[IC] Into the Black

[Kirah]

Once dinner was done Victoria called over the PA that it was ready and all were to join them in the Kitchen. The suits sat quietly at one end of the table talking quickly in a language Victoria didn't recognize. All the crew knew it was required to join for dinner. Other meals were sporadic and weren't required, but dinner was meant for decompressing. Something Victoria had learned a long time ago was necessary. Often times things were brought up at dinner that Victoria would address later, dinner was not a time for arguing or fighting. Didn't matter what woes someone had with someone else dinner was not the time to talk about it. After dinner was fine. Victoria gave a quick update to everyone on the flight plan. First Persephone, then their second stop to drop off the original cargo, and then onto Bellerphone. "Should take about 5 weeks to get to Bellerphone." She informed the suits. "Sounds fair." Todd Wright, the suit, told her.

[Oni_]

Sera was walking down the ships corridors, when she was approached by one of the ships passengers, she wasn't sure who it was although he did introduce himself as Ben. It was a strange meeting, he did a customary bow which showed Sera that he knew of her religion, it wasn't infrequent but it still warmed her heart. He told her of how the scriptures had been read to him as a child. His next step however took Sera by surprise, he took he hand to kiss it. He couldn't help herself, she pulled her hand away, not with too much force but still enough and she started to giggle uncontrollably. "Wo De Tian A!", she managed to make out, she didn't often speak in Chinese, although if it were something some may consider inappropriate for a priestess such as herself to say, although it was still understood by most, nevertheless she continued, "What in the 'verse are you doing?!". It wasn't that she was offended, she just couldn't get her head around this sort of thing, she was too childish. She didn't get a chance to receive and answer, the captain had called for lunch, she turns to this Ben character, "Come on, let's go eat. You can tell me all about yourself and your ex-catholic parents later,".

[WilsonTurner]

He smirked, snorted, and stomped his feet- his usual fare in his times of need. Cause a scene? Him? Never! Well, maybe, but it was fun and he had nothing else to do. If somebody actually built stuff like him and understood half of his theories, maybe he'd be less busy putting small robotic spiders to hang out around the ship. Those were useful though; he didn't think anyone knew about them, and they had cameras that liked to a separate network he set up for the ship alone. There were only three of them, and each of them were a hodgepodge, but they worked. He was quite proud of them, too- it took him months to finish all three, and recode the ship so it didn't blow up and work with anything he made to link to it. Really, he was surprised neither the Kai or Cap asked him about it- he practically rebuilt it, only really keeping the stuff that dictates the engines and movements and the like. But he shrugged, and having completely forgotten about the grease on his face, among bits of dirt and the like that accompanied it, and similar substances across his clothing, he headed up to the mess- but not before he sat down to fiddle again with his items. So it was, after everyone had sat down, did the frazzled-mech-dazzled mechanic walked in, completely oblivious to his own appearance, and instead said, "Well howdeh everyone! Ol' Harold did to told me that we were gettin' some passen'-gers."

[Subject Zero]

After spending most of the day in the cockpit, Kai was relieved to finally be elsewhere. His stomach had been rumbling for a while now and after sitting down at the table, accidentally bumping the arm of one of the suits next to him, he loaded up his plate with as much as he could without going overboard. He was hungry but he still made sure to leave enough for everyone else. He was sure Higgins would embarrass the captain enough without him eating the passengers dinner too. He took a massive bite out of a bread roll and glanced at the suit sitting next to him for a second. He found himself wondering why such fine gents would be out here in the ass end of space, hitching a ride on a boat like the Herald. Something about these guys made him uneasy. He tried not to think about it though. Some of the crew were probably shadier than these guys anyway. Casting a quick glance at the rest of the passengers, he continues shovelling food in his mouth. Damn, this wasn't bad. Shen had done well. He would have thanked him if he had room left in his mouth to wrap his tongue around words. His eyes stopped on Higgins as he entered. The engineer was absolutely filthy. More so than usual. He was sure the captain would like him to be at least clean for dinner, 'specially when they had passengers aboard, but Higgins looked pretty frazzled too. Kai wondered what he had been tinkering with that had zapped him but that wasn't his primary concern. "Yeh su" he complained "I hope you plan on washing before you touch the food."

