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Hello? Hello! This is Jack.

Um, I am in one of the back trailers in the second convoy. And I have found sewing supplies and more fabric, and I thought, well, some of us have been going through, erm, changes. These can be hard on our clothing or make wearing certain clothing difficult.

I am not the best tailor in the world, I cannot make a patch or mended tear invisible or create clothing from scratch, but I know how to mend very well if you do not need it to be invisible. Also I can probably take your old clothes and alter them to fit you better.

I will be down here all evening if you would like to stop by. I will try to be here most evenings after dinner but before bed in case anyone needs help fixing your clothes. Okay? Okay.

[And with that slightly distracted-sounding final note, as the sound of fabric rustling around marks him getting back to work, he signs off.

He will indeed be down in the shops section of the convoy all evening, working diligently to patch, mend, repair, and alter clothing for anyone who comes by. If no one comes by, he's working on his own clothes or trying to work out how to make a pattern so he can learn how to make clothes from scratch, preferably with as little wasted material on mistakes as possible. He has no idea if he will ever find more, after all.]

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[The lack of fabric recyclers is starting to get to SecUnit - it's been shoving the tattered remnants of its sleeve out of the way or trying to fold them up out of the way, but it's a very temporary solution.

(Someone from Preservation would probably know how to do this, it's in the name of their colony. SecUnit hasn't bothered. It's too used to its clothes being too riddled with bullet holes and bloodstains to be salvageable.)

In the meantime - no preamble, no identification.]

Can you fix a sleeve?

[At least Jack recognizes the voice, and is frankly not surprised at not having a greeting included, coming from that one.]

Oh, yes, of course. It may not be with fabric in the exact same color as the original, if it needs patching, but I can make it so it at least is whole.

It... might.

[The tears weren't actually intentional, but Jack can probably guess that. It grimaces, where Jack can't see, and adds,]

Fine.

[That's all the warning Jack gets that it's leaving the radio and making its way towards the Convoy - the parts that it hasn't explored, seeing as that's where the dining hall and the bar and everything is. It's still wearing the bike helmet when it ducks inside.]

[There isn't much to the shop: a counter, a couple tables and shelves, the door. Jack is at one of the tables with a needle and thread and a pile of different fabrics, working on a pair of trousers he's modifying to more comfortable fit all his tails.

He looks up when the door opens, and offers SecUnit a smile, immediately putting his current project aside.]

Hello! Are you wearing the-- oh I see, yes you are.

[Yeah that's a pretty torn up sleeve, all right.]

[It sure is - at the moment the sleeve is a collection of tatters, ones that it hasn't folled up out of the way.

It's still wearing the jacket though, because - well, it doesn't exactly have a change of clothes to swap to instead. It shifts slightly, looking immediately more awkward. Without a purpose like scavenging to distract it, SecUnit seems to be struggling with what to do with its body while talking.]

How do you need to -

[It hoists the arm with the torn sleeve.]

Um. Well. It would be easiest if you could take your shirt off, but if you are uncomfortable with that--

[Because he has a feeling SecUnit is probably not comfortable with that.]

--I could take the sleeve off at the shoulder, at the seam. I will need to measure your arm to make sure I do not make the replacement too long or short.

[For about 1.6 seconds SecUnit stares across the little trailer of shop spaces, clearly weighing the pros and cons of the situation as it fidgets with the fastenings on the jacket.]

How long will it take you to fix it.

[Jack considers the sleeve and its tattered state, then he guesses,]

An hour maybe. I might actually replace the whole sleeve up to the elbow. That will be quicker than trying to stitch the pieces back together and put little patches between them.

And I'd have to take it off for you to put the sleeve back on.

[This sucks. But an hour... That's enough for an episode or two. It could be worse. Jack is not the worst human. And it's got Sanctuary Moon.

It starts by taking off the helmet, setting it down on the nearby table much more in its own arm's reach than Jack, then pulls off the jacket over its head. It's wearing a simple t-shirt under the jacket, a navy blue. No logos (the navy blue counts, as far as Perihelion is concerned).

