Kai
Retired Staff
- RP Date
- YE 45.1
- RP Location
- Dawn Station
A small prototype fusion-powered scooter whirred as its rider and passenger made their way through Dawn station's Sector One, the industrial heart of Origin Industries' shipmaking efforts, passing hundreds of ships in various stages of construction. Their destination seemed to be rather close to the end of the arm, several kilometers away from where the two had met up at the Takeda house in Sector Nine.
The passenger wasn't just on a pleasure drive. Hundreds of sensors creating thousands of data points in every instant were being gathered by the ones in the protective gear– boots, helmet, gloves, all of it. Not to mention the data the passenger themselves gathered in wireless communion with the vehicle. The valets at Takeda House had blinked at the unfamiliar vehicle, in various degrees of surprised depending on how long they had been working there and thus how many prototypes they'd seen. The motorcycle itself wasn't exceptional in external appearance among all motorcycles, but anything new aboard the station was noteworthy, and almost certainly a new prototype.
The Rider, a young Yamataian named Herschel Packard with curly purple hair sticking our from under his half helmet and a riding jacket with his nickname (Herk) emblazoned on the back, had simply taken the opportunity to try out the prototype motor scooter as a means to an ends. that ends being getting himself and his occasional work partner to the site where a couple final prototypes from OrIn were getting ready to go off to their space trials, and the due from the testing and data collection department needed to set up their instruments to gather the final bits of data needed before the prototypes could be sent to production and sold to the public. The two boxes flanking the rear tire of the scooter were heavy with said instruments, as well as the X-type computer stations they used for collection and processing of their data.
"This thing's feeling a little sluggish fully loaded like this, but I'm still topping 120 kilometers per hour eventually, so I guess it meets the test parameters right?" he asked the be-sensored passenger.
"Unless I'm a lot lighter than I was before I got on the scale, and they had those crab cakes on the menu at the House today, so I am definitely not!" Felicity Sampson the thrill-seeking scientist joked, bouncing a little in the seat behind him to test the stabilizers. "I could disable the limiters and we could see how it performs with raw output?" She laughed, the lights in her cybereyes visible through the tint of her helmet just like her mid-length, pink hair fluttered in the wind as a bit hung out of the bottom of it.
"I'd rather not mess up my hair any more than it is already," Herk joked back, leaning forward in parody of a more aggressive riding style, one not suited to the upright, pedestrian, basic transport nature of their current mode of transportation. "I don't think I'd win any NARC races on this thing, even if they allowed wheeled bikes!" the young man grinned a bit, but noticed a sign saying that a checkpoint was coming up, and they'd have to swipe their badges to get any further, and so he slowed down as the duo approached the gate and its automated security. coming to a stop and leaning over before setting the motorized scooter on a small kickstand, he pulled out his wallet and the small security card within, swiping it across a smooth pad which beeped and flashed n confirmation.
"Your turn, or the gate won't open." he mentioned.
The pink-haired cyborg smirked and held the back of her hand up to the sensor. "You really need to get yourself some basic augs, Herk." When her transmitter registered with the system and it started to open she laughed again. "Hey, hey, gun it when it opens, we need acceleration testing!"
"I'll get augs if my hand falls off and doesn't grow back on its own" he responded, a bit snarkily, not saying anything else but complying with Felicity's request anyway. the instant torque of the scooter's twin electric motors causing both tires to lose traction momentarily, before they heated up enough to find grip and send the pair rocketing forward for a few moments until they met the governed speed and stopped accelerating. "Either we need better tires on these things or some kind of launch control" Herk noted.
"Careful what you wish for." Another fluid giggle came from under Felicity's helmet at the speed. "It's not a racer, but for a commuter it's not bad at all. Has to be able to accelerate in and out of traffic, right?"
"Only if you don't want to get squished by a hovercar or something" Herk lilted back. the route they were taking had a curve up ahead to detour around something bigger that was currently in development, but it was nowhere near test ready, and so the pair wouldn't have anything to do with it yet. leaning in, the Yamataian took the corner probably more aggressively than he should have and had to overcorrect his balance a bit to keep from losing control. "Whoops, sorry," he apologized, speeding them down their way to their destination.
"Finally something fun happens and you apologize for that?" Felicity leaned back and steadied herself with the boxes instead of by clinging to Herk. So far back, that she could look behind with her helmeted head nearly upside-down.
Herk huffed a bit at his indignant coworker "well, it's not in the test parameters you laid out so it might throw the data off," he explained, throwing the bike into a second corner just a bit more carefully than the first one.
"We're almost there anyway, just another Kilometer and then it's time for set up."
"Go, go, go! I'm doing it. I'm turning off the governor!" Felicity had that joyous mania in her voice that said it wasn't a joke, she as about to do it. "On time is late!" She sent the wireless command that took the speed limiter off the bike, and let the motors turn the wheels as quickly as the throttle told it.
