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[ladybro]

Who: Kate Bishop and YOU
Broadcast: Fleetwide
Action: Planetside
When: This morning

[ kate is down on the planet, hair tied back with a light-coloured bandanna. she's holding the device selfie-style -- a shooting aesthetic born of the snapchat and periscope generation. ]

Do any of you know the story of the one red paperclip? Some guy up in Canada started with a paperclip, which he traded for a pen, and then traded that pen for a hand-made doorknob, and then that for a camping stove (plus fuel). And he kept going until fourteen trades after the red paperclip... he got a house. A whole futzing house.

Well, my one red paperclip was a piece of foil-wrapped gum I was holding onto since the day I arrived. Two votive candles, one fishtail braid, some dice, a repaired rope bridge, wooden shoes, and a barrel of mead later? [ her free hand reaches for something off-screen, which turns out to be a simple wooden bow. ] This is my whole futzing house. Suck it, whatever intergalactic bank handles our fleet credits. Suck it.

[ later, she can be found celebrating her minor economic victory down at the BEACH -- sunbathing, or swimming, or just diverting herself by building odd shapes in the sand. find her there, or cooling off in the evening at one of the taverns -- a little sunburned, but looking thoroughly satisfied. ]

Comments

[ladybro]

-- The music danced around her head. And, truth be told, it wasn't all that different from other instances when other songs had lodged there. Although this was no America's Top 40. No club-hit, neither. But she bobbed along in the water with this partially-remembered soundtrack and had no complaints for it.

"Marcus?" She answered after a long pause. It took her a moment to suss out what he was asking, and she had to reverse engineer her understanding from how he'd reacted to her question. It was mention of the beach that gave it away. "And Finch, probably. Marcus and Finch."

Then, proudly: "I saved their wedding."

[bullhorned]

The names meant nothing to him. nor did weddings when it really came to it. Gendry had never actually attended one, not even for those among the common born like himself. He had a general idea of what the expectations of ones were, though that was essentially that two people were given a lot of attention and then at some point in the evening, had a lot of sex. Dying at weddings was only a more recent tradition.

"Good job that," he concluded. "Weddings are terrible when they go bad."

[ladybro]

Why did the thought of death suddenly linger in her thoughts? She frowned, and pushed it aside. And yet she could only really agree with Gendry. In the end, Marcus and Finch's wedding had been saved by the recovery of a single precious orchid. In the process, Kate had embroiled herself in far worse dealings.

But that wasn't the memory that now arrived into her thoughts. Instead, her thoughts went back further -- to a New York cathedral. To a wedding, festooned with all the bits and bobs of luxury. And Kate at the off-centre of it all, maid-of-honour to an older sister that looked none-too-different from her. But there was a storm a-brewing amid the festivities, and when the wedding party is held hostage at gunpoint, it was Kate who put herself between the bride and the baddies.

Understanding, now, that a memory like that was bound to leak through, Kate gave her head a spirited shake. He didn't need to see any of that.

"That's just it," she countered. "They're not supposed to go bad."

[bullhorned]

He didn't know what to make of what he'd just then seen, with unfamiliar weapons and in a setting he didn't really understand. But weddings were weddings and he rather suspected they weren't going to get a whole lot of swimming done if they kept reliving each other's lives.

"I wouldn't know. Never been to one."

[ladybro]

"What? Nah, no way."

She was treading water still. And registering her disbelief as she lifted fingers off his wrists -- holding onto him as if only with the tips, and only there did her doubt leak through.

"Never?"

[bullhorned]

He had not gone out any further than where he was still jumping into the waves, though at the very least he'd learned to kick his feet to better stay on top of the water. It had become predictable at least, so much so that he didn't even notice it anymore.

"Never invited. Folk like me, we don't ever do anything so grand as all... that." That referring to what she'd showed him, even if only by accident. "So never had to go along to any. Just as well. Seems dull."

[ladybro]

"Incredibly dull, actually. Unless it's your own -- I'm guessing. Or unless it's for someone you really care about." Like a sister. "It's sixty percent social obligation and forty percent free food..."

