milliways_bar | (no subject)

Baze can't remember the last time he celebrated a birthday. Before the lean years of the Imperial occupation, certainly, possibly even before he was an Guardian. He does remember not enjoying them much, as after his parents died, birthdays were just reminders that he wasn't going to be visited at the Temple of the Kyber by anyone. That's probably why he stopped celebrating.

Cake, though--cake is always good.

"You look awfully upset for someone who has a treat," Baze remarks to the young girl, settling himself on a barstool. Bar rewards him for visiting new people with a mug of caf, which he's utterly delighted and amazed by.

(OOC: Chirrut may wander in at random later, if that's okay.)

YT's eyes flick over the new arrival as she licks some stray frosting off her thumb. Something about him reminds YT of those grizzled samurai in the old movies Hiro likes so much (and that YT kind of likes, too, although she won't admit it out loud). It's not something she can put her finger on.

"Yeah, well. Eating your negative emotions is a thing in some cultures," YT says helpfully/sarcastically.

Baze barks out a cheerful belly laugh, resting his hands on the countertop. He beams at her once he's done cackling. "Oh, I like you. I'm Baze Malbus. What's your name?"

A person who reacts positively to YT's 'tude (surprise, they're rare) is a person who just might be worth getting to know. Possibly. YT needs to gather more evidence. "Name's YT," she says, putting her half-eaten cupcake down. "Where you from? And when?"

Now that she's set the cupcake down, Baze offers her his hand. "YT, huh? Nice to meet you. I'm from Jedha, a desert moon orbiting the planet NaJedha," he says, expression tightening. He swallows thickly, repressing some awful memory, and then brightens again. "I hail from nineteen years after the Galactic Empire was created. What about you?"

YT accepts the handshake cautiously. (She has a surprisingly strong grip for a chick of her relatively small size.) "I'm from Earth, in 2009." Pause. "Does that mean anything to you? 'Cause, like, I don't know what NaJedha is or about any Galactic Empire."

Yes, YT has seen Star Wars, but a geek she is not - so the notion that's it's that Empire doesn't cross her mind.

"The pamphlet said that people come here from all different times and places, and that the weather out back is based on Earth's," Baze muses, almost to himself, stroking his chin. He picks up his cooling mug of caf and takes a large gulp. "But no, that doesn't mean anything to me. Your dating system is strange. I can hardly imagine keeping track of something for two thousand years. We change systems at the drop of a helmet."

YT pushes a lock of short hair back behind her ear. "Must be tons of fun to try and figure out dates from two or three calendars ago." In the sense that's it's not really fun at all.

Baze laughs again, more a chuckle this time. He's an easy laugher, it seems. "Yeah, well, there are smarter people than me trying to keep track of it," he says, indulging in his drink again. Damn, but the bar makes some good caf! "Have you been to many planets? I've only been to three, and the latter two late in my life. I know you're young, but scads of people travel when they're young."

Edited 2017-04-19 21:14 (UTC)

"Psht. Are you kidding? It's a heavy lift for us to get to the fuckin' Moon, let alone another planet."

Now that YT thinks about it, she hasn't really seen that much of her own world. Never been further from home than Washington state or Minnesota.

"Which moon?" Baze says, cocking his head at her, a curious expression on his face. He looks rather like a giant, lost puppy. "What do you mean, you can't go to other planets? Is space travel not common where you're from? Back home, everyone and their mother is a spaceship pilot, so I didn't even consider that a possibility."

YT holds up a finger. "One Moon. Just one. There's some others in the solar system around other planets and shit, but it'd take forever to get a manned craft out there. Maybe it's easy for you but we're still just taking baby steps."

"Wait, your moon is named Moon?" Baze says, dissolving into helpless laughter. That ranks pretty much up there as one of the silliest ideas he's ever heard. "I bet you don't even have faster-than-light travel. Oh, wow. That's... I don't even know what to think about that."

He indulges in his cooling drink, shaking his head. "Well, then, how do you get around on your planet?"

YT scowls and eats a bit of cupcake while Baze is guffawing. Her glare does not seem to affect him at all.

"We get around lots of ways. Cars, trains, boats, airplanes. I get around on my skateboard a lot of the time."

It's true. Baze is pretty much impervious to the glares of teenaged girls. "I don't know any of those except for boats. We have speeder cars, but I suspect those are something different."

Edited 2017-04-20 04:33 (UTC)

"Do your speeder cars have wheels and run on gas?"

(Probably not, YT figures.)

Baze hesitates, considering that odd question. He cocks his head, looking once again like a giant, lost puppy. "They have wheels that are used for steering them around, if that's what you mean," Base says cautiously. "And they run on power cells, not any particular fossil fuel."

"Yeah...not like the kinda cars I know at all," YT says. After a pause, she adds: "You got skateboards or something though, right?"

(A world without skateboards would be sad indeed.)

"Not that I know of," Base says, blinking at her. "What is a skateboard?"

He pronounces the word differently than she does, putting equal emphasis on both the components of the word.

YT raps her knuckles on the Bar. "Yo, Bar - can I have my plank for a sec?"

The orange-and-blue object that appears on the Bar looks like what would happen if a skateboard had sex with a Moon rover and the resulting love child was raised by monster trucks. There's a sensor package on the nose, and some toe switches. The wheels are fat and made of stretched-out hexagonal treads.

"This is my skateboard," YT announces.

Baze boggles. He truly didn't put two and two together regarding the wheels she mentioned, so to see them in the flesh is interesting--and confusing. Jedha has no real roads, so Baze wonders how YT manages to get around on this thing.

He decides he likes the plank, and pokes one of the wheels.

"That's an impressive piece of work," Base says, beaming at her, and then looking back at the skateboard again. "But how do you keep the dust from getting into the axles? Wouldn't the grit interfere with the turning of the wheels?"

"Crud gets in. Fact of life," YT says. "Which is why a smart pro thrasher like Yours Truly performs recommended maintenance at least once a week."

Of course, YT doesn't realize that Baze is thinking about sand, which the high-tech smartwheels would not handle too well.

"Ah, okay," Baze says, nodding at this new information. Hs doesn't know what's involved in this weekly maintenance, but he suspects it's an annoying job, and repetitive, too, given that there are four wheels to clean. "Yours Truly--is that what your initials stand for?"

Good catch. "Yep," YT says. "Pro thrashers are kinda like fighter pilots. We have callsigns."

They're also like fighter pilots in the sense that they move fast and risk life and limb whenever they go to work.

Baze blinks at her again. He's never heard the word thrasher, and to put a pro in front of it just brings up all sorts of questions. First things first. "What do you do as a professional thrasher?"