It was actually closer to 3:15 by the time Jackie knocked on Stanislav's door. Which was not indicative of her having been late for her appointment -one which she had been mercifully permitted to make via text message- because Jackie, whatever her faults, was habitually punctual. Rather, it was to suggest that she only spent about half as long, girding herself for the inevitable human interaction, as she usually did. While it might have been assumed that she would get such rallying out of the way before trudging halfway across campus, it was Jackie's personal experience that all the worthwhile maneuvers took place in the moments right before the battle. In this instance, said rallying began with a forced march, consisted mainly of three or four failed charges, a couple nearly complete routes, and concluded with a particularly insidious moment of hysterical bravery.

Which is to say that things went uncommonly well.

A lot of it had to do with the fact that Jackie knew Stanislav. Or had known him at least... As much as Jackie could claim to have known anyone outside of her own family... The point was that he was familiar, if only in name, and that had provided some much needed reassurance. He was also special in that he inhabited a part of her life where being her had been much more simple, which was a feeling she could scarcely even recall. A time before Vytal and aura training, a time before Heidi even, when she'd had no greater aspirations than to finish whatever book she was reading at at the time. A time where her parent's profession had seemed arcane and glamorous and she'd been sure she would not follow in it. It had brought a bittersweet kind of smile to her lips, when she first read Stanislav's full name, nested primly in the classifieds among Vytal's many other gunsmiths, to remember a time in her life when weapons had been strange and fascinating things, rather than unpleasant tools in an even more unpleasant trade. Had she spent a little more time thinking, she might have even talked herself out of messaging him, and simply held onto the idyllic, doubtlessly rose tinted, memories of her youth, knowing that meeting him now, nearly a decade later, was sure to spoil the illusion. Jackie had certainly thought exactly that since, but she could hardly back down after reaching out to him, not without looking flaky and irresolute. She was flaky and irresolute, of course, but she didn't want a Kovac to think so.

Besides, she still needed professional help, and it would be much easier engaging with someone she had met before than trying to construct a completely new relationship with someone else. At least she wouldn't be tempted to pretend she was anything other than the tall, gawky, bookish prim he doubtlessly remembered, as she might have been with anyone else who didn't already know her.

None of which stopped her from pacing like a cage cat for nearly twenty minutes outside his door.

When Jackie finally found her nerve, so small that she easily and frequently misplaced it, it carried her right up to the closed dorm door and compelled her to rap erratically on its surface in the arrhythmic staccato of air escaping from a balloon. Also like a balloon, Jackie's nerve deflated near as fast, and she found herself turning right on her heels and preparing to beat a hasty retreat when strong voice called to her from the other side of the door. There had been a hysteric, half mad moment when she had almost convinced herself the apartment was empty that she wouldn't actually have to interact with anyone, and her disappointment that she'd been wrong rooted her in place as surely as nails through her feet. Hunching up even more than usual, Jackie pictured him opening the door only to see her half way down the corridor, running for her life. It wasn't exactly the most dignified impression to leave him with, not that she had great hopes for any of the alternatives.

Rather than opening the door outright, which Jackie would have found vastly preferable to the anxious purgatory that was his threshold, she heard him moving stuff about on the other side of the wall. These sounds, incongruous to his claims about temperamental locks, conjured to mind visions of a broad and eclectic workshop, filled machinery and replacement parts for anyone one of Remnant's more esoteric weapons, one half imagined and half remembered from her youth, and the smaller but older boy who invariably occupied it. She could remember silently envying his strangely light, nearly silvery hair, which seemed so much better than the dark, lank, limp strands of her own. It was funny to her how much clearer a young Stanislav was in her mind when compared to his parents, at a time when most children were much of the same to her. Perhaps it had been because he was one of the few children her age that she'd known outside of the context of school.

Shifting where she stood, Jackie became uncomfortably conscious of the outfit she'd chosen to where that day. It was bland, neutral and practical attire that prioritized comfort over looks, much like everything else she wore. A shapeless mute-green jacket over a dusty blue t-shirt, with jeans that would have fit Heidi perfectly but made her own legs look toothpicks inside a straw, and dusty grey running shoes. Even her hair was practically attended, pulled back in a tail which, she now realized, doubtlessly accentuated her unpleasantly aquiline face.

Reaching up, Jackie touched one side of her head where restrained bangs had begun to form as her greasy hair worked its way free of the unfashionable scrunchy that secured it. How she suddenly wished she could have made Heidi do all of this for her...

