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ellen park

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Ellen has been busy. Very busy. Post-apocalyptic Philadelphia is not the worst of cities- so far as she knows that distinction goes to Pittsburgh- but it's... well, it's still a post-apocalyptic city run by ice gangs and weirdoes and it's got mutant hippos in the rivers and there is a persistent legend that people don't try to cross the river because plants on the other side will eat them. And in her experience you can't deny that possibility. So she's been busy.

But the door opened to the Bar today, and she is grateful for any chance to be somewhere that does not smell like the shores of the Schuykill, and she will apologize to you if the attempts she has made at cleaning up and changing into her old blue Vault suit with the 101 across the back have not been enough to get the reek entirely gone. Just let her have her beer in the process, okay?

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Cassian's stretching his shoulders as he enters then stops at the smell.

He shakes his head, its odd and then sees Ellen, "Messy mission?"

Ellen rubs at her face with one hand. "Just once I would like it if a mutant animal turned out to have some weird trait that caused it to smell like a cake baking," she says. "Or crushed plant leaves. I'd be fine with crushed plant leaves. I did my best to wash up, but it won't go away entirely..."

"Be careful with wishes like that. A cold just went through here which involved sneezing up glitter,"

He nods, he knows how some smells can be like that and orders a caf.

"... glitter," says Ellen a little blankly. "The... okay, that's new. I don't think I've heard of that happening around here before. Were you affected?"

"Yes, it was an awful cold just with glitter," A lot of its been cleaned up but some places like the couches still have an extra shine.

"I don't even know how to process that," Ellen admits after a long thoughtful silence. "I don't- I only learned what glitter was a few years ago and I'm not sure I've ever actually seen it in the wild, but I'm pretty sure it's not supposed to come out of people."

"Its not and it comes in far too many colors," That was the disturbing part, those colors shouldn't come out of a body.

"Oh, good Lord, that must have hurt."

Ellen's father was a doctor, and he taught her to read with one of his medical books as their primary text. The body only has so many colors that are supposed to come out of it.

"Is it over? Are you guys feeling better?"

"Oddly it didn't, not more than anything hurts when you're that sick. That was a small mercy. Yes, thankfully but I had it for almost a week,"

He's still finding glitter though he cleaned everything as best he could but the ridges of his jacket have an extra shimmer.

"That's something, I suppose," Ellen concedes. "I hope you'll excuse me for saying I'm glad I wasn't here when that happened. I'd probably wind up carrying it home even if I thought I was well, with my luck."

"Not at all, I understand. I was getting ready to go on a job when it hit and had to stay here while I got better,"

He couldn't risk that glitter out where he was working.

"Good move. I'm guessing you're recovered enough to go back now?" Ellen says. "I mean, I know there's-" She waves a hand vaguely at some shiny spots in his vicinity. "-but you haven't been sneezing, so..."

"Yes, actually I've been out and found a door while on a job. I know, I've never regretted wearing a Corellian cut jacket before,"

Though most of his jackets have places where the glitter could have been caught.

"Corellian," Ellen says. "That's... that's your home planet, right? I've never been very good at keeping track of styles that don't involve armor."

(OOC: Heading out, will be slower.)

He looks down into his caf before shaking his head,

"No, I'm not from Corellia. I'm from a tiny planet in the Outer Rim. A lot of pilots are from Corellia and somehow they've ended up the style most of us wear."

Corellia is also one of the major forces in the Rebellion which gives it more influence.

"Oh, okay," Ellen says. "I think I remember the Vault teacher telling us about something like that with pilots- bomber jackets, I think it was. After the Second World War a lot of people wound up wearing the kind of jackets bomber pilots used to keep warm in the cockpit, even if they'd never served in the Army Air Corps. Not that I'd know what one of those looked like, so I'll just have to pretend it looks like yours."

"I can see the logic of that but I've got an old flight vest I wear when flying over this to keep warmer. Most ships are too cold,"

Even the nicer ones, if he's flying he likes layers.

"I'll take your word for it," Ellen says. "I've flown a couple of times, but it was on passenger aircraft inside Earth's atmosphere. The only time I've been outside the atmosphere was on another species' ship altogether, and I didn't really have much choice about the environmental conditions."

