| Cheers |
| Summary: | Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name…but all you've got is a looted, molding wet bar on a bombed-out hell planet. Some of the Leonis castaways belly up to it and discuss the state of things. |
| Date: | 10 Jun 2041 AE |
| Related Logs: | None |
| Players: |
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| Virgon House - Leonis |
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| A room in the Virgon House. |
| Post-Holocaust Day: #104 |
Decrepitude and disrepair are the hallmarks of the Virgon Embassy, post holocaust and looting. With a fresh rain having fallen the previous night, the brownstone's gutters are still leaking runoff into the tattered walls, lending the place a damp, mildewy smell. Steady dripping can be heard quite prominently in one of the embassy's more central rooms: a large, circular space that was once covered with a glass sunroof and arranged with finely upholstered chairs, with a polished wet bar and a fireplace tucked into one corner. The glass, of course, has been shattered by enterprising looters seeking a way in; the furniture overturned and rainsoaked, the bar all but emptied of its contents. With the possible exception of a small bottle of spirits that Sitka's liberated from its hidey hole, and is currently sniffing at its contents. The Captain's in his fatigues and a tee shirt, service pistol laid beside him on the bar, and looks to have recently dunked his head in a fair quantity of water, judging by the way his dark hair's plastered to his skull.
One of those looters? Tyr Bannik. But he is a looter of a more benevolent sort — or so he claims — using his powers only for good. The deckhand has been able to put his avionics skills to work for once, puttering around the Embassy and cobbling together what wire and casings he can strip from the fixtures and walls of the house. "Captain?" Bannik calls as he walks into the bar area where Sitka is. "Did you have those tongs over here?" He pushes his glasses up on his nose, peering around.
Sure, the Virgan Embassy is more defensible, contains more intact furniture, and isn't marked on some Cylon's map as 'Here Be Humans' — but it's not /familiar/. Tisiphone had just stopped skulking around the Sagittaran Embassy as if expecting boogeymen to jump out from each corner. The morning was spent helping with gear-ferrying. The afternoon was spent skulking about for a new hidey-hole, her precious windowsill and overturned couch left behind. The evening finds her snooping instead of skulking, her investigations bringing her in with a restless, suspicious frown. Any boogeymen here?
"Frak, this place is starting to mold." And on that cheery note, Haeleah wanders her way in. Nose wrinkled at the olfactory aura of decrepitude. "Life in atmosphere is over-rated. If I've got my way, I'm never leaving a place with an air filtration system again. I'll tell you what." She does not actually notice /who/ is in the room right away. The monologue is launched into before any hellos. She's been engaged in some scrounging of her own, , though the pickings for things mechanical are slimmer than for base wiring parts. Most of the big stuff was gotten to by looters before her. "Bannik. Hey. Finding anything good? Frak me! Is there booze left?" That last to Sitka, at the bar. Which she heads over to investigate for herself.
Sitka looks over his shoulder as Bannik addresses him, eyes ticking down then up the young man in a brief, cursory fashion. "Hey, Tyr," accompanies something approaching a smile, followed by a couple more sniffs of the bottle. "Nope, haven't seen any tongs. Says it's rum, but it smells like piss. Not surprised they left this behind." It doesn't stop him from taking a swig of the stuff, of course. No good Saggie ever turned down free booze. Haeleah gets saluted with the bottle while he swallows, and then drags the back of his hand across his mouth. "Define booze."
Bannik shakes his head as his tongs seem to have gone missing. "Darn it. I had them around here somewhere." He sighs. "Lieutenant Kulko wanted me to scrounge up a VLF to try to talk to Cerberus again. I've almost got it back together from the wiring I scrounged up." Some exposition for the room.
"There's a wine-cellar downstairs, you know." Tisiphone's voice, from over yonder, as she leans a shoulder into the wall, head tilted down while she lights a cigarette. She may be looking over at Haeleah from under her brows as she does. She may be grinning, just a touch, as well. After lighting up, she raises her head, watching Sitka and his possibly-maybe rum for a few seconds. "There's a whole frakking sinkful of cutlery and silver crap in the kitchen," she says. "Tied together with fishing line?" A shrug. It's not for her to understand. "I threw it all in there after looking around upstairs. Bet there's /silver/ tongs." A grin against her cigarette. "Might not be anticonductive, though."
