4 Carrian
When Michael woke up, it was only dimly lit outside, signifying that it was quite early.
He had slept quite uncomfortably considering the events of the day before, including the way he slept in general. Michael had plucked the feathers off of himself, and smeared some of the blood on the "walls" around him, wiping the remaining amount on his face away with the cleaner portions of his rags, it had dried by then anyhow. He couldn't get all of it off before he had slept and ended up staining his some sections of raggedy clothing in red. He obviously had nothing to wash it off with either.
He kept the clothes anyway though, as long as they kept most of his skin from burning.
Michael left the cool shade of the pipe and ventured out once more into the unknown. He, a small, sand-caked, blood-soaked, raggedy, and thin child-man-person. A sudden thought came to mind.
'What will they think of my appearance?' Michael thought for a moment after activating «Find Society».
'Eh. Probably that I've been attacked right?...unless they usually suspect 6-year-olds of murder around here.' He shivered.
Michael himself did not notice how calm and uncaring he sounded in face of yesterday's events. This, would undoubtedly both unnerve and worry everyone that knew him before. To say the least, it was extremely strange.
'Might as well be cautious about it anyway.' He thought as he maneuvered over a large dune, speckled with scrap.
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A few hours of uneventful travel later and Michael had nearly arrived at the base of the wreck. He may have thought that it was large from a distance, but it grew increasingly more immense as he neared.
The exposed area, not concealed under the sand, stretched for about 2 kilometers into the air. The base of the wreck was around a kilometer as well. It was awkwardly bent in its ascent as gravity pulled it back towards the earth. He couldnt figure its original shape due to the frame being so distorted from collapse, wear, and stress. It didn't really seem like a building.
But what surprised him the most was the small (in comparison to the behemoth) seeming settlement at its base, leading into a large rupture in the wreck's hull.
Small specks that he guessed were people, could be seen wandering about from within. There were hundreds of them. Michael sat there, behind a ridge of scrap, overlooking the establishment, thinking up a plan.
That was, until...
"Hey, there little buddy". Michael felt a light tap on his shoulder.
...
'!' Michael, scared shitless, instinctively reacted by kicking out with all of his strength in the direction of the voice.
After he felt the kick connect, and a yelp of pain and surprise, he bolted away. Only to look back seconds later in confusion. No one was giving chase, nor was there an angry shout, or anything of the sort.
He looked back to find a young man, curled up into a ball, and sobbing quietly.
...
'The hell?' Michael stood shocked there for a moment.
He neared a bit, stopping at what he considered a safe distance to observe the figure.
The man was covering his face with his hands. Had his knees to his chest, and seemed to be believably sobbing his heart out. Externally, the young man looked to be around 25 years old, maybe less. He had messy, dirty blonde hair, was of average build, and wore a black vest of sorts over a light brown tee, his lower half was clothed with baggy camouflage decorated pants that had pouches/pockets all over.
As he stood there, Michael thought this guy was a sad excuse for a man, if all it took to down him was a thin 6-year-olds kick.
'Maybe I got him in the groin?....but still...'
Michael kept thinking that way with a frown, until he heard the sobs lighten and saw the young man peep through his fingers at Michael.
He looked quite shocked at Michael's expression, but returned to sobbing, now with added wails of pain.
It appeared as if he was trying to garner some sort of reaction out of Michael, into pitying him.
Michael squinted at the guy. There was some obvious plot behind his actions, but what they could be, Michael simply couldn't guess. Unless...
He looked down at his small, 6 year old hands...
Michael started shaking with fury.
He was being treated like a 6 year old...a damn 6 year old!
Michael had never felt so embarrassed and ashamed as a man in his entire life.
The pretending young man peeled at michael again and froze in confusion at the fury on Michael's face. He immediately stopped sobbing and gradually sat upright, studying michael up and down.
"You're a strange one aren'cha"
The first thing Michael noticed when the man removed his hands from his face, was his eyes, a deep blue with some form of unmalleable excitement about them. And his face, by all means extraordinarily handsome. In short, this guy was a lady-killer.
"Who are you?" Michael asked in a deadly tone.
With that, the man's eyes shone brightly, he made a goofy, but unmistakably friendly smile and pointed his left thumb at his chest. He spoke loudly and with a definite pride.
"My name's Carrian"
...
'Carrian huh'. Michael snorted, holding firm to his grudge.
"Just Carrian?"
The young man, Carrian, smiled, revealing pearly whites.
