So a Shard and a Shapeshifter Beat a Guy with a Bar

[Rusty]

Sure enough, 1900 rolled around, and Rusty was waiting at the spaceport.

He wasn't feeling like himself, however. Sure, he had his usual outfit: massive combat boots, dark grey trousers, dark green T-shirt with a brown leather jacket over it, leather shooting gloves with carbon fiber reinforced knuckles, and of course Gertrude slung over his back, but everything else was different.

For starters, the cloak was gone.

Also, he had a face.

It had taken some finagling, but Rusty had convinced the Shard Network that it might be a good idea to have a different chassis on hand, just in case he needed to be someone else. After all, the giant menacing cloaked figure thing was cool, but a bit distinctive. Not necessarily a good thing for an assassin.

So they had sent a freaking HRD. And not just any HRD, but one designed specifically for Rusty. Its strength was similar to his own, as was its size. The goal was to make it as close to his droid body in terms of capabilities as possible, in order to make the transition easier.

Unfortunately, the result had turned into something that the Captain would have called meat candy, right before going weak at the knees. Kairon would have probably described it as a Corellian god of protein shakes. Rusty called it pretty freaking conspicuous.

The HRD was two meters tall. Short-cropped hair, dark brown, capped the skull. The face was all lines and hard angles, with a jaw you could plow a field with. The eyes were an eerie gray-silver that even the Shard found unsettling.

Below the neck, it was all bulging muscles in slabs that could be used to patch holes in a hull. It wasn't grotesque, like a professional bodybuilder. Instead, it was more along the lines of a professional athlete who liked his cardio and weightlifting, and never ever skipped leg day. Thank the Force the skin hadn't had the chance to catch a tan yet; it was disconcerting enough getting stared at by most of the women and more than a few of the men on the way to the spaceport. Maybe the massive rifle didn't help anything, but he was still perfectly willing to blame the attention on the HRD.

There was time to kill, so Rusty used it roundly abusing the idiot who had thought this chassis was a good idea.

"I'm going to find whoever built this thing and shove my foot so far up their..."


[member="Laguz Vald"]

 

[Laguz Vald]

"That they'd what? Rue the day they were born?"

Laguz cut in with a wicked smile on her lips, finally conent that this was indeed the new body [member="Rusty"] had mentioned back at his shop. Being able to switch to another chassis added a whole new layer to the conundrum of what exactly the man actually was, but the merc had learned a long time ago that not knowing certain things was perfectly okay. In fact, the longer one worked in the information brokering business, the more one began to understand that simple, yer powerful policy.

Knowledge is power, yes, and power kills with infinite ease.

She's seen it, felt it, avoided it. Not knowing what the craftsman was? Big deal. If she ever hankered for his destruction for some reason or other, she had ample avenues of achieving the same result without ever learning what was under that hood. At the moment, the two were slated to work together, not against each other, and this the need to know grew even lesser.

He was skilled, and he was fun to be around. That was enough for Laguz.

"That's a mighty fine… chassis. You make it yourself?"

She gave his bulging phisque another once-over as she lead the tall man to her ship, wondering where he was hiding all that promised torture gear. Was it disguised as under the muscles? Could the droid-thing even do that? Maybe she was starting to assume the same level of subtletly in her old age; not many could hide objects inside their own bodies, though she imagined that artificial constructs like the man behind her probably had few tricks of their own up their sleeves.

The endless combat between organic and technological seemed kind of silly to someone who embraced both without batting an eye, and had seen enough of history utilize both ends of the spectrum to not really care which mattered in the end. You could bury a man with either, and that was all the assassin needed to know.

"Gertrude all you're gonna need to break the guy?" the woman asked as she entered the small freighter, squinting a bit until her eyes adjusted to the low light. Another perk of doing this on Bastion was that her navicomputer could do all the work for her. Not that Laguz was a terrible pilot, mind you, but she preferred to spend her time doing interesting things while travelling somewhere.

Like planning out a torture session, for example. Or getting drunk. Or both! Both was good.

