piper90 | [Video] [locked to the New Hires]

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[Video] [locked to the New Hires]

[While Woody needed some time to come to terms with speaking to big people, and more time to test the waters as to how they'd receive him, Buzz has already overcome the hurdle of making first contact, and has longer term plans to set in motion. Woody's comfort keeps him from introducing himself right away, but once his pal has calmed down a little, Buzz doesn't wait around.

His introduction video arrives as encrypted as possible and labeled "for New Hire eyes only," in case anyone was in danger of opening it in front of an employee.

The video is being shot from the communicator installed in Buzz's forearm, and the Uncanny Valley of seeing an action figure speak is unavoidable, well, that's a shame.]

Greetings. I am Buzz Lightyear. I come in peace.

That's a space toy joke.

[He's trying his best to maintain good Space Ranger bearing, but though he's not consumed with anxiety at breaking the non-contact rules the way Woody is, he's still a little nervous.]

As you may have gathered, I am an action figure. [sure it's obvious, but it is the tiny plastic elephant in the room he has to acknowledge.] Under normal circumstances I wouldn't have made myself known but . . . Jorgmund didn't leave me much of a choice. Therefore I've decided to introduce myself and clarify my, uh. Unusual circumstances.

[Gosh he's already embarassed by the masquerade he's going to have to keep up.]

Due to a nonfunctional feature of my model, Jorgmund currently believes I am under the delusion I'm a real Space Ranger. I'm not. They also believe I am loyal to their agenda. I'm not.

[He has to be vague. Brainy would be implicated immediately if it were known that his demo switch no longer worked. This channel may be secure, but not secure enough for him to risk someone else's secret. He can pretend the switch never worked in the first place, and that the drama surrounding it during his interview has been a clever lie of his own all this time.]

If I'm right, this deception may be useful in covert operations against our captors. Therefore I am apologizing in advance for anything . . . mind blowingly stupid I say or do in front of everyone to keep Jorgmund convinced I'm too deluded to question even their substandard ethics.

[If he sounds formal, well, he's being formal. He thought for quite a while about how to make this speech, and longest about how to end it.]

I understand it may be . . . unsettling for some of you to think of a toy as alive. I will do my best to be considerate. I don't know how it feels to be a person. [He thinks he does, because he thought he was one once, but since he never has been, he must not actually know.] But I think I want to see this world saved and all of us safely home again as much as anyone else here could.

[Even with all this planning he still looks a little awkward and uncertain as he picks his closing statement.] This is Buzz Lightyear, out.

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you're saying we got a mole?

fucking fantastic. my name's saturday, let's talk strategy.

[Oh that's the term, isn't it? Buzz's latent kid-appropriate ranger training wasn't supplying it. But cool, now he knows.]

Yes. Are you comfortable discussing in person?

[That same latent training is telling him, though, that secure network or not, the less he commits to a permanent record the safer he and his cohorts will be at spying.]

absolutely. i know a reasonably secure spot, kinda small but with your size that shouldn't be a problem. away from eyes and ears. tell me where you are and i'll come pick you up? that seems fastest.

[saturday means no disrespect whatsoever, she's trying to be practical and considerate of his size]

[Buzz really wants to brag that he has a fully functional jetpack and is super fast now, but it does make too much logistical sense to turn down an offer of a pickup from someone who knows the area.]

Very well. I'm in the library. Come in and ask for "A Tale of Two Cities" and I'll follow you at an unsuspicious distance.

[for a moment, saturday considers just telling him about the cameras; then she thinks again. jorg doesn't know what they're doing, but she does. that's their advantage right now. so use best practices]

gotcha.

[she logs off and makes her way to the library]

[When she arrives Buzz is pretending to read by the entrance, looking very serious, the seriousness undercut by the fact that the book is My First Book of Quantum Physics.

He surveys the library with an expression of smug dismissal, like everyone present is slightly beneath him, and he's only passing time waiting for a library fight that he can break up.

Keeping his eyes on the few regularly moving people who've already seen him means his impulse to play inanimate is so overworked that he probably won't give in when Secret Comms Person shows up.]

[Saturday walks in, without looking around, and heads for the desk]

"Hey, I was wondering if you have a copy of the Tale of Two Cities?"

"Humph. Just a moment."

[she feels a bit of an ass, but it's not a bad bit of business, and she's good at projecting casual. She acquires the book, chitchats a bit, and janders back out. Then she lounges against a wall and waits, flipping through the book, which she's never actually read]

"t was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, jesus christ it just goes on like that, huh."

