NOTE: brackets indicate another language being spoken
Several hours later, the navigator sounds off, rousing Kaki from her light slumber. She rubs her eyes a moment and stands to check it.
"Seventeen," she calls, "you might want to get up. Landing's in ten minutes."
He opens one eye at the mention of his name. Taking care not to rise too quickly from his fake nap, he sits up and rubs his eyes. Sometimes not being able to turn his mind off was a blessing, but it mostly was a curse.
Seventeen had been laying in bed wishing he had been able to say something more to Eighteen, actually go by the camper he lived in on the main island and get some more clothes and ammo, or even just have made sure the animals were safe before he left.
Walking over to where Kaki was currently preparing them to land, he looks out at the alien planet. The ecosystem resembles that of a rainforest, but the sky replaced light blue for a color he had never seen before, and the tree's leaves are a mix of magenta and crimson. The wonder he feels at seeing a habitat so unlike Earth's can't be understated.
"I can't believe places like this exist..." he borderline whispers.
Kaki glances at him from the corner of her eye, her face utterly neutral in contrast to his wonder. Then, a twinge of a smile graces her lips, and she goes to input a series of commands for landing.
"Well, if you think it's beautiful from up here," she tells him, "wait until you're up close."
Eventually, they touch down onto a landing pad in a low-rise city - slightly industrialized, but the shadow of a crimson jungle still looms just beyond its limits. Kaki unbuckles her seatbelt and stands, retrieving a small device from a cavity in the armrest of the captain's chair. She takes a moment to check it, before sliding it under the sleeve of one of her gloves.
"I will be back in a few minutes," she says, as she crosses the ship to the entrance door. "I have to pay a parking fee."
And then she's gone, leaving him to his devices for a bit.
Left alone for the first time in a while, Seventeen tugs at the hem of the shirt she had given him. He wasn't used to such tight clothing. He walks over to the closet he had deduced was a half-empty weapons closet, and grabs a bandolier off a hook inside it. After buckling it across his chest comfortably he fishes around inside his backpack and pulls out the orange scarf he hadn't worn in maybe a decade. Luckily the muscle memory for the knot he used to keep it secure back in the day still sat dormant in his knuckles.
Next, he picks up the pistol and turns it back and forth in his grip, and then tucks it into the holster on his jeans. There has to be some ammo that works for it in this market.
Looking at himself in the full-length mirror that hung inside the weapons closet, he wonders absently what Kaki would think of this new look, and almost right on cue, he hears the ship door reopening. "I need ammo," he says to her, vaguely gesturing to the gun on his hip.
A silver gaze looks him up and down, regarding him in the new outfit for a moment, before she rolls her jaw a little in thought.
"I know a guy," Kaki says in response. "He has a shop in the market, which is where we're going anyway. Let me just-"
She moves past him straight to the closet and emerges back out with the stack of crates - which look just as tall and heavy as she is - on one arm. She steps past him again, but motions with her head to follow just before exiting the ship.
"It is as I said - I'm here on business. I have some things to sell him, offered me quite a bit for what I have."
Seventeen smiles to himself almost pompously, Kaki's full body scan of his new outfit not going unnoticed. He almost offers to help her with the crates but decides against it. She's probably a better dead lifter than he was anyways.
He follows her out of the ship, the change between the Earth-like gravity of the ship and the much lighter one of the planet catching his equilibrium off guard. The soles of his boots feel… bouncy, and as he follows his new companion down the dirt road, the android wonders what other strange and new experiences this planet will have to offer.
Once they enter the market, it's very clear to him that Kaki is known rather well by the merchants. They're standing at a pottery booth, Kaki speaking the fourth language she's switched between in an hour when Seventeen wanders over to a community bulletin board.
His heart stops when he sees it.
A bounty poster, bearing a picture of a younger Kaki, with cropped hair and two eyes, footed by an impossibly huge amount of currency he didn't recognize but could deduce wasn't just pocket change.
"Seventeen!"
Kaki waves him over, not seeing what it is that he's looking at from where she stood. When he approaches, she sighs a little.
"I apologize for getting so caught up in the hubbub, I was just getting a few things sold before lunch. Speaking of which!"
She motions to a booth just across the way, from which the scent of freshly cooked dishes wafted all over the marketplace.
"How about something to eat? It's local cuisine if I remember correctly."
