In the Wreckage

[Jakobi Velenti]

Stardate 08.29.24

"Good evening, Captain." Rhythmic beeping of the heart rate monitor punctuates the robotic voice that speaks, a gentle hum of machinery constant throughout the room. A few more moments pass in the ambience before it speaks again. "Diagnostics show that you are awake. Please ack-"

"Fuck off."

There's a beat of silence, only broken by the ambient noise of the medical equipment. The monotone voice finally starts again with, "Your vitals have stabilized. Per Cresselia's request, there is a video file pending your review." The man on the surgical table heaves a sigh, pain lacing through him with the effort. Eyes the color of burnt honey slowly open, vision blurry but adjusting by the second. He turns a tired frown towards the glowing hologram that had been addressing him, lifting his head to scowl at it. "She survived?"

The translucent man, stood with arms behind his back at parade rest, nods. "Unharmed, sir. Would you like to review the file?"

Relief eases the tension in his shoulders, and his head falls back against the table with a soft thud. "Guess that explains how I'm still kickin'. What's the file?"

"Video file designation: DoF_ART_Finals. Cresselia acquired it last night from the planetary body designated in travel logs as RhyDin."

The man on the table chuckles, an action cut short with a wince. Again his head turned, not lifting from the table this time to squint at the hologram. "She went down to film that? By herself?"

"I acted as her supporting officer for this mission, Captain."

"Good boy, Aiden." Comes the mumbled response as he finally sets an arm at his side to push himself to a sitting position. His entire body screams in protest, a sensation he's familiar with ignoring. He'd long since given up on trying to convince the A.I. that this was no longer a military station, having grown to like being called captain. "I'll watch the file later. How long was I out? What happened to the Scavs?"

"You have been unconscious since approximately 1:48 a.m. Wednesday morning. You dispatched the last of the enemy forces 3 minutes later at 1:51 a.m. It is currently 7:26 in the evening, Thursday." Aiden's expression and tone remain bland while giving the seemingly self-contradicting answer, translucent body devoid of emotion. An arm comes from behind him to gesture at the table. "It is highly recommended that you remain in medical until a more complete recovery is made, Captain Valentine."

Jake grunts in acknowledgment, already pulling pads and straps off his bare and heavily scarred body. The muscles of his chest tighten with the effort, every motion stiff after the long rest combined with the injuries. Fingers reach down towards the top of his abs to touch a thick patch of bandages where the source of most of the pain was coming from. As he presses against the wound through the gauze, his mind flickers from the present.

Its dark aboard the station, but there's lights moving through the hall. Flashlights move to flood a room with light as the door slides open with a soft electronic whisper, the barrels of the guns they're attached to glinting as they slowly press into the room. Arcing motions serve to try and eliminate any shadows he can hide in, and a command is barked out from the figure at the back of the group in their guttural language. The command cuts short with the sound of bones cracking, the neck of the Scav dangling limply in his arms now. Lights flicker, gunshots ring out, and a mechanical whirring grows violently loud.

"Captain?"

The hollow voice of Aiden pulls him back to the moment, a few blinks serving to erase the fading scene from his eyes fully. Jake pulls his hand away, looking back up at the projection with a muttered, "Huh?"

"I asked when you would like me to remind you to review the file, sir."

"Later, Aiden." The name is said with a warning tone, another strap being yanked off from his legs. With care, he slides them around to the side of the table, testing how well they'd hold his weight. Satisfied they wouldn't buckle, Jake rises to his feet, looking towards the door of the room while pushing the arms of an autodoc out of the way. Patchwork sheets of metal and electronics along the wall gave away how much of the place was put together from scrap and salvage, the occasional piece of gleaming and pristine tech sticking out like a sore thumb and serving to draw memories of the places they had been 'acquired' from. A blanket laid across a chair beside the table is snatched up and wrapped around his waist for modesty. "Where's Cress? Shouldn't take her this long to start shouting after I pull off the monitors."

"Cresselia is currently sleeping. If you are refusing to stay in the medical bay, I have instructions from her to relay a message." Aiden's projection wavers before being replaced by small text box as Cress's recorded voice begins to read the transcript aloud,. She sounds exhausted.

"Go back to sleep before you pop a stitch." A pause, though he can see more words yet unread. "I already know you won't, though, so please at least check your room. You mentioned a costume party the other day. Thank me by not dying again." As the recording ends, the hologram takes the form of Aiden once more, eternally passive expression landing on Jake. The pirate doesn't spare him more than a glance, turning a tired look towards the door as he begins to head towards his quarters. Once out into the hall, he doesn't stop moving as he asks, "How is she holdin' up?"

