World Tree MUSH

    In comparison to a lot of the different worlds connected to the World Tree, this one seems... largely on the calm side. Or at the very least not in active throes of chaos. Calling it 'normal' would really only apply for the viewpoint of people used to a typical 21st century Earth.

    And perhaps only 'normal' for people who are used to the concept of the multiverse, for that matter, seeing as this is one of those places where people from many different worlds tend to come stop by. A crossroads of sorts, perhaps? 

    And this is the world where one Shirou Emiya has ended up staying for the time being, too, while he... gets his bearings, after his violent ejection from his home realm. He's gotten used enough to his situation by now, at least, to be confident enough to move around without much worry. And to wander into this large, sprawling open-air marketplace in the middle of a certain town. The red-haired young man, dressed now in a black jeans and a white-black jersey jacket to help shield him from the colder temperatures of the late fall, moves betwixt the stalls here, studying various fresh-grown ingredients brought by farmers and wholesellers. He's thought to cook some kind of food as a show of gratitude to the people who have been housing him since he fell into the Tree. Now, considering a large onion at one stall for a moment, before nodding to the merchant on the other side of the stall. "I'll take three... going to be making a big stew so will need more than usual, I think..."

    At least this kind of shopping is familiar to him. A comfortable reprieve from all the life-altering new things he's had to deal with. Surely nothing will come along now to metaphorically slap him upside the head with new experiences and information and ruin his otherwise serene day, right?

    Surely not.

Surely he won't run into, hypothetically speaking, a three foot tall mechanical being who is walking up to the same stall Shirou is at. One that's carrying crate just to set down the crate, climb on top of it, and take a look at what the stall has to offer.

Unfortunately, as unlikely as the scenario might be, that's just what happened. The mechanical girl, and it's obvious that the body is meant to be feminine, with cyan eyes and hair, pale white skin and a a synthetic fabric in white, cyan and gray that roughly approximates a semblance of clothes. "What are these for?" She asks the merchant, pointing at the onions Shirou just bought.

    Of all the possible things that could have happened... Actually, this is probably nowhere near as bad as what *could* have happened, but it is still a mild shock to the system for Shirou.

    He tries not to stare when he realizes just what/who ended up walking next to him. He really does! Really hard too, at that, but he's still much too unused to seeing things like this to not be unfazed by seeing things that are entirely unusual for the world he came from.

    ...Nevermind that his world did have a plethora of very strange things, too. In his defense, he never had the chance to witness *most* of those things.

    While the japanese redhead is trying to process this sight before him, the merhant - an old farmlady - seems to take the girl's appearance much better in stride. "Haven't seen onions before, dear?" She asks of her in counter, in a perfectly calm tone of voice, and the kind of smile that comes from decades of practicing customer service. "They are for eating. Most people cut them up, cook them and put them in with other food, to enhance the flavor."

"Organic life is extinct in my world." Bryllu answers the farmlady cheerily. "So all I've ever had for dinner was a battery recharge." She takes a closer look at the onion, "I don't think the effect would be the same if I threw it into my matter to energy converter, would it?" She turns to Shirou, "It's rude to stare, you know. You'd think you've seen a ghost the way you're gawking."

    "Oh, I am sorry to hear that," the farmlady offers, even if Bryllu herself does not seem much at all bothered by that. And without missing a beat, she quickly answers her question with, "Mmm, I wouldn't know about all that, but I'm going to guess no."

    As for Shirou? He's caught off guard by the accusation directed right at him, and he jumps back a bit, face flushing with a hint of red out of embarrassment. "Ah-- I'm sorry, I didn't mean to..." He starts only to cut himself off with a shake of his head, so he can turn to a forward lean into a little bow. "My apologies."

"That's a shame." Bryllu answers the farmlady, and hops down the crate she's carrying. "It's fine, I'm sure I might look a little weird to primitive humans like you." The crate is folded up and placed under an arm. "My name's Bryllu Zibhu MLDVII. I'm trying to learn about primitive human society, all I really know is from files written long after we'd colonized the galaxy."

    "Primitive...?" Shirou repeats the descriptor after he's straightened up from the apologetic bow, his amber eyes narrowing subtly at the small girl now. "I guess... you're from the future? No, wait, I guess 'future' is kind of relative with all these other dimensions...?" The redhead frowns at this particular notion with a brief rub at his chin before he focuses on Bryllu again. "Er... I am Emiya Shirou. And I'm not sure if you necessarily *have* to call it 'primitive'...?"

