2024-01-26: Building from the Ground Up
- Cast: Christina MacKenzie, Koji Kabuto, LiSA
- Where: Photon Power Laboratory
- Date: U.C. 0098 01 26
- Summary: Koji and Chris are experimenting in parallel; Koji is pushing Super Alloy Z to its limits, and Chris is throwing herself fully into her inspiration. schematics
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
The Old Lab's hangar is full of the sound of hammer on metal for multiple reasons. Chris's new project is occupying the primary maintenance dock, and Koji is working at one of the spare machining stations, tapping away at the computer. Though his face is obscured by the welding mask, his bearing at the keys and the persistence with which he keeps typing - and his hunched lean forwards - indicates a mounting frustration.
Suddenly, there's the screech of metal buckling under enormous strain, followed by a high-pitched ricochet sound from the machiner. "Damn it!" Koji slams a hand on the side of the desk, pushing his chair away from it. Keeping the protective gear on, he heads over to the station, carefully lifting away the reinforced clear guard with an impact fracture in it, and leaning in to pick up two shards of black metal, similar to the plates that armour Mazinger Z but each no larger than the palm of his hand. They're buckled, shorn, and glowing at edges that fit together like a jigsaw piece. Sighing, Koji throws the two pieces into a bucket of water, and clicks the record button on the cassette deck he's carrying. "Project Report: Super Alloy New Z refinements, attempt three. Unexpected stress fractures developed during the re-alloying process; the heat of welding the plates together caused them to shatter. Back to the drawing board."
Stopping the recording and saving his documentation, he lifts the welding mask back up and walks over to the maintenance lift. "How are things going on your end, Chris?"
<Pose Tracker> Christina MacKenzie has posed.
There it stood, her 'newest project'--its scale as large as her newest ambition. Something new--something that, perhaps, was a sharp departure from her recent activities. It was larger than a house, larger than a structure to keep a family warm and safe. It was smaller than a mobile suit--the slumbering Ichinanas in sight towered much higher. Without its head or arms, it barely came up to the waist of most machines she's piloted. Even with the relative difference, this headless skeleton's height was still a dizzying 10 meters tall.
Clinging to its chest--yet an empty, open frame--was a woman in a borrowed PPL jumpsuit, red hair in a tight bun. Taut cables held her to its side, a red and white cicaida on a giant metal oak.
Chris tugged on the magnetic tethers keeping her anchored atop her perch, making sure the rappel harness was safe before she repositioned herself, calling out to her tech support Haro, MAIRO.
"Bring the left arm in a little-- Slowly...Slowly. The magnetic joint clamps should pull it into alignmen...Ah! --ALLSTOP!"
When the alloy snapped, the ring of metal-on-metal sang out, reaching her through her ear protection, and she gave MAIRO the safety-halt command. Chris's head snapped up towards the sound, and sighed in relief that it wasn't from any part of the frame--though she frowned sympathetically as Koji scowled at the newest attempt on his own.
"All clear, MAIRO, bring it back in; target: clamp distance of 12 centimeters. Hold the cradle steady there."
Koji's approach caught Chris's eye and she leaned back, waving.
"Looking good so far! Hopefully the joints line up properly! How does it look from your angle?"
<Pose Tracker> LiSA has posed.
Lisa is ... not really supposed to be lurking around. Someone disappeared for awhile and screwed up her studies. While she did end up passing the exams, she can't help but want to do her own review, and today's been a stumper. Luckily, she lives in a house with a whole bunch of nerds, but one of those nerds is unavailable and the other one is currently doing (not mad) SCIENCE.
Lisa enters the room properly equipped for safety, a physics book under one arm as she comes up right behind one certain MacKenzie.
"Hey dad - hi Christina - can you help me with this problem?" She asks from feet behind the woman.
(boo)
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
Koji rides the maintenance lift up, squinting up at the still-unarmoured frame Chris and her modified Haro units are assembling.
"She's lookin' good," he agrees, " - for a chassis skeleton, at least." He shakes his head. "No luck with the metallurgy - there's definitely something about the working we're missing to get from father's refinement of Super Alloy Z to even a fraction of the properties of Infinity's armour."
He steps off the lift to lean on the railing. "And you're set on installing a Mobile Trace into this?"
