#salvaging the ship of theseus

[proxycrit]

Salvaging the Ship of Theseus au! Posting on the sketch acc because i haven’t decided on anything permanent yet.

Emmet’s having a grand time guys.

He’s doing great!

On a side note, here’s Ingo!

Ingo’s fighting very hard to retire from Wardenship after seeing a whole train fall from the sky and land on the other side of Hisui. Unfortunately, this is a track he can not disembark until either him or Sneasler become permanently indisposed.

He’s also doing great! Don’t worry about it!

[powder-of-infinity]

Oh don't look at me like that, girl. I told you I'd make a pilot out of you. I told you that I would determine your schedule. I never said that I would make a combat pilot out of you. That was always what you concluded in that silly little brain of yours. Now get in that cockpit. The cargo isn't shipping itself. It need to be delivered, people's lives depend on it.

Don't fool yourself. I am still a handler. *Your* Handler, and I am perfectly authorized to kick your butt until you break. Now, will you get in that cockpit and bring food to civilians cut off from any other supplies, or do you require a demonstration?

Oh? Getting hit in the chest hurts? Well then, stop whining and get into the cargo mech. And it is a *cargo* mech. Stay on your route and out of trouble. I'm tired of burying my pilots.

The conditioning? You mean the weird sex stuff? Sure. We *can* do that. If you behave yourself, that is.

I ask you again. Do I need to beat the crap out of you, or will you get into the cockpit? Cockpit? Good girl. Be back by twentyonehundred, and I'll treat you like the combat handlers do.

Oh? How I would even know? Silly girl. I used to be a combat pilot myself. I even have Theseus on base, to rescue my girls.

She's a beauty. Salvaged her a couple years ago. Superheavy brawler. To make sure the enemies know the ares accord are conventions, not suggestions. Enough babbling. One kiss and then your outta here.

[critterbitter]

Do you have an ao3/plan on uploading your work there?

(Does a lil jig) I have no work on ao3 but I have been drabbling together some stuff! It’s a long term project though haha, and I’m not likely to post because I’m still job hunting. (Shakes my little hat) but i can be convinced! Some stray dollars for lunch mmmight motivate me. Ehe.

For people curious what I WANT to write, if i have time:

Hisui Horizon Event — (alternate version of Canon but flavored with my war crimes.)

Ingo is sent to Hisui with no name and no memories. He copes.

Without her anchor, Chandelure fades. (Elesa and Emmet, mourning the loss of their third, will not let her slip gently into the grave.)

Salvaging the Ship of Theseus — (definitely canon divergence because, well.)

Emmet and Eelektross fall into Hisui seventeen months after Ingo’s disappearance and a month before PLA.

May I introduce: Shitty merchant Emmet, who’s definitely not fluent in Hisui flavored Kantonese. One concerned Eelektross, who’s about to change the landscape of pokemon-human relations forever. Warden Ingo, who is attempting to retire wardenship to go looking at the rift bubbles. Lady Sneasler, who’s using Ingo as a babysitter for her three rascally sneaslets.

And a very angry Elesa, armed with an extra pissed Chandelure, as they hunt down Sinnohian legends to get their favorite muppets back.

(HERE’S A DRABBLE. I have a lot of thoughts for Salvaging the Ship of Theseus. So many thoughts. Help. HELP.)

(Sigh. I have so many outline ideas. But writing is hard so yall. Art or fics, I’m not powerful enough to do both.)

But also interest check? Intwest chweck? WAH (gets swatted at with a broom))

