| Leakage |
| Summary: | Evandreus leaks from the eyes, Devlin leaks optimism. |
| Date: | 12 Feb 2042 AE |
| Related Logs: | Enter the Swarm, etc. |
| Players: |
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| Port Hangar Deck |
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| Grime. Planes. |
| Post-Holocaust Day: #351 |
Evandreus and Stiffy are just post-CAPping it in Harrier-303, the minor damage to the cabin of the boat having been readily repaired to add the Raptor back amongst the ranks of the blackready. Stiffy heads out first, as is her usual custom, bringing with her the brunt of the post-flight data the pair had run together, while Evan sits up front of the boat, finishing up the last few details and setting the boat into level-two standby. And crying. Well, no, not crying, exactly, but his eyes are wet and there's liquid slowly dripping from them. He doesn't look particularly upset, or sad, or anything. It's as if he just drank too much water— got filled up to the eyeballs and it's started to leak out.
Devlin has been helping out a little bit around the deck. Though he's not qualified to work on any of the planes, with all the chaos of the last two nights, there's plenty of plain old manual labor that needs doing. Moving planes, shifting parts, maintaining tools, etc. are all things an extra pair of hands can do to free up better-trained ones for the real work. He gets to forgo the bright orange coveralls, at least, instead just in his off-duty fatigues, which by now are grimy and greasy. He wipes his forehead on a clean bit of arm and looks around, spotting Bunny and Stiffy after a minute or two. The ECO gets a wave, and then the pilot as well, before he frowns and asks, "You okay, Evan? You're… leaking."
Evandreus steps on out of the powered-down boat in time to see Stiffy chin-up a brusque greeting to Devlin on her way past, and then to catch the wave from the man himself. Helmet tucked under one arm, his mouth contracts in a shrug of a frown and he lifts his other hand to his cheek, pulling it away to look at the wet on his fingers. "Crap," is his ever-eloquent comment on the situation. "I'm sorry, man. No, I'm fine. Just. Long couple of days. How's Bubs?" he wonders warmly after the man's wife, drawing closer and resting his moist-fingered hand on Devlin's upper arm, a compassionate gesture of support one step down from a full-fledged hug.
"No worries," Devlin shrugs off the apology with a shake of his head (and an actual shrug), "It has been a long couple days. He touches the pilot's arm in return, but then realizes his hand is filthy and apologizes, "Sorry, I'm greasing up your flightsuit." The hand is dropped and he nods, "She's good, she's healing really well, should be on duty in a day or two, even, they're saying. And Hosedown is stable, they say," he adds, "Still not conscious, but stable. So that's something. How're you doing?"
"I'll send you the dry cleaning bill," Evan jokes back, tone of voice indicating he couldn't care very much less about the ick on his arm— a small price to pay for the comforting touch of a friend. Evan could live on Galley Red and friendly embraces. "That's good, that's— really good," he tells him, then, in re: Bubbles. "Oh, y'know. Cylons are making it hard to ignore our impending doom. Sickbay's keeping my antidepressants under lock and key. Here's me stuck in the middle leaking like a sieve."
"I'll expense it," Devlin replies, smiling, and trying in vain to wipe his hands off one against the other. Both being equally dirty it doesn't really do much. He nods about Bubbles, agreeing, "Yeah, it was pretty scary for a little bit there. But she'll be fine. Gonna take her hair a while to grow back, I think she might be most upset about that part." He scratches a hand through his own, clearly still not quite used to actually having hair worth the name. As for impending doom, he shakes his head, "Hey, we're hanging in there. They've come at as twice with insanely overwhelming numbers and we managed. We're getting more of them than they get of us. We'll get through this."
