[b]Ares:[/b]

“Sucks your Mum was a bitch.” Zhang says with complete earnestness. She’s entirely unfazed by the infodump. Some people would feel scolded by an answer like that, an insinuation they’d fucked up by pushing - if anything, Zhang just seems vaguely honoured you trusted her with it instead of trying to suplex her into shutting up, like her ex used to (that was not a reason they broke up). “Appreciate it way more now. I kind of made you make a positive memory with it now, I’ve been calling you tea lady all day. That sucks” 

“I mean, you wouldn’t happen to know anything about welding, would you? My day plan is patching a roof in a squatters place, squatters can’t even get their names onto the pod system to get the materials delivered. Thought it was just supposed to be plastics when I made the promise.” 

York continues to be busy on his phone. This time because the thought of being asked to do manual labour visibly frightens him. He self identifies as the laziest person on the station and has simply tricked himself into believing management isn’t real work. 

[b]Blue:[/b]

Her two biggest finds are Wolfgang Shtern and Lombardi Serino, two very old men who remember construction back on Earth. They’re good, comfortable finds for what Blue needs. 

Their choice of bar is one of the public toolsheds in Apollo - again, NASA engineers designed Aevum and thought; ‘Everyone needs a hammer sometimes, but almost no one needs a hammer all the time’. Normally guys like Shtern and Serino wouldn’t come down here, they have much better gear at home, but here’s the difference - Shtern is the guy who requisitions the tools for these public sheds, at least in Apollo district. The old German is the guy who really makes sure he knows that ‘cheap’ isn’t ‘value’, and he looks to spend a lot of his time doing exactly what Blue is doing.

Shtern cracks a Belgian style beer and leans against a variable setting bandsaw, clearly unimpressed with how the water jet setting is holding up when the machine is only five years old. He’s a short man, with a white cotton shirt that hangs off his body like sailcloth and a pair of jeans his wife bought him twenty years ago. 

Serino, for contrast, is a thing of absolute beauty - what Jeremy Clarkson would consider absolute beauty. He’s more android than cyborg at this point, with top of the line parts. Under the perfectly tailored black silk shirt and white Italian pants is a black-and-chrome body with a heavyweight boxer’s build. This is a body made to operate heavy machinery as handtools, with the precision of a Swiss watchmaker. 

It is eye wateringly, blisteringly expensive. This guy is long retired, but he was a dragon watcher back in the day. How could he [i]not[/i] be? He had a hand in making a lot of the tools that were state of the art back then, there was a matter of pride in seeing how they were used. He’s been left behind in much the same way Blue has in being able to contribute to it, but unlike Blue he’s been able to keep up with the trade side of things. His opinions have stayed cutting edge long after his contributions have. 

They are best friends because they love to fight, and what they love to fight about makes them the two most valuable people on the entire station for Blue right now. 

“Should have gone with the Orochi.” Serino teases Shtern’s sour expression at the bandsaw. “I’m telling you, that green band laser-” 

Shtern just kicks the bandsaw on with a foot and jams a finger into the running bandsaw blade, which stops immediately. They’ve had this argument so many times before that replacing the sawblade after doing this is faster and easier. Shtern cracks open the side of the machine and gets to taking the broken blade out. “You’re paying for this one too.” 

Serino pulls out his phone and makes what’s functionally a rounding error in his banking account for the new sawblade. This, too, is easier than arguing with Shtern about it. “Their new liquid nail mix is definitely worth it though.” 

This Shtern considers. “Oh, yes? I saw it is three times more expensive, and ignored it. What makes you think it is worth it?” 

“You use half as much, and it sets twice as fast.” Serino says. “They split the solution into a trimix coming out the barrel, they completely fixed the problem of residuals of the dual mix sealing the internals. I haven’t had one fail on me yet.” 

This gets Shtern’s notice. He pauses in his fussing with the bandsaw. “The Mondragons have been failing a lot faster than I thought they would, I do not understand why people cannot learn to clean the barrels well enough. What’s it like on skin?” 

“Worse.” Serino admits. “There is solvent for this.” 

“Worse.” Shtern says it like an accusation. 

“So just don’t get it on skin.” Serino counters, folding his arms and looking disgusted. “There will always be consequences for mistakes, and you should worry less about the people who make them.” 

“[i]Meine Blau[/i], pass me the new band, please?” Shtern sticks his head in the machine to ignore Serino and sticks a hand out to where he remembers Blue to be. 

[b]Fiona:[/b]

Fiona holds up a hand and counts things off three fingers. “First of all, I was going to fuck Pink later anyway, that’s not the point.” She knocks one finger down without looking at Pink, because cool girls don't look at explosions. “Second, you don’t know what I can take. You’re not the only one who’s had to deal with an overinflated sense of their own greatness just because they’ve been surrounded by mediocrity too long, but you [i]wish[/i] you were too much for me like that.” Somehow, she manages to make this sound like a compliment to Green, because it is. 

“And third of all?” She knocks down the last finger with a fox-like smile. “You didn’t answer my question. I asked if you [i]wanted[/i] to, and you haven't said ‘no’.”

And that’s the most curious one to Fiona, because nothing about what she knows of Green tells her that Green would have given reasons like that to shoot her down. She’d have just shot her down. So even if Green does just say ‘no’ here, she’s going to have to wonder about that.