The Katissa Chronicles Part 6: Pls no more food [Closed]

Katy blinked, shuffling herself around to get a look at the movie. "Maybe it takes place on some, um.. other planet or something, and fire works differently there?" Katy frowned in thought. "Though if this movie has lost your interest, we could always do something else. Maybe try a different genre of movie? Or you could play one of your games and I could watch?"

Melissa shook her head, "Nooo, that wouldn't be very fun for you though! How about we play something we can both play? Like strip poker! Or some other card game, maybe, though others aren't as fun." She said with a teasing grin, trying to see how Katy would react. Would she agree? Blush? Brush it off? Melissa called this the 'strip poker test', and so far no one had passed it! Because this was the first time she had tried it.

Katy blinked at Melissa, desperately trying to figure out whether or not the other girl was simply joking or not. If Melissa was joking, letting on that she might be interested in something like that could make things as weird as things had gotten with Aoife. If she wasn't joking, though..

"Well, um, I.. um.." she said, suddenly trying to fight off an intense blush. "Um, what if your roommates come back? That would make for a really bad situation," she said, attempting to dodge the suggestion without answering one way or another. "Besides! That wouldn't be very fair for you. I'm pretty good at poker," she added quickly.

Melissa giggled, 'So she's a dodger is she? I shall have to remember that for the future!' she thought, as she watched the other girl trying to avoid the question. Deciding to be nice, she responded with a smile, "True, true! I'm not very good at poker, I give myself away too easily! I'm pretty bad at keeping up a poker face!"

She couldn't help but continue teasing though, "Buuuuuut that wasn't a nooo, was it?" She continued with a smirk.

"Well I, um..I mean, we don't even have a deck of cards, right? So, um.. it doesn't matter if I said 'yes' or 'no', because we don't have cards to play with," she replied, attempting to once again dodge the question. Realizing she was failing to stop herself from blushing, she opted for the infinitely more tactical solution -- she dropped her head flat onto the bed and used her hood to hide her face. If Melissa couldn't see her reaction then it wouldn't be embarrassing, right?

Melissa couldn't hold back her giggles any longer, breaking into an incontrollable giggling fit, "Oooh, you're so adorable when you're embarrassed!" She said between her giggles, as she pounced lightly onto the girl, attacking her ears with ear scratches.

Katy let out a small yelp of surprise, having broken one of the most important rules of combat. Never obscure your own vision. "No, it's just, I mean, um," she said, before giving up. She should never have told Melissa about her weakness of ear scratches!

"Well," she said in a much less embarrassed, much more content sounding tone, "I suppose if you had a deck of cards it wouldn't be a terrible idea." She had wanted to try and come up with another dodge, but ear scratches made that seem like way too much work.

Blushing as she realized what she had gotten into, Melissa desperately tried to dodge out of the situation as well - Katy was probably just agreein because of the ear scratches! She probably didn't even want to play, she did seem to have a big weakness to having her ears scratched.

"Uhh... Uhm... Well Ahh... I don't have cards, actually, so I guess we can't play that! U-Unless you really want to I could go get a pack I guess..." She said, as she relented on the ear scratches for a few moments.

Katy blinked, having suddenly realized what she said. "Oh, oh no, I um.. I just meant that, um.. since that idea was out there it might be something to do, not that we should.. er.. do that specifically. Besides, you don't have cards! So forget I said anything!"

Katy brought her hands up to assist in hiding her face, still acting under the very well thought out theory that if Melissa couldn't see how embarrassed Katy was, she wouldn't know anything was amiss. If the bed were a little more solid she was fairly sure she'd have started banging her head against it for her own stupidity. It didn't matter what she may or may not actually want, because above all else she desperately wanted to avoid making things with Melissa as awkward as things with Aoife had become.

"I guess we could, um.. just.. go for a walk or something," she suggested, her ears twitching miserably.

Seeing a way out of the embarrassing situation, Melissa readily took it, standing up and closing her scroll, "Y-Yeah, that sounds like a good idea, a relaxing walk would be nice!" She stuttered.

"Just walk around aimlessly or do you want to go somewher specific..?" She asked.

Katy quickly got up as well, busying herself with adjusting her hood before looking anywhere but directly at Melissa. "Oh, um.. I hadn't thought that far ahead," she admitted. She didn't even especially want to go for a walk, it was just the first thing that had popped into her head. Katy had realized her error too late; of course Melissa had been joking. If Katy had just played along she probably wouldn't have made things weird!

