Nomi and Vic 2

Nomi seeks Vic out in a moment when he is by himself, perhaps tinkering with some complicated bit of something that is too small for Efnir to help on, or perhaps during a meal break that Efnir has gone on. She is quiet as she approaches and not particularly trying to be stealthy, but Vic is so engrossed in what he is working on that it's almost as though she appears "out of nowhere" when she picks up a tool he had been groping beside himself for and presents it into his gloved hand.

"Here you go. Sorry, didn't mean to surprise you," she says and gives him a smile. "How is the project coming along?"

Vic yelps and bangs his head on the gap in the panels he's leaning into. Wincing, he rubs his head and says, "S'all right. No lasting harm done. Between you, your sister, and Vesper, you all are too quiet. Are you having a competition? Well, no, that wouldn't be fair: Vesper would probably win. Maybe you could put a bell on him as a handicap?" Vic trails off, realizing he's on a tangent again. "It's going great! I'm was just about ready to give it a test run, in fact, but I was making double-sure that the hole Rhen cut into the wall was completely sealed." He waggles the tool that Nomi just handed him that will help him accomplish that task. "But I see you figured that out. Thanks." Vic takes a moment to make certain the seal is good and then shoos Nomi out of his room. "Wait just a moment, please. I'll be right out." He then closes both internal airlock doors. After warning Gigit to keep an eye on the internal atmosphere in case of a leak, Nomi hears another low hum come from inside, adding to the faint, ever-present ship sounds, and then Vic emerges from the airlock. There's a slight whiff of something in the air that follows him out of the airlock; it's a little like maybe someone farted in an elevator a couple minutes ago and it had almost dispersed before you walked into it, but you can't be sure. "Now, we wait to see if any alarms start going off." He rubs his gloved hands together. "I can't wait to get out of this suit!"

Nomi crinkles her nose at the smell, but it passes quickly as does the look on her face, which is overtaken with sudden curiosity. She clears her throat as though she is slightly unsure, but then seems to decide to ask the question which had just occurred to her and she says. "What do Skakoan bodies look like? Obviously you're always in giant armor suits off world. Has anyone who's not a Skakoan ever seen you without your suit?" She blushes, her cheeks turning a purple more red than blue.

Vic doesn't laugh or look embarrassed at the questions. It's unclear whether his equanimity is due to his medical background or whether Skakoans don't have quite the same taboos around bodies as other species do. "I've heard previously that other species expect Skakoans to be heavily built or even fat due to the shape of the standard pressure suits. We are rather spindly in shape in comparison to other bipeds. We don't have a sizable digestive system, which accounts for most of the difference in the torso. Our limbs are rather long too. Oh! And our eyes don't glow; they're just highly reflective. As for your second question, yes, non-Skakoans have seen me outside of my suit. Guests of other species are not so rare on my homeworld that I've never interacted with them. There were even a few brave scholars I have known that came to study there to take advantage of Skako's superior education system." He says the last as if it were a fact rather than an opinion. "However, outside of Skako, I've not interacted with many non-Skakoans outside of my suit. It's inconvenient for anyone I'd be talking to, as they would need to wear a pressure suit instead. Even other methane breathers are not compatible with Skakoan atmosphere due to the pressure."

Nomi nods. "I would not have guessed. But then I'm not sure what I would have guessed if I had been asked. I just always picture you in your suit. When non-Skakoans visit Skako do they bring their own suits or are there suits available? Like for rent or something? I imagine it is a pretty highly specialized piece of equipment. Like if I wanted to go there sometime, where would I get a suit so I could visit?"

"Another misconception about Skakoan bodies is that we're all androids or cyborgs," Vic says. "Because we wear faceplates and most Skakoans use a poorly adapted translator, other species tend to see a metal face and hear an obviously synthesized voice and think 'that's a droid.' It's one of the reasons that I don't use the standard translator; being mistaken for a droid is pretty aggravating." He turns his attention to Nomi's questions. "Most who expect to spend significant time on Skako will have a tailored pressure suit made for them. Your hypothesis is correct: they're rather specialized. If you were to have a reason to go to Skako, I'd recommend being fitted for one with all the bells and whistles. Living full time in a suit presents unique problems that a normal pressure suit doesn't solve particularly well. There are suits for rent designed for short visits, but they're notoriously uncomfortable and inconvenient. Visitors tend to stick close to their ships and don't stay long. Skako is not an inviting world anyhow. Is there a reason that you'd want to go?"