Packard, having been at full throttle already, was surprised by the sudden surge in power from the bike as it suddenly lost its inhibitions. thrown back slightly, he bumped into his passenger (who was already quite close on the small bike) and then bounced back forward, a little bit rattled but keeping his composure. "Holy- you weren't kidding!' he shouted past the wind blowing by them from the speed, before a high pitched whine turned into a sizzle followed by a loud POP and a cloud of smoke from the front wheel as the slightly smaller motor in it blew out, the speed of the bike dropping rapidly as the now dead motor turned into its failure mode- frictionless magnetic braking.
It was lucky, then, that they had just arrived at the dock they were supposed to be getting to, the scooter making some less than confidence inspiring noises as it slowed to a halt. "Guess we'll have to gut the hub to get back. I don't want to call a tow out here."
The fact that Felicity had nearly been knocked from the bike by the impact at approaching the second-hundreds-of-kilometers-an-hour only got a nearly-maniacal cackle. What did not amuse her, however, was the fact that the bike was slowing down. "Awww— right when it was getting good! Hmph." She semi-mock pouted and hopped off the side of the seat right before the rapidly-slowing bike came to a stop entirely. "Well, good thing we brought the toolbox." Removing her helmet and shaking out her hair, then kneeling beside the bike, Felicity's cyber-eyes analyzed the situation through her squinted gaze. "Hmm..."
Herk hopped off the bike as well, setting it on its kickstand as Felicity examined it. "We could probably let it cool down first. Maybe try fixing it after we're done setting up the diag equipment for these other two projects." the Yamataian casually motioned to the short fence they had stopped next to, beyond which the dark green hull of a new model of escort ship, the Jinkan 2A, sat awaiting their team's expertise. a crane above the ship's shuttle bay was hefting a rack of small, winged capsule shaped fighters into it for deployment on the same voyage, one of which would be another recipient of their technical administrations.
The exaggerated sigh and slumped shoulders expressed that "waiting for things to cool down" wasn't a concept that Felicity enjoyed. Sometimes it was hard to believe she had the patience and dedication to become a scientist at all. Without anything other than a huffed, "okay, right," Felicity began to open the cargo boxes and retrieve the diagnostic equipment they'd brought along. Setting up the equipment didn't take her long with the HUD in her cyber-eyes displaying each step one at a time and highlighting and tagging the relevant parts in her field of vision. "There we go." Felicity then looked up at the Jinkan 2A, as it was loaded for a shakedown/test/marketing cruise.
Packard unpacked the other cargo box as Felicity emptied hers, and double checked all of his sensors and other equipment before stuffing it into the bag that they normally carried it in when there wasn't a cargo box available. "Well," he began, reading the expression on the pink-haired girl's face, taking his riding jacket off and stuffing it in the now empty cargo box, revealing his Origin Technician's uniform, which had a patch on the shoulder that said METL in bold letters. "Which would you rather rig up? The drone fighter or the ship itself?" he asked her.
"Whichever one is faster," Felicity didn't even hesitate to think about it. She did the same with her own riding gear, revealing an identical patch. "And I mean faster sublight. You can't feel hyperspace like that." Ever the adrenaline junkie, if it was surprising that she had the will to become a scientist, but it was no surprise at all what sort of career path she had taken using it. A need for speed made her a natural fit for the department that tested new products, many of which could go very, very fast.
Whipping out his communicator, Herk checked the specs quickly before responding. "Well, the Drone by point Oh Five C, and it accelerates several magnitudes faster. only downside is, as a drone, it has no seats so you can't fly it, at least not directly." The device quickly disappeared back into a pocket as the purple-haired man began walking to the work area's gat, letting himself in with his security card as he'd done earlier at the traffic gate.
"Either way, we aren't set to tag along, just set up, find a safe spot for the X-types, and then collect everything when they're back from the voyage in a few days."
Tapping her eyebrow next to her cyber-eyes, Felicity grinned, "Oh, can't I? ...says the no-augs! I can ride anything with an interface!" She laughed, plugging in the full Node of ten X-type units linked together, forming an array to install in the ship. "Standard sensor net, hey look," Felicity had her eyes closed and was waving some sensor units around towards Herk, "I can SEE YOU." She giggled again, liquidly, after her sing-song tease. She really could see him through it, though.
Herk gently smacked Felicity on the back of the head as if to chastise her for her shenanigans. "Just because you have permissions from the King in Sector one doesn't mean you need to abuse them at every opportunity, and like I said, it's going to be gone for three days and you won't be on it, since the last time you did that you skewed all the results by going past the parameters." without saying anything else, he disconnected half of the cores from the Node, putting them into his bag along with the equipment. "And it's two separate tests! There needs to be an air gap!" Herk waved dismissively at his partner, making way to the ramp onto the ship so he could get started with his set up. Sometimes it was fun working with Felicity, and other times it was a headache. The normally laid back Yamataian had to actually work hard and act responsible around her when she stopped being able to control herself.
