Lunch Break

[Deleted]

Lumini was not a foolish robot, and Mechanica itself had a strong, thriving economy with a heavy importance on earning a good amount of money.  Sure there weren't quite as many needs as these humans had, needing just, some kind of simple shelter and a way to charge up, but more currency meant more entertainment, fun and other such things.  As such, when Lumini had arrived on Earth, and deduced both how much food she was likely going to need to make her LIquid Light last longer, she had set out to look for a job.  That job had been found in the art of construction, there was a great need for construction in a place where super heroes and super villains constantly destroyed buildings, streets and such, and a robot girl that was rather, tall with long, almost crane like arms and super strength and durability, was a perfect candidate for construction.  In fact she was planning to keep this job even after she finally managed to join the Titans, which didn't seem likely to happen anytime soon.

That was fine though, her construction job payed well, she did good solid work, and right now she was on her lunch break.  She had one full hour to herself, and well she didn't really need to eat, well she did actually eat, but only really dry foods and right now she was basically full of energy, so no need to go eating.  So, she was going to use this hour to explore more of this fascinating Earth culture that oozed from every pore of this city.  What was she going to check out next?  Lumini honestly wasn't sure, at least, she wasn't until she saw the skating rink, a great big building, that inside had a great rink of ice, smoothed carefully so that various people could skate along and over it.  It wasn't too popular in the middle of the day, but it did have several individuals out on the rink, a few couples, some kids, a few adults just enjoying their day offs and such.  Of course, the empoyees were rather surprised to see a nearly seven foot tall robot walk in, and even more surprised when she not only smiled, but paid for a pair of ice skates.  She did need help getting them on, and her feet didn't quite fit them, it wasn't that she couldn't fit through the holes, but that her 'feet' were more pegs, they fit through the holes but didn't stay stable, but some clever thinking and just taking the laces and wrapping them around like a lasso fixed that soon enough, and soon she was heading out onto the ice.

This was ten minutes into her hour break, and she set to it.  Now, Lumini was heavy, just under five hundred pounds, she wasn't likely to crack the ice too badly, and it would freeze back to normal afterwards easily, but she would have a chance of damaging the barriers that surrounded teh rink to keep people from just sliding on out of it.  So, to start, she used her long arms to pull herself along, leaning forward sort of like an Earth ape, as she placed her hands on the ice, and pulled, sliding forward easily on the skates, once she got used to it, she started trying to imitate the skating motions of the humans around her...and immediately fell on her face, metal body easily sliding across the ice, leaving scrapes over it from it.  Well that was a failure, she might as well try again...and again, and then again, but hey she at least hadn't crashed into any of the barriers yet, she was having enough presence of mind to avoid that!  Although most of the other skaters were giving the heavy hunk of metal a wide berth, for obvious safety reasons as Lumini saw it.

[Gaunt]

It was good to have days off. Teachers were having some sort of meeting thingamajig, she wasn't scheduled for any patrols, Kaie could just take a stroll around town. Time was when she would have heroed up and went on an unscheduled patrol, but the Titans had gotten more strict about supervising hero activities lately. She wasn't sure if there was some sort of bad behavior that had been going on, but all official patrols had to have a high-ranking Titan now. Probably one of the others had been a jerk and spoiled it for everyone. She wondered who?

Now was the question of what to do. The giantess strolled the streets for a while before coming across an indoor skating rink. She'd never been skating before! Of course, most ice couldn't hold her, but a place like this would have that thick, sturdy stuff that maybe was ice but probably wasn't. Well, she had some spare money. Now was as good a time to try as any. The giantess knelt down, crawling through the doors. She couldn't stand up to her full 12'10" in the check-in area, so she stayed crawling until she came into the high-ceilinged rink.

They didn't have any skates in her size, but they agreed to let her out onto the ice. Kaie stepped out into the area around the rink, finally rising back to her full height. Some of her hero and cheerleading training would come in handy here. She'd learned to roll with her falls, so she wouldn't bust through floors if something tipped her over. The ice would be safe under her. It had taken a bit of convincing to get the manager to believe that, but eventually he'd gone along, muttering something about superheroes and publicity.

