(no subject)

[h_hollister]

She had the bazookoid cartridge open on her desk, her florescent lamp tilted down so she could see it all clearly, staring at the innards of wires and circuit boards.

It was the last cartridge of its kind left anywhere in this universe.

And it was empty.

She was trying to see if there was any way, any way at all, to recharge it.

Unfortunately, since she hadn't attended MIT and did not have degrees in particle emissions and physics and chemistry AND computer science... It was rather like watching a infant try to read War & Peace in its original Russian. Only with less drooling.

She thought she recognized a few componants, though. Like, this little chip, here, probably controlled the...

She prodded an experimental finger toward the chip in question, and was immediately horrified to hear a terrible little *snap.*

Smeg!

Closing her eyes, she withdrew her finger slowly, then glanced down. Yup. Snapped the chip right off.

She moaned and bowed her head, pushing the lamp up and away. Well. That was that. Nicely done, Hipster. No more big shooty gun for you. You fail. Wouldn't life be so much simpler if you'd A) stayed in your own time and B) been able to stay on the Dwarf? The Dwarf has an unlimited supply, since you'd be the only one drawing from it...

...

Oh. Holy. Shit.

DUH!

Trying not to get too excited, she fired up her PINpoint and rifled through the directions. She needed to find out how she could get the coordinates for an unknown location. Since she'd left the Dwarf two years ago, it had surely drifted from where they left it.

Oh. Oh, right. Radiation. Lots and lots of it. That she put there. If she PINpointed herself onto the Dwarf, she'd be toast. Very, very BURNT toast. With no butter or jam in evidence.

Damnation.

So. Okay. Two obstacles. Gotta figure out the coordinates. Gotta get a high rad suit and gieger counter.

The former, she could probably do on her own. Shay Caron had designed the PINpoints to be extremely user friendly. The latter...

Where could she dig up a high radiation suit? Hrm...

Oh. Duh.

Norman Osborn would probably have a few. Heh.

She poked her head out of her room, looking for Nadezhda.

Comments

[h-hollister.livejournal.com]

She reaches over and grabs a donut, interrupting her massage momentarily, before settling back in.

"Heh. I knew it. Sorry, Tee. Maybe hang gliding? Or parasailing?

And, yeah, Deadpool gave me my gun back, sans ammo. I'm going to get more. Tomorrow, perhaps. We'll see how my meeting with Norman Osborn goes. Oooh."

Mm. Donuts and massage. Nice.

[cold-hope.livejournal.com]

She has been no more intrusive than the furniture, leaning on Hollister's shoulders; now she gets up. "I'm sorry...lousy hostess I am. It's...good to see you again, Thunder."

[h-hollister.livejournal.com]

Oh, boy...

Please, Thunder, please don't be upset. This is part of life, too. I'm here if you need me.

At least, that's what she's trying to say in her look to him.

[crackofthunder.livejournal.com]

He responds quickly. Perhaps too quickly.

"The feeling is mutual, Nadezhda," he says, without looking back at her as he rifles through the fridge. "But don't worry about hostess duties. I've... become used to making myself at home here. I hope you don't mind."

[cold-hope.livejournal.com]

"Not in the least. I'm...glad."

She sits back on the couch, visibly calm. "How was Los Angeles?"

[crackofthunder.livejournal.com]

"Somewhat unpleasant, but warm. Expansive. Expensive. Difficult to traverse on foot. A different variety of human to see."

His vision remains focused on kitchen duties, pulling out sandwich materials, unwilling to turn to face them.

Even he knows it's petulant.

[h-hollister.livejournal.com]

She shoots a glance at Nadezhda, making a 'oh jeez this is embarrassing' face.

"You know, you eat more than any other man I've ever met, except for Lister. How do you stay so darn skinny?"

Changing the subject. A tried and true conversational gambit.

[cold-hope.livejournal.com]

She is quite able to handle petulance.

But not to embarrass Hollister. "I'm glad it was of interest."

She gets up, and nods to her friend. "I'll be in my lab. Nice to see you again, Thunder." And she retreats, closing the door silently.

[crackofthunder.livejournal.com]

As soon as the door is closed, he puts down everything he's doing, and just hangs his head, leaning weakly against the counter.

"I should be better at this."

[h-hollister.livejournal.com]

She moves immediately to him, and wraps her arms around his waist. "Tee, it's okay. It's barely been three weeks since all this crap started. There's nothing to be ashamed of. Hey, at least you can still hold up a civil conversation. When Rimmer and I broke up, he threw a book at my head. It could be much worse."

