Scrub a dub dub (Tavis)

[JoAnna Blake]

JoAnna was efficient in whatever job she was given. Spending a year in the waste treatment as a mechanic fixing the sewage machines had been not the cleanest job. But she found that it was rewarding. The sounds of the gears working like they should, the hum of the machine, the tick tick tick noises they made, had been music to her ears. And when they broke and made hideous grinding noises and clanks, she took glee in knowing she was going to solve the issue and find the source of the break. It was like solving a mystery. How can I fix this next time? If I fix it this way how long will it last? Will it work better? Not break again? What about this way? Were the questions that constantly filled her mind while her hands were covered in grease and oil. Wrench and screw driver in hand, flashlight being held between her plump lips, a puzzled look on her face.  She loved her job. But another duty called, and thats what brought her to Gamma Base. And now instead of playing in grease and oil, she was playing in soap and dirty dishes. Replacing her tools with rubber gloves and a hair net. 

Should have been an upgrade right? Wrong. She hated it. She'd only been at base for two days and had been eager to get to work. Not realizing this was the work she would be assigned too.
 But she would not complain. She wouldn't whine. She'd do as she was told and seek to please. That's what she was there for. To prove that the blonde haired blue eyes girl was not some inferior basket case that couldn't do anything right. Jo was smart. And patient. They'd soon realize there was more to her then met the eye.

She pushed the door open with her back as she came in from the mess hall with a plastic bin full of dirty dishes. She walked it over to one of the many sinks and set it on the counter before filling the deep stainless steel sink with a small amount of water solution before she started putting the dishes in. Her blonde hair was in a tight bun underneath her hair net, she had yellow rubber gloves on, a apron over her standard military working outfit of a white short sleeved t-shirt and khaki pants. She had a slender, slightly curvy figure. The body of runner mostly. She was well toned. Especially her arms. She had surprisingly good upper body strength from having to work on machines the previous year. The soft cotton of her shirt was loose, a bit on the bigger side, but she didn't care. She was too focused on her job at the moment.

Letting the dishes soak a bit, she pulled a plate up and began scrubbing frantically at it with a brush before putting it in the next sink to be rinsed off. The hussle and bustle of the other workers sounded around her. Some chatted as they worked, others laughed, some slacked off, but not Jo. She kept her head down and did as she was told. Ignoring everyone until she felt a tap on her shoulder, that shocked her. Literally. It was a small shock, like someone generally did when they conducted small amounts of electricity. She glanced over her shoulder to see a man standing behind her. She arched an expectant eyebrow at him. "Yes?" She asked. Wanting to know what he wanted. Tavis Daley

[Tavis Daley]

Tavis hated dishwashing. He had the strange feeling in the back of his head that he’d always hated it, even if he couldn’t remember his time before Gamma Base. But now it was even worse, now that he was basically a lightning man. If he put his hands directly in the water, even if he wasn’t using his power, sparks flew and anyone sharing the tub with him was shocked. They’d found that out the hard way when he’d accidentally singed all the hair off of another Private’s arms.

Being here, washing dishes, put Tavis in a bad mood. Especially when he was stuck in a room with other men who he was sure smelled like pigs… if he had ever smelled a pig, which he hadn’t.

Until today, however. Tavis’s eyebrows climbed upwards at the sight of a woman… one whose figure certainly made him nod appreciatively. And she was wearing his special pair of insulating rubber gloves. Sighing a long-suffering sigh, Tavis grabbed one of the regular pairs of rubber gloves and tapped her on the shoulder. He’d gotten used to the shocks he got from touching things - to him they merely tickled at worst, and were arousing at best.

This shock was halfway between tickling and arousing. When the girl - she couldn’t be more than 20 years old, if that - turned to him, Tavis gave her a slow smile and held up the gloves in his hand. Also yellow, but with a white interior, unlike the ones she had on which had a gray interior. ”I believe you have my gloves, miss. The ones that are gray inside?”

”Honestly, they should mark them more clearly.” Tavis grinned to show he wasn’t bothered by the fact that she’d taken his gloves unknowingly, and gave her a little wink. ”Wouldn’t want anyone to get a little shock, after all.” He held up his hands and let a few arcing tendrils of electricity dance between his fingers.

He loved using his power. He loved the rush it gave him, the tingle it set off throughout his entire body. And he loved pushing it to the limits, every day getting inches and inches farther along, growing stronger and stronger. Tavis would give up all of his memories, would give up the ability to even make memories, if he could keep growing this power. It was intoxicating.

[JoAnna Blake]

Jo’s eyes went to the gloves the man held. Taking note he was attractive, but had an air to him that rubbed her the wrong way. She turned her head to look inside the gloves she wore and saw that they were indeed grey. She wasn’t aware that they had assigned gloves. Someone failed to mention that to her.


“Sorry.” She murmured pulling them off. She shook them a bit to get most of the soap off before she turned to hand them to him. Noticing that the his hands had electricity dancing around his fingers. “No, wouldn’t want that to happen. “ She said slowly, reaching for the right pair of gloves before handing him his. “Sorry for the mix up.” She said pulling the appropriate gloves on and then turning back to her work. Ignoring him like she did everyone else. She quickly finished scrubbing the dishes before she rinsed them off and put them in a clean plastic bin, carrying it to the machine that hot air dried the dishes. She walked past the man, paying him no other attention.


