Week 11: Finding Darya wandering around being Santa

Ida was sitting on the sofa, tapping her foot impatiently, when she spotted Darya carrying a bunch of stuff. Ida was holding a large orange box. "Perfect timing!" she exclaimed, walking up to Darya. "What've you got there?"

"Umm..." Said Darya, adjusting her grip on the boxes. "Just some stuff I've been getting for people. Here's yours." She said, dumping a box of medipacks packed around an underslung KO rifle on the table.

"Also, if you see Rico or Syl around, I got these for them." She said, draping the packages over the sofa arm. "What about you?" She asked, eyeballing the box.

Oblivious to the conversation, Dusty skittered across the floor to the couch to a corner off the room. He opened the front of his carapace, showing his gun. After a second, there was a tiny clicking noise, and two small arms unfolded, each ending in three "fingered" hands. The tiny hands reached up, grabbed a seat cushion from the couch, and dragged it to the floor. Walking backward, he pulled the pillow over the rug to the corner of the room.

"Oh, this is for you," she said with a cheerful smile, opening the box. Inside was her old plasma shotgun; in a shining moment of impracticality, a scope had been attached to the gun. "Since I don't need it these days, I got the chiplock removed. I thought having a proper weapon might help you." There was no condescension in her voice as she casually insulted Darya's weapons of choice - she was being very friendly and (from her perspective, at least) helpful.

"Speaking of which, would you come to the IMA factory with me? I wanted to get you a brand-new gun as a surprise, but they insist on having people around so the weapon can be fitted specially for them. I can make it a round trip and drop you off if you need to go somewhere afterwards."

((OOC: I haven't got GM confirmation yet whether this would take you a minor action or not.))

Darya picked the plasma shotgun out of the box, giving it a few experimental spins in her hand to test the weighting. "Thanks. I'll make sure to bring this if I'm hunting cult." She said, nodding to Ida.

"Not sure about the factory trip though. I'll see if I'm free anytime this week. What gun is it?"

Moving silently bar the clicking of tiny metal feet, Dusty propped the pillow up sideways against the wall. Skittering at speed, he went back to the couch and removed another pillow, heaving it over to the corner as fast as he could. (Not fast.)

"Umm...Dusty, what exactly are you doing?" Asked Darya as she noticed the little droid running around dragging pillows around. "I've got something for you too actually..." she said, digging around in the massive pile of stuff she was carrying.

Without missing a beat, Dusty responded, "Building a safe zone against the enemy!" His tiny arms dragged the second pillow to the wall, and began positioning it upright. He was moving with purpose and efficiency, especially for a little egg shaped robot.

"You're building a cushion fort, you mean." Said Darya, looking over him and smiling. "I used to do that when I was a kid..."

"Anyway" she said, shaking her head to snap herself out of her memories. "I've got a present for you." She pulled out a large, soft ball and rolled it towards him, letting it bounce off of his feet. "It won't stand up to laser fire, but it should be fun to mess around with."

Ida sighed in response to Darya's answer. "Listen, Darya... This isn't just about tactical advantage. Yes, that'll do great against the cult, but... Oh, whatever, as long as it helps." She watched as Darya placed the ball down in front of Dusty - obviously she'd been pretty comprehensive in getting stuff for everyone.

"The weapon I want to get you is the Mhilleadh, an automatic shotgun. It's got tons of punch up close, so it'd be great to use when you can't get distance from enemies. Trust me, it'll be really good for you."

**Smallest froze as she farsighted the faceless fiend thief things from her fiefdom. Her feline ferocity formally declared she faintly though how best to forfend her foe's formulated fallacy. Following the foul and foolish frame's return to the furniture to refuill his surplus and furfill his purpose, Smallest flawlessly flashed, fleet of foot, to his fort and fabricated a foolproof fantasy for forfending him. She forshored her fangs and kept close to the floor, flexing for her fiery fifth face off with her foe. Fearlessly Smallest waited, hearing the footfalls fall from far to near and following their final fall, decided that her frigid foe had forfeited freedom. Flowing from behind the cushion the fightfull feline's clawws found purchase and she freelanced atop her flacking fiend.**

"Oh honestly." Darya, shaking her head, grabbed a small squeaky toy from the bags, and walked across the floor. She pulled the lynx off of Dusty's head, gently, and placed it on the sofa, squeaky toy in its paws, before turning back to Ida. "I think I saw those..." She tried to think of something else to say, but instead just shrugged. "Thanks I guess. Sounds like it could be helpful in some situations."

