May 18 - Tune-ups

[Calvin Strong]

The afternoon found Cal working with Taliyah at his usual worktable, ironing out some minor bumps in her recently-acquired hard-light tech.

[Taliyah Malik]

Taliyah winces as Calvin works, "Easy, lover. Save the rough stuff for later."

[Calvin Strong]

"I'm trying," Cal said in his quiet, distant voice he always got when he was mostly concentrating on something other than talking. "But this projection cell's out of place and... got knocked under. Must've been a one-in-a-milion knock to do it." He was being as delicate as he possibly could, trying to slowly reallign the out-of-place projection cell.

[Taliyah Malik]

Red lights flash for a moment, "If you break something, I'm coming for you, Strong."

[Calvin Strong]

"Will you relax," he said, his tone not rising. "You do the breaking, I do the fixing. You're one of the last people I'm going to be careless with, all right? Ah, there we go." He pulled the tiny cell from the glowing section on her arm, then started working with delicate probes to reattach it.

[Sara McDohl]

McDohl walked up behind the two, her hands in her pockets.. She looked terrible, no question with what had happened. "Hey.."

[Calvin Strong]

Cal glanced up at her, though he couldn't look up quite yet as he needed to finish fixing the cell into place. "Hey," he said, when he could pull his hand away. He frowned a bit at her expression. "What's wrong?"

[Sara McDohl]

She just took a deep breath, her eyes tearing up a bit. "I messed up..big time.."

[Calvin Strong]

Cal, again, wished he had some way of controlling his blood flow better, because this time he didn't want to stop blushing, but to keep from going as pale as he did. "What... what do you mean?" he asked, his stomach sinking.

[Sara McDohl]

Sara looked over to Tali for a brief second, before looking at Cal again. "I..I.." She stammered, trying to collect what she wanted to say. "I hurt a lot of people.."

[Calvin Strong]

Oh shit. "How, Sara?" he asked, closing his eyes and sighing. "What happened?" Relax, Cal. She's not in the infirmary or the brig, so it can't be that bad.

[Sara McDohl]

Sara turned away from him. "I almost killed Will..McManus..and Professor Nailah.."

[Calvin Strong]

It was a nice delusion. "You what!?"

[Sara McDohl]

Wincing at the shouting, she turned away from him completely. "It..wasn't supposed to be like this.." Her hands moved up to her head. , wiping her eyes.

[Calvin Strong]

"What happened?" Cal asked, his eyes fixed on her. From the way he asked, it wasn't exactly a request for her to tell him.

[Sara McDohl]

Sara pulled over a chair and sat down, looking at her lap, before she took a deep breath and explained everything to him. "I'm such an idiot.."

[Calvin Strong]

Cal was, to put it lightly, stunned. He glanced over at Taliyah with an 'oh my god' expression, then back at Sara. "What the hell?"

[Sara McDohl]

McDohl played with her fingers a bit, nervous at the thoughts running through Cal's head.

[Calvin Strong]

"You... I... seriously, what the hell about any of that didn't just scream 'this is a horrible and evil idea'?"

[Sara McDohl]

"I...don't know..." She said with a sigh.

[Taliyah Malik]

"I should probably go," Taliyah says, getting up.

[Calvin Strong]

"No, you don't need to," Cal said, still looking at Sara. "This'll be over pretty quickly. You've known that this shit is bad, and you said you wouldn't do anything like this, then oh, look, you do something like this." He shook his head. "No. Just no. I don't know how to deal with this."