Disclaimer: I don't own Vandread.
A/N
This story is entirely fan-made and fictional. Any acts that you might find offensive, disguising, inhuman, wrong or just don't like, we are not liable for. You are reading this story of your own free will and not being forced, if you don't like something, we are not forcing you to stay and read it. Please leave the page and re-frame from reading the chapter and or story. All Copyrighted Characters belong to their respect owners. We don't claim anything that is not our own creation and are merely using them for fan made material.
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Chapter 3
"To believe in something, you must first understand that something. To love is to experience hate. To know joy is to know sorrow. Tell me what you know, and I will tell you what you don't know." – Lightning to Barnette.
Barnette waited on the couch for Trig's friend to show up. She hadn't been told anything about the person that was coming to get them. Which prompted Barnette to ask why they needed to be picked up at all.
Trig didn't own a vehicle, yet she was a famous pilot. It meant she had money. But she didn't own a vehicle, which seemed rather strange at first to her. Why not own a vehicle when you don't live in the city? She didn't grow her own crops or slaughter animals for meat. And living so far away from the city meant you needed a way to get to town for the stuff you needed to survive with.
It was a simple reason: She was hardly home.
Being famous was a double-edged sword. It brought with it fame and duty. That fame meant you did more jobs. You were away more often than you were back home. Tours were considered regular operations. And their operations generally consisted of protection/escorting jobs or assaults on Raider and Pirate encampments. With her fame it meant she was gone for months at a time, usually only being home for no more than a month or two in combined time out of the year.
Then why own a home?
It was her late parents' home. Fully paid off. She grew up in it. Her family was long dead. Her brother had been the last one to die nearly four years ago. She only stayed and kept the house because it was the last proof of their lives she had left and she didn't want to give it up. The living could have it when she passed from this world.
On some level, Barnette could respect that. She left a lot when she joined Magno. Her parents and siblings for starters, but she left a home she had grown up in. Friends that had been by her side for as long as she could remember. There were days she wished to return to that life, to see those people again, but when she joined, she left it all behind for their protection. She hadn't spoken to any of her family members since that day and had never looked back without feeling some pain of guilt for her actions.
It made the woman before her seem more human and less like a soldier. Behind the armor and the mask; Barnette felt like she was nothing more than a woman who had given everything she had and received nothing back. It would take but one more thing to bring her down, and when that happened, an empty husk might be all that remains.
Barnette had been given time to explore the house. It was a three-bedroom house with two rooms have beds in them while the third was made into an office, two bathrooms with one master bath, and a back yard that reached out as far as the eye could see. It was beautiful.
Her room was in front of the first bathroom and had a standing shower. If she wanted a soak in the tub, she had to use the master bath, something that she doubted she'd get to use.
A knock sounded at the door, jarring the pirate from her thoughts. She waited, knowing that it was Trig's house and her duty to answer the door. The knock sounded again, but Trig was nowhere to be seen or heard from.
Grumbling, she got to her feet and moved for the door. The knob turned before she reached it and was slowly pushed open.
In the doorway stood a man roughly her height, maybe even a few inches shorter, with brown hair that fell just short of his ears, and piercing yellow eyes. He was dressed in a leather jacket and red shirt with a pair of tattered blue jeans and boots. He stared at Barnette for a few seconds before sticking his head out the door and checking the number posted on the side.
"You must be the new girl they picked up," he said, his accent heavy and odd. He reached forward with one hand, smiling as shut the door behind him. "I'm Sky Kid. I'm part of Trig's team."
The pirate looked down at the male hand. "You, my dear pirate, might want to learn some respect. It'll take you far." She could feel the words of Church in the back of her mind and reluctantly took the hand. His grip was gentle, but not weak.
"Barnette." She let her arm fall to her side as she eyed the man in front of her. "Sky Kid?" She repeated the name. It sounded strange on her tongue.
"Yeah." He laughed, scratching the back of his head as he did. "They call me that because I fly an Attacker and I'm the youngest on the team." He stood a little straighter, proud of that fact. Barnette could see why he might feel that way. Dita might have felt that way when they allowed her to pilot a Dread.
"How do those names work? Why go by them and not your real names?"
Sky Kid put his hands in his pockets. "We stop going by them because people recognize us by those names. They're stenciled in on our machines. Sometimes they're catchy enough that we prefer going by them for just that reason. But for a lot of us it's more because we view the team as our family or even second family."
