#Angela and Ramen are BFFs

[classywastelandbread-blog]

Here have another. 

In which our heroes meet Orisa and Orisa meets some very strange lizards. 

(Thanks @ohayokuroneko for keeping me company while I finished it up.)

[peace-wisepenguin]

Get to know me

get to know you tag

rules: answer 21 questions about yourself then tag 21 people you want to get to know better.

tagged by @socially-awkward-slytherin-vibes

nicknames: Ang, Angie

name: Angela

zodiac: Virgo

favorite musician/group: I don’t really have a favorite band but I’ve been listening to the vamps a lot lately. and Fleetwood Mac

favorite sports team: I haven’t watched a lot of sports recently but I’ll always love the NY Giants... :(

other blogs: nope

asks: I’ve had one ask and that was just someone apologizing for something after they had deleted their blog

how many blogs do you follow: 148

tumblr crushes: I don’t really crush on people but I do enjoy @wolfywordweaver posts a lot

luck number: I don’t believe in luck but my favorite number is 11

what are you wearing right now: A long multicolored skirt with flowers and a black tank top with penguin socks!!

dream vacation: A 3 month long European tour of notable and historical sites. yes. I’m a history nerd.

dream car: I can’t drive so maybe any car with a driver :)

favorite food: sushi, ramen, chocolate

drink of choice: tea but I like to drink wine when I’m out for a nice dinner...which is not often

instruments: I’ve never been very musical

languages: English, French and I can understand some Spanish but I wouldn’t be able to speak or write it

celebrity crushes: none, but my bff talks about Tom Hardy a lot, so...I know stuff about him lol

random fact: I didn’t sleep much last night because our power went out around midnight and then an hour later our friendly neighborhood racoons decided to make a bunch of noise, and then when I had finally fallen asleep again my cat decided she wanted attention and I had to obey her or she would continue to keep me up.

favorite ecosystem: probably terrestrial. I feel very free in a forest

favorite cat species: I love cats but I don’t have a favorite species. My cat is mostly black with some white here and there...idk.

So I don’t really know a lot of people on here and I feel bothersome when I interact with any living species so I don’t think I’ll tag anyone...and I think like four people follow me so--

[classywastelandbread-blog]

Honored Spirits: Email

This chapter kind of got away from me but I thought it’d be fun to explore Ramen and Angela’s relationship since it has been very Hanzo-heavy. 

Inspired in part by conversation with ohayokuroneko.

Hanzo’s dragons enjoy math and science and engineering but Ramen is a little strange and enjoys...art....we’re just going to go with “art”. 

In which Ramen and Angela are BFFs, McCree is a noodle whisperer, Angela is very much an enabler that has little to no shame, and Ramen is given email access and access to the internet. 

At this point, Angela wasn’t too surprised to find Ramen draped over her body when she woke up. Clearly their luminescence was optional because it was as dull as the contraband iguanas her roommate in medical school had kept, possibly in hopes of not disturbing her.

“Guten morgen,” she mumbled to it, flopping a hand tiredly along the bed until she found a part of its cool body for her to pet; it purred, half-lidding its gold-orange eyes contentedly despite the half hearted nature of her petting. Switching to English since she wasn’t sure that the spirit could understand German, she asked, “Does Genji ever notice that you’re missing?”

Ramen bobbed its head though if it was meant in answer to her question she could never be sure.

“Not that I’m complaining,” she continued. “I don’t mind seeing you so often but it makes me wonder sometimes.” Ramen nipped at her playfully. Unfortunately due to the way it was lying over and on her, it only succeeded in pushing its nose into her breast. “You perv,” she muttered halfheartedly, shoving its head away. “Alright, I’m getting out of bed.”

Ramen bobbed its head again and drifted in the air after her, following her into the bathroom until she shooed it out. It scratched at the door and wiggled the door knob – just once each to prove a point – before presumably wandering away.

