He's Going The Distance (Open)

[uber_marionettist]

Who: Dirk Strider, OTA
Where: Goldenrod Rocket Labs
When: Early March!
Summary: If you want to steal some Lapras, you must first.... build a giant robot?
Rating: PG-13 for cursing and Dirk-like behaviour

Dirk's presence in the Rocket labs is pretty much continuous lately. Two full time jobs and a fervent desire to be anywhere but in a shared dorm randomly generated Rocket personnel made his whereabouts something of a guarantee anyway, but with the successful integration of his (un)patented BroPro and PokeGear, he's gotten started working on something specific.

Something... big. Something mechanical, maybe even automechanical. Something with huge cameras for eyes and a head bigger than him.

This is... fine. It's got to be fine because he must have approval for it; he certainly couldn't hide it even if he wanted to.

Most everything is joined to some kind of concave sheet metal layer, and as days and weeks pass, his upper half sometimes disappears entirely into this as he progresses to affixing wires, hard soldering the panels, and occasionally just ripping everything apart and throwing it in big noisy heaps of twisted aluminium and wrenched steel.

It looks like... a turtle shell?

...

(Sometimes, you can even find him sleeping in there...)

Comments

[fingersandteeth]

God, it's so cool.

The fact that Dirk and Jack are building a goddamn giant robot together... that's so cool. How is this his life? How is this any of their lives? At some point in the relatively near future, they're going to have a giant robot.

(Getting a chance to look at it again probably is a lot of why Steven volunteered to be the guy to bring Dirk food from the mess, before he accidentally sent himself to a pokecenter via starvation.)

[uber_marionettist]

Yes, they will have a giant robot.... Dirk hopes. He's really pressing right up against the technological limitations of this place, but if you're not attempting any kind of AI bullshit, then the vast majority of robotics is just mechanical engineering with a few more buttons to push at the end of it.

It takes a singleminded kind of person to see a project like this through to completion by oneself, from concept to plans to test type to alpha to finished product, but he doesn't actually need to do this all by himself, and in fact is.... well, he's not, which is. Surprisingly okay. It's been a few years since.... since he had a collaborator. It's not a real collaboration, at least not in his opinion, because he maintains absolute oversight of everything and he makes the final decisions, because he knows all too well what happens when he doesn't.

He's by himself right now, though, and true to singularly focused form, way more invested in fixing whatever is fucking up his welding torch right now than whenever he last ate. He's sitting in a tangle of wires and metal bars at the robot's unfinished 'base' like a bizarre bird in an unwelcoming nest.

But then he smells food, and--

"Oh, holy shit."

The possibility that he is slavering over someone else's food comes a second slower than his awareness of and desire for said food, and he continues in what he hopes is a smooth and casually undetectable manner.

"What are you even doing here?"

[fingersandteeth]

"Bringing you food," Steven says with a shrug, thrusting the plate (which seems to contain a hamburger, gravy, and rice) over in Dirk's direction. "The Team doesn't actually want you to starve to death while working on the robot--and someone needed to bring you something from the mess hall, so I figured I might as well do it. I can manage to make Jack eat when he comes home, but you don't exactly sleep, do you?"

After a moment, he adds, "And yeah, okay, I wanted to check to see how it's going."

[uber_marionettist]

"I told you, death don't stick," he deadpans as he takes the plate. It's the kind of repetitive but toothless sniping that counts as friendly ribbing with him, at least if you're willing to let it.

Otherwise, it's just pedantry.

He actually doesn't say anything else for a second because he's pushing the hamburger to the side and filling his mouth with rice and gravy, which requires some kind of chewing before he can continue. Holy fuck. Gravy, he's pretty sure, is one of mankind's actual greatest inventions. Basic subsistence fare never tasted so good when he was a kid.

He glances behind him at the gradually-coming-together collections of moving parts. The actual back third is almost complete now, which means it's starting to look like a lot more than the haunting and wretched inhabitants of Strider's Island of Misfit Robotics: a long steel snake, an ominous pair of eyes in a skeletal metal basket, and a gigantic dish strung with a jungle of wires, and so on.

