Issue 1 Downtime

Kay walks into the common room after dinner, laptop under her arm. She heads over to the couch to sit down and flip her laptop open and check her emails.

Cal barely looked up from where he sat, working on...

Well, it looked like it had probably begun life as an old-school cell phone. Parts had been added, though, and every so often there was a crackle of electricity as he spot-welded something into place (using his bare hands to do the welding, of course).

Oddly, the television seemed to be changing channels seemingly on its own.

Kay throws a slightly annoyed glance his way at the crackling but doesn't say anything. He was here first afterall, so she just tries to ignore him and whatever he's doing.

Cal tested the strength of the welds for a moment, then nodded when he found it acceptable. He snapped the back back onto the phone and then pointed it at a tablet he had sitting next to him. He frowned for a moment as he pressed the buttons on it, and grinning when the password-locked tablet opened up for him. And then frowned again when the device he'd been so intently working on started smoking out the back, apparently fried from whatever it'd done.

And, unseen to him, while he was doing all this, Kay's computer started fritzing, then suddenly came up with a Blue Screen of Death.

"Huh. Well, doesn't that suck. Oh well," he said, shrugging as he tossed the phone down on to the table. Have to look over that design again...

"What? Oh come on no no no!" she shouts at her computer, afraid it finally died on her. Not being exactly tech-savvy she does the one thing you do when this happens. Hit the power-button and try to restart the computer.

She wouldn't have any problem getting the computer to restart, but it wouldn't get far, freezing up partway through for some tech-babble reason that came up on the screen and made absolutely no sense.

"Problems?" Cal asked without looking up from where he was now disassembling the smoking gun phone.

"Yeah, I think my computer died..." she says, doing her best to not sound like this is as big a deal as it is to her.

"Mmm. Try restarting it," Cal said, with the tone of someone who was only half listening and didn't care. Or, possibly, one who was playing coy.

"I did. It's just spitting out errors now."

"Something you downloaded?" Cal suggested, (sort of) trying not to smirk. Heh... and here I figured Steve was the one who'd burn out his computer on some infected porn site...

"No! I'm not stupid. It just blue-screened when I tried to load gmail."

"Get something fr- oh, wait, just a minute ago?" He looked at the now-smoldering insides of the phone. "Hm. Wonder how it did that," he said, shifting to problem-solving mode as he tried prying apart the melted insides to get a picture of where the melting had started.

"What? Did you do this? If you killed my laptop..."

"Oh pipe down, I'm trying to figure out what happened. Probably a combination bad transmitter and a piece-of-crap laptop."

"Yeah well we can't all be rich. Fix this!"

"Jesus Christ... 'Me me me me me,'" Cal said, rolling his eyes. Seriously, how the fuck did that work? Should've just broadcast the programs into the tablet and... maybe I picked it up, too. Better check the logs...

"What? You broke it! I can't afford a new one. How dare I expect you to fix it."

"Hey, smart people trying to think over here while whiney people whine. Do it quieter," Cal shot back.

Kay blinks. "You broke. My laptop."

"Is your brain stuck on repeat? Or did you run out of useful things to contribute here already?"

"You broke... my laptop..." she repeats herself, tears welling up in her eyes.

"Oh, and what are you going to do about it, go get Steve or your girl-crush to come kick my ass?" Cal shot back, starting to get irritated as he completely misread the tone of her voice as he kept trying to pry components apart.

"Wh-what? I don't have a crush on Bri!" she sniffs.

"Yeah, no one would draw someone like that unless they have a huge hard-on for them. Which kind of explains this one, too. Want me to send it to her and ask her what she thinks?" he said, turning the tablet so it faced up at Kay, displaying the 'you're so perfect' sketch scanned from her sketchbook.

"Th-that doesn't mean anything! I drew everyone in the comic like that! It... it's... feministic... Doc Savage... something!" she tries to remember what Regan had called it. Somehow it had sounded more intellectual when she had said it.

"Um, no, 'feministic' would be a girl being empowered without having to resort to sexuality, are you just throwing out random words you've heard now?"

"No! A-and I wrote that about Colin!"

"Riiiight... Colin. What color are his eyes?"

"Brown...ish."

"Yeah, we're going to have to go with 'no' there. On the other hand, whose eyes ARE brown?" he said with a smirk, a picture of Brigid (evidently taken in passing) replacing the sketch on the tablet.

"Plenty of people have brown eyes!"

"Yet you picked hers," Cal said with a smirk. "Hey, who knows, maybe her boyfriend'll want to share. They probably play it wild down in the Savage Land anyway..."

"You leave them out of this!"

"It's okay. We can see what Brigid thinks after she gets that love letter."

"Why are you doing this to me!? Why do you keep making things up to try and make Brigid hate me?" she cries.

And at this, Cal actually looked up and, for the first time, thought about his next answer. Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit.

He swallowed, looking back down at the phone. "...Sorry..."

"You steal my notebook, you break my computer and then you make up rumors that are just gonna mess everything up" she keeps going, burying her face in her hands.

"I didn't mean to break the computer!" Cal protested. "I... oh for god's sake. Give it to me." He picked up the tablet, touching, something on the screen, then set it back down.

Kay isn't really in any state to hand it over, having just curled up into a ball on the couch.

"Just take it. You've already seen all my stuff anyway..."

Cal looked over at her, thoroughly feeling like crap. He walked over, picking up the laptop, and setting the tablet down in its place. "There, that'll work until I can fix it. Or replace it. I... just ask me tomorrow," he said, feeling super-awkward. "I'm... sorry. I won't say anything to anyone. About anything."