| Guns and Ammo |
| Summary: | Guns and ammo, baby. That's all Cerberus needs, according to some intoxicated deckies. |
| Date: | 31 May 2042 AE |
| Related Logs: | None |
| Players: |
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| Colonial Pete's - MV Elpis |
| Colonial Pete's is the long-awaited successor to Kythera's Aquarian Pete's, though this version is more bar than strip club. Not that there aren't any strippers here, in fact there's even a raised platform complete with pole built just for them. The majority of the room, however, is dominated by mis-matched tables and chairs and a long bar. Lighting is haphazard, the harsh fluorescents that came with the place usually left off in favor of lower lighting from scavenged lamps and even a bit of neon rustled up from somewhere and hung behind the bar. There's a pretty decent sound-system playing a wide variety of music, and a couple of low-tech bar games, like a mini pyramid arena.
There are always a few burly-looking guys around to keep an eye on rowdy patrons, and especially to guard the doors to the back rooms, where the stills are kept along with (rumors say) a few private alcoves for those willing to pay extra for one-on-one time with the girls. A large black chalkboard that once adorned Cerberus' Ready Room hangs behind the bar. Scrawled on its surface beneath a crude picture of a steaming bowl are the words 'SOUP OF THE DAY: MOONSHINE.' |
| Condition Level: 3 - All Clear |
| Post-Holocaust Day: #459 |
Colonial Pete's is moderately crowded tonight. But then, the place is very rarely sparsely populated, being so far as anyone knows the only remaining open bar in the universe. Iosif has just entered the place and is seated at said bar, procuring a glass of moonshine from the bartender. Glasses off, in his off-duties, and clearly very much at his liberty.
If there's such a thing as 'too much to drink' in the Colonial fleet, the bouncers here don't seem too interested in enforcing any sort of law and order…so long as the patrons aren't acting too far out of line. Case in point? Well, there's a deckie currently occupying the stage. She's not so sure of herself to be up there with glass in hand, but she is up there. Clothed thankfully, but gyrating in strange fashion compared to the slinky undulations the normal 'A-team' of strippers usually undertake.
Iosif has been too involved in ordering his drink to pay too much attention to the strippers so far. But of course that changes. He angles he stool to get the best view of the stage as he can, taking a preliminary gulp of his drink…which he coughs on. Oh, there's Cilusia. "Bloody hells…" he mutters, squinting as if not sure he's seeing right. Not that this stops him from watching, of course.
She's not exactly being shy, truthfully. Up there in full-on fleet off-duty threads, but spiced up by a variety of home-made Scorpian leather bands, bangles, and tassles, she sure is grooving along to the music. It's not the folksy, saucy stuff that she grew up with, but it doesn't seem to stop her. Not that the rest of the crowd seems to mind, nor the bouncers, nor the other official dancers.
"Bloody hells…" Iosif mutters it again as he hops off his stool to wind through the crowd, and get a better vantage point for the stage. He ends up over by where some other men are standing and oogling. As they are wont to do in a strip club. He can't help but chuckle as she watches Cilusia, though it's more with surprise than amusement. As she grooves, he puts two fingers between his lips and whistles. "Atta girl, Fasi!"
Is it the booze? Or is it the infectious qualities of the music? Given that it's canned music a few years old by now, it's looking more and more like the booze. While it's nothing obscene or even particularly damning, it certainly isn't the most becoming! She's not dancing for tips, not even for more booze. It only goes as long as this particular song, it would seem. When it comes to an end, she hops down off the stage, sweaty and red-faced, quick to pickup a fresh drink, and look around the crowd sheepishly.
Iosif claps when Cilusia climbs off the stage, and not entirely in jest it seems. "Fasi? My gods, never figured I'd see you up there. What got into you?" Apart from the booze he likely means, even if the answer's that simple. "You should try that on the Deck sometime. It'd keep things interesting, leastways."