"According to the logs, Cresselia entered her quarters for the first time since the attack as of 4 hours ago. She has acquired a total of 3 hours of sleep." The voice answers from a passing speaker.

A few paces away from his door, Jake pauses to stare at a streak of dried blood along the wall. His eyes follow it towards where a messily cleaned puddle of the liquid clearly was at one point. Cress seemed to struggle to pick it out from the regular paint despite the massive difference in color, once it was no longer fresh. Jake looks up and away to a camera over the intersection of the hallway, nodding once. "Tell the kid I'll handle this when I get back, got a fight to watch. She check what happened on the cams?"

"She tried to, sir, but per your previous orders I locked her access until you have had the opportunity to make the necessary edits. Are you certain it is wise to keep the lead engineer from seeing possible areas for improvement in our security recordings?" The tone almost sounded curious, but perhaps that was Jake's mind reading into it too much. He simply grunts, not willing to have this conversation with the computer as he turns to press against the panel beside his door.

His eyes first land on his duster, hanging freshly cleaned from a hook on the far wall. A pang of guilt grows in him, seeing it returned so much earlier than it was supposed to be. Then his gaze turns to the pile of clothes on a chair beside his bed as he walks in. "You little shit," he murmurs with a smile, lifting the hat that rested at the top. Jake puts it on his head, turning to look at a mirror on the wall with a surprisingly warm grin. Still talking to himself, he says, "I told you not to go through my damn movies."

[Jakobi Velenti]

Stardate 09.11.24

Machinery hisses and spits in protest as Jake fights to push the overly large ratchet one last time, putting all his weight into the action. Sweat runs down his bare torso to mingle with thick black smudges of grease and oil, the lithe but firm outline of his body slumping as the bolt squeals in it's final turn. Panting with the effort, one scarred arm raises up away from the massive tool to wipe even more of the mixture across his brow in an attempt to stop the sweat from carrying it into his eyes. His other hand pulls away from the tool, still held upright by the bolt it was around, to gesture at the strange oblong device he just finished locking into place. "Please tell me you didn't make any more of this shit."

Cress looks up from the terminal she's sat at, her currently glowing blue eyes looking over at the the finished work. "That should be all four of them! I just need more time to finish running some tests on the rift and it's interaction with the charged particles..." She involuntarily bites her lip, the vents along the sides of her neck flaring slightly as she turns her gaze towards the thin line running down the middle of the room they were currently in. It split the large storage room into two halves, a distinct difference in coloration between them that was made even more apparent by her thermal readings as the air on either side of the room was somehow maintaining different temperatures exactly along the split.

"You sure this won't make it even worse? I know Aiden said it's a good idea, but that weasel says everything you do is a good idea." Jake's own eyes had followed hers, wearily staring at a point on the wall where the shift was the most noticeable before turning back to her with mild concern. "I think he's got a crush on you."

Those blue eyes go rolling, a smile spreading across her lips as she turns back to the readings across the terminal screen. "I told you it will be fine. Go shower and get out of here already, Jakobi. Your part of the work is done for now, and the security system is running full steam so no need to play watchdog. Go make some friends finally so I can stop being teased for having one." She holds back on teasing him about the mysterious texts he'd exchanged a few nights prior with someone, not wanting to reveal her snooping until she had a good excuse cooked up for how she'd found out. The glow in her eyes grows brighter as she slips a cable from her wrist into the side of the computer. "If you're gonna stick around though, please get me something swe-"

The request isn't fully out of her mouth before she can hear the door on the Riftside of the room slide open with a hydraulic whoosh, the sounds of Jake's boots marking his exit. A green dot representing his location blinks off from one digital map of the station that floats in the corner of her vision, appearing on another almost identical looking one in her peripheral. She watches it idly for a moment as more data loads on the screen, seeing him take the usual route to his Riftside quarters where she knows he will likely be for a while. Graphs and equations pull up in the display across her eyes in tandem with the new data loading onto the terminal, the numbers plugging into place automatically as it does. The maps are dismissed with a subtle motion of her fingers, all attention shifting over to her research while the rest of the world around her slowly fades away from her mind.

Time's passage distorts until she's no longer aware of it.

