into the fray...(open)

[Anya]

At the sound from Gear, Anya looked down at him in surprise. There was no mistaking that the noise had come from him, after all - she was already growing quite familiar with the robot's noises, though she had no way of understanding what they actually meant. Never the less, she couldn't help but give a small laugh when Gear reached out an arm and gave them a wave. He really was very likable, she reflected. Even if Nate had never particularly intended him to be. It made her wonder what the other one - Widget, Nate had called her? - was like.

Nate's translation of the robot's 'words', however, was actually a little...surprising. "You can understand him?" Anya immediately asked the first question that came to mind. Well yeah, she figured after a moment. By now Nate would've had to come up with some way of communicating with his robots. It made sense, she supposed, that he'd learned to understand them. Anya brightened a little at this, her smile widening slightly. "Well, you can tell him that I like him too! ...Or can he understand us?" She quirked her head slightly to one side, curious. Either way, it was certainly reassuring to hear that Gear did appear to like her. Hopefully that meant he wouldn't be bouncing her on her head any time soon. That didn't sound too fun.

As she turned and beamed back at Nate, though, something made her pause a moment. And the funny thing was, Anya couldn't quite place exactly what it was that was making her hesitate. She wasn't very good at 'reading' humans or interpreting what their emotions meant, but Nate was smiling at her...and that was a good thing! Only, he seemed just slightly more tense than he had been a moment ago - or was she imagining it? Blinking, Anya inwardly scolded herself for reading too much into it. Honestly, she needed to stop worrying so much - what was there to worry about? Tapping her fingers lightly against the surface of the table as she thought this over, the vengeance demon supposed there wasn't much else she could do except ask. There wasn't much use in sitting here fretting silently to herself.

"That is a good thing, right?" she asked him in reference to Gear liking her. "You just...you looked a little bit worried, just now."

[inari]

"That is kind of hard to explain...." Nate said evading the question about how he could understand gear and widget. It wasn't that he was avoiding the question, its just hard to explain how he had learned to understand their language, and body language. "When you watch him and listen to the audio patterns, you learn...or at least you can with enough practice get a good idea."

"Also its not that he doesn't understand you. its just you can't understand him." he added with a grin when gear gave another wriggle and freed its other arm. There was a strange warbled sound like "WHOOHA.....(Yes i like you too.)" it said this with obvious enthusiasm.

"You like anybody who seems interesting." Nate added to gear with a sidelong glance shaking his head he should have expected this he really should have. "Correction you like most anybody who seems intersting." He added to himself in a whisper remembering all those unfortunate suits who were only doing their jobs.

"I just would like to know how this happened." nate muttered

"BLEREPPwrerear...(Your the one who meddled)" gear said in an annoyed sort of voice.

"Yes but the books never said this...." He sighed to himself shrugging the ideas for now when he realized that the waiter was staring at him with shock after finally coming back with the orders of pizza.

"your food sir..." He said in an awkward voice as he carried the two pizzas to the table.

[Anya]

It was rare that the rather easily distracted blonde gave anyone her full attention for such an extended length of time. But with Nate, Anya was practically hanging on every word. Her eyes widened slightly as he explained how he'd learned to understand Gear, at least to a certain extent, over time. Humans were capable of so much more than anyone ever gave them credit for, really. "Maybe I could learn!" she chirped excitedly, folding her hands together and resting her chin against her fingers as she gazed brightly down at Gear. Then, looking up at Nate again, she went on to explain: "I'm very good with languages. I speak quite a few of them, actually...but...I don't speak robot..." Perhaps it wasn't the best idea to bring the language thing up, being that most humans wouldn't know as many languages as she did, but she was a little too excited to be acting as 'normal' as she was supposed to.

As if to prove her point, she fell silent and focused intently on the little conversation that seemed to be going on between Nate and Gear. The robot sounded distinctly annoyed as he retorted to what Nate had murmured a moment before, though she still wasn't most closer to translating the words themselves. Anya very much intended to continue trying - but at that moment, both the man and his robot fell silent. It took her a moment to realize why: the waiter had returned, and was now staring at the scene taking place before him with a rather stunned expression planted on his face. She blinked up at him, her head tilting slightly to one side as he offered them their food.

"Hey, thanks!" Anya spoke up, breaking the awkward moment with her usual obliviousness. Her words seemed to prompt the waiter to finally put the pizzas down on the table. As he straightened back up again, still staring uncomfortably, she couldn't help but add: "You should take a picture. Apparently it lasts longer." Raising her eyebrows at him patiently as if to ask 'is there anything you wanted to say?', she said nothing more until he'd collected himself, nodded, and hurried off again. Watching him go, she shrugged a little. She hadn't meant anything rude by her words, really. Anya just had a way of making people feel even more awkward with her blunt, direct statements - though such statements usually had perfectly harmless intentions on her part.