-- If she smiled, now, then it was only with a burgeoning pride that he was weathering the waves so well. Kate didn't deign to ask him what he meant by folks like him. He'd called himself a lot of things, earlier. And she could easily fill in the blanks.

[bullhorned]

He couldn't even claim that free food was even a reason for him to be excluded, because he had been invited to so many feasts and gatherings in the Drabwurld that seeing tables laden with food was no longer considered novel and extravagant. If not for the sparser pickings of the dwarven city for the last year, he would have found this planet to be outright paltry in comparison.

Well, he was lucky for that, then. He didn't really have much of anyone he really cared about to go inviting him to weddings. "I could do with some free food," he mused aloud. "It's not so bad here, but the food up there is awful."

[ladybro]

"It doesn't have to be." Who was she kidding? The food up there was utter crap. And yet: "I've learned a few food hacks, already. I've recreated pizza. It's not perfect. And it's no New York slice. But I've gotten as close as I personally can."

Then, by way of explanation: "I'm the cook on the Blameless."

[bullhorned]

Food hacks was a combination of words that did absolutely nothing to rouse his appetite in any way whatsoever. Skepticism showed in his wrinkled brow.

"Oh," he answered. Then he tapped the back of his neck: "Engineer. Golden."

[ladybro]

-- There was a spark of genuine awe. Engineer sounded so much more glamorous than cook. And then, aboard the Golden to boot.

"They must be glad to have you. I'm of the mind that you can't ever have too many engineers. Probably. Unlike cooks -- unless you like spoiled broths."

[bullhorned]

He did not feel the awe was all that well deserved. As much as he'd worked on the ship (admittedly little so far), he could not claim he actually understood what he was doing or what purpose it served.

"I've barely been up there," he mused. "It should be fine, though. Can't be that hard to stay in space."

[ladybro]

Kate raised her face to the streaming sunlight above. Sure, it wasn't that hard to stay in space but: "You start missing this."

The sun. The air. The bright day.

[bullhorned]

"I spent a year in a cave." Which was the sort of thing that might have implied he could survive without all this, except he added: "This is better."

He would hate to give it up again. Stubbornness and bitterness had kept him anchored to an underground city (which was admittedly more spacious than any spaceship), but now he wasn't sure he could give up on a sky again.

[ladybro]

She'd let him go to float on his own. And she, gently, bobbed and floated on her back. Kate still watched him, however.

"A cave? Why?"

[bullhorned]

"It was a big cave. A city of dwarves." He shrugged. "It was the best place to finish my apprenticeship."

[ladybro]

"Stop me if I'm getting any of this wrong: you basically...went off to college in an underground dwarf city. Am I right? That is so nerdy."

-- Okay, so maybe it wasn't nerdy of him to have done it. But it was a nerdy concept.

[bullhorned]

He could have stopped her, had he known what on earth she meant by college or whether or not nerdy was a good thing or not. From the way she said it, he leaned towards not.

"I made machines there," he said as though to prove he wasn't nerdy. "I built an entire arm for a man once, just as good as his old one."

[ladybro]

-- A tinkerer. Like Winn, then. Or Cisco. Total nerd alert. But contrary to what Gendry might have thought, Kate didn't see it as a bad thing at all. She smiled, and let her nose crinkle as she wrapped her head around the thought of an underground tinkering dwarf trade school.

"An entire arm, huh? Like, a machine arm?"

Perhaps her curiousity was latent. Subconscious.

[bullhorned]

He nodded. "The old one didn't work. Something about magic."

[ladybro]

"Didn't work? 'Cause the old one was magic? Or because the old one wasn't?"

[bullhorned]

"It wasn't magic." It was not an easy concept to explain, because until coming to the fleet, he hadn't had to experience all that much of conventional technology. "I don't really know why it wouldn't work."

[ladybro]

"-- Was it metal?"

[bullhorned]

He nodded. "The new and the old."

[ladybro]

Thoughtfully: "I know a guy with a metal arm. But, hey -- it's not like there's no shortage of those across worlds. Betcha it's not even the same one. There must be, like, at least a hundred metal armed people."