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Post by seraaches on Sept 7, 2009 21:00:22 GMT -5
Rank didn't matter to Richard Owen; why should it? Any idiot could rank up, after all. And while he was just a respectable Six, well, it was still respectable, and most people didn't even notice that about him at all. No, the first thing people noticed about him was his genius. It would be difficult to miss his amazing mechanical legs, after all, and people often stopped to stare in awe and wonderment. As well they should. He accepted these amazed stares as just a part of his due; he was a genius, after all. The Corvies here were so fortunate that he was here and they had a chance to even glimpse him. Such thoughts were in mind as he took a rather unusual break and headed towards the little coffee shoppe that served his neighbourhood. Let the peons look their fill and perhaps venture a question or two to his genius, though he doubted anyone would. They were generally too overwhelmed to approach him. |
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Post by Bee on Sept 7, 2009 21:11:13 GMT -5
 Zeki saw the bird, and his attention was so immediately and intensely focused on him that he walked directly into a street sign. Honestly. Corvistowne scarcely bothered with things as pedestrian as street signs, and he managed to smack into the only Do Not Cross in a fifty meter radius. He whimpered and clutched his aching face. But that wasn't important. The bleeding would eventually stop on its own. What was more important than that was the bird, the wonderful bird with the metal lower half. Zeki had to talk to him. His life, he felt, depended on it. If that bird could still fly...maybe he could tell Zeki more about aerodynamics, what materials to use to keep a design airborne. Maybe he had a special metal uniquely geared to engineer easy flight. His imagination took wing. "Ooooh!" said Zeki, chasing after the man. "Mister! Please wait! I need to talk to you! Mister!" |
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Post by seraaches on Sept 7, 2009 21:44:43 GMT -5
Striding along, the Diamond was utterly unaware of someone running into a sign. He did, however, ruffle his feathers at two ladies who appeared to be a mere moment from swooning at his lovely presence.
A high-pitched piping caught just enough of his attention that Owen's stride arrested a single step. No, it wasn't his legs; such a sound might mean that he was suffering a catastrophic failure, and that, obviously, was a very bad thing for him. Relieved that it was nothing of the sort, the sparrow continued on his imperious way without realizing that he was being paged by anyone, much less a child-- which he viewed as little better than an Ace at the best of times and louder and more irritating than an Ace at the worst or normal times.
Owen actually disliked anyone useless, though that seemed to cover most of humanity.
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Post by Bee on Sept 7, 2009 21:53:02 GMT -5
The bird seemed not to notice Zeki at all, which sent him into a panic. He was no more than fifteen feet away! How could the bird not hear him? Maybe he needed to be louder? Or more dramatic. Corvies could be very wrapped up in their thoughts, he knew. After all, hadn't he just walked into a sign?
Dramatic it was, then.
"Mister, I need to talk to you, please." He closed the gap between them. He was as much in the bird's personal space as he felt comfortable being now, which was less than a foot. Close, but not quite in his face. Now he just needed to say something suitably flashy. He struggled for the right words. He needed to be impressive. "If I can't, I'll...die! I'll just fall over and die."
Well, it was certainly some first-class exaggeration. But not far from the truth.
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Post by seraaches on Sept 7, 2009 22:09:13 GMT -5
Owen was moving along easily when suddenly he realized there was something infringing upon his space. Perhaps someone truly needed assistance. . . only a glance around proved that whoever was talking to him was evidently invisible. His golden eyes briefly slipped over the child and immediately dismissed it as unimportant and certainly not what was talking to him. Except, barring the invisible Corvie, which perhaps wasn't that far out of the realm of possibility, there wasn't anyone here.
The sparrow stopped rather abruptly and looked keenly around, still ignoring the strange, if vaguely familiar-looking, child that stood near him, ogling. Children had no manners. Owen was pleased that he didn't have any and he didn't foresee them (EVER!) in his future.