Pulling a lever on the machine lifted up a hood and she laid the plates out on the stand and then lowered the hood back down she turned the dial to the appropriate setting and pushed the button. She had to pause and close her eyes as she listened to the sweet noise of the buzzing machine. Aaah that noise. She opened her eyes again like she hadn’t just been standing there with her eyes closed, and headed back to get the next batch of dirty dishes when the sweet melody of buzzing turned into a screeching noise. On instinct JoAnna turned around and rushed to the machine, pushing buttons to turn it off and opened the side hatch to get a face full of smoke. She coughed and waved her hand in the air to try and clear it. A wicked grin appeared on her face at the prospect of her getting her hands dirty again. “Do we have a tool box in here somewhere?” She called moving away from the broken machine. She pulled a lever to raise the hood up and pushed the dish wrack out of the way before lowering it again.


“I think there’s one under one of the sinks. Shouldn’t we call maintainance?” Someone asked. “Why when I can fix it by the time they get down here?” She said like the man was and idiot. It was times like these when her arrogance showed. She found the tool box and heaved it up with ease. Walking to the machine she set it on the counter before she suddenly disappeared. It was like a switch being turned. She hadn't needed to spend much practice on using her powers before she had grasped them. She couldn’t get her clothes greasy, and she couldn’t very well strip in front of the praying eyes of all these men. Her powers provided her with the happy medium. All that was visible of her body was her clothes, which didn’t last long as she quickly climbed out of them and left the apron on. Folding her clothes neatly on the counter. Someone would have thought they were hallucinating if they just saw a floating apron.


JoAnna dug through the box, seeing what she was looking for and turned the flash light on before she plopped it in-between her teeth and then grabbed a wrench and screw driver as she started to examine the machine.

[Tavis Daley]

Tavis shrugged, ”Hey, no worries, like I said--” he trailed off when she turned away and went back to work. His eyes narrowed when she clearly ignored him. Didn’t anyone teach this bitch manners? He felt sparks flickering around his hands and he clenched them into fists before shoving them into his gloves in the hopes that the rubber would curb some of the side-effects of his anger.

He turned to go back to work when the machine malfunctioned. Tavis stared as the woman turned invisible, then her clothes fell to the floor. That meant she was… naked. He rolled his eyes and turned away, his anger not so easily forgotten. ”Fucking exhibitionist,” he muttered under his breath. Taking off her clothes was utterly unnecessary in his opinion, in fact so was the turning invisible. She was just tinkering with a damn machine.

Still seething from her earlier rudeness and her apparent desire for attention, Tavis ignored what she’d said about fixing the machine herself and went to pick up the phone that connected directly to maintenance. He told them of the malfunction, and that a Private was attempting to fix it, in the nude, and hung up.

”I’d stop your little show if I were you,” he called out to the woman, ”The higher ups are sending a mechanic… and they probably won’t be happy about a Private going into one of their machines without permission when it’s not your job.” He hadn’t been here more than a week, but already he knew that Unican military was suffocatingly strict when it came to duties and crossing lines, especially if it meant she stopped her actual job to do something else. Maybe a little reprimand would teach her to not be such an attention whore.

Shooting one last dark look at the woman, or at least where he assumed she was judging by the floating apron, Tavis returned to scrubbing one of the large soup pots. He’d be damned if he was caught screwing around when the repairman came - word of slacking spread like wildfire up to the officers, and they were harsh disciplinarians.

[JoAnna Blake]

Jo ignored the man's comments, and focused on her task. The fix was easy enough. A bolt had come loose and fallen off. She found it quickly, tightened it back on, closed the hatched put the tools away, and wiped her hands on her apron, removing the grease she had acquired and then got dressed again. She was visible, her hands clearly still had grease smudges but her clothes were clean. She put the tools away, washed her hands, and then put the dishes underneath the hood, and turned the machine back on before going back out to get another bin of dishes. The entire thing took merely five minutes, and the machine was purring just like it should.

She went back to work, moving quickly, making up for her lost time she had spent on fixing the machine. When someone from maintainable finally came down she was taking out the first batch that had dried, only to put in the second one. She glanced at the man from maintenance, and then heard one of the higher ups coming in behind him looking for the culprit. "Private JoAnna Black Sergeant, I was the one who fixed the machine." She said standing up straight in the appropriate posture, as she confessed to what she had done. "I am fully aware, and fully prepared to be scrubbing toilets at my leisure time." She said clearly. She knew this the entire time she had been fixing the machine that she would most likely get in trouble. But why spend time on calling maintenance to fix something she could easily do in less time? Her work still got done, even with the time she took to fix the machine, which was running perfectly fine. The man from maintenance turned the dryer off and opened the hatch to examine it. Probably to see if she had screwed something up. She kept her face blank as she awaited her punishment.

[Tavis Daley]

The Sergeant clearly didn’t want to be there, in a place so beneath him. He passed a brief look over the room before he fixed his gaze on the woman. JoAnna, Tavis noted with a curl of his lip from where he stood at attention, as was expected from Privates when a Sergeant entered the room.

”Know your place, Private,” he growled out before turning away to leave the room. ”As you were.” And with that he walked out. The man from maintenance shrugged when he saw the dryer was working fine, gave JoAnna a brief nod, and followed.

Tavis shot a sneer at JoAnna before he turned away and continued washing dishes. She’d get what was coming to her eventually. Sooner rather than later, if he had any say in it. They didn’t need rude brats in the military, especially not ones with powers.

He hated this goddamned job.

[End Thread]