"And I fell asleep for a couple hours earlier, but I guess we're all just going to ignore that? Whatever. Status update is, I haven't strung any of the wires from the head through the neck at all yet, but that ass is watertight."

[fingersandteeth]

"Well yeah, it doesn't," Steven fires back, "but you sending yourself to a Pokecenter sure is going to delay the robot getting finished, isn't it?"

He's not bothered, though. This is the kind of mutual sniping he's fine with. It's not Dirk trying to pretend he's an authority over things he knows nothing about, after all.

"Nice to know about the ass," he adds. "So... where are we going to be riding if you can get it together?"

[uber_marionettist]

"Steven is going to have to endure Dirk talking around or at least between massive mouthfuls of gravy and rice. Now keenly aware of how long it had been since he'd eaten, stuffing his face with warm, real food is priority fuckin' one.

"Humans? They go in the shell."

But Dirk knows from experience that slowing down goes a long way towards making less food make you feel more full, so after the first few bites, he does start purposefully pausing a set minimum number of seconds before reloading. Talking helps fill the void there.

"The interior will eventually be insulated with rubber and glass, and the technical components will be embedded in that. Keeps us and the internals from turning into one of Tesla's electrifying wet dreams." He stabs the air with his utensil, waves it demonstratively like the arcane gestures are going to mean jack-all to Steven somehow.

Pause. More eating.

Chewing. Swallowing.

"That's also why producing a chassis that's one hundred percent watertight is a goddamn necessity."

[fingersandteeth]

Steven nods. "Right. That makes sense." And it does. He's not much of an engineer--well, he's not really any kind of engineer at all, just the guy who hands his boyfriend tools when he's allowed to--but he's got enough basic knowledge to see how all of those things are pretty goddamn necessary.

"What about the head? Anything go in that?"

this is going to feed into dirk's presumptions even more and i hatelove it

[conniemaheswaran]

Look, robots are cool. Especially giant robots. Especially-especially giant robots made for nefarious purposes may or may not have an additional cool factor, depending on how guilty Connie is feeling about being a rocket on any given day. (Robots made for stealing an endangered species out of a safe habitat are significantly less cool, but Connie's doing her level best not to think about that particularly hard.) So Connie has come into the lab to observe... and to hand exactly the tool he needs.

She's picked up a few tricks from DIYing her Mach Bike.

[uber_marionettist]

The first time Connie just has the socket wrench he was looking for waiting in hand, ready for him almost(?) faster than he could turn around, he just took it. No word of thanks, no additional gesture or visible reaction, no change of expression. The element of surprise actually ensured the absence of that response.

The second time, it was a screwdriver bit, and there was a second's longer pause before he went back to work. That time he was talking, and the beat of elongated silence hung between words somewhere in the middle of the sentence. (The sentence itself was a long, meandering quasi-dissemination on Timaeus and the shape(s) of the universe, frogs, and the theoretical scope of the exact dimensions of the universe they were currently inhabiting. The topic had started as an observation on the repetition of forms and concepts between realities [for example, frogs] but had taken a sharp left turn somewhere.)

The third time was a different bit and this time he jerked his head up slightly--a short, wordless mark of approval.

Eventually he dropped that one--he really didn't set anything down, ever, he just fucking dropped it like an astronaut--and found her there again. Not handing him something, though, which was just as well because there are very few good ways to hand someone an entire welding torch and tank.

He raises one eyebrow, purposefully.

[conniemaheswaran]

"Oh, really? Okay, then." Taking that as her cue, Connie straps on the mask and tank, then begins picking up where Dirk left off.

connie that probably isn't what he meant,

YIKES (TM)

[uber_marionettist]

Dirk reacts partway on instinct--instinct that may or may not be 'his' in the traditional sense but which is wholly his in every way that matters.

His hand shoots out faster than conscious thought, but in perfect time with the thoughts that motivate it. He doesn't grab the torch. He grabs Connie--scarred, calloused hand closing over hers roughly as he jerks her arm up--or tries to, anyway, the intent being both immobilisation and neutralisation.

