#tango is not solely talking about plane crashes. he's talking about something else.

[theminecraftbee]

Tango's been reading about plane crashes lately.

Scar catches him doing it, while he's sitting around, waiting for Scar to give the go-ahead on checking on their boat. It's a bit embarrassing to be caught, although Tango can't quite place why. It's not like reading about plane crashes is that weird; people have always had a strange fascination with things going horribly wrong, and the plane crashes are new to Tango. He'd read enough about engineering disasters as case studies back when he was getting started, but these...

The point is, though, Scar catches him reading about aviation failures, leaning against the walls of the steadily-rocking ship he'd helped build into a proper trading hall.

Scar blinks. "Don't those things scare you?"

"Eh, not really - I mean, I get why it scares some people, but I had to read all about the dangers of industry before I started making it. Scare you straight on safety, right?"

"Ah yes. The famous safety protocol of Tango Tek, truly the safest of redstoners," Scar says. Tango flushes.

"Like you can talk, Deaths Georg."

"Fair, fair," says Scar. "Still."

Tango shrugs. "It's interesting, reading about how people react when things are going wrong! Sorta like engineering people!"

"You are such a nerd," Scar says fondly.

"Takes one to know one."

"Rude."

"Hey, who flew the Enterprise in Star Wars again?"

"I could kill you for that."

"Yeah, that's what I thought."

Scar sighs and flops down, sitting next to Tango. "Even if it is about engineering people, isn't it times things have gone wrong? Doesn't pilot error account for a lot of plane crashes? And if not that, people definitely built the plane wrong. Like, I get you, but I mean, by the time you're reading about those people, hasn't the machine broken? I just... don't really get it."

"I mean..."

Tango pauses. He looks back down at what he'd been reading, and he looks up once again. The sky has darkened, and the moon sits at a waning gibbous above them. Tango looks at it a while. Scar, for his part, is patient enough, only tapping his feet a little bit. He's trying his best, so Tango will try his best to explain it too, even if the fact he's been caught feels strangely intimate. He doesn't know why. Plenty of other people like these things; that's why Tango could read it in the first place. He looks at the moon up there and Scar down here and the scars on Tango's hands and tries not to heat up too much with the depth of some emotion he cannot place.

"It's like... yeah, sometimes it's human error in the moment. But most of the time it's a lot of little mistakes. One big one, sure, but a lot of other ones. And sometimes, the pilots don't do much wrong at all, and the mistakes were long before they were put at the yoke. With the training they've got, with everything they know... they manage to do everything right."

Scar's quiet. He stops tapping his feet.

"And the plane still crashes?"

"And the plane still crashes."

Scar's very quiet for a while. "Well, gee, Tango. Why do you read them then?"

"...because normally, if the pilots hadn't tried - well, it would have been worse. Or, at least, it wouldn't - at least they'd tried."

Tango feels strange, saying it. He wrings his hands. Finally, he laughs and rubs the back of his head. "Hahaha. I'm sounding so pretentious, aren't I? Really, I just like watching crashes. Most people do."

Scar's still quiet, though, looking up at the moon tracing a slow path along the stars.

"No," Scar says finally. "I get your point. Probably not my thing, but - I get your point."

"Alright," Tango says, "alright."

"Finished checking the spawnproofing. You wanna give it a live test?"

"After all of our talk about disaster? How could I not?"

Tango puts his tablet away again and stands up with Scar and goes to check to see if the boat's ruined the raid farm, or if the farm's ready to go. He feels like he's confessed something. He's not sure what. He'll strike it down to Scar and Grian being weird this season, like, weirder than usual, and move on with his life. Frankly? He hasn't got the time (or the mental health if he's honest) to think too hard about it. Nope. Can't afford that.

Can't afford too much to think about - about mistakes. About swiss cheese models and cascading errors and pilots who are put in charge and can't fix it but try everything they can and -

He just likes planes, really, he tells himself, just like he likes most machines. That's all there is to it.