Welcome to Gaia! ::

Sascha rolled his eyes as he continued to work on shuffling items into bags. Ah! Last perigee’s copy of Popular Bladed Weapons—the concealed knives issue! That was a good one. Sascha set it aside in a different pile and returned to stuffing his bag.

He remembered Chiara. ”I’m not gonna break all of it,” he scoffed, ”Though anything that helps me get better at breaking stuff with other stuff is definitely valuable in its own right.”

Sascha seemed to genuinely ponder this epiphany before tying off his bag and proceeding to drag it to the front door. ”Don’t you do weapons training? I’d figure a highblood would have some kind of fancy tutor or like, a sword caddy or something. Or do you just plan on hiring your own battle butler?”

Sascha retrieved another plastic garbage back and shook it open with a loud “WHAP.”

A sizable pile of bags was starting to accumulate next to Sascha’s front door. It was all-too apparent where the stacks of unsorted items used to be from the circuitous tracks worn in to the carpet, indicating the routes Sascha had taken to dodge his own mess.

If Sascha was embarrassed by the state of his hive, he didn’t show it. ”Ha! Just sounds like you don’t know how to throw a good punch.” Sascha ribbed Chiara as he made sure the bags weren’t about to topple over from the pyramid formation he’d lumped them into.

”Guess I’ll have to take your word for it on the ‘conflict resolution’ thing,” Sascha airquoted “conflict resolution” sarcastically. ”Regularly busting into other people’s hives ain’t really something a lowblood can get away with.”

Sascha was perhaps treading rather close to looking a gift horse in the mouth, but he couldn’t help wanting to size up Chiara. She practically had free-reign over his hive since they’d met, but he didn’t know a whole lot about her. She kept giving him picture-perfect highblood answers. That was fine and dandy, but Sascha knew if he had that kind of social status, he wouldn’t be half so diplomatic in the way he dealt with people.

Then again that was hardly the case and he was two steps from the bottom rung.

Chiara was getting prickly. Bagwormother slowed her own sorting to cast a reproachful glance at Sascha, which he ignored with a practiced grace. She was loosening up, and while it could mean nothing but trouble for Sascha, he couldn’t help but prefer it to the staunch professionalism Chiara had introduced herself with. It was fun!

”Yeah, sure, I’ll bite.” Sascha had no shame. He was confident in his ability to take whatever Chiara was offering to dish out.

He paused his smug grinning in order to thoughtfully concoct a question to ask. He didn’t know her well enough to care about the usual go-to invasive questions such as “Who do you like,” or “What’s your favorite color.”

Suddenly the answer became obvious. Sascha looked up from the spot on the floor he’d been absently staring at. With narrowed eyes and a mild smile, Sascha straight up asked, ”Why are you really here?”

He planted one hand on his hip, while his other held his bag. No matter how young she was, this kind of menial job Chiara had volunteered for was total drudge work unsuited to her caste. She had to have a reason to want to be here… or like, a debt to pay off or something. Maybe she had mob ties? That would be pretty cool…

Sascha’s thick eyebrows shot into his hairline. Interesting? Favorite memory? Wait, was that an arson threat?? Sascha tried very hard to force his eyebrows back into a somewhat neutral position. He cleared his throat and coughed into his glove. In what was meant to be a casual move, he tossed his bag over towards the door with the others, but ended up flinging it into the wall with a crash and a thud. He paid it no mind.

”W-Well then! I’m… Glad to hear people are finally talking about me!” Sascha announced after far too long of a pause. He was certain that “interesting” wouldn’t have been the word his neighbors would have used to describe him. He honestly couldn’t think of anyone that would have been conversing about him without his knowledge. Voscil maybe? Sascha couldn’t be sure. If a highblood had stopped by to sight-see an “interesting” troll, Sascha wouldn’t dismiss the good fortune that lead to him being viewed as such. He was about as pleased as he was suspicious.

Chiara’s question gave him plenty more to think about at that moment anyway. Sascha didn’t generally put much stock in the past, or even really the future. He lived for the moment. Supposedly, that would make what few memories he bothered to keep pretty special to him, then?

”I guess…” Sascha was being oddly quiet, thoughtful even. He looked around the ever-so-slightly less cluttered room for answers.