"Yep, just Carrian, ain't got one of them last names...on that subject, what's your's kid?"
Michael wanted to kill the man where he stood to regain his honor, but that wasn't a very likely scenario from his standpoint, so he settled for shaking heavily in anger.
"Name's... uh, Mitch, and I ain't a fucking kid" Michael quickly swapped his real name for another, shortened version, probably out of habit from playing too many games online with random people, not wanting to hand his identity out to random people.
Carrian seemed taken aback by Michael's word choice, but soon regained his observable friendliness.
"Right...um...well then, Mitch, are you...uh...alright?" Carrian asked as he looked at Michael, or more correctly, Michael's clothes.
The man-child in question looked down at his own rags and instantly remembered that he was covered in blood.
'Well shit'
"Y-yes...uh...I was attacked...but this" Michael pointed at the stains "isn't mine".
That drew a curious raised eyebrow from Carrian, who seemed a bit suspicious.
"Well, *cough* if you will excuse me, I have places to be" Michael continued.
"And that would be?"
Michael frowned, then pointed towards the establishment.
"There"
...
"...you mean that bandits nest?"
...
'That what now?'
"Excuse me?" Michael's childish voice asked in astonishment.
"You must not be from anywhere near here, if you didn't know that, THAT, is a bandits nest". Said Carrian, pointing towards the general direction of the wreck.
"That whole thing?"
"Yep"
Then Michael suddenly turned cautious, facing Carrian.
"Are you a bandit too?"
"You bet." Carrian laughed aloud.
Michael would have frozen in fear, if not for the fact that he had nothing worth stealing, except maybe the blue cube in the pouch. But he was unaware of another factor influencing his behavior.
"So...you loiter over there?" Michael looked to the wreck.
" 'loiter'?...Nah, I don't station myself there, if that's what you mean." Carrian replied, seeming somewhat repulsed by the word "loiter".
"Where then?"
Carrian raised an eyebrow at Michael.
"Why are you interested?"
Michael shrugged his small shoulders and replied:
"I'm not from around here, remember? And it doesn't quite sit right with me that you popped out from some dune somewhere, walked up, and scared the shit out of me."
...
"You're quite the interesting kid," said Carrian, looking quizzically at him.
"I ain't a fucking kid!" Michael yelled out angrily.
But Carrian ignored him with a smile and continued.
"Ah, but if you really must know..." Carrian stood up and began waving his hands around dramatically "...I am a drifting soul, who prefers to wander aimlessly between these far and few establishments, in search of great fortune. A grand fortune that grants me fame, and also...the "love" of many" He had a distant lecherous look in his eyes when he said that last bit.
Overall, Michael's new judgment on Carrian was...
...that he was full of crap, perverted, idiotic, and hopeless romantic. And he must be quite the useless person if he was all the way out here, by himself, pretending to cry in front of children for their pity, and doing god knows what else.
So he turned to leave and avoid the situation.
As Michael walked away, he decided he would try and find some other way into the nearby establishment.
There were two reasons for this: one was his appearance (duh), and the other, was to hopefully avoid anyone else who would possibly come up and bother him.
He especially wanted to avoid people like Carrian.
Staying out here wouldn't do him any good, even more so if he got hungry again. He clutched his stomach as he thought of such insatiable hunger.
"Hey! Wait!"
Michael ignored the voice and kept walking, deciding to circle around the wreck for any other possible points of entry.
Carrian ran to catch up with him.
"Hey...uh..mind letting me tag along?"
"And why would you want to do that?" Michael asked questioningly.
"Uh...because...you look like somebody who's going places in life, and I believe by following you, my chances will become ever greater. Plus, it feels like its going to be quite the adventure." He ended with a big grin.
' "Adventure" my ass...this guy is up to something' Michael squinted at Carrian.
'Who the hell follows a 6-year-old - looking person around in search of wealth and adventure?'
Well. Michael didn't really have anything to lose at the moment, so he guessed he could tolerate someone like Carrian a bit.
"Do what you want"
Carrian smiled at those words and laughed.
"Alrighty then, where to? Wherever we go, I'm sure we'll come across some wealth".
Michael almost immediately regretted his decision. All the way towards an uninhabited side of the wreck, Carrian would talk nonstop.
Information about this place was valuable to Michael, but Carrian managed not to speak a word about it somehow, which was strange.
After listening in for a few minutes or so, his brain hurt badly in confusion. He had no idea what the hell Carrian was going on about.
'Maybe it's a skill or stat or something that I'm missing?'