Dusty cried out--"Aaagh!"--before the cat was removed. Once she was, Dusty reached forward with little arms, and glaring at the ferocious feline, stuffed the ball into his shell. There wasn't enough room to close it, but he didn't bother. Possessively touching the ball, and still looking at Smallest, he crooned a semi-suspicious, "Thank you, Auntie Darya."

**Finding that one of the food fabricating folk, had, forcably fended her from her foe while frowning, the fastidious feline made a fast flight through the fast lane and formulated another fight with her foil. A flurry of fur faded from focus as Smallest flew down the firepole following it to freedom.**

Shaking her head once more at the cat, Darya smiled at Dusty. "You're welcome. Don't take all of the cushions, will you?" She said as she sat down on the sofa, dumping the rest of the packages on the table, and pulled out a long baton, which she spun in her hands and looked at slightly suspiciously, before doing something at the handle, causing the end to light up, looking like a slightly strange, but very powerful, torch. "Ok. This is awesome, but why would Warrick want to give it to me?"

Dusty resumed making his pillow fort fortified safety construction, dragging pillows back across the room.

Ida looked at the baton in confusion - not because of what it was doing, but because of the source. "Maybe they like you. What is that thing, anyway?"

((OOC: It'll eat up a minor action to get that gun sorted, so if you don't want to then fair enough, Ida will find other ways to get lethal badass weapons into Darya's hands.))

Darya gave it another twirl in her hand, before looking up at Ida. "It's a UIG hybrid stun baton." She said, looking over it. "It can be a tazer, a light, or..." Fiddling with the handle again, the main body of the baton opened, and, in a split second, Darya was holding "A short sword."

Looking over it again, she frowned. "I should probably check with the CEO if I'm allowed to have this, or if this is a really indirect way of killing me..."

"What did... he? She? They say when they gave it to you? I mean, giving away UIG stuff like that... I figure either they have some sort of plot or they're just into you," Ida said with a laugh. "Now that'd be a twist. Or I guess they might want to recruit you or something."

"Well, it's chip locked to me, so I guess that means I'm allowed to have it..." Darya sighed and put it away. "Oh well. Do you know where Rico and Syl are? I got presents for them."

"Oh, I left Rico at work. He does all the work anyway, so I figured I didn't need to stick around when I had more important things to do like giving you a real gun. He should be back in an hour or two, I guess. Sylviane's patrolling the perimeter... Yeah, her eyes tell me she's around the back." Ida returned to the sofa and sat down, examining the underslung KO rifle in the same way a child might treat an unwanted hand-knitted jumper from an aunt at Christmas. "What'd you get them?"

Darya pulled out an exteremly long blue and white dress, along with a a shirt and tie in the same colours. "These. Thought they might like them." She said, eyes twinkling at Ida's obvious distaste at the gun.

"Ah, that's cool. You can just leave them in the wardrobes in my room if you want, they'll find 'em there," Ida said turning to Darya, then back to the gift.

"See, it's you always using stuff like this I just don't get. Fair enough if you have to be subtle on the job, that's sensible of you, but why not use good weapons the rest of the time?"

Darya looked Ida in the eye. "Because, often, this is the most sensible weapon we have. Against non-upgraded foes, this allows for quick and immediate take downs of opponents without worrying, generally about return fire." She glanced down at the plasma shotgun at Ida's hip. "That can provide those as well, it is true, however these also, at a practical level, reduce the number of people killed on the mission, which particularly helps when we are doing black operations." She pulled her own KO rifle out of a holster at her hip and waved it. "I'm not going to expect you carry one of these around, since I'm the only one who can really use them on agents or UIG guards, but they're a lot more useful than you give them credit for."

"Okay, so it lets you shortcut the dull parts, I get how it's useful and all. But..." In a swift motion, Ida drew Mirabelle and pointed it at Darya, though holding it in a single hand she clearly wasn't in any position to fire, and her finger wasn't on the trigger. "You've seen what I can do with this. A man knocked out is a man who could come back to haunt us later if things went wrong. But a man killed by plasma searing through his body is a man who'll never be a problem again, and so is a man traumatised by seeing that.

"Besides, there's more to life than efficiency, Darya. Fighting with weapons like that doesn't have any real heart or soul to it. You just point, hit the trigger, and move on to your next objective. These are people we fight, and you have to give them the respect they deserve."