InsaneJournal

PRESENT DAY RP Log: Viktor and El
Who: Viktor and El Higgins
What: Viktor shows El, his new assistant, around the lab, and the two get to know one another
Where: Papa's Pride
When: Last week

The door to the laboratory to the side of Papa’s Pride was closed, but unlocked. Viktor was on the other side of it, drinking cold coffee, gazing at the few remaining boxes that Diego had assisted him with moving. For the most part, the equipment was moved and unpacked. It hadn’t taken long. Viktor had initially kept Jayce’s research belongings apart from his own, superstitious that they might disappear as suddenly as their owner, but when they hadn’t, he’d absorbed them with his own. They had worked too long together for him not to do so. Viktor could read Jayce’s shorthand like he could his own, at this point. It had been easy, and so parting was not.

He took a sip of his coffee, and did not register its unpalatable temperature. He was only in his late twenties, but he felt old, suddenly. Tired. He supposed years of being in pain would do that to you. Viktor did not relish the idea of relearning how to work with someone new. El’s impertinence had been amusing enough, yes, and if her work was good, he would adjust. But he missed Jayce. He missed Mel. He missed what had become the rhythm of his old life, his happy life, and he did not know how to not miss it.

But Viktor didn’t know how to lie down either, so he didn’t. He started at the sound of a knock on the laboratory door, checked the time, and swore under his breath. It must be El; he’d told her to meet him here at this time. “Come in,” he said in heavily-accented English, and tried to look like he had his shit together.

El was on the fence about whether she was doing the right thing. On one hand, since Chloe had left she was no longer responsible for anyone but herself, so it hardly mattered what she did. On the other hand, it felt a lot like giving up, no matter how much free time she continued to devote to finding a way home. She’d built up a significant store of mana in her powersharer - which under the circumstances was more like power storage - but she estimated that if she ran ten miles through rough terrain every day for the next twenty years she wouldn’t have enough to blast a hole through dimensions. If she wanted to just destroy the dimension she was in, it would probably be easier. Stupid apocalyptic affinity.

Anyway, she was starting to come around to thinking there had to be a bit more to life than constant unbearable exercise, and also she was running out of her arrival money. She’d been living pretty frugally since moving to Morningside - she didn’t have to spend a lot to improve on the food standards of the Scholomance - but if she didn’t work out a source of income soon she might be in trouble. Viktor’s request for an assistant had come at just the right time. She could only hope it wasn’t a total disaster, like any other time in her life she’d tried to do anything as normal as getting a job.

She took a deep breath before she opened the door, and hoped that the last four years would at least count for something here. At the very least she thought she could avoid being accidentally killed. No one could say she wasn’t good at staying alive.

“Hello,” she said, offering her hand like an adult probably would. “I’m El Higgins.”

Viktor took her hand and gave it a firm shake; unlike her, he had had loads of experience shaking hands. Of politicians, competitors, allies, teachers, enemies… “El,” he said, rustling up a pastel sort of smile, “it’s good to put a face to a name. I’m Viktor.”

Just Viktor. He didn’t have a last name, or if he did, it hadn’t been important in the kind of place he’d grown up in. He leaned on his cane, trying not to wince as he did so: he’d been sitting too long. “Well,” he said after an awkward moment, his accent vaguely Russian, “this is the lab. Still in its infancy; there are more boxes to unpack, but…”

A scoff, and he turned to take a better look at her. “I’m sorry,” he said after a moment. “I probably should have prepared an um… schedule? Curriculum? For your first day. I didn’t plan anything. But…” he dismissed the motion with a wave of his hand. “A lot of that is ah…” What was the proper swear? “...bull shit,” he concluded after a moment. “We are both adults, yes? You are here to learn? And I am here to figure out how to best use your interests and abilities. So…” He pulled up a stool for her to sit, and gratefully sat back down, taking the weight off of his bad leg. “Why don’t you tell me about them?”

El sat a little gingerly, careful not to upset anything around her. “Oh,” she said, blinking, wondering if she ought to have practiced an introduction. “Well, I’m… what you’d call a wizard, but I mostly don’t use magic in case it’s an emergency,” she began. “But before I came here I’d just finished four years at school. I did incantations track, which is mostly languages, but we all had to do some alchemy and artifice. Alchemy’s basically chemistry and artifice is like building stuff that works with magic. Um.” She decided not to mention that most of the things she’d built hadn’t been used, because the school kept insisting on giving her assignments that were designed to kill people in horrible ways. “I’m really good at taking accurate notes. And noticing things that don’t fit right. And I’m stronger than I look, if you need stuff like… moved around,” she added, glancing around at the equipment and boxes.

