Chancestander:

chancestander​:

Rex was legitimately about to answer the question about spare parts– the thermic panels he could have done something about. Fusion cores, a little trickier. But like this sector of space being the ‘Monster Belt’ or Earth being a den of super powers and rule-bending physics, did have some surprises on occasion.

“Maybe we could– oh. Oh! Haha. Okay, sure: I think I can do with something like that. I do love a good bit of fruit… sweet, full of vitamins…”

Rex laughed a bit before following Krigg to retrieve the foodstuffs. Whatever bounty hunters or other trouble came around, at least now he’d have some idea who, what, and where to look when he heard a commotion.

“Monster belt, huh? I guess there are a lot out here. Whether bred or drawn this way from deeper space. Earth’s always been a hotspot for wild stuff. I mean, a Space Kraken! I gotta go up there and see one of those for myself.”

“Y’know, sweetness in fruits is not that common. Not every planet’s biosphere figured that sticking some sweet goodness into a seed dispersal method worked. Sometimes they’re just... fat. And they taste like it too.” Krigg let out a small snort of amusement as Rex rebounded from her joke without missing a beat, a chipper smile quirking the corners of her mouth. She could appreciate someone who rolled with the punches. The small alien trotted back to the entrance hatch of her ship and casually crossed her arms over her chest, shooting a short look over her shoulder.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to watch you bite into a butterfruit without telling you which is what.” She let out a mischievous cackle, eyes shining with a light twinkle of amusement. Lips briefly pulled back in a proper grin, exposing two rows of shining, needle-like fangs that would have made a deepsea fish flush in modesty. Their owner didn’t show off for very long, and without further ceremony, she gave a short hop and dropped down the access shaft to her ship’s interior.

And for once, Krigg was ever-so-glad that the Revenger had once been a standardized ship - Rex could fit down the chute without squeezing, and stand up on the command deck without banging his head. As opposed to the vivid racecar red and gold of the Revenger’s hull, the living space was a semi-circular room painted in a decidedly muted mix of off-white and grey, as properly un-bombastic as it got. It felt a little too big considering the semi-circular console covered in keypads and screens sitting in front of the cockpit window was Krigg-sized, complete with a captain’s seat just right for her.

“Well, guess I’ll be seeing plenty of weird nonsense while I’m around. If you’re living there though, I guess I don’t have to worry TOO much about the curious sciencey types that wanna’ see people’s insides to get to know them!” Krigg chuffed, making a quick mental note of the fact that Rex seemed to mention quite casually his ability to achieve space-borne flight. Good to know for later, she supposed. “Seriously though, bred? Are people keeping lizards of unusual size in their backyards around here? Is it like - a cultural thing? “Welp, honey, I’m gonna’ walk the lizard!” Pfffffff-”

Krigg’s spitballing was interrupted in a light snort at her own joke. She finished trotting over to a closed room, and slapped the opening interruptor. Which given the lighter square of material surrounded by weld marks right above it, had been moved ever-so-slightly downwards at some point. The door’s pannels slid open from a seam in their center, revealing what looked like a pantry, complete with well-stacked shelves of unknown products, and a freezer with a sliding door at the top...

Which was not short person-friendly, given that when Krigg made a beeline for it, she had to climb over the edge to slide the door open and stick her upper body in to rummage through it.

“What you feeling for, anyways? Sweet, sour, slightly acidic, or something real weird?” She called out, over the noise of boxes being moved about.

5mind​:

Impressive. Somehow the small stranger seemed to be even more agitated than when she was hollering at them. Was it something they said? Oh it was definitely something they said.  

Now she was trying so damn hard to intimidate them. It was a little funny, they had to admit. A sense of humour was something Fivemind only developed later in what can be considered its life, and thus something it does not feel comfortable expressing openly. All for the better, considering that laughing would only exacerbate the situation. 

And it seemed the other had every right to be angry anyways. 

“Oh! You live in this!” the red one replied. “My apologies.”

This stranger had sharp eyes it seemed. And here the machine thought no one would notice if it just made of with a singular screw ( at least not until when its too late). Scavengers they may be but sabotaging someone’s home and livelihood was…well, that’s just not what heroes do. Not unless if the other was evil anyways.

