B
Blizzard
Uesureyan Fields...
Havok Customs HQ...
The breakroom...
Tuesday...
2:30-ish in the afternoon...
Splat.
Out of all the days of the week, Jax hated Tuesdays the most.
Splat.
Wednesdays were the official halfway point to the weekend, so they had that going for them.
Splat.
Thursday was pre-Friday. Friday was the end of the work week.
Splat.
Saturday and Sunday were self-explanatory. Mondays, although universally hated, at least served the purpose of making Friday, Saturday, and Sunday more enjoyable. But Tuesdays?
Splat.
Nothing! They were the red-headed stepchild of weekdays. Not close enough to Friday, and too far away from the weekend to make you hate it like Monday.
Splat.
It was a rather slow afternoon in the massive hangar that comprised Havok's main production site. The building itself measured four hundred feet in length, three hundred in width, and two hundred feet tall. It was so big that along with the actual workshop, the building could fit Jax's princes-class yacht, the Jax Mobile, in its entirety. In the back corner of the space Jax had erected an office, a meeting room, a breakroom, and a restroom.
The breakroom featured a large, glass window which gave a view to the massive workshop outside, which featured three large fabrication machines and several workbenches and toolboxes. Several unfinished bikes sat on stands while several Nekos and Minkans diligently worked to fill the company's orders.
Normally, the blonde catboy would be outside giving a hand. But today, the owner and founder of Havok didn't feel like simply improving something. Today, he felt like creating. Unfortunately, due to the mysterious powers of Tuesday afternoons, his mind was completely blank. So at the moment, Jax was simply throwing spaghetti at the wall until something stuck.
Splat.
Literally.
On the other side of the massive hangar, one of Jax's older employees was having a similar debacle. Well above the bustle and noise of the workshop sat a cobalt-winged elysian perched up on a catwalk. Anastasia was having a slow day as well, but not one without thought. Between her and the droves of Minkans, her plate for the day had been cleared by one.
The Elysian sighed for a moment, resting her hands on the pockets of her gray-blue coveralls. While the adjustment from military life was still taking time, there was one thing she was thankful for in this position- space. It gave her the once-rare opportunity to use the two giant slabs of azure feathers she had been graced with for more than the occaisonal look.
In what would be best describes as some kind of unwritten safety code violation, the veteran stood and simply, fell off the high catwalk, wings outstreched. In a bat of an eye, the Elysian was soaring around the less-populated high lane around the back of the workshop. Anastasia came to a landing only a few meters away from the office complex in the corner, taking a small moment to grab a datapad from her locker.
Anastasia folded her wings and walked past several startled new employees, stopping only when she pased the break room window. Her eyebrow raised upon seeing Jax quite literally throwing lunch against the wall, and questioned if this was a terrible or perfect time to speak. The Elysian continued walking and rounded the corner into the open doorframe to the break room.
"...Is everything alright, Jax?" she asked mildly concerned. Jax, however, didn't look at her, instead keeping his eyes glued to the poor, sauce-splattered wall with a look of deep thought.
"Don't mind me. Just getting the creative juices flowing." her boss mumbled. Without warning, he set down the pot of boiled pasta he'd kept in his lap and began floating around the room lazily. "It's a trick I like to employ when you just can't think of anything to do. See, what you do is you clear your mind, right? Then, you literally do the very first thing that enters your head. Then, you do that until something else comes along, and so forth until you find inspiration."
Anastasia nodded as she absentmindedly looked out the window, where a poor blue-haired Nekovalkyrja had caught on that her boss was throwing her noodles against the wall. She knew it.
The Elysian slipped into the breakroom itself and propped herself up against the back of the couch. She pressed her datapad against her lap, looking at the wandering entrepaneur. "Well... I had an honestly stupid idea if you want something to work with."
At this, Jax immediately stopped floating and landed, his fluffy ears perked with interest. Looking outside, he winced a little when he realized what he'd done.
"Aw! Bluebell, I'm sorry! This is why you need to put sticky notes on your food in the breakroom!" he called out, but the girl slumped away dejectedly. The catboy sighed and sat back down, facing his senior engineer with rapt attention.
