3 things: office technology in the late 1980s; going back to college; will write for comments

[edenfalling]

1. If you worked as a secretary at "the local grain company" in Kansas in the late 1980s, would your company be likely to have a computer? If so, what kind and what would its capabilities be? If not, what office technology would you have instead?

I ask because I was only about six or seven year old at the time in question (and also, I grew up about 25 miles from Manhattan), and I am therefore very, very unclear on the intermediate steps in office technology between, say, typewriter-with-carbon-paper and PC-hooked-to-internet. Internal networks like I think IBM used to do are a complete mystery to me, and I don't know if a modestly sized grain company would either have been interested in or been able to afford such a system anyway.

(This is in reference to the Mysterious Skin fic I am trying to write for Femgenficathon. The character in question is Avalyn Friesen, and the setting is the rural vicinity of Hutchinson, which is about 40 miles northwest of Wichita.)

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2. I have been thinking, once again, that I really should go back to college (by which I mean, take one or two online courses a semester for several years) and finish a degree in something, if only so that I have my trained monkey certification and can thus get a foot in the door at better jobs should I feel inclined to look for a new position. The thing is, I associate college with the worst years of my life -- the years in which my depression and all my related maladaptive thought patterns jumped out and beat me up repeatedly, once I was away from my accustomed support networks -- and I have a reflexive mental/emotional flinch reaction whenever the idea of returning to that comes up. Also, I hate, hate, hate the reminder of how many courses I screwed up or just failed utterly because I was unable to attend classes or complete the assigned work.

It would, I think, be less distressing if the inability had been because the classes were hard. No. This was because I was unable to do much of anything for several weeks every month or three, and then did not have the tools to climb out of the resulting hole, nor even the tools to convince myself that I was worthy of so much as attempting to climb out of the hole. And that is not a state of mind I want to touch with a ten foot pole... but I kind of have to at least brush against it in passing, if I want to get copies of my transcripts and talk to admissions people about how many courses I need to do to get a degree and swear to them that no really, I'm better now, I promise.

(...Okay, organic chemistry genuinely was hard -- I just cannot visualize complicated stereoisomers to save my life, and now you know why I decided to major in German literature instead of chemistry -- but everything else was easy. Which was quite possibly part of the problem. Easy things don't feel meaningful.)

Anyway, I talked about this with Vicky when I saw her in August, and she helped me write up a list that breaks down "go back to college" into a bunch of small, manageable steps. I need to print that out and pin it to the wall behind my computer to prod myself into taking action.

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3. Gacked from annearchy: The first five people to comment on this post get to request that I write a drabble/ficlet of any pairing/character of their choosing. In return, they have to post this in their journal, regardless of their own writing ability level. (Slight variation: you must specifically ask for a ficlet in your comment or I will assume you don't want one and will move on to the next person. Also, what the heck, I will write ten of these -- five for LJ comments and five for DW comments, assuming anyone is interested at all.)

I make no promises whatsoever as to length -- you may get a single sentence if that's all I can think of -- but I do tend to run long...

Comments

[tuzemi]

On the computers question, I think it would depend on company size. I do know that in that timeframe at a chemical plant employing about 1000-2000 people (so pretty big), they used a combination of standalone PCs running programs like Lotus, WordStar and WordPerfect connected to daisy-wheel printers, and an IBM mainframe-based office system called PROFS for email and calendars. My uncle had a smaller company (1-10 employees) in that timeframe, and he ran his entire business off a single 286-ish computer running both DOS and Xenix, connected to a wide-carriage printer very similar to this one.

I would say that for your purpose, your secretary probably did have a computer, an 8086, 8088, or 80286-based IBM XT (or clone like Compaq, Tandy, NEC, AT&T, or DTK), running PC-DOS (IBM only) or MS-DOS (clone). He or she would have used Lotus 1-2-3 for spreadsheets, WordPerfect for letters and internal memos/notes/correspondence/outlines, and a Clipper or dBase-based database to maintain the inventory and customer lists. One "killer feature" of the day was mail merge: putting a bunch of pre-cut sticky labels in the dot-matrix printer and matching up destination labels with "Dear Mr. so-and-so" letters. (If the story goes into the early 90's, the next "killer feature" was the ability to send faxes directly from the computer to a fax machine.)

The hardware would cost about $2000, the software another $1000-2000.

