riverviewlogs | introductory mingle: CARNIVALE

( continued from here )

[ Hana was chewing dutifully on the sweet she had picked up as she listened to him. She could only assume that he must have been like her— one of the "displaced." He certainly didn't strike her as someone who's always lived here but it was a pleasant surprise to meet someone from an alternate reality who was also a pilot. She couldn't say that she'd been one "for quite a while," like he had, but she couldn't imagine herself being anything other than what she was now.

She leaned back in the bench a little, back against the alley wall, and drew one of her knees up to rest her chin on it as she looked at him. ]

What's it like, being a pilot in space? I've never been out to space before. Well— [ she chuckled. ] I have now, I guess.

[ Seeing as Quarantine was on a moon of an entirely different planet in an entirely different plane of reality, and all. ]

[Shiro definitely was one of the displaced, considering he had never seen this place before, even in their travels with Voltron. He had seen a lot of things, but not this. Though he did find something pleasant in finding another pilot here. He found himself wondering about the type of crafts she had in her world]

It's different than piloting in atmosphere. You don't have such things as wind resistance or weather to take into consideration. However, you also don't have resistance to slow down, turning can be harder, and there are much larger obstacles you could run into.

[He chuckled as he took a bite of the food that he had taken from the offered plates]

I don't know what it is, but this thing is really good. Also yeah, I guess you have been to space now. Even if you weren't quite expecting it.

I take it you don't do much piloting off world.

[ As he explained what it was like to pilot in space, Hana turned her head, still resting it on her knee, and stared ahead at the wall of the alley across from where they sat. She tried to imagine in her head as he spoke what that would be like, to move about in space and have to dodge things like asteroids and debris without being able to slow down or turn the way she knew she could in her own mech. There was a thoughtful look on her face before she looked back at him with a smile and reached out to grab another piece of food, this time from the savory plate. ]

I don't know what that is either, by the way. Couldn't hear the guy in the booth over the music but it looked good and now I know that it tastes good too!

[ At his assumption, though, she nodded. ]

Negative. Like I said, I'd never been to space and I just got here, like, not that long ago? I haven't gotten to pilot anything here yet.

[ She looked down at the food between her fingers, noting its appearance. ]

All the piloting I did back home was on just on Earth. Mostly just in my country.

[He was quiet for a few moments enjoying his snack while she looked thoughtfully at his explanation of how a ship would work in space. He had spent much of his teenage years learning about piloting both in the atmosphere and in space. He had even piloted a few missions even before the Kerberos mission where all of this had happened and he had ended up with the lions]

Well, you’ll have to point me to which one it was. I think Keith might enjoy this too.

[He knew the younger paladins would be looking forward to having real non-food goo food. He pulled his legs up to sit cross legged on the bench while she spoke. Having finished his snack, he reached over to take an item from the sweets plate. Like the other one, it was covered in powdered sugar, but he didn’t particularly care]

A shame that you haven’t had the chance to pilot here. Hopefully you’ll get to. Perhaps you’ll get the chance to pilot in the space while you are here.

Edited 2017-07-23 04:19 (UTC)

[ She gave a little shrug of her shoulders before she popped the snack into her mouth, devouring it in effectively one gulp. Boot camp for the Perimeter Guard was going about as tiresome as one would expect a boot camp would be, even worse for the fact that this was the second time Hana's had to go through a boot camp in recent history, but no amount of her complaining and insisting she was a competent soldier would beat protocol. She hoped that after that she would get to pilot something. They did put her down as a Special Vehicle Operator, after all. ]

Guess that depends what the Perimeter Guard wants to do with me. Hopefully something exciting!

[ She drew her other knee up close, then, curling up on top of the bench. ]

You know Keith? The one that— [ she furrowed her brow and frowned at him and looked, generally, like an angry cat, ] looks like this a lot?

[Shiro knew the same thing. He was just starting out the Perimeter Guard and it was like starting over because they had to know the person they were accepting could do it. Luckily for him, after actual boot camp with Galaxy Garrison and a year in the Galra prison, training here was nothing.

Still frustrating given his background]

Hopefully. Seems like there will be plenty of opportunities for you to show what you can do.

[At the imitation of Keith, Shiro couldn't help himself. He did laugh. He shouldn't have, but he did] Yep. That's him. He's my teammate.

[ Shiro seemed like such a serious kind of guy based entirely on the past few minutes of this first impression, so Hana was a little relieved that he could give a real laugh after all, and she couldn't help but laugh a little, herself. So the two of them had come from the same place; it figured in, she supposed, with what Keith was saying about space and his sword (after he stopped pointing the thing at her, at least). She didn't know he was a pilot, too. But more importantly: ]

Is he always that grumpy?

