[Meanwhile, Guy's still leading the rear practically frozen in the doorway, seeing several women and kind of. Dreading every decision that led him to this point in life.
He looks down at his key. Ant. He looks back at the door. Ant.
. . .
Maybe his eyes didn't work.]
I didn't get keys crossed with someone, did I? [This has to be a mistake.]
Guess it can't be helped. So long as you girls don't mind it.
...Flayn, right? Sure, I can the lower bed. Might save me from hitting my head on the ceiling.
[Tall joke. The one unfamiliar face pipes up from the boxes, and he'll give a nod as he swings that stupid fanny pack off and tosses it onto his bed. Goodbye tiny useful pouch.]
Easy enough to remember, I hope. That would make yoooou... Stephanie, right? [Only one blonde girl on the board makes her easy to pick out.]
Yeah, well. After some of the stories I've heard, I honestly wouldn't want to be back in any of the places we got stuck with. Demon boat included. [Sup, Steph, he's gonna toss an easy smirk her way before crossing around to look at the labels on the boxes.]
You know, outside the fact that no one had any personal space, I can't say I minded the bus. [An exhale, almost sounding disappointed.] I wish I could have taken a look at the outside of it before it dumped us out and drove off like that...
Self-propelled vehicles are extremely uncommon, so all I could really think about on leaving the bus was just what size of engine would be needed to successfully support the speed we were travelling while still being remarkably compact. If power like that could be adequately condensed, there could be a lot of practical uses!
[ stephanie is not a nerd, and is so used to dealing with advanced technology and sentient ai that she is just trying not to fall asleep at nerd talk. it's fine. ]
...Man, why do women never get this stuff. [he's so disappointed. oh well.
ANYWAY. Flayn first, because that was the nicest answer.]
Self-propelled just means something else isn't forcing the motion. A wagon or a horse-drawn carriage aren't self-propelled, for example, but something with a heat-based engine that could generate its own power could, essentially, move itself using its own force or energy. You'd still have to have someone to control where it's going, but propulsion - the act of actually moving - that's the part that would happen all by itself.
[As for the others - don't worry, Steph, he will be enough nerd for the whole cabin.]
Huh. It's news to me. Not that it really changes my mind, either way. I still would have loved to see what it looked like on the outside. Normally, something with that much space and that many people needs to be pretty bulky. I'm just curious how they managed it.
[ she is technology. if she were awed by it she'd never make it through a single day. ]
Nevermind that the circumstances that have led up to us being in this situation tend to deny conventional logic in the first place. It's not out of the question that the engineering and design of our bus might have been the same.
Flayn seems to be closer to what my world's used to, anyway. There's landships and a couple different aircraft, but most of those are owned by the military. If you're just a regular person, you either walk or take a carriage. Can you blame me for being excited about the idea of more options for public transportation?
[Well, he found his box, which he'll easily lift out of the way. But uh---]
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