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The C.I.C. - Wednesday, 9am-Midnight

Kaidan opened the shop and let the raven inside. "Hey, buddy. How've you been? I missed you." The raven seemed happy to see him, too. Or maybe it wasn't. The cup of pens by the register was systematically emptied as the bird one by one threw them to the floor in an almost ritualistic manner.

Leaning on the counter, Kaidan pulled out a bastardized deck of cards and began playing his weird form of pazaak solitaire again. The raven helped, for a value of help that meant occasionally stealing a card and gliding across the room with it.

Business was steady. The in-between moments were spent playing with the cards, his face almost entirely blank of emotion.

[Open!]

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Kaidan! Oh, Kaidan! You were about to have a great time with this. There was a little green triangle walking into the shop, dragging a bag behind her. She paused as a pen bounced by her feet, and then glanced up at the Raven and Kaidan both, tilting her head quizzically.

"Am I interrupting?"

Kaidan looked up and threw Peridot a smile. "Hey, Peridot. No, you're not interrupting. How've you been? Haven't seen you in a few weeks."

"Busy," Peridot replied. "Robonoids to build, evil ropes to defeat, you know how it is."

... Probably not.

"I came to deliver my progress on the robonoid you requested, actually," she added. "Something came up back home and I might be gone for a while. It isn't quite finished, but I think you might be able to get something useful out of it all the same."

"Busy's good," Kaidan acknowledged. Then he frowned, "Everything ok at home?"

Peridot gave her shoulders an easy shrug.

"My exemplary skills as a pilot were requested," she replied. She was... incorrect, but that was neither here nor there. "There's a Ruby ship from Homeworld and a very small number of Gems around who know how to fly it."

She rummaged through her bag for a minute, and then pulled out a green metal sphere. Four little cones hung limply below it, not actually tethered to the sphere itself, but sitting underneath it as though they were.

"But I do have this for you."

"That's good, though, right? That they want you to come pilot a ..Ruby ship?" Kaidan asked. Peridot sounded as though that were a good.

He looked quizzically at the little metal sphere, "That's the Robonoid you were building? Hey, thank you. I wasn't sure you'd have time to work on it anytime soon."

"I have had nothing but time," Peridot muttered, maybe a little sourly. "I still don't entirely know how to fill it. This kept me occupied for a while."

She held the sphere out to Kaidan.

"At this point, it should be able to think well enough to evade attacks. It can fly- that's what the legs are for."

Yes. Yes they did spin around like a helicopter.

"I hadn't gotten to installing weaponry just yet."

Because arming something potentially semi-sentient before ascertaining what it would do with those weapons was dumb.

"I'm sorry you've been bored," Kaidan said sincerely, "I'm glad the project could help a little."

He reached gingerly for the green sphere. It was.. well, it was cute. "What commands does it follow? Or does it? How do I get it to work?"

"It understands three basic commands," Peridot replied. "Attack, evade, and stop. You activate it by pressing a finger to the circle on the bottom."

She paused, and then added, "I think. Human physiology is different from Gem physiology. Most of our tech responds to hard light, trying to key it in to organic life is... new, to me."

"What does 'attack' do, without weapons onboard?" Kaidan asked. He wasn't about to turn it on until he had at least a better understanding.

"Without weapons..." Peridot squinted at the robonoid, and then shrugged. "You know mosquitoes?"

It would basically just annoy people to death.

"Mosquitoes drink blood and spread disease, so I hope you just mean the annoying buzzing thing they do?" Kaidan asked hopefully.

Honestly, he didn't know. It could be either.

"... The annoying buzzing," Peridot replied, blinking. "They drink blood?"

She didn't have blood! She didn't know these things!

"They do," Kaidan confirmed, "They land on humans, bite them and draw up some blood, and the bite causes a histamine reaction that itches."

Peridot was lucky. Mosquitoes were the worst.

"Let's see what little buddy here can do." Kaidan pressed the button.

The robonoid sat silent for a few seconds before, with a little shudder, its legs splayed out in four directions, and then raised up over the top of it, free-spinning about an inch above its surface.

The sphere rose, hovering in place in front of Kaidan, waiting for instructions.

Peridot looked practically incandescent with pride. It worked! The human finger activated it! Success!

Kaidan beamed at it. The thing was too cute. "Ok, little buddy, can you fly around without knocking anything over or breaking anything?"

