EVENT: ARIMA ▒ APRIL 22-23

[ataraxites]

CHARACTERS: Ensemble production!
LOCATION: Arima Mining Colony
WARNINGS: Potential for gambling, drugs, violence, sex work.
SUMMARY: Passengers departing for and arriving by shuttle at the Arima Mining Colony.
NOTES: Covers April 22-23. IC event start commences post-Gunnery announcement. Divided by locations; players are free to indicate which day, and to begin new subthreads wherever they'd like! April 24-26 log here.

You step off of the shuttles into one of the bustling, heavily-guarded docks buried deep within the rock of an asteroid. Everyone seems too wrapped up in their own business to pay much mind to the group pouring out with you, and the mechanical sounds of takeoff, landing, and regular maintenance fill the air with clinks and whirs. As you begin to explore the colony, you find dingy and worn streets filled with a ruckus that's easy to get lost in: pushy merchants, booming, scratchy voices coming from inebriated patrons, and the scurrying footsteps of opportunistic thieves darting through the crowds. The colony no longer seems to profit off its mines, but this waystation for undesirables does have a taste for myriad forms of entertainment.

Comments

CORRUPTION PLAYER PLOT | RESCUE SHUTTLE | APRIL 22

[busdriver]

(ooc: open to anyone signed up as a rescuer.)



Up in five, lock it or lose it.

[She doesn't completely skip her take-off speech, but she trims it down as much as possible. Given what they're setting out to do—given that this is a rescue mission—she won't condescend to anyone aboard. The shuttle will be navigating a significant distance through an asteroid field, and while that would typically deserve a mention, she decides it's the least of these passengers' concerns. She'll tell them when to belt up. For everyone's sake, as well as her own, she projects ease and familiarity as she runs through the pre-flight checks. She's clinically aware of what every lost second might mean for the people being held prisoner, but she can't and won't rush.]

My name is Melinda May. I've worked hostage extraction before. If you have intel on the enemy, I want to hear it. If we're coordinating rescue efforts, I can help. If I tell you to sit down and strap in, do that. Otherwise, use this time. It's gonna be a long trip. I need to stay on the controls.

[As much as she'd appreciate the additional information, Sheppard gave them enough to go on. She's walked into similar situations knowing a lot less.

During the flight, there's purpose and calm concentration in her body language. It's not worth a tragedy to make her comfortable, but she's more in her element now than in her entire time on the Tranquility. It hasn't got much to do with piloting. She has a mission, a list of names, specific objectives. That's how she's accustomed to living. There's no edgy fear rolling in her stomach, no significant anxiety. She's been trained to keep emotional considerations out of her field work, and at the end of the day, that's exactly what this is. Her participation isn't down to any emotional investment. She won't let things get personal.

Unless she has a visitor, the co-pilot seat is empty next to her.]

[trusted]

[Oh, she's getting visitors.

Bucky's like one of those kids on the school bus who snags the back seat then won't sit still. Before he gets up to the front he's investigated every other angle of the shuttle, sticky fingers everywhere, from the small cargo hold to the neon tracks above the seats.

Looks military issue, the way the seats face each other across a central aisle. It's not so completely different to the kind of craft he and the Commandos pitched themselves out of over a new Hydra base once every few weeks.

That is, until he gets to the front. The windows. When he gets there Bucky leans out over the flight controls (carefully, he's not green about these things, even if the tech looks like it's from another world - and maybe is). In a second he's all but got his nose pressed against the glass. The windows in the shuttle bay were one thing. The wash of infinite black seems somehow more vast when you're in a small ship diving straight into it.]

Holy cow. [He drags the words out, a low, impressed purr, then drops himself back into the seat beside Melinda, without waiting on invitation or approval. Whatever veneer she's wearing, her emotional investment has to be more than his (he and Steve are along for the ride out of an interest in exploring and a pathological inability to ignore the word rescue). So he's taking the levity portion of the trip on his own shoulders (he's using his time). Not so hard, when the face like a kid in a candy shop isn't at all for show.]

I'm already planning all the people who aren't gonna believe when I tell them about this. Makes me wish I knew more about poetry.

[busdriver]

Sgt. Barnes. [Easy recognition, just not what he told her to call him. There's a short breath ahead of her correction, somehow managing to make her own mistake sound like his fault.] Bucky.

[Melinda keeps her hands steady and her eyes forward, only tracking him peripherally; a little more aware of his movements than she would be with the average person. She knew he'd have military conditioning, it's nothing that comes as a surprise. It registers, fits into her mental file on him, cautions her against relaxing completely. Doesn't cross her mind, whether he'll know instinct from mistrust.]

It's something. [She admits, noncommittal, impressed in a broad sense that can't be entirely positive. When it comes to feeling the vast expanse around them, she won't permit much sentimentality. It would humble her if she let it. She'll get through by doing exactly what she was shown, what she knows, and not fully processing the experience until later. Tough as it is to be genuinely uninspired by the view, she's finding a way. Poetry might be the last thing Bucky needs. Even if he's only got the best intentions, wanting to describe what he's seeing, it's an acquired taste and not one of hers. She resists the urge to roll her eyes.]

Before you ask: I won't help with rhyming words.

[trusted]

I got space and place, to start.

