RP: YSS Miharu Mission 3, Aftermath

Nyton saw Kotori at her desk, dressed in uniform and apparently ready for the day; she already had two volumetric windows up on which she had apparently been working on. Two chairs had been prepared in front of her desk.

The black-haired nekovalkyrja minimized the windows and then her amber eyes made eye contact with Nyton's. She gestured him to the seats. "Bring him in."

Nyton looked over to Heram through the doorway. "The Taisa will see you now, sir." he said. Once he passed the information Nyton then walked in to give Heram way to enter. Nyton stopped about a few feet and to the side of the entrance. It was a gesture of respect, placing the guest's station above his own in allowing the guest to sit down before himself. This time however it also meant that he was waiting to see if Heram would remember what he had been taught. Don't screw up. he thought.

Masako bowed her head towards Nyton and Wazu as they stood up and headed off towards the Taisa's quarters. Now alone at her table, the young Neko looked around the wardroom. She noted one of the tables seemed slightly crowded with Yoroko, Rin, Kai, Yuzuki, and Takuma. They seemed to be having a good time eating and chatting, so the Warrant Officer didn't want to reign in on their parade. Yukari and Miyoko seemed to be leaving to work a bit more, leaving Masako with no one to chat with in the wardroom.

"Hmmmm," she hummed in thought as she took her tray back towards the serving line and set them aside to be taken away. She then took another tray and began to gather a variety of food onto a couple of plates. Covering them to keep them warm, the young Neko left the wardroom and returned to her room. She had yet to see the two sister come to the wardroom, so she was getting quite worried.

Reaching her door in a few moments, she shifted the tray onto one hand and rung the chime to her own room for the second time that day.

Wazu gave a short bow before entering the room, going down only just enough to be noticeable before making his way toward the chair beside Nyton. Entering the room was done with a certain economy of energy that he lacked before. His face had a smile across it, doing its best not to wince with every step as he approached. This time there was no hurry. He would be doing his best to take it slow and complete the convoluted greeting ritual exactly as specified earlier.

“'Good morning, it is a pleasure to see you again, your highness.” Wazu said.

"Oh, being old isn't so bad," Tom said. "You get to have lots of children crawling all over you and talking. It's really cute, actually."

He chuckled and squeezed Mara one more time to him for good measure before he let go.

"Ready to meet the day? If we're going to do any fixing of you, we can't be spending all day talking in the baths."

Kotori rewarded Wazu with a nod. "Good morning to you as well, Mister Wazu." She gestured to the seats. "You may both sit."

The nekovalkyrja shot Nyton a brief, suspicious look, and then returned her attention to Wazu.

* * *

"Sure!" Mara hopped off the edge of the bath and headed off to the changing room to dry off and change.

Wazu would sit down, and wait for Nyton to do the same.

Nyton took note of the look and gave a reassuring nod. He then set down the breakfast tray on the unoccupied far side of her desk. Well, it is a good start. he thought though concerned that perhaps it was so good it had made Kotori suspicious.

Once Heram was seated Nyton followed suit and took his own seat.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------


This time the door was opened by Akiko who beamed a happy greeting to the short neko. "Ohayo gozaimasu Kurohoshi-Juni!" she said. Akiko was wearing an orange paneled Miharu styled uniform now. The uniform was obviously meant for one of the tech crew sprites but besides ship designation there were no rank or identifications on it. Shizuka was walking up while brushing her hair. She too was wearing the same uniform. "Oh Kurohoshi-Juni, you are back already?"

This felt a little bit awkward for Wazu, though he did his best not to show it. For the time being it seemed like a good moment to get to the apology that Nyton mentioned.

"Please accept my apologies for the affront I committed yesterday. I meant no offense to you or your crew and ship, however, I am sorry for causing such."

Kotori gave a nod, acknowledging Wazu's apology. Not sparing much attention to the foodtray Nyton had brought her, she spoke: "Good morning to you as well, Mister Wazu. I do hope that pleasure will be one I will share."

Her tone was business-like as she moved on. "I've had you brought here because I have yet to determine what to do of you and your demands beyond my first choice of simply bringing you back 'home' to Nepleslia tomorrow. I believe you would have something to say on the matter."