Smiling down at Peridot, he praised, "Peridot, this thing is really cool!"

Peridot watched with an even bigger grin as the robonoid zipped its way in a circle around the room. It maybe got a little too close to the raven for comfort, but didn't actually knock into the poor guy, at least?

"Cool!" She knew that word. Her little chest puffed out in pride. "Of course it is!"

The raven quoked indignantly and hunkered down. That thing didn't even have wings!

"Buddy, start your harassment program. Let's see how you do," Kaidan encouraged the floaty thing. "It's a robonoid, but does it have a name?"

"... Robonoid," Peridot supplied, watching it about-face and zero in on Kaidan. Oh, it was so gonna buzz right in his face. "A buzz robonoid, I think."

Since she had invented a whole new kind, she figured she got to name what it was. Homeworld had flask robonoids, plug robonoids, and hand robonoids. This one buzzed.

Kaidan took an experimental swat at it, "So its name is Buzz Robonoid." The capital letters were clearly enunciated. "Buzzy for short."

"... Buzzy?"

'Buzzy' wobbled backwards in the air, then spun about in a circle before launching itself at Kaidan again.

"I think I like that."

It was way more creative than her usual naming conventions.

Kaidan continued to play air-tag with Buzzy for a few minutes, amused at the persistence of the little bot. "How long will Buzzy be active for? Does it need to recharge, and if so, how do I do that?" he wondered.

Peridot's head tilted sideways a little.

"... Recharge?"

Gems didn't rest. Why would their tech ever need to?

Congratulations, Kaidan. Peridot had basically just presented you with a perpetual motion machine. Named Buzzy.

"Human electronics run on batteries or electricity. I take it Buzzy doesn't?" Kaidan asked, curious about that. "But I can power it down with the button?"

"When it gets annoying, yes," Peridot confirmed. "You might not always want a flying attack robonoid throwing itself at your face."

... Then again, maybe he did. She wasn't going to judge.

"Come here, Buzzy," Kaidan called, holding out a hand for it. Mostly he was curious to see if it would listen while in 'annoyance' mode.

"No, having one always in my face would be problematic - it would make eating or drinking difficult." You know, those annoying things the bipedal meatsacks had to do.

"I'd feel a little bad letting my friend attack Buzzy," he added, "...though I feel no regret at all introducing them."

Peridot tilted her head faintly, confused. Buzzy flitted around Kaidan's head for a moment before going in to attack his hand, instead.

"Feel bad?"

Peridot didn't tend to have much empathy for robonoids. They were tools.

"You built it. I would feel bad if it were destroyed, because you spent time building it for me and I value that," Kaidan tried to explain.

Kaidan had empathy for everything.

Peridot seemed mildly perplexed by the idea of it, but seemed to accept that answer all the same.

"It's so odd, being among people who value time so much," she noted. "Maybe someday I'll get used to that."

"Humans have far less of it than gemstones do," Kaidan said helpfully, "We have to value it, if only for the scarcity."

"Come home, little buddy," Kaidan said, holding his hand palm up, "Enough buzzing for right now."

Peridot watched as Buzzy zipped in one more time, lilted upwards, and then stopped spinning its little legs, lowering them below itself and falling to land on them in Kaidan's hand.

And she blinked and tilted her head as it scuttled up his arm to perch on his shoulder.

Oookay.

"Humans are still new to me, too," she noted.

Kaidan also blinked over at it. It wasn't heavy and he didn't mind it. Well. Now he had a pet.

"We haven't been around all that long, geologically speaking," he agreed, "Are there any where you're from?"

"No," Peridot replied, shaking her head. "There isn't organic life of any kind of Homeworld. It wouldn't survive long if there was."

Because the Diamonds would have it destroyed.

"Earth has humans, naturally. It's the only place I know of that does."

"Where I'm from, there's both organic and inorganic life of several species," Kaidan offered, "though we don't have Gems, that I've ever met."

"We don't come near this galaxy often," Peridot replied, shrugging and waving a hand vaguely skyward. "Maybe once every few thousand years. On clear nights, you can see Homeworld's galaxy from here, though. That's kind of nice."

"Are you looking forward to going home?" Kaidan asked. He knew what it felt like to be a galaxy away from home.

"I'm..." Peridot frowned a little. "I'm never going home. But I'm going to a reality that has home, and that's almost good enough."

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The C.I.C. - Wednesday, 9am-Midnight

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