Scorpia is a (hugbug) wrote in valloic, @ 2021-12-02 10:20:00 |
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Entry tags: | !: action/thread/log, ₴ inactive: brigitte lindholm, ₴ inactive: scorpia |
Who: Brigitte and Scorpia
What: Brigitte comes to replace Scorpia's door
When: Shortly after Scorpia arrives, earlyish October
Where: Scorpia's apartment
Warnings: Squeaky clean
Scorpia might have eventually figured out exactly how much pressure to exert on doorknobs so that she could actually turn the knob without crushing it, or slicing it in half, but it had taken longer than she cared to admit. In fact, it had taken nearly every doorknob in her apartment before she’d managed it. Normally, she liked to think, it wouldn’t have taken quite so long, except for the fact that jumping to an alternative universe and accidentally stinging the first person who came across her had the unfortunate side-effect of stressing her out, and a stressed Scorpia was not a Scorpia that was great at the whole ‘not breaking things’ thing.
She was very thankful for how friendly everyone on the Network had been, and especially for the girl who’d offered to come and upgrade her doors so that she didn’t need teeny-tiny keys and door handles that were obviously designed for people who had hands instead of pincers.
So now she was hovering while Brigitte worked, watching everything she was doing. “Do you need anything?” she asked, probably not for the first time. “Tools or snacks or I could make you some tea?”
Brigitte wasn't exactly unused to people standing behind her shoulder to see what she was working on, so it didn't bother her in the least. She paused for a moment to turn and raise her safety goggles to her forehead and smiled with a level of reassurance. "Thank you, Scorpia! I have my tools all right here and I shouldn't risk drinks or snacks around these electronics.. Maybe after?" She had tapped her toolbelt as she talked, then winked before lowering her goggles and getting back to work.
To make it less awkward for Scorpia, though, she figured maybe some explanation of what she was doing might help her feel less anxious. "What I'm doing right now is running power from your main circuit to your doorframe. There's already some here to help with a doorbell and general premise wiring, but none of that will be strong enough for a biometric reader. From there, it'll just be a matter of installing this new reader I developed, which we'll test when I'm done. Oh! And I was thinking of having a bypass in case of power failure. How accurate are you with your stinger?"
“Oh right, of course,” Scorpia said, a little embarrassed. She probably should have known better, especially with how much time she’d spent with Entrapta (and boy was she ever homesick for Entrapta right now. The goggles and all the handiness with the door reminded Scorpia of her, a little), though Entrapta occasionally ate while she worked. Maybe tiny food was easier to eat while working on this sort of thing, especially when her hair doubled as another set of hands or three.
“Uh huh, uh huh,” she said, nodding as though she understood what Brigitte was talking about. She thought she caught the general gist of it though. She blinked in surprise when Brigitte asked about her stinger though, and she glanced back at it, uncertainly. “Oh, I guess… kind of accurate?” she said. “I don’t really like using it very often,” in fact, most of the time when she struck someone, it was instinct, “and I’ve never really tested it before, you know, with striking smaller objects? But I can usually hit what I want to when I try.” Given what she usually hit was approximately people sized, she generally had some leeway, but it wasn’t like she was hitting people in the head when she was aiming for their chest.
"Well! We can test it!" responded Brigitte, cheerfully. She pulled a smaller concave object out of her pack and handed it over to Scorpia to look at. "What I'll do is install this high above the door, maybe close to the ceiling, and camouflage it a bit. Maybe I can attune it to your stinger. And it'll be more analog, so if power goes out, you can strike it with your stinger to open the door. No sense getting stuck!" During the explanation, she had already returned to the other work she was in the middle of, leaving the gadget with her new friend. "And who knows! If you ever want a change, we've probably got people who can magic up some hands for you. But I know all about wanting to stay true to yourself, too."
Scorpia gave Brigitte a look of surprise, and then looked at her pincers, frowning. There had been a couple times when she was younger that she wished she had proper hands, with fingers and opposable thumbs, but it wasn’t anything she’d ever really longed for. Her whole Scorpioni family had had pincers and had (probably) been proud of them, and besides, they were definitely better at some things than hands were, like cutting through things. Etheria was different than Vallo, more accessible to people who maybe didn’t have normal hands, but they were still her pincers.
“I think I’ll keep them how they are,” she said after a moment of looking at them. “And having a second way in does sound helpful. Does it change anything if I have electrical powers?” She demonstrated, a current of black electricity running between her moveable and her fixed claw on her right pincer.
Brigitte's immediate answer was drowned out as her mouth took on an "O" shape as she witnessed the dark electricity. Her eyes matched and she set down her tools to pull out a meter device. "Oh gosh, can you do that again so I can measure the voltage? Have you ever tried charging up devices before? Or is it purely an offensive/defensive ability? Is there a limit, does it make you tired? How often can you do it? Is it biological or supernatural? Do you know how it works?"
The door was momentarily forgotten.
