| Naked Accusation |
| Summary: | It's a no-pants party in the Berths and everyone's invited! |
| Date: | 2 Oct 2041 AE |
| Related Logs: | Trust is a Rare Commodity |
| Players: |
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| Pilot Berths - Naval Deck - Battlestar Cerberus |
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| Post-Holocaust Day: #218 |
| 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. |
| Condition Level: 3 - All Clear |
It's mid-evening at Chez Pilot, and Tisiphone is spending it much like she's spent every evening for the past stretch of days — with her curtain half-closed and the smell of cigarette smoke leaking out. The bottoms of her legs are visible, feet covered as always in the fuzzed and worn red- and gold-striped socks she wears instead of the drab regulation footwear. Thrown across the foot of the bed are her duty blues, a fresh LTJG pin upon its collar.
Devlin is walks in through the adjoining head, swiping at his head with a towel, looking like he's just come from the gym. He's headed for Psyche's bunk, of course, and he peeks behind the curtain only to shut it again with a bit of a thoughtful frown. "Huh," he comments mostly to himself, since it's not directed at anyone nearby. He turns to lean a shoulder against the ladder, drumming his fingertips on it for a moment before shiny things catch his eye. Shiny pins, to be exact, on Tisiphone's uniform. "Hey!" he remarks, moving towards her bunk, "Tis, you got promoted!"
Pallas has been more and more absent from the berths during his spare time ever since he was ordered to stop drinking; most assumed at first that it was because he was drinking in hiding, but not a single person has seen him with a bottle in hand since then. Or even smelling of booze as per usual. But while he's apparently sobered up and become more lucid, he's gotten even more tightly wound and bitter since then. He storms into the bunks, looking like a man on a mission. Tis' bunk is the objective of that mission, and he heads straight toward it, disregarding everyone and everything else. Including the newly re-promoted LTJG Apostolos herself. Placing one boot on her bedframe between her legs, he hoists himself up to look at the top bunk. Empty. Damn.
Cidra enters the berthings. Which is, honestly, something of a rare sight these days. The woman's spent very little time here. The drawn down of CAG in Berthings time actually began after they fled Sagittaron, and has only increased since Captain Sitka's death. Rumor has it she's sleeping in her office. Or the chapel. As she's spending quite a few nights Not Here. She's here now, however, and makes her way directly to her locker to begin changing out of her duty blues. Pallas' rather…forceful entrance gets a glance. But nothing more immediately.
"Again," comes Tisiphone's scratchy, flat-voiced clarification. One striped foot moves slightly, a fuzzy toe prodding negligently at the rumpled formalwear. "Maybe-" Whatever she was going to say stops short at the CLOMP of Pallas's boot upon the edge of her bunk. Her thumbnail flick-flicks with restrained irritation against her cigarette filter before she says, "Didn't have the nut-punching sign out, Spiral, but if you're volunteering."
"Yeah, that's good," Pallas says sarcastically as he pulls himself a little bit higher. Now he's hanging off the edge of the top bunk on his forearm, just barely on his tiptoes on Tis' bunk. "Right after you get your Junior pins back, you lose 'em for punching me in the sack." After a quick glance over his shoulder to make sure Andrea isn't anywhere nearby, and he starts rummaging madly with his one free hand. Stealth is obviously not the name of his game, because he just shoves stuff all over the place, leaving the bunk trashed when he comes back down. "There's better ways to get your hands on my junk, Creampie." A quick glance is given to Devlin, but it's not much more than him narrowing his eyes suspiciously at the nugget before looking back to Tisiphone. Cidra's presence is missed completely.
"Uhh. Hey, Spiral," Devlin greets the pilot as he suddenly climbs up Tisiphone's bunk, blocking the nugget's view of the new LTJG. He crouches and ducks to see around the LT's legs so he can give Tisiphone a little wave and repeat, "Again. But I didn't know you to say congrats the first time, so. Congrats." He smiles, and leans against her ladder, glancing up to watch the rummaging curiously. "Whose bunk is that?" he asks both and neither of them. Cidra's entrance is apparently not noticed just yet.
