randomplaces | Nexus. The Fangor family scoop. Talk with a Marco.

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Nexus. The Fangor family scoop. Talk with a Marco.

The walk through the trees was somewhat long, but though there was no trail the way was clear and easy to traverse. When the forest finally ended it was to show a largish clearing ringed by more trees and sporting a few hurdles and ramps near where Al and Marco entered. On the farther side, nearly lost in the long grass, the force fields covering a large scoop and two smaller ones shimmered softly.

It was to the largest scoop that Al directed his steps, though he shot a glance toward the larger of the small ones as the sound of hammering came from it. It made him wonder what Varek was making now, but he knew he'd find out later without upsetting the nervous young Andalite by invading his private workspace. Varek always showed all his inventions to his War Prince first.

The large scoop took up about the same ground space as a comfortable bungalow back on Earth would have, and Al wore an unconscious grin as he passed through the force field and rumbled down the wooden stairs into a kitchen that would have looked more at home in that comfortable bungalow back on Earth, even down to the family snapshots arranged on a shelving unit over to one side, and the alphabet magnets on the door of the big stainless steel side by side fridge.

"Loren?" he asked, seeing that the freezer door on that fridge was open and unable to detect the scent of the person busy inside because of the cold draught that was billowing out.

-Yes?- A slender Andalite woman looked around the door at him, then closed it and came over to give him a hug and a nuzzle. -I went grocery shopping to replace what Ax happened to this morning.-

Al chuckled as he returned the embrace, then glanced over toward where Blue was cuddling a stuffed animal in a nest of clean towels in her favorite jumbo size laundry basket. "I brought a visitor."

Loren looked at him quizzically, then turned her attention toward the stairs.

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(( Just a note for context, so far this Marco is between #4 and #5, so he has just met Ax, never been to a scoop, hasn't seen Ax eat, and doesn't know about his mom. ))

Marco follows Al, still generally weirded out by this whole aliens thing, and not entirely sure which planet he's on. It's almost disturbing to see little human things like refrigerators and magnets with Andalites prancing around.

Surely it's nice for a scoop, but all Marco can relate it to is camping, a kind of vacationing he's less than fond of. Then again, it's nicer than where he's living now with his dad, so he keeps his mouth shut. It's probably not wise to make jabs at people who can literally morph into Wolverine. He raises a hand and waves a bit. "Hey."

Loren's lower eyes crease into a smile. -Hello. Why don't you and Al grab a drink and go sit in the living room while I make some nachos?-

"I can do that," says Al quickly, not liking to sit while his wife works. And then he winces slightly under the Look she turns on him.

-Oh no you can't.-

It's a sheepish looking Al that turns to Marco. "What do you like to drink? The only thing I can really remember ours having is a Jolt cola that he tried to chase me around with after he'd already drunk the rest of the pack."

((OOC :)))

"A soda would be pretty cool." Marco just feels really confused by all of this. "Who tried to chase you down? An Andalite? How do you drink if you don't have mouths? Isn't having a mouth kind of a required part of drinking?"

"Our Marco." Al goes to the fridge and sticks his head in. "We have grape and ginger beer. Which do you want? And trust me, if a teenage Andalite wants pop, not having a mouth isn't going to stop him from having pop."

-And then leaving sticky footprints all over the floor.- Loren snorts and pokes her husband in the back. -Give me the spicy cheese.-

"It's called soda," he says, "and I'll take grape. How'd you get a fridge, anyway? Were they having a sale at the intergalactic IKEA?"

"In Canada and parts of the Midwestern United States it's called pop, and that's the English I picked up." Al shrugs as he straightens and offers a can of natural grape soda pop. "And there's an entire mall here."

"Yeah, but everyone knows that it's actually called soda. I mean, even if you picked up Canadian English, you have to get the lingo right. Thanks," he says as he takes the soda and pops the top. "Where is here, exactly?"

