Hello, Carlos. I hope that this isn’t an inconvenient time to be interrupting your radio. I just feel that over one year is enough to let bygones be bygones and make you consider dropping the restraining order…

unfulfilledvisceraspilled:

the-perfect-scientist:

unfulfilledvisceraspilled:

the-perfect-scientist:

unfulfilledvisceraspilled:

the-perfect-scientist:

“What? Oh, Jesus Christ… you’re not the one who’s allowed to come to that conclusion. By bringing it up, you’re making me want to hold out longer.”

“Blood and… violence, Carlos?” He paused to look up at the dripping ichor that was coming from the ceiling. Well, coming from something that was on the ceiling. Hard to fit a giant man in a small booth after all. That sure was one heck of a handshake.

“I’m not sure what you mean by that. I’ve never liked that sort of thing. I have to close my eyes and drink plenty of herbal tea before I can handle a single minute of Nanalan.”

“Your words for it are merely different from mine – it’s the same thing,” Carlos said. “Call it… ‘Language Variation’, I guess. What you call ‘violent’ isn’t necessarily what I would call ‘violent’.”

“Oh– so this is some sort of cultural thing?” His finger left the button momentarily so that he could adjust the microphone better. This sounds like some good wholesome bonding, here. “I see! Just like how in science-talk the word ‘consequence’ can mean something good or bad. So what does ‘violent’ mean to you then?”

Carlos made a slightly-annoyed groaning noise. “Um… it’s… that thing you do… the uh… what you call ‘decorating’. THat’s… I would consider that violent.”

The noise from the other end of the call indicated that something had fallen off of the ceiling and fell with a wet smack. It’s for the best that Carlos not know what part of what just came loose in there.

“… Oh. Is that why you wouldn’t go inside your newly-furnished lab that one time? Gosh, I’m so sorry Carlos. I When I come over should I warn you next time?”

“You’re not coming over,” Carlos said firmly. “Not at all, do you understand? No language variation – I mean exactly what I said.” He was going to stop this train right there.

Hello, Carlos. I hope that this isn’t an inconvenient time to be interrupting your radio. I just feel that over one year is enough to let bygones be bygones and make you consider dropping the restraining order…

unfulfilledvisceraspilled:

the-perfect-scientist:

unfulfilledvisceraspilled:

the-perfect-scientist:

“What? Oh, Jesus Christ… you’re not the one who’s allowed to come to that conclusion. By bringing it up, you’re making me want to hold out longer.”

“Blood and… violence, Carlos?” He paused to look up at the dripping ichor that was coming from the ceiling. Well, coming from something that was on the ceiling. Hard to fit a giant man in a small booth after all. That sure was one heck of a handshake.

“I’m not sure what you mean by that. I’ve never liked that sort of thing. I have to close my eyes and drink plenty of herbal tea before I can handle a single minute of Nanalan.”

“Your words for it are merely different from mine – it’s the same thing,” Carlos said. “Call it… ‘Language Variation’, I guess. What you call ‘violent’ isn’t necessarily what I would call ‘violent’.”

“Oh– so this is some sort of cultural thing?” His finger left the button momentarily so that he could adjust the microphone better. This sounds like some good wholesome bonding, here. “I see! Just like how in science-talk the word ‘consequence’ can mean something good or bad. So what does ‘violent’ mean to you then?”

Carlos made a slightly-annoyed groaning noise. “Um… it’s… that thing you do… the uh… what you call ‘decorating’. THat’s… I would consider that violent.”

Hello, Carlos. I hope that this isn’t an inconvenient time to be interrupting your radio. I just feel that over one year is enough to let bygones be bygones and make you consider dropping the restraining order…

unfulfilledvisceraspilled:

the-perfect-scientist:

“What? Oh, Jesus Christ… you’re not the one who’s allowed to come to that conclusion. By bringing it up, you’re making me want to hold out longer.”

“Blood and… violence, Carlos?” He paused to look up at the dripping ichor that was coming from the ceiling. Well, coming from something that was on the ceiling. Hard to fit a giant man in a small booth after all. That sure was one heck of a handshake.

“I’m not sure what you mean by that. I’ve never liked that sort of thing. I have to close my eyes and drink plenty of herbal tea before I can handle a single minute of Nanalan.”

“Your words for it are merely different from mine – it’s the same thing,” Carlos said. “Call it… ‘Language Variation’, I guess. What you call ‘violent’ isn’t necessarily what I would call ‘violent’.”