"Or, um.. if you didn't feel like going for a walk, I could just go study or something? I mean, if you're getting bored or anything, I don't mind."

"No, no! I think a bit of fresh air and a relaxing walk would be nice, and I'm not bored at all! It's too fun to tease you!" Melissa said with a giggle as she began walking out the dorm after a quick stretch. It really would be good to get some cool, fresh air - it would help her fight the blush she was barely holding back. Maybe her joke had been badly timed...

"Do you usually default to studying when you have nothing else to do...? That doesn't sound very fun! You should do fun stuff in your free time instead of studying!"

Katy followed the other girl, finding herself staring down at the ground as opposed to much of anywhere else. "Default? No, not really. Well.. sort of. Sometimes I just read a book instead," she said with a small shrug. "I've got a few on the go that I try and make time for, but studying usually does come first. I can't afford to let my grades slip," she explained.

"I've probably already spent more time hanging out with you and Aoife than I've ever spent hanging out with, um.. well, anyone else. Usually I'd just be reading, studying, going to class, or sleeping."

"Really?!" Melissa asked, not noticing anything strange in the other girl - she was probably just looking for gold on the ground, after all! "Then we should... Umm... I would suggest more fun stuff to do with friends, but I don't know anythin' else... I never really had any good friends either, at least not the kind that would invite me out to do stuff. We could uhh... Yup... I got nothin'." She said, scratching her head in embarrassment.

"We could go play pranks on people I guess? Though you don't want to get in trouble, right? So maybe that's not the best idea.." She said, trying to remember any other interesting activities the two might be interested in.

Katy frowned in thought, trying to come up with a list of options. "Well, we already went swimming.. and we did cliffdiving.. and we hung out in the woods," she said. "I'm not sure what else is left. We could find somewhere to relax, maybe have a nap," she offered, completely contradicting her earlier suggestion that they go for a walk. Thinking of things to do with another person was difficult when they didn't seem to share a large number of interests.

"Ooh! I know!" Melissa said suddenly, almost jumping up as she thought of something the two could do, "You were planning on upgrading your weapon right? Or at least redesigning it? I've been planning on an upgrade to soothing mayhem too, we could work on planning the upgrades together?" She suggested.

Katy blinked, nodding thoughtfully. "That's not a bad idea, actually," she said. Modifying her rifle was a process that tended to take months and months of work, but she did have a few ideas and hadn't really sat down to math out the requirements yet.

"Where do you usually go to plan out your weapon changes? Library? That's usually good for me, but if there's two of us it might get a little loud. I only need my scroll right now to tinker with the weights, so anywhere is good with me."

"For designing? The dorm should be fine, but if you want to go to the library I'm fine with that as well! For some reason the librarian staff don't like me though... But everything I need is in my scroll anyways." Melissa responded, beginnin' to walk towards the dorms anyways - if Katy really wanted to they could just change their course halfway.

"What are you planning on changing?" She asked excitedly, already thinking about how she was going to implement her own changes, "I'm plannin' on adding a system to shoot the blade of my weapon while it's attached to a chain! To hook bad guys in 'n stuff!"

Katy turned to follow Melissa back to the dorm, pulling her scroll from one of her pockets and calling up her rifle schematics. "Oh, I'm not sure. I was thinking about trying to math out what I'd need to change to put a thruster in the barrel, and maybe take another stab at making it collapsible," she said, flipping through the various schematics of all her previous rifles.

"Maybe build in a pop-out bayonet or something, if I can do it without completely throwing off the balance in the front. Or if I wind up rebuilding the rifle from the ground up I've always wanted to add in a warhammer mode. It's already long enough, and the stock isn't really doing anything when I'm not actually shooting," she said, sounding as excited as the other girl.

Until she started crossing possibilities off because she couldn't make the math work she could imagine loads of things. The early stages of rebuilding her weapon were always the most fun because of that.

Listening carefully to Katy's ideas as the two walked back to the dorm, she gave a few suggestions, "Wellll... A Bayonet probably wouldn't be the best idea, it would be kind of bulky and annoying to use to actually fight with, especially with a long weapon like a sniper rifle! Unless you want to use it for warding off charges I guess. Warhammer might also not be the best idea, it could damage the weapon and the parts inside! If you want something for close combat, I could make you a sword or something?" She suggested.

