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Ray hasn't gone home yet from the other night. After Romana came out to meet him, he broke out his holocomputer and got a compatible imaging device from the Bar for it, and pretty much every possible visual aspect of the Acrocanthosaurus parts he brought back got captured and recorded for future study. Right now he's still out back working on the head in question, but that's because it needed to be stripped down and cleaned as thoroughly as possible. Lots of photographs, lots of samples taken, you name it.

At least the skull (which is currently in two pieces, having been neatly split down the middle courtesy of Ray's lightsaber) is laid out neatly on a tarp close to the Bar's outer rear wall while Ray works on cleaning up the last few traces of squishy matter. He'd probably be good with a distraction, though.

Comments

[dust-to-order.livejournal.com]

Sooraya's on her way indoors, after a long night. She stops at the sight of Ray and a head that looks to be nearly as long as she's tall.

before she recovers. "What is that? Was," she amends.

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"Acrocanthosaurus atokinensis, I think," says Ray, looking up from carefully scrubbing out one of the gaps with a very soft, very small brush. "A predatory dinosaur about... mmm... eleven or twelve meters long, I think. Maybe longer. One of the bar's occasional patrons is a predatory dinosaur from the early Cretaceous and I went to visit her time with her, and this guy here-" He gestures at the skull. "Tried to eat us."

[dust-to-order.livejournal.com]

"Keeping a trophy?" She looks at it, still wide-eyed. "Understandable. The only dinosaur I've seen here so far was Cera--on Security. You weren't unarmed, I take it?"

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"Well, that and the paleontological research I can get out of it'sreally beyond anything else that would be available in my time. It's only 2007 where I come from, and I think there's a grand total of about five viable Acrocanthosaurus skulls in museums in general. I won't be able to publish any results, because people would ask where I got the skull from, but I can at least hang it from the ceiling in the garage."

He grins, holding up a metal cylinder that looks like a bicycle seat post with several grips and a number of other cryptic little devices welded on. "Nah, I wasn't. Are you at all familiar with the Jedi Order?"

[dust-to-order.livejournal.com]

"Somewhat," she hedges. "I've heard of them, yes. Someone told me there's a few that visit the bar...oh!"

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"Yeah." Ray grins. "To the best of my knowledge I'm the only Order member on Earth at the moment, unless you want to count my nephews, and I'm about as Force-blind as they come- but that was how I made it out alive. My friend Red and her daughter Scribble and I were running for the entrance to Milliways, but I tripped and the door closed behind them, so it was either take down the giant predatory dinosaur or make some poor paleontologist have a heart attack when he found human bones inside a dinosaur coprolith."

[dust-to-order.livejournal.com]

"That's very considerate of you," Sooraya manages with a straight face. Then she laughs, head shaking. "Does this sort of thing happen to you often? And, how did you manage to join the Jedi if you don't have the Force?" She can understand why he'd want to easily enough.

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"Nature pretty much hates me," says Ray. "I do all right scuba diving, but when it comes to the natural world and being on land I'm pretty much condemned to a life of 'come and get it, big tasty bait' in any ecosystem you care to name. As far as the Jedi thing goes, I got permission from Anakin Skywalker to attempt to build a lightsaber- this was back when he was here, I think he's gone on to unity with the Force now- so long as I promised to do everything that I could to follow the Jedi philosophy and live up to their ideals and do their work if I ever got it right. When I finally got a saber design to work, Master Qui-Gon Jinn accepted me as a padawan apprentice despite being Force-blind."

[dust-to-order.livejournal.com]

"hm. Deserts included?" she wonders, but decides not to pursue that subject.
"It's the gadgets that interested you, or the meeting people who were more advanced, at first? Jedi philosophy being..." she's trying to remember the movies, but also realizes that they may not be relevant to the Jedi who come here.

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"When I was testing one of my more complicated energy systems in a sector of the Nevada desert so remote that the US Air Force uses it for a bombing range, I was attacked by a rabid timber wolf the size of my couch," Ray says. "I didn't even know they had timber wolves in that part of the desert."

He steps away from the skull for a moment, wiping his hands on his work shirt. "Oh- the gadgets, to start with. When I was six years old I tried to build a lightsaber with a flashlight and some crystals I grew with my home chemistry set. I sort of set the family cat on fire by mistake, but in my defense I thought I'd closed up all the entrances to that part of the basement and I didn't really understand just how easily that cat could squeeze through the gap between the water pipes and the rest of the wall. After that it was the people, and the duty to uphold justice and decency and defend the people of my city against the really incomprehensible, which is what I was doing for a living anyway when I started coming here."