Looking out into the rink, Kaie noticed she wasn't the only super there. A tall, long-armed metallic girl was already out on the ice. Kaie gave a wave before tentatively stepping out onto the ice. Wow, this was slippery. She had to brace herself a bit to get her balance. "Hey there!" Kaie took a few steps towards the robot girl, doing a penguin walk to keep her balance. Short steps, foot straight down. She could do this. "Don' think I seen you around before."

[Deleted]

Twenty minutes into her lunch break, and Lumini was greatly enjoying herself!  By this point in time, after ten minutes of practice, she could actually skate...slightly, a little bit.  She would need to make a custom pair of ice skates for herself given the different dimensions of her feet from human feet, but she was able to move!  Slide one foot, then slide the other, sway back and forth, and with her long arms, she could adjust herself easily!  It was fantastic fun, and though she had to be really careful with turns, given her bulk, momentum and inexperience, she was at least able to move without pushing herself along with her hands!  Thus she was having immense fun, gliding along, even if she didn't dare try a spin, fast turn, or any of the other tricks a couple other customers were performing.  No, she was just going to keep gliding along, and that was just what she did...until Kaie showed up.  It was impossible not to notice her, she was taller than even Lumini, twice as tall in fact!

The robot found herself staring in surprise as the girl came in, but she didn't stop gliding.  In fact, after the initial surprise she went back to gliding over the ice.  She had not realized that humans could come in such large sizes!  Truly it must be quite the rarity, or perhaps she was from another part of the planet and visiting?  Humans did seem to have a variety of physical forms and features, and sure the Mechanista did themselves, but they built their bodies from scratch so of course there was variety among the Mechanista!  Still, she was clearly just a girl come to enjoy the ice rink, and Lumini could not blame her for that, this was great fun!  So, she just continued onwards, maybe she could talk with the girl, strike up some conversation.  The robot did need to get to know some other humans a bit better after all!  Yet, she found herself not needing to do that, as the tall girl made her way onto the ice, she started to move towards Lumini purely on her own!  The robot found herself having to tilt her head back to look up at the girl, something she was really not used to, it was usually the other way around!

She chuckled at the statement, starting to slowly glide in lazy circles around the giant girl.  She was really getting a handle on this ice skating thing!  "That's because I'm a recent arrival.  Only been here for a couple of weeks!"  She says cheerfully.  "My name's Lumini, nice to meet you!  I didn't know humans came in such large sizes though!"

[Gaunt]

Kaie let herself skid to a slow stop near the robot girl. This was actually pretty fun, once she got over her nerves. The metallic maid started circling her, and Kaie tried to crane her neck to follow. She didn't really trust herself to turn on the spot, not yet at least. "Ooh, thas cool! I been here bout a year and a half now, joined the Titans after I come here." She had a really chipper voice, not at all what you'd think from a robot. Most of the full-mechanicals she'd seen had more of a tinny monotone. Maybe she was a cyborg under all that? Kaie was curious, but it seemed rude to just ask. To paraphrase a wise woman, you don't just ask someone if they're a robot.

"I'm Kaie." The giantess waited for Lumini to circle around front again, extending a finger to shake when she did. The girl was curious, and Kaie couldn't really blame her. There were maybe two or three full-time giants in Jump, and she was by far the biggest. Well, the biggest humanoid one at least. "Oh, I'm a metahuman. Grew fast, and still growin too. They think I'll be like 15 feet tall when I'm all done." Kaie smiled down at the orbiting robobuddy. "I'm sort of a giant, like the most literal Titan." Kaie laughed a bit at her own joke.

