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strangetrip2018-08-29 09:46 am
st_ripetail) wrote in strangetrip2018-08-29 09:46 am
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[Rocket and Illyana - backdated 8/29/18] yay literacy?
Rocket decides to kinda-sorta address his issues with the English language. Illyana judges his technique. Nothing explodes.
Beyond the media options, Rocket didn’t have much use for the library. Most of the books were on the big side for his hands, and he couldn’t quite shake the feeling that bird-scratches on paper were too primitive to be all that useful. (Screens were different.)
But thanks to the magic book things, he was actually having to read and write more often, and that was a problem. Reading, fine, but he knew he screwed up the letters when he tried to write. It didn’t bother Quill, and he was mostly the one that mattered, but the idea of other people maybe judging him was uncomfortable. A bit. He got judged enough for being small, or fuzzy, or a psychopath.
So today he walked into the library with his magic book and a pen, pulled some other book that looked full of words of a shelf, and hauled both to a table. Next, he marked a page of the magic book ‘prIvit’ to make sure nobody could see, and started randomly looking through the library book for good words.
Maybe it would actually help, right?
What drew Illyana's attention most was none of those things: she was not overly concerned in the moment that the raccoon-like humanoid was small, fuzzy, or a psychopath. What she found more arresting was his reading choice. It made her stop on her way past his table to openly stare down at the cover, then back at diminutive figure sitting there. "Don't take that title literally," she warned in a mild tone.
"What?" Rocket blinked at her, then back at the book, then actually worked out the title. Complete with running fingers under the words to make sure he didn't skip down a line when he shouldn't. "Oh. Nah, I know pretty much all you humies're from Terra. Earth. Whatever the fuck name."
He had that habit of moving his lips to try and determine the sounds of what he was reading in relation to the text as he read. It was common for someone only beginning to learn to read. Belasco had curbed her of the habit early on by summoning ember weevils to watch her for any slight part of her mouth while she studied. She'd only made the gross mistake of screaming in pain once. That had let so many more in.
"Hn. Is 'humie' supposed to be a pejorative term for a human?"
"Or pet term. Whatever floats ya, blondie." He'd spent enough time being called things like 'vermin' or 'rodent' that a little return pejoration (or whatever the word was) felt like nothing but fair play. "I also use 'bald body' and 'gangling fuckhead' if ya like either'a those better."
"I prefer respect." She leaned into one arm where she grasped the back of the chair opposite him, the other hand resting on her hip. It was ironically very similar to having a conversation with a minor demonic entity.
“I got no respect. Ask anybody.” It wasn’t completely true. Rocket respected things and certain people, but it took a while usually and didn’t sound all that different from disrespect.
"You would have more respect if you could read and spell competently." She knew perfectly well what he'd meant. But it rather demonstrated the point she had chosen to make. Illyana reached to point at the scrawl of crude lowercase letters on his open journal page. "'Private' is spelled pee-arr-aye-vee-ay-tee-ee."
Rocket’s ears flattened, in annoyance rather than outright anger, for now. She’d misunderstood on purpose, and even if he was actually trying to get better at the writing shit, it wasn’t cool to poke like that.
Still, he tried writing the word her way in his journal to look at it. “That’s fuckin’ dumb,” was his final evaluation. “It don’t look nothin’ like how it’s said.”
"No," she agreed. "It doesn't." She glanced back at the cover of the awful book he had chosen. He had needed to study it to work out the title. "Did you choose that entirely at random?"
“Yeah. They’re all the fuckin’ same, this one looked like it had a lotta words.” Rocket shrugged, then wrote the word ‘private’ a couple more times, once his way and once the blonde’s. His was looking less right? Maybe? But the other way with the weird A-T-E thing still didn’t look right.
Well, it didn’t have to look right, did it? It was just a matter of remembering. “Good enough.”
She snorted softly. "The words are different in each. Some books are even intended to help teach reading and writing." She took the book from his table. "This is not one of them."
“Hey!” Rocket lunged to try and take the book back. “I do shit my own way, blondie! It works for me.”
Illyana jerked the book away with an abrupt motion as he dove, then held it higher. She looked pointedly back at his page. "Does it?"
“It fuckin’ will! I always teach myself shit.” Whatever he hadn’t been taught or programmed to know but somehow needed to know, he’d always managed to learn his own way. And he didn’t need to know this, he just felt like it. “What’s it to you, anyways?”
"I am a librarian here. That means I have a vested interest in books. And in learning from books." She brought her hand down again, to allow him to take the book back if he so chose. "It is your decision, how you wish to spend your time here, and what materials you will use. But you could 'teach yourself shit' much more effectively than by grabbing something at random and beating your head against it to make some few words stick."