 

[Rusty]

Whatever else he thought of the meat suit, Rusty liked being able to scowl.

"Of course not," he said dryly. "I've got a pack on too, not that you can see it through the half a bantha someone decided to bolt onto a pair of Endorian trees for legs."

He turned around and sure enough, nestled between his shoulder blades, was one of Gertrude's battle boxes. The Shard had hastily improvised straps, with an improvised cargo area on top made from defective armorweave panels that hadn't gone into the armor. If the whole thing had been hollow, [member="Laguz Vald"] probably could have sat down in it comfortably.

Laguz's confusion was apparent. Rusty gave her a knowing grin, then tapped the side of his nose with the tip if his index finger. How disconcerting it must have been to see someone else who could change their face.

"I don't know about you, but I could use a drink. Never had a chance to try alcohol before, but the Ca- a friend of mine sure seems to love it."

The HRD chassis was apparently able to metabolize alcohol and simulate intoxication. Unlike an actual human, however, Rusty could purge the effects from his system in a few highly unpleasant moments. That would have to be tested as well, so he had gone out and purchased a bottle of whiskey. Or was it rum? Tequila maybe? He didn't remember exactly what, only that it had been the most expensive thing in the store. If throwing money at the problem didn't solve it, what would?

"How's about we make like a tree and get the [bleep] out of here?"

Oh, and apparently, the designers had thought it funny to incorporate the inability to swear. At least the bleeps were in the Shard's natural voice, rather than the usual piercing tone. That would have been a step too far, and would have rendered the HRD useless.

 

[Laguz Vald]

"Someone's having a bad day," the shifter remarked with a grin at the grumbling, her smile widening as the mountain of a droid turned around to show off yet another piece of handiwork. Whatever he had in there had to be good, but Laguz restrained herself from daydreaming. It would hardly be appropriate if she made him wait by fantasizing about the possibilities of what he'd brought to the table.

Later, dear, she reminded herself and instead stepped into the ship with the droid-man in tow.

"You've... never been drunk?"

A predatory grin split across her face at that tidbit of information, and when her eyes settled on the presented bottle of alcohol, the smirk further spread beyond what would seem possible for a normal humanoid. Luckily for the merc, she was hardly one of those.

"That's some fine Corellian stuff," she hummed appreciatively and set the decorated flask on the table. A few strides found her in the cockpit, and within a few taps on the interface, their course was set for Bastion. By the time the ship got cleared for takeoff, the two of them would hopefully be well into the third quarter of that bottle.

Well, at least that was the plan.

Laguz returned with a pair of glasses and unceremoniously plopped down into one of the chairs, crossing her boots on the table and proceeded to pour them both a heathly helping of the alcohol. Go big or go home, right? Go big and go home? Whichever worked, really.

"Here goes, big boy. The can is down the corridor to the right." Do droids even puke?

Oh, well. She'd find out soon enough. Laguz threw back her head as she downed the contents of her glass with gusto, shivering in delight as it burned its way down her throat.

This was going to be fun.


[member="Rusty"]

 

[Rusty]

Rusty's new body could replicate most human bodily functions, but it wasn't set up to gag or choke, which meant the burning hellfire that was invading his throat hole didn't leave him a gasping, sputtering heap. That was nice, because once you got past the pain, it actually tasted pretty good.

Smoky, sweet, with hints of peat and something that might have been vanilla.

Not bad.

"I could get used to this stuff," he said, grinning.

He poured himself another measure of the amber liquid. Instead of throwing it back in one go, he took a moment to enjoy it this go round. The burn wasn't nearly so bad if he didn't take it all at once, and he was getting more of the complex flavors from it.

They sat in silence for some time, too busy drinking to talk much. Rusty was determined to keep up with [member="Laguz Vald"] and was largely succeeding. Once he got used to the initial shock of the alcohol, it was really quite easy to see how the Captain drank so much of the stuff. His head was feeling pleasantly fuzzy, and a sense of general well-being suffused his entire body. A quick dive into the operating system told the Shard that his body was working overtime to counteract the negative effects, but it was winning so far.

