In this crowd, I suppose an irate 6' tall redhead with daisho at her waist wouldn't draw much attention, even if they did know that I'd gone towards the market area with brown hair and a different gender. The other inhabitants of the Explain Star were even more used to this sort of thing happening every so often. Well, Elena seemed about to ask some question or other, but paused and reconsidered as she saw the irritated look on my face.
"Tell Mal I'll be right back," I grumbled as I stormed into the section of the 'Star that I'd more or less claimed for my own. The workshop was one of the things I'd talked Mal into as a necessity, and I was glad of it. I calmed down as I watched some finishing operations going on one of the automated machining centers. Not that I disliked the handwavium, but I was trained as an engineer, and highly advanced technology that I could understand was reassuring. Mundane technology, perhaps, but only in the sense that it was made to human blueprints. I'd fairly quickly realized that despite everything handwavium could do, there would always be a place for stuff that worked in comprehensible ways, without random... features. Conservative reaction, perhaps, but I made a decent income making bits for other people who realized how little we actually knew about the stuff and were a bit iffy on trusting their lives to it completely.
Okay, to be honest, I was cheating a bit. There wasn't room for a full assortment of machine tools, so I had to break them down and reassemble them into other things using handwavium. Fortunately, the quirks from this mostly manifested in the form of very strange units; the milling machine was taking a cut out of a piece of alloy that it measured in tiny little fractions of a light year, and none of the placards on it were in any langauge I recognized. Part of the reason I made Dee though.
I sighed and stretched, rummaging through a drawer and extracting a dry Hawaiian shirt and a bra. Truth to tell, the quasi-curse didn't bother me that much, except for two things. Of course, it seemed to follow Murphy's law; when I was in a hurry and didn't have the proper stuff to change into, I'd be more likely to walk into someone or slip into a puddle, or run out into a rainstorm, or whatever. That wouldn't have been much of an issue if it didn't hurt so much to change more than once a day.
"Oh well, whatever," I muttered to myself as I tied my hair back and adjusted the swords. "Sorry about the delay," I said as I wandered back into the common area.
"These things happen," Mal casually replied, and I couldn't help but break into a grin at the fact that we lived in a universe where that was true.
"Tell Mal I'll be right back," I grumbled as I stormed into the section of the 'Star that I'd more or less claimed for my own. The workshop was one of the things I'd talked Mal into as a necessity, and I was glad of it. I calmed down as I watched some finishing operations going on one of the automated machining centers. Not that I disliked the handwavium, but I was trained as an engineer, and highly advanced technology that I could understand was reassuring. Mundane technology, perhaps, but only in the sense that it was made to human blueprints. I'd fairly quickly realized that despite everything handwavium could do, there would always be a place for stuff that worked in comprehensible ways, without random... features. Conservative reaction, perhaps, but I made a decent income making bits for other people who realized how little we actually knew about the stuff and were a bit iffy on trusting their lives to it completely.
Okay, to be honest, I was cheating a bit. There wasn't room for a full assortment of machine tools, so I had to break them down and reassemble them into other things using handwavium. Fortunately, the quirks from this mostly manifested in the form of very strange units; the milling machine was taking a cut out of a piece of alloy that it measured in tiny little fractions of a light year, and none of the placards on it were in any langauge I recognized. Part of the reason I made Dee though.
I sighed and stretched, rummaging through a drawer and extracting a dry Hawaiian shirt and a bra. Truth to tell, the quasi-curse didn't bother me that much, except for two things. Of course, it seemed to follow Murphy's law; when I was in a hurry and didn't have the proper stuff to change into, I'd be more likely to walk into someone or slip into a puddle, or run out into a rainstorm, or whatever. That wouldn't have been much of an issue if it didn't hurt so much to change more than once a day.
"Oh well, whatever," I muttered to myself as I tied my hair back and adjusted the swords. "Sorry about the delay," I said as I wandered back into the common area.
"These things happen," Mal casually replied, and I couldn't help but break into a grin at the fact that we lived in a universe where that was true.