"Very distant future." Bryllu agrees, and she doesn't notice the eye narrowing, "I guess early could also work, or earthbound? But not all humans seem to have earth as their cradle planet so that doesn't seem right. What do you think works best, Emiya Shirou?" She tilts her head sideways.

    "Uh..." Shirou may or may not have a vaguely harder time trying to keep up with *that* particular line of thought. At least, it takes him a few seconds to properly catch up with it. "...I suppose, 'earlier'?" He suggests. "Since then it's not relative to the location, and can imply 'stage of society' too rather than just 'time since the beginning of universe' or something?"

The small being nods, "Then I'll use that from now on. Thank you, and sorry for the insensitive phrasing." She takes a look around, "So are you here to pick up food? Really nice of these people to stand around and offer food to strangers while also answering questions."

    "Thank you, I suppose...?" Shirou clearly doesn't seem entirely certain on how he should even think of this particular exchange, in so far as it has gone anyhow. The question she presents now, however, gives a recluse of something much more easy to answer. Something he can consider himself to be at least familiar with!

    "I'm here to buy food to cook with, yes," he offers in answer thus, with an eager nod -- and while he's at it, he gives a look over the other stalls around theme. "It's, well... They are selling the things they have produced, you know? So they can get money for their hard work."

Bryllu tilts her head sideways at the explanation, "Uh." There's a brief pause, "I'm sorry but you're using some unfamiliar words and I think they're kind of central to what you're saying. Could you please define the words 'buy' 'selling' and 'money'?"

    Oh, that's... unexpected. "Er..." The kind of unexpected, no less, that Shirou is not entirely sure right away on how to deal with. "You don't... have money from where you come from... I see." Shirou frowns thoughtfully at this, mulling things over while idly scratching at one cheek with a single finger. "Or even things like monetary transactions. Okay, so, um... How would I explain it...? So there's... a certain value that's given to goods and services that people provide, and that value is kind of... assigned to a numerical value of 'currency'. That's money, right... or rather, money is like... tokens of that currency that prove your ability to give something in return for goods or services of equivalent value, I guess? And then after that person has sold that good or service has gotten the money, they can then exchange that money for other goods or services for themselves, and so on..." An economist he clearly isn't, but he tries his best.

Bryllu unfolds her crate and sits down on it as she thinks over this answer. "I guess... if scarcity is a problem then some system of exchange would make sense?" She muses, "I'm going to have to learn to make sense of this, aren't I? Thank you. Uh... I'd offer to compensate you for the answers you've given me, but I don't have any of this 'money.'"

    "Huh? Oh, no, I wouldn't ask for any kind of compensation for something like that!" Shirou insists with a shake of his head and a dismissive wave of his hand sent back at the small mechanical being. "I'm just happy to help. Or, as much as I can anyway. Sorry, it's kind of hard to explain something like this to someone completely unfamiliar. At least it's probably not going to be easy to give a 'satisfying' answer without, like... explaining our entire society from zero."

"Oh. Okay." Bryllu takes a look at the sky, staring into the sun. "I guess I'd have as much of a hard time explaining mine. You wouldn't recognize the sky where I'm from. It's just a dark void. The sky looks so pretty here, both at day and at night."

    "Just a dark void...?" Shirou repeats, somehow managing to sound curious with just the first few syllables, then concerned with the next few, and then finally... somewhat sad for the rest. His head tips after that, with the realization that comes. "I see... I guess you're from far enough forward that the sun is out, right? ...but wait, hold on." A rapid blink with another quick realization. "Wouldn't you be able to see distant stars, at least...?"

"Far enough that all the stars are out." Bryllu looks back towards Shirou, "Earth is a very distant memory even by the standards with which our people keep time." She shrugs, "But it is what it is, no sense in dwelling on what can't be changed. Entropy is harsh and unforgiving, but we had a good run."

    "So it's like that..." The reality of entropy is a heavy truth to live with, indeed. It leaves Shirou looking rather forlorn for a moment, too, even if he assumes that it might end up being like that *only* in her world. A generous thought, perhaps. "...And yet, from what I am hearing, life still goes on," he notes then, trying to sound a bit more positive, even as he gives Bryllu another once-over now. "Even if in a different form."

"For now, yes." Bryllu agrees, "Though we'd mostly abandoned the organic forms of our ancestors long before we ran out of hydrogen with which to make stars. We know how much time is remaining though, which is why I'm one of the youngest members of the last generation." She looks to the sky, "But don't feel sad on our behalf. Just like you and I both have to die one day, so too do galaxies. What matters is what you do with the time you have, and we are by and large satisfied with what we accomplished."

