Owner	Pose
Nadia Pym	With all the tools and equipment installed and the security penetration testing completed. GIRL is practically open for business! There's just a few minor changes being made to the security set up to prevent actual cat burglar infiltrations from taking place. Extra cameras. Exotic sensors that are harder to fool. And wasp based security in the elevator shafts. The last of which needs the most work. Most people, Nadia excluded, don't really want swarms of wasps getting into the elevator with them. But that doesn't mean the facilities can't be used by the GIRLs. Indeed today we find Harper and Nadia in the engineering lab working on one of Bluebirds experimental new drones. A series of screens on the walls showing schematics. Work benches around the sides of the room loaded up with tools, equipment and potentially useful pre-fabricated parts. While mechanical arms in the middle of the space hold the drone up to allow them to access it from every possible angle. "So the idea is to base the form on a canine?" Nadia wonders. "Are we aiming for that sort of scale too? There's a few military designs like that intended for carrying supplies for soldiers. I can load up the publicly available information on them for reference. If that'd help? Any specific bits we don't have to hand we can order in or three-D print as needed."
Harper Row	"This is definitely more elbow room than the back of my van." Harper raises her arm to rub at her forehead with the back of her wrist. The anti-static guard isn't the best for mopping up perspiration, but it does help with the occasional obliteration of an itch on her skin. With a sucking in of breath and avoiding inhaling her wad of watermelon flavoured gum, she then exhales and tongues the inside of her cheek. "I mean, dogs are pretty good at certain things. Better than drones in some ways. Getting barrelled into by a rotty or pinning a perp by something with four legs is the reason why cops still use 'em. They've got a certain fear factor that triggers the lizard brain of thugs. Something in ancient past..." Harper muses, and raises her glance up to Nadia and the monitors. "Yeah, those four-legged automatons. Though I think we'd be better served if it's got more intimidation factor than a blank smooth-faced drone. Something with a face would be cool, but I guess we gotta get it actually walking first before I obsess over jaws and claws, right?" she smirks.
Nadia Pym	"Well, police dogs are often used for scent tracking. Which is probably going to be a bit beyond what we can put together on short notice," Nadia muses. Walking around the room. Gesturing at various screens to make the images change. "We /can/ put in some spectrometry equipment which will simulate a sense of smell. Allow for the detection of guns and bombs based on common chemical signatures." She makes some more gestures. Shrinking the design down a bit. "Those designs are generally used for shipping gear. We'll have to make something sleeker and, more importantly, faster moving. You can't chase people down with a pack animal."
Harper Row	Harper starts chewing on her bottom lip. A bad habit that the chewing gum is supposed to prevent. She ceases when remembers, and goes back to chomping down on the artifical stuff instead. The lip-smackin moist sounds almost on the verge of annoying her own ears. "Ahhh, that's true. It would be pretty awesomesauce if they could detect gunpowder, cordite, y'know explosives and all that. Yeah, some sort of artifical snoof-snoof, snuffle-wuffle." Harper raises a screwdriver and twirls it around before using it to scratch at her temples. "You ever see those alien movies? There's this alien that runs around, but it can run on ceilings and walls, not just the ground. Not exactly like a monkey, still more like a doggo. So, sleek sounds good." "It's gonna have to have a hell of a set of Asimov protocols. Those three rules of robotics. But, uh...tweaked."
Nadia Pym	"Alien movies? Which ones? I've seen plenty of movies speculating on the origin of Superman. Or do you mean the Roswell alien autopsy film? That was faked by the CIA. Everyone knows that. The real crash was in Aurora Texas decades before that and they didn't have modern cameras. Which is why they didn't film it," Nadia says cheerfully, shaking her head at Harper as if she'd said something funny. "Making a drone climb on the ceiling is... not impossible." She considers the idea for a moment. "Probably not very practical though. Ceilings aren't designed to support much weight." She adds spectrographic sensors to a list of potential features. Then after a pause adds wall/ceiling climbing with a ? after it. "Oh! What about grapnel lines? Rather than climbing walls it could fire hooks and use a line to haul itself up."
Harper Row	Harper peers over to Nadia, eyes framed by her brows, staring at the options Hollywood has rattled out for her to consider. Opening her mouth to vomit forth a whole geekdom of information over the Alien franchise. She stalls and pulls back, favouring the technical considerations. Though she's dying to make her tongue do the ~mya-mya~ punching thingy, but her impression may not cut mustard. She grunts instead and her mind lurches onto grappling options. "Sure, that could do in a pinch. I was just considering, a sprinting pal that could provide distraction and crowd control, where it could do things that airborne drones couldn't also do, with distraction and crowd control...but y'know, more physical obviously. I'm more fearful of dogs than crows. Though I hear magpies in Australia should certainly give me pause." She squints. "What also did the CIA...~obviously~ fake?"
Nadia Pym	Even if Harper was to explain the movies in great detail she'd probably get a blank look in response. Nadia hasn't exactly watched a whole lot of science fiction. Generally people who do try get her to watch movies pick things which won't give the super genius weird ideas or inspiration. Does Harper really want a genetically engineered xenomorph running around GIRL going hiss at people? Probably not. "Something quick, nimble, but with enough weight it can grab a criminal and restrain them. Without causing injury." An important GIRL rule is no weapons! But holding onto someone to slow them down or to grapple them. Well that's another story entirely. "Maybe we can fit other useful tools. High power lamps to illuminate dark areas or temporarily blind people. Thermal smoke dispenser so it can create a mobile cover zone. In case you need to approach a snipers nest..." If Harper hadn't asked about the CIA the list of option features would likely be a mile long... "Oh. Well. A lot of this comes from Red Room records so could be propaganda or disinformation.. But I read this file which says Marilyn Monroe was assassinated by the US Government because she was going to reveal secrets about alien deals she learned from the Kennedys. Also they covered up the Mars landing so as not to upset the Martians. Those NASA missions with the drones? They keep landing those on the dark side of the Moon. They change everything to look red using CGI." There's a beats pause. "I shouldn't tell you the stuff about Elvis. That's way too classified to share." She glances left, then right, and whispers "But between you and me? His death was faked so he could do a tour around Alpha Centauri."
