[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/qapDYfH.png[/img][/center][center][h2][color=#FF2E00]Avelyn[/color] and [color=#b9dde9]Laurey[/color][/h2][/center][i]
[hr]Avelyn has a truly beautiful mind, a logical and pleasing mass of insulation and propagation. A convert-to-be if ever there was. Now we work on our project together, a brain child perhaps more her own than mine, and I am at once humbled and engaged.[/i][hr][hider=Laurey & Avelyn]

Approaching Avelyn wasn't as hard as it might have once been; now Laurey's cybernetics marked her not for shame, but as Homo Superior. Or something more. 

“Hey Avelyn, busy much?”

[color=#FF2E00]“Not particularly, no.”[/color] she shook her head as another one of the pieces of scrap she originally bundled up for  the improvised decoys took off on its own, soared across the cargo bay and slammed into an empty crate she’d been using as a target, [color=#FF2E00]“Something I can help you with?”[/color]

Right, yeah, crazy kid powers. “Maybe you can, maybe you can. How would you like to help me make a War Machine?” She arched a single eyebrow comically high, then shrugged, “Or you know, maybe something that can at least help out.”

Avelyn paused mid-motion. [color=#FF2E00]“I like the idea, but question the required resources. I assume you went into this with an outline of a plan?” [/color]she turned to face her colleague, sitting down on one of the nearby crates.

“Of course. That’s why I’m here. You can heat stuff up, right?” Rhetorical, this was known. “Well, what if you used that to shape the chassis and plating and what-not? Like… like a sculptor.” This is what the rest of her “plan” hinged on. 

[color=#FF2E00]“Hmm.”[/color] She glanced toward one of the scrap bundles, [color=#FF2E00]“I suppose that could work. Money for materials isn’t an issue anymore. I assume you have the software side of things covered.” [/color]Avelyn gestured to Laurey’s implants. The pile of scrap was starting to turn red.[color=#FF2E00] “What of all the mechanical parts? Store-bought as well?”[/color] Avelyn reached out toward the now glowing pile of metal and closed her fist, compressing the metal from across the room. [color=#FF2E00]“Looks like that part will work.”[/color]

“Good, that’s super,” She tapped a strip of metal lining her skull, “You know it. But yeah, the bazaar is going to have everything we could ever want. Flashing the cash could attract the wrong sort,” she tutted. No, that would be bad. “But if scraps can be bent to your will, then our options are…” limitless, “big.” 

[color=#FF2E00]“I’ll have to check just how detailed I can make things be, and we’re still going to need some tooling for things like threads and whatnot. As for showing too much money, well...” [/color]She paused to think of something that could help, [color=#FF2E00]“Maybe ask the 1000 IQ genius who got it in the first place, he might have some tips for that. If we find people with the relevant knowledge I could, aehm, borrow that if it would help. What is it that you want to build exactly? A tank, a battle mech, weld handles on Tarak’s armor so we can hitch a ride next time we have to walk a distance?”[/color]

Laurey was nodding along, “A joke. Very good.” She did, however, smile, “A mech sounds nice. That is a lot of work. Worth it though. Yes, let’s go with mech, and if we screw up, then it was what we planned.” A wink. 

[hr]
The Galactic Bazaar was a melting pot that reeked of a thousand and one different spices, of sweat and pheromones and excretions, of ozone and Burn-Out, of greased palms and hopeless dreams. It stank of failure. How had Laurey not noticed that before?

It slid past their rented hauler skiff. Thank the Great Machine; Laurey's legs were rubber from Nero's sessions.

[color=#FF2E00]“This place reminds me of home. The shitty parts, where even the guards were scared to go.”[/color] Avelyn muttered as she tried to make sense of the map on her Omni-tool, [color=#FF2E00]“Except that was a converted copper mine, this has no right to be such a mess. How big do you want this thing to be? How much of what do we need?”[/color]

“Needs to be able to fit into our ship, beyond that…” Laurey peered into her own map, “I think we should find the chassis first. Everything else will depend on it, somewhat. Maybe a construction mech. I doubt anything military grade will be here. At least not for our money.” Madness. “Then we cover it with as much armour, weaponry, and utils as we can afford. Sounds good?”

