Pidge Gunderson/Katie Holt (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
isthisapidge) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
legionworld2017-07-17 12:20 pm
isthisapidge) wrote in legionworld2017-07-17 12:20 pm
Entry tags:
[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.
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.
no subject
"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."
no subject
"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?"
no subject
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.
no subject
"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?"
no subject
no subject
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."
no subject
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.
no subject
"...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.
no subject
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.