But I just got here! (OPEN)

Anastasia was finally, finally done getting all her paperwork done. She'd come in, had her mini-orientation and gotten a stack of paperwork. Then she'd gotten sent off to her dorm, checked in there... and realized they'd left out a chunk of her paperwork. She'd had to trek back through the school to the admissions office, and then she'd had to wait in line again... but it was finally done. She had all the paperwork she would need, and she just needed to go back to her room and check through it all. Most people would be keen to skip over the massive stack of paperwork, most of which was really only covering the utter basics, but Anastasia was exactly the kind of person who was going to read through every single word. Most of it was simply the fact that she didn't want to screw up. Russian schools were much different, the least of which was the fact that she'd already graduated over there, but still had a year to go.

A year she was mostly going to just work on getting rid of her accent and improving her english.

With a stack of papers under one arm, Anastasia headed to the door of the counsellor's office, surprised to hear someone banging on the door. She was even more surprised when they demanded access to the... to the orifice? She wasn't entirely clear if the issue was that her English was that bad, or if the issue was with whoever was outside.

Of course, as someone who had literally not known of the existence of the supernatural until a few days before, Anastasia was definitely expecting a person on the other side of the door. The most alarming thing she'd seen was someone walking around with a third eye in the center of their forehead, and for the most part she'd managed to unintentionally miss most of the Manta Carlos island's more surprising residents. So opening the door and finding a two foot tall... bug... thing, Anastasia did something quite unlike her.

She yelped, practically falling backwards and barely catching herself. She wasn't the kind of person to scream, but it was certainly close enough, and she had absolutely no idea what she was looking at.

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Tag to @"Botchmun"​

If Anastasia had not had literal years of being taught how important composure was, she likely would have screamed. Even with all those years, it was still a close call as the thing brushed forward, waving things that Anastasia decided were probably some kind of antenna. It was just so... so alarming. It was so inhuman, and yet it was talking (even if it sounded a bit like a human talking through a rusty grate and a straw), forming words that took her a moment to wrap her head around even if the english was fine. It was more the way they were strung together, in a way that was not truly an accent, but likely a restriction of how the thing normally spoke.

"I am - I, no." She stuttered herself, trying to pull herself together. Anastasia almost never lost her composure, which had the unfortunate side effect that meant actually getting herself back together was more or less unknown territory.

"I am just - just another student. A new student." A new student who she was surprised to realize still had her stack of papers underneath. "You need to wait in the line. The line by the desk." She couldn't tell if she was under explaining or over explaining.

What Anastasia blurted out next was a sure sign of just how flustered she was, because in a normal situation she never would have said anything even close to it.

"You - You're a bug?"

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Tag to @"Botchmun" ​

'Earthers'. So it was... it was not just a bug. Not just a large, sentient bug. No, it was some kind of large, sentient alien bug.

Anastasia couldn't tell if that was better or worse.

She was not the kind of person who was afraid of bugs. She didn't jump and scream at a spider. Nothing short of a tarantula would even make her flinch, and even then that was more out of habit that something was moving. But this... this was so far outside the realm of what she could consider normal that it had thrown her off, and she swallowed hard, letting formality take over when the thing greeted her.

She had thought her English was subpar, but in the end it was doing just fine. She missed words on occasion, but as long as she got the gist of a sentence, it was enough. "Ah, it's 'acquaintance'." Similar sounding enough, although very different meanings.

She was trying to get used to it, trying to push back that moment of panic and confusion that a bug was talking to her. The way it spoke didn't sound human - there was too much... well, she wasn't even sure of the word for it. She didn't think there was a word for it in English, because only humans (and rarely mimicing birds) would speak the language.

She did lean back a bit from the thing as it leaned forward. "Ah, I understand a bit. Some languages here are... also... handsigns." She tried to let her brain catch up, even as the thing leaned in.

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Tag to @"Botchmun" ​

"Possible." Anastasia corrected almost immediately. As rude as it might be to correct someone in conversation, she'd been asked by the strange bug thing to do so, and it felt normal. She could almost pretend for a moment that she was speaking to an exchange student, still learning Russian.

The bug started to move towards her and it took all of Anastasia's courage to just stand there and let it prod at her hand. Her fingers were stretched out, and suddenly she wish she'd reacted fast enough to pull it into a fist. Did the thing know that human fingers didn't bend backwards? Weren't bugs supposed to be strong for their size?

At the very least the antenna didn't hurt - they just tickled, like a feather running over her palm.

"Earthlings." She corrected, although she second guessed herself after. Was Earthlings even right? It was like something out of an old sci fi movie. An old bad sci fi movie.

"My name is... Anastasia Mikhailovna Usenko. But my first name would be Anastasia." What did the alien even know about names? Was it even an alien? "Are you... from earth? Or from somewhere else, I guess?" She kept calling them 'earthers', but then it wasn't clear if she actually meant 'earthlings', or if she was just using it as a term for humans.

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Tag to @Botchmun​