[syn4k]

i feel really fucking sorry for every historian that is going to have to research this century in this future. Hey I know this is a bunch of words on tumblr.com on an internet designed to degrade down over the years which is terrifying but like if anyone from the year 2110 or some shit like that manages to see this, please know that it sucked for all of us learning about this stuff too

if this post can be salvaged from the wreck of theseus' ship that this site will eventually become and survives until then, hello humans in the future. everything is very scary right now. i think everything's always been scary but its different when you're staring down entropy itself

here are a few things that i want people from the future to know:

in between all the crazy shit going on in the 21st century weve been eating dinner and petting animals and scheduling times to hang out with friends just like weve always been just like we always will be. for every huge groundbreaking event you learn about theres gonna be several million people at any time going "damn" and immediately putting their phones down and going to do regular shit cos life goes on man

we're still telling stories! just like always! and singing stupid little songs just like always and most of it will be never recorded and lost to time forever but please dont be sad even if you dont know the origin of a story or song just know that in creation you are connected to the past always :)

i hope the internets still up we got a lotta good shit on here

i love you. we love you

has tumblrs search function been fixed yet?

what version is minecraft on

seriously dont get sad about whats been lost. its ok. it was here once and it was beautiful

i love you

i love you

i love you

if you really are reading this in 2110 then i am almost certainly dead by now

(unless the events of 17776 by jon bois occurred in which case yippee! immortality! we still got 2 years til april 7th 2026. holding out till then o7)

i love you

[dragon-swords-prophecies]

FIC ASK GAME TO CORRECT BLOG THIS TIME

✅ list one or two favourite lines you’ve written and explain why they’re your favourite

🔚 have you ever completely changed the direction a piece was going?

😊 say something nice about your writing

~ @akindofmagictoo <3

✅ list one or two favorite lines you've written and explain why they're your favorite

''Oh, and please tell that poor fellow lying on the sidewalk outside that I hope he feels better soon.''

There was a long pause. ''He's dead, I can't really... do that?''

''Oh dear. Tell him tomorrow, then? I'm sure he'll be back on his feet in no time!''

Every single thing balloon guy says is my favorite, but especially this (and the alligator incident). The first murder has just happened, and there's a guy's body laying on the sidewalk, and balloon guy walks past and thinks ''ah, yes, this is Perfectly Normal for humans. large pools of red liquid around them are nothing to be concerned about!'' he does not know what death is. despite many attempts to explain it he has remained politely confused about why humans vanish sometimes for the last several hundred/thousand years.

🔚 have you ever completely changed the direction a piece was going?

yes! with herald I completely changed the time it was set in and the genre of the story (1890s-inspired steampunk -> 1940s noir-ish), but also with one of my other wips. frost & fire, which I haven't talked about in like two years, got completely and wildly changed at least three times. the reason it's on draft four (?), despite that I've never actually finished a draft of it, is that every time I massively changed the plot/characters/other majorly important element, I started a new draft, because the other one was so far gone it couldn't be salvaged. at this point it's basically the ship (wip?) of theseus

[starstruckpurpledragon]

So I like to get amateur crafty with jewelry, it can be a fun way to pass the time but not to the point I wind up hyperfocused on it and it's hours later, I've forgotten lunch and a work meeting and have three dozen earrings with matching bracelets, 'how did that happen?' type of thing.

Which means that sometimes my mom will pass me her stretchy bracelets when the elastic cord starts to give out so I can fix them.

Now the thing about these types of bracelets is that the makers looooove to hide where the elastic cord is tied off inside one of the beads. Not a bad idea really. But.

They glue the damn thing in there.

The last two of these I've repaired (IE, replaced the elastic cord) I've managed to pry out the glued bits and salvage the bead for reuse.

Sadly. Not this time. I've let my mom know the situation and that I've found similar enough brown jasper beads on sale. Basically I told her if I eyeballed the stone type correctly (if I have, then I'm giving credit to being a geologist's grandchild and claiming it has given me magic stone-identifying powers) then I will replace only the glue-jammed bead. If it isn't then I will replace all the beads and keeping the leftover to play with either way.

She's fine with me doing a ship of theseus with her bracelet (did not phrase it as such to her, she'd have had no idea what I meant) so for now her bracelet shall continue to sit around disassembled until the replacement parts arrive.

(As another sign that I have ADHD and it's inherited, she gave me this bracelet to fix in the spring; I'm only just now getting around to it. She had forgotten she'd given me a bracelet to fix and was like 'which one???' so it'll be like she's getting a brand new bracelet when I give this back to her.)

