Awesome, my favorite characters finally showed up! I mean, seeing as this is an AU of Legends 2, it was inevitable. I liked seeing them all together after all that crap I put them through. Technically before all that crap I put them through. Before it, and in a parallel universe where it probably won't happen. The ToC Bonne parents are jerks, though! At least my version of Mr. Bonne could see some value in Tron's mad skills! That scene at the end with Bon and Tron was pretty neat, too. I missed being able to read about them.
Teisel playing the trumpet, by the way? That sounds like they're just asking for a noise complaint.
Nice touch with him scaring away his customers with the food cart. I hope he decides to take up the trumpet again, much to the complete and utter dismay of the Servbots and everyone with ears in an embarrassingly wide radius of his current position.
I digress. I spent the past couple of days just going over it a bunch of times to really commit that chapter to memory. Knowing my memory, that'll probably last about two days. I mean, I haven't even been keeping track of what happened to my versions of these characters after PSTC ended. They probably aren't doing anything weirder than usual, right?
Sera didn’t know what to expect when she and Geetz joined Roll while she spotted for Rock on Saul Kada Island, but whatever expectation she might have had regarding spotting and Irregular Carbons definitely didn’t involve
this.Once Rock had finally returned with the third key, the Carbons’ discussion about her smile and her feelings started to make her incredibly self-conscious. Sera decided to head up to the roof. She reassured Geetz that she would be fine up there by herself. She just needed some time alone to process all of it and clear her head of these troublesome aberrations that were causing her to lose control of her composure.
Perhaps it might have been better if she’d just agreed to let Geetz escort her up there, because quatting at the edge of the ship and fiddling with a small radio and some wires that had been attached to the Flutter, was the last person in the universe Sera had expected to find on the roof of the Flutter. There was no mistaking it. Even though he was wearing Carbon clothes, and even though he was skinnier and paler and kept his red hair tied in a loose ponytail, there was no mistaking it. She immediately felt herself grow increasingly lightheaded and found herself spiraling into a continuous loop of frustration at these persistent, unfamiliar feelings. As if the happiness she’d managed to experience hadn’t been enough of a distraction! “First Class Purifier Trigger, what are you doing onboard this vessel?” She snapped the moment she’d shaken them off.
The young man snapped to attention. “Oh dear. I’d expected there to only be a 10% chance I would be discovered from this spot,” he admitted. “I suppose the odds weren’t on my side this time.”
Sera’s frown deepened. It was exactly like Trigger to completely ignore her. “Well, Trigger?” She persisted. If she had any misgivings about fighting with the Purifier Unit, she wasn’t about to let him notice them anytime soon. “I’d thought I’d managed to get rid of you back on Forbidden Island. Apparently you’re harder to dispose of than I’d initially anticipated…”
“My name isn’t Trigger,” the young man corrected her. “It’s Pic Holie. We’ve never met. I know your name is Sera, and I've been watching you and your companions for six months and thirteen days, but until now we’ve never formally met.”
Huh. This was an intriguing turn of events. “Pic Holie. You know who I am. That's peculiar.” She pondered out loud. His vocal inflections were definitely off. There was a good chance that this wasn’t Trigger after all, but she certainly didn’t want to risk testing him in battle herself. “Still, you haven’t answered my question. I don’t take kindly to insubordination. What are you doing on this vessel?”
“Oh, right,” Pic apologized. “I was trying to see if you guys were going to get any more radio transmissions of my friend T-Bonne. I came here because I wanted to see what he was like in this world. Ever since this weird guy named Rocky showed up on my island to meet T-Bonne, there’s been this strange wormhole in one of the caves by the beach. It let me watch you and everyone else. I was only 74% certain that I would be able to see T-Bonne here, but it turns out I had nothing to worry about. He was here, and his voice sounded exactly the same, and he was still nice even with brother and sister around.”
“74% is actually quite probable,” Sera responded. “However, I’m unfamiliar with this T-Bonne of whom you speak.”
“His real name is Teisel,” Pic elaborated. He detached his radio from the Flutter and clipped it back onto his pants. Then he stuck out his leg to give Sera a clear view of the Bonne emblem tattoo on his ankle. “He came from a family of pirates called the Bonnes. Their logo looked like this. In this world, they still use it when they build robots.”
“You put this man’s logo on your leg.” Sera repeated.
“He’s my friend.”
“Friendship on this planet is an unusual phenomenon,” Sera seemed to agree. Even though their sentiments sounded like a series of non-sequiturs, it still sounded like an agreement.
“He’s a very excitable person,” Pic added. “He doesn’t know I exist in this world, so it seemed like a better idea to listen in on him from back here since Rock was going to run into him anyway. I didn’t want him to think I was creepy. I get that a lot.”
“I can’t imagine why,” Sera muttered under her breath.
“Well, for starters, I like giving people back rubs, but when I do that it makes them uncomfortable. I have a frustrating way of sneaking up on people without realizing they haven’t noticed me. I have trouble recognizing figurative language. I can climb up the sides of…”
“I didn’t mean that literally,” Sera snapped. “You’ve already unsettled me enough.”
Pic looked hurt. “What did I do?” He asked. The young man looked genuinely confused.
“To start, you’ve climbed on top of someone’s ship and hacked into their equipment. You seem to have been spying on us long enough to know my name. Your theory on parallel worlds is completely ludicrous. I would have certainly found any parallel worlds by now if they truly existed.” Sera explained. She hesitated for a moment before she added, “You also… You look like someone I used to know.”
“Trigger,” Pic recalled. “You miss him. The T-Bonne I know gets that same look on his face when he thinks about his family. It's more noticeable when it happens to him, but for approximately seven sixteenths of a second, I could see it in your eyes, too.”
“That’s unfortunate,” Sera brushed it off. The last thing she wanted to admit was that she might be starting to lose control of her expressions. “I am going to have to ask you to leave. Perhaps you could go locate your friend in person. If he really is as nice as you claim, I am 88% sure he would be willing to speak with you, especially if you decide to talk about his orchestra and leave out the frivolous claims of interdimensional travel.”
“88%?” Pic smiled. “I like those odds… Try not to think too hard about your feelings, okay?”
Before Sera could respond, he’d already jumped off the side of the ship onto the wing and scampered off into the desert.
She decided it would probably be for the best not to tell Geetz and the others about this one.