For the longest time, Astral couldn't recognize people by their faces.
He knew there was something there, but if someone showed him a picture of someone, he wouldn't recognize them. He wouldn't be able to differentiate two people either if they had the same hair and eye color.
The most he'd have to go off of when it came to recognizing people was through anything but their faces. Scars, hairstyles, hair colors, tattoos, anything that would make them recognizable from another person. Clothes sometimes helped, but they could always change into something different, so that wasn't reliable.
Recognizing the monkeys wasn't difficult for them. They knew how their parents and siblings looked, they were the only monkeys in Shuggazoom City, and the only cybernetic monkeys on the planet. Robotic in Antauri's case, and a hybrid in Kaminari's case.
Slingshot was also recognizable out of everyone as well. There wasn't another robot that looked like him.
Only once did Astral not recognize him, and that was when he was in his human mode. It threw him in for a loop the first time he saw him like that. They only recognized him when they heard his voice.
"Wait, wait, wait!" Astral waved his hands. "Uncle Slingshot?!"
Slingshot rubbed the back of his neck. "…I forgot that you have prosopagnosia. My apologies, Astral. Perhaps we should've warned the others beforehand so you knew what to expect."
"Yeah, tell me about it!"
They had a good time over at Jinmay and Slingshot's, but it took them a bit to adjust to how Slingshot looked there.
It felt weird to him. The main saving grace to it was that Slingshot had visible expressions in that mode. The most he had with how he normally looked was his eyes and his voice.
It was fine, but it wasn't extremely expressive.
Astral did prefer how he normally looked, though, out of familiarity.
He thought the same with Chiro.
When Chiro was finally able to shave the goatee off, Astral didn't… take it too well.
Astral simply stared at him. He felt uneasy seeing Chiro without the facial hair. Outside of pictures of Chiro when he was younger, they had never seen him without it.
He just looked so… odd. Chiro was happy to have finally shaved it, no doubt about it, but it felt unsettling for Astral.
Chiro looked at them with a raised eyebrow. "What're you looking at me like that for?"
"…Please never shave it off again. I love you, Uncle Chiro, but…" He shook his head very quickly. "No."
It was at that moment where Chiro's expression fell. He went from joyful to dejected within a matter of seconds.
They never saw him get that upset about something so mundane in their life.
He raised a thumb. "I'll… I'll keep that in mind next time I think about it…"
Chiro tried to keep his voice from cracking so badly.
Astral felt bad, but he just didn't like Chiro without the facial hair.
In the end, Jinmay mentioned how he looked better with the goatee. That simple comment about how nice it was made him never shave again.
They wondered if she always had that effect on him.
Regardless, though, the smallest of changes like that threw him off as badly as major changes. He didn't like it in the slightest.
Not only was it change, but it was something that took from what he could recognize as the person he knew. Something small could be tremendous help, whether other people realized it or not. He hated not being able to recognize people by their faces as it was, having something recognizable be taken away made it harder for Astral.
It was frightening and frustrating in a way that they didn't know how to truly word.
How could they describe it outside of saying it was scary and frustrating?
Everyone's faces looked the same to him. He knew there were differences and he could see the individual pieces, like parts of artworks, but it was like blank canvases every time he looked at the whole picture.
They were the same and he couldn't tell them apart. There was nothing he could pick apart when looking at the whole picture. Things mentioned before were the only things that could help him.
Astral knew that other people could recognize the faces. He wanted to know how they could do that.
Even with himself, he didn't know how anyone could live like this.
They could get by, but living like this was torturous.
Everything could change within an instant, more so than faces ever could.
At least, that was how Astral saw it.
A/N: Being someone who's face blind (I genuinely cannot recognize people's faces), well… why not throw it onto one of the kids? It does suck I have to rely on other things just to recognize people, that I'll admit, but I'm not that bothered by it. It just means I get to take in more details about the appearance (like tattoos or piercings) than I might with only the face.
I imagine that it might be really upsetting at worst for some people, though. That's what I was mainly going for with Astral here.
If you go to offer me any commissions or anything involving money, it's an automatic no. I'm glad you enjoy my works, but scream to me about my works instead of making offers, scam or not. Do so anyways and I'll ignore you. Do so more than once and I'll block you. I'm genuinely tired of it. Thank you in advance if you respect my wishes.