"If I try it on deck, everyone there gets a show. At least over here, it's mostly civvies! Easier to live down that way!" she replies with a grin, hoisting a sloshing drink into the air triumphantly. "Just felt like working it out of my system, you know! Kind of unsafe to do this on deck, and Cerberus doesn't have a bar or a dance floor!" Dance floor is kind of an overstatement of what this place actually has, though.
Iosif raises his own glass, "To rhythm. I won't tell a soul, cross my heart and all that." He even drinks to it. "It's more a platform, really. With a pole. Still, point. Know what you mean. Well, not about giving the folks a show. Dunno how in demand I'd be." He grins. "I needed a frakking breather, though. With Bannik gone all weird and Chief shuttered up in his office most days, figured getting away for a bit'd be a relief."
Cilusia replies with a shrug. "Gotta have a break at some time. This is just…habit for me I guess. Kind of how I grew up. I mean, not the same music or even the same kind of music, or the same kind of dancing. But ah…there was a lot of smokey cantinas, dive bars, and ass-shaking where I grew up. All traditional, you know. Lots of…how do you put it? Fast beats, folk-songs, but made for gyrating and grinding. That's where I grew up, what I grew up with!"
"On Scorpia, aye? That where you got them…blingy things?" Iosif gestures to the bands and bangles and tassles, not seeming quite sure what to call them. "Nice. Wish we had some music like that in here. Fast beats and stuff. Seems like what's playing is whatever they managed to scrounge off somebody's old music player collection." Which it is, probably. "I spent some time on Scorpia when my folks got a contract hauling supplies to and from the shipyards. Hard work. Good money in it, but it didn't leave you much time to see the sights. And that's what I liked about living on freighter. Different people every day. Different planet most months."
"Didn't get them. Made them," Cilusia is fairly quick to correct. "It's sort of a thing my mom was into. Made a living out of it, making jewelry of all sorts. Metal, glass, jewels, leather, beads of all kinds. Real jewelry, from the deep jungles of Scorpia. Exotic tribal jewelry from the steamy ports of call," she utters with a little chuckle, all the while holding up her free wrist at chest height, clasping her drink in three fingers on her opposite hand, and spinning the bands and straps and all around her wrists. "Gods, I've had these practically forever. That's why the leather's all worn."
"So that was a cultural performance up there, then?" Iosif winks before taking another gulp from his moonshine glass. "Just joshing with you. It's right fine that you've kept them. And you wear them real well, I got to say. You craft things of that like? Jewelry and all. Or just fix up planes and shite?"
"I do it all, of course. I'm the frakkin' man," Cilusia belts out none-too-shyly in her clearly alcohol-inspired personal celebration. "Just like fixing planes; just like fixing up flight suits and shit! Gotta have something to do to keep you sane! Otherwise, you go frakkin' batshit frakkin' insane and do something…do something like that one kid. Gods, that one kid. Can't even remember his name anymore." She starts to get a little more somber pretty rapidly thinking about the insanity the situation is pushing people toward.
"…Ganas? The bloke what threw himself in front of a frakking Viper?" It takes Iosif a minute to recall the name to mind. And it makes him drink. Deeply. He clears his throat rough. "That went down when I was in training. Thought about just up and quitting then and there. Couldn't just go back and spend my days here, though. At least on the battlestar I sometimes feel like I'm lending a hand in it all. Even if I dunno how much good it does some days." He is bringing the party mood further down.
"Yeah, but then who's going to keep shit flying so that we can blast those frakking toaster fraks to the hottest sort of hell, where their metal melts and their…where their brains and guts and shit turn into black, burned, useless goo?" With another slosh of the drink, Cilusia gives Iosif a nice hearty clap on the shoulder. "I've seen way too much godsdamned…everything since all this started. All I wanted to do was fix shit, and now…frak man, I've toted a big rifle just about every time I leave that damn ship!"
