to this place, Luca wants to check it out. Sure, there are lamp locations and he can just teleport wherever he needs to go, but while Luca is more than happy to use them, he doesn't want to become dependent on them, which means he'll have to learn the lay of the land without them. Luckily for him, he arrived with his bike. It's incredibly rusted, but he's never had it in any other state, having gotten it the only way most sea monsters could get such a thing. By finding it in the Ligurean sea, not far from a steep cliff that dropped off into the water.

But, miraculously, despite all the rust his bike worked just fine, and he'd even been able to ride it well enough to win the biking portion of a triathlon once. Now he's riding through town, wearing the clothes he found in his bag on arrival, as well as his robes. The latter was mostly due to the weather. With all the rain, he wanted something water resistant so he wouldn't change in the middle of town. Sure, everyone who had seen him in his sea monster form so far had been fine with it, but that doesn't mean he doesn't want to take some precautions with how many people see him.

That's why, as the first few drops begin to fall, Luca stops his bike, putting one bare foot down so he can focus on pulling his robe over his head...only to put his foot right into a puddle.

"Gah!"

He pulled his foot (which was now green) out of the puddle, causing him to fall off his bike to the ground. Frantically, Luca pulls the robe over his head to keep his face human at least, before desperately trying to wipe the water off his foot...and now his leg as well after that fall, to try and force himself to change back.

Then, finally noticing that someone else is there, Luca looks up with a nervous laugh. "Oh, uh...hi."

[The Archaic Archives: OTA]

By the time Luca reaches the Gaze, he's given up all hope of holding onto his human form. The rain's just coming down too hard, and it's too difficult trying to keep all his skin covered and ride a bike at the same time. Eventually, he just accepts that he's going to have to be in his sea monster form for now, and that's just going to have to be okay. Still, he's on high alert the entire time, just in case someone might take issue with a sea monster biking through town.

And then he reaches his destination. The archives. Between this and the School of Mutter, it truly made the Gaze the most wonderful and happy place in the entire town in Luca's eyes.

He walks inside. Normally he'd shake himself dry, but he doesn't want to take any chances of getting even a drop of water on one of the books, so instead he waits to air dry naturally. Once that happens, his scales and fins begin slowly receding into his now human-looking skin. Now that he's dry, Luca begins to walk through the Archives, looking at the books as he passes.

"Wow, there's so much here! I wonder where I should even start."

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[Luca's eyes go wide, putting his hands up, not wanting to do anything to set off the boy with a terrifying pointy leg thing coming out of the back of his head. At least, not more than he already had by just being himself.]

Alien scum? I don't--

[What? He doesn't know what he means? Luca might have never heard of 'alien scum' before and might not know exactly what the term means, but it doesn't take much to figure out what the other kid is reacting to. Staring up in terror, Luca doesn't even bother to try and keep the water off him anymore. There's not much of a point anymore. What the water reveals might initially seem like a confirmation of what Zib expects. One of his fingers disappears on each hand, leaving three fingers and a thumb. His nose fades into only nostrils. The green spreads.

And then...his changes deviate from what Zib might expect. Luca's feet become longer and webbing spreads between his toes. Webbing grows between his fingers as well and his ears become fins. Small blue fins emerge from his lower legs and forearms, and his hair transforms into an array of blue fins. Finally, a long tail erupts from his body with a pair of large dorsal fins running down the length of it. His eyes, the pupils now slit and the sclera now yellow, now are solely focused on the tip of the weird robotic leg thing.]

I haven't done anything! Why are you threatening me with your weird robotic crab leg? Why is it coming out of your head?

[At first, Zib doesn't relent, still glaring at the other boy and ignoring his frantic questions... until Luca changes further, and his expression changes from anger to confusion as he watches. The PAK leg droops ever so slightly, but he doesn't retract it just yet, just in case.]

Wait... that's not a normal Irken appearance. Unless... there's a dimension where they exist as fish aliens? But even then...

[His PAK leg straightens again, still threatening but at least it doesn't look like Luca is going to get stabbed as Zib's tone sounds a little less hateful when he speaks, but still wary.]

Who are you? Why do you look like that?

['Normal Irken'? What's an Irken? Is this guy an Irken? He does look a little weird for a human. But then, he said 'they'. Luca's so confused. He's glad, at least, that the other boy doesn't seem quite as ready to stab him with the weird leg thing, but he's still definitely nervous.]

