Birds of a Feather Build Together

[Cali Ziiva]

Location: Theed, Naboo​

Tag: [member="John Locke"]​

​

"Cali. Cali!"

After a bit of rustling, a pink haired, pink headed Zeltron peeked out from beneath a canvas tarp. Wide-eyed, she stared at the cream-colored man that stood at the entrance to the workshop. "Hey there," she cried, quickly followed with a toothy grin.

A slow deflating sigh followed the enthusiastic welcome. "Are you going to be using the shop all day?"

"Huh?" Blink, blink. "Oh. Yes. Well, no. Actually, maybe you can help me find out." With that the rest of the Zeltron emerged from under the canvas. Dressed in bright blue overalls covered in numerous splotches of dirt and oil, she stood proudly to her feet with both hands atop her hips. "I think it's ready for a show."

Perhaps he shouldn't have asked. Might be safer to let her use the shop all day than be subjected to testing some new creation. They never blew up. They always worked. The problem was often enough they tended to work too well. Last time had been a fire-breathing lizard that nearly set the area ablaze. Fortunately the pink creature seemed about as enthusiastic as talking her way out of things as she was talking her way into them.

With the push of a button the large whatever-it-was was wheeled out on a mechanical platform into the courtyard. Cali slowly strode alongside it until it was free and clear of the hanger. A soft melody of some kind was hummed until the control was released and the entire construction came to a standstill.

"Okay! So, you know what happened last time was a really big misunderstanding," Cali declared without the slightest hint of bashful acceptance of nearly setting the city on fire. "This time I made a dial to control the output, right? I even tested it on a very tiny prototype first. I think I might be spending too much time selling this stuff instead of building them not to think of this sooner." Cue giggle. "Anyway, are you ready?"

The owner of the shop made sure he stood off of center from whatever bulbous thing was hidden before him now. "Much as I can be."

Another tooth grin was flashed before her pink fingers took hold of the canvas and gave it a good tug. With the soft fwip and crumble of fabric about the base, the canvas came free and revealed a giant...duck. Its bill and eyes stared boldly toward the future, with its wings nested comfortably against its sides.

Naturally, the workshop owner was speechless with her magnificent talent on display. Cali grinned and she took a quick walk around her creation for a visual inspection before the test run.

"What... Why did you create a giant duck, Cali?" It stood twelve feet high. Twelve feet. A metal duck. A painted, twelve-foot tall metal duck. Just why?

"Cause no one ever suspects a duck, of course. Oh, you have a giant lizard land in front of you and you start thinking 'fire' or 'acid' or 'razor sharp teeth.' But when you see a duck what do you think? Cute. Fluffy. Okay, some of them can get aggressive, but look at him," the Zeltron waved her hands at his adorable self. "No one needs 'cute' out and about though. So that's where the surprise comes in."

After she'd reached out and took hold of a large control pad, Cali backed up to join her compatriot in the inventive arts. "So, we'll start at, oh, two percent. How's that? Safe, right? Right! So, here we go."

"Safe from what?"

Just like that Cali pressed the 'fire' button and the giant duck let loose a quack that had both of them squeeze their eyes shut and stumble under the sonic assault. Deafened for just a second she hadn't heard some of the nearby overhangs rattle as a result of the blast.

"Whoa." The disheveled pink hair was tossed about as the Zeltron recovered from the auditory overload. "Good thing that was two percent... I wonder what ten--"

"Wait. Not here, Cali. We'll be lucky if no one calls the local constable over that racket as it is." The man was still rubbing one ear with a pinched expression. Obviously recovered enough to be beside himself with Cali talking about higher levels of output. "You should test that somewhere else. A different planet, perhaps."

With a grin, Cali powered down the construct. "So, now you see, right?"

Eyes narrowed, he felt like this was about to lead up to something. "What?"

"Why he's a Mighty Duck."

Shoulders slumped, eyes closed, it wasn't worth even sighing about at this point. "Just... let me know when you're through for the day, Cali. And no more field tests." He turned to make his way back to the front work area where other mechanics nearby might start growing curious or perhaps worried what might happen next.

Cali grinned and waved as the nice man left. "No problem!" It wasn't anything to get quacked up about.

 

[John Locke]

There was something about Naboo that seemed to pull John back again and again, there must have been, he'd built the head office of Locke and Key Mechanics on the planet after all. But, it was more than a good tax rate, or pro-business policies, he could have gotten those anywhere. There was something else, like an echo, a memory fo flowers and happiness, of a smile he could almost see, a ghost turning away from him, an urge to chase to find that ghost and never let go. It was a feeling he couldn't quite put his finger on, couldn't quite figure out what he was feeling, what had caused it. For a man of science that was more than frustrating it was a situation he'd never come across before in his life.

