| Cards, Chats, and Chapel |
| Summary: | A game of Triad in the Rec Room attracts Karthasi whose conversation hits several points, |
| Date: | 22 Jun 2041 AE |
| Related Logs: | Close Frakking Attention |
| Players: |
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| Recreation Room |
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| This huge room spans quite a lot of floor space, the support beams crisscrossing at even points throughout the room. The two sides are divided fairly between the Enlisted and Officers with an unseen line more or less running down the center of the room. A couple pool and card tables sit in no-man's land with a series of regular mess tables at the rear of the room, nearest a counter full of minor refreshments like coffee and bags of chips. Magazines and reading material are spread out over the couched seating areas and a few televisions are set-up with a couple of video game systems made available. |
| Post-Holocaust Day: #115 |
The third shift is halfway through and dinner is two hours past. Now begins the 'killing of time'. At one of ther tables near the invisible centerline of the room Constin is seated, shuffling a deck one handed- the big man's right arm still showing the fresh scabs where pins had, until recently, kept broken bits of humerus in place, hand kept near to his stomach.
The hatch swings open and admits one (1) Tisiphone. Her bruised cheekbone is fading to a (not-so-)lovely mottled green, and the last of her Leonisian sunburn is still leaving her cheeks and arms. The dark red bandana she wore across her scalp for most of the misadventure is still being worn — though, blessedly for all concerned, it's been cleaned. She's in her fatigues, and carries a corked glass bottle with her, full almost to the brim with amber liquid. Killing of time and livers, indeed.
Fresh out of smokes, but feeling full of piss-and-vinegar - getting back from Leonis with little more than scratches, bruises, and all around aches and pains'll do that for a gal - Cilusia hears the game calling to her. That, or the hooch. Or the smokes. Something. She is not, however, currently drinking, and is somewhat freshly showered, even! "Ohhhhhh frak me. How sweet it is to be back to playing some godsdamned Triad!"
"Not so sweet as it'll be once some of these ladies step up to the table," Constin drawls back dryly to Cilusia's declaration. "Take a chair if you like, sir- us enlisted only bite a little," he adds with a short-lived curl to his lip.
Sun-bleached brows shoot up toward Tisiphone's bandana as she looks Constin up and down and up again. They furrow toward eachother slightly as she says, "I heard you on the comms on Leonis." She detours toward the table, setting the bottle down with a CLUNK before retrieving one of the mugs from the refreshments table. "What're the stakes?" She pulls out a chair and drops down into it.
"Speak for yourself there, bud. I bite a hell of a lot harder than you'd think." To prove a point, she gives a little muscle flex. Yeah, that's right. That's like 100 pounds of flexing, inked, huge-haired Scorpian acting a fool in front of the MP who's like half-giant - well, a quarter at least. Before she sits, she kicks the folding chair around so that the back is in the front, and flops down. "You dealing there, Gigantor?"
"Yeah, ah'm shaking," Constin returns deadpan at Cilusia's snap. "So scared ah'll let you have first deal," he notes passing the hexagonal deck Cilusia's way, before looking up at Tisiphone's greeting. "Did you now, sir? Ah was making a bit of noise," he voices with a half shrug. "Can't say ah remember if we've met though. Stakes start at fifty cubits, unless either of you wanna bet with something else?"
Tisiphone snorts. Or she might have a tickle in her throat. It's hard to tell for sure, and her head is tipped forward as she rummages out her cigarettes, negating a clear look at her expression. By the time she looks up, lighting her ciggie as she does, whatever prompted the exclamation is wiped away. "Tisiphone Apostolos, Black Knights," the Viper jock rattles off, making her cigarette bob. "Never got my first paycheque, man, so it's smokes for me. Ten cubits a smoke?" She starts tapping the cancer sticks out.
"Well, frak me. I only got a few cubits or a few smokes. I might have to give you a mix and an IOU," Cilusia quips, reaching out to take the deck. Those little fingers are right nimble as she shuffles the cards together, doing what she can to bridge them. "Alright, alright. I think we're all familiar with the rules of the game. Large Triad wins. Full Colors beats out mixed, reds are high, blues low." As she talks, she starts to deal out six cards to everyone, starting with Tisiphone, then Constin, then herself.
