aionlogs | learning.

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learning.

WHO: Hiccup and Ernesto
WHAT: You take a Viking to a steam-powered city and you DON'T expect him to try to climb over everything to figure it out?
WHERE: Godsblood
WHEN: Sometime after the portal between Greentruth and Godsblood is revealed
WARNINGS: Just big dumbs being dumbs

Godsblood was no Berk. It may have been built on the water and had a familiar seaside air, but it lacked the vibrance Berk had. Not that Hiccup expected it to be much like his home, but he's also unsettled for how wholly different it is. The Hairy Hooligan tribe of Berk didn't really value learning unless it was about defeating dragons and fighting for so long a time that a steam-powered city was far beyond his imagination. And his imagine was vast, having created his own wind-based power system for his forge back on Dragon's Edge.

This was different and it made him feel small where he was already feeling small).

Thankfully, his own thoughts of self-doubt are eclipsed by his sense of wonder. If there's one thing Hiccup will never grow out of its need to investigate and learn about things he doesn't understand — If there's one thing that made him seem the Hooligan he undoubtedly was at heart, it's that he doesn't seem to find any problems in trying to climb things to get closer to what he's looking for. He'd started innocently enough, investigating a piece of machinery from close up — Not too close, feet firmly rooted on the ground, and trying to hide his genuine curiosity at its functionality.

He figured out what it was doing ages ago, but now he needs to know how it was doing it... So he might have ducked around a shop, found a pathway to climb up and was now angling for the best way to climb up the side to get a closer look at the gears. Unfortunately, the climbing route is a slippery due to aforementioned waterways and the wind pulling up water. Also, it's really not designed to be climbed on, but that doesn't keep him from half-dangling up there to get a better look anyway.

Sorry, Ernesto. Are you sure you really want to get involved in this mess?

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Ernesto isn't sure he wants to get involved in any of the messes he's been involved in lately, but he's always been a little too curious for his own good anyway. He likes to be the guy that knows things, so he'll do his best to keep abreast of what his allies are up to.

Even if he happens to stumble across their shenanigans completely on accident.

See, Ernesto is from a world that is very modern and high tech. This steam powered city has a certain impressive aesthetic to it, but the tech is outdated by his standards. Whole cities can be built upon the back of landships, that dart around the world avoiding the disasters that strike quickly and with devastating effect.

It's all to say that he hasn't felt the same need to scale a building to better examine the machinery, but he will stop in the middle of his way to stare up in wonder at the man spidering his way up a wall.

"Mr. Moss?"

He knows Hiccup's name now, of course, but sometimes a nickname sticks with you.

Hiccup's arms balance him on a thin ledge of the building, close enough to one of the pieces of machinery he can just about see what's turning inside. He'd momentarily forgot he was dangling off the side of an establishment, mind whirring to life at another problem, that it should be almost predictable that he's forgotten his surroundings.

"Wha—?"

It's not the hailing of Mr. Moss that captivates him as a name, so much as it was being nearby and possibly getting yelled at. He scrambled back slightly, losing balance with his prosthetic as the cleat-like device failed to grip into thin metal. Unable to reposition himself with the ledge he was standing on being slippery he... Well, slides off the side with a loud 'WOAH!' and, should he not catch himself (or get help) in the next several seconds will fall further, off the walkway, and into the rocky-water below.

The kind of people who can get so entirely wrapped up in what they're doing that they forget the world around them really are impressive...

And also a little concerning. Ernesto isn't entirely certain what Hiccup is doing scaling the wall like that, but he can tell that he probably has no business up there. The panicked reaction kind of gives him a way.

While it's unfortunate for him that Ernesto chose now to walk by and call out to him, it is fortunate that it does happen to be someone with very honed reflexes and reaction times. Ernesto doesn't even think twice before he darts forward and grabs onto Hiccup's shoulder, dragging him back to towards safe and steady ground.

Hiccup's done nose dives hundreds of feet in the air and never felt unsafe. For a brief moment his life flashed before his eyes from sheer embarrassment — An experienced dragon rider can't climb a roof. But then something, someone is gripping onto his his arm and he's blinking back up.