"Ugh, I hate using five, you might as well just use one. It's Full Node or Nothing, Baby," It might have been something Felicity made up on the spot, but she said it like it was a famous catchphrase by an Origin Pictures action star. "And I mean, I said I wouldn't ever do that again! I was just going to ride along with a sensory splice, not actually try to fly it. This time."
"You can just stream the test data after it's done if that's the case," he suggested, knowing full well she'd complain about it not being the same as 'real time' and that he was being a spoilsport, but he'd just let the waves pass on by as long as they got their job done and didn't get docked for doing something crazy.
"I did hear someone say that OAW might have a new model go into prototype in a few months, so if you can stay within parameters here, I'll put you in for that job. METL isn't the only department that does this testing, after all, and we don't want one of their in house teams taking all our fun, do we?" Herk grinned a bit at the suggestion. As he finished talking, he arrived on the first sensor location described on his test layout, and started opening an access panel so he could install the sensor that was required.
She didn't complain about his suggestion, but did roll her eyes. Felicity sighed again, and turned back to connecting the sensor nets that Herk was installing to the X-type units she was configuring. "Destiny, run diagnostics, please." Her cybe-reyes went unfocused as the computer's output overtook her vision. "Okay, good. No, Herk, move that last one up a little, it's touching a charged conduit."
The promise of being able to run a more interesting test, even taking a new product out for a spin was enough to gain Felicity's compliance. She fell in line, continuing the tests and diagnostics according to protocols with minimal complaining.
Herk complied with the instruction, knowing Felicity's augmented vision was better than his normal vision, and faster by a lot than measuring, though the picture in his guide showed it in a different spot. "I could have sworn it was right here on the last prototype we tested, though," he muttered, before it hit him. "Ahh, that's right, this final prototype re-routed some of the conduits, of course." As a team, they worked their way through the Jinkan 2 in a matter of a dozen minutes, before making their way finally to the shuttle bay.
On a small deployment rack, six Spade drones were stowed, their double-hinged wings folded, and their lights all inactive. Each one appeared to have their primary sensor windows tinted so they would glow a different color; Green, Blue, Red, Yellow, Purple, and Orange.
"Which color will be the lucky drone we rig up?" Packard asked Sampson.
"Well, since pink isn't a choice..." Felicity mused, "Purple I guess. I'll think of your head." She laughed again. "These things are neat, are they replacing the Scimitar?" The scientist had the access panel on it open and was flipping the jumpers to test mode so it would gather and display additional data usually ignored in production mode, or at least not passed along to the operator. "There."
Herk dug through his bag, pulling out a few additional sensor nodes. "Here, you'll need these ones too to finish out that sensor map, and then we can work on limping that scooter back to whoever you 'borrowed' it from" He handed them over to the Augmented woman before double checking all the schematics, diagrams, and plans that they had been following, making sure that they hadn't missed or misplaced anything. "After those three, we can put your X-type stack in one of the lockers and our actual job is done for the day."
Felicity nodded. When she was actually focused on a job the crazy energy subsided significantly, and she calmed down as the task absorbed her. A few more manual adjustments, and she called out to the computer again, "Destiny, route all feedback and control systems through this module." Lights came on in the patch panel as the computer did its work, and she shut it with a triumphant finality. "All right, clear over here, every box checked," that first part was to Herk, then back to addressing the air to activate the computer, "Destiny, initialize."
All the checks done and everything stowed properly, Herk sighed with relief. "YOSH!" he shouted in Yamataian out of nowhere, and then bolted to the ship's stairway, starting an unannounced, impromptu race against his partner, then once out, running to make it back to the now damaged scooter. Before any protests could be made, a few tools were produced from the bag and the curly purple coiffed man got to work removing the front wheel so it could be worked on.
Felicity's augmentations centered around useful modifications for a scientist and engineer in their jobs and daily life. She wasn't a combat cyborg, after all, and even though she was reasonably fit, was a desk jockey who only did the minimum to not have to worry about needing a different-sized uniform. She also wasn't particularly long-legged, either. The head start was insurmountable, even if she did actually try. She nearly caught up when her trill-seeking nature came out as she vaulted over the safety railing and slid down a support buttress rather than take the stairs. It still wasn't quite enough, and she trotted up, panting, about the time he was reaching into his bag. "Ha~ ha... well, I'm too tired to help, I guess." With that, Felicity sat on the seat of the bike sidesaddle, leaning back on one arm and fanning herself with another. "Pull that again and I'm enlisting in the Star Army. We'll see how you like it when I come back as a Neko."
