voidtreckerexpress | [closed] But if you lead, I'll follow

Entry tags:

[closed] But if you lead, I'll follow

Who: Devero, Koumyou
Where: Spa Car
When: Just before the mission.
What: Hanging out and talking magic / having a magic lesson.
Warnings: Doubt it, but will update if needed.

You know where the boys haven't had a magic lesson yet, somehow?

The spa car!

Now that Devero is getting better and better at doing his exercises out and about where there is noise and distraction, Koumyou has suggested they meet up for something in the heated pool of the spa car.

It's not at all because he wants to lounge around in the hot water all day. How dare you?

But anyway, here he is, lounging in that pool with the back of his head resting on the edge, eyes shut in the steam, waiting for his big neomage to arrive.

The sacrifices he makes, really.

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Koumyou's smile is both incredibly fond and also more than just a little mischievous, "Is my tech nerd going to become a magic nerd, too?"

That just makes Devero even more self-conscious. "The more I understand the theory, the easier the application in practice!" he says, defensive but good-natured.

"It's really nice," Koumyou shoulder-bumps him, beaming, "we'll have more common ground this way."

Koumyou's not really a magic nerd per se, but at least he can discuss the finer points of it without needing some kind of manual for translation.

Devero beams back. "We will!" he says cheerfully. He likes that prospect too; he sometimes feels the technical and educational gap between them acutely.

"It's definitely easier for you to teach me magic here than for me to teach you about the tech on my world," he adds. "We'd probably have to go back to my world for that, honestly."

And that's certainly never going to happen by choice, now is it!

"And I don't have wires in me," Koumyou points out cheerfully, "but you do have chi."

He relaxes down into the water some more, and goes ahead and leans against Devero's side.

"We don't have to do the chanting stuff in here, maybe we can just..."

You know, hang out.

"Maybe I should order you a baby bracelet from the shop," Devero muses, half-seriously.

When Koumyou settles down in the water, Devero relaxes with him. He's actually feeling fairly worn out now that he's not focusing so hard on his chi, the new exercise with it having worn him out.

"Works for me," he says, and drapes his arm over Koumyou's shoulder, tucking the priest under his arm.

Koumyou smiles over at him, as sappy as can be. But he can't not respond to the tease, even so.

"I'm going to assume a baby bracelet isn't a total insult, Dev-chan!" he mock-huffs, expression not really changing much. And then he adds, "Maybe something that can talk to your face computer, though? SCAs don't always work."

Devero's responding grin is a little toothy. "Only a little bit, I promise!" he says.

Of course, he immediately explains: "It's illegal to Implant kids for any reason other than medical necessity, so kids in creche wear wristlets that transmit their emIDs," he says. "Most folks opt for an emID transmitter Implant when they hit adulthood-- only a total teknull is going to opt out-- so for the most part, if you're wearing a wristlet it's because you're a kid. Hence baby bracelets.

"--But I could get you an Interface of your own, if you want," he continues thoughtfully. "We'd need to tweak it to accept your SCA signal as an emID, but I'm getting pretty good at that."

Koumyou laughs at that, "If we actually needed me to have an emID for some reason and it just needed to be injected in somewhere, I'd be fine with it. I very well might fry it on accident, but I wouldn't have some... tech-phobic objection to it."

So there's that at least.

The interface idea, though, gets a more thoughtful look from him as well, and a hum.

"...Do they make those things for people who don't have... stuff?"

"You wouldn't mind?" Devero asks softly, looking down at him with the biggest, dopiest expression on his face. He hasn't thought much about what they would do if Koumyou was on his world, since they'll never visit if he has his way, but any thought he has given has assumed Koumyou would stay teknull.

So he's kind of stuck on that, give him a moment.

"Why would I mind?" Koumyou asks in return, "Like I said, it might not survive long with all the lightning I throw around, but I'm not scared of needles or anything."

"I-- I don't know," Devero admits sheepishly. "I guess I just assumed, I'm sorry." Tightening his arm around Koumyou's shoulders, he leans down to smooch the priest's cheek. "Thank you."

He returns to the Interface question: "Most Interfaces are designed for loteks to use, actually, and there's options for teknulls, too. We can definitely get one that you can use without an Implant."

"Silly man," Koumyou pokes at his ribs under the water, wiggling his fingers in a light tickle. "You've seen my scars and you thought a needle would bother me! Silly, silly man!"

He, too, will get back to the interface topic... after he teases Devero sufficiently.

Devero shies away from the tickling with a laugh, splashing water at Koumyou in retaliation. "Not the needle!" he protests. "I just-- assumed you wouldn't want tech in your body!"

"I'm marrying a cyborg!" Koumyou counters, pursuing with his wiggling fingers.

Devero splashes him again more vigorously, slipping off the bench and into the deeper middle of the pool to get away from Koumyou's tickle-hands. "That doesn't mean you want to be one!"

Koumyou relents, a sly expression slipping over his features. "I have tech in my body on a regular basis and you know it, mister."

Devero hits the seat on the other side of the pool and splashes down heavily on it, dissolving into raucous laughter. He can't even respond to that, so surprised and delighted by Koumyou's risque assertion.

Koumyou just smiles as serenely as any Buddha statue, settling back into the seat he's on.

After Devero's able to talk again, he asks, "So what's an interface look like for someone like me? Like a cell phone?"

Devero stays seated across from him, but lays his arms along the lip of the tub and stretches his legs across to drift against Koumyou's. He knows vaguely what a 'cell phone' is, having picked it up via contextual osmosis during his month on the train, and nods. "A handheld would probably be the closest to a cell phone," he says. "Those are pretty common. Or we could get you a tablet or a wearable. Just depends on what you want to be able to do with it."

"I've never even touched a cell phone," Koumyou points out, "they exist on my world, but they're useless in Shangri-La. They're in books and the like, but that's as close as I've personally gotten."

So you're going to have to help him out, here.

"I never left Shangri-La before the train, so I have literally no idea what kinds of things something like that can even do. I vaguely know what yours does, but I also know you're all wired up inside."

"Honestly, an Interface for a teknull is going to be able to do everything mine can, for the most part, they would just Interact with it differently."

He stretches one arm out in front of himself, spreading the fingers wide and wiggling them. "I can access the functions of my Interface without having to touch it because of my Implant," he says. "You would have to get fingertip sensors if nothing else to be able to use any of the optical Interfaces. But a tablet or a handheld you touch the screen to use, like the ICPs and SCAs here.

"As for what they can do...." He thinks about it for a moment. What can't they do? He starts listing things off on his fingers: "Send and receive personal cards; take video and voice calls; send text-based messages; access the net and your cloud; record photos, video, audio and process what you've got; monitor any output from your bio-Implant or baby brace-- wristlet, if you have one; share your requisition status or merit level to obtain goods or services; er... control any other devices in your home, um.... access external public systems...."

He squints into the middle distance there, trying to think of other common Interface functions.

Koumyou breaks into that with a laugh, "You sound like me, trying to explain what chi can do."

Devero has to laugh too. "Guess we're both nerds, then, eh?"

"You're a much bigger nerd than I am. I slept through all the lectures in training!"

Not all, not really, but. He has an image, here.

"How about we get one with all the bells and whistles since the cost will be the same anyway, and you can teach me to use the useful bits? Having another camera would be neat, and video. And being able to talk without the SCAs, of course."

Koumyou gives Devero a big smile, "Though I'm still going to send Wiggles with notes, sometimes. Makes her feel included."

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