nexus_sages | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

James T. Kirk absolutely loves marketplaces.

It's not necessarily because he's looking for anything, per se, although he does often keep an eye out for interesting books to add to his collection, or maybe a bottle of some kind of exotic alcohol, or some kind of pointless alien gizmo with which to annoy Spock with its purposeless existence. No, he just loves the sheer diversity each bazaar brings to the table.

No two markets have ever been alike, in his experience. Sure, it's not quite as exciting and mysterious as exploring deep space, but it's something of a microcosm of the same, all sorts of goods and cultures thrown into close quarters, and one never knows what one might find just down the street.

His shipboard gold uniform may stand out a bit in the crowd as he meanders along, a faint smile on his face as he leans in to examine someone's wares on display, just enjoying being out and about in the fresh air.

[OOC: Retconning Jim eating bacon in this thread. Hadn't fully considered some of the elements in his backstory at the time.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[I'm aware! Full steam ahead. :D]

To an intragalactic flyboy like James Kirk, pink hair and tattoos probably don't even rate on the scale of interesting things he's seen this week. They don't much stand out in an interdimensional marketplace, either. It's probably just as well. Verity's only looking to do her shopping. She weaves through the crowd with the ease of a local, one hand balancing a basket full of groceries (including the requisite two baguettes and bouquet of flowers) on her hip when she stops to look at this or that. By the look of things, she's either got a massive appetite or is shopping for a crowd.

When Jim comes into view, she gives his uniform a curious look that doesn't bear the flicker of recognition. Star Trek didn't feature much in her childhood, and it's not the sort of movie her Asgardian friends would have dragged her to. He gets a brief smile of 'yes I see you seeing me looking at you let's not make this awkward' before she looks down at the piles of alien fruit. Or maybe heirloom, and this is what food looks like when the taste hasn't be bred out?

"Try these," she suggests a moment later, pointing to a stack of golden plums. "They're sweeter."

Her appearance honestly wouldn't stand out terribly much on the Enterprise herself either, so Jim doesn't take much special notice of her until she speaks. But once she does, she has his attention, and he smiles at her, glancing over her briefly in what might be more of a tactical assessment than anything inappropriately sexual. "Thanks for the advice."

He does reach out and pick up one of the plums, lightly testing its ripeness with his fingertips, and he nods a little toward her grocery basket. "Do you know a lot about the food here? I haven't seen a lot of this stuff before." Minus the Earth-like foods, anyway.

Verity would do terribly in Starfleet. Honestly, how long could anyone expect her to last before she got court-martialed for calling out a C.O.?

His tactical assessment is welcome to pick up on the two rings on her left hand and the lean muscles under the tattoos. The facts aren't necessarily related. She nods and gives him another little smile. "You're welcome."

While he explores the plum, she quickly strikes a bargain with the seller, trading a handful of beads for a small paper bag of the plums. Her gaze follows his down the basket while she tucks the fruit in with the other fare, and he can see her thinking about how much of it is 'alien'. Then she shrugs. "I've been here a while, and I like to cook. I'm pretty knowledgeable about most of the stuff in this market. You're new here?"

"First time," he affirms, lifting the plum to his nose to smell it. Not as fragrant as his preferred kind of apple, but pleasant enough to hint at the flavor, and he digs in his pockets to find something worth trading for. His 'fleet account is probably no good here, after all, and he can hardly barter away his communicator if he wants to get back to the ship in one piece. "I've done the alien market thing before, but it doesn't win points for consistency from planet to planet."

Oh, people take all kinds of money here. Probably including Starfleet credits, in places with the equipment to do electronic banking. But this time he's in luck, the plum is paid for. Verity is not the nicest person he's likely to meet around here, but she remembers how much little things like this meant when she first arrived.

"If everything was the same everywhere, there would be nothing to discover." A few gourds that look like small teal pumpkins are added to her basket before she shifts it, intending to move on. "And if that were the case, lots of people would be terribly disappointed. You looking for anything in particular?"