"That would just put us on even footing," Herk quipped, undoing the fasteners holding the wheel and hub to the fork of the scooter. With a few swift taps, he knocked the axle tube out, which cause the wheel to disconnect from the bike. as it did so, gravity took its natural course with the rather unbalanced scooter (more so because of the person sitting on it) leaning forward and then crashing to the ground. unperturbed, or at least acting so, Herk grabbed the now loose front wheel and started inspecting the rather fried looking innards, trying to see if he could either gut it safely or at least disable the failsafe so it spin freely.
"That would just put us on even footing," Felicity mouthed the words back to him, her face screwed up and her head movements exaggerated as if using a mocking tone. She had narrowly avoided falling over with the bike and didn't look in the least happy about it. However, she had done a passable job of stepping forward and making it look like she hadn't almost fallen, pushing off with the hand she was leaning on and taking two bold steps off. "I don't think they'd like it if they saw you treat the prototype that way. At least what I did to it produced useful data."
"Real world abuse is always good data," Herk pointed out, though he didn't turn to face Felicity. He was concentrating pretty hard on actually fixing the thing rather than falling for the pink haired woman's easy provocations.
"I just gotta-" he started, before a click followed by a pop sounded out, and the shorted motor slid out of the hub assembly, along with the acrid smell of burnt plastics and conductors. "Hrmmm... Looks like you just blew a few of the resisters because... Ah ha, there it is!" he grabbed a single wire that looked like it had come loose and then rubbed its insulation off on the inside of the hub shell.
"We'll have to let them know it will need a thread locking compound added to the hold downs to prevent this from happening to consumers."
"...offer higher-rated resistors in an optional performance package..." Felicity read aloud as she added it to the report, "thread locking compound on hold-downs." She narrowed her eyes as she watched him prep the wire for reattachment, "Well, can it get us back without having to call for help?"
Gesturing to a pair of passing Mimicoms, interrupting their chatter and summoning them over, Felicity pointed to the fallen frame. "Okay, when he's ready we need to flip it back up." Her eyes went up to the looming Jinkan II above them briefly before coming back down to look at the fallen frame and its burnt-out hub in pieces still. "And you saw nothing."
Herk frowned a bit as Felicity changed what he had said, but held his tongue for once. He held up the motor's innards for Felicity, and then pointed to the bearing on one end of the shaft. "If you can get this off, we can stuff it back in the shell and ride with just the rear motor. the other side is slip fit, not sure why this one is press fit," he asked, sort of petering off into a mumble as he mentally took notes.
The two Mimicoms nodded at the instructions after they had arrived, and while they hadn't been officially tasked with doing something like this, both Herk and Felicity had the proper authority to give them orders, and doing so wouldn't impede their other tasks, so they patiently waited.
With an almost-teenage disinterest on her face, head back and looking upwards, rather than down at the guts of the motor, Felicity put her hand over it without even looking. She gripped the housing in her fingers, and there was a whirring sound as the appropriate, but micro-sized tools for accomplishing the task extended from around her wrist and the palm of her hand. The tools went to work disassembling the bearing housing as her augmented hand locked into place and held it like a vise. Felicity's eyes never even flicked in that direction, working only by feel, before she chimed, "Done!"
She shook the bearing collar like a maraca as she he held it up, tracing the hi-hat cymbal rhythm of something Durandemonium had been working on in their practices. "Hurry up and get it back on!"
Herk made a face as he accepted the proffered bearing, gave it a once over to ensure it wasn't damaged, and then stuffed it into the socket in the hub that was its usual home. Okay, this should do it," he said, grabbing the axle from the deck and positioning the wheel near the fallen motorbike. "If you would, please," he asked, motioning with his head to the prototype as his hands were somewhat occupied. swiftly, the two Mimicoms went to work, picking up the vehicle (And giving one another a bit of a surprised glance as they discovered it was in fact quite lightweight) and then aligning the front forks with the wheel, allowing Herk to slide the axle into place. After picking up one of the tools he had been using earlier, the wheel was now securely fixed in place, the bike sitting up on its own.
"Thank you, you may return to your duties," the Yamataian said to the Mimicoms, one of whom bowed courteously, the other waving in a friendly manner, before they were off on their prior task. "Okay, that should do it. you can toss that motor core into one of the boxes.
Felicity, certainly deliberately, interpreted "toss" literally, and thankfully the core made it into the box. "In the box. Let's go!" She was on the back of the bike practically as soon as it was upright and steady again. "C'mon, c'mon..." It's not as if Felicity had anywhere to be, merely the deliberately-exaggerated impatience that tended to punctuate her periods of feline, detached laziness.
A sigh escaped Herk's lips as Felicity's manic personality shifted to impatience, shaking his head gently and hopping onto the scooter, heel knocking the kickstand back into its stowed position. "Alright alright, we'll get going, then. But you owe me lunch at Takeda House since you lost the race."