"That's how shit works. If it's not in my head already, I gotta beat it in there." Mostly, anyway. It'd been easier with Lylla, but that had also been right after... everything. "An' I'm not a fuckin' larva thing. I ain't gonna do picture-book shit. I know pictures already."
She tipped one shoulder at him to shrug. If he had no interest in learning, she could be off doing literally anything else. "It is your time to waste."
She watched him impassively for a beat longer. "Aren't you growing bored of the words 'fuck' and 'shit' by now?" It took significantly more (or less, depending on context) to make her bristle than a slew of scattershot curses. Yet he kept using those two words over and over again, like smooth-worn worry stones.
"Nope, they comfort me." Rocket flicked an ear. "So I got habits, fuckin' sue me."
She did not deign to react. "Can you spell them?"
"Yup. Pretty sure, anyway." Rocket rolled one shoulder, not quite a stretch. "Look, I got a lot put in my head by... other people. Hell, they made my head bigger on the inside so's they could make it all fit. This stuff," he gestured at his journal and the scrawled words there, "wasn't part of it. What I got, I figured out for myself an' lemme tell ya it's been mostly useless until just now. 'Specially this language since it's just a Terra thing."
Illyana tucked the discarded book under her arm and reached to take his pencil. "What did these other people put into your head, if not language?"
Rocket tried to keep the pencil away from her. He could get a new one! But it was the principle of the thing.
"Weapons skills, unarmed combat, explosives, tactics, strategy, piloting, astronavigation, engineering, chemistry, physics. Shit like that." Everything he'd need to be really bad news in a fight, nothing that wasn't relevant to that.
She wasn't so interested in his pencil that she chased after it, stilling her palm on the tabletop instead. "Why did they give this information to you?"
"Dunno. I didn't ask." He had guesses, but that wasn't the same thing. "An' by the time I thought maybe I should, they'd all got way too dead."
"You killed them," she supposed. Also a guess, albeit an educated one.
"I killed'em a lot," Rocket agreed cheerfully. "They had it comin'."
The blonde considered him silently for a moment. She hadn't killed her own mentor in order to gain her freedom, in the end. Dani had assured her that she had come out of Limbo better and stronger for it, and part of her agreed. It was that other part that dwelled on that moment, that choice, and would have tried it the other way. "It seems they did."
She knew already that this foul-mouthed creature hadn't maintained a murder spree while finding himself here, and that would suffice for now. "I will be curious to see how you choose to entertain yourself while you're here, raccoon," Illyana turned as if to leave him be.
"I ain't a raccoon. I've seen'em. I'm not one." He'd seen more than a few in Gotham, and... yeah, probably he had been one once, or something really a lot like it. But that had been a lot of science and engineering and a mostly shit life ago. "I don't call you people monkeys, do I? Macaque? Chimpy? No, I do not. So you stop pullin' it on me, or we're gonna have problems."
She arched an eyebrow at him. "You called me a human."
"So? You are a human." Rocket flicked an ear. "Tell you what, you get yourself cut open an' rearranged who even knows how many times 'til you're just some little monster thing with a fluffy tail only good for killin' shit an' the only one like you in the entire universe, we'll talk about the human thing. 'Til then, suck it. I ain't a fuckin' raccoon."
"I am not a human. Even though I may look human." Illyana wasn't quite so forthcoming about why and how she had been made, un-made, and re-made into what she was. If the angry little non-raccoon felt all too alone in the universe, she knew full well that there were too many more demons, monsters, and yes, even baseline human manipulators that should be given no such knowledge about her for free. "If you can accept that fact, then I am willing to accept that you are not a raccoon - even if you happen to look like one."
"Fine. You can be blondie." Almost all the humans Rocket had met acted like it was such an insult to be their species, they went out of their way to claim they weren't. Which basically made 'I'm not human' a completely human trait. But whatever, he could come up with non-species things to call them. No big deal.
"I am Illyana Nikolaevna Rasputin." She didn't make an earnest attempt to thwart the nickname. As far as such things went, it could have been much more objectionable.
"Nope, that's way too long t'use regular." So many syllables. Not something you could yell out as part of a 'duck!' thing. At least, not and have it actually work. You'd be one beat into her middle name and her head'd already be blown off. "Not doin' that."
"You may call me Illyana," she explained. "What shall I call you?"
Illyana was a little better. A little. Blondie was still shorter, but it was worth having more than one option. "Rocket." See? Short. Easy to yell fast.
