SIGINT

The Technology Planet - Frixion Prime - Open

I'd be interested, but it would depend on your impression of Mary, since she's a bit of a basket case XD;; if you think they'd work out, though, then by all means! But I totally understand if not. She fits into very few venn diagrams.

The other character I'd volunteer, SIGINT (much less psychopathic) is off-planet currently, so I can't really throw her here at the moment.

The Technology Planet - Frixion Prime - Open

	Frixion Prime — Foody Place @Antarctic Termite

"Bubble tea, hmmmmmmm..." Mary put one finger to her forehead, and then another from her other hand, concentrating intently. "HMMMMMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmm...ermmmmmmm..."

"I dunno." The little girl snapped her head upwards, bouncing a bit. "I feel like I've had it somewhere before...but I can't remember...when or where..."

It was like a buzzing fly around her head that wouldn't go away. Like trying to remember a certain word for a sentence, but the more she thought on it, the farther away it seemed, as though her efforts merely scattered her own mind further. "Well, I'll have it anyway! If I've had it before, it can't be bad, right? I wouldn't drink something that tasted bad, right?"

The girl didn't seem to catch on as to Ayem's mental state. So, yes, they were there for quite a while.


Swaying back and forth, the little girl looked up at Ayem intently. The older woman was nearly three times her height, and craning her neck to make eye contact was a little uncomfortable — but she didn't mind that much. "So, whaddo you do? You have a floaty-boat, so you must move around in the sky a lot. I bet you do a lot of cool stuff all the time." Mary posited optimistically, "And— andandandandand!! I can come along!? I can go on your floaty-boat!? For reeeals!? Pinky swear!?" Jumping up and down with her arms outstretched, her body swayed back and forth while she made airplane noises. "I'm gonna be like— whooooosh!! Through the sky!! It'll be so cool, all the time!!"

The Technology Planet - Frixion Prime - Open

Edited from my original response - I'm a little squirrelly about getting jnto fights, but it is a persistent world RP, so it's not really on me or anyone else to determine where you can go or what you can do. If you feel like jumping in, go ahead and jump in!

The reason Termite and I decided to have our RP in the planet megathread was to try to breathe some life into it, since not much was going on. So, having gone into it with that in mind, far be it from me to push people away.

The Technology Planet - Frixion Prime - Open

@Antarctic Termite youtu.be/3v8I5egzoMo?t=1m26s

The Technology Planet - Frixion Prime - Open

	Frixion Prime — Inner Streets @Antarctic Termite

"Bunnies...only like healthy girls...?"

Mary's face fell as she followed Ayem obediently through the streets. "That's...no good." The girl said quietly. "I'll always be sick. I won't ever get better. Never ever. Because...I was born sick. So I'll always be this way, forever and ever." There hadn't been much strength in her grip to begin with, but even so, it still somehow gave a feeling of weakness. "Even if I got new clothes...they'd just get dirty and messy all over again. Is there even...a point to replacing them? If I won't ever stop coughing stuff up?"

All of the dirt and grime over her hoodie hadn't come from the ground or from the air, but from her own throat. Changing the clothes wouldn't cure her illness. Nothing would. Her body was unstable from the start, a false existence forced into being, and made to pay the price for her father's hubris.

Even if she took care of herself, how long would that flaw-ridden body persist? A year, maybe two. And then she would fall apart, just like all of the failures before her.

And even that much, really, was a miracle in and of itself.

---

"Candy~"

The little girl was distracted easily enough by the wide assortment of choices before her. All of them likely owned and produced by the same company and made to create a thinly-veiled illusion of consumer choice, but eight-year-olds generally didn't care about that sort of thing.

"I like these ones!" Tapping the screen, she moved quickly to a sort of powdered candy that was basically a straw filled with pure synthetic sugar, and adjusted the 'quantity' slider to its maximum value, 99. "They don't weigh a lot, and they're easy to chew."

Without even thinking twice, Mary swiped a black, unmarked card, which seemed to pay for the purchase in full. Those kinds of cards were generally carried by high-ranking businessmen, and were tied directly to a corporate account. They weren't credit cards or anything of the sort — it was literally a corporation asset.

The screen briefly flashed a name as it authorized the purchase — Atticus Vüqar — before it went through without issue. Mary was now the proud owner of 99 glorified sugar cubes, according to a computer on the wall. That was probably enough food for an interplanetary expedition.

"I wonder if I can get a flying thingy with this...Papa said it only goes up so far..." The girl wondered to herself, turning back to Ayem, standing and waiting for the purchase to be brought to them. "Where do they sell floaty-boats? The ones that go up into the sky." The girl blinked, "Oh, um...we needed other things first...I forgot. What was it...?"

It was difficult to tell if she had a short attention span, or actual short term memory issues.

The Technology Planet - Frixion Prime - Open

	Frixion Prime — Inner Streets @Antarctic Termite

With her left hand, the little girl slowly pushed against Ayem's right, as though comparing the sizes of their hands. Skin met cold metal, but the girl didn't seem to mind. She was too enraptured by the wonder of it all. In her right hand, she continued to hold the combat knife, pointed towards herself — but it didn't move. It was frozen, just like the rest of her, as she gazed with her jaw hanging open into the artificial structure. She was completely oblivious to the woman's caution, not even realizing that she was being kept at arm's length. She wasn't even paying attention to that sort of body language to begin with.