"Sho...So," Rusty said. It took him a second to realize that he needed to compensate for a tongue that felt thick and clumsy. "This is what all the fuss is about. I have to say, it's kinda nice."

 

[Laguz Vald]

Some people developed a taste for the riches, and the luxury, and the fine things in life after being able to afford them for a long while. Some people, but not Laguz.

Money could buy all the luxury the Galaxy had to offer and then some, if you had enough of it. Blood money, as it turned out, was damn good, and after two centuries in business, the merc had enough that no price was too high. She'd blown some of it too, throughout those decades, but as time went on, Laguz invariably found it lacking.

Whiskey, be it the crap off of the lowest shelf in a back-alley liquor store, or the thing that came in jewel-encrusted bottles with more years in the barrel than most people lived to see; whiskey was just an amber-colored alcohol that did a spanking job of giving you a headache if you drank enough. The only difference was the quality ofthe hangover pounding in your skull the next morning.

And Laguz, for one, preferred to have an expensive headache over a cheap one, and if their progress through the bottle was any indication, the dawn would surely meet her with one. Oh, well. Worse things could happen to someone in her line of business.

"You get used to it after a while," the sniper replied over the rim of her own glass, the alcohol-induced shiver accompanied by the singing warmth that scorched its way down her gullet as she downed the rest of the golden liquid.

"You've been around longer than that, though. How the kark is this your first time?"

But even as she spoke, the shifter had to wonder how a droid-man-thing like [member="Rusty"] could even become drunk. Weird. She needed another drink.

 

[Rusty]

Rusty grinned sheepishly.

"It's not easy getting an HRD to work with," he said. "More'n I'd make in a decade running shtolen goods, and money alone ishn't enough."

He leaned back and put his own feet up on the table.

"Shometimes, it's nice to be in the gunshmithing business. You get favorsh."

He was well aware that he was slurring, but the Shard didn't mind. It was kind of fun. The sound felt nice on his tongue, and while he could compensate for it, he wasn't going to. Because reasons.

His head was buzzing pleasantly by this point. It was like the world was a little softer around the edges, and everything was on the verge of being hilarious.

Yeah, this alcohol thing was nice, but the idea of a hangover still seemed odd to the gunsmith. The Captain regularly went out and came back, sometimes that evening, sometimes the next day, always looking like crap, her head pounding, stomach churning, and full of regret. What was it that drove her to go out an put herself through hell like that?

"I'm curioush. Thish ish nishe and all, but how is it worth the hand...the handover? Hangover? Hangover. Do you mix the alcohol with shome other intoxicant, or ish there shomething that goesh with it?"

[member="Laguz Vald"]

 

[Laguz Vald]

Laguz quirked an eyebrow at that slurred admission, leaning back to a precarious angle in her chair as she partook of the fiery caress of the amber liquid again. Was it just her under the influence, or was the writer feeling more wordy today? Who knows.

"Really? I figured you could make one yourself, with your… nine hundred years, was it? That's plenty of time to figure it out. I guess. I mean…"

She trailed off again, green eyes focused on the struggling silhouette of a fly that had somehow found its way into her drink, wings fluttering in helpless agony. Laguz stared at the creature as its seizures petered out into nothing, biting her lip in morbid curiosity as she watched another life snuffed out by circumstance and happenstance.

"Mmmyes. Hangover."

She scratched her head and blinked a few times, but the haze was clearly there to stay for the night. Apparently expensive also meant strong. With a sideways glance, the shifter checked the label, shuddered, sighed, and poured herself another glass.

Go big or go home, baby.

"I don't knoooow." She gave a lazy shrug and wrapped one arm around the backrest, partly for style, partly for balance. The room was starting to swim a bit, you see, and it wasn't turbulence. Because space doesn't have turbulence. Ha! She still knew that much. Not for long, though.

