| Burning Locker of Fire |
| Summary: | A vandal strikes the Enlisted Berthings, namely, Sofia's locker. |
| Date: | 17 Sept 2041 AE |
| Related Logs: | Cylon Lovers stuff |
| Players: |
    |
| Enlisted Berths |
|---|
| Rows and rows of bunks run along the outside and center of this room which is quite a bit larger than the Officers' Berths. With multiple hatch entrances to different sections of this area, the complex has spaces for armored doors similar to the ones on the Hangar Deck that can lower in case of fire or depressurization. Tables are set up along the spaces between the bunks and lockers divide each over-under sleeping area. Each bunk is a standard military size and has a deep blue curtain to seal in some privacy for the occupant. |
| Post-Holocaust Day: #203 |
Leave the fancy brass to the high and mighty officers. The enlisted men and women of Cerberus are the ones who really make this great ship hum, and tonight they finally have an opportunity to kick back and enjoy the fruits of their labors. With the help of crewmen from the escort carrier Areion — who didn't volunteer but instead were voluntold — repairs to the battlestar are, for once, ahead of schedule. No surprise, then, that Captain Gabrieli gave his damage control crews the benefit of a one-night furlough: the functional equivalent of unleashing a wrecking ball on the unfortunate enlisted berths.
By now, the party's cleared up: oh-dark-hundred in the morning and only a few souls are stirring. A drunk petty officer is passed out two feet from his bunk, having fallen asleep en route; a pair of lovebirds are necking rather loudly on one of the room's larger tables. Plastic cups are strewn around the floor, some still filled with moonshine left over from Monday's meet-and-greet, and a trail of vomit leads from a ring of six upturned chairs into the head to aft.
And for one night only, a blind eye shall be turned.
Woo! Repairs ahead of schedule. Sofia yawns, chilling out on her bunker. She didn't party much after her run in with her first ever hangover. She winces at the lovebirds and the trail oof barf. Ew. She just kind of curls up and tries to pull her blanket over her head so the smell doesn't waft over.
At first, all that's audible is the squelching of lips and tongues pressing together with abandon — but even as Sofia moves to draw the blanket over her head, she hears something that most definitely did not come from the crewmen sharing a very public tryst. It's a rattle — like the sound of ball bearings clicking and clacking in a busted pair of rollerblades, perhaps, or the sound of a locked door being pulled and pulled again.
Crewmen need love too. Unhf. Hey wait. Sofia pauses at that noise. She furrows her brows, trying desperately to ignore the noise and tempation to throw a shoe at the lovebirds. "The hey?" She leans over to go see if she can find out where the rattling is coming from. "Making out is bad enough…" But this is either out and out frakkin' or - something. Maybe someone REALLY likes doors?
There weren't any roller derby girls at the party, last time Sofia checked, so by simple process of elimination, the noise must be coming from somebody trying to bust up a door. A second later, her bleary eyes confirm her hypothesis: there's a figure crouched in front of a row of lockers, a figure that's so busy cracking the combination to one in particular that it doesn't notice the soft swish of a curtain sliding open. And that locker? It belongs, of course, to to one Sofia Wolfe.
Right. Though, Fiona might be able to give one a run for their cubits. Regardless- Sofia rubs her eyes and blinks. Um. Maybe they're drunk and confused? "Um. Pardon me?" She asks the figure, curious, cautious. She's willing to give them the benefit of the doubt - at least half the room is so drunk finding one's pants is a Sisyphean exercise. She sits up and lets her legs dangle a moment.
Sofia earns no response: the safe having been cracked, the figure's withdrawing a can of spray paint from its large and bulky sweater, priming the bottle by shaking it up and down without regard for the other occupants of this particular collection of bunks. One flick, two flicks, three flicks — and then the figure is letting loose, paintaing angry red letters onto the neat and well-organized interior.
What the! "Hey!" Now it's serious. She pouts. Sofia spent ages cleaning and organizing. "What the frak are you doing!" That's HER stuff and - there's rage, surprise and - general wtfery. She looks startled.
Sofia's belongings will suffer one final indignity before the night is out. Even as the woman's voice rings out, the vandal has covered all four of her precious books in bright red paint, and now he — or she — ditches the bottle in favor of a —
Holy shit. That's really a lighter. And any engineer worth her salt will know what happens when mist from a spray can meets an open flame…
Two choices, Sofia. Douse that fire or go after the sweater-clad figure now sprinting for the hatch.
Oh. Oh FRAK. Sofia screams, almost reflexively. Fire. Fire bad. Fire bad for raesons Sofia /really can't remember/ but there's some deeply buried fear and loathing and oh gods. She hesitates. There's a temptation to beat the hell out of the sweater clad figure if she can catch them. But then there's a load of books on fire. Choices, choices. Well, the hatch - yeah, time to douse that fire. Sofia's gonna try to put it out. For the sake of the others. "Stop that person! He's setting fires!" As if any of the drunks would be any use but it's worth a shot?