"Oh. Wow. Uh, hi," Hiccup manages mildly, his feet pulling into the side of the walkway to finish helping to hoist himself up. He doesn't feel shame enough to blush, but he does sort of awkwardly not look at the other man as he checks to make sure everything is still in place, shifts to change the foot of his prosthetic. "Hi, Ernesto. Fancy seeing you here," he adds, a touch too quick to not be embarrassed as he finally glanced up through his bangs.

He placed his hands on his hips, finally settling as if nothing happened at all. "What brings you around her?" He says as if he's not usually in Greentruth.

For a man who flits about in the air as if he belongs there, falling off a roof to a potential untimely death has to be pretty damn embarrassing. Not that Ernesto knows about Hiccup's dragon riding excursions of course, or that he blames him for not being some expert in scaling buildings.

He is thinking that Hiccup might do better to not climb up in the first place if he's going to be so quick to lose his footing and fall though.

As Hiccup regains his composure now, Ernesto holds onto him for a second longer, before letting go so Hiccup has a chance to reclaim a little dignity. The smile on his face is easy as he reaches over to help tug the rumpled shoulder of Hiccup's shirt back into place.

"General business as usual for me. I really feel like I should be the one asking you that question, Mr. Moss."

Hiccup grins, a look more impish than not. It's far from the fact he didn't know what he was doing. "Oh, yeah, right. What kind of stores are around this side of the city?" He inquires readily, shifting back to swing a leg absently — it creaks like a screen door that needs oiling.

The statement, read someone as an accusation earns a wave of his hand. "Who me?" Hiccup asks, all the sound of someone bewildered by the fact, "I was just doing a bit of shopping myself. Trying new food, talking to the locals —"

"Checking out their energy resource management," he adds off-handedly, "I've seen wind-powered, I practically invented it back home, but this —" He jabs a hand backwards in the direction of the place he was clearly just climbing. Because a normal person would just climb and try to investigate without asking, or reading a book. Or... Well. "This is different."

"It's a little more industrial on this side of the city."

Less shops and more the production stage of the capitalism grind. It makes Hiccup's comments about doing some shopping and looking for food seem a little more dubious. Then again it's probably easy to get turned around in this city if you're not familiar with it, but--

Ah, there it is. That's the crux of the matter isn't it? Hiccup was putting his own life in danger just to check out a technology that he wasn't used to see. Ernesto can't say that he has the same kind of interest, but any of his engineering has always been very specialized instead of general.

He glances up at the building that Hiccup was indicating, and if he wanted Ernesto to be impressed, well...

"Things are pretty old fashioned in this world, huh?"

Edited 2022-05-27 02:36 (UTC)

"Is it? Huh. Hadn't noticed," Hiccup returned idly, despite noticing it was in fact not for shopping. He's never seen an industrialized city before now, but he's not going to say as much. There's a lot to see and take it. He feels like every time he turns around there's something new he wants to investigate — For someone who's mind is always running, learning, and creating it's definitively not a good thing.

It's partly why he's already half-distracted before Ernesto speaks again and he blinks at the other, confusion profound. "You —" He waves a hand at everything, "you call this old-fashioned?" He sounds aghast by the thought, like something more advanced had yet to cross his mind.

"I mean —" His breath sounds more like an incredulous laugh, "in my village unless it was how better to kill something with something sharp they didn't care about ingenuity until a couple years ago. But this is... something." He speaks in awe. There's so much more they could have done in Berk with all of it — It gets him thinking now, about how to help and what to do.

There's no forgetting that all of them come from different worlds, not when Ernesto stands out so much from the majority of his fellow Aions, but it is easy to forget that their worlds probably all vary in more than just the common appearance of the people inhabiting the world.

While he hasn't had much of a tech talk with most of his fellow Pleroma, it seemed a given to him that everyone existed in a world more advanced than the one they find themselves in now. The fact that Hiccup is reacting this way kind of goes to show he should put aside any future assumptions.

Turning his gaze to slowly scan the buildings around them, he makes a bemused 'huh' sound as he lets it sink in.

"If you don't mind me asking, what was the latest new piece of technology that came to your village?"

Surely they're working with something past the level of the wheel. There had been boats that brought a number of them to the ruins that the Regent's people kept them in the first place, and Hiccup would have mentioned shock at that before now if he was that far in the past.

