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who: Odo & OPEN
what: Checking out his new environment
when: October 13th
where: Some park near the residential area
warnings: None, will update if needed.

For how many years he spent living on Deep Space Nine – or Terok Nor, as it once was – Odo was almost intimately familiar with its corridors, shops, and cargo bays. Criminals always knew the secret ways through vents or hidden deck plates to conduct their business – and therefore so did the constable.

However, here the buildings and roads were a mystery – a mystery that had to be solved if he had any chance of finding out exactly what had happened to him.

Not being familiar with the native fauna, Odo took the form of a Tarkalean hawk to take his impromptu aerial tour. He did his best to make a mental map of the area, but soon it would be too dark to make any more progress.

He looks for a suitable place to land, and finds one on a stone bench on the cusp of a street light. Anyone looking would see the bird turn into a shimmering liquid before growing in size and changing in shape to something much more human in appearance.

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The instant recognition is a bit unusual considering the environment he now found himself in, but if Odo is surprised he does not show it.

"That's right."

He steps off the bench and notices the lingering disparity in height. It takes him a moment to recognize the reason. A wheelchair was not something he saw regularly. Medical sciences throughout most of the Alpha Quadrant was advanced enough to render them almost obsolete as a daily need, except in rare cases.

Odo considers sitting down, unsure if maybe it would make the person more at ease... but then putting people at ease was never his strong suit.

"I'm a Changeling. You've heard of my kind before?"

Ivar would likely bristle at any attempt to put him at ease. It's easier dealing with people's discomfort than with what he often misinterprets as their pity. He's a proud and independent sort, a creature molded by hardship and being born in an era where physical prowess was everything.

"No. But I have a friend here who can do something similar, though not nearly so fluidly." His cheeks flush a little bit at the word 'friend', indicating there might be more on Ivar's mind then just friendship. "He calls it morphing." There was a term Marco called himself, but Ivar could be damned if he could remember right at this minute.

The constable notes the blush, but whatever it might have suggested about their 'friendship' was not his business. It was the other's words that caught his attention more.

"Really?" He says with mild surprise. "That's interesting. Another term used to refer to my people is metamorphs."

Laas had introduced him to the term, so it was probably more common in his part of the galaxy. It made Odo wonder... was this another of the hundred? It could be he had trouble shapeshifting from lack of contact with others of his kind - or perhaps he was young? He tries not to get his hopes up. For all he knew this was some other kind of being. However, if anyone could be pulled to this place for lack of belonging, one of the hundred would have been a prime candidate.

"I would like to meet him, if possible."

"That's almost what he called himself." He mutters to himself. "What was the exact word..." Then it comes to him in a flash. "An Animorph is what he said he was. His name is Marco. I'm sure you can find his contact information through the network they have here."

He continues to look Odo up and down. "I'd ask how you do that, but I'm not sure I'd understand the explanation." Anything that had to do with science generally got chalked under the category of magic in Ivar's mind. It wasn't willful ignorance, it was just the fact of being quite a few centuries behind everyone in terms of advancement. Made it a little hard to catch up on all that he had missed. Magic explained everything in much simpler terms for him.

"I might just do that." He had no doubt he could find out how to contact this Marco, if not by conventional means, the police department no doubt had other records.

"Animorph," Odo repeats quietly, pondering the meaning. "Does that mean he only takes the forms of animals?"

He had never heard of such a thing, but it certainly was possible that a being like that existed in the universe. As for the question...

"It's difficult to explain, yes. I doubt 'morphogenic matrix' means anything to you?"

"I don't know. I've only seem him shift his form once or twice. He doesn't do it nearly as gracefully as you do." Frankly, the way Marco did it sometimes could be a little gross. Limbs and fur should not have been sucked in and shifted around the way he did. It was downright unnatural.