Quiet murmuring from the other side of the door swiftly forestalled any further thoughts Jackie might have had on the subject of her appearance, as well as inspired one final, unreasonable plea for escape, and the dark haired, dark eyed girl braced for what was to come. Brief and impersonal meetings, especially from childhood, are a particularly flimsy foundation upon which to build expectations, but nothing could have adequately prepared Jackie for the moment when the door finally opened. The last time she had seen Stanislav, Jackie had been almost a foot taller than him, and while she did not expect that state to have endured -after all, though she was taller than the average woman, she was still shorter than the average man- she had at least expected to be of a height with Stanislav still, if not potentially slightly taller. What greeted her instead was a mountainous man, like someone had taken all the big parts of a silverback and tried to arrange them on a human skeleton. So unprepared was Jackie for this development that she violently doubted her own memories of the boy that Stanislav had been. It was only when her eyes latched onto familiar features, grown delicate or bold with maturation, the she could even begin to reconcile the boy from before with the man before her. Yet there was his deeply tanned skin, the same color as her mother's, and the familiar lines of his face, which had grown full and strong with age. His hair too, though it had grown less silvery blonde and more gray in intervening years, was familiar and enviable to her. Without a doubt, even before he opened his mouth, Jackie concluded that this must be the small boy she remembered, even if he was now nearly as tall as Heidi. In fact, if Jackie wasn't quite mistaken, he might have actually been taller than her too.

He was evidently not oblivious to his own stature, as his greeting obviously suggested, though Jackie supposed he'd had the better part of a decade to acclimate to his gargantuan height, where as she was proffered only a scant few seconds.
"Rather..." She said in a small voice, half dumb with shock, "I have not gotten much taller."
It was only after a couple of seconds that Jackie even recognized this witty, for her, rejoinder had come from her own lips and, all at once, she realized she had been staring up a Stanislav in gobsmacked silence for the close to ten seconds. Immediately, red rushed into her cheeks, where it showed up well against her own tan -though not so tan as Stan- skin, and she hastily tugged her eyes down to the floor. A couple of seconds later, she realized her mouth was still open and closed it. 

Clearing her throat forcibly, Jackie found something very interesting on Stan's shoes and combed her slacking bangs back over one ear, while her other hand swung her case into view. Like her, it was an unassuming container -more like a piece of luggage than a weapons crate- with wheels underneath and a hinged top on the back.
"I've brought something for you to look at." She said hurriedly in a clipped tone, before almost trying to shove the wheeled case through the door, stopping herself just short of bludgeoning Stanislav's shin with it in the process. She made no effort to actually enter his room, however; She had only preferred to have something tangible between them, even if Stanislav's monstrous stature made the case look like a lunch box. 

Swallowing deliberately, Jackie drummed her free hand atop the case, where she had found an even more fascinating spot to stare at in lieu of meeting Stanislav's gaze. 
"L-like I said in my message, I need some advice on custom cartridge loading for a prototype I am developing." Jackie continued. Having perceived her previous words for being barely above a whisper, she had attempted to correct her next by speaking more loudly and firmly and, as a result had come dangerously close to shouting. What was worse, she could hear her unbalanced in her own voice, and adjoined to the volume subtly hysteric tone that wasn't sure if it wanted to be professional, conversational, or casual, and so tried to be all three at the same time. Some part of Jackie was vaguely aware that this was not how meeting someone -let alone the child of old family acquaintances- after a nearly a decade was supposed to go, but she was helpless to stop herself from getting everything wrong as quickly as possible. 
"It is a custom dust compound I have been developing..." Jackie blurted, continuing to vacillate wildly between nearly inaudible to improperly loud, "But all my attempts at loading it myself have been in vain."
She wasn't sure if she should have been friendly or frigid, whether to treat this encounter like an excuse for reunion or with completely detached pragmatism. As a result, she came off as trying to do both while succeeding at neither, all while seeming unable to control the volume of her voice. 
"Most have resulted in the compound blowing up in my face, which is not ideal when dealing with highly corrosive chemicals, ha-ha." Attempting, at the last moment, to insert a bit of self deprecating humor -the only humor she was any real good at- to take a bit of edge of the bluntness of her rambling, yet not trusting her attempt at a joke to be self evident, Jackie had amended her words with what she had intended to be a good humored chuckle. Only two syllables into the robotic mockery of laughter did she realize how forced it sound, so she immediately stopped and, thereby, further accentuated its every unnatural intonation. 

Aware that she had likely stepped beyond the realm of 'awkward' and well into the realm of 'unstable', Jackie hunched up even further to hide the painfully hot redness of her face and shut herself entirely up. Better to be thought a fool in silence, then to open your mouth and provide demonstrable evidence of your complete inability to behave normally and your absolute 'brokenness' as a person...


Stanislav Kovac