[open] Salvage and squeeing on the shore

[birdlady]

Who: EVERYBODY IT'S A LAKE PARTY
What: Clean-up! Chao rescue service! Other stuff! Open log!
Where: The lake
When: March 9-15
Warnings: Let's hope the lake Gyarados isn't pissed off about the spaceship that landed in its house...

Just as she said, Melia was at the shore of the lake in the early afternoon, already directing her bodyguards around the scattered, remaining pieces of the Egg Carrier littering the ground. What she really wanted to do, though, was find those Chao. It was a bit selfish of her, she thought, to be more concerned about finding the cute critters than cleaning up the lake, but she did have a good reason. She had to make sure they were all right in the aftermath.

And she wanted to pet one. Or all of them.

((This is a catch-all 'do stuff at the lake' log! Go nuts!))

Comments

[voltecpower]

He could have been inside, he could have been spending this nice warm day in moderately-cool cyberspace checking for any new malware or hack attempts on the network that might have occurred that one night he didn't have his eye on it. But Riche would have kicked his butt if she had known he wasn't helping to clean up the huge mess he helped make. After all, he did help salvage a good bit of the technology from when his main adversary's base went up in flames... even if his only reason was to make sure some other cyberterrorist organization didn't get it first. It was probably a good idea to try to accomplish the same with Eggman's tech, what all he could discern from the rest of the wreckage.

Whyyy did it have to go down in a big watery lake of all places?

Pulse stayed near the edge of the lake, grabbing whatever pieces of the former Carrier he was able to lift or drag, and giving each one a good look-over before depositing it in a pile he was steadily building several feet from the shore, all the while doing his very best to keep from getting wet. It appeared that anything resembling motherboards or chipsets were already decimated beyond repair, but it didn't hurt to check.

Eventually he would notice the small blue creatures floating around on their tiny wings, watching him as he worked. Pulse was used to being stared at, but every now and then he couldn't help but stare right back... what were those things?

[awakeningwill]

For all the activity around the lake, Zero had added it to his patrols, just in case anyone dragged out something dangerous. He couldn't help but notice, however, that Pulse was doing his best to collect the remnants of Eggman's machines while staying completely out of the water at all times. This was the kid with the impressive electric attacks, wasn't it? It was a little surprising that someone with that much power could also have such a large vulnerability, if that was the case.

Zero watched him for a while, studying him from afar. But eventually, his curiosity pushed him to approach the student. "Need some help?"

[voltecpower]

Pulse's hand immediately snapped up in salute when he spotted Zero. "Sir!"

His other hand was clutching what he figured was probably part of the casing for one of the Carrier's engines, though he didn't have enough experience with engines in general to be able to tell for sure. Either way, he didn't remember seeing anything like it when he was in the lab. He held the large metal plate at one end, standing it up.

"Ah, help, sir?"

He glanced over at his scrap pile. He had thought he was processing it all at a fairly reasonable pace, as efficiently as he could.

"...I'm afraid I'm not sure what you mean."

[awakeningwill]

Zero glanced over at the lake as he replied, "The water. Your electricity makes you vulnerable to water." Just an educated guess, but he'd been watching long enough to feel fairly certain about this conclusion.

It was a bit similar to the reploids of his world - those that were inclined towards the electric element had vulnerabilities to ice as a result. But Pulse wasn't a reploid, was he...? Actually, Zero couldn't say he knew exactly what he was at all.

And besides, it seemed like he was searching for something specific, the way he'd check over anything that had once been part of one of Eggman's machines. "What are you looking for?"

[voltecpower]

Oh... Pulse blushed slightly at having his most basic weakness called out. But considering how he had been purposely avoiding the water this whole time, it was pretty much obvious.

"Well, it's... ah... something like that, sir. It doesn't really... hurt. I'm not harmed or anything... Just... If I get wet, I lose my powers. ...They come back when I dry off, though."

He wasn't sure if it was appropriate to try to describe the sense of dread and insecurity he felt when one of his most direct and efficient means of sensing the world around him was shut off, or if Zero would even understand. Fear, after all, was a human emotion.

"I wanted to make sure that there wasn't anything left behind that could be reused, sir. It's possible that... ah... I might have missed something when the Carrier started to go down."

He glanced back at the scrap pile.

"So far... I haven't found anything like that, sir."

[awakeningwill]

To be fair, with Zero's general stoic air, it was pretty easy to mistake that for the limitations of a machine. Fear, while something that he understood, was never something that seemed to affect him outwardly. Losing your powers was pretty understandable as a less than desirable thing, though. Being vulnerable like that, even if it was only temporary, wasn't something to take lightly.

It was tempting to hope that maybe something from the robotisizer would be able to be salvaged, since that was the only known way of restoring Hajime back to human form. But if it meant studying Eggman's designs to bring that despicable machine back into the world? Technology like that deserved to be lost as forbidden knowledge.

"It's for the best," Zero muttered, crossing his arms as he cast his gaze over to the pile. But, turning his attention back to Pulse himself, he had to remark: "You seemed quite thorough in the destruction of his lab. That's a lot of power you have..."

[voltecpower]

Pulse was the type who wasn't overly fond of his power. For so long, he felt that he was more effective at breaking things than building them, hurting others rather than healing them. It took people such as Riche, the AI he rescued from a cyberterrorist organization bent on galactic conquest, to help him realize that people with powers such as his were necessary, useful, helpful. His powers were the complement to her own, and she was willing to help him find avenues to using his power for the greater good, in return for his being there for her and seeing all the potentials she had for her own power, which up to then had been exploited for the purpose of evil.

Spending time at the Academy among others with their own unique powers and abilities helped him to feel more at ease with his own powers, as well as build confidence in himself and find ways to use his powers to help others. However, there were only a few moments where he felt that he was actually being tested on his capabilities. He wouldn't look back on his experiences on the Carrier as such a test, a means of proving himself; he joined the cause because he honestly felt something had to be done, and he wanted to be of help. Used to working alone, he didn't think that someone else would be observing his performance; at least, not someone he considered an ally.

"U-uhm... Thank you, sir."

[awakeningwill]

It was a rather refreshing change of pace that Pulse was so modest about his abilities. Zero could respect that. As a rule, he tended to be wary around people who had ego, who boasted about their power and let their grand aspirations get to their head. He didn't get that sense here at all.

So there was no suspicion or tension in his tone when he casually asked, "I'm curious... how did you get to the lab so quickly?" Zero had been making pretty good time when he was headed there, and he'd already had a sense for where the lab was located from the last time he'd been in the Egg Carrier. Seeing Pulse there first had been a complete surprise, especially when Zero didn't know what kind of powerset he had.

[voltecpower]

"I tracked down a logical address tagged with that physical location on the Carrier's closed hintbox network. I wasn't sure if I had enough time to find the admin log on the root directory, so I just checked each node on the network until I found it."

He paused, realizing that he hadn't disclosed to anyone at the meeting how he had intended to locate the lab.

"...I can enter cyberspace, sir."

SORRY I'M LATE

[awakeningwill]

Huh. Zero raised his brows in mild surprise, but cyperspace wasn't an entirely new concept to him. After all, it was through cyberspace that his cyber-elves worked their powers. He'd even travelled through it himself a few times, though that was under very specific circumstances. To think that Pulse could do it on his own...

"That's the first I've seen anyone who wasn't a cyber-elf do so unaided," he commented. Perhaps that explained why Pulse was often nowhere to be found a lot of the times - if he'd been in cyberspace all that time, it made sense.