Retrospectivity

[go_endeavour]

Bee has scarcely left the workshop and already Endeavour is thinking about what happened back in Florida all those years ago.

It wasn't like what had just gone on. There was nobody telling them that Columbia had popped a hole and disintegrated upon reentry. Endeavour - back when she was inanimate but artificially sentient - had heard the workers

Comments

[nottabeater]

He tilts his head quizzically, wondering at her confusion. "What is it?"

[go_endeavour]

She grins slightly. "Nothing. Just... more of what I said earlier. Someone worrying about something other than the state of my thermal protection system..." She shakes her leg and a few black silica tiles fall to the floor.

Endeavour picks the tile up in her hand and inspects it closely, then hands it over to Ratchet. "Here, have a look at this."

It's very light.

[nottabeater]

He scans it and nods. "We've got a bit of this in the make up of our armor and outer body parts."

Then he lifts his head again and looks at her. "Is it all loose?"

[go_endeavour]

"Really?" She arches an eyebrow. "Silica-based, just the same?" She holds her hand out to get the tile back and shrugs, picking another tile from her elbow.

"They're loose. Which, as you can imagine, is the prime reason our turnaround time sucks. All I need is a bottle of glue."

[nottabeater]

"You don't really need them anymore." Ratchet leans forward and gently brushes his hand along her arm, wiping the loose tiles away. "We're an alloy of several metals and the silica based compounds. All non carbon-based."

[go_endeavour]

She frowns slightly, but then laughs.

"But... I liked my reinforced carbon-carbon," she complains good-naturedly.

[nottabeater]

He chuckles despite himself, then gets up and pulls her to her feet so that he can reach the rest of her to dust her off. Tiles fall like rain, exposing a beautiful gleaming white surface.

[go_endeavour]

She's vaguely distraught, but realizes that it's only the extraneous tiles that are leaving. Besides, if what he's saying is right, she doesn't even need the extra tiles.

However, now she looks vaguely different; more white. The smart black accents are relegated to the vestiges of her wings and engine covers, and they weren't really tile anymore, just a smooth metallic surface.

"Hm. I like this," she said, examining herself. "You've developed a habit of bringing out the best in me."

[nottabeater]

He shakes his head with a smile, then looks at her. "Classy."

[go_endeavour]

She laughs at him. "Thank you." She looks down at the pile of tiles. "So, what d'you think we can do with these?"

The tiles get nudged with her foot.

[nottabeater]

He walks over to where a pile of storage containers is neatly stacked against a back wall. "Let's put them in here. We might want them some day."

[go_endeavour]

"Sure." She grabs one from the top of the stack and puts it in the floor, then starts putting tiles into it. She figures it'd be an amusing waste of time to count them.

She loses count at 1224.

"Wow. There were a lot of these."

[nottabeater]

He absently tells her the exact number.

[go_endeavour]

She stares at him like he's grown another head.

"How do you do that?"