synflux | [catchall] time to live like we're dying

[ Elan can be found doing little but lounging around since returning from Brasov, feeling thoroughly exhausted, demoralized, and done with shit. LILITH in a rare show of decency has left Outsiders to their own devices, demanding no trainings or forced labor from them. Who knows how long that will last, and he intends to enjoy the break for as long as he can. Rather than see to important things like getting his robot repaired, Elan naps leisurely beneath a tree in the greenhouse, arms behind his head. His eyes are closed but true sleep eludes him, and occasionally he cracks open an eye at the beeping of a robot or at the arrival of an Outsider. ]

[Most of the week after their trip back from Brasov, Romania, Transylvania, whatever the fuck (was that place even officially documented on a map considering the back-dated village culture and magic fog?) was spend distracting himself with his job, chores around the base, his boyfriend, his friends, one spot of training in the simulation before that was utterly shot from the rest of the month, and here... in the greenhouse.

Bakugo lets the door swing shut behind him as he beelines towards a particular setup in the greenhouse. Shelves now adorned with an assortment of plants, cuttings, seedlings, and seeds that have yet to emerge. It took him all week to get everything he brought back with him from that shitty village into proper pots, some needing temporary placement from the travel sacks. The last group is his aim for today, eyeing a selection of flora nestled in moss-like cups.

Stone paths sprout one direction or another as he trails them to the gardening shed, only to notice a familiar figure under a tree nearby. Normally he's not someone to interrupt a person's nap, unless he needs them for some reason or the other. But... normally. Bakugo can still be an asshole. Meaning he's prefacing his vanish into the shed with a casual aim-then-thumb-flick of an acorn-like seed through the air. Arcing beautifully high to decent-

bonk!

-right on Elan's forehead. Unless he's actually awake and dodges/deflects.]

[ Elan's awake but he's mentally checked out he might as well not be. The seed finds its mark. He makes a startled noise, one hand going to his head, eyes snapping open and pushing himself up to sitting at once. At first he looks up at the tree thinking some squirrel is being a menace until he finds the real menace a few yards from him. His expression turns unamused. ]

Very funny!

[Bakugo snorts in obvious amusement. It was pretty funny to him! Elan's glaring challenge towards the tree made it look like he was ready to fight a damn squirrel for its wretched prank. Hilarious.]

You know how to plant things, Gundamn? [And in he goes into the shed, rummaging around to gather some material. Spades of different sizes, plastic planting pots, a big bag of soil, watering can.]

[ Haha, very funny. Seeing as there's no real threat from squirrels (threat from ally TBD), Elan leans back against the tree. ]

You're talking to a Spacian. We didn't exactly have soil to plant things on!

[ Unless you're Miss Daughter of a CEO with your own fancy greenhouse. Not to say Elan hasn't looked into gardening since coming to Earth and maybe even had a few potted plants of his own for the fun of it, but looking at all the tools Bakugo's hauling out, it looks like work. ]

[Bakugo returns to sight, balancing the stacked pots along his arm with the spades slotted into the tops, other arm curled around a bag of potting soil like a body builder pumping weight.]

Guess you're learning something new today. C'mon.

[Don't make him drag your ass over here. Of course it's work! Getting a damn shower or eating is also work! Jeeze, amazing this guy's muscles haven't atrophied yet.] Text

[ Elan doesn't move from his spot. He's feeling pretty comfortable where he is, but his eyes follow Bakugo around the greenhouse. ]

Aren't there robots for this kind of work? What are you even planting?

[You're on borrowed time, Gundamn. Bakugo heads for a set of shelves with several plants clustered within, all sitting in little peat cups. He sets down everything he brought with him from the shed.]

Do you see any fucking robots around?

[If there are, he's not met any today.]

Medical plants I got from that cultist shithole.

They'll come around.

[ Elan says with a yawn. He had suggested to Raidou that they kidnap a robot for his gardening project, so they're wise to be avoiding him right now... ]

There was an abundance of food back in that village. Makes you think the farmers around here are doing something wrong! Maybe we should start cult sacrificing people to monsters to bless the land.

They've got more important shit to do.

[The greenhouse isn't exactly a damn farm producing crops for the city. Not that Bakugo hasn't had some questions about when and where LILITH got all those fucking drones to help with cleanup and other things... Random.

Elan's comment, however, earns a dark snarl from the explosive hero and a nasty glare.]