"Like Hell," Constin snorts back to Tis' proposal. "You got any idea how much a smoke is worth? And what a cubit ain't? Call it a hundred cubits to a smoke and you both should be in the clear," the marine rumbles in what would have been very generous pre-Warday. "Corporal Eleftherios Constin, Cee-Em-Cee." He names himself in return, gathering up his stack of cards and tosses his count of fifty cubits into the center of the table. Playing the game with one hand takes him a second longer to sift through than normal.
Tisiphone pauses with five smokes out. She seems to consider questioning Constin, but then — looking gift horses in the mouth, and all — she sets the excess (for now) ones down on the table and throws in a single ciggie before picking up her cards.
"Well, isn't that nice of you all to make me look like a fool right from the start?" Cilusia plucks some cubits out of her off-duties and tosses them up on the table. "In case you didn't catch my name in all that Leonis shit, it's Fasi. Cilusia Fasi. And I hit things with a wrench when I get mad. Because that's what deckies do."
"Yeah, we're right neighborly," Constin returns, adding his hundred cubits to the pot. "Welcome back to the boat, by the way," he adds, setting the cards facedown in order to pick out the one he doesn't want, and passing it toward the dealer. "One for me."
"One for me too," Cilusia adds. One hexagonal card gets thrown into the discard, and she takes a fresh one from the stack. "Rumor has it you dropped in from the sky yourself, huh? A flying bear…never thought I'd see the frakkin' day…"
"Good to be back," Tisiphone mutters, though it sounds a bit reflexive. While Constin and Cilusia take their fresh cards, she uncorks her bottle and pours a splash into her empty mug. "You guys grab your own glasses, you can have a taste," she points out. She lifts it to drink, sets her teeth against it as she swallows. "One for me." She tosses her discard in, and snakes the fresh card into her hand.
"Ah surely did," Constin returns to Cilusia. "Hay-Lo jump from twenty miles up. Fell for more than five minutes," the big man drawls. "Don't mind saying that was one helluva thing," he relates with a smile cracking through. "Swear ah can't wait to do it again. Much obliged, sir," he adds to Tisiphone's offer, setting his cards facedown again to throw back the last of whatever had been in his disposable cup already to free the thing up.
"Well…this ain't so great…" Cilusia, scowls, looking at the cards. "Shit cards, shit cubits. "I frakkin' check." She taps the table twice with her finger tips.
Constin takes his fresh card, and sets it atop his remaining hand, without a second look. "Same as ah understand terminal velocity is for anything else, sir. See your hundred and raise you another hundred," he drawls, giving a nod of thanks for the splash of alcohol.
"Godsdamnit. Godsfrakkindamnit you two. I don't have enough cigarettes for this shit." For a minute there, Cilusia stands up and pats around in the pockets of her pants…before finally pulling out two rather ragged, wrinkly, bent smokes. "And here I thought I was out. The things I do to stand up to the big boys." She chucks them into the center.
The ship's recreation room is about the last place someone as socially ambivalent as Sitka would generally seek refuge— yet it's undoubtedly the Petrels' commanding officer who waltzes in with his hands shoved in his blues' pockets, with a half hour or so to kill before shift change. His attention, of course, is drawn to the card game being played a couple of tables down; he pauses for a moment near the coffee machine to watch, under the precept of pouring himself a cuppa.
"Heh," Constin chuckles again. "Fasi, those are some of the saddest smokes ah've ever seen. They're gonna match your face after ah win this hand," the marine drawls with a tight grin. Turning his narrow eyes toward Tisiphone, Constin inclines his it. "It is, sir." Cracking a wider grin, he notes, "Large Triad, Green high." The cards are overturned to reveal his hand as he eyes the other hands as they are revealed. "Well frak me," the marine shakes his head as Tisihphone shows a Red high.
"Well, don't much matter, since neither of us won the motherfrakkin' things," Cilusia says about the hands when they're overturned. She's even with Constin, and just a point behind Tisiphone. Her lips are pursed up and pushed out. "Shit. And here I thought I was being sneaky to hide a Large Triad. Asses. Both of you." Then a hmph as she slides the deck toward the next one to deal.
Tisiphone tries, briefly, to keep it to a well-mannered chuckle. Very briefly. The 'mmheh-heh' noise cuts away to what can only be fairly described as a cackle, though, as she pushes her cards forward, and drags back her hard-won loot. After pushing them over to the side, she pulls the cards together and gives them a quick, inexpert shuffling. "Play you a round?" she calls toward Sitka, pale brows lifted. "You owe me some smokes." Such. A. Grin. She starts dealing the cards out.