Nomi blinks rapidly and her face colors. "I didn't mean to imply...I never thought that you were an android. I know a Skakoan is a flesh and blood being! I mean, I was completely racist in other ways, associating you directly in my mind with Wat Tambor..." Nomi puts her face in her hands and mutters, "Oh! I'm so sorry. I was so rude when we first met. With all of the travel we have been doing and with talking to you about your home I have just become curious, is all. If the opportunity came up, I would not turn down a chance to go to Skako, just to see it. Besides, I like the idea of being one of a few non-Skakoans who've done that first hand. This galaxy is so big. A person could spend their whole life traveling and only see a fraction of what is out there." Nomi looks just a little wistful at the idea.

Vic waves both hands in front of him in what looks like an alarmed gesture. "Oh my, I did not mean to imply that I've been treated poorly here! By The Eye, if anything, I think everyone has been very accepting. Especially you!" With that out, Vic seems to calm down a bit. "I get caught up in explanation and sometimes I lose track of how what I'm saying might be interpreted. I'm really not offended by your questions. I actually quite enjoy them, if I'm being truthful. And it's quite the opposite of the behavior that I find annoying: unthinking assumptions that reinforce mutual misunderstanding. Questions are the solution, not the problem." An idea appears to come to Vic after seeing Nomi's wistful desire for novelty. He says tentatively, "If you want to see what it is like, you could be my first visitor to this little slice of Skako I've created on board ship. We should run tests to make sure that one of the emergency pressure suits on board works properly before we try it, but you could suit up and come to visit me inside." He gestures back to the indoor airlock.

Nomi picks up a scrap of metal and bends it between her fingers adding it to a few other twists she's been fiddling with. She gives Vic a happy and relieved smile. "I'm glad my questions don't bother you. And I would be happy to take you up on your invitation to your space. Just as long as we make sure I don't get crushed. Thank you." She nods in agreement about testing the suit before using it.

Vic then glances around a moment and adds, "Efnir told me everyone was gathering for dinner. Not hungry tonight?"

"Ah! Right," says Nomi. "I ate earlier when I got hungry. Besides I wanted to catch you away from the others for more than asking about the finer details of your anatomy. I heard about the data from the Temple and was thinking about when we talked before and you mentioned wanting a slicer unit. I didn't find one, but I was wondering if that is what you wanted it for and I was also wondering what else you may have found out and what else you were looking for in the information that you took."

"Oh, yes, I'd forgotten you were not there when we spoke about the Zoph data." Now Vic does look a little embarrassed. "When I went to the Jedi temple to speak with them about what happened at my dig site, it had already become clear to me that I wasn't really getting anywhere. If it was a political problem or a bureaucratic red tape issue, I'd have been able to negotiate or bribe my way out of it; by the time I got to the temple, I had thought that clearly this was something else. However, I really wanted to know the reason for the attack, so I broke into their data systems to find out. Frankly, I probably would have gotten into some serious trouble for doing it if things hadn't happened as they did, because I didn't have the proper tools to do it properly and I was acting quite recklessly. All the data was encrypted, so I sent it to my brother to figure out how to break into it. He's a bit of a genius when it comes to that sort of thing. He's only gotten part of it open so far, but he was able to see some metadata records on previous visits to the planet by Jedi, including some familiar names. That's all I know with certainty so far, but it suggests that the Jedi did have some reason that they didn't want me digging on Zoph."

"So, now we have another reason to look for Zernvik Akawoi besides the mystery of his disappearance that Vesper wants to solve," Nomi says. "He may know something about Damasa and he may know a lot about Zoph. It seems to be all connected... Coincidence or the Force. You decide." Nomi gives Vic a waggle of her eyebrows.