[McHaggis]

.

[cunfuzzler]

Rebecca laid in bed, hands outstretched above her, she examined every aspect of it that she could from her angle, removing and replacing the magazine and suppressor, and doing as best an inspection she could without taking it apart. Once she was satisfied she got up, nestled it into a magnetic holster at her belt and pulled her jacket over it to conceal it. She took a deep breathe as she stood at the door to the rest of the ship mentally going over her persona, she was a country girl who had turned browncoat when the war came, and upon it's end decided to put her soldiering skills to use as a bounty hunter. She took one last moment to make sure she had the accent down, her natural core world accent would have been a dead giveaway of her true origin, once she was satisfied she grabbed her harmonica, put it in her jacket pocket and set out into the rest of the ship. She set a slightly meandering route to the ship's galley one that took her a few more places she hadn't the opportunity to examine upon boarding the vessel. She didn't find anything of particular note, and while she was sure at least a few of the crew members had bounties, they probably weren't particularly massive, she wouldn't know if the trip was worth her time until she had an opportunity to inspect the ship's cargo. So she set off for the galley, finally allowing her heels to clack on the ship's metal floors, broadcasting her approach for anyone to hear as she navigated the corridors Eventually she drew closer to the wafting scent of food and found herself at the galley, she looked over those that were already there. At least the majority of them would be kicked out of any restaurant on her homeworld and regarded as savages. But that certainly wasn't the kind of persona she was in, so as such she smiled and found an empty seat. "Ni how" She spoke to the room. "Tidy little ship ya'll got here. The food smells delectable!"

[Kirah]

Victoria glared at Higgins upon his not so ceremonious entrance. She had told him very clearly to clean up before entering the dinning area. He had been on her crew long enough to know better, and to know the very look she was giving him meant that after dinner she'd have a chat with him. "Sink, soap." She pointed to them, without adding anything else. Todd Wright smiled at Shen, though one could argue it didn't look like the most eased smile. "It's quite interesting." Was the man's response. "Everyone this is Rebecca. She's on her way to Lilac" Victoria went round the room introducing everyone else that had joined as a passenger, and all the crew to each other. Out of those she had picked up on New Melbourne she was happiest about Rebecca, seemed to be the only one out of the bunch that wasn't totally crazy. Though that wasn't saying much since her opinion of all alliance was that they were crazy. "Have a seat. We've just started dinner."

[WilsonTurner]

Higgins gave a goofy smile at Victoria and raised his hands- revealing perfectly clean, washed (though still slightly dirty because of ingrained grease and such, that'll probably never go out with anything short of an hour of scrubbing), and said, "Nah, not hungry today. Just lookin' at our fellow bunk-mates for the next few weeks. You all welcome to the ship- just don't do nothin' with the engine room. It's a mite messy in there and I don't want none you accidentalleh getting shocked or nothin'." He gestures vaguely at his head. He flashes a victorious smile at Victoria, an ironic thought in his mind, and left the room before there could be a response. To his credit, though, he did give a slight, if very unfamiliar and kindly-meant, bow on his way out, in recognition to the core-worlders.

[McHaggis]

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[Fillet]