When she finished showering and getting ready, Angela found Ramen curled up like an enormous snake on her bed. It had clumsily tried to make it for her before giving up. Seeing her, it drifted over and coiled around her neck and torso like a bandolier as she tugged the sheets straight and flat.

Breakfast was a simple affair: an apple, a fried egg, and some of the chili that McCree had made the night before that she took with her to her office. Drifting after her with its claws paddling through the air as if it were swimming, Ramen dropped a banana in front of Lucio’s door; she winced, knowing that the banana would be badly bruised from a meter-high drop…if it survived intact after Lucio left his room. An offering of an orange was more gingerly placed in front of Hana’s room and a single grape at Ana’s. Hanzo and McCree each got half of a cherry and Angela didn’t want to consider what that may mean.

Why the dratted creature did such things, Angela would never know but she had long since given up trying to dissuade it. It got to the point where she would simply carry the extra offerings to prevent further accidents. Ramen would become upset if she broke or cut the cherry for it so she’d carry a tissue with her to wipe the juice from its mouth and talons.

Their morning wanderings done, Angela locked herself in her office, ate her breakfast, and sat down to do her research.

Her first patient of the day was Lucio, who had tripped over the banana. He was pretty sure that he didn’t require stitches but he just wanted to check with her to be sure. After cleaning the wound and giving him a few butterfly bandages to close the gash, she sent him on his way though she did wonder why he tripped over it knowing that Ramen dropped off a piece of fruit in front of his door almost every morning.

She wasn’t too surprised that her next patient was Genji. “If I didn’t know better I’d say you were doing this on purpose,” she quipped with a hint of ice in her voice.

“Not at all,” Genji assured her meekly, eyeing Ramen where it was curled around her half-eaten bowl of chili. It stuck its tongue out at its host and wiggled the forked ends mockingly. “Ramen doesn’t tell me what you do here,” he added even though Angela had never asked. “I’ve tried.”

His panels were stuck together and there was dirt, grass, and neon fibers in the inner workings of his joints. She didn’t want to know why and so ignored it except to consider how to clean everything out. “Armor off,” she told him briskly.

“You should buy me dinner first,” Genji quipped, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively.

He caved under Angela’s unimpressed stare and began stripping off his clothes. As he began unlatching the plates of his armor, Angela sat down at her desk and resumed eating her leftover chili, watching him. “It always tastes better the second day,” she told Ramen and it bobbed its head as if agreeing, its ears pricked curiously toward her.

(She knew for a fact from McCree that the honored spirits couldn’t and didn’t eat; neither could they taste so it was somewhat of a foreign concept to them. Ramen seemed to be fascinated when she described flavors to it, so she had developed somewhat of a habit of doing so when she thought about it.)

“I feel abandoned,” Genji said plaintively, crossing his arms carefully over the exposed panels of his chest as if hiding his nudity. “Forgotten. Woe!”

“If you truly felt so abandoned and forgotten, you probably wouldn’t have left ‘meditation’ with Zenyatta,” Angela said absently, scraping the bowl for the last of the chili. Ramen bared its teeth in an attempt at a human smile, flared its whiskers, and bobbed its head. Genji made a strangled noise as Angela put her bowl down and brushed imaginary crumbs from her lap. “I’m surprised you can still blush,” she said absently. “Now hop on the table, ja? I have a lot of work to do.”

“Use cuffs next time,” Angela suggested an hour later as Genji fled from her office. She rubbed her fingers on the scales above Ramen’s subtympanic shield the way the dragon liked and it leaned into her caresses. “Tell your host that nylon rope doesn’t work so well in his joints,” she added. “Zenyatta should know better. Also, recommend that they not use red because it clashes with his running lights.”

Ramen bobbed its head, baring its fangs as it tried yet again to smile. It wiggled its head in a way that she interpreted as amusement – like it was laughing. McCree once told her that the laugh of the honored spirits sounded like a box of metal nails or bolts rattling around in a wooden box so in a way she was glad that she couldn’t hear their voices.