"Alright, what do you got?" Jax asked.
Anastasia looked away for a moment, almost embarrassed at the thought. After a second or three of staggering, she flipped open her datapad which had a cover adorned with the crest of the ship she served on. "I was looking at consumer trends, and it seems... "crotch rockets" are the least popular kind of bike right now, even in racing."
The Elysian looked back at her boss, wondering. "It makes sense, they're smaller and don't do much better than regular airbikes, with half the space..." She paused for a moment, stopping her tangent before Jax's attention waned. "But I think I had a really stupid idea, on how to fix that."
There was a moment of tension as she paused, gritting her teeth. "Elysian. Stunt bikes."
For a moment, Ana's boss simply starred at her, resting his chin on his hands, as he thought over this concept.
"So, like, you're saying an Elysian rides the thing... and uses their wings to do tricks or something?" he asked. It wasn't an outright 'no', but he was curious now.
Anastasia picked up the conversation before it had a chance to dip. "Kind of, yeah. What I was thinking would be like... freeform propulsion. A lot of people don't actually ever get to fly under their own power. Their wings are either too small or weak to propel themselves off the ground." She took a moment to breath. "Maybe, it could be like a sport."
Once again, the Elysian was treated to a long moment of silence.
"That is..." Jax began finally. "...Just about the coolest fucking thing I have heard of so far. Let's do it."
The Minkan hopped up from the couch, dressed in a very casual jeans and t-shirt, and went to slip on his gray canvas sneakers. "So, do you already have any rough sketches of the idea?"
There was a brief moment of staggered silence as shock washed over the engineers face. She had fully expected that to be the stupidest idea she had ever pitched. "Oh- well I kind of do."
The Elysian rounded the couch to face Jax, bringing up a model on her datapad. It was a common airbike model, with some patches of untextured gray assemblies meshed into it, which appeared to be two new oscillating thrusters towards the front, and a whole new back end of the bike. "I'm still working on how it should fit and be held, but I think the big innovation would be user adaptivity."
Breathe.
"Meaning that the user can enteer their weight and wingspan, so that the bike can accomadate thrust for them. Potential for an equal ride across the board. We've got at least one programmer here, right?"
"Maybe. If we don't, I've done a fair bit of coding in my life. If that fails, we can always hire a freelancer," Jax replied, leaning forward. "Alright, so I like it, but it seems a little big. You were planning on the rider using their own wings for lift, right?"
"Yes," Anastasia replied, "I imagine once we figure out how much control we need to accomodate for, we could start cutting weight..."
"I'd be worried about safety features. It'd be flying higher than the normal airbike standards for sure... At some point it'll have to know when to keep the rider from crashing into the ground."
"Well, how high can an Elysian go? Because an Origin 32 can get up to a thousand feet, and mini anti-grav units come standard in riding jackets. They work by detecting when a rider has fallen off a bike, then calculate how fast the rider was going and at what altitude. It doesn't completely cushion the impact, but it definitely saves lives." Jax informed her.
Anastasia nodded. "Really I guess the limit is the rider's comfort and energy, then. I would debate putting a cap on it, but we'd need to do some research. That would be end market goals, this is just the design."
"Okay," Jax conceded, kicking up his feet on the coffee table. "What kind of power source are we looking at? Jets? You'd have to worry about the rider getting sucked into the turbines, though."
Anastasia pondere the thought. "Definetly not jets. We'd need to have whatever propulsion generated to come out below or behind the rider, but close enough to the center of mass to not destabilize it." She took a moment to think, before looking back at Jax. "Do you think plasma jets would be percise enough? They arent energy efficent, but better than creating your own turbine."
"Like the kind of thing they put on the new Mindy armors?"
Anastasia nodded. "Yeah, they've got real nice acceleration. Saved me at least once on the field, thats for sure."
"...Okay. Maybe. I'll need to figure out where to source a few of those. I wonder if they're even available for sale? Because if not, we'll need to build our own." Jax mumbled, before standing up and stretching. He looked back to Ana with a look of excitement resembling a child who'd just found out that they were going to Phalanx-World. "I knew I'd hired you for a reason. Want to continue this discussion somewhere else? Namely a place that serves margaritas?"
