Scene #9143: Airships and Admiralities

Owner	Pose
Kale Hearthward	EARLIER: "Hey. You're good with building things, right? Would it be strange if I asked you for help with the new ship?" And so: Petra gets a shiny new Contractor badge! Being here as a favor to Kale doesn't exempt her from paperwork or bureaucracy or security - though the process is fortunately short, and only involves a minimal amount of Security Theater. It is mostly meant to communicate that the Paladins know who she is, they know she is here, and that they know that she knows that they know. Etcetera etcetera. One silver lining is that during the process it gets revealed that, at least in this branch of the bureaucracy woods, she has Official Recognition as a Supervillian - one that's 'Grapefruit Class' (no explanation is forthcoming). With that done, welcome to Achilles Air Force Base. It's low-to-mid-level security here, with just a few perimeters of barbed wire fencing serving as static defenses. It's practically homely. Kale's Elegy Rescue Team (formerly the East Wind Rescue Team) has a large hangar here all to themselves. Inside are the relatively spartan team headquarters, an elevated drydock/building platform, and a number of different vehicles all lined up along one wall. Among those are the gifted Sundew airship that the team's been primarily using, a salvaged Gale Empire scout craft, a medivac that's looking like it's seen better days, some sort of earless giant stone head, and a food truck. There's already some activity when Petra comes in - Kale's perched on the scout ship in the middle of hacking it apart, and he and his medic on the ground are yelling at each other. "I said, we need the technomagic converter unit! Not the engine!" "And I told you the converter and the engine are welded together! We can't just pull out one!" "Oh, hey, you almost missed the exciting bit," says the pilot, who's the only one who's seen Petra enter so far, mostly because she's doing nothing except leaning against a wall and watching the other two argue. "Figuring out what pieces we're missing because nobody knows how to communicate. Thrilling. All the best parts of a family meal without the dry instant mashed potatoes."
Petra Soroka	EARLIER, IN RESPONSE: "Sure would. Where at?" Going through Paladins security is actually a kind of endearing process for Petra. In a lot of senses, the literal actions performed by security are ones that would be repulsive to her, being scrutinized and treated as a danger and metaphorically patted down and so on, but here, they're not, really. Part of that is the novelty. Despite being a fairly successful supervillain for over a year, people rarely ever treat Petra like one, so seeing the paper pushers sweat when they scan her file and then follow protocol on how to deal with her as a threat is kind of nice. Another part is the reaffirmation that she is dangerous, and that she has done some pretty awful things-- there's a thrill in being treated like a wild animal, a cop killer, a conqueror, and also, the person who abused some of the Paladins top personnel until eventually forcing her way into being their friends. So, Petra's in a pretty good mood, all things considered, when entering into Achilles Air Force Base. She flashes a smug little tongue-out peace sign to a guard, already defanged of the majority of her weaponry (though the morphmetal stays), and raps on the opening to the hangar with her fist to announce her presence when strolling in. "This is the exciting bit? Are they gonna start hitting each other, or something?" Petra isn't inclined to immediately try and solve the argument, instead loitering with Skye for a minute. Being on an air base makes Petra feel like she should be allowed to-- even required to-- pull out a cigarette before hopping into the repairs, but Kale always complains about that kind of thing, and it'd be so annoying if that was the first thing he said. So instead she swirls a morphmetal wrench in her hand, and it liquifies into a loose twirl of Silver floating around and between her fingers. "Damn. I can't even tell which one they're supposed to be working on." Petra raises her voice to call out to Kale, "Yo. The princess's hand-me-down isn't good enough for you anymore? What's, like, the goal here?" Petra has a decent quantity of specifically vehicle-related odds and ends in storage with Qetra-- it was kind of her speciality, besides the ratbots, while working with Eggman. She doesn't move to start unloading it or giving Kale an inventory of how she can help, though-- it's kind of up to him to decide a goal before Petra judges how worthy and purposeful it is.