"What about you, where you from?" Kaie started scooting along slowly again. They could skate and talk a bit, would be more fun than just standing there and chatting. She just had to keep her focus. She didn't want to flatten her new robot pal. "I moved here from Dublin with me ma. She heard there was good stuff for super teens, and there's construction work here so steadier jobs. Us supers make a mess of it sometimes." Kaie cringed a bit at the thought. Her first tangle with Cinderblock had made one hell of a mess. Turns out suplexing a massive, heavy supervillain was not at all great for the pavement.

[Deleted]

Lumini was still smiling brightly, not only was her voice chipper, but clearly however she'd been built, a great deal of effort had gone into her construction to allow detailed facial expressions. About the only thing that was really missing was pupils, she even had eyelids to provide extra depth of expression! She could wink, blink, lower her lids to give someone a blank, disbelieving stare and even arch an eyebrow, although her eyebrows were more just slight ridges above her pupiless eyes. The fact that Kaie, what a lovely name! Like Mekainacal! It might even work as a proper Mechanista name...well maybe a nickname.

She was a Titan, and one of those 'metahumans' that Lumini had heard of, but knew almost nothing about. It was fascinating, and just made her more interested! She shook that finger vigorously, robotic fingers, rather cold, closing around that one large finger and pumping up and down firmly, before releasing. "Hehe, it's rather impressive! I can only imagine how much extra strength your size gives you. Do you have a more efficient muscular structure to compensate for the increased strain of volume?" The engineer in her can't help but ask, her expression fascinated, before she was diverted with a question towards her. "Eh? Oh, I'm from Mechanica! It's another planet, so that technically makes me an alien." She says this quite proudly, slapping a hand into her shaped metal chest as she continues to skate along with the giant girl.

"Mmmmhm, I'm actually working for a construction company right now. Will probably still keep working for them even after I get into the Titans myself!"

[Gaunt]

This was the chipperest robot she'd met since ever. She was all smiles and happy voices, and certainly more than happy to make friends. Well, it made sense. People didn't come to skating rinks to not have fun. Well, except maybe hockey fans. Some of them seemed to come out to get drunk and punch strangers. But today, this was a place of fun, not sloshed brawling.

She had a strong handshake, and her metallic fingers were cold even through the gloves. Kaie made a mental note of that. An impromptu hug here would probably be pretty uncomfortable. It would be like glomping a snowman. A rigid, metallic snowman. Okay, that was a bad metaphor. She'd have to think of a better comparison later. Right now, Lumini was talking sciencey stuff. Kaie wasn't too clear on some of it, but she knew a question about her strength when she heard one. The giantess laughed, taking an exaggerated flexing pose. "Yep! I been trainin since I joined tha Titans, I can lift a bus now." She'd heard something like Lumini had said, something about it being to compensate for her giant size, but she wasn't too certain about the specifics. Kaie tended to glaze over when it came to topics aside from fighting baddies.

So she was an alien and a construction worker. That was pretty neat, it wasn't often you met a super who did things other than being super with their powers. "Ooh, good idea. Ma always says if this superhero thing don't work out, I can always just be a crane." Kaie chuckled at the thought. Who would hire a 15-foot woman as a crane? "And ye wanna be a Titan too? Gonna be keepin busy. I'll tell tha other Titans about you, see if someone who does recruitment can stop by and say hi. I'm still a bit new meself, don' have a lot of authority." Still, though, she didn't know how to find this girl. In a city like Jump, even a robot girl could get lost in the crowd. Kaie was pretty sure she'd heard there was one already on the team. "Say, you got a phone or Skype or somethin? So I can tell em how to get in touch. An maybe we can talk an stuff, it's good to have more super friends."

[Deleted]

A bus eh? That sounded impressive, those buses looked pretty big, bigger than she could manage to lift at least. She hadn't exactly examined them directly herself, had mostly gotten brief looks and glimpses from inside and outside, but she would likely put their weight well past her seven ton thrust limit. So, this Kaie might actually be stronger than Lumini's current body, impressive! Of course, there was still the question of durability, but ahhh, it wasn't important this wasn't a competition after all! "Impressive, your buses seem like they have a good bit of weight and heft behind them." She says as she continues to skate, getting better and better as the seconds ticked by.