"Miss Cresselia, it has been 2 hours since you began your calculations and data analysis. Per Captain Valentine's orders, I am advising you take adequate time to tend to your physical needs before continuing." A thin blue line appears just under all the shifting data, waves running through it as the familiar monotone voice speaks. A sigh builds in her mind as she goes about ending her connection to the terminal, and a brief check of the time confirming that she had indeed spent a couple of hours lost in her work. That same sigh escapes her lips as she slowly deactivates her internalized life support, regaining bodily control while exiting the digital workspace. While both of her vision subsystems kick back online properly, the Riftside and Homeside station maps both pull up in her otherwise blank optical overlay.

For the briefest moment, seeing no green dot on either sends the usual rush of panic through her before a little wave of the hand pulls up a translucent screen that shows the steadily rising and falling line of his heart rate, his current spatial coordinates listed just above it with the location tagged as 'RhyDin'. Her racing pulse slows as the rest of his vitals appear one by one, her last updates to his implants having included a remotely accessible live feed of them. Seeing all of them in their usual, albeit extremely concerning, levels finally washes away the last of the terror that had flooded her. It's only now that she notices what's sat before her through the translucent window floating in her view, a little smile forming on her face. Swiping away the screen with one hand, the other comes forward to pluck one of the many colorless candies from the pile that had been deposited on the top of terminal in front of her. A little card shifts in her lap with the movement. Noticing a familiar symbol on it as she lifts it up to inspect handwriting that was added to this particular one, the words only make her smile grow.

Gone Shopping

[Jakobi Velenti]

Stardate 09.27.24

The hiss of a door sliding open grated against the blessed silence. Light footsteps echo against the inside of his pounding skull, each one louder than the last as they approach. A weight on Jake's chest shifts before those thundering yet dainty steps have even gotten to him, causing bleary eyes to crack open. Like sandpaper, his tongue slips between dry and cracked lips in search of even a drop of liquid for the desert in his mouth as the world comes into focus.

A small mass of brown fur and twigs is the moving weight on his chest, the rootfang cub's head having lifted to look towards the source of the noise. Cress, the aforementioned source, finishes her last few steps to come beside Jake and Rudy, nudging a few empty bottles aside with her foot as she does. Hands on her hips, the stare she levels downwards onto him only registers as disappointment in his mind. "Do you plan to sleep in the hydroponics bay all day? Because if so, you've drank the whole station dry, and I'm not wasting even more synthesis materials on alcohol for you."

Each word stings in the most literal sense as the peace and quiet of the room is cast out with her chiding, head practically splitting open from inside. Hydroponics bay? Tilting his head to look around himself, leaves rustle underneath him and greenery meets his eyes. Right, even in space he'd managed to find a bush to pass out in. "...shit." The utterance is hoarse, nausea wracking him for a moment after the strain of putting his voice to use for the first time in... "What's today?"

As if just to make the headache worse, a speaker on the wall crackles loudly to answer him in the familiar voice of Aiden. "Station time, as synced with the city of RhyDin, is currently 12:29 P.M. on Friday, September 27th." With a suppressed wince across his face, he slumps further back into the shrubbery. 'Two days.' Cress continues to frown overhead as he tries to summon up memories, finding that beyond attempting and failing to repair a bed frame back at the Inn, everything after that was hazy and distant. He could see things as though it were through a wall of frosted glass, details muddled too much to actually make anything out of the events of the last couple of days.

Except for a pair of red gems. Aches and pains momentarily forgotten, his hands move to pat against and dive into the pockets of his coat. Cress had crossed her arms at some point, and now began to tap her foot impatiently. "What are you looking for?" Her brow knits together, concern and frustration both evident in her features as currently dull blue eyes search his face, while he continues to search himself. Rudy, who'd been looking between the two of them curiously from atop Jake's chest, is lifted up and set down into the bush for his continued search, where the cub digs in and disappears into the foliage. Coming up empty, she huffs at his lack of an answer. "If you dropped it, the cameras probably saw where you did. So what are we looking for?"

Sitting up takes way more effort than it should, nausea returning in force as he glances over the empty bottles surrounding him on the floor while he extricates himself from the shrub. A mental note is made to ask what the bush actually is later, assuming its supposed to grow more than just leaves st some point. "Rubies. Think I tried to nick a pair of 'em..." He trails off, recalling a blurry memory of the gemstones glittering in the starlight. Some kind of grey case holds them, barely visible in his mind's eye as nothing more than a series of overlapping smudges that were getting further and further. A shiver runs through him. "Don't think I actually pulled it off, though."

