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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"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."

"Yeah, that's Aang all right!" Kaya said, offering a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. The awkwardness between her and the rest of the Avatar crew hadn't quite been dealt with yet, so it was still a bit of a sore subject.

"It doesn't stay boring for long, trust me. This is far from the worst thing that's happened on Stacy. If I were you, I wouldn't tempt face by saying that aloud. You might regret it."

Howard doesn't miss the almost sad smile, but decides not to pursue that conversation point just yet. "He gives me the creeps a bit. He's almost too nice."

He snickers and puts one of his shoes up on the desk. Despite many washings, it's still got bloodstains, and obvious holes in a tooth-mark pattern. "Are you kidding? I almost got eaten by dinosaurs already."

Kaya couldn't help but laughing aloud. "Too nice? I've never heard of anyone being too nice! Is that someone that's the opposite of being too mean? He's always been that way, although he's been through a lot for this ship, I'm surprised he can manage it."

The girl raised her eyebrow. "Ugh, don't get me started. There was this one time where we had to face this Nightmare King, and all of peoples dreams started to attack us. At one point we had to actually face what earth people call a Tyrannosaurus Rex, and I STILL think that was easier than when we had to go through these terminators."

"There's totally such a thing as being too nice. Usually someone's who's too nice either isn't actually that nice, is setting themselves up to get shafted, or drives themselves crazy." At least, all the examples in Howard's life pointed to that.

"My buddy Zouichi threw a T-Rex, actually. Like, literally picked it up and threw it in the air. It was pretty crazy." He laughs at the mention of Terminators. "'Ah'll be bahck' terminators? Seriously?"

Kaya shook her head. "Actually, its because he's an air nomad. Their kind are usually pretty fancy free, love everything, try to understand everyone's point of view, that kind of thing. He actually is naturally like that, believe it or not. But he's definitely not weak, oh no. He's one of those guys that has a lot of power, and all of the training and strength, and knows when he has to use it. I always admired that about him."

She raised an eyebrow. "Is that the same security Zouichi that you're talking about? Because if it is, how on earth did he find up fighting a dinosaur?"

Kaya looked surprised. "Um, that didn't say anything like that, but they were grey with red eyes and very, VERY hard to destroy, even with combined strengths. I never saw anything like them."

"Wow, so an entire race of people who're way too nice. It creeps me out, man." He fakes a shudder. "God, girl, how many guys you crushing on? Marco'll get jealous."

He kicks his shoe against the table-leg gently. "Same way I ended up getting chased by them. Stacy sent us on this absolute bullshit mission and we nearly all ended up dead infiltrating and fighting in a dinosaur gladiator ring. Fun times."

"Yep, sounds like terminators. I better revise my plans for hiding under desks to include hiding behind metal cabinets."

"Former race of people, actually," Kaya clarified. "During the war, they were the first that were killed off. Aang just happened to be out of the way at the time."

At the mention of that, Kaya sucked her breath in. Marco being her boyfriend was just an irritating joke, but Aang: that was just bit of a sore subject she would refrain from getting into. "Ha ha," she said, trying to sound sarcastic about it as if it were just an annoying thing.

"A gladiator dinosaur ring?!" Kaya was beside herself. "Really, what is she thinking? My friend Billy was almost critically injured in that mission with the ships! Where is she getting her information?"

She shook her head. "Hopefully that won't happen again. Anyway, if it does, I'll protect you: I've never been the run and hide kind of girl."

"Cheerful," Howard says sarcastically. He notes the uncomfortable way she responds to his crack, tilts his head, and drops that subject too.

"Oh, I think she has plenty of information, she's just choosing to withhold it. She sent me, Zou and Anwei on that mission when she could have sent Zou and two people like you, people with serious firepower. The only reason we got out alive was dumb luck."

He smirks. "Yeah? If it ever comes down to it, I'm totally going to hold you to that."

"Well, no one likes thinking about something like that," Kaya said. "Aang is pretty amazing, with all he's gone through."

Kaya did look uneasy about this though. "I could understand Stacy maybe trying to get you to toughen up, but if they could have gotten people who would have been much better, why not do that? I don't understand half of what she does lately."

She smirked. "Maybe by then you'll know how to defend yourself, who knows?"

"Personally, I think her whole motherly love schtick is crap and she wouldn't lift a finger to stop any of us dying, if she isn't setting out to do it herself. She's screwing with us. Or, she's crazy and she thinks screwing with us is part of her motherly love plot."