"We are self destructive creatures, my dear metal man. It's in our nature."

"I think."

"Eh. Who the kark caaares. It's just a lame headache. I keep pills for it around. They cost some good money but eh. Never been an issue for me. Credits, I mean! Not hangovers. Hangvoers… hangovers are a schutta."

And there went the rest of her whiskey. Laguz leaned slightly forward in her chair and nearly toppled over, but two centuries of honed reflexes somehow jumped to the rescue even in her intoxicated state.

"Soooo metal boy. Gonna tell me what kind of toys you brought?"


[member="Rusty"]

 

[Rusty]

Rusty made a mental note to skip the whole hangover thing. Whether or not he remembered the note in the morning remained to be seen.

"HRDsh are ridiculously complicated," he said, slowly getting a feel for his drunken tongue. "It's like droid and person all mixed up, and if you don't get it right, it all dies. You want a gun made, I've got you. You want a squishy meat sack for a best friend, not so much."

Rusty's drink was almost finished off by this point, and the bottle wouldn't be far behind. He tossed back the rest of his glass, then carefully refilled both their glasses with the last remnants of the liquor. There went 600 credits, gone in an hour. There were worse ways to spend that many credits, he supposed.

Some part of him was still coherent enough to realize that playing with all the goodies in the box might not be a good idea. For starters, intoxicants and weaponry were rarely a good combination. He had seen too many wannabes get hammered and accidentally shoot themselves or someone they ought not have. Still, there were a couple of things in there that were safe to play with.

Probably.

The first was another bottle, this time rum, and about a tenth of the price.

"The store owner recommended this stuff too. I reckon we can crack it open next."

The next item was a thick rod, about thirty centimeters in length. It was matte black with a handgrip and a few dials on one end and what looked to be a medical-grade electrode on the other end.

"I've always wanted to test this thing out," he said, grinning madly. "Direct neural stimulation device, acronym something something something something clever wording blah blah blah. Contact with skin can induce a wide variety of sensations, everything from burning to itching to tickling. You name it, it'll do it. Causes no long term damage, though I'd be willing to bet you could traumatize the [bleep] out of someone if you wanted."

He handed the device over.

"Its default setting is a mild electrical shock, like a stun baton, but less powerful."

[member="Laguz Vald"]

 

[Laguz Vald]

"Oh."

Laguz's face fell for a brief moment before she shrugged the small surge of disappointment away and washed it down with the refill offered to her by the HRD-droid-man. At this point, the merc was entirely certain that she had absolutely no clue about [member="Rusty"]'s true nature, and blissfully, she did not care. Perks of intoxication, and all that.

Which is not to say that the shifter would care much more under normal, less… influenced circumstances. Care implied an attachment, and attachments were a bad idea in her line of work. It was only a question of time before a friendly face showed up on a contract, and then one was faced with what was arguably one of the more unpleasant decisions one can be forced to make.

When that particular time had come for Laguz, the sniper had picked option c) and bailed on the whole deal, dropping the identity xe'd been using along with the face and the species that went along with it.

Most people couldn't just up and leave like the shi'ido could, however, so why expose themselves to the very possibility of that situation? One of the great mysteries of sentience, and certainly not one the assassin had ever come to the bottom of.

She was far more successful in doing so with a whiskey bottle, as she soon realized when she tipped it above her glass only to find out that it was devoid of the precious amber liquid her throat so craved. Before Laguz could lament that particular tragedy, another was set on the table, a slightly darker shade of brown this time, and with a label that promised an entirely different boquet of flavors to be lost on her unrefined palate.

She uncorked it with surprisingly sure hands while the gunsmith happily chatted on about the device in his grasp, grinning wildly all the while. The smile was infectious, and Laguz found herself mirrorring his expression as she exchanged a brimming tumbler for a torture instrument before plopping back into her chair.

"A good thing to start with. Get him nice and soft for the main course," she spoke thoughtfully as her green gaze drifted to box. It had been opened, now, and there was no stopping until she'd sated her curiosity.