They settled into their routine again: Angela doing her research and peer review and Ramen fiddling with an old terminal in the back corner. It had been toying with it for the past few days it visited her and if anyone needed any confirmation of their intelligence, then there it was: even though Ramen’s talons weren’t quite meant to move like a human hand, it could use tools – like an abandoned stylus – to compensate.

Finding a break in her review, she leaned back in her chair and watched the honored spirit toy with the terminal. It was glowing again, casting a gentle green light that was reflected in the surfaces around it. It reminded her very much of Genji’s own lights. With the stylus held delicately in its jaws, Ramen very carefully typed into the old analog keyboard. As she watched, it put the stylus down and touched the ancient wireless mouse with a talon. It very carefully moved it around and there was a soft click as it pressed one of the buttons; on the terminal a new window opened.

“Maybe that’s not the best terminal for you to use,” Angela mused and Ramen twisted its head like an owl to look at her. “I’m still waiting to be creeped out by seeing you do that but I can’t help but think you’re still just too cute,” she added.

McCree had said that any “facial expression” the dragons showed would be in the soft skin around their eyes and in their whiskers, jaws, and ears. Now the skin around Ramen’s eyes crinkled and it tossed its head as if to say, I am not cute – a sentiment that McCree told her was repeated often by the spirits.

“Let’s find you a touch-screen terminal,” Angela decided. “And we can see if we can adjust the keypad for you to be able to type easier.” Ramen lifted into the air as if gravity no longer applied to it and “swam” over to her, paddling its legs until it could slip comfortably around her neck. “Are you going to embarrass Genji with what you’re researching?”

The dragon twisted its head to look at her, its eyes widening almost comically and its ears pricking forward; its tongue lolled out of its mouth, fat and pink and forked and glistening with the illusion of moisture as it cocked its head to the side like a dog as if to ask who, me?

“Yeah, I thought so,” Angela said, hooking a finger into its open jaws. It tossed its head back. She could feel it laugh even if she couldn’t hear it, something she was always fascinated by. “Athena?”

“I will begin setting up a new account,” the AI said from the nearest terminal. “For now I will label it ‘MED_Research_Asst_1’.”

Ramen laughed again, bobbing its head in exaggerated motions.

After a few days of trial and error, Angela developed a stylus that was much easier for Ramen to manipulate. Its hands weren’t well suited for grasping small things after all, so it had to be something that was easily moved by its jaws. In the end simplicity won out and they fashioned a mouthpiece for Ramen to gently grip in its mouth while it typed, clicked, and otherwise manipulated the touchpad screen.

Once they reached that point, Angela and Athena worked with Ramen to figure out its visual acuity. It seemed both fascinated and bored by the subject so they kept their explanations to simple words and short sentences.

Ramen assured them that it could very easily adjust itself to all of the screens it had encountered. It told her that it was much like adjusting the focus on her “weird human eyes”.

When Angela absently commented that Ramen very much reminded her of Genji, the spirit simply replied, as above, so below.

(When none of the dragons appeared to be around, Angela asked McCree about this - the gunslinger had quickly become the dragon expert outside of the Shimada brothers and was less likely to give her a vague and unhelpful answer because it amused him. McCree explained that the spirits took on the traits of their hosts – to be expected since Ramen and Udon had been with the brothers for every waking moment since they were born. He added that Soba once told him that at heart, Hanzo had always been a crotchety old man and that Genji had always been the odd sort.)

The other positive of setting up a terminal for Ramen was its new email capabilities. It didn’t email anyone save her and Athena, seeing no reason to, but it proved to be surprisingly talkative. If Genji was suspicious of their relationship (any more than he was initially) he gave no sign of it and Ramen didn’t indicate that it was doing anything that Genji wasn’t already aware of.