And, for seemingly no reason, Herk planted both of his boots solidly on the ground, grabbed the front brake, and then twisted the ight grip to full throttle, causing the rear tire to squeal loudly against the ground and blow up a cloud of smoke before he released it, nodding his head in confirmation of who knows what. "Yeah, this'll work alright.."
The passenger wasn't just on a pleasure drive. Hundreds of sensors creating thousands of data points in every instant were being gathered by the ones in the protective gear– boots, helmet, gloves, all of it. Not to mention the data the passenger themselves gathered in wireless communion with the vehicle. The valets at Takeda House had blinked at the unfamiliar vehicle, in various degrees of surprised depending on how long they had been working there and thus how many prototypes they'd seen. The motorcycle itself wasn't exceptional in external appearance among all motorcycles, but anything new aboard the station was noteworthy, and almost certainly a new prototype.
The Rider, a young Yamataian named Herschel Packard with curly purple hair sticking our from under his half helmet and a riding jacket with his nickname (Herk) emblazoned on the back, had simply taken the opportunity to try out the prototype motor scooter as a means to an ends. that ends being getting himself and his occasional work partner to the site where a couple final prototypes from OrIn were getting ready to go off to their space trials, and the due from the testing and data collection department needed to set up their instruments to gather the final bits of data needed before the prototypes could be sent to production and sold to the public. The two boxes flanking the rear tire of the scooter were heavy with said instruments, as well as the X-type computer stations they used for collection and processing of their data.
"This thing's feeling a little sluggish fully loaded like this, but I'm still topping 120 kilometers per hour eventually, so I guess it meets the test parameters right?" he asked the be-sensored passenger.
"Unless I'm a lot lighter than I was before I got on the scale, and they had those crab cakes on the menu at the House today, so I am definitely not!" Felicity Sampson the thrill-seeking scientist joked, bouncing a little in the seat behind him to test the stabilizers. "I could disable the limiters and we could see how it performs with raw output?" She laughed, the lights in her cybereyes visible through the tint of her helmet just like her mid-length, pink hair fluttered in the wind as a bit hung out of the bottom of it.
"I'd rather not mess up my hair any more than it is already," Herk joked back, leaning forward in parody of a more aggressive riding style, one not suited to the upright, pedestrian, basic transport nature of their current mode of transportation. "I don't think I'd win any NARC races on this thing, even if they allowed wheeled bikes!" the young man grinned a bit, but noticed a sign saying that a checkpoint was coming up, and they'd have to swipe their badges to get any further, and so he slowed down as the duo approached the gate and its automated security. coming to a stop and leaning over before setting the motorized scooter on a small kickstand, he pulled out his wallet and the small security card within, swiping it across a smooth pad which beeped and flashed n confirmation.
"Your turn, or the gate won't open." he mentioned.
The pink-haired cyborg smirked and held the back of her hand up to the sensor. "You really need to get yourself some basic augs, Herk." When her transmitter registered with the system and it started to open she laughed again. "Hey, hey, gun it when it opens, we need acceleration testing!"
"I'll get augs if my hand falls off and doesn't grow back on its own" he responded, a bit snarkily, not saying anything else but complying with Felicity's request anyway. the instant torque of the scooter's twin electric motors causing both tires to lose traction momentarily, before they heated up enough to find grip and send the pair rocketing forward for a few moments until they met the governed speed and stopped accelerating. "Either we need better tires on these things or some kind of launch control" Herk noted.
"Careful what you wish for." Another fluid giggle came from under Felicity's helmet at the speed. "It's not a racer, but for a commuter it's not bad at all. Has to be able to accelerate in and out of traffic, right?"
"Only if you don't want to get squished by a hovercar or something" Herk lilted back. the route they were taking had a curve up ahead to detour around something bigger that was currently in development, but it was nowhere near test ready, and so the pair wouldn't have anything to do with it yet. leaning in, the Yamataian took the corner probably more aggressively than he should have and had to overcorrect his balance a bit to keep from losing control. "Whoops, sorry," he apologized, speeding them down their way to their destination.
"Finally something fun happens and you apologize for that?" Felicity leaned back and steadied herself with the boxes instead of by clinging to Herk. So far back, that she could look behind with her helmeted head nearly upside-down.
Herk huffed a bit at his indignant coworker "well, it's not in the test parameters you laid out so it might throw the data off," he explained, throwing the bike into a second corner just a bit more carefully than the first one.
"We're almost there anyway, just another Kilometer and then it's time for set up."
"Go, go, go! I'm doing it. I'm turning off the governor!" Felicity had that joyous mania in her voice that said it wasn't a joke, she as about to do it. "On time is late!" She sent the wireless command that took the speed limiter off the bike, and let the motors turn the wheels as quickly as the throttle told it.