"Mandalorians, in my experience, are pretty karking resistant to physical stuff. Annoying, really, but what can ya do. We need a way to get him to expose that little beskar heart of his… got anything for that?"

 

[Rusty]

"I've got a rib spreader," Rusty said maliciously.

He pulled the wicked looking device from his pack and set it up on the table. The Shard was nothing if not prepared, and he had brought along the instrument on the off chance that someone set him up for that joke. He hadn't seen such a perfect execution since Emperor Cygnus of the Muwari people on an uncharted backwater in the Outer Rim had ordered his wife to be put to death for adultery with a howitzer and a very particular target in mind for the gun crew.

The memory threatened to set him, giggling, so Rusty decided to give his new drink a try.

The rum was a completely different experience from the whiskey. Sweet, almost cloyingly so. The Shard immediately decided that he didn't like it straight as much as he liked the whiskey, but it was a more versatile beverage. This stuff could probably be an ingredient in a staggering number of drinks. That would bear further investigation once they wrapped up on Bastion.

That would have to wait. Rusty wrestled his mind back onto the job at hand.

"Men like that have their pride. He knows he's a bad mother[bleep]er, and that he's worthless to us dead. I imagine they've worked him over a few times before and he hasn't cracked. For him, that's a badge of honor. He'll wear their failure like armor, and it'll make him just as determined to outlast us. He probably thinks time is on his side too. Either he'll die on the table, or his people will rescue him. I'm willing to bet your people haven't told him he's legally dead yet, so no rescue, which means his best hope is to die under duress."

The next item removed from the seemingly bottomless pack was a medkit. This wasn't just any medkit, however. In it was everything you'd need to perform any emergency medical procedure that didn't call for fishing things through arteries or cracking open a skull. Aid bags like this were a staple of the special forces community, where operators might find themselves away from proper medical care for months at a time. A special forces medic was no match for a properly trained doctor on the doctor's worst day, but most of them could keep all but the most critically injured of patients alive indefinitely, or at least until they could get to a hospital. They took risks no sane doctor would ever take and their workarounds were often as crude as they were clever, but the way they saw it, a patient who lived to complain was better than a corpse.

"My goal is to make sure that doesn't happen. If you squint just right, most torture that doesn't outright kill is basically just a medical procedure. By taking the proper precautions, we can make sure he lives until he cracks. Mandos are a lot like the beskar they wear. It's tough as hell to break, but when it does, it shatters."

[member="Laguz Vald"]

 

[Laguz Vald]

The woman snorted and nearly choked on her drink at the perfectly executed punchline, throwing back her head in laughter. A droid gunsmith with a sense of humor. Who woulda thunk.

Still going through small bouts of chuckling, the shifter forced herself to lean forward again so she could better hear what [member="Rusty"] was saying. His words had started to float a bit, with that trademark reverb and distance that came with copious amounts of alcohol consumption.

Objectively, Laguz knew full well that she was now looking to descend down that last slope before glorious blackout, and found she did not care enough for the next morning to stop herself from pouring another drink. The rum, she would concede, was somewhat more spicy, and the burn was different of her tongue to that of the previous beverage… whiskey, was it?

"Oh, no. We don't tell them anything," she said, clearing her throat to get rid of the hoarse timbre. "Those pricks can rot in the dungeons for all I care. The bastards fought back hard, you know? But we got 'em. Gutted them like pigs, straight in and up."

"They squealed, too."

"But, point!" she exclaimed and pulled herself from the memories of Wayland and Mount Tantiss — still one of the most harrowing experiences in her life despite its considerable length — and stabbed a finger in the air to emphasize her agreement. Thank you, rum.

The woman rubbed her chin as she swished the alcohol in question around her glass, seemingly immersed into deep thought, when in fact the merc was trying to come up with a plan that would bring her to her sleeping quarters with the chances of undue accidents as minimized as possible. She could always just pass out on the table, though. Her neck would hurt like a queen if she forgot to adjust it, which she likely would, because drunk, but it was an option. A good option, come to think of it, because the room didn't seem to be adhering to the laws of physics anymore.

