Video

[heart_wrenching]

[ Even after the video starts, the image is mostly obscured, the figure still way too close and fiddling with her device. ]


Is this really broadcasting now? Amaaaaazing. I can't even see the microphone or camera! It's almost unbelievable.


[ When she finally sits back the area around her is a mess. The tables are strewn with tools and machine parts, knobs, springs, coils, piping. If one looks carefully, one may be able to spot a number of control panels suggesting she has possibly dismantled every major appliance in the home. Like ya do. ]


Well, hello! I'm a new imPort, my name's Winry. Winry Rockbell. And . . . does anyone out there know how to build a "microwave"? Well, rebuild, technically. The locks and turntables are pretty straightforward, but then there's all these wires . . . who knew electricity was going to be such a big deal, anyway?

Comments

[fullmetalbrat]

Did people know you from before too?

[vorbarra]

No, this is my first time here, as far as I'm aware. I more meant... [ A low thoughtful noise. ] That brand of naïveté, we really don't have that where I'm from.

[fullmetalbrat]

Huh . . . [He gives Gregor a searching look, reassessing.] Just how rough is your world?

[vorbarra]

Right now? It's more or less fine.

[ Completely droll, ] Any time predating the start of my reign, however, could be better characterized as a seething pit of angry snakes. It still is, but I'm slowly getting them to be domesticated.

[fullmetalbrat]

People like that never get domesticated. Just focused.

[vorbarra]

[ Finally with some unexpected steel, completely at odds with his sad-poet look, ] No, I won't be fabricating any wars to keep us all pointed in the same direction. They are going to be domesticated. It'll take me my whole bloody life, but Barrayar is going to change, and they won't even have realized it's happened.

[fullmetalbrat]

[The look Ed gives him . . .]

Who the hell said anything about making up wars? People focus in their own ways. Domestication is what makes it sound like you want to use them for some future bullshit. Making a place where they don't have to worry about that kind of shit is something else.

[vorbarra]

I assure you, there is no other way to divert Barrayarans than giving them a war. We've nearly a thousand years of practice.

I use domestication in the sense of taming a dog trained deliberately to bite.

[fullmetalbrat]

The word you want is rehabilitate. You're helping them, not sticking a muzzle and leash on them.

[vorbarra]

[ A bit of a tolerant look. Ed seems very young to him several times in this conversation. ]

I don't want to do any of the above. I'd just like them to stop biting, oh, each other, random galactics that wander in, myself occasionally, and settle down and be quiet productive members of our nascent galactic economy.

[fullmetalbrat]

[Edward, on the other hand, continues to look exactly like a petulant teenager who thinks he knows best.]

Right. So what's your grand plan for that?

[vorbarra]

About fifty years of beating my head against a wall, give or take a decade.

[fullmetalbrat]

You sound even more hopeless than Mustang.

[vorbarra]

[ If he was a dog his ears would be perking up. On human Gregor, it's a subtle reaction, but his interest is piqued. ]

Oh? Is he trying to remake centuries of precedent as well?

[fullmetalbrat]

[His posture closes off abruptly. For a moment he let his guard down too much; opened up more than he really meant to.]

He's dealing with a shitty military. It's close enough.

[vorbarra]

[ That was enough of a tell for Gregor to be making some solid assumptions with, and they're very interesting. He had the sense from his character that Mustang wasn't someone with small goals.

Out loud, he merely makes a thoughtful noise. ] And you? Are you dealing with them as well? He said you're his subordinate. [ Probably in the same way Galeni says Miles was once his subordinate, Gregor reflects with some humor. ]

[fullmetalbrat]

[Ed snorts, clasping his hands behind his head in a lazy, careless pose.]

Please, I barely count as military myself. I just travel around on my own doing research. If he called me his subordinate it's in name only.

[vorbarra]

[ Speculatively, inviting comment: ]

He must take his duties very seriously, to be so protective of an in-name-only subordinate.

[fullmetalbrat]

[That . . . actually catches him by surprise.]

Hahh? What are you talking about?

[vorbarra]

When we met and you were unconscious, you were his only priority.

[ Not first. Only. ]

[fullmetalbrat]

Don't be stupid. Why would I be—? He must have been going after something else without you realizing it. An unconscious subordinate makes for pretty a good cover.

[It would just be ridiculous if Gregor were right, right???]

[vorbarra]

Newly blind and asking for references to healers to check they hadn't overdosed you, rather than to restore his sight? Hard to misinterpret that.

[fullmetalbrat]

[. . . Nope this still doesn't make a lot of sense to him.]

So—he wanted to make sure I wasn't dying. That just seems like something any decent person would do.

[vorbarra]

After the amount of military inspections I've done-- I'm commander in chief, you realize, for a whole empire-- I do know how to read officers.

[ Which is his droll, oblique way of saying, Not buying it. ]

[fullmetalbrat]

I've known him for years. He's the guy that recruited me. Maybe you know your own officers, but you're reading him wrong.