Before Chris can answer the question, though, they're joined by a third. Koji beams as he turns to see Lisa joining them, textbook under one arm. "Hey, kiddo. What's the question?"
<Pose Tracker> Christina MacKenzie has posed.
As MAIRO lines the arm up at the handspan distance, the mech's alignment clamps swivel and groan, reaching out for their counterparts on the shoulder. The crane begins to creak slightly, and Chris signals MAIRO to grade the electromagnet power down and proximate the joint.
There's a deep, satisfying [c L A N K] as the magnets line up together.
"Looking great, lower the power and hold it there!" MAIRO responded with a dutiful 'Bwooo'.
Returning to the platform to meet Koji at the lift, Chris takes the break to cool off.
"Infinity's armor... If it's been done before, there /has/ to be a way to do it again... I doubt they left behind a manual though!"
With her noise protection in, she gets even less warning than normal. Chris gets out less than half a sentence when LiSA pipes up, and sends her jumping towards Koji!
"The data doesn't li--UWAH" She scrambles to regain her footing, huffing and puffing for a moment. "I hope it's not a question about circulatory pressure... Sure, what's, what's the topic? I thought the U-FITS were over already."
The jumpscare doesn't stop her from walking over to LiSA and wrapping her up in a huge hug, though. "You're really okay..."
Only once she releases LiSA does she reply to Koji's hesitant design query.
"It's too dangerous." She doesn't mean for herself. Why would she? She never does. "One wrong move and the rubble collapses on everyone underneath it. There's no force feedback in standard operation schema, and...Well, I'm not as /talented/ as my family is, and I'm a little old for surgery," she speaks of the psychics and cybernetics in her close circles. "It has to be a Trace system, unless you have a better idea."
"Alright, then, let's take a look at this problem set."
<Pose Tracker> LiSA has posed.
"They are, but I missed a good amount of class. While cramming is good for just remembering things, understanding them is a different matter entirely, especially when it doesn't have anything to do with the last thing I was in class for." Lisa says with a grimace, before being promptly swept up into Hug.
"I am - I promise! I never meant to upset anyone. I'm so sorry." She reassures Chris softly.
Distracted from her good ol' studying, though, her gaze drifts to Chris, then Koji.
"Trace suits? That's the type where you move the robot with your own body, right? Like how a lot of the pilots in the Gundam Fights did?" She asks to confirm her knowledge. "Don't they have some sort of feedback loop? What's your injury metrics?" She wonders briefly. "Cybernetics can be expensive but you also have to weigh how much you are going to pay out to your own body."
She does open her book, showing the heat of fusion and vaporization section. "Last time we were working on friction and acceleration." Ah, the chapter before.
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
"Mm, I guess so," Koji replies to Chris's certainty about the Trace cockpit. He nods over to Lisa. "She's right, though. Sympathetic injury using a trace system is the leading cause of Gundam Fighter incapacitation and permanent retirement - or at least it was when the Fight was still a thing."
He walks over to Lisa, peering at the textbook. "Fusion and vaporization, right after Newtonian physics? Huh. Different order than I remember doing in the late '80s. So what's got you puzzled?"
<Pose Tracker> Christina MacKenzie has posed.
"You don't need to apologize... We both know Koji would have done the same in your shoes." Chris would have, too.
Chris shifts uncomfortably
"Neither of you are wrong about the dangers of Mobile Trace, I know, /I know/, but... I've piloted mobile weapons for a long time, and dug out rubbled buildings with Tristan like he was my bare hands for a long while. I can't feel the stone shifting--I can't feel the grind and pressure of what pieces are load-bearing. I don't care how much danger it puts me in, I can't afford to make myself safe just to put the trapped and the wounded in danger." For all the passion in the statement, there's a youthful determination in her smile. "This isn't going to be a mobile weapon. It'll be a...I'll make sure it's mobile /deliverance/."
Chris leans in close, flicking forward a page or two before going back to the problems.
"What's the thread...the connection...friction and fusion... Did the acceleration unit talk about kinetic energy?"
<Pose Tracker> LiSA has posed.
A pause as Lisa bops her head over her own work. "If this isn't going to be a machine that's more particular towards fighting, what's your thought on sensor spreads? Holographic, hand-touch designs that just use things like little gestures. Stuff that can get you topography, or even keep an eye on the status of your own machine or maybe readings for other machines in use?>"
Lisa offers.
