[mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids] ~open log~

[thom_293]

who ; thom_293 and anyone who cares to run into him! \o/
what ; Thom is getting out of Spartanhaus to stretch his legs, explore the area and use his MAGICAL JETPACK to scope out sniper vantage points. He'll also be making a brief sojourn into the junkyard to search for supplies. Feel free to catch him anywhere your character might be that's still out in

Comments

[projectconcerto]

While the junkyard was mostly huge piles of crap, there was now a little (temporary) clearing about ten minute's walk from the entrance into zone one. On one side of the clearing a little metal building had been constructed, ten or so feet high, with thick reinforced sides and a thick roof, all apparently designed to keep the random crap that fell from the sky from hitting the person underneath it.

Inside, Maria stood underneath the makeshift protector, her head tilted to the side, her brown hair falling across her face as she looked out into the clearing. Both her nano-machine colonies were out there, swarming through the air like two clouds of very softly buzzing bees, and Maria seemed to be directing them with her hands. She didn't have to do that, but when she was working on a project, it made her feel more...involved.

The clouds were swirling up bits of wreckage from all the nearby piles and dragging it into the center, where they'd tear it down to its constituent atoms and then reconstruct it into other forms that she wanted. And slowly growing out of the ground was...a Light House? A classic looking lighthouse, made of brick and wood and metal, and apparently about half-finished. She flicked her wrist and one of the swarms shot off to nearly disappear into a nearby pile, searching for things it could turn into glass as the other continued building.

[thom_293]

It was the clearing that caught his attention. He'd noticed it a ways off, scouting the wreckage of what had, once upon a time been a space-going ship. It had landed nose-first, jammed into the earth, the fuselage crumpled but still providing a nice vantage point. Nothing else about it had seemed salvageable, though he'd tampered with the instruments and checked for any medical supplies or an armory cash. Whatever its original power source had been was long spent, and someone had been here before him, taking anything of use save the view its upward aft had presented.

He had no idea who had the sort of determination necessary to clear even a small area in the junkyard, and that in itself bore investigation. It took him several minutes to make it to the point, following a nav point he'd tossed up in his HUD, jetpacking over one dubious pile of garbage that looked like it wouldn't support his weight.

He approached the clearing at an angle, more habit than anything else, but when he saw the girl standing under the lean-to, he lost the cautionary spring to his step.

"Hey, Connie." There was genuine warmth in his voice as he addressed her. She'd helped out during the Marker, and didn't seem too bad, for a civvie. Plus, she pinged a great deal of his more protective instincts. "Looking for something?"

He'd spotted that lighthouse, but wasn't quite sure what to make of it. He tilts his head at it in silent question.

[projectconcerto]

Maria tensed for a moment when she saw the armored man approaching, but relaxed once he spoke. She hadn't met most of the people running around in the giant suits, so she was still rather paranoid of all of them. But Thom had been nice enough so far.

She offered him a bit of a smile, reaching up to brush her hair behind her ear before she shoved her hands into her pocket. "No, just...building. It helps me relax." The two swarms continued buzzing about, though construction slew to a halt after a few moments as her attention shifted elsewhere.

"It's a light house I saw in a book once," she explained, somewhat sheepishly. "I had a dream about it and it's been stuck in my head so I figured..." She shrugged.

[thom_293]

"Why not, right? I can get that." He shrugged off the pack he'd been ferrying across the junkyard, full of things that might prove useful - if not to himself, then maybe to Kat. It was something to do, at least.

"Need a hand? I can't do your nifty mind mojo, but I can take care of any heavy lifting you might run into."

A fully armoured Spartan can lift just about a tonne without a lot of strain. There's a reason none of them ever really quit their day job.

[projectconcerto]

Maria was not the sort to turn down help, at least not once she had stopped being insanely suspicious of someone. She glanced at the pack he was carrying, and then turned her attention back to the light house. "Well. I need glass." She finally answered. She lifted her hand and the swarm that was over digging through a pile swarmed up into the air, dragging a half a dozen glass bottles with them.

"A lot of it. Enough to make the top of the lighthouse, I mean. But there aren't a lot of things that can be turned into glass, and glass itself doesn't really reshape easily..." She laughed. "Any ideas?"

[thom_293]

"Glass is... let's see, about 75% SiO2, and a healthy portion of Na2O and CaO, right? Silica dioxide, sodium oxide and calcium oxide..." Annnnd he was off in his own little science nerd world for a sec. He couldn't remember the exact chemical composition - he'd sat through his fair share of science lessons as a kid, but it hadn't been high on Deep Winter's priority list to teach them too much outside the box. "Your 'bots can do it, right? What if I just found you a couple of sandbags? I figure they'd be highly efficient at sorting through the chaff for the necessary atomic components."

"Or, I found the wreckage of a ship. It had transparent viewpoints, probably some kind of metal/glass derivative to handle the pressure of deep space. Could drag a few of those back here, up to you?"

