thepurpleone | Cyberformed [] Inbox

Was it so palpable? Then again, what did Donnie know about Jedi and emotional energy?

He would however be remiss to admit that things had been a bit heavy of late. It didn't help that things were eating at all three of the turtles, and while Donnie hoped that the other two were weathering through things better than he had been, catching Mikey the other day in his frustrated state had spiked his own concerns.

It was hard, working through it, the negative funk. But Donnie was someone who needed to keep busy, and he found the ability to do so, to concentrate and put in some effort to something fruitful. It'd hit in bursts and if he was lucky he'd be able to get through to a suitable stopping point before whatever reserves he'd scraped the motivation from had run themselves empty again.

Currently was one of those 'empty' moments. He hadn't bothered going back up, sprawled there on the beanbag he purposely left close to his work area for such times. He'd pulled his hood up over his face, headphones thumping some techno as he scrolled aimlessly on his phone, not really registering much of the content that passed along the screen. He lifted his head as a window came up on his computer, notifying him of someone at the door, and with a few taps to turn down his music and another to call up the cameras outside, he blinked, surprised at the unexpected guest.

When had he even last spoken to Anila? It was nice to see she was doing okay at least. He debated briefly before tapping another button on his bracer, allowing for the doorway to slide open wide enough to allow organic admittance. Then he flopped back against his beanbag again.

Anila realized, as the door slid open, that she probably should have come up with a reason for her visit. Sure, it wasn't unreasonable to stop by and say hi to a friend, but she wasn't sure if they were really close enough to say that was reasonable and when was the last time they had really talked? It had been... a really long while, that was for certain.

She couldn't exactly say what had really drawn her to the room. Well, she could, but most didn't appreciate it and she was certain Donnie wasn't an outlier in this situation. Not to mention the disturbance she was feeling was not the type that you addressed directly.

Slipping into the room, the Jedi doesn't take long to find the young turtle, even as tucked as he was into his hoodie and his bean bag.

She stepped over to him and crossed her arms, looking down at him for a second before finally sitting down next to him, casual and a little slouched.

"Seems like you've had a tough time." Might as well acknowledge it. Note it and move on. "I was wondering... about earth food. I was kind of looking into it, and do you know about... pizza?" She pronounced it funny, like Pihz-sta.

Donnie stared up at her expectantly, blinking when she ended up just inviting herself to take a seat there. Should...he offer another beanbag? Move?

Her observation made him snort a brief laugh. Understatement of the year. Internally he braced himself for what usually came after. It was even more baffling when it didn't come.

Again Donnie blinked.

"...you mean pizza." The question came out a bit flat, but it was halfway between that and a correction. "It's pretty much a staple for my family."

She sat up a little, her eyes lighting up.

"Pizza," she tried again, sounding much closer to his pronunciation, though there was still a touch of that slight alien accent to it. "You do know it then! What is it like?"

She was clearly very eager about this.

The turtle looked at her, puzzled. Was there a catch? There had to be a catch. He squinted, but so far as he could tell, Anila looked genuinely pleased and curious about this foreign dish.

"You don't know? They serve it at the bar- I made a whole machine and everything."

Slowly Donnie shifted to try sitting himself up some. He had to elbow the beanbag behind him a bit to get the stuffing to settle just right.

"It's basically a flat bread base, slathered with tomato sauce and sprinkled with cheese, topped with various complimenting ingredients such as pepperoni, mushrooms- various vegetables as one pleases, really. You can customize it to your liking. And it's slid into an oven and baked, and when it comes out, the cheese has melted and the bread's got a nice crisp crust depending on how it's made..."

She lights up even further, leaning towards him excitedly.

"They do? I guess I need to investigate the menu a bit further, I tend to just go with what is familiar, but there is so much there now."

Anila tilts her head thoughtfully. "That sounds really fancy, but really creative! I think I had something similar in my travels, but I can't remember where. Is that your favorite food? What sort of toppings do you like?"

"Understandable. Which is why we usually stick with pizza," Donnie said, grinning a bit. He tapped at his phone to sweep through his photo gallery- there had to be some shots of pizza in here...

"Nah, it's not really that fancy. But yes, definitely one of my top go-to options for a meal. It's even got all the important food groups, all in one. Ah-hah, here we go. This is us eating a classic- pepperoni," he said as he pulled up the picture of him and his brothers stuffing their faces.

