These Aren't Wastes

It is, Sheri has discovered, unfortunately easy to confuse her with one of the children of this planet. The fact that she's wearing shapeless fatigues doesn't help matters in that regard at all, but there's no way in hell she's wearing anything that would make her more obviously an adult. If she had to deal with one kind of disrespect, she'd take the childlike appearance over the latter. That was usually dispelled easily enough when she started talking.

The fact that the woman just appeared out of nowhere was definitely noteworthy. "Negatively charged, ether?" She repeated, narrowing her eyes. Bending down, the Captain's fingers dug into the tainted earth and pulled up a handful of soil. It was far darker than the rest she had seen in this land, and it crumbled between her fingers far more like ash than earth.

"I'm no scientist." She said, with a matter-of-factness that would make many of her own people flinch with shame. "But I was curious. This place looks a lot more like home to me than much of the rest of the planet. I was wondering if there might be some terraforming effort underway. It wouldn't surprise me if the Saiyans are looking to invade more than just one world at a time. And this one is a lot nicer than Plant."

Her tone is calm, level and utterly confident. Also adult. She may be short, but those sharp red eyes of hers age her far more accurately than her stature. She's a soldier to her very core, and only the extremely foolish or extremely naive couldn't see that.

She doesn't recognise the race that this taller being is, but clearly she's not a human, that much could not be more clear. From the way she's talking, though, it seemed like she WAS a scientist. Or close enough, anyway.

She lets the crumbling earth fall away from her fingers as she rises, regarding her fellow alien with a curious look.

"Are you involved in making it this way?" She asks, bluntly. "I'm on leave, so it isn't really any of my business. I've never heard of 'ether' being used to corrupt things though. Isn't that a medical thing?"


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One day, Sheri will stop being irritated when people call her child. That day, however, is not today, and her eyebrow twitches at that particular word. It is deeply frustrating to be infantalised when she's got more blood on her hands personally than most other soldiers in the Tuffle army. But getting angry about it isn't going to help anything.

"I'm in my thirties." She said, with a hint of reproach. But everything else the woman says is far more interesting to her than getting personally offended about the mode of address.

Destron Gas was a dangerous substance, but one that the Tuffle commando knew a fair amount about, if only because it was at the heart of so many military projects that they promised would end the war any day now - including some of the ones that they had locked away because they would take out the planet rather than just the Saiyans. The fact that this woman was harnessing the power of Destron Gas was impressive. Definitely far beyond any of the other technology she had seen on this planet so far. Humans had advanced well enough in some areas, but in most of them they were hopelessly backwards compared to what she was used to.

She still didn't understand all the details. Ether was still not a term she recognised. She wasn't sure why you'd want to charge rubies, either, for that matter. But she didn't need to understand all the details. What she did grasp was enough for her to be impressed.

"It's not my business." She said, once the explanation was fully complete. "It looks like this is pretty localised, and it doesn't seem to be spreading, which implies you know what you are doing. I didn't think there were many other species in the galaxy who could harness the power of Destron Gas. But it's not up to me to regulate that. I am curious to see how you're doing it, though."

Not that she'd likely be able to comprehend it. The eggheads back home probably could, but it had been decades since she was in the lab. She could still appreciate it, though.

"Captain Sheri Zveet of the 611." She said, by way of introduction, with a loose salute. "I get the feeling you're more of a ... free agent?"

Call it a hunch, but Eikyo didn't seem to be wearing any insignia that she recognised. Conducting mining extraction with Destron Gas on undeveloped worlds? Yeah, that definitely felt like someone out to do their own thing where they weren't likely to be interrupted.

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If there was one thing that Sheri had not been expecting when she headed over to Earth, it was to find a large number of aliens and most of them convinced of the provinence of magic. There's a very slight tightening of her jaw at that. It is very frustrating - a reminder of how advanced her people really are compared to the rest of the galaxy. There was really no point trying to argue with someone who believed in magic, though; clearly whatever process they were actually using worked for them, even if they didn't understand the scientific principles behind their own methods.