[projectconcerto]

Maria tilted her head to the side as she thought about his suggestion. "Sand would work, we just haven't found any nearby. It seemed like stuff was mostly junk. Someone told me there was a beach here but the thought of going all the way there and all the back was a little annoying." She grinned at his offer to find some.

"Thank you, but you don't have to." Although his idea of getting things from the ship would be easier. "Actually. The ship would probably work. I can come with you though." She held out her arms, and the two nano-machine colonies came swirling back through the air to curl around her wrists, until they appeared to just be two bracelets again.

[thom_293]

"Sure." He wouldn't mind the company, one way or another, though he did watch her with interest disguised behind his visor at the swarm of the machines. He didn't need to be told directly that they were probably a threat to his team, so whatever he could learn about them was a simple matter of reconnaissance. He didn't particularly like mistrusting her - she was just a kid, after all, younger than Kat - but it was in his nature.

"You gonna leave the lighthouse here when you're done, or do you want to bring it with you somewhere?"

[projectconcerto]

If Maria really wanted to be, she could've been a threat to everyone on the station. How easy would it be for her nanomachines to just eat through a pressure wall? It would take longer than eating through SPARTAN armor but probably not by much. But luckily, she wasn't the sort to do that. She stepped out from under her little protective dome, glancing up at the sky warily before she waved her hand to him to lead the way.

"I hadn't really thought about it," she admitted, glancing over at the lighthouse as they walked. "This was just the easiest place to build something out of junk."

[thom_293]

He caught her wary upward glance, and shortened his strides so he could walk beside her. If anything fell out of the sky, he was betting on being able to knock it away before it flattened her. So far, he hadn't been bothered. It'd take several tonnes dropping on top of him to actually cause damage, anyways. The benefits of being hard-headed.

"Well, that's fair. How big do you think it'll be when you're finished?"

[projectconcerto]

She noticed him stepping closer but didn't comment. Crowds and closeness weren't something Maria particularly cared about, not after spending years hiding in Hong Kong's underground scene, which was all about crowds. Still, it was nice to know the giant suit of armor could probably catch something that would fall on her.

She glanced back at the light house for a moment. "Fifteen feet?" She finally decided. She couldn't build a full-sized one! Well...she probably could, but she'd get bored halfway through.

[thom_293]

"Pretty decent size. We could always take it to the beach when you're done with it?"

Admittedly, it wouldn't be big enough to serve the purpose its name inspired, but it seemed better than just letting it moulder in the junkyard.

He sidestepped around a sheet of plate metal that looked to be unsteadily perched on whatever it concealed and resumed speaking once he had his feet planted on firmer ground, "Ship's about another hundred meters thataway." He pointed to where it was coming into visibility amidst the heaps of clutter.

[projectconcerto]

"It will be very heavy," she pointed out pointlessly. For all she knew he could lift it anyway. At some point she was going to find a way to examine a spartan suit. Somehow.

When the ship came into view she held out her arm and one of the nano-machine colonies melted off her skin and swarmed up into the air before diving into one of the piles of junk nearby. Bits and pieces of things began swarming out, and slowly assembled a small flat-bed push truck for piling things on. The wheels weren't all quiet the same shape, but it looked sturdy enough. Maria's attention was on the ship though, staring at it quietly.

"I've never seen a space ship before."

[thom_293]

The secrets of the MJOLNIR armour had been defended to the death back home. There was a reason that they were all equipped with the ability to self-detonate; if there was a high chance of capture, and none of survival, they all had their orders. The odds of anyone else getting their hands on even the most base components that constituted the Mark V was verging on the impossibly unlikely.

"That's fine. I'm stronger than I look." His tone has an edge of jocular self-deprecation, an edge that's curbed quite abruptly as she proceeds to build the cart. Whatever these nanobots are, they're way more advanced than even the theoretical implementation of them back home.

"Space ships are pretty much all the same. You've seen one, well." He lifts one shoulder in a shrug.

[projectconcerto]

As if that would stop her. The only reason she hadn't tried to talk to whatever systems the armor had yet was she was being polite. And how long would that last?

"I would believe it," she said about his strength, even as she still looked at the space ship. Just because seeing one meant you had seen them all didn't make seeing the first one any less fascinating. She ducked down a bit, peering at it from another angle before she started climbing over a nearby pile of junk to see if she could see it from the top.

"So they all look like this?" She called down towards him.

[thom_293]

"Not so much. They aren't generally nose-first into the ground, for starters." And if they are, well. Then you usually have a problem.

Mostly, he's been on flavourless military transports. Spartans may be Navy, but they aren't really built to be on ships. For one thing, they have an alarming tendency to smack themselves (not speaking from personal experience, at all) on bulkheads that aren't built to accommodate people over about five and a half feet with any degree of comfort.

"I mean, the general design is more or less the same. They all gotta fly, be fairly aerodynamic, et cetera. Best to isolate the engines away from wherever the personnel or passengers are going to be, in case of a blowout. The rest is mostly up to aesthetics and personal preference."