The conversation of course shifted to the Titans, and a topic that Lumini was keenly, heavily interested in. So, there were some directly in charge of recruitment, sensible, they were likely trained in interviewing and screening, but Lumini was confident she could pass! She was trained in Mechanista hand to hand, even if she wasn't quite a master, and was strong, durable and clever! Then of course, there was the 'phone and skype' question. "Ah, well I have my shipboard communicator, I live at my ship. I've set up the transmitter so that I can switch to local human networks so that my super visor can call me if he needs me early, or if something comes up and I need to call him. It...doesn't exactly have a specific number though." She sort of had to rig his own phone, and tinker with it to give a special function that allowed him to attempt a direct transmission to her ship. He had been worried about letting her tinker with his phone of course, but hey she had given it back intact, better than intact in fact!

[Gaunt]

Well, she wasn't wrong. Kaie wasn't sure quite how much a bus weighed, this metric-MURICAN measurement stuff still threw her off a bit, but they were heavy. You couldn't argue with that. "Yeah, guess so. Thanks!" It was always nice hearing another super compliment her on her powers. Then again, raw strength was Rumble's forte. She wasn't quick, or agile, or skilled, but her size and power made her a good battering ram. It came in handy sometimes. Kaie couldn't help wondering how strong she'd be when she was fully grown. Sure, she'd probably never match the likes of Superman, but a girl could dream.

Well, this made things a little more difficult. Kaie supposed it was probably easier for Lumini to live on a ship, though. Aliens could have a rough time when they first showed up on Earth. Bringing a mobile home with you probably made it a whole lot easier. "Well, can ya get internet there? I mean I got lotsa options for that. Skype, Facebook, Pesterchum, whatever." Kaie kept her arms out, slowly drifting along next to the robot. She was starting to get the hang of this skating thing! Well, she hadn't fallen yet at least. Kaie was good at not falling. When you could crush a car by landing on it, you had to get good at that.

"What sorta powers you got?" Kaie was curious about the robo-alien girl. As any Cyborg fan knew, tech heroes were the Swiss Army Knives of the super world. You never knew what sort of tricks they had hidden away somewhere. Kaie could think of a few offhand that might be useful for construction and/or heroics. Ooh, what if she was modular? She knew Cy could switch things out sometimes, maybe Lum could too.

[Deleted]

Ah the problem of communication was one that Lumini had been dealing with for awhile. She had come up with a few juryrigged solutions, but then there was this 'internet' that all of the Earth used. It was fairly similar to the data network that ran the length and breadth of Mechanica, but rather than just being one unified network of information, it seemed to be cut and parceled up between individual servers, internet companies and all sorts of other things! She had in fact been investigating to see if it would be illegal to hook herself into the internet without going through one of the internet providers. So far, she hadn't found anything that said it was, as long as she was actually generating her own internet network. Generally it seemed that the reason most had to pay for service...was that they simply did not have the technology to receive, upload, connect, and all that good stuff. Basically she would produce her own network, her own internal server, her own broadcaster and so forth, she wouldn't need an intermediate. She could do it, her shipboard computer could be rigged for that with a little work, but she wanted to be absolutely certain that it wasn't illegal.

"I might be able to get internet. I'm currently doing a bit of research to make sure it's not illegal to hook up to the internet without going through one of your internet providers. So far, I think it's legal to make my own internet service and then isolate it to myself...although I'm not sure if I'd have to then get a business license...your law is kind of confusing." Then again, Mechanica law could get obtuse in a few areas, so maybe that was just a part of law. Ah well, things to worry about another day!

