Your Sunglasses Won't Save You Now
"I'm gonna tell Harmeet about the flight computer," says Chandra, "Maybe see if she can get something out of it. But first I need to do something about your wounds."
Abhas hesitates a brief moment, mulling the offer over, then says, "You know a doctor you can trust?"
"I was going to try to do it myself," says Chandra, "See if I can reproduce that effect from the Manse."
Abhas chews his lip for a moment. "Alright, go for it," he says. Chandra closes his eyes, focuses. He hears a faint, dull beat at the back of his hearing, the sudden, inexplicable widening of his perception as he draws upon, manipulates, the fabric of time itself. He tries to focus on the wounds, tries to figure out how to make the powers do what he
wants them to do and-
Patient mobility may complicate repairs. Immobilizing.
Abhas stops in mid-sentence, frozen in time like most of Chandra's possessions have been at one point or another. Chandra almost manages to swear before-
Wounds diagnosed. Replacing tissue.
He can
feel his power rip open time, searching for points in times where bits of Abhas
weren''t injured, and haphazardly super-imposing them over his myriad wounds. The dragon-blood shifts, scales being replaced with old scales, dull scales, then scales fresh from a molt. A tattoo he presumably had had removed at some point re-appears across his neck and left arm before disappearing as it was swapped for flesh from yet another point in time.
The shuffle slows, then stops, as Abhas' myriad wounds seal. Chandra clenches his teeth, waiting for Abhas to unfreeze. It takes a few seconds, then, without ceremony, Abhas simply starts moving again. "-can start whenever." There's a moment of confusion on Abhas' part as he realizes that he has, evidently, already been healed. "Well," says Abhas, examining one of his hands, "That was...thanks, man. Though we
need to talk about your powers some time." Chandra nods and grabs the Flight Computer, but Abhas puts a hand on his shoulder on his way out. "Hey, uh, you have a Transmission Room? Something with decent range, ideally? I need to make a call," he asks.
"Hallway to the hangar. Second door on your left," says Chandra. Abhas shoots him a thumbs-up and leaves, allowing Chandra to exit the office.
Harmeet's not in the living room when he enters. He finds her in the kitchen, quietly chewing on an aloo paratha. She doesn't acknowledge Chandra until she's finished her meal, and even then keeps it to a dull, "What?"
"I have a job for you," he says. "Something challenging."
Her eyes - one as intact as it's ever been, the other surrounded by scar tissue - flick up to him. "What?" she asks again. It's faint, but he thinks there might be a note of interest in there; rekindled under the apathetic layer of depression.
Chandra drops the hard drive on the table in front of her. "I managed to rip it open last night. There's a conversation between Cybitch and whoever hired her to kill Rav. I couldn't figure out-"
Her hand closes over it before he can finish the sentence. "Give it here," she says, "and get me a computer."
Yeah, she's definitely not apathetic anymore. That's... hopefully a good thing? That certainly looked like some of her old spark.
Likelihood of severe damage to structural integrity of building: rising.
Okay, maybe not
entirely a good thing.
*
It takes Chandra a bit over a minute to get her a computer. It's kinda weird, she thinks, how co-ordinated he is. He'd been doing the stand-offish sunglasses thing for a while now, but...whatever he'd done it was kinda creepy. He moved like someone who'd rehearsed it for years, totally perfect timing on everything. When the computer finally booted up he was moving out of her way before she even realized she was working.
She slides into place and hooks up the flight computer, waiting while the computer runs through its startup sequence.
Chandra says, "Do you want some he-"
"No," she says.
"Alright," says Chandra. There're a few seconds of increasingly awkward silence before Chandra tries to rekindle it again. "Well, if you need anything, just…" He fades under the
withering silence of the room, only to start again a moment later, "...ask, I guess. I'll be-"
"Chandra?" snaps Harmeet, "Shut up and let me work." He clams up, and Harmeet regrets it almost immediately.