"What?" The dreamy-eyed guy looks up from the flushed face of his lover, palms pressing down against the table to avoid putting too much weight on the poor woman beneath him — and then, suddenly, he's bolting up toward the nearest fire extinguisher, staggering forward as he tries to get his balance. He needn't have bothered. A half-second later, the shipboard klaxons sound that most terrifying of alarms, and a second after that, the man's partner has gotten on the nearest intercom to raise the call:
"Fire! Fire in the enlisted berths!"
And the vandal, of course, doesn't stick around to see it.
"Someone set my locker on fire-" Sofia jerks her head towards the hatch. She looks annoyed that the vandal got away, but such is life. She moves to grab the extinguisher and start putting out the fire. Her /stuff/. There's words, and angers and fears and frustrations. What kind of stupid prank is this? There's a lot churning and it feels like she swallowed a stone. Gods. It takes several moments for her to put it out, several puffs of carbon dioxide ensuing. Brains are funny. Things seem to slow down when one is in a panic. Is it so one doesn't screw up at a vital moment? Who knows? A cruel twist of the knife so that moment when one realizes they screwed themselves over /really/ sinks in? Either way.
Thankfully for Sofia — and the majority of her stuff — the first emergency team to arrive is made up of those enlisted folk who did the responsible thing and avoided this golden opportunity to get beautifully shitfaced. With the help of their extinguishers, the blaze is put out with relative ease: no kitchen fire, this little thing. Her clothes are saved — but alas, the books are beyond repair, having been painted over, burned, and then doused in so many streams of chemicals.
And the locker itself? Scorched, sure, but otherwise undamaged — save for the words 'CYLON LOVER' painted in massive capital letters over the mirror on the door.
"Arson," a grim-faced deckhand declares, setting her fire extinguisher down in disbelief.
"Gods," her buddy whispers, turning to skewer Sofia with his cool grey eyes. "What the frak did you do?"
Phew. Sofia takes a deep breath. She looks sad, realizing her books are gone. Books from Aquaria. Never again. Her eyes are wide, horrified. There's water gathering dangerously in them. She bites her lower lip hard. If only the place wasn't full of drunks. "Who would do this…" Who did she anger? She grits her teeth a little. She swallows hard. "N-nothing. I am friends with the deck crew, if it's Coll they think of. But … would someone /really/ believe a random - Agh. No." She shakes her head. "Nothing. I haven't done /anything/," She curls her fingers hard into her palms.
So there show up two very non-MP looking Marines. Why don't they look like MPs? Well, they're both dressed in their black BDUs, weapons slung on their back. And the leader, Corporal Lucius Decumius, has his mouth hanging open as he enters the room, nose twitching at the smell of burning. "Frak. This is… frakked." His companion, one of the other guys who came up from 3/4 Marines Recon with him, is just as exasperated looking.
Silence reigns for a few seconds as the DC crew unwinds, the adrenaline rush fading; then, as the MPs arrive — or not-MPs, as the case may be — they do what all enlisted folk do when confronted with events beyond their control.
"Yeah," the female deckie murmurs at length. It's an answer to Sofia and Decumius both: noncommittal in every way. "Don't get paid for this bullshit. Pryce, incident report is yours."
"Uh-huh." The large man's eyes don't leave the words on Sofia's locker as he backs away slowly. For this just might be the buzzkill to end all buzzkills.
"Yeah, and thanks for the help while the guy ran out," Sofia replies, mood considerably soured. She huffs softly. She rubs the back of her head. She shakes her head. Her books. She almost wants to cry. She does want to cry. She looks to the Marines. "Well." Well. What?
"Anyone who was in here isn't going anywhere." Decumius comes to his senses rather quickly, a frown pursing his lips. "I'm taking statements from every single one of you. And until we determine exactly what happened, nobody touches /anything/." He looks from person to person, pausing to give a sympathetic look to Sofia quickly before he booms to them all, "Understood?"
Sofia sighs and looks to Decumius. There's a lot of mingled emotions. She shakes her head. "If only I wasn't the only one not making out or sober," Sigh. She just puts her face in her palms. "Understood." She looks back to her locker.
"Sorry, you're gonna have to explain this to me, Wolfe. I was asleep until my shift, which started half an hour ago. Then I came here. Who was drunk, and what was happening? I need the whole story." Decumius looks around, quickly, taking his helmet off. He motions over to a corner of the room, as far from the burnt items as he can get. Not far, given the circumstances, but anyways. And he moves there. "Please, sit down. Breathe. And tell me the whole story, please."
By the door, Lance Corporal Koersen is busy talking to the other folks who were present. He's got a sour look on his face and a notepad in his hand that he's busy scribbling in.
