PHD #226: Dedication and Distraction
Dedication and Distraction
Summary: Khloe and Psyche meetcute just before the Black Knights briefing, only without the cute.
Date: 10 Oct 2041 AE
Related Logs: Hot and Bothered, Right
Players:
Khloe Psyche Evandreus 
Pilot Berths — Naval Deck - Battlestar Cerberus
The battlestar's pilots call this place home. Bunks line the walls with grey curtains to cover their sleeping areas. Lockers sit between each pair of bunks and a round metal table sits in the center, furnished with simple but comfortable steel chairs. A hatch at the rear of the room leads to a communal head.
Post-Holocaust Day: #226

Dressed in her uniform blues except for her jacket, Khloe is busy taking a stiff-bristled brush to said missing uniform jacket as it's splayed across one of the round tables found throughout berths. Brush, brush. She's going after every piece of lint, imagined or realized. Her brass is currently unfixed, sitting next to the jacket, with a rag and some cleaning polish in a can waiting to be used.

Just off CAP and having the kind of bad hair day only flight helmets can inflict, Psyche makes her way into the berthings, already unzipping and shucking her flight suit off her shoulders. She pauses at the sight of the brush-wielding SL, eyes flicking from the woman to the pins on the table. Her eyebrows tick upwards and she pauses to watch the polishing in progress. "Shiny," she comments mildly before continuing on to her locker. "Captain Vakos, I presume?"

Khloe glances up at her rank and surname being mentioned, pausing only briefly in her uniform grooming ritual. "Yes, that's right," she says after the woman, then looks back down to the jacket. She sets the brush aside, then slips into a chair. Taking up the rag and her wings, she begins searching out and destroying fingerprints. "You must be Lieutenant Devlin. Bubbles, am I right?"

Psyche flashes a big, sunny smile over her shoulder as she opens her locker. "That's me. Nice to meet you, sir." She goes about divesting herself of flightsuit and boots, bobbling from one foot to the other as she does so. "So I understand you and the CAG go way back," she offers, light and conversational, reaching out to steady herself on the locker frame. "She must have a lot of faith in you. After Lasher and Shiv, you've got ginormous boots to fill." No pressure or anything.

"I was planning on bringing that topic up at the briefing tonight, actually," comes Poppy's response, neither sunny nor cold. She speaks in a lightly authoritative alto voice, words clipped efficiently. "As far as the Major and I, we have some history, yes. I look up to her opinion greatly." There's a hiss sound as she sprays some of the polish onto her wings, which get re-polished; once she's done, she affixes them where they belong on her jacket without removing the rag. No fingerprints.

Psyche hangs up her flightsuit and tosses her boots in after, shimmying the rest of the way down to skin with the typical nonchalance of a pilot in the berths. "I'm sure you'll do fine," she replies, shrugging on a bathrobe. It's big and white and fluffy, with a fancy pink letter 'P' embroidered on the breast. "You've got tough, talented, fiercely dedicated squad of remarkable human beings. We pretty much know the drill." She tilts her head, considering the captain as she belts her robe. "Micromanaging us is probably a waste of time and energy. Not to mention counterproductive."

Khloe finishes polishing the rest of anything metallic on her uniform jacket, then folds up the rag and stows it and the can in the top section of her locker. Everything is orderly, folded, precisely placed where it belongs. Speaking of micro-managing. "That's likely true," she says, producing a hangar for her newly cleaned jacket; she carefully hooks the hangar underneath the shoulders then hangs it up on the edge of her locker, apparently intending on dressing it soon, but not immediately. "I'm a firm believer that regulations were created to create a division between a skilled, dedicated, devoted soldier, and one prone to distraction. But I'm not in the habit of chasing after pilots that have proven stats."

Psyche folds her arms casually, listening and considering a moment. "Okay," she allows. "Here's some stats for you, then. Our nuggets — including but not limited to my husband — have made themselves flight and fight ready, not to mention done their paces to qualify as officers, in three months. OCS and flight school. In three months. Think about that next time you wonder whether they're skilled, dedicated, and devoted or given to distraction." She smiles faintly, wryly. "Believe me, I did my best to be as distracting as any woman wholly and selfishly in love could possibly be. And I didn't have much success. Fortunately, he married me anyhow."