Avelyn nodded along. [color=#FF2E00]“Good idea with the construction mech, actually. Those tend to be built to carry heavy and unwieldy loads, so we can go nuts with it and not worry about weight or center of mass as much. What is it meant to do? Do we want it to draw fire away from us, do we want it for ranged support, anti vehicular role…?”[/color] She swallowed a remark about arming it with whatever they can find and be happy with it. [color=#FF2E00]“If we get lucky, we might even get our hands on some sensor or even EW gear. Intercepting or even messing with enemy comms is a lifesaver.”[/color]

“We’ll just have to see. It’s there to be shot so we don’t have to be. Anything else as far as I’m concerned is a bonus.” She was certainly onto something with the EW gear; guns were nice, but what could they kill that a Star Marine couldn’t, and with way more style? Or Squad 0. 

Where had all the moisture in her mouth gone?

[color=#FF2E00]“Have any experience buying bigger things like this? I could probably employ some mindfuckery if it comes to haggling, but otherwise I’m kind of out of my element here.”[/color] Probably a bad idea to mention most of the people she ‘negotiated’ with the past few years were tied to their chair. [color=#FF2E00]“Are we married to your regular bipedal chassis or are quadrupeds on the table? Better stability at the cost of taking up more room.”[/color]

“I have… I suppose professional experience. Never in person though. Can you tell if they’re fucking us over? With your,” Laurey spun her finger next to her head.

[color=#FF2E00]“Short answer, yes. Long answer, I can parrot their thoughts back at them, then threaten to set their hair on fire if they don’t give us a better price, but I’d rather not, that draws attention.”[/color]
[color=#FF2E00][i]‘And it’s fucked!’ [/i][/color]a voice yelled in her head. [color=#FF2E00]“I guess between that and your knowledge we at least won’t be taken for suckers and buy a defective piece. That’d be hard to live down.”[/color]

Laurey laughed, “The attention might be worth the show. You’d be surprised, even ordering from factories you get defects. Obvious things QA should catch. Being conned by con men isn’t a point of shame, it’s just life. But if that happened I’m sure Tarak and the others could make them see the values of a refund.”

[color=#FF2E00]“Getting defects QU missed isn’t that bad, get a refund and the law should be on your side. Getting purposefully screwed over by a shady used mech salesman doesn’t seem that way. And hell I’ll let someone else fix my problems. If we screw up that bad, I’ll have the con man for lunch myself and no one else must ever know.” [/color]Avelyn laughed. She paused, rolling the next question on her tongue, deciding whether or not to ask.

[color=#FF2E00]“If I may though, where and how did you get… that.” [/color]She pointed to Laurey’s implants.

Slight tremors at the edge of Laurey’s lips could have been a smile. She ran a hand through her shaggy hair, revealing the latticework of scars and chrome even further.

For a while, they hummed along in silence.

“Have you heard of the Intersolar Children’s Commune?” then she shook her head almost immediately, “It never spread beyond J-heim. Funny really. We were a mostly political group, pacifists. We were against the Ascendancy, the war. We’d chain ourselves out in the snow, dye it red like blood. That sort of thing. Statements we felt profound but amounted to nothing. I’m not even sure if the people who had to clean up cared, at least it gave them something to do.”

They paused at an intersection, where a dozen Elephant Ox were driven along by chains and Ion pokers. 

“I was… involved with someone there. I’m not sure if it mattered or not,” it was odd, talking about this. Easy. It happened so long ago it was as if it was somebody else; she just had to blow off the dust and read. She drew out her necklace, the shining crystal. “A Kaisoken. Maybe that made me more of a target. A big middle finger to the enemy.”

“The long and short of it is I was imprisoned. At first it was flattering, they were finally paying attention to us,” she sighed, “It was a “re-education” camp. They tortured me. My mind mostly. Then they flung me into some experimental programme. Drilled all this,” ding ding, “Into my CNS and beyond. And for a time I was a puppet in my own body.”

The oxen passed and they continued. 

“Then it began to break down. Now it just hurts.” It hadn’t though, recently, had it? Not much.

