Chapter Text
"Did you just break your bones!?" Vk shouted from down the hall.
Regi shot to his feet and out of his office before he had time to fully process what he had just heard. Standing just a few yards from his office door were Vk and Dante. Vk looked distressed, her elongated nose shrunken and pulled closer to her face.
Dante turned to face Regi, his disconcerting smile spreading across his face, displaying square blunt teeth. His blue eyes crinkled in the corners in an appealing way and his brown hair looked unfairly soft under the unflattering bright white light of the hallway.
"Regi!" Dante greeted him with enthusiasm. Regi approached him, already scanning for injuries.
"Regi, Dante just broke his bones as a threat display," Vk quickly informed him.
"I did not!" Dante protested.
"I heard them snap!" she said just below a shout.
"Dante, are you injured?" Regi asked, his voice as tight as his muscles, tension knotting across his shoulders and stomach. His body was already bracing itself to rush Dante to the med bay.
"No, I'm fine," Dante said with a shrug. He held up his odd asymmetrical hands and flexed the knobby joints in front of Regi's face. "I just cracked my knuckles. I was making a joke," he said with a grimace.
"And cracking is different than breaking?" Regi asked slowly, his face wrinkling in confusion. It wouldn't be the first time that a human word translated incorrectly, but the translator seemed to think the two words meant about the same thing.
"Er," Dante grumbled, frowning and scratching at his head in a way usually indicative that he was working through a complicated issue. "No, they mostly mean the same thing. But, I'm not *damaging* my knuckles," he sighed, a sound that Regi had learned indicated frustration or exhaustion. "This is hard to explain."
"Are there mechanisms in your hands that allow you to make those noises?" Vk asked curiously. "Is there an evolutionary purpose to them?"
"No, not really," Dante said with a frown. "When I was a kid, my ma-maw used to tell me I would give myself arthritis, cracking my knuckles. Back then they thought the noise was made by popping the knuckle bones against each other." Both Regi and Vk winced in sympathy at the thought of popping joints out of place. "But, I think there was some article or something that came out before I left Earth that said you're actually popping bubbles in your joints or something."
"Bubbles?" Vk asked faintly, staring at Dante's hands with ill concealed wonder.
"There are bubbles in your joints?" Regi asked, unable to resist looking at Dante's hands himself.
"Uh, well, actually," Dante held his own hands out in front of him, frowning down at them. "I don't know. I didn't actually read the article. I just saw it when I was scrolling through my news feed."
At that, all three looked at Dante's hands and wondered at the mysteries they contained.
"I guess that's something we can ask about, once we find Earth," Vk said slowly.
"Hm," Regi grunted noncommittally.
"Definitely," Dante said with a final frown at his hands before he stuffed them in his pockets.