milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Between training sessions for his Marines both on and off Borealis, agricultural work at and around the Greenbrier, and scouting out bullsquid wallows and barnacle colonies for future meat hunts, Shephard's been a busy, busy man the last few weeks. How the people at the Greenbrier who have kids do it without going off their rocker, he doesn't know.

Well, okay, mostly how Ms. Vance and Dr. Freeman do it without going off their rocker. The other folks just muddle through as far as he can tell.

Anyway. It's been busy as hell at home. He only just noticed that one of his favorite tools for making new arrowheads broke, and dammit, there's no way of replacing it at home, so...

"Hey, Bar? Y'all got any moose antler shanks I could git my hands on? Six inches long, one and a half inches wide'd be pretty sweet."

He's been up to his eyeballs in officer training and engineering manuals for weeks. Low tech's sounding mighty nice right now.

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Noriko looks a little different today than the last few times she's been in; she's wearing skinny jeans and a pink cherry blossom-patterned shirt, with a matching kanzashi pin in her hair. She's still sketching fountain designs as she looks over at him. It's been a while since she looked normal.

"Going barbaric on us, Marine?"

"Makin' arrowheads," says Shephard. "Broke my good billet and I ain't seen deer in my neck of the woods in a while, so the only antler I got these days's what I picked up in Svalbard. Reindeer antler ain't near as dense as moose."

He seems to think this makes sense.

"Meetin' up with someone?"

"What, do I look that good?" she asks.

"Nah, I'm just exploring that whole civilian thing. It's kinda nicer than I remember, but that might be the part about not getting shitkicked out of bed in the morning."

"You look like you're tryin' to make an impression," Shephard says. "It ain't bad."

More than that he's not gonna say either way, because it'll probably get him in trouble.

"Fair 'nough. Takes some gettin' used to, as I recall."

"Well I'm glad I made a good one," she says with a smile, flicking her hair out of her eyes.

"Not as much as I thought there would be. Bedroom being too quiet, being jumpy around loud noises... What I thought it would be." Plus about a million things she hadn't, but those she's not talking about.

Shephard nods. "Sleepin' your own hours ain't quite normal at first," he says. "'Course, I ain't in much position to talk 'bout civilian anything these days, but I got a little bit of an idea. Mostly from seein' folks back home git used to it."

"Strictly speaking we weren't military either," she says with a shrug. "I still have to get up in the mornings, but it's not like I'm being attacked. Which is interesting."

"Reckon so," says Shephard. "Tell you the truth, even if I was the kind to try'n sleep in come mornings, I couldn't do it. I got ten fuckin' eyeball dogs and they git up earlier'n a fuckin' dairy farmer. It ain't exactly bein' attacked so much as buried under a shitload of critters all wantin' a walk at once."

"Yeah, I don't think I've ever gotten up that early," she says. "Mostly I get up in time to go to class, but not with a whole lot of spare time."

"You ever want to find out what it's like, I c'n lend you one of the dogs," offers Shephard. "Just tell folks it's from another dimension. It ain't even a fuckin' lie."

Noriko just laughs. "No, no, I think I'm good without the getting up that early," she says. "I've already got too many reasonable friends, I need one crazy habit like sleeping in."

"Fair 'nough," says Shephard cheerfully. "I'll tell you what, though, if that was aimed at me I reckon that's the first time in years I been called reasonable."

"You, and the psychiatrist guy here," she says with a smile. "Most reasonable friends I've had in years. You even ignore my choices in hair color."

"Hair's hair," says Shephard with a shrug. "If you ain't in the Corps it ain't my business what you do with it. You got two eyes under there'n two arms to work with, so there ain't a whole lot of color shit you c'n do that'd make it weird enough to notice."

"What, blue doesn't stand out enough? Now I have to change it," she says with a one-sided quirk of a grin.

"You could stand to grow yours out more, but I'm told helmets get in the way."

"Tried that once, when me'n Freeman had to git from New York to Rowlesburg without bein' tracked down nor seen," says Shephard. "Didn't much care for the effect, nor the beard I wound up with neither, but shit, it was late in the year'n it wasn't like I had a watch cap or somethin' up my sleeve."

"You with a beard. Now that would have been a fun sight," she notes. "Why'd you have to avoid being seen?"

"Our HQ of the time got blown the fuck to shit by the Combine while me'n him were out on a mission," says Shephard. "Folks got away on the crazy-ass teleporting boat, but by the time we got there ain't nothin' was left taller'n a parking meter. Only place we reckoned they'd have to go was my home town, on account of my brother was with 'em and the Combine hadn't found Rowlesburg in years. Couldn't take the chopper we'd been usin', though. Too easy to track and shoot down. We had to git across a couple hunnert miles of open country without leadin' the fuckin' space maggots straight back to what was left of our people."

"Damn," she says. "How'd that go?"

"We made it," says Shephard. "Looked like shit by the time we got there, on account of not havin' supplies with us to start with'n havin' to live off bark'n headcrabs along the way'n melt snow and such, but we made it in the end. I do not recommend that approach to overland travel, though, I'll tell you that."

Noriko chuckles, and shakes her head, with a ringing of bells from the flowers in her hair. "I should tell you a side-effect of the electrokinesis," she says. "I've been clocked at about three-hundred fifty miles an hour if I'm running all out."

".... fuck me sideways," says Shephard after a moment. "That's... shit, I dunno if my last murderbird could fly that fuckin' fast."

Nori can't avoid a laugh at that. "Sorry. I don't usually go that fast--usually, I keep it to relatively human ranges of speed--but yeah. When I tell people I ran away to Colorado once, I mean it literally. It took me like, three hours."

"Damn. Must wind up hungry after a run like that," says Shephard. "What'd you do, pull into an all-you-can-eat and sit down in front of the spaghetti?"

She snorts. "No, no, usually I pass out for a couple hours and then hit the food. I just have to stay away from caffeine, it does bad things to me."