"I...guess that makes sense..." She admitted glumly, "Well, I can't throw knives anyway, 'cause they're too heavy, but yeah..." Her right hand fell limply to her side as her face soured. "But still...knife hands. There aren't any left? That's not fair! You're supposed to aaask before you take the last of something, like, like, like the last sugar cookie, or the last sugar cube, or the last...sugary thing!"

The little girl's attention quickly moved on, though. Her brain moved in an odd direction, but it moved a mile a minute. Tossing the combat knife between her emaciated hands like it was a toy, she answered the talltall lady with a beaming smile. "My name's Mary! M-E-R-Y! Like the girl with the little lamb." She added helpfully, "Having a lamb would be cool...but I'd rather have a bunny."

Thankfully deterred from the subject of self-amputation, her mind began to wander again. "If she's far away...I'm gonna need...food. Lotsa food." Mary thought out loud, still juggling the combat knife as her head turned up and away, unfocused eyes indicating a (comparatively) deep train of thought. "And I'm gonna need a flying thingy...and, um...I think that's it. Yay! I only need two things!" Without any fear, Mary reached out with her hand, taking one of Ayem's knife fingers and avoiding its blade with surprising precision as she did so. "Let's get the food first! Come on, come on~! I wanna get lots of candy~!"

The Technology Planet - Frixion Prime - Open

	Frixion Prime — Inner Streets @Antarctic Termite

"Nope~!"

The little girl smiled widely as she admitted, without complaint, that she had absolutely no idea what she was doing.

"She flew off into the sky." The girl explained helpfully, "I dunno how to fly, so I can't follow her...and I dunno where she is..." She pouted expressively, kicking at the ground in disappointment. "So, I thought, maybe someone else might know..."

"But! But!! You've seen her, right!? You've really really really pinky-swear-promise seen her!?" Like a lightswitch flipping on, the girl was jumping up and down excitedly. She pivoted moods like an improperly calibrated accelerometer. "Wh-which way did she go!? Where was she when you saw her!? I gotta chase after her!! I gotta!! I gotta I gotta I got—"

The little girl, who had up to that point been literally bouncing with energy, suddenly stopped. Staring wide-eyed at the talltall woman holding the paper, she froze, like a toy whose batteries had abruptly died. It was only after a gasp of unbelievable amazement, the kind of look you'd see from someone viewing an eclipse or a fireworks show, that Mary's trembling finger slowly pointed upwards.

"You...you..." She began, slowly, with a trembling voice. "You...you have...you have...knife hands." The little girl finally finished her thought, her eyes locked onto the fingers that gripped the paper. "That. Is. AWESOME!! I want knife hands, too! I wanna cut off my fingers and replace them with knives! It'll be sooo cool!!" She proclaimed, already pulling back one of her sleeves, and unsheathing what looked to be some kind of high-tech combat knife from her hip that had been hidden beneath the hoodie. She was literally intending to amputate herself at that exact moment. "Where'd you get yours!? How long have you had them!?"

Love Bomb Piracy Front - Prologue

	Stolen Ship — The Bridge @JaceBeleren

The bespectacled girl's head slowly turned upwards at the metal woman, her eyes devoid of recognition. Her mouth moved slowly, but there was no sound. At the very least, she wasn't screaming — even if only because she was beyond that point.

She was reliving another event, from another time. Another death, from another place.


<sup>...Was that right? Was she really dead?

That girl...can't be dead. Because...</sup>

<sub>...even now...she's still dreaming.

The same dream, every time she sleeps.</sub>


Blinking vacantly, SIGINT's blood-stained, trembling hand reached up, with so much strain that it seemed like she was trying to lift a dumbbell simply by raising her own shoulder. The data drive dropped into her hand, its outside painted crimson. With all of her energy expended, the arm dropped down to the floor again, her gaze lowered to focus on it against her reddened hand and the metallic floor.

Her movements were more robotic than even Diana's own. Like a machine that had shut down, her blank gaze remained downward, with only the trembling of her fingers to indicate that she hadn't stopped breathing. With effort that could have pulled the moon down from the sky, her fingers slowly, very slowly, closed over the drive, gripping it weakly.

SIGINT

As discussed in Discord, profile was opened for editing following SIGINT's successful joining of the Love Bomb Pirates. This editing is now complete and pending re-approval.

For comparison, the original raw text has been stored in a pastebin, here. It may expire after some time.

Changelog:
Mnemonic - added more detail, no meaningful changes
Hacking - minor grammatical fixes, no meaningful changes
Thermo-Optic Bodysuit - SIGINT's Contraband item, upgraded to a rank 4 device from its previous rank 3.
Added: Complete camoflauge, as opposed to partial. Now grants proper invisibility instead of a blur effect.
Removed: Energy resistance, it just didn't really make sense.
Robotics - Added a bunch of missing detail, and a new robot schematic, The Frisbee, inspired by the Penumbra's astrionics suite, and constructed using materials from the Smuggling Network critical point.
My Room - A new feature which lists out what SIGINT's workshop is like aboard the pirate ship, and the mundane gear it contains. This also includes her Friend Ship upgrade, Bunnies (via Colin).

The Technology Planet - Frixion Prime - Open

an innocent eight year old child