She snaps headphones on, puts on an Ahmed^3 album, pops a mastick and chews on it thoughtfully. It's a cheap fruit flavor - the others (Now just Chandra) always made sure to warn her off the
Bhang mixes everyone sold, and to be honest, she's never really felt the urge to go for drugs before. But she's a pilot, and she always figured piloting is all about image. Chandra has his shades and cigars, Ravana had the drugs, Abhas did that thing where his scales caught fire, everyone else had
something. It's about...having a brand. So Harmeet grabbed the Masticks when she started racing, and now she just chewed when she was nervous.
Which was more-or-less constantly, now. She feels a bit guilty for snapping at Chandra like that - he was only trying to help. But he was
hovering, and after last night, clingy attempts to baby her are the last thing she needs. At least this is something she can still
do.
The Ahmed^3 song's just because the music's good and the lead singer's cute, though.
Blinking at her diagnostic readouts she considers for another second and gets to work. Her fingers leap over the keys as she enters a series commands calling up prepared macros as well as activating a brute force cracker - but that's just a distraction, the last command she hits only after her little electric hounds are already in play. As expected, the protections on the model start activating failsafes that will wipe it, but Harmeet's data daemons are tracking the failsafes, snipping out their codes and permissions and using them to open up the system to her even as the now neutered failsafes crash into their own internal firewall. Not easy, but not overly complex, either. Now she just has to sit back, pop her headphones off and wait.
"So, uh, Harmeet," says Chandra somewhere behind her, "Mind telling me why my microwave deserved to die?"
*
It takes a few seconds for Harmeet to answer. She mulls it over for a bit, loudly chewing on her mastick. "The microwave was dumb," she says, finally.
"What did it do that was dumb?" asks Chandra.
"Buttons wouldn't register properly," she says.
"Huh." Chandra frowns. "They always worked okay for me."
"Yeah, well not me, okay?" Harmeet replies wih a bit of heat. She waves her cybernetic hand once. "This stupid arm wouldn't work right, it's all... clumsy."
Ah.
Ah. Adjustment. No wonder she's getting frustrated; it must be like having two off hands. It's impressive she can type as well as she can, to be honest. That's not all, though, Chandra can tell. The terseness, the masticks, something worse than augmentation adjustment is bugging Harmeet. And so Chandra, buoyed by the relative success - alright, non catastrophe - of his parenting so far, decides to simply ask outright. "Is anything else wrong? Are you feeling alright?" asks Chandra.
"I was…" Harmeet trails off and looks back at the flight computer. There's a long, uncomfortable pause. Chandra tries to figure out some way to encourage her to speak up, something useful to say, and settles for sitting, waiting, outwardly impassive.
"Chandra?" Harmeet mutters, lifting her head a little. She's not looking at him, though, she's staring at her reflection on the flight computer's glossy surface. "Am..." Her voice quavers a little. "Am I pretty?"
... oh
hell no. That is not a question Chandra was prepared for. If he had been asked it
forty years from now, it would not be a question he had the necessary skills to answer. He can already imagine the possibilities. If he tells the truth, she'll probably cry. If he lies, she'll catch it, and either get mad or cry. If he legs it... actually that would kind of be an attractive option if it weren't for the fact that it would be running away from a tearful thirteen-year old girl.
Dammit, why don't teenagers come with manuals explaining what to do in situations like this?
All this flashes through his head in under a second, but he needs to answer quickly. Hesitation will only make things worse. He gives it another second of rapid thought, just long enough to make it seem like he's considered the question carefully without stalling for time, then comes to a decision and...
Pick One:
[ ] Tell the truth, bluntly. She's got burn scars down half her face, and while she might have grown up to be good-looking beforehand, she's never going to be now. (1x)
[ ] Be honest, but gentle. She's not ever going to be as pretty as she was, but he got her pretty good treatment, and it won't scar as badly as it might have done. Anyway, cliche as it might sound, it's what's on the inside the counts. Rav was basically five foot six of track marks, scars, malnutrition side effects, crooked teeth, and a
bizarrely well groomed pompadour, and he was never starved for attention. (.9x)
[ ] Lie your ass off. She might be a bit beaten up at the moment, but once her burns finish healing, she'll look just fine. (1.2x)
[ ] Run for it. There are
no possible negative repercussions from refusing to answer this question worse than actually answering, right? (.1x)