"Chemically speaking, a fermented, colorless liquid with psychoactive properties. Good for setting things on fire or finding true love at a frat party if the proof is high enough. Sir." Haeleah provides the 'booze' definition for Sitka. It may not be dictionary-approved. She looks over her shoulder at Tisiphone, offering the woman a quick grin. Nose is still wrinkled, but it's probably more from the damp than the cigarette. She's on an irradiated planet. She has bigger health issues to worry about. A nod to Bannik. "Sweet. Gods knows we've got plenty they might want to hear about back there. Not that I'd know where to even begin explaining all…this."
"Well, however you do it, you'll need to do it in not too many words," Bannik deadpans. A little bit of VLF humor over there. Oh, Bannik. Such a laugh riot. He sighs and wipes his brow with the sleeve of his greens. "That should be good enough. I found a hot pad to try to keep from burning my hand off."
Sitka looks warily between Haeleah and Bannik as the dork humour commences, then edges back against the counter, and takes another swig of the 'rum'. He definitely looks amused at the jig's description, despite his reluctance to smile. "You know.." Another swallow, grimy fingers rubbed over his throat a couple of times. "This isn't half bad, if you don't mind the sensation of having your esophagus flayed open." Tisiphone's noted with a brief flick of blue eyes, but left alone in her lurking.
Tisiphone seems to be trying to keep a polite distance from Haeleah as she smokes. She can be a conscientious smoker when she wants to be — well, as much as one can be while still lighting up in the first place. When Sitka edges back against the counter, though, putting a little more space between himself and the engineer, she starts meandering his way. Someone's got an eye on the possibly-maybe rum. "'Still alive. Weather sucks. Send Raptors. Sick of Cylons. Love, Kythera.' That's short enough, isn't it?"
Haeleah gets a chuckle out of Bannik's little joke. She is, indeed, a good audience for dork humor. She leans on the counter with her elbows. She'd almost look casual if not for the ever-present rifle and pistol combo she's carting around. She doesn't get too far from those nowadays. "I could do with having my innards scorched some right now, sir. If there's enough to share." Toothy smile. Though the attempt at joking doesn't also isn't /quite/ as casual as she'd like it to seem. "At least we've got a line on some movers that could get us all off this rock. Those Raptors that old pilot dude was talking about. And didn't Doe have a line on some non-hyperlight craft? I'll take just about any ride home I can thumb at the moment."
Bannik is enlisted, so he doesn't ask for the booze. Also, he's not really old enough to drink. Or isn't much of a drinker. Something like that. "I ought to get on back towards the VLF now that those tongs are located," he remarks to the crowd. "Hope we can get cranking soon."
Bannik leaves, heading towards the Virgon House Reception [Out].
Tisiphone tucks her cigarette into the corner of her mouth before putting both hands against the bar and vaulting up onto the edge of it. Her boot-heels drum softly against the sidewall as she watches Bannik head off again, in search of tongs. "Bunny said he found something, yeah. Not sure where, exactly. He- uh." She picks her words carefully, the sound of evasion to them. "He's had a hard time since Rutger Tower." That's a bit of an understatement. The less kind rumours going around include words like 'insane' and 'catatonic'. "But." She moves on to easier topics. "Yeah. You know that collapsed tunnel at Anadyomene? The, uh, ex-Colonel said it lead to a second hangar full of Raptors. So if we can get in, and get word to Cerberus that we're getting /out/…"
"Hey, sure. Be my guest." The bottle's set down on the counter, and slid the short distance to Haeleah, requiring that Sitka lean in slightly toward the engineer. "Non hyperlight? Are we talking civilian transports, or something?" He releases the bottle and eases back against the counter, arms folding across his midsection. As Tisiphone hops up nearby, his attention's redirected toward the junior pilot, expression speculative.