"Good eve, all," Cidra says. Voice raised a little. Tone nondescript but it is, perhaps, a warning that any nut-punching should perhaps be tabled for another occasion while she's in the vicinity. She strips off her uniform jacket, hanging it up neatly, then pulls her duty shirt off over her head. It's leisurely exchanged for a T-shirt of plain, drab green Navy make. She then gets to the business of removing her trousers and trading them for sweatpants.
"You're not my type," says Tisiphone to Pallas — or his lower legs, at least. "Little too old." A lungful of smoke is snorted out toward the older pilot as her eyes roll ceiling-ward. It's not until she's pulled another drag off her smoke and exhaled that she looks toward Devlin. "Thanks," comes the lacklustre response. "Let's see how long it takes me to cock it up this time." Her eyes flick toward Cidra's voice, hold there a second before she says, only, "Sir." Back to Devlin: "Used to be Daphne up there. Some new bint moved in. Frakked if I know who. Guess they owe Spiral a bottle, though."
Devlin's greeting only earns him another squinting sort of glare from Pallas. "Some woman parading as a former wingmate," he says, answering the question distractedly. He's going through Andrea's locker now. Apparently, whatever he's looking for isn't there, so the door gets slammed shut, then booted. "Well, you're cock expert," he says to Tisiphone. Leaning against her bunk, he lights up a cigarette. "Toast," he says tersely, glaring her way. "I'm told that it was you who signed her out." Her being Hosedown, of course.
Devlin looks back down at Tisiphone when she speaks, and shrugs at her, smiling crookedly, "Maybe it'll go better this time. And hey, at least I'm not almost catching up to you, now," he jokes. "Huh," is added when she explains the bunk situation, and then he's turning to look at Cidra when she greets them. "Major," he offers in greeting. He doesn't turn back to those nearer him right away, instead continuing to look at the CAG as she changes for a long moment, too long, really, before he seems to realize what he's doing and blinks, turning quickly back to Tis and Pallas and covering a sudden cough. "So, she's… what?" he asks, trying to catch back up, ears a little red, "You think she's faking, or something?"
"If you are referring to Lieutenant Demarcos. It was, yes," Cidra replies to Pallas, kind of jumping to turn to face him. As she's still pulling her sweatpants up. They are in place a moment later, however. She regards the lieutenant in that rather inscrutable way she has of regarding things. "The Marines had completed their background check of her. There was little more that could be done, and I saw no reason to drag things out further. I did want a word with you about her, however. I am told you two are…acquainted? From a past assignment?" She does not actually stop him from rifling through this person's stuff. As for her changing, it's done with no real bashfulness. The woman has an odd sense of modesty, which seems to tune out the berthings and the Head as places where people are Naked For Real in ways one should be conscious of.
"You ever get around to growing one, you know where to find me for an appraisal." There's no real heat or venom in the barbs thrown Pallas's way; then again, Tisiphone hasn't mustered much reaction to anything as of late, with the exception of sudden tearsplosions. Thankfully for all involved, they're becoming rarer and rarer. With the conversation moving to Andrea, she lapses back into silence, folding one arm behind her head and staring off into the curtained foot of her bunk.
Pallas could fire a witty repartee back to Tisiphone. But that takes so much effort. Instead, he drops his pants, kicks off his boxers, and stands proudly and fully nude with his hands on his hips. "Whenever you're ready there, Handjob." He turns to face Cidra to respond, angling his body a bit to include Devlin. Wouldn't want anyone to miss out on the party. "Andrea Demarcos served under me with the Skyhawks on the Volans," he answers. A slight emphasis is placed on her name, making clear that he still doesn't believe the woman that they rescued is who she says she is. "And as for whether or not she's faking, if that's still a question that needs asked, she should be in a cell. Which is where she was until Toast decided to let her loose."