Hello, Carlos. I hope that this isn’t an inconvenient time to be interrupting your radio. I just feel that over one year is enough to let bygones be bygones and make you consider dropping the restraining order…

unfulfilledvisceraspilled:

the-perfect-scientist:

unfulfilledvisceraspilled:

the-perfect-scientist:

unfulfilledvisceraspilled:

the-perfect-scientist:

“What? Oh, Jesus Christ… you’re not the one who’s allowed to come to that conclusion. By bringing it up, you’re making me want to hold out longer.”

“But if I didn’t bring it up then you’d forget. And if you forgot then you might not remember to employ it when we–

Oh dear. You’re right, I shouldn’t have mentioned it at all. Redo?”

Carlos pressed his lips together almost painfully. He didn’t want to get into the hurting again – he didn’t! But it was really hard to remember how easy it was to get hurt when it had been months ago.

“Are you… are you doing any better, Kevin? At all?” he asked, his voice painfully even.

Kevin laughed from the other end. It was a bright, cheery laugh full of casual relief. It was a true, wonderful trademark of friendly Desert Bluffs folk. “Ahaha– Carlos! Why would you even question something like that? I can guarantee from the bottom of my heart that I am absolutely eternally

in a constant state of mortal suffering.

It’s so quiet here that I can hear the moist tap of my tongue to the roof of my mouth when I try to form human speech. The masked army doesn’t exactly do well with sounding out those brisk consonants. I’m sure you know what I mean. You were here, after all.”

So not really any better. Same ol’, same ol’. That helped Carlos in his decision.

“The masked army can be great conversationalists if you don’t expect them to respond in the same way you would,” Carlos said a little dryly. Kevin was feeling lonely, but it wasn’t Carlos’ problem.

“Aha– well, I have noticed that if I stub my toe at least one of them looks in my general direction. They do have the warmongering going, that’s quite the hobby. Maybe I should try out for their sports team…” He knew Carlos’ tone was shifting and it made him somewhat nervous. His finger twitched for a button that he hoped he didn’t have to press.

“Soooo… how’s scieeeence? Is it on its best behavior todayyy?”

“Science is… science. Constant and unchanging. The only variable is my mood,” Carlos responded. “You know, maybe the masked figures could use you on their… ‘sports team’. It seems to be right up your alley, with all the … blood and violence… involved.”

Taking a Chance (closed w/dont-do-anything-i-would-do)

dont-do-anything-i-would-do:

the-perfect-scientist:

dont-do-anything-i-would-do:

the-perfect-scientist:

dont-do-anything-i-would-do

Tony
watched the other and just smiled softly before he pulled out his
tablet and began to work on some coding as the other sketched. He could
multitask, made a habit of it, so why not work on an Upgrade for Jarvis
while he spoke to the young man in front of him.

“Glad to hear you get the time, I’d have paid for a flight home if we
delayed you any way all things considered. I liked what I saw on your
CV, and with your own reports from when you were a student. It’s
interesting to see it all and I like your innovation you got going. Need
more people willing to work like that for us.” Tony smiled softly but
kept his focus on his tablet as he worked. He couldn’t sit still, a bad
habit he always had.

“So what brought you to us? Why did you choose to come here, after
Hammer Tech surely you knew of the issues?” Pepper spoke calmly, not
judging just simply wondering what was going through the other person’s
head.

Carlos tried not to smile too much at Stark’s comments. He
knew that what he had in regards of paperwork behind him (excepting Hammer) was
pretty good. But hearing someone like Tony Stark say that they liked it… It
could turn a man into an embarrassing pile of mush if he wasn’t careful.

But Potts’ questions made it easy for Carlos to return to a
more neutral expression. He realized that while drawing it was a bit harder to
come up with a response other than what he knew to be the absolute truth and
wondered if they planned this. Probably. He didn’t exactly want to straight-up lie, but he didn’t want to over-share his
feelings with them, as well as how desperate and painful his job search had
been.

“Well… honestly, I’ve always thought it would be great to
work with Stark Industries,” he said, thinking carefully about his next words. “I…
I understand that what happened was terrible and…” He paused before taking a
breath. He put his pencil down and looked to Miss Potts and Mr Stark somberly. “I
am very sorry for all the problems and danger that Hammer had put you and your
company through, and I deeply regret any part that I had unwittingly played in
it. This is not meant to sound like an excuse, but… I worked in the safety
department. However I didn’t see an entire project myself – tech was only
showed to us in parts. I did small-scale testing with the parts that I was
assigned to, but full-scale testing was not possible with the way that the labs
were run.

