trans_9 | Bad Handwriting and Everything [Open]

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Bad Handwriting and Everything [Open]

The upside to using paper and pen instead of data pads for taking notes on patients is that it's intuitive and you can fiddle with things. The downside is that, at the end of a shift, a lot of the notes have to be shredded for privacy reasons, and the details have to be entered into the data pads anyway. Despite his usual devotion to efficiency, Howard doesn't mind this. It's a nice way to review the day and cement anything he might have learned.

The Quarantine's mostly empty now, which is a definite plus. All those kids were getting Howard crankier and antsier than usual. He brought in a box of toys from the Warehouse, though he didn't bother to check the age ranges for them, so he hopes someone who cares a bit more will take out all the choking hazards before any of the children regress to toddlerhood. He doesn't want anything to do with children; he had enough of that back in that dystopian nightmare he called home. All they do is cry and scream and demand things and kill each other and eat all the food and lie and burn down buildings and generally make life unpleasant. Not that adults are always better, but at least someone's around to enforce order here.

He hums a snippet of Cliffs of Dover to himself, chewing on the end of a Tinker Toy, and starts typing in his notes.

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"Yeah, pure and innocent kids ain't. Oh, and we had talking coyotes trying to kill us, flesh-eating worms, brainwashing evil mineshafts, and psychopath zombies with guns and whips. Perdido Beach is such a tourist trap these days." He chews on the Tinker Toy again, looking a bit distant, before snapping back to the present.

"And did you?" Howard wouldn't volunteer for a war if you put a gun to his head. He looks at Katara a bit as if she just mentioned she used to have a second head and removed it with acid. "And what's waterbending?"

"Doesn't sound like you're missing anything, not talking to him." Howard rolls his eyes. "At least he's not as bad as the crazy blonde chick who was in Quarantine earlier. She was downright scary, and I know scary."

Kaya stared in disbelief. "You know, if it weren't for the ship, and that time we actually had to go and fight zombies once, I might start to think you were crazy. But let's face it: with everything here, it'd be kinda hypocritical. most of this technology is stuff I could never imagine in my wildest dreams."

"Yes, as it turns out, I did. Granted, the people from my world don't recognize me and teh ship had me thinking I was my older teacher, but that's a long story. As for what waterbending is, its pretty simple: anything made of water, I can use. I can freez it, defrost it, use it as a weapon or a shield. In short, I control water."

It was much more intricate than that, but she'd answer his questions as needed. She was tired anyway: normally, she would have just shown him.

"I wish he was less volatile, honestly. But what blond girl are you talking ab...do you mean Rachel?"

"Ugh. I hate zombies. We had one tied up in our basement back home," he says. "Yeah, too bad we can't figure out how to use half of it."

"Like fruit, drinks...blood?" He figures it's never bad to know more about what your comrades are capable of, and even now his mind is racing trying to picture all the ways water could be a weapon. It's a scary prospect.

"As much you talk about him, you'd think you had a crush on him." He shoots a glare over to the Quarantine. "Yeah, that Rachel. Trying to interview her was like pulling teeth. You'd think I insulted her grandma or something.

"Well, considering the ones that were on the ship were trying to eat us, they didn't really thrill me either," Kaya said, remembering that day, "Though now that I think about it, I actually missed the zombies because that was when we were trying to recapture the bridge. What a day that was: that was when we first met Lex Luthor."

Yep, really bad day there.

"Fruits, drinks, river, ice, yes, all of that. Human blood I can only do on the full moon, since that's when a waterbender is at their strongest. To date, I only did it once, back when we were on shore leave and there was an Ohm attack. I had them attacking each other so I could give some of the guys more time to escape. Controlling people's blood isn't exactly an exciting prospect for me."

See that there? That would be a death glare. "Not for all the money in the universe. Besides, my guy is on the Council anyway. Rachel, I've heard has a bit of a temper, though the one I came across seemed kind of meek and quiet."

Howard drops the Tinker Toy. "Lex Luthor?"

He's been wary of the people Stacy chose for the war from the start - including her bizarre decision to include him - but one of the most well-known villains of a comic series Howard used to read when he was in fifth grade, hunched in the school bathroom with an X-Men lunchbox and an ear out for bullies? Seriously?

And Katara's whole thing about blood just sounds like some sort of blood-magic werewolfery. He takes a deep breath and shakes his head. "Thats just creepy, yeah. What's this about healing?"

Howard is very used to deathglares. Give his sometimes unpleasant nature, he's received many of them in the last few years. "Your guy? Who's your guy, and does he know you're in love with Marco? Is he okay with that?"

Now he's just trying to get a rise out of her.

"I figured you might have heard of him. He IS on the ship, and a lot of people wanted to kill me for not hating him on the spot. But he seems like a...well, a neutral person, at any rate. I want to at least get to know him better before I form an opinion. We don't hate each other."