On the other hand, McCree knew of their interactions and how she and Athena had helped Ramen gain access to the internet. What McCree knew, Hanzo and his dragons knew though Ramen didn’t mention any discussion with Udon or Soba about what it researched.

Things came to a head when Angela found an email that had been sent to her late at night, roughly one week since she had given Ramen access to a computer terminal:

From: MED_Research_Asst_1@Overwatch.org To: Angela_Ziegler@Overwatch.org Subject: Research

He knows.

Medical Research Assistant 1 Overwatch Medical Bay 5 Gibraltar Watchpoint

She found a chain of emails timestamped a few hours previous. Reading through the chain, she found herself laughing.

From: Winston@Overwatch.org To: Group: Active_Field, Angela_Ziegler@Overwatch.org, MED_Research_Asst_1@Overwatch.org Subject: Updates to Athena’s Servers

All:

Athena will be down for some updates to her servers. Her systems will not be shut off completely and all scans will still be running. You will still have access to your emails, communicators, and all other access you have to the base and surrounding areas.

The systems that will be down for maintenance will be the administrative access, direct access to archived information on her encrypted servers, and some access to the shared drives and mission reports. Other systems will still be running but there may be delays while her system updates.

Systems will be down from 0500 to approximately 0930. We apologize for any issues this may cause.

Best,

Winston

From: D.Va@Overwatch.org To: Group: Active_Field, Angela _Ziegler@Overwatch.org, MED_Research_Asst_1@Overwatch.org Subject: Re: Updates to Athena’s Servers

Lame.

-Sent from Mobile

From: D.Va@Overwatch.org To: Group: Active_Field, Angela _Ziegler@Overwatch.org, MED_Research_Asst_1@Overwatch.org Subject: Re: Re: Updates to Athena’s Servers

UGH. Why did I get my own email sent back to me?

-Sent from Mobile

From: Soldier_76@Overwatch.org To: Group: Active_Field, Angela _Ziegler@Overwatch.org, MED_Research_Asst_1@Overwatch.org Subject: Re: Re: Re: Updates to Athena’s Servers

Who is “Med_research_ass_1”?

-Sent from Mobile

From: Genji@Overwatch.org To: Group: Active_Field, Angela _Ziegler@Overwatch.org, MED_Research_Asst_1@Overwatch.org Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Updates to Athena’s Servers

“Research ass”?

-Sent from Mobile

From: MED_Research_Asst_1@Overwatch.org To: Group: Active_Field, Angela _Ziegler@Overwatch.org Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Updates to Athena’s Servers

Researching your ass.

Somehow Dr. Ziegler managed to give you a butt and made your codpiece look like a thong.

Worse in some ways is that it is a better than the butt you had before Shimada Hanzo tried to kill you.

Medical Research Assistant 1 Overwatch Medical Bay 5 Gibraltar Watchpoint

From: D.Va@Overwatch.org To: Group: Active_Field, Angela _Ziegler@Overwatch.org, MED_Research_Asst_1@Overwatch.org Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Updates to Athena’s Servers

LOL! □

-Sent from Mobile

From: Genji@Overwatch.org To: Group: Active_Field, Angela _Ziegler@Overwatch.org, MED_Research_Asst_1@Overwatch.org Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Updates to Athena’s Servers

This better not be who I think it is.

-Sent from Mobile

From: MED_Research_Asst_1@Overwatch.org To: Group: Active_Field, Angela _Ziegler@Overwatch.org Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Updates to Athena’s Servers

I am that I am.

Medical Research Assistant 1 Overwatch Medical Bay 5 Gibraltar Watchpoint

From: Soldier_76@Overwatch.org To: Group: Active_Field, Angela _Ziegler@Overwatch.org, MED_Research_Asst_1@Overwatch.org Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Updates to Athena’s Servers

1. “Reply All” does not need to be used for this chain.

