driftfleet | (no subject)

Who: The Vision
Broadcast: Fleetwide
Action: The Caprine
When: At the Shuffle, evening of the 20th

[He doesn't appear immediately on the Caprine, of course. First he's rudely deposited onto the hospitality deck of the Marsiva, but although he grasps the reality of the situation quickly enough it takes some time to process it all - the uncovered memories of his time here, the juxtaposition of his new situation with the events at home, and then a crushing disappointment as he scans over his newly-acquired communicator and realizes he can't put in a transfer to the Windrose, because his ship doesn't seem to exist anymore.

So that's how it's going to be.

He figures it won't be long before he's assigned to a new ship, and sure enough he's popped over to the Caprine in all his maroon-skinned android glory. He shakes the confetti off and pulls up a video broadcast.]

Good evening, members of the Fleet. I am the Vision, recently of twenty-first century Earth and one of the Avengers, if that means anything to anyone. [Yes, he's still technically an Avenger, even if he's been a bit AWOL lately.] If there's anyone here who knows me, I'd like very much to know that you're here, and please don't hesitate to ask me if you'd like anything from me. I seem to be on the Caprine this time around.

[And then he looks a little wistful.

Does anyone know how long it's been since I was here last? It's been two years for me subjectively, but I'm aware that often has little to do with time passing in the Fleet. I was on the Windrose. [Captain of it, in fact.]

Thank you.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

That must have been terrible for you. Here we call it an augment "glitch", but that was deliberate on their parts?

[The Fleet may have its problems, but at least it's better than that.]

Then we'll just have to research ways to do that without the augment upgrades. If I could see the data beforehand, I wouldn't mind, but as you say--

[He smiles a little.]

Let's find a way to get there on our own.

Sometimes they said it was a malfunction. Sometimes it was deliberate in hopes of helping with our rehabilitation. Somehow. I think it was probably always intentional. I think it is here too. [She doesn't have a lot of faith in their captors, but she figures their devices work a lot better than they seem to.] Probably great for ratings.

[She's relieved when Vision sounds moved by her plea. There's still those feelings of guilt over wanting to protect herself, possibly over the added protection of the crew, but like he said, maybe they can find their own way.]

Thank you. Really.

[He snorts and speaks with a dry tone.] Though I can't say if torturing us for money is at all better than for their own purposes, at least one of those is a motivation I'm entirely familiar with.

[He loves humanity, okay, but sometimes there are just douchebags.]

I trust your judgment, Kitty. Especially in a situation I've been gone from for this long.

Edited 2018-09-07 16:06 (UTC)

I don't know if there's any justification for something like this. Maybe if we were all like me—out of chances back home. But most of you aren't.

[She hopes his faith is well placed. All the more reason to bulk up the ship in other ways.] I was thinking maybe we should work on some weapons or defensive capabilities for the ship that extend beyond Atroma technology. That way we have greater control over it. Especially when we don't have a security officer.

[~~yes well, only because he's not from the end of the movie~~] A reason and a good reason are two different things, naturally.

I like the idea. [Though it's still slightly unreal that Wrath isn't here anymore.] And I have many of Tony Stark's designs stored; we could see what is and isn't adaptable with the materials at hand.

[~~Never be from the end of that movie!~~ She's relaxing again and smiling.]

Hey, even easier. We didn't use many weapons back home. [There were still a lot of weapons and she was trained to use a variety, but it wasn't as many as the enemy so it didn't feel like much to her.] We usually used our powers, but in space that's trickier.

With this crew our abilities ought to be sufficient on a planet, but I for one am in no hurry to see whether or not I'm well-adapted to vacuum. [He could probably take it, if he remained insubstantial the entire time. Probably.]

Naturally, most of the weapons systems I know are going to require rare materials, an external power source, or both; still, it's an avenue worth exploring. I'll write up the designs and send them to your communicator, if you like.

[She nods. It's exactly that. When they're being fired on in space they're practically a sitting duck and that's really Wonderduck's job. But if they get boarded then those boarders don't know what hit them. But they can't count on people always pressing their advantage foolishly like that.]

I have some experience in coming up with external power sources. The grid wasn't exactly up back home. We had to be creative. I'm sure we'll figure something out.

Do you think it's safe to have the designs on our Atroma communicators? [A legitimate question. She goes back and forth on it. She doubts the Atroma's knowledge of them is so limited that simply speaking one on one is enough to stymie them when they all have augments right in their heads.]

[He nods sharply.] And working with novel materials may be likely, given our circumstances. I'm looking forward to experimenting.

[And then he gets a look of contemplation. The limit of what the Atroma do or do not know, how much they care, and if there is truly a "safe" way to do things--he hasn't had to think about this sort of thing in a while. When he answers, he speaks more slowly than usual.]

I think it would be best to assume they can find anything we want to hide, and work under that assumption. But it's also important to ask why they would make a move to stop what we attempt to do. Do they truly want for there to be a security officer in order to have weapons systems on a ship? If so, they'll find a way to disable anything we build. Conversely, if they're pleased by our willingness to innovate rather than accept the inevitable, we'll be at an advantage. Either way, I believe it would be worthwhile to try.

Though even so, if you'd prefer they be stored on network-disconnected media, I don't see why we couldn't use that instead.