We'll start with you!

They're gardening robots. This is exactly what they're supposed to do, or their programming should be rewritten. Don't you have robots where you're from?

[ Farming, gardening... It's all the same to a Spacian who hasn't a clue how to raise crops. Elan rolls his eyes at the threat. What a hero. Even if Bakugo were serious, being the subject of a witchhunt would be nothing new to him. ]

Not for gardening. We use them for combat training and emergency transportation.

[They're typically combat and rescue support for the heroes who do the heavy lifting. Bakugo sets down everything he brought with him from the shed, hooks a foot around the leg of a nearby stool, and swings it over to his location.]

Get over here. I'll show you how to pot a plant.

[Make yourself more useful than napping, Elan.]

Robots can do more than train and transport! You ought to be teaching them instead.

[ Why do labor a robot can do for you? There's a Haro for everything back in space. Any chance of falling asleep ruined by the threat of acorns, Elan rises to his feet and comes over...to look. He's taking it easy especially after the mess that was Brasov. He may not be physically tired, but he is exhausted in his soul, which explains why he's been fucking around instead of doing more productive things like fixing his mobile suit. ]

I'm not a damn programmer!

[He has plenty of skills with computers, but certainly not to the engineering level of telling a robot how to operate! Elan's intending to watch, given the slight distance he keeps, but he signed his doom the moment he got up and came over. Bakugo sets a small pot on the working shelf, then crouches to shuck out a few spade-fulls of soil from a bag into a larger pot. Up we go, back to the shelf. All of them are pretty damn exhausted from that bullshit Romania trip.

He's working so his brain can't dwell on the memories and draining emotions.]

Your world has a lot of robotics, huh.

[Apart from Gundam, of course.]

[ Elan hovers nearby watching the hero work. He himself seems more interested in moving his mouth than moving his fingers. ]

Well of course it did. Humans wouldn't make it out in space without advanced technology. Robots are used for construction, monitoring, entertainment, wars...you name it! It's not all that different from here, except you can count on things not to glitch or break down.

[ If he had a nickel every time the base's heaters stopped working, he'd have two nickels, and if this had happened out in space, he'd also be dead. ]

[Yeah that's always Elan's priority: mouth first, fingers last. He has a decent voice, so it's not grating on the ears for him to run it. At the very least...]

Che. Because all those robotic stories never had to deal with glitches or breakdowns for fucking drama.

[His world has plenty of advanced technology, but space travel wasn't a big thing since everyone was so focused on Quirks and what the world had to offer with them. Their space tech is our "modern" but hasn't done a massive amount beyond it, since Quirks began to manifest and heroes eventually became society important number one.]

Machines work well if you take care of them. It's not fucking hard.

Tell that to the boss! How many days were we cut off in Brasov? Not that I missed having command in my ear all the time. I could do with less drama, personally.

[ Crouching down, he plucks one of the hand shovels from Bakugou's pile and starts idly pushing dirt around. Not in the interest of achieving anything but to keep himself occupied as he chatters. ]

No shit. Have they never dealt with a kaiju like that before? [Between the rifts, mind-wiping worm, and other shit, you'd think they'd have been able to penetrate some shitty magic fog!] Some goddamn "magic emp" bullshit.

[Part of him agrees with Elan about not having LILITH in his head for a while being a nice break. But considering what it cost them and the result... he would've rather avoided the trade in hindsight.]

Make a hole in the middle of this. [If Elan's going to push dirt around, Bakugo's gonna let him create little wells in the pots of dirt he's filling.]

[ If it were backbreaking work, he might have refused, but making a hole in the soil, Elan doesn't see what's there to sweat about - literally. Sticking the shovel into the pot he digs a shallow hole where he assumes the seeds will go, talking all the while. ]

If they have, they're keeping an awful lot of important information to themselves. Kinda hard to make any sort of plan when we're only told last minute what we're dealing with! If I'd known everything in their torture dungeon wanted a bite of me, I would've brought my mobile suit and skipped lunch.

[ He makes light of it now, because what else is there to do when recounting horrifying experiences? ]

[Bakugo knew he'd bitch about anything harder. "Trick" him into doing something simple while advancing his own process. He swaps out the pot of soil once Elan makes a passable hole for another one, then takes some time to pot the bulb of a plant inside the newly-created soil crater.]

