2010-12-09 - A Dangerous Exchange

It's been a while since Argama began its transit towards the planet of Mars. The aliens had left the crew alone for a while, and as much as the pressure was still there, there definitely are some people who have begun to sleep on the job. Ascian however, is not one such person. He's been getting plenty of sleep in the temporary room he occupies on board of the Argama. He's been behaving quite well as of late, busily helping out all across the battleship. However, today, he has evil plans. He knows that a young man named Katz Kobayashi has been trying to keep an eye on him from the shadows. Of course, with his own military training, it isn't hard to detect when he is being followed or looked at. And right now is exactly one such moment.

He feels those prying eyes in his back, the brown haired youngster peering at him from behind some crates in the hangar. The Divine Crusader himself is holding an electric screwdriver and applying it to one of the control panels of the ship after having been asked to remove it, so they could get it to maintenance. It had been busted, and was currently the only control panel for moving the gundam elevator for the port-side launch-strip. He finally removes it from the wall and unplugs some of the wires sticking from it with ease. Battleships like this were made for easy maintenance after all.

However, when he finally kicks off from the hangar, up onto the second floor that access the area, and heads into a hallway... he clearly is /not/ on his way to the maintenance room. He's going somewhere else... where is he moving? Could Katz follow him and find out about his /devious/ plan? Was he trying to hiding the control panel? Was he going to cut the wires? Was he going to sabotage it?!

Of course Katz wants to know what this jerk is up to. He follows close behind the Martian, ducking behind everything from large objects to confused people. Katz is like a stealthy cat in his mind. In reality, however, Katz was more like a large blundering drunk with his attempts to be stealthy.

And yet, he doesn't let this stop him from trying to discover what Ascian is trying to do. He needs to find out what this guy is doing here.

He does note the fact this guy is allowed to do maintanance. Why was a prison allowed to do these things?

Well, it wasn't exactly 'maintenance' to unplug a control panel and get it to the maintenance room. It wasn't as if /he/ was supposed to mess with the electronics. And there had been an engineer peeking over his shoulder to watch Ascian undo the device. The problem was the transit...

The transit takes Ascian and the control panel down the hallway, into another, descending into the less crowded areas of the ship... until finally the young man arrives in front of his own room and opens it. It is dark inside. He immediately slips in - grinning, hoping that Katz will try to find out what he is doing with the control panel. Within seconds he flicks the light on... /having exchanged the control panel for an exact spare with explosives put into it/.

He does this however while it is dark, and makes sure the 'old' one is put away securely and hidden. So when the lights come on, it looks like he was still holding the exact same control panel without having done anything to it.

Katz is obvlious to this switch. He stands directly behind Ascian as the lights come on and suddenly yells, "A-HA!" There is a point from his stubby little hands. "Thought you could sabotage the ship on my watch did you?!"

Katz grins and shakes his head, immediately sprinting to save the "real" control panel from Ascian's hands. "Well you're not going to take that vital component back to your Divine Crusader scumbag friends! I'm taking this and telling Bright to throw you out the airlock!" The teenager is feeling rather good about himself. He wouldn't even notice if the real control panel was right in front of him.

Ascian's showmanship is impressive. His body jolts a bit as the kid suddenly shouts out, and when he looks around he truly looks shocked... before relief shows on his face. As if he were thinking 'oh, it's just the kid'. "I wasn't doing any such thing!" A lie like this was not good enough if he didn't lie on top of it to hide it. "I was just going in here real quick to grab myself a snack." He turns and points at a package of 'HAMBURGER' that was yet uneaten. The man then gives Katz a weird look.

"Look, please don't tell Bright I was slacking off. I have enough problems as it is." Slacking off? He just piles lie on lie to confuse the kid. "And it's not as if that thing is /really/ bro~..." He quickly covers his mouth - as if he was not supposed to say that.

Katz glares at Ascian and laughs harshly. "You expect me to fall for that?! You are clearly trying to cover it up!" The pilot of the MK II holds the device, sliding it underneth his arm. "I mean even if you are on break, noone is stupid enough to bring this kind of tech into their room for a burger!" Katz shakes his head, not buying this lie for a moment. He had this douchebag right where he wants him...

And he almost jumps at the next statement. "I,it's broken?! Oh god! Bright is going to think I broke it before I got it back to him! WHAT AM I GOING TO DO?!" Katz looks to Ascian as if he expects the spy to help him out of this jam.

"Okay..." The Divine Crusader raises his hands defensively. "Okay, I was up to no good. But here, liste~." Ascian pauses as Katz begins to talk about it being broken. He is confused for a moment, then lowers his hands a bit from their raised position. "Calm down. It..." He looks around suspiciously, as if someone could hear him. "It's not actually broken." He whispers to Katz, before giving him a look as if he was telling him 'don't tell anyone'. "Someone reported it broken. I checked it, but there's not actually anything wrong with it."

Truth on top of lies confuses only that much more, and can give a person a false sense of security, only much more quantified since the Divine Crusader had given up the control panel when Katz had run up towards him in 'surprise'. He did everything to make sure Katz thought he had the upper hand here.

"Oh thank god. Listen... I'll look the other way this time but... don't do this stuff again! I mean this is my home!" Katz thinks he has the upper hand here. Like he is the one with the power to pardon Ascian's misdeeds. "Anyway, I'm going to take this back and reinstall it before anyone notices it is gone." He looks around and places a hand on Ascian's shoulder. "Ok? So this time, you're free to enjoy your hamburger, alright?"

"Ah... ehhh... okay." Ascian mutters uncertainly, as if he didn't trust that Katz was going to let him get away that easily. But in reality, this was EXACTLY as planned! If Katz was seen putting that control panel back in, nobody would suspect it. He takes a step back, confirming their 'deal', and he bows his head a bit to make Katz feel like he had suddenly gained a minion of sorts. "Sorry." He adds with a most sorrowful voice.

"Don't worry about it. Just...don't do it again or I'll shoot you myself." Katz adds, turning in the doorway. He starts to leave but stops looking over his shoulder. He had a bad feeling about this guy still. That was mainly his Newtype Senses going on the fritz. Like they were trying to tell him something. He decides to just ignore it, moving toward the hanger to replace the stolen part.

Ascian is left behind in his room, his eyes fixed on Katz as he floats out. He gives Katz a hesitant smile, like he was feeling guilty about what he hadn't actually done. Or perhaps it was guilt about what he was doing. For a liar, it sometimes becomes hard to tell your lies and truths apart, even if you plan them that well, due to the emotions behind them being so well acted that they almost become reality. "I promise." The Divine Crusader hesitantly mutters, like a child who had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. But in the back of his mind, he was doing backflips for joy that this plan had actually /worked/. It was somewhat hard not to show it, but he manages for now.