[edenfalling]

Thank you for the information! *takes notes*

[theodosia21]

I'm sorry I'm late, are you still doing this writing meme? *embarrassed* If you are, I'd love something with Yukiko in it. ^_^

[edenfalling]

Sure! Do you have a time period, mood, or secondary character in mind?

[karit.livejournal.com]

I know exactly how you feel about college. I had a very similar issue, in that I would feel depressed and miss to going to one or two classes. Then I couldn't go to the next class, because I felt like such a failure for skipping the last class. Then of course, I was twice as depressed for missing it, so I'd psych myself up to going to the next one, which naturally I felt too useless and rotten to go to. Eventually, I'd miss four or five classes in a row, and I failed quite a few classes that way. The worst part was that I knew I would've passed the class easily if I could've just made it to class.

It was just a horrible downward spiral I couldn't seem to get out of, and it was so hard for me to make friends to get that new support system. Ugh, horrible time. I dropped out and that was for the best, because I quit wasting my money, but now that I'm stable and have a decent paying job, I really want to go back, maybe do one or two classes a quarter at the local college. The only problem is every time I go to fill out an application, all that panic and stress just seems to come back and I decide I'll do it "later". I've been saying that for about the last two years now...

[edenfalling]

Yeah, pretty much like that. I would spend one to three weeks wrapped up in metaphorical gray fog and unable to connect to the world or motivate myself to do anything. I would be up for twenty-two hours straight because I couldn't motivate myself to go to bed, then sleep for eighteen hours straight because I couldn't motivate myself to get up. I wouldn't eat much either, because I couldn't motivate myself to get out of the room and get meals unless my roommate was around and asked me to come with her. Classes were completely out of the question. About all I could do was read obsessively; I couldn't even make myself feel better by writing.

Depression sucks. :-(

I have been meaning to go back and finish college for, god, about four years now, but I flinch away every time. I am hoping that having the process broken down into a series of tiny steps will make it feel more manageable and less overwhelmingly terrifying. *cautiously optimistic*

[rthstewart.livejournal.com]

so many things here...
1) I started my career at a very large Midwestern law firm in 1988. The secretaries had fancy IBM typewriters that were quite revolutionary because you could backspace over a line and correct text without using white-out. My law school had large tandy or Compaq computers in a pool that ran WordPerfect and WordStar on a DOS platform. I moved to another, more sophisticated place in 1990 and they were only just starting to give secretaries computers. I would not assume that a grain elevator in the 80s would have anything but an IBM selectric or Smith-Corona. This was before Fed Ex too and fax machines were only just starting to be used.

2) College. Do you feel like you are in a better place mentally? It certainly seems so over the distance of the Internets where I really don't know you at all. Why plunge in though? Maybe start with a class at the community college? Get back into the discipline of it and see if you like it and if it agrees with your head. And, you know, when you describe that hole you were in where you could not even imagine getting out, that is such a classical depressive episode and don't you feel you are better able to see that and deal with that now?

3) As for drabble, oh gosh, do I have to post over in mine? I'm BORING and don't really have anything to say. BUT BUT Shezan and Ilgamuth or Cor and Aravis. Oh please.

[Fic] "Do not stand at my grave and weep" -- Chronicles of Narnia

[edenfalling]

"This is not going to end well," Ilgamuth told Shezan one week after the barbarian queen and her younger brother arrived in Tashbaan.

"How so?" Shezan asked, slipping her newly ragged volume of Hilad's poems of grief under a sheaf of papers on her desk. She pushed herself to focus, to think outward instead of in. "You said yourself that things in Narnia went promisingly. The queen challenged Rabadash to prove himself, she accepted the necklace he offered, she followed him to Tashbaan -- done, and done, and done. And she does not strike me as one to court war over a broken dance."

Ilgamuth glanced along the hallway behind him and closed the door to Shezan's rooms. "That would be true if she were a daughter of Calormen. But she is a barbarian, and the more I speak to her retinue, the more I suspect she opened the dance unaware." He sank onto the sofa and gestured as if opening a book and preparing to share the knowledge it contained. "Consider that Narnia lay prisoned in sorcerous winter for a century, and that the tetrarchs, to all reports, come from a land beyond the edge of the world -- as our ancestors did, nigh a thousand years ago. The queen had no reason to know our customs. Even the humans among her counselors might have remained purposefully ignorant, out of ancient spite and resentment."

"You believe that she thinks she is still in the space before the first step?" Shezan said slowly. "Still considering whether to stake a claim?"