Sitka looks away when Tisiphone turns toward him— and just in time to prevent his coffee cup from overflowing. Sluuurp as he brings it to his mouth, and skims off the top. "I'm, uh.. not too good with cards, Apostolos." He flickers a smile while he swallows, and 'salutes' her with his mug before wandering in closer. "Thanks, though. Mind if I just watch?"
Constin chuckles, letting out a short breath and turning an eye toward Sitka as Tisiphone greets the pilot. Checking his cards, the marine drops his hundred worthless cubits in the middle of the table. "Ah don't mind, sir. No shame sitting out," he voices to Sitka without looking up from the cards held in his hale left hand.
From that pocket, Cilusia pulls out a few more cubits to at least keep in the game and see what she can draw. "Well, seeing as how these are pretty much worthless anymore…" she chuckles a little, tossing them up there with a click clack.
"Definitely gotta play you sometime, then," Tisiphone mutters, narrowing her eyes toward Sitka, her grin still threatening to spill the cigarette out of her mouth. She toes out one of the chairs at the table and points her chin at it before her attention flicks back to her cards. "Mmn," she says, before picking one of Cilusia's poor, bent ciggies out of her winnings heap and throwing it back into the pot.
"Ah'm good," Constin states, after thumbing through his cards, placing the stack facedown in order to pick up one of the cubit chits, while awaiting the decisions of the others. "Bet another hundred," he states when Cilusia and Tis have made their own choices.
First, Cilusia discards and recollects two new cards. "You all are just trying to bankrupt me, aren'tcha?" Once more into the depths of the pocket, to retrieve a crinkly 100, when the betting comes back her way. "Looks like it's been through the washer huh?" It has.
While Constin and Cilusia manage their discards, Tisiphone pours another splash of bourbon into her cup. She's not much of a card-player, by the looks of it — her mouth twists with exasperation at one corner before she lifts her glass. Bourbon shot, cigarette chaser. She picks up the cup and waggles it at Sitka, eyebrows lifting again. A few quick and grinning Sagittaran syllables are shot his way, sounding like a question, before she throws another of Cilusia's dented ciggies into the pot.
"That *is* the general idea," Constin snickers to Cilusia's complaint, picking his cards back up and- as neither of the women raised the pot, setting his cards out faceup. "Large Triad, Green high-" In spreading the cards out, he frowns. "Aw frak. Thought that was a three.." A snort and less vocal curse.
Sitka leans away from Constin in order to sip at his coffee again, the knuckle of his thumb touched to the corner of his mouth as a trickle tries to escape. The bourbon's given a glance, and then his attention's drawn briefly to Tisiphone when she switches to that brash-sounding Sagittarian. One brow is raised slightly, and he murmurs his reply to her in the same language, over the rim of his cup.
"Read'em and weep ladies…" Cilusia snerks laying down her cards. "Large Triad…red high. For real. Some of us can count, jarhead." She lays her cards down overtop of Constin's, and rakes in her winnings with a huuuuuuuuge grin. "At least this time, I don't have to fish around for more pathetic washer-cigs, huh?"
There's a ripple of sly laughter from Tisiphone at the tail end of Sitka's words. She narrows her eyes at him, then at her cards, then tosses them in to the heap. "Man, /take/ yer shitty damn smokes back," she encourages, making little shoo-shoo gestures with her smouldering cigarette toward the pot. She uncorks the bourbon-bottle again, waggles it Constin's direction. "You want some, then?" The question's aimed at the Captain.
"Yeah, yeah.. Ran out of fingers on the one hand," Constin drawls back dryly to Cilusia's 'some of us can count' taunt. "Come on then, deal out the fresh hand, so ah can win some of that back, then." The ante is tossed out once again, as the big marine decides now is when he wants a taste of whatever it was Tisiphone shared earlier. Throwing back the bourbon, he reacts visibly. "Pretty damned good," he voices.
After briefly scanning Cilusia's cards after she throws down, and quirking a small smile at her broad grin, Sitka's about to knock back another swallow of coffee when Tisiphone makes her offer. Ostensibly, anyway. He eyes her up and down for a moment, actually seeming to consider it before a glance at his watch confirms he's only got: "Thirty-two minutes until I'm on duty. Love to, but I can't." Instead, a swallow of coffee that's mostly grinds.