Kale Hearthward	> "This is the exciting bit? Are they gonna start hitting each other, or something?" "Pff, I wish. Probably what happens next... she gets mad that he's rushing, he gets mad that she's doublechecking his work and acting like he's going to hurt himself again, she gets mad that he's hurt himself again..." "Okay, well, we'll get the winch- don't try to lift it-" "Hrrk." "Kale it weighs eighty pounds!" "I can- ow, ow...." "It's like a bad rerun." Skye observes Petra's body language for a bit, and then pulls out a bag of shell-on sunflower seeds. "Here. These take the edge off." When Petra makes herself known, Kale hops down and heads over, acting as though he didn't just hurt his back. "Hey. Yeah, it's not cutting it. Okay, everyone else take thirty, get some food." Conveniently, his squad leaving means he doesn't have to color his text. "So yeah - not cutting it. If it was just for regular missions, regular disasters and the like, it'd be fine, but..." "... Well, we're not going up that sort of thing all the time, right? We're up against forces of nature like Hiromi or the Sea Monster Queen, existential stuff like the Refulgence monsters or whatever that was in Padgett's world, or big force projection threats like Eggman or Petr-" He coughs. "Ahem. No, something exceptional. Top of the line, with an x-factor. Several x-factors. The East Wind could hold an entire town, which seemed like overkill until we had to evac an entire town from the Sea Monster Queen. Having giant air-duel weaponry was excessive right up until Joanne D'Arc came back to life and started ordering literal fire dragons around." "For the last couple of weeks..." He pauses, and checks the date on his smart phone. "For the last couple of months, has it been that long... Anyway. I've been trying to grab what I can to use as parts. Combine it all into one new ship, and refine it." "The Sundew airship has good bones, it's fine as a frame. We're hoping to use the internals from the Gale Empire ship, the medical equipment and control systems from the modern medivac, and the relic has some x-factors we're going to try to implement. That's the plan, at least." He pauses. "There's... another matter, though. You're leading a team at Lobcorp, right? Can I ask you some questions about that?"
Petra Soroka	"Oh--" Petra hesitates before taking the sunflower seeds, a sliver of morphmetal arcing around the corner of the bag to slice it open. It's like what baseball guys do! "Yeah, thanks." So Kale is spared Petra exhaling smoke into his face when he approaches her, while she's instead engrossed in practicing the muscular familiarity to process a sunflower seed in her mouth as cleanly as possible. She's occupied by carefully maneuvering the shell to the edge of her mouth so that she can spit it onto the hangar floor for another second before she can respond to him. "Uh huh, like me. Yeah. I mean, that little thing would barely cut it if I used the East Wind against you, wouldn't it?" Petra only says that because the reiteration of how much work was put into the East Wind, and how much capability it has, makes her own possession of it feel kind of embarrassingly lacking by comparison. Does she really need to hold an entire town, or fight dragons with it? She probably could do those things, but doing that feels kind of embarrassing too, especially since she'd just be on Kale's same side during any incident where she would. Oh-- Petra stops her train of thought and tries to turn it around. She's supposed to do evil with it; such as, maybe, using it in place of dragons in order to terrorize entire towns. "Months, yeah. I've actually been poking around inside the East Wind, so I've got a good idea of what sort of stuff you had, but... you, like, had that one for a while. So who knows what's up with you now." Particularly, Petra knows that Kale isn't 'the East Wind' anymore, and, as an understander of the relationship between titles, affiliations, identities, and machines, expects his thoughts to have changed on that. "Are you basically just trying to rebuild the East Wind?" Petra drips morphmetal from her hand onto the ground, forming helical pillars of Silver that lift her up enough for her to jump onto the side of the Gale Empire scout and sit on the edge. Her feet dangle down and thud against the side of the hull, disrespectfully. "You can ask if you want, yeah. I mean-- what, do you want details on how Extraction Team works? 'Cause that might be classified, I'm not actually sure." While talking, Petra starts to wander around the insides of each of the ships in turn-- the least relevant section of the ship for her own work, but the cockpits are interesting in the same way that a vehicle museum would be. They're fun toys that she can explore!