Ilgamuth nodded. "It would make sense of her behavior of late. In Narnia, she was warm to counter the land's chill -- even in spring, the nights are cold and frost is far from unknown on the fields. Here in Tashbaan, she grows cold to counter the heat of summer and Rabadash's growing passion. But she speaks gently and smiles when he declaims his love, rather than sliding her words around to reparations. That is the way of a woman weighing her choices and choosing to withdraw, not one who has already chosen and is having second thoughts."

If Queen Susan of Narnia thought she was unattached while Rabadash and all the court considered her halfway to marriage...

"This is not going to end well," Shezan said, echoing Ilgamuth's opening. "Can you spare this night? I have no faith in our ability to hold the Narnians, not when the gods have so clearly taken an interest in Rabadash's fate and shown a willingness to use even demons in their plans. He will be beyond fury if the queen plays him for a fool, and those of us with cooler heads must be prepared for the aftermath."

If only her grandfather had not died the day Rabadash sailed for the north... but there was no use wishing for time to unspin from its skein. Azaroth had called him home and he was with the gods, advising the armies of heaven as he had advised the Tisroc on earth. His smile, his rapier mind, his sure and gentle hands -- they belonged to the other world now.

Still. If only.

Ilgamuth leaned down to kiss her forehead, having walked over without her notice. He wrapped his left arm around her shoulders and touched the half-hidden book of poetry with his right hand. "You do your grandfather honor," he murmured. "Come. Sit with me, and I will quote Hilad's poems of love that outlasts death. Then we will save our prince from his folly and our country from humiliation."

"So may it be," Shezan agreed. Circling her hand around his wrist, she let her lover raise her to her feet.

[edenfalling]

Thanks for the information!

Yes, I am in a MUCH better place mentally. I was out of college on a psychiatric medical leave from 2002-2003, after which I tried to go back in 2003-2004 and discovered that while I was on anti-depressants, I had not untangled all the related behavior patterns, dropped out again, and entered the work force. By mid-2006, I had found my way out of most of my mental boxes. I just remain very wary of college, because in my experience full-time school exacerbates all my negative tendencies whereas full-time work mitigates them. So my tentitive plan is to take one or two online courses a semester, maybe supplemented with a couple in-person courses from the local community college if I can wrangle a plan to get the credits transfered to the place I hope to enroll in. :-)

[iponly.livejournal.com]

Speaking as someone who went through depression at a place famed for really bloody hard classes.... the classes being meaningful doesn't mean much if your head chemistry is still wrong. Luckily, I had some of my support networks when it happened to me, so I'm currently working on my fifth year of college and looking at graduating in the sixth. Saying "six years of college" hurts quite a lot, but I just remind myself I've been through things that hurt more and I kept going then. And damn if I'm going to lose to past!me.

[edenfalling]

Yeah, when I was out and out clinically depressed, the difficulty or easiness of the classes would not have made any difference. The thing is, though, I did go back to college once, after a year of psychiatric medical leave, and even though I was on anti-depressants (which worked -- they flattened me out a bit, but in a neutral mood instead of my base mood being morose with periodic plunges into strangling gray fog), I could not cope. I had a persistent feeling that nothing about the whole college experience mattered, that there was no point to it, and I am pretty sure the relative lack of challenge was a part of that. Not all of it! But a part.

This is why I want to take classes part-time instead of full-time. Work keeps me emotionally grounded in a way that school never has.

[willowgreen.livejournal.com]

Computers: When I graduated from college in 1982 and moved back to Ithaca, I became the rabbi's secretary downtown. He and I both had IBM Selectrics. In 1985 I moved to California, where I worked as a secretary for the next few years. At my first job, at a large publishing company, I had a Selectric at my desk, but there was a dedicated word processing system in a separate room. At most of my temp jobs (1985-1986), there were just Selectrics. When I got a permanent job at a large research institute, in 1986, they were just rolling out a dedicated word processing system called NBI to all the secretaries. We had the NBI terminals *and* Selectrics at our desks. The engineers were beginning to get IBM PCs in their offices, but not everyone had one yet.

The NBI system stayed in place at least through 1989, but over those 2-3 years all the engineers got personal computers, and the Macintosh became more popular. By 1989, I was working as a newsletter editor in the publications department and I had a Mac on my desk. I can't remember exactly when the secretaries switched from NBI terminals to their own personal computers, but I know they kept their Selectrics around for a long time, because it was too hard to address an envelope in a computer printer.