“There’s not much to tell,” Craig started as they walked down the corridor towards the mess hall. “I’m a simple boy,” he smiled, “brought up by simple folks. My parents had believed in the Goodness of the Catholic God,” he said with disdain, “and He had brought us nothing but pain. We were rich once, we lived in Osiris before…” he shook his head, unwilling to share more about their history. “Once we converted to the Divines, everything turned around.” Craig gazed at Sera. “You’re doing good work.” He sat at the dining table among a host of different sorts of people. They weren’t the best of society nor were they the worst he had seen. The crew and passengers seemed to be, however, more astute than he would have liked for his purposes, with a tension in the air that he would like to keep himself out of. He made sure to keep himself in check and his stories watertight. “Hen hao chi,” he told who he presumed to have been the cook, a scrawny boy that still looked far too tender and privileged for a ship like the Herald. “The xian yu is done in a way I’ve never tried before. I like it.” He glanced at the newcomer, Rebecca, an outer-rim girl who had seen the rough side of life, like more of the villagers whose lives had played out similar to his own, and weighed his options between her and Sera; it was the thought of her status as a high priestess that sealed his commitment to his act. “I suppose they’re going to confess their sins to you later on,” he jested to Sera quietly beside him, referring to the dynamic between the two men. “I might,” he added in a whisper.

[Oni_]

As Sera and Craig - who still called himself Ben - walked down the ships halls he told her about his family, Sera let him speak for the most part, with a few um's and ah's when appropriate. Luckily it was a short life story, it didn't take them all that long to reach dinner. Sera had to hand it to him, Shen was a good cook. Better than her at least, she couldn't make much more than a burnt mess most of the time. It made her feel better about herself when she had a good meal inside of her, it didn't matter much if she had made it or not. Craig then decided to bring up the passengers confessing their sins to her, "I'd be so lucky for people from a fancy rock like them to be wanting to confess their sins," she replied and then, in reply to his whisper, she added in a hushed tone, "I don't have all night, it seems to me it would take three of me to get through most converts sins in the time left in the day," once again she turned her attention to her food.

[WilsonTurner]

Higgins returned to his engine room, thoroughly unsure of himself. Really, what was he going to do with others onboard? He didn't really like dealing with any amount of new people... at all. He can be friendly, sure, but he was never sure of how to be social. Ach, and he might've stayed if that Shen... it was disturbing, to him. Shen didn't like him, and it bothered him more than he could admit. It wasn't like he told everyone, but he gave him that look... Either way, he didn't feel welcome or comfortable, so he took off his gloves- leaving clean hands, which he washed anyways- and stopped by to... he honestly wasn't sure. Say hi? Usually he ate as much as he could, but he found he wasn't hungry. He always preferred the ship- any ship- over going out to the world. As he pondered his discomfort and uncertainty, he began fiddling with his latest project, spinning it about, disassembling it and reconstructing it. He turned it on, turned it off, put a new battery in it, took apart the old one for scrap, made a new piece out of scrap, attached it to it, and then took off a different part. It was the sort of mindless construction that he had used to build pretty much everything else sitting on his little shelf. Most of them didn't do anything, just little interesting contraptions made with too much time and not enough working parts. This piece had already caused the scrapping of six of his working pieces, and it still wasn't finished. He considered it, distracting himself from his thoughts, as he sat on his 'bed,' which was nothing more than a thick blanket spread out in a corner of the room, adjacent to the doorway. Cross-legged, he held it up in front of his eyes, and promptly dropped it. The resulting shock was enough to persuade him to leave it on the shell, for now.

[Fillet]

“It wouldn’t take you long to go through my sins,” Craig whispered. “I’ve been a good boy, just rough on the edges that you might help me with.” The naive - or cold, he couldn’t tell which - high priestess was going to need more work, he realised, and left their conversation to let his intentions simmer with her. Craig finished the dinner and excused himself from the table. The core people, including Shen, made him uncomfortable. Their presence reminded him that he could never become like one of them. “I’ll take it to him,” he said, taking a plate of leftover food and feigning ignorance, asked, “Where is the engine room?”

[McHaggis]

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[WilsonTurner]

[snip]

[Kirah]

Victoria was on edge. Simply put she didn't like having this many core folk on her ship. It made her jittery. She needed the money.

A glance at Sol told the hired gun to follow Ben. How he handled following the guy was up to his own discretion. Much like Shen, the captain had no desire to let someone go wanderin' about her ship, especially to the heart of it.