"One of your pals left it for us," says Tisiphone to Constin, as she scoops up her fresh cards, cigarette bobbing as she looks at them. "Lance Corporal Maragos?" She makes a sympathetic noise best translated as, 'Meh,' to Sitka's refusal, but doesn't push it, plunking the bottle down again, instead. Another glance at her cards before she throws in one of her own cigarettes — slightly bent from the pack being in her pocket, but not laundered.
"Well, let's put some of this cash to use, huh?" Cilusia tosses her bet out into the middle of the table. "A real testament to those cig packs huh? If they can go through the wash cycled and still be smokable…maybe. Damn, must've been a long time since I've had this particular pair on, or maybe I just smoked enough of the pack to not give two fraks about keeping it." She shrugs.
"Did he, now?" Constin voices to Tis on the subject of the bourbon as he studies his cards- looking over them at greater length after his last round's gaffe. "Maragos must have ad his fill at the Jump party, last week. Decent of him to share," the marine opines, tossing one card to the dealer. "Gimme one."
Sitka drops into the role of silent observer for the time being. Slouched in his chair, probably half asleep even with the coffee he's imbibing, the Captain observes the goings-on at the table from under droopy lashes.
Again, Tisiphone scowls faintly at her cards, plucking two of them from her hand and grabbing fresh ones. "You gonna make it through CAP, man?" she teases, eyes flicking over the edges of her cards toward Sitka. Another card is drawn out, unlooked at, and slid over to Constin.
"Yeah, it don't sound like such a good idea to fly a CAP if you're gonna nod off there, Captain. I could go without seeing wrecked Vipers for a long, long time," Cilusia comments as she doesn't drop a single card. "It's looking like all it'll take all we can do just to keep what's flying, flying, even though I hear Viper fab is back up and cranking."
"Mmn," Tisiphone says, eyeing her fresh cards. She lifts her bourbon cup, finding it all but empty, and shakes the last few drops out onto her tongue before plunking it down again. She looks to Cilusia and Constin a minute before throwing two more cigarettes onto the pot.
"Hnh?" Blue eyes open fully, and drift over to Tisiphone when the Ensign speaks. "Aw, hell no. They aren't putting me back on patrol for a couple of days yet." Mumbled to Cilusia, "I don't get into a cockpit if I can't fly. Your concern's touching, though."
"Well, Fasi- Better you have too many birds to keep flying, than too few, yeah?" Constin returns to the endless lament of the Deck crew: too much work. A shake of his head as Tis raises the stakes. "Bluffing or not, ah'm out," the marine states, tossing his hand in and passing to Cilusia.
You would think that enough incense gets burned in the chapel that another cigarette or two wouldn't unduly mar the atmosphere. And yet, after the evening's group Promethean observations, the priestling's snikked across the corridor for a smoke and maybe a cuppa. But first thing's first, and she's getting a fingernail underneath the sliding cap of her pack of Caprican-packed Fumie Plusses. The other smoke and/or card enthusiasts attract her attention, and her course swerves, attraced by the gravity of the game into the orbit of the table as she draws out a long pale-green and tan papered creature with her fingertips.
"Well, we're about to see if this is smart. I never was a really good student, afterall." To call, Cilusia tosses up an actual smokable cig that she won from that last hand. "I'm calling, then we'll see what you got." She's grinning, leaning right up against the back of that chair, toe tips just touching the ground as she sits backwards.
Speaking of cuppas, Sitka's just in the process of draining his. Speaking of smokes, he proceeds to dig a pack out of his trousers' pocket and tap one out, still absently watching the game in progress. At the Sister's entrance, he looks over briefly— then does a little double-take, eyes snared by her approach.
"Large mixed, blue high-" Tisiphone starts to announce, seeming fairly confident as she lays her hand down and sketches her eyes to Cilusia's cards, and finishes with an, "-aw, frak me." She blows out a smoky huff, and makes that little shoo-shoo gesture again, with a bit of a sulk. "Frakdamn, how the-" she begins, then is distracted by Sitka's double-take. Looking over, she sits up a bit straighter — a bit like a kid caught smoking by their teacher. "Sister," she greets.