Networking: Our NBI terminals had internal e-mail, but hardly anyone used it. In 1986-1987, file exchange between computer systems was a huge issue; there were companies that sold gigantic, multi-thousand dollar machines that would convert files from one computer system to another (I remember because I researched them). People were beginning to have computers in their homes and using text-based networks such as Genie and CompuServe. We got LAN-based company e-mail around 1989, but it was still difficult if not impossible to e-mail outside the company.

People started talking about the Internet in the late '80s/early '90s, but it was still all dial-up and mostly text-based. UseNet and Fetch were popular. I signed up with America Online around 1991 or 1992 and used their forums extensively. I remember 1993-1994 as the year all hell broke loose on the Internet, because America Online finally started allowing cross-communication between .aol email addresses and other email addresses. I first saw a demo of the graphics-based World Wide Web running on a very slow beta version of Mosaic in 1993, and, in one of the defining moments of my life, said, "This is cute, but useless. It'll never catch on."

So, that's a long answer to a short question. Bottom line: You'd be safe making your fictional company computer-free. Alternatively, your secretary might be typing away on an IBM Selectric while her boss was swearing at his PC. E-mail would probably not be in heavy use. The PC would be used mostly for spreadsheets and (secretly) computer games.

[edenfalling]

Do you remember what kind of Selectrics you used? Wikipedia informs me there were several different types with varying capabilities -- some could produce justified print, some had some kind of magnetic memory function and could be considered primitive word processors, some were just very nice typewriters that had a correction function and didn't let you hit two keys at once, etc.

So I can safely ignore the internet, even if there are a few computers around somewhere in the office? Cool. That makes things simpler.

[willowgreen.livejournal.com]

Also, ficlet: This is not remotely original, but I'd love to see your take on Harry/Hermione.

[edenfalling]

Sure! Do you have a time period or a mood in mind?

[annearchy.livejournal.com]

Re: Computers: In 1986 I worked for a publishing company in Chicago. We had DEC computers that had maybe 512K memory. We booted them up with a disc that was literally floppy - 8 inches square, and if you looked at it crooked, it bent and you lost the boot program. Had to boot it every day, and it was lain on its side like a knocked-over suitcase and I had to crawl under my desk to boot it. Anyway I'm guessing a grain elevator in Kansas probably had no computers or databases and the secretary probably used a Selectric (still popular then) and did the books in a ledger, by hand. I would be very surprised if the boss had a computer; usually (back then anyway) bosses knew even less about computers than their staff.

[edenfalling]

I remember proper floppy discs! From about 1984 to 1996, my family's computer was an Atari 800 (???) which had its CPU in the keyboard, of all places, plus an external floppy drive. You could only run one program at a time, and most of them required a cartridge in the keyboard and a disc in the floppy drive, and my god, the little magnetic tape circles in the centers of the floppy discs were fragile.

I taught myself to touch type on that machine, when I couldn't keep up with my imagination by writing longhand. *indulges in fond memories*

Selectrics sound like they were nearly ubiquitous. And hey, are you interested in a ficlet? I can totally write H/Hr if you'd like. :-)

[monkey5s.livejournal.com]

I can tell you that after my parents' divorce, my mother had to get a job, and the only thing she was qualified for was basic office work. This was in, ummm, 197... 2? 71? And they had Selectrics at the small dairy in Ohio where she worked. They also had some rudimentary spreadsheet technology, because there was always a great deal of anger over the salesmen, who would make deals and fail to turn in their sales sheets in a relevant time frame, so when the billing was done, the office workers were always having to take calls from angry grocery store managers. In the late 80's she ended up with a federal government job at an extremely small district office of the Forest Service, where they had computers with word processing software that was "better than WordPerfect", which arrived later.

The small library in a small town in Ohio where I got a job in 1979, did not have computers to start with. We got our first ones in, ummmmm, sometime in the mid-80's, but they weren't used for much at first. We still were using the Selectrics for the most part (and, you know, hand-stamping the date due cards on which patrons wrote their names. In pencil. Which we then filed alphabetically for each day). Our library was a late-adopter of computerized checkout technology, we didn't start the retrofit of the collection until what, the early 90's?

I suspect "the local grain elevator" would have a level of technology that depended on how big they were. Kansas should have a very agriculturally-focused economy at the time, but once again, size of company would be key.