"Yeah, I know he would. I think that's why I ended up picking him. Somehow, it was always meant to be him."
Lisa has soft pride in her tone, before she looks at Christina for a second. A longer second, and then Lisa -facepams-, with a snap of sound. "Oh sweet Mazinger, energy, I didn't even think about that! -I- didn't think about the nature of heat and vaporization as energy sources... steam wheels, hot springs..."
"I was trying to find the connection but I think my teacher just moved stuff around, we didn't end up following the book exactly! Thank you thank you!"
Happy Lisa springs hugs on Christina first, then Koji, enthusiastically embracing them for moments before she starts walking back towards a safe zone, eyes stuck on the page as she talks over her shoulder. "I've got it thanks Christina love you dad see you both later bye...." (She does -not- run into a wall. There is not bonking noise.)
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
"Mobile deliverance, huh?" Koji taps his chin. "Mobile saviour, maybe? Or is that too much."
He looks away sheepish as Lisa says it was always 'meant' to be him she picked. "I just..." He finds himself lacking the words to respond, instead beaming as Chris helps Lisa put together what she's missing and watching fondly as the young lady walks off to get back to her studies.
"... Sometimes I think I don't deserve her," he admits, before glancing to Chris. "You're pretty good with kids."
<Pose Tracker> Christina MacKenzie has posed.
"Holographic hand controls... to manage sensor sweeps and machine status?" Chris already uses complex hand movements to control the Tristan's INCOMs... It would be an easy adaptation. She stares at her hand, turning it over and flexing each finger, deep in thought. "Combining the Trace scheme for intuitive body movement... with gesture recognition to engage more complex actions using that intuitive control."
She can't help but smile at the enigmatic murmur LiSA utters. She doesn't understand it completely, or even mostly, but the admiration and connection between them made her a little...envious?
("Wait, envious?")
"Wait, Lisa, you sure? You didn't even show me the probl--uh, oh, bye! You're welcome! Good luck?" She hugs the force of nature for the instant she can.
"S-savior? I don't know so much about that... but it's not a weapon. It's not built to destroy and reworked from there. Even the Tristan...is a knight before he is a medic. This one...she's got to be different."
"She's a good, smart young woman, and she trusts you so much... As for me, haha, I've been a babysitter for most of my life! This much is daily life for me."
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
"... Yeah, I think she's on to something there. We've got more than a few holographic systems we can rig up to customise. I know where I'd put the readouts in the Pilder, but a Mobile Trace system is going to have a few more options for displaying them." Koji nods thoughtfully, sketching the rough shape of such displays in the air - and including at least one overhead display too, apparently.
"We could stand to look at the worker-type Ichinana configurations, too, where we forego the chest array and armour for a utility pack - mining, construction, you name it. Configuring a version of that pack for rescue and recovery operations shouldn't be too difficult."
Chris says Lisa trusts him so much, and Koji chuckles. "Yeah, that's what I mean - in a lot of ways I still feel like the same dumbass teenager, you know?"
He sighs, and shakes off the feeling of uncertainty. "Well, my project's a bust for now. Let's see if I can help any on this - do you have a name for it yet?"
<Pose Tracker> Christina MacKenzie has posed.
Christina watches Koji's invisible outlines form in the air, and designs take seed, ready to blossom on her sketchbook pages.
"Can you send me the files you have on worker Ichinana packs? I have a few designs and concepts I'd like to get your advice on...Plus, inspiration from tool kits for natural disasters and industrial accidents...Some sketches from when I worked in Anaheim R&D, might come in handy, too."
She laughed. "You're worried /you/ act like a reckless teen? I'm running from the law and I'm about to be 40. I'm still learning the same lessons I paid dear coin for, two decades ago... I might be a hypocrite for saying this, but...don't stress too much about it: The people that care about you will help balance you out. Sayla and Leina have saved me from myself more times than I can count. If she really did choose you, I think you can stand to let her be proud of you, Koji."
"A name, huh? I'm still thinking. If this really works, maybe I could make a few more for the Yumi Foundation. Leave a legacy that isn't just...isn't just gunfire and sacrifices. I'll have to make sure it has a perfect name. But for now?"
"Getting this new chance feels like I'm dreaming..."