JuNoWriMo 2008, part two.
Boo I am failing it! I give, it's not going to happen. But here is the rest of what I have. Some of it is mildly tweaked repost. Starts right after the line of asterisks at the bottom of this one. Oh and Sivier is now a girl. Called Silvie. Or Blondie, if you're 'Tatsu and can't remember names to save your life.
I was more than a little annoyed to be put on prisoner detail, especially since not more than a week after the man had been trying to kill all of us, Boss wanted him working on important machinery. The conversation, however, went something like this:
'Sin', ya want this guy to work for us, he's good.'
'He's Spacer. A bomber pilot.'
'Yeah, 'cause you never fucked anything up.'
'I never killed hundreds of unarmed civilians.'
'Ain't his fault how he was raised. Besides, you need the break. Ya work too hard.'
'I don't have time to take a break.'
'D'ya really trust someone like that to anyone else'?
All right, he'd won.
I took the Spacer out the next morning. It's only three and a half blocks from HQ to the apartment building. It'd been eight days since the last run, which had been far more of a disaster for them than for us; it was late morning; it was cloudy; we were safe. I kept glancing upwards and around anyway.
'You're gonna get really bored doing that, the next one's not for another month,' the prisoner told me, two blocks down the road. Smirking. I knew better than to respond verbally, but I did flash a glare at him.
'Yeah, right, you're scary. I know that, man. My humerus knows that. Chill.' He grinned like he expected me to be in on the joke. I wasn't.
He kept talking. Very good at that. I kept ignoring him until we reached the fire exit that serves as a front door to this bank of buildings, and then all I said was 'Shut up and climb.' He followed orders more insubordinately than I would have thought possible.
The apartment was in bad shape, but it had a bed, running water and most of the glass in the windows. The Spacer's only comment was 'Hell, it's bigger than my barracks,' so I didn't feel a need to beat appreciation into him.
He collapsed on the bed and sighed. 'So, you gonna hang around looking ominous all day? I mean I appreciate eye candy as much as the next pansexual teenager, but I'm not into the shooty thing,' he said, making a gesture that, presumably, indicated a gun.
I may have been leaning on a wall, and I don't think I'd let up on my glare all morning, so perhaps he had a point. Not about the eye candy, though. 'Not all day; I'm supposed to be checking on you every so often. Though I have more important things to do.'
He gave me an incredulous look. 'So go do 'em. I'm not gonna run off, you know? Boss trusts me.'
I shook my head. 'No, Boss trusts /me/. Not to let you run off.'
No matter how pointless it was; I was going to end up having to shoot the man, no matter what Boss said about second chances. I would probably enjoy it.
'Well /yeah/ that too, but that doesn't mean you have to be right bloody here. You can always go do your stalky thing someplace else.' Despite his claims, he didn't look at all scared. In fact he'd turned around to look at me upside-down on the bed, completely relaxed.
It would've been easier if he were scared. Or at least made more sense.
'If you were actually trustworthy, you wouldn't be trying to get rid of me.'
'Ha! You are a paranoid bastard, aren't you'?
'And you're Spacer trash; I know which I'd rather be,' I snapped back; he visibly flinched at that, which I'd hardly expected. Very interesting. I revised my estimation of him up a point or two.
'I'm not Spacer, man. I mean I was about a week ago, but y'all aren't the only ones who got burned by them.'
'Oh, so they're a 'them' now. I suppose you think that means you're Earthsider.' If he'd made the slightest move towards an affirmative answer, I think I would've added another few broken bones to his tally; but he didn't. Instead, he looked at the ceiling and scowled.
'Nah. Not yet, anyway.'
'Wise of you.'
We were silent for a few minutes; apparently he'd run out of things to ramble on about. I was about to leave and let him get on with things - I didn't really expect him to be able to get anywhere, between the bugs and the noisy fire escape - when he came up with another topic.
'Y'know I don't think I ever properly intro'd myself - I'm Futatsu. Walker. Call me 'Tatsu, no one can pronounce it right,' he said. He held out a hand, upside down. I stared at him. He thought better of it.
I'm nowhere near fluent in Japanese, but I know the basics. 'Futatsu. I sincerely hope your parents weren't Japanese.' It's not at all difficult to pronounce, either.