How inconvenient.

"I'm not super patient, so might be better if you handle the… procedures themselves. I can drill him for info inbetween. Or stand around looking scary." She shrugged. "Just don't tell me to take my time."

 

[Rusty]

Rusty shrugged. He tried to lean over to put the medkit back in his pack, but the room started spinning dangerously.

"That's fine," he said, teetering on the edge of his seat and oblivion. "I can handle the medical stuff."

He recognized the symptoms. Loss of balance, blurred vision, impaired thought. Rusty had finally crossed from buzzed to well and truly drunk. Maybe not blackout drunk, since he didn't know if he could, in fact, black out, but drunk none the less. This must be what the Captain referred to as the Danger Zone. Sober enough to remain ambulatory and awake, but well past the point of making intelligent, rational decisions.

Fortunately, he had seen her in this state so many times, reasoning with her was second nature. It only took a little mental arm bending to convince himself that a tactical retreat was in order. Better to head to his cabin to sleep it off than stay and make a fool on himself.

There was only one problem.

"Uh, which way to my sleeping place thingy?" he asked, trying and failing miserably to stand up straight. "I wanna get settled in there before my brain melts."

[member="Laguz Vald"]

 

[Laguz Vald]

"Yeahhh. About that."

She cleared her throat as the embarrassed silence stretched for a moment, a moment during which Laguz scrambled to scour her memory for that particular piece of information. It seemed to be like a glaring hole in her plan, if one could even call it such. The sniper had never been particularly great at planning ahead, and a good portion of her most successful jobs hinged on her impressive ability to improvise and think on her feet.

(Or, as she liked to call it in the privacy of her mind, 'bullchitting your way through things').

This, it occurred to the merc, was one of those moments where her lack of planning was coming back to bite her in the ass. About time she installed some hard chitin down there, really, given the frequency of such events.

"Right."

"Well, I figured that with your… you know… droidness," she waved a blurred arm into the general direction of the metal man, "you can just… sleep anywhere?" She flashed what she hoped was an apologetic smile at @Rusty. Didn't droids just shut down overnight and wake up in the morning?

The more that she thought on it, the more Laguz realized she had no karking clue what droids did overnight. Did they even need sleep?

Asking the real questions, right there.

"Umm… yeah. This ship kinda has only one bed, you see. I don't usually have guests." At least not the kind that need a separate bed.

"Sooo maybe sleep on the table?"

She supplied, unhelpfully. Great job, Laguz.

 

[Rusty]

Rusty blinked.

In a galaxy of spaceships, big, small, and everything in between, he had never encountered that problem. No ship large enough to haul freight ever had just one bed, at least not factory stock. They just weren't designed to be flown by a single person. There had been a few warships designed that way, and of course most starfighters were single seater, but they were the outliers. There was simply too much for the average pilot to handle by themselves on a ship of any size, and even experienced pilots got lonely.

Of course, [member="Laguz Vald"] only looked human. He wasn't sure what type of shifter she was, but the Shard was pretty sure she wasn't actually a she, no more than he was a he. That should come in handy for dodging all those pesky societal notions around sharing a bed. On the other hand, at the moment he was anatomically a male human, and she had chosen the form of a human female. Would that make things weird? What if they woke up and didn't remember what happened? That sort of thing happened to the Captain all the time.

And in fairness to her, she hadn't anticipated this problem because she didn't know to anticipate it. Rusty had just assumed there was a spare cabin, as was almost always the case, and hadn't thought to bring a cot. Force knew it was far too late to turn around and grab one. Even if they weren't already in hyperspace, any ATC worth the name would have them both arrested for piloting while intoxicated.

A thousand different calculations flitted through the gunsmith's mind. His mouth, unfortunately, was not on the same page.

"You're the Captain," he said as he shucked off his shirt. His body might have looked like something the ancients would have carved out of marble, but to him, it was just another chassis. Modesty didn't play into it.