Barnette nodded in understanding. Why change a name that your family called you? It made sense to go by that name for them and maybe your other for the other family. Or perhaps he was lying. It was hard to tell.
"Sky Kid!" Trig came running around the corner, slipping past Barnette and grabbing him up in a hug. It was only then that Barnette realized that Trig was rather tall, standing over the male by a good foot. She spun him around, his tiny frame held tightly in her arms, before setting him down and brushing off something from his shoulders. "How have you been? How are your eyes? Did they fix your machine yet?"
Slightly dizzy, he put a hand over her mouth as she continued to ramble on, asking questions for another ten seconds before falling silent. He pulled his hand back sharply and wiped it on his jeans. "Gross! What are you? Five years old?" He looked at his hand and then to her. "Please tell you weren't setting a new record for finger sports."
"I have a roommate now. Can't."
"Why? You're not a screamer." She lightly slapped his shoulder. He didn't seem to care and smiled at her. "But to answer your other question." He blinked his eyes really fast and then smiled. "I'm good. Doctors said the new eyes took. I already finished an evaluation with them. And I'm not longer colorblind. That isn't fair that women don't get that. And yes, my machine is fixed. So, I'm back on the squad as soon as Avalanche accepts the release papers."
Trig rolled her eyes. "I'm sure he's signed those already. We've been home for about a day already." She looked back at Barnette and then back to Sky Kid. "And life is fair. We don't get colorblind because we get periods. Balance in life right there, buddy."
"That," he pointed to the two of them now, "is hardly fair."
"If both men and women had periods, I'm fairly certain humanity would have died out long before we discovered fire."
Barnette watched the banter in silence but upon hearing about periods she grew curious. "What's that?"
"What's what?" Sky Kid asked, turning away from Trig as she continued to lecture him on the pros and cons of both sexes.
"Periods."
Trig clammed up on the spot and regarded Barnette like an unknown creature that had dropped at her feet. Sky Kid pursed his lips and looked to the older pilot without laughing or smiling. "Trig, you wanna answer that?"
She shoved him lightly, her mouth moving, but no words forming. It was then that she looked Barnette over again and this time, looked at her longer than and harder than she had in the past four months. Barnette had been crabby during the entire four months, and one could argue that if she had been suffering from a cycle, it might have been hard to guess. Surgery, recovery, and constant questioning made her irritable, and one could honestly mistake an irritable female as one going through her menstrual cycle.
But no. William had never once reported on it, and most would believe it to be out of simple curtesy for her. And during the entire time she had used three different panties from an engineer on the ship. They never gave her a way to stop the bleeding or catch it if it happened.
So, the most obvious question became an alarming one for Trig. "Do you know what a menstrual cycle is?" Barnette nodded slowly. "Do you even have it?" Barnette shook her head this time. Sky Kid's mouth hung open and Trig turned away, most likely doing the same before she whipped back around, a lecturing finger pointed at her nose. "That isn't fair! Can you be colorblind?"
"Um… No?"
Sky Kid threw his head back and laughed. He laughed hard enough that it hurt Barnette's ears and lasted long enough that he began to go blue in the face. He fell to his knees and then collapsed on the floor in the fetial position as he continued.
Trig looked furious. "You're telling me you don't get cramps?" Barnette shook her head. "You don't get bleeding without injury down there?" Again, she shook her head. "You don't start to bloat?" Barnette looked upwards for a moment before shaking her head again. Trig fell to her knees, despair hitting her hard. "That's… that's… not fair!"
"How's that not fair?" Barnette finally asked, demanding an answer for this strange thing they were talking about. She looked at her pants and then to Sky Kid. "Aren't we supposed to be going shopping?" That spawned a curious thought from her then. "And why is he coming?" Trig didn't move or speak. She just stared at the tile floor in despair.
Sky Kid stopped laughing, his face finally regaining some color. He chuckled every few seconds as he spoke. "I'm the one with the car. And I'm the only guy she trusts to help her buy clothes." He gestured to himself. Barnette gave him another looked and tapped her chin in thought. "This is spur of the moment. Usually, I look better." He tapped Trig with his boot. "Get up, Trig. We're burning daylight."
It took another minute for her to come from her depressed state and shamble out to the vehicle.
The vehicle was orange with one door on either side and sporting a large 01 in black and white on the door. It was hard to make out, but on the roof of the vehicle was a blue and white X pattern with thirteen stars in the blue X pattern.