"Pepperoni and cheese is always good. Dress it up with some mushrooms, olives on occasion- I love a bit of truffle, it just kicks the flavors up some."

She nods, genuinely looking like she's interested and following. And she is. Food is one of her favorite topics. It was already so different between planets in her galaxy. But now there is a whole extra layer! It's fascinating the different ways different cultures prepare food.

Unfolding herself from the floor, she leans into look.

"Oh, so you eat it with your hands! It's a very creative food. At what point does it not count as a pizza, is there anything you can't put on it?"

"Ha ha ha- oh, there's arguments and potential insult depending on who you ask. People back home take pizza very seriously," Donnie explained.

"Ever since being exposed to the offerings of yōkai pizzarias, I can't say that there's much limitation in that regard. It is very much personal preference. I for one cannot condone ham and pineapple coexisting on the same pie."

"Interesting!" she says, one-hundred precent serious.

She's catching on to all of this, even with the strange terminology. Some things don't quite translate without deeper explanation, though most of it is pretty easy with context clues.

"What are your favorites then? Do your brothers like the ham and pineapple combo?"

"Also known as...uuugh, Hawaiian," Donnie clarifies for her benefit. "They do not have as refined tastes as I."

Says the guy who happily ate the Super Creepy Supreme at Run-of-the-Mill Pizza.

"Vegetable is pretty good. Oh, but if truffle is an option, I highly recommend. It makes many things quite tasty."

"Hawaiian," she said, trying the word out for herself. "I will keep it in mind."

She settles back again, crossing her legs once more as she taps her fingers to her palm thoughtfully. "Back on Belecaat, my home planet, meat was more of a delicacy, but we had these fruits. Raski. Those were my favorite. Oh! And these root plants, Jabara, you could eat the leaves, but personally, I don't think they tasted very good, but the roots tasted a lot like the rodents that would get used in the fertilizer."

"Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm as carnivorous as the next turtle. But I think I'm more willing to ingest plant-based items than my brothers."

Donnie flops back on his beanbag, brow arching as Anila speaks of things from back home.

"Err... Is....that a good thing or a bad thing?"

Her head tilts, her fingers continuing to tap an uneven rhythm into her palm. "Well, I think it depends on who you ask. I think it tasted pretty good, and made a good meat substitute at times, if for flavor more than similar nutrients, I think there was something about how it took on the flavors of the soil so you could kind of manipulate it. Ours just happened to taste like tarnowak. I had a friend though that hated it." She grinned at him.

"Did you do most of the cooking then? You seem to be the expert in the field, especially when it comes to pizza."

That still doesn't really explain what it tastes like, but Donnie can at least see the appeal of having a naturally-flavored, organically grown meat supplement.

"Ha ha ha- no. Cooking is not my personal expertise. I can handle making a sandwich and I know how to make a grilled cheese without having to break out a skillet, but otherwise cooking is more my brother's thing."

"Oh, really? You sounded like you knew so much about it. Though, I guess you can know a lot about a thing but not actually be all that good at it." Just like herself and her Jedi training.

She leans back on her hands. "What's something you are good at then, if not cooking?" It wasn't a judgmental question, just something of genuine curiosity.

"Ouch, that sounds kind of harsh..." Donnie winces. "Knowing about pizza and knowing how to make pizza are two entirely different things!"

He blinks at the question. Given the sparse interactions they've had, he supposes she wouldn't really know too much about what he does.

"Tech," he says. "Computers. Fabrication of machinery." He throws his arms outward in a loose gesture. "Everything in here has been programmed, retrofitted or repurposed by yours truly."

"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean for that to come out so rude."

She looks around the room as if it's the first time she's really seen it.

"All of this was you? That's impressive! You're still pretty young, aren't you? For your species? Is this a turtle thing, or a you thing?" Some species tended to be more inclined with this sort of thing, maybe this was just natural for his species and not really something that is all that impressive. Even if pizza making apparently wasn't. Though, the way he announced it certainly indicated that it was something to be impressed by, and it was definitely far more than anything she could do herself.

The words spark a warmth in his chest that he clings to, like a rare treat or a treasure. It eases some of the heaviness from him, if just a little.