Harper Row	"At this point, I'm not even sure that isn't possible." Harper muses in monotone. "The level of wacko that's going on around...everywhere. Now, the skeptic in me demands proof, but..." she makes a vague gesture with a hand, wafting away at the air. "One thing is for sure, I'm bringing over my collection of movies. I've already got them organized in importance, influence, binge-ability and special effects awesomeness. It'll be painless. We can make a girl's GIRLs night out of it seeing as we're all a little dorky, nerdy or whatever." "Testing our ideas out...I wonder if we need to make a crash test dummy ~first~. Poor thing. But could be really Youtube funny in a failworthy sort."
Nadia Pym	"Can you read Russian?" Nadia asks curiously. "I mean I have archives. Lots of them. I /did/ steal them from the Red Room before I escaped. So they rather want them back and anyone who reads them..." She looks at Harper and winces. "I do not imagine they would want you to walk around knowing so much." Does Gotham really want the Red Room adding to the list of potential bad guys they have to deal with? Probably not. "A GIRL movie night would be excellent," she agrees brightly. Bouncing with delight. "I mostly just watch the movies Gwen has shared with me." Maybe there are music videos too. Probably someone should be bringing sweet tunes! So many things to plan. "We can do a lot of that virtually? Knock up a virtual prototype and test range of motion. Run through a bunch of iterations until we have the best design. Use some of the software they use for reducing weight on airplanes. Test again a few times. Then we build a prototype."
Harper Row	Harper starts to shake her head. Her head tilted in such a way, as if to disagree with how much movies based on books can do so much wrong/right. She raises a finger and wags it back and forth like a cheeky T-1000 while sucking on her own tongue. She steps closer to Nadia. She lays a hand on the other woman's forearm gently. "Nuh-uh." She takes a long moment to fix her with a look. "Not virtually. We can do that in our heads. We've got great imaginations, and software will only go so far." She squeezes her hand gently and then pats and rubs with her fingers, flesh on flesh. "We'll plan it out. But we'll test it out where it counts, yeah? Where we can feel the results. Impact, pressure, all the physics. I'll strap pillows to myself if necessary. Come to think of it, I've still got my old roller derby gear. If I can barrel into some chick for a couple hours doing dirty tricks, it'll serve where it needs to for us with our projects, yeah? That'll get us real results." "And you can guess my teamer tag in the meantime."
Nadia Pym	"I mean I can predict every calculation in my head," Nadia admits. "And work up a full simulation in my imagination. But it really is faster to use some of the computer tech we paid literally hundreds of thousands of dollars for..." If she doesn't justify spending Kate's money then maybe they'll have to give the equipment back!?! "What's a roller derby?" she wonders. "Why do you put chickens in a barrel?" She blinks a few times. "Pillows..? We do have proper safety padding we can use? That's not virtual so it's okay right?" She frowns. It's bad enough she's having to calculate the dimensions of robot parts in her imagination then manually calculate an iterative improvement process. But now Harper is speaking in code. "I think you might need to tell me what that is before I even attempt a hypothesis."
Harper Row	"I'm more of a show rather than tell, but I'm willing to butter the bread before sliding it onto the pan." Harper offers after a languid licking of her own chops. She gives Nadia's arm another gentle pat before she drags her fingertips off the long way. A bit of a rolling of her shoulders and the Gotham gal shrugs out of her jacket so she's just in her tank-top. "Imagine Nascar going round and round, but it's us gals. Imagine hockey, and football, and points scored by doing lah-lah-laps." Harper flicks her tongue while imitating a misfiring motorcycle that's revved. "Kicking is a little frowned upon, but whatever happens, happens. There's a penalty box for bad girls to think about what they've done, catch their breath and show off a few bruises. And blow kisses to adoring fans. Score points. There's your team, and their team. Tall girls, short girls, fast girls and stronk girls. Lapping is important and you gotta protect your Jammers from Blockers." Harper puts her hands on her hips. "I can't show you James Caan doing his Rollerball, because that's...well...I suppose it might help but it's not exactly what's going on. I'll take you out to a Derby. My treat. That'll explain more than my bad explanations." "No deep thoughts at a Derby, so it'll be like a bit of a vacation. Maybe it'll give you some interesting new ideas. We'll keep the hotdogs and soda levels balanced. I bet there's one on tonight if we're lucky. You free to get dragged out on a date, Ms. Pym?"
Nadia Pym	"I don't think I've ever really been confused by /anything/ before now," Nadia says solemnly. "Is the bread for the chicken? Are we making lunch first.. is that what you mean?" She watches the display in wonder. Because in her entire life nothing has ever been explained to her that she couldn't grasp. But somehow Harper has thrown too many cultural references. Too much slang. Possibly also too much teasing. And all she can do is be impressed... "I grew up in a Siberian bunker remember. I don't know what a Nascar is either..." Except it seems they go round and round. "Is it like a merry-go-round?" And then thankfully the situation is resolved with a field trip. Show not tell indeed. "I'd love to go watch some girls... Lapping and possibly being put in a box with you?" Keeping Nadia from deep thinking is easier said than done though. Especially when she's just started doing all the complex math needed to design cool drones!