trans_9 | She Lives! [open]

Most of the ship was asleep. He could hear them, tucked away and snoring loudly in their individual compartments, disturbingly comfortable in their meaty prisons. But this was no time to be hypocritical.

Just a few minutes earlier, Dustin had narrowly escaped Yoshimi’s room after falling asleep there, successful only because he happened to wake up while she was out. Perhaps she got bored of watching him. Perhaps she finally decided to call Shitface Kirk on him while he was recovering to take him to the brig—or worse, she could’ve contacted the Major. The Major was a downright scary woman, one that Dustin planned on avoiding even if he was forced to work for her.

Whatever the reason (and whatever the consequences), he was feeling a lot better now that he’d had food and rest and a new goal to accomplish. Said goal was something that he’d noticed when he first visited the Armory to get his primary tools; the genetic identification system not only picked out his personal items, but it also found a certain vehicle down in the hangar that was of extreme interest to its owner. Though Dustin had no intention of going down there until he found Codi, he was starting to…think differently, now that the initial shock had passed. This can be explained later.

He first made a stop at the Weapons and Possessions Locker, rooting around some of the unclaimed items further back. The large, silver thermos that Dustin happened upon surely wouldn’t be missed. With his prize, he then headed up to the Mess Hall, where he received his usual water shot and a tray full of slop. Dustin scooped the pile into his thermos, pocketed the utensil he was given, and crumbled up his crunchy plate into the mixture.

And then he left for the hangar.

A while later (after a brief stop in the City), Dustin was wandering around the huge space and fiddling with his phone. Without proper tools he wouldn’t be able to completely repair it, but for now he’d managed to reprogram and edit the genetic signature grid, which at least allowed for him to detect people that he’d already contacted intimately enough to receive some DNA from. This program was actually something of a prototype; it sounded good when Dustin first thought of it, but upon activation he realized that people spread their DNA around everywhere, either through shed hair or skin flecks or other such biological shavings; therefore it was hardly useful for distinguishing a single person from, say, their hairbrush.

This new program instead concentrated on densities of DNA samples instead of individual flecks, and with a slightly modified interface allowed for a completely different view of objects. It still wouldn’t work in the Pod Caverns because of whatever Stacy had set up in there, but it would work well enough in the hangar for finding the special item in general.

It came up clear as day on the scanner—Dustin’s sweat and blood might as well be essential parts to this machine, after all—and, shortly thereafter, he’d found it.

It was a wireframe skeleton, roughly the size of a large apartment but much more sleekly designed, patched with a rough layer of specialized insulation and plating in areas; everywhere else was coated in a thick sheet of wires. Compartments here and there bulged with tools and materials, thankfully spared from being taken away with the rest of his possessions. Even Dustin’s makeshift work surface remained untouched, surrounded on all sides by clamped wires and a hastily placed welding set.

He was taken aback, unable to do much else but stare for right now. Observers might notice that his dark green eyes are eerily glinting in ways that they probably shouldn’t be.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Tess has been exploring the hangar; the zero-G maneuvering system in her suit has served rather handy in the areas without any artificial gravity, letting zip about easily. In some places—like where Dustin's found his project—she has to walk, but that doesn't bother her any. In fact, it's the walking... and the clicking of her currently high heels against the floor... that probably give her presence away before she's even completely in sight.

The suit she's wearing... it's tightly form-fitting, and seems almost like some strange offspring of a diving suit and a spacesuit, with a blue-green slightly iridescent 'skin' and smoothly-placed paneled compartments here and there, with a slim 'backpack' unit on the back. And there are, indeed, high heels, seamless and fitting enough to seem like the suit was built that way. Given the girl's rather endowed figure already, the extra padding from the suit's thickness and the heels make things... wow.

As she gets closer, the helmet clicks and slides open, splitting to either side, and finally revealing the first glimpse of any skin—her face is covered with a transparent skintight membrane under that, easy to miss at a first glance, though it gives her a slightly plasticine quality and also covers her eyes and nose and mouth.

She grins questioning, looking over the... whatever that big framed thing is.

Indeed he had heard her coming, as obnoxiously loud as her heels were, and Dustin was not happy to have visitors. He was in the middle of installing coolant pipes on the underside of his machine, which required his full attention so that the pipes were perfectly even, lest supercooled liquid helium leak out through the cracks; distractions were the last thing he wanted right now.

Dustin continued working, lying flat on his creeper, hidden underneath several layers of insulation and basic flooring. Perhaps if he ignored her then she would lose interest and keep walking? Yes, let’s go with that…

She stopped close by. Dustin sighed loudly, deciding that he didn’t have much of a choice.