Also, it's a direction that doesn't leave the flame on his robot or aimed in anyone's face, so at least his instincts had that covered.

ripperoni in pepperoni

[conniemaheswaran]

Connie's reflexes have been honed after years of battling monsters. This gives her enough of a window to see Dirk's hand coming.

"Dirk, what the fuck-"

However, Dirk's are faster. He clamps around her arm, and if anybody else was in the room right now they'd be holding their breath. Then Connie's own training kicks in.

One: Turn and twist out of the grip, putting his arm in an awkward position. Turn off the torch, drop the pack onto the ground gently.

Two: Knee to the groin to stun. Take advantage of welding mask to headbutt him in the forehead as hard as she can at the same time.

Three: While he's reeling, throw him over shoulder, pin him to the ground, hold nearest deadly object to throat.

[uber_marionettist]

Dirk is faster, but he didn't have a plan. His instinct, be it 'his' by right or not, comes with a sense of authority, of physical and psychological power that simply does not fucking exist here. His thought, insamuch as there was thought, was preventative: he doesn't want Connie fucking up or with his fucking robot. Especially not without his explicit word to that order.

So his reaction was innate and even deliberate, but not necessarily planned. The problem with this is that when Connie whips around and twists around his grip, he's still drawing a blank on exactly he planned to do next. The knee to the groin, alarmingly, does not faze him as much as it should, but the welding mask to the face only goes better than a half-destroyed battlebot to the face in that it does not split his face open to permanently scar.

And the next second he's on his back, feeling that impact in his pelvis and spine, and there's a screwdriver at his fucking throat. The blow didn't knock the wind out of him but it definitely stopped it in his lungs for a metric second. It's been a hot second (idiomatic) since that last happened... is what he'd say if he'd not fought Connie a few weeks ago and ended up on his back in a ditch. His jaw clenches, teeth set against each other hard enough to actually affect his expression.

"My turn. What the fuck."

[conniemaheswaran]

If this were an anime, an ellipsis would be slowly assembling itself above Connie's head.

There's a beat, and-

"OH MY STARS I'M SO SORRY MY TRAINING TOOK OVER ARE YOU OKAY OF COURSE YOU'RE NOT OKAY C'MON LET'S GET YOU TO WAIT I HAVE A BETTER IDEA ARTEMIS LET'S GO I NEED YOU"

A Gallade pops out of a Great Ball, gives Connie a withering look, and fires a chain of Heal Pulses at Dirk. Meanwhile, Connie continues pacing back and forth... and spies Doomlord and DA SHAREZONE in the doorway, Doomlord possessing her spare gear.

"No."

DA SHAREZONE somehow gives Connie a shit-eating grin, despite having no mouth.

"No no no don't you dare-"

Alack, alay, it's too late. The video is already uploaded, in all its meme-ified glory.

Connie slumps as she gets the notification, groaning.

[thedifferencebetween]

Oftentimes, Jack's actual talents and skills don't get much use in Pokeworld. His plans are the very slow and long running subtle types that require manipulation of far more moving parts than he has access to here, and his robotics and engineering genius finds an outlet in doodling death traps that will never be made.

But every so often an opportunity comes along.

And when he'd noticed what Dirk was doing, he'd strutted into the lab with his hands in the pockets of his stupidly expensive designer jeans and a grin on his face. He'd been eager beneath all his usual bravado and posturing....

But once he actually started working, all of that melted away. Jack's focus was only on the project, the quips and jokes and rambling stories gone and replaced by tight lipped, silent concentration.

Or at least mostly silent.

"Hey Dirk, c'mere a sec." Jack's standing at a workbench, staring down at a pad of graph paper on which he's jotted down some notes and figures and hasty, out of context sketches of small parts of the robot. "Both on account of we've been at this for hours without a break and also I think I've got an idea on how to streamline the jointed segments for smoother motion. Hardest friggin part of any kind of mobile robot, and the bigger they are... And I know, I know it doesn't matter if it moves organically, but smoother joint segments mean smoother overall motion in general and I figure we want that in a mobile, aquatic base."