Packard, having been at full throttle already, was surprised by the sudden surge in power from the bike as it suddenly lost its inhibitions. thrown back slightly, he bumped into his passenger (who was already quite close on the small bike) and then bounced back forward, a little bit rattled but keeping his composure. "Holy- you weren't kidding!' he shouted past the wind blowing by them from the speed, before a high pitched whine turned into a sizzle followed by a loud POP and a cloud of smoke from the front wheel as the slightly smaller motor in it blew out, the speed of the bike dropping rapidly as the now dead motor turned into its failure mode- frictionless magnetic braking.
It was lucky, then, that they had just arrived at the dock they were supposed to be getting to, the scooter making some less than confidence inspiring noises as it slowed to a halt. "Guess we'll have to gut the hub to get back. I don't want to call a tow out here."
The fact that Felicity had nearly been knocked from the bike by the impact at approaching the second-hundreds-of-kilometers-an-hour only got a nearly-maniacal cackle. What did not amuse her, however, was the fact that the bike was slowing down. "Awww— right when it was getting good! Hmph." She semi-mock pouted and hopped off the side of the seat right before the rapidly-slowing bike came to a stop entirely. "Well, good thing we brought the toolbox." Removing her helmet and shaking out her hair, then kneeling beside the bike, Felicity's cyber-eyes analyzed the situation through her squinted gaze. "Hmm..."
Herk hopped off the bike as well, setting it on its kickstand as Felicity examined it. "We could probably let it cool down first. Maybe try fixing it after we're done setting up the diag equipment for these other two projects." the Yamataian casually motioned to the short fence they had stopped next to, beyond which the dark green hull of a new model of escort ship, the Jinkan 2A, sat awaiting their team's expertise. a crane above the ship's shuttle bay was hefting a rack of small, winged capsule shaped fighters into it for deployment on the same voyage, one of which would be another recipient of their technical administrations.
The exaggerated sigh and slumped shoulders expressed that "waiting for things to cool down" wasn't a concept that Felicity enjoyed. Sometimes it was hard to believe she had the patience and dedication to become a scientist at all. Without anything other than a huffed, "okay, right," Felicity began to open the cargo boxes and retrieve the diagnostic equipment they'd brought along. Setting up the equipment didn't take her long with the HUD in her cyber-eyes displaying each step one at a time and highlighting and tagging the relevant parts in her field of vision. "There we go." Felicity then looked up at the Jinkan 2A, as it was loaded for a shakedown/test/marketing cruise.
Packard unpacked the other cargo box as Felicity emptied hers, and double checked all of his sensors and other equipment before stuffing it into the bag that they normally carried it in when there wasn't a cargo box available. "Well," he began, reading the expression on the pink-haired girl's face, taking his riding jacket off and stuffing it in the now empty cargo box, revealing his Origin Technician's uniform, which had a patch on the shoulder that said METL in bold letters. "Which would you rather rig up? The drone fighter or the ship itself?" he asked her.
"Whichever one is faster," Felicity didn't even hesitate to think about it. She did the same with her own riding gear, revealing an identical patch. "And I mean faster sublight. You can't feel hyperspace like that." Ever the adrenaline junkie, if it was surprising that she had the will to become a scientist, but it was no surprise at all what sort of career path she had taken using it. A need for speed made her a natural fit for the department that tested new products, many of which could go very, very fast.
Whipping out his communicator, Herk checked the specs quickly before responding. "Well, the Drone by point Oh Five C, and it accelerates several magnitudes faster. only downside is, as a drone, it has no seats so you can't fly it, at least not directly." The device quickly disappeared back into a pocket as the purple-haired man began walking to the work area's gat, letting himself in with his security card as he'd done earlier at the traffic gate.
"Either way, we aren't set to tag along, just set up, find a safe spot for the X-types, and then collect everything when they're back from the voyage in a few days."
Tapping her eyebrow next to her cyber-eyes, Felicity grinned, "Oh, can't I? ...says the no-augs! I can ride anything with an interface!" She laughed, plugging in the full Node of ten X-type units linked together, forming an array to install in the ship. "Standard sensor net, hey look," Felicity had her eyes closed and was waving some sensor units around towards Herk, "I can SEE YOU." She giggled again, liquidly, after her sing-song tease. She really could see him through it, though.
Herk gently smacked Felicity on the back of the head as if to chastise her for her shenanigans. "Just because you have permissions from the King in Sector one doesn't mean you need to abuse them at every opportunity, and like I said, it's going to be gone for three days and you won't be on it, since the last time you did that you skewed all the results by going past the parameters." without saying anything else, he disconnected half of the cores from the Node, putting them into his bag along with the equipment. "And it's two separate tests! There needs to be an air gap!" Herk waved dismissively at his partner, making way to the ramp onto the ship so he could get started with his set up. Sometimes it was fun working with Felicity, and other times it was a headache. The normally laid back Yamataian had to actually work hard and act responsible around her when she stopped being able to control herself.