[talesfromsigil]

Surely she wouldn't release a chapter with something important about to happen in it when she's about to go on vacation, right?

[g0atbutts]

replace the cpu, then. bam. machine fixed. immortality maintained. carry over whatever code you can salvage from there, and ship of theseus that motherfucker.

People love to talk about the immortality of the machine, but I'm a mechanical engineer, so I know they delude themselves. Most machines are far more mortal than flesh.

How long does a machine last? A car is a very solid machine, expensive, precision designed, and you're lucky if you get more than three decades out of them.

Your enemy is not the flesh. It's entropy. It's the death knell of the energy imbalance. If you want to live as a complex machine you will, by necessity, generate a great deal of entropy until your machine breaks irrevocably.

You want to be immortal? Then don't worship the machine, worship the stone, the forest. Seek that which is either simple enough to never know death or diffused enough to accept every death.

[devouring-hive]

Recycling???? Like they're gonna take your pieces that can be salvaged.

"Are we still talking about this? Very well. The Ship of Theseus, does its name mean anything to you?"

[iamded-dev]

Upd8

So that post down there I made about that zombie game idea was back in twenny-nineteen, that’s like 4 years ago! And I haven’t thought about that game at all! But there are other game ideas that have stuck with me all this time. I have my notebooks and more recently, my Google docs (because paper will wither and fade, but the cloud is immortal) which I keep track of these all along with all the details and tid-bits that come to mind. But to list them quickly, I have dreams of making...

• Junkyard salvaging game based on TWRP songs “Built 4 Love” and “Computer Wife” - This one I’ve put a lot of thought into in terms of gameplay and how to actually make it, as well as art style etc. Initially inspired by those two songs as well as RamHeadedGirl’s character generator “Ship of Theseus” (nsfw)

• Tamagotchi but with anime girls - This was prompted almost entirely by the Steam game "Your amazing T-Gotchi!” and my wish for a brighter outcome. I haven’t the programming knowledge or gameplay ideas to pursue this one too far, but we’ll see

• Monster-girl dating game - I’m gonna be real, that Dead by Daylight dating sim spin-off spoke to me. Romance, horror and mystery blend very well together. After a quick Steam browse I found “Occult Rewrite” and “Project Vostok” that fit the same vibe and provided some good inspiration. Also, the visual novel game engine ‘Renpy’ is incredibly easy to learn.

• Necromancer game - This is an ultimate dream of mine, but one I haven’t put nearly enough thought or time into. I mean look at me, I’m ded. Skeletons are my pals! I want a game where you can raise an undead army and cause mayhem! “Boneraiser Minion” and “Necrosmith” are two games that fit the vibe and nailed some of my ideas before I got there, but I’ve still got plans...

[proxycrit]

(Takes your kneecaps)

HEHEHEHEHEHE

Au’s Salvaging the Ship of Theseus! Gotta figure out how to draw these guys. Inconsistency my beloathed!

[reactor-stress-is-a-resource]

>> Oh, yeah, the Winterhalter's absolutely alive for how it acts when I'm workin' on it. As for the gun, there's no compensators lmao I raw dog that shit

>> I pretty much never get into scraps with any ship much bigger than I am, though, so one shot does it. Line it up, put her into drive, maximum forward burn, and KABOOM. Works well enough for my purposes, but there's still some vertical spin and backward travel.

>> A SHIP SCALE BASILISK THOUGH!?!?!?!?!? I. Do not want to be near that, as awesomely powerful as that sounds. And on a transport ship??? I mean the Winterhalter's an old salvage tug so I guess I can't talk. Then again call her the ship of theseus because NOTHING inside is stock. She's like a hot rod under the hood, I'm immensely proud of it.

>> Anyways the transport ship

>> Engine limiters my beloathed, they get in the way so often when trying to screw with a ship's power and speed.

>> Oh, the eye thing! I have a projector kinda like that, it's in my shoulder though. Mostly it's just used so Volta can fade in whenever he takes control through my built-in player two implant. That would be really cool, to just. be able to project things from your eye.

