re_alignment_logs | we're devils and black sheep, we're really bad eggs

Don's voice comes from downstairs. "I haven't left the ship since you wrecked it up fighting robot centipedes!" He comes up draped in as many wires as vain old women wear furs, with a soldering iron in his hand.

He gestures with the iron, it's tip still red with heat. "And without somewhere to go for parts, I-" his eyes light on the pile of junk. "Are those parts!?" Marvelous would recognize his expression as the one Marvelous sees in the mirror when the dinner bell is rung.

He runs forward, stumbling on the long wires around his neck and shouts as he drops the soldering iron and it spins across the floor, hissing with heat. "Look out!" he shouts from the floor as he tries to stumble back up to his feet.

"I didn't wreck it," he calls back, annoyed, and twists to look at Don. "Just had a little accident with those fire powers Megatronus gave me."

He recognizes that excited face as one that means Don's about to cause a disaster. He pulls his legs away from the sliding soldering iron just in time, watching it burn the floor a little.

"You gonna get that?" he asks, and watches Navi swoop down to tug at the back of Don's shirt in order to 'help'.

Navi's tugging at his collar chokes him a little, annoys him a lot, and helps... not at all. He groans and ends up crawling forward after the soldering iron instead of getting up. He manages to pick it up before it burns the floor too badly, at least.

He uses the arm of the chair to get up, swatting Navi out of the way. "C'mon, give me a break!" he shouts at her. Then he turns to Marvelous, screwing up his lips. "I hope that I get some powers that can help keep you from having any more accidents someday."

But snarking is not the solution in this case. He grabs the sack and starts digging through it. He flips a few circuit boards and small electronics out of the bag and sets them aside for sorting. "Oh! This'll be good for that problem I had rerouting the power supply back to the shield array. Otherwise I was going to have to sacrifice parts of the space propulsion systems, which... you know, who knows we might need that again someday." He looks up and then back down into the pile when he realizes that Marvelous probably doesn't care.

He inspects a weird yellow star shaped fruit closely, and then sticks the tip of the soldering iron in it with a hiss so he can set it aside. It's been off, of course, it's just still super-hot. "Okay, so..." he starts to sort stuff out in the pile, focused, with the tip of his tongue sticking out of his mouth. In a minute, he's got all the electronics in one pile, and all the food-items in another. "You had to bag them together?" He fusses, as he tries to wipe a stripe of rust off a weird lumpy berry.

"I was helping!" she squawks, swatting back at his hand before she settles on her usual perch behind Marvelous's shoulder.

"The only person having accidents here is you, Doc," he says, before he watches Don sort things. He watches with one imperious eye, chewing on his apple with regular crunches.

"Didn't really have anywhere else to put it," he points out, pointedly not mentioning the couple of snacks lining the pockets of his coat. No need to let Doc know about those. He is, actually, interested in Don's running commentary, though he doesn't have much input as to how to actually accomplish most of the things Doc does with a wrench.

"If it's not safe, we'll toss it," he says, "some of the raw stuff was messed up before I tossed it in there, y'know."

He's too distracted by cracking open a small electronic device with a screwdriver to snark back at either Navi or Marvelous. His eyes sparkle at the little bitty circuit boards in there. "Oh, good. Oh good!" He says, half to himself. "I think I can make this work. This'll help with that issue we had with power cutting out to the kitchen, at least." He beams, his mood lifted immediately with the lifting of his prospects for getting the ship back to normal.

"Is there usually a lot of useful stuff like this in that pile thing?" he asks, breaking the circuit board out of the machine and wrapping it in tissue paper for safekeeping. He puts it into his jacket pocket, "I mean, a couple of these things are as advanced as Zangyack's tech, if not more."

And then he turns to the food, and shovels it into the sack to gather it up. "I bet I could make a crazy stew from some of this stuff." He pulls out a can that appears to contain potatoes and eyes it. "I just hope it's all what it looks like."

Marvelous is fond of that development, as power cuts in the kitchen put specific food storage appliances in danger. He had more than enough faith in Doc's ability to repair the ship around them, as long as he had the parts.

"It's hit or miss," Marvelous answers, around another bite. "If you dig enough, usually you can find stuff. Some of it's too broken to use, though." It helped, of course, that they were surrounded by robots already. "Might be able to ask around, medics might have stuff, right?" A bonus to living with all these damn robots.