Having already folded, Constin is free to enjoy Tisiphone's displeasure as she's edged out, barking out a short laugh, and slapping the table with his left hand. Following the collective look of the table he greets Karthasi with the word, "Sir," before glancing aside in surprise to Tis at the pilot's word of 'Sister'.
"Heeeeeeee!" Cilusia practically squees out when she wins another hand! "Frakkin' lucky hell! Been a long time since I can remember winning more than one at a go!" "Large triad, red high! Beats your blue!" She chucks her cards back in the discard, and plucks her winnings from the middle of the table…just the cigarettes though, leaving cash there. "Here you go, for your troubles," she grins, sliding a straight cig to Constin and Tisiphone. "Keep the cubits, but I've got about a million hours of rack time I wanna catch up on after our hellish little vacation. Good game though!" And with that, she kicks that chair back out, and says her goodbyes, stopping a second to look at the woman Tisiphone IDs as sister. Tisiphone and Sitka get little salutes. "Sirs…sister," she nods to them all. "Corporal," to Constin. Then she skeedaddles for the hatch.
Karthasi fumbles absent-mindedly for a lighter — where did she put it? — fumie hanging from where she'd tucked it between her lips. She gives the other Captain a nod, then looks to Tisiphone, coming up with her lighter, at length, but declining to allow it to fulfil its Platonic tele, letting that hand hang at her side while she nabs the fumie with her other hand and drops it to her side as well. "Tisiphone," she greets, coming near enough the table to be engaged in conversation without intruding overmuch into the game. "Don't stop dealing on my account," she goes on to add, with a pale but almost jestful smile. "Although after a beat like that I wouldn't blame you." she gestures with a motion of her chin toward the close cut on the table. "Welcome home," she adds, syllables properly pristine, as always, but no less sincere.
The salute aimed Sitka's way is waved off halfheartedly as the pilot fits smoke to mouth, and digs out his lighter. "Take it easy," he offers over his shoulder in parting. Another quick glance goes to the approaching Karthasi, and then he begins easing his chair away from the table. "I should, uh, probably get going too. Reports to review, and all that." His eyeroll plainly states what he thinks of the navy and its fondness for paperwork. "You all have a good night, yeah?"
Tisiphone pulls the last drag off her own cigarette and leans off to the side to grind the cherry out against the edge of her boot. She drops the crushed filter into her empty bourbon-cup, eyes flicking up from it to Karthasi, then across to the departing Sitka. "Mmn," she says again, the same noise she made at her earlier losing hand. Then, with a return of her earlier slyness, "I'll catch you for a game yet. Thanks for the help." A little eye-narrow, there, before she's looking back to her tablemates. "Last hand before I rack out? Do you play, Sister?"
Constin dips his head to the departing Cilusia, "Fasi," adding to Sitka, "Sir. You ever want to play cards, instead of just peeking at them, consider yourself invited," he drawls with a dry grin to the Petrel Captain. Tisiphone's query is met with another nod. "Deal away, sir. Ah'm game."
"Good night, Captain," come the words of farewell from the other Captain, coupled with a short lowering of her head into the vestigal image of a bow. Lifting her head again, she looks from the table to the pack of cigs in her hand, then to Tisiphone. "I could stay a hand, if you don't mind me playing with these," she adds, meaning the smokes she's toting, of course. "Hello, again," she adds, for Constin's benefit, or, well— in his direction, at least.
"I'll take it under advisement," murmurs Sitka to the Corporal around an exhale of smoke, chin lifted so he can slip the top button on his blues jacket into place. Then his chair's slid back in with a scrape of worn pads against the deck, and he leans past Tisiphone briefly to put out what's left of his cigarette in the ashtray perched near her. Where Karthasi's little bow might be returned in kind with a gesture, or possibly some sort of blessing, he merely twitches an uncomfortable smile and turns to lumber on out.
Tisiphone watches Sitka start to move for the door, then scoops the cards up and gives them another one of her thorough, though rather inexpert, shufflings. "Corporal's decided that a smoke's worth a hundred cubits, so however you want, Sister," she explains as she starts to deal out the cards. She's still sitting a bit straighter than she was before — not uncomfortable like the Petrel Leader was, but definitely more /attentive/.
"Ah wasn't too talkative last time we met, sir," Constin notes dryly to Karthasi's greeting as he scoots in his opening bet. Tisiphone's explanation is echoed by a nod. "Seems only fair," he notes. "Cubits ain't worth what they used to be, yeah?"