>> And as long as that PMD-esque-creature-machine puts out thermal energy, it sounds perfect for my needs. And 'unstable' only makes me want to use it more lol

[Pyroclast]

>> HI I JUST FOUND YOUR BLOG

>> REALLY OLD TECH & ENGINEERING 🤝

>> Need to get in touch with more engineers on here. Making things/making things blow up with friends is one of the most fun things in existence I think

>> Anyways here's my pride and joy, the ISV Winterhalter. Installed that short-cycle lance myself

[Winterhalter outside.omif]

IMAGE ID: A small salvage ship that looks mostly like a box, with a gun half its size and three quarters its length bolted to the top

>> What're some of your projects? Love hearing about what other people have made :)

>> [Pyroclast]

>>HELLO!!!! Oh it’s really nice to meet someone who likes old tech, I LOVE working on older freighters they’re so much more clunky and tactile than ones these days, those things are ALIVE they’re like some sort of beasts to me.

>>Ohhh the Winterhalter looks SO good!!! What kinda considerations did you make for the recoil on that lance? Can the engines produce enough power to counter the force that would push the ship backwards? Hell, if I made something like that I just know I’d send myself careening off into space.

>>I’m actually between projects right now!! I just finished up putting a ship-scale Basilisk on a transport ship which was SUCH a fun project. It was so unstable and I had to figure out how to route enough power into it to get the most efficient pulse without completely fucking up the projected speed of the ship. I ended up having to take some limiters off the engine which shouldn’t be a problem at all unless they try to run like a million things at once including the Blinkspace generator and Basilisk.

>>I have been thinking about some little projects, though! I’m gonna build a portable printer into my new prosthetic arm so I can have repair materials on the fly AND I’m gonna put a compact projector in my prosthetic eye just for fun.

>>Oh oh oh! Now that you’re here I should grab you something outta my workshop! I heard you kinda blew up a Perpetual Motion Drive you needed, I think I got, hold on…

[Crashing, clattering, and comical banging noises]

>>HERE WE GO!!! It’s not really a PMD, it’s not even IPS-N, but it does basically the same thing!! It’s paracausal, I think, and WAY more unstable than anything IPS-N makes but it’s functionally the same thing. Don’t look inside it, though. If it hurts my brain it’ll melt yours.

[princess-of-the-corner]

What’s Charlie like in your au?

Okay Charlie! Charlie, Charlie, Charlie!

Charlie is genuinely 100% a real person in my AU. Not a robot.

That said.

She did inherit her dad's interest in robotics. One of the reasons she liked being with him in his workshop as a kid.

She steered away from that for a while, trauma of what happened making her wary of anything that reminded her of Back Then. But she still ended up taking to working with mechanical parts and programming pretty easily even if it wasn't directly into animatronics.

The evens of Silver Eyes go as they did. Going back for the memorial, uncovering the truth, nearly getting killed by confused animatronics, having to kill William to escape.

Despite even more trauma, Charlie feels very much for all that was lost. The children who lost their lives, her father whose dream was shattered. She decides that she doesn't want to let Afton ruin all of that.

She applies herself more into robotics, deciding to major in it at college. However, she also takes a side study into the supernatural.

She eventually goes back to the original location for two reasons.

The first reason: She wants to make sure the souls of the children are properly able to move on. She's able to properly summon and talk to them. Which gives her some insight into why Afton killed them in particular, and that the events of Silver Eyes aren't the first time he came back there. The children are worried about moving on, knowing that Afton could have become a Ghost too. And that he won't stop. Charlie promises to deal with that(low-key having already thought about that before).

The second reason: Charlie wanted to salvage the old parts. Get a jumpstart on how these animatronics worked. And also bring a little bit of her dad's work into the new place, even if she knows it'll all get replaced eventually. Ship of Theseus and all that.

Charlie moves somewhere away from Hurricane, aware that the people might be uncomfortable with her decision, and opens the new pizzeria. With better and improved Animatronics.