"I'm sorry to hear that, its good to have what control you can especially when flyers,"

Its one of the reasons he learned how to fly, to get control of where he goes and how.

It's been a few years since Zeta at this point. Ellen has gotten relatively decent at suppressing the memories that pop out at odd intervals.

"... yeah, I can agree with that," she says after a moment's hesitation. "And we did wind up with the controls in the end, so- yeah."

He notes her hesitation but won't ask if she's quiet,

"That's good. And you've never wanted to go into the black after that?"

Wasn't there color in her face a few moments ago?

"..... no."

That's a dramatic no, time to change the topic, "Oh, right. How are things going in your world?"

Ellen shakes her head rapidly, like a dog getting water out of its fur. "Sorry," she says. "Um- all, all right, at the moment, more or less. We, um. We've been... we've been getting a lot of repairs done at the robot factory. It's taking us a while to get to real production, but considering how much of what we had to do before this was just scavenging, and how much old world knowledge we've found in what's left of their files, that's okay."

"That's- that's not what the smell is from. That has more to do with being asked to help with some of the local wildlife. Swimming birds that smell like death himself."

"That's good. What kind of droids are you building? I've repaired and reprogrammed but never built one from the ground up,"

At the mention of the birds he makes a face, "That's awful. Were they dangerous?"

"Old ones from General Atomics blueprints from before the war, with a few modifications," Ellen says. "There's a hovering model with a round body and three arms that we can modify for combat or security purposes, or rig up as a medical bot, or leave in the default configuration for home service. We have the blueprints for a couple of their other varieties of bot, but we're not going to make robobrains because they require living components."

Which is probably the most tactful way of describing those particular mechanized nightmares.

"They were fairly nasty. Not as bad as some of the other things that live in the river, though. And unlike a lot of things out there the penguins were edible, even with the smell problem."

He opens his mouth closed it as he processes droids that need a living component, that seems wrong. Enhancements and implants are chosen,

"That's a good variety of types and useful that they're not too specialized. What does a penguin look like?"

It's really best that he doesn't know what a Robobrain looks like. Some things just shouldn't exist.

"There's a few specialized kinds of 'bot out there, but General Atomics mostly worked from one major template," Ellen says. "It makes it easier on us to only have to produce one basic design of frame and then just adjust the other parts for specific models... oh, they're about as high as my armpit, and with black and white feathers, and a beak full of more teeth than I've seen on anything on land that wasn't a deathclaw. They eat anything that doesn't move faster than they do."

"Simple is best at the beginning until you know what you need. How many penguins did you have to deal with?"

They sound like they could be tricky to fight.

Ellen spreads her hands helplessly. "Dozens? Scores maybe? I'm not sure," she says. "They'd been ganging up and attacking the guard animals the Friends use to protect themselves- that's a local group of people who won't commit violence or wield a weapon, but consider it okay to keep guard animals around for protection. Even a half-tame yao guai is only one animal, compared to twenty or thirty of those birds."

"That's an idealistic way to live in your world," He admires that they try but it seems foolish.

"Very," Ellen agrees. "By all accounts they really ought to be dead. But they're apparently legendary for their talents with animals, and with making allies of people they help, so... that's something, I guess. They're just not able to negotiate peaceful interaction with everything out there, so sometimes it comes down to asking for help with penguin hunting."

"Allies like you so it is working for them. Nice to think it can," Its not something he could imagine working in his world.

"Seriously," Ellen agrees. "Even if it's on a tiny scale, that's something. Then again I'm not sure it could work on a scale much larger. Sooner or later they'd run up against a threat with more power than their allies, and no conscience at all."

"Yes and they won't care who's in their way,"

The Empire wouldn't, they'd have to make it look pretty for the holonet but they've done that before.

"Which more or less leaves it up to the rest of us to try to keep things safe so people like that can live their lives," Ellen says. "At least, that's how I tend to see it, and how Elder Lyons tends to see it. I know a lot of more conservative Brothers feel like we ought to let outsiders go their own way, but they're not in command."

"I can understand that," Its what he does in some ways, he can fight so one day no one has to.

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