"I'll probably take the floor if you don't mind, though. Not that this doesn't seem like a sturdy table, but it's a bit small."

To demonstrate, he cleared the bottles and glasses off with the sort of wobbly precision that sometimes favors the drunks, and sprawled out on it. The table supported his torso nicely, but his legs were dangling off.

"See? Floor's better."

 

[Laguz Vald]

They stood there, awkwardly measuring each other across the swimming expanse of chairs and floor between them, just two drunken, century-old killers looking for a place to lay down. Funny, where life lead you, ain't it? Laguz had never imagined she'd ever have an experience like this, not even after a number of lengthy and action-packed decades rolling around the Galaxy. It was a curious place, with sights that surpassed even your wildest dreams — and often nightmares as well — and yet still, she was as unprepared for this particular turn of events as she would have been two hundred years ago.

And then her alcohol-addled thoughts were abruptly cut short by the sight of a chiselled male body as the droid-thing yanked off his shirt, and for a moment, Laguz experienced the stark emptiness of the mind that she had only felt once before; during the great Rapture, when Netherworld itself had opened up to swallow the masses of the Galaxy. Indiscriminate, as hell and tragedy are wont to be. The Chaos down below — or beyond, depending how you look at it — was unlike anything the shifter had ever known, and given the swiftness of her exit, not something she wished to know ever again.

Fortunately, it passed before Laguz could faint on the spot.

(It was a close call, though.)

"Why… would you take the floor?" she asked slowly as he flopped on top of the table.

"I mean. I only have one bunk but… um…"

Well, the truth of the matter was that Laguz was a sucker for luxury, which was coincidentally also the reason why the ship wasn't equipped with two cabins; the spoiled merc had them remade into a single, spacious one, complete with the Star Wars equivalent of a french bed and a walk-in shower.

"It's big enough."

At least it had been for the last guest she'd entertained on the ship. Or had she been a he that time around? Oh, well. Who cares?


[member="Rusty"]

 

[Rusty]

Rusty blinked.

Well then.

If she didn't have two cabins, maybe she had the one? Somewhere in his fuzzy little brain, alarm bells were going off. This reminded him of something, he just couldn't remember what.

Oh well. Bed was more comfortable than a floor, any day. He assumed, at any rate. Firsthand experience was slim. But hey, what was the worst that could happen.

There was a matter of protocol. The Captain usually slept in either a long shirt or nothing, but there was something called pajamas. Rusty hadn't thought to bring a set. He had just assumed he was going to have somewhere private to sleep. Where they a necessity when sleeping in the same bed as someone? The way she told it, getting someone into bed was a tricky prospect, but she didn't mention anything after that point. That brought up a whole different set of questions though. What about blankets? Was he supposed to bring his own? What about space? What if they ended up intruding on each other's space?

These questions and more ran through the Shard's mind. He wasn't sure where to start, but he figured it was better to ask a stupid question than make a mistake out of ignorance.

"That's fine by me," he said hesitantly. "I'm not exactly sure how this is supposed to work though. How do we do this thing?"

[member="Laguz Vald"]

 

[Laguz Vald]

"Yeah, so. Let's get going," while we can still walk.

Laguz didn't remember the corridors of her ship being this winding, or wide, or narrow, or generally varying wildly in size and… straightitude? If that wasn't a word, it had to be made into one. Way too awesome not to exist.

But yeah, turns out the merc had also forgotten where exactly her cabin was. And the toilet. The karking toilet.

Somehow, the fact that copious liquid consumption leads to copious liquid leakage had slipped her mind, and now the shifter was not only lost, horny, and drunk; she was lost, horny, drunk, and I am doing Kegels right now.

"This… thing…" she parroted the droid-man slowly, pivoting on the spot and going slightly further than she'd been planning on. Instead of speaking to the HRD's fine, fine face, Laguz ended up talking to the wall of her ship. Good going, right there.

"You mean sleeping?"