"Yeah." Haeleah just kind of agrees that Evandreus had a 'hard time' at the Tower. A worried shadow crosses her face, but it's not a subject she presses. "Thanks." The last to Sitka as she passes the bottle, which she picks right up and gulps from. Face promptly contorting. But she does swallow. "Ugh. That is…flammable." Which seems to be generally what she was looking for, so it's not a complaint. Blink, blink. A shrug at the question. "Frak if I know. However I get off this rock is fine by me. Who even knows if these transports are flyable? I haven't…uh, had a chance to ask Doe any details about them." What with the whole catatonic thing. Yeah. The bottle is passed back to Sitka if he wants to drink more.
Tisiphone's eyes aren't staying anywhere for long. At the moment, they're roaming with restless curiousity along the jagged, rain-shiny edges of shattered glass of the skylight above. Every time she comes to the end of a shard, she looks down at the floor, as if searching for the missing piece. "Yeah," she says, with an absent nod. "Bunny used to fly for a cab company before he joined the Fleet. Maybe he meant something like that. Would take a lot of trips to get everyone to Anadyomene, though. That's assuming we wouldn't be shot out of the sky the first time we show up on DRADIS, too. Maybe we ought to find an underground parkade. See if there's working cars. Deep enough down, they should be okay."
There's no comment whatsoever from Shiv, as to Evan losing his shit up at the tower. Might be he's still feeling guilty for pistol-whipping the poor kid, or might be there's something else about the whole business that's disturbing him. He flickers Haeleah a faint smile that doesn't come anywhere near his eyes, and snags the bottle by its neck when it's passed back. "That's not a bad idea at all," he tells Tisiphone, glancing over again without making eye contact, then tipping the bottle back for a swallow. "I think we should at least consider bringing the raptors to the civilians, if we can't reasonably bring the civilians to the raptors. No matter which way we play it, we're going to get the attention of the cylons, if they're still hanging around."
"They seemed to be pulling out of that Tower…place." Haeleah shudders at even touching on mentioning it. "But who knows about anywhere else on this damn planet." A little nod to Tisiphone as she listens along to that. "This city have an underground rail line or something? Might be able to make use of that, staying under DRADIS-wise. The flying stuff is you all's bag. I just hope anything that's left down here still works. Which I guess it's as good a bet as any that it could. The toasters seemed more interested in destroying people than property."
The cigarette at the corner of Tisiphone's mouth bobs slightly with the ghost of a smile. She cants her head, frowning thoughtfully up at a lightning-like crack in the sunroof glass, and says, "Makes the most sense to me to stay low until we /can't/. Travel by land until we've got the Raptors. Don't poke our noses up until we've got noses that can bug out, you know? But- how many of us are there, now? How many Raptors are we gonna need? I sure as shit can't do sweet frak-all in a Raptor cockpit, let alone calculating a FTL jump." The smile drains away to pensiveness. "Gonna be seven different kinds of miracle to get us all home in one go."
Tisiphone pulls her cigarette from her mouth and looks over at Haeleah, adding, "They blasted the H-train tunnels behind us when we came under the river toward you guys. Doesn't mean the other tunnels aren't still clear, though."
Shiv, meanwhile, is a silent participant in the conversation. He listens, he drinks, and he cogitates. The alcohol helps. Really. He also flicks fingers through his damp curls, every so often, like he's paranoid there's something caught in them. Freakin' Saggies.
Haeleah keeps half an eye on Sitka. He has the booze, after all. The precious, precious booze. "I've worked a little with FTL drives. Mostly on the maintenance and repair end, though. Different spectrum than actually trying to jockey the damn things. I don't know. I'm not really much on miracles. At least there're more options than we had last week. I'll take that as a win." She eyes the bottle again. "Did you say that was rum?" She was clearly not able to identify it by taste, other than 'flammable.'
Tisiphone pulls the last breath of smoke out of her cigarette and flicks it away to skitter across the floor. She turns as she exhales, folding one leg onto the edge of the bar, and reaches toward Shiv — or, more accurately, his bottle of possibly-maybe rum — and wiggles her fingers somewhat imperiously. Cheeky Ensign is cheeky. "Gimme a taste," she says to him. "You're hogging it. There's three of us here."
Sitka may be off in his own little world at the moment, but he isn't oblivious. Particularly to junior officers trying to horn in on his booze. "Yeah," he tells Haeleah, sinking back against the counter once more on his elbows, with the bottle dangling precariously (or so it would seem) from his left hand. The zealously inked one. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's rum. Shitty rum, but—" He pulls it back a little as Tisiphone starts making grabby fingers. Juuuuust out of her reach, like the tease he is. "Well, I guess we've got Kal, at least. And the Colonel, whatever he's calling himself. We'll figure it out."