"Either that or fumarella has greatly appreciated in value," Greje reasons as she slips around and down into a seat, pulling a few more smokes from the pack to line up as ammunition into the game. "Fair warning, though, these are fumarella, daphnis minor and a little bit of the White Lady's barley," she explains the contents of the smokes. Nothing egregious, especially for the clergy, but not stuff you want to smoke directly before shift. And she sees the bet, discreetly, while she explains, thus, then raps her knuckles easefully on the table, passing up her opportunity to discard.
Tisiphone's sun-bleached brows shoot up her forehead a little as she eyes the Sister's bet in a new light. Intrigued. Definitely intrigued. "You've been well, Sister?" she asks as she drags two cards out of her hand with a mild frown and replaces them with two from the deck.
Contin picks out three cards, his rate of play hampered by essentially playing with only one hand. "Gimme three, sir," he voices to the dealer. Checking each of the three new cards in turn, he snorts once and shakes his head. "Fold. Looks like the fancy smokes ain't for me, this time around."
"Better now, yes, Tisiphone, thank you. And I'm very glad to see you safe, as well," Greje collects her cards together and just sort of holds them on the table in front of her, fingers forming a lattice over them as she speaks with Tisiphone. "Our missing comrades were foremost in our thoughts and prayers, here." And, as if in afterthought, she tosses another fumie into the middle.
"I-" Tisiphone hesitates for a moment, teeth dragging over a cracked spot on her bottom lip. "I heard they dragged the Admiral out of the Chapel to arrest him." She leaves the statement there, though the questioning look is plain on her face. Someone's hoping the rumour mill's gone terribly awry. She glances to her cards, then throws one of her own cigarettes in to the pot as well.
"You heard wrong," Constin interjects, although the rumor wasn't directed to him. "The Admiral got dragged off the doorstep, sure, but he weren't in the chapel when he got detained. He was shouting in from outside when he ordered the crew to start killing each other." Bitterness is clear in the big man's voice as the incident is discussed.
Karthasi maintains her mask of cool Caprican calm even as the topic nears the pollution of the sacred precinct on board. "Two of the chapel attendants were privy to the matter," she states, carefully stacking her cards and setting them face-down in a neat pile. "I questioned them at length and it is my opinion that the letter of sacred law was not violated in the course of the evening's events." Thus she assures Tisiphone, but only in terms that can be liberally interpreted to mean, 'but another priest might have a different opinion.' Inasmuch as sacred law is a long and complex code, and any particular case might have as many priests' opinions on it as a legal case might have different opinions by different lawyers.
Tisiphone's pale eyes flick to Constin, sketching over the Marine's face as he replies. The unease melts away almost instantly to relief. "Really? I'm so frakking glad to hear that." Presumably only the /first/ part of his statement. "The- um. The XO's not a praying man. I thought maybe he might have…" She gestures vaguely with her cards. Sagittaran sign language for done something horrible, maybe. Her eyes move then to Karthasi, whose answer is listened to very intently, indeed. "Letter of the law," she murmurs, looking up at the Sister's expression for a moment before the cards-turning pulls her attention away. "Large mixed, red high," she announces, though without the crowing or cackling of her earlier wins. It doesn't stop her from collecting her winnings, though.
"The letter of *Colonial* law doesn't make any allowance," the big MP states flatly. "So ah'd say the Ex-Oh went out of his way to keep folks from getting pissed off. Sacred Law ain't the code ah'm sworn to uphold," Constin adds with a wan smile.
Karthasi smiles quietly when she notices the repeat of the prior hand. "All of this has happened before," she comments, half-facetious. She looks up, then, "Yes," she asserts. "There is clear scriptural precedent for the differentiation of cases where someone is taken from an altar by force and those where someone is lured from the altar by treachery, the former invoking pollution while the latter does not," she explains. "Still. It's a fuzzy line, on which I'd wish no one had tread," she lays out there in an honestly troubled voice. "But I see no miasma in the case which must be cleansed." She looks to the Marine, flushing just slightly pink along her cheeks. "Of course not. Nor do I expect you to. That falls to me, as far as I'm able to protect it."
