hadriel | ☢ audio

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[Newt has definitely not been up all night building salamander-proof enclosures out of spare Null parts so the fact that he sounds both tired and revved up on way too much coffee is just your imagination.]

Two questions, Hadriel. One: Tell me about the cave monsters. What all has crashlanded here before I got here? Specifically, I'm looking for stuff that a person could feasibly, like, catch. Or at least put down and drag into town for some post-mortem studying. This includes stuff that might be a good food source, maybe? I don't know. Depends on what's out there.

[The food source thing is secondary in his mind, but the masses don't need to know that. He's already expecting to catch some flak for this.]

And two: Anyone got some time to help me wrangle some salamanders, at least? I'm thinkin' two should be good. I'd like to grab some other stuff too, but again, depends on what's out there. Gonna start with the salamanders for now.

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As long as you own up to it. [She laughs quietly. The best people she knows are all a little unhinged. She finds it endearing by this point.]

You know, there's a time when I would've thought a giant lizard was cool shit, but after the past few months- [She huffs loudly. This place was taking the fun out of everything.] Pretty cool that you could stop something like that. I'm gonna look forward to the dirty details of how. World went and pretty much ended back home, kinda nice to hear 'bout people hittin' the break on the apocalypse.

[She wistful about it. What kid didn't grow up hearing snatches of stories about before and wondering what life could have been if the bombs hadn't fell? It was an escape to imagine worlds where things turned out better.]

I don't got one of those.

No kidding? That, uh, sounds pretty crappy. [The fact that she's alive to talk about it means the apocalypse can't have been that bad, though. If the Kaiju had won, humanity would've been decimated.] You'll have to tell me about it sometime.

[But, uh, record scratch!!!]

You... don't have a name? How does that work?

Yeah, I guess. [Crappy was a bit of an understatement, in her opinion. But she's gotten the gist that most of the people here had a terrible life before this.] I'll answer any questions you got 'bout it, sure.

[The questions that follow make her sigh heavily.]

Works just fine. People pick their names where I'm from and I ain't picked one yet. I know when people are talkin' to me.

[Sorry Girl he's hung up on this now. He's encountered a lot of weird cultural customs in Hadriel, but this has got to be the weirdest.]

So why don't you just, like... Pick one? What are people supposed to do when they're talking about you?

[She sighs, a little uncomfortable because he technically was right. She was a teenager, grown by Zone standards and more than old enough to take a name. But with the only people she wanted to tell that name gone...]

I just haven't. And people give me nicknames if they worry so much 'bout me not havin' one. There weren't many kids in the Zones, so when I was younger it didn't matter anyway. Just had to mention the lil' one and people would know.

Huh. Your world sounds pretty different from mine. [Which usually isn't enough to make him back off, but by "pretty different" he means "really different," which means he'll need an entire new conversation to understand her world's setup. Later, then.]

You'll have to tell me about that sometime, too. Where I'm from, our parents name us. My dad named me after Isaac Newton. [He says this like she should know what that means, but then remembers she probably doesn't.] He's this really influential scientist that laid a lot of the groundwork for physics and astronomy. Naming people after other people is a popular move. You could always name yourself after someone like that.

[As if she hasn't already thought of that, but look, he's trying to help.]

Way I hear it, it's pretty different from everywhere. [She doesn't find that a bad thing. Other worlds are better off being nothing like her own.]

Huh. Most people I know don't have parents anymore to give 'em anything, let alone a name. [She starts to chuckle, then cuts herself off when she realizes that's kind of dark.] Is that why your interested in bein' a tech-brain, so you can live up to the name?

No. No way. You can't take someone's name. Not back home. A name's not just what people call you, in the Zone's it's tied into who you are. Takin' the name would be like stealin' their identity.

Yeah? Weird how some worlds are closer than others. There's a ton of people from somewhere similar to where I'm from, but with some key differences. Like, we're all from Earth--and timeline-wise we're even clustered within about the same fifty years--but with major differences. Some people have magic, for example. And I haven't met anyone else whose Earth has been invaded by Kaiju.

[His planet got lucky, clearly. Yaaay...

He laughs too, though a little uneasily. It's dark, sure, but sometimes you have to laugh at the dark stuff. But also: He's not familiar with her world, so maybe this isn't something to laugh at? She's laughing, though. It's probably fine.]

I mean, where I'm from, parents name kids at birth. My dad had my name picked out before I was born. [He wonders briefly if her culture functions more reptile-style, like parents leaving clutches of eggs to hatch and fend for themselves from the get-go. It's... unlikely, maybe, but also, they're just voice chatting. She could be a lizard person for all he knows. He literally already knows a lizard person, so that wouldn't be the weirdest thing.