A chill ran of regret ran through Takuma's back when Kai unenthusiastically waved him down. It seems I shouldn't have interrupted him... he thought. Since I already made the effort, it would only be more awkward to just walk away... With a sigh, Takuma sat down and munched on a golden brown piece of toast, with butter sinking into a pool in the center.

Alright, now I just need to figure out where the conversation is going and I can join in, fixing the situation! He listened to what Kai said, but things only got more confusing.

Kai said:

I guess it's a toy. I wanted to give it the ability to take orders and bring me food or maybe help at parties or something, but I don't really know how."

Click to expand...

Huh? It... What is 'it'? he wondered, scratching his head. Something that can be given orders and serve food. Could be some kind of robot, but I have no idea where he'd randomly get one that didn't already have the 'ability to take orders'. A sprite maybe? Wait, Kai got his own sprite!? Apart from a partially surprised expression on his face, an interesting scene popped into Takuma's mind.

"Kai-sama~!" As Kai looked down from a makeshift, spray-painted throne, he saw a familiar a lewdly-dressed blond neko looking up at him with adorable blue eyes and a cute smile. In her hands was a silver plate covered with an equally-silver lid that was polished enough to outreflect a mirror. "Your lunch is here!" she said with a face that would cause your eyeballs to bleed from the cuteness.

Takuma could hardly hold back his laughter. He held most of it back, but his face contorted with a smile and a few grunts escaped his sealed mouth. "Kai-sama..." he muttered to himself in a high voice, still laughing. Once he was finished laughing to himself, he decided to comment on the conversation, even though the chances were that his 'it' was probably off. "I don't think they were meant to be used that way. Chances are it would take a large amount of difficult modifications."

Yuzuki's ear flicked.

She wondered briefly at Takuma, looking him over before deciding to offer him a hesitant smile. There wasn't much else to do. Unfortunately his arrival had derailed her train of thought, and now when she looked back at Kai, the exausted sprite could only wonder what it was that Takuma had meant by it. The quiet laughter made her nervous, especially when she didn't know the joke.

Kai-sama?

Mulling it over in her head, Yuzuki took a few bites of her food. FOOD. Her stomach praised her. It wanted more, but something in the back of her mind - some remnant of some electronically uploaded briefing on table manners - fought back the urge to completely, utterly ignore the two males also at the table.

"I don't think so," she found herself saying, answering Takuma's statement instead of shoveling another forkful of eggs into her mouth, "The motor componants are still there, all they would need is a calibrated actuator and a capacitor or power source of some sort."

For a moment Wazu was wondering if Kotori was coming on to him. He had seen the sharing pleasure line used before on other ships and captains were just about the only people who could get away with it. However, that was not something for him to focus on right now.

“From what I understand we are both interested in Eve, and we both have something to offer the other party in our respective searches. I am interested in discussing a mutually beneficial arrangement for the duration of this search.”

Wazu would then pause to assess Kotori’s reactions.

Kotori gave him a nod. "Go on." The combination of straight, shiny black hair and strangely iridescent amber eyes made her look a bit like a... crow?

Well, 'Kotori' more or less meant 'small bird' in Yamataian. This 'small bird' seemed to be treating him with aplomb, but her eyes were flat and emotionless... a bit like the expressionless stare of a Ketsurui Samurai.

Or... he could keep with the crow metaphor and go for the impression that she was waiting for him to stumble before sweeping in like a scavenger to pick of strips of flesh off him. She definitely did not feel as friendly as when she had first greeting him on the ship.

"Ohayo," she replied with a gentle smile. "Well, it seemed as if there wouldn't be any more breakfast by the time to go to the wardroom," the Warrant Officer replied as she held up a tray. "So I thought it would be prudent to grab some food for both of you before it all ran out," she explained with a cute grin as she glanced at their attire.

"I see you got some uniforms, I hope they will do for now," she said as she entered her quarters and opened the tray cover. "I didn't know what you would like, so I got a bit of everything. Eggs, bacon, white rice, steam vegetables, and miso soup...with orange juice to drink," she said as she placed the tray upon her desk.

