shatterverse | (no subject)

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Leah could, if she wanted, call up any number of people and ask them to do her a favour by giving her a lift to the farm.

She chooses to take a cab because that's one step closer to independence, and she's weird like that.

Which is why, one afternoon, said cab pulls up alongside the farm and deposits a blonde woman in sunglasses and carrying a white cane, who tips generously before it heads off. She takes a few seconds to orient herself before heading up the path towards the farmhouse.

She's hoping to find a person in particular, but anyone who gets in her way will be spoken to.

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He's too busy laughing to mind.

"Yeah, that's me. Let me guess, you got my name from Val?"

"She's got a way with words."

It's true, and it's one Leah approves of.

"I've got experience in field tactics, so I got talked into coordinating the Detroit shenanigans."

"All right."

What he thinks, and keeps to himself: damn is he ever glad Val isn't running this show.

"I just need the specs on the 'bot, then," she says. "Can't play chess if you don't know how the knights move."

Neil leans back on his hands, contemplating his mobile suit, which is sitting about ten or fifteen feet away directly in front of them.

"To tell you the truth, I'm not sure anymore. Back in my world I could've rattled off all the numbers in my sleep, but she took a hell of a beating and the repairs got stalled when my mechanic turned into a newt. I think she still flies, but I wouldn't want to bet on how fast."

With a shrug, "The targeting system still works just fine, though, and I know Steve fixed her beam rifle first. She's a sniper suit; on a good day I can vaporize a basketball at a hundred kilometers. I haven't been having too many good days lately, so it's probably closer to fifty for a shot that precise."

And with the right equipment and both eyes he can hit a target in geosynchronous orbit, but that's irrelevant right now.

Leah is not going to quote Python
She is not going to quote Python
She is not going to quote Python.

Dammit.

"Do me a favour and test flight when you've got a sec?" she asks.

"What's the reload time on the rifle? Assume an aimed shot."

It was limiting to her, but she averaged at 20 arrows in a minute.

"Reload's negligible. Less time than it takes me to pick a new target."

Because Gundams are essentially magic.

"If I want to hit everything I aim at, I can't do much better than two shots in five seconds."

It used to be two in three, according to his mun's very scientific review of canon, but that was before his injury.

Which is close enough to Leah's performance at the top of her game that she grins. Although in her case the limiting factor was muscle movement, and not her crazy-quick aiming brain.

"That's the kind of thing I like to hear. Does it stand up to close combat?"

She's assuming yes.

"Yeah. Not what it was built for, but it does okay."

She's not going to ask him to use it, but it's a useful thing to have.

"Alright. Fucking great to know I have some precision in a team of tanks."

Neil laughs. "Always nice to be appreciated."

"I'd be harrassing you for a go if I could see."

Leah grins, leaning back on the heels of her hands and kicking the earth wall slightly. "My kinda sorta grandad had a robot suit."

"What kind of robot suit?"

"Depends what you mean by 'kind'," Leah says. "It was more of a body-enhancer than a weapon itself. He didn't stick a taser attachment on until about ten years ago. Before that it made hims strong and flew."

"So an exoskeleton? Yeah, mine's a little bigger than that." Come to think, this is relevant information! "To the tune of eighteen point two meters."

Leah hesitates, then laughs.

"Fucking great big. Val wasn't kidding.

"What colour is it?"

"Green and white."

"Nice," Leah says, updating her mental image accordingly. "What does it look like?"

she's a visual person, even now. forgive her.

...

He contemplates it for a few seconds.

"Like an overgrown suit of armour with wings (http://i40.tinypic.com/9kw9ol.jpg), I guess. They're not wings, they're shields, but seems like whoever dreamed her up was feeling quirky."

Leah grins.

"Oh, I know quirky designers. Sounds really cool."

"It is," Neil admits.

Sure, there are lots of serious and important things about flying a Gundam, and then there's the fact that with the right equipment practical limits on your range are defined by the curvature of the Earth and the placement of intervening mountains.

Leah grins for a second, then suddenly segues with, "so, this thing about being a newt...?"

"—Yeah. Steve Bell, my mechanic, he disappeared for a while recently. When we found him, he was living in the kraken pond as some kind of amphibian. Val calls him a newt, for lack of a handy biology textbook."

He sounds a little rueful when he continues, "So he won't be fixing any mobile suits until he has thumbs again."

"No idea what caused it?" Leah asks. "Is he talking?"

"Not a clue. I don't think he knows either, but it's hard to tell; he can't understand spoken words too well and if he wants to say something he has to drag twigs around until they make letters."