"I grabbed anything that looked like it was still good," he answers, eyeing the can in Don's hand. "If it looks suspect, toss it. Only people gettin' use outta that stuff is us and the other humans, right?"

He shivers a little. "Yeah, but... I don't know, feels a little weird if you ask a robot for parts, you know?" The idea gives him the image of a serving platter full of human limbs.

"Anyway, it doesn't matter if it doesn't work, I mean, the only stuff I can recognize in here is really weird obscure electronics anyway." He puts down the can and lifts up a tiny, nondescript box, "I'm pretty sure this is a musical instrument from a planet pretty close to where I was born." He takes out the communications device he was provided, and plugs one of the ends of cable he has around his neck in, fumbling for the other end for a minute until he finds the right connector and plugs it into the box. He pokes at the screen until a weird, tinny noise begins to come out of it.

A second of adjustment and he's got it playing a serviceable little tune that resembles what comes out of a theremin. doesn't really sound good - Don's not a big musician - but it sounds a little like music at least. He chuckles as the tune fades away.

Then he looks back at Marv, "Right, got it. I just don't want to end up starving. Actually, scratch that, I don't even want to end up hungry. You get really cranky."

"Eh, they're robots, 's not the same," Marvelous answers, stubborn on this. He's started to come around to the concept of not all of them being terrible losers, but anybody who could change their entire body like an engine transplant was suspect in his mind.

Marvelous watches with raised eyebrows as Don fumbles around with the cables and the little box, and sits back, half a smile playing small at his mouth as Don gets it working. "Never heard of it," he settles on, "but you want it, keep it." By the time Don looks up, his eyes are narrowing again.

"I don't get cranky," he disagrees, and sits forward to smack Don over the head. "Don't leave cable in the sink," he says, and flattens his hand against Don's head to shake it a little.

He pouts his lips thoughtfully at that. Not that he'd exactly gone out and started to make friends with the skyscraper-sized robots that they shared this planet with, but... Just rejecting them out of hand seems a little off, to Don. "I guess," is what he finally comes up with.

He just laughs. "I've got enough to do without trying to figure out how to play a musical instrument. That's not gonna get us any closer to doing what we need to do here. Whatever that is." But he looks at the little box again and shoves it in his pocket too, with just a touch of a sniffle. "There always used to be guys from that planet playing these things on the street for cash back then." Now's no time for nostalgia, though.

"Ow!" He grabs Marvelous' hand to try to stop him, shouting, "Hey!" and then he rolls his eyes. "I'm gonna take it off before I start cooking, this is just to keep it all from getting tangled." He knows himself pretty well, and walking around for too long with cables looped around his neck is just asking to get choked.

He slides out from under Marvelous and pops the loop off his neck, putting it around the parts on the floor for the moment. He hovers, feeling like he should say something before he moves out of the room. It's not like he's uncomfortable with Marvelous, I mean, he's his captain and his friend. But he's never seen Marvelous so hollow, with bravado making up more of his facade than before.

He misses Joe and Luka, who know how to cheer him up much better than Don does. He didn't realize til now how much of Marvelous' energy he draws from the people around him, and the flavor of Marv without those two is much different. Buuut, he can only do so much. So he just grumbles, "You do so!" and shuffles into the kitchen to wash out the food and put it away.

Marvelous shrugs, unruffled by Don's dissension. He's used to it by now.

"Bring it back for Ahim or somethin', I'm sure she'll be up for hearin' about commoner stuff, or whatever." Well, either that, or Luka would sell it, but Marvelous has plans to see home again, so he'll go for the one least likely to make Don whine.

"Good," he says, and pulls away as Don tries to get away. He watches him shed the cables, taking another crunch out of his nearly-finished apple, and by the time he catches Don's half-under his breath rebuttal, he barely resists the urge to chuck his apple core at the back of his head.

He settles back into his seat, though, half-listening to Don banging around toward the kitchen. Wordlessly, he reaches toward the inside pocket of his vest, where his two Ranger Keys reside, and he presses his fingers over the shape of them. Approximately ten seconds later, Navi's beak comes down on his head, and he hisses, smacking her away.

"Nice to have someone else to do the cooking, eh, Marvelous?" she asks.

"Yeah, Bird," he says, and she attacks him again for the nickname. It's a fall back into an old, familiar routine. He half-expects Luka's punch to his shoulder to separate them, with the sounds of Don in the kitchen so familiar. All he was missing now was--the rest of their crew. He lays off on noogie-ing Navi.