She cast an appraising eye over the technology when it was revealed, and stepped forwards so she could get a better look. She didn't understand most of what she was looking at either. No doubt others of her people would, but she hadn't stepped foot in a lab for far too long. The mild look of disapproval was replaced almost immediately with a nostalgic smile, and she reached into one of her many pockets to pull out a scanning device.

"It's an impressive setup." She said, "Especially for a lone operator. If you want to harness the power of destron gas, though, you should head to Plant. It's not too dangerous at the moment, and my people have been making some pretty significant advances in that area."

She nodded her head at the explanation of the purpose of the rubies. "I'd imagined that was it." She says, "Crystalline structures are natural storage vessels. By processing the destron gas through them you can capture a high percentage of the potential energy within the gas, with only a small leakage into the surrounding area."

Her hand waved vaguely to indicate the dying plantlife around them. There probably aren't many people who would consider this a 'small' leakage, but there probably aren't many people who know all that much about what destron gas can actually do, either.

"Given the situation our people have been forced into, we've mostly been concentrating on weapons research, obviously." She continued, "But utilising it as a power source makes a lot of sense. The only difference between a weapon and a power source, really, is what purpose you put the energy to."

She turned to face the taller woman more fully, then, and smiled, "So, what ARE you planning to do with the rubies? Seems like a lot of effort to go through just to prove a theory, so I'm guessing there's more to it than that."

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Sheri is happy to listen to Eikyo's explanation, and watch with some interest as the zeni bill is used as an object demonstration of what she was talking about. It was interesting to consider that there were still people out there who were motivated by money, or who saw it in any way as relevant, really. She knew that there were. She knew that it was. But she couldn't relate to it, not any more. So long living in the Saiba Wastes on scant supplies had warped her view of such things. What use did she have for large sums of money?

All the money in the galaxy couldn't buy the lives of those lost. All the Zeni on Earth wouldn't unshed a single drop of blood. The war wasn't about money. Sure, some people made noise about Saiyans and their reputation as mercenaries -- but Sheri had fought enough of them to know that the money was never truly the point.

For them, it was all about the thrill of the battle. For Sheri, it was all about survival for her people. Those were things which simply did not have a price.

"Yeah. The eggheads are always coming up with new weapons of mass destruction." She says, vaguely. "It's kind of funny really. Turns out it is much easier to destroy a whole planet than just wipe out a decent sized section of it with no collateral damage. That's the trouble with Destron. It's useful stuff, but it hangs around. I imagine nothing else will grow here for what, fifty years? A hundred?"

A wild guess, really. She had no idea how long the effects of pollution like this would last. It could be a lot, lot longer. Not really her area, either.

"And... well. Funnily enough, I really don't have anything better to do."

A rueful smile tugged onto Sheri's lips, and the woman folded her legs up underneath herself, squatting in the air on a little cushion of ki as she made herself more comfortable.

"I'm on leave. I was in the field for, longer than I should have been, according to the regs." She gave another vague movement; a shrug of her shoulders which communicated a general disregard for 'regs'. "I won't get to go back until I've had a check-in with Interim Command and they agree I seem stable enough to return to active duty."

But Eikyo hadn't asked about herself. She'd asked about the 611.

"The 611 are an elite light infantry force." She said, "We're stationed in the Saiba Wastes, unless we've been reassigned whilst I've been away, but I doubt it. The Wastes are heavily polluted. Lots of vicious fauna and flora, lots of outlaws, mercenaries, war profiteers. The Saiyans make the odd, token, effort to try and claim the place and so do we. But mostly our job is to be advanced warning. Most big offensives would need to push through or over the Wastes, so we're eyes and ears somewhere it is too costly and impractical to put down a proper base."

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"It's still an active warzone. We still have to engage the enemy."