"No. In those areas it's actually called pop. And people will laugh at you for saying soda." Al frowns at him, and then dismisses the debate as he opens a tall brown bottle that looks like beer but is really Jamaican ginger beer. "This is a Nexus between realities. People from every place, time, and possibility go through over by the sign."

He takes a pull at the bottle and then nods to a doorway. "Let's go sit in the living room."

If Marco notices the frown, he doesn't seem to care. He tends to get argumentative and snarky when put into a new situation, especially a new weird situation, and he knows that every minute longer he spends in the company of aliens he's sealing his fate of never returning to normal. And Marco very much wants to return to normal and just walk away from this whole thing, and would, if Rachel and Tobias didn't keep guilting him.

"Alright," he shrugs, and follows Al.

The living room that Al leads into has thick carpet of a comfortable colour, several large cushions scattered all over the floor, and two armchairs. Al dumps himself into the one closer to the big screen TV, then winces and pulls a doll out from under himself before glancing toward another open doorway from which the sound of busy, distracted humming is coming.

Marco winces inside, a little, at how much nicer, how more alive this place is than his apartment. He takes a seat, checking the chair first for dolls and toys, and keeps drinking his soda. "How many people, um, Andalites, live here?"

(( Out biking for day, back tonight. ))

"Andalites are people." Elfangor frowns at the doll, wondering why the makers put such a big head on it, then looks up again. "Four. And two people whose main or only form is human. Aidla and her husband and son live next door."

"That's not what I meant," Marco mutters, "of course you're people, I'm just only kind of new to the whole X-Files thing."

"And why are you all living together? Did we beat the Yeerks?"

"The yeerks went down with the reality." Al looks up with a grim smile, but doesn't want to add that survivors and expatriates often do tend to live close to one another.

Marco sighs. "Please don't tell me that the only way to save the world is to break reality. That might be a bit ambitious, even for us. Not to mention risky."

Al looks away, once more feeling guilty at the words, 'save the world'. He considers what he knows about the reality breaking in other universes similar to his own and decides to stick to the important part. "In other realities the yeerks were beaten after a few years' hard battle."

"A few years? I thought the Andalite high command was supposed to be here in a year. I mean, it's flattering that they think we're so good at this and all, but putting up five kids and a cadet to babysit the world for years just seems like a bad idea."

This keeps getting worse and worse. He never wanted this responsibility, he can't be risking his life like this. He has people to take care of. He has his dad to look out for. Why is everyone guilting him into this when the Andalites can't do their job protecting the universe?

"High Command are...." Al takes a drink of his ginger beer to cover what he was going to say, well aware that Loren would have heard him and what the consequences of that would have been.

He swallows the drink and snorts as he lowers the bottle. "I don't know the story there. But I don't remember hearing anything from them after I was saved and sent back in my own reality."

Marco gives him the fish-eye. "Contrary to popular belief, I'm not stupid. And I don't buy that you don't know about High Command. You got us into this war, the least you could do is be honest about it."

"Even an omega glass telepath can't save chewed up brain cells, Marco," says Al quietly.

"Huh?"

Then "Oh, GOD, telepaths? At what point does life stop getting written by Stan Lee?"

-Marco, language,- comes a little sharply from the kitchen.

Al winces a bit and leans over to see his wife through the door, then sits up and looks back to the boy. "Trust me, Stan Lee hasn't got anything on what I've seen since I wound up in this form."

Marco throws his hands up at the chastising, but doesn't retort. He figures he's in a war, he has a right to a little language, but then again, they are giving him grape soda.

"That's great. Just when I think my life has out-weirded itself, I find out telepaths exist. Next thing you know, I'll find out Tobias is an alien and everyone else is a robot."

Al sputters his pop a bit at the comment about Tobias, and he's holding his nose and wincing as he turns back to Marco. "No. At least the versions I know aren't robots. Andalites don't seem to be able to speak to cybernetic people."