    "I suppose that's all we can really ask for, isn't it?" Shirou considers all of this for a few seconds more -- and then takes a step to bring himself closer to the mechanical humanoid, reaching with a hand to give a brief squeeze and pat to her shoulder. "Always forward, right?" He murmurs, as he pulls his hand away again. "Do you want to see the other food I am planning on buying here?"

"Yeah, it is." The gesture is accepted, "Sure that sounds great." She jumps down her crate and picks it up, "Lead the way? I don't know what you're buying."

    "I am planning on making pork roast stew, so I still need to pick up some pork and some other vegetables," Shirou offers in explanation once she's come to step besides him... probably realizing only later that she probably doesn't know what "stew" is. "Oh by the way, uh..." A look sent to the crate she's lugging around. "Do you... bring that everywhere with you?"

"Not normally. I didn't take into account that spaces are designed for your size and I didn't want to go back to fabricate a bigger body, so this lets me look at what the stalls have without having to climb on top of the stalls. That seems rude." Bryllu explains herself, "So what's a stew? Pork is an animal, right? Cousin of the pig?"

    "You can... fabricate a different body for yourself?" Shirou finds this curious, apparently-- even if it should be somewhat obvious just from having her told him her people aren't really organic anymore. "Can it be anything you want it to be...?" As for the stew, though...

    "Stew is basically a slow-cooked dish that has a collection of ingredients cooked in liquid stock. That lets all the stock itself absorb flavor from all the other ingredients and help make meat in it all soft and tender. Mmm..." His head tips sideways to direct one eye looking her over, with some curious thought. "Do you have... any way at all to process organic food? Get a sense of the taste?"

"Mostly, yes. Can't go that much smaller than this or there's not enough room to house all the necessary components, and there's a limit to how big my fabricator can make things. And of course I can't make things that I can't tell the fabricator to make, but besides those restrictions, yeah pretty much anything." Bryllu explains, "Of course there's tradeoffs. Smaller bodies tend to be more energy efficient, which is why most of us stick to around this size."

"Nope. I got lots of sensors, but taste isn't one of them. We don't need to eat and I've never needed to do chemical analysis so I don't even know if I could cheat by getting my fabricator to figure that out." Bryllu shrugs, "I could toss it in a matter to energy convertor and get energy out of it, but it seems like a waste of time and effort when I get the same result by throwing some air in there."

    "And thus why you were this size now then..." Shirou observes, giving a slow, understanding nod with that. But the answer he gets for his second question... well, that actually makes him look a bit... sad. "That's... a shame, really," he tells her, outright. "Being able to taste good food is a joy in itself."

"I suppose. There's things I can experience you can't, though, so I think it evens out in the end." Bryllu doesn't sound at all bothered. "I guess maybe one day I'll figure out how to experience food and then I'll find someone to cook for me."

    "WEll, maybe if you happen to find me again when you do," Shirou says, with a warm smile sent sidelong to her way -- apparently considering it to be a case of 'when' rather than 'if', for whatever reason. "I'd be happy to cook something for you, in that case."

"Sounds good." Bryllu agrees, "I should probably let you get back to your business though, I'm sure you have duties to get back to. And I have a lot of exploring to do." She folds her crate back up. "Thank you again, and I'll make sure to find you!"

    "Duties...? I mean, I suppose--" But she's already folding that crate up, and presumably getting ready to turn to leave the red-haired boy on his own. "I'm not sure I did that much, but you're welcome? I guess you've resolved to do all that too, so--" Beat. "Wait, do you *have* a way to find me, in the first place...?"

"Check your phone." Bryllu answers, sending a request for a contact info exchange without even bothering to lift a finger, "If you agree to that, I should be able to get in touch, I think? I've been doing some research into common communications standards."

    The *ping* is heard from Shirou's pocket right as she gives that answer, and he promptly digs out the smartphone within, working his way through it... with some effort. "...Oh. I see... I think. Where I came from was roughly a decade behind here in terms of technological advancements, so I'm still kind of trying to get used to... this thing, but I think I got it..."

"Great. I'll see you later, then!" Bryllu nods, "And yeah getting used to different environments, I get it." She begins to walk away, before pausing, "And don't you dare die before I figure this out, okay?"

    "Wh-?!" Well, *that* definitely caught Shirou off-guard. It leaves him standing there, just staring after her with widened eyes. "I... will try my best...?"