trans_9 | House Call

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House Call

Luis was getting the feeling his tank of snails was becoming something of a joke around the Science Department, but he didn't care much. They were too fascinating to just give up his research on. They came in a rainbow of colors and glowed in the dark, and also had the ability to weave beautiful and intricate webs of brightly-colored spider-like silk. They were like... spidersnails. No way would he pass up on that opportunity.

He walked through the crew quarters on his way back from Hydroponics, a small holding tank of the creatures under his arm to start a second population. Walking by the doors, he quizzed himself on who lived in each one, partially just to test his memory and partially to see if he could remember which one was his.

As he passed Trudy's quarters, though, he remembered all the hubbub of the dogfights a week or so ago, and recalled hearing that she'd gotten a bit banged up. His mouth narrowed, and he was at her door a moment later.

"Knock knock," he said, adjusting his glasses. "There's a handsome doctor here to see you, General."

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Trudy was still amazed that's all she'd come away from the battle with. It wasn't like she hadn't been in the thick of everything, but the only time she'd been in real trouble was when the Leviathan went down, and that blast rattled her around. She lounged on her bed, thinking about nothing in particular. Sometimes you just ran out of things to do on the meatship.

So Luis's knock on the door made her get up and answer immediately. "Here to count my limbs and make sure they're all still attached?" she asked, smiling.

"Yes. I was just thinking the other day what beautiful limbs you have, and what a shame it would be if something were to happen to them," Luis said, smirking and leaning against the doorframe.

"I heard things got a little crazy out there. But you seem to be all in one piece, sí?"

"The Gundam kid got fucked up a lot worse than I did," Trudy said, standing aside from the doorway to let him in.

A large sheet of metal, scorched around the edges, was propped up against the wall between Trudy's bed and the unused bunk. A tiger head was painted on the side with painstaking detail - it was the panel she'd cut off the side of her chopper before scrapping it to Engineering. Her old automatic rifle was propped against it, with her GIA-issued service blaster next to it. She sat back down on the bed. "I got rattled around pretty good when the Leviathan blew but it's only bruises. He'll be in traction for a while."

He made a face as he set his tank of snails down nearby the door. "I saw him down in medical." And he did look like he'd been hit by a train.

"At the very least nobody was killed," he said soberly. "That's the best we can hope for."

"You can say that again," Trudy said dryly. "Splicer just about gave me a heart attack and I was convinced we'd lost Cowabunga for a second when he hit the self-destruct."

She eyed the tank of snails. "You brought your work with you?" she asked. Teasing. Maybe.

He smirked, tapping the glass/plastic/whatever it was that constructed the tank. "I was just on my way back from Hydroponics with these little guys," he replied. "I've already got one big tank of them, but I wanted to start a second habitat for research too."

His eyes lit up with that special Science gleam. "They glow in the dark and spin webs. Very interesting."

Trudy shook her head with a small smile. "You're the only person I know who would get that excited over snails," she said. "Anyway, this is the worst of what I got - promise."

She rolled up her sleeve to reveal an electrical burn from a console that had shorted out when she got clipped on the engine. It was no bigger than two fingers, barely anything.

"It's not my fault they're cute and fascinating."

He shook his head and made a tsk tsk noise. "Dangerous work," he muttered. "Then again, you're talking to the guy who broke his arm at work a few months ago, I guess I can't really talk."

"Dangerous is in the job description," Trudy said with a shrug, rolling her sleeve back down. "Fly fast, shoot things, get shot at, try not to blow up. You know I don't try to get hurt."

She would feel bad if she made him worry. Although given how long it had taken him to come check up on her, she was pretty sure that by the time he got worried it'd be over with one way or another.

"I know, I know," Luis assured her. "You are good at what you do. Don't feel nagged on my account. Just don't be surprised if I check in from time to time to make sure there are no big holes in you."

He kind of shuddered at that thought for some reason.

"I wanted to give you some time to relax before I came in to whine at you. But in any case, glad to see you're all right."

"Like I said before, I made it out a lot better than some of the pilots. A lot of it has to do with the fact that I can't really get in the thick of things and command at the same time." She still needed to apologize to Rtas for commanding his bridge crew in the middle of the fight. That was his job.

She sighed and scooted far enough back on the bed that she could rest her back against the wall and stretch her legs out in front of her. "How about you, no new crises to report? More killer mutant creatures breaking out of your lab?"

"Not so far, no," Luis said, looking more than a bit relieved about it. "Dare I say we're actually running out of mutant pathogens to study?" He reached over and knocked on... well, it wasn't wood, but close enough.

"It's given me some time to do my own research, which has more or less revolved around these snails, but what can I say? It keeps me out of trouble."

