thepurpleone | Cyberformed [] Inbox

"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.

She takes her time to look at each plant, listening as he goes on about the origin and other information about each one. She wasn't as invested in various flora as he had seemed to be, but she had also been raised to honor the trees she had grown up amongst and that respect lingered for all plants in a way.

"You should see the trees back on Belecaat," she said when she found a pause in his informational lecture.

"They were tall enough to breech the clouds and their bark was blue and swirled light water and veins."

She held out her arms, where blue tattoos and scarred skin swirled and looped in beautiful tandem across her skin. "To respect the local culture, we would scar and tattoo ourselves to match the trees, to follow the traditions and show respect to the planet."

Info-dumping about tech and his latest projects is one thing, but it's clear there's a different sort of energy and a genuine love and appreciation for plants as Donnie happily explains what he's learned and what he likes about each of the specimens he shows her. While he may not really be one for forests, he still appreciates trees enough to ooh at the description of the ones Anila speaks of from her home.

"Blue? Oh...that sounds amazing. I bet something like that'd even make Leo appreciate a tree," he says with a laugh.

He looks at her arms, brows lifting. The scars look like they might've been painful, but it's such a strangely balanced design between them and the tattoos that decorate her arms. "Whoa... And that's your homeworld?"

Anila might have had a little bit of trouble paying attention at some points, but she did her best. She never had the best for focus for the academic type stuff, which definitely got her in some trouble growing up. But it was important to Donnie, so she gave it an honest effort.

"Yeah, Belecaat," she answered. "Not where I was born, but it was where I was raised since I was a baby. In the secret Jedi temple there. I haven't seen it in some years though." Her voice goes a little sad and she twists her arm a bit to trace the lines as the swirl up her skin, disappearing into her shirt but poking out in the exposed skin of her neck and tracing up onto her jaw and cheeks.

And now she wasn't sure she ever would see her home planet again.

"Leo likes blue then?" she asks, pushing on, adding some levity back into her tone.

"Oh..." Donnie isn't quite sure where to go with that one. He's not really familiar with Jedi and their 'baby-snatching' ways to figure this as anything unusual otherwise.

He tilts his head, not really catching that note of sadness, or rather not connecting it as such, but he studies the swirling lines. His arms had hurt bad enough getting burned up as they got eaten by magic that he can't imagine sitting through such sessions for all those tattoos and other markings.

"Yeah, blue's his thing. Like orange is Mikey's, and Raph's is red, and mine is purple."

"I was kind of guessing as much, you really stick with that color code, the three--four of you." It was a shame she never got to meet that fourth brother, he seemed like such a gem. She had met the other two, briefly, in passing, and she had heard bits from Donnie over the year or so they had known each other.

"I was wondering if it was just a weird coincidence whenever I saw you," she gives a little laugh. "Better than the dull browns the Jedi just love." She rolls her eyes, but she's still grinning.

"Our dad basically calls us by colors more than our actual names so...yeah." Like this is a normal thing. Donnie at least doesn't seem to find anything wrong with it. He may just have issues with when Splinter calls one someone else's color coding.

He blinks, snout wrinkling. "Brown? I mean, dad wears browns but...is that a dress code or something for you guys?"

She kind of stares at him for a moment. She shouldn't judge, maybe that was just a part of this mutant turtle culture that she didn't know about. She knew there were things about Jedi culture that people gave odd looks too, or disagreed with. (Even she did, at times).

"Yeah, basically. It's not absolutely required but most people wear the traditional stuff, the robes and all that. They were comfortable, recognizable and easy to move in. We weren't to invest too much in appearance beyond just looking presentable, so plain tans and browns were the go to. I wore them as a kid, but like less layers, when I can."

The look on Donnie's face makes it clear just how much he cares for that color choice, but then that's probably no surprise.

"So you're...space monks."

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