Trig pulled the door on the passenger side open and pushed the seat down. Barnette looked at it and then to Trig as Sky Kid walked around the side and tore the door open to the drivers' side and climbed on in. Trig gestured with her head to get in. Sighing, Barnette climbed in the back and sat in the middle, bouncing on the seat to test it.
"Comfy."
Trig snapped the seat back and saddled on in up front, slapping the door shut as she rolled the window down. Sky Kid didn't start the car. Trig looked at him and he looked back at her. He checked the mirror and sighed when he saw Barnette was doing the same.
"Second rule when entering my car?"
Trig sighed and grabbed the seatbelt with a scowl. She clamped it into place and then looked back at Barnette. The pirate looked at them funny before looking around for her own belt. It took a moment to find it and when she did it was too small for her.
"What'd you have back in here, a midget?" Trig asked as she reached around to help Barnette with the odd buckle. She got it and turned back around to sit in the seat normally.
"I had to pick up my little brothers' two friends a few days ago." The car started without a cough and he started driving. "Where too first?"
"The mall." His eyes left the road and he stared at Trig for a long moment before he turned back to the road and proceeded to speed up. "We can get food there."
"It's not healthy!"
"I'll pay." He relented and smiled. "You only like it when I pay."
"I like it because it's a free meal. And I'm usually your driver, so getting a free meal ain't that bad when I'm the one doing all the heavy lifting."
Trig brushed him off and turned back to Barnette, her serious expression returning. "You don't have a menstrual cycle? Explain that to me."
Sky Kid sighed.
Barnette licked her lips. "We don't have anything like that anymore. I mean, we used to have it, but it was long before my time. It was spoken about in our history books as being a day of the dead kinda thing. We wanted to stop it from interfering in our daily lives, so, thanks to genetical tampering in the womb, they managed to stop it with something called Medroxyprogesterone. They flush our bodies with it after we're born and it prevents us from having it."
"How do you have kids?"
"We still have kids. When you want to have a kid, they just inject you with the seed and you get pregnant. We can choose when we wanna get pregnant."
Trig's scowl grew for a moment before she sighed. "Your world sounds like heaven." She turned back around. "Sky, what do you think?"
Sky Kid was shaking his head, one hand on the wheel and the other near his bangs that he played with while he drove. "I think her world is a little strange, but it's not nearly as bad as those merchants from the Glasslands." Trig shuddered in thought.
"Why Sky Kid, though?" Barnette was still confused why a man would come with them to go shopping. Picking out clothes and helping dress someone who couldn't made some sense to her. But she was a fully functional person who could dress, eat, and clean herself. Why'd she need him?
"Sky plays for both teams."
Barnette furrowed her brow at the words. It was something only heard for sports, so the concept was lost to her.
Sky Kid white knuckled the wheel. "I sleep with men and women. I'm bisexual." There was a long pause from Barnette. Long enough for Sky Kid to shake his head and glare at Trig. He gave her a pointed look as buildings began to slowly come into existence around them. "Look, over here we let people love who they want. We don't judge anyone for it. People do make jokes, but usually it's from people that are-"
"You sleep with women?! That's… wrong and disgusting. A man and a woman have sexual activities together is just wrong." Barnette finally snapped.
Sky Kid came to a stop at a stoplight and turned to face her fully, his look of confusion evident. Trig bit down on her lower lip as she fought to keep from laughing. The car behind them honked and Sky Kid turned back around to start driving again.
"Where in the fuck did you pick this woman up?! Seriously? I want to know. It's no longer funny for me that she can't have PMS or anything like that. It's concerning to me as well. Where did you pick this woman up? Tell me."
Barnette looked between the two, her look of disgust still etched on her face. "We found her planet side that had saw a battle with some of our ships. She claims aliens. Command thinks she's a mad woman. Her world is only women. They have a war going on with the men that live on another planet."
Sky Kid took a calming breath and turned in to a large parking lot. He parked the car. "She can't meet Hound. By no means does she meet Hound. Agreed?" Trig nodded, licking her teeth as she did. "He finds out that there is a planet of only women, you know he's going to do something stupid. What's that joke that Chance talks about? Amazon Women?"
They exited the vehicle, Sky Kid just tall enough to stand over the hood of the vehicle, the keys in his hand. Barnette got out on Trig's side and remained confused to the conversation. "Something like that." Trig shut the door. "Food first? Then shopping?"
Sky Kid shrugged. "I don't care. You're paying. I'm just the driver. Not the luggage boy. If you wanted that, we should have picked up Naomi."
Trig rolled her eyes.
Barnette looked at the building they had parked near and shook her head. "This is a mall?" They nodded. "It's rather…"
"Run down?"
"Bland looking?"
"I was going to say small. But… yeah, I guess that works too."
They shared a laugh and walked in. The place was cleaner and well kept on the inside. There wasn't much that Barnette was expecting from the place, and her thoughts were accurate. Nothing she hadn't seen before.
"Food court is this way!"
Sky Kid put his hands in his pockets and trailed after the happy female pilot as she skipped towards it. Barnette looked to the male and then to her handler/keeper. It was hard to figure out if she needed to follow her or stay with him.
"She loves eating here." Sky Kid looked to his left at a clothing store. He came to a full stop and watched as Trig began to get further away.
Barnette glanced at the entrance to the place he was looking at. When she looked back at the male, she could see he wasn't here mentally anymore. His eyes had softened and gained a faraway look. When she stared at them long enough, she noticed that the scalar of his eyes was pure white. No red veins or odd markings. His yellow eyes held a flick at the body left side of the pupil that was matched on the other. His eyes were cybernetic, replaced by machines, yet they still held the capacity to convey emotion.
Barnette waited for him to return. It wasn't long. Almost as quickly as he had stopped, he had regained his composure and looked at her.
"Sorry."
Barnette jabbed a thumb towards the entrance. "Wanna go in?"
He shook his head softly. "No. I was just remembering someone I used to know." His left pocket showed signs of his hand moving over something. He pulled it out and ran a hand over a small pocket watch. He put it back in his pocket and looked ahead towards Trig. She had stopped and was waiting for them. "It never gets any easier."
His words weren't soft. They carried and were meant to be heard, but most likely not for her.
"What doesn't?"
Sky Kid started walking slowly. Barnette followed, standing beside him. "Loss." He smiled at some kids as they pointed to him with smiles. He waved back with one hand that he pulled from his pockets and then left it out at his side. "I used to think that kind of stuff couldn't happen to me. Losing people. You never think about it happening to you 'till it does. Then you sit and wonder what you could have done to stop it."
She nodded when he looked her way. "It's a fact of life. You can't always win."
He nodded, his somber attitude lifting a little. "I suppose you're right. Not everyone can be blessed with luck. I ain't lucky. Never was. My eyes are proof of that, I guess." He stopped and looked at her, a shy gin tugging at the corner of his lips. "One of the other people who was on our team used to come here all the time. He was a good person. Liked him a lot. He died a few years ago. I walk by that store and I always think about him. I forget about him at times until I come here. I never learn. Should park on the other side. I just wanna get in and out, so I don't think."
"Nothing wrong with that." Barnette flinched when she said that. She'd left people behind. Not like recently. She'd forgotten dead people in the past and it made the pain worse. Like someone was taking the same knife and stabbing you with it all over again. You try and forget the thing that got them, but you when you run across that reminder of them, you can't help but wonder if you could have done more. That was the pain that hurt the most.
Sky Kid chuckled. "Good guy, but really bad about denying people things. Idiot would have given you a gun and a bullet if you asked and wouldn't have thought twice about you shooting him with it." He licked his lips.
"Sounds like an unreasonable person."
"He was. Good guy, but he'd bend over backwards for you if you were one of his friends. Never turned down anything. Well… almost anything. He played the DD a lot of the time and was usually given a lot of good chances for fun, but he was too straight and narrow to take advantage of them."
They caught up to Trig and the woman gave them blank stares.
"What?" Sky Kid asked, feigning ignorance.
"You know not to keep a woman waiting, yet you make me wait? I thought we were friends?"
"We are. Now move your ass. I ain't got all day."
The three walked into the center of a large opening. There were eight places serving food with only images and names of what they were serving. Barnette never would have considered herself surprised by anything, but the last few months had been rather surprising to her. Since they didn't show the food already cooked and steaming, it was left to an image of what the food was, most likely something that was created to look good, but upon execution wouldn't be like the image. The other shocking factor was that there wasn't any total for calories. If she wanted to watch it, which she did, she needed to know these things.
"I could go for fish." Trig finally declared. Barnette looked at the other places and realized that it was probably going to be the same all across the board: Fried food. She walked behind Trig and found Sky Kid bringing up the rear. "Fish?" Trig asked her. Barnette nodded. "Try the Fish and Chips. It's really good. I like it with Crisps, though."
Barnette didn't know what that was, but she understood the first bit of it.
"Get me the same thing. Sweet tea as well." Sky Kid went to look for a table.
