The Lion & The Serpent

He nodded. He glanced between Auryon and Kratzer. He was torn between standing near the former and sitting next to the latter, so he resigned himself to standing where he currently was instead.

"Do you, uh, vant me to change mein guize?" he asked, looking over at Kratzer. "I don't vant to make you uncomfortable, and I probably don't need to look like you to learn your mannerisms..."

"Da, please," Diamond said as Kratzer merely shrugged. "I'd hate to get the two of you confused."

Auryon pulled up a chair and took a seat. "You'd best start with that accent," she says. "Under normal circumstances, it's actually quite good - still a bit staccato, but other than that, fine. The more stressed, pissed, or in pain he gets, the worse it is, 'cause he just kind of stops putting effort in."

"Zere's no point in effort if you can still understand me," he grunted, and she raised a hand for silence.

"Second thing, there's a few things he always says in German. Ja, nein, and any cussing," Auryon continued. "You follow?"

He pulled up a chair across from her, guise shifting back to the Scarlet Lord - with a hoodie, jeans and sneakers instead of his usual outfit - as he sat down and nodded.

"I do," he confirmed. He paused for a moment, then hesitantly added in an exact imitation of Kratzer's voice, "I mean, ja." He knew it was bound to distress Kratzer, but he needed to practice as much as he could. Changing his guise was a nice compromise; the voice would have to stay, at least for now.

"By 'cussing' she means scheisse, Hölle, fick, and Verdammt," Diamond added. "Do you know any German?"

He let himself give a small smile.

"Ja, ich kann deutsch," he said, effortlessly switching between the two languages. He paused, then hesitantly added, "Ich kenne viele verschiedene Sprachen. Ich bin älter als ich aussehe. Gibt es eine andere Sprache, von der Kratzer weiß, dass ich sie auch sollte?"

Spoiler

Translation: "Yeah, I know German."

"I know a lot of different languages. I'm, uh, older than I look. Is there any other language that Kratzer knows that I should, too?"

"Da," Diamond said. "He's got Russian, German, Mandarin, English, Italian, French, Spanish, and broken Japanese."

His smile grew just a little bit more; he knew all of those languages and more. But for Kratzer to know each and every one of them...He glanced over at the man in question, switching back to both English and the voice he usually used with this guise for the briefest of moments.

"That's really impressive," he said.

Kratzer dipped his head. "Danke," he thanked Maahes. "I travelled a lot in my youth, and back then we didn't have things like Google translate, so it wasn't terribly difficult to pick things up with enough exposure. My old mentor taught me as well."

"...Google translate?" Maahes hesitantly asked, then decided it wasn't exactly relevant to the conversation. It must have been some sort of translation system Earth had developed in the time that he had been gone, though he couldn't possibly imagine what it looked like. "That's still really impressive. I've always been good at picking up languages because of my kind and my frequent travel through the stargates, but..."

He sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck.

"It's always cool seeing humans pick up-" He faltered. "Uh, people who haven't lived as long picking up a lot of languages. There's one guy I've heard of who knows twenty-three - but he's an archeologist, so that's kind of expected."