"I'm sixteen," Donnie replies, pushing himself up to sit again, still beaming at the praise. "Very much a me thing. I've been taking things apart to figure out how to put them together again since I was little. So I've been keeping everything running, back home. And since we couldn't really just buy things most of the time, a lot of it's scavenged. I still scavenge a lot from the junk room here. Old habit."

There is a shift, something she can feel through the Force, a swell of warmth coming from Donnie. She smiles a little. It's nice to have something cutting through all of that gloom. Sometimes her training did come in to help. Though it was hard to tell what was training and Jedi philosophies and what was just her. Maybe they were one in the same. Maybe it didn't actually matter.

"That sounds like a lot of responsibility, especially for someone so young." She says it not like a mother, or a concerned adult but as something full of thought, someone who maybe related a little. She wasn't sure the age range of his species but it didn't seem all that far off from her own and even if she didn't know where sixteen landed on that scale, it was clear he was a kid. Her life has been rather secluded as well, but nothing like what his sounded like. Still, there were similarities there. "I hope you had help at least. What kind of scrap do you use? If I find anything, I can bring it to you."

Donnie shrugs. "Someone had to do them." He seemed to be the only one to think about it, but then such responsibilities hadn't seemed like a bit task, not when he enjoyed building and fixing things, figuring out how they worked. He'd taken pride in being able to do something for his family, to keep them comfortable and safe.

Sure, it'd be nice to get a thank you more often than hear that something else was broken again, but he knew he was needed. He wouldn't be asked to fix something if they didn't figure he couldn't.

"Sometimes. Mikey'll come with me to scavenge things at the junkyard, or I can ask Raph if I need something heavy moved... Otherwise they don't have much of the same interests. -but making them do anything technical would probably just give me more of a headache so it's...it's fine."

He holds back a sigh, pushing away an old ache, one he's gotten used to mostly ignoring. The smile that follows isn't completely forced. It's rare he gets any offers like that, and he's always pleasantly surprised for it.

"That'd be great! I'll make use of any tech or machinery parts and metal. ...although if you find anything that'd look like it'd make a good planter, I'd be open to those too."

Anila leans back on her hands and sighs. "Someone always does, don't they?" she says. She's the last one to say anything about children and grand responsibilities. She's a Jedi. More or less.

"Even if they don't have the same interests though, that just makes things more... balanced, doesn't it? Gives you fresh ideas. Alternate perspectives. That sort of stuff is good for a kid like you. Well, anyone really." Especially when you grew up secluded like they had.

She smiles back at him. "I'll keep an eye out for sure. What plants you got?"

"I guess? I mean, it's never boring, if that's what you mean."

Certainly he wished that now and then they'd see things from his perspective, so that maybe they'd appreciate his own a bit more. That hadn't necessarily worked when he'd tried to make them smarter though. Maybe there really is only room in the world for one Donnie, or at least he'd rather there only be, because otherwise they wouldn't need him.

"I can show you," he says, pushing to his feet. Plants are another passion of his, one even less understood by his brothers, although Mikey's always the rare exception, interested and willing to help when he could.

He starts towards the back of the large space, and even before they reach the back wall Anila can see the alien array of Cybertronian blooms that have been cultivated to grow along the vines that creep up from the contained plot at the bottom and between planters installed against the wall. There's a single metallic flower that has its own place in a pot on a stand nearby.

Anila hums. He was right about that at least, things were rarely boring when there were so many different types in the universe.

She hops up to her feet in a fluid motion and pulls a pack of cookies from a pouch at her hip.

Opening the bag, she steps over to look at the metallic flower on the stand a little more closely.

"This is quite impressive, you take care of this by yourself? You must stay pretty busy." She takes a cookie and pops it in her mouth before holding the bag out to him and offering him to take a couple. "Do you know what all of these are?" She asks around her mouthful of pastry.

"Oh, that one's special. Quintessa made it. It's pretty amazing- I'm not sure it actually counts as a plant but it's still pretty, and it more or less follows the basic patterns of a flower's blooming cycle."

Donnie's brows lift at the offer of cookies, and he reaches into the bag to take some to nibble on. He's probably missed another meal but that's hardly anything new.

"I got these from Titan Eco Memoria, during the first winter ball I went to. I've been growing them for about two years now. They're types of flora from Cybertron," he explains, wasting no time in pointing out the different ones and naming them. It's clear he loves plants, his spirit lifting, a genuine smile on his face as he goes on.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject