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[He reaches over and picks one up, turning it over in his fingers to look at the image of the woman. She looks sad...]

This is currency from your home?

[He pulls four of the coins towards himself and pushes the other four towards Manabu, and if there's a spare one then it'll get set to one side, in an implicit agreement that they'll do fine for betting with.]

Aa, yeah. Well-- [he puts his share in a little stack.] More like, from most everywhere. It's like a universal currency, so you don't have to keep changing money planet to planet. Most places that want outsiders will take it. And if not...[he shrugs.] At least the stations will, so if you have a few, you at least won't starve until your next train.

Who's she?

[He nods down towards the woman embossed on the coin. She must be someone important if she's on the currency for multiple different worlds, after all.

He starts to shuffle, slowly at first and then faster as the muscle memory catches up with him. His left hand is bulkier than his right, but it doesn't seem any less dextrous even for more delicate movements like card shuffling.]

Huh? [Manabu blinks, then looks down at the coins.] Oh, uh...That's Queen Millennia. She's not actually queen or anything -- I mean, not right now. She lived like a couple hundred years ago. Old history stuff, back when people were mostly still on Earth.

There was a Queen of Earth? How'd that happen?

[The Earth he knows would never be so united as to march under one banner. Each country is far too territorial and proud for that.]

[he shakes his head.]

Not Earth. A planet called La-Matel. Queen Millennia was an La-Matellian who was sent to Earth as an operative, to prep it for culling. But she grew to love the planet and its people, and instead of working to help destroy it, she fought to find a way that both planets could co-exist.

The real details don't get talked about much, but she's kind of like...um. Kind of folk hero-ish? Like the kind of story you tell kids when they're young, with lessons about overcoming differences and teamwork and stuff. That sort of thing.

And like a lot of fairy tales, the I heard the real thing winds up being sadder than the story that gets told.

[Huh.

That makes a lot more sense, though it makes his skin crawl to think of anyone coming to 'cull' the Earth. Obviously it had never happened, not since there were humans now in every part of the galaxy, but it's still an unnerving thought.

He deals five cards to each of them almost absently.]

Will you tell me the story?

[Since he's sort of decided that Manabu is going to be someone he keeps around, he may as well try and learn more about him.]

Mm, let me think... [and also squint at the hand. what combos were good again?

...none of these, probably. ah, well. nothing really to lose, so he doesn't sweat it.

Millennia...man, it's been a while since he thought about that story, back when his mom told it to him and Mamoru.]

I'm...pretty sure the parts about her being sent to Earth in secret and being raised by humans is right. It's the stuff afterward that kind of gets shrugged off.

But, yeah. La-Matel turns out to be a planet with this really weird orbit structure, where once every thousand years -- the millennia part -- it swings back into the Earth's solar system, behind uh... [he squints.] The tiny one. One of the orbits on the far end. I forget. And anyway, for some reason, the next orbital swing was going to send the planet smacking right into Earth. The La-Matellians sent a bunch of their kind to Earth to hide there and grab a bunch of humans for servants before impact, then use them to, like, cultivate some other planet the La-Matellians could own? Something like that. Aliens seemed to do that a lot to Earth...

[he looks up briefly in thought.]

Mm, so the part after the whole...deciding to help save both planets instead of destroying the Earth is what I think gets cut out. About how Queen Milennia left with La-Matel, and it became a place of machines. Its people gave up flesh and blood to live on as robotics, kind of like how humans who go out to Heavy Melder do.

[he looks back toward James.]

I think...a lot of people who grew up hating machine men got hung up on that more than, like, my Mom or whoever else just liked the parts about teamwork and stuff. Even now, people leave Earth hoping to get new bodies, and sometimes folks give them a hard time for it.

[It's an interesting story, and he can definitely see how it has the elements of a fairy tale about it, but then it takes a sharp turn sideways in a way that he's not expecting. Humans going to give their bodies up for new ones? Robotic ones?

What the hell?!

The cards bend slightly as his metal fingers tighten.]

Why would they do that?

[No, that's not exactly the right question. He can maybe understand why some people might want a new body, if theirs is defective or wracked with pain. It's probably just his own issues with humanity and being altered peeking through.]

[the curling of James' fingers go unheeded, especially since his expression remains in its pretty typical scowl. Manabu's not too terribly cognizant of human-robotic issues, being of a hale and whole body, and his android crewmates looking especially human compared to, say, some of the railway conductors with their metallic faces with odd configurations.

so when he answers, it's with a shrug and a dubious look.]

I guess to be maybe more durable. I mean, metal bodies won't wear down as fast as regular humans will, even with the best medicine around. Or they want to live somewhere humans really can't. There's some really extreme places out in the universe, after all.

[on his turn, he sets a card down, and Elle doesn't even pretend she knows how to play poker.]

Prosthetics aside, I think a lot of people just...really want to live as long as they can, no matter what. Even if it means looking different.

[Would Steve have chosen a mechanical body over his own asthmatic form if it had been an option? Possibly a stupid question, the idiot had chosen to have a dangerous medical procedure to put him in a new body, that's not so different than taking a wholly mechanised one.

Still, the implications of that being possible make him uncomfortable in ways that he would struggle to articulate.]

...is that why you weren't surprised to see my arm?

