#starting with my least favourite thanks rng xD

[factorialsotherfandoms]

Happy Battleships deanon day! Upon consultation, I'll just. Do these pairs-ish by RNG. I've got a long stack so let's just get started with a fic for @echotunes

Testing, Testing

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: QSMP | Quackity SMP Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Pac & Mike (QSMP) Characters: Pac (QSMP), Mike (QSMP) Additional Tags: Science, Fluff, platonic soulmates tazercraft, Mind Link, Bodyhopping Summary: Pac and Mike spend some time in the lab.

Full text under cut:

Their equipment is delicate, but with enough practice anything can seem simple to use. Pac is over with the apparatus, while Mike sits at the computer. The software for the detector is an old, old thing, but it works well enough; after each run they must manually export and reformat the data, but it's better than writing new, perhaps inaccurate, software - or somehow getting an upgrade from the Federation.

"Twenty three at nine-o-two," Pac reads off the equipment.

With the computer precariously loaded with the detector software, Mike resorts to a clipboard and calculator. He scribbles the time and temperature in the margin and replies, "all ready here."

Their scanner is nothing as complex or fancy as a medical scanner, instead a tiny little thing that sits on the desk. It is about good enough for detecting anomalies in materials, but certainly not up to assessing a person or an animal. They have used it to scan some strawberries before, but that was more for Richarlyson's curiosity than anything.

Small as it is, Pac just reaches inside and places the small sample of terracotta on the tray. Some of that mined on the same expedition had been reacting strangely under tensile stress, so testing some of it seemed like the best course of action.

"Placed," Pac replies.

"One second," Mike blinks his eyes shut, and opens Pac's. The colours feel a little off through Pac's eyes, but to share body parts always has a comforting fuzz to it. He reaches from himself and into Pac, lifting one arm to tighten the plastic clamps supposed to hold it in place.

With a better scanner the emitter and detector would move; having built this themselves from scrap and discarding Federation equipment, Pac and Mike's scanner relies on the tray moving instead. Everything is controlled by the computer, one bit of software winding it to each step and then telling the detector to read. After that the data comes in, and once the numbers are processed it just needs feeding into the imaging software.

Simple enough, except that home made detectors always need close watching.

Satisfied with that Mike double checks the shielding. Their collection of lead blocks is all intact, and the little safety monitor pinned in place. As he slips back into his own body he makes a note of the number on it.

That, too, goes on his notes page.

All good. Mike does not bother with the words, knowing Pac will hear.

He gets a hum in response, agreement morphing into a noise of concentration as Pac uses the tongs to retrieve the source, and put it into place.

It's a little terrifying how easily radioactive compounds can just be picked up on the Island, but it often serves their purposes well. Technetium-99m in this case, now in a glass container - probably discarded from the Federation's own research or medical facilities.

More the fool's them.

They give the safety monitor - stolen from a Federation worker's corpse, if Mike remembers correctly - a few moments to settle, before taking the first reading.

Mike did write the code which controls everything, but he still does not trust it; he manually takes a zero reading, also noting that down in his log along with the time.

"Ready?"

He knows that Pac is, but the verbal confirmation is an important feature of safety.

"Ready!"

Mike presses the button to make it work. First he receives another reading - only 15 off the last, and so probably the detector is still working fine. After the reading there is nothing for a few seconds, before the little tray judders to the next stop.

Gently he feels Pac nudging himself in, watching both the readings and the apparatus at once. With each pair of eyes pointing at different things, they can both keep an eye for problems with them both.

It's squeaking a lot today

The terracotta might be too heavy

It was fine last time

It's kinda old

Maybe time for a new one?

Maybe Richinhas and Ramón want to help?

We can ask, it's just the mechanism

Readings look fine?

It's terracotta, they're going to be low

The chances of picking something out from that...

It's what we've got. You want to ask the Federation to check it? Or just throw out an entire day's terracotta?

It is unclear as to which thought belongs to who, but both shudder with that final consideration. It is an option, if they have to, but neither wants to. Someone would be more than happy to mine again, but the number of blocks they would lose is... A hideous amount. Atrocious. Enough Mike might be tempted to ask the Federation for help - and pack some explosives in the bottom of the crate.

There's an idea.

He thinks it, and across the bench Pac giggles.

With how slowly their equipment moves, it will be a good couple of hours before the scan is complete. They have done it plenty of times before, one checking the equipment and the other the monitor. It's an easy enough take, too, they just cannot leave the technetium out where little fingers might find it.

Or not so little fingers - Mike can name a good few Islanders who would be irresponsible with it. It is neither enough nor the right sort to make a bomb, but he is sure someone would try.

Pac suggests Max.

Mike points out that Max is perfectly capable of getting his own nuclear waste for a bomb; he's more worried about the likes of Dapper or Fit.

The image of either of the two building a nuke from a discarded medical sample is funny enough, something to concentrate on as the machine ticks away. The sample is heavier than a rubber duck; they will likely be here all day.

Pac flops down onto his desk, staring into the blocks of lead shielding. Mike opens youtube on his phone, and puts some music on for them both; it's a slow sort of lab day, not an interesting one.

Mike feels his arm move, only registering Pac's presence a few seconds later. Pac uses Mike to pick up his pen, and start doodling in the margins of his notepad. A short nudge later has Pac making another log of the weather - this time both humidity and pressure instead of the earlier temperature - before returning to the doodles.

It will be a long day.

... Mike is going to leave Pac to that, while he himself starts designing a trigger for that TNT trap idea.