Kale Hearthward	Sunflower seed shells on the hangar floor seems to be an acceptable prearranged compromise. > "Are you basically just trying to rebuild the East Wind?" "Well, that'd be lame, right?" That's~ not~ a~ de~ni~al~~~ The cockpit of the Sundew Handmedown (not its actual name (probably)) has been refitted to somewhat resemble the East Wind's - pilot and copilot seat in front, and a swivel captain's chair in back which also serves as the comms console. The Gale Empire scout ship is a single-seater, and more akin to a military jet's cockpit - aside from being more open around the sides, giving a better view of the ground through the somewhat anachronistically clear glass windows. Cameras? What are those? We use good old fashioned binoculars here. The food truck is, actually, just a food truck? The 'cockpit' isn't any different than any other food truck's, though the seats have been adjusted up to their maximum height (because everyone on Kale's team is short). Likewise the Medivac has just a helicopter cockpit. Someone's been scratching tally marks in the copilot side dashboard, though. Some of the marks are a lot deeper than the others. The giant stone head, entrance in the mouth, is the most different by a mile. Instead of a cockpit being visible on entry, there's an entire forest, inside some sort of pocket dimension with a curved skybox. The 'cockpit' is a freestanding control console in the middle of the forest, with monitors hooked up to external cameras instead of a direct view of the outside. "I'm not going to ask anything sensitive. Just... how do you handle having a team? Being responsible for people? Especially in a dangerous place like Lobotomy Corporation." "What'd you do if you lost someone?"
Petra Soroka	"Yup. It'd be lame as hell." Petra clambers out of the Sundew Handmedown and into the giant stone head, poking her head out of the interior to continue. "It'd be super lame to basically just rebuild the internal setup because you're afraid of trying anything else, and then incorporate a space warping setup like the East Wind had, and reconstruct your new ship to do all the same stuff you had it for before." "So then what's different? Is it-- uh, what's with the food truck, actually." Of all the military and esoteric vehicles here, the food truck is the one that Petra hesitates most before getting inside. She's gone inside helicopters, and Sarracenia's ships, and she's even gone into giant stone heads, but she hasn't been in a food truck, and even worse, she's had to fight off the temptation to go inside a food truck when the opportunity has presented itself before. Is it a magic food truck? A taco food truck? Is there some fucked up tech that could be extracted from it, or is it just a narrow little metal cube with fryers in it? Petra absentmindedly probes around the interior of the food truck with a mess of morphmetal tendrils, looped together in a bracelet around her wrist. "Being responsible for people... haven't you had a team way longer than I have? I don't..." Petra folds her arms on the open window of the food truck and leans out, like she's about to ask Kale if he wants the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles-shaped popsicle. "Honestly, it's kind of a miracle that none of my team's died, yeah." "None of the other agents in any of the other teams either. I've seen the Info records, I know how wild that is; the stats ever since I started working there are basically unbelievable. And-- I mean, the rest of you Elites aren't there very often. It's got to be mostly me that's made that difference, right?" "So I kind of feel responsible for all of them, I guess. Not just Noyo, Vincent, Parker, and-- and I guess Rufus is there too, but all of them. So..." Well, with all that context, Petra has to turn her mind towards actually answering Kale's questions. "Uh...." "Um... so I just volunteer a lot in all the other departments. And spend extra time there. That's not a good answer."