THe sensation had driven him out of his labs, out of the offices entirely, just one more nondescript man lost in the crowd, just one more man walking the pavements of the city. The architecture had always been spectacular on the plent, it just wasn't something he was, he had ever been particularly interested in. Still, that restlessness, that sense of somehting missing had driven him out into the streets, hand tucked into his pockets, dark eye flicking idly over the crowd. Your usual mix, people wrapped up in their lives, each with their own story and their own worries that left them rushing past one another, strangers passing in the night.

A sigh, a turn and the flash of credits passing between fingers left John clutching an orange, turning the sphere round and round between his fingers before he started peeling back the skin, a wry smile turning up his lips. Like that ghost of a feeling, he just really felt like an orange now. Lost in his thoughts, and the taste of the fruit John had managed to amble into a part of town he never had before...not that was saying much, it wasn't like he got out much. Although...John was almsot sure that the 12 foot tall duck wasn't something that dominated the skyline wasn't normal.

"That thing some kind of festival centerpiece right?"

[member="Cali Ziiva"]

 

[Cali Ziiva]

"Hmm?" Cali blinked and spun about to look at the inquisitive person that'd laid their eyes upon-- The Zeltron popped an inch off the ground when her bright eyes beheld The [member="John Locke"]. Ooh, goodness Zeltros her, and look what she was wearing. And how dirty she was. She felt so embarrassed having such a well known inventor catching her in such a disheveled state.

"N-No, not a festival, uh, thing," she replied with a bit more volume to her voice than she'd intended. Words had gotten mad jumbled there and she'd totally fought to find the right ones. "This," swallow, breathe, breathe, "is a super sonic weapon." The pink woman began to pace around the large construct trying to buy time and not just stare at the man. "The diaphragm and port are huge, with most of the frequency output being on the lower spectrum. The decibels it reaches makes sure anyone around hears and feels the impact. Imagine a sonic grenade, but a hundred-- a thousand times more powerful. You could drop entire armies to their knees." And probably make them all deaf. Well you didn't have to crank it all the way up.

"Um, oh," she scurried back to the front and gestured with both hands toward the bill, "and this can allow directional output so it doesn't have to affect an entire area."

A soft giggle followed the quick run down. "Oh, I'm Cali, by the way." Scoot, scoot. The Zeltron slipped closer as she got hold of herself. "I like building things. Well, I have a gift of being able to figure out how things are put together; so it just kind of seems natural to reassemble things in different ways to see what happens. Nothing wrong with a little art on top of that." Like making a sonic emitter look like a giant duck. Plus she liked chocolate and long walks with Mega Industry Stars like Locke on paradise planets.

 

[John Locke]

John's lips curled up into a small smile, a small sound of amusement escpaoing his lips as he slipped his hands into his pockets, inclining his head to the pink ball of energy. "Well, you're right about that, there's no reason that something you make shouldn't look good as well as serve it's purpose...if it's serves it's purpose."

A hand slipped out of his pockets to wave at the gigantic duck that towered over the both of them as to took a step forward, metallic fingers tapping agaisnt the side of the duck. "The problem you're going to run into is this is a gigantic target, and a gigantic warning. There's no-way any reasonably intelligent army isn't going to spot the duck walking towards them and call in air support or artillery." White teeth worried his lowerlip for a moment as his eyes started to glow, lost in thought, in teh streams of data cascading over his vision as he constructed and discarded schematics in a manner of seconds. "Have you considered adding some defenses to the...well the duck? given it' size you could get a significant excess power that could be funneled into shields or some other form of defences to protectt it. I'd suggest that you could consider that or well, break it down."

He half turned to face the Zeltron, "I've never really played much with sonic weapons, but if I remember my high-school physics soundwaves build off one another. Have you considered a swarm of smaller ducks all well, quacking at hte same time to achieve teh same effect?"

[member="Cali Ziiva"]

 

[Cali Ziiva]

"Defenses?" Cali looked up at the duck and then back down to Locke. "Well, I thought they'd just drop it from orbit like they do this giant lizard I've heard about. Of course, most people don't believe the stories. They laugh about 'giant lizards' and think it's a code word for some secret weapon. I mean," the Zeltron shrugged, "they aren't wrong, except for the part where the secret weapon actually is a giant lizard."

That said, what Locke said was tossed about mentally. "Defenses could work though. Missiles or blasters under the wings so if approached from afar hostile parties aren't on alert. Shield generator never hurts either. Maybe a dome-type to shelter nearby troops?" After all, if someone was tasked with guarding it the weapon might as well provide some shelter from long-range assault. A sonic weapon lost a lot of energy over long-distances, so it's make sense an enemy would try loitering at the edge of the effective range.

With a light bounce Cali pivoted around the man a little more so she wasn't ninety-degrees off to one side, barely in sight. "Linear superposition. Overlapping waves of the same frequency cause an amplification where those waves overlap. We would need the frequency to be higher for that to be effective the further hostile parties are, however. If the frequency is too low there'll be large, uh, pockets where the amplification wouldn't occur. Or just a lot of smaller ducks."

