milliways_bar | (no subject)

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sinthia schmidt

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Sinthia can be found outside today, stance square as she faces down a paper target some yards away. She holds her pistol steady, breathing slow and regular, and she rarely misses what she's aiming at. Doesn't mean what she's aiming at is always the center of the bullseye, though; she's working on headshots at the moment.

The sound of a .45 caliber round being ejected forcefully from the barrel is hard to miss, though.

---

Later in the afternoon, she can be found inside the bar at a table, meticulously cleaning her pistol; she was silent while shooting, but now she's very softly humming to herself as she sweeps away powder residue and grease.

She looks almost comfortable as she works.

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At the range she's drawing the attention of a soldier, in white body armor, helmet tucked under his arm, who's strolling from the bar, drawn by the sound of the weirdest explosions he's ever heard in his life.

When he realises it's the gun making that noise, his curiosity is piqued even further. But he's not about to interupt target practice, just mades himself visible to the side, watching with a curious expression.

She looks over, looks back, and pulls the trigger; the bullet buries itself in the dirt mound behind the paper target, and Sinthia slowly lowers the gun's barrel.

"What?"

He waves one hand, "Don't stop on my account. Just never seen a weapon like that is all."

"It's a pistol," she says. "This one is an IWI Jericho. I prefer the nine milimeter variant, but these rounds have considerable stopping power."

This is an entirely normal conversation for her, yes. Usually not done in this format, though.

And, very belatedly: "Hello, too."

"Most pistols I've used have fired particle-beam energy," Fives says, and now it seems like she's stopped to talk to him, he approaches. "They don't make anything like that noise.

"Hi - I'm Fives."

"Sinthia," she replies.

"We don't quite have that technology yet. These fire a metal projectile in a casing packed with explosive powder."

"With ammo measured in millimetres?" He guesses. "That's one way ot making a mess."

He glances towards the targets though, and notes the head shots with an approving nod.

"It can be messy," she allows. "But death usually is, no matter how you approach it. The body isn't going to stay clean without the muscular strength to hold everything in."

Even strangulation can be messy. Admittedly, gunshot wounds are higher on the list.

"No, I know," Fives says, torn between disappointment that his levity fell flat, and surprise she'd think he needed reminding of that fact.

"Even droids leave a crazy amount of wreckage behind."

"Droids?" she echoes. "Androids?"

Those are only a myth, even as relatively modern as she is.

“Yeah.” Fives says after a pause. He’s never actually encountered anyone who’s surprised at droids yet.

“The army we’re engaged with is mostly droids. “

She's quiet for a good few minutes, silence stretching around them. It usually makes other people uncomfortable after long enough, but she's thinking. Androids sophisticated enough to have a military designation means several things, all of them interesting.

"Why use droids?"

Fives doesn't seem thatr uncomfortable about the silence - he lets it stretch with a curious expression because he can see she's thinking and it willing to let the thought get through to its conclusion.

"Mostly they're cheaper. Roll them off the assembly line, upload some basic battle programming, send them straight into our lines."

"If only we had that technology now," she murmurs. "What about you? Your side has...just humans?"

Fives raises aan eyebrow. "Who are you calling 'just' a human? I'd like to think I was worth at least a dozen of those clankers."

"Are you not?"

He seems like any ordinary human. And by the way she's currently watching his face like she could stare a hole through the man, he could pick up that she's searching for any...anomalies.

It would be refreshing to find someone like herself.

"Yeah, I am," Fives says, "with a bit of engineering on the way, but the template's all humans. But no, we're not the only ones. The officers come in all species."

It honestly hasn't occurred to him that the only people he's interacted with in Milliways appear to be human.

"So...you are altered human." It's a passable definition to her, at any rate.

"Is that what this means?" she asks, gesturing with a fingertip to her forehead at the same spot he has that tattoo.

"I'm a clone," Fives says, "with some adjustments, yeah."

He mirrors her tapping, until his fingers find the scar tissue of his own tattoo, and grins when he twigs.

"No, that's my name: Fives."

She cocks her head and blinks.

"So you are an...experiment?" she asks. Cloning technology being commonplace is a bit outside her easy grasp. But the idea that he's like her, that's something she can hook into.

"Were you the fifth one? So the name Five?"

"Well," he explains, "we're not all that experimental now..." but he doesn't really think that's what she was asking. "I was designed in a lab though, if that's what you're asking."

To the second question he grins wider, mirthful. "No, there's a few more than five of us. My birth number is two-seven fifty-five fifty-five."

The sound of thought is just a soft hum when he explains, but her face slowly bears a soft smile, though the expression is very soft, restrained. "That's quite a lot of you. Why were you designed?"

"Soldiers," he says, simply. "Got to have a steady supply if the other side are rolling droids off the factory line, right?"

Don't point out the temporal synchronicity. No one at home has.

"So they don't waste time training you?" she asks. "Is it programming instead?"

One, notably, is far more easily reversible. But Sinthia doesn't bother specifying which.

"We're trained," Fives says. "Grew up training for this. When I say 'adjustments' it's mostly to accelerate the growth process so we can train quicker.

"We're not droids; it's not that easy to programme an organic."