He laughed. 'Nice catch. Yeah, no, it was my Grandma. She was kinda off in the head,' he mused. 'So yeah. Some people get all the luck with the cool-sounding foreign names.' He gave me a considering look.
'It's not /foreign/. My mother was Chinese.' /Why/ was I having this conversation?
'That explains the pretty, then. Does it explain the accent? 'Cause I /like/ the accent.' That was about the point at which my common sense overrode whatever schaudenfreud-loving part of me had kept me talking. I refused to be flirted with by a Spacer. Particularly one I couldn't shoot.
'This conversation is over. I'll check in in a few hours.'
'All right, all right, see you later then. I promise not to blow anything up that you don't want me to,' he said. He may very well have continued, but I couldn't hear it once I hit the ladder. Just as well.
Almost as soon as I got to my room, my comm buzzed. Wonderful. 'SingKueh.'
''Kueh, man. How'd it go?' It's Silvie. Of course, Boss would've asked her to check on things.
'He's installed. I take it the mics are working?'
'Sure are. He's talking to himself. Sounds kinda annoyed about the whole thing.' She laughs. 'Ya should hear the nicknames he's come up with.'
'I'm better off without, I'm sure.'
'So I don't think we're gonna need ya for a while. Get some sleep. Keep the comm on though, Boss says he's thinkin' we could have trouble.'
'Understood. SingKueh out.'
I don't like it when Boss thinks we could have trouble. He has a very good track record of being right about it.
***
(And here goes the bit in that entry that starts "Morning number one starts at...')
***
Day Three stabs me in the face - it's getting to be a tradition - and I once again forget the ground isn't where I frikkin' told it to be and drop out of bed. 'Fuck.' There isn't any glass there any more, though. See? Silver lining, knew I could find one.
I get up. I say 'good morning' to the mic under my bed and the one in the top-right corner of the kitchen area, and give it a running narration. 'Going to counter, opening cabinet, pulling out a -' I check the label on the package '- tinfoil pack of probably-cornflakes, making plans to overthrow your despotic regime - oh, whoops, did I say that out loud?' It's the little things. I wonder if they're actually listening. If they are, I bet Boss is getting a laugh out of it.
'So yeah, cornflakes.' I got my casts off yesterday thank /God/, and with the accelerated healing thing my leg's almost at full capacity, and my shoulder's, well, I'm just not gonna think about my shoulder right now, but it moves at least. So I can pace in circles if I'm bored instead of just thinking in 'em, which let me tell you is a hell of an improvement, giving me as it does almost fifteen more minutes of interest before I go totally stir-crazed.
You know what I need? A monkey. No, seriously, hear me out here, it'd be like one of those hero-type sidekicks, and it'd sneak out and bring me like a soldering iron or something so I could finish this steam-powered water thinger. And it'd be dead cute so's to attract chicks.
Who am I kidding, any monkey of mine would probably just throw shit at the walls. Nah, maybe a parrot. That'd give me something to talk to anyway. More interactive than the bugs, and less likely to cast suspicion my way.
I finish the cornflakes just as someone comes through the window. I expect it to be SDaC, so when the footsteps are way lighter than they should be I just about refrain from throwing myself under the table in instinctive 'ohshit' response. I bet that full-body twitch looked pretty interesting.
"Chill, it's me," a female voice says. I turn around and it's Blondie. You know, Boss's girlfriend. "Twitchy much?"
"Hey, if I am you made me that way," I say. "What the hell's up with you?"
She strides in and starts running her hands around under the table. "Checking the bugs," she says. "Ya found 'em, we gotta make sure you ain't got some kinda loop on 'em. That one's clean..." she pulls it out, checks it over, and sticks it back in. Woman's got really pretty hands. Hm.
She jumps up on the counter to check the one on the ceiling, and when she's sure I haven't, like, put a tiny nuclear bomb on it or whatever, jumps down and starts looking over my diagrams, I guess so she can figure out if those are explosive or something. Don't know why they /would/ be, given I'd be the first one to go, but given my shitty track record down here they've got no reason to think I'm /not/ suicidal.
"See, totally fine. Paranoid, aren't ya?" I ask her. There I go with the syntax again.