[ She stretched her arms out a bit. ]

And— well, the best thing would be if my mech suddenly wound up here, but I guess I could see about piloting other things too.

[He could be very serious. In fact he wouldn't really admit that he could be anything else, but he did find the antics of the younger paladins amusing. The food goo fight as a way to get back at Allura for all of "bonding" exercises she had made them do for example, complete with big dopey grin at how much fun it had been to do something so silly]

Unfortunately yes, he frequently is. Not all the time.

[Keith's temper maybe him appear grumpier than he was. If she had met him soon after arriving, he wouldn't have been in the best mood and could have been rather threatening because that's unfortunately what Keith did. At least since they were both here, Keith would feel more at ease]

Hmm... that would be the most ideal. I don't know much about how this place works and what the odds are of getting it. I would like to see it though if it does show up.

[ She gave a quiet "huh," in contemplation at trying to imagine someone being so grumpy so much of the time, and wondered what he was like on a team. There were a few grumps on her own squadron at home, sure, so maybe it was a similar kind of deal.

But then he mentioned wanting to see her mech and— she recognized a chance to show off and there was no way she wasn't going to take it. She pulls her phone out with a bit of excitement gleaming in her eyes. ]

If your mech's a black lion, then mine's a pink bunny. I have pics on my phone. Wanna see?

[Well, he was grump some times, but he was also an excellent pilot and when he actually let himself not be serious, Keith could be a lot of fun. He had shown that plenty of times, but he was also quick to get annoyed if things irritated him.

He raised an eyebrow as she pulled out her phone. But that's when he realized she wanted to show him pictures of the mech]

Of course I want to see your pink bunny mech.

[Never a phrase he would have thought he'd say]

Edited 2017-07-26 02:09 (UTC)

[ She was more than happy to show off her MEKA unit, and so she smiled at him again when he agreed to look at a picture or ten. Being a military pilot might not have been a life Hana really chose for herself, having been drafted, but she'd since become proud of what she'd become, and what it meant for the safety of her country. But, also, her mech was state-of-the-art technology. How could she not be proud about it?

It took her only a moment or two of scrolling through her phone before she found a picture to show Shiro. She held the phone up at him to let him look at it. It wasn't exactly shaped like a bunny, but that was always how she'd thought of it and it suited her piloting style quite well. Quick, mobile, powerful. There wasa pink bunny, though, on Hana's flight suit. ]

Ta-dah! That's a state-of-the-art piloted MEKA unit! MEKA, by the way, stands for "Mobile Exo-force of the Korean Army." And there's me next to it!

[As she began to look for a picture on her phone, he waited patiently, curious as to what this looked like. The lions were fairly similar to the anatomy to large cats, at least that he knew about from having seen them from a distance. How close would this look to an actual rabbit?

It made him wish that he had had a way to take pictures of the lions. He had never thought that he would need it. He had been around the lions; people knew about them, knew what they looked like, could see them when it was out of the Castle of Lions. He had never considered there was a moment where he would want to see Black and not be able to. There were no pictures of Black.

He leaned closer as she turned the phone to him. He studied the suit. Well it was vaguely like bunny. He could see the basic look to it. And then the bunny on her suit]

Ah ha. Very nice. That's a standard model?

[He could guess that was her next to it]

[ She looked thoughtful at his question. Technically speaking, the standard model of a MEKA unit was an unmanned drone. Pilots came into the equation because the colossal omnic attacking Korea and its neighbors grew smart enough to disrupt the drone control networks... but while Hana was proud that she could represent and defend her country by becoming a pilot, she wasn't sure how much a stranger from a different reality would really appreciate that story. In the end, she settled for an easier answer. ]

Kinda. They're definitely not all pink, just mine. [ She chuckled. ] But they all basically look like that, though sometimes we add our own stuff to it. Make it more personal, you know?

Edited 2017-07-29 19:35 (UTC)

Well, I didn't expect them all to be pink. A whole army of them might be a little obvious.

[Pink was not exactly a subtle color. One ship might be missed, but a large group would be easy to spot and would attract attention]

It's good though you can make them personal. It is your mech after all. We haven't really be able to do that with our lions though Pidge took some of the tech she found in our ship and reserve engineered it to give it to her lion so Green has the ability to go invisible. That's the most that's been done.

[ There was definitely nothing subtle about D.Va, whether it was her piloting style or her entire personality.

She let her hand with her phone drop back down so she could pick up another piece of food, something from the sweet plate, and there was a little smile on her face ash she looked back on the time she'd spent so far as a pilot. It hadn't been that long, really, but it's been such an important part of her life. ]

Some of us still get sponsorship gigs from when we were pros. [ Gamers, she meant. The military needed people who had the necessary reflexes to pilot against an ever-evolving machine. ] So that's part of how we can customize. How do you even customize a space lion mech, though? Sounds fun!

