She Lives! [open]
Most of the ship was asleep. He could hear them, tucked away and snoring loudly in their individual compartments, disturbingly comfortable in their meaty prisons. But this was no time to be hypocritical.
Just a few minutes earlier, Dustin had narrowly escaped Yoshimi’s room after falling asleep there, successful only because he happened to wake up ( Read more... )
Comments 60
"Watcha doooin'?"
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A millisecond delay passed as he went over his options. The first response was to pull out his gun, but that was no longer in his possession (thank goodness). Second response was to stab him in whatever exposed area was available, but there was nothing sharp in his immediate vicinity.
Third option was to punch him in the face. Dustin went with that one.
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"I'd shake but you've gotta open your palm first, dude," he quips, "S'okay, nobody else is watching you commit such a terrible faux-pas. It'll be our little secret."
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A look of confusion crossed Dustin’s face when he noticed that this man was less interested in attacking him than cracking jokes. Wonderful-a practical joker. As if Dustin needed another one of those…
“What the hell are you doing here?” he frowned, blatantly ignoring the idea of a formal introduction.
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Having returned to her room several minutes after Dustin vacated, Yoshimi's forehead had creased in a frown, and she had dropped her digi-book on her bed, eyeing the rumpled sheets on the formerly unused mattress before stalking out of the room. Somehow she doubted both his intentions and wiseness in leaving - twelve hours of sleep or no, the kid had been dead on his feet. He couldn't possibly have recovered that quickly.
She found him quickly, hopping out of sight as he emerged from the City, and with silents footsteps, she has been following him since.
What a surprise he will get when she finally chooses to make herself known. Which she hasn't done as of yet.
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The scruffy man fashioned an improvised creeper out of some spare parts and an old dolly, and soon enough he’d disappeared completely beneath his contraption with a monkey wrench and a vat full of epoxy resin. It was about then, as he was concealed and in a better position, Dustin saw Yoshimi crouched behind a nearby cruiser, spying on him like usual. Tsk, tsk-some people never learn.
He waited for her to get curious and venture closer. When she did, Dustin popped out from underneath his contraption to greet her in the usual way:
“You really are stalking me, aren’t you?”
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With minimal blushing (hey, it's embarrassing to get caught doing exactly what you've already been accused of doing once), she smirks.
"Just a bit," she says almost cutely, holding her fingers a centimeter apart to show how little a "bit" she is talking about, then peers at his odd contraption, hands on hips.
"You know, I would say something about you probably not being in good enough condition for wandering the ship at odd hours of the night, but this thing-" she taps the hull of the... ship? "-is cool enough to make up for it. And anyway, it's not my body you're abusing." She pads around the contraption, eyes appreciative of the complexity.
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He finally couldn’t take it anymore. Dustin appeared from the depths with a befuddled expression-because he was honestly confused.
“Was that a compliment I heard hidden underneath all that condescending sarcasm?”
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Her bright blue-within-blue eyes fixed on the man, the stare as intense as it always was when she was seeking an answer.
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“Indeed it is,” the scruffy fellow smoothly regained his composure as his face split into a smug grin, “As for what it does…Well, I hope to have it flying in a few months, if I have the time. I’m a busy man ya know.”
Ambiguity led to adorable guessing games in Dustin’s experience, so he left it at that.
“My question is, to whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?”
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“That’s why I’m down here,” he patted the metal frame affectionately, “Most of the major work’s already done with-the wiring took me a few years, but I only have a few more sections to go.”
Eight years, to be exact. And that was only after he finished the blueprints, got the materials, built the prototype, tested the prototype, made the frame…
“I most certainly wish to call you that-it’s a beautiful name,” Dustin lathered on the charm with a flattering smile, gently taking Arha’s hand in his own despite his callused fingers, “My name is Dustin. This child beside me is the Dart.”
He stooped down, as if bowing, and snuck a kiss on the back of Arha’s palm (that is, if she didn’t catch the motion first and give him a hard kick for his troubles.)
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The suit she's wearing... it's tightly form-fitting, and seems almost like some strange offspring of a diving suit and a spacesuit, with a blue-green slightly iridescent 'skin' and smoothly-placed paneled compartments here and there, with a slim 'backpack' unit on the back. And there are, indeed, high heels, seamless and fitting enough to seem like the suit was built that way. Given the girl's rather endowed figure already, the extra padding from the suit's thickness and the heels make things... wow.
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She grins questioning, looking over the... whatever that big framed thing is.
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Dustin continued working, lying flat on his creeper, hidden underneath several layers of insulation and basic flooring. Perhaps if he ignored her then she would lose interest and keep walking? Yes, let’s go with that…
She stopped close by. Dustin sighed loudly, deciding that he didn’t have much of a choice.
“There something you want?” he grumbled, still concealed beneath his invention.
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"I was tryin' t'figure out what it is," she says cheerfully. Her rather uneducated-sounding US-Southern accent is thick enough to drown a small animal in.
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