driftfleet | (no subject)

Will do. You did say it was a prototype after all. [And brass won't stand up to nearly as much as she'd like. Plus, she really looks better in silver, okay?] I'll need to give it a good work out to find the bugs if there are any. Probably not in this room though. Or even the ship. Hopefully we reach another stop soon.

Suitable targets are in short supply out here.

I've heard it happens frequently enough. [Though it's alarming to think he's already been here for most of a month.]

They are. I do my training on the Iskaulit, but it's still limiting.

[The comment on other stops makes her nod.] That's what I hear too. I'm used to something big and unexpected happening every few days. You could practically relax at the pace this place keeps us. [Not that she hasn't been busy adjusting to all the mutant arrivals or experimenting with the augments. But she's surprised they aren't throwing more at them. She feels like it's all about a false sense of security because it couldn't possibly be a real one, right?]

Yes... it's a lot of empty time. [Comparatively speaking. If this were Kyriakos, he would have been summoned to half a dozen games by now, and witnessed death at least once. It could still happen. He stays alert.]

But I read on the network that you found time to look into the augments.

You caught that, huh? [She reaches up with her non-clawed hand and brushes back her hair.] My power disrupts electronics. I figured I had to try it on the augment. We thought trying on Logan was the safest play.

[She'll get no arguments on the safety of it from him.]

It still sounds like it didn't go according to plan.

[She shakes her head.] I was afraid. Deeply afraid. I don't really do fear. Not like that. [She can still remember the way her arm trembled as she held it out, ready to do something that normally comes with decisive ease. Her battle instincts are well trained and experienced even at a young age. And for so long she's had so little left to lose. Fear usually only comes into play when worried about someone else and in that moment she trusted Logan's healing factor. There was no reason for any of it.]

Fear wasn't the worst of what happened though.

[He had tasted some of that fear himself, a few days after being shuffled onto the Heron. Purely as a test, he'd tried to place the point of a sharpened screw against the augment. Found he couldn't do it, was nearly paralysed at the thought of it.

He breathes out, nodding at Kitty's recounting of the sensation.]

"Minor to major injuries", wasn't it?

[She nods.] My part went easily enough. I managed to phase through the device and it did a lot of nothing. Either they did something to my powers or the augments work in some way I can't disrupt that easily.

Laura moved on to trying to cut it out of him. That's when things got messy. The panic it sets off is in the person with the augment and the one trying to tamper with it. We had Logan chained up just in case, but it wasn't enough. Laura passed out before she could remove it and Logan went into a rage. A chain snapped and the next thing I knew he was stabbing Leia before I could get to him.

[So it affects the assailant as much as the target. Clever, really. Horrifically clever. Other than Logan he doesn't know the people involved, not personally. He's seen some of them on the network by now. Still, he grimaces a bit at the mention of stabbing.]

I can see why she might not have wanted that in a public report. Was he subdued?

Yeah, Laura and I took care of that. She wasn't out long. Then Logan was out and when he came to he was back to his senses. Meanwhile, Leia summoned a healer for herself and it all worked out more or less. [Except they didn't achieve their goals and everyone got hurt at some point except Kitty.]

[He nods, lost in thought for a moment. What would have happened, if one of them had died in this process? It's something he still wonders about. No one had responded in the positive when that other girl asked if anyone had died in the Fleet. It's something he wants to know. Much easier to get the measure of a place like this, if you know the permanence of death.]

Even so, I imagine none of you would try that particular method again.

You're right. It was a good deterrent. Which is probably the point. I didn't have much hope for the cutting. I assumed something anyone could do had been tried before even though I didn't have any details on it. That's another thing, with people always coming and going it's easy to lose any kind of history about the place. People end up just repeating the same patterns.

[She wonders about the death bit too. That actually shifted in MarinaNova once the virtual reality nature of the place was exposed. People would simply return the next day with some...glitches. Before that if you died you stayed dead.]

It's always an issue, with places like this. I know that I was the only person to witness some things in Kyriakos, and once I was gone there was only my word for it.

[Well, that and a few grisly bits of proof. He pulls out his communicator and flips it open.]

However, having it recorded goes some way to preventing a total loss.

[She nods.] Leia was smart in documenting things and offering them up, but how long before those get forgotten and lost too?

We housed information with the Defense Force in the prison. But it's not like we had the time to sit down and update every new arrival. We'd never make any progress moving forward either.

We had... meetings, sometimes. [From his tone, it's clear he doesn't think much of them. They always were shambolic and mostly devoid of consensus.]

There's no way of knowing. All you can do is hold on to what you know.

That's probably why these things don't get defeated. [At least not in her experience.] They stoke our personal dramas and keep us distracted. People come and go. Some people have no reason to want to leave at all. Some are just ill-equipped.

That's the name of the game.

[It's not always easy, he knows, to see the forest for the trees.]

Yeah, I say this like you don't know. You're one up on me when it comes to these places. [One of the things she likes about him actually. Not that she'd wish it on anyone.]

Maybe so. But you would have known from the beginning of the prison that something had to be done. [He'd had no such luck in the library. Nor had he been instrumental in toppling the Portraits. It had been hard enough living day to day, without a concept that there was anything else to go back to.]

[She nods.] When they messed with our heads it was usually only for a day at a time and in different ways. Okay, we can tie for at being awesome. [How any of this made them awesome she wasn't sure, but it's what she's rolling with as she gives him a smile.]

I can deal with a tie. [In a contest with no clear winners, that is pretty acceptable.]

Good. I was afraid we'd have to arm wrestle to declare a victor. That would have been so embarrassing for you. [We've reached the teasing portion of Kitty's friendship.]

We can't have that, can we. I have a certain image to maintain.

Understandable. So, want the tour? We even have some kale bacon which I'm assured is a treat and not a punishment.