Vic rolls his eyes and replies in what probably should be a playful, mock-exasperated tone as he is gesticulating while speaking, but his translator clearly doesn't do that sort of thing, so it comes through like uninflected, factual statements (which makes it a little funny). "I'll take coincidence, thank you very much. Or how about 'clear series of causal events' stretching back from 20 or more years ago to today. I plopped a mine down on top of some Jedi secret, was driven out by someone trying to keep that secret, and it seems like somehow it's connected to other, more dangerous secrets those Jedi are trying to keep that got you all involved too! Sure, it's all connected, but it is so because we're tangled in this web that happens to have ensnared us all, not because of the force. Do you and I seem like the kind of people that are likely to be chosen by a mystical destiny?"

In response to Vic's clear rejection of the Force, Nomi gets a mischievous grin on her face. "Yes, sure, a string of events that just happens to join you and Nawah in the same room and then just happens to run you into the others of us who are fleeing the temple, when we could have taken any corridor out of hundreds, yet we took the one you were in? Thus you ended up on a ship, fleeing with the very same Padawan who just happened to have been picked up for one mission on a trial basis with the very Jedi that destroyed your mine and brought you to Coruscant in the first place? That's a lot of coincidence.  Besides, I may not be able to move things with my mind, but I do like to think that I have some magic in me."

"Okay, when you put it that way, it seems rather less like coincidence," Vic says. "It's just hard for me to see myself as a part of all that, you know? Doesn't it feel odd to you to think about things like that? Magic, destiny, The Force?"

A mock stem look appears on her face as admits the strangeness of their circumstances. She learns forward. "Oh Vic," she says quietly, making him lean closer to hear. "You ARE magical, too. You just need to believe." She leans in just a little closer holding his gaze with her own then her eyes flick to the right and her hand reaches up to the area where Vic's ear would be. She pulls a metal flower 'from thin air' behind his ear. It's a cleverly constructed bit out of curled metal scraps, a bolt, a nut and some washers. "You know, if you don't wash behind your ears, you're liable to start growing things back there," She says with a wink. Nomi puts the little flower in Vic's gloved hand.

"I'm used to thinking like that. I grew up with it. You didn't, so you'll have to stretch a lot farther to get there. But maybe you can believe right now and prove it as you go."

After a confused moment, Vic laughs in surprise at the gift's appearance. You get the impression that he's never seen anyone do anything like that before, but he seems delighted nonetheless. "As someone who barely recognizes magic when it happens in front of his face, I'm going to take your word for it." Vic reaches over to a couple of boxes stacked outside his door and pulls out the top hat he wore to the casino. He places the metal flower in the hatband where someone might put a feather and puts it on. "Thank you. You've found me the perfect flair for my favorite hat. What do you think?" He does a little spin to show it off, which is pretty comical in his large suit. He adds belatedly once he recovers from his posing, "And by the way, I have not yet been able to check what I've got growing back there. You try living in a pressure suit for months at a time and not growing anything behind your ears! ...He says in a mock-scolding tone that his translator doesn't convey." He says the last part out loud, looking a little sheepish. "If my brother ever figures out how to get irony or humor to come through on this thing, he'd win the Skakoan Medal of Sciences Award...if anyone on Skako cared about non-Skakoans understanding their humor.

"Hmm, like a hypothesis made while studying in a field with which I am not familiar. I get it. THAT, I can do. And if I keep getting results like the ones with my experiments with the artifact, I'd be foolish not to let my preconceptions go."

Nomi claps for Vic as he turns. "You appear ready to go dancing, sir." She gives him a mock curtsy. "But perhaps you want to go try out your new room and check behind your ears. Let's meet another time and continue destroying each other's preconceived notions."

"It's a date." Vic startles at his own words, turns around briefly, and fiddles with an interface on his arm. "Bad translator! Override colloquial protocols!" To Nomi, he says in a more stilted tone, "I would be pleased to meet you later to continue our discussion." Clearly embarrassed, he gently sets the top hat on the stack of boxes and flees into his room.