Avelyn listened in silence, slowly coming to regret asking that question. Her look of surprise when Laurey mentioned being flattered to be imprisoned was quickly replaced by a noticeable wince at the mention of torturing the mind. How many people like Laurey were out there, haunted by the things she’s done to them? She didn’t even lose count, she never bothered with it in the first place. When did it happen to her? Avelyn spent a part of her training in a place much like Laurey described. No, it couldn’t have been her. Even if Laurey somehow forgot, Avelyn would remember. She didn’t forget unless she wanted to. And this was the kind of thing she had to hold on to. Every reason to be here. Every reason to hate the Ascendancy.

[color=#FF2E00]“I’m sorry, that was a dumb thing to ask about.”[/color]

Laurey shook her head. “The pursuit of knowledge is a noble one. Perhaps you can answer tit for tat. How has this one become a fabled Star Marine?”

[color=#FF2E00]“By being an idiot.”[/color] Avelyn sighed, [color=#FF2E00]“Got caught stealing, ran down a dead-end street, got caught. Couple days later, I was on a shuttle off world. Then restraints and big fucking needles got involved.” [/color]She shook in part in disgust, in part in fear, [color=#FF2E00]“Where the others are geniuses, in my case they thought they could use someone who could go around for a few years without being caught. Don’t really know, hard to get anything out of people who refer to you by number rather than a name. Then off to a training camp. Your normal conditioning, sitting through propaganda bullshit, more spell practice, killhouses...” [/color]She sighed, [color=#FF2E00]“And ‘Advanced Interrogation’. I wonder what the outside world was told about us, if anything at all.”[/color]

The story was much what Laurey had expected; squint your eyes even and it might be the same as her own. Close enough for government work. Kindred spirits with a finger pointing the blame squarely in one direction.

“Now we both stand enlightened,” the skiff whirred to a halt, “Seems like something a web forum or two could answer. But riddle me this,” She nodded her head towards a stall that was less a stall, more a fort made out of stacked vehicles and machines, “if I were a construction mech, where would I hide?”

[hr]
Back on the ship, the girls inspected their treasure.

Haggling had gone smoothly enough, with Avelyn on lookout. Two women showing knowledge of machines, basic as it was, seemed to enthral the businessmen. One of the few cases where old-world sexism was advantageous. They walked away with a Risastor-S2, a biped with umbrella stilts (for which the mechanism was “busted”) for 5 million credits. Not a bargain, but nor was it daylight robbery. 

They also made a second trip to collect various armaments, protective clothing, and bundles of electrical guts and computer gizzards. Laurey made a quick stop at a “Personal Medicine” place; she was running dangerously low on Bliss, having blown through what little see had the night she spoke to Narvia. Now, though, she bought a metric fuck-tonne. The lie was that she won big, whether or not the dealer believed it was another matter, but 3 million credits don’t lie. 

Sadly, the mech was too big for Avelyn’s gravity magic to affect it whole on a scale significant enough to make the handling easier. Then again, that was the point. But when the monster was finally aboard, Avelyn looked at it with a bit of pride. [color=#FF2E00]“Job well done?”[/color] She reached into her pocket and pulled out a pack of fairly expensive jerky, having taken the five finger discount somewhere along the way. [color=#FF2E00]“So who else is in on this? Just us two or are there more coming to brainstorm?”[/color]

Was Laurey crying? No, those were tears of pride. 

“It’s our baby, but,” she shrugged, “Whoever. We can get most of the technical stuff done alone. The others might spot, flaws… holes, in the bigger picture… we’re toooo close,” as if to emphasise this Laurey backed up, stumbling onto a box, then sitting there like it was something she meant to do. She gestured to the weapons, “They might have useful things inside their head… thoughts… on what the pew-pew do.” She sniffed, long and hard.

[color=#FF2E00]“Add a rearward-facing camera to the list.”[/color] Avelyn grinned when laurey hit the crate, honestly unsure whether Laurey’s managed to take a hit somewhere when she wasn’t looking.[color=#FF2E00] “Let’s see… Nero would suggest blades or chainsaws, Trajan a heavy gauss rifle or a howitzer… That’s all I got. For someone who can read thoughts and memories, I sure don’t know a lot about the people I’m working with. Do we leave it to sit and come back fresh in the morning?”[/color] She asked, one eye looking at the Omni-tool, looking up some information on metallurgy that didn’t include thermodynamics, the other watching Laurey to catch her should she fall off the box.

“Yeah man,” Laurey said, clearly long gone from the real world now. She stared at the mech, but what she saw was a king's court bathed in gold.
[/hider]