zenderael_rl | [Mal/Travis] - steampunk revolution

"Hey, you know me. Gotta save money somewhere, right?" he asked, laughing again. He shook his head, before he took his glass and clinked it against the other one. Tyrus looked down at the glass, then lifted it and took a long drink of it. "Not bad. Dragon's Breath, huh? Did you rename yourself Puff after it happened?"

He grinned. He could have asked if Malachai was okay, but it looked he was fine.

"You kidding? 'Captain Puff' just ain't got the same ring to it." He drank back some of his own, then went to sit on the couch.

"That was when I set up the potion lab, though," he continued, thumbing towards the lab setup on the table not far from the couch. "Grabbed a bunch of supplies, came back home and ordered what I couldn't get quick. Was able to mix up a bunch of fire resist potions, and some heals in case I needed 'em."

He gave Travis a wide grin. "You got any idea how surreal it is to have all this shit be real? Before, you just knew it was talk about some game. Not it's like... shit, man. You'll never know if what someone says is referrin' to a game or not, now."

Tyrus took a seat on the chair, taking another drink of the rum. He never liked to take shots of rum; he preferred to drink his liquor slowly. It also made it easier to control his intake of liquor and keep him sober for longer. He swirled the drink around, before he looked back up and peered over at Mal. He nodded to him. "That sounds like the good thing to do. It's..."

He looked around. He learned to fake this sentiment. It made it almost real in his head; to become truly amazed at Zenderael. He had to channel the amazement he felt at Earth to do that, but the end result was similar. He smiled, over the rim of his glass, and nodded his head. "Yeah," he said. "It's a big change to get used to. Makes you look at the world differently, too, you know? Seeing how people lived on the other world."

"Yeah," Mal agreed. "We ain't had sword fighting in ages, an' now we got people who've used swords on a daily basis for years." That was just a small part of it, but a part he could easily connect with, with his own fascination with swords, and the historic significance of swordsmanship. A lot of the rest was just mindblowing.

"But it's more than that, too. Monsters- I mean, people went huntin' and came up against bears or wild boar, but that's nothing." He went quiet a moment, looking into his glass, and then shook his head before continuing. "When I got attacked by the cracklecat- I don't remember if I told you about that- I was scared. Never seen anything like it. But people from there're used to these things."

It made sense to Tyrus. He remembered when he was out with Harriet and saw the sea monster up the river; it hadn't frightened him the same way it frightened most of the people from Earth. His expression grew distant for a moment, as he thought about it, and then he threw back his glass and drank the remaining rum down. He looked at Malachai and nodded his head. "Yeah," he agreed. "We're scared of things that they're used to. I'd bet even a soldier or whatever, they'd be scared of a monster."

He lowered the glass, cupping it in both hands. "There's just nothing like monsters over here, you know?" he asked. "It makes Earth... I guess peaceful, in some ways. Not so much in others, though, probably."

"Hah, yeah. They never had traffic before." Mal snickered at himself. Traffic could be pretty fucking noisy. He could only imagine how Zendereans felt when first seeing a car, or a whole street of the things.

He nodded to the bottle on the table. "Help yerself," he invited. "There's a couple more bottles in the kitchen, plus some other stuff. Just don't touch the vodka." He only had the vodka on hand for Duncan- he never touched the stuff himself, it was nasty- but wanted to hold onto it for whenever it was Duncan decided to fill him in on what was up.

He finished off his own glass while waiting to let Travis get a refill first.

"No shit." He laughed again at that. "We don't want traffic either. Too bad they gotta deal with it, too."

Tyrus decided to stick with the rum. It was good stuff; he wanted a bit more of it, before he switched to a different liquor. He filled up his glass and took a sip of it, before he looked back to Malachai. He grinned over the glass's rim again. "I'll leave your vodka alone," he said. "I'm not the biggest fan, anyways. You like the stuff too much to share?"

Mal made a face that clearly said 'gross', before saying, "Yeah, that's it," with a sarcastic tone, assuming Travis was just fucking around. As he leaned to refill his own glass, he clarified, "Savin' it for Chief."

He wasn't sure for how long, but it wasn't like vodka went bad.

"What've you been up to, anyway? Aside from crashin' into shit."

Oops.

It was easy enough for Tyrus to brush it aside, like he was just fucking around. He knew who "Chief" was, too, thankfully. He nodded at Mal, grinning at him, and then shrugged his shoulders. Part of making a convincing lie, he found, was basing it in truths. Half-truths let him use his emotions normally, kept him from constructing a entirely fabricated life. It was better that way.