And besides that, it's the principle of the thing. Why build anything if it's not going to be the best possible whatever you can build?

[uber_marionettist]

When Jack had first turned up with an agenda and a determination to make Dirk accommodate it, Dirk was about as accommodating as he (n)ever is, and it took some intense and deadly serious negotiations before he "let" Jack anywhere near his stupid, overambitious plans (and the new pet project at the centre of that.)

And it had been tense, at first. Especially when Jack kept talking.

But as it become gradually apparent that he did know his dick from a drillbit, and in fact knew about more than the base mechanical engineering tasks Dirk had wanted to quarantine him to (with no real success)... it got easier. Almost easier than doing it all himself. Almost.

Because he didn't dare get too comfortable. At least he's stopped radiating tension and hostility. Even if part of it is that he and Jack share a tendency toward hyperfocus when they really get to work, or at least a very intense monofocus.

And he's actually quite interested in what Jack has to say.

Though there's a short delay before he responds to the sound of a human voice at all; he's riveting, god damn it, and he can't and won't stop until he's done with the panel.

He peels himself away from starting the next one only begrudgingly, and only having absorbed like... half of what Jack said.

"What? I mean, I heard part of that." His hair is plastered to his face unpleasantly, and his awareness of that has been increasingly difficult to ignore. Getting work done is basically the only possible means of (not) stopping himself, so now he's scrubbing at his face violently with his hands.

"Uh. Yeah, unless we're dedicating our collective effort to utilising distinctly unnatural movements or eliminating motion all together, then we're going to want to replicate the natural motion as best we can, just for reasons of pure functionality... and shit, if that's our angle then why the fuck not go for gold. So shoot your shot, what's the notion."

He tucks his hair up into his hairline, pushing his glasses back up over his face. Pauses.

"....I mean, as long as it's not [OOCLY REDACTED SLUR USE] then I'll probably let you try. Think I said so before, but I never made so much as a fucking boat before this thing."

[thedifferencebetween]

"Yeah, can't say I've done much in the aquatic vehicle department, but I've built plenty of giant robot things before."

Jack passes over his notes and the sketched design, a modification on the joint mechanisms.

"Really the trick is replicating actual joints and bone structure, and then improving on it! Nature's great and all, but it can always be better. I tell ya, when that clicked...the shit I was making as a little kid was just pathetic. I mean it was awesome for a little kid with literally no education, but...stiff legged things just lurching around..."

Jack chuckles, shaking his head. He'd made some real monstrosities when he was working all this stuff out for himself, hybrid robots cobbled together from scraps he pulled out of dumpsters.

He's come a long way.

"I dunno what the hell a Lapras joint looks like, but a flipper's a flipper. I have encountered and studied big ass things with flippers before. God, aquatic shit is freaky, isn't it?"

I forgot about [OOCLY REDACTED SLUR] thanks past me

[uber_marionettist]

"Can always get freakier," Dirk informs him.

He frowns down at the papers, still talking while he does: multitasking, but only just.

"......... the shit I made as a kid was alright, I guess. Mostly just wanted to see my puppets gain a little more life... pretty much inevitable I'd graduate from pulling strings to writing them."

He's really not thinking about what comes out of his mouth; he's so focused on the page that he's just reflexively filling the dead air with words, filling time and space with himself while he thinks.

"What the fuck else was I gonna do, the whole planet was one giant fucking fishbowl. Everything but the fish and the seagulls was an alien, at least by the time I got there, and I'm not totally convinced all the fish I know were Earth Originals, if you catch my current drift."

If he were listening a little more and thinking about robotics a little less, he probably wouldn't have said all that. Or at least not all at once. Usually there are a few more layers of obfuscation and artful insincerity. Instead he just waves the paper at Jack.