Kale Hearthward	"Hah, yeah, it'd be lame if I was doing that again." That's~ not~ a~ de~ni~al~~~ "Instead of doing space warping, putting in a simple point-to-point teleporter for mass evacuations and resupply would work. We're thinking we can get that from the giant head. It's got... weird geometry in there." "... It's also got a mystery dungeon. Full of random items and all, keeps repopulating with stuff and doesn't run out, assuming you can fight through to claim it." "Right, so the food truck!" Kale flies over and perches on top of it, leaning over to look at Petra through the windows. "It's just a food truck. I wanted to incorporate it so the new ship could be a food truck as well." Petra, poking around, can find stocks of various supplies, including a large amount of ice cream in both tubs and novelty-on-a-stick varieties. Kale doesn't so much as raise an eyebrow if she helps herself. "... Has it been longer? I mean by a few months, maybe... But..." "..." Kale attempts to spin Petra's straw into something approximating gold. "Well - you're saying you go do everything you'd ask your team to do? You're shouldering the work and the risk the same way they are? I guess that makes sense." "I'm asking because..." Kale decides to just come out with it. "My team got fired on recently. While their defenses were down, and while I was too far away to help them. It just..." He trails off.
Petra Soroka	"Hmmm... I mean, the energy supply needed for a constant, like, space stretching effect is way lower than teleportation... and if you're using it over and over again to evacuate a ton of people..." Inviting Petra was a good choice logically, Kale knew, because he's fought plenty of her machines before. It's still something different for her to actually display... any kind of intellectualism for design, because her visible status as 'Eggman's apprentice' has mostly been relegated to end-state supervillainy and ideological ramblings rather than the brick and mortar of studying. "The heat generated by repeatedly charging a long distance teleporter would need so much venting that on a small thing like this, you'd have to do it while flying... is that really practical? Maybe there's some goofy shit inside this dumb head that's got better specs, but I dunno. If your goal is mass evacuation, it might be better to have, like, external teleporters, than internal stuff. Like Lilian's circles." "It's just a food truck. I wanted to incorporate it so the new ship could be a food truck as well." "..." Petra transmits ellipses in a remarkably Angela-like way. "Oh. You're just getting silly. Sure." Petra does not entirely believe him about that, though. Surely, even Kale wouldn't be that dumb. Within the sincere desire to construct a new airship and a new way of maneuvering through his role as a seach-and-rescue operative now that he's moving on from his title as the East Wind, surely there can't be something as shallow and arbitrary as 'also wanting a food truck'. Petra is about to integrate that into her perception of Kale and permanently lower his value in her mind, but decides impulsively to not do that. "Why? Why a food truck?" "You're shouldering the work and the risk the same way they are?" "Oh, I... guess. It's like... I mean, I have a responsibility to do more, not just because I'm their captain. In the same way you do, right? Because, uh...." Petra hauls herself out of the window of the food truck and sits in the frame, almost exactly the width of the slid-open window. Forced by the shape of the overhang to lean forwards, she puts her palms on her knees and looks down at Kale. "Like, Lilian was talking about the definition of an Elite recently, right? About, like, responsibility, and hard work, and why the word 'Elite' came around and what it should mean and all? I don't really have a good definition or anything, but you know what it is, to yourself. You know you're one, and your crew isn't. I'm one, and my agents aren't. So... not just doing the same stuff you'd ask them to, but doing more." "I dunno." Petra straightens up, and then smacks her head on the food truck and winces before hopping to the ground. "I'm kind of shit at leadership stuff. I'm better at... yeah. So I'm, like, maybe a little too careful with them." "My team got fired on recently." "Oh. Hm." Petra glances over to where Kale's team filtered out to. "... Yeah. I mean, sometimes I'm not even anywhere near L-Corp when some breach happens and my agents have to deal with it." "I can't say whatever, like, 'they're all risking that already and they know it', because... I mean, that sucks. But you could do a meeting, maybe? I do monthly meetings about, uh, risk stuff, and how people are feeling with their assigned Works. If they don't feel like they're being put under necessary risk, then...."