She sighed. "I know it is, but sometimes its necessary. I need to make sure that I can defend the people on the ship, so if I have the opportunity to use it against the Ohm to save lives, I'll do what I can. As for healing, I can do that with most wounds from people in med bay, yeah."

She gave him a very annoyed look. "MATT knows darn well that Marco has nothing on him. Matt is romantic and amazing. Marco is a pain. And you, you;re saying this on purpose!"

She did think it was a little funny, but he didn't have to know that!

Howard drops his head to his table, gently head-desking. "He's only one of the most famous villains in our pop culture. Well, I mean, I guess he's not the Joker, but...God. What the hell, Stacy."

He takes a deep breath and composes himself again. Seriously, Lex Luthor... "So. Healing powers. Just wounds, or does it also work on...I don't know, sickness? How fast does it work?"

"I understand it's hard that your one true love is getting deaged back to kindergarten, but don't make Matt your rebound. That's just cruel," he says with a totally straight face.

Kaya giggled. "I dunno, I haven't had any really hateful session with him. He seems all right. He;s kind of an interesting person to be around, really."

She sighed. "Well, not totally, as far as mind sickness. It's usually pretty instantaneous, although the healing process needs a few minutes, you know?"

Kaya fixed him a look. "I will seriously hurt your face if you think I could rebound Matt with Marco. Matt is an angel, a great guy. Marco is... well, mean and nasty."

"I'm sure he is. He would be. I'd probably take a picture. And then run away, change my name and sign up for Witness Protection," he says darkly. "So you couldn't, say, heal addiction?"

And in a way, it'd be a relief if she couldn't. Because if Orc wakes up and is still a drunk, Howard doesn't know if he'd want to relinquish the reins of control and fix that. At the same time, he'd want to do everything possible to help, according to him, his best friend.

He puts a hand in front of his face. Even with Stacy's tentacles, who's to say Kaya won't just suck the water right out of him? How would Stacy stop that? "Please don't hurt my face. It has nerve endings."

Kaya chuckled. "I know worse people than Lex Luther. But I had a lot of people angry at me for not hating him on sight. Supposedly karma is coming back to haunt me though, since some vicious person from my world is here and barely sane, and they're letting her free soon anyway."

She shook her head. "That would be more like magic, or at least, something with the human brain. That's far too complicated a machine, I think, for most people to manipulate, and I don't think I'd want to."

She laughed. "I'm joking! Sorry, that guy has just been a bit of a sore subject for me. His mother, Eva, is a good friend of mine, and she's been through a lot already."

Howard raises an eyebrow at her. She seems to keep going back to the idea that a lot of people are angry at her, almost like she needs to reassert that she was the victim of something he never even mentioned. He makes a mental note of it, retrieving his Tinker Toy, now with plenty of teethmarks on it. "They're letting her free? Last I heard they didn't decide yet what they were going to do."

"The brain's still an organ, but yeah, I guess. I guess more can go wrong with a brain." He nods, although he knows cases where you can get a brain to do what you want if you have the right power.

"That's okay. I just won't tell him about your secret crush and you won't break my face, okay?"

Actually, she was just describing what happened at that time: it had been more than year ago, after all, most of their tempers had cooled. Well, maybe not Paco's, he HAD lost an arm during that particular mission. She was pretty sure he still bore a grudge, which she'd just learned to live with. "Actually, I'm talking about someone different, I think. Her name is Azula: she's curently in the bri, but eth Council todl us they were letting her go."

A stupid decision in her opinion. She was stil plenty crazy.

"Even if there aws a way, I'm not sure I would want to. The idea of messing around with someone's head is just too intrusive."

She gave him a look. "Ok, that joke is seriously wearing thin. Normally I wouldn't care, but its him, and I haven't been this annoyed in awhile, not since that Asuka girl."

"Yeah, right, that's exactly who I was talking about, actually. They're just letting her walk? Without even a goddamn psych eval? Jesus!" Howard's voice gets shrill; he's not only speaking from the little he knows about the Azula situation, but also his experience as a jailkeeper for the town psychopath. He still has nightmares most nights about Drake getting loose and making the people who showed mercy on him eat their words.

"I guess that's true. It just seems like something there should be a much easier fix for." He shrugs, sucking on the end of the Tinker Toy. "I guess I wouldn't know, I'm not addicted to anything."

"I don't even know who Asuka is. But nah, joke's not wearing thin, you just need a sturdier sense of humor."

Kaya sighed. "I didn't think it was possible either, but after they told me I went to talk to Azula myself. I just don't see her getting better, not right away. Whatever they can do for her, I hope they do it soon."

Kaya nodded. "Me neither, unless its bad luck. Of maybe bad luck is addicted to me? I'm not sure, honestly. But the best remedy for that is finding people on the ship you like and hanging out with them."

She giggled. "Tell you what: hang out with me a few more times and then break out those kind of jokes. You'll find my sense of humor much better then."

