Being robros

[stayb100ponyboy]

Who: Equius Zahhak and Dirk Strider
Where: Equius' workshop
When: backdated to immediately after this
Status: Closed
Style: STRONG and manly

After getting off the SFC, Equius wanders up to his workshop. It takes a little digging, but he manages to unearth the solar surfer he and Jim were working on. It's been quite awhile since then, and the surfer is pretty dirty, so he settles in with a rag, wiping it off and waiting for Dirk to arrive.

Comments

[shippingmath]

Thanks to flashstepping, it doesn't take Dirk long at all to reach Equius's hive. He's certainly been by enough times to know exactly how to get there easily. He doesn't even bother with formalities, he just heads toward Equius's workshop and sticks his head in.

"Yo, bro," he says when he notices Equius in it, coming in and holding out a hand for a fist bump in order to take it. "Show me the goods, dude."

[stayb100ponyboy]

"Hello." Equius holds out his own fist and waits for Dirk to take initiative and bump them together; he can't do it on his own for fear of crushing Dirk's hand. "This is what I've got so far."

He motions to the surfer. "I have blueprints for its engine around here somewhere too."

[shippingmath]

Equius isn't left hanging for long. Dirk gives him that fist bump, then steps closer again to look the half-finished solar surfer over. "Not bad," he says, poking at it, before turning away to hunt the blueprints down himself, without waiting for Equius to take them out. "This isn't just troll tech, is it?"

[stayb100ponyboy]

"No, it's mostly human tech." Dirk has been here enough times that he knows where things are, and Equius leaves him to his search. "I was trying to modify it with troll tech to make it able to carry me, but then..." He shrugs. He lost interest in the project when Jim left.

[shippingmath]

It doesn't take long to find them, and once he does, Dirk sets them next to the hoverboard itself, looking over the plans and comparing them to the progress made on the board itself. "Looks pretty damn good so far," he says finally. "We might as well add the troll shit now, before it's done and we have to take it totally apart to get anything done."

[stayb100ponyboy]

"We could just take it apart and start from scratch." Now that Equius is looking at it more closely, he's seeing flaws in the solar surfer's design and things he screwed up the first time around. "It could be improved here... here... and here."

[shippingmath]

"And if you streamline it here, then add a flare there, it'll handle sharp turns better," Dirk adds, leaning in to paint at various parts of the board as he talks. "Sure, why the hell not? If we can do better, then we should."

[stayb100ponyboy]

"All right, let's take it apart." Equius gets out a wrench and attacks the surfer without further ado. "I was thinking that some troll tech could boost the energy output and make it handle better, but then it would lose some of its lift ability. What do you think?"

He's come to value Dirk's opinion quite a bit.

[shippingmath]

"I say go for it. We don't need to make this thing hit the ceiling, just stay off the ground enough. The point of a board is to have some fucking fun with it, and half the fun is doing tricks." He slips in next to Equius, pulling his own tools out from his sylladex. "I'll show you a few when we're done here."

[stayb100ponyboy]

"Sounds good." Equius takes off a piece of the surfer and sets it aside. "If you only want it to hover a little ways off the ground, we can divert energy from here and put it here," he points out what he's talking about, "and then it would go faster and hold more weight."

[shippingmath]

"Wonder if we could make that adjustable," Dirk commented. "Some things need more speed than others, and sometimes you need more height. It'd be damn convenient if we didn't have to rebuild it for every little change."

[stayb100ponyboy]

"That," Equius pauses for a moment, his mind working overtime, "is an excellent idea."

He sets down his tools, leaving Dirk to take it apart for now, and starts sketching plans on a sheet of paper, muttering to himself about how to divert power on cue.

[shippingmath]

"Fuck yes it is." Dirk keeps up with the dismantling, setting each individual piece aside as he works. He doesn't try to get a glance of what Equius is doing for the moment. He can see them when he's done, and add his own suggestions then.

[stayb100ponyboy]

After finishing his preliminary sketches, Equius shows the paper to Dirk. "What do you think?"

[shippingmath]

Dirk examined them for a moment, then made a few notes and modifications of his own to the page, before handing it back to Equius. "Not bad. I bet we can do a whole lot of shit with this thing."

[stayb100ponyboy]

"Yes, I think we can." Equius looks at Dirk's modifications and nods before pinning the paper down with a couple of wrenches. "Where do you want to start first?"

[shippingmath]

"Start with the system to transfer power. We need to know how everything's connected to make sure we can fit it into the design of the board," Dirk said, setting aside the last of the hoverboard's guts.

[stayb100ponyboy]

"Right." Equius will be using some troll tech here to supplement what he and Jim already did. And his mun will be bullshitting forever about what it is exactly that he's doing, because she studied history and not mechanical engineering. "How does this look?"

[shippingmath]

"It looks fucking boss," Dirk said, peering over it. "Here, let me get started on the engines and the connection, and we can test it before we start fitting on the other shit."

[stayb100ponyboy]

"All right." Equius steps aside, letting Dirk fill in, and starts working on the outer shell to the spacecraft. After working in companionable silence for a few moments, he hazards a question about something that's been on his mind for awhile.

"Dirk? What happened in your game session?"

[shippingmath]

Dirk stops what he's working on when the question gets asked, then sets aside his tools and turns toward Equius. His face is blank. "Not much. It's not even finished yet. Why? Someone say something about it to you?"

[stayb100ponyboy]

Equius turns to look at Dirk, his expression a little surprised. "No, no one said anything. I was just curious, that's all."

He likes Dirk and wants to know more about him!

[shippingmath]

He shrugs, and turns back toward his work, but rather than continue to do anything about it, he just stares at the pieces laid out in front of him. "Not much to say about it. We've been in it for a few months already, but it's going nowhere fast because we fucked up. Didn't prototype anything going in."

[stayb100ponyboy]

"Oh." And then things suddenly got awkward. "I'm sorry to hear that."

Pause.

"Did you have trolls in your session too?"

[shippingmath]

"Eventually," Dirk admits. Because, thanks to Gamzee, they did. "Not in the way the previous human session did, though. We never got trolled by anyone. Instead, we got a so-called brother and sister pair using reversed quirks, bothering us in the time leading up to our game and basically leaving us the fuck alone once it actually started."