trans_9 | Like A Toddler With Deadly Tinker Toys.

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Like A Toddler With Deadly Tinker Toys.

Kyle has been oblivious to the miniature civil war that had erupted, but it's likely that even if he had known, he would have taken no part in it. He's had enough of war for a while, especially considering he wasn't around for the events that precipitated this particular fight, and he's not about to go jumping into any fray without a good reason.

Instead, he's been holed up in the Sensoriums, in a replica of his old workroom, finally making all the half-baked concept weapons that he just never had time for back where he comes from. At the moment, he's got a small, working railgun prototype sitting in the middle of a clear space. A search through the media library had turned up some interesting facts about superconductors, and after running tests on the various suggestions, he's fitting the prototype with superconducting wires. They still require some cooling, but not as extensively as other superconductors, eliminating the need for liquid nitrogen.

He's completely engrossed in the delicate work, and has almost forgotten why he'd come today in particular -- Yoshimi is going to try out the SMG he rebuilt.

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Blitzwing happened to be wandering the ship again, passing the Sensoriums for what seemed like the fiftieth time that cycle, when he spotted Kyle. Whatever the organic was working on piqued his interest, and before he knew it he was leaning over the organic's shoulder without a word.
He stayed quiet for a while (unusual for him) before finally speaking.
"So, vhat are you vorking on?"

Kyle's head ticked a little to the side when someone came in, but when there was no greeting, he just continued replacing wires. The sudden query almost gets him to jump, a mistake he just managed to avoid. Finishing off that section, he turns around and stands up. This one looks like -- like the other robot. Sentinel Prime. "--A railgun. Small enough for perimeter defense against armored infantry or vehicles." He figures if anyone's going to know about railguns, it'll be the robots. "I'm Kyle. Who're you?"

"Blitzwing." He's dropped the 'designation' part by now. He examines the railgun with interest, his modified optic whirring slightly as it zoomed in to inspect the component parts.
"Interesting. Made from scratch, or vith a blueprint?"

"From scratch -- my own blueprint." Kyle gestures at one wall, which lacks tool racks or part bins and instead is covered with sketches and blueprints, all hand-drawn. Some of them are rough sketches on paper; some of them are done with technical pen on blueprint paper. "Do you make or have interest in weapons?"

Blitzwing looks rather impressed by that.
"Ze making does not interest me, but weapons themselves do, yes. Some of my weaponry requires maintenance, und I haff to do zhat myself, so I have a little experience in zhat field."

The mention of more weapons catches Kyle's interest. "Can I see your weapons?" He pops a panel and enters a few commands, then latches it shut. The railgun clicks and whirs to life, swiveling over them both, then aiming down at the ground close to one of its tripod feet, in idle mode.

Blitzwing hesitates for a moment, before inwardly shrugging. What harm could it do?
He lowered his shoulder cannons into firing position, moving closer to Kyle to allow the organic to look at them.

"Interesting." Kyle moves around to one side, out of the way, and takes a close look. "What do they fire? And how?" He only wishes he could take one and disassemble it. Alien technology is fascinating, what can he say?

"Zhey haff two settings; vun setting fires a stream of ice, ze other releases rapid bursts of plasma fire."
At the second question, Blitzwing shrugs. "As to ze how of things, I am not quite sure. I did not make zem. I can repair zhem, but I never paid attention to ze inner vorkings much."

"Ice?"

Sorry, Blitzwing, but now you've done it. Kyle has to take a closer look. "Can I examine one? I've never even thought about a gun that could fire a stream of ice." And how would it switch settings? The barrel must be able to change temperatures rapidly, but only in a certain range, so it won't melt or crack...There's only a few metals that might fit the bill, and even then, testing would be required to make sure they won't deform under the stress of such extreme temperature changes.

Blitzwing raises an optic ridge, but nods grudgingly. He can't fault the organic for curiosity, after all-he's done it plenty of times himself (or at least one third of him has).

Kyle finds the latch to disengage one shoulder cannon and sets it down on the clear part of his workstation. "I'll put it back together," he adds, absently, although he's already starting to disassemble it, finding screws and rivets and popping them off easily, getting at all the important bits and starting to examine them.

The Sensorium really is quite a wonder; all his old tools, the ones too big to lug around in his bag, are here, and they somehow affect physical, actually-there objects. The whys and hows of it were still unknown, unfortunately, but he plans on making a few tests, seeing how far it'll actually go.

Blitzwing just watches, inwardly impressed at how fast the organic works. He soon gets bored of that, however, as he inevitably does with most things, and starts wandering around Kyle's workroom in order to inspect the various tools and blueprints that catch his optic.

One side of the room has, in one half, all the tools too big to carry around, and ones he doesn't use much -- the small and oft-used ones end up at his work area. The other half is taken up by shelves with parts bins, labeled in Kyle's cramped writing.

Another side has racks of weapons, one large rack labeled 'mass-produced' and with smaller labels for various kinds of guns and melee weapons, and one smaller one labeled 'custom'. Guns of all kinds, combat knives, shock batons, even a few swords and daggers. In front of the weapons racks are two motorcycles, resting patiently, one with its engine out and half-disassembled, the other ready to go.