"None of the crazies I ever knew got better, they just got more murderous and crazier. And I've know way too many crazies." He bites his lip, looking worried. With the exception of Brittney - who was just fused to another psycho - they all ended up killing other kids in horrible ways too. Throwing them through walls, torture, whippings, drowning...

"That would presume I like people. Nice try, though." Kaya, you don't want to get into a contest for bad luck with Howard. The two of you will be competing for years.

"Nah. No one gets a grace period, sorry. But it's just going to get worse the longer you know me."

"With her, I'm not quite sure what will happen. All I know is that in my world she was plenty dangerous, and vicious when it came to getting what she wanted, and that was her sane. Insane, I just don't know. These council people better know what they're doing."

She shook her head. "Well, that's what works for me, anyway. With you, I'm guessing you'll have to find your own way of dealing. Obviously not everyone is a prize, but there are alwys at least a handful you can trust."

Kaya laughed. "Fair enough. I don't know, you seem like a pretty interesting guy. I'll take my chances."

She looked over at his notes. "What are you doing there?"

"Oh, great. I just love vicious people who go off the rails." He shakes his head. "I'm going to be going out of my way to avoid her, but that's never an ideal solution. At least I don't know her."

He actually laughs at that. Trust is not something that comes easily to him - or at all. The closest he comes to trusting anyone on the ship is Zouichi, and that's mostly because he's got Zouichi figured as someone who would put the safety of others before himself. "Whatever you say, Bubbles."

He doesn't repay the compliment, feeling a little awkward. Normally tensions are so high in the FAYZ - and before that he had so much trouble making friends in school - that he tends to grind people's nerves relatively quickly. He's used to antagonism; being a friendly acquaintance of someone is a relatively new experience.

"Deaging stuff. Filling out more interview info in case it turns out we screwed up and this has nothing to do with the clock. Backup plan." He's not an optimistic person.

"Well, its my first time seeing it, to be honest," Kaya confessed, looking apprehensive. "Chances are though, she won't get to know you either. You're a little dark skinned like me, so she'll probably think you're a peasant or something, like you;re part of my tribe."

Bubbles? Was that a term of endearment, or just another joke? It was hard to tell.

"I guess it is good to think ahead, although I really am hoping its the clock. I have a few friends of mine that are already being affected by this clock thing."

Howard snorts. "Oh, yeah. I forgot all brown people look alike. So she's crazy and racist."

Don't dwell too much on it, Kaya - just about everyone gets nicknames from Howard. He just happened to think your speech about friendship would have fit in a Powerpuff Girls episode.

"It would be pretty nice if this whole thing worked out and we weren't surrounded by kids for longer than we have to be. Not to mention it'd look good for us at Medical."

Kaya snickered. "I've heard of this 'racist' thing in my readings in the library, and its not quite the same, actually. In the region where I live, dark skinned people populate the poles, the lighter skinned in the middle regions. She's not looking at your skin and thinking...well, actually, you might be right, now that I think of it. Of course, she's also crazy laong with having a superiority complex."

If Kaya saw the Powerpuff girls she would love it, especially Blossom.

"I know what you mean. Getting people just to come here is like pulling teeth. How long have you been doing it so far?"

"So instead of 'go back to Africa' it's 'go back to the pole'? Between the war and the crazy people, your place sounds fantastic. I'll book my tickets there in a heartbeat."

He counts back - it's hard to keep track of things on Stacy. "Almost three months. You?"

Kaya shrugged. "We're peasants to her, because she was raised as royalty. It's less about the color and more about how she feels she was raised to be better than those below her status. We could be colored lighter, but as log as she is royalty ad we aren't, that will be how she is."

She looked a little down trodden. "Almost three years, actually."

"You still got kingships? That's lame. We had some idiot tried to make himself king in the FAYZ, but that didn't turn out so well for him."

He's surprised. He hasn't run into anyone else who's been here so long. "Seriously?"

"Like I said, compared to most of the world's here, mine is pretty primitive by comparison. In the Fire Nation you have the Firelord, in the Earth Kingdom there is a king, and in my tribe there's the chief. I think the air nomads were the only ones that didn't have anything like that, but most of them are dead now, thanks to the war: you can ask Aang or Nima about that."

She nodded. "Yeah, its been that long, actually. There aren't a lot of people who have been with me as long: I mean, I know Billy has, and the Captain Leon has been here awhile, but I can remember quite a few of the events that's happened on the ship. Its sorta why this melting clock thing doesn't surprise me."

"I think I ran into Aang. Bald guy, arrow tattoos, way too peppy?"

He taps the Tinker Toy against his front teeth. "The only thing that's surprised me is how cliche the clock is. Stacy's almost normal compared to how crazy it was back home. I guess I'll get more used to the boring routine the longer I'm here. Not that I don't like boring routine."

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