Devlin is busy being embarrassed, since while people in various states of undress in the berthings and the head are hardly anything unusual, it is not precisely commonplace that he stares at them (with one obvious exception) and it is even more rare that he stares at the CAG, which he was totally just doing. It seems as if no one noticed, though, and he begins to relax, just in time for Pallas to drop his pants. "Dude!" Devlin exclaims, "What the frak?" He is confused, clearly, and not-pleasantly surprised, rolling his eyes. "Come on, man."
Cidra regards Pallas. This involves eye contact. And ignoring anything below the fold on the forty-something Viper pilot. "Her identify and story have been verified as thoroughly as it is possible to verify such things. I will not keep a woman in a cell indefinitely. At some point, we must all admit there are some things we cannot know for certain until a person proves themselves. Or not." If she is at all self-conscious about having this conversation while Pallas is un-bottomed, there is no sign of it. The Gemenese woman probably had to firmly compartmentalize Berthing Naked long ago to function in the Navy. "That being said, I do agree she should be watched, and that she should have a meeting with our Intelligence staff, if for no other reason than to see if she can give us any better idea of why the Cylons have abandoned these planets."
Tisiphone turns her head to see… Pallas's head staring back at her. In a manner of speaking. "Never seen a balding nutsack before," she informs him, blandly, before looking away to pick up her pack of cigarettes. "Thanks. I feel enlightened. You wanna back that up so I can light my smoke? Burning head-hair smells bad enough."
Forty-three years old though he may be, Pallas still has the maturity of a thirteen-year-old when it comes to certain things. Penises are included in that list. So he swings sideways and attempts to give Devlin a good mushroom-slap with his exposed member. "I keep myself nicely trimmed," he says to Tisiphone. "The point isn't for women to be flossing while they're choking on my cock." That lovely tidbit dropped, he falls silent as he studies Cidra's Inscrutable CAGface. "Well it's a good thing you're taking so many precautions," he drawls, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "How long was she held? A day or two? You think that just because she can recite the history on her file, which the Cylons have probably read backwards and forward, she's free to roam the ship?" His lips curl in a sneer as he takes in another breath of smoke. "The Cylons have abandoned these planets because they don't need ships and gunfire to kill us off. Not while we've frakking gone soft and let them come aboard our ship with no resistance."
Devlin is not forty-three but he has been thirteen, and he knows how these things go. When Pallas turns in that swinging sort of way, he darts back out of range, just shaking his head at the pilot, snorting, "No way, man. I'm not falling for that shit." He takes another couple steps back, just in case, retreating to lean against the lockers and listen with mild curiousity to the on-going discussion.
Cidra blinks. Three times. At Pallas. She still keeps her eyes pointedly on his face rather than his penis. Wherever it might be swinging. "We need pilots, Spiral. The woman knows a stick. At the moment, that is at a premium, and I refuse to be held hostage to paranoia. More to the point, have you any proof this woman *is* a Cylon, other than an inability to believe one you know could have survived the holocaust?"
The hatch opens, admiting a very sweaty Andrea. After most of a year hiding in a confined space, PT was an immediate necessesity, and combined with a much improved diet, Andrea is already starting to resemble a stick far less than when she was initially found. Mopping at her face with a towel as she enters, she nods to the group she sees. "Evening, everyone."
"Point made, can you put your frakking pants on again?" Tisiphone can't really edge deeper into her bunk, though her socked feet brace against the edge of her bunk as if she's tempted to try. After a final scowl at Spiral's… knees… she tips her head down and busies herself lighting a fresh cigarette off the dying cherry of the previous one.
A groggy, sleep-blind hand wanders from the topmost bunk nearest the door and grabs a fistful of penis. Fortunately, the penis belongs to the Priapic shrine-statue hanging on the wall and not, say, Pallas. The arm, for its part, belongs to the bunk's proper inhabitant, the Raptordriver Bunny, and it fumbles downward along the rope hanging from the sacred cock until it finds the hanging chronometer and pulls it down and into the bunk again, close up to Bunny's face so he can squint at the time and then out into the open area.