“There something you want?” he grumbled, still concealed beneath his invention.

That voice... oh! Tess bends down, suit brushing against the floor so she can try and get a look under the whole assembly. Depending on how much clearance there is she might have to squish and wiggle a bit, though.

"I was tryin' t'figure out what it is," she says cheerfully. Her rather uneducated-sounding US-Southern accent is thick enough to drown a small animal in.

Saying that there was enough room for Dustin to fit is…not saying much. The area beneath the machine was dark and cramped, though the man on his creeper seemed to have plenty of room to maneuver, brandishing a cordless soldering iron, a vat of epoxy resin, and a sturdy fume mask. Opaque tube segments were piled up on either side, effectively concealing the man from this person’s prying eyes.

She might’ve seen him shudder in response to her voice—oh god, that voice. Uggh. Nothing beneficial could come out of an accent like that, not to Dustin.

He didn’t even bother gracing her with a proper answer, let alone any sort of manners. “Figure it out yourself. Now go away, I’m busy.”

"Well, it's too big t'be a breadbox," she comments vacuously, trying to squeeze in under the thing a little more. Oof. There's a certain limit to her flexibility and compressibility she's fast approaching. Rather than keep going and get herself stuck, she wiggles back out again and circles around, looking for another way under the thing. Curiously, this time her heels are gone—not just quieter, but gone completely from the noise of her walking. "It don't got the hydraulics t'be a flight simulator. I know!" she says brightly. "Is it a... really large go-kart?"

Dustin thought his brain was going to melt if she stayed for any longer, so it was a partial relief when she stopped trying to squeeze in there with him and left—or, so he thought. He couldn’t hear her heels anymore, so he assumed that she lost interest.

Then she started talking again, startling Dustin enough to make him almost fall off his creeper. Not to mention she was teasing him in that god-awful devil speech! He’d had quite enough of that; Dustin readjusted himself on his wheeled platform and briskly scooted into the open, head abruptly popping out near the woman’s feet.

“Listen, if you’re just going to stand around and throw your ignorance at me then you’re wasting both our ti—“

He blinked, brow curling into a concerned furrow while his mouth remained partially agape. That was…wow. That was some suit she had there. Goodness, it just hugged every corner, now didn’t it?...

Good thing Dustin’s lower body was still under the hull.

Tess crouches next to Dustin, seemingly ignorant of how her appearance is affecting him. (My, and the suit's apparently quite flexible, too...) "I was gonna say maybe it was a spaceship, but it ain't lookin' like it's got enough skin t'take any particle impacts without goin' splat, and it don't got the structural support fer hookin' up any pusher plates." She smiles pleasantly at him, as if the sudden change in her level of displayed knowledge isn't anything out of the ordinary. Of course, with that suit she's wearing (is that thing spaceworthy?), it may not be...

He took a moment to rein in his hormones, which, with this woman’s change in position, was becoming increasingly more difficult. It helped to concentrate on her disgustingly southern accent—nothing was more disturbing to Dustin than a drawl, especially when it was coupled with apparent intelligence.

He got an unpleasant mental image of Clay in bloody scrubs, wielding a syringe full of morphine. That was sufficient enough to calm himself down.

“She doesn’t have ‘skin’ yet because I’m not done with the internal structuring,” Dustin retaliated with his usual smug demeanor, forcing himself to scoot underneath the hull from whence he came, “And I assure you, if she needed ‘pusher plates’, I would install them eventually.”

…Well, no harm in flaunting knowledge. She started it.

“…That is, assuming these devices are for deflecting particle impacts. The tubing that I am currently threading throughout the hull will pump a continuous stream of superfluid helium just underneath the external surface—made of a composite metal with an extremely low specific heat—keeping the shell’s temperature at an average of 2.17 K and creating a weak magnetic field, thereby thoroughly assuring that no small or medium-sized extraterrestrial particles will accidentally damage my ship. Trust me, lady, I’ve thought this through.”

"Better hope y'don't hit anythin' too nonferrous," Tess says with a gentle smile. "I'd be a lot more comfortable just fixin' t'have some armor instead." A little bit of a questionable stance with the form-fitting quality of her suit... "If your expectin' t'see anythin' big in advance, that's gotta be causal propulsion. I thought yer engine stuff looked a spate too big."

She slides into a kneel to peek in after Dustin, her knees edging apart a little as she tries to keep an eye on where he's going to.

She Lives! [open]

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