goddamngrenades | OPEN POST

"Do you have a name I can call you by at least while I'm here?" Pidge asks, doing as told. "Since you have a name you can call me, and there's really not a lot of good nicknames I can think of involving motorcycles."

She glances over again, smirking. "Aww, look--identity forger's got scruples."

"Taylor." It's honest enough (real name) and irregularly used enough (everyone in the project called him York) to make it safe. The only people that knew it was his are dead or think he's dead.

It works.

"I might be a criminal but I am a criminal with standards."

Hmm. She can't assume it's his real name, but she shuffles that off into her mental database as well. "I appreciate you not taking the money and running and also doing a thorough job of this whole setup." Even if it's run out of a bachelor pad garage. "I knew there was a reason I hired you."

"I've got a reputation for getting the job done." This isn't the weirdest thing he's swung- nor is Pidge the youngest. It's just usually kids and their parents when he does work on anyone roughly this age.

"The Yelp of the darkweb speaks highly of you, anyway, so your idents must be thorough and up to spec. Were you always a forger?" Maybe she shouldn't be asking the career criminal semi-personal questions but hey, they'll be here talking personal (fictional) details for a while.

"Can you call it 'underground' instead of 'darkweb', please? Both are illegal but for very different reasons." Reasons he's not gonna get into with a kid. Reasons that make this gig, with a kid, doubly uncomfortable. "Not really."

She wiggles her fingers at him. "Show me the forbidden identity forgers." There are dark places of the net okay, just...the dark places she went were this type of illegal. "I guess you must've done something else before to get that scar. Did you get your eye upgraded?"

"If I got it upgraded I would have a working eye now, wouldn't I?" Nosey, this is why he didn't work with kids. Kids asked questions. He flicks through the next set of files, scans Pidge in for the photos, and gets to work building that fake background.

"I wouldn't have any way of knowing if it worked or not--you could have it look any way you wanted it to, and having people think you have a bad eye when actually it's a supercomputer would be a pretty nice advantage." Is this the rambling part of the day? It might be. "But you'd probably work faster, if you could afford one of the better models. You wouldn't even have to do anything about your scar, if you think chicks dig scars." She has no opinions on the matter, being Definitely A Boy.

"Drink your soda." Sooner he gets this done, the better. At least the rambling is somewhat familiar even if the voice is all wrong every which way. "Look not everything is solved by shoving a supercomputer in your skull."

He would know. Christ, he would know.

"Not everything. I mean, sure, AI for ships make them run smoother with less human error, and smart AI? They're..."

Her soda's halfway to her lips, almost pouring into her lap but not quite. Squinting into the middle distance. "They're..."

Internal database query: results established. Subject: Taylor. Physical traits and deviations for age scanned. Subject found. Verification required...
Continue?

The can is slammed hard to the tabletop, splashing up orange. "You're one of them," she gasps. "You're from Project Freelancer."

Just a kid, not a threat. Just a kid, not a threat. Just a kid-

Two words and he's on the other side of the sofa, pistol in hand and pointed at Pidge's head which (wow overreaction much, self?) is not how he thought tonight was gonna go. It seems too much like genuine surprise but he hasn't managed to scrape a life together for himself after fucking dying by being careless and anything less than completely paranoid.

"You're a little young for a UNSC plant, kid." Is it better or worse that he sounds more or less the same?

There's fear, of course, in a distant way where she leans back, away from the gun trained on her head, but the indeed genuine surprise is still gaping on her face. "A plant--I'm trying to get answers from the UNSC! I need to hide from them, kind of like you!"

"And why the hell do you need to hide from them, huh?" HE doesn't ask as a rule but- this kid broke all of them by recognizing him. No one that knows about him is supposed to be this far out here.

"I recognized you, didn't I? I think they take offense to anyone that can hack their systems like that and get away with it. In fact, I'm pretty sure in some places it's called treason. This is part of the getting away with it."

She leaps to her feet but doesn't make any moves closer, but even for a kid with a gun in their face, Pidge looks ready to fight. "I'm trying to find my family. My dad and my brother went missing, and the UNSC is covering it up! They said they died in a shuttle accident, that it was pilot error, but that's not true at all! I wasn't looking for you."

"...Well, then." The pistol goes back in it's shoulder holster and York lets himself slump back against the sofa. Okay. Not a plant, just a kid.

A kid that can hack like a motherfucker, apparently, but just a kid.

"What makes you think they're lying? I'm not saying they aren't just. What tipped you off?"

She hoped that would be enough, but she's still kind of surprised when it is. There's blood pumping now, and she can't just fall back on the couch like he does. "The pilot they had doesn't just make errors, for one. His record's too good. And we found out over the local news before anyone official came to us. It all just seemed...sketchy."

Pidge frowns down at the floor, fists curling and uncurling. "Maybe I was just in disbelief for a while, but I looked, or I started looking. If it was what they said it was, it wouldn't be classified. Pilot error is just a story. I didn't find everything, but I found enough. Some of the data that managed to transmit before losing contact. It just doesn't add up. I don't know if they were involved in some secret project, or taken by aliens, or what, but I know where I'm gonna start looking once I get out there."

"...all on your own?" No, York.

No.

Last time he stuck out his neck his ass got shot and he'd really, really rather not dive into that mess again. He barely survived, D got taken and-

Yeah.

No, not doing this again. Just. Asking.

"I know I'm just a kid, but I'm the only one doing anything about it!" It's raw and vicious and hurts, because no one's willing to own up to what happened to her family. Her mom is going to be even more heartbroken, even with the note she left, and will call the cops if she hasn't already.

There is no one else. No one else believes her. And the military is only going to shut her up, especially with the other classified intel she got into.

"So yeah. On my own."

"...you're gonna get shot." Just. Laying that out there right now. This kid can't expect to run around and do this shit and not get shot at or shot and if they're not ready for that it'll only make the inevitable firefight all the more shocking and tragic. "Tell me you got some kind of plan beyond 'on my own' and 'fu- F the man'?"

She grits her teeth, looking away. There is a plan. If there wasn't a plan, would she have even gotten this far? And she's trying to get away, get safe, search in safety without...getting shot by the military. Hopefully.

"Hop on some shuttles. Get to Erusia. Find any leads about my family. See where that takes me. I can get pretty far on a fake ID if it's good." Pidge glances back up at him, a little challenging.

"...Yeah, no." Nope. Not even a little, that is a poor plan in so much that it is not a plan at all. It's a sketch of an idea that's already kicked off before any real planning was ready and is gonna end bad. York's seen this enough to know how it'll go.

He closes his laptop and sits back, crossing his arms to peer at the kid. "You need something better than that."

"I'm not masquerading as a member of the UNSC, not like this," she snaps with a motion to, well, all shortness of her. "And I can't just use my real name to get there like they're gonna just let me go. Being a stowaway carries too much risk. And I'm not hijacking a shuttle to get there myself; then I will definitely get shot down."

"Okay, that's what not to do. What are you going to do?" Having bad plans to not do isn't having a plan, it's having situational awareness.

"The plan is take a couple shuttles out and poke around! So long as the supposed 'crash site' isn't swarming with military, then I should be fine, and then I decide where to go from there." This isn't like computer code. Computer code has a form and structure that is constant and predictable. This is not that. This is life which is not at all predictable. "If you're trying to talk me out of going, you can't."

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