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 thought that was less judging people and more punishing them. I think we should judge away and yeah, that generally isn't going to get you any favors."

"They sort of come hand in hand though. With Azula, the way I looked at it, they took into account her rights and how feasible it would be to keep her locked up. Personally, I thought she needed that time to think about what she did and THEN transferred her to a better place to rehabilitate her, not just let her go with a chaperon who, I'm sorry, sounds more biased about the situation than most of us do."

"That policewoman chick? She's, well, I was getting some really sketchy vibes off her. I'm pretty sure she's up to no good. And that's not just because she's a police officer."

"Yes, her. As far as I know, she's the one who arranged for Azula to be given chaperoned freedom. I don't know much about her, but...wait, her being a police officer is a bad thing? Did you not trust law enforcers in your world?"

"I caught her skulking around and being all secretive with this weird briefcase earlier. Couldn't figure out what that was all about, but I didn't want to get on the wrong side of Security, you know? Although I guess if she's hiding something, loosing a crazy teenager with superpowers would be a good distraction." He starts chewing on the toy again as the paranoid wheels in his brain start turning. "I mean, before they all disappeared, police officers tended to target kids like me. So I've never liked them."

He doesn't mention that most of the time, he actually had been shoplifting, cutting class or engaging in other illegal activities.

"Really?" That was news to her, and not good news either: what was someone who was supposed to be watching over one of their worst enemies participating in suspicious behavior herself? "I may have to look into this kind of thing myself. If she means to do something that can potentially harm the crew, I want to be sure about it."

She looked confused. "What do you mean, kids like you?"

"Just, whatever you do, don't let it trail back to me. I don't need Security on my ass and that woman legitimately scares me. I get the feeling she could mess my day up if she wanted to." Not that he wouldn't be up to doing some snooping around. He might even enjoy it. "Kids with my skin color. We get a bad rap back on my homeworld, especially since the school I went to was mostly white kids."

Kaya scoffed. "If she's up to no good and she notices me, I think fear of her is the least of your worries. If she's just a police officer though, I'm not too scared."

Not that she liked the idea of someone from security being up to no good, not in the least. She looked at his skin color, clearly baffled. "What difference would that make? Your descended from people closer to the sun, just like me. Why would that be any different from people who got less skin tone?"

"Actually I'm descended from people from L.A., where if you can see the sun through all the smog it might as well be the end-times, but yeah. I mean, I didn't invent racism. It's pretty stupid."

Kaya had no idea what an L.A. was, maybe some kind of tribe or city? And what on earth was smog, unless it was some sort of combination of smoke and fog? How was that possible?

"Racism, like when that horrible woman called me a chu-I mean, Chink," Kaya said, shaking her head. "Its the dumbest concept I ever heard, skin tone being a factor in liking someone. YOu seem like a very nice person with your own likes and dislikes, like anyone else."

"She called you that? Geez, whatever happened to people being creative with their racism?"

Howard actually laughs at her assessment of him as a very nice person. "Yeah, okay, Bubbles. You're not so bad yourself."

She shrugged. "In my world its more of a peasant and royals, or benders and non benders. Racism and all of that, its sort of a new thing for me. Its stupid, but then there are bound to be plenty of dumb people on the ship."

Oh, she had an idea there were things he was hiding, but she was sure he would tell her when he wanted. "Thanks, although I've never heard that nickname before."

"Apparently Stacy doesn't administer IQ tests before snatching people up. I've met some real idiots here."

He tilts his head at her. "Well, you mentioned magic water powers, and your trust and hope speeches sound like something out of a Saturday cartoon, so I'm calling you Bubbles after that one chick on this one show."

Kaya sighed. "I don't even bother wondering what Stacy's thinking anymore when it comes to who she brings aboard the ship. Hopefully, they can leave their petty nonsense at the door when the going get tough."

Saturday morning cartoon? "Was she the leader on the show or something? That would make sense."

"And it will get tough," Howard says pessimistically. "No matter what, it can and will get worse."

"Nah, she was the young, peppy one. Blossom was the leader. Not that I'd really know, it was a girl's show so I didn't watch it much. It was kind of fun, though."

"Well, I can adapt to whatever is throw at me," Kaya said, "and I've been doing that ever since I've been on this ship. It isn't the easiest thing in the world, but I get used to it."

She wrinkled her nose. "Not that I'm complaining, but I had no idea I seemed that peppy!"

"Adapting's good. Adapting'll keep you alive." He nods, then reaches a hand up as if to high-five her.

"Peppier than me, at least. Or most people from where I'm from."

"It's something that both the North and Southern Water Tribes have learned, probably because we live in the poles to begin with. All that cold and ice pretty much made us able to deal with any kind of adversity our earlier generations weathered."

She chuckled. "So either I'm really peppy, or you guys are just very pessimistic."

"We have our reasons. The FAYZ motto is 'it can always get worse' because seriously, it can. Also 'radiation, what radiation?', but ever since the power plant went to hell that one's only half as funny as it used to be."

Kaya looked confused again. "Granted, I know very little about radiation other than it producing super powers for some reason, but what's a FAYZ?"

"I came up with that name," he says with a bit of pride. "Fallout Alley Youth Zone. Fallout Alley was the old nickname for my hometown, and when all the adults disappeared it became a youth zone. So yeah."

So had had been something of an organizer in his world? Knowing that, it made sense that he might not like being here: on the ship, unless you were super powered or held some sort of position, you tended to be just another person there. Of course, that in itself was a position of power, hadn't she learned that from watching V for Vendetta?

"What's a Fallout Alley?"

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Bad Handwriting and Everything [Open]

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