Duh. If they're going to leave us in whatever location for two fucking weeks doing nothing while they research- [unseen and unnoticed in the background at that] -we should use the time for something better, dammit!

[Some of their ranks like the freedom to look around the new locations and he can't begrudge them that, but Bakugo agrees with Elan's point completely.]

You're gonna have to clean and fix it before you get back in.

[Does he sound smug about Elan wanting his Gundam back? ... Yes.]

[ Bitching is indeed a great distraction and Elan only half-registers the pot before him getting switched out, automatically moving to start on the new pot. His attention is further diverted by Bakugou raising a hot button topic. ]

Don't tell me you're still thinking about piloting. Give up, it's not a mobile suit made for ordinary humans. You don't know the half of it. That thing ought to be dumpstered.

[ He pauses to wave the shovel in the air emphatically, bits of soil falling off of it. Sorry not sorry to anyone in the vicinity. It catches on his clothes, too, but he brushes it away casually. He wouldn't be napping in the grass if he was bothered about getting dirty. ]

[Easier than he thought. One pot after another, passing down the Elan divot division. Some left longer to let him dig wider and deeper. Some are dropped, then taken, away quickly for shallower holes. Whatever he needs for whichever plant he's working on.]

You're not ordinary? [Bakugo quirks a brow at the pilot, giving him a quick up and down look before returning to his work. More bagged plants emerge from the sack, opened and put in the new pots before going onto the shelves beside the others. There's a categorization going on here, but it's in his mind right now. Labels come later.]

Oy! Stop flinging dirt everywhere! [There's a difference between getting it on your hands and having it thrown around into his hair!] That's why you're gonna give me a crash course!

Yes and no.

[ He hums cryptically while he works on another pot. With his free hand he wags a single finger in the air. ]

Pharact is a special mobile suit fitted with the GUND format, making it a GUND-ARM. Gundam.

[ On the outside he might look like just another pilot, but there was a key difference between his robot and the others that were brought here. Recounting his past is never pleasant, but Bakugo had proved true to his word about protecting him in the absence of his suit, garnering Elan's astonishment, and begrudgingly, gratitude and respect. It's his turn to explain in earnest the curse that it is to be a gundam pilot and why a crash course may not be in his best interest. No dodgy answers or needling, only the truth. ]

Development of GUND is banned, actually. When a gundam's power is tapped into it outperforms a normal suit, only ordinary pilots can't withstand the effects of the data storm it generates. The technology was deemed too risky to human lives.

But! One sketchy corporation decided to get oh so clever about it. They figured if they experimented on humans and implanted in them the particles to resist a data storm...you see where this is going?

[He's listening... Already knew the mobile suit was called a Gundam. Hence Elan's nickname, Gundamn.]

So the interaction between you and Pharact are different than normal mobile suits. Is it technological or biological?

[Likely one of the two options is the culprit if "normal" people can't operate the mecha. He hasn't given up on the intent to pilot the thing, he only intends to know enough to move the Pharact out of harms way if Elan's knocked out. If able.]

Aa. You're bio engineered to handle the strain.

[Meaning "normal" people would be overloaded with the rush of information and data poured into them by the gundam's superior parameters. A data overload the human mind/body couldn't handle. Tampering with human biology to circumvent the shortcoming is pretty sketchy, especially if they did it without the pilot's permission.]

I'm one of several Enhanced Persons! Not that there's many of us left now. These scientists aren't as smart as they think, you see. They've only figured out how to reduce the strain, not eliminate it. Even being Enhanced Persons, eventually, we die.

[ There's no change in the intonation of his voice, as casual as one would remark about the weather, but he appears to be pushing dirt around again. Worse than being an experiment is being a failed experiment. Thanks for nothing, Peil labs! His open dislike for LILITH's modifications stems from a place of bitterness. It pains him to see others running to give up their perfectly good body when he would give anything to have a perfectly good body back again.

Funny enough, Bakugo's nickname is annoyingly on the nose. Being a gundam pilot is to be damned, used, and discarded. Now this next part, he's reluctant to admit because he might get chewed out or whatever. ]

I've avoided engaging the GUND format as much as possible. It's not in my interest to die an early death. Nor is it in my interest to pilot for shady corporations again, but too bad, we're stuck here.

[ It means that he's been holding out, that up until now, he's fought with only a fraction of Pharact's real strength. It also means that normies can technically move a gundam around, but why would you? ]

[catchall] time to live like we're dying

@bakugo

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