Terra - Ottawantreal

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A huge North American city, built in a mishmash of styles from many eras of architecture. the spaceport is bustling and filled with cruise ships, racing yachts, and transport craft. It's full of shops, clubs, gardens, and tourist attractions.

The weather is currently cool but sunny.

Skye followed Moriah, staying close to her and Silence.

"Oh no, we don't mind at all. Maybe you should join our team." One lady winked at Matt. "You don't look like you're from Terra," she added.

A volunteer came over to the group to start explaining the rules. Not that there were many rules, mostly just have one person write down answers for the group and shout the answers after each round of they were called on, don't check your phones, and don't be a sore loser.

Ellie leaned against Shane. "Man, this is a big production. Do you think the old people will be mad when we win?"

Matt laughed. "Man i'd love to, but my friends need me to get half the answers wrong." He shrugged. "Nah, i'm not terran. It's kinda hard to explain." Mostly he just didn't want to admit he was half Satare, or explain what the hell Kevali were.

---

Silence found a seat and listened to the rules, nodding.

"You look half elf, with those ears." The old lady nodded, "Oh yes, I suppose we can't deprive your friends of you." Another wink.

Matt laughed. "Elf?" He self consciously reached up to touch his pointed ears. "no such thing right?"

"There are a lot of very unusual creatures in this universe dearie," one of the old ladies said with a cackle. "Why, I even saw one once. My goodness, was he handsome."

The other ladies looked envious.

"So you're not an elf?" She asked, maybe a little disappointed.

Matt shrugged. "probably not, sorry."

"Ah well," the lady said. "He's still handsome," she stage whispered to the others at the table.

~~
The next round of trivia started, with the announcer reading off questions for the teams to write down.

"Wait, who's writing?" Ellie squeaked.

Shane grabbed the paper and pen "I will." He did want it to be legible after all.

Matt chuckled. "later ladies!" He winked at them and wheeled back to his friends.

The old ladies giggled and waved as Matt left.

"Yay Shane! I hope you have good handwriting," Ellie said.

The host started the trivia round. "What were the three North American countries at the start of this millennium?"

Ellie looked unsure. "Uhhh... What are Japan, Greece, and Canada!" They were the ones that came to mind anyway. And she was totally doing this Jeopardy style, cause she'd watched Humanist Jeopardy once.

"Only Canada is North America out of those." Shane said quietly. "The USA and Mexico I think are the other two." He added, writing down Canada then looking to the others for confirmation.

Matt shrugged "not a clue."

Silence stared around the room. "united states... " She said, reading what the general answers around the room seemed to be.

Ellie frowned at Shane and his knowledge, but nodded. "Okay, let's go with what Shane and Silence say," she said. She snickered a bit, having a telepath was kind of an advantage in this game.

The next few questions were more recent trivia, stuff about TV show hosts, movies, spaceship models. Mostly stuff from the decades the seniors had grown up in.

Ellie had no clue about most of them. Tobias had a few he thought he knew, whoo.

Matt knew very little about any of this, he'd make wild ridiculous guesses and make up names for tv hosts instead.

Silence read the minds of those around them, though whether the old people actually knew the answers remained to be seen.

About the only questions Matt was any use on were music questions, he had a strangely broad knowledge of classical terran 'pop music'. Unless they started asking questions about farming or agriculture he wasn't much help at all.

Shane knew some, but not others, he had grown up on this world, so he had an advantage in that way.

There were some questions about music, which Matt was indeed very good at.

Silence's strategy yielded a lot of good results, and some results that were easy mistakes to make.

Ellie tried to answer all the questions, way more loudly and confidently than was required. And mostly incorrectly. At this point she kinda knew she was terrible at this, she just didn't care.

The round was kinda long, but finally it ended and the host started pointing to different groups to call out the answers. When they were correct on an answer, everyone looked to their papers to see if they'd gotten the same result.
Some people started subtly trying to erase their first responses and put in the correct ones.

"Let's erase some responses and write the correct ones," Ellie muttered to the others.

"is that allowed?" Matt asked, looking around in case anyone was watching and trying to get the pencil off Shane. cheating, whoo.

Shane sighed and shook his head. "It's only allowed if you want to be disqualified from being able to win."

Ellie giggled as Matt tried to take Shane's pencil. "Totally not allowed, but also totally fun, right?"

Matt pouted. "Spoilsport." He made an over dramatic play of the whole thing but broke into laughter half way through, rather spoiling the effect.

Shane laughed and marked some more of the answers as correct as they were.

A group across the room was apparently caught cheating, and the person who had explained the rules earlier went over to tell them to sit out on the next round, please.

The group all looked more amused than disappointed.

"We could so cheat. The rules people are totally distracted right now," Ellie whispered.

Moriah shook her head. "The seniors are all watching us because we're different, they'll rat us out," she said in a conspiratorial whisper.

Shane shook his head a little then glanced around, yep, they were being watched.

"aww man." Matt looked over to the old ladies, were they watching? If he caught their eye he winked.

Silence frowned, reading the surface thoughts of those around them.

The old ladies were unashamedly watching, they really had taken a liking to Matt, and all his friends by extension. One of them giggled at Matt's wink.

A few people were watching the group, but Silence would find that the majority seemed to be more interested in cheating or judging the other teams' answers than they were in watching the newcomers.

"lots cheat..." Silence mumbled. How curious. Why were they taking part in this then?

Matt chuckled. "Maybe we'll do better next round. You never know, it might be like, alien races or uh... how to make weapons out of household goods."