#chibi-dist

Gamma would frown at his Freelancer if he could. “Reggie,” he says carefully, the distortion on the words making it sound slow, glitchy. “This will get you hurt. I can not handle running the time distortion unit on a high functioning frequency without attracting the attention of the Director–”“I’m damn tired of hearing about him, Gamma,” Wyoming sighed stretched out on his bed. “Damn tired.”“–without attracting attention and still be responsible for your biomedical well being in the time distortion loop. I need to-”“Do you pay attention when someone dies, Gamma?” Wyoming asks suddenly. There’s a sudden shift in his tone that registers with Gamma, that makes the AI look toward his Freelancer stretched out on the bunk. Wyoming was staring up at the ceiling, his eyes looking dead and distant. Gamma felt a spike within him that he needed a moment to analyze. Concern. “Reggie?”“When one of them dies, or gets hurt in the field,” Wyoming continues, still not looking at him. Maybe that’s what was disconcerting about it. Reggie always looked at him when they talked, eye contact, he was big on eye contact. But not now. His dark eyes were fixed on a distant spot on the ceiling, dull, almost listless. “Do you pay attention when it happens? Or is it a statistical moment for you?”Gamma starts to run a diagnostic on Wyoming to check his medical scans, worried (that was an emotion he’d been familiar with concerning his sniper) that he was ill.“Whenever a soldier dies in combat or otherwise I take their death into account,” Gamma tells him, hovering closer to Reggie. The blue light of Gamma’s hologram washes out his skin, makes him look ghostly pale.“Whenever a soldier dies,” Wyoming starts, voice quiet, eyes still not looking at him. “I think about how I could have stopped it. One bullet to the right position, one quicker spot, quicker move, call of their name.”Gamma would frown if he had a mouth. There is a long stretch of silence that falls between them, not uncomfortable, but more like… nothing, really. Reggie’s medical scans are clear, but what is even more so is that this is really bothering him. Gamma lets the silence continue for a few moments more before speaking. “…I would be able to run the distortion unit at a lower frequency, but a higher speed. It would give you a limited amount of time to use it, but a higher accuracy and a power boost that would allow us to return virtually anywhere within a sixteen hour time frame.”That seems to sink in. Wyoming blinks and the life comes back to his eyes. He sits up and his mustache twitches as he grins at Gamma like he’s just thought of a briliant joke. Gamma wishes he could smile in return.