He couldn't possibly be confused about a concept as straightforward as that, right? Right? Damn, these… droid… man… things… you never knew where you were at.

"I lay down. You lay down. We're both lying down, yay! Now excuse me while I go piss."

At least she'd found the toilet?


[member="Rusty"]

 

[Rusty]

Rusty nodded. Well, that seemed simple enough. As much fuss as people made of this, it was surprisingly simple.

While [member="Laguz Vald"] went to void her bladder, the Shard went ahead and removed his boots and socks. Since sweat wasn't necessary to regulate body temperature, that function could be turned off when not needed. The Shard had done so almost as soon as he boarded the ship. What did that mean? No smelly feet. He neatly rolled up his socks and placed them inside the boots.

Of course, merely describing the action simply doesn't do the situation justice. This wasn't a mere removal of footwear, oh no. This was an epic struggle for the ages. New boots are never easy to remove, even sober, and that was one thing Rusty was not. He fought, and they fought back. One minute he thought he had the open hand, only to find a lace that was too tight, or that the shoe had to be twisted this way rather than that. Eventually though, he overcame his leather foes.

Now it was time for the next struggle: pants or no pants.

There was no reason to keep the restricting garment save modesty, something he was simply not accustomed to. But then again, what if it was expected that they remain on? What if the removal of pants was a taboo, something only done in either dire circumstances or by paid entertainers? What about undergarments?

Again the arguments raced back and forth through the Shard's mind. Or rather, they sluggishly lurched from synapse to synapse, trying desperately to regain balance despite the insidious affects of the liquor.

Finally, Rusty decided to split the difference: pants no, boxers yes. That should provide enough modesty to be socially acceptable while still being comfortable enough to live with. Honestly, he didn't see why so many organics made it seem like sharing a bed was as difficult and dangerous as defusing a land mine.

This decision was not without its consequences, however. The pants put up an epic struggle of their own, and he had just managed to get one leg out when he heard the door to the refresher open.

"You know," he said, clearly frustrated, "this is more difficult than I thought it would be."

 

[Laguz Vald]

Nothing like relieving the stress of an overly full bladder. For all the hedonistic pleasures Laguz had partaken of in her time in this Galaxy, nothing quite reached the pure, unadulterated bliss currently flowing through her body. Even a good afterglow would be hard-pressed to top the feeling coursing through her veins, and it would have to be a damn good afterglow.

With a drawn-out sigh, the merc stretched like a spoiled cat and rolled her shoulders before nearly tumbling over for foolishly relying on her inebriated sense of equilibrium. Her hand shot out on sheer instinct and the shifter caught herself on the edge of the sink, letting out a colorful string of profanities before she pulled herself back to full height and ambled towards the bedroom proper.

Upon entering, the woman nearly fell again.

She settled for raising her eyebrows far beyond what was humanly possible, too drunk to care about her image.

The droid-man was hanging half-off the luxurious bed taking up most of cabin space, ass in the air as he attempted to get the other pantleg down his impressively defined thigh with an odd combination of undulation, dry humping, and bellydancing. It was likely one of the most hilarious sights she'd ever been treated to, and that was saying a lot, consider what kind of company Laguz usually kept. K'lor slug mating display? Forget it. Robbing a zeltron casino and walking out the front door? Positively quotidian. Centuries-old doomsday device under a tall mountain that also doubled as a phrik mine, a labyrinth, and a refuge to one of the most notorious in the history of forever? Well… yeah, no. [member="Rusty"] won.

"You can make an armor for shapeshifters… but you can't take off your pants?" her tone was quite blunt, but one might excuse her bewilderment at the absurdity of the situation. Especially since the poor merc was piss drunk. Or was that empty-bladder drunk?

"Just— ugh, give it here," she added after a few seconds of observing his struggle with a mix of amusement and despair, stepping forward to grab the offending garment. With a sharp yank, the woman would pull on the fabric, and she even had time to utter a triumphant yell before promptly collapsing on her ass with the HRD's clothing in her lap.