Todd, the suit, excused himself at this point. Victoria gave him a slight nod as he and his servant left. She wondered about the beefy overweight man. He was too clean, then again most core people were. If she hadn't already sent Sol to follow Ben, she would send him to follow Todd. Of course she couldn't have everyone of the guests followed, as much as she'd like to. Thankfully her regular cargo was clean. The shipment was through a long time friend of hers, and he always warned her when the stuff was hot. It would be a long few weeks anyway.

[Fillet]

The captain’s intention was clear. Craig went with his escort Sol, the ex-Alliance soldier, to the engine room. He let the thumps of their boots walking through the hallways fill the silence between them; there was no need to jog Sol’s buried memory of him.

The engine room was like any other heart of a ship: noisy, like static, with a constant whirr in the air - a surprise electricity jolt worsened the welcome. It was metal and grease everywhere. There was a kind of permanent dirtiness to mechanics - their oily black hands, smudges on their skins and a perpetually stained overall - that Craig had never been fond of. It reminded him too much of his birth world: both were besmirched. It had taken him a long time to be scrubbed clean of his past, more or less. He passed Higgin his dinner and shook his unclean hand. “Got one of my own,” he said, pointing a thumb at Sol standing guard nearby. “The last thing I need is for this ship to be stuck in this gorram system. The suits though, I don’t get a good feeling about them.”

Craig picked up and fooled around with the device Higgin was fixing up with a nonchalance typical of non-mechanics. His eyes subtly scanned the room for any part worth selling. “I don’t like them suits,” he continued. “Not just them but any high-up-there ones. But money’s money, and they always got lots of them. What’s this anyway?” he asked about the device.

[WilsonTurner]

Higgins' eyes snapped open from their half-closed position, lazily staring at his project. He had been fiddling with it for the past... however long it had been. But, with the same casual motion, he tossed it on the lowest shelf of his makeshift metal bolted-to-the-wall shelf, and rolled to his feet. His device hit the metal with a loud, electrical snap!, but Higgins just waved off the passenger's flinch.

"Nothin' to worry about, mate," he said, dismissing the snap from behind him. "Hey, look, bringin' the tinkerer some food- thanks." He took the proffered food with a grateful smile, and then waved vaguely with the other hand.

"Welcome to the heart of the ship! Thousands of parts, an not one of them a day over twenny years! Remarkable how some machines keep running with the magic touch, eh?"

Then he held out his now-slightly-dirty hand, which he looked at and promptly rubbed off half of it on a clean spot on his unusual attire for a handshake. But this time, when he spoke, his smile got a touch colder.

"Don't be comin' on down here without an escort, put my worries at ease? Not to accuse, but the good Cap would have my head if you were in the engine with no one around." He left out the part where someone might bug the ship or set it to malfunction or some other ungodly thing. The engine room was his- the heart was under his protection, and he'll naught let anyone stick a needle in it. The captain excepted. He might just get angry if someone were to be here, messin' with the heart, messin' with his shinies.

[Kirah]

[Time Skip - Two weeks later]

The last two weeks had been fairly average. There was of course tension growing between the crew and the suits, not that there wasn't some between the crew and anyone else. It probably stemmed from Victoria's own distrust of the two men. She had let them onto the ship though she kept reminding herself, as did Shen.

Currently Victoria sat on the catwalk, legs dangling off, head resting on the bar, as she clicked through a visual novel. Victoria only half paid mind to it as she had already finished it once before.

Below her in the cargo bay the suits played a game of cards over their case. Victoria was fairly certain this was the third time the same guy had won. He sniggered and reshuffled the deck. They never opened the case, at least no time that Victoria had noticed. It didn't match any other cargo type she carried and sat off to the side away from the rest of the goods. Simple stuff was in the rest of the boxes, mostly cloth, but there were other useful tidbits that Salisbury needed. "Stupid name for a planet," Victoria mumbled, and shifted, her left leg a little numb.

((If you want to post a quick bit about what your character has done in the meantime, or after dinner, please do, keep it to one post though, and then join us in the present))