legionworld | [Open] Busy as a...Pigeon?

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[Open] Busy as a...Pigeon?

Who| Pidge and you!
What| Day to day work on Legion.
Where| The lab, mess hall, training deck
When| After the current crop of plots, but can be flex-time’d
Warnings/Notes| Pidge does not take good care of herself, news at 11.

[A. The lab]

Sure, Legion keeps Pidge incredibly busy, but there’s nothing wrong with taking some hobbies on the side, right? She doesn’t even ask for money to fix up alien technology. Just the chance to take apart something so beautiful in it’s mechanical intricacy, to really lay everything out and get personally acquainted with every single piece and every function? That’s all the payment she needs.

The person she got this particular tech from was a little cagey about what it was supposed to do. Some sort of embarrassing hygiene thing, Pidge gathered, but it made it a little hard to determined when it was fixed, but she’s pretty sure she’s got it with just...one more screw…

She flips it on, a tiny pink switch on the neon-blue bulb. It’s not quite glass but it’s not totally dissimilar, and it has a mirror and magnifying glass set up. Some kind of laser array meant to be adjusted with anti-grav-enabled ball bearings. She’s worked on it for hours and finally it’s time to turn it on.

It starts to hum and warm her hands. The bulb lifts itself up, floating into the air as she playfully pushes her palms up, as though she were giving a boost to a newborn butterfly. It wobbles until it hits about 8 feet in the air.

Then lasers shoot out, cutting a shelf in half with a violent screech of metal.

A shelf full of volatile chemicals.

Anyone walking down the hall will ether hear the explosions, see the smoke, or run into Pidge who barely managed to get out with her skin not burned off. She may be coughing and hacking but the way the laser scorches the metal along the wall should tell the whole story. It won’t cut the station in half on the first pass, but it won’t take more than ten.

[B. Mess Hall]

Her eyes are blood shot. She can barely taste the food she halfheartedly shovels into her mouth. The light emanating from her laptop gives her an almost zombie-like pallor.

It’d be easy to think she was dead if not for the speed at which she’s typing and the fact that the vaguely corpse-like smell is coming from the glass in front of her. It’s some kind of hellish programmer cocktail made to keep fingers typing through the queasy jitters and heart palpitations.

Pidge has definitely been up for more than 24 hours.

[C. Training]

...Which can lead to problems elsewhere.

Pidge has reached acceptance about training. It’s important to do, even if she’d rather be programming and she’d almost always rather be programming. But she’s doing poorly: missing shots, zoning out, and tripping over her own feet.

But she doesn’t hit the absolute low point, though, until she leans against the wall for a second, just one second to catch her breath…

And then falls asleep on her feet.

Thank goodness she wasn’t in the sim room.

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After ordering himself and getting some ramen, or the next closest thing thereof, Genji turns to take a seat. Of course, on seeing the programmer who had next to no sleep, he almost wants to head that way. In fact, he does. The things he'd like to say probably aren't welcome but that wasn't going to stop him until he heard a solid no.

Still, after he set down across from her laptop, he pulls open his chopsticks and turns the visor of his helmet on her.

"You...are not in balance."

"I actually spent a lot of time balancing these ingredients, thanks."

She meant to take her eyes off the screen only for as long as it took to glare at him, but the moment her brain can switch gears enough to determine that she's looking at a robot? He's got a lot more of her attention. Of course he'd know about balance! His gyroscopic system's probably super advanced.

"The ingredients are not exactly my concern but..."

He does look over at the drink, curious if that was it. If there were warning bells to set off, it was there.

"...perhaps it should be. But no, I mean you. The body is a delicate system and pushing it too hard in any direction is not safe."

Getting lectured by a robot(?) isn't something she's used to. She leans on one hand to look at him, scratching her lip with a finger and tapping away with the other hand. Safe. As if anything Pidge has done since Kerberos has been safe.

"Look, if I keep going I'll have this done by tonight. If you really want to lecture me you can do it then."

"Would having it done tonight as opposed to tomorrow make a difference on the world as a whole?"

He did have food so he reached up and hit a switch on his mask and the bottom portion popped off with a hiss. Only his chin and mouth showed up it was scarred up enough as is. Using his chopsticks, he picked up some noodles and blew on them.

"Or would it do more harm?"

"Of course it will! If I get it done tonight I'll have more time tomorrow to work on the security system! I think I've figured out a way to track and identify individual breathing patterns!"

She's a little embarrassed to see that there's a human under the suit, but if she's honest? (And she won't be this honest to his face, but...) She's significantly more disappointed to see it's a human under the suit.

"...."