Uh...my name's Luca, and I'm a sea monster. We turn human when we dry out but we change back when we get wet. I don't even know what an Irken is! Or aliens, for that matter.

Oh...

[The PAK leg now droops entirely, no longer in a threatening manner and just sort of clinking against the ground useleessly. Zib's curiosity has taken over any urge to do harm at this point.]

Does that mean you're from Earth, or is there a different planet that has that sort of thing?

[Luca lets out a breath when he sees the crab leg clank to the ground.]

Yeah, we're from Earth. We live throughout the Mediterranean. I'm from the Ligurian Sea, although I have an uncle from the Deep.

[Referring to the Calypso Deep, which like the Ligurian Sea is contained within the Mediterranean sea. He knows he doesn't really need to give details of where he lives, but he's hoping that will cement the idea that Luca is from Earth, and definitely is not an 'Irken', whatever that is.]

Ohhh, I see! That's amazing... I mean, I always thought there were probably mermaids or some kind of paranormal entity living in the ocean out there, but this is really cool getting to finally meet one...!

[And thus, the metal spider leg retracts and disappears back under his makeshift hood, and suddenly it's as if Zib is just an excited kid.]

Tell me more, what's it like living there? Do you have any cool powers or stuff you can do as a sea monster?

[Luca blinks. He was really not expecting that big of a change in Dib's demeanor, even if he's grateful for it. Typically where he's from, most humans who wouldn't be okay with aliens would also not be okay with sea monsters.]

Um...aside from turning human and swimming really fast, I don't really have any powers, no. And...it can be kind of boring. I lived on a farm where we raised crabs and goatfish, so...it was kind of the same thing day in and day out. And of course, we have to avoid boats, so I always used to panic whenever I saw a boat coming.

[He's gotten past that since he's actually been to the surface, and he's even been on a boat before.]

Really? Huh... that's a little disappointing about the powers thing, but the rest is still pretty cool no less!

[There's a pause, and then he frowns, apologetic.]

So, err... sorry about threatening you a minute ago. I had thought you were someone else.

I mean...it sounded more like you thought I was something else, but...uh...well, it's not the first time someone's panicked and tried to stab me.

[He thinks about it for a moment.]

It's the first time someone used a weird metal crab leg to do it, though. At least you stopped?

I mean, he is a somethingelse rather than human, as much as that jerk pretends to be, but--anyway, sorry, it's not a metal crab leg, it's, uh...

[A pause]

A metal PAK leg, which I guess isn't dissimilar to a crab? Or a spider, which is what it reminds me of sometimes.

Oh. You said something about a normal Irken appearance, I thought you just thought I was an Irken, not a specific one.

[Now Luca's wondering who he could look that much like.]

I...don't know what a spider is.

[He's seen them before when he came on land, but he didn't know the word, and they certainly didn't have spiders where he grew up.]

But it's good to know what it's really called.

[Saying PAK leg might be faster than 'metal crab leg' anyway.]

Yeah, he's--he's part of an alien race called an "Irken", and they have green skin and... and don't react well when coming in contact with water, so when I saw you, I thought... I thought maybe you were him in disguise somehow.

[PAK leg is definitely easier to say than metal crab leg though, this is true.]

You don't know what a spider is? They're like... they're small and they've got eight legs and some people mistake them as insects but they're actually arachnids which is a separate thing.

[He thinks about it.]

I think I've seen something like that, but if it's what I'm thinking of, we definitely don't have those in the sea. I wasn't on land for very long before showing up here, so I don't know what a lot of things on the surface are.

[He had the three days of preparing for the Portorosso Cup, and then the summer where he kept sneaking to an uninhabited island with Alberto. Alberto didn't really know as much as he thought he did about the surface, though, so Luca really didn't come to human civilization with much of a grasp on...well, anything.]

Oh, wow... well, have you learned anything new now from ending up here? Or like... have any questions you want answered? 'Cause like, I'm a land dweller so maybe I could answer any questions you have.

[He lights up.]

Yes! I have so many questions! Like...how do singing lady machines work, and how do you get a voice inside a machine? What's the moon like up close? Has anyone ever gone up there? Do humans use forks to eat foods that aren't spaghetti? How would you eat something with a fork if you don't twirl it? Why do humans make clocks?

... Okay, wow, that was a lot more questions than I was expecting all at once.

[But! Zib is not deterred by this.]