Not that, you know, I have a leg to stand on where that goes. I mean, I /have/ drawn up plans to mount one of those little mics on eight legs so it can follow me around. It actually only needs three, but an eight-legged camera is just awesome. Don't question the spider-cam.
"What the hell is this?" Blondie - what's her real name, Silvie - is questioning the spider-cam.
I grin. "Walking bug, of course," I tell her.
"Y'know, I didn't half believe 'em when they said how good ya are." She looks at my wallpaper-and-ink plans - floralprints? - in disbelief.
"You better now."
Blondie's probably got a reason for being here. Now I can't blame her for being distracted by my engineering prowess, but I'd kinda like to know. And she's gotta know I want to know. She's almost as good as Boss at casual psychological torture.
"Yeah, gotta face facts I guess. Y'think ya can get your brain 'round somethin' more practical?" she asks, smirking at me. She puts the prints down.
"Depends what kind of practical you're talking about."
"Think Boss said we wanted ya workin' on the G-819," she says. She's probably expecting me to jump in the air with glee, or something. I don't, but only 'cause it'd hurt coming down.
I can feel the uncontrollable grin coming up, though. "Seriously? I mean, seriously seriously? You got a G-819 I can work on?" I mean they said it before, but. Holy shit. This may be the most awesome thing that's happened since back in university when I - well, that's a long story, remind me later - and this time doesn't even involve a universal solvent.
"Yeah, seriously seriously. Ya start tomorrow if you can deal with, ya think that arm'll work for ya?" she says. Sweet of her not to mention my manic expression. Or the minor flailing that I may or may not be doing.
"It'll do what I need it to for a gee-nine," I say. "Christ. I barely even got to fly one of those."
"They're good," Blondie tells me. "'Til they get shot, 'course - that's the problem here, fuel tank's fucked, and the radio's still sending homing signals when it's on."
"Oh /man/." I think I'm in shock. Just a bit. Blondie is way too amused by all this. Can't begrudge her that though, I get pretty ridiculous when I'm on a tangent. She pulls out a pack of actual graph paper, a ruler and pencils from her backpack and slaps it on the table.
"I'mma work with ya on this one, so I got materials," she says.
"I could kiss you."
She slides down into the nearest chair, and says, "Don't."
Instead, I pull up a chair, and we get started.
***
I was more than a little annoyed to be put on prisoner detail, especially since not more than a week after the man had been trying to kill all of us, Boss wanted him working on important machinery. The conversation, however, went something like this:
'Sin', ya want this guy to work for us, he's good.'
'He's Spacer. A bomber pilot.'
'Yeah, 'cause you never fucked anything up.'
'I never killed hundreds of unarmed civilians.'
'Ain't his fault how he was raised. Besides, you need the break. Ya work too hard.'
'I don't have time to take a break.'
'D'ya really trust someone like that to anyone else'?
All right, he'd won.
I took the Spacer out the next morning. It's only three and a half blocks from HQ to the apartment building. It'd been eight days since the last run, which had been far more of a disaster for them than for us; it was late morning; it was cloudy; we were safe. I kept glancing upwards and around anyway.
'You're gonna get really bored doing that, the next one's not for another month,' the prisoner told me, two blocks down the road. Smirking. I knew better than to respond verbally, but I did flash a glare at him.
'Yeah, right, you're scary. I know that, man. My humerus knows that. Chill.' He grinned like he expected me to be in on the joke. I wasn't.
He kept talking. Very good at that. I kept ignoring him until we reached the fire exit that serves as a front door to this bank of buildings, and then all I said was 'Shut up and climb.' He followed orders more insubordinately than I would have thought possible.
The apartment was in bad shape, but it had a bed, running water and most of the glass in the windows. The Spacer's only comment was 'Hell, it's bigger than my barracks,' so I didn't feel a need to beat appreciation into him.
He collapsed on the bed and sighed. 'So, you gonna hang around looking ominous all day? I mean I appreciate eye candy as much as the next pansexual teenager, but I'm not into the shooty thing,' he said, making a gesture that, presumably, indicated a gun.
I may have been leaning on a wall, and I don't think I'd let up on my glare all morning, so perhaps he had a point. Not about the eye candy, though. 'Not all day; I'm supposed to be checking on you every so often. Though I have more important things to do.'