Anastasia nodded. "I'll look into it." The elysian cocked her head to the side briefly, looking at Jax for a moment. She was fine with continuing the discussion, but margaritas? "...At two o'clock in a Tuesday?"
Her boss shrugged. He was confused that she was confused, in all honesty. You really couldn't blame him, as he was still a Nepleslian at heart. The only time that was considered unacceptable for drinking was when the national anthem was playing.
"...Yes."
Anastasia sighed with a little smile. She didn't drink too much herself but she could tell Jax was a little confused. "Alright, then."
"Woo!" Jax cheered and hopped to the door. Once in the workshop, he called out to his employees. Anastasia went over to her locker, unzipping the front of her coveralls and slipping them off the less industrial looking set of jeans and a red elysian-fit t-shirt. She folded the coveralls in a neat pile, then turned her attention back to Jax.
"Wrap it up, people! Time to get out of here!" announced the catboy, who received cheers from his staff, who were about ready to leave this dismal tuesday afternoon behind them. Jax beckoned to Ana to follow him outside, to where his new, lime-green Advent sat. Like all of his vehicles, it had been given the special Havok Touch. When started, the hovercar roared to life in a fashion that was definitely louder and more agressively than the stock model.
Some other employees were loading up in their own suped up rides. It was almost an unspoken rule of Havok that you needed a fast vehicle. Anastasia was, however, an exception to many rules. Getting a custom vehicle was part of her plans, but she had been focusing more on getting her financial situation straight before treating herself to things like that. Where public transportation couldn't get her, she could take herself.
The cobalt Elysian followed Jax' beckoning, walking up to the passanger side of the vehicle. "May I?"
"I insist!" Jax called over the rumbling of the engine.
Anastasia smiled and opened the door, slipping into the hovercar's passenger seat. As soon as he was sure that Ana was strapped in, Jax gunned the throttle, rocketing out over the wide expanse of flat concrete that was the Uesureyan Fields. Once he was clear of buildings, he pulled back on the steering wheel and brought the car skywards, pointing the nose towards Kyoto, a mere twenty minutes away at his normal driving speed.
"So! Find a place to live, yet?" asked the catboy, trying to strike up conversation.
Anastasia leaned back, looking out over the city before back to Jax. "Yeah... Army benefits gave me a little micro apartment on the edge of Kyoto. It's a little small, but the view is pretty."
"That's good. I remember living in one of those for a while." mused Jax. Then, he snickered. "Though with Love Day coming up you might want to go to their place instead."
His laughter died down, and he glanced at his chief engineer. He hadn't known her that long, so he felt it prudent to take some time to ask her about her life.
"Speaking of which, got any plans for Love Day? A special someone to celebrate with?" he asked, giving her a coy look.
Anastasia smiled slightly at the question, looking away. "Well, there is someone..." Her smile soon faded into a frown. "I met him in service last love day, but, he's still in the military."
Jax's own brow furrowed as he gave Ana a look of sympathy. "Ouch. On a ship? Or a base?"
"He's still on the Kaiyō, last I got to contact him. They're deeper. in Kuvexian space, so the Star Army has put my request for contact on hold." The Elysian sighed and went quiet, but then turned her head to look at Jax. "How about you?"
Jax gave a little shrug and looked off into the distance.
"There was... once. She was one of the commanding officers of the Eucharis when I first arrived. I was a bright-eyed Santo Hei, she was an ex-samurai trainee. And things just kind of... happened. But that was a couple years ago." He said, quickly realizing how it must have sounded. "Oh, but not like that. She didn't die, she just... kind of vanished, I guess? I know she's still in the Star Army, but I don't know where and she hasn't tried contacting me since. Yeah, I don't really date anymore. Doesn't mean I don't have Love Day plans."
Jax merged into the air traffic as they made their way into Kyoto, lowering his altitude while following the GPS to a Mexican restuarant he liked.