As for the question...]

Uh, not really? Not my first name, anyway. And my family's more musical than anything, but my uncle's the one that got me into engineering. Plus, Newton's all physics and math. I'm a biologist. [The superior form of science, judging by his tone. He can't admit that physics and math are also cool. Hermann might overhear him, even from universes away.]

Hm. [A weird cultural difference, but then again, maybe not that weird. Not any weirder than Germany making people submit applications to name their kids. His dad complains a lot about the lengths he had to go through to name him Newton... What a world.] I guess that checks out. Sounds like it would get tough after a while, though. If everyone in my world had to have a different name, man... That'd be rough. There's, like, a million Johns running around.

Right? Like half the people I've talked to are goin' on 'bout what's normal for them and it's no shit I've ever heard of. Still usin' bullets and havin' countries that haven't existed for ages. It's wild.

[Most people probably wouldn't find it funny, even most adults back home. But she doesn't know what she's missing by not having parents and it's much easier to laugh than feel bad.]

Not a lot of kids are born out in my parts. Be a lil' like countin' your chickens to pick out a name, you know? Even without what names mean to us. [Hell, she's still the only child she knows that lived out in the Zones from infancy. All of the others were raised in the City before escaping.]

Music, huh? [Her voice brightens.] Kinda an odd leap from tunes to science. Not sure I've heard of any biologists. What is it that you do?

A million? Geez, I don't know if there's ever been that many people 'round home. [Before the war, there were billions in the world. But that information was lost on her. All she knew was the people of the City and the Zones, an was left none the wiser to the ways the world used to work.] I mean, there was maybe a couple hundred in the Zones the whole time I've been alive. And most of 'em are dead now. Probably a couple thousand in the City, if you count all the droids and bots too. But that's it. There's no one else out there so there's plenty of names to go 'round.

[Newt scratches his chin, taking a moment to ponder over all of this neat information. It's pretty far from his version of reality, sure, but...]

Countries that haven't existed for ages, huh? Y'know, it kind of sounds like you're from some post-apocalyptic version of Earth. They have stories about that kind of thing back home, but it's all fiction. Before the Kaiju invaded us, we had plenty of fictional stories about monster attacks and alien invasions and stuff, too. Funny how that sort of thing works, isn't it?

[Maybe "funny" isn't the right word, what with both of their worlds being on the brink of total destruction and stuff, but it's fine probably.]

Well, I studied engineering, too. And music. Biology's just my main gig. See, the cool thing about the sciences is that you can combine fields. Before we knew about the Kaiju, I specialized in bioengineering. Like, artificial tissue replication, genetic engineering, that sort of thing. With the right tools, life is just as malleable as the mechanical world. And, uh, music's just fun. [He laughs.]

These days, all my focus is on Kaiju. [Or, was? Maybe? Now that they've closed the Breach, he's not sure what his future holds back home.] I head up the K-Science department at PPD--uh, Pan Pacific Defense Corps. That's the global organization in charge of defending the world against Kaiju attacks. Specifically, I study whatever big-bads cross over into our universe to try to make sense of it all. My job is primarily to hunt for weaknesses, but understanding the Kaiju is so much more complicated than that.

[He could literally talk about this for years, but that's the gist.]

Wait, what do you use if you don't use bullets...?

Well, yeah. Everyone always talks 'bout the world endin'. Kinda what happens when people bomb everything that, you know, exists. Everyone knows it was the apocalypse of our own makin', the day the lights went out. I guess people used to make up stories 'bout this kinda thing before too. All monsters and mayhem. They just got it wrong. Only monsters where the people with the shiny red button to press. You're right, it's kinda funny who wrong people got it.

[It was a good laugh in a depreciation kind of way. Look how stupid the people before us were, look how innocent things used to be.]

Engineerin' like cars and shit? You could make mad credits knowin' how to fix up a junker. [She finds mechanics very respectful.] A lotta that mumbo you're talkin' 'bout is new to me. The only artificial tissue I can think of is maybe the skin they cover androids with? You don't work on 'droids do you?

Makes sense. Kinda hard not to focus on it if something's attackin' you. [Kind of like how everyone back home focused on the Dracs. When something threatened you, you had to sit up and take notice.] So you're the smart guy of the bunch, eh? You figure out the weakness so someone can kill 'me all. Not a bad gig. I'm a lil' surprised they could get the whole world to agree on a group for fightin' anything though. Big groups of people usually don't agree on much, let alone something that really has to be done.

[His people sounded a far more diplomatic than her own. She was impressed with a world that could work together instead of tear each other apart.]

Ray guns. You know, batteries and lasers and all the fun of laser burns. You don't have those?

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