Over the next several years, Charlie expands the company. From just the little pizzeria, to the Pizzaplex. In between upgrades to the location, she works on upgrading the security. Making it as hard as possible for anyone to harm the children. Whether it's Afton's Ghost or some more mundane killer and/or creep, she has that on lock.

(No seriously. I have headcanons on a LOT of the security measures that should be in the Pizzaplex but Vanny deactivated).

Along the way she meets up with Michael and Elizabeth(now both Ghosts) and agrees to bring them into the company. Michael as part of Security, and Elizabeth eventually becoming a co-creator for the animatronics.

She also goes though a lot of regular Human staff, with the only one sticking around through it all being one of the first security hires Jimothy "Phone Guy" Deacon.

Sometime along the way, the Animatronics also start becoming Alive on their own. Not possessed, but genuinely their programming becomes complicated enough that they're people now.

Charlie, now head of the Pizzaplex and still working on it, is still very dedicated to both fun and safety. However, due to not wanting to let everyone know 'hey there's a serial killer Ghost who pops up sometimes', she does her best to keep that and the darker history under wraps. Not full on cover up, but just. Do not capitalize on the 'spooky rumors'.

[onceandfutureoshainspector]

- ??? whatever i tell this bot i wasn’t in the army. did i just get drafted by marriage????

- i guess i’ll go meet the CAPTAIN. i have so, so many questions for them.

- last voyage??? this thing is pointed in the general direction of the PRYDWEN, and it looks like it’s got a bunch of rocket boosters attached to the underside, so it might be capable of flight in some bullshit kind of way (probably how it got here tbh) - is the CAPTAIN planning an attack?

    - oh my god, arial naval battle between OLD IRONSIDES and the BROTHERHOOD OF STEEL’s flagship. i am hoping and praying so hard.

- first step though: finding a way up. the ability to climb a rope ladder would come in handy right about now.

    - found it eventually. looks like OLD IRONSIDES has been here long enough that they’ve built a super rickety bridge up to the hatch - it didn’t land here yesterday.

- the interior of this place is filled with junk? like just random stuff like salvaged monitors and shopping trolleys full of rotary phones. it looks almost like they’re trying to upgrade the ship while maintaining a degree of its historicity.

    - oh yeah, the crew are all robots. i feel like there might have been some kind of misinterpretation of instructions that led to these shenanegans.

- [insert ship of theseus joke here]

[snakedevour]

𝐒𝐎 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐈𝐒 𝐘𝐀𝐆𝐀𝐌𝐈 𝐑𝐀𝐈𝐓𝐎.

she's known him, obviously. she's played the role of his well-heeled girlfriend, given the curious privilege of witnessing his apotheosis from the best seat in the house. but the yagami she knew would never adopt a tone that bordered on earnest,would never apologize. something in him, something fundamental to his godhood, has changed; a paradigm shift. a cog in kira's machine has stopped turning, and so kira is not the one speaking to her.

yumeko simply studies him for a moment. she can't help it, because he looks different: eyes a little brighter, a little wider, shoulders not so burdened with the weight of a world he'd so meticulously spun up for himself. a self-made atlas suddenly relieved of his duties.

the ship of theseus: a thought experiment that challenges the integrity of identity; the question of how many changes, how many corrections, it takes before something ceases to be what it once was. perhaps, in this moment, she's looking at a raito as he might have been had he not hollowed himself out.

did your gambit fail, raito-san ?

❝ a little abrupt, yes. ❞ she plays along. if yagami has truly lost his wager, she won't move to salvage it without proper prompting. she wonders if this is the end of the show. ❝ but these things happen ! ❞ ( what happened, exactly ? the layman is obvious, and yet ... ) ❝ don't even worry about it, raito-san. ❞

she takes one of his hands in both of hers, fingers teasing the reminder of his handcuffs with an unmistakable deliberateness. the metal of that ring around her thumb is cool against the back of his palm.

❝ of course we can talk. ❞ her usual buoyancy and excitably is replaced with a controlled composure. ❝ i'll answer any questions you have to the best of my ability. ❞

❝ i'm sure my absence seemed pretty abrupt. it's what everyone on campus is talking about right now. me being back, where i was. everyone keeps asking ... but ... actually, though? i wanted to talk to you ... ❞

for some reason. even yagami can't put his finger on it, but one of the first things he did when he got his phone back (and out of sight from prying panda eyes) was text the raven-haired girl from school.