"Yeah, they're not great ideas," she admitted, frowning. "I wouldn't really know what to do with a sword, though. That's sorta why I was thinking hammer, 'cause.. y'know. You just gotta hit a thing with that. It can't be that hard to hit something, right?" Pulling up the schematic of the rifle that had exploded before, she started comparing it and her current rifle's various measurements side-by-side on her scroll.

"It's just.. I realized I have zero offensive or defensive ability outside of my very specific skillset. If you attacked me right now, for example, there's literally zero chance I would win, or even be able to survive the first attack. I need something, right?"

"Using a warhammer isn't that simple by the way! You need to know to distribute the weight properly, and need a lot of strength too!" Melissa said.

"That's what teams are for though, covering up for your weaknesses! If I was attacked from a distance I wouldn't be able to do anything except try to avoid the attacks, which would be pretty much impossible when I don't know where they're coming from! That's why I wouldn't get into a long distance firefight and I would let my teammates do that. But I see your point I guess, your team won't always be there..." Melissa said, trying to think of a better method than using a sniper-warhammer, "You could learn martial arts maybe? Or if you used something like a naginata... A spear or something, I could teach you how to use it." She suggested.

"That's sort of what I was thinking about with the bayonet. Nice blade on the front would make it spear-like, I think. I dunno," she said, tucking her scroll back into her pocket for the moment. "They're some of my more unrealistic ideas, anyway. If I could get a thruster on there and maybe figure out how to collapse it I'd be more than happy."

Katy was reasonably sure she could make a rifle that could be packed up. She was just.. extremely hesitant to try it again.

Picking up Soothing Mayhem from its sheath on her back, Melissa showed off its 'form change' showing how it folded up upon itself multiple times to make a more compact flamethrower, "I could help you with that maybe, my weapon folds and has a thruster! What do you have designs so far?" She asked, already thinking of how she could adjust the systems in her own weapon for use in a sniper rifle.

"A bayonet could work, if you had some more unwieldy parts of the rifle fold up onto each other! It would actually work pretty well as a spear then, and I teach you to use it. A naginata is basically a spear with a sword on the end after all!"

Katy let out an impressed 'ooooh' at the display, then pulled out her scroll again but just sort of aimlessly tapped her thumbs on the edges of it. There wasn't a single other person who Katy had ever shared the actual design documents of her weapon with; not even her parents. "Well," she said, finally holding the device out. "Here, you can see for yourself."

If someone bothered to navigate through the dozens of folders and subfolders they would find precisely detailed schematics for every version of her rifle to date, dozens of designs only in the conceptual stages, as well as hundreds of stress test results and virtual simulations to accompany each weapon design. Some of the folders going back several years actually contained preliminary designs for an assortment of other, completely unrelated weapons and armors, though those taper off and eventually stop altogether the newer the files get.

"Everything that's not floating around in my head is on this," she explained. "You can look through it if you want, but it might be kinda boring."

Melissa looked through the files on the scroll with a look of awe on her face, her jaw unintentionally dropping. She had never thought to do any tests or anything, definitely nothing even remotely close to what Katy had here. Her strategy for weapon design had been to simply do what seemed right, and luckily it had worked out for her so far. But she definitely saw the appeal and benefit in running all those tests to make sure it would work as expected, instead of blowing up in her face or something.

Looking at the design of the girl's current weapon, she was further amazed. It was just so well planned, everything was carefully measured out and all the weights were balanced with precision. Just looking at the design inspired her - how much better could her own designs and creations get if she applied the same level of planning?

Realizing she had just frozen in place and was staring, she looked back up at Katy, "This... Is amazing! You really put a lot of work into it didn't you?" She said, finding it difficult to find better words to express what she thought of the amazing files she had just seen, "The way I did things before I just threw together parts in ways that looked like they would work well in, I never thought of doing all those tests or planning everything out so well. I guess I'm just lucky nothin' has blown up in my face yet!" She said in embarrassment.

Katy shrugged self-consciously, looking embarrassed. "When I first started out I wasn't nearly as thorough as I am now," she said simply. "Every time I rebuild my rifle I try and use as much of the same material and parts as I can, so even though the one I have now is the 6th iteration, there were a few before it that I couldn't salvage."

She winced slightly at the memory. "I had built a collapsible rifle when I was younger, and the functionality weakened the rifle. After about a month something inside bent the wrong way, and the rifling didn't set properly. I fired an explosive round, it caught the rifling and exploded still in the barrel. Almost killed me. So I haven't tried again, though I've run plenty of simulations. The accident made me, um.. far more cautious."