He shakes his head. "Maybe, but I'm still going to hold you to saving me. Makes my life easier."

"I'd like to disagree," Kaya said, "But the truth is, I've been pulled apart and back together by the shenanigans of this ship, and no matter how idealistic I try to get, or how much I try to look on the bright side, a bad thing happens. A mother wouldn't do that, not one that was actually trying. She's more like that God Damion keeps talking about, that throws everything to chance and gets angry when disobeyed."

She raised an eyebrow. "You mean to say knowing we're in a war and you don't want to find a way to fight back? Why?"

"Yeah, that's what you get for idealism, I guess." He understands that feeling of Stacy as a god; in a way, that makes it worse, because Stacy's reified as yet another power beyond his scope that's playing with and threatening his life. And he hasn't even gotten his memories screwed up like Kaya.

"Who says I'm not learning to fight back? I'm in lessons. I just never want to have to use what I learn." Mostly because he sucks at it. A lot. It was only a few weeks ago that Zouichi pointed out to him how to make a proper fist that wouldn't break his thumb.

"It can only get you so far. The rest is usually taped together by the friends you make and the experiences you have. It's what makes sure that being here all this time, losing people, almost coming close to death, is not only just a hell someone made for me."

It was a blunt assessment, and one that Kaya would hardly ever use, but that was how she felt sometimes.

"Then what's the point of learning it then? You HAVE to use it, so you get better. That doesn't mean you have to go haul of and go fighting people or anything, but you will want to make sure you get good enough so that you're a formidable fighter, you know?"

"Nope. It's a hell someone made for all of us," he says, ramping up the cynicism to match Kaya's steadfast resilience. How nice, for her to have her friends to help her through this.

"No, I mean, I am getting better, I just never want to have to be in a position to be fighting for my life again. Why's that such a weird concept to you hero-types?"

"The Ohm," Kaya said. "No matter who much I hate how Stacy operates, or how little we get informed, it always boils down to the enemy that went and destroyed most of our planets."

Which was, of course, what led to her next answer. "I was born into war. It didn't matter that I was scared, or that they were intimidating: fact is, I either fought back or knuckled under, and the third option, running away, isn't one I can live with. It always comes down to a matter of time until you get targeted yourself. And since the Ohm target other planets, I want to help stop them."

"If you believe that. Maybe it's the Matrix," he snarks. He hasn't seen the Ohm fight, but he knows that even with the brutality everyone tells him about, just because someone's violent and cruel doesn't mean they aren't fighting on the right side of the war.

"Good for you. Me, I didn't ask for any of this and I've still ended up fighting for my life more often than not in the past few years, and I don't even have any useful skills. All I'll end up doing is getting in the way." He's getting defensive now, the way he usually gets when he feels his Perfectly Reasonable feelings of self-preservation are getting labeled as selfish.

"I don;t know what a Matrix is," Kaya said, looking confused. What was hew talking about? She had seen the Ohm up close and personal, ever sacrificed time on the field to fight them, so what was a Matrix? Some new kind of enemy?

"No one says you'll learn a set of skills instantaneously," Kaya said. "It's dumb to think you'll just learn, like magic. It takes dedication, spent time, blood and sweat. A lot of people on the ship are just born with the stuff: some of us, we had to earn it in the hardest ways. I don't think of you any different."

"It's a joke, is what it is." He should remember that she's clearly from a time when DVDs don't exist; the pop culture references are probably going to fall on deaf ears.

"Yeah? Well, I do. I'm not hero material and honestly, I wouldn't want to be. You want to go off on all your world-saving adventures against injustice, fine. You sound like you've always wanted that. But I don't want it expected from me."

"Oh." Kaya said, looking more confused. "Well if its a joke, I'd like to have it explained, just so I can get it! It sounds like a movie thing, and I'm actually pretty new to that."

But here, she gave him a stern look. "Always wanted that? I was a girl from a village who was stuck in a war. From what you said, you sounded like you knew what that was like, the war part anyway. If that's the case, you ought to know that in that situation, what you'd like or prefer doesn't really matter. Don't start labeling me as a do-gooder or adventurer just because you don't want to be that way. That's your own choice. I'm doing this because people are dying, plain and simple, and I'm not the type of person who thinks that should happen. All you have to do is see the Ohm at work, and you already know what the future of the universe will be like if they're not stopped."

It wasn't pretty, that was for sure.