Looking up at the menu, Barnette shrugged. "Can I get the same?"
Trig nodded and shooed her off to go after Sky Kid. She complied and sat down in front of him at his table. He was looking around the large cafeteria with a smile. Barnette looked up and saw an odd thing made of wood and metal above her. A long body with two wings standing on top of each other with two dummies resting towards the middle of it, and a spinning blade at the front of it made up the thing.
She tore her eyes away from it and then looked to the back wall where a dark room was lit up like Christmas with different colored lights coming out of the darkness and odd noises, like a cross between music and random banging. Laughter could barely be heard of the racket that came from within it.
When she looked behind herself, she could see three stores. One was labeled as a clothing store of some kind, the second was a toy shop, and the third was a weapon store. Barnette wouldn't deny a chance to step in to that store.
Trig sat down between them and smiled. "I just got a message from Shamrock." Sky Kid took his drink from her and started sipping it. Barnette looked at her drink and furrowed her brow. It was something dark and bubbly. "He wants to know when we can do cards again."
"I haven't had the chalice for long. Can I have, like, maybe more than three weeks with the damn thing? I just won the stupid thing from Riptide!"
Trig waved his complaint off. "Don't worry. I told him to give me some time. I wanna be there for this one. I wanna win that damn thing back. You got about a week before I pry it from your little fingers."
"Good. I haven't washed it in about week anyways."
"You are going to learn to drink alcohol, damn it! That thing is not meant for sweet tea and water. It's meant for beer and things that'll fuck you up."
Barnette blinked in surprise to her sudden outburst. "What? I'm confused. What are you talking about?"
"We have a card game we play." Trig stated. She sipped some of her drink out through the straw. "Victor gets this mug that I went out and got a few years back. When we decided to play again, you have to show up with the mug and defend your title if you have it, otherwise we're trying to win and get it from you."
Sky Kid snorted. "I liked the original one better."
"Contents Will Fuck You Up?"
He nodded.
Trig shrugged. She liked it too, but the new was better.
"So," Barnette finally decided to ask the big question that was plaguing her. "How am I buying new clothes? I don't have any money."
Sky Kid did a double-take and then looked accusingly to his friend. Trig waved her hands in front of herself wildly. "It's getting taken care of! I swear!" He backed off, but still looked annoyed. Trig cleared her throat and looked at Barnette with a sweat smile. "I'll be taking care of it. They're going to reimburse me for this. I buy the clothes. I keep the receipt and give it to Church; I get my money back. This is only until they get you set up."
"They said I have to get a job." Barnette bit her bottom lip in thought. "I'm good at everything I learn. I see it once, I can do it without problem. I used to work for the Reg back at the start of my days with the…" she looked around, suddenly more cautious than she normally was. "…service I was with."
Trig nodded her thanks for her cleaned version. "What's that?" Sky Kid asked her. "Reg? Never heard of anything like that before."
"It's a group within the military that gives out weapons for the pilots. Resources were low, so we created a system that prevented them from needlessly wasting what precious resources were had. All the pilots had a card that had their points on it. The points were given to them by way of combat success. The better you were with a certain type, the more frequently you could get that type. You were making points by way of combat effectiveness and spending those points for the weapons and gear you wanted. It was rather painful in the beginning, but it works."
Trig furrowed her brow in thought. Sky Kid leaned back in his chair; his eyes squinted close enough they almost looked shut.
"That seems rather smart, actually."
Barnette laughed. "It was hated for the first few weeks of its inception. But when it came to saving resources, we didn't have many options available to us. I'm sure it could have been better."
"I don't think I could imagine that." Sky Kid traced the lid with his index finger. "But our machines are given only certain things. I sure as hell can't take a cannon and fix it to my craft, same with how Trig can't take a buster on her machine."
"I get access to MIRV Missiles, though."
Sky Kid nodded sadly to that.
Barnette smiled, as she understood that reference just a little more than the others, they had said prior. "I was in charge of ringing up their orders and ensuring that they got what they wanted before sortieing. It wasn't a great time, but it was the starting point for me. Had to work through the ranks somehow."
The two pilots laughed. "I remember those days. Flight School was the worst."
"You got stuck with Viper, didn't you?" Sky Kid nodded, shivering at the name. "He's a good guy. Little loose in the head, but he's still a good guy. He was your class's Squadron Leader, right?"
"Yeah. He pushed us really hard against the other classes."