2. Who is “med-research-ass-1”?

-Sent from Mobile

From: Genji@Overwatch.org To: Group: Active_Field, Angela _Ziegler@Overwatch.org, MED_Research_Asst_1@Overwatch.org Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Updates to Athena’s Servers

WHO GAVE YOU TERMINAL ACCESS AND AN ACCOUNT

-Sent by Mobile

From: MED_Research_Asst_1@Overwatch.org To: Group: Active_Field, Angela _Ziegler@Overwatch.org Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Updates to Athena’s Servers 1 Attachment: Murad_the_Tiger.jpg

Use proper punctuation - Shimada Sojiro did not spend that much money on tutors for you to completely disregard all of their  lessons.

Also, did you know that there are websites dedicated to anthropomorphic animals in very sexual poses?

For your viewing pleasure.

Medical Research Assistant 1 Overwatch Medical Bay 5 Gibraltar Watchpoint

From: Genji@Overwatch.org To: Group: Active_Field, Angela _Ziegler@Overwatch.org, MED_Research_Asst_1@Overwatch.org Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Updates to Athena’s Servers

You and I are going to have some words.

-Sent from Mobile

From: Genji@Overwatch.org To: Group: Active_Field, Angela _Ziegler@Overwatch.org Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Updates to Athena’s Servers

Everyone, I woudl like to sincerely apologize for “MED_Research_Asst_1”.

It twill not happen again.

It was someone taht should not have access but our security has not been compormised. I will speak to Winston about riscinding their access.

-Sent from Mobile

From: Mei-Ling_Zhou@Overwatch.org To: Group: Active_Field, Angela _Ziegler@Overwatch.org Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Updates to Athena’s Servers

* would

*it will

*that

*compromised

*rescinding

Proofreading is recommended before sending :)

Mei-Ling Zhou 周美灵 Climatologist and Data Analyst Antarctica Watchpoint

From: Mei-Ling_Zhou@Overwatch.org To: Angela _Ziegler@Overwatch.org Subject: Fw: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Updates to Athena’s Servers

Good morning Dr. Ziegler,

I was wondering if you knew where Ramen had gotten that picture? The one of the tiger?

Asking for a friend. I think they would really like to see more ;)

Mei-Ling Zhou 周美灵 Climatologist and Data Analyst Antarctica Watchpoint

She didn’t see Ramen for another two weeks, mostly because it and Genji were away on a mission.

“Ramen misses you,” McCree whispered to Angela. “I can hear it - they’re on their way back I guess. As soon as it’s within range, it’ll be here to see you.”

That brought a smile to her face and she waited in her office for it to return. She was just adjusting the gift she had picked up from town when Ramen appeared in the air above her. “Hello there!” she exclaimed as the dragon twisted and twined around her gleefully. “Welcome back!”

The dragon leaped into her arms, coiling its long tail around her waist as they hugged. It was awkward since Ramen was longer than she was tall and at its widest its barrel was as wide around as her arm and it had such short little arms but they made do.

“Did you miss me?” she teased and Ramen rubbed its face on her shoulders like a cat. “I got something for you.”

She had very carefully not wrapped it in gift wrap, instead choosing to tuck her gift into a bag with tissue paper. Ramen dragged the book out, inspected the cover critically, and then looked up at Angela.

“Athena released the details of your search history to me,” Angela admitted. “So I saw what you had been looking up before they banned you. I thought that while we wait for everyone to cool off, you could take a look at some of these books.”

Though Ramen didn’t have a face that could make expressions that were easily recognizable to Angela, she very well understood the wicked humor in its eyes.

“One more thing,” she added and logged in to her terminal. As Ramen shifted so it could watch over her shoulder, she queued up the slideshow of pictures that she, McCree, and Mei had prepared in its absence. Ramen’s long body tightened around her so that she could feel the rumble of its laugh like thunder all around her.

Every free space of Genji’s room from desk to wall to ceiling to floor to bookshelf to desk was covered in pictures of anthropomorphic animals in vulgar or suggestive positions.