#shruggernaut

(the ask meme again)

7: What’s your strangest talent?

I learned contact juggling in college as a way of avoiding homework in college

43: Do you have any nicknames?

One of the many upsides to being named Jareth is that it shortens to ‘wrath’ which is a pretty great nickname, 

74: What’s a song that always makes you happy when you hear it?

Yeah it tends to throw you out of whack if you're aligned with that planet(s), plus the full moon tends to do that with most people. With so many planets in retrograde it'd affect more people.

"We've been borrowing Cabal guns for years. Guess it's only fair they start using some of ours."

Dario-9 looked up from the datapad he'd been reading. "What are you talking about?"

Edna flipped her own pad toward him and pointed at a subtitle on its screen. "Word is Empress Caiatl got one of these numbers from Zavala—scaled up for a Cabal operator, of course. Damn, the caliber on that must be huge..." She looked off to the side, counting with her fingers as she worked out a quick calculation.

"Oh, that." Dario leaned back again and resumed the precarious tilt of his chair. "A state gift from our leader to the leader of the Cabal Ascendancy hardly amounts to the Cabal taking up human-made arms."

"I dunno..." Edna skimmed the report again. "Historically, the Cabal have been all about incorporating acquired tech into their arsenals. Caiatl may be taking them in a new direction, but why wouldn't that still include using what they get their hands on?"

Dario gave a small shrug. "Maybe."

"You don't find this at all interesting?"

The Hunter let his chair rock forward onto its front feet, and set his datapad down on the desk between him and the Titan. "Interesting? Sure. Important? Not really. Why are you so wrapped up in it?"

Edna put her pad down on the desk and crossed her well-muscled arms. "I'm not wrapped up. I just think it's neat."

"You have to write something."

Javier slumped back in his chair, the open document on the screen before him conspicuously empty. He looked up at Edna, desperately. "Must I?"

The Titan nodded gravely. "You must. You took a job. When you take a job, you gotta get it done."

"Ugh." Javier pressed his hands over his face.

"What's the problem, anyway?" Edna asked, toying with an antique pistol on Javier's shelf. "Should be easy work for you, reviewing a gun."

Javier glared out through a gap in his fingers. "I couldn't give less of a fuck about Suros' latest iteration of their uninspired, bog-standard hand cannon. There is nothing to say about it beyond the fact it works and its fine."

"Sounds like someone wishes he hadn't left his old job."

"I didn't leave, I got laid off—and Häkke's benefits sucked anyway. But at least their guns were good."

Edna raised an eyebrow. "Suros' guns aren't good?"

Slumping further into his seat, Javier raised a hand to fend off any impending criticism. "I'm not saying they don't make something good now and then, but let's not mess about, eh? Suros has been riding on the success of the Regime line and its old artificial scarcity for years, and strictly speaking they didn't even design that platform."

"So maybe you should say that." Edna returned the ancient handgun to the shelf and leaned close to examine a row of archaic ammunition specimens.

"Ha, yeah, sure—and lose my job without even getting my first article published. Solid advice."

The Titan crossed her arms, which was like two strong trees growing around each others, and shook her head. "I'm not saying you should shit on Suros' entire business. I'm saying you should talk about how the company's reputation is built upon the Regime, and situate this new piece in terms of that lineage."

Javier blinked and sat up partway. "Situate? Did you say situate?"

Edna shrugged smugly. "Contrary to popular belief, Titans can read, you know—and some of us do."

Edna leaned against her Warlock friend’s workbench, eyeballing the assortment of unfinished projects and incomplete components, all neatly arrayed in small trays or tins or small squares of greasy cloth. Only one apparently finished thing lay among the rest: an unassuming sidearm with an integrated suppressor.

Curious, she picked it up. The gun was tiny in her gauntleted hand. Edna turned it over, back and forth, and tested the slide. The suppressor, a cylindrical barrel extension fixed to the muzzle, had a graceful swirl turned in its exterior casing.

