Within the Depths
Sep. 6th, 2025 09:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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120_minutenTeam: Drache
Challenge: Sci-Fi/Fantasy: "Mein Interesse an dir ist rein wissenschaftlich." (fürs Team)
Fandom: Wuthering Waves
Charaktere: Mortefi, Xiangli Yao
Wörter: ~860
Sprache: Englisch
Anmerkungen: For my co-op buddy Simonika bc of a certain photo set. xDD
When the academy had been granted access to the Fabricatorium of the Deep, Mortefi had been wary. Just like in the pirate stories he had enjoyed as a child, treasure troves like these always came with a catch.
In this case, the catch was Xiangli Yao. Prodigy, genius, wunderkind. Given his sheer amount of talent and ingeniousness, he would have had every right to be arrogant or at least a little proud. Yet, Mortefi had never seen him behave in a conceited manner. Quite the opposite: he was like vast ocean of knowledge, undisturbed by the small stupidities of the requests to the academy. No matter how outrageous the demands or how ridiculously stingy the budgets and time frames that came along with them, Yao took them with a never ending reservoir of calm.
It drove Mortefi nuts. It was fuel to his fire, and right now it radiated through the data processing centre like something radioactive. Mortefi’s skin had never been thick to begin with. The radiation eroded it quickly.
“Fuck this!”
He had been mumbling the words a few - okay, a few more - times under his breath so far, but when he had finally worked through the encryption frequency just to discover yet ANOTHER minutely compartmentalised library of countless Forte experiments, he finally lost it and hit the keyboard with both his fists.
“Beep!” the computer answered. “Invalid command. Press F6 for list of commands.”
“Beep you!!”
Mortefi kicked the server rack closest to him.
In response, Yao peeked up from under another workbench where he had been dismantling and rewiring the personalisation mechanisms in the hardware so Mortefi could extract the information stored in the machines, despite being an outsider instead of a cultic follower of the Order of the Deep. An all too trivial task for a robotics expert like Yao, but he had not complained even once. Of course he hadn’t. He was a god-damned ocean!
“Another haystack?” he asked.
“Hrmpf, might be haystack with or without a needle in it. Or it might be a whole stack of needles. That’s the problem. All the information is neatly organised, but the documentation is so sloppy that I can’t - never mind. I shouldn’t complain. All this knowledge is a gift, after all.”
“To be honest, I find gifts to be overwhelming sometimes.”
“You do, huh?”
Precocious little brat. Was he a psychologist now, too? Or some kind of Taoist monk? That would explain his excruciating calmness, at least.
“Would you like to switch tasks for a while? Mine is quite repetitive. I could show you.”
And let the brat get to the new findings first? Outdo him once again? Fat chance!
“No thanks”, he mumbled. “We’ll both be digging through the data anyway, once you’ve cracked everything open. Might as well let you keep at it, so we can get there faster. I’ll just take a break and then I’ll keep sorting through the slug.”
“Would you mind, if I joined you on your break? I could use one, too.”
Yes! He would very much mind!
“Be my guest.”
He managed to swallow his sigh and twist his lips into a forced smile. Yao wasn’t the source of his anger, after all, just a very effective catalyst. No need to let it out on him more than he already had.
When he saw Yao get up on his feet, however, the polite mask fell off his face.
“What’s that twitching?”
Mortefi pointed a finger at Yao’s prosthetic arm. He had never seen it malfunction before. Like everything Yao created, it was an expert piece of robotic tech and always perfectly taken care of. Secretly, he kind of liked how the younger researcher always kept it neat and polished, just like he himself liked to have every piece of his tech and lab equipment sterile and shiny.
“Oh, it’s nothing, really”, Yao said. “Must be the lingering frequencies here from all the experiments. My Forte has been acting up a bit, since we’ve come here.”
Ah. Yes. Mortefi had almost forgotten that Yao used his Forte to communicate his wishes to the prosthetic, just like the brain would to a limb of flesh, blood and nerves.
“A bit”, he repeated, shooting his colleague a doubtful stare.
He was all too familiar with the dangers of overclocking. If Yao’s Forte was acting up so much that it showed, then maybe the vast, undisturbed ocean wasn’t so calm after all. Maybe there were storms and currents under the surface.
He wouldn’t want to let the boy drown in it. Not before Mortefi would finally outdo him and become an even greater researcher than him. Yeah. That was all there was to it. It was only his usual competitiveness. He wasn’t intrigued at all. Or worried. Why would he worry about the great Xiangli Yao.
“Let me see.”
Yao began to reach out with his arm, but winced before Mortefi could touch and examine it. Were it not for the hesitant look in his eyes, one might have thought his Forte was just acting up again.
“Don’t worry”, Mortefi lied, “my interest in you is purely scientific.”
