milliways_bar | AU Week: Daemonverse

Eighteen years of tight quarters led to some changes in basic biology. Everybody below the age of thirty settled as something small, compact, easy to keep close. People around Curtis’ age usually had something a little bigger: malleable enough to re-settle, just hardened enough not to venture too far from their original shape. A few people who were too old — too set in their ways, even after what the train did to them — ended up dying from the stress, unable to keep their outsize daemon from being touched so many times a day. Nobody had anything much bigger than a dog anymore.

And nobody’s daemon could ever get more than a foot or two away from them without feeling the strain of separation.

But, like Dejah’s fond of telling Curtis, he’s not on the train anymore. He remembers people whose links could extend almost the full width of a car. Joanna thinks it’s a shitty idea, but it’s just a test, he keeps reassuring her. It’s just another muscle to build up.

So, by the fire, Curtis hunches in an armchair with his eyes fixed on the honey badger next to his feet. Slowly, Joanna places one clawed foot in front of other other, inching forward against the pressure of their link.

They can do this. They’ve endured worse hurts.

[ooc: keeping it simple for AU week: daemons! Everything else about Curtis' background remains the same. Mun will be sporadic until about 10 PM ET, then around solidly until 11:30ish; post is open until I say it's not.]

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Joanna stops. Curtis looks up again, with more interest -- and a bit more sympathy -- than before.

"Where're you coming from?"

"Auckland Shatterdome, with all the machines going it should be warmer but I've yet to find a warm Shatterdome,"

He's from near Dunedin, he's used to cold but some days he really likes the warmth of Milliways' fireplace.

Shatterdome. That sounds vaguely familiar. Joanna and Curtis exchange a look as they reel back through their memories, then --

"Oh," says Joanna, just as Curtis says, "That's one of the places with Jaegers, right?"

"Yes, my parents pilot Walking Death, their Jaeger and I'm a mechanic. She's a real beauty,"

Sam pulls his data pad out and pulls up a picture of Death, "Here she is."

Joanna trots back to Curtis' side, hopping onto his lap so the two of them can get a better look at the data pad.

"Damn," mutters Curtis, impressed. It's one thing to hear someone describe a Jaeger; it's another to see an actual picture.

(Just wait until the two of them see a Jaeger in person.)

"Yes, and she moves smooth as silk never giving those Kaiju a moment to think,"

He loves working on her because he knows he's a part of something great and pulls up a video of her taking down a Kaiju.

Joanna clambers closer, eyes wide. Her mouth splits into the best approximation of a grin you can get on a honey badger -- predatory, with lots of sharp teeth -- as they watch the action.

He has no idea if someone with a daemon could pilot one of those machines. That Pentecost guy wasn't sure himself. But shit, would it be nice to punch something like the Kaiju Walking Death's busy pummeling.

That is a very toothy grin and Sam thinks of his father when he's in a certain mood,

"I always wanted to be a pilot, they thought my sister and I might have been drift compatible but we weren't."

"What does that mean, 'drift compatible?'" asks Joanna, looking up from the screen.

They know it takes two pilots, and they do have to be compatible somehow, but the drift part...that's new.

"It means you know how the other person moves and thinks. I don't completely get it but you know it when you feel it,"

He's never felt it but he's seen it.

"Yeah, but -- "

Drift snags on their thoughts like a coat caught on jagged metal. Even Curtis isn't sure why. Maybe it's just because every part of the sentence makes sense except that part.

"Why 'drift?'"

"I'm not sure. I think some of it is that for it to work, you have to keep your mind empty for the neural handshake then you drift together. My parents have tried to explain it but its a lot about being in sync and not getting caught up in other thoughts."

Curtis' brow crinkles anew at neural handshake. It's frustrating: he knows he's hearing the words correctly, but he still can't understand. Two pilots, keeping their minds clear and in sync, drifting together through --

"Oh," Joanna breathes again as it clicks. (They think.)

"It's like us in reverse," he says. "Two people, one body instead of one person in two bodies. Right?"

Edited 2015-07-25 02:12 (UTC)

"Yes, that's it. Its really complicated and hard to get it just right. Some of it can be predicted but not all of it. I tend to work more on making sure the Jaeger moves smoothly and fast instead of the neural handshake aspect,"

Daemons and pilots kind of work as parallels.

AU Week: Daemonverse

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