[It sounds like people with metal parts are a lot more common where Manabu comes from.

He lays down two of his own cards, and then deals one more to Manabu and two to himself, to replace the ones put down. Then, after a momentary glance, he pushes one of his coins to the centre of the table.]

Mm? [blink.] Aa, I guess so. I mean, knowing what I know now...it's not very common where you're from, is it? [and perhaps part of making him a vehicle for Nazis to do their thing.

his attention drifts to the table, then to his cards, then...elsewhere.]

Someone I met early on when I joined the SDF...he'd changed a lot of himself, I think. I don't know if he did it by choice, but he'd even augmented his metal arm to form as a kind of mini-cannon.

[he slides one coin over to meet the two already there.]

Not everyone gets a say in what happens to them.

This is the only one where I'm from.

[As far as he's aware, no other prosthetics even come close, but that's because most other people developing prosthetics are interested in things like morality and ethics. It's so strange to think of a place where they're commonplace, where people can make an arm even more of a weapon by customising it so drastically.]

We don't have that kind of technology. I guess-- maybe we'll get it in the future though, huh, if you're any indication?

Maybe. I mean, if you already got aliens knocking on the door, you might be there sooner than you think! [necessity and strife tends to breed progress, after all. not that strife is a good thing to look forward to or anything.

on a brighter note:] But that'd mean you could maybe get to see space for yourself! That'd be pretty lucky.

[His lips curl up a little into a smile, though he doesn't really realise it. There's more of Bucky in him than he knows, and the man who used to buy dime store science fiction novels would love to go into space some day. His accent changes ever so slightly too, more of a Brooklyn twang threading through his word.]

Wouldn't that be something? You know, they hadn't even put a man on the moon when I was a kid.

Ehh? Really? [the notable shift in James' demeanor is unnoticed at first, since Manabu's invested in the conversation's contents.] So it's just everyone stuck on Earth together? [no wonder there's so many wars.] What about planes then? Does anyone fly at all?

Sure.

[It's so strange to be openly discussing these things, but Manabu knows enough about his past now that he can talk about the changes made in seventy years.]

There were planes even back in the war, but they weren't anything like what exists now. And they sent men to the moon while I was--- gone. I don't think anyone's been to space since, though.

[he lets out another drawn-out, soft sound of wonder. he can't really imagine his life without the chance to get to space; even when he'd been stuck on Tabito growing up, he always watched the trains leave, always knew there was a chance. to not have it seems...really strange to him. limiting.]

Man. [his mouth quirks.] If you had to wind up in old memories anyway, I kinda wish it was a more fun space one... [and not...y'know.

anyway. he puts a card aside and draws another, barely thinking on strategy or the game at large at all; it's just a thing to do with his hands at this juncture.]

It's really something out there. Impossibly big and empty...but also kinda...full? In a way. If that makes sense.

[He gives a noncommittal shrug. He half understands, knows how somewhere can feel both impossibly empty and yet full at the same time, but he has a feeling that it's nothing compared to the vastness of space. It's something he can't truly comprehend, and his small time on the train with Manabu hadn't exactly given him much more insight into it.]

I think I'd like to see it someday.

[He doesn't often express preferences or desires for the future, but space-- that would be something else. He doesn't take another card of his own, just thinks for a moment before laying them out - two pair, Jacks over threes.]

I don't think I will, but it'd still be nice.

Considering where we're stuck, I don't know what the odds of anything are right now...

[he almost doesn't want to push his luck; who knows if they'll wind up somewhere worse before something better crops up?

anyway, cards. crap, uh...well. he's got a couple tens and...nothing else? he makes a face, dropping them.] Told you I'm not good at this one. [take your coins, then!]

[As he pulls the coins in towards him, that small smile becomes a full cocky grin, showing some of the man he used to be peeking through.]

And here I thought you were a military man.

[What kind of soldier doesn't play poker?]

[Manabu goes red.] I, I am! Card games aren't, like, part of basic training, you know...!

[of course, the indignation passes quickly, as any jab like that does, and Manabu lets himself laugh a little before realizing something rather key here.]

Uaa, you're having fun, aren't you? [he points.] Even if it's just making fun of me, that still counts. [smiling:] They don't teach that in basic, either!

[There's a moment where the smile fades completely, as if he's just realised that he is having fun and he needs to hide it behind a blank neutrality, but it comes back again after just a few seconds, albeit a bit smaller and more tentative than before.]

I guess I am.

[And isn't that something.]

[it is something!! wow, a good thing in this hellscape, who'da thunk it? Manabu's impressed to his own degree -- of course, he can't understand the whole scope of what makes James the man he is now, and certainly doesn't know the value of a peaceful moment and letting it happen in his regard, but there is an unconscious resonance that comes when two people in a harrowing situation can find some relief. the tangled wire of tension around people's throats and hearts eases up a bit, makes breathing easier. makes trust easier.

not that Manabu needs much help with trusting folks, but, maybe in James' case...]

Lemme guess: Don't tell anyone, or else?

[Luckily, the allusion to him being dangerous doesn't make the smile disappear again, it just makes a hollow sounding huff escape his lips.]

Pretty sure there's nobody would be interested even if you did tell them.

[Except Steve, and he highly doubts that Manabu is going running to Steve to tattle about Bucky making friends and smiling.]

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