He came down the steps... and as he reached the landing and peered around the corner he froze.
None of those people looked right.
At all.
There was a guy who was probably 5'4, and had multicolored feathers(but the main color was a light green) instead of hair that went from his forehead down to the back of his neck, coming in sweeping curves down to his cheeks before the human face dominated the jaw.
His eyes were definitely that of a bird's however, when they fixated on the foxkin on the stairs.
'Okay, animal people, that's normal, I'm a fox.'
That made sense.
However, the steam-punk style ROBOT sitting next to the parrot-person?
'What. The. Fuck?'
It had skin of what seemed like plastic or plexiglass, with its joints made of this white rubber or something, with the gleam of copper wires showing on the surface of the rubber.
Inside this plexiglass skin and rubber jointed body... was a full on copper robot.
Brass and copper, maybe bronze, the foxkin didn't know.
But it was gears and pipes connecting together, with two lenses where eyes would be that merged with the plexiglass face, with no nose, ears, or mouth visible.
'It DOES have a pipe that goes to just behind where the mouth SHOULD be, the pipe has a few holes in it facing outward, so maybe that's how sound comes out of it? If it can even speak... how would the noise escape the glass exterior though?'
The many gears and pipes all connected to a massive copper sphere in its chest, which pulsed with a glowing white energy that seemed to be like a heartbeat.
That's where all the pipes that led to the many gears that operated it's joints came from, that mechanical heart of sorts.
Many copper wires also wrapped around its components under its transparent skin, connecting to the wiring through the rubber of the joints as well as the lenses it had for eyes and to two rubber patches on the sides of its head were ears should be. These wires also ultimately led back to the core in its chest.
The foxkin blinked, hard.
'Okay. It's a robot. Move on.'
He turned his head further as he finished stepping onto the landing, and met more and more pairs of eyes as he went.
There was a girl, black hair with a nose that was pretty small small and pushed up a bit, making the nostrils noticeable... yet it was somehow cute when paired with her short stature, maybe between 5'2 and 5'5, and the impressive size of her chest. Even a B-cup looks impressive when on someone so small after all.
However what caught his attention more than her "assets"(curse the hormones all animals are subject to!) was the ears on her head... and that her shirt, having no sleeves, exposed the strange things she had for arms.
He'd best describe it as a thin arm with black fur on the whole thing that led to 4 fingers and a thumb with a claw on the end of each.
However it was the leather folds from the arm that made it really strange... until he realized the "hand" was actually at a second elbow? And the arm continued after folding back to end nearly at the shoulder it began, and the folds probably stretched out when the arm fully extended-
'Bat wings dumbass. Her arms are wings that are folded back, meaning her hands are at the middle of her wings. She's a batgirl, and not the DC kind. Also those are bar ears on her head, which is why they're so tall with oval shapes... the rift of fur around the ears that then blends into the hair looks neat though.'
His observation was proven right as text suddenly appeared on her.
'I wonder what it'll call the robot and bird guy.'
He temporarily ignored the others to look back at the first two, taking another step down the stairs.
'Well... makes sense the robot-automaton-isn't gendered.'
'He's a FUCKING PARROT?!'
The foxkin has one of the strangest experiences of his whole life; trying not to laugh while simultaneously not having any clue what he found funny due to not remembering what it was that made someone being a parrot funny.
The others... there was a massive man with black ram horns and red skin, with bright fiery orange iris'.
'Damn he's tall. Demon bloodline in a human being right? Wait...' the foxkin tilted his head curiously as he froze, looking at the tiefling, leading the man to scowl at him.
"The fuck you looking at, Fox?"
The foxkin shrugged. "Uh... don't suppose you can tell me what a 'human being' is, can you?"
The bat girl drew her knees up to her generous chest as she sulked on the ground.
"None of us remember anything dipshit, same as you." He said with a strange amount of anger, a clear accent in his voice.
The foxkin nodded, turning to look around while his mind automatically labeled his accent as "southern", though south of what he had no idea.
The room was large, with a bar to the right, against the wall that led to the staircase he still stood on, and the automaton and parrot guy both sat on two of the stools at said bar, despite their being no drinks behind it or on its shelves.
And there was no door anywhere, or windows... just like the hall upstairs.
Other stools had been moved around the room as seats for the others, while some chose to stand, like the tiefling, or sit on the ground like the bat girl.
Then there was a green skinned woman who was 7 feet tall, buff to an UNBELIEVABLE DEGREE, had TUSKS, and her black hair was in dreadlock braids. She was just leaning against a wall casually.
Then there was a girl of more average height, not the extremes that the orc or bat girl were.
She had pale pink hair, like the color of a cherry blossom, with bright blue eyes. Those eyes had golden flecks all over the blue iris, and her skin was weirdly shiny... like it wasn't skin, but plastic wrap over skin maybe.
With no wrinkles in said plastic wrap?
Conversely there was a guy with dark skin, like dark wood or bark, with snow white hair, and his eyes looked gray with flecks if darker gray and such, looking kinda like gray stone.
There was also quite a few different animal-people.
The tiger had yellow hair and eyes with black stripes on the skin of his arms, and one across his nose and both cheeks.
The rabbit had brown hair and brown rabbit ears, and assuredly had a small brown rabbit tail. The fur inside her brown ears was a pure white however, while here eyes were a dark brown that blended with the pupil to look black.
The sheep girl... her hair was very curly, bright white, and was probably very long considering how much of a strange Afro it created, with sheep horns just barely visible. Not to mention she had horizontal rectangular pupils, and her skin looked soft somehow, like it would make you fall asleep if you napped on her generous thighs.
Then there was a full-on lizard standing on two legs with opposable thumbs, with coppery scales and red lines along every one of those scales, and his slot tongue kept flitting out.
There was another who had horns going straight up like a goats, horizontal rectangular pupils as well, while his hair and beard were a light gray, and his skin a darker gray.
That made the first race to appear twice in this group by the Foxkin's observations.
'Do those three... have fire for hair?'
The Djinn's looked middle eastern, were it not for their golden eyes and flaming heads.
The fire had no heat and burned nothing however, so after a pause, the foxkin moved on.
So many animal people!
'Wait what?'
He looked again at that last one.
A person with a strange yellowish-brown tough layer on top of his bald head, with many similar layers running down the back of his head and neck like armor, down his back and the back of his arms, and since he was barechested with shorts it was easy to see that the "plates" went around his hips and down the front of his legs.
'...moving on.'
The foxkin at this point gave up on looking at every individual person as he leaned against the wall near the stairs.
Everyone of the others seemed to be waiting for something apparently.
He looked around, finally walking over to the bar and taking a stool on the other side of the automaton from the parrotkin.
"Are we... waiting for something specific?"
A voice that was surprisingly high from a robot, but still definitely male came from the automaton, with a slight tinny echo to the voice. "Well, if someone brought us all here, they must have a reason right? Xandra said she'd wait for a few hours, then she'd start smashing through a wall."
"Xandra?"
"The female orc."
"Ahhhh..." Expressing understanding, the fox nodded, slumping against the bar slightly as if to sleep, his ears flattening against his head as his tail swayed slowly.
'Wait... she knows her own name?'
He shot a curious glance out the corner of his eye at the orcish woman.
The text changed to match the new information he'd been given... interesting.