"Proof?" Pallas snarls, unleashing his full naked fury. "You to play the 'innocent until proven guilty' game, Toast?" He quickly closes the gap between them. Neither Andrea nor Evandreus are acknowledged, nor does he fulfill Tisiphone's request to cover himself back up. "You'd better be damn sure of your decision," he hisses, jabbing a finger toward her chest. But it stops a centimeter short of actually touching her. "You better be frakking sure that she - " he points to Andrea without taking his eyes off Cidra's face - "is not the enemy. Because if you're wrong, we're the ones who'll pay the price for it. What'll it be this time? More frakking Vipers exploding? Poison in our tanks?" His eyes narrow hard, and his face comes so close to hers that the built-up ash on his cigarette is touching her cheek. "I haven't forgotten who the enemy is, Toast. And I sure as frak wouldn't be so quick to put the entire Wing in danger."
Devlin takes this opportunity, as Pallas heads towards Cidra to, after watching for a moment with sort of rapt horror, sneak back towards Tisiphone and her bunk. He sticks his head in and says something quietly to the pilot before ducking back out and heading for the hatch to exit.
Well, hello to you, too. Andrea is drawn up short as she is pointed at, and it doesn't take long to connect the dots on what exactly is being discussed. To her credit, she doesn't blush, she just shakes her head. Pallas was always paranoid. With a sigh, she brushes past him, allowing Devlin to pass before reaching into her bunk, which is above Tisiphone's.
Cidra holds her posture very straight, eyes flicking down from Pallas' gaze to his pointed figure. "I have vouched for her, Spiral. And mixed her with you and the rest of mine. And whatever she is is now upon my head. This, I know. I know what those abominations have done to us. Do not speak as if I do not. I know who the enemy is. But I shall not become so wrapped in looking for them in every shadow that I ignore an opportunity fight them." Devlin's sneaking is missed. Perhaps that's for the best. Andrea's entrance, however, is noted. Her eyes fall upon the woman. Expression inscrutable. She just watches. If she's at all embarrassed about having been caught talking/arguing about her so openly, the CAG gives no sign of it.
"Back the frak off the CAG, man," mutters Tisiphone, pale eyes lifting through the ragged ribbon of cigarette smoke. It's not said with any particular volume — it may not even carry to Pallas's ears, let alone be acknowledged. Her gaze flicks over to Devlin when he stoops to speak with her. "Sure," comes the lacklustre response to his mutter, followed by a mute up-nod of farewell.
Evandreus reaches out again, hanging the clock back onto its peg and leaving it there to swing while he shoves himself to his side, then up to his knees, tangling his calves in the sheets half-kicked off as he kneels facing his shelf, snikking his curtain all the way shut before opening up a little box and finding some of the treats pilfered from Aerilon.
"You don't know who the enemy is or isn't," Pallas snaps, abruptly stepping away from her. Maybe Tisiphone's words are heard after all. Andrea is given a suspicious glare as she passes him. "That's the whole frakking point." But his tirade is over for now, and so's his nakedness. He pulls his boxers and pants back on. "You should've been given a Gods-damned medal for trying to kill that skinjob, not a court-martial," he growls to Tisiphone. "But who the frak am I. Just a washed-up nobody."
Andrea is visibly shaking as the scene continues, and suddenly she spins in place. "Just how do you propose she go about verifying it, Spiral?" She steps up to him. "Keep me in hack until… what? Would a month of good behavior have made you feel better? Six? A year? A decade? You've always been dark, you've always been paranoid. But you have never let it cripple you before. Damn you to all of the available hells, you KNOW me. What test do you want me to pass? I'll take it, right here, right now."
"Maybe the court-martial was for /missing/, man. Look at it that way," comes the half-hearted mutter from within Tisiphone's bunk. She draws her knees up toward her chest and folds her arms across them, chin propped atop, cigarette dangling precariously from the corner of her mouth. Every time she drags from it, it bobs and sifts ash down across her calves and besocked toes.
