RPG

Win.

"Well I have a secret .. I'm kind of an alien myself."

She almost reacted, that calm exterior wasn't just icy, it was Rick Stein chocolate cake cold.

"I'm not actually a born New Yorker, I started out in rural Wiltshire, which if you don't know, is about as far away from modern civilisations as you can. I hadn't even seen a corndog until my twentieth birthday. So yeah .. what was the question?"

He put his hand up to stop her answering.

"I think I have to be honest here, little green men, no, I don't. Technology and abilities beyond the realm of common understanding, I just don't believe in it, I know its possible."

Damn it, caught smiling again.

"You're not gonna' anal probe me are you?"

Terror gripped 'Misaki', for some reason he had expected something more organic.

"Well hey", he said, sort of addressing it like a dog and hunkering down to a squat, "Sorry if I was aloof earlier. My name isn't really Misaki."

The little thing didn't come to him so he walked over to the now couple, a little er, scared, to be honest then offered his hand.

"It's Delaney, Delaney Cyrus-Morouni, most people who know me call me Lain or Lainey. Misaki was my Father's middle name, it's just, a defense mechanism I guess". Amazingly he found himself awkwardly scratching the back of his head.

"Sorry if I'm talking over you .. that .. thing .."

Calmed down.

"He's really cool, does he say Hello?"

Totally engrossed, he couldn't stop staring at the little 'bot. Obviously he'd never seen anything like it.

"He's sort of .. human?", he was struggling here to not just forget his situation and play with the 'alien. When he did take a split second to look up Trish was surveying him pretty closely, part of his mind was engaged worrying about the fact it might try and kill him at any moment. Mentions of death squads and assassins made him uncomfortable, almost as uncomfortable as Science. In it's entirety.

It looked as though she was smiling though, I suppose she was surprised but this wasn't strange, most living things seemed to have some sort of affinity with him. In his 26 years he had failed to understand why.

"I'm confused Trish, you said that this was an Alien, but I might have a place here as a scientist? Surely this kind of thing totally precludes most of what the modern world knows as science", he smiled back, "And besides that, I don't think even I could design something that acted as organically as Mercury here."

"Sorry if I seem like I'm talking to myself", he said bashfully.

"I'm certainly interested in learning more, so what is there, some sort of entry exam?"

Blink.

"Is there anything that grows?"

He said dribbling some vinaigrette onto his nice tan overcoat which was, by then, hanging half off his left shoulder.

Delaney looked at Mercury, who stared back with imperceptible emotion. Weird little thing, he thought. At these times it's hard to even know what thoughts are your own. Still eating he walked over to look at some of the Fauna; great blue veins pumped chrysalis coloured liquids into various pores of one specimen with leaf-span of maybe a metre five. Give or take. Luscious pinks and rare blues sprouted and drew the gaze around, in all manner of ways that seemed roughly inhumane to Lain. Well, im-plant-mane maybe.

"Other than the being cooped up in here forever, I kind of like this place", he was now openly fondling the leaf tracing back thoughts of carniverous fern, "I take these guys aren't for me to take back to show and tell?"