"I was in Instructor Kahil's class," he said. Travis signed up for that before Tyrus got here. "That was the big one. And trying to keep from growing broke before the fall semester starts, y'know?"

He didn't know, because he'd never had to worry about going broke before, and now that he had his alchemy business going, it was easy enough to make what he needed off of selling whatever concoctions he could make to help ward off illness or treat symptoms. He hadn't even gone through his savings, yet.

But he'd heard enough of his friends talk about money problems, so Mal nodded understandingly. "Shoulda become an alchemist when ya had the chance," he said, grinning. "Already got a few patents pending."

He sipped at his rum and leaned back. "What was Kahil teaching, again?" he inquired. "I was taking swordsmanship and monster tracking before the instructors got sick."

"It was basically about butchering monsters. Finding the right parts. Kind of gruesome." Kind of boring. Tyrus knew everything about that; he learned some from Nadir, but the basics were things he practiced a lot. He looked at Malachai and grinned at that, lifting up his rum, and took a long drink of it.

"Yeah," he said. "I should have." Except it would have given him away to Harriet. "I even got along with Nyx pretty well. Too bad, you know?" He shrugged again. "How were you at swordsmanship?"

"Maybe I shoulda taken that one," Mal said, musing. Might have been more useful than tracking. Well, maybe... He'd still have to find the things before he could kill them and then butcher them. "Should start looking into harvesting my own parts, though. Costs less that way." Which meant bigger profit margin.

"Pretty good, actually. More of a defensive fighter, but the dancing experience meant I picked up on the footwork pretty easily, and swords don't need a whole lotta strength behind 'em." Which was good, because he wasn't all that strong. "Could probably hold my own against some'a the less deadly beasties."

He snickered, then. "I actually told the instructor off- Anais Vallinar, a paladin- for sayin' that the kids who weren't learning so well were refusing to. She tried to punish me by makin' me her partner for defensive demos."

"I ought to learn some day. I'm an okay with a gun, but..." It wasn't quite the truth. Tyrus was a very good shot with a pistol; he used a pistol and a short sword in combat, fighting something akin to a pirate, but he mostly used his sword for defense. Special made bullets and offensive potions were his method of choice.

"You got balls for doing that, though," he said. He grinned. "I saw her walking around the halls. She could kick both of our asses at the same time."

Mal had to laugh at that. A lot of the students were afraid of her, but he just found it amusing. Sure, she was kind of standoffish, intimidating, and probably could kick both their asses at the same time, but she was also disciplined, and he didn't think she would unless they did something truly terrible.

"Dunno if it was ballsy or foolish, but she deserved it," he said, once he stopped laughing.

"I know how to use a shotgun. Keep thinkin' I should learn another gun, though. Shotguns ain't always useful, y'know?" Maybe a pistol. That would probably be easier to handle in tight situations, more maneuverability and only needing one hand. Though, that did get him thinking about ammo... He hadn't even thought to make his own since becoming an alchemist, more interested in constructs than anything.

"Yeah. Plus those things that nature goddess made." Tyrus frowned at that, looking at Mal again. He sipped a little bit more of his rum. "These seeds that were apparently getting in every Earth gun they could find. If they get over to this side, we're gonna be stuck with those really old school Zenner guns. I played a little with one once, in Bastantown's market."

He frowned. He did not like the difference between them; he had gotten used to the Earth firearms and learned to use them. It felt a little like switching to a peashooter. "It's pretty different."

Mal frowned, as well. "Yeah, I'd heard about that." He'd almost forgotten about it, actually. "Guess I should look into a flintlock, then, huh? 'less I can put something together myself, but I don't really have the parts." And he didn't have the machinery to make the parts. Course, Zen alchemists probably made their own and didn't have Earth machinery...

He'd have to think on that further. But not while drinking.

He drank back some of his rum, thoughtful. "Mm, I was workin' on somethin' else, though. Medena's here and all, an' Earth's got a lotta pollution. So I was looking into upgrading the city's water filtration, see if I could make it run cleaner, you know?"

"Flintlocks are less accurate, but more stylish. It's a rule." He paused, and felt compelled to add, "Or maybe more of a guideline."

Damn it, Travis.

"Yeah? That's a good idea," he said. "I never thought of using Zenderean stuff to try to fix that. Are you gonna sell it to them?" It made sense. Increased the bottom line and tapped into the wealth of the city's people. It was hard to resist that thought, knowing the city was richer than any one person could hope to be.

Mal had a nice buzz going, taking his time with the rest of the rum, a sip here and there. It was a good feeling, one that kept his mind off other things- his dad, whatever was going on with Duncan, all his friends vanishing on him...

Pirates were something worth thinking about, though, and flintlocks made him think about pirates. "Naw, it's definitely a rule," he said. "Just gotta dig out my pirate hat an' I'll be all set." He grinned.

He mused over the rest, shrugging. "Dunno that they'd be able to pay a whole lot, but I'd at least try to get 'em to fund it, if they seemed interested. No idea how t' go about bringing the idea to them, though..." He'd never had any experience dealing with government projects or funding or anything of the sort.

"Sounds like you have it made. Do up some alchemical ammunition, there you go. You'll go far, kid!" Tyrus said with a laugh. It was good-natured and came to him easy, especially through the growing haze of his alcohol. He fought with that very style. He looked up, tilting his head.

"Demonstration, maybe?" He was the last person to know. He would go through Upas for that -- and while he might be willing to lie to Mal, he wasn't willing to pull him unknowingly into the machinations of Bohun Upas. That would be wrong. "Just show them what you can do. Make a miniaturized model, maybe."

Mal laughed along with him. "Yeah, just started thinkin' about the ammo bit. Hadn't thought about it before." Just thinking of all the sorts of things he could do with ammo was inspiring, but, probably not something he should plan out while drinking. He might plan out something that sounded really cool but turned out to be completely inane... Like bubble-gum bullets.

He liked the idea of a model, though. A functional, miniature version of what he could come up with, complete with water sampling... Maybe... He'd have to think on it. "I'll keep workin' on the idea. Ain't got much yet. Wanna finish up the constructs first, you know? One thing at a time."

"Only way to do it," he said. He took another drink from the glass of rum, draining the rest of the stuff from his glass. He blinked his eyes a few times; even through the endurance potion, he felt a buzz starting to grow. He rubbed at his eyes. "When I'm working on some code or something, that's where I always go wrong."

Travis used to code up little video games. A couple of years ago, he tried to code up an old school, 16-bit style RPG based on their Zenderael characters. Tyrus saw the unfinished product; the part where he sent a little two dimensional sprite version of himself running around was downright unnerving.

"I always switched between projects," he said. It wasn't a problem that Tyrus had. "Never finish anything, but start a lot of things. I'm trying to fix that, though, y'know? After the crash... life's short, I guess."

He felt a flush of guilt. Travis would never have that chance, because of him.

Mal had never had that problem. Sure, he might start two or three projects at a time, but they always got done. Perhaps because he'd learned life was short while still young- his mother's passing had happened when he was only thirteen- and he was determined to do something, be someone, before his time came.

"You just gotta manage yer time. Once you got that gig down pat, yer good t' go." Though he grinned, there was a hint of sadness on his face, remembering his mother, which reminded him of the more recent loss of his father. He played it down, ignored it, and focused on Travis instead, tipping the glass towards him. "Might take some practice, but you can do it." He took a sip of his rum, then got curious. "You workin' on anything now?"

"Nah," he said, "not sense the wreck." He noticed the brief hint of sadness, but did not remark. If Mal wanted to talk about it, he could, but it felt wrong to presume the closeness to point it out. He shook his head, looking down at his empty cup and debated if he wanted another one.

"I was working on a driving game." He laughed at that. It was true, too; it was actually how Tyrus got the idea for a car wreck. "I can't quite bring myself to get back to it."

Not to mention that Tyrus had no clue how to code a game. When classes started again, he would have a very big problem.

"Eh, driving games suck, anyway," Mal teased, smirking. He didn't like driving games, actually, but he wasn't seriously going to tell someone their work sucked, unless it actually did. Driving games were fun to some. To each their own.

"Could try somethin' new. Or a side project. I got an app I made- monster recognition thing." He dug out his phone while he spoke, pulling the app up and holding the thing out for Travis to take a look at. "Not sure if you've seen it. Took face recognition software an' altered it to work with photos of monsters, then it pulls up details of the monster an' its weaknesses or whatever. I made it free, but you could put yer expertise to use in other things, you know? Just gotta figure out the market."

"No argument now," Tyrus said with a laugh. He shook his head, before he peered at the phone. He flipped through it with his finger on the touchscreen, just to get an idea of how exactly the program worked. His eyes widened at first, before they narrowed. He nodded his head. "That's like the answer to the sixty-four thousand dollar question, Mal. You could probably sell this for a lot of money. The motherload."

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