“When I applied for the engineering position from Stark
Industries I just thought… I just thought that the worst that you could say to
me was ‘no’ or to not even reach out to me at all.”

Immediately Carlos started to worry that he’d gotten too wordy and may have just cut off his chances. He knew what happened to those test pilots hadn’t been his fault, but he didn’t think it would be socially proper for him to deny responsibility entirely.

Tony smiled at the honesty from the other and hummed lightly in thought. He wondered about the other, about what brought him to that point, because clearly he had been holding back. “Well at least he’s honest. I knew I’d like him and maybe you’ll finally have someone who’ll tell you what you need to know before it happens.” Tony Chuckled softly to Pepper, who glared at his comment before she looked back over to Carlos with a soft smile.

“It’s okay to be honest. We like it when people are being open and honest about stuff with us. Especially considering everything that’s been going on. We have to be careful so it’s refreshing having someone here who is willing to say what they were thinking.” She smiled softly to him and looked down at the design he was sketching a moment. “Tony found your CV interesting, understanding the position you were put in, and we know many people didn’t see the danger because they couldn’t see the whole picture. That’s how Hammer seemed to work but here, you’ll work with a team on a project together. That way if you think something might go wrong you can fully test it.”

Carlos started to relax slightly. It seemed that that was an
acceptable answer, and he hadn’t messed everything up. That was… that was very
good.

He returned Miss Potts’ smile. “Thank you very much,” he
said. “That’d… it’d be a very nice and welcome change to previous environments
I’d been in.” To actually know when a project was going out, rather than
finding out the day after that it had been presented that it failed
spectacularly…He’d forgotten what a properly functioning lab was like.

Carlos picked up the pencil again and continued with the
drafting. It was starting to take shape finally – it looked like a wheelchair,
but what was immediately different was that the wheels were of a design that he
had been playing with in his head.

“We take care of our staff here, unlike some, I never like seeing them struggle where they don’t need to. There’s a reason we’re ahead and part of that is me, yes, but it’s also the people that work here. We won’t let them down if we don’t need to.”

Tony had said it as if it were a matter of fact and just smiled softly to the man as he sketched out his plan. Pepper smiled softly seeing the interaction between the two and wondered if they both might be helpful for each other in some way before she focused back onto Carlos. “I should hope it does, and maybe in the future if you think something is going wrong while you work here then you can be free to tell us.”

“We like to improve the company and know that the staff being able to tell us about it is a huge thing.”

Carlos’ sketching passed for a moment before continuing with
a very slight smile (that he was trying not to let grow any bigger). What Stark
said just… sounded so genuine. He didn’t say anything different from what he did
in public appearances, but again – Tony Stark saying that to one’s face really
struck home for Carlos and it made him feel like things could be alright.

“Absolutely, Mr Stark – Miss Potts,” Carlos responded,
looking at them. “I care very much about my work and anything I can do to help
it get better I am willing to pursue.”

Carlos glanced down at his sketching again and his smile
faltered a bit. Ugh, he didn’t like how the wheels were looking in the concept.
There were a lot of components he had in mind, but in this one draft it was a
little hard to see it. He drew a line from the wheel’s tread on the profile
view drawing and started to quickly scribble in the notes that he wanted to
make sure to explain. Then he moved onto the next part – a balanced seat.

Hello, Carlos. I hope that this isn’t an inconvenient time to be interrupting your radio. I just feel that over one year is enough to let bygones be bygones and make you consider dropping the restraining order…

unfulfilledvisceraspilled:

the-perfect-scientist:

unfulfilledvisceraspilled:

the-perfect-scientist:

“What? Oh, Jesus Christ… you’re not the one who’s allowed to come to that conclusion. By bringing it up, you’re making me want to hold out longer.”

“But if I didn’t bring it up then you’d forget. And if you forgot then you might not remember to employ it when we–

Oh dear. You’re right, I shouldn’t have mentioned it at all. Redo?”

Carlos pressed his lips together almost painfully. He didn’t want to get into the hurting again – he didn’t! But it was really hard to remember how easy it was to get hurt when it had been months ago.

“Are you… are you doing any better, Kevin? At all?” he asked, his voice painfully even.

Kevin laughed from the other end. It was a bright, cheery laugh full of casual relief. It was a true, wonderful trademark of friendly Desert Bluffs folk. “Ahaha– Carlos! Why would you even question something like that? I can guarantee from the bottom of my heart that I am absolutely eternally

in a constant state of mortal suffering.