[crackofthunder.livejournal.com]

He tries to take some comfort in her embrace.

"I spent eight MILLION of your years denying I had any compassion for anything ever... I should be BETTER at this."

There's a severe frustration in his voice, and suddenly his hands are on fire again.

And it scares the hell out of him.

"GAAH!"

[h-hollister.livejournal.com]

She jumps back, startled as hell, her face going completely white.

Her first instinct is to scream bloody murder, since, you know, he's shooting fucking fire out of his hands. Randomly. Unprovoked. No good. But she pushes it down, and takes a deep breath.

"Thundercracker, calm down. Are you hurt?"

[crackofthunder.livejournal.com]

The only other time this happened, he was pissed and only half-awake,

Now he's pised and fully awake... and watching flame billow around his hands... and feeling no pain from it... as if it's being GENERATED by his hands.

The moment of supreme weirdness is replaced by a recollection... and he starts to experiment...

And the flame retreats, starting to fade out... not even leaving a smoldering. Then one hand flares up a bit, then douses completely.

...

"This is weird."

[h-hollister.livejournal.com]

"Oooookay, I'll take that as a 'no' to my question..."

She's staring at his hands. She knew he could do that, but she'd never seen him use it like this, not deliberately.

She forces herself to step back toward him, and then takes his wrist and inspects his hand. Nothing. Perfectly normal hands. Well, okay, not PERFECTLY normal, seeing as they were on fire a second ago...

"Thunder? Could you do that when you were still all mechanoid?"

[crackofthunder.livejournal.com]

...

"Not exactly. I... used arm-mounted flamethrowers and incendiary bombs a lot, but... they could work something like this. Sometimes."

He holds up a finger, squinting, and there appears a small lick of flame.

"Yes. Weird."

[h-hollister.livejournal.com]

"Well, hey, bright side time: You're gonna be a hit a barbeques. And you can have s'mores whenever you want."

She smiles weakly up at him, and says, "You wanna see what I can do?"

[crackofthunder.livejournal.com]

"Yes, I would. Perhaps this would explain your... nonchalance about this."

He said 'nonchalance.' He's learning. He's also still staring at his hands.

[h-hollister.livejournal.com]

"Heh. You don't hang around the Nexus as much as I do. You shooting a bit of fire out of your hands is... only mildly weird." She grins.

"Okay, mine is kinda gross..." She pulls a small fruit knife out of the kitchen drawer. "And totally unsanitary."

She pokes the tip of her thumb with the knife, to be rewarded with a nice little cut. Holding it up so he can see, the cut oozes blood for a second... then stops, closing up almost visibly, leaving only a little white line.

And she instantly turns green. "Okay, that was dumb of me. Ew."

[crackofthunder.livejournal.com]

"That was dumb and gross, yes," he concurs, but with a small smirk. "But congratulations on being hard to kill. That's a good thing."

A blink.

"Any idea HOW you can do that?"

[h-hollister.livejournal.com]

"Yep," she says, moving to the sink to run the knife, and her thumb, under some hot water. That was indeed totally unsanitary. Ew.

"I have tiny robots living, well, I say living but they're not really alive, anyway, nanobots in my bloodstream. They brought me back to life after I died, and then just sorta stuck around."

Okay. Let's see how he handles THAT little double whammy of weird.

[crackofthunder.livejournal.com]

Thunder's eyes widen. He's known some very tiny robots in his day.

"That's completely disturbing. Are they sentient?"

[h-hollister.livejournal.com]

"That... I don't know. I don't think so. If they are intelligent, they've given me no sign. Nothing like, 'oh, hello up there, we have some union demands that need to be met.'"

She's surprised he hasn't reacted to the fact that she was dead...

[crackofthunder.livejournal.com]

Dead is a relative term for mechanoids that can explode but download their consciousnesses into storage for a new body. Not so strange, really.

"How exactly do nanobots reconstruct organic material? Are you a reploid?"

[h-hollister.livejournal.com]

"No clue. They were designed to fix mechanoids, but they rebuilt my entire ship, and its crew. I was a little pile of ash for three million years, and yet here I be. And what the smeg is a reploid, anyway?"

[crackofthunder.livejournal.com]

"I don't know. It just sounds like some kind of artificial life form replicated from a sentient source."

He shrugs. "And I was a giant hunk of decaying metal crammed into a volcano for four million years, so I've got you beat."