milliways_bar | (no subject)

Fairy Fixit received an alert that someone was tampering with the Milliways front door. But since Milliways exists in a time loop near the end of time itself, real time alerts are an unreasonable expectation. Actually, getting a message to the right world within the right millennium without causing a spam packet storm across all of multiversal spacetime would be a remarkable if it weren't so common.

Well, between certain worlds with certain timelines it is common. Surely, it is likely some timelines collapse because a poorly thought out portal networking homework assignment.

~~A flying insect of unusual size~~ Fairy Fixit buzzes down from her room upstairs, having used her own backdoor into Milliways, and makes a quick inspection of the front door with the tools in the toolboxes she brought down with her.

She finds nothing of great concern that wasn't there before, so she buzzes her way back upstairs to the library and comes back down with a large tote bag of reading she has been meaning to do. Maybe if she hangs about near the front door, she'll catch whoever has been fiddling with it.

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Baze has not been messing with the front door. He'd have to have one to mess with in the first place, and he doesn't have the technical knowledge or the tools, besides. Not to mention the desire. Who would want to mess with a part of heaven?

That said, he approaches the insect of unusual size with a smile. "You're one of the first non-humans I've seen around here. Hello! I'm Baze Malbus."

She is about the same size as a toydarian, and her wings are just about as loud.

"You would think that an interdimensional nexus such as this would attract more diverse clientele, but then again entry here seem to be by invitation only, mostly," she says, smirking at the end. She built her own way in.

"I am Fairy Fixit, lead teleportation network engineer for the Zanaris branch of the Abyssal Services Department."

"Mostly?" Baze says, raising his brows with a grin. "What do you mean by 'mostly'? And it's a pleasure to meet you, Fairy Fixit. That sounds like an important job. What does a lead teleportation network engineer do?"

"Well, my associates at the ASD and I had to figure out a way to connect with the main portal to this place with assistance from this side a couple of times already, but since then I have been coming through a back door," she says, proudly.

"I monitor and maintain the teleportation network hub on Zanaris as well as some trade data and commodity peering between Milliways and Zanaris."

She... is not good at judging whether she is talking over someone's head. Sorry.

"Huh, good for you," Baze says, though most of her comments are met with a blank stare from him. "What's commodity peering?"

"Well, it is difficult to transact much business in dimensional nexûs like Milliways or Zanaris without resorting to barter, but it can take such a long convoluted chain of bartering in places like this to get a fair price that nothing would get done without commodity peering. Or excessive charity, I suppose that would work too. There is a lot of alcohol consumed here, so having a quantifiable commodity that is in such high demand like that makes things simpler here, but not everyone values alcohol as highly. Caffeine rich plant parts are another commodity that's important here."

"I don't really have a great mind for business," she clarifies, humbly,"I just help it happen." She doesn't want to be accused of price fixing, afterall.

She checks to see if anyone is hanging around the door, but seeing no one interesting or suspicious, she turns back and gives Baze a second look. "That is very interesting armor you wear, Baze Malbus."

That explanation doesn't exactly address Baze's question as to what commodity peering is, so there's a lot of blinking done on his part. He opens his mouth to ask another question, but it flies out of his head once she makes her last comment. He brightens, grinning widely.

"Thank you!" he says cheerfully. "It has saved my life more times than I can count, deflecting blaster bolts and who knows what else. The chest plate has a compression switch which releases it, and it protects my neck, of course. These little pieces with holes in them are power cells for my weapon. But you must see all manner of different armors, being as well traveled as you are. Are you a collector?"

"Well traveled?" she wonders aloud. "I wouldn't say that, but my work does take me to well traveled places. And what I do tends to make remote places easier to reach. Maybe I am well traveled..."

Veering back to Baze's question, she answers, "I am not a collector, but I have a friend at home who is a bit of an armor enthusiast. We get to see some unique armor on travellers coming through Zanaris. Do you mind if I your armor a few raps?"

"Maybe you are," Baze agrees, with a small smile. The smile broadens at her question. "Of course, I don't mind at all."

He sticks his massive chest out, presenting the armor to her. "It's thicker around the neck portion."

She removes her hat, revealing a pair of feathery antennae and buzzes in close enough to rest them on the armor. She punches the armor three times, but not hard enough to push herself away and listens.

"That is pretty good damping," she declares. She then flies back a respectful distance and asks, "what kind of bolt does a blaster fire, by the way?"

"It's a plasma charge," Baze says, amused by her antennae. "Blasters convert and ionize energy-rich gasses into plasma bolts, a brief shot as opposed to a continuous beam. They have a little bit of mass and use ammunition. My own gun can fire 35,000 bolts before it needs replenished, but it's meant to be mounted on a vehicle, so it's a little excessive for a handheld weapon."

She often forgets to take off her hat and let her antennae out even when she is supposed to be relaxing and there is no danger of anything falling on her head. Wearing it has become a habit.

With the hard little hat off of her head, though, she has a much better sense of the tiny air currents in the room and her own motions. Her hovering becomes much more stable.

"Your armor must have thermal and electic dissipation properties to it as well, then," she comments. "I never really thought about the possibility of plasma weapons; they must do frightful damage to someone who isn't protected."

"My armor definitely does," Baze says, nodding eagerly. He knocks a fist on the metal, much like she did. "It distributes the heat evenly instead of concentrating it at a point. And plasma weapons can do a ton of damage. I used to have an E5 carbine rifle which I modified to punch through armor, and the person wearing it. The trade off was that the gun ate charges, and there was no longer a stun setting."

It seems like it it should be impossible that Fixit could open her already (proportionally) large eyes any wider, but it happens.

"A stun setting?" she exclaims. The only plasmas she is familiar with are fire and lightning. The occasional static electricity discharge as well, but that's far from her mind at the moment.

"Yeah," Baze says, a small smile fixed on his face. "The stun setting works by overloading people's biosigns with an electrical impulse. It makes them turn blue for an instant, and knocks them unconscious. The obvious use is for taking prisoners."

"Oh, that's how, I understand."

"Your descriptions are very helpful," she compliments. "It's such a nice change from the conversations I usually have with..." she thinks for a bit, "fellow travelers."

Baze laughs, resting his hands on his rotund belly. "That's terrible," he says, good cheer radiating from his frame. "But I've found the same to be true here. Most people, when asked about the outside, say it's like Scotland. When asked what Scotland is like, they say it's like the outside."