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As long as Ninraa can remember, which is surprisingly a lot considering the fact he remembers back to his wiggler days, he's been obsessed with another alien boy. And it didn't even make sense to him. Unlike robotics and mathematics, there was no rhyme or reason to it. No circuits to connect. No numbers to add up. Ssssure, the guy was one of the very first beings he remembers ever seeing, but he also saw his friend Scorch, and having a cr.. an obsession with that guy.. well, the mere thought of it disgusts him. Which sucks, cause he does have those kinds of thoughts about him as well, but it's not because he wants to. It's because of the voices..
In any case, the reason Ninraa was currently mulling on the thought of that guy again, was because he recently met another alien. A human. Nora, was her name. A weird name, but when it came to being weird.. heh, you could say he was an expert.. anyway, she is a friend of him. That guy.. and that guy looks exactly the same as he did back then, so many sweeps ago, Ninraa discovered, when that human Nora brought him to that guy's dream room. To Nick's dream room.
Blonde mullet, glasses, oddly pale in an alien way.. he looked exactly how you remembered him—a complete loser. Except they weren't in a lab and Ninraa wasn't a wiggler anymore. No. They were about the same age now.. and.. Ninraa knows he is probably the only one here who remember that time in the lab in the first place, but it felt special somehow. Like destiny. Heh heh he.. probably not. There was definitely some game reason to this.
Still. Him and the human girl, who Ninraa found out he didn't mind hanging out with, even when she kept pressuring him to keep making questionable decisions, spent time in that room for a comfortable, yet, an uncomfortable amount of time. Nick's sleeping form was so chillingly peaceful, it unnerved Ninraa to the point he had to distract himself by getting his fronds on about anything that could take his attention away. Without his glasses, Nick looked slightly different from what he remembered, like a barrier was missing between them—their faces. It almost felt casual. Intimate. Like they were all friends. Like this was the usual and they were just having a sleepover. And so he was allowed in such a private place and could watch someone sleep. And it was completely normal and not an invasion of privacy at all... this was exactly why he was so nervous to come here, but that human girl was just too convincing and forward to go against.
But it's not like he ever cared for that with even his actual friends.. privacy, that is.. heh heh he.. so maybe he was just confused and nervous in this new place, so unnervingly bright and.. bright.
He didn't even spend time like this with his friends actually.. too creeped out by his presence, annoyed by his words, pissed at him for his addiction to sopor–the only thing that made him feel almost okay—would his moirail perhaps care to hear about all of this? Heh. Forget it. He was too emotional to begin with, his fronds full with his own tears and worries. His leader duties. His band. His own obsession with well-built statues, that he swears he only enjoys in the most innocent of ways.
Ninraa helped Nora get into Nick's computer, hack her own (?) account, trolled her friend, read Nick's diary, and found a figure that was a pleasant color to him: teal. He took quite a liking to it. She looked a little robot like and he liked those.. and she was teal.. so he could almost pretend it was a figure of him. Him as a robot.
And then he woke up. Nick did. Opened his blue ganderbulbs, that were just a few shades off from Ninraa's own, all groggy and confused. And he didn't like Ninraa. At all. The same Ninraa who was creeping as close to his face as possible and immediately telling the other about how'd they'd already met in a goo lab before, teeth clattering with unrestrained laughter from the pure giddiness of it all, words slurring together and morphing into one another. Perhaps.. a little too excitedly, with even his fronds trembling uncontrollably. But if Ninraa were to say it was shocking, that it didn't go over very well, it would be a lie. He doesn't really think even his friends like him all that much. Nor his moirail. His lusus that tries to kill him on the daily. Or even himself for that matter. But still.. why did it sting? He knew how it would go, even leaned into his unpleasant quirks to creep him out, to piss him off, yet.. It was fun, like it always was, but.. why did he do that? Ruin the reunion he'd looked forward to literally his entire life? Because he's known about the game for about as long as he remembers existing and acting like he didn't care about all that until now, so close to it happening, felt easier than confronting it? Lol nah.
Nevertheless his face didn't crack and he's certain the other two were none the wiser, with Nora too busy to even pay attention to him and Nick too mad. So he refocused all of his attention on the random Meeeeku figure he'd found and slobbered all over it, to Nick's utter dismay. Heh, he even fools himself sometimes. For someone who didn't know how to lie all too well, Ninraa has to admit.. he was the best liar around.
He blames the unnerving feeling, overwhelming feelingssss, to the foreign fronds. Completely fleshy.. natural. They'd bothered him as soon as he'd fallen asleep and found himself in Prospit. Organic and wrong. Not the prosthetics he'd made. They weren't his. Weren't him. And he felt it even now as he fought with Nick and he could feel him. A bit too vividly.. skin to skin.
As he'd thought. Being a robot would be ssssso much better. Maybe one day he'll replace all of himself with cold metal. Maybe then it'll all stop feeling weird. So much. Too much.
Ninraa left Nick and Nora as suddenly as he'd appeared there, by waking up. And he continued on to pretend like he didn't leave that dream behind with longing frustration. Because he doesn't care. And he's sure it's nothing he'll have to unpack later. It was all nothing of note. It was a nothing obsession.