Log Info
Title: Hothead vs. Ice Queen
Emitter: None
Characters: Cordelia, Sasha
NPCs: None
Place: Cordelia's lab, Taylor Hall
Time: Morning, July 15th, 2010
Summary: Sasha barges into Cordelia's lab and attempts to get her to reverse the effects of the dehormonizer on Jerry. It doesn't go over well.
One of the lights over the lab bench has been adjusted to glow with the daylight spectrum, beneath which Cordelia is working steadily on something almost too small to see, with her goggles down and tiny waldoes attached to her fingers to offer a little more control over what she's doing at microscopic level. There's a brass-and-wood phonograph playing something that blends strings with modern beats and a faintly metallic underlay — Abney Park, if one's familiar with it. She seems quite absorbed in her work.
Daylight. Morning. A morning for action! Even retail therapy with Claire hasn't gotten Sasha to calm down. It probably exascerbated it, knowing that each potentially Jerry-maddening outfit would go over with all the impact of jello on a wall. Cordelia's door flings open. Sasha's there, arms crossed and not at all looking happy. "We need to talk," she says gravely.
Somehow, Cordelia isn't surprised by the door banging open. "Most people," she says calmly, "Knock before bursting into a laboratory, lest there be explosions, or security concerns." She looks up from her work, eyes magnified by her goggles, and is treated to an up-close look at Sasha's pores. "You need to take better care of your skin; it looks like the nanites might be increasing oil production." She slides those lenses out of the way with a *click* and a *tick* of cogs and gears shifting.
She's rather predictable in that way. "You'd have locked the door," Sasha says. She takes a step in, closes it behind her, and leaves her arms at her side. "You drugged my boyfriend," she says. "You really want to be insulting my skin too?"
Cordelia gives Sasha a patient sort of look. "Yes, at his volunteering to test a new invention," she says. "And may I remind you, Miss Romanova, that you /did/ just shove my door open; I feel quite justified in commenting on your appearance." She pauses for a moment. "So, if you're quite done trying to bluster your way into intimidating me, what do you want?"
"I want you to fix him!" Sasha declares in frustration. "He's not….*himself*! He's like some crazy pod person with no reaction to me. I might as well be a cardboard cutout. *HE* might as well be a cardboard cutout."
"Actually, I found him far more intelligent and informed and thus interesting than when he was relentlessly hitting on any girl in sight," Cordelia notes, turning back to her work under the solar-light. "If your relationship is purely built on sexual attraction, then I feel rather sorry for you." She pulls her goggles down again and begins working with the tiny waldoes to adjust something on a miniature circuitboard.
Sasha sputters a few times, then wrinkles her face up in confusion. "But he's not him! And how dare you judge our relationship. You wouldn't even know what to do with a boy if you had one," Sasha shoots. She crosses her arms again. "Fine, ignore me. If this thing doesn't wear off you're gonna be in a world of pain."
Cordelia looks up from her work again, that patient expression still in place — the sort one would wear when dealing with a child throwing a temper tantrum. "Miss Romanova," she says evenly, "Claiming that I am judging your relationship is a fallacy; I feel sorry for you in that evidently you have never had a model for a relationship wherein sex and the body were not central to it, and thus cannot conceive of a more grounded marriage of minds, despite having read Shakespeare's 'The Tempest' in Freshman English, where the concept is discussed and exemplified." The threat seems to have no effect on her save to make her turn back to her work. "Threats. How… boorish."
Sasha stares at Cordelia, blinking a few times. "You are the most arrogant, cold, frustrating person I've ever met. And I'm from LA," Sasha hisses. "I hope you're happy dying alone some day," she adds. Sasha turns and opens the door, stalking out.
"Do come back when I've completed these adjustments to your nanites," Cordelia calls after Sasha. "I believe I've reprogrammed them to accept solar energy."