He flashes a genuine smile of thanks when he realizes what she's done, and takes a bite of the fruit, swiping at the juice that threatens to run down his chin. It's pretty good, he has to admit.

"Not really," Jim says, once his mouth isn't full. He may have been raised on a farm, but he likes to at least act like he has manners sometimes. "I like to try new things whenever I can, so whatever I haven't seen before, mostly. Plus it can be fun to watch my CMO's face whenever he finds out what I've been eating."

That is just the right kind of thanks to give her. She accepts it with a nod, then gives him a moment to enjoy the fruit.

Manners help. If nothing else, they're a great way to put people at ease before shaking things up. She appreciates the effort. "CMO... chief medical officer?" Obviously not a military girl here. "Oh, I'm sure we can find all sorts of things to make him worry. Or you could just lick something, save time."

"That's right." If she's not military, it's a damn good guess, regardless.

Though he has to laugh a little at her suggestion. "I could, but that'd be the boring way to do it. Seriously though, anything fresh is a treat after weeks of reconstituted rations." As if evident by the way he's savoring every bite of the plum, until there's nothing left but the pit.

"Depends what you're licking," she points out with a smirk. She's not volunteering, but there are plenty of people who would. The box is shifted again until the weight settles more comfortably on her hip for walking. Her look invites him to come along if he'd like. "There's plenty of fresh food here. Straight from the farm, or take out, or somewhere in between. Would you rather bring home a bounty, or get samples for your doctor to test before feasting?"

He does a double-take, a somewhat delighted grin spreading across his face. Doesn't matter if it's a serious offer or not; he appreciates the sense of humor behind it, and the sentiment it expresses. "True enough."

He pitches the plum pit into the nearest trash receptacle and sucks the lingering juice off his fingers, perhaps not as dirtily as he once might've, and takes a few steps closer, enough to non-verbally indicate his willingness to trail along. "I'm fine with stocking up now, as long as I don't end up with more than I can use before it spoils." Jim absolutely abhors food waste to a truly drastic extent, though he hides it pretty well.

Every now and then, she manages a joke. It's about as rare as her lies. But once he starts grinning, so does she. Smiles are the best kind of contagious.

"Then I'll be happy to help you find things that are safe for human consumption." So many people in the crowd aren't, but that's not so unusual to him anymore is it? Some of the wares, however enticing their look or scent, are skipped over. Probably for good reason. "How many people are you looking to feed? I'm sure we can manage to rein ourselves in, you can always come back for more."

He gives that some thought. He hadn't seriously considered stocking the Enterprise's fresh food stores here, if only because the logistics would be a nightmare, and it'd probably lead to enough wasted food not to make it worth it to him. But he also doesn't want to be the greedy asshole that says 'just me.'

"Probably two, unless someone around here sells Vulcan foodstuffs, then it'd be three." He says the second part a little belatedly, as it occurs to him that Spock would never say he was missing food from home. It wouldn't be logical and all that.

"My name's Jim Kirk, by the way," he adds. Their conversation's gone beyond a simple fruit recommendation, and it seems weird to keep going with the 'hey you' method of address when a random stranger has offered to take time out of her day to help him out.

"Vulcan?" The word doesn't seem to register with her, but that doesn't mean she's ruling it out. "We can check." Once she has a free hand. Crowds, groceries, and a phone are a recipe for disaster. But there are benches at regular intervals, it won't be too long before she's got a place to put things down.

"Verity Willis." She gives him a smile with her name. Once the basket's set down she offers a hand. "Nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you too." Jim's handshake is firm but not handcrushing, and he's pretty happy that most of the people he's met so far have stuck with familiar customs like these, because navigating completely alien societies is interesting but hard sometimes, and it's nice to go on cultural autopilot for a bit.

"So, where do we start?"

