trans_9 | Back in Business [Open]

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Back in Business [Open]

Asuka wasn't sure how long she'd been running that maze. It had seemed like forever to her. Just endless circles, following the commands of an AI, trying to get out. She could handle the puzzles and traps. She'd hated the isolation. Finally, she'd been spat back out into the welcome (the fact that she'd been relieved to see them disturbed her) corridors of Stacy again. She ran a hand through her hair with an irritated huff. How long had that taken, anyway? She needed to check up on her training and she needed to get back in the saddle. Quickly.

She headed off on the run - the sensoriums were calling her name. Grounded or not, she intended to take a virtual X-Wing out for a spin. It was the work of a few moments to call it up. She spent a few minutes circling the virtual craft, the virtual hangar deck stretching out white and empty around her. Yeah, she'd get in trouble if she got caught, but she wasn't going to get caught (although part of her was afraid of that and part of her wanted to go and see Arha). She shoved those feelings away. She wanted to have some fun first.

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"They always yell at you for showing off! It's so stupid! If I can kick ass and look good doing it, why shouldn't I?" Asuka grinned arrogantly. She liked Deunan. "By the way, I'm Asuka Langley Soryu. Who're you?"

"Deunan Knute." She offered her hand, gauntleted by her armor but for the trigger finger, to Asuka to shake. "Nice to meet you, Asuka."

Asuka took the offered hand and shook. She eyed the armor curiously and cocked her head. "What's with the armor, anyway?"

Yeah, a bit blunt.

"The plant suits freak me out. I can't stand the pulsing," Deunan admitted. "I'd rather wear regular clothes if I'm just hanging around, but..." she trailed off with a shrug. Normal clothing wasn't among the amenities Stacy offered.

Deunan looked at her own arm critically. "The Garthim's self-supporting, so it's not like it's hard to move in."

"...yeah, they are kinda freaky," Asuka agreed, "At least plugsuits don't... breathe or whatever it is those plantsuits do!" She shuddered.

Her gaze returned to the armor and she leaned forward, curiosity piqued. "I've never really bothered with personal armor... I don't get involved in personal combat, really."

"It takes the place of the datasuit you used to have to wear to pilot a landmate," Deunan explained. "Plus, it provides protection and lets you take your HUD with you if you end up having to ditch the suit somewhere. The Garthim's great, really."

She cocked her head as an idea occurred to her. "I'll bet the sensorium could simulate a set for you if you wanted to try it out. It's the smoothest power armor I've ever worn."

"What's a landmate?" She looked puzzled for a moment and then her eyes lit up as she mentioned "power armor". She grinned widely and took a step back, eying Deunan. "That would be so cool! Are these landmates anything like my Eva?"

Of course, the X-Wing vanished. Then, with a thought, her Eva unit was looming over them.

"A landmate's a--" Deunan broke off and looked up at the Eva. Looked way up.

"Uh. Something like that, I guess. A little more...practical?" With a thought, she added a Guges D landmate to the scene. At 10 feet, it dwarfed the two women...and didn't even come up to the Eva's knee.

Hey, the Eva is completely practical, as long as you have a nuclear reactor to power it. And your enemies are conventional armored units. Or giant aliens. Or maybe Godzilla. Asuka folded her arms with a slight pout. "Hey, my Eva is completely practical!"

She harumphed and gave the landmate an appraising look. It was so... small. She sighed. "It's kind of small, isn't it?"

Still, it was kind of cool.

"It's designed for police work," Deunan said, patting the landmate as though it were a horse. Indeed, the Guges had "POLICE" plastered across both shoulders. "Anti-cyborg, anti-terrorism, that kind of thing."

She jerked a finger at the Eva. "We had a program for huge mobile platforms like that but it...didn't work out." And had almost destroyed Olympus in the process.

"Police?" Asuka groaned. "Well, I guess I could still take one for a spin. Just to try it out."

She ran a hand over the landmate, eying it. "How does it work? It can't be that much harder than an Eva."

"Hey! ESWAT is Olympus's first line of defense!" Asuka was a nice enough kid, but she'd better not have been running down Deunan's job.

"The catch is right here." Deunan reached over and triggered the landmate to open. "Climb in. You don't need a datasuit if you're just going to stomp around trying things out. The worst you can do is damage the landmate." She shrugged. "Which doesn't matter here."

Deunan indicated the lower set of arms on the suit, roughly human-sized. "Your hands go in those, and the main arms follow their motions.

"Hit this button--" Deunan pointed it out "--to seal the armor. Watch your legs. You don't have to bend your knees as far as you think you do."