Sheri let that hang. The implication was there in her words. She'd fought, a lot. And she was still here. Presumably, that meant that her enemies were not. She didn't want to go into more detail than that, but it'd be an awful misconception to think of the 611 as glorified park rangers. How she wished that were the case. If all she had to do every day was watch over saiba-creatures and make sure nobody pestered the wildlife, that would have been paradise compared to the hell she'd left behind.

The only thing worse than being there was not being there, and knowing that people she cared about still were.

But that was why she was here; to take her mind off those horrible thoughts, and soon enough, this stranger is giving her something else to focus on. 

Most other Tuffles would likely have been able to upgrade Eikyo's setup; the species had an almost preturnatural gift for science and technology after all. Sheri was not so gifted. What she did have over them, however, was an extremely strong aptitude for following orders. It all came back quite quickly, really.

The soldier proved to be sharp and precise with her following of instructions, and whilst she might not understand all of the intricacies of this equipment, she grasped enough that she didn't make any obvious or foolish mistakes. Soon enough her fingers were dancing across panels and her eyes taking in the readouts from the various scanners and devices with some real comprehension behind them. She didn't know how this machinery was doing what it was doing; she couldn't begin to guess at the purpose of the more magical components. But she could see the shape of its form and function, and that was enough to make herself useful.

And it was good to put herself to that task. Lose herself in lab busywork for a little while. She hadn't done anything like this since her days at school, and it really did take her back to happier times.

It was only as they got towards the end of the procedures that it actually occured to Sheri that she ought, perhaps, to have been a little more judicious about who she was helping out here, exactly. Interim Command probably wouldn't look too kindly on her if they found out she'd helped pollute a section of the planet for over a century assisting with some shady destron-based experiments.

But eh. What they didn't know wouldn't hurt them.

"Thanks for this. It's nice to use my brain for once. You want a hand packing all this up before the locals finally notice something is up and get too curious for their own good?"

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There was a respectful whistle as Sheri loaded the materials into the container. Despite her small size, she didn't have any issues moving surprisingly large and bulky objects when needed; perfectly happy to be Eikyo's muscle in this. It was a dynamic that she was used to. Even when she was at school, she'd not been one of the more academically gifted Tuffle students, and sometimes you just needed someone who could hold something heavy and still for a prolongued period of time.

She didn't ask any questions about the storage, but she did admire it. This kind of contained interdimensional space was rare even for her people. It'd make life so much easier in the Wastes if she could carry around supplies for a prolongued period in a small box, but it just wasn't economical to provide that kind of equipment to every squad. She still didn't really know who this roving scientist was exactly, but clearly they were both extremely knowledgeable and quite well resourced; though perhaps it was easier to be resourced when you were just responsible for yourself?

Much to think about, there.

"Don't I know it." She said, nodding her head to the Shinjin at her words on war. She'd seen more war than most people saw in a lifetime. That was, after all, why she was here. She'd seen her fellow Tuffles come into her unit at all stages; fresh, experienced, veteran. Everyone was different by the time they cycled back out to other units or returned to civilian life. You couldn't see that much death and stay the same.

Maybe that was why this moment of respite had felt so pleasant to her. It was a brief time where she felt like she was in touch with the young girl she'd been before she entered the war proper. Being a soldier was all she had ever wanted to do; to free her people from the yoke of Saiyan oppression. But she'd been cheerful, once. She'd believed that she could lend her skill to the battle and bring an end to it.

She didn't think that way any more.

"If you wind up on Plant, let me know." She said, reaching into one of her many pockets, and producing a small chip.

"It's against regulations." She continued, with all the implications of trust that implied - she could get in real trouble for sharing this, as she handed the chip over. "But when they give me my scouter back, that'll let you patch in to my comms frequency. I don't know. Maybe I'm crazy. But it feels like we could make a good team."

Was it a risk? Yes, of course it was. She didn't know this person. But she'd given her a measure of peace for an afternoon, which was more than anyone in Interim Command had ever managed.

Sometimes, you just had to go with your gut.

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