He gave me an incredulous look. 'So go do 'em. I'm not gonna run off, you know? Boss trusts me.'
I shook my head. 'No, Boss trusts /me/. Not to let you run off.'
No matter how pointless it was; I was going to end up having to shoot the man, no matter what Boss said about second chances. I would probably enjoy it.
'Well /yeah/ that too, but that doesn't mean you have to be right bloody here. You can always go do your stalky thing someplace else.' Despite his claims, he didn't look at all scared. In fact he'd turned around to look at me upside-down on the bed, completely relaxed.
It would've been easier if he were scared. Or at least made more sense.
'If you were actually trustworthy, you wouldn't be trying to get rid of me.'
'Ha! You are a paranoid bastard, aren't you'?
'And you're Spacer trash; I know which I'd rather be,' I snapped back; he visibly flinched at that, which I'd hardly expected. Very interesting. I revised my estimation of him up a point or two.
'I'm not Spacer, man. I mean I was about a week ago, but y'all aren't the only ones who got burned by them.'
'Oh, so they're a 'them' now. I suppose you think that means you're Earthsider.' If he'd made the slightest move towards an affirmative answer, I think I would've added another few broken bones to his tally; but he didn't. Instead, he looked at the ceiling and scowled.
'Nah. Not yet, anyway.'
'Wise of you.'
We were silent for a few minutes; apparently he'd run out of things to ramble on about. I was about to leave and let him get on with things - I didn't really expect him to be able to get anywhere, between the bugs and the noisy fire escape - when he came up with another topic.
'Y'know I don't think I ever properly intro'd myself - I'm Futatsu. Walker. Call me 'Tatsu, no one can pronounce it right,' he said. He held out a hand, upside down. I stared at him. He thought better of it.
I'm nowhere near fluent in Japanese, but I know the basics. 'Futatsu. I sincerely hope your parents weren't Japanese.' It's not at all difficult to pronounce, either.
He laughed. 'Nice catch. Yeah, no, it was my Grandma. She was kinda off in the head,' he mused. 'So yeah. Some people get all the luck with the cool-sounding foreign names.' He gave me a considering look.
'It's not /foreign/. My mother was Chinese.' /Why/ was I having this conversation?
'That explains the pretty, then. Does it explain the accent? 'Cause I /like/ the accent.' That was about the point at which my common sense overrode whatever schaudenfreud-loving part of me had kept me talking. I refused to be flirted with by a Spacer. Particularly one I couldn't shoot.
'This conversation is over. I'll check in in a few hours.'
'All right, all right, see you later then. I promise not to blow anything up that you don't want me to,' he said. He may very well have continued, but I couldn't hear it once I hit the ladder. Just as well.
Almost as soon as I got to my room, my comm buzzed. Wonderful. 'SingKueh.'
''Kueh, man. How'd it go?' It's Silvie. Of course, Boss would've asked her to check on things.
'He's installed. I take it the mics are working?'
'Sure are. He's talking to himself. Sounds kinda annoyed about the whole thing.' She laughs. 'Ya should hear the nicknames he's come up with.'
'I'm better off without, I'm sure.'
'So I don't think we're gonna need ya for a while. Get some sleep. Keep the comm on though, Boss says he's thinkin' we could have trouble.'
'Understood. SingKueh out.'
I don't like it when Boss thinks we could have trouble. He has a very good track record of being right about it.
***
(And here goes the bit in that entry that starts "Morning number one starts at...')
***
Day Three stabs me in the face - it's getting to be a tradition - and I once again forget the ground isn't where I frikkin' told it to be and drop out of bed. 'Fuck.' There isn't any glass there any more, though. See? Silver lining, knew I could find one.
I get up. I say 'good morning' to the mic under my bed and the one in the top-right corner of the kitchen area, and give it a running narration. 'Going to counter, opening cabinet, pulling out a -' I check the label on the package '- tinfoil pack of probably-cornflakes, making plans to overthrow your despotic regime - oh, whoops, did I say that out loud?' It's the little things. I wonder if they're actually listening. If they are, I bet Boss is getting a laugh out of it.