"Hey, Doc," he calls, "you got the stuff for curry?"

He shrugs, Ahim probably would like to hear about it. And given that probably this is one of the few of whatever these instruments are called left in the universe, he might as well keep it.

He's putting away the groceries - there are quite a lot for all that he was carrying them alone, he's learned to pack them tightly. He feels a little bit of relief to hear Marvelous and Navi bickering with each other. His shoulders unknot a little.

"Yeah, but I was gonna save it cos curry roux keeps forever. You want some? I did get two boxes." He calls, ducking his head out of the doorway.

"Yeah, unless you've got chicken in there," Marvelous says, leaning sideways to peer at Don with one eye. "Last try at curry didn't turn out well." How he'd burned curry was a mystery even to him--man, that had been a smelly couple of days. He'd even bothered to scrub out the pan, sick of the stink.

"But if you've got chicken, do that," he says, because who would turn down chicken for their next meal?

He smiles broadly. "I thought you'd say that. Yeah, I've still got some chicken. Plus, it doesn't keep that long." The dishes were bad enough without some decade-long crusted curry monstrocity as well. Don probably would have cried if he saw that.

"You want the same old thing or something new?" He chirps, "I could try making a sauce with one of these weird fruits?"

"Don't mess up the first chicken I've had in a month with some freaky fruit sauce, Doc," Marvelous says, voice full of warning. It's part because he'd hate to see such a waste of chicken, and partly because even a whole bucket of KFC to himself couldn't beat the ones from home.

"All right, all right. I think I can make some teriyaki sauce, how about that?" He goes back to banging around in the kitchen without waiting for a reply. Marvelous always makes himself heard on the Galleon.

"Fine," Marvelous says, after a serious moment of thought. Of course, fried was the best, but he liked all chicken, because it was delicious. "Don't go easy on the spice, or whatever!"

"I won't," Don calls from the kitchen, "But you have to eat your vegetables too!" He's got a head of cabbage that needs eating, and he wasn't going to let Marvelous go any further off a diet that is at least something close to healthy.

"What kind of crazy stuff have you been eating from that junk pile, anyway?" he asks.

Marvelous makes a wordless noise that hopefully covers his feelings about Don's vegetable obsession. He'll end up eating them anyway, of course, but he's going to grumble about it beforehand.

He stops to think. "Whatever was easiest," he settles on, which translates to things that could be eaten raw or heated up real quick. (Usually in the can it came in, if possible.)

He's not going to take no for an answer, no matter what Marvelous grumbles. But he'll probably sear the cabbage a little, just to make it more palatable.

He raises an eyebrow as he starts the pan on. He knows from the cans and containers that Marvelous never throws away. "I guess I probably should have guessed from all the trash you left around. Nothing you couldn't recognize I bet." There's a tut tut in his voice. He plans on testing out all the weird food he sees.

"I dunno anything about some of the crap that winds up in the Pile," Mavelous answers, scowling in the direction of the kitchen. "I just ate the stuff that looked like it wouldn't kill me." A strategy that had largely worked out!

Don wonders for a moment exactly how the Lambda works. He sounds tentative as he asks, "Did you ever see anything familiar? Like that instrument? Stuff we probably couldn't find anymore?" The idea that being here could allow him the chance to have one of his own planet's nostalgic and now pretty much eliminated foods... Well it helps to make the whole thing worthwhile.

"A Ranger Key and some chicken, around Christmas, barbecue sauce, and one time we found a whole pack of socks," he says, covering the basics. "Depends on what you're thinkin' about, I guess. Sometimes stuff comes up that people get all crazy over." Even, of course, putting aside his own reaction to finding the Ranger Key kept safe in his coat pocket next to the Gokaiger Key.

"A Ranger Key!?" he gasps, "Which one?" The idea that somewhere, someone was deprived of their ranger powers is set aside, because wow do they need at least a little bit of an edge here. Zangyack would have been tough, but this place is a tough they're not ready for.

"That's really useful. I wonder if we could get enough to fire the gun." That they could no longer fire the Gokai Galleon Buster was something that was at the forefront of his mind. Not that they'd needed it so far, but he was really proud of his gun.