Marco gives Al a long look, and then shrugs. It must just have been funny because Tobias is spacey dreamer social outcast enough to be an alien as is. No way is he actually an alien.

"I've spoken to cybernetronomic people in the Nexus. It's not that hard."

"With the andalite thought speech?" Al frowns, absently rubbing his nose though the sting's already faded.

"You can morph," he says, and then, because he's still rankling from getting called out for the inappropriate invocation of deities not to mention the whole getting-dragged-into-war and no longer having to be too respectful because Elfangor's not actually dead and didn't die horribly this time around, he adds "duh".

"Duh." Al growls softly. "The point I was making is that I can tell robots from organics."

"Nachos." A dark-haired human woman brings in a huge steaming platter and sets it on the table between Marco and Al's chairs, then grabs a few toys and puts them in a box by the door on the way out.

Al leans over to examine the food, discussion momentarily forgotten in the face of a much more appealing topic.

"Can I have some?"

"She made them for both of us." Al's smiling slightly as he throws up a quick mental thanks and grabs a blob of the goodness.

Marco has some, still eyeing up Al. On one hand, he's nice and generous. On the other, Marco's impatient and feels like he hasn't gotten all the information he needs, and he's more than a little resentful of being cast as a superhero. Something about this scene of Andalite domesticity unsettles him. It's so out of place for what he's seen of the Andalites, but then again, he's only seen them in the context of battles and war.

Nor is he happy with the idea of staying in this war for years. He's barely invested in it as is. If it weren't for Tom and being showed up by Tobias, he wouldn't even be involved. And he certainly doesn't plan on it for the future.

"You might want to watch out for the smaller pepper rings." Al sucks in air, his expression mildly surprised. "She sliced a bird's eye in with the jalapenos."

"My mom was South American. There is no such thing as too spicy," he says, defiantly taking a pepper ring. It's hot, yes, but nothing he isn't used to, doesn't miss from when his mom used to cook.

"I would have agreed with you once." Al has another big bite of nacho goodness. "But then I was stupid enough to taste Dragon Elf cooking. The stuff took the skin off my mouth."

"So like the Warheads of spice? If it's for dragons, doesn't it make sense it would be hot, with the firebreathing?"

"They're not dragons. Just a warrior-minded humanoid race who think getting electrocuted for wrong game answers is funny." Al pokes around to find some of the pickled chilies.

"Well, that sounds like tons of fun. That's very Mojo-from-X-Men. The universe is just full of pleasant people, isn't it?"

Al shrugs. "It doesn't actually hurt them. But I'd rather leave the game to them anyway. And they are pleasant people, if you understand them."

"That's what you told us about Hork-Bajir, and sorry, I'm not going to buy that anything that looks like an infomercial for dicing onions on the cooking channel is pleasant."

"That's a close-minded view for something that's pale, hairless, and sometimes slimy and bad-smelling," notes Al as he reaches over to get a picture which shows Loren in her Andalite form standing between two tall, gorgeously formed green women with strongly boned but beautiful faces and finned ears and then shows it to Marco.

"It's not such a close-minded view when you've nearly been slice open by one, but I will admit that whoever they are, they're sexy."

"Marco," says Al patiently. "You can't judge an entire race by the actions of a few, or even of the majority, in some cases."

Then he points to a big chunk of meat that's on Marco's side of the plate as he sets the picture down again. "Are you going to eat that?"

"Well, yeah, but given that all the Hork-Bajir are slaves to the Yeerks right now, I can probably be pretty certain that when they see me they'll want to turn me into chop suey," he bristles.

"You can have it. Talking about walking razor blades with homicidal slugs in their heads kills the appetite.

"I'd forgotten that." Al reaches behind another framed picture and takes out a band of what looks like blue enamel set on silver. It's about an inch wide and four inches long. "Do you want a yeerk detector? You can't pinpoint location, but it tells you when one's close."

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Nexus. The Fangor family scoop. Talk with a Marco.

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