How fitting. "Rocket. Did you read the sign in the hallway, affixed beside the library doors?"
"Pretty sure you know I didn't." That felt kind of like a 'duh'.
Strangely, something softened in the line of her lips, the usual tension in her jaw and the cut of her gaze. It was the open threat of a smile. "It would have informed you that the doors to the library are open at all hours. Volunteer staff is on duty as schedules allow. Classes and tutoring for most subjects are available upon request. Donations are encouraged." She paused before the next, to give the last item particular emphasis. "Disruptive patrons will be zealously evicted."
"I ain't bein' disruptive!" Rocket's ears flattened in offense. "I'm bein' disruptive you'll know, blondie, 'cause of the explosions an' burning."
"You haven't been evicted. That seems to indicate that you haven't been unduly disruptive by my standards. Yet." Her expression hardened, her narrowed eyes bearing down on his in counterpoint to the flattening of his ears and the bristle of his whiskers. "No explosions. No burning. Not in the library."
The books did have protections in place that would withstand even a substantial amount of mayhem. But that was beside the point.
"Hey, I don't do shit without a reason. If I blow somethin' up, it's earned." And books were frustrating but ultimately not offensive. It was pretty easy to just go and blow up something else to feel better.
Illyana simply stood and watched him for a moment, as if sizing him up. Then she turned away, moving to a nearby shelf and selecting a thick tome, and a laminated sheet.
She came back to his table and returned Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, placing it back down beside his journal. Then the laminated sheet - ESL Quick Study Reference Guide. And the largest item - Essential ESL Dictionary.
Well, they weren't baby books. No stupid fluffy things or idiot grins. No too-big letters as if the fact that he wasn't good at reading was because his eyesight sucked. And the book looked like just a list of words and meanings. A ton of words. Whatever ESL was, it wasn't fucking around.
Good. "...Yeah, okay. Thanks."
"If you have questions or concerns," she moved to leave him, "I'm available." Illyana chose her words specifically to sound significantly less like he needed help and more like he was scheduling his own self-study. Because he was obviously proud, and on the one hand, she respected someone that took the initiative in their self-improvement. And on the other hand, that much pride was permissable until you let it keep you willfully ignorant. Idiots could think very highly of themselves for no reason whatsoever. That attitude was where her empathy curled up and died.
"Gotcha." If his picked-at-random book was really all that bad, maybe he would ask for a recommendation of some other book to practice on. But not right now. Rocket figured he might as well give the non-word-list book a chance to stand or fall on its own.
Beyond the media options, Rocket didn’t have much use for the library. Most of the books were on the big side for his hands, and he couldn’t quite shake the feeling that bird-scratches on paper were too primitive to be all that useful. (Screens were different.)
But thanks to the magic book things, he was actually having to read and write more often, and that was a problem. Reading, fine, but he knew he screwed up the letters when he tried to write. It didn’t bother Quill, and he was mostly the one that mattered, but the idea of other people maybe judging him was uncomfortable. A bit. He got judged enough for being small, or fuzzy, or a psychopath.
So today he walked into the library with his magic book and a pen, pulled some other book that looked full of words of a shelf, and hauled both to a table. Next, he marked a page of the magic book ‘prIvit’ to make sure nobody could see, and started randomly looking through the library book for good words.
Maybe it would actually help, right?
What drew Illyana's attention most was none of those things: she was not overly concerned in the moment that the raccoon-like humanoid was small, fuzzy, or a psychopath. What she found more arresting was his reading choice. It made her stop on her way past his table to openly stare down at the cover, then back at diminutive figure sitting there. "Don't take that title literally," she warned in a mild tone.
"What?" Rocket blinked at her, then back at the book, then actually worked out the title. Complete with running fingers under the words to make sure he didn't skip down a line when he shouldn't. "Oh. Nah, I know pretty much all you humies're from Terra. Earth. Whatever the fuck name."
He had that habit of moving his lips to try and determine the sounds of what he was reading in relation to the text as he read. It was common for someone only beginning to learn to read. Belasco had curbed her of the habit early on by summoning ember weevils to watch her for any slight part of her mouth while she studied. She'd only made the gross mistake of screaming in pain once. That had let so many more in.
"Hn. Is 'humie' supposed to be a pejorative term for a human?"
"Or pet term. Whatever floats ya, blondie." He'd spent enough time being called things like 'vermin' or 'rodent' that a little return pejoration (or whatever the word was) felt like nothing but fair play. "I also use 'bald body' and 'gangling fuckhead' if ya like either'a those better."
"I prefer respect." She leaned into one arm where she grasped the back of the chair opposite him, the other hand resting on her hip. It was ironically very similar to having a conversation with a minor demonic entity.