The bird's feathers ruffled in annoyance as he looked around once again, trying to discover the owner of that peculiar voice that had called to him.
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Post by Bee on Sept 7, 2009 22:28:23 GMT -5
"Mister, I'm right here,," Zeki said, brow furrowed in bafflement. He was getting just a hair confused. The man had looked right at him several times but did not seem to process his existence. Perhaps this bird had been experimented upon, instead of doing the experimenting, and his cognition had been a tragic victim of the ordeal? It was known to happen. More than one Corvie had leaped right over the line from "clinically insane" to "clinically braindead."
That would make him incredibly sad. He needed to know how this bird functioned.
He stood right in front of the Corvie. He blurted everything out and hoped that some of it stuck. Please, please don't let the bird have a mush-brain. If it turned out he was just deaf, Zeki could always make a sign. "Please, you're incredible. The metal, I mean! How did you do it? Can you still fly? Can you please tell me?"
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Post by seraaches on Sept 7, 2009 23:10:08 GMT -5
The high-pitched rambling continued and Owen was forced to reluctantly come to the conclusion that the deformed child was, indeed, talking to him. He stared at the thing, baffled by this strange, strange turn of events, though his head twisted ever so slightly when the thing announced that he was incredible. Owen's feathers ruffled up and then smoothed back down. Of course he was, but most children weren't really smart enough to know that.
In light of this child's amazing intellectual capabilities-- though one epiphany was not proof of a smart child-- Owen deemed it worthwhile to allow the thing a few moments of his time.
"But of course I can still fly," the Diamond said arrogantly. "It would be stupid to lose such an ability just because I have upgraded my legs." He did not mention that he couldn't fly for as long anymore, but, really, it was a worthwhile trade.
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Post by Bee on Sept 11, 2009 21:36:17 GMT -5
And what amazing legs they were! Zeki felt a little bit creepy staring so much--honestly, he wasn't usually such a bother, this bird was just so fascinating--but he had to look more closely at the design.
"How did you engineer it?" he asked, eagerly. He was going to get everything out while he still had the bird's attention. The Diamond also seemed very confident in his body alterations--but of course he could still fly!--so his methods and materials must have been sound. "What kind of metal did you use?"
It must have been light, if it allowed for perfect flight. Could he tuck in his legs well enough to avoid drag? How did those metal tail feathers work?
"Did you make plans first or did you just go at it? Can I see the plans if you have them? That would be amazing!"
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Post by seraaches on Sept 13, 2009 0:44:58 GMT -5
A certain amount of worship was to be expected, but it could, of course, go too far. Owen eyed the child as it spewed so many questions and tried to gain information that he certainly wouldn't share with a mere kid.
"It's an alloy of my own making," the sparrow said with a small, condescending sniff. Really, this child reminded him of someone. . . "Of course I made prototypes before actually implementing my own and no, you cannot see my plans." He made another sound of derision. "A child can't be trusted with such things."
A new thought, more paranoid, struck him suddenly. What if this kid was a spy of some sort? Could he be trying to steal his precious alloys? The Diamond twisted his head suspiciously. "And why are you so curious?" he asked suddenly.
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Post by Bee on Sept 28, 2009 14:33:25 GMT -5
"I would like to build planes," Zeki informed him. The bird had made the alloy himself, and a good one, too...that was very impressive! He must've been exceptionally smart even by Corvie standards, and he didn't seem half as loony. If Zeki tried really hard, he might just get something intelligible out of him. This was his lucky day.
"My dad gave himself wings, so I guess the sky just runs in the family. But I don't think I want to experiment on myself. I wanna pilot. I wanna fly other people too. My designs are heading in the right direction, I think, but I might need material that...isn't widely available yet." Some Corvies hit a wall when it came to that; everything made sense in the equations, until it became apparent that to get the right density or chemical composition, one needed a material that didn't actually exist. He gave the bird a hopeful glance.
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