Welcome to Gaia! ::

The new coat felt all wrong. Probably because his own jacket had been fur lined and customised to the extreme. This one was simple, and he wasn't sure he was going to find it easy to get used to the elaborate branching emblem when he caught sight of it at times either. It was a lot to deal with and he was still very much like a lost soul in a new place. His hair was tied back, he was wearing his glasses - because reading actually mattered here - and felt like a complete tit. He'd even worn a shirt because it was indoors and he couldn't wave it off as just tropical island weather.

He had some duties to do at the very least and today it looked like it was minipets that were on the menu. He didn't mind minipets, most of them anyway.

He counted along the doors till he found lab 3b where he'd been informed there was probably cage cleaning work to be done where he could try and pick up some of the general procedures. When he found it, he headed right inside without so much as a knock. Pleasantries still very much happened to other people.

Rep stopped in his tracks when he realised why he'd recognised the hallway outside the room he was currently in. Melvin. He'd been hoping his first bit of humiliation would be with someone he didn't know, but alas, that was not to be. He took a slow breath that wasn't half as calming as he hoped it would be.

"Jordan has it." he said, matter-of-factly. "I don't need it anymore." He turned his back to Melvin and gestured with his thumb at the tree before turning back. "Sun doesn't want me. New division."

Rep crossed his arms huffily at Melvin's expression, surely it wasn't such a major shock to people? The way things had been going for a long time hinted that he wasn't welcome in Sun, the death threats probably should have been an early hint.



He pushed Tracey's thoughts aside.

"They don't want me. It is what it is. I got in trouble, Simon said I could keep my rank if I got the ******** out of his division. I don't like to be the awkward guy where I'm not wanted, so I did." It sounded so flippant when he said it out loud, as if he'd been assertive and made a brave choice rather than conceded to a choice that was all he really could accept and retain his dignity, a choice that still left him feeling like some important part of his soul had been torn out.

"Life would take me. I transferred."

"Sasha came to visit in the infirmary, things kicked off, there was a fight. They found out about our history, there was backlash. Simon mostly wanted me killed, but I got a trainee demotion and he said he'd waive it if I got out of Sun." He'd put everything on the line just to have the man say no, stop, he was needed and they'd called his bluff. He'd still have been inconsolable if what H had to say hadn't given him hope there was still things he could learn here and offer.

"It's s**t." he said sadly, that creeping urge to tear up on the periphery of his thoughts. "But I'm a big guy, I can deal. Somebody said to me one time that I looked good at surviving. I am."

He nodded. "I'm still a hunter. No that it ******** means much, given I haven't got a clue about things about here yet." He smirked weakly. "Why, scared I'm going to try and make you go get me a hot chocolate? I'm no Marcus."

"I don't do the pulling rank bollocks. Rank is nothing, some of the smartest people I know aren't hunters and some of the ******** useless arseholes I know have rank on their side." He might have joked or dragged it out a bit for laughs, play up the b***h thing, but he was in no mood to push his luck at all.

"No department, I'm just like, oddjob for the time being, getting a taste of everything to see what I'm decent at. Well except the infirmary. I'm banned from there." Which was a pity, considering that was where Harrison was.

"Today it's mostly minipets that I'm dealing with. So no exactly edge of my seat."

"It's going to take some getting used to for me too." He was used to having run of the island, free to do as he pleased as long as it ensured he stayed in prime fighting condition. He still intended to keep fit, even around the labs because the habits of over a year were hard to break. He didn't care if he had to sacrifice some of his sleep to do it.

"It's fine." he said with a weak shrug of his shoulders. "It's only work, I'm no someone who shirks anymore. If s**t needs done I'll do it."

He picked up the tiny turtle and he earring glowed fiercely as he eyed it.

"And aye. I don't know about the game being over, but we aren't allowed to be on the island at the same time any longer. When she gets back I need to go off island for a week. And vice versa."

"I don't care if they treat me like a dog." he said. "If they want shittily made coffee because they are too lazy to move their own fat arse then that's their problem I guess. I'll get them it." Pride was no longer an issue, he had pride when it came to fighting, when it came to claw to claw tooth to tooth battles, but when it was whether he was too good to get someone a coffee, there was no pride involved.

The little turtle flapped its fins at him as if it was trying to fly. He took an odd sort of pity on it and took it over to plunk it in the bucket. "Maybe. That's her problem. She's got the upper hand, its her move. My move comes later, depending on what she does."

He raised a brow at Melvin. "An appointment? What's to know? My artifact makes a lot of ******** water and isn't much good to anyone unless they feel like a drink."

Rep gave Melvin a funny look at all his considered and very valid points. Researching artifacts made sense when he put it like that, still to Rep it seemed very much like someone else's problem. New inventions were something that other people provided, not something he was going to futilely pour hours and hours into. What he did best had always been dismantling things, taking them apart for the sake of seeing what made them break. He didn't want to examine the pieces and write about them. Even with programs, what he wrote were like viruses, code that burrowed into the very nature of a game and attacked the copy protection, hibernating there in defiance of checksums. It was a war on a battlefield no human could see or touch, written in electrical pulses like a heartbeat in a machine no one human fully understood.

It wasn't making sippy cups for hunters.

"Its fresh water, I've never measured it, and it hardly takes any time to recharge. I guess it'd be useful maybe." He shrugged. "If you want to examine it you can. To me its just a good survival tool I guess."