The engineer nodded somberly, gazing out into the bustling streets of Kyoto as she reflected on her recent military conundrum. "It's been a bit of a transition. One week you're out there floating in space and the next day you wake up in a hospital bed and say they can't keep you around." The caelisolan pursed her lips slightly, deciding to shake it off. "I don't mean to sound sour. Every day I'm thankful I'm alive."
"Amen to that. I'm pretty sure the afterlife doesn't have margaritas!" Jax chuckled and lurked the vehicle down the street, turning quite a few heads. He sifted sideways into a space and shut off the engine. Before them was a small, yet nice restaurant that was bustling, but not quite as crowded as it had been an hour ago during the lunch rush.
Anastasia smiled at the joke as they landed, looking up and down the alley of the city before reaching for the door handle. The tall elysian got out of the hovercar, catching a glimpse of themselves in the mirror. Her hair had been windblown into a proper mess, like bedhead times ten. For once in a while, she took a minute to handcomb the fine locks back into order.
The two were promptly seated in the back corner booth, with the sounds of conversation, clattering silverware, and mariachi music setting a lively mood. Jax ordered enchiladas and a margarita-grande before looking back to Ana.
"Any idea what you want to call this thing? You get to name it, since you built it, but keep in mind it's gotta be something marketable. Something that reaches out towards our target audience and makes them want to get it." asked the catboy.
Anastasia's order was just a little bit strange: she wasn't too hungry and ordered a simple salad. She did, however, feel like loosening up and ordered a 'nephattan' cocktail to go along with that. "Well, to be honest with you I didn't think I'd get this far." An honest smile split across her face. "If I can't think of something, we could name it after Bluebell and her spaghetti."
"...And those brownies she made for the Yuletide... and those sandwiches...and the pudding..." Jax sighed guiltily. At the very least, they could name it after her after all of the cullinary disasters that plagued her. She worked so hard on her creations, having been a former chef aboard a Star Army vessel, but something always went awry and in the end her meal was destroyed.
None the less, the two engineers enjoyed their meal and continued brainstorming Anastasia's crazy new idea.
Havok Customs HQ...
The breakroom...
Tuesday...
2:30-ish in the afternoon...
Splat.
Out of all the days of the week, Jax hated Tuesdays the most.
Splat.
Wednesdays were the official halfway point to the weekend, so they had that going for them.
Splat.
Thursday was pre-Friday. Friday was the end of the work week.
Splat.
Saturday and Sunday were self-explanatory. Mondays, although universally hated, at least served the purpose of making Friday, Saturday, and Sunday more enjoyable. But Tuesdays?
Splat.
Nothing! They were the red-headed stepchild of weekdays. Not close enough to Friday, and too far away from the weekend to make you hate it like Monday.
Splat.
It was a rather slow afternoon in the massive hangar that comprised Havok's main production site. The building itself measured four hundred feet in length, three hundred in width, and two hundred feet tall. It was so big that along with the actual workshop, the building could fit Jax's princes-class yacht, the Jax Mobile, in its entirety. In the back corner of the space Jax had erected an office, a meeting room, a breakroom, and a restroom.
The breakroom featured a large, glass window which gave a view to the massive workshop outside, which featured three large fabrication machines and several workbenches and toolboxes. Several unfinished bikes sat on stands while several Nekos and Minkans diligently worked to fill the company's orders.
Normally, the blonde catboy would be outside giving a hand. But today, the owner and founder of Havok didn't feel like simply improving something. Today, he felt like creating. Unfortunately, due to the mysterious powers of Tuesday afternoons, his mind was completely blank. So at the moment, Jax was simply throwing spaghetti at the wall until something stuck.
Splat.
Literally.
On the other side of the massive hangar, one of Jax's older employees was having a similar debacle. Well above the bustle and noise of the workshop sat a cobalt-winged elysian perched up on a catwalk. Anastasia was having a slow day as well, but not one without thought. Between her and the droves of Minkans, her plate for the day had been cleared by one.
