milliways_bar | (no subject)

Entry tags:

enzo matrix

(no subject)

A boy walks into a bar and abruptly loses half his vision.

"Huh? Is it another holiday?"

It probably is, if Bar's dressing people up. And here Enzo just intended to supplement his Academy lunch ~~with something that doesn't make him gag~~. Holidays, though, are always fun and novel, so he may be taking a longer lunch than planned!

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"No, it's about trust."

She encourages the horse forward gently, does a warm-up trot around the garden, then stands on his back.

Enzo would have thought it was about whether or not it's comfortable to have someone climbing around on your back, but okay.

"Cool! That looks way harder than a zipboard!"

"Well I don't know what a zipboard is, but it's jolly good fun."

She slips down gently to sitting again, praising the horse.

"In the circus we'd do it longer and faster, and maybe with other tricks like dropping from a rope onto the horse, but Orion is Teja's so we're still working on it."

"A zipboard's what most people use to fly around on in my world. You stand up on those, but it's not bumpy, and it's hard to fall off."

Of course, if you do manage to fall off at fifty feet, you're pretty screwed...

"Dude! You were in a circus?" That would explain matters.

"Yes, surely I told you that?"

"I don't think so!" That, he would have remembered.

"Oh, I suppose I'm used to people knowing. Yes, I was in the circus, brought up there, until my father found me and made me go to boarding school."

"He found you? Did you run away or something?"

"No, my mother did, just before I was born." She hesitates. "She died when I was a baby, I was brought up by the circus folk."

"Ohhhhhhh. Wow. Why'd she run away, do you know?"

"She missed circus life." Carlotta says with a shrug. "It's in the blood."

Enzo smiles. "Sounds like a real format."

"A format?"

Enzo waves his hands as he tries to translate the concept. "It's something sprites have that Users don't. It's like, you have jobs, and that's what you do, right? But we have formats, and it's not just what we do, it's what we are. And we know what we are."

"Like... like if you're a girl or a boy?"

Enzo shakes his head. "No, like I'm a Guardian, so my function's to mend and defend, and I can't not do that. If someone's in trouble or something, I have to help. That's what I am."

"That must be hard. What happens if you can't help?"

He sighs. "Depends. If it's something that I really can't do anything about, and I know there's no point even trying, then that bytes but I'm okay. And if someone else is helping, that's okay. But if I oughta at least try to help and I can't, then it hurts, real bad."

"That's tough on someone so young." she says sympathetically.

Whoops.

"Yeah, it is, 'cause no one wants to let me help."

"Then you could always watch other people help, that's like being a trainee helper. You're helping indirectly by paying attention so you can help someone else."

"Yeah, but they don't want to let me help 'cause it's dangerous, so they don't want me to be there anyway."

You've hit a bit of a sore point here.

"Yeah, being a kid can be hard. School won't let me go riding alone."

"Even sitting down?"

Carlotta nods ruefully.