There was more to it, he could tell, but with the way all his pains were seeping back in, it could wait. As even more bottles clink together when he moves to climb to his feet, part of him suspected he was better off not remembering anyways. Cress grabs one shoulder to help him up, a boon with how the room spins before settling. "C'mon, I haven't seen you eat anything since you came back. And," Her fingers come to pinch at her nose with a scrunched up expression. "You need a shower if you're going to that duel tonight." 'Duel?' Right, the challenge. A groan rises up from his chest at the thought of it, but he moves all the same with the gentle tug given to his arm.

Wooden claws tap lightly as Rudy emerges from the plants to follow the pair, whining for a share of the attention that Cress happily provides when she pauses to pick him up. A glance between the wolf's dirty paws and muddy prints left over the chest and shoulder of Jake gets a light laugh from her. "And you're leaving that coat behind."

"Like hell. I'll clean it myself." 'Again.'

[Jakobi Velenti]

Stardate 10.08.24

It’s been so long
Long hard days

After several hours of floating amidst the debris, intently watching the little screen on the inside of his helmet's visor, a signal appears. A blip on the radar, getting closer to the center point that represented himself. Pressing a button on the wrist of the thin suit shuts off the screen alongside any other lights along his body, just as the target comes into view. The slowly moving heap of slapped together parts and panels was exactly where it was supposed to be, surprising even himself while also lighting a spark of anger in him at seeing it actually heading this way.

They don’t say
Gods change my ways
Change my ways

“Why would I lie?” MoonBeryl managed to infuse the tone of its question with just enough of a teasing edge that his top lip curled up, already wondering if he would regret ignoring the advice he’d initially given weight to about waiting to entertain the Opal’s offers. He had waited, at least a day or two. Now wasn’t the time to dwell on that, however, as the Scav ship began to drift mere feet past him. Pushing against one of the many pieces of scrap surrounding his body in the darkness, his boots connect with a pair of soft clicks. Walking along the outside of the ship is only precarious due to its terribly shoddy construction, each step threatening to discover that the magnetic pull of his soles is stronger than the connections between the components underfoot. It takes a moment of cautious searching to find what he’s looking for, a wicked grin stretching across his face as he leans down against the external door to the ship.

Those evil ways

Metal tears quietly, the sound only reaching him via the vibrations that travel through his legs and arms while his cybernetics help him to rip it open. His torso is instantly thrown backwards by the decompression from within, two bodies only narrowly skimming past him as they’re flung out into the debris field. His mag boots barely keep him attached to the ship against the blast of air that had come out, but it's over as quickly as it had begun, a red light coming on as emergency panels slowly begin to slide shut in an attempt to seal the hole and restore the airlock’s integrity. Jake grips the sides of the hole he’d made, pulling himself through before it can shut him out.

So I set out
Cross that way

Once inside, the artificial gravity forces him to switch to manual controls for his boots, activating the same magnets in his suit’s gloves. Gentle shifts of nanomachines against switches control the release of each step, allowing him to make his way up the wall until he’s crawling along the ceiling. With the emergency panels in place over the entry he’d made, a soft hiss starts up as reserve air begins to fill the space around him. Almost as soon as it stops, the inner door to the airlock shudders open. The barrel of a slug thrower enters first, followed by a head that's as much metal as it is flesh, an entire portion of the skull and one eye completely replaced by brutal looking exposed circuitry and mechanical components. One look into the room is all it takes for the Scav to lift a blocky comms device, a garbled mix of syllables conveying some kind of all clear. Dropping from the roof is as simple as letting the magnets shut off for a moment.

Strike them down
To make them pay
Change their ways

One boot crashes into the tech sticking out of the thing’s head, internal whirring driving the kick hard enough to send it into whatever might be left of the Scav’s brain. It’s dead before they both hit the floor, body softening Jake’s own landing. Or as soft as it can be, what with the two chunky cybernetic arms that it had been using to hold its massive gun. One ginger tug at the weapon reveals that it’s as weighty as it looks, and would be far too heavy to continue with any semblance of stealth. “I can help with that.” A gentle whisper of an offer at his thoughts. Jake doesn’t deign to reply as he rises from the ground, already moving further into the ship. He reminds himself that they’d brought this upon themselves while tapping another button along his wrist to pull the visor away from his face, considering the vessel appeared to be on a direct course for the Homeside station, which the Opal had heavily implied was the case when it convinced him to lie in wait in the first place.