❝ i just wanted to say ... i'm sorry for leaving you hanging like that. that wasn't my intention. ❞ that feels lame, wrong even.

because, in truth, he feels like he owes her an explanation for something. something he just cannot quite grasp. it's on the cusp of his tongue, like he's ready to say it, but the words are unable to form, and thus all he can muster is an apology that even sounds a bit dull coming from him. he doesn't even really know what he's apologizing for.

HERE IS THE REALITY: the investigation is at a standstill. nothing is progressing. they can't find kira. studying the yotsuba group has provided enough context to keep the case alive ... but little beyond that. after the task force's probing, yotsuba clammed up and sold most of their assets outright, muddying their stocks and investments along the way, and then the company dispersed itself entirely before L could even try to pull the plug.

finding them all as individuals has been tough, and L was certain up until this point of three things in absolute:

kira is operating within yotsuba ... and that yagami raito was kira at one point in time, likely the original, and presumably gave up his powers to someone else. this power was somehow also given to amane misa, but was taken away, leaving her in much the same position as yagami. it sounds plausible, right?? it sounds too plausible. even with how damning it felt to be put on the spot, yagami had to admit ... he wondered. am i kira? is ryuzaki (is L) right?

still, there's no proof. without his memories, yagami is admittedly only as good as he is normally.

which is pretty outstanding, he would argue, as he's been pretty invaluable, if not a bit argumentative, up until this point. and agreeable, he would further insist. extremely so, given the circumstances i was put in.

his wrist is healing from the chaffing of the cuffs, but a thin red line remains for now. yagami rubs at it absentmindedly, sighing to himself before looking back up to her.

her. jabami yumeko. he knows her, even remembers her, but it's all so ... limited. limited in its scope of what they truly are. he remembers conversations of idle passing — exchanges about their families, dinner invitations, walking the campus together.

but that's where it ends. at least, he thinks it does.

ask him about the ship of theseus and his answer might be different now.

❝ this sounds crazy, but i feel like ... i missed a lot, right? while i was away. but, like, it's more than that, you know? i was hoping maybe you could fill me in? that we could go out together? ❞

i know we used to. i wish i could remember what we talked about. i wish i could remember why i need to see you. all i know is ... i just do. — @snakedevour

[talesfromsigil]

Royal Road: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/74124/theseus/chapter/1346263/the-plan

Bit of a shorter chapter tonight. Aisling shows up and discusses where the crew is headed next. Honestly, I kinda wonder if I should rewrite this one, but it's time to publish so... here you go!

It didn't take much alcohol in my system before I started feeling better about being surrounded by unfamiliar bar patrons outside of my ship. I wouldn't say that I was comfortable, but alcohol certainly took the edge off and helped me loosen up more to the crew.

Not too long after, I spotted Aisling walk in the door, and upon seeing us in good spirits, her own shoulders dropped and a smile grew on her face. I raised my glass toward her and exclaimed "Captain!" The others took note of her as well and raised their glasses in kind to join me. This gave her a little laugh as she approached the table.

"Seems they got you to lighten up, huh?" She said as she sat down on the opposite end of the table from Ray and started to spread some papers around the table, pushing food aside "We still got a few days before Meryll's ready to take off again, and I got something to keep us busy for that too, but for now, let's talk our next job."

I had to wonder if it was normal to discuss tactics around a table in a public place like this while half the crew was getting drunk, but I had no objections.

"Please tell me it's not salvage again, that's left a sour taste in my mouth." Joel whined.

"It's not, but we're not out of that business in the future." Aisling warned, eliciting an annoyed grunt from Joel "First we got a supply drop. Tribals down on Earth requesting aid. They had a blight this year, won't survive winter on their own, so we're dropping rations, gonna sneak some medicine in there too. Skulls insisted."