"Easy, Money Shot. I have dealt with far worse than this," Cidra says mildly. Not taking her eyes off Pallas. "Lieutenant Ellinon is not unjustified in his…caution, given all we have been through." The word is chosen carefully. Still, she is not unhappy when he puts on some bottoms. She closes her own locker. She'd left it open while she was undressing into her off-duties. A fresh cigarette is withdrawn before she locks up, however, and she lights it. Eyeing the altercation between Andrea and Pallas. "Easy yourself, Hosedown. This is, I think, not the time." Tisiphone is just *eyed*. Cidra sighs. And smokes. She smokes deeply.
"A month of good behavior?" Pallas scoffs. "What will time tell me? Frakking nothing. If the Admiral snuck by undetected for all this time, you think I'm going to trust you?" He spits out his dead cigarette and crushes the life out of it with the toe of his boot. "One person's life balanced against the safety of the entire ship - the entire frakking Fleet! You frakking bet I would've kept you in that cell. Or better yet, never picked you up. Better to leave you on this planet with some rations and supplies, just in case you really are who you say you are, and one round in a pistol."
Andrea's eyes are blazing. "That would all make sense, Spiral, if you didn't have as much reason to distrust people on this ship as anyone you picked up. Better toss the entire frakking command line in the brig while you're at it, right? After all, they might have been in on it!" She then glances at the CAG, shaking her head. "Sorry, sir. You're right. I just…" Whatever she just, she leaves it inside, and backs off.
"A day or a month, Demarcos. You shall earn our trust the same way the rest of us do each day. By getting in a plane and flying against the Cylons. And each day, you do it over again." Cidra eyes the lieutenants a moment longer but is, perhaps at least satisfied Andrea won't escalate things. Hopefully. At least, she puts her cigarette out and leaves them to their own devices. Hitting the Head. She will very likely shower and exit, as she has in nights past. To go…wherever it is she squirrels herself these days.
"Yes, because throwing everyone off the ship makes just as much sense as not picking one person up," Pallas snaps, rolling his eyes. "Chalk up one point for actually being Hosedown - you spout the same inane, vacuous idiocies." Shaking his head, he stalks away from her bunk, lighting up another cigarette as he goes. "I'll be watching you, whatever you are. On the ship and out in space. And the moment I start to think something's not right, the second I suspect foul play, I'll frakking shoot you down like the shit-cunted frakrag that you are."
"No." Andrea is back, barely even registering Cidra's departure as she chases him down. "That's not how it frakking works, Spiral. And you frakking well know it. If we are flying in the same wing, which it seems that we will, then you are going to shape up, and shape up now." She grabs his arm to spin him around. "You taught me yourself, remember? When in combat, a wing has to act as one unit. And if you're gonna be out there watching me instead of watching a KNOWN enemy, then you are unfit for the cockpit, and you frakking well know it." She stares him in the eyes. "So man the frak up, Spiral. The Cerberus saved me, and I WILL repay my debt to them by flying to the very best of my ability, protecting my wingmates and shooting the enemy I know. If your paranoid little world won't let you do that, then you may as well just turn in your wings and go live with the civvies."
Pallas forcefully shakes off Andrea's hand. For a moment, there's a wild look in his eyes like he's about to backhand her, but he restrains himself. The flames of rage die down to a smolder, and his lips curl in that all-too-familiar sneer. "You think I haven't tried?" She wouldn't know that he was supposed to be honorably discharged just after the holocaust hit, and that his release was denied due to the circumstances. "This is the most frakked-up Squadron I've ever flown in. There's no teamwork. The reservists are mixed in with the real pilots. So don't you worry. I will be watching you." That appears to be his parting shot; he turns on his heels and heads out, leaving a trail of cigarette smoke behind him.
Andrea watches Pallas leave, and slowly calms down. The frakking fool, the total frakking IDIOT. He'd been a lot of things… but a coward? What else could it be? To be so terrified of enemies lurking in shadows that he let it interfere with his fight with the enemies he could see. Grabbing her towel, she went into the shower to clean off. It was going to come to a head, eventually. But the CAG had taken a chance on her… she was also taking a chance with him. Whatever he did, Andrea vowed that her own reinstatement would not be a choice the CAG would regret.