Genji is silent for a moment, if only to slurp some noodles. But he's also thinking about things. Wondering the best way to reply. In the end, he defaults to teachings that he picked up from his master.

"Patience is bitter but its fruit is sweet."

Pidge never really did like those kind of proverbs and also she's not thinking 100% straight at this point, which is why her train of thought veers off into pedantic land.

"Of course it is. You don't eat the non-fruit bits of a fruit-bearing plant. Fruit evolved to be sweet so that animals would want to eat it and spread the seeds. There's no reason for a plant to want an animal to eat the actual body, so it's bitter...Nnnnnot sure how this relates to patience anyway."

The corners of Genji's mouth twitched up in a smirk at that response. Perhaps another time.

"When you have gotten a full night's sleep, wonder about it again. Still, think carefully on what you do. You may develop a system that can track those by presumably how much CO2 they exhale but what would be the consequences of that?"

Though that was rhetorical and not meant to be answered right now. It was a bit deep to think about over eating.

Edited 2017-07-20 20:50 (UTC)

"The consequences? You mean that if somebody disguised themselves as one of us, we'd have just that much more security around here?"

Pidge doesn't really do rhetorical. Even if she weren't dog tired and over...well, medicated isn't really the right word but it's close, she's just too practical. Or maybe too literal. They both amount to the same thing right now.

"What of those who do not breathe? Or perhaps have an internal supply of atmosphere they may partake in?"

Genji was probably complicating matters but no one could call him perfect. Still, the direction he was taking things was probably not where he wanted to go.

"That's part of it! Breathing, or the lack of it, can be faked or hidden! For some people, a lack of breath may be all the identification we need!"

She gets so worked up, she nearly drops her glass, catching it before it spills all over the floor (and eats down into the wiring, probably).

"I think I can make this foolproof...I know they say there's no such thing as a foolproof system but if that's true than think how much better it'll be once the first one gets made!"

Wash takes a seat next to Pidge. Doesn't matter why he was initially in the mess hall; his priorities changed immediately upon seeing her in this state. For a moment, he's silent, watching her type; the next moment, he abruptly closes her laptop.

Well, most of the way, anyway - he stops right before the lid would have snapped shut on her fingers. "You're done," he informs her calmly.

Edited (Maybe I should specify which prompt it is first.) 2017-07-18 20:35 (UTC)

Pidge blinks a few times. The mess hall isn't as bright as the screen and it takes a moment for her eyes to adjust. And then she very pointedly does not look at him as she lifts the lid back up.

"I'll be done when this compiles."

And Wash pushes the lid back down again and keeps his hand on it this time. "No, you're done now," he says in that same calm tone. "Empty out your drink, get some water, and get some rest." Do not make him take your laptop away, Pidge, because he absolutely will.

She shoots him a growl and puts her hand on the side of the laptop so she can slide it out of his hands as she spins in her chair, putting her back to him.

"I'm so close to getting this to work! It'll be tonight, I'll sleep then, I promise."

Well. They're playing that game. Okay, then.

"Right. And in the meantime, you're working at decreased efficiency because you're sleep-deprived, and if you get called on a mission, you're more likely to be unable to perform, because you haven't slept. You're not helping your team, and you're not helping yourself." He gives that a moment or two to sink in. "Now you can either find a stopping place, go to your room, and get some rest, or I can haul you down to medical, where they're a lot pushier about this than I am. Your choice."

Pidge's glare only gets angrier and her growl gets...growlier, but she shuts her laptop. And her eyes.

"Fine, but let me finish my lunch first." She pivots back around and picks up her fork. She spears a green bean and holds it in that no-man's-land between tray and mouth, staring at it for long enough that it's obvious she's seething about being forced to stop.

"You know you're not my dad, right?"

"Deal." As long as she's eating actual food and not whatever horrifying corpse juice she's concocted and squeezed into that glass in front of her.

He lets her contemplate her food in relative silence, because sometimes it's better not to poke the bear; she, in return, comes up with that. She really must be tired. "I know," he says lightly, "but in my experience, the bargain-bin off-brand model tends to work well enough until you can replace it with the real thing." Not being her dad isn't going to stop him from doing his best to take care of her.

Pidge's fork stops half-way to her mouth, which has narrowed into a thin line.

"You're not-! I didn't mean-!" But each exclamation dies before it's even born. Truth of the matter is that she has no idea how she's even supposed to handle it when he says things like that, even if she was totally sober. She's not even sure why that comment set her off, except that she isn't sure even when she's going to get to replace him.

Wait, no, that's exactly what it is, isn't it? She expected to work today, not deal with feelings, so all she manages to say is:

"It's not about replacing you, OK?"

