Issue 1 Downtime

Rob was hard at work.

He was hard at work attaching power supplies to the defense batteries around the base, but he wasn't one to let the little details bother him.

There's some kind of mechanical whine from down the hallway along with what sounds like "Woooooooooooooooah!" followed by a series of crashing noises and the sound of metal grinding against metal.

A moment later Robin comes skidding into the room on the back of one of the atomic steeds, spinning slightly as she comes to a halt.

"Oh hey there." she says nonchalantly as she noticed Rob.

Stan was following Robin, frowning as he saw the activities Rob was engaged in.

"Hey, Robin," Rob says continuing his work and very deliberately ignoring Stan.

Stan took the ignoring with a silent 'Meh' as he examined Rob's work.

"Ooh, are those plasma accelerator coils?" she asks with big eyes looking over Rob's shoulder. "Or pew-pews as they should just be called if you ask me."

"Sort of," Rob says, "I actually had to refashion a pair of dimensional gap colliders because the only plasma accelerator generators I could find had major issues with their crystal matrix alignments."

Stan nodded, impressed with the workmanship.

Even with all his many, many, numerous faults, Rob was a genius technologist.

"Need any help with that?"

Rob snorts, "Qualified help, sure."

Robin just rolls her eyes and grabs hold of one of the pieces Rob isn't working on. There's a faint sound of straining metal and movement within the machinery and after about a minute the previously unpowered defense battery corresponding to the accelerator bank she's grabbing fires down into the valley, presumable razing a couple trees.

"You may be smarter than me, but I don't have to take these apart to fix the crystal matrix."

"Impressive," Rob says dryly, "Do you also have the superhuman ability to not give a crap about firing off a defense battery blindly? Or is it just the in thing these days to be reckless in order to prove a point?"

"When I tell it to fire at some trees it'll fire at some trees. Don't get your panties in a bunch."

Stan smiled at that, remaining mostly silent as he opened his notebook and began sketching the outer perimeter of Tir na Nog.

"Because people can't be in trees," Rob says, "That would be impossible!"

"Eesh, are you always this pissy? I just asked if you wanted some help."

"Only with reckless idiots that don't know what they're doing," Rob says, "If you want to help, stay out of my way."

"I can see why Vivien would like you. Now you two can be lonely together on top of Mount Better-Than-You." Robin says, rolling her eyes as she climbs back on the atomic steed and makes it stutter to life to head back down the corridor again.

"That would seem to be a contradiction in terms," Rob mutters.

Stan continued his sketching, turning and adding some of Rob's fortifications to the landscape.

"And what exactly do you want?" Rob calls out to Stan.

"I want a good angle, to sketch out some views. could you oblige?"

"Kind of busy here, Stan," Rob says, opening a panel.

"Ah, it's not a problem."

Whistling a short bit, he started adding a rough drawing of Rob opening the panel into the picture.

"Nice day, hmm?"

"Yeah, it's a beautiful day in paradise," Rob says, pulling out a circuit board.

"Well, I think I'll enjoy a few minutes of peace while we still have some."

Pausing to look out over the view, he added a cloud.

"Well, have fun with that."

"I shall. thank you."

With that, he resumed sketching Rob looking a little uninterested, working on the defenses.