"The word science barely means anything to me," he says in a bone-dry tone. But less Odo think that it's base idiocy that Ivar comes from, he explains further. "I've from a very long time ago, far beyond what most people here come from. It was the year 816 where I came from." Sometimes, Ivar felt he was never going to catch up in terms of what everyone else had experienced as normalcy from their times, so why even bother?

Internally Odo is glad to hear his shapeshifting described as graceful. By his own people's standards, his abilities were sub-par.

Ivar's place in time makes the constable nearly double-take, though. Assuming that was measured in human years, it was kind of impressive that he was functioning here at all.

"Well, I can see how that might be a problem." Odo pauses, thinking about how to explain his shapeshifting in non-scientific terms, but everything he comes up with sounds ridiculous and inaccurate. He lets the thought go. "For someone of your time period you seem like you're taking all this well, anyway. How long have you been here?"

Ivar was used to that reaction. From what he could tell, there was no one yet who had shown up that was from farther back than he was. Not surprising, considering he was just on the verge of the written history of Western Europe. History and legend still blended together in his time, and modern day scholars were hard-pressed to say if Ivar himself had been real, something that would have amused the young teen had he known.

"Seven months. It's been an adjustment period." His first month here had been the hardest. Everything was strange, and every time he turned around, there was something new that someone was telling him. Ivar prized knowledge, so to be in such a state of ignorance had been a very frustrating experience. The only thing that had kept him from losing his temper entirely was realizing that a lot of people had been in similar circumstances.

"I can imagine."

From what Odo had experienced, there was a period of adjustment for everyone who came here, but for Ivar it was probably more difficult than most.

For a moment Odo thinks back to the early days of his discovery. That was an adjustment period. It was fortunate that Ivar was probably clearly seen as a sentient being upon his arrival, instead of having to prove it.

"If it helps any, there are many things we don't understand in the twenty-fourth century, either."

"Twenty-fourth?" It was Ivar's turn to be a little surprised. "I think that's as far into the future as anyone I've met here. I can't imagine what it's like."

Really, he can't even conceive of what humankind was like by that point. It's hard to see human beings outright leaving the planet when they hadn't even finished exploring all of Earth in his time. But as proven by the presence of aliens here in the Quarantine, they had gone very far indeed.

Odo nods and shrugs in agreement. It was a fair statement. Truthfully the constable probably couldn't imagine life that far in the future either, though he'd never tried it.

"I don't think it's something you'll have to worry about. From what I understand you'll either stay here, or go back to where you came from."

"I don't know. My girlfriend went to my world instead of returning to her own when she left here." Just ignore that look of pain on Ivar's face when he mentions Letha. It hadn't been a nice or pretty break-up on either end. It was almost three months later, but Ivar was still in the throes of his first heartbreak.

Not that he'd be discussing any of this with a perfect stranger. He'd ended up doing that enough the first week when he'd been crying his eyes out at the drop of a hat.

That information comes as a surprise, and Odo looks mildly startled. "Really? Well, that adds another layer to this mystery."

The constable was about to ask for details of the circumstances that led to her going someplace different, but he's also quick to pick up the look of lost love on Ivar's face. He'd worn it before. Perhaps now wasn't a good time.

"I... should go," he says reluctantly. "But I'd like to talk to you another time, if possible. How can I contact you?"

"You can contact me through the network or my phone." He gives Odo the number. This is someone he'd be interested in getting to know better. Then it occurs to him that he never properly introduced himself.

"My name is Ivar Ragnarsson. Some call me Ivar The Boneless." Perhaps a name that still held resonance if no place but the history books of Earth in the twenty-fourth century.

Odo raises a hairless eyebrow at 'The Boneless,' but he could see why he might be called that. Idly he wondered if it was meant to be an insult, which Ivar had then re-claimed as his own identity. Similar perhaps to his own 'Nothing.'

He lets the young man access his phone to input the right information. He wasn't quite familiar with the outdated piece of technology it yet.

"I'm Odo," he says in turn. "I'll be contacting you again, as well as your friend Marco. I appreciate the help."

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