[Ah, there's his contact! Buzz carefully reads a whole extra page after she leaves, then drops the book on the re-shelving cart before jetpacking out of the library, all the while looking around with that same imperious Big Important Ranger Man expression.

It does a lot to mask the anxiety that comes with floating around at Person Eye Level, moving in plain sight.]

"Hullo."

[Saturday eyes him with well-disguised curiosity. that is definitely a toy, it is definitely mobile, and it is definitely not being controlled by anyone she can see. this is definitely her life now]

"Cameras in the halls don't work. We're clear so long as no one comes by. Nice jetpack."

"Really?"

[The smug expression vanishes, and Buzz cuts his jetpack, dropping to the floor with a relieved smile.]

"Wow, that's good. Doing this much improv is more work than I thought it would be."

[It's nice to get to be polite and pleasant again, instead of the overbearing cog that Jorgmund clearly wants to believe he is.]

"I'm sorry I didn't catch your name yet, miss, but thank you for agreeing to meet with me."

[He holds out one tiny hand for a tiny handshake.]

[Saturday gets down on the floor, cross-legged and as close to eye level as she can manage without being too obvious. she accepts his tiny handshake with all due solemnity]

"Call me Saturday. Pleasure to meet face-to-face. You're from the same place as that Woody guy, eh?"

"The pleasure's all mine, Saturday."

[He means it. It's nerve wracking to talk to a big person, but it's . . . also freeing, somehow. Pushing up against that anxiety, finding the nerve to keep on doing it, just realizing that he can, and it's not so hard or terrifying as it might have ever seemed.]

"Yes, we've been the same kid's toy since I was bought. We're lucky to still be together in this. Were any of your friends brought with you?"

[pain flits across her face for a moment, sharp as a knife to the gut but quickly shoved aside]

"Nah. Left the whole gang back home. Most 'a my gear, too. Lotta people are the in the same boat, but some other people got folk from back home with 'em."

[Buzz is not the best at reading people, but in the way that he tends to think better of them than they necessarily deserve. That flicker of pain would have been hard to miss even if he were less good a reader than he is.]

I'm sorry. You must miss them a lot.

[He'd say something hopeful about 'maybe they'll show up here,' but that's its own bad possibility. He already misses Jessie fiercely, but he certainly doesn't want her to be tortured and implanted with a shock collar and if missing her is the price he's got to pay in exchange for that not happening, then fine, he'll miss her all he can.

Buzz straightens up, pulling together his best serious-yet-sincere Space Ranger bearing to offer his formal assistance.]

If you ever get bored or lonely, well, Woody and I know just about every card and board game there is. We're new at talking to people but we'd be happy to keep you company.

[While he's trying to assess the second big person he's had a real voluntary conversation with, his attention lands on Saturday's pointed ears. That's new!]

Am I mistaken, or are you, uh - other than human?

[Gosh he hopes that's not offensive to ask. Fantasy's not his genre. She could be an alien with pointy ears, and he doesn't want to come right out and ask 'are you an elf' with his poor working fantasy knowledge until he knows for sure that's not offensive. Elves can mean those ethereal people from the long movies Andy watched once, or it can mean Santa's Little Helpers from the stop motion movies he watched every year, and those are very different terms for one word.]

Yeah. I miss 'em.

[it's kind of the understatement of the year, really. but his next offer make her smile with its sheer sincerity]

I'd be happy to join to you, anytime. One thing that is kinda neat about this place is meeting new kinds 'a people. I mean - it'd be fun, traveling through different worlds, if I was doing it on purpose and knew I could go home.

[like odd little sweetheart plastic dudes you've just decided to protect with your life. she laughs at his question, in a friendly way]

I'm an elf, if that's what you mean. Where I'm from, it's just a subtype of human - magic causes certain genes to activate when it's around, an' you get elves, orcs, trolls, things like that.

Fascinating. I'm a science fiction toy, so my fantasy knowledge is a little lacking. So any person can have relatives that are trolls AND elves AND humans?

[Family reunions must be interesting around Saturday's neck of the woods.]

Where I'm from, sure. We got dwarves, too. Orks, pixies, sasquatch, just about everything you can think of.

[Saturday smiles a little, amused by his fascination. Most of the people here are from worlds close enough to her own that she isn't remarkable in and of herself.]

Didn't used to be this way - magic came back about fifty years ago, started messin' us about. But it's just how things are, now.

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