Their evil ways

Darting down one hall brings him up to an open door, and peering inside makes his blood run cold. Prosthetics and implants of various sizes and levels of quality lay strewn across tables, some still lined with bits of flesh and blood from their connection points. The fire inside grows hotter, lips pulling into a grin. Now he needed no reminders to soothe whatever shriveled excuse he has for a conscience. Turning to continue down the hall, he rapidly approaches an intersection just as a hand with three of its fingers replaced by skeletal metal versions swings out into it, cracking across his cheekbone. The rest of the mix of man and machine rushes out to follow as Jake’s body continues forwards with the momentum, his head toppling back while another half metal fist reels back. It makes the mistake of dropping what the pirate can only assume is some kind of guttural one liner instead of just hitting him as he’s falling, giving Jake that one extra second needed to recover. Two blurs of slick plastic covered arms shoot up to catch himself before he’s all the way down, grabbing that prepared arm to pull it forwards while his legs kick up off the ground. The maneuver results in a reversal of their positions, the Scav stumbling down as he flips himself up and over to land in a crouch a few paces beyond. Further down the intersection, another appears with another slug thrower in hand. The barrel points down at him and sheer instinct has control of his body being surrendered to the machines inside.

But I can’t hide

They pilot him around like a puppet, far faster than he could move of his own volition. Throwing himself aside barely stops him from taking a shot to the chest, the round ripping past and into the backside of the other Scav that was still getting back to his footing just behind Jake. The pirate lunges for the now screaming individual, grabbing and spinning to make a meat shield as another shot is fired. It’s only the low velocity nature of the slug throwers that keep him from getting peppered through the body as he charges down the hallway, the weapons meant to pose as little risk as possible to the hull integrity of spacecraft if fired from within. A barked command in the Scav’s hideous language falls on deaf ears before the blur of man and spacesuit are upon the enemy, a sickening crack stopping the gunfire. Dropping the thoroughly riddled corpse he had rushed in with, he abandons stealth entirely to pick up the long barreled rifle with both arms, the weight requiring a little assistance from his implants to manage. Suddenly, it feels lighter than air. "I'll even do this one free, as an extra reward for our promised conversation."

And I won’t hide

From there, the rest of his journey through the ship is little more than blood splatters left against the interior walls and bodies with varying levels of replaced parts left in his wake. Minutes later, with his boot atop the chest of whoever had been steering, Jake is working the navigation computer of the ship. It doesn’t take much to convince the relatively rudimentary computer to chart a course right back to where it came from, leaving autopilot engaged. Each step back to the exit has him counting in his head, smiling wildly with a mix of satisfaction and unhinged bloodlust as he tallies up the number he’d torn through on this brief outing. Thirteen, if he was counting the two who had been sucked into the void, but only eleven for the purposes he had intended. Securing his visor back into place, he checks his suits seals before making his way back out the airlock to push himself towards his own approaching shuttle, throwing one last look at the message he was sending to the rest of the Scavs who would eventually come across the tomb of a ship. The thought of their terror alone is enough to pull his manic grin even wider.

My Evil Ways

[Jakobi Velenti]

Stardate 10.15.24

In the week since he'd intercepted the approaching vessel, Jakobi had asked Aiden no less than six times to check the security systems in a way that didn't alert Cress. As she sat plugged into her monitor, pouring through the cracked logs, she wondered if he'd ever be clever enough to think about asking Aiden if she'd bypassed the encryption anyways. She wasn't entirely sure if the AI had discovered her backdoors into the systems or not. Asking was out of the question, as tempting as it was. Comparing notes with the machine had been such a boon over the last 12 years, helping her expand upon various topics of research from the comfort of her own mind, but it also made her feel a little guilty about going behind it's back each time Jakobi ordered certain logs or recordings to be kept from her.

The logs minimize automatically when the door opens, her work on the rift harness taking its place seamlessly across the screens in front of her. He was earlier than expected. Turning to track the familiar heat source of Jakobi, she turns her innocent smile onto him, noticing another bundle of dull greys and reds in his arms. The furrowed brow is lost in her altered vision, but his slightly elevated temperature gives away the anger all the same as he holds Rudy up towards her. “The hell is this?” The harshness of his tone surprises her, prompting a blink to adjust her view enough to make out finer details. A wince slips across her features when she realizes what he's referring to, seeing the prototype harness she'd accidentally left on the cub.