[edenfalling]

Thank you for the info! It's sounding like a Selectric is the way to go. Do you know what kind of spreadsheet technology your mother used? Because that sounds like it would be relevant to a grain company, and I know nothing about any spreadsheet making technology other than Excel. (And that, I only taught myself rather half-assedly so I could make graphs and table for chemistry lab reports. *makes face*)

[(Anonymous)]

Mm maybe thinking about the perks of colleges will be helpful? Many theaters and music venues give large discounts for students and/or offer discounted tickets for the school to give out. And the school itself will definitely host performances with huge discounts for students especially student run productions...Not to mention student buspasses and restaurants.

[edenfalling]

Oh, I wouldn't be going back as a full-time student. For one thing, I couldn't afford to quit my job. (Nor do I want to; work is good for my emotional stability.) And the place I'm trying to apply to is not very local. It's in New York state, but I want to take online courses, so physical location is not really an issue.

[hungrytiger11.livejournal.com]

....I am shocked but somehow think that you have not reached your limit of five ficlet comments? If not, I've love to see Anything Naruto so long as its in an AU setting (your choice).


Also... I'm sure you already have talked it to death but online courses really are very different from college, and looking at what little I know of your life (which is basically that you seem to have built yourself a life you like) it seems like online classes would be a good fit. You are doing your everyday life, just with course work, which didn't seem to be your problem with college....

Whatever you decide, good luck!

[edenfalling]

Yeah, my goal is one or two online courses a semester, once I can convince myself to get through the application process. *hides face* Two would be more economically sensible, since there is a fixed base cost for taking any classes at all and therefore it's cheaper to do them several at a time and thus finish faster, but I think one may be good to start with, just to sort of prove to myself that I can do this. *hides face again*

...I will get on that ficlet as soon as I finish the one for willowgreen, which I have just figured out how to approach. :-)

[Fic] "Sasuke and the Seven Leaves" (1/3) -- Naruto

[edenfalling]

I am making use of an idea from the AU summary meme I did a while back. *grin* (1,600 words)

---------------

Sasuke is not, according to every commander he's ever had, a good soldier. Not because he's bad at fighting, or even because he's bad as a tech support officer, which is nominally his job aboard Captain Orochimaru's ship -- because he's not bad at either of those things, dammit -- but because no matter how hard he tries, he can't quite fit in to the smoothly oiled machinery of the space force. Some of that's down to prejudice -- the way the inner system views colonials is patronizing at best and pathologically bigoted at worst, and Sasuke doesn't have the patience to non-violently educate idiots on the thousand ways they're wrong -- but mostly it's just a personality clash. He has a problem with authority figures, as Lt. Commander Yakushi likes to say with his deceptively gentle smile.

This is why Sasuke is in the brig when the CSF Cobra is attacked.

The hull is breached early on -- alarms are still whooping and the red emergency lights glare from the upper corners of the narrow corridor he can see through the tiny window in the brig's airtight door. The artificial gravity holds out longer until something judders through the metal and ceramic skeleton and shell of the ship and everything goes nearly weightless, the emergency generators routing power to life support and leaving only enough gravity to keep the floor oriented tentatively "down" instead of letting everything float free.

Sasuke should be fighting off the boarding party -- both pirates and the outer colony rebels always try for salvage instead of the clean destruction from a distance the space force favors. Failing that, he should be in the engine rooms or wired in to the network, helping route power where it's needed and direct the marines into position to catch the invaders in an ambush crossfire. He's good at that. His teams always win simulations when he's allowed access to the system so he can play scout and sniper.

But no. He's stuck in a tiny two-by-three meter room, completely fucking useless, just because he decked a grinning bastard for calling him the captain's catamite. He isn't! Sasuke doesn't even fucking like Captain Orochimaru. It's not his fault the brass think he makes a good poster boy, the living symbol of their mythical "obedient colonist," and keep roping him into missions he doesn't have seniority for. It's not his fault the captain thinks it's funny to pretend the orders come from him instead of sector command back on Ceres.

Sasuke is upside-down, distracting himself by trying to balance on a single fingertip, when someone blows the airlock to the prison corridor. He can't hear the explosion directly, but the shudder of stressed steel is much closer and more violent, and he shoves himself into the air to look out through the brig's window, bracing himself on the narrow frame around the triple-layer glass.