On the reverse side of the spectrum, Hiccup may have constantly thought of how to improve things and be interested in Godsblood but that doesn't change the fact how so much of this seems like beyond them. Years away from Berk (even if, yes, they had the wheel — thank you Ernesto).

Ernesto's not impressed, in fact he's acting like all of this is boring to him which would have made Hiccup stare at him owlishly anyway but the question adds to it. He blinks and shrugs his shoulders nonchalantly while he considered the question. "Again, my village doesn't really care so much about innovation. I mean, we live a pretty dangerous lifestyle," he mentioned, thinking about it, "I guess when we were out on Dragon's Edge I started using a wind-propelled system to work the forge in my hut? Gobber and I used it at the forge in Berk when we returned home." So. Wind-power, sort of, but he doesn't make it sound like it's really a big deal or anything he's thought much about.

Edited 2022-06-17 03:22 (UTC)

That's unfortunately something that Ernesto can kind of relate to in some regards. Though the kind of dangers the two men face happens to be different, the war that continued to rage across his country did a good deal to stifle innovation in most parts of Bolivar. It's kind of hard to sit down and get to inventing when supply lines are screwed up by fighting cutting off your material sources.

Besides, people are more likely to focus on weapons innovations than anything else. Even Ernesto himself specialized in weapon modifications.

His brow furrows at the confession though, and he presses his finger thoughtfully to his chin.

"So you at least have turbines, huh? That's a decent start to knowing how this all works then."

He moves his hand away from his chin now, gesturing to the building next to them.

Hiccup swung his arms at his side as he considered the building. He finds outside of innovation, he's not a fan of Godsblood. The locals aren't bad, but there's something stifling in the city itself — Too metal, perhaps? It's difficult to place his mind around.

He turns his attention back to other with a short nod. "I think I have a good idea on how it's working, at least," he admits thoughtfully, turning his head upwards with a thought, "but I want to learn what I can. If I can learn that, I can work on ideas for different tools for us to use.

(Please don't let him learn to make a fire-breathing costume again, it'll only be a trainwreck waiting to happen).

Sadly Ernesto has absolutely no idea about Hiccup's past fire-breathing costumes, and the disasters that resulted from making them. What he does know is that Hiccup is making it loud and clear in this conversation that he's an inventor, and even if he's behind Ernesto's time in regards to tech, if they can catch him up to speed with Horos at least? Well... it's certainly (probably) not going to hurt the Pleroma's cause.

"We can probably try to get you talking to some of the engineers who maintain some of these machines, though you'll want to be careful when talking to them. It's reasonable for the common person to not know the details of how they work, but you don't want to sound completely unfamiliar with them. It'll make you sound like you're not from around here. Which, coincidentally..."

He stops to point at the building Hiccup was just scaling.

"Climbing around like that will too."

Hiccup scatches the corner of his chin in thought. There was probably better ways to learn about things he admits to himself, but he was nothing if not himself. Learning about how something ticked from observing and being close to it was just as easy in his opinion. He'd always been taught hands-on or by experimentation, after all, that he offers nothing more than a laugh.

"I guess you're right. I just saw something moving and wanted to see how it worked up close," Hiccup mentioned off-handed, rolling his shoulders with a shrug, "asking about it really wasn't a thought."

His sheepishness wears off to a more disbelieving laugh. With a shake of his head he waves a hand in dismissal. "Whaaat? No way," Hiccup remarked, "I could've been just a guy who was looking at shingle repair! You know, they really could use some work up there. It's not supposed to be that slippery, it probably means they need to replace them. We should tell them while we ask about the building."

Hiccup spoke with rapt attention, eager to dismiss how it wasn't totally normal even if he does realize it wasn't. There are far more important things to focus on than his oddities as a member of the Hooligan Tribe (like dragging Ernesto with him to ask the owners more).

"Mm... a roofer that they didn't hire to do any repair work, and who also doesn't have a single tool on him?"

Hiccup realizes how suspicious that sounds, right? There's no way he actually thinks that's a remotely believable excuse, does he? Honestly, Ernesto likes the people he wound up on this strange world with (the ones that haven't tried to stab him so far at least), but some of these people really don't know how to blend to save their lives.

"I think we'll be better off if we head out of here, and find some other buildings that will be a little less conspicuous to ask about."

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