“We were thinking of taking at least a little of your ship for…..further analysis.” The blue one spoke up this time. In contrast to her red plated counterpart, her speech was much more even in tone and very obviously synthetic. ”But seeing how this is your home, I suppose we should have just asked first.”

“Let us put it this way,” Red One said, “We were just admiring the craftsmanship of your vehicle-” 

Blue Two completed the sentence, “- enough to want to take it apart.”

“We will not though!” 

This would be so much more convincing if Red’s bladed arm wasn’t idly twitching and Blue didn’t still have the screwdriver in her hand.

“IN “THIS”. Really? My beloved Revenger, just a mere THIS? Come on.” Krigg huffed sharply, tilting her chin up for emphasis as she strolled around the two drones to place herself quite strategically between the screwdriver-weilding stranger, and her adored ship. She was not going to be caught taking risks of them nicking off with a small pannel that’d bring a crucial function of the ship unexpectedly offline.

The mentions of asking first before taking the ship apart after certainly struck her as not entirely honest. She narrowed her eyes, glaring quietly at the two drones, one sporting a much less smoothed out voice box. Were the two AI, or just remote drones of various degrees of quality? No, no, the second one had what sounded like a voice synthetizer found in basic AI.

“I don’t care if it’s “a bit”, or if you should have asked - don’t make me have to do repairs! If you want to get some scrap metal to, I don’t know, chew on or something, I have spare bits that don’t require me replacing something yet for you to mess them up!” Krigg ends up huffing, hands plopped onto her hips for added emphasis, staring with a rather blatant lack of trust at the two drones.

If giving them some of the metal scrap from repair jobs she did semi-frequently could keep the metal-crazy drone chipmunks AWAY from the Revenger, then it was honestly better than being arsed to find a new parking spot. Or fighting them off. It wasn’t that she *feared* them by any stretch of the imagination, but they were still heavy duty machinery with sharp blades strapped to it.

Krigg was confident, not stupid.

5mind​:

@stxr-bxster

There was a spaceship next to the scrapyard. No other way to put. There was a completely intact spacecraft in the little clearing next to Fivemind’s favourite scavenging spot. 

The blue android had come here to scavenge with the red one not too far behind. Her cracked screen of a visor scanned the alien vehicle. Fivemind had an eye for hardware, and there was no way this thing was constructed anywhere around here. 

Perhaps it was supposed to go inside the scrapyard? At least that was what the AI hoped. It looked a bit too cared for to be scrap. Blue unholstered her weapon and gave the spacecraft a prod. A rather hard prod.

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP-!

“GAH!”

Krigg startled, the small piece of aluminium framing she’d been inspecting flying out of her hands as a noisy, high-pitched ringing that was particularly harsh on her sensitive antennae sounded off from what felt like just around the corner.

The small alien began furiously patting at her coat, trying to locate the source of the familiar noise from hell. Why-oh-why had she decided to use such an agressive sound for urgent alarms?! On one end, it was impossible to ignore, which was the point of it, but having the equivalent of an ultrasound airhorn blast catch your attention was not fun.

Finally, she managed to fish out from an inner pocket the small device responsible for the screaming, turning it off with a press of her thumb against the big ol’ blinking button. She squinted, trying to muster up the information of WHAT the oval remote was. Perks of having so many gadgets - sometimes you just forgot what one given thing di-

The proximity alarm. The information sprang to life in her mind rather unexpectedly, and with enough force to leave her donwright scowling.

Of all the times for her to go scrounging for small recyclable bits in the nearest deposit of garbage - The alien sprung from a crouch to standing, and made a beeline back towards her beloved Revenger, leaping from discarded kitchen appliance to gutted cars full speed ahead. If she was lucky, the proximity alarm was just some animal poking at the ship, looking to use it as a back scratcher. If it was not...

---------------------

It took entirely too long for her taste to come to a skidding halt in the small clearing she’d parked her ship in. And she quickly found out that it was not the best case scenario when she spotted two large humanoid robots painted vivid colors, assembled from mismatched parts of discarded plating, milling about her Revenger. One of whom was *poking* it with a broken street lamp. A sharp, jagged piece of metal. She could almost feel the paint flaking off.

