@esperpeanuts →
Hm. That's the smallest child he's seen... Possibly ever? Theoretically he knew how meat-people prolification happened, but. Well. Wasn't exactly a curiosity he was interested in, and wasn't remotely related to his ambitions as a Scrybe. Plus, Inscryption wasn't exactly a game aimed at babies. ...Toddlers? What was this instar of human juvenile called? Who cares. She looks tiny and stubby and underdeveloped, so he's going to settle on "baby" and leave it at that.
What's she doing here? If the rumors (pamphelet, news, online forums, and other reputable sources) he'd heard were true, this was a big experiment with the people in charge abducting people from all manner of worlds to study, but babies? Babies are too small and helpless to be on their own or be abducted for a study. unethical (since when did ethics bother him?) babies are generally useless, and more of a burden than an asset.
Either way, he could take pity on her. Here he was, bemoaning his terrible luck in being dragged into an unfamiliar place as a lab rat rather than the one labbing the rats (that makes no sense but who cares. It's his mind, he can think stupid things if he wants to), but at least he was a grown- robots don't really grow. A mature robot, with useful things like agency and intelligence and the ability to look after himself. Could this little human prototype even feed herself? She certainly looked like she was having trouble just reaching the shelves in the game store (yeah, he's back looking for cards again, can you really blame him? It's been his whole life! ...He doesn't need to justify it to himself in his internal monologue. Forget it.), having resorted to climbing them to grab at something near the top. That... can't be safe. (Does it care? It doesn't care. None of its business if an initializing beast wants to learn the hard way.)
"Hey."
He'd surprise himself, and float his way over to her to offer help before even having a moment to think otherwise.
"Don't hurt yourself. What are you trying to get? ...This toy?"
What even is that thing? The plushie looks like some monster that Leshy or Grimora would dream up. Did babies like scary things like that? Maybe Leshy wasn't so unusual, then. For a beast, anyway.
