(Untitled)

[3nanashi]

The Milliways garage is huge, echoing, and moderately labyrinthine.

Which means it's both interesting and kind of homey, to someone who spent formative years working on a Gundam project.

Trowa has some free time to kill. He's wandering.

It's anybody's guess what will show up, down here.

Comments

[justcallmefee]

Somewhere in the maze of lanes and parking slots, there's a woman working on a motorcycle. Well, at least there are tools spread out around her, and she has a grease stain on one cheek, her straight brown hair tied back from her face with a bandana. She's wearing a white wife beater over well worn blue jeans, and she's reading some sort of manual.

[3nanashi]

Hey, interesting.

Trowa's not going to interrupt someone else's work uninvited. But he will pause for a better look at the motorcyle, some yards out of range.

(And in the woman's peripheral vision. That's just sensible courtesy.)

[justcallmefee]

The bike was a gift, a Ducati, and it looks like she was doing basic maintenance on it before she was distracted.

She seems pretty engrossed in her reading, sitting cross-legged with the book across her knee, her brow furrowed. Closer examination reveals that the book is titled YOU: Having a Baby: The Owner's Manual to a Happy and Healthy Pregnancy.

The moment she becomes aware of his presence, she jerks upright, hiding the subject of her fascination like she'd been caught reading something from the banned books list. When she sees who it is, she relaxes somewhat, still pushing the book under the tire of the bike.

"Hey. You shouldn't sneak around like that. Someone might -- get ideas." Her smile is a little forced, but genuine enough.

[3nanashi]

"I wasn't trying to sneak."

There's not much apology in his tone, but that's mostly because there's rarely much tone there. Neither is there defensiveness or smugness or anything else. and it's true enough, for what it's worth.

Note to self: work on civilian body language a little more.

"I was just looking at the bike," he adds, which is also true. (Although he did notice the book. And made another mental note. But the bike's more immediately interesting.)

[seewhatyoumean]

Cass hasn't been down in the garage since that fight with Goldie. And while she doesn't usually feel anything even approaching nostalgia (what's there to feel nostalgic about?), today she's feeling something close. Hence the garage.

Her cape whips out behind her as she speeds down an open lane on a motorcycle she snagged from... somewhere down here.

[3nanashi]

A motorcycle engine -- even a very quiet-running one -- is pretty identifiable. And the echoes here aren't that bad.

Trowa pauses before crossing that open lane, and then lets that pause become a halt until the cyclist is past.

. . . Ah. Hey, Cass. New ride.

[seewhatyoumean]

Cass is going fast. Perhaps dangerously so. But she catches him out of the corner of her eye and less than a second after she whips by the bike is up on its front wheel, spinning 180-degrees, and coming back at a much more reasonable pace.

Hi, Trowa!

[3nanashi]

Trowa is faintly amused. But you can't tell.

(Unless you're Cass.)

Having fun?

[cutting_edgex23]

X is also wandering through the garage.

Or maybe she just wanted to find Trowa.

It is not difficult -- for people with heightened senses of smell, anyway.

Probably.

[3nanashi]

Either way, she'll probably find him soon!

X has many skills. (And great mission efficiency.)

Right now, he's looking with some curiosity at what looks like a very old, very primitive prototype of a mobile suit. The exact model isn't familiar to him, but the basic look of it is. (Only from history, though. This is from at least a hundred years before his time.)

[cutting_edgex23]

"Trowa," X says, footfalls purposeful and heavy as she approaches.

Then she stops, head tilting as she studies the suit.

"I did not know there were robots here."

Beat.

"Deactivated robots."

[3nanashi]

Looks like, Trowa does not say.

"Yeah."

It's news to him too.

"These are pretty old models, though."

[04_after]

Quatre originally meandered down to the garage as part of his it's-really-interesting-to-explore-Milliways distraction to the fact that he knows Trowa is on-site, just not where. (If you ask him how he knew, he would--have to think about that. Thankfully, no one's asked.)

He's forgotten his boyfriend, though, in the face of awesome amounts of technology (sorry), and is currently having a quiet, friendly conversation in Arabic with some older model mobile suits from around 150 AC.

They're...probably not talking back. That's okay.

[3nanashi]

Some things catch the attention.

Among them: Quatre's voice (if you're Trowa), and mobile suits. (You don't need to be Trowa to have those catch your eye. Twenty-meter humanoid battle robots are a little conspicuous in a garage.)

Both of these are reasons to turn his steps that way, although the mobile suits were visible from a lot farther back.

[04_after]

Quatre's partway up an Argus (first generation), resting easily on the iliac support as he carefully investigates the torso's sensor arrays.

The discussion (primarily about the sensors) falls off a bit as Quatre wedges a foot into one of the holds a bit deeper, so that he can inspect the visible portions.

"I wonder if anyone'd mind if I disassembled you," he says, thoughtfully. "I'd make sure to put you back together. But, then, that'd be awfully rude, wouldn't it?"

[3nanashi]

Did the Argus even have pilot-keyed system locks? Trowa's not sure.

It's a pretty good way to tell if a new-looking mobile suit is individually owned or straight from the factory, without going into diagnostics and settings, but not if the option isn't installed on a '50 Argus. They're old enough that Trowa's never run across a functional one before. (And only once a scrap one; it was half-dismantled in a junkyard, missing its power core, and being occasionally cannibalized further for wiring and components.)

Whether it's rude depends a lot on whether there's a pilot to care. Insufficient evidence, thus far.