He stares upside-down into a blank, polarized facemask, which retracts to reveal startled blue eyes. The blond invader -- a rebel, judging by the patch with two ringed planets crudely pasted to the left upper arm of his blinding orange tightsuit -- says, to himself, "The fuck?" Which Sasuke can't hear, of course, but he taught himself to read lips when he was bored at the academy and anyway, the blond's expression speaks for itself.

Sasuke lifts his right hand from the window frame, still bracing himself in midair with his left hand, and mimes shooting a gun at the idiot outside. He bares his teeth to make the gesture absolutely clear. Let me out and I'll kill you, asshole. Nobody attacks his ship and lives.

Not after Itachi.

So of course the blond blows the lock and kicks in the door.

The last thing Sasuke hears before the debris knocks him unconscious is an annoyed tenor voice grumbling, "Aw, fuck, now I gotta remember where they keep the spare suits on these overgrown ant-traps."

[Fic] "Sasuke and the Seven Leaves" (2/3) -- Naruto

[edenfalling]

---------------

When he wakes, he's strapped to a gurney, the light hitting his closed eyes is the yellow-white of faux sunlight instead of dangerous orange-red, the contented purr of a well-maintained ship thrums gently in his bones, and gravity is back to the usual 75% of Earth standard -- a compromise between generator power, the evolutionary requirements of human bodies, and the convenience of getting extra bang to every step. Sasuke grew up in this gravity, born to space like all the Uchiha were. This is more natural to him than the aching pull of Earth, and the hum of the ship is like the comfort of his parents' arms.

Clearly something is wrong.

"He's awake," a woman says. A hand touches his cheek, bare skin to skin. "Hey. You. Stop shamming. I'm no landlord medic, but I can read brainwave patterns as well as anyone. You're not even feeling fuzzy. Eyes open, time to face the music."

Sasuke opens his eyes.

Six rebels stare back, jammed shoulder to shoulder in the tiniest excuse for a med-bay he's seen since he was eight years old. The leftmost one is tall with prematurely gray hair, a cyborg implant in his left eye, and some kind of mechanical contraption over his mouth and chest. Probably a breath regulator; cloned organs are expensive in the outer colonies. The man next to him wears an interface headset over his shaggy black hair; his face is nearly as hard to read despite being uncovered. They wear rank insignia marking them as a captain and a commander, respectively.

The other four are younger: the blue-eyed blond who kidnapped Sasuke, a quiet-looking woman with long black hair and white contact lenses (some kind of VR interface, Sasuke bets; she must be a computer tech), a skinny man with black hair and the hacked-up clothes that say he spends a lot of time around overheating generators, and a woman with pink hair (dye or gene-mod? hard to say) who grins, hard-edged, and says, "Good boy." She presses a couple points on a remote in her left hand and the straps holding Sasuke's chest and legs retract. His wrists are still cuffed to the rails, though, he discovers when he tries to move. There's just enough give for him to sit up, not nearly enough to stand or reach more than a foot from the gurney.

"Who are you, what do you want, and why am I alive?" Sasuke says.

The pink-haired woman's grin widens. "We're your people, who you betrayed when you joined the landlords and their corrupted dogs. We want you to betray them in turn. And you're alive because traitors are so much less politically useful than martyrs, don't you think?"

"Lt. Haruno, play nice," the gray-haired captain says, his voice surprisingly expressive and fluid despite the electronic overtone that says he's subvocalising into a speech program.

The pink-haired woman -- Haruno -- shrugs. She doesn't look even the faintest bit apologetic.

Sasuke shrugs back. "You are not the legally mandated government, nor did your so-called fleet do anything to protect my clan in our time of need. I will not roll over and play dog for you. And if you think the brass and their propaganda hacks can't make diamonds out of anything, you're sadly delusional. But do try. I can't wait to see you all on trial when the space force catches up to you."

All six smile at his words, and the blond outright laughs. "Yeah, that'll be the day," he says. "Their ships suck ass. The only point having anything that big is to haul cargo -- you can fit all the weapons and power you need on a frame a third the size, if that, and that gives you speed and maneuverability to boot. Hey, why do you think we get away every time? Why do you think the pirates get away? Aside from them being in bed with the fucking landlords, I mean. You did know that your snake-freak captain's in league with Akatsuki, right?"

"Lt. Uzumaki, one thing at a time," the captain says, sounding long-suffering.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," the blond grumbles, as if he hasn't just accused Sasuke of inadvertently working to help his family's murderers. "It's totally true, though."

Sasuke mimes a gun and snarls.