The Elysian sighed for a moment, resting her hands on the pockets of her gray-blue coveralls. While the adjustment from military life was still taking time, there was one thing she was thankful for in this position- space. It gave her the once-rare opportunity to use the two giant slabs of azure feathers she had been graced with for more than the occaisonal look.
In what would be best describes as some kind of unwritten safety code violation, the veteran stood and simply, fell off the high catwalk, wings outstreched. In a bat of an eye, the Elysian was soaring around the less-populated high lane around the back of the workshop. Anastasia came to a landing only a few meters away from the office complex in the corner, taking a small moment to grab a datapad from her locker.
Anastasia folded her wings and walked past several startled new employees, stopping only when she pased the break room window. Her eyebrow raised upon seeing Jax quite literally throwing lunch against the wall, and questioned if this was a terrible or perfect time to speak. The Elysian continued walking and rounded the corner into the open doorframe to the break room.
"...Is everything alright, Jax?" she asked mildly concerned. Jax, however, didn't look at her, instead keeping his eyes glued to the poor, sauce-splattered wall with a look of deep thought.
"Don't mind me. Just getting the creative juices flowing." her boss mumbled. Without warning, he set down the pot of boiled pasta he'd kept in his lap and began floating around the room lazily. "It's a trick I like to employ when you just can't think of anything to do. See, what you do is you clear your mind, right? Then, you literally do the very first thing that enters your head. Then, you do that until something else comes along, and so forth until you find inspiration."
Anastasia nodded as she absentmindedly looked out the window, where a poor blue-haired Nekovalkyrja had caught on that her boss was throwing her noodles against the wall. She knew it.
The Elysian slipped into the breakroom itself and propped herself up against the back of the couch. She pressed her datapad against her lap, looking at the wandering entrepaneur. "Well... I had an honestly stupid idea if you want something to work with."
At this, Jax immediately stopped floating and landed, his fluffy ears perked with interest. Looking outside, he winced a little when he realized what he'd done.
"Aw! Bluebell, I'm sorry! This is why you need to put sticky notes on your food in the breakroom!" he called out, but the girl slumped away dejectedly. The catboy sighed and sat back down, facing his senior engineer with rapt attention.
"Alright, what do you got?" Jax asked.
Anastasia looked away for a moment, almost embarrassed at the thought. After a second or three of staggering, she flipped open her datapad which had a cover adorned with the crest of the ship she served on. "I was looking at consumer trends, and it seems... "crotch rockets" are the least popular kind of bike right now, even in racing."
The Elysian looked back at her boss, wondering. "It makes sense, they're smaller and don't do much better than regular airbikes, with half the space..." She paused for a moment, stopping her tangent before Jax's attention waned. "But I think I had a really stupid idea, on how to fix that."
There was a moment of tension as she paused, gritting her teeth. "Elysian. Stunt bikes."
For a moment, Ana's boss simply starred at her, resting his chin on his hands, as he thought over this concept.
"So, like, you're saying an Elysian rides the thing... and uses their wings to do tricks or something?" he asked. It wasn't an outright 'no', but he was curious now.
Anastasia picked up the conversation before it had a chance to dip. "Kind of, yeah. What I was thinking would be like... freeform propulsion. A lot of people don't actually ever get to fly under their own power. Their wings are either too small or weak to propel themselves off the ground." She took a moment to breath. "Maybe, it could be like a sport."
Once again, the Elysian was treated to a long moment of silence.
"That is..." Jax began finally. "...Just about the coolest fucking thing I have heard of so far. Let's do it."
The Minkan hopped up from the couch, dressed in a very casual jeans and t-shirt, and went to slip on his gray canvas sneakers. "So, do you already have any rough sketches of the idea?"
There was a brief moment of staggered silence as shock washed over the engineers face. She had fully expected that to be the stupidest idea she had ever pitched. "Oh- well I kind of do."
The Elysian rounded the couch to face Jax, bringing up a model on her datapad. It was a common airbike model, with some patches of untextured gray assemblies meshed into it, which appeared to be two new oscillating thrusters towards the front, and a whole new back end of the bike. "I'm still working on how it should fit and be held, but I think the big innovation would be user adaptivity."