“Incantations,” Viktor murmured, curious. He’d never been good at languages save runic, really - written was easier than verbal any day. “I’m not certain how much incantations will help you here, but both alchemy and artifice will serve you well. As will thorough note-taking and problem solving.” He didn’t reply to her offer to help him move stuff around; Viktor was stubborn about doing things himself, even if it hurt him the next day. “Do I recall correctly that your school was…” he paused, searching for the right word. “Kind of ah. Barbaric?” Hopefully he didn’t offend her. There were only so many words for a school that ran kids through a deadly gauntlet, in his opinion.

“That’s one way of putting it,” El admitted. “About the best thing you could say about it was it was a better option than not being there. Kids like me are basically monster chow walking around in the real world.” Or they had been, anyway. “Let’s just say you learned to pay attention really bloody fast if you didn’t want to lose any vital organs.”

He made a face at that, but sadly, it didn’t seem that strange when put so baldly: “I have a little familiarity with keeping watchful or being dead,” Viktor admitted, thinking of his childhood in the Lanes. “But… it is no way to live long term, I think.” He cleared his throat, and gestured to the laboratory. “Shall I ah-- give you the tour?”

“Please.” El hopped off the stool. She was genuinely interested, it wasn’t like she had jumped at the first job that came along out of desperation. And it would be cool to see how working in a lab worked when half the challenge wasn’t dodging the maleficaria lurking behind every crucible or disguising themselves as table legs. She hoped. “What are you uh… actually working on?”

Viktor pointed out the basics - storage, the exhaust hood, sink, the fridge that could actually be used to store food in, the fridge you did not want to store food in… “I’m working on filtration devices, primarily,” he answered, gesturing to the chalkboard covered in writing. “As the population of Vallo grows, so does its waste. It would be a shame to mess up such a pretty place as this due to not planning ahead to, mmm? I also am focusing on--”


A robot the size of a medium-sized dog came wheeling out from under a table. It made a concerned beeping sound, and peeped at El.

“...robotics,” Viktor finished with a grin. “El, this is Blitzcrank. Blitzcrank, this is El. Don’t worry,” he added, sending El a reassuring smile. “He likes everyone. He even likes Diego Hargreeves. I am certain he will like you.”

El blinked. “Cool,” she said, a small smile daring to creep across her face. She didn’t know much about robots, but she was pretty sure they wouldn’t be affected by whatever it was that tended to push normal people away. She crouched down a little and waved, unsure if the thing could even see her. “What kind of robot is it?” she asked. “I mean, um, he? What does he do?”

“He was originally a prototype for a much larger model,” Viktor said with a fond smile on his face, looking less stiff than he had. “I intended to use him to go where humans cannot - perhaps to polluted areas, or otherwise dangerous locations.” His voice turned rueful. “And he would have been very good, had I kept him to those purposes. But. Well.” A shrug. “I grew fond.”

Blitzcrank rolled over to where El had crouched, and solemnly held out a grasping mechanism. “Hi! Are you going to work here?”

“I think that she will, yes,” Viktor answered, sending El a little nod. El seemed as if she might be a good fit, he thought. Focused, interested. Not too serious, which was something he needed, honestly.

“Then we’re going to be friends!” Blitzcrank decided.

Viktor shrugged apologetically. “He is nicer than I am.”

El had been staring in impressed surprise ever since the robot started talking, but it didn’t take her long to recover. She shook the little robot arm carefully. “I’d really like that,” she said, with a little hitch in her throat she hadn’t been expecting.

Viktor noted her reaction - despite his own social awkwardness, he was perceptive - but he didn’t draw attention to it. Instead, he turned to his station, tapping his finger against the side of his face as Blitzcrank circled around El’s feet.

“I think that concludes things nicely,” he said. “When you start tomorrow, I will have protective gear for you. “But make sure you uphold the basics of safety yourself - close-toed shoes, of course.”

“Right.” She let out a breath of relief she hadn’t quite realised she’d been holding. “Thanks. I… won’t let you down.”