It’s so quiet here that I can hear the moist tap of my tongue to the roof of my mouth when I try to form human speech. The masked army doesn’t exactly do well with sounding out those brisk consonants. I’m sure you know what I mean. You were here, after all.”

So not really any better. Same ol’, same ol’. That helped Carlos in his decision.

“The masked army can be great conversationalists if you don’t expect them to respond in the same way you would,” Carlos said a little dryly. Kevin was feeling lonely, but it wasn’t Carlos’ problem.

Hello, Carlos. I hope that this isn’t an inconvenient time to be interrupting your radio. I just feel that over one year is enough to let bygones be bygones and make you consider dropping the restraining order…

unfulfilledvisceraspilled:

the-perfect-scientist:

“What? Oh, Jesus Christ… you’re not the one who’s allowed to come to that conclusion. By bringing it up, you’re making me want to hold out longer.”

“But if I didn’t bring it up then you’d forget. And if you forgot then you might not remember to employ it when we–

Oh dear. You’re right, I shouldn’t have mentioned it at all. Redo?”

Carlos pressed his lips together almost painfully. He didn’t want to get into the hurting again – he didn’t! But it was really hard to remember how easy it was to get hurt when it had been months ago.

“Are you… are you doing any better, Kevin? At all?” he asked, his voice painfully even.

Taking a Chance (closed w/dont-do-anything-i-would-do)

dont-do-anything-i-would-do:

the-perfect-scientist:

dont-do-anything-i-would-do

Tony
watched the other and just smiled softly before he pulled out his
tablet and began to work on some coding as the other sketched. He could
multitask, made a habit of it, so why not work on an Upgrade for Jarvis
while he spoke to the young man in front of him.

“Glad to hear you get the time, I’d have paid for a flight home if we
delayed you any way all things considered. I liked what I saw on your
CV, and with your own reports from when you were a student. It’s
interesting to see it all and I like your innovation you got going. Need
more people willing to work like that for us.” Tony smiled softly but
kept his focus on his tablet as he worked. He couldn’t sit still, a bad
habit he always had.

“So what brought you to us? Why did you choose to come here, after
Hammer Tech surely you knew of the issues?” Pepper spoke calmly, not
judging just simply wondering what was going through the other person’s
head.

Carlos tried not to smile too much at Stark’s comments. He
knew that what he had in regards of paperwork behind him (excepting Hammer) was
pretty good. But hearing someone like Tony Stark say that they liked it… It
could turn a man into an embarrassing pile of mush if he wasn’t careful.

But Potts’ questions made it easy for Carlos to return to a
more neutral expression. He realized that while drawing it was a bit harder to
come up with a response other than what he knew to be the absolute truth and
wondered if they planned this. Probably. He didn’t exactly want to straight-up lie, but he didn’t want to over-share his
feelings with them, as well as how desperate and painful his job search had
been.

“Well… honestly, I’ve always thought it would be great to
work with Stark Industries,” he said, thinking carefully about his next words. “I…
I understand that what happened was terrible and…” He paused before taking a
breath. He put his pencil down and looked to Miss Potts and Mr Stark somberly. “I
am very sorry for all the problems and danger that Hammer had put you and your
company through, and I deeply regret any part that I had unwittingly played in
it. This is not meant to sound like an excuse, but… I worked in the safety
department. However I didn’t see an entire project myself – tech was only
showed to us in parts. I did small-scale testing with the parts that I was
assigned to, but full-scale testing was not possible with the way that the labs
were run.

“When I applied for the engineering position from Stark
Industries I just thought… I just thought that the worst that you could say to
me was ‘no’ or to not even reach out to me at all.”

Immediately Carlos started to worry that he’d gotten too wordy and may have just cut off his chances. He knew what happened to those test pilots hadn’t been his fault, but he didn’t think it would be socially proper for him to deny responsibility entirely.

Tony smiled at the honesty from the other and hummed lightly in thought. He wondered about the other, about what brought him to that point, because clearly he had been holding back. “Well at least he’s honest. I knew I’d like him and maybe you’ll finally have someone who’ll tell you what you need to know before it happens.” Tony Chuckled softly to Pepper, who glared at his comment before she looked back over to Carlos with a soft smile.