He looks over to Kaki through the crowd, able to mask his disturbed expression just in time. Jogging over to her, Seventeen watches her body language. She doesn't seem to have noticed what he was looking at.
What the hell? It was true she seemed to know too much about this PTO group to not have been a part of it at some point. But to have a bounty from them - with an amount that large, no less? He decides to play it cool. He'll do some minor reconnaissance until he feels it's appropriate to confront her about it.
Since they met, he had felt that there was something about her past that she didn't discuss freely and took great care to keep bottled up. But he trusted his instincts completely. There had to be an explanation for it that didn't boil down to, he had taken off across the galaxy with a wanted criminal.
Holding a hand to his chin, he points to a hot pot of dubious color. "That one looks tasty."
{ I'll take two bowls of that... } she tells the cook. { Oh! And also two of the skewers. }
She's handed the food, where she would pass a bowl and a skewer to Seventeen as she does so. She turns to him, using a strange utensil - it had a spiral that ended in a point - to spoon some red noodles into her mouth.
"I love the food here," she says after swallowing, "because it's all plant-based. I don't have to worry about asking for substitutes."
"Oh, I'm vegetarian too," he replies, trying to not sound too distracted. Seventeen didn't need food to replenish energy, but he never passed up trying new things. Taking the bowl and skewer from her, he chomps at the hearty plant meat on kebab and hums in agreement with her assessment.
"Do you mind if I ask why your diet is plant-based? I do it for moral reasons, but I know everyone's different."
"Well, technically it isn't entirely plant-based," she says as she dabs at her mouth with a disposable napkin. "I can eat insects and the like as well, but that is not so readily available on certain planets sometimes."
She takes a bite from the skewer and chews quickly, before swallowing to speak again.
"People of my race - the Brench... We have smaller stomachs and longer intestines. Meaning, we aren't suited to handle meat or dairy. At least, not very well." She shrugs, and sheepishly adds, "The last time I attempted to eat meat, I got violently sick."
"Anatomy is fascinating," he muses. "Deviations of evolution in general too, the way we all share the same basic emotions and processing capabilities, yet experience reality so differently that our own anatomy would develop so uniquely from one another, it's really incredible..."
Seventeen trails off.
"...Sorry, there was a girl back on Earth that I was close to. She loved evolutionary and metaphysical philosophy, and our views on it lined up pretty heavily," he says as they walk idly through the market.
He takes a very long moment to think about Rosemary. They had met shortly after Eighteen had married Krillin. She was in school to be an herbal allergist around the time Seventeen was lost in translation. His sister was building a new life with a husband and child, and he had been left without the only person he had had by his side since birth.
Things had ended poorly with Rosemary. Despite them never actually being a couple officially, they had a very codependent and borderline toxic relationship that both of them were at fault for. He had blocked her number and told her to never contact him again a little under a year ago, and still wasn't quite over it.
If he was being honest, it's part of why he had left with Kaki almost willingly. Everything on Earth reminded him of her. Hell, even the camper he lived in still smelled like her. He was still finding half-filled travel-sized notebooks belonging to her in every corner of that house.
They approach a small alleyway, and Seventeen slows down to Kaki's speed until they were standing right in front of it. He holds out his hand, gesturing for Kaki to give him her trash so he could dispose of it properly.
"It's all right," Kaki tells him nonchalantly.
They pause a bit so she could eat the rest of her food without wrestling with the crates in her arms. She slurps down the broth and hands him her trash without much thought, but immediately notices the wistful expression on his face as he turns away to do so. She gulps a little as she glances away a moment so he wouldn't notice her as well, but then she would meet his gaze again to speak.
"I never really stopped to think of it before you said it, but it is rather fascinating how different yet similar anything can be. I think... that's why I've grown accustomed to the life I lead now. I quite like seeing more than I already have," she says. She almost leaves it at that, but then adds, "You should tell me more about it sometime."
"Most people think it's a bunch of new-age crap. But it's a comfort to me at least," he says as he pulls a portable recyclable trash capsule out of his pocket and stuffs their waste in it.
Seventeen looks up to the sign hanging off the alleyway entrance. "Is this the place?"
Kaki looks up to the sign, which was just a generic { GENERAL TECHNICIAN } sign, though she notices it looks rather new. She sniffs.
"Mhm. This is the place. He updated the sign, though."