Marvelous's mouth quirks as he reaches into his vest pocket. He pulls up the red-and-white Dairanger Key for DragonRanger. "Dairanger," he says, wiggling it. "Only the one, though, around Christmas, like I said."

He makes a thoughtful noise when Don mentions the Galleon Buster. "It'd be nice," he says, "dunno how nice the Lambda's gonna be about it."

He looks admiringly at it, "Nice. Yeah, OK, I won't expect anything super great from the junk pile..." Still, he thinks to himself, might be a good idea to spend some time there.

He shrugs. "Well, I guess we can still fire it, just not at its most powerful." He ducks back into the kitchen to throw oil on the pan and get cooking. He has that look in his eye like he's gonna get into a groove, and he only hesitates the smallest amount to try to figure out how Marvelous has reorganized (or disorganized) his spices and seasonings.

"Hopefully the bird can start bein' useful if we're gonna get somethin' nice like a pack of Ranger Keys." He turns his head to look pointedly at Navi, who huffs. This is a conversation they've clearly had before.

"If it doesn't do the whole job, Doc, it's gonna be a problem if we need it," he points out. The gun was an excellent addition to their arsenal, especially with heavy hitters like the guys around here. If they could just collect two more Keys...

"Oh yeah, I guess if there was something for us in that pile, she might be able to tell us, huh." He murmurs, hands moving around. He pauses, reaching for a bottle of soy sauce and putting a splash in the pan. The chicken is simmering now, he puts a top over it and goes to chop the cabbage.

"Mmh," he says, distractedly, "Just have to skip right to fighting with the ship until we get them."

"Well, otherwise why'm I keeping her?" Marvelous asks, and there's some loud cursing when she takes offense to that with her beak to his head.

He rubs at it. "Yeah," he admits, "which isn't exactly a bad plan, since it makes us the biggest guys around." Which is, in fact, actually really nice, for his ego and his sense of safety both. Too bad they had to be careful of breakages--he thinks it's likely materials for repairs would go straight to the guys with minds of their own, before his beloved ship.

He laughs. "Don't mind him, Navi, there are some people on this ship who appreciate you." He turns the chicken in the pan, sprinkling just a bit of sugar over it. Gai's not here, but his particular little artful touches with food are something Don has learned by heart by now.

"Until you wreck up the ship doing something reckless..." He mutters, thinking about those centipedes.

"Yeah, some people don't care about results," he adds, eyeing her.

Marvelous can't actually hear Don muttering to himself, but he knows his crew as well he knows himself, so he's got an idea what that silence means.

"What're you sayin' back there?" he grouses. "Did okay without you here, y'know."

"Yeah, you did fine! The ship, on the other hand..." he responds, cheekily.

"Ship came out all right, what the hell're you talkin' about?" Marvelous answers, "left leg struts were damaged before I got here, remember?" Budgeting, parts, et cetera. "And fightin' centipedes had to be done."

He ducks his head out of the kitchen, gesturing with cooking chopsticks. "Yeah, but that's just the damage you could see! Power output was screwed up on the right side because of your overcompensating for the damage, and when I got here we were a week or less from starting to list! I don't really want anyone touching the Galleon either, but you shoulda had someone look at it!"

Marvelous parrots Don's little diatribe, because he's already heard it a couple of times already. "And I told you, I wasn't goin' to somebody I didn't know to look at my damn ship. Swappin' the fuel system was enough of a pain."

He does feel bad about letting the ship get that bad--he wasn't exactly Mr. Engineering, or anything, but he knew how the outputs were supposed to look, and they hadn't been. He just didn't feel great about asking for that kind of work for free.

He narrows his eyes, annoyed at the mocking imitation. "Yeah, yeah. You're just lucky I showed up when I did, or you'd be camping out in the hull sideways and all my pots and pans would be messed up." He sighs, ducking back into the kitchen to continue to turn the chicken in the pan.

He spoons the sauce over the drumsticks carefully, calling, "Well, I got to the important stuff before the ship went aground, at least." He can't help but be a little grumbly. It's Marvelous' ship, sure. But it's his ship too.

"Well, good for us both, you're here," he answers, which is as close as Don will get to appropriate gratitude at any point ever. Good for a certain value of good, anyway. As good as things got, around here.

He notices Don's grumbling, of course, and huffs to himself more defensively than the rest of his attitude would imply, but otherwise says nothing. The chicken has his mood perking up, anyway.