Breathe.
"Meaning that the user can enteer their weight and wingspan, so that the bike can accomadate thrust for them. Potential for an equal ride across the board. We've got at least one programmer here, right?"
"Maybe. If we don't, I've done a fair bit of coding in my life. If that fails, we can always hire a freelancer," Jax replied, leaning forward. "Alright, so I like it, but it seems a little big. You were planning on the rider using their own wings for lift, right?"
"Yes," Anastasia replied, "I imagine once we figure out how much control we need to accomodate for, we could start cutting weight..."
"I'd be worried about safety features. It'd be flying higher than the normal airbike standards for sure... At some point it'll have to know when to keep the rider from crashing into the ground."
"Well, how high can an Elysian go? Because an Origin 32 can get up to a thousand feet, and mini anti-grav units come standard in riding jackets. They work by detecting when a rider has fallen off a bike, then calculate how fast the rider was going and at what altitude. It doesn't completely cushion the impact, but it definitely saves lives." Jax informed her.
Anastasia nodded. "Really I guess the limit is the rider's comfort and energy, then. I would debate putting a cap on it, but we'd need to do some research. That would be end market goals, this is just the design."
"Okay," Jax conceded, kicking up his feet on the coffee table. "What kind of power source are we looking at? Jets? You'd have to worry about the rider getting sucked into the turbines, though."
Anastasia pondere the thought. "Definetly not jets. We'd need to have whatever propulsion generated to come out below or behind the rider, but close enough to the center of mass to not destabilize it." She took a moment to think, before looking back at Jax. "Do you think plasma jets would be percise enough? They arent energy efficent, but better than creating your own turbine."
"Like the kind of thing they put on the new Mindy armors?"
Anastasia nodded. "Yeah, they've got real nice acceleration. Saved me at least once on the field, thats for sure."
"...Okay. Maybe. I'll need to figure out where to source a few of those. I wonder if they're even available for sale? Because if not, we'll need to build our own." Jax mumbled, before standing up and stretching. He looked back to Ana with a look of excitement resembling a child who'd just found out that they were going to Phalanx-World. "I knew I'd hired you for a reason. Want to continue this discussion somewhere else? Namely a place that serves margaritas?"
Anastasia nodded. "I'll look into it." The elysian cocked her head to the side briefly, looking at Jax for a moment. She was fine with continuing the discussion, but margaritas? "...At two o'clock in a Tuesday?"
Her boss shrugged. He was confused that she was confused, in all honesty. You really couldn't blame him, as he was still a Nepleslian at heart. The only time that was considered unacceptable for drinking was when the national anthem was playing.
"...Yes."
Anastasia sighed with a little smile. She didn't drink too much herself but she could tell Jax was a little confused. "Alright, then."
"Woo!" Jax cheered and hopped to the door. Once in the workshop, he called out to his employees. Anastasia went over to her locker, unzipping the front of her coveralls and slipping them off the less industrial looking set of jeans and a red elysian-fit t-shirt. She folded the coveralls in a neat pile, then turned her attention back to Jax.
"Wrap it up, people! Time to get out of here!" announced the catboy, who received cheers from his staff, who were about ready to leave this dismal tuesday afternoon behind them. Jax beckoned to Ana to follow him outside, to where his new, lime-green Advent sat. Like all of his vehicles, it had been given the special Havok Touch. When started, the hovercar roared to life in a fashion that was definitely louder and more agressively than the stock model.
Some other employees were loading up in their own suped up rides. It was almost an unspoken rule of Havok that you needed a fast vehicle. Anastasia was, however, an exception to many rules. Getting a custom vehicle was part of her plans, but she had been focusing more on getting her financial situation straight before treating herself to things like that. Where public transportation couldn't get her, she could take herself.
The cobalt Elysian followed Jax' beckoning, walking up to the passanger side of the vehicle. "May I?"
"I insist!" Jax called over the rumbling of the engine.