"You guys have classes to become pilots? They just stick you in a simulator and let you practice before receiving recommendations for it?"
"No." Trig put her finger on the table, drumming it with her tapping. "When you enlist, they make you take a test to figure out where you'll stand. Most people usually fall short of being of a pilot because of reaction time. That's why most pilots you see will be almost twenty. You don't start developing it until around the age of sixteen. If you want to enlist, you take the test, figure out if you've got the gene for it, and then they can go from there. But, it's not just about a reflex speed or a gene. You also have to have the mind and body for it. Up there, you need to be better than the other guy. You have to believe that you are. That belief is a power. You think the other person is better and you're already dead."
"They want us to be strong willed, believe that we're better than the other guy shooting at us." Sky Kid cut in. "Your class becomes your family, your squad. You have to rely on them because they rely on you. We had plenty of hotshots that quickly learn that flying solo is a bad idea. You screw up, do something stupid, and the other guys got you. But with a team, you have someone watching your back. You have to trust that person to make the shot or to stay on your six to make sure you can take the shot."
Barnette nodded in understanding. They didn't teach you that with how she learned to pilot. It was that you had to work together and over time you developed those bounds. This seemed more forced. Like you weren't supposed to know the person behind you, but you had to trust them to not do something stupid like leave you behind.
She wouldn't deny it; she was jealous. It made them sound better. Stronger, even. Like they could tackle anything. But she'd seen the way Sky Kid had been moments earlier. Death was a common thing. They were in a war of their own it seemed. They were staving off pirates and raiders. People like herself.
"They make us take the class for two years. By the end of it, you view those people as more than your squad. They become your family. But they do replace you if you lose someone. That's how we got Sky Kid. We lost people. Family members for us."
They fell into an awkward silence for several minutes.
I wish they gave us that back home. Barnette shut her eyes and wondered how better she would have been with a group like that. Maybe things would have been different. Meia might not have been as cold as she was. Dita might not be as ditzy and clumsy.
Wasn't that the trappings that Sky Kid had mentioned? The "What ifs?" that plagued you with loss. She couldn't turn back the hands of time. If she could, she'd tell herself to smile more and be more understanding in the beginning. Hell, she'd probably warn Magno about the operation to get the ship from the men was a bad idea. Not like she'd probably listen, but it would be a nice thing.
"Here you are." Barnette smiled at the female waiter that came out with a tray of food for them. She sat it down with a fake smile. "Anything else I can get for you today?"
Sky Kid looked down at his food and sighed. "What are these?" he asked, lifting up a six-inch fry. "I thought I asked for chips?"
"Those are chips." Trig answered. She shooed the worried waitress away to spare her the pain of his complaining. "You always do this."
"No. He's right." Barnette cut in, lifting up a near identical fry in response. "This is a fry."
"It's a chip."
"No. What you have are chips." Sky Kid picked up a thin "chip" from Trig's basket of food. "This is a chip. This is a fry. Learn the difference."
"No. You learn the difference." Trig picked up the "fry" and pointed it at his nose. "This is a chip. What I have are crisps."
Exasperated, Sky Kid threw his hands in the air and collapsed back into his chair, his eyes narrowed in frustration. "I didn't want fries. I wanted chips."
"You got chips. If you wanted crisps, you should have asked for them."
Barnette looked on in fear as the two started having a heated debate about what was a fry and what was a chip. It was a confusing thing for sure. She even looked at her own pile of greasy food in fear. The fish was fried and that wasn't something she had expected. And the menu had even said its name was Fish and Chips. Even sported a picture of it right next to the name.
"What the fuck are crisps?"
"A crisp is a thinly sliced potato that is seasoned and fried. What you have are chips, which are sliced into rectangles and seasoned after being fried." She picked up both fried pieces of potato and motioned in order of the object in hand. "Chip! Crisp!" She put them both in her mouth and happily munched on them.
"I can't believe this."
"Not my fault you don't know your fried food."
"It's confusing to me as well." Barnette admitted softly. "Where I'm from, it's a fry and a chip. A chip is what you have, Trig, and what we got were fries."
"Thank you!" Sky Kid shot a smug look to his fellow pilot. "I was confused and worried about your world before, now I wanna go there. I bet their food actually makes sense."
"How does it not make sense?"
"It just doesn't." He gave up arguing and started eating. He mumbled around his food every so often, usually something about old world problems and what came first. It went over Barnette's head.
What a weird world. Barnette munched on her food in silence as she was left to worry about what else might be different in their world when compared to her own.