He's aware that Marvelous' sarcasm sometimes covers more soft, genuine feelings. So he takes it at face value, and feels a little better about the whole situation. I mean, it's obvious to him that the crew's been missed and he's taking the brunt of that. So he lays off. For now. If he doesn't make a stink about the condition of the ship from time to time, Marvelous would get suspicious anyway.

The chicken needs a little more sear, in his opinion, but he moves it to the side of the pan to cook the cabbage alongside. It's one of his sure-fire tricks for getting the crew to eat vegetables... Make them taste a little bit like meat. "It's almost ready, by the way!" he calls. "You want to set the table?" The answer, undoubtedly, will be no.

Don was correct that Marvelous didn't think the Doc was the Doc without a bunch of complaining, often about things Marvelous was directly responsible for. Laws of the universe and of their crew, et cetera.

The smell is wafting onto the bridge by now, and Marvelous pauses to suck in a breath, relishing it. Then Don's question gets to him, and his only response is to laugh. "No," he calls back, after a minute.

He brings out a couple plates and two sets of silverware as well as some cups. "I thought you'd say that," he grumbles. He misses Ahim and Gai even more.

He sets the table and sighs, "All right. See if I make you chicken again for a couple weeks."

Marvelous slides forward his chair, eyeing the table with approval. "You'll have to, or it'll get freezer-burned," he points out, which might be totally false but it's not like he cares.

He rolls his eyes, "You'll be begging me for chicken before this gets even a touch of freezer-burn." But he hustles back into the kitchen to plate anyway. There's a bit of simple seaweed and daikon salad in a bowl that he'd been waiting to spring on Marvelous.

He brings out the chicken, cabbage, and salad very, very carefully, and sets them on the table. "Dinner is served!" he chimes triumphantly, more from the fact that he managed to set the food down without spilling any than anything.

"I don't beg," he answers, looking away resolutely. He's actually half-out of his chair already by the time Don gets to the table, following either the scent of food or the concern that Don was going to somehow trip over a chair leg.

Thankfully they can both relax, and he reaches to the plate of chicken in order to pluck a single piece up and toss it in his mouth. He chews thoughtfully, and nods approvingly before he moves around Don and settles himself down at the head of the table.

"Then let's get to it," he says, already loading up his plate with no concern for Don.

He sighs, "Of course you don't, Captain." He says as he sits down. He smiles, anyway, watching Marvelous so eager to eat his cooking. He makes absolutely sure Marvelous gets some vegetables on his plate before he serves himself, and then he makes sure to rescue a couple of thighs and legs from Marvelous' grasping hands.

He tastes, and it's almost like it would have been if Gai was here. But not quite. Still, good enough.

Marvelous doesn't actually hate vegetables as much as he claims to--mostly he just keeps a high level of complaints in order to discourage more vegetable appearances. He'd grown up eating whatever was around, and it's not a habit he's ever gotten out of. Not that he particularly wanted to get out of it.

He's got a mouth full of food when he speaks, again. "'s good," he compliments.

That's basically all he usually gets as payment for his services, and it took him kind of a long time to realize that it was all he really wanted. A little compliment from Marvelous went a long way, in the end. He eats the chicken first, a habit that started when he joined the crew and people got grabby.

"Thanks," he responds, trying to be just as gruff as Marvelous, but he can't keep a little smirk from his lips. Engineering was his job, but cooking... Well that was his passion, at least a little.

Marvelous is in full food-mode by now, which means the only importance of Don is as an obstacle to More Chicken. He's kind of shoveling a little of everything into his mouth all at once, though. Proper Don cooking was not to be wasted. Even on Don's plate, which means he's keeping an eye on all of that chicken.

With two of them, it's a little easier to divide up the chicken, which is why Don made sure to cook double what he would want to eat plus one, knowing even then that he might get shorted on chicken.

He tries to get to his part of the chicken before Marvelous at least, but he can only eat so fast.

Marvelous, to his credit, only steals one more piece of chicken than Don had banked on, as he's actually enjoying the salad thing. Not that he'd admit it aloud, but half the mound on his plate is gone, which speaks volumes.

"You even hungry?" he asks, through a mouthful of food.

He gives Marvelous a reproachful look, "Not everyone eats like you, Marvelous." He waves his hands. "And if you're so concerned, you could try not eating it all before I can get to it!"

we're devils and black sheep, we're really bad eggs

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