“It’s okay to be honest. We like it when people are being open and honest about stuff with us. Especially considering everything that’s been going on. We have to be careful so it’s refreshing having someone here who is willing to say what they were thinking.” She smiled softly to him and looked down at the design he was sketching a moment. “Tony found your CV interesting, understanding the position you were put in, and we know many people didn’t see the danger because they couldn’t see the whole picture. That’s how Hammer seemed to work but here, you’ll work with a team on a project together. That way if you think something might go wrong you can fully test it.”

Carlos started to relax slightly. It seemed that that was an
acceptable answer, and he hadn’t messed everything up. That was… that was very
good.

He returned Miss Potts’ smile. “Thank you very much,” he
said. “That’d… it’d be a very nice and welcome change to previous environments
I’d been in.” To actually know when a project was going out, rather than
finding out the day after that it had been presented that it failed
spectacularly…He’d forgotten what a properly functioning lab was like.

Carlos picked up the pencil again and continued with the
drafting. It was starting to take shape finally – it looked like a wheelchair,
but what was immediately different was that the wheels were of a design that he
had been playing with in his head.

Scientifically Interesting (closed w/ blackwhitehat)

blackwhitehat

Hatbot
fell silent, contacting Gamma, who was currently with Flug. A few
minutes later, the bagged scientist rushed out of the manor. “My baby-!”

Carlos immediately sat up and away so that this scientist wouldn’t shove him away. Wait, was that a bag on his head?

Well, Carlos had seen weirder.

“I used a paradox on it and it fell over,” Carlos explained quickly. “I tried to reboot, but I think something fell loose in the fall.”

Scientifically Interesting (closed w/ blackwhitehat)

blackwhitehat:

the-perfect-scientist:

blackwhitehat:

the-perfect-scientist:

blackwhitehat:

the-perfect-scientist:

blackwhitehat:

the-perfect-scientist:

blackwhitehat

Hatbot bounced again, pleased about this news. “Hatbot.” The small robot looked up at his boss.

“Yes sir?”

“I shall be inside. Watch over this pathetic fool and make sure he
does nothing funny.” Black Hat glared at the human. “Have him bring the
sentinel back when finished.”

“Yes sir!” Hatbot saluted with a grin.

Carlos hummed lowly. “The only one doing the funny stuff here is you, Señor Sombrero Negro hombre,” he murmured in a very low voice.

He immediately got to work looking around and figuring out the components he was looking at. There was a lot going on inside, he could tell. Vocal components, what looked like large coolant lines complete with a hat-shaped pump right where a heart would be on a typical human, large servos and power cords… oh, it was beautiful. He could honestly spend all day in there.

But he had a job to do so he started to look at the wires to make sure nothing was burned and broken.

Black Hat strode back into the hat shaped manor as Hatbot curiously watched the other work. This stuff was always so interesting to him! He loved to watch his creator work when he could.

Carlos hummed to himself and gently moved wires around as he inspected. He found a manual control panel further in the cavity and hummed and nodded to himself.

“I see, I see,” he said. “Okay… so far nothing looks like it’s been knocked loose from the fall. So all I have to do is activate the start-up sequence.”

Carlos got a smaller screwdriver from his bag and he started to turn the connections he found, making sure each bolt was tight. Once done he reached in to get ready to flip the switch back on.

“Alright… let’s see how he sounds.”

Carlos flipped it and retracted his hand before sitting back and watching the robot. He listened for any crackling or any rattling, which would signal that something was out of place.

Hat Bot watched anxiously and then tilted his head when a rattling sound came from him. “What’s that?”

Carlos frowned. He reached in and shut off the switch to abort the reboot before pulling out his phone and shaking it to turn on the light. “Something’s not connected,” he told the little robot as he shined it inside and started scrutinizing wires. “Or… something broke when he fell.” It sounded like it came from deep within the robot’s chest cavity. Carlos wasn’t sure he’d be able to reach it. “Dammit… Here, hold this,” he then said, offering the little robot his phone to shine the light.

Hatbot curiously took the phone and shone the light for him. “I can call Dr.flug? He created us, he’ll know what’s wrong!” He said confidently.

Carlos reached his hand in to push aside wires and get a better look. He glanced at the little robot. “Uh… how would he feel about me having shorted out your, uh… buddy here?” he asked.

“He’ll be a little upset, but he’ll be more worried about fixing him.” Hatbot shrugged, bouncing slightly on his wheel. “Should I call him?”

“Mm…” Carlos hummed awkwardly, considering. He was quiet for a few moments as he peered into the giant robot’s cavity to see if he could find what was wrong immediately. But he couldn’t. Damn. “Uh… your guys’ creator… yeah, you should probably have him come out here. I’m not sure where everything is.”