"It's a movie about a computer than makes people's lives a simulation. You don't realize your life isn't real until it's been unplugged. And for some reason the good guys decide their going to make everyone live their lives outside the simulator even though they're happy inside."

He matches her look, taking it one step further into anger. "No. I don't. We've been tugged around from our worlds by a ship that may or may not be crazy and may or may not be telling us the truth and set up to fight a war. I'm not going to deny the Ohm did some awful stuff on their last attack, but we're working with less than half the story. Maybe the Ohm are trying to save the universe. Maybe they're as evil as Stacy tells us. We don't know, and we just ended up drafted to do what Stacy wants because she's manipulating the information. Maybe having a purpose, suspect as it is, and having someone give you props for how special and important your 'story' is is enough for you, but it's not enough to make me risk my life more than I have to. We don't know and Spacey Stacy goes out of her way to keep us in the dark."

The idea of that actually completely through Kaya off a bit. She really didn't like the idea of technology advancing so well that they were able to facilitate a scenario where they could all be fooled into living their daily life was just sort of scary.

She listened carefully before she replied to this. "If you believe that, I can't blame you I guess, but keep in mind how diverse the members of the crew are: there are ways for us to test the boundaries of what Stacy can do. Specifically, we've had crew members already attempt to talk to the Ohm: we specifically have a Councilor who believes just that. So before you say I'm juts blindly believing what Stacy, keep this in mind: if it turned out all of this was a lie tomorrow and Stacy is our enemy, then I would still fight, because there's still one more thing to fight for: this crew and everyone in it. I never decided to do this because I LIKE it, but I am good at it, and I do believe in fighting for a better day, when it comes down to it."

Though the last part would be a bitter pill, if it were the case that her world was completely gone.

"Diverse, yeah. That doesn't exactly fill me up with faith, you know? Stacy didn't stock up just on you hero-types, she also dragged in con artists and Neo Nazis and Lex freaking Luthor." And Howard himself, who doesn't have the cleanest history in regards to ethics. "And take it as someone who's been on a Council before, people will say a lot of things to keep the citizens calm and complacent."

He sighs, grinding his knuckles into his forehead. "So yeah. Good for you. If it all turns out to be a lie, I get 'told you so' points. But it's not right to just expect kids to go do your dirty work for you because you're a magical fucking spaceship made out of tentacles and, and snot or whatever, and I'm not going to pretend it is just because she says she has a higher calling. And if I'm right and Stacy's evil or crazy, well, we're still stuck with an evil, crazy overlord. Life's just a barrel of monkeys these days."

"Well that's what I'm saying. We're all been brought here, good guys and bad guys alike. The choices we make, to go and continue doing whatever we thought was our way, or do something better. That isn't a decision only for 'good guys' or 'bad guys': its a choice for us all. I know full well that the council exists for the reason of keeping everything calm and in control. People on the ship, they need that."

And here was where it got real. "But the scenario of Stacy just being evil is slowly getting disproved, if only because the more we go from world to world, the more we see that there is a presence of something more than ourselves and our petty differences. If the Ohm's objectives are to destroy planets and eventually us, where will we stand? Do we want to continue being suspicious while more people needlessly die? Do we want to run away, get by until the Ohm come and then find a way, ANY way, to get going? Or do we want to do the thing that's hardest: deal with the changes that are going to come and knuckle down and fight back?"

She shook her head. "I never said having children here, fighting with us, is something I'm comfortable with. But these kids, no matter their age, understand as we do that they have to get strong, because whatever happens, they have to be ready."

"'Slowly improved'? Last I checked, Stacy's most recent itinerary included torturing a crew member into insanity in full view of the public, oh, and sending untrained, uninformed kids like me on something that came very close to a suicide mission. Just because aliens exist - big shocker there, I know - doesn't make Stacy automatically good, so I'm not sure I'm even following your argument. What I'm saying is, the Ohm and Stacy, or something bigger than Stacy, are playing a gigantic game of chess and we aren't even ranking as pawns. We can't see anything past the square in front of us when there's a whole war going on and no one's giving us straight answers. Which is, you know, fine, whatever, not exactly something we can snap our fingers and change, but everyone here acts like we should be totally okay with this situation and any complaints are just because we want to see the Ohm blow shit up. It's not that. We just don't even know which side we should be fighting on so we hopped on the first agenda Stacy smacked down in front of us."

He turns the toy over and over in his hands before sticking the end of it back in his mouth. "But whatever, I'm probably being depressing right now. You go get your warm fuzzies with the kids. I'll sit here and try not to freak out."

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