[dust-to-order.livejournal.com]

Sooraya facepalms. "Rabid...It's sounds as if you could have used a way to learn to be intangible, too," she says.
"Ah. that, I can understand. You're lucky that you can do it for a living, and openly. I'm still trying to figure that part out." She shrugs a little.
"Do you need a hand with this?" belatedly realizing that if she wants to interrupt the man, she should at least offer.

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"Possibly. Considering my track record, I'd probably get stuck that way," Ray says. "At least I put the poor thing out of its misery. I didn't want to hurt it, but when it gets that far there's no real hope for it, you know?"

Then he smiles a little. "My New York City is completely up to the eyeballs in all kinds of supernatural and paranormal events. For the past three years- four, come October- my job's been to capture and remove ghosts, spirits, supernatural entities, and what have you so that everybody else can get on with their lives. It's been interesting. I take it you've got a calling of some kind that's been thwarted wherever it is you live?"

He looks down at the skull. "If you wouldn't mind too much. I'd like to get this guy as cleaned up as possible, so I got some brushes that shouldn't damage the hard parts. The teeth're probably what I have to work on next."

[dust-to-order.livejournal.com]

"You could put it that way...X-Men are supposed to be protectors of a sort, but lately we've had to concentrate on our own survival more than anything else. A reality shift that happened in our timeline reduced our numbers to a fraction, so... and Mutants aren't exactly seen as humans by everyone, on my Earth. If you turn out to be one, you're safer not to let it be known--If you can. People are often too afraid even when there isn't a reason."

"No, I wouldn't mind." She nods. "If it won't be a bother. And I can be quiet if I'm distracting you here, truly."

[there-is-a-me.livejournal.com]

Spoon's first thought?

His kill was still cooler than Ray's. Anyway! "Hallo, Doctor."

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Ray looks up from rinsing out one of the larger skull cavities and waves. "Hi, Spoon. How're you doing?"

[there-is-a-me.livejournal.com]

"Regrew me face an' ribcage." He says cheerfully, "Got me kill cleaned, the armor mostly built and, uh...you do electronic things, right?"

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Ray gives this some thought. "What happened to your face and ribcage to begin with, or shouldn't I ask?" he says. "And yeah, I do. You got something that needs fixing?"

[there-is-a-me.livejournal.com]

"Acid. Fuckin' alien had acid blood." He says brightly, "Fuckin' killed it with me teeth. Nah, I've got t' build this mask..." It looks a hell of a lot of a Predator mask, "For, y'know. Hunting? And I don't have the knowledge to build the insides."

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"Huh," says Ray, peering at the design. "What sort of functions does the mask have to be able to perform, and what're the design limitations? I've tinkered with SCUBA regulators a few times for the heck of it, if maintaining an oxygen supply is part of the deal."

[there-is-a-me.livejournal.com]

Spoon hands over a list. Monitor the atmosphere, the energy left in the computer, the distance to targeted prey, the targeting system, recording data, vision modes, temperature and atmospheric conditions.

This is Spoon's hopeful face.

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Ray runs one finger down the list, lips moving slightly. Eventually he says, "How big of a rig do I have to work with? I mean, how far is this allowed to protrude from the face, and what's my weight maximum?"

[there-is-a-me.livejournal.com]

Spoon offers the mask, which does have additional room for the systems, so long as they're smallish. He built with an eye toward functionality!

Lots of moving bits, too. So Spoon points, "Left space here, here, and here. The whole back should be alright to add things to. Uh. I've got a little of the alien left, if I need a rebuild."

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"Okay. Atmosphere sensors I can do, the power monitoring system I can do easily, the distance rig... I can probably copy the systems we use in the ectoscopes, that's usually a focusing thing anyway... the recording system I might have to- hm. Flash memory's cheap enough, you should be able to fit a lot of your data on a card, I could put the card reader over here..."

His hands twitch. For something like this he needs his holocomputer.

[there-is-a-me.livejournal.com]

Spoon? He's a happy puppy, "Would it help if Christine brought technology to be modified? Her people use their mandibles..."

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"Yeah, that would go a long way," says Ray. "As long as I'm allowed to take it apart and put it back together to figure out how it works first. Considering some of the technology I've had to repair and simulate, the control system shouldn't be that difficult to adapt."

He's thinking of the Beam generators just at the moment, and having to build the Baby Beam devices for the test.