[b]Brown:[/b] York types, types, blinks. His ear cocks as his brain catches up to the information it just cached, ready to be ejected before it even bothered to reach short term memory, but an alarm started screaming from the trash eject button just before it went out. He takes a sliding step to put himself between Zhang and Brown, despite the fact that there was no space between them to slide into. “Nope.” York says. “One sec. Need to talk to your lawyer for a minute.” “Ah, sure?” Zhang sounds surprised. “She seems like a big girl, though, she’d handle it. It’s just-” York doesn’t answer because he’s already got a friendly arm around Brown shoulders and he just pushes her forward ten steps ahead, out of earshot, and angrily hisses into her ear; “What the [i]fuck[/i] are you [i]doing[/i]? You [i]cannot[/i] be interrogated as a person of interest right now, are you [i]fucking kidding me[/i].” He’s actually sincerely angry he has to be the one telling you this. He had really hoped you were beyond needing a sanity check like this. Sorry, Brown. Your masking makes him oblivious to the internal monologue you’ve got going on. We are punished for our successes, too.. [b]Blue:[/b] “Many little things, but the most interesting is heat management.” Shtern looks to Serino with questioning eyes, like he’s trying to ask him to fill the blanks in things he hasn’t said yet. Searching him for memories of the arguments they’ve had. “Water moves so much better as steam, and then back again. But never have we had materials that could take the heat change without bending, or warping, or melting, or- Don’t get me started on plastics.” “Energy surplus to boil much more large amounts of water. Those ice freighters aren’t carrying ice anymore, they’re in-situ melting that volume of water. Around 20% more capacity, if you do it like that.” Serino snickers, and looks at the back of his fingernails. “Then you have to deal with free-surface effect in zero gravity, and pressurizing your vessel, but such things we can do.” “Flexible tubing. Rerouting of systems. All new things that-” Shtern’s eyes light up. “Lom, do you think you could get me some of that tubing they use for the Cloud line?” “I could.” Serino tips his head. “I think there’s still some salvage in Gaea. Why?” “I would love to process it and see what it is.” He’s excited. “Just to tell [i]Frau-Blau[/i], of course.” Serino stares blankly. “Right. Just that?” Shtern pushes himself off the bandsaw chassis and dances in place like a happy goblin, making a low squeaking gurgle in the depths of his chest that sound very excited. “Why?” Serino rubs his hands down his wrinkled face. “Why do you always get like this?” Shtern smiles dreamily. “I put an old fridge into it. I close the door. I click the settings like I am making microwave popcorn. And the next day, it is all in its little pieces for me.” This makes him inordinately happy. “Or it could be its metal, its rubber, just in little cubes. The most perfect little cubes.” He rubs his hands together imagining it. “Jeana got so upset with me, I spent days just breaking everything down just to see, and giggling like a schoolboy. I was a little monster with it.” He would have had to have already been 70 years old by that point - it must have been a sight. Macro Processors are like if you made a mass spectrometer out of nano piranhas. It intelligently identifies welds, nails, connections, and safely separates things at a submolecular level. The inventor, or inventors, is|are the only person|people who has|have accepted a Nobel Prize for physics anonymously. The amount of corporate espionage their work has enabled makes them the engineer equivalent of Salman Rushdie. [b]Green:[/b] [Chase rules: Green is the Pursuer, in this case, trying to catch Fiona. Fiona’s lead represents her impression of untouchability or incontestability - her ability to feel out of Green’s reach even when she stays close enough to touch. Lead starts at 5. In this case, technical abilities such as Surveillence and Digital Intrusion take precedence over traditional skills like Athletics and Pilot.] [Fiona rolls 5, +3 for 8.] Fiona’s plan here is to just take it. Rolling with Green’s aesthetic or playing back in her way - She’s meant to show that she can be unchanging and unyielding. Is it more boring? In a way, sure. But the point of this is to make Green feel safe about her - and that means presenting herself as an indefatigable bastion Green can’t hurt, not as a force that can beat Green down. [hider=If Win: (Roll =<8)] That being said, Zoro wasn’t above cutting the clothes off his enemies to make a point. Look past the imagery and the and the power, and into the raw code of what Green’s summoning. Delete her hurtboxes. Strip her of her physical touch until she’s left as naked imagery. Fiona stands in the tumultuous rapids, and cocks an eyebrow. “Trying to get me wet, huh? Need to try harder than that, nerd.” [/hider] [hider=If Loss: (Roll >8)] The problem with trying to be a solid wall against the tide? The tide wins. That’s what water [i]does[/i], it is a constant, implacable and shifting force that makes an embarrassment of all attempts to resist it. Fiona tries to get her defenses out, but stumbles to keep her balance by swinging her arms. It’s not until she remembers her wings and her other senses here that she manages to clip out of the ocean and float above it, with it. She’s out of practice. She won’t underestimate something like that again, but this was a bad start. “At least I know you want to make me wet.” Fiona dusts herself off, and waits for the next play. [/hider] The glowing macros around her wrists kick in. She’s dedicating more personal resources to this, adding digital latency time to her biological reflexes delay, but she shouldn’t need to rely on her reflexes to deal with something like this again either. [Challenge increased to 5].