"As long as you have something to keep you occupied," Trudy said. "Kang managed to find a camera of all things on XaXing. Wouldn't expect them to have something like that, but it's been really nice to get back into photography. You know, when I'm not terrorizing my troops."

She was proud of her troops. Don't let anything she says about terrorizing fool you.

"Really?" he asked, sounding intrigued. "I didn't know you liked photography." It was kind of strange the mundane hobbies you discovered about people on this ship... they all seemed odd, mostly because it was impossible to stumble across them easily.

"It's kind of funny. I never even saw a camera until I was... nine or ten years old," Luis chuckled. "My grandfather brought one back from the city. I spent days playing with it. I wasted an entire roll of film taking pictures of the outside of our house."

Trudy laughed - she could just imagine little ten-year-old Luis running around the house snapping pictures. "Yeah, I've been into it since before I enlisted in the Marines. I took tons of pictures on Pandora." All of which had been in her room on the FOB and had perished when Pandora was destroyed - all except the one picture of the Pandoran sunset that survived in her cockpit. That one was tacked up on the wall of her quarters.

"My camera didn't survive the missile strike, though. I found it in multiple melted pieces while I was stripping down the Samson for parts." Both of those things still pained her a little.

He frowned at the sad fate of her camera. "I'm sure we can find something similar somewhere around the universe," he said. "And if not, we can commission those nerds down in Engineering to build you one."

He stepped a little further into the room, having a seat on the nearest chairlike thing he could spot. "I never thought of taking pictures around here... I suppose because everything around here is so unbelievable, the idea that we might need a picture to remember it is crazy."

"Oh - no, Kang picked up the camera for me. Shocked the hell out of me, I didn't think he knew I wanted one. But then again, that guy hears more things around this boat managing that bar. I wouldn't be surprised if he knew everybody's business."

Trudy didn't care how he'd figured it out. She had a camera and that made her happy. "You know, as much as this boat has some shitty stuff, I don't really mind it. The people make up for the crazy, most days."

"Yes... Kang has that certain way of being far sharper than he seems," he said. Of course, Luis had told Kang far more about himself than he told most people, so it wasn't too much of a shock if he knew a lot of deep dark secrets about him.

"I don't mind it either," he said. "I mean, the shortage of cigarettes is frustrating, and let's not even get into the food... but considering what I would be doing otherwise, if we were back home, I like it here."

"It definitely beats the alternative," Trudy said dryly. She went quiet for a minute, thinking. Always dangerous to let Trudy think on this topic for very long.

"D'you think Stacy would let us stay, if we could get our worlds back?"

He frowned thoughtfully.

"I don't know," he admitted. "I imagine she'll try to send us back to our original times and places, though... I guess I don't see why we couldn't go somewhere else."

He shrugged his shoulders. "I mean, I can't imagine she'd expect us to agree to just... go back to. You know. Where we were exactly.."

"I mean," Trudy said slowly. "It's not like anyone in our world will know the difference... since. Well." Kind of a strange thought, that Jake and Ney'tiri probably held her funeral, if they had survived the battle. "To be honest I'd rather get marooned on the next shore leave planet than have to go back. Probably be better than here anyway."

She glanced up at the ceiling. Stacy could probably hear them. She didn't care much. If it weren't for the shitty slop and the warden personality, she'd be kosher with staying on Stacy forever.

Luis nodded grimly. "Yeah. Nobody missed me, and nobody would notice if I came back... but I agree with you."

This was getting pretty awkward, pretty quick.

Finally, he exhaled. "If you don't mind me asking... how did you, er..."

Trudy managed to figure out what he was asking - there really was no tactful way to phrase that question. "I sucked at my job for one day," she said. "But you know, when your job is to fly fast, shoot things and not get shot, one day is all it takes. Seeker missiles are a bitch and a half. Took a direct hit, then woke up here."

She'd been in the military most of her life. Death wasn't something that surprised her, not even her death.

"Ah." Well, that made sense. Trudy was a Marine, and it really did only take one mistake with a helicopter for that to be all she wrote.

"I, uh... I pissed off my old boss," he said finally. "He punched a hole in me the size of a football. The American kind, not the European kind. I bled out." He shifted a little awkwardly in his seat, then reached up and idly rubbed his fingers over his chest. A nervous habit. Sometimes he could still feel the pain there, though he had no idea why and really didn't want to know.

Trudy got up and crossed the room, putting her hand over that spot on his chest. "Here?" she asked. "You don't have a scar." She would know. Then again, she didn't have any scarring - or any injuries for that matter - from her own fatal incident.

A half-smile crossed her face without her realizing it. "Man, will we ever stop finding similar shit about each other? Quaritch was my CO before I told him to go to hell. He's the one who shot me down."

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