You can get a voice inside a machine by using a recording device, like a microphone and flash drive of some kind to store the data. Singers do it all the time by singing songs and making it so you can listen to them whenever you want without having to go see them in person to hear it. It's also how these devices we got here work when they record your voice or video of you to send to other people.

The moon is quiet and doesn't have a whole lot going on up there, but it's nice. And yes, people have gone there: some people have thought it was a hoax and that space travel to there was impossible, but I've been there myself now.

[... After one time he accidentally got stuck there with Zim briefly while body-swapped with his stupid robot, but shhhhh probably best not to think about that particular incident.]

There's a ton of food you can eat other than spaghetti you can eat with forks, and I don't just mean other pasta. People use them all the time for meat, or for eating salads, or basically anything that you don't want to use your hands for and get grease and crumbs all over you. You just use the prongs on the fork to stab into it and hold it onto the fork for you to eat, no twirling like spaghetti involved.

And humans make clocks because we're all really bad at being able to figure out what time it is without them. In the past people used to have to rely on figuring out which direction the sun was coming from to figure it out but humans are too lazy for looking at shadows and guessing that these days, so... now we have clocks to do it for us?

What's a microphone and flash drive? How do they work? how does a microphone record sound?

[He's got...so many questions. Luca's not just trying to navigate the surface, he's trying to understand how it works down to the molecular level. He's...a little disappointed that the moon sounds kind of boring the way Dib describes it, but at the same time he's amazed that Dib was actually there.]

You've been to the moon? How'd you get to the moon? Are there parts of space that are more exciting?

[He's hoping space isn't all calm and quiet. It seems so cool when he looks up at the stars and realizes they're all giant balls of gas and fire, each with their own planets revolving around them, and when he learns about planets made of gas and all sorts of weird stuff about space.]

I, uh, got there with my spaceship.

[He lies, because the actual circumstances behind how he got there are lame... but he does have the means to go there with his spaceship if he wanted so it's not a bold faced lie necessarily...]

And yeah, there are a lot more places to go than just the moon, like other planets that have aliens on them--don't go to Irk, though, that's the one that has the Irkens and they just want to take over or destroy other planets, they're terrible.

But there's other ones, like... Foodcourtia, which is a planet that is basically a fast food or restaurant stop for the entire galaxy. Different species from all over can go there and can get just about anything they want to eat... although, it is under Irken control, so you have to be careful to not do anything to get them to think about invading your planet.

Oh, wow! You have a spaceship?

[That's so cool.]

I wish I could go to space...although I have absolutely no idea what makes Irkens want to invade planets, so I have no idea how I'd avoid that. Although I guess if I ever did somehow manage to get to Foodcourtia, I could just not talk about Earth.

Yeah! I've even got it with me in this place... though, uh, it's mostly only good for short distances at the moment. I've got some maintenance I'm still working on with it before it will be ready to attempt reaching space from here.

[At the mention of the Irken empire again, however...]

There is no good reason for what they do. Irkens are terrible and selfish: they only care about either taking things for themselves, or destroying it so that no one else can have it if they can't have it. I don't think theres a single other species that actually likes them, but they are forced to deal with them because of how powerful they are.

Oh, wow!

[That was the most amazing news he could ever imagine!]

Let me know when it's space ready! I want to go with you!

[They could go exploring space together! Hearing more about the Irkens, though...they sounded terrifying. But then he thinks about how 'land monsters' (aka humans) looked to his people, and he considered that maybe there's more to it.]

There has to be some reason for what they do. Maybe there's more behind it?

[Oh, he will absolutely allow Luca to ride with him, and it will probably be a disaster--I mean, a fun adventure.

At the bit about the irkens, he sighs.]

Listen, I've tried for... a really long time to understand them, and have even gotten my hands on their technology and information about their history to study as well. At this point, I've accepted that they really are just those kinds of life forms that care more about themselves than anyone else.

Oh.

[Well, it did sound like Dib actually looked into it and tried to give Irkens the benefit of the doubt.]

I was hoping it would be something like with sea monsters and humans. We...haven't always gotten along, but neither side was ever actually evil. Humans just thought we were dangerous so put out a reward for anyone who could kill a sea monster and sea monsters...well, just figured humans just wanted to murder.

[But if Dib looked at their history and everything...Irkens probably just really were that bad.]

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The Heart is a Bloom (Open)

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