Fear me or love me

Luckily, their network was only accessible to civilized users. Rook couldn't help a small grin when Russell was the first to be mentioned. She would have to bake him some cookies in return for dragging him into the interdimensional tea club.

The time Shade spent huffing at the wires was an excellent occasion for Rook to have a little snack of her own. She unwrapped a single chocolate chip cookie and quietly munched away. It was up to Edmund to tune the crystals anyway. The old captain waited for Shade to be done, before diving into the board. The crystals activated as soon as he phased back out.

"There ye go, laddie! Ye did good."

"Yeah, it looks like it's working right. Let's put everything back together and go try these bad boys out."

Call him an old man if you wanted, but he could not get behind the trend of people being absorbed in screens instead of the actual physical world around them.

He was satisfied seeing that the crystals lit up when Edmund interacted with them. It would have been very irritating if they hadn't and then they had to work backwards to figure out what exactly had gone wrong. Even though this whole process had been going pretty well it didn't make him want to get into electronics repair. It was all very tedious.

"Very good then. Let's finish this."

Even as the joke didn't land with all the present, the group was still working meticulously, this time to ensure the crystals on Shade's end would be connected perfectly. It was a bit frustrating having to do so without touching any of it, but it definitely wasn't going as badly as Rook had told them to expect.

"Well, that isn't very new for me. It'd be a novelty if I had to use a crystal ball." It was a totally different shape, after all. "But hey, if it works well enough, maybe we could set things up so you can contact more people."

So the burden of relaying the city's latest gossip wouldn’t fall entirely on her. Rook grabbed some wire cutters and began tying the other end of the wire. The crystal was then positioned on the board and expertly poked to check it would stay in place.

"And that's about it. We can tape it down too later but I guess it's the time of truth. Edmund?"

"Now that would be useful. If I'll be using telecommunications technology anyway, I may as well take full advantage of it. Do you think a connection with Russell could be established?"

Not that Russell was here at the moment to give his thoughts on the idea, but Shade knew better than to think he would've declined. It did take some of the pressure off of Rook from being the middleman in communication.

The gears were definitely turning in his head, trying to work out a way to fight this guy without landing himself on Doc's shitlist.

"Who the fuck are you?"

And what a charming opener it was.

There's a rather uncomfortable BONE CRACKING noise as he tilts his head in response to the 'no.'

He had never seen this guy in his life. Big though. Very big. Would be fun to fight. Unfortunately, not his assignment. Therefore, not worth engaging.

She definitely had some experience with that. Nevertheless, Rook's grimace was entirely due to some of the mystery paste spilling on her tools, as it unfortunately couldn't be simply magicked away.

"Yes, that's right. This is what you use when you don't have all of Willow's fancy tech."

"Or electricity." Edmund added.

"Yes. This type of crystals is designed after the ones powering Edmund's ship. He suggested we pick copper to stabilize the connection. That's kind of funny, actually."

That would however remain a joke between the two engineers.

Though more of his had been being interested in someone who wanted absolutely nothing to do with him.

Needless to say, the engineering joke was completely lost on Shade though and only received a slow blink in reply. He wasn't even going to ask for an explanation as to why copper was funny here. He had a feeling the punchline would not have been worth it.

It was a small payback for the naps she had been missing out on. The ghosts were doing a good job at diverting the attention from Rook's disappointment, at least. They were the first to admit they looked silly with their phones.

"He sure is. Have you even met Josh? He likes to study on the roof sometimes." The fact they kept a pool up there probably had nothing to do with it.

But as Shade was keeping up so far, Rook motioned the pirates to get back to work. They clearly had the first step figured out, there was no need to address what had to be done to turn regular thermal paste into the formless substance they were using. She picked up the remaining crystal and let it slowly float around her index finger.

"So, the crystals you're about to place are the heart of your new radio. Once bound, they'll be sending and receiving signals across the void."

"Dat'd be 'voids', wee phoenix!" Edmund chimed in.

Apparently he'd gotten a promotion from when Rook had initially declared them to be friends. Yes, he was keeping track of that. He'd been getting more used to the concept but it was still relatively new.

"I've not yet had the pleasure, but perhaps I'll see him sometime then." Considering how many times he'd shown up at said roof. All it'd take was Rook trying to take a nap while Josh was also there.

"So these would be the key that's allowing us to defy a radio's typical range and capabilities."

It made sense, even without a full technical explanation. Put the magical crystal in the radio to let it talk across dimensions, like attaching a special antenna.

After a long moment of pondering, the hologram begrudgingly sighed.

WEEEEEEE. TEAM STATUS QUO IS BLASTING OFF AGAIN!

He probably deserved that, really.

Was this some sort of nightmare?

"WHY WON'T YOU LEAVE ME ALONE!?"

Unfortunately for Hank, he was not strong enough to fight against someone that much bigger than him, even if he was going to try.

He squirmed around for a bit helplessly, before locking eyes onto Shade. He was contemplating something. Something he didn't normally do.

Fuck it.

Either way, Shade let out a shout that was a mix of shock and rage before proceeding to yeet Hank like a baseball.