Anastasia smiled and opened the door, slipping into the hovercar's passenger seat. As soon as he was sure that Ana was strapped in, Jax gunned the throttle, rocketing out over the wide expanse of flat concrete that was the Uesureyan Fields. Once he was clear of buildings, he pulled back on the steering wheel and brought the car skywards, pointing the nose towards Kyoto, a mere twenty minutes away at his normal driving speed.
"So! Find a place to live, yet?" asked the catboy, trying to strike up conversation.
Anastasia leaned back, looking out over the city before back to Jax. "Yeah... Army benefits gave me a little micro apartment on the edge of Kyoto. It's a little small, but the view is pretty."
"That's good. I remember living in one of those for a while." mused Jax. Then, he snickered. "Though with Love Day coming up you might want to go to their place instead."
His laughter died down, and he glanced at his chief engineer. He hadn't known her that long, so he felt it prudent to take some time to ask her about her life.
"Speaking of which, got any plans for Love Day? A special someone to celebrate with?" he asked, giving her a coy look.
Anastasia smiled slightly at the question, looking away. "Well, there is someone..." Her smile soon faded into a frown. "I met him in service last love day, but, he's still in the military."
Jax's own brow furrowed as he gave Ana a look of sympathy. "Ouch. On a ship? Or a base?"
"He's still on the Kaiyō, last I got to contact him. They're deeper. in Kuvexian space, so the Star Army has put my request for contact on hold." The Elysian sighed and went quiet, but then turned her head to look at Jax. "How about you?"
Jax gave a little shrug and looked off into the distance.
"There was... once. She was one of the commanding officers of the Eucharis when I first arrived. I was a bright-eyed Santo Hei, she was an ex-samurai trainee. And things just kind of... happened. But that was a couple years ago." He said, quickly realizing how it must have sounded. "Oh, but not like that. She didn't die, she just... kind of vanished, I guess? I know she's still in the Star Army, but I don't know where and she hasn't tried contacting me since. Yeah, I don't really date anymore. Doesn't mean I don't have Love Day plans."
Jax merged into the air traffic as they made their way into Kyoto, lowering his altitude while following the GPS to a Mexican restuarant he liked.
The engineer nodded somberly, gazing out into the bustling streets of Kyoto as she reflected on her recent military conundrum. "It's been a bit of a transition. One week you're out there floating in space and the next day you wake up in a hospital bed and say they can't keep you around." The caelisolan pursed her lips slightly, deciding to shake it off. "I don't mean to sound sour. Every day I'm thankful I'm alive."
"Amen to that. I'm pretty sure the afterlife doesn't have margaritas!" Jax chuckled and lurked the vehicle down the street, turning quite a few heads. He sifted sideways into a space and shut off the engine. Before them was a small, yet nice restaurant that was bustling, but not quite as crowded as it had been an hour ago during the lunch rush.
Anastasia smiled at the joke as they landed, looking up and down the alley of the city before reaching for the door handle. The tall elysian got out of the hovercar, catching a glimpse of themselves in the mirror. Her hair had been windblown into a proper mess, like bedhead times ten. For once in a while, she took a minute to handcomb the fine locks back into order.
The two were promptly seated in the back corner booth, with the sounds of conversation, clattering silverware, and mariachi music setting a lively mood. Jax ordered enchiladas and a margarita-grande before looking back to Ana.
"Any idea what you want to call this thing? You get to name it, since you built it, but keep in mind it's gotta be something marketable. Something that reaches out towards our target audience and makes them want to get it." asked the catboy.
Anastasia's order was just a little bit strange: she wasn't too hungry and ordered a simple salad. She did, however, feel like loosening up and ordered a 'nephattan' cocktail to go along with that. "Well, to be honest with you I didn't think I'd get this far." An honest smile split across her face. "If I can't think of something, we could name it after Bluebell and her spaghetti."
"...And those brownies she made for the Yuletide... and those sandwiches...and the pudding..." Jax sighed guiltily. At the very least, they could name it after her after all of the cullinary disasters that plagued her. She worked so hard on her creations, having been a former chef aboard a Star Army vessel, but something always went awry and in the end her meal was destroyed.
None the less, the two engineers enjoyed their meal and continued brainstorming Anastasia's crazy new idea.
