Ben Skywalker (beingajedi) wrote in parabolical, @ 2009-05-05 18:37:00 |
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Entry tags: | ben skywalker, mirta gev |
Who: Ben Skywalker & open
Where: downtown ish
When: late afternoon
What: walkin' "home". (Also a little tl;dr for wtf the kid's been doing the past couple weeks.)
Status: In Progress
Rating: tbd (probably pg?)
The best way to learn about a new culture was to observe it in action, and since realising he was stuck here for at least the foreseeable future, Ben had done exactly that. (It also got him away from the Welcome Center -- while it was preferable to staying at the Hyperion, he was still in no rush to be around Alema Rar more than was necessary.) On the surface, things were wildly different from home, especially Coruscant: humans were the only species he saw out and about in daylight hours, though he had noticed a few other beings in the shadows and after dark; technology was so vastly different that "primitive" wasn't even the right word, really, but it suited in most cases; and the lack of space travel meant a planet that had to get its fix of war between individual countries, a planet where land borders actually meant something.
Once he got used to the differences, however, he started to take note of the similarities. The big ones being? The love of paperwork and bureaucracy by the government (though it was still strange that this was a national government, not a galactic one), and the criminal underworld's methods of bypassing such things. Just like Coruscant. The different areas of this city, Los Angeles, where different types of people hung out and different things went down, just like Coruscant. And the way everyone seemed to assume teenagers were up to no good ... just like Coruscant.
It was just a few days ago that he'd eventually found a job, in a part of the city where he figured there was a happy (well, not unhappy) medium between "criminal enough not to look too closely at forged identification" and "honest enough not to try to shoot a newcomer on sight". Not that he couldn't deal with the latter, but it would be pretty tiring to have to fight and/or mind-trick everyone 24/7. Bad enough that he had to lie about being sixteen. Just to stack shelves in a kriffing grocery store -- but hey, it was cash in hand every week.
He was walking through the streets on a meandering route back to the Center, dressed in Earth civvies; he'd also acquired a small shoulder bag, since he couldn't carry his lightsaber on his belt and expect not to be noticed at the same time. He paused at a corner to drink from his soda bottle -- and just to watch the other pedestrians for a moment. Always something to learn.