| Mechanized Warfare |
| Summary: | Ciro and Ximena catch up after a few months out of touch. |
| Date: | 02 May 2042 AE |
| Related Logs: | None |
| 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: #430 |
Mid-day and between shifts, Sergeant Ciro Sondray is sitting alone in the rec room quietly at one of the small tables. There's an old, outdated movie playing in the background, and the tall, powerful marine is idly watching it with his feet propped up onto a chair. Only half interested in what's playing, he takes occasional sips from a mug of tea that steams before him.
Ximena's arrivals are never quiet. From the opening of the hatch, to the noise of getting The Chair over the lip of the doorway, to the general clatter of the woman making sure people just bloody let her get where she's going. Okay, that last part is mostly an exaggeration. Mostly. But regardless, in the Ensign comes, making her way past the gaggle of people signing up for a triad tournament near the open hatch.
The clatter of the chair catches Ciro's attention as he draws his head away from his propped up arm to turn his head. Glancing at typical human height first, he lowers his gaze to the woman in the chair. His arm still propped up, he waves his hand in a lazy display of greeting before peeling his boots off of the chair across from him, turning at the waist to face her as she nears. "That triad tournament's going to fill this place I think." The almost brooding marine says to her, reaching for his mug. "It's been a while since I've seen you…"
"They died down for a while, when the only thing you could play for was cash that didn't have any value, or clothes you ended up giving over to the civilians anyway. Ever since they started giving out those vouchers, it's been a party once a week." A nod acknowledges the marine's thoughtfulness in putting his feet down, though it gets an amused smile and a wave of her hand afterwards, "Feel free to stay comfortable. You know I don't need it." The seat that is. A peek at the movie playing, "You cut your hair." Everyone was a bit shaggy dog on Sag, before the Cerberus.
Ciro's eye's tilt upwards, toward the mohawk he's chosen for his post-apocalyptic hairstyle. A quiet, smug grin crosses onto his lips as he stretches his feet back out and folds his arms across his muscular chest. "Seemed appropriate again, it's what I wore all throughout the war on the Sag. At the least it beats that conservative brass look." He replies, turning one of his boots to shove a chair out of the way, giving her room to wheel up and speak with him. Absent-mindedly, he runs a hand through the neatly trimmed mohawk and over his shaved scalp on the sides. He then nods his head back towards the door. "You been over to the Elpis yet? I went over there on vouchers. Pete's is a draw and from what I understand those vouchers can get traded now for stuff we can't get over here."
"I'd ask you what exactly you've been using to keep it standing up like that…but I'm not sure I'd want to know the answer." Mena, however, doesn't settle in at the table, despite the space being made for her. Rather, she pivots and heads towards the drinks station. Thankfully, she hasn't lost the knack for making her voice carry, and the conversation rolls on despite the increased distance, as she pours herself a cup of coffee. Cream, two sugars, all poured into a travel mug deposited in a holder on her chair before she heads back, "Oh, I don't know, I think it has its appeal. All you're missing is two lines in one of your eyebrows." A tilt of her head, "I go over there when I need to help work on repairs, but I honestly don't get over there much for anything else."
"Yeah, you probably don't want to know. I just keep finding shit on the walls in the marine berthings that seems to make it work." Ciro replies as Mena actually gets a chuckle out of him. He shakes his head at her knack for finding a way to word things, one of her better qualities. "Honestly, you're not missing too much. I went over there a few weeks ago. It was ambrosia and strippers, and the moment anything with dog tags walks in there it's like meatloaf night in the galley. Feeding frenzy." One of his eyebrows rises and falls, an almost bored facial expression. "I still prefer it over here though. Not much to relate to over there."
"A lot of people want to pretend that we're no different from the civilians. We're all just one big happy family. But that's not the case, is it? Frak, I don't even remember what being a civilian was like." Still fairly newly minted she might be, but Ximena's been military more than half her life. "I'm pretty sure it involved trips to the PEX and sneaking out to hang out with boys, but I'm not sure." Back to the table, and she place that's left open for her. "I can't imagine the feeding frenzy's anything you hadn't seen before. Military men always were easy marks."
Once more, Ciro's lips crack into a small, knowing smile. "I didn't say it wasn't nice for the moment, but what can I say, strippers are strippers. If they were worth taking home they'd be waitresses. I didn't stay long." Slouching a little in his chair, he lets his elbows rest on the table, only breaking them apart long enough to reach for his mug and bring it to his lips. It's always tea…never coffee. "I remember a few things, nothing worth mentioning of course, but…" His shoulder lifts in a shrug. "…mostly it's the beaches. I didn't really care so much about the people I didn't know."
"I don't think, strictly speaking, that the point of strippers is taking them home. That's what you have the private booths for. Sometimes all you want is a quick fix and no awkward questions the morning after." The coffee's carefully managed, the lid opened to allow it to cool. "It's funny to me, how much everyone, well, most people, seem to care about 'all the people of the colonies'. Seems to me, like the time to care about them should have been before they were all dead. And most of the people on this ship, and the rest sure as hell didn't care about them then. It all seems to disingenuous sometimes." Clearly, Ximena's never been one for keeping her opinions to herself.