Kale Hearthward	"Does it? The East Wind didn't seem to take up that much energy... I salvaged the space stretching module whole, I have no idea who or where built it originally." ... Is the East Wind really that much of a one-of-a-kind thing now? Kale starts feeling like trading the East Wind for Skyrah (nee Quicknest) maybe wasn't as a killer deal as he thought it was! ... No, he doesn't really think that, but there's a few more sour grapes in play now. "Okay - well, some sort of... teleportation circle creation thing. Externally mounted to deal with the heat. A teleportation gun?" > "Why? Why a food truck?" "Okay." Kale gets serious. And he gets into the food truck, making his way to the cooking area in the back. "You weren't there for this - there's this world called Zora, that unified relatively recently. And we were invited there by the- nation of Teppelin." The actual name is Spiral Empire, but Kale's mental model of Petra (who looks a lot like Psychonautra for some reason? Maybe his mental model room needs another cleaning, the wires are shorting out) has her focusing too much on the linguistic similarities between 'Spiral Empire' and 'Gale Empire', and that's not the point of this story. "The first thing we saw, right after arriving, were our contacts General Einar and Princess Nia zu Teppelin, working at an ice cream truck handing out ice cream to refugees." "I thought at first, I don't know, they were just trying to look like good people as a first impression. But the more I thought about it, honestly, the more it made sense." "Food is important." He fires up the grilltop with an audible click and fwoosh of the gas igniting. "As a shared cultural experience. But also an important thing on its own. Good food - hot, fresh, tasty food, is an important indulgence. People can't just buy a pallet of rice and lentil MRE's and live on that their whole lives. So sometimes yeah, ice cream is one of the most important things you can get to people fleeing their homes for their lives, if everything else is being met. So once the danger has passed, the earthquake has stopped or the supervillain has moved on or whatever, I can do that for them." "And - as a shared cultural experience. Did I say that already? But it's important, for team building and downtime and sometimes just as a morale boost." There's a sizzle and smell of something hitting the grill. "I could just bring a bunch of food supplies and gas grills and pull everything out at mealtimes, save some space that's going to be taken up by all the food truck stuff, sure, but - that's lacking style. Versus, parking the new airship, opening up the side window, and just taking food orders from the other elites or whoever we're helping then and there. It's memorable, it's unique." > "I do monthly meetings about, uh, risk stuff, and how people are feeling with their assigned Works. If they don't feel like they're being put under necessary risk, then...." "I'll keep that in mind. It's a good idea." "... The other reason I'm asking, is... it's not going to be just those two pretty soon." Kale looks over in the direction they've gone. "I can't speak too much about it - um, especially to a supervillain, no offense - but I might have a larger command pretty soon. If I'm willing to jump through the hoops for it." "Going from two people I'm responsible for, to twenty. Probably more than twenty. And I can't be in twenty places at once."
Petra Soroka	"Teleportation gun? Yeah-- yeah, I can see it. Like," Petra scrambles up-- with the assistance of morphmetal stairs forming in the air as she steps on them-- on top of the Sundew Handmedown to get a better viewpoint of where the gun could rest. Looking around like she's in the perspective of the gun, she makes an approving noise. "Something like that, or some sort of... area-defining projection, or stuff like that. Basically, if you've got ten thousand people on the Union Busan trying to escape, you won't want them to have to pile into the ship to do it, right?" Petra doesn't register that he might be feeling any special bitterness from reflecting on the East Wind. After all, she's helping now! They're working on a craft, and no one can be unhappy while working on a craft. Petra listens through Kale's entire explanation, patiently seated above him (she just keeps relocating herself to sit somewhere above him, like a cat) the whole time, before nodding seriously and saying: "I was also there." "With Princess Nia and Einar and stuff. I remember that. I actually agree totally, so I'm glad-- like, that you have an answer. And also that it's a good one, but mostly that you had one at all." "... The other reason I'm asking, is... it's not going to be just those two pretty soon." "Oh? With the Paladins? Or is Lilian subdividing stuff up in Trideag already?" Petra waves her hand dismissively, "And you obviously don't have to worry about telling me if it's Trideag stuff. There's literally no chance I'm going to be fucking with Trideag." "And I'm hellllllping you right now, anyways! If I show up on some mission and you've got a truck full of guys with you, then I'll know that before I do any supervillainy. That's sort of the cost of doing the-- really, actually kind of weird work that we do." Petra slides down to join Kale in the food truck, waving away the lingering smell of gas and smoke from the grill. "Twenty's a lot. Twenty's, like, everyone I've got in Extraction, and only a quarter of that's for combat stuff. Like, villainy and everything aside-- why do you need more people? Are you, like, taking them out in your ship soon, to throw bodies at monsters and stuff? If you are, then you kind of already know the answer, about risk and whatever."