Not having her hand crushed is a good end to a greeting. The familiarity of social ritual is sometimes the only comfort to be found in a strange place. These little things were her lifeline once, and sometimes still are. Once her hand is free for it, she pulls out her phone. "We start with the Internet. 'Vulcan', right?"

Tap tap tap. "Um... we're not talking a god, are we?"

It is so weird to be around humans who've never heard of Vulcans, but she's not the only one, so he does a decent job not laughing at the question, containing his amusement in a small smile. "No, they're a humanoid species. Pointed ears, green blood, a bit too obsessed with logic."

He is a bit curious with her use of the word 'internet,' however, peering at the screen of her handheld device. It's not a padd, not quite, but it's similar enough that he can tell she's accessing some kind of digital database.

"Oh." And then, "Oh." Okay then. A bit more tapping while she tries to contain her own smile. A few things make more sense now.

When she notices him leaning over to watch she shifts her weight slightly and tilts the screen so he can see what she's doing. It's not the fanciest tech she owns, but there's something comforting about the StarkPhone she's had all this time... Looks like she's getting directions. They are here and something tagged as Vulcan is over there. "Do you have things like this where you're from?"

"Maybe," he says, smiling slightly in thanks for her accommodating his curiosity. "It looks like a datapadd, but smaller." And less advanced, but he can't think of a polite way to say so. "Is the internet a subspace-accessible database?"

For a 21st-century pleb, she's learned a fair bit of future-tech jargon. Like 'subspace'. "Well, where I came from, it was mostly just Earthbound. People didn't go out in space much unless they were superheroes, or villains. Or abducted. Lots of not human-rights-friendly aliens... but it probably would have grown. It's a sort of a shared database, though, computers all over connected and sharing information. The 'net here is a little..."

She pauses, hums thoughtfully, then shrugs. "Wonky."

He grins a little. "'Wonky' works for me. Seems to fit this whole place."

"That's a good word for it," she concedes with an unhidden fondness. For all that it is what it is, it's somehow her kind of wonky. The groceries are collected again and she turns toward their new destination. "I suppose military types don't much like things that can't be categorized and codified, huh?"

In her defense, they obviously didn't have Starfleet back home. Not for realsies, anyway. SHIELD may have been close in some ways, but... they weren't exactly her favorite people.

"Not military. Even worse. I have a ship full of scientists," he says, resisting the urge to laugh too much. "Categorizing is what they do."

He follows along, though of course he can't quite avoid a little bit of rubbernecking as they go, as long as it doesn't make him fall behind.

"A ship full of scientists?" Verity's smile holds no laughter or mocking at that idea. "Sounds nice," she adds sincerely. "I'd like that kind of traveling I think."

Verity's pace leaves plenty of time for looking around, both because of the crowds to navigate and her knowing about that urge. Truth be told, one or two things will be new to her, too, and she'll stop to examine them. Some stalls she walks past more quickly--Jim might recognize the rhythm of the patter as the hucksters try to pawn off their knockoffs and illicit goods as genuine.

Their destination is obvious when they turn onto the street, standing out amongst its neighbors plucked from Interwar Paris and Victorian London. Verity slows when she sees it and waits for Jim to do the same. "This look like the right kinda place?"

"Exploring strange new worlds and civilizations," he says with a grin, and to anyone familiar with the type, there's a look in his eye that speaks to a wanderlust, and a passion to seek out the unknown out among the stars. "There's so much out there and we haven't even scratched the surface."

Some of the languages may not be familiar enough for his universal translator implant to pick up on, but one constant of the multiverse seems to be pushy sales people, and Jim puts on a charming grin and shakes his head whenever one of the merchants tries to get a little too enthusiastic about hawking their wares at him.

And once they arrive at their destination, he looks it over with a critical eye. He's never been to Vulcan itself, not unless you count the stratosphere, so he's not entirely familiar with their architecture. But this structure certainly looks like their style, carved out of reddish stone, the entrance flanked by two laser-cut statues of humanoids with pointed ears. "Yeah, I'd say so."