Ciro's expressive eyebrow lifts as she speaks, listening to her words. At times, he offers a quiet nod and at others he gazes at her over the rim of the mug of tea he's drinking. "Nothing brings people together like annihilation." He inserts, shaking his head quietly from side to side. "Maybe it's because we were on the Sag. Most people haven't gotten a taste of the human condition in its finest. Lords know you and I had a pretty good idea for a while." The mug is set down, cooled off enough that the steam is no longer an issue. "There were only a few I cared about. A few." He smirks, killing the severity of the conversation with sarcasm. "They're all gone now, so the rest of you can piss up a rope."
"And nobody wants to admit that before all of this happened, they wouldn't have cared less about any of the people who are now dead. At least you're honest about that." Whether or not Mena cares, well, she seems to be walking the middle way, "Even after the worlds died, they were still more than happy to kill us at every opportunity. Sometimes I think we have more capacity for hatred and murder than the cylons ever did. They at least killed us all in one go. We killed each other by inches." As for the rope, well, "I don't think I have that sort of directionality. But I'll keep it under advisement."
"You never know, Ximena, where there's a will there's a way. Maybe you're just not motivated enough." Ciro replies quietly as one of his feet slides out from the other and he shifts in his chair, getting comfortable again. "In all seriousness, though, I'm not saying frak-em-all. Sooner or later we're either going to win, lose, or draw this fight and people are going to start wanting to find some place to settle down. It's just the nature of the beast. You're one-hundred percent right, though, now that it's been secured that we can't fight over supplies and we're not pushing eachothers' heads underwater to try to get air, there's this air of community that's downright creepy." He turns to look upon her face. "Whatever, though, I'm just paid to pull triggers and crawl in the mud. I'm comfortable where I'm at."
"I will admit, I don't spend much time in thinking up ways to make my bodily fluids defy gravity. Most of the time I'm just trying to find ways to keep myself defying gravity." The coffee is sipped, paused over, considered, before she takes another. "And what do we do then? We settle down and what? Hell, most of the people left in this fleet wouldn't know how to get around with a car and a nav system. You think people are going to be happy living in shacks or mud huts and farming the land? We're sure as hell not going to find a planet with the cities premade and the lights already turned on. We can talk about wanting to find a new home all we want, but you know as well as I do, most of these people wouldn't last a week without their creature comforts. They might want to piss and mon about being lockedup in these ships, but they've got running water, indoor plumbing, roofs over their head complete with temperature control, and three squares a day."
"What, you mean you're not going to design homes for them and use your engineer ways to rig their mud huts with central cooling?" Ciro asks, lifting his eyebrow as he fires yet another round of sarcasm in her direction. "Shit, we wouldn't be in this problem if we'd just stuck to mud huts, sticks and stones, and midwives to begin with. I wouldn't mind going back to that. Just set me up with someplace nice enough to die by a beach and I'm set." His nose twitches to the side, forcing him to bring his elbow up and turn, coughing into his elbow. "Excuse me." He shakes his head. "The real bitch of it, is that you're right. We've got a portion of the population solving problems and another portion that can't seem to tell whether or not they have any room to make demands. Even before the war my old man taught me to work for my place. That wasn't so common a practice even when I was a kid."
"Frak no. I have better things to do with my time and my talents. Next they'll be expecting someone to walk around behind them waiting to wipe their asses with leaves pounded and dried into toilet paper." Clearly all of her years in the field have not gone to waste. "People want to be able to do for themselves, or so they claim, but what they really want is to have done to and for them. I wouldn't survive long without the comforts the ship provides, I've never had any illusions about that." Whatever she might like to indicate otherwise in her day to day life, being a paraplegic is still being a paraplegic. "All I'm hoping for is to do as much as I can before the end."
Ciro's eyes level on her once more, and he falls into a long silence. He doesn't fidget. He doesn't move a muscle. The depressing tone in her words doesn't bring him to an ounce of sympathy, a standard that's been set for every conversation that they've had to this point. "Give it time. Even if we do set down the ships are protected from the elements, and there's no way this ship is going to be used as some hotel. Corps is gonna get some work out of you." He nods his head quietly to emphasize his words. "If ass-wiping duty ever happens, you better remember where you came from, and who's in your corner. You let that shit roll downhill to me and I'll lock you up somewhere."
A standard that's been set because Mena clearly neither wants nor expects sympathy. Life is life. And you do what you can with what you have. "No better place to day than in the harness." Ximena finally puts the lid back on her coffee cup, tucking it into the holder on her chair, "Come on, then, bring the player. I'll let you take a gander at the collection of movies we've got stashed down in engineering." A snort, at the threat, "I'd just blow my way out." quick hands puch herself away from the table. "Coming?"
Rising from the table, the tall, muscular marine steps over to the media unit and extracts one of the players, leaving the Rec-Room's collection of video discs behind. The change of scenery and the hint at a different selection of vids sparks his interest enough for him to open the door to the hallway first. "Make a hole." Ciro calls out, forcing a few of the marines trying to pen their names onto the Triad tournament's roster to make some room for the large marine. The end result is that Ximena herself isn't going to have to work so hard either.