"I know you didn't, I know it's not, and it's fine." He's pretty sure he knows where he stands in this relationship - he hadn't meant to upset her by it. "Look, I know I'm standing in until you can get back to your dad, and I'm fine with it. It's not the first time I've been someone's replacement, temporary or not, and it won't be the last." He shrugs. Evidently getting tossed headfirst into vacant roles - leader, Legionnaire, dad - and being expected to perform is his lot in life, and he's long since gotten used to it.

"That's not true." Pidge sounds tired, but no less firm for it. "Stop talking like you're anyone's second choice."

She continues eating. "You're not really anything like my dad anyway," she says, because she's too tired to have a filter and talking is just the thing she does when she has nothing else to do, "You're a lot more like Shiro, actually. You know, the leader of Voltron? I hope you get to meet him someday, you'd probably like him."

Wash lets that one go - not because it's true, but because he's pretty sure Pidge doesn't want to hear about it. He's always been someone's second or third or last choice - someone to shore things up or fill in a gap until someone else better suited to the job comes along.

But the conversation moves on, and him with it. "From what you've said about him, I probably would." He smirks a bit. "Who knows, maybe after all this is over I'll follow you home and help you fight your war." It's something of a ridiculous notion, especially when he still has his own war to finish, but Pidge is tired and chatty and he's just making conversation until he can haul her back to her room for a nap. Might as well entertain the idea in the meantime.

Pidge chews thoughtfully, too tired to note that Wash totally dodged her first statement.

"...It'd be nice. If you did come along, I mean. We could really use your help. You'd be a great asset to our team, and-" And he's got expertise and she's kind of afraid of leaving the friends she's made here and she needs help finding her family and-

She wipes her eyes, and tries to make it look like it's just because she's tired and not because they're watering all of a sudden.

Pidge may be missing conversational details, but Wash sure isn't. Her trailing off and wiping her eyes fits one of a very short list of options; the thing is, making a big deal of it will probably make everything worse.

So he puts a hand on her shoulder and does the best he can. "Hey, go get some rest. I'll grab you some dinner later." If he can't address what he's pretty sure is the real problem, he might as well get the next one over.

Tadashi had been ambling toward the lab with the intention of burying himself up to his eyebrows in Robotican coding, but the explosions and the smoke kind of put that plan on the back burner. Being the sort of guy already inclined to run toward danger to try and help, Tadashi breaks into a sprint and spies Pidge stumbling out of the lab.

"Are you okay?" he asks, reaching out toward her. "Is anyone else still trapped inside?"

He is not going to panic and do something stupid this time. He's not he's not he's not.

"I'm-" she coughs and wipes a few tears out of her eyes. "I'm okay! The lab is empty but- AHH!"

Pidge grabs his arm as hard as she can and hauls herself to her feet just in time as an out-of-control laser streaks by an inch from her back. The back of her shirt is smoldering but she didn't have anything, you know, sliced off. She also totally fails to register his panic as anything but a response to the immediate danger.

"But we may be getting an addition if we don't stop that thing!"

Tadashi yelps and jerks Pidge back, patting at the smoldering part of her shirt to make sure that it's not about to burst into flame.

But hey, he's at least more used to lab shenanigans with lasers than he is with fire.

"Does whatever that is have an off-switch, or is it plugged into something?"

Pidge struggles to keep her balance but she doesn't lose her focus. She's not wild about getting patted down, and she kind of wants to tell him that she's probably not going to combust if she hasn't by now, but there are way more important things right now.

"There's an off switch on it, but it's working off a battery pack! We're going to have to get it down...Somehow!"

Miku also accepts her lot in training. She is meant for support, and that has never meant running headlong into fighting. She'll leave that to bigger, flashier heroes. She was seconds behind Pidge on the course, and was the first to see her friend fall asleep against the wall. She stopped short and instinctively put a bubble around them both.

"Pidge? Pidge, this is no place to sleep. Please wake up."

Pidge snorts, and then nearly loses the natural balance she had while she was sleeping, only managing to keep herself upright with a hand splayed against the wall.

"Sorry! Sorry...I've-" she yawns, then continues, "I've been working late this week."

"You're beginning to sound like someone else I know," Miku replied. And for once, her thoughts strayed to Tadashi and not to Rei, or Mafuyu. "Why don't you take a rest? It's not like the training course is going to get up and walk away."

"I was kind of hoping to stick to my schedule so I could get more work done tomorrow but, um..." Pidge sways a little, pivoting so her back is against the wall, "I don't think I have the energy to stand up right now."

She does, however, have the energy to blush. This is kind of humiliating, honestly.

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[Open] Busy as a...Pigeon?

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