“It's just a-”

“No, ain't looking for what it is. The fuck is it doin' on the mutt?” The way Jakobi shakes the young wolf slightly as he asks bothers her, even though the little guy doesn't seem to mind. He couldn't stand to be a little more gentle with her work? She sighs, disconnecting entirely from the monitor in front of her. This was going to be a conversation she was hoping to avoid, she already could tell.

“I've been making great progress with organic materials and rift transport. After getting a few scans of the teleporters down at Stars End, I thought it was safe enou-”

One slammed boot to the metal floor beneath them cut her words short, the temperature of his face rising a little further as the cub in his hands squirmed a little. But she presses on when his mouth opens, determined to finish her answer. “It's on Rudy because I needed to make sure it fit. Plants and bodies are one thing, and those worked without the harness. This was a safe first step to seeing if we can actually do something with this!” She can't help the way her voice pitches up, frustrated. Why did he have to get so snippity? She thought he didn't even like Rudy.

“Bodies?”

‘Oh. Whoopsies.’ She forgot that she never did get around to telling him what she did with the Scav corpses from the station attack over a month ago, or at least the ones he'd left intact enough to use. “I don't understand what the problem is, Jakobi. I'm this close to the biggest breaththrough yet, and he'll probably be perfectly safe!”

“Probably!?”

“Nothing is ever gua-”

"Shut. Up." Rudy whined, a sound Cress feels tempted to mimic under the intensity of Jakobi's growled command. She expected being shouted at, but the quieter anger never sat right with her. It wasn't something she felt as comfortable ignoring like his usual blustering. “The mutt goes.”

“What? Jakobi you ca-”

“Ain't a discussion!” He began to remove the little harness from the cub, slipping its limbs carefully but quickly.

Bristling, Cress sits forwards, palms coming up to either side as she starts to argue. “But it's sa-”

“I said it ain't a goddamn discussion!” The harness finally comes off as he shouts the words, being flung against the ground with enough force that one of the circular discs lining it cracks. “You ain't get to make that kinda call for someone or somethin’ else.” One boot comes up, slamming back down to crush another couple of stabilizing discs, the heel grinding it to either side. “You want a damn test subject? Use me or yourself, or someone who can at least fuckin’ say yes.”

Cress deflates, watching days of work and various expensive components be destroyed in an instant. The tone of the scolding wasn't helping matters either, she'd not expected Jakobi to make such a big deal of things. Worst of all, arguing with him was difficult, causing her gaze to linger on the floor even as her thermals registered him moving further back. In part because she felt a little bad, but mostly because she knew he wouldn't listen to any counter points she might be able to make. She couldn't test it on herself yet, since she had to operate the device, and Aiden wasn't exactly tangible enough to warrant being a viable candidate either. Was she confident that Rudy would have been fine? Yes. Was she hesitant to test it on Jakobi because of the small chance he wouldn't be? Also yes. But that was something she expected him to understand and agree with, with all his talk of saving his own skin before anyone else's. Looking up from the smashed harness on the floor, her mouth opens to finally ask why he even cares.

But he's not there. Both station maps pull up against the tiny screens of her optics, his blinking location already moving rapidly down the hall from the room she's in. He crosses through to Riftside, tracker shifting from one station map to the other. A feed opens up between the two maps, security footage of the hall showing him storming towards the hangar, and it looked like his mouth was moving. A peek at Aiden's transcripts shows that he isn't talking to the AI, which perplexes her. In all the footage she'd been watching over the last few weeks, he'd been talking to seemingly nothing, maybe himself, more and more.

Disappointment settles into her with only the briefest considerations of trying to stop him, before being even more disappointed by the knowledge that it wouldn't accomplish anything except delaying him. With a pout and a huff, Cress turns to reconnect herself with the screen she's sat beside. “Aiden, adjust measurements for the harness in my blueprints to match that stinky jacket.” If he wanted to volunteer himself, then so be it. He was the one who'd be bringing her all the replacement parts for what he just broke anyways.

The thin blue line that had been sitting idle in the corner of her view dances to life as the monotone voice replies. “Adjusting. Please specify if you intend to match the entire length, or just the torso measurements.”

“Just the torso, so we're not potentially wasting that much material on a first test.” She supposed she would miss Rudy, or at least researching the effect his presence was having on the plant growth in Hydroponics. Oh well, progress demands sacrifice.