[There's a certain pull to his mouth that could make her want to sock him in it, but he knows her sort. He doesn't get it, exactly, the reasons staying professional means ditching anything personal for some people, but then he's never been a woman at war. Met enough, though, not to underestimate a one of them.

And it's not like he doesn't hide the worst of his thoughts. The veneer he chooses is just different, that's all: a smile, since he doesn't do blank so well.

And if there's one thing he's learned it's that a smile goes easier on other people. Up here as much as back home, he's got too many of those to be looking out for, too much to let that slip.]

We took some girls out to the theatre, on London leave one time. [Before Hydra, before Steve had shown up, when the West End still defiantly burnt its lanterns to show that some things wouldn't die. Bucky kicks his legs out, settling into telling-] Made a terrible date. The play was too long and you couldn't root for the main guy after what he did to his girl. I don't remember much of it, but there's one line - There's more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

[It doesn't rhyme but it's poetry. He leans forward again, into that view (she doesn't need to trust him, he'll take care either way)].

Guess the guy knew his stuff.

John Sheppard OTA

[warandapiece]

It's claustrophobic. The shuttle is bigger than the puddlejumpers he used to fly, but Sheppard feels confined in more ways than one, trapped inside this body that had once almost permanently ripped him away from his friends and everyone he knew. He felt like an animal; the taste of blood was still stuck behind his teeth and the smell of it--he could smell everything, and it didn't help to make him feel any more human, even now that he wasn't being driven by the cold, cruel voice in his head. He missed his friends more than he could stand, missed the people who knew, who'd been there for him when he'd been through this before and could help him through it again.

He could handle being lost on a planet thousands of years in the future, he could handle missing his friends, but if ever there had been a moment on the Tranquility where he longed to see one of them, this would be it. In a small, desperate way, he hoped to discover on their arrival that there was a Stargate on the colony, a way to get back home, but failing that he'd settle for finding the man who had done this to him and ripping him to pieces with his teeth.

Yes, with his teeth.

1/

He was still highly strung; human thought persisted, human words, but predator instinct was still remarkably powerful. Still, he was in control of it now - or so he insisted to anyone who would listen, tied up as he was in the back of the shuttle. He was present in case he could be useful, but the smell of fresh blood from the fight in the shuttlebay was still on him, and resentment and anxiety were running high--their friends had been taken, after all. Keeping him confined, for his own safety as well as others, had made sense at the time, not that Shep was happy with the arrangement. Now, an hour into the trip, Sheppard seemed more lucid still.

"I swear, I'm fine. I just want to stretch my legs, that's all."

2/

Freedom at last. The ache of sitting still with his hands bound had been relieved already, but Sheppard paced the confines of the shuttle like a caged tiger, first in one direction then the other. There was nowhere to go, the shuttle would take as long as it took, but god how he wished the thing would go faster.

His patience was usually better than this. He's flown eight and twelve hour missions before through the empty blackness of space, not knowing whether when he got to his destination there'd even be a Stargate waiting for him. He'd sat for hours in the cockpit of a puddle jumper waiting for the Daedalus to rendezvous. Truly, there was nothing he understood better than shuttle downtime.

But this body had other ideas. It wanted more space and less people and wet and darkness. It made him find whispered conversations distracting and what were natural human smells overwhelming, and occasionally when people looked at him straight on he felt a leaping urge to go for their throat, and had to mentally pull himself back. Maintaining this kind of control all he time, nevermind just on the shuttle? He had no idea how he was going to do it. He had to get this thing reversed, and that meant finding Melkor before the rest of them did. If they killed him before he could be changed back... He couldn't live like this.

He turned and paced in the other direction, almost bumping into someone coming down the shuttle. Hackles raising at once, Sheppard raised a hand for their throat--(OOC: for tag purposes, Shep can stop himself before touching them, or the other character can defend themselves, or alternatively character can be pinned against the hull before Sheppard manages to restrain himself. Just make it clear in your tag which it is)

[sorrycharles]

[ Erik can’t fly.

What he can do is sit quietly and deflect space shrapnel spiraling through the black before it has a chance to pierce the hull.

To call it shared silence is a stretch -- he’s slouched in the co-pilot’s chair with his fedora seated too low on his nose, deflective of conversation, obstructing any sign that he is awake at all. He’s clean shaven; there are muddy stains on the shirt he’s wearing under his suit, at odds with crisp tailoring and sharp creases.

Every so often debris will accelerate out of the darkness and ricochet away, back into the nothing from whence it came. Smaller specimens rinse over the windows without ever touching them. Larger ones windmill off course as if stricken amidst flickering displays and the odd sensor blinking or bleeping into alarm. Electromagnetic interference.

There are no close calls.

He’s very thorough.

He doesn’t touch the controls and does not exhibit any symptoms of wonder for the infinite frontier. He does not want to be in outer space. Someone he knows was taken. May is a means to getting there.

These truths he holds to be self-evident.

He doesn’t want to talk about it, doesn’t want to strategize, even if she does catch him sizing her up sidelong after a while. ]

[summerlord]

[Oh, she gets a visitor. Elrond sits in the seat smoothly, his expression carefully guarded. There is a sword strapped to his hip and he is wearing finely detailed armor -- clearly ready for a fight.]

You wished to hear of our enemy?