Haeleah sticks her tongue out at Sitka as he teases Tisiphone with the booze. Blowing a raspberry at him. When in Virgon House, do as the Cheeky Ensigns do. On a more serious note. "Kal knows his shit. I will give him that. Maybe we all can cobble something together. Not like anybody lacks motivation. This is not exactly my idea of an ideal retirement location." Large dark eyes rove around the room again, narrowing at the signs of looting still scattered around it. "I wonder what this place looked like before everything went to shit? Some kind of high-flying consulate-type place, you figure? With foreign dignitaries and over-priced wine."
Cheeky Ensign is also /denied/. Hmf. "Oh c'mon, don't /be/ like that," Tisiphone grumps, the petulance gentled with narrow-eyed mirth. "Repayment for all the smokes I've bummed you." /All/ is emphasized, to remind the Captain there have been many. So, so many. Again with the grabby fingers, grabbing at empty air, her gaze slanting over toward Haeleah for a beat. "Did you see the frakking grand piano in the hallway? Wonder if anyone plays. Sounds like it still works, if we could find the missing leg. Bet they had their three-martini lunches in here."
Sitka is impervious to cheeky ensigns, and cheeky jigs emulating said ensigns. It comes with the territory, just like the flecks of silver in his dark hair and the fine lines that don't fade when he quits squinting or smiling. "He's pretty brilliant with a jump drive, or so I've heard," opines the Captain. As for Tisiphone and her petulance, he merely gives the bottle a little taunting waggle. Heeeere, ensign ensign ensign. "Probably pretty classy," he agrees, glancing up at the shattered sun roof, then down at the leaves and dirt and puddled rainwater that's collecting in the crevices between overturned furniture. "Parties out on the veranda, and veal shipped in from Caprica, I'll bet."
"I'm not real musical. Though if there's enough rum and wine, I wouldn't mind trying to get Lieutenant Oberlin to rap again. I swear, I witnessed it, and he's not half bad." Haeleah gets a giggled snort out of the continued bottle-tease between Sitka and Tis. "Not like folks around here couldn't use *something* to take their mind off…everything. Maybe we can even use the veranda. Class frakkers that we be."
You could attribute it to Tisiphone's sneaky ways, or you could attribute it to hearing the words 'rap' and 'Lieutenant Oberlin' in the same sentence, but Shiv is finally relinquished of his bottle of rum. "That's something I'd like to see," he murmurs, a hesitant smile tugging at the corners of his lips. He lifts his hand to lick a trickle of alcohol off his thumb, and shakes his head in mock disbelief to what Tisiphone says. "Anyway, I'm going to go crash out.." He eases off the counter, flicking again at his hair. "Shab be kheyr."
Haeleah sits up a little straighter. Not retracting her elbows, but she slides them back some so they won't impede stretching Tisiphone's path. "Whoa, girls! And I swear, I've seen it!" That last a final proclamation to Sitka regarding Oberlin's rapping. "He's got soul. Well, for a Virgon. It's pretty entertaining. Anyway, have a good one, sir." Her fingers are waggled at him in a parting sort-of wave. Tisiphone's fish story makes her wrinkle her nose. "I *can't* imagine it. What a waste. But then, I was never much on fish, anyway. Or classy Caprican restaurants. I never spent much time there apart from the odd lay-over. Place cost too much to make it worth a vacation."
Cheeky, denied Ensign is no longer denied — /and/ is also sneaky. A Captain said so. That makes it /true/. Tisiphone almost cackles as she pushes back up to a seated position, lifting the bottle for an immediate gulp. "Gha-a-ah," she shudders, plunking the bottle down and sliding it a couple inches toward Haeleah. "Didn't have much time or cash for 'em while I was at Academy, either." Snort. Her eyes slide over to the departing Sitka. "What, so soon?" she calls to him, after wiping her mouth with her thumb. Her eyes glitter — cheeky, again. "So, hey, where'd my curtains frak off to?"