[Nope, Shiro would not use subtle describe her even as little as he knew about her.

Shiro picked up another piece of food as well when she put her phone down to get one, this one was from the savory plate. There were a lot of good things that they had here. He was going to have to buy the next round since she was sharing with him while they sat here and talked.

His brow quirked as she said "sponsorship" and "pro". That was not exactly what he had been expecting. He would get to that]

You can't really do much especially since they are sentient. Like I said, Pidge managed to give her lion invisibility. So far that's it.

So what are these sponsorships? And pro what?

[ Hana couldn't even imagine what it would be like to pilot something that had its own thoughts and feelings, although if she had to imagine it, she and her bunny mech would probably get along perfectly. Hana took a lot of time to make sure she was completely in tune with how Hana liked to pilot, after all. Plus the sponsorships helped...

She reached up with her free hand and brushed her hair back, tucking it behind her ear. It was weird trying to explain it all to someone who didn't know— how could he, since he wasn't even from the same reality or whatever— because she was used to everyone just knowing. About D.Va, about why she and other pros were drafted into the military. ]

Sponsorships... like in sports. I was a pro-gamer, you know! #1 ranked, too. Before I became a pilot. A lot of my sponsorships carried over since I ended up being so good at it, they thought they could help out. [ and advertise themselves in the process. But that wasn't something she wanted to get into. ]

[It was an easy thing for Shiro to spot, given he knew the feeling well. When Hana tucked her hair behind her ear and spoke, he knew exactly what it was. She was uncomfortable with that topic. He hadn't realized it would be a problem but her body language told him that it was.

So he didn't press it. It was better to pick a new topic and take the focus off that]

Huh... Back home, before all of this happened, I was an expedition pilot with the Galaxy Garrison. Basically gathering information from our solar system. They definitely didn't have anything like your MEKA.

[Pulling the attention off of her and back onto himself so she didn't feel uncomfortable. They could go a completely different direction with the conversation now]

[ It wasn't so much an uncomfortable topic as it was that she just— wasn't sure how to go about it with someone from a different reality. She'd have to explain everything about the Omnic Crisis and MEKA's history and Overwatch and she just wasn't feeling up to it, sitting in an alleyway with someone she'd just met. But there was something that felt— welcoming? About Shiro, like she could confide in him despite the fact that they'd just met, so maybe she could try talking about it again another time.

In any case, she was a little relieved when he shifted the topic away. Another time, she was sure, she would totally want to brag and boast about her days as a pro and how she became a pilot from there. She did her part then to listen to him intently. ]

So you went on space expeditions, right? Was that a big deal where you're from? We haven't really made it past the moon, where I'm from, though I think Keith said something about Pluto...

[There were likely going to be a number of things for both of them that it was just difficult to have to explain. To much information to provide as background for the other person to understand. Given they weren't from the same worlds, that was bound to happen.

But of course in his effort to pull it off a difficult subject for her, it had brought it closer to his difficult topics. And this came out when she mentioned Keith bringing up Pluto. Yes, that was where everything had changed for him. He took a breath before continuing and nodded]

Yeah, it was. The Galaxy Garrison was not only a facility for pilots trained in space exploration and travel but they also trained cadets for the same careers. What they do with those skills is of course up to them.

Myself, Commander Holt, and his son Matt were assigned to a exploration mission of Pluto's moon Kerberos. It was supposed to be a simple mission but...

[He looked down at his hand hidden partially by the jacket]

That's where things stopped being simple.

[ She had taken to chewing thoughtfully on her food while she listened to him, but she got the distinct feeling as he drew in a breath before responding that it wasn't an easy topic for him, either. Yet there he was, talking about it. Hana was genuinely curious, of course. She knew that there was a colony on the moon where she was from but nothing as forward as sending people out to the edge of the solar system, and they definitely didn't have anything what the Galaxy Garrison sounded like. She had to wonder what else might be different about their worlds.

But she also wondered what he was saying had to do with his hand; her gaze followed his down his arm and eventually to his hand. It— didn't seem like it would be a fun story. She held her hand up at him, as though to signal him to stop there. ]

You don't have to tell me, you know. I was just curious. Plus we're eating really good food!

[ She gave a small smile. ] But if you do wanna tell me, maybe we can hang out again sometime.

[Shiro wasn't sure if he had been about to tell her but the raised hand stopped him before he did. She was right, completely right. He didn't have to tell her and this probably wasn't the best time to tell her considering how long had they known each other. Not very long. It wasn't something that he really wanted to burden someone with so soon.

He gave her a faint smile in response]

You're right. We don't have to talk about that now. Let's just enjoy the food.

[Perhaps later, they would both be able to share the problems that they had. For now, it was better that they not]

introductory mingle: CARNIVALE

for shiro

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