Challenge: Sci-Fi/Fantasy: "Mein Interesse an dir ist rein wissenschaftlich." (fürs Team)
Fandom: Wuthering Waves
Charaktere: Mortefi, Xiangli Yao
Wörter: ~860
Sprache: Englisch
Anmerkungen: For my co-op buddy Simonika bc of a certain photo set. xDD
When the academy had been granted access to the Fabricatorium of the Deep, Mortefi had been wary. Just like in the pirate stories he had enjoyed as a child, treasure troves like these always came with a catch.
In this case, the catch was Xiangli Yao. Prodigy, genius, wunderkind. Given his sheer amount of talent and ingeniousness, he would have had every right to be arrogant or at least a little proud. Yet, Mortefi had never seen him behave in a conceited manner. Quite the opposite: he was like vast ocean of knowledge, undisturbed by the small stupidities of the requests to the academy. No matter how outrageous the demands or how ridiculously stingy the budgets and time frames that came along with them, Yao took them with a never ending reservoir of calm.
It drove Mortefi nuts. It was fuel to his fire, and right now it radiated through the data processing centre like something radioactive. Mortefi’s skin had never been thick to begin with. The radiation eroded it quickly.
“Fuck this!”
He had been mumbling the words a few - okay, a few more - times under his breath so far, but when he had finally worked through the encryption frequency just to discover yet ANOTHER minutely compartmentalised library of countless Forte experiments, he finally lost it and hit the keyboard with both his fists.
“Beep!” the computer answered. “Invalid command. Press F6 for list of commands.”
“Beep you!!”
Mortefi kicked the server rack closest to him.
In response, Yao peeked up from under another workbench where he had been dismantling and rewiring the personalisation mechanisms in the hardware so Mortefi could extract the information stored in the machines, despite being an outsider instead of a cultic follower of the Order of the Deep. An all too trivial task for a robotics expert like Yao, but he had not complained even once. Of course he hadn’t. He was a god-damned ocean!
“Another haystack?” he asked.
“Hrmpf, might be haystack with or without a needle in it. Or it might be a whole stack of needles. That’s the problem. All the information is neatly organised, but the documentation is so sloppy that I can’t - never mind. I shouldn’t complain. All this knowledge is a gift, after all.”
“To be honest, I find gifts to be overwhelming sometimes.”
“You do, huh?”
Precocious little brat. Was he a psychologist now, too? Or some kind of Taoist monk? That would explain his excruciating calmness, at least.
“Would you like to switch tasks for a while? Mine is quite repetitive. I could show you.”
And let the brat get to the new findings first? Outdo him once again? Fat chance!
“No thanks”, he mumbled. “We’ll both be digging through the data anyway, once you’ve cracked everything open. Might as well let you keep at it, so we can get there faster. I’ll just take a break and then I’ll keep sorting through the slug.”
“Would you mind, if I joined you on your break? I could use one, too.”
Yes! He would very much mind!
“Be my guest.”
He managed to swallow his sigh and twist his lips into a forced smile. Yao wasn’t the source of his anger, after all, just a very effective catalyst. No need to let it out on him more than he already had.
When he saw Yao get up on his feet, however, the polite mask fell off his face.
“What’s that twitching?”
Mortefi pointed a finger at Yao’s prosthetic arm. He had never seen it malfunction before. Like everything Yao created, it was an expert piece of robotic tech and always perfectly taken care of. Secretly, he kind of liked how the younger researcher always kept it neat and polished, just like he himself liked to have every piece of his tech and lab equipment sterile and shiny.
“Oh, it’s nothing, really”, Yao said. “Must be the lingering frequencies here from all the experiments. My Forte has been acting up a bit, since we’ve come here.”
Ah. Yes. Mortefi had almost forgotten that Yao used his Forte to communicate his wishes to the prosthetic, just like the brain would to a limb of flesh, blood and nerves.
“A bit”, he repeated, shooting his colleague a doubtful stare.
He was all too familiar with the dangers of overclocking. If Yao’s Forte was acting up so much that it showed, then maybe the vast, undisturbed ocean wasn’t so calm after all. Maybe there were storms and currents under the surface.
He wouldn’t want to let the boy drown in it. Not before Mortefi would finally outdo him and become an even greater researcher than him. Yeah. That was all there was to it. It was only his usual competitiveness. He wasn’t intrigued at all. Or worried. Why would he worry about the great Xiangli Yao.
“Let me see.”
Yao began to reach out with his arm, but winced before Mortefi could touch and examine it. Were it not for the hesitant look in his eyes, one might have thought his Forte was just acting up again.
“Don’t worry”, Mortefi lied, “my interest in you is purely scientific.”
no subject
Date: 2025-09-06 07:25 pm (UTC)....verführe mich nicht zu noch einem endlosen Spiel...
no subject
Date: 2025-09-06 07:33 pm (UTC)xDDD Wenn du mit PGR abgeschlossen hast? Dann wär ja wieder Platz?