Oh, hell no.

“AY! GARBAGE RANGERS! STOP TOUCHING MY SHIT!”

Perhaps the angry screech would have been more intimidating if Krigg didn’t actually reach the smallest robot’s waist, barely.

*Hey so uh, since I’m barely ever on this blog - I figured I needed to repurpose it. I’ll be moving Cornelia to a side-blog over the course of a little while, and remake the main blog into something else. I still love my little munchkin but the energy’s just not been into it and I want to try new things.*

*Be seeing you when I actually get to it*

Carcinisation - or, why invasive species suck.

Phenotype Hr-0017, or, as it is more commonly known, the Chain Crab, is a large hyperpredator that eats just about everything it can fit down its gob. What does not is torn into smaller chunks for consumption by their pincers. Mature specimens can reach the size of a small bus, and they’re efficient burrowers at all stages of life.

As far as the invasive species of the collection designated as "Horde" go, it's a problem in a big, heavily armored package with a well-protected nervous chord under a heavy carapace. New specimens born from stranded Horde individuals do not bear the Denominator parasite, yet survive without complications, which suggests that the specie's assimilation was recent, and the original bioform relatively untouched. They reproduce quickly through parthogenesis, making infestations painfully difficult to get rid of.

Comissioned P.R.O. dispatches are a common method for handling said infestations, as their experience with Horde parasites lends them some expertise in the matter.

5mind​:

Red One perked up. Could’ve sworn their auditory sensors picked up something nearby. Of course, the pitch was a bit too high for them to properly detect. Huh, was this what humans meant when they said their ears rang? 

Blue Two’s sensors did not pick that up. So Fivemind just filed it away as something to look into during their next maintenance check.

The furious outburst that came next, however, both units definitely heard. With an unnerving synchroneity, both androids turn to face the newcomer. Huh, that was weird. There was no one- 

Oh. 

There was someone. A very short someone. Two visors turned down to look at her. 

“What did you just call me….us..?” Red One tilted their head. “That is not who we are, little one.” 

Blue One resumes scanning the ship visually but has ceased poking at it with her pedestrian light. Instead she has opened a small compartment on her thigh out of which she pulled out a screwdriver. 

The possibility of the metal being alien meant that it would be best to take a sample, no matter how small. 

While very much wound up like a grandfather clock, even Krigg couldn’t help but stutter a little in her stiff-legged, purposeful marching advance towards the robotic entities as they turned to face her as one. It didn’t feel like something that an exosuit would do, organic twitch reflex wasn’t that precise.

Remote drones sounded more likely. The small alien took a small, cautious step back, one hand twitching hard towards one of her collapsed plasma pistols tucked under her coat, wary of some form of automated defense system kicking in in response to the holler. The drones’ responses though... weren’t that.

They were to look down, and correct her bellow of anger with some choice... ways to call her.

Little one. LITTLE ONE. Krigg’s translator helpfully supplied that the subtext of the designation, while very much adequate on surface level, was usually geared towards children.

The small extraterrestrial’s lower eyelid twitched, and her back stiffened, chest puffing out and antennae perking up on her head in hopes of making herself look more noticeable. Which worked as well as it usually did when facing down something twice her size. Not-not a whole lot.

“Well, maybe if you weren’t poking at, y’know, my freshly repainted livelihood, mode of transportation, and HOUSE with a pointed, probably rusty metal pole, I would have been bothered to find a correct designation for you lot!” Krigg hissed, levelling a stern glare at the red drone, the one which had decided to adress her in the first place.

“So, kindly vamoose your caboose AWAY from my ship, because it’s not good for the scrapyard-”

Something moving just behind her visual point of focus caught her eye, the faint star-shaped reflection of her pupils shifting just enough to look at the blue drone, which had returned to its own occupations, and pulled from a compartment on its hip a metal tool with a handle attached to a flat-ended metal tube.

“...What’re you trying to do with that?” Her tone felt distracted, a little far away. Not yet aware of the possible disaster about to unfold.