After a tilt and tip of her wild, pink hair back, and the Zeltron gazing up at the sky for a moment, she added, "If we go smaller, might be worth considering an insulated helmet to protect the troops while simultaneously broadcasting a sonic signal to disrupt enemy troops using high frequency, high amplitude waves. With lower frequency pulse rifles to knock them away, especially any with protecting against high energy attacks. Wouldn't be as cool as a giant duck on the field, but also wouldn't be a massive target." Her bright eyes dropped back down to gaze at the Super Star of research and development. "Could even build a tank able to fire concussive energy that might even pass through most defensive barriers. Not so easy to defend against vibration of oxygen molecules." Line of sight was hardly an issue. Insulation or rigidity of materials were more the problem then.

Tag: [member="John Locke"]​

 

[John Locke]

"A giant anything is a secret weapon," John agreed, slipping both hands into his pockets as he took a step backwards, "but if they want to keep on being a giant weapon then they need to have, eitehr a way to defend themselves or a way to prevent themselves from being hit by enemy weapons. The first time you drop something like this, you may take people by surprise, they may even not attacck because they have no idea what you're landing here. But after that, you better believe that Duckie here is gonna be a lodestone of weapons fire, so we might as well make sure that your weapon can make it to the frontline right?"

John fell silent as he watched the pink...person...biosterous energy made flesh? The cyborg wasn't entirely sure what to make of her but she certainly seemed ammenable to other people's ideas. "Dome shields might work if you have the power spare...what kind of power source are you running on this?" The man's head tilted to teh side as teh gave the duck one last look before glancing over to Cali, nodding his head. "Exactly...I'm thinking a lot of smaller ducks. A small droid about," he held his hands about 30cm apart. "That way they're small enough that most sensors won't even look twice at them, and when they do they'll probably just see a probe droid. Which would be the last mistake they ever made." John could see it in his imagination, a horde of mechanical duclks rising out of the streams and lakes to take out an entire army with one resounding quack.

John slowly bit his lip before nodding, "You're talking about an entire weapons line consisting of sonic weapons, I could get behind that. It's an underutilised weapon and you could probably take more than a few people by suprise with it. And besides, you've got a weapon that very much is the definition of a bunker buster, it might not be able to break through the defences, but it'll take care of anything inside. I do like the way you're thinking. You could even push the technology into grenades, sonic blast like that could be plenty useful on a tactical level."

[member="Cali Ziiva"]

 

[Cali Ziiva]

Despite John's words of caution, the Zeltron's bright eyes and smile didn't waver by any measure. Just because there was a problem didn't mean there was a problem. It was only a problem if you let it stand in your way, and this Zeltron didn't let anything stand in her way. Except chocolate. Always time to take a break and munch on some sugary treats.

Xobos? Her Miraluka girl didn't stand in Cali's way. Oh, she was certainly a distraction, but Cali was often the one doing the distracting. Besides, Xobos needed the company. As a Zeltron, Cali wouldn't let such a pretty thing languish in darkness all alone; it went against her religion of fun and happiness.

But the pink one's thoughts were already far and away off course. Didn't take long to get back on track though. Not every day she got to talk to [member="John Locke"]. Like, there'd been that one time, but it had been all business. Some people were abducted and they had to get them back... You know how those things went. Best laid plans and whatever. So just chatting with the man about this and that -- mostly her latest zany idea -- was an absolute wonder!

"Oh! A miniaturized K-19 Graviwave Reactor," Cali replied casually with a little bounce and a flop to her disheveled, pink hair. "There's plenty of power in Big Duckie here. Like, I bet this Duck couldn't quack at more than, like, forty percent without damaging itself. Fifty-five percent without shaking apart. And if I cranked it up to one-hundred percent I bet it wouldn't touch seventy before disintegrating!" Why, yes, she was proud of that. First, she miniaturized a big reactor, and then got it working, and then managed to use it, and then found out she couldn't even use its full potential because it was too much power. Like too much power was even a problem.

"Mm mm, that's a good idea. Though wouldn't have them waddling over a battlefield at the enemy. Oh," the Zeltron blinked, "or maybe you could. Like, make a wide and deep line... maybe make them Hover Ducks that speed across great distances." Cali giggled at the thought. "Sneak attacks would be better though."

She went silent and fixed the man with wide eyes as he spoke about how to utilize sonic attacks under varying conditions. "Definitely. Like, it's hard defending against vibrations of air or other molecules. Not very useful in space, but usually you fighting person-to-person in space either. 'Course, you can also make counter-sonic weapons. If the other side builds something like this you build something to quickly analyzed and emit a frequency exact one-hundred and eighty degrees offset. Actually, I could probably make some ear protection to help with that. Wouldn't do anything about the concussive force though."