"Powers? Oh, you mean my body functions!" She says, turning slightly as they kept skating. She chuckled, "Well my body is not capable of much at present. I built it from scratch for exploration and well...unless you join the military or the..." She hesitates for a moment, as if searching for the words, "Let's call 'em Void Travellers, getting a big, combat capable body costs a pretty penny, as the Earth phrase goes. I've gotten a bit more credit in some of my travels since leaving home, and hopefully some of my deeds and research here will earn me more. So, let's start from the top. My body as a whole has a three ton lifting capacity, but a seven ton thrust or force capability, so I can hit harder than I lift. However, my whole body can withstand up to ten tons of pressure...I believe you humans measure pressure in pounds per square inch. I wasn't able to get the built in tools, but I do have a full toolbox, which is a bit more advanced than human tools. My body is detachable of course, I can technically speaking take off any part of my body if I choose to, to modify or even replace it. Over time hopefully I'll get the resources and materials to get components shipped in from Mechanica, or to build them myself!"

[Gaunt]

Oh, wow. She hadn't even thought of that. Kaie wasn't an expert on laws. Titan Orientation had taught her enough to stay within legal limits herself, but internet stuffs was complicated. Kaie didn't even know where to begin with that stuff. She was a simple, old-fashioned hero. Give her something to punch, and she can punch it. Give her paperwork, and she'd try to pass it off to someone else, and not just because the pen wasn't in her size. "Yeah, I don' know what the rules are on that. Probably best to check." Titans didn't usually handle crimes like stealing cable, but that wouldn't really reflect well on her.

Kaie squeed a bit. Lumini had powers for days! Well, maybe not too much now, but there was potential. And she'd been right about the modular part, she was proud of that. "Thas pretty cool! I'm jus' big and tough." Lum's homeworld sounded pretty neat. People just bought their superpowers there, apparently. Well, some people did here, now that she thought of it. Or invented them. But a world like that, with no one just being born super by chance, she had to wonder what that was like.

"So yer a researcher too? Is researching places like this a big thing where yer from?" For her part, Kaie was pretty used to researchers poking and prodding around. She was a medical anomaly, so she'd had doctors inspecting her since she started to super-size. One more wasn't too big a deal. "Say, is it better ta research a big superhero city like this or a regular place? Or are ya doin both?" Probably both, now that she thought of it. Kaie had been around enough biomedical research to know you needed a control group.

[Deleted]

The internet issue was something Lumini was going to work through on her own easily enough, as soon as she figured out whether she actually needed to open up her own internet service. She would figure it out eventually, she just wanted to be thorough, you had to have the patience and eye for details when it came to mechanics and engineering, and so she was going to apply that same thing to here...even if it was kinda dry, dull and confusing at times. Back to the conversation at hand, Lumini just chuckled, "Hey, being big and tough is plenty, and hey, the only difference between you and me right now is a toolbox." She says cheerfully, attempting to skate backwards and...she fails miserably, immediately slipping and falling on her metallic rump! "Ack, whoops." She said, laughing as she slid a bit more on the long purple dress attached to her torso.

She would move to carefully stand herself back up, still smiling over her little spill. "Of course, research is very important, although it's not quite 'research' this is exploration, although research is definitely involved." Once she was back up she went to skating normally rather than trying anything fancy. "I'm actually just researching the Earth in general, specifically your technology. To be honest, as curious as your metahumans are, they're more just that...a curiosity. I don't actually know much about biology, in fact I have to frequently remind myself that humans can't survive getting their heads or chests crushed." Well...that could be a somewhat scary statement.

[Gaunt]

"Well, that and a couple meters." Lumini was pretty dang big, but Kaie was downright huge. She was going to make another comment when the robot girl abruptly toppled. Kaie let out an eep, careful to keep herself stable. Even with her safe-falling tricks, she wasn't sure if she could avoid cracking the ice here. "Are ya alright?" The robot girl seemed to be okay. She was taking her little tumble in good spirits. After a moment, Kaie laughed along with her.

Kaie nodded along. She didn't know too much about this exploration stuff, but it sounded neat. "Ya'd love the Titans, then. All sorts o' tech there. Not sure how much they have ta keep secret, but Cy's a super good inventor." After a moment's thought, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a super-sized cell phone. "And I got some stuff of me own, too. Din' make it, but had ta have it custom made fer my size an' strength. An' weight, could kinda squish most phones on accident."