Slight confusion flickered in her warm brown eyes for a moment, but she blinked it away as she turned back to Nate and gave a slight sigh. "I guess people just aren't very used to the whole robot thing," she commented lightly. After all, it wasn't as if robots like Gear were a common sight in New York; Anya supposed a little awkwardness was to be expected. Still...it was silly, if she really thought about it. Then again, most human behaviors seemed silly when she stopped and thought about them, so maybe that really wasn't saying much. "That's the problem with people, I think. The moment they encounter anything new or unfamiliar - different - their first instinct is to be alarmed, or suspicious, or...'weirded out'. I don't understand why. Life would get so boring if everything stayed the same, and everyone was like everyone else. " Shrugging again, the vengeance demon fell silent and took a thoughtful sip of her drink.

[inari]

"Well after the pizza would you like to try and learn from them?" Nate asked rather surprised that someone actually wanted to be able to translate robot language. "i know when i learned it was like an orangutan trying to teach a human to speak orangutan and the only word you can really know is ook."

Nate shruged for a moment then added with a smile. "Then again it wasn't that hard once i got used to it."

"weperewerwer (People are boring..)" Gear said as he pointed to the waiter and then did a thumbs down gesture. It would appear odd gear was in the form of a box with arms. His legs and torso scrunched up but he found a way to still be expressive.


Nate gave gear a whack with one of his feet. "You think everybody is boring."

"Nerwerhewer (Not her.)" he says pointing to anya then giving a sort of thumbs up of approval.

"You gear are impossible." Nate added more out of annoyance and surprise than anything.

"Nwerwerwe....(not as impossible as you.)" he added in a smart reply.

"Go boil yourself in oil." Nate grumbled

"BLWERWEER (That would be nice.)" Gear added teasing the human maker it liked teasing him it made him more attentive focused and entertaining to him.

"just be glad widget isn't here."

"blwahwerw...(low blow.)" Gear said before shutting up knowing that nate might just have widget attack him again. He just had to word things right for that to be definate.

[Anya]

Learn from the robots? He was actually offering?! At the prospect of this, Anya brightened even further (if that were at all possible), looking as happy as one of those overly excitable, capitalism-loving kids on Christmas! She forced herself to stop and listen to Nate explain further before blurting out a response of her own, however. Upon hearing his words, an expression that could accurately be described as 'politely puzzled' crossed the vengeance demon's features. "Oh, well, I don't know orangutan either," she informed him matter-of-factly. It seemed that, unsurprisingly, Nate's joking use of that little simile was lost on Anya - who was infamous for taking things quite literally. "But I would love to try to learn to understand Gear! You both sound like you'd have so much to teach me, and learning new things is fun! Well...unless you're learning about, like, American history or something, but..." She trailed off with a simple shrug, far too excited to pay something as boring as history much mind at the moment.

At any rate, she felt that she was off to a pretty good start. It wasn't too difficult to understand the general gist of what Gear meant just by watching him. Almost like a human, you could tell a lot about how he felt just by reading his body language - all she needed to do was start associating the phrases he emitted with the way he acted. Anya hadn't been boasting before; she was very quick when it came to picking up languages...though the idea of a robot language was particularly foreign to her, and she wasn't sure how different it might be. But now she'd get to find out!

Meanwhile, watching the interaction between Nate and Gear was proving to be a high quality source of entertainment. Amused, the blonde giggled briefly at the scene playing out before her. There was no mistaking the snarky element of Gear's chirping, and Nate's retorts were similar in nature. Her light brown eyes darted between the pair as each spoke in turn, ultimately ending with Gear quite abruptly falling silent after one particular threat from Nate. Still grinning slightly, Anya shook her head. "Widget must be pretty scary." she observed with a nod toward the now decidedly subdued Gear. "Hey - it's almost like they're siblings! I mean - I never had any siblings, but you know how it is - one of them always has to keep the other in line. And argue. A lot." It wasn't often that Anya could make particularly accurate, insightful observations about human lifestyle...but in this case, she'd witnessed more than enough little spats between Buffy and Dawn to get a general idea of how this sort of thing worked.

Personally, Anya had never envied them - most of the time. Once or twice she did have to wonder, though. Family sounded like it would be...an interesting thing to have.

[inari]

Nate kicked gear out from underneath his chair and the robot popped into existance again. Gear was small kind of squate and had no outer frame so his skeletal frame was all that was on him at the moment. "The thing with understanding him is to watch his body language."

Gear did a simple wave at anya "Werew...." his head light flashed a moment as if to empasize confusion or embaressment.

"Obviously he said hi." Nate said with a grin.

"Widget isn't frightening." Nate said with a huge ammount of sarcasm in his voice.

"Woowwhooooowowoo.....( She is tooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!)." Gear replied with an expression on his body that if was human would have been a big dark cloud of Glooom.


"Wouldn't know about siblings personally. Although these two give me a good idea and i can say i'm glad it never happened to me." Nate said idly as he ate some of his pizza."

"Werwerwrwrwrew......(I hate you.....thats no fair........)" Gear replied and if it was possible even did a more glooom emotion and curled up into a ball as if nobody liked it. The gloom almost palpable as the robot sat.

"Ohh cheer up you i was only kidding." Nate said when he couldn't take the self glooming robot that seemed to suddenly have no confidence in itself.

((sorry for the wait.))