The third side is a test-firing area, with various targets, wooden, metal, and otherwise set up, and he's working at the fourth, under his previous sketches and blueprints.

Kyle soon grabs an unmarked sheet of sketch paper and starts drawing rapidly, mumbling to himself about the ideas implemented in the making of the weapon and drawing schematics and suggestions.

On inspection of the shoulder cannon, Kyle will notice that most-if not all- of the weapon is made out of materials that couldn't be found on Earth or anywhere in the vicinity. Even the wiring looks distinctly alien, running across and around the inside of the cannon-sometimes in formations that don't seem entirely possible.

Strange, alien symbols are written on the side of the cannon, on the outer plating; probably a manufacturer's mark. There are signs of significant wear and tear on the weapon; Blitzwing has had these a long time, and it shows. However, most of the constant degrading has been repaired many times with the same level of consistency; the triplechanger has probably done it himself most times.

Blitzwing is inspecting the motorcycles at the moment-however, something on the weapon racks catches his optic and he straightens up to inspect it.

The whole unrecognized-material thing is sort of frustrating; chemical composition scans are coming up with big fat question marks, just as confused as he is.

Oh, well. The mechanisms are interesting, even if his concurrent simulation is informing him that no metal he knows of can withstand that sort of temperature change.

Maybe two weapons, then, one ice and one plasma fire. The wiring sort of hurts his eyes if he looks at it too long, so he tries not to, and studies the symbols instead. The weapons are worn, but well-cared-for. Blitzwing knows what he's doing, at least.

"See anything interesting?" he asks absently, starting to reassemble the cannon.

Though waking up to Stacy usually depresses Yoshimi to untold levels, she is practically skipping through the hallways today, barely ten minutes after she woke up. Why is she so happy, you ask? Why, she gets to play with her new gun today.

A Japanese nursery rhyme on her lips, she enters the Sensoriums without so much as a knock, dark eyes falling on her shiny new weapon almost immediately. She has to try very hard not to hug Kyle, then proceeds to make a face at her own vapidness.

"You're my favorite person on this ship, you know that?" she says anyway, reaching out a small hand to stroke the smooth metal.

Kyle pokes his head out around the railgun, then straightens. Even though he's not a people person, he looks pleased to see Yoshimi. His list of acquaintances on this ship is pretty tiny, and he's talked to Yoshimi the most.

Her 'greeting' gets him to smile. "No, I didn't. It's a nice title to have."

The SMG is finally finished -- he's used some of his lab's more specialized equipment to put the finishing touches on it. "Go ahead and try it," he suggests, gesturing to one side of the room. It's been extended into a medium- and close-range target range, with paper, wooden, and metal targets, as well as several thick blocks of gelatin.

She grins at him happily, lifting the SMG from its resting place, her hands squeezing the grips.

Muttering something in Japanese (something that sounds vaguely like 'sugoi'), she runs a hand over the metal appreciatively. Eyeing one of the wooden targets, she pulls the trigger and promptly starts grinning like a maniac; she can't remember how long it's been since the thing has fired properly. There isn't much by way of robot slaying about these days, but if she'd been able to get back to Tokyo, it's certain that she would prance off to defeat one of the Class C mobs running around.

When her original target (in addition to several others) is effectively vanquished, Yoshimi lowers the weapon, her eyes glinting at Kyle. "Favorite. Person. Ever." she says, amending her previous statement slightly.

Kyle settles in a chair with his omnicom, using the stylus to jot down notes, both from observation, and from the sensors trained on the target range. Yoshimi, he notes dryly, has that peculiar look of glee that some people adopt when given a shiny weapon and free reign to shoot things. He sort of gets it -- he feels the same way about explosions.

Her new opinion of him gets another quirk of his lips. "Thank you. Perhaps I should start building guns for the rest of the crew, too." He's not quite serious -- news of what happened in the City has been filtering up to him, and it doesn't particularly make him want to start handing out advanced weaponry.

"Are there any irregularities? Any problems?" It had looked all right, technically, from the sensors, but he'd built it for Yoshimi, not just making sensors happy.

Poking at the gun a bit more, she shakes her head. "Nothing that I'm aware of; it works better than it ever did pre-melting, which is definite perk." The way she's holding the thing, it looks either like some awful parody of a child or some peculiar, morbid piece of religious paraphernalia.

"The rest of the crew would probably be very happy with shiny new weapons. Though, admittedly, they really don't need guns if they're gonna keep running around fighting." Her tone is somewhat absent-minded as she clicks away at bits of the gun, gaze almost... reverent.

Gun-crazed? Yoshimi? Never.

Kyle seems satisfied with her evaluation. "If it starts having trouble, take it to me. I can fix most problems." Most, not all; there are potential reasons he might have to remelt the whole gun, but they aren't too probable. He's been handing out new guns to soldiers for some time; her near-reverence for her SMG doesn't faze him.

"I heard something about that, but I didn't get much of an explanation, beyond the fact that most of the problems happened before I got here. Do you know anything about it?" He leaned forward in his chair a little, intent. She's got a point, and he isn't about to go around handing out new guns if they're going to be used on other crew members.

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Like A Toddler With Deadly Tinker Toys.

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