"Ugh, I hate using five, you might as well just use one. It's Full Node or Nothing, Baby," It might have been something Felicity made up on the spot, but she said it like it was a famous catchphrase by an Origin Pictures action star. "And I mean, I said I wouldn't ever do that again! I was just going to ride along with a sensory splice, not actually try to fly it. This time."
"You can just stream the test data after it's done if that's the case," he suggested, knowing full well she'd complain about it not being the same as 'real time' and that he was being a spoilsport, but he'd just let the waves pass on by as long as they got their job done and didn't get docked for doing something crazy.
"I did hear someone say that OAW might have a new model go into prototype in a few months, so if you can stay within parameters here, I'll put you in for that job. METL isn't the only department that does this testing, after all, and we don't want one of their in house teams taking all our fun, do we?" Herk grinned a bit at the suggestion. As he finished talking, he arrived on the first sensor location described on his test layout, and started opening an access panel so he could install the sensor that was required.
She didn't complain about his suggestion, but did roll her eyes. Felicity sighed again, and turned back to connecting the sensor nets that Herk was installing to the X-type units she was configuring. "Destiny, run diagnostics, please." Her cybe-reyes went unfocused as the computer's output overtook her vision. "Okay, good. No, Herk, move that last one up a little, it's touching a charged conduit."
The promise of being able to run a more interesting test, even taking a new product out for a spin was enough to gain Felicity's compliance. She fell in line, continuing the tests and diagnostics according to protocols with minimal complaining.
Herk complied with the instruction, knowing Felicity's augmented vision was better than his normal vision, and faster by a lot than measuring, though the picture in his guide showed it in a different spot. "I could have sworn it was right here on the last prototype we tested, though," he muttered, before it hit him. "Ahh, that's right, this final prototype re-routed some of the conduits, of course." As a team, they worked their way through the Jinkan 2 in a matter of a dozen minutes, before making their way finally to the shuttle bay.
On a small deployment rack, six Spade drones were stowed, their double-hinged wings folded, and their lights all inactive. Each one appeared to have their primary sensor windows tinted so they would glow a different color; Green, Blue, Red, Yellow, Purple, and Orange.
"Which color will be the lucky drone we rig up?" Packard asked Sampson.
"Well, since pink isn't a choice..." Felicity mused, "Purple I guess. I'll think of your head." She laughed again. "These things are neat, are they replacing the Scimitar?" The scientist had the access panel on it open and was flipping the jumpers to test mode so it would gather and display additional data usually ignored in production mode, or at least not passed along to the operator. "There."
Herk dug through his bag, pulling out a few additional sensor nodes. "Here, you'll need these ones too to finish out that sensor map, and then we can work on limping that scooter back to whoever you 'borrowed' it from" He handed them over to the Augmented woman before double checking all the schematics, diagrams, and plans that they had been following, making sure that they hadn't missed or misplaced anything. "After those three, we can put your X-type stack in one of the lockers and our actual job is done for the day."
Felicity nodded. When she was actually focused on a job the crazy energy subsided significantly, and she calmed down as the task absorbed her. A few more manual adjustments, and she called out to the computer again, "Destiny, route all feedback and control systems through this module." Lights came on in the patch panel as the computer did its work, and she shut it with a triumphant finality. "All right, clear over here, every box checked," that first part was to Herk, then back to addressing the air to activate the computer, "Destiny, initialize."
All the checks done and everything stowed properly, Herk sighed with relief. "YOSH!" he shouted in Yamataian out of nowhere, and then bolted to the ship's stairway, starting an unannounced, impromptu race against his partner, then once out, running to make it back to the now damaged scooter. Before any protests could be made, a few tools were produced from the bag and the curly purple coiffed man got to work removing the front wheel so it could be worked on.
Felicity's augmentations centered around useful modifications for a scientist and engineer in their jobs and daily life. She wasn't a combat cyborg, after all, and even though she was reasonably fit, was a desk jockey who only did the minimum to not have to worry about needing a different-sized uniform. She also wasn't particularly long-legged, either. The head start was insurmountable, even if she did actually try. She nearly caught up when her trill-seeking nature came out as she vaulted over the safety railing and slid down a support buttress rather than take the stairs. It still wasn't quite enough, and she trotted up, panting, about the time he was reaching into his bag. "Ha~ ha... well, I'm too tired to help, I guess." With that, Felicity sat on the seat of the bike sidesaddle, leaning back on one arm and fanning herself with another. "Pull that again and I'm enlisting in the Star Army. We'll see how you like it when I come back as a Neko."
"That would just put us on even footing," Herk quipped, undoing the fasteners holding the wheel and hub to the fork of the scooter. With a few swift taps, he knocked the axle tube out, which cause the wheel to disconnect from the bike. as it did so, gravity took its natural course with the rather unbalanced scooter (more so because of the person sitting on it) leaning forward and then crashing to the ground. unperturbed, or at least acting so, Herk grabbed the now loose front wheel and started inspecting the rather fried looking innards, trying to see if he could either gut it safely or at least disable the failsafe so it spin freely.