Sitka wipes whatever it is that's now sticking to his fingers, off on the thigh of his fatigues as he lumbers away. It's probably best not to ask. "They'll be your curtains when I'm cold and dead, Apostolos," he retorts with a faint smile. This one comes close to touching his eyes. "And I'll put them up in the morning. I need a few more nails." That said, he lifts his hand to the pair and makes his way off for the hall— and the stairs beyond it. Glass crunches and crackles under his boots as he goes, and the rhythmic cadence of his footfalls soon vanishes to the plink, plink, plink of leaking pipes.
Sitka leaves, heading towards the Virgon House Reception [Out].
"Curtains?" Haeleah is curious. "Don't suppose I can have another pull off that bottle. Or…medicinal purposes or whatever. Besides, enough of that and your teeth might go up in flames the next time you smoke one of those cancer-sticks." It was only a matter of time before the dig came, really. But she doesn't harp. "You did Academy on Caprica? Swanky. I just shunted into ROTC during undergrad on Libran. Figured a few years in the Navy'd pay off my student loan debt. And…" A roll of her eyes around the lovely Virgon House. "…here I am."
"Curtains," Tisiphone affirms, watching the Captain make his departure. There's a fondness to the snort and shake of the head she flings after him. A month of following orders in life-and-death situations will bring the devotion or dislike out in any command structure. "He's been scavenging like a raven. Found these frakking… curtains." Yes, girl. You said that already. "Gold-thread and silk, maybe? They're ridiculous. He hung 'em in the Sagittaran Embassy, now he brought them here." After another shake of her head, she edges the rum-bottle closer to Haeleah. "Yeah, straight off Sagittaron to the Caprica City campus. What a frakking culture shock /that/ was. So you weren't looking to be in the rest of your life, eh?" Her mouth twists up wryly.
"Swanky," Haeleah repeats with another of those toothy grins. "Decent idea, though. More stuff we can use for blankets. Sagittaran to Caprica, huh? Frak me sideways. I mean, good for you. Don't see many come up that way." She takes a deep pull off the bottle, then sets it back within Tisiphone's reach. Shaking her curly head. "Frak no. I never really saw myself as a soldier. I mean, you go through basic. You train for all this. But I never wanted to be anything but a tech. Military's got the shiniest tech to play with of just about anyone out there. It's great experience. Civilian companies love engineers with a Navy background. You get a couple of tours on your resume, it's your gateway anywhere. Plus, I got grad school done on the Navy cubit. I just finished my master's before I was attached to the Cerberus. I owed them some more time in but - another three or four years? I figured that'd be it."
"I was gonna be an engineer, you know?" Tisiphone grins crookedly at the rum-bottle as she takes it again, swirling the liquid around and around. "That's where I thought I was gonna end up. That's where my instructors thought I oughtta be. Then I tried a flight sim on a dare, third year in, and my whole frakking world got turned on its ear." She grins wider and more crookedly, lifts the bottle for a drink, then slides it back. Unlike certain Captains, /this/ Saggie is capable of sharing her booze. "That's gotta be really tough," she says, looking up at Haeleah. "I mean- I came in knowing I was in for good. Coming in for the short term, and then- this? Rough."
"No kidding. Can't picture you as a snipe," Haeleah says, head canting at Tisiphone. "But I guess we grow into what we wear. I've fiddled with the sims a couple times. Programming mostly. They just make me barf." She grins. A shrug to that last. "It is what it is. Not like anybody's where they planned to be right now. Could be worse. I'm still alive." Time for more drinking. Another gulp from the bottle. She's quiet for a stretch after that. "I…umm…should probably hit my rack. Or whatever the hell is passing for it in this place. Don't finish all that by yourself. It *may* make you go blind." A joke. Probably.
Tisiphone's mouth quirks again, crooked and a touch regretful. "Yeah," she agrees to Haeleah's assessment about her lack of snipe-ishness. "Can't picture it anymore, either." A quick, restless shrug, and she ploughs on to other topics — like, say, the rum-bottle. And taking another drink from it. "You, uh. Take it easy, hey? Check the offices on the second floor if you haven't scored some blankets already. There were still some left when I grabbed mine." She lifts the bottle to the other woman in a quasi-salute.