“I got no respect. Ask anybody.” It wasn’t completely true. Rocket respected things and certain people, but it took a while usually and didn’t sound all that different from disrespect.
"You would have more respect if you could read and spell competently." She knew perfectly well what he'd meant. But it rather demonstrated the point she had chosen to make. Illyana reached to point at the scrawl of crude lowercase letters on his open journal page. "'Private' is spelled pee-arr-aye-vee-ay-tee-ee."
Rocket’s ears flattened, in annoyance rather than outright anger, for now. She’d misunderstood on purpose, and even if he was actually trying to get better at the writing shit, it wasn’t cool to poke like that.
Still, he tried writing the word her way in his journal to look at it. “That’s fuckin’ dumb,” was his final evaluation. “It don’t look nothin’ like how it’s said.”
"No," she agreed. "It doesn't." She glanced back at the cover of the awful book he had chosen. He had needed to study it to work out the title. "Did you choose that entirely at random?"
“Yeah. They’re all the fuckin’ same, this one looked like it had a lotta words.” Rocket shrugged, then wrote the word ‘private’ a couple more times, once his way and once the blonde’s. His was looking less right? Maybe? But the other way with the weird A-T-E thing still didn’t look right.
Well, it didn’t have to look right, did it? It was just a matter of remembering. “Good enough.”
She snorted softly. "The words are different in each. Some books are even intended to help teach reading and writing." She took the book from his table. "This is not one of them."
“Hey!” Rocket lunged to try and take the book back. “I do shit my own way, blondie! It works for me.”
Illyana jerked the book away with an abrupt motion as he dove, then held it higher. She looked pointedly back at his page. "Does it?"
“It fuckin’ will! I always teach myself shit.” Whatever he hadn’t been taught or programmed to know but somehow needed to know, he’d always managed to learn his own way. And he didn’t need to know this, he just felt like it. “What’s it to you, anyways?”
"I am a librarian here. That means I have a vested interest in books. And in learning from books." She brought her hand down again, to allow him to take the book back if he so chose. "It is your decision, how you wish to spend your time here, and what materials you will use. But you could 'teach yourself shit' much more effectively than by grabbing something at random and beating your head against it to make some few words stick."
"That's how shit works. If it's not in my head already, I gotta beat it in there." Mostly, anyway. It'd been easier with Lylla, but that had also been right after... everything. "An' I'm not a fuckin' larva thing. I ain't gonna do picture-book shit. I know pictures already."
She tipped one shoulder at him to shrug. If he had no interest in learning, she could be off doing literally anything else. "It is your time to waste."
She watched him impassively for a beat longer. "Aren't you growing bored of the words 'fuck' and 'shit' by now?" It took significantly more (or less, depending on context) to make her bristle than a slew of scattershot curses. Yet he kept using those two words over and over again, like smooth-worn worry stones.
"Nope, they comfort me." Rocket flicked an ear. "So I got habits, fuckin' sue me."
She did not deign to react. "Can you spell them?"
"Yup. Pretty sure, anyway." Rocket rolled one shoulder, not quite a stretch. "Look, I got a lot put in my head by... other people. Hell, they made my head bigger on the inside so's they could make it all fit. This stuff," he gestured at his journal and the scrawled words there, "wasn't part of it. What I got, I figured out for myself an' lemme tell ya it's been mostly useless until just now. 'Specially this language since it's just a Terra thing."
Illyana tucked the discarded book under her arm and reached to take his pencil. "What did these other people put into your head, if not language?"
Rocket tried to keep the pencil away from her. He could get a new one! But it was the principle of the thing.
"Weapons skills, unarmed combat, explosives, tactics, strategy, piloting, astronavigation, engineering, chemistry, physics. Shit like that." Everything he'd need to be really bad news in a fight, nothing that wasn't relevant to that.
She wasn't so interested in his pencil that she chased after it, stilling her palm on the tabletop instead. "Why did they give this information to you?"
"Dunno. I didn't ask." He had guesses, but that wasn't the same thing. "An' by the time I thought maybe I should, they'd all got way too dead."
"You killed them," she supposed. Also a guess, albeit an educated one.
"I killed'em a lot," Rocket agreed cheerfully. "They had it comin'."
The blonde considered him silently for a moment. She hadn't killed her own mentor in order to gain her freedom, in the end. Dani had assured her that she had come out of Limbo better and stronger for it, and part of her agreed. It was that other part that dwelled on that moment, that choice, and would have tried it the other way. "It seems they did."