“What’s the swirl for?” she called out to Teri-8.

“What swirl?” came the Warlock’s reply, muffled by the sound of the shower and the half-open door between them. Steam wafted from the washroom, carrying earthy, herbaceous scents.

“The swirl in this gun here, on the suppressor. The rest of it is so... utilitarian.”

“Dunno,” Teri called back as the shower squeaked off. “Even utilitarian things benefit from a little embellishment sometimes.”

Edna shrugged to herself. “I guess.”

“Take me, for instance,” the Warlock said, stepping through the steam into the doorway. She’d folded her towel and thrown it over one shoulder. Her robes still lay draped on the chair by the little kitchen table. “My body is a machine, a made thing designed with utility in mind. And yet—” she gestured to herself, touching the fingertips of one hand to the edge of her synthetic collarbone, “—I am not without certain embellishments.”

Despite herself, Edna stared, the odd little pistol still clenched in her hand.

“You don’t think it’s a little... untoward? Showing up to a Vanguard strategic meeting like that?”

“I tried all morning to get these stupid wires out of my shell, but something is completely stuck in there. You’re welcome to take a crack at it, but we’re already running late.”

“How did this even happen?”

“I don’t know, but it’s the last time I’m going to one of your friend’s wild end-of-Dawning parties. Outrageous.”

“Shruggernaut’s just trying to show everyone a good time...”

“Well I didn’t have a good time when somebody started stringing all the Ghosts together with these silly lights.”

“If you’ll just... hold still a minute, I can cut the wires off, at least, and maybe the stuck bit won’t show...”

“No! You’re gonna be as embarrassed as I am in this meeting, but at least we won’t be late!”

“You don’t think it’s a little... lazy?”

“Look, we deserve a night off, it’s OK to go a party once in a while...”

“No, no, I mean this... costume.”

“Oh. Lazy? No. No, it’s good.”

“But it’s just... old tape. Old tape and a tired trope.”

“Pre-Golden Age horror still plays well, trust me.”

“Even if it does... It’s just so low-effort. I feel like I’ll be laughed out of the party.”

“Please. Didn’t you read the invitation? ‘Costumes required—bad costumes only.’ Shruggernaut’s all but said the party is just an excuse to get completely smashed. Nobody’s gonna care how cheap our costumes are.”

“So why are you putting on all that fancy armor?”

“Because I’m going as Zavala.”

“But you don’t look anything like him.”

“Exactly. That’s why it’s a bad costume. Shrugs’ll love it.”

“Time to ring in the new year.”

“What are you talking about? Solstice was last week, it’s already the new year.”

“I’m allowing leeway for calendrical variations. And there’s still plenty of ringing to do after the first week anyway. The Dawning continues, after all.”

“OK, granted—but what does that have to do with a fusion rifle?”

“How better to kick off the festivities than with a little voopage?”

“What festivities?”

“Are you deliberately missing the point here or are you, like, tired or something?”

“Sorry, definitely the latter.”

“Partying late again?”

“Shruggernaut kept me up all night playing some weird ancient game. Pops, or... poms, or something. Didn’t quite retain the details after drinking her nog all night, but you sit on the ground and slam little discs into a stack of other little discs... I didn’t really get it, but Shrugs was alarmingly into it.”

“Lucky you, spending the night at Edna’s. Sounds like you had a real good time.”

“It wasn’t like that... She had half a dozen people stay late, mostly her Titan friends who are apparently all obsessed with this stupid game. Dammit, what was it called? Dugs?”

“Sounds like you need to clear your head. A little voop will be just the thing.”

“I don’t know why you think a fusion rifle is going to help with a hangover.”

“Well, if the brisk air on the Europan ice doesn’t do it, then total disintegration will.”

“You wanna... shoot me?”

“Why not? A quick voop, you’re evaporated, your Ghost brings you back, and poof! No hangover.”

“...I think I’ll try coffee first.”