More importantly, its arms being more visible makes it much more obvious what SecUnit might actually mean. It's not that there's no skin and flesh - it's there on its hands, its arms. But so are the seams for the gun ports, metal running into its joints and augmenting parts of its musculature in a way that blends them seamlessly. The mechanical parts aren't just something that got grafted on.

But SecUnit is trying not to think about its arms being on display, mostly by promptly shoving the jacket in Jack's direction.]

Jack had put two and two together between the smells he'd picked up and the conversation they had, but seeing it is definitely... a thing. He takes it in, mostly sidelong without looking directly at the gunports and metal joins, as he collects the jacket.

Then he turns away, back to his table. "I will need to measure your forearm. I will try not to touch you, if you can hold your arm out still for me. The tape measure will need to touch you, though. Is that all right?"

It knows he's staring, it has to - at least from the way SecUnit's eyes flick towards Jack, then away again to stare at the far side of the room. It goes to shove its hands into its pockets almost immediately upon handing over the sweatshirt -

Only to promptly be told that Jack needs its measurements. It grimaces. "Fine." It has to shove the arm in question out, once again watching Jack out of the corner of its eye. The other hand remains pointedly in its pocket, even if the rest of it is all over tense.

At least it's a very brief staring. Jack collects his tape measure and approaches. He stays at arm's length, and as promised, does not touch SecUnit at all. He holds the tape measure an inch over its skin when measuring its forearm's length, and when wrapping it around the widest point of its arm and then its wrist, makes sure no finger actually touches.

"May I ask," he begins as he turns back to the table, "will a normal sleeve interfere with those ports I saw?" He is not a hundred percent sure what they are, but they look like they expand a little. "Or should I make something with, I don't know, snaps or velcro along that seam?"

It's still stiff as the measurements are being taken, withdrawing out of Jack's reach the moment he's done with the tape and turned back to the table. It even glances towards the door, maybe measuring its chances of getting out of there, before its attention is pulled back by the question.

It holds up an arm, forearm held parallel and not pointed anywhere towards Jack, and activates the energy weapon, which folds out of the port, humming but not primed to fire.

"They're guns," it says, shortly, letting the weapon fold back away again. "Unless it's skintight it can get in the way when they close. It wasn't the guns that shredded the sleeve anyway."

"Oh hmm." That is actually kind of fascinating. He examines it from a distance, frowning a little. "So you would prefer the sleeve flush with your skin then, and perhaps a little stretchy to accommodate the guns. I can do that."

He moves past the table to a cabinet behind it, opening the doors to reveal a few mismatched and definitely not full rolls of fabric, and some loose patches of more fabrics folded on shelves. "Knit, knit, we want knit... aha this. The color is even close, though it is not perfect." He pulls out a folded pile of soft fabric, holds it up next to SecUnit's shirt for it to see, as if checking for approval. "Good?"

It shrugs, a gesture that apparently indicates the extent of its concerns about this - it's pretty sure that it's going to ruin this jacket eventually, with more tears or monster blood or something else. It still needs to get used to the lack of fabric recyclers. "Sure."

... With one exception. When Jack holds up the fabric for inspection, it comes back into touching range, to get a feel for the fabric on offer, rubbing it between thumb and forefinger as its expression goes momentarily contemplative. "Yeah, that works," it declares, letting the fabric drop as it steps away again.

Jack nods, and takes fabric and jacket back to his table to get to work, letting SecUnit do as it likes. He mutters to himself as he does, keeping up a kind of running commentary. It's mostly in Spanish, but the world's language filters make it understandable anyway, even if SecUnit didn't have a module that includes old-school Mexican-accented Spanish.

Only once mid-work he does speak up. "SecUnit? May I hold this against your arm to make sure I have the length right?"

It waits a whole 4.2 minutes of Jack working before it settles in, arms crossed, at one of the tables, staring at the opposite wall. Its expression goes vague, abstracted - from the outside it might seem to just be spacing out as it waits, but of course it's taking advantage of the wait to play media - episode 12 of Sanctuary Moon, which isn't as good plot-wise as later arcs but was the point when the show started to find its footing, as far as SecUnit is concerned.

