Welcome to Gaia! ::

"'ther? What's that place?" The habits of formal speech picked up from his family were starting to wear off, thanks to discovery of a radio. Music, and that was a facinating new toy. Not that they didn't have it back home, but they didn't have anything simular to the variety played on Gaia.

He squinted at the store in question. It looked like a clothes store, but the clothes were weird. And their were faces hanging on the wall. Autsu didn't know what to make of it. He fluttered his wings in irritation and tugged at his Father's hand, having not gotten an answer on his first attempt.

"'ther!"

Kniene blinked, a sad little smile coming to his lips. He'd been like that more and more lately, and his own mannerisms, which had started to blend in with the norm, were becoming more and more old fashioned.

"I fear I have not seen such a place before, 'tsu." He admitted, stroking the boy's hair absently as he spoke. Autsu liked being touched, even if his roughness confused the rest of them. "Come, we will see."

It was, of course, he who followed. The second he was given permission the young boy bolted across the street toward the costume shop, not looking at traffic or the people that surrounded them. His wings fanned out, taking up space and cutting a wider ribbon of space through the crowd.

Yikes! The sound of his name being called had Autsu stumbling to a stop, his wings opening even wider as he nearly lost his balance in the suddenness of his stop. As he grew, he became used to the things, understanding how they could be used to help him balance, instead of just making him clumsy.

"Anne!" His enthusiasm was undisguised, he had fond memories of this particular comrade, and their valient battle against a particularly fuzzy enemy. How good to see him again. "Comrade, you are taller."

A bit of that formal speech there, he wasn't completely free of it, radio or no. "Hi."

It was then that Kniene caught up, a hint of amusement in his eyes as he put a hand on his son's shoulder and tapped those wings in a silent indication that it wasn't polite to take up enough space for four people on a crowded sidewalk. Autsu folded them obediently enough, though there was a reluctance to the movement.

"Who are your friends, my son?" he asked in a murmur, absently petting the boy's wings.

Kniene made an odd contrast, standing so near Patrick. Patrick with his piercings and Kniene with his strange, archaic form of dress. It was a bit warm for a cloak, but the shirt he wore had a definatly out of date feel. The loose white sleeves, the golden embroidered vest. It looked a bit like he was some sort of particularly conservative gypsy.

"I would be Kniene, Autsu's father." He bowed politely, lowering his head and bending at the neck instead of at the waist. "I am sorry if he startled you."

"This is Anne, 'ther. A comrade." And that explained everything as far as he was concerned, he quickly turned his focus back to the other boy.

"He's my guardian, yes." He twisted, looking closer at the equally dark boy in front of him and spotting something that made him so homesick it hurt. Hands jumped up, clasping the strange ring he still wore at his neck, remembering.

"You have a tail." There was no mistaking the sadness in his voice, the childishness falling away, revealing itself as no more than so much pretty gilding. "I had a tail, once."

Autsu released his necklace only reluctantly, letting it fall back against his shirt, his expression still filled with absolutely undisguised pain. He still wasn't completely aware of how telling his face could be. It had not been so much of a problem when he still had scales. Reaching out hesitantly, he attempted to brush hungry fingers over Kian's tail.

"You use it wrong." He said it bluntly, tact was not something he'd learned, in either of his lifetimes. "It can help, especially with turning and fighting. Wings most often make me clumsy. I am getting better."

Kniene, still petting the wings his son so hated, looked down at the scene before him with regret and bare sympathy. Looking over the two boy's heads, he glanced at Patrick, a look that clearly showed his mixed feelings over the scene.

"Your son is also a criminal, is he not?" He asked, voice soft, so not to disturb the boys.

"Practice, I think. Drill." Though Autsu knew that everyone on Gaia was not a criminal reborn, he often thought that way. Indeed, the fact that he was discussing former bodies with Anne didn't even seem mildly unusual. Instead, it was a nice change from the confusion of interacting with those who didn't have the trouble of readjusting to a new world and a new body. Anne could understand him. "If we think in our old bodies, we'll be poor fighters."

And that, of course, was the worst fate Autsu could think of. Other than the one he was in.

He removed his hand quickly, bringing his fingers again to the ring on his neck. He'd been built right, once. That was his problem. No matter what he said, he couldn't stop thinking of the body he had owned, instead of the one he did.


"As you say." Kniene agreed, inclining his head to acknowledge the other man's point. "'tsu has adjusted well I think. Though this is the first I've seen him speak of his past."

"I had horns." Autsu responded, running a hand over his decidedly unhorned head, "I was a fighter."

Of course, to Autsu it was perfectly clear that the reason he had horns was because he was a fighter, but to anyone not educated in the peculiar nature of his species, the statement might seem a bit random. He knew though. He knew his body had been made, quite literally, for battle. He had been meant as a soldier.

"Guns, when we were serious." What words his father didn't use, he'd managed to learn from the nearby bookstore that his brother so loved, combing the shelves for some memory, to find echoes of the world he'd known. Guns as he knew them were not as they were here. But the concept was the same. "We trained hand to hand, and in lance. Na-"

And he stopped, shocked to find that the name had come so close to crossing his lips, as it only did in the dark, when he mourned. That it could come so casually, so simply. And still hurt so much. Soldiers did not let pain stop them. He made himself keep speaking.

"The royals sometimes used swords."

Kniene nodded in agreement, looking at his own son with often explored confusion in the glance, "I still do not know exactly what he was supposed to have done. 'High Treason'. There were no details."

Nevermind the form he had, in mind Autsu was not a child. And while he wasn't quick, he wasn't stupid. Anne was doing him a kindness, but in the way that soldiers were kind. The other boy could have shamed him, or cornered him. Worse, pitied him. And he hadn't.

Autsu was not entirely sure how to react.

And then the man, the 'parental' spoke and Autsu frowned at the unfamiliar word. It had to do with the strange shop, didn't it? Costume. "What is a costume?" He asked his new ally, letting this new confusion distract him from the recent conversation. "Who is Halloween? Why are they coming?"

Not liking feeling so lost, he glared upward at both his father and the other guardian, his expression dark. "I will not go if Anne does not wish to."

Upset, his speech was at its most formal.