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“Oh!” X exclaimed, stuttering as he tried to vocalize his thoughts, “it’s a coconut crab!”
“A what?” Zero spoke over the noise of their adversary moving, though not close enough to be dangerous yet.
“A coconut crab” X repeated, beginning to think Zero and Vile had no idea what he was talking about. Vile heel-turned from X to the Maverick and gave an elongated pause before a silent swivel back.
Something curled beneath their opponent, similar to a coconut crab’s underbelly plating, though it seemed an additional weapon in this case, not a protective measure.
X explained this as best he could with what additional time and air he had, the three now running towards the oncoming Maverick, but couldn’t shake the feeling that the other two were still confused.
Ah well, it doesn’t matter, X thought, firing behind Vile, allowing Zero to sever a leg in the confusion, though somewhere in the back of his mind was the video he’d seen it in and a mental note to show it to them at home.
-
“Do you think it’s weird to say ‘eat this’ when our enemies, and even some of us, don't tend to eat?”
“Don’t fucking do this to me tonight, man,” Vile said, pressing at the underside of the eye slice of his helm. It gave slightly, highlighting a half centimeter of additional metal between the helm and the softer mesh beneath.
“Yeah, you already had us this morning with that coconut crab thing,” Zero added after taking a gulp of his drink. Aside from their usual round- a glass of bourbon for Vile, a cream soda for X, and a beer for Zero, sometimes maybe two (tonight it’d be one and half, Vile and X taking turns finishing the last half), they’d ordered whatever there was to eat, compiled in a messily plated table of french fries, barbeque wings, honey-glazed chicken tenders, and onion rings.
It was all stuff they really liked, fried, fatty things, but X couldn’t help walking himself through this solitary thought process after nearly every mission, anytime they were in a restaurant or bar: the general changes they’d made to be able to taste, already having functionality for eating though all on a spectrum of it (X having both taste and digestion, Zero having taste but no way to digest it, Vile having a way to digest it but no sense of taste), if the preference for certain tastes was for a reason or at random- did that decide their appearances in the same way? Did it explain why they could only have leg adjustments of certain length? Zero being slightly taller than the other two but still smaller than Layer or Signas? And being incompatible with anything larger or smaller than that? Did that apply as well to-
“You look like you need a drink,” Zero said, tipping his glass towards X of which X took a small sip.
“What’s wrong, rethinking your career path? Wanting to be an, uh,” Vile shrugged, both confusion and nonchalance evident in where the mesh warped, the edges of the visor space also accounting for an expression change. “A crustacean-ologist?”
“Vile,” Zero coughed a laugh, “that’s absolutely not what they’re called.”
“Oh shut up, I was gonna say astacologist but that’s just crawfish,” he retorted, pressing an onion ring to where the mouth below lined up with the helm above it, the latter having no mouth space of its own despite also acting as a face.
He covered it as he ate, continuing his joke-spat with Zero (“How do you know the word for that then?” Zero laughed, beginning to eat the fries. “Oh, so I can’t just know things?” Vile returned) and as curious as X was to see how consumption of solids worked with the mesh, he wasn’t going to ask now.
He turned a wing in its sauce and stuck a few fries to where it congealed thickest. He could ask these questions later. In finding the answers to small questions, he’d find the answers to larger ones. It was doable. He’d be okay.
Both Vile and Zero pointed at his face after a bite of food, sauce on the tip of his nose.