"That would just put us on even footing," Felicity mouthed the words back to him, her face screwed up and her head movements exaggerated as if using a mocking tone. She had narrowly avoided falling over with the bike and didn't look in the least happy about it. However, she had done a passable job of stepping forward and making it look like she hadn't almost fallen, pushing off with the hand she was leaning on and taking two bold steps off. "I don't think they'd like it if they saw you treat the prototype that way. At least what I did to it produced useful data."
"Real world abuse is always good data," Herk pointed out, though he didn't turn to face Felicity. He was concentrating pretty hard on actually fixing the thing rather than falling for the pink haired woman's easy provocations.
"I just gotta-" he started, before a click followed by a pop sounded out, and the shorted motor slid out of the hub assembly, along with the acrid smell of burnt plastics and conductors. "Hrmmm... Looks like you just blew a few of the resisters because... Ah ha, there it is!" he grabbed a single wire that looked like it had come loose and then rubbed its insulation off on the inside of the hub shell.
"We'll have to let them know it will need a thread locking compound added to the hold downs to prevent this from happening to consumers."
"...offer higher-rated resistors in an optional performance package..." Felicity read aloud as she added it to the report, "thread locking compound on hold-downs." She narrowed her eyes as she watched him prep the wire for reattachment, "Well, can it get us back without having to call for help?"
Gesturing to a pair of passing Mimicoms, interrupting their chatter and summoning them over, Felicity pointed to the fallen frame. "Okay, when he's ready we need to flip it back up." Her eyes went up to the looming Jinkan II above them briefly before coming back down to look at the fallen frame and its burnt-out hub in pieces still. "And you saw nothing."
Herk frowned a bit as Felicity changed what he had said, but held his tongue for once. He held up the motor's innards for Felicity, and then pointed to the bearing on one end of the shaft. "If you can get this off, we can stuff it back in the shell and ride with just the rear motor. the other side is slip fit, not sure why this one is press fit," he asked, sort of petering off into a mumble as he mentally took notes.
The two Mimicoms nodded at the instructions after they had arrived, and while they hadn't been officially tasked with doing something like this, both Herk and Felicity had the proper authority to give them orders, and doing so wouldn't impede their other tasks, so they patiently waited.
With an almost-teenage disinterest on her face, head back and looking upwards, rather than down at the guts of the motor, Felicity put her hand over it without even looking. She gripped the housing in her fingers, and there was a whirring sound as the appropriate, but micro-sized tools for accomplishing the task extended from around her wrist and the palm of her hand. The tools went to work disassembling the bearing housing as her augmented hand locked into place and held it like a vise. Felicity's eyes never even flicked in that direction, working only by feel, before she chimed, "Done!"
She shook the bearing collar like a maraca as she he held it up, tracing the hi-hat cymbal rhythm of something Durandemonium had been working on in their practices. "Hurry up and get it back on!"
Herk made a face as he accepted the proffered bearing, gave it a once over to ensure it wasn't damaged, and then stuffed it into the socket in the hub that was its usual home. Okay, this should do it," he said, grabbing the axle from the deck and positioning the wheel near the fallen motorbike. "If you would, please," he asked, motioning with his head to the prototype as his hands were somewhat occupied. swiftly, the two Mimicoms went to work, picking up the vehicle (And giving one another a bit of a surprised glance as they discovered it was in fact quite lightweight) and then aligning the front forks with the wheel, allowing Herk to slide the axle into place. After picking up one of the tools he had been using earlier, the wheel was now securely fixed in place, the bike sitting up on its own.
"Thank you, you may return to your duties," the Yamataian said to the Mimicoms, one of whom bowed courteously, the other waving in a friendly manner, before they were off on their prior task. "Okay, that should do it. you can toss that motor core into one of the boxes.
Felicity, certainly deliberately, interpreted "toss" literally, and thankfully the core made it into the box. "In the box. Let's go!" She was on the back of the bike practically as soon as it was upright and steady again. "C'mon, c'mon..." It's not as if Felicity had anywhere to be, merely the deliberately-exaggerated impatience that tended to punctuate her periods of feline, detached laziness.
A sigh escaped Herk's lips as Felicity's manic personality shifted to impatience, shaking his head gently and hopping onto the scooter, heel knocking the kickstand back into its stowed position. "Alright alright, we'll get going, then. But you owe me lunch at Takeda House since you lost the race."
And, for seemingly no reason, Herk planted both of his boots solidly on the ground, grabbed the front brake, and then twisted the ight grip to full throttle, causing the rear tire to squeal loudly against the ground and blow up a cloud of smoke before he released it, nodding his head in confirmation of who knows what. "Yeah, this'll work alright.."