'Probably wisdom..."
Michael thought it was strange how easy it was to gain the stat earlier with just his logical thoughts, but when he tried now, nothing happened.
He decided he would figure it out later.
But for now, Carrian was just plain annoying with his nonstop blabber.
' I swear. If I could reach that man's face'
Violent thoughts reached Michael's mind, he controlled himself, however. Strangely, he felt more violent than his usual self lately.
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When they came within a few dozen meters of the wreck, it had reached a pinnacle height in their eyes. Michael could not stop staring, whereas Carrian's useless self had probably seen such a scene many times before.
Oddly, unlike what Michael had expected, there were no visible entrance areas into the wreck. He thought that with such a thing probably having crash-landed on this planet, the metal would be torn or bent in some places, similar to what he saw further up, from a distance.
But there was no way he was about to try climbing a kilometer up in order to get in. He would likely die in the process of such an escapade.
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So, now Michael had no real idea what to look for.
Carrian, noticing this, said:
"If our luck is just right, we might find one of those access panels. Chances are one in a hundred thousand though" he laughed.
'Access panels?'
"What?"
"You know- one of those things you use to open an airlock from the outside. You'd just better hope we aren't on the top or bottom of the ship's orientation."
" can you find one? " Michael though Carrian was showing how useful he could be.
"I'd be quite easy to do with «identify», but even if we find one, I don't know about getting it to work." Carrian shrugged.
"«Identify»?"
"Yeah..." Carrian let a curious glance at Michael "practically everybody has it: it lets you see what an object is."
Michael was confused, why he himself did not have such a skill that seemed imperative to his job description.
"How do you get it?"
"Oh. That's easy, just study an object up close for two hours or so, observing every minuscule detail you can. That should give you the prerequisite."
This also answered the question Michael had about gaining skills. They could be gained via physical action now, as far as he knew.
'Two hours huh?' Michael gave a wry smile. The previous owner of his body was probably some hardworking kid to survive out here. They probably didn't have time to sit and stare at a rock all day, much less, for two hours. Plus...they were a kid. Kids tend to have low attention spans.
Michael ended up picking a cylindrical scrap from a nearby heap (its everywhere!), and moved to dit in the shade of a wide metal plate, positioned to block the sun.
In his opinion, the sooner he got the skill, the better, and Michael was not one for wasting time.
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Michael had yet to observe the cylinder for 30 seconds. 30 seconds!!!, before Carrian decided to stream incomprehensible nonsense again.
'Oh fuck me' Michael mentally prepared for the next two hours.
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He just barely survived. Until the very end, Carrian talked nonstop. Michael was somewhat amazed by it.
'How is such a thing possible?'
'Doesn't he run out of breath?'
'Probably another skill....'
' Well. Whatever...at least it worked'
Michael knew he had achieved his goal when a transparent blue screen appeared before him.
*Skill Acquired*
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Identify Lvl.1 (Max Lvl.10)
Retrieve the Identity of an object in your view.
*Limited observation when identifying organisms higher in Lvl. than oneself.*
He immediately got excited, looking around at every object that came into view.
*Broken Pipe - Pipe, once function in within a star cruiser's complex hydraulics systems. Has been severely damaged. Repair before reuse.
*Cylindrical Container - Used to store minute amounts of liquid. Severely damaged. Repair and clean before reuse.
Michael had an idea and turned towards the wreck.
*Shipwreck: Star Cruiser - 'The Desolate' *
The shipwreck of the once massive star cruiser 'The Desolate'
*Tip: Level up «Identify» for further information*
Carrian, who had yet to stop talking, noticed Michael change position.
"You've finished already?"
...
Michael glared at him, then thought of something.
"«Identify»"
*Carrian*(Lvl.?)
*?*
Michael could understand that Carrian was most likely a higher level than he was, but was confused if the lack of basic info was due to «Identify»'s low level as well.
He stood up, dusted himself off, and began walking again. Identifying everything he passed, hoping to raise a level.
Carrian followed.
A few minutes passed in the light inferno, and Michael managed to level up «Identify» twice, after studying more than 50 objects along the side of the wreck.
"So, what do you think the chances are we'll find something?"
"Well...I do know that they go up significantly if more than one person is looking." The child-like voice implied.
"Heh. That's true." Carrian smiled wide. "You know, I've noticed, you're quite smart for a tot."
"..."
Michael's eyes turned red. He turned around and was about to berate Carrian when he saw an excited look sprout on the handsome young man's face.
"Found one!"