She knew already that this foul-mouthed creature hadn't maintained a murder spree while finding himself here, and that would suffice for now. "I will be curious to see how you choose to entertain yourself while you're here, raccoon," Illyana turned as if to leave him be.
"I ain't a raccoon. I've seen'em. I'm not one." He'd seen more than a few in Gotham, and... yeah, probably he had been one once, or something really a lot like it. But that had been a lot of science and engineering and a mostly shit life ago. "I don't call you people monkeys, do I? Macaque? Chimpy? No, I do not. So you stop pullin' it on me, or we're gonna have problems."
She arched an eyebrow at him. "You called me a human."
"So? You are a human." Rocket flicked an ear. "Tell you what, you get yourself cut open an' rearranged who even knows how many times 'til you're just some little monster thing with a fluffy tail only good for killin' shit an' the only one like you in the entire universe, we'll talk about the human thing. 'Til then, suck it. I ain't a fuckin' raccoon."
"I am not a human. Even though I may look human." Illyana wasn't quite so forthcoming about why and how she had been made, un-made, and re-made into what she was. If the angry little non-raccoon felt all too alone in the universe, she knew full well that there were too many more demons, monsters, and yes, even baseline human manipulators that should be given no such knowledge about her for free. "If you can accept that fact, then I am willing to accept that you are not a raccoon - even if you happen to look like one."
"Fine. You can be blondie." Almost all the humans Rocket had met acted like it was such an insult to be their species, they went out of their way to claim they weren't. Which basically made 'I'm not human' a completely human trait. But whatever, he could come up with non-species things to call them. No big deal.
"I am Illyana Nikolaevna Rasputin." She didn't make an earnest attempt to thwart the nickname. As far as such things went, it could have been much more objectionable.
"Nope, that's way too long t'use regular." So many syllables. Not something you could yell out as part of a 'duck!' thing. At least, not and have it actually work. You'd be one beat into her middle name and her head'd already be blown off. "Not doin' that."
"You may call me Illyana," she explained. "What shall I call you?"
Illyana was a little better. A little. Blondie was still shorter, but it was worth having more than one option. "Rocket." See? Short. Easy to yell fast.
How fitting. "Rocket. Did you read the sign in the hallway, affixed beside the library doors?"
"Pretty sure you know I didn't." That felt kind of like a 'duh'.
Strangely, something softened in the line of her lips, the usual tension in her jaw and the cut of her gaze. It was the open threat of a smile. "It would have informed you that the doors to the library are open at all hours. Volunteer staff is on duty as schedules allow. Classes and tutoring for most subjects are available upon request. Donations are encouraged." She paused before the next, to give the last item particular emphasis. "Disruptive patrons will be zealously evicted."
"I ain't bein' disruptive!" Rocket's ears flattened in offense. "I'm bein' disruptive you'll know, blondie, 'cause of the explosions an' burning."
"You haven't been evicted. That seems to indicate that you haven't been unduly disruptive by my standards. Yet." Her expression hardened, her narrowed eyes bearing down on his in counterpoint to the flattening of his ears and the bristle of his whiskers. "No explosions. No burning. Not in the library."
The books did have protections in place that would withstand even a substantial amount of mayhem. But that was beside the point.
"Hey, I don't do shit without a reason. If I blow somethin' up, it's earned." And books were frustrating but ultimately not offensive. It was pretty easy to just go and blow up something else to feel better.
Illyana simply stood and watched him for a moment, as if sizing him up. Then she turned away, moving to a nearby shelf and selecting a thick tome, and a laminated sheet.
She came back to his table and returned Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, placing it back down beside his journal. Then the laminated sheet - ESL Quick Study Reference Guide. And the largest item - Essential ESL Dictionary.
Well, they weren't baby books. No stupid fluffy things or idiot grins. No too-big letters as if the fact that he wasn't good at reading was because his eyesight sucked. And the book looked like just a list of words and meanings. A ton of words. Whatever ESL was, it wasn't fucking around.
Good. "...Yeah, okay. Thanks."
"If you have questions or concerns," she moved to leave him, "I'm available." Illyana chose her words specifically to sound significantly less like he needed help and more like he was scheduling his own self-study. Because he was obviously proud, and on the one hand, she respected someone that took the initiative in their self-improvement. And on the other hand, that much pride was permissable until you let it keep you willfully ignorant. Idiots could think very highly of themselves for no reason whatsoever. That attitude was where her empathy curled up and died.
"Gotcha." If his picked-at-random book was really all that bad, maybe he would ask for a recommendation of some other book to practice on. But not right now. Rocket figured he might as well give the non-word-list book a chance to stand or fall on its own.