caughtinanetwork

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[Audio]

Okay, weirdos. I'm fucking bored.

I've reprogrammed this stupid piece of shit alien communicator thingy with a text to speech program. By touch. In a foreign programming language. So now there are no excuses.

Someone entertain me.

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[Now he feels like a heel, and his previous irritability fades into someone very distinctly awkward.]

... Look, I'm not trying to be difficult, I just. I'm not used to people talking to me unless they need something.

You're the one who talked to me. I just threw my boredom out into the universe and netted me a lisping flame-spewing human with emotional issues that nearly reach the level of mine.

And all I'm looking for is something to pass the time.

Only nearly? I'll have to step up my game.

I was just taking a break from setting up on the island-- I'm not a storyteller. Unless you want to hear about some vague association with the blind girl I know at home, you're out of luck.

Trust me, you don't want to try to beat me on this playing field.

But we've been doing so well! Tell me about the blind girl. Does she lick things?

You're right, I don't. Stop patronizing me and I'll talk to you, okay? I'm not a child.

And no, she doesn't lick things. Mostly she hits them. She can 'see' by feeling the vibrations in the ground, and it's made her the strongest earthbender in the world.

Stop being a wiggler and I won't treat you like one.

...That's pretty cool, actually. Terezi can taste and smell colours, so she sees things by licking and sniffing them, which is way more annoying.

Stop being a what? I haven't been wiggling at all!

That doesn't just sound annoying, that sounds gross. Toph shows her affection by punching, but she's actually... not that bad. [There's an amount of hesitant respect in there, but Zuko is fairly secure that Toph is a friend, and it comes out in how much less sensitive he sounds about it.]

That's what troll children are called, lameass.

[Chuckles] Well, Terezi's not that bad, either. I'm glad I don't have to learn her way of seeing, though.

Of course. Why would they be called anything else? That makes total sense. [Troll vocabulary, seriously. Zuko is so unamused by it.]

... So you haven't been blind that long?

First we're hatched into grubs then we pupate into wigglers, and then we grow up into adults. It totally makes sense.

No, just about a week.

You sound like insects. It doesn't make sense, it's creepy.

Oh, uh, sorry. No wonder you're bored. I thought it was bad enough when I couldn't use one eye for a month.

We are insect-like. You guys are mammals, and that's creepy to me.

Right? And everyone's getting on my fucking case! What happened to your eye?

One day this is all going to seem normal, and that's really the freaky part.

[He pauses, considering what he wants to say on this, and he can't help but speak a little shortly.] It was burned. Since you can't see it, I have a huge scar on my face. I had to keep it bandaged for a while.

[A beat later he returns to normal, non-sensitive topics, and says,] You're a lot less awful about it than I was, and you have it worse.

I know, right?

[He listens, thoughtful] Wow, that sucks. Right over your eye? Must be hideous.

Wow, you were whinier than I am? Well, i don't know. I've got a friend helping me out, and another guy is going to make me new eyes, and I did at least have a lot of warning...so maybe that's why I'm coping. Going blind is sort of a rite of passage for prophets.

[flatly,] Yeah. Hideous and disfiguring.

[Zuko's getting tired of not knowing anything about anything, and isn't going to ask what a prophet is, and why going blind would be important for it.]

I was pretty terrible. I had a lot going on. [Understatement of the year.] But okay, I have to ask, how is someone making you new eyes?

[Hey, no shame in being hideous and disfigured. Sollux was born that way]

He's making me robotic ones to replace my old ones.

I'll bite. What's 'robotic'?

You don't know what robots are? Where do you come from, the stone age?

I don't know what that is, either! I'm from the Fire Nation. Just explain it.

The Fire Nation? [He shrugs] I just meant that you're from some primitive place that probably doesn't even have computers. How the fuck am I supposed to explain robots to someone who doesn't know the first fucking thing? They're just fake eyes that work like real ones, okay?

Computers like this starfish thing? No, we don't have anything like that. The most advanced we have is steam power, and that's too expensive to use for anything but war machines.

... You're going to put fake eyes in your head?

You can power things with steam?

Well it's better than the burned out holes that I've got in my head right now!

Edited (fucking lithp) 2012-04-02 05:23 (UTC)

You can power a lot of things with steam, especially if you have a bunch of firebenders willing to heat up the water for you.

Oh. Yeah. It would be. Aren't you freaked out about how it's going to work?

Yeah, but electricity and nuclear power is way more efficient, trust me.

I'm fine! It'll hurt like hell, I think, but after that it'll be okay. At least I don't have to get my legs sawed off like Tavros.

I have to trust you, I've never heard of them before! I'm getting really tired of not knowing anything about this stuff.

[Legs sawed off? It's starting to seem like 'trolls are violent' was a gross oversimplification.] Well... for what it's worth, I hope it works out. I don't understand any of it, but it sounds like your situation sucks.

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