milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Making his way to the target range through the jungle canopy was just a little too Viet Cong meets Tarzan for Gordon's tastes today. When he made his way back indoors he opted to take some time to make his next visit to the range worth all the fuss and bother- it's modding time. He might as well put the welding skills he learned for the bicycle to good use.

One almost-redheaded guy in nerd glasses and circled-lambda T-shirt doing terrible, terrible things to an unsuspecting Combine pulse rifle, over by the Window.

[tinytag: Gordon Freeman, Alyx Vance, John Vattic]

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"Spent some time doing maintenance and going over the circuits in my hazard suit the other day," Gordon says. "Some yo-yo cross-wired it to make the blood ox monitor, the flashlight, and the boosted sprint function all drain the same power source. I had to spend an hour and a half undoing their damage."

"Wow, that's pretty stupid, but glad you could fix it. I mean, I'm not into advanced circuitry, but even I can realize the stupidity there. Wish I could rewire my brain so I could be invisible and use telekinesis at the same time, but oh well. Pick your battles, I suppose."

Gordon smiles wryly. "It used to have a built-in stealth function, but that got removed sometime between Black Mesa and now," he says. "Made room for the antivenins, I guess. Anyway, I couldn't engage that and move any faster than a crawl, let alone a sprint. That's as close as I ever came to invisibility myself."

"Yeah, I can't do real invisibility, just tricking people into not thinking I'm there. Doesn't work on cameras, though... found that out the hard way. I was fighting through those goons for ages." He sighs, remembering. "Oh, well, nothing's perfect, I guess."

His mind takes this opportunity to give him a rather splitting headache, to which he takes his head in his hands and massages it.

Up go the eyebrows at that. "Do you need to sit down or anything?" Gordon asks. "That looks nasty."

"Eh," John says, grunting through his teeth, "You get used to it. One of the very short list of side effects to being a psychic powerhouse." The others being target practice for government goons and a tendency toward memory loss.

"I'll take your word for it," Gordon says dryly. "Armor and guns got me this far. They should be enough to get me the rest of the way."

"Yeah, I wish... well, I would say I wish things were that simple for me, but that would be doing you a great injustice, my friend."

And yet... he says it, but there's another layer of him under the surface; many layers. He's connected to something. I wonder if he himself even knows it.

"I understand the sentiment," Gordon says with a wry twitch to the corners of his mouth. "As long as we're both engaging in wishful thinking, I'd like a pony."

"Hmmm... I want... I'd have to say get rid of the past six months, whatever they were. I mean... I don't remember anything except the broadest details about my life... I don't even remember my... preferences in company, for lack of a better term. What friends I like to keep at MIT, the sort of people I went on dates with... hell, I don't even remember my sexual preference. Then again, I suppose that's yet another non-problem for you."

Pause.

"But a pony might be nice, too."

Gordon's... not gonna answer that first part. He's just not. It's safer.

But he nods. "You get the idea,t hen."

"Yeah, I'm... sorry to rant at you like that, at any rate. Sound like I never got over being 13 or something."

"Do you need any help with that, or anything?" John indicates the weapon.

Gordon just shakes his head, his expression almost but not quite a smile. He's not about to give anyone a hard time for venting.

"I don't think I'm going to be able to weld this on after all. My equipment isn't capable of that kind of heat. Got any ideas on how to stick the sight to the barrel?"

"Well, I'm not sure if the research would ever be completed in my world, since it's pretty much in the experimental stages right now, but there's this tape that the guys in Bio were engineering that mimics the properties of gecko feet to have a permanent stick, but it can also be removed if the mood strikes you (http://www.technologyreview.com/Nanotech/18966/?a=f). It's pretty strong actually, from what I can recall."

John shakes his head. "Why do I remember things like this, but not others."

"Hmm." Gordon considers the pulse rifle. "I might have to ask around about that. There's probably somebody here from a timeline that did produce the stuff."

"Or, the bar might provide it to. Doesn't... she... normally produce anything non-sentient?"

John's still not sure about the specifics.

"I haven't tried for very much beyond basic pistol ammunition," says Gordon. "The few times I've asked about anything complex I was given a pile of parts and told to put it together myself. I had to learn to weld if I wanted a bicycle."

"Oh, fun. No, I very much doubt that you could make this stuff yourself. And if it makes you feel better, I can ask?"

"Worth a try," says Gordon. "Thanks, John."

"Not a problem. Excuse me for a second," he says, wandering off to the bar.

He comes back with a metal cylinder that looks like something out of Superman. In fact, it might even have a STAR Labs logo on the front... but whether it's a joke or not, Bar will never tell. He hands it to Gordon, saying, "You're probably better with these things that me."

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