Tisiphone carefully draws the Sister's two fumarellas out of the pile of winnings, and offers one of them out to Constin from between her fingers. "For inviting me to play," she says to him. "Thanks, man." The other is tucked, oh-so-carefully, into her own pack. /That/ one will be saved for later. On matters of fuzzy lines, she rubs absently at a spot on her wrist-cuff and murmurs, "So say we all," under her breath. Superstitious? Who, her? After Karthasi falls silence again, she pushes her chair back and says, "I know what I saw on that tape. I'm- I know I'm not so concerned about the Admiral's treatment. Just the Chapel's."
"Much obliged to you, sir," Constin answers as he accepts the offered unit of Tisiphone's winnings. "As for the admiral.. ah don't know if he's guilty. That's not for me to say. All ah *will* say is that he ordered the ship's crew to start killing each other, and that bitch Rime passed along that order. And as a result of that, there were four marines killed and sixteen wounded. Some body's to answer for that."
Now there's a thought that sparks the Caprican Academic's interest enough to break her chilled facade entirely, both brows rising as she regards Tisiphone "You don't believe that the admiral had legitimate claim to the protections Zeus vouchsafed to Hestia?" she asks, more intensely curious than incredulous. "On what grounds, if I may ask? I'm very interested to know." Which is clear enough. "If he truly was not vouchsafed those protections, then no harm could have come to the sanctum whether he was goaded out or hauled out bodily."
"He's an abomination before the Lords and Ladies." Said in the simple, matter-of-fact way of someone speaking what they believe is the pure and perfect Truth(tm). Tisiphone's eyes don't even waver when they return to the Sister's for a moment, as she pushes her chair in and collects her bourbon-bottle. "You're probably- I'm sure you're right, Sister, that it wouldn't matter, then, how he was pulled out. But none of you knew. You thought he was the Admiral. So it mattered. That's, um. That's how I see it." /That/ isn't offered confidently at all — rather meekly, instead. Putting forth theological opinions to the Sister requires a bit of pluck for the Ensign. "Um. I've gotta rack out. Thanks for the game." She ducks her head in a mute bob to Constin, a deeper one to Karthasi, before turning to go.
When, in reality, there's nothing the Sister likes better than a good hard bit of debate over some arcane detail of theological code. She certainly doesn't seem to mind being disagreed with, and when Tisiphone puts out her own thesis, she's already lifting a finger in a manner most professorial to add another leg to the debate before Tisiphone gives the rather firm social cue that she's done talking, and the finger falls to the table, once more, her expression briefly that of a puppy whose master is bored of throwing the stick before she plasters it over in her usual pleasantly neutral expression. "Of course, Tisiphone. Ypnos be kind to you," she restrains herself to saying.
Having been briefly left in the dust of theology and scripture and, Constin had little to add, and even when he does speak up it's brief. "Ah don't know a thing about Zeus and Hestia, and ah won't speak as to guilt in an ongoing investigation. But that fella's actions were un-frakking-worthy of an officer of the Fleet." A snort and disgusted twist of his lip.
Karthasi takes a quiet breath, straightening her back and looking to Constin again. "Well. That's for the JAG to decide; it lays outside my area of expertise, I'm sad to say," she disclaims meekly, pulling another long pale-green and tan cig from the pack and actually lighting up, this time. "You're friends with Lauren?"
"Ah'd have thought honor and justice had some little place in the faith," Constin answers a bit curtly. Using his left hand to pick up and slam back the little disposable cup of bourbon Tisiphone had left him. LEtting a rumbling breath out, he answers with a nod. "Yeah. Ah am."
"The right thing in the eyes of man is called justice. The right thing in the eyes of the Lords is called piety. These two things are… not always identical," Greje tells the fellow. "That's good. She needs someone, right now."
"Well then ah'm frakking glad to be a man," Constin returns to the first, setting the empty disposable cup back on the table lightly. Karthasi's last words draw his eye back up. "Why now? Ah mean, moreso than any other time."
"Ah—" Greje begins, cheeks budding with roses once more. "Well, she's having trouble finding her feet, is all I'll say. I don't want to divulge anything told to me in a confidence. But you two seemed to have a connection, in the Sickbay. Has she spoken with you?"
Constin frowns as he peers back at the woman. "You frakking blushing?" he wonders, puzzled. "Yeah, we talk quite a bit." The talk of keeping confidence is enough to get the MP not to pry, but it doesnt make him look happy.
(More to follow)