"Heh, she can take a page out of—" Cubits' book. Right. That thought, jollily along as it was prancing, gets smacked down like a deer on the front of a truck on the coastal thoroughfare. "Eh," he defers from voicing the blood-spattered notion. "Right. I mean, Boots and Flasher and Bran did set up a pretty well-triangulated jamming field. But it's not like we have enough Raptors to set up protection like that for the entire battlefield. And Should some places be better fortified than others? They'll just take out the weak spots all the easier. And we can't afford even small losses right now. It's not like we can just build more pilots. Or more boats, for that matter."
Devlin doesn't seem to follow the aborted thought, just scratching at the back of his head and then shrugging, "Yeah, they helped out. But, I mean, we've got plenty of Raptors. At least considering how many Vipers we've got. Not that I'm saying losses aren't bad, any loss is terrible, obviously. But we're holding out own. And you can build more pilots," he points out, with a bit of a crooked smile, "I mean… they built me. And I'm hanging in there. And I heard the fabrication plant works, so maybe they can build some new boats. Dunno about that, but they seem to be doing a good job getting ours up and running again quick. And maybe they won't come back this time," he shrugs, "You never know." He thumps the other man on the upper arm and chides, "Don't be a downer, Bunny! You'll only make yourself feel worse."
"Ow! I'm too late," Bunny cracks a grin, nonetheless, as he lifts a hand to rub at his thumped arm. "I already feel worse. But who knows, really? Maybe you're right. Maybe it's just my brain funk making me think we're all about to die. Hey," he sets the syllable into the middle fo the conversation like a great wall to keep the funk out. "Wanna do something tomorrow? I dunno, hit the rec room, watch a movie or play a game? Assuming we don't have visitors of the striped variety?"
"It is your brain funk," Devlin insists, "We're gonna be okay. I am convinced. You can't change my mind, so. We're just gonna have to change yours." He smiles, and then wider, nodding, "Totally, for sure. I think I saw a shelf of old board games in the library, that'd be something different? What do you think of those stripes, anyways?" he asks curiously, "Drips and Bannik and I were talking about them yesterday, wondering if they're, like… squad markings or kill counts or something."
"Sweet; it's a date. Tomorrow's my birthday, and -you-" the word emphasized with a casual hipbump, "Get to come to my party," he tells him. "The stripes? I dunno, I wouldn't think the Raiders need squadron markings. I mean, assuming they have a 'visual' system at all tied into some sort of DRADIS function, they'd be able to read the IDs of one another without having to go so far as to physically see a bunch of markings. In fact, I'd think that'd apply to all Cylons, everywhere. It's almost as if the only people the marks are a benefit for would be… us? Maybe they're trying to send a message to someone in the fleet."
"Tomorrow's your birthday? Oh cool! Happy…Birthday Eve," Devlin offers with a grin, "For sure, we will do fun stuff tomorrow." He nods decisively, and then listens, nodding along as the topic shifts and Evan explains his take on the stripes. "That's a good point," he says, "There's no reason they'd need them. I mean, we've never seen any with stuff like this before now, right? So either something changed in how they work, or… yeah. Maybe it's a message?" His nose wrinkles a little at the thought and then he adds, "Or maybe it's, like…a factory error? Like one of those foundries or wherever they come from has a machine on the fritz and it's slashing these marks onto the raiders. I dunno."
"Could be as simple as that," Evan agrees. "I mean, like I said, it's very unlikely to mean anything to -them,- at least. And for us, well, I guess all we can really do for now is to track it and see if any noticable pattern emerges. Though I hope beyond hope that this will all stop before there gets to be anything close to a pattern involved. And yeah, we can play some board games, maybe get together a game of charades. Maybe spike the punch, if Boots isn't around," he adds with an impish smile.
"Yeah, please gods no more of these. I don't want to figure out the pattern that bad, at all," Devlin says, shaking his head. As for tomorrow, he nods, smiling, "Sounds like fun, definitely. I'll see if I can bust Psyche out of sickbay and bring her along, see who else is around. I bet we could get a good group together to hang out. And sure, spike the punch," he grins back.