Kale Hearthward	"With the Paladins. Skyrah's - no, can't tell you that part yet, even if it'll be obvious to you later when you see it. Just - with the Paladins." "I'm not throwing bodies at the monster, that's still my job alone, along with maybe Skye and Hazelthistle. I may be throwing bodies at rescuing people while the monster is attacking, though. And - obviously less risky uses like... setting up infrastructure. Scouting. Guarding." "But there's still risk in all that. Still a pretty good chance-" He pauses. "Still a very good chance that, before I retire or bite it, I'm going to give an order that results in one of the people trusting me getting hurt. Or dying. Or worse." "... Taco?" Kale finishes grilling, and starts assembling. "I've got chorizo and tofu. They're both pretty good."
Petra Soroka	"But you are taking them near the monster. Or, like, metaphorically, but you know what I mean. You agree." While talking, Petra gets sidetracked by kneeling down to poke at the grills. She mumbles, not to Kale, 'no point in trying to salvage these, really, it'd be more space-efficient to get custom-ordered...'. She opens up the cabinet below to look at how the propane canisters feed into the grills, folding her legs into a sloppy bow on the ground while discrete droplets of morphmetal around her form into tools. "Yeah, people get hurt even just doing construction work, like, all the time. Do you think people who run contracting companies worry about their people dying every time they set out for a job?" Petra doesn't say it like a rhetorical question. "It's totally possible. Honestly, I don't know how anyone manages to deal with it." The sunflower seed that Petra spits onto the floor of this food truck likely isn't the first one to have landed there over the course of the truck's life, but it's still gross for Kale specifically. "I'm not really any good at giving orders. I basically just act, like, I'm the same level of employee as they are. Lilian might have more feelings about responsibility, and delegation and whatever... and when you're supposed to feel like you're at fault or not. I just try and do my best for them. I've probably got less of an idea of how to deal with fucking that up than even you do." Petra raises up a hand for a taco. "Sure-- I'll take a tofu one. Do you want to take a trip into the dungeon after?"
Kale Hearthward	"That's still... I mean it probably doesn't scale well, but that sounds like it works pretty well for you." Tacos are consumed, custom grills are ordered, and then - mystery dungeon time! The randomized terrain tilesets are made from the memories of everyone who's entered it recently - probably fortunately for Petra, it can't read her, so it's mostly Windswept Continent and Paladins Bases tilesets since it's been Kale's crew that's been using it. There's real treasure on the ground - tools, strange otherworldly fruits ("It's all been safe to eat so far") and rarely a chunk of valuable material. It's not enough to get rich quick on a single run (or even many runs) but still very lucrative. Assuming the randomly generated solid-holographic enemies (again based on whoever's entered it recently) don't get you first, anyway. It is, actually, a pretty fun time? (Probably more fun than the previous encounter with mystery dungeons, which had Petra as a codependent tiny rodent that had to stay home, and Kale in a body that was always literally fighting itself.) There's guiltfree things to fight, a maze to puzzle through, and shiny things to find. It'll get old if that's all that they do, but in short bursts it's the ideal adventurer outing? "Thanks Petra," says Kale when it's all done. "I'll send you an invite when we're ready to have the first official launch."