Deunan backed off to let Asuka try the power suit. Even if the girl had no knack for it, in the sensoriums, she couldn't hurt much more than her pride.

Well, Asuka couldn't knock them too much. NERV had been a paramilitary organization itself, after all. She took a step back as the suit opened up and then crept forward, peering at the internal mechanisms curiously. After a moment she grinned again and clambered in. She slipped her arms into the control ports and then carefully made sure sure her legs were in the right position. She tapped the button and a moment later found herself in a whole different kind of powered armor.

"Whoa..." She took a few steps as she tried to keep an eye on her own legs. "Seems pretty easy!"

"Walking's not too bad. You might get tripped up trying to run, so go easy."

With half an eye on Asuka in case the redhead did manage to find some way to hurt herself from the inside of a landmate, Deunan conjured up a Guges of her own and climbed inside. Its systems got indignant about her missing helmet, which she'd left in her room, but grudgingly supplied her with an internal display.

All systems green. They'd better be--this was an imaginary landmate, after all.

"How's it going?" she asked Asuka over the suit radio.

"So far so good! This is easy!" Asuka raised her arms experimentally, turning and twisting her torso. It was different from the Eva. Although Unit 02 responded to her thoughts and her analog controls, this was all analog - but it was through the movement of her body, so she might as well be in sync with it. Interesting. She took a step, then another and then tried to run, grinning to herself. She might get tripped? Her?

Of course, a moment later there was a crash and Asuka found herself sprawled out on the floor. The armor had managed to cushion most of the impact, but she thought she'd bruised something, somewhere. She grumbled to herself as she tried to stand up. "Stupid suit..."

"Look, I told you the knees take some getting used to." Deunan made a grabbing motion, and one of her suit's main arms grasped a hard point on the back of Asuka's landmate to help lift it to its feet.

"Check the diagnostics. Anything red?" She didn't think there would be, not from that little stumble, but it didn't hurt to drill in good habits early.

Asuka glanced over the readouts. Really, she only had half a clue what any of them meant, but everything looked OK and she'd learned that, in general, when something went wrong the display would usually be flashing something large and alarming in your face. "No, everything's fine!"

She clambered back to her feet and flexed her fingers, making sure everything still worked. "I could've stood up on my own, you know."

"Sure." Deunan rested her hand on her cocked hip, and the landmate followed suit, which was an interesting sight. "But the point in having backup is so you don't have to do things on your own. A tight fireteam's way more effective than any solo."

The exact same thing that everyone else kept telling her. But Asuka didn't want help! She didn't need help! Did she? She grumbled and setteled both of her hands on her hips. "I shouldn't need help."

Well, maybe they had a point. "I should be good enough on my own!"

Deunan frowned, the landmate's armor hiding her expression from Asuka. The attitude confused her. Was the girl trying to get killed? "Even if you're the best in the world, teaming up with the second best is only going to make you both better. The right team is way more than the sum of its parts."

Asuka huffed inside of her suit. Sure, the Rogues weren't holding her back. She wasn't even the best pilot in the squadron. And then there had been that stupid training exercise. She let out a long-suffering sigh. "Fine, fine. But I don't like it when people slow me down."

"Me either." Deunan sighed.

"Look, you don't have to listen to me. This whole conversation's turning me into my Dad, anyway." She packed the appropriate mix of disgust and horror into that last sentence.

Her father, huh? Asuka remembered her own. Barely. She shrugged inside of the suit. "I just want to learn how to use this thing! I... can't pilot my Eva here."

She was quiet for a moment. "So I need to do something! I'm not getting left behind! And I'm not going to be second best!"

Asuka had mentioned there was no one from her world here...the poor kid must be terribly lonely and afraid. Even though Deunan's father had been an unspeakable bastard when she was Asuka's age, she'd at least had a father around, and Briareos's shoulder to cry on when that father became unbearable. Asuka had none of that, not even familiar surroundings. The bravado was understandable, even admirable.

"I'll teach you to pilot a landmate, sure. But you'll need to be wearing a proper datasuit if you want to get fine control. This is just playing around." Deunan gestured dismissively.

If Deunan knew about the kinds of parental issues Asuka was carrying around, she'd probably have even more sympathy for her. Not that Asuka wanted sympathy or wanted to be treated like a "weakling", but that was entirely on her. She eyed Deunan's landmate through her display. "A datasuit? Sure. Can't be any worse than a plugsuit."

She actually liked the plugsuit, even if they were disposable garments.

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