Speaking of squishing, this conversation had taken an abrupt turn for the worse. Kaie laughed nervously. "Yeah, even I couldn't survive that. Granted I'm pretty hard to crush, but still..." Kaie trailed off into awkward silence. How even did you respond to something like that?

[Deleted]

It was a fascinating conversation really, and she stared at the phone in delight. "If you'd like, I could look into making you some bigger things too. There was a small trend a couple decades back for having 'larger than life' bodies." In a robotic culture like the Mechanista's, that had taken on a very different meaning from the common Earth usage. "It was before my time of course, but I can still get the files on the structural requirements and materials used.....I might just do that anyways, it sounds fun." She said cheerfully, momentarily spacing off on the idea of building a giant version of her current body to match Kaie's size. Silly of course, she didn't have the credit for that, but a fun little idea nonetheless.

Then the conversation trailed off, she could feel it trailing off. Oh dear she had said something inappropriate hadn't she? Quick, she needed to think of a smooth segway to try and pick up the conversation! "ah...uh...oh, well you see. Mechanista bodies are more like 'clothing' to us. Everything that a Mechanista ACTUALLY is, is contained in our hard drives. As long as that survives anything can be done to our bodies, and our hard drives can just be taken, plugged into a new body, or into a computer and we'll be just fine. We might now know what happened if our sensors were damaged...but we'd be completely fine. Which is the confusion, I mean I don't think you worry too much about damaging a villain's armor or shirt, right?"

[Gaunt]

Kaie's jaw dropped a bit. Alien technology? Oh man, that would be super cool if it worked! Lum sounded like she knew what she was talking about, and she'd mentioned having the tools for it before. And if there was anything better than a custom phone, it was a custom alien phone. "That sounds awesome! Once ya figure out the stuff with like, internet or cell service and stuff, we gotta try it." And as an added bonus, she'd learned that, at least at one point, there had been sentient giant robots out exploring the universe. Kaie's world had gotten just a little more anime.

Lumini's explanation about the replaceable bodies really did help things. The giantess had never really given too much thought to how purely robotic life-forms worked. She knew a cyborg or two, but none of those until now. It made sense that the hard drive could be swapped out like with a computer. Bodies as clothes was a bit of a weird concept, but it made sense when she said it that way. "Yeah, is not too big a deal. Well, up to a point. There's some villains ya really don' wanna see naked." Kaie pulled a disgusted face. "An' there's some supers that are a lil like that, too. Lil folks running big machines, like..." Kaie paused. She was pretty sure Cyborg had faced someone like that, but the name was slipping her mind. She'd have to ask later. "Well, they're out there."

[Deleted]

This must be the type of situation that led to a human sighing in relief. Something Lumini didn't really do, since she didn't breathe. The most she did was make common speech and thinking sounds. That was more a personality thing than anything physical, but she didn't mind it. It was one more connection to the original organic roots of her species! She was pleased to hear Kaie liked the idea of giant alien tech too, and she was definitely going to have to do that later on, but as Kaie said, certain things came first.

She giggled at the idea of certain villains looking worse naked than others. The idea was...hard for her to grasp. Aesthetics and appearance were something that was entirely within one's control on Mechanica. To an extent that dwarfed human plastic surgery by light years. There just flat out wasn't an excuse for something to look displeasing to the eye there, and yet for the most part, humans could find themselves looking...strange...to put it charitably, with no real recourse to fix it. Truly organics had it very hard. "Oho, well I'll not worry so much when dealing with them, still best to keep organic limits in mind eh?" She said, before blinking, "Ah, ahaha, well that's just about the end of my lunch break Kaie, it was great meeting you." She said, starting to skate to one of the gates, before stopping. "Oh, what's your phone number? I can at least contact you from my ship with a little effort, and i'll still need it when I do get the internet issue resolved!"