We were doing... humanitarian work? I hadn't expected that. "Skulls?" I had to ask.

"One of the bigger gangs." Aisling explained "Good people, even if they are profit-mongers. This tribe's good with their farms and their taxes, ain't gonna leave them high and dry cause they had one bad harvest."

She'd said they were profiteers, but they actually took care of their people when things went wrong. Things really were different on the inner worlds.

"Sounds good. And the bounty?" Joel asked.

Aisling rolled her eyes and shuffled some of the papers around, showing a photo of several men "Exclisive contract. Group of three, been causing trouble with those same locals. Skulls would let them handle it on their own, but they crossed the line and nicked the last aid shipment. Been trying to sell it back to the tribals for extortion prices."

"Dead or alive?" Joel asked.

"Skulls want 'em alive for public execution." She replied casually. A public execution for theft seemed a bit overboard to me, but no one else was saying anything "We come to blows, though, shoot to kill. They'll give us partial payment for proof of kill, and I ain't risking any of you on some small-time idiots thinking they're too good for the rules."

"Any leads?" Mouse spoke up.

"Gonna have to talk to the locals, they move around a lot. Shouldn't be a hard job though." She leaned over and started gathering the papers up again. "Had to give the skulls a bit of a discount since we gotta sit in port for a bit, but the pay will be more than enough to make up for the last month."

I had to wonder my own role in this. Sure I'd be hauling the goods in my cargo hold, but would I be much use chasing thieves on the ground? "So... do I get like... a gun or something then? Never shot anyone before."

"Oh you will." Joel chuckled darkly.

"You have nine guns." Aisling declared. I hadn't taken much stock of my weapons systems, but that sounded about right. But she knew what I really meant. "You won't be joining us on the ground, Meryll. At least not for that portion of the job. Even in a small skirmish, the advantage of having aerial support and an evacuation plan can't be overstated. You and Doc will stay on board Theseus."

I was a little bit relieved to hear that. I wasn't sure if I could keep my nerve together surrounded by gunfire, never mind be effective in a real fight. But Theseus versus small arms fire was a different story altogether. "What about Mouse?" I asked.

"Mouse is ground support. We need the numbers on this one." Aisling explained. The boy didn't seem phased by this news, and just nodded along. "Don't give me that look. Kid knows how to shoot."

I had to shrug at her, not really having a good argument to oppose it. He did seem like he was far more capable than I wanted to give him credit for. In fact, I noted, nobody else even seemed to treat him like a kid. He was just another member of the crew to everyone else. Maybe it was time I stopped looking at him like he was too precious to let him be in danger.

"Sounds like we've got a plan." Ray nodded "So what are we doing while we're in port then?"

"Dock work." Aisling declared, eliciting a groan from the crew collectively "Unless you got something better to do?"

"Captain, not to object, but I am... not strong." I mentioned as I watched her rummage through her bag "No one's going to hire the girl who's got the strength of a particularly frail puppy to haul goods."

As if to answer me, Aisling pulled a circuitry blade from her bag and placed it on the table "That's because you'll be busy training." She pushed it toward me "Simulator system. Your piloting needs work, so you're going to be learning the basics, and you won't need to be in the core module to use it. It'll teach you how to maneuver in space and atmosphere, take off, land, act as a support gunship, and dogfight. Now, it's designed to work for a standard ship core, so it's probably not gonna play nice with you, but you'll still learn a lot from it."

As I took the blade in hand, I wondered if this would be at all similar to actually being in the ship. I really hoped it would. Looking down at my hip, I saw the enclosure cover wasn't screwed into place anymore, instead accessible by a sliding panel, so I wouldn't need tools to replace it. I popped it open and slid the blade in next to my personal one, like I would with any other modular machine at my old job, securing it into place and taking a deep breath as I felt the data stream exploring its new hardware. "Alright, what else?" I asked, looking up to see that Aisling had taken a mug of beer for herself and was chugging it down rapidly.

She let out a refreshed sigh and declared "For now, we drink and feast!" To which the others raised their glasses and smiled again.

It would be a long night.