Elodie 404s for a moment, sputtering. "But. Wait. No, no, you're both adults, you can do whatever you want in your free time, just wait to flirt with my technician till after he works me over." There's a moment before what she said sinks in. "I mean till he fixes my..." she stops again, frowns, tries again. "Till after he works out the kinks in- Fuck it. Anything I say will be dirty. Skels, bone me up and get your digits inside me cuz you know it feels good."

Sorry Pink. She's had a day and it's not noon yet.

*

Elodie lies topless on a padded table, glaring and jabbing at her phone, earbuds blocking out the music. An array of LED lights shine down on her back, carefully arranged so that no shadows cover anything important, and illuminating a tattooed star map, constellations names spelled out lovingly in delicate cursive. The bottom corner features a date and time in the same hand. Framing the map: "may the stars shine upon the end of your road". A clever puzzle to work backwards to figure out where in the world, a treasure map where the X is implied. 

The effect is ruined by the scar tissue around her spinal implant cutting the map neatly in half, which Fucking_Skelator is currently prodding at each and every joint, crevice, and corner of, checking for corrosion. Her tentacles were similarly disabled and opened up, the connections between the prosthetics and the dock and hardport grafts that attached them to her being the next thing to be checked.

She hates this, she hates being helpless, she hates that her technician understands this. She hates not having a choice to not trust anybody. She needs a distraction.

"Hey Skels. Heard anything fun about police fuckups or coverups recently?"

She doesn't have to raise her voice above the trumpet that had inexplicably joined the speed metal. She didn't know how, but he could always hear her.