And it's monitoring the language, too - it has hints of one of the Preservation standards that overlaps with one of its Corporate modules, with enough differences in dialect to need the local translation module's help. It filters and parses it in background.

None of those inputs are enough to occupy enough processing space to surprise it when Jack finally makes his request. It shrugs, then turns the gesture into lifting its arm in silent permission. "Sí," it says, slipping into the closer language module.

Jack blinks over at it. "You speak Spanish?" he says, in Spanish, somewhere between surprised and delighted. Nobody else has seemed to either notice when he swaps languages, or else has noticed but not understood.

He does get up at the lifted arm, so SecUnit doesn't have to hold it up forever, hurrying over to hold the sleeve against it, not touching, but just making sure the length is right from shoulder to wrist.

It shrugs uncomfortably - is this that weird? It thought this was one of the common language clusters in at least some places, given the fact that the Company had bothered to give it the module on it.

"I guess." Which... sounds like a shitty explanation for it, doesn't it. It elaborates, "Preservation uses it a lot. Captain Consuela Makeba has some speeches recorded in it." Or reproduced in it, in the case of historical genres.

Once Jack is done with the measurement, it folds its arms, but doesn't retreat quite so much. "I've got two of the historical dramas about it."

"I should not be surprised, I am sorry," Jack says, returning to his table to fold in the hem and start stitching again, but he's smiling. He talks even more easily in his native language, so it's probably no surprise that he keeps talking. "But you are from somewhere that seems very far away from me, and I did not expect it. Also, I admit, mostly I do not find people who know that in addition to their own language. Usually if they don't speak English, they choose that, and if they do, they don't bother to learn another language."

He tilts his head, glancing up again from his work briefly at SecUnit. "You have historical dramas? In your car?" Or... well, it is a construct of some sort. Maybe it has some kind of... player in its head?

"It's probably not the same. I only have some language modules, and the context doesn't always carry over." It's seen so many weird gestures and had to figure out whether they're supposed to be aggressive/insulting from context. So many. Not to mention the number of people who think a SecUnit's neural tissue isn't advanced enough for it to understand things like sarcasm. Or context.

More importantly, though... it's realizing its mistake. "No. I've... got the files saved." In its head. "I don't have a way to play them yet." Or it does, but it probably shouldn't hook itself up to the Convoy's tech just to play movies. Installing them on people's devices is one thing, but playing them directly is a bit too much like being an appliance for its tastes.

Jack nods, accepting the explanation. "Maybe we can find something in one of these trailers that has a video input," he offers. "If you want to watch them again. Do you have many dramas saved?" He has very little idea what the storage space in a SecUnit's brain might be. He has very little idea what the storage space in a regular computer might be, really, he's modern but he's not knowledgeable about things like that-- and SecUnit is probably better than a boring old computer.

Uncomfortable now, SecUnit shifts, shrugging. "It's fine," it says, maybe not wanting to admit that it was ignoring Jack to watch media not ten minutes ago. "If you want to watch one I'll find a way to send it."

There's got to be something, even if it's just someone with a solid-state screen device it can set things to. In the meantime it crosses its arms, watching Jack and the jacket he's still got before him.

"It's all right. I keep myself busy," Jack assures it. Case in point, even as they've been talking, he's been working the hem on SecUnit's sleeve. His hands are always busy when he talks, whether it be with work or punctuating his speech. "I would not have anything to watch it on, either." He flashes it a smile. "Thank you for offering, though."

He holds up the sleeve, considering the hem, then makes another few stitches. "There. Come take this and try it on? If it is the right length, then you can take it back."

From the speed SecUnit stops pretending to be casually hanging around and comes over to take the jacket back, it's been downplaying how uncomfortable the whole prospect of removing its outer layers has left it. It holds out its hand for the jacket, and once it's give, promptly tries the thing on.

There is at least a half-second where it checks the length of the sleeve, and gives an experimental tug at the stitched parts to make sure the entire thing won't come unraveled with the movement. Then it glances at Jack - not quite meeting his eye, but checking to see whether he seems satisfied enough with his work.

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swapping to prose because I am tired of brackets already

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