”I guess it would be just after I left the wiggler trials with my lusus,” Sascha finally decided, seemingly surprised by his own answer. ”Like the trials were literally the hardest thing I’d ever done and all I’d ever known—if you could really call it knowing anything, flopping around in the dark like that. To come out of it and realize, like, what it all meant and stuff. How few trolls actually make it out. In that moment I was the absolute pinnacle of the species. I earned the right to my own hive, my own lusus, to live on the surface with the rest of troll kind. Heh. The shine kind of wears off once you realize you’ve been hatched a lowblood, though. Guess I’m still chasing after that initial feeling.”

Sascha shrugged. He felt weird. It wasn’t like he was being particularly mushy, but open sentimentality didn’t sit well with him. He went back to stuffing bags with renewed vigor, hoping for Chiara to say something to make the conversation normal again.

Sascha’s packing had slowed considerably as he watched Chiara talk. He wanted to know where she was going with this. Her words were pretty, at least by his standards. He agreed completely and it was throwing Sascha off. He didn’t trust things to go his way.

Ah, there it was. Sascha took his sweet time before letting on that he’d even heard the question. Chiara was given a hard, scrutinizing look.

”I wanna be famous or something. Can’t be picky.” His answer was uncharacteristically stilted. He seemed to realize that his “dream” hardly sounded dreamy with the terse way he’d phrased it.

Sascha rolled his eyes. He hated being cagey, but this was something of a weird topic for him.

”No matter how you cut it I’m gonna end up a helmsman. Not like I’m gonna duck my horns down in some hidey-hole like a rebel for the sake of living to the ripe old age of whatever. I figure if the opportunity to do something big comes along I’ll take it then; worry about the specifics later.” Sascha shrugged. ”Fame and infamy are all the same after a while.”

Sascha responded to Chiara’s smiling with a frown of equal intensity. The lack of sincerity in her praise was enough to register even with him. Still, even if he wasn’t preening, he was curious. Where exactly was she trying to go with this?

Even after Chiara asked, Sascha wasn’t sure what her angle was. He sucked his lips into a thin line before responding, clearly on guard. He couldn’t hear his lusus making any noise elsewhere in the small hive either. She was probably also listening to what he had to say.

”What like literally? Sure, who wouldn’t wanna be some enormous purple ********. Can’t say I enjoy what all’s going on in the ocean Glob-glub wise but I’d gladly take the fins and horrorterrors if it meant getting to knock some heads around free of consequence.” As much as Sascha enjoyed talking about himself, this shady game was starting to wear on his nerves.

”I’m neither desperate or cowardly enough to go hemoanonymous though, and I’m not stupid enough to try wearing someone else’s blood color entirely. If I’m going to be caught with a culling offense I’d rather it be for something awesome like terrorism. Better a powerful somebody than a safe nobody.”

Sascha shoved a box with the bottom of his foot over towards the pile of other packed goods.

”I dunno how much you can carry, but this is probably the most we can get down to the warehouse district in one night if you wanna get along with signing me up for a storage unit before you leave town.”

Sascha grunted. ”Poor highblood. So many big, scawy powiticaw pwobwems.” Bagwormother nipped at his heel and he quit mumbling in a bit of a start. ”Yeah, okay. I’ll take your word for it.” Sascha wasn’t even trying to be convincing with that line read. Bagwormother seemed satisfied and maneuvered around him to drag a bag to the door. Sascha rolled his eyes and followed.

He couldn’t help but be instinctively wary around a stranger’s lusus. Still, h followed Chiara’s lead and hung his bags on one of Indica’s quills, very careful to make sure the large beast was aware of his presence. ”Nifty.”

Bagwormother sniffed at the face of Chiara’s lusus, acquainting herself with it. Sascha paid them no mind as he returned to pack the rest of the bags onto Indica. ”I take it you’re one of the political types? Or are you one of the lonely highbloods and that’s why you came all the way out to see little ole me?” Sascha batted his eyelashes at Chiara as he secured several more bags. If Chiara was going to insist that she wasn’t trying to trap him… well, he wasn’t going to give her the benefit of the doubt, but he would hear out whatever explanation she had. He obviously had the time.