heisrisen | 6. Bombay (open spam plus privates for Iris and Sylvanas)

[Open spam]

[He sits on the deck, legs crossed and feet bare, sketching endlessly. His hands will always be as deft as they were when he died, steady and inhumanly precise from years of minute neural surgery too revolutionary at the time for medical drones to have any programming for it. It's his mind that needs the toil, needs to entrain itself again by focusing on all the details his memory can supply. So he draws, cityscapes of thriving worlds, the landmarks of odd and extravagant cultures, nuanced portraits of steadfast servants and political challengers alike.

Sometimes, when he looks up, he gets a little lost in the deep blackness beyond the barge, eyes fading to the distance until the striped marmalade cat gamboling near him headbutts his elbow and yowls for attention. He stutters when it happens, then smiles and scratches Mel's ears, forcing himself to concentrate again in spite of the terrible pressure of darkness held above and around him by whatever invisible dam.]

[Spam for anyone who might be in the laboratory.]

[He investigates the various samples from Megamind's world with obvious fascination, alternating between gross morphological examination, pouring over gene sequences, and plugging the occasional piece of data onto a rough planetary ecology simulation program he hashed out on one of the terminals. He lapses into something like an academic fugue after a little while, lost to the world beyond the information he's processing, unaware of time passing.]

[Private to Iris]

We have some information prepared for you. Let us know where and when you'd like to meet.

[Spam for Sylvanas]

[He knocks on her door the day after the return from port.]

Special delivery for Lady Sylvanas.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

[ Megamind is happy in his labwork; there's skip in his step and still jaunty from a merry weekend turning into a merry week. He's rehydrated one of the small rodents, and the thing is quite docile, even after having some blood drawn. ]

[ It is placed in a glass-sided case to run about and chew on bit of bark sample while he gets the blood in the centrifuge to spin down and separate.]

So, are you enjoying things so far?

[ May as well be friendly. The Emperor's a helper! MEgamind likes helpers. ]

Tomorrow night do you? Pub, spa, my place, yours or d'you need the lab for this?

Just fine. Let's make it yours. We'd like privacy and our room is a bit cramped for meetings.

[He doesn't stumble exactly, because he's not standing up. But he sort of jerks and startles out of his reverie.]

- oh. Yes, we suppose.

[He rubs his forehead.]

Though what we wouldn't give for proper synesthesia right about now...

Synesthsia? Like-- seeing red but tasting sound?

[ He's not sure that's what the Emperor needs, but-- you know. Asking. ]

[He chuckles a little, surprised.]

Right. It did used to mean that, didn't it? No, though it's related.

Neural implants, fairly standard for the last sixty years. They override the secondary sensory portions of the brain and devote them temporarily to processing incoming data, so you can interface with two or three datastreams at once.

It's marvelously useful, but ours is offline at the moment, and we aren't sure we could get this equipment to transmit to it properly anyway.

Interesting. You and Tosh-- [ Well, okay maybe that's not the best comparison. ] She has some, uh, implant that allowed her a more direct interface with a computer.

I don't think it was quite like what you're suggesting though.

Cute cat.

[ She'd wanted to have a pet, with Charles. But it somehow never quite came together. She had the feeling that Charles didn't really want that - she could be wrong. Maybe he was just busy.

She is blue-skinned right now, though it might be obvious in her posture that she's... afraid. Not quite afraid, maybe; tense, certainly. Waiting for someone to have a negative reaction.

She crouches. ] May I?

[ Making friends. She needs to make friends. Friends are good. ]

Of course. Mel loves meeting new people.

[And sure enough, he's already starting to rub his head hopefully under her fingers. The Emperor flips to a clean page.]

Our apologies if this is too forward, but may we draw you?

[Friendly! Cats can bite, and scratch, which is why Raven usually tries to ask first. Owners generally have a better idea of their pet's behavior than a stranger.

She glances up, a little sharply, at the question.]

Draw me?

[He reclines a little just to look at her, content in it. She reminds him of some Utopian baroness, a century and a half ago, when palette swaps were in vogue on Sita, but the dappled texture of her is more organic, less expansively extravagant.]

Yes. You're very lovely.

[Her glance is suspicious.]

Not just weird?

[But the cat gets none of her suspicion; it melts her, and she smiles a little as it flops at the touch of her fingers.]

[He shrugs one shoulder, rolling and mild.]

Unusual. Not particularly strange, compared to some people we've known, but beautiful nonetheless.

[A pause, for a long moment. And then - she's been working at clothing, lately, making it fall right, act right. It's a useful stretch for her imagination and her abilities. She isn't, in point of fact, wearing anything right now.

So she lets it all fold, sliding back into her skin with a sharp ruffle of scales like feathers.]

Is this better? For drawing.

[Her knees are curled up a little, but it's mostly for balance; she's not really worried about modesty, though she's worried that maybe she should be worried.]

[His polite smile widens, curiosity and simple delight.]

Well, it's certainly classical. Are you comfortable?

We may want you to hold the pose for a while.

[And if she's uncomfortable for other reasons, it's an opportunity to equivocate.]

I'm comfortable. But there's a kitten around, and I don't know if I'll want to sit still.

[Little bit of a mischievous look there. But it's true - she'll want to play with the cat.]

[At first it looks like Arthas is going to ignore the Emperor and walk straight past him, but he comes to a halt at the railing and calls over his shoulder:]

Thanks.

Doom us to sketches and motion studies, will he? Little rascal.

[He draws lightly, fluidly, catching the shape of her in a few clean lines. He reserves most of his time and attention for careful shading, trying to capture the particular quality of her scales with only pencil, trying to make her look precisely as inhuman as she does without the easy cue of color.]

How did you do that?

[It's a mild question, almost a professional sort of curiosity. Various nano-based garments could have achieved a similar effect, but he doesn't think that's what's at play here at all.]

[She's surprised it took him this long to ask.

She tips the cat onto his back, letting him grab at her hand and bite. He's gentle; it doesn't hurt.]

I can change how I look. The clothes were fake.

[Of all the men who'd knocked on her door since she'd been brought to the ship, only he could lay claim to the dubious honor of saying she didn't make him jump through hoops or threaten violence in any fashion to get her to open it to him.

Of course, he's not getting invited in. At least not, at the moment. She comes out.]

I was beginning to wonder.

Yes, but how? It's not just light projection or subdermal dyes, it looks very tactile. But the shift pattern is very different from a nanosheath or an assembly cloud. It's not hardware at all, is it? It's part of you.

...yes. I think it might be a little bit like a bird fluffing up its feathers, but... on a smaller scale. And more of it. I don't really know, though.

[Getting her a bow and arrows in LA is kind of a hoop. Her standards are therefore intact. He unslings a large gym bag from his shoulder and offers it to her.]

One bow, quiver, and a compliment of arrows. Probably somewhat more metallic than you're used to, but we got the least mechanical one we could find.

[He wants, badly, to study her, to figure it out. He already has theories. But he thinks of her wariness when she approached, and decides not to push, not so soon.]

It's marvelous.

Are you from Earth?

One of them. I'm a mutant.

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6. Bombay (open spam plus privates for Iris and Sylvanas)

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Spam. we should thread surgery but idk where to start :/a

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