'So yeah, cornflakes.' I got my casts off yesterday thank /God/, and with the accelerated healing thing my leg's almost at full capacity, and my shoulder's, well, I'm just not gonna think about my shoulder right now, but it moves at least. So I can pace in circles if I'm bored instead of just thinking in 'em, which let me tell you is a hell of an improvement, giving me as it does almost fifteen more minutes of interest before I go totally stir-crazed.
You know what I need? A monkey. No, seriously, hear me out here, it'd be like one of those hero-type sidekicks, and it'd sneak out and bring me like a soldering iron or something so I could finish this steam-powered water thinger. And it'd be dead cute so's to attract chicks.
Who am I kidding, any monkey of mine would probably just throw shit at the walls. Nah, maybe a parrot. That'd give me something to talk to anyway. More interactive than the bugs, and less likely to cast suspicion my way.
I finish the cornflakes just as someone comes through the window. I expect it to be SDaC, so when the footsteps are way lighter than they should be I just about refrain from throwing myself under the table in instinctive 'ohshit' response. I bet that full-body twitch looked pretty interesting.
"Chill, it's me," a female voice says. I turn around and it's Blondie. You know, Boss's girlfriend. "Twitchy much?"
"Hey, if I am you made me that way," I say. "What the hell's up with you?"
She strides in and starts running her hands around under the table. "Checking the bugs," she says. "Ya found 'em, we gotta make sure you ain't got some kinda loop on 'em. That one's clean..." she pulls it out, checks it over, and sticks it back in. Woman's got really pretty hands. Hm.
She jumps up on the counter to check the one on the ceiling, and when she's sure I haven't, like, put a tiny nuclear bomb on it or whatever, jumps down and starts looking over my diagrams, I guess so she can figure out if those are explosive or something. Don't know why they /would/ be, given I'd be the first one to go, but given my shitty track record down here they've got no reason to think I'm /not/ suicidal.
"See, totally fine. Paranoid, aren't ya?" I ask her. There I go with the syntax again.
Not that, you know, I have a leg to stand on where that goes. I mean, I /have/ drawn up plans to mount one of those little mics on eight legs so it can follow me around. It actually only needs three, but an eight-legged camera is just awesome. Don't question the spider-cam.
"What the hell is this?" Blondie - what's her real name, Silvie - is questioning the spider-cam.
I grin. "Walking bug, of course," I tell her.
"Y'know, I didn't half believe 'em when they said how good ya are." She looks at my wallpaper-and-ink plans - floralprints? - in disbelief.
"You better now."
Blondie's probably got a reason for being here. Now I can't blame her for being distracted by my engineering prowess, but I'd kinda like to know. And she's gotta know I want to know. She's almost as good as Boss at casual psychological torture.
"Yeah, gotta face facts I guess. Y'think ya can get your brain 'round somethin' more practical?" she asks, smirking at me. She puts the prints down.
"Depends what kind of practical you're talking about."
"Think Boss said we wanted ya workin' on the G-819," she says. She's probably expecting me to jump in the air with glee, or something. I don't, but only 'cause it'd hurt coming down.
I can feel the uncontrollable grin coming up, though. "Seriously? I mean, seriously seriously? You got a G-819 I can work on?" I mean they said it before, but. Holy shit. This may be the most awesome thing that's happened since back in university when I - well, that's a long story, remind me later - and this time doesn't even involve a universal solvent.
"Yeah, seriously seriously. Ya start tomorrow if you can deal with, ya think that arm'll work for ya?" she says. Sweet of her not to mention my manic expression. Or the minor flailing that I may or may not be doing.
"It'll do what I need it to for a gee-nine," I say. "Christ. I barely even got to fly one of those."
"They're good," Blondie tells me. "'Til they get shot, 'course - that's the problem here, fuel tank's fucked, and the radio's still sending homing signals when it's on."
"Oh /man/." I think I'm in shock. Just a bit. Blondie is way too amused by all this. Can't begrudge her that though, I get pretty ridiculous when I'm on a tangent. She pulls out a pack of actual graph paper, a ruler and pencils from her backpack and slaps it on the table.
"I'mma work with ya on this one, so I got materials," she says.
"I could kiss you."
She slides down into the nearest chair, and says, "Don't."
Instead, I pull up a chair, and we get started.
***