Well, she had not yet tried to kill him. Wazu counted that as a plus for the time being. He figured that as long as he could still speak he had the capability to sway things to his favor.

“Trading information about Eve is the first thing that comes to mind for such an arrangement. I also have access to certain resources that you might find valuable for your ship including weapons, technology, and workforce.”

Kai ignored the strange mumblings from Takuma as he watched Yuzuki. The sprite's reaction to food was humorous, even if no one else would have noticed it. He cracked a tiny smile, and continued with his 'project' idea.

"It even has a few of the bits that bent it at the waist left, so we might actually have to remove a little. the problem is making a program, as well as giving it the sensors to navigate and hear voices. Making it move is the easy part."

The Yamataian stuck his fork in his mouth, getting a somewhat contemplative look. "You know how to do any of that?" he asked both of the people sitting at his table.

"Da ne." Yoroko replied, "I mean to say, take it easy. We've just been through a pretty rough experience both for the Miharu as a ship and for us as her crew. Chances are we're heading to a starbase, where the repairs we make here will look tiny compared to what they are capable of. I'm not saying don't do work, I'm just saying give yourself a little bit of a break is all."

Yoroko fell silent after she was finished speaking and thought about what she had said. I sound...grumpy. the Hei decided silently, her good mood seemed to have disappeared. "Mah," Yoroko said, feigning her enthusiasm again. "If you enjoy working hard on the Miharu then it's what you should do I guess. It's the small things that make us happy after all..." After Yoroko was finished speaking she returned to her meal.

Kotori raised one hand to brush some of her black hair behind her shoulder, half-closing her eyes. Amber slits eyed him through eyelashes. "Information and workforce are the commodities you might provide. I am uninterested in the rest."

"Also..." Kotori pivoted her chair enough so she could take a look through the window that was behind her desk. After a brief look at the planet her ship orbited, she pushed the chair in a 300 degree spin until she faced Wazu again.

Still giving him that half-lidded look of hers, she set her hands over her chair's armrests and told him: "...our needs are not matched horses. You need to find Eve to talk to her. My goal is not to parlay or capture; she has escaped too many times. I intend to kill her, and destroy any recordings or copies of herself she might also have."

Yuzuki gave this a little more consideration.

She took another forkful or so. 'Or so' turned out to be most of the remaining eggs on the plate, and in very short order she found herself eyeing the sausage, sitting so unassuming beneath the gradually thinning puddle of sausage gravy. It had no idea that it was about to die, again, after a rigorous series of internal Yuzuki processes which would, inevitably, turn it into waste liquid. She stalked it.

Then she remembered, again, that she was not alone.

"Yes," she said, simply, hesitating. Table manners were fighting for dominance. The tide of battle could go either way. "I can. Most mechanical... err, most... things like this operate one of three ways. Mechanically, hydrolically, and pnumatically."

Somehow, her stomach had lost, so she decided with a sort of anxious, harried determination to press on.

"A mechanical system is more often found in larger products. Products that have to move a lot of weight or are going to be placed under a lot of stress. Helical gears, bevel gears, probably a few drivetrain assemblies just to translate it. Most often they're just used for repetative activity, something like cranes. The field of movement is very small. Then there are hydrolic and pnumatic systems which are controlled by a series of pumps or compressors, which would pressurize or depressurize based on the demands of the system. It's loud but it works. That's why..."

Yuzuki stopped and stared at her plate.

Internally, she continued, but her mouth had shut after her brain had realized where this was leading. It was an evolution - mechanic, hydrolic, pnumatic... It's how people had built robots, way back in the day; they had been clumsy things, barely able to follow simple electronic instructions, but that had been that for the longest time. The dark truth was that there weren't really just three systems. There were four.

The fourth was synthetic muscle, sinew, and bone, guided by complex electrical impulse - the first Nekovalkyrja. Probably, whatever Kai had brought back, would be some derivative. She had talked herself into a corner. It was a different corner than she had experianced yesterday, but it was still, undeniably, a corner she did not want to be in.

"Yes," she repeated when she realized she had fallen silent. "Yes. I could."