Scorpia stared for a moment, and then smiled, just a little. Yes, she definitely reminded Scorpia, in some ways, of Entrapta. She looked up as she tried to remember all the questions Brigitte had asked. “Sure, if you’d like. I haven’t, so I don’t know. Also don’t know, but I’ve never gotten tired from it yet. Whenever I want. It’s uh… Well, I didn’t get my magic until I came in contact with the Black Garnet Crystal, but I’m the crystal’s princess so it really only works like that for me.” She knew Shadow Weaver had used the crystal for its magic for years, but never like Scorpia had. “And no, I have no idea how it works, other than magic.”
Brigitte shoved the meter under her arm and started typing some notes into her phone. "Connection to a crystal, mmhmm. Crystal's princess suggests possibly a genetic transmission method." She faced Scorpia again and nodded. "I guess the question is if it's your magic and the crystal is some kind of focus or if it's the crystal's magic and you're the focus. But you still have it and the crystal isn't here -- it isn't here, is it?"
In all honesty, a chance to combine technology and magic was something she'd always wanted to figure out, so she needed to take notes and ask questions.
She even made notes into a voice recorder! Brigitte wasn’t Entrapta, Scopria knew that, but whatever nervousness she might have had before melted away, and she the look she gave Brigitte was full of warmth. “Oh, that’s a good question,” Scorpia said. She really didn’t know the first thing about any of this. In fact, Shadow Weaver had convinced her that the crystal had rejected her right up until Glimmer had convinced her to try, and Scorpia had always taken Shadow Weaver at her word. “But I think it’s my magic? Shadow Weaver didn’t really have access to it in the same way I did, and she’d used the crystal for… oh, pretty much my entire life, I guess? Maybe longer. I don’t know if the crystal’s here though. I know the Fright Zone is, but I don’t know if the crystal came with it.”
She hadn’t gone yet, hadn’t asked to go yet. She knew it should have been one of the first things she did - it was her kingdom after all - but she wasn’t sure if she was ready yet.
Brigitte took a moment to soak in all that information as she chewed her lip. "Okay, so this Shadow Weaver used your crystal without you, which would suggest maybe the answer is both. Maybe the crystal is like a battery for your powers? Or an amplifier? Oh the possibilities!" She quickly changed her mind about measuring the power output of Scorpia's powers and tucked away her tools again.
Turning back to the door plate, she got back to work. "I can't leave a project unfinished, but once we get this done, we are totally going to need to make a trip to the Fright Zone to see if your crystal is there and maybe get both of our questions answered!"
“Oh, yeah, sure,” Scorpia said, a little uneasily. She really should go check it out, and she couldn’t keep putting it off together. She wondered if she should let Adora and Catra know. Things were… awkward, to say the least, but she probably should just in case there was something here that was different than back home. “I wouldn’t mind learning more about the crystal, if it’s there. You wouldn’t try to build or improve on any weapons while we’re out there though, right? Because we should maybe avoid doing that.”
No judgments if she was. But Scorpia didn’t want to go about making anyone mad.
"No way, I prefer defense fabrication anyway, though I may want to pick up a few things for study later if that's okay," answered Brigitte, already wrist deep in her work on the door again. After a few quick adjustments, she placed the biometric scanner on the wall and fastened it in place with a release that would only let it be taken off the wall if you knew the command code. Burglar-proofing! Well, unless they took the wall down, but then really security wouldn't be an issue. Or if they could walk through walls. Or teleport. She'd have to think of other ways to defend against that.
"Okay! Please hold your pincer in front of the scanner for five seconds so I can attune it to you."
“Oh, I’m sure that’ll be fine,” Scorpia said, not entirely sure, but it wasn’t like anyone else was using it, and Brigitte didn’t seem like the type to try to repurpose them for world domination or anything like that.
She held her pincer in front of the scanner as Brigitte had asked her to and turned to her as it took her readings. “Thanks again for all of this. I really appreciate it. Round doorknobs really don’t -” the scanner beeped, and Scorpia pulled away her claw, “really work with these.” She opened and closed her claws as a demonstration. “Next time we hang out, maybe I can help you with something!”
"You already have!" Brigitte's mind was already cataloging ideas of what a person with bio-electrical powers could be capable of. It was a completely different sort of application than what Thor could produce, and she'd always been afraid he'd blow out any capacitors she tried to use anyway. But something meant to be used organically? Oh wow. And Scorpia was super nice, too! Packing away the last of her tools, she turned and faced Scorpia again.
"I'll have to come back later for the secondary bypass, though, I need to test a few ideas before I settle on what works. Maybe after we hit the Fright Zone!"
Scorpia flushed. She didn’t think she’d done anything in particular to help Brigitte, but she wasn’t going to argue the case. Sometimes Entrapta would thank her for apparently no reason too, so it wasn’t as though such a thing were new.
“After the Fright Zone,” Scorpia agreed. “I’ll let you know as soon as we can go out there!”