Evan's doctors' visits have grown less and less frequent as months pass between him and his brush with cascading organ failure, but from the tuff of white fluff taped into the crook of his elbow, which elbow he's cradling in his other hand, bending and unbending it slowly as if in a silent disapprobation with the sensation, that's where he's in from now, sporting a pair of sweatpants and a tank top that one of the Evans has graced with a dribbling of upchuck. "Hey, guys."

Khloe folds her hands in front of her, muscles in her arms briefly flexing as her fingers thread together. There's some tension in her jaw before she speaks. "Since you're making this personal, I suppose I'll speak my mind," she states evenly. "I've no intention on disrupting what happens in private between you and your husband. For the record, I find Alex to be a competent pilot. Were it up to me, I would put new nuggets through the four-and-two that all of us went through, regardless of the war. Discipline is not something that you can cram down someone's throat and expect to be absorbed perfectly. It takes months of humiliation as a Midshipman One before you forget that you're not in this for yourself, but for your Colony and your loved ones. Decoy has one thing on his mind, and that's getting back to you, each and every time. That makes him a liability." Yeah, she said it. She has no idea that Evan has even come into the berths just yet.

"Hey, Bunnyheart," Psyche flashes a big, warm smile at Evandreus as he enters, blowing a kiss. She wrinkles her nose a little. "You've got some… uh… yucky stuff on your shirt." She gestures vaguely on herself to indicate where. Khloe's reply quickly reins her attention back in, and the little blonde just listens. It takes her a moment, and a deliberate breath, before she replies in kind. "This isn't personal, sir. If you were making completely erroneous judgments about any pilot in this squad, I'd say something about it. I promise you that. It's kind of remarkable to me, though, that you seem to know Decoy's mind and motivations better than I, or even the CAG, does. 'Cause I assure you, sir, that if he were a liability — for whatever reason — he wouldn't be flying. Toast'd make sure of that. So… yeah. Maybe you better rein in your ego and figure out whose judgment you're criticizing when you say Decoy's a liability. 'Cause it isn't mine. Sir."

Hm. Viper folk are having SRS VPR TLK. The Raptorbunny will stay firmly on the sidelines, here, though he does swipe the kiss from midair before tenting out his tank top away from him, peering at the mess, "Oh, thanks," he remarks. Showing up at the briefing smelling like baby puke, while totally classy, might be moderately inappropriate. So he peels off the top and opens up his locker, tossing it in, then pausing to regard the swatch of bound cloth sitting on the shelf of his locker with a quiet reverence.

"That's why you're not the Es-El, Bubbles," Poppy states, her voice just as even, her face as stoic. She turns to take her uniform jacket from its hangar and shrugs into it carefully, methodically. She then produces a manilla folder from her locker and then closes it. "It's not about ego. It's about straight and narrow." She exhales, like a sigh - the first sign that she's troubled by the discussion. "As far as the Es-El is concerned, I look at stats and numbers. When pilot performance suffers, I look for reasons." She buttons up her jacket, walking past some of the racks; perhaps deliberately her shoulder catches the curtain at Psyche's rack, and it pulls aside, revealing pink sheets. She pauses, and turns to close the curtain. "Don't give me a reason to bring regulations to bear, Lieutenant." As she heads for the exit, she nods to Evandreus. "Bunny. I see the Evans left their mark on you," she says with a softer voice. She doesn't smile, though. "See you two at the briefing."

"Sir, I wouldn't be SL for all the cookies, chocolate, and pot left in the universe," Psyche shakes her head, turning to retrieve her shower bag from the locker. "For serious. I don't envy you." She rolls her eyes slightly as regulations are brought up. "Is that a threat, sir? 'Cause seriously? I don't give a frak. The world has ended and we're fighting for our lives and those?" She points at her bunk. "Are sheets. Good luck with your speech. See you there."

~fin

Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License