"Um. Watch out for that vomit trail," Sofia points. There's trail of vomit from a ring of upturned chairs into the head to aft. She sighs and moves over. "Sorry. I'm-" Not in a good mood. "I guess I can't blame people for sitting even after I yelled. I - okay. So everyone'd been partying since we had a night off I guess. Anyway, I start pulling my curtain and blanket because frankly I don't wanna hear people making out or going farther," She explains. "I mean, if you wanna do that - whatev." Shrug. Drunk is drunk, "So I hear this rattling and something like a door being forced open. I poke my head out and someone is trying to open my locker. Guess they got it eventually because then they start spraypainting things." Sigh. "Make sense so far?"
Decumius has his own notepad out and is writing down some obviously key points, looking down at the paper and then back up to Sofia periodically. He nods at the crewman. "Yep. Please, go on."
Sigh. Sofia nods, "Well, I yelled at them. Didn't stop. Then they pulled a lighter - I can't tell if it was a boy or a girl, but they had on a sweater." Frown. "No one was able to stop them I guess." Or too *ahem* busy. "I screamed. But I guess that seemed like something someone drunk might do?" A shrug. "Anyway, I noticed the lighter and they torched my books. I had a choice of either grabbing the guy or putting the fire out, so I put the fire out. I dunno if it was right, but frakkin' drunk or making out or not, no one deserved to burn alive if it spread," Sofia bites her lower lip.
Decumius nods at the doubt that Sofia expresses, putting a hand on her shoulder. He's trying to be comforting, it seems. "Yes. That was the right thing to do. Fire in a confined space is priority. Especially on a ship, and especially in a berth. So, this guy ran out as you were putting the fire out? Did you catch any other glance at him?"
Sofia smiles faintly at the hand on her shoulder. "I appreciate the sympathy," She remarks quietly. "Just-" Her rep's probably toast, with the letters 'CYLON LOVER' spraypainted neatly on her locker. "Those books were from home and now everyone's looking at me funny…" Then a headshake. "No. I tried. I even called for help but again-" Load of drunks and the two lovebirds. Yeah. She seems relieved that she choose wisely in terms of fire vs. tackling dude. "Yeah, they bolted once the fire was going. Guess they heard me yelling and didn't want to stick around, you know?" She shrugs. "Oh well." What's done is done. Now there's sadness and fear.
"Alright. Well, for now, if that's all you can remember, here's what I want you to do. We're cordoning off this room, it's now a crime scene. Grab your blanket and whatever sleeping kit you need, as long as it's not in the locker, and you can head up to the security office. I'll radio ahead and have the duty officer prep for you a room. Probably in the guest rooms." Decumius says, his fingers and pen jotting down a final few things before the pad gets tucked away in a pocket. He looks dour.
Lance Corporal Koersen, meanwhile, is still taking witness statements. Upon overhearing Decumius, though, he begins to order the same - everyone woken, and sent up to berthings. He approaches Decumius and leans in to whisper something to him.
Decumius nods and whispers back.
Koersen moves to tell the other folks where their new berths are. These happen to be seperate from where Sofia will be sleeping.
Sads. "Not even any of my clothes? Alright," Sofia nods, accepting. It's not easy to find clothes … tailored to her, but she seems to accept it. "Thank you," She murmurs. "I'm really sorry…" She seems gloomy, but what can be done. "I wish I could tell you more, I was just about to go to sleep." Good thing she hadn't, one supposes. She takes a deep breath, gathering her pillow, blanket and sleeping kit. She looks to the Decu, though there is some curiousity and worry. "Well… might be kinda cool to get a room," Look on the bright side.
"Sorry. You'll get your stuff back when we've done thorough investigation. I'll make sure the duty officer knows you need a fresh shower and toiletry kit up there. You'll be comfortable, don't worry." Says Decumius, reassuringly. He gets up, and nods at Lance Corporal Koersen.
Koersen calls up the duty officer over a small handheld wireless set, and informs him of the details.
Decumius glances at Sofia. "Off you go now. Don't take it to heart, it's probably random, drunken violence."
"…" Sofia looks worried about leaving her worldly possessions behind. "Yeah, sure," She doesn't seem to believe that last line. She doesn't fuss though, a friendship with some of the MPs keeping her a meek sort. She pauses. She shuffles her blanket a little. There's a sketchbook nestled within the blankets. Kid sleeps with a sketchbook? Odd Snipe is odd. "Thanks."
Decumius smiles genuinely at Sofia, waiting for her and the others to vacate the room.
Sofia just sort of half smiles weakly back. It's not really anyone's fault, she's just really rattled by what happened. Even a little fearful. She will step out then, clinging to what she's allowed to take.
Decumius puts his head in his hands for a moment, before composing himself. He locks the hatch door. "Frak me. This is gay."