"Only had to tote a rifle once, on that frakking basestar," Iosif says, drinking more. Which finishes off that particular glass of moonshine. He hands a server a voucher for another. "That place was a damned nightmare. Heard from some of the Marines the bloodbath on the Areion was worse, though. Just maybe not as weird. Can't say it's the sort of thing I want to try again, though I guess none of us got much choice."
"Do what you can, when you can, as best you can. Or something like that. I don't know. Probably heard that somewhere along the line, or maybe it was from my dad? Shit, I can't remember anything anymore," laments Cilusia, with a nice kick of her boot at the lower part of the bar. "Everything running together on account of this," she says while holding up her empty glass and giving it a little wiggle back and forth. "Burning down here and up here!" The glass gets slammed down, and she makes a point to first pat her stomach, then to fan out her mane of hair and let it drop.
"Haven't had quite enough to forget yet. But I'll work on it." Iosif takes his next drink and knocks it back. "Bugger, this stuff. Bet we could use it to clean the engines. Does the job, though. What you think of that stuff Bannik's been spouting, anyhow?" He takes another long gulp before elaborating. "That manifesto tosh, about the Cylons on Gemenon and gods and peace and love and all that shite."
"Don't know what's true and what's false anymore. Maybe they're telling the truth, since one of our frakkin' pilots is one of them, since that big fat asshole one hacked himself all open to save the ship and shit. Maybe that means something? But then, they blew us all to hell to start this and they keep coming after us. I guess…man, frak I don't know." She slaps the bar counter with an open palm, and shrugs. "If they want to really make friends and stop this shit, for good…I guess let them? Of course, how do you know they're telling the truth and all?" she admonishes with a little wag of her finger.
"Dunno, Fasi. Can't know, I guess." It's sort of a reply to all of it, but the last part especially. Iosif does more drinking. "They ain't hitting us every day again, not like during them frakking Swarms. They ain't tried to hit us at all in a long stretch, seems like. Maybe them frakking toasters is as tired as we are. Can't say I'm keen to go have drinks or something with them, though. They tried to kill the lot of us, kept trying for good on a year. So I guess I…yeah, dunno."
"Of course, if they got tired of it…that means we're a big enough frakkin' thorn in their side that they don't want to mess with us anymore. Boy, that's a nice warm thought," she practically coos, strangely rubbing her belly instead of her head. "Yeah, nice and warm. Filling. Damn shame about that crazy frakker on Areion. Insaneomatic or not, that frakking gun deal was balls-to-wall badass. Rig Cerberus up with a monster like that, and those Cylons are frakked right up their rubber-valve assholes."
"Insaneomatic, heh. Maybe he wasn't human at all, but some experiment Fleet Intel built and went all horrible wrong. Me, I'm glad as hells we ain't riding off one some suicide mission. Do miss that Gun, though. I mean, you say what you want about them Areion frakkers, but that thing left the Cylons it tore through all…braindead. Like they was broken toys or something." Yet another deep gulp, which empties Iosif's second. "Ain't much chance of us finding another one of them. We're a bit more frakked than before, you get to looking on it like that." On that note, he orders another drink.
"Guns and ammo, man. Guns and frakkin' ammo. That's all we need." From her pocket comes another voucher down to the bar, and when the drink comes up, it disappears down the hatch with a hiss, a twitch of her face, and wipe of her mouth the her arm. "But damn! I'm going to stagger my ass on back and frakkin' face plant right in my bunk. Damn I'm tired after all that. And all this."
Iosif glugs his drink with less speed than Cilusia. Thankfully it's not a contest. But he drinks it all. "Ugh, tastes flammable," he grimaces as he puts the empty cup down on the bar. It's not really a complaint. "Yeah. Bunk. Better get to that. I'll ride back with. Got to be on Deck at second shift tomorrow. Guns and ammo, Fasi. Aye." He'll stagger out as she does, eventually to faceplant back on Cerberus somewhere. Hopefully in his bunk.