"So yeah, I know flippers, I guess. Big compressed hand, ball and socket joint, bells and whistles if you're feeling that freaky vibe. Can we reinforce the joints at all? Not keen on adding more potential points of failure, too much risk and this thing ends up dead in the water. Literally."

And Dirk's spent enough years of his life in that exact situation.

[asmywitness]

Tyler doesn't exactly make a habit out of seeking out Dirk. It's a bit tricky to be friends with Psychic Ground Zero when your only real mainstay companion is a Psychic bird that hates him.

But, well. They work in the same place now, so he ought to try and play nice for a bit. Even if the guy is a grade-A douche, it's the kind of low-level asshole fuckery that Tyler can get behind. And frankly, he misses that kind of banter.

When he finds Dirk working in his personal lab, or whatever the fuck he might call it (is he the kind of person that would sincerely call it his lair? Tyler thinks Dirk is), he sends a text message first.

Your shift starts in half an hour, you know. Eat some fucking breakfast.

This is very shortly followed - literally, shortly as in Tyler waits for Dirk to actually look at the message and read it for half a second - by a sealed ziploc bag, containing a greasy-looking cheese and bacon toasted sandwich, being hurled with surprising accuracy at Dirk's head.

This was the stupidest tag I could have written, probably

[uber_marionettist]

It isn't really "Dirk's" lab so much as it's the lab he started in and rapidly crowded everyone else out of, thereby precluding any other possible labelling based on use alone.

So the same way a lot of things become Dirk's, ultimately.

Pun intended.

Anyway.

He has not read the text message, and whether or not he even knows he received one is dubious. That would be a nice explanation for the lag between the incoming projectile and his hand, anyway. He catches it, yeah, but messily--the mess might be contained in the bag, but it's a pretty nasty price for any cool points he might have earned by intercepting the thing without looking up.

He regards the ex-sandwich silently for a moment, shrugs, and pops the bag open.

Then he checks his messages.

Then he sends one back. In that order.

You didn't even ask if I keep Kosher first.

Its beautiful

[asmywitness]

I did not, no. That would be because nothing here is actually kosher - or halal, since you're being anal-retentive, but I'm more familiar with the latter - because I am one hundred percent certain Judaism as a concept doesn't exist here.

Now if you'd just said 'vegetarian' instead then I would absolutely be in the wrong for assuming, but since you decided to try and take the 'holier than thou' routine I am under no obligation to cater to your fuckery.

He sends it all with a straight face and a dry look, leaning casually on the doorway as he types.

Also since you're being a dick about it, that sandwich was 50 bucks so either pay up or eat up.

[uber_marionettist]

Good thing this shit is basically Monopoly money.

Like being back on Earth C. Boonbucks printed in absurd quantities, values maintained solely by the power of belief in those values.

He opts to just sort of push the mess of carbs and protein up from the bottom, biting into it as it starts to emerge from the bag for minimal mess. Like a freezie pop, or a tube of toothpaste.

That's one thing the big guy and economics have in common.

[asmywitness]

What meaning does the gold standard have to an alchemist, sort of thing.

He moves into the lab then, so he can get a closer look at the giant-ass shell Dirk is working on. Gotta say, he's hella curious.

What's with that thing? You going to make a mobile home or something?

Why do so many of my tags to Tyler feel like shitposts

[uber_marionettist]

Rather than wasting his (proverbial) breath, Dirk gives Tyler short nod--the cool, bro's version of 'got it in one,' or any similarly unnecessary verbage.

This? No. Already did one, anyway. Not that I needed one; Carly paid commission and I felt like a challenge.

This is a motherfucking robot.

they just feed into each other's dumbassery so well

[asmywitness]

Amazing, how a man of such verbosity can choose to sum it up in a single gesture. Tyler wonders if it hurt him to do it.

But you know what? Robotics are still a cool enough thing that Tyler is genuinely kind of interested, even if he doesn't particularly show it. He doesn't want to give Dirk the satisfaction.

I suppose if you know how to code, it's not unreasonable to presume you know how to apply that to robots in some way. Is this another challenge or did you just decide you wanted a motherfucking robot for yourself?