twenty-two ☼ spam, BLOO TEAM

[deshabille]

[Mal still doesn't understand what Thanksgiving is. She doesn't strictly speaking need to eat, and when she does it, she much prefers rougher fare than what the prizes consist of, such things being what she's used to. And she certainly doesn't know what a laser is.]

[However, she's inexorably drawn to blowing off steam and making a grand fool of herself, so she straps on all the ridiculous trappings of this inexplicable game and sets off into the hallways. She tends to improvise extra armor for herself, made out of scraps of metal, bits of cloth, and such, for maximum visual bafflement but minimal extra protection. By the end of the first day she's died and reset several times and is cheerfully ignoring the fact that she did just recently die not a week ago.]

[Her aim is not as good as one might expect of a soldier, but then, as Bush might scoff, infantry: what's to be done with them. She can be found anywhere, but most particularly holed up by the art room behind an easel, grinning like a loon.]

spam } mira, 11/30

[This is . . . refreshing. Sort of beautiful, actually, in a utilitarian way. The Barge gives her time to grieve, and then it forces her back to her feet. More merciful than a battlefield, more structured than everything that came before. She is pleased. If she were a cat, she'd be purring as she knocks on Mira's door.]

[She has read the file. Of course she has. It fascinates her, the swirling impossibilities twining around her legs, forcing her to believe in them. A world or worlds like these breed different sorts of men and monsters - and then there's Mira, born again. And again. And again.]

[It does not escape Mal's notice that she's approaching a suspect. She's not frightened, though. If anything, it makes the whole prospect more interesting.]

Comments

[shakenandlimp]

Ha-! Found you!

[Bush shoulders his way into the art room with a very creditible roar of battle, only to stop and frown.]

Oh, you are blue team as well.

[deshabille]

So I am.

[She grins at him from behind the easel, and shoots at him anyway.]

[shakenandlimp]

[He looks down, resigned, as his armor flashes to register the hit.]

Well, that is the infantry for you.

[He's nothing if not predictable.]

[deshabille]

[It's nice to have someone predictable around, truthfully.]

Devastatingly clever?

[She twirls her gun, possibly by the handle, in some kind of improbable way, and pops out from behind the easel.]

[shakenandlimp]

More polish than good sense. [So dourly.]

Well, I'm back to my room, then.

[deshabille]

Mm, or you could stay here and help me figure out how to defeat the brutal enemy.

[shakenandlimp]

The first step towards beating the enemy'd be to have a working weapon. Which I haven't, thanky, Corporal.

What was your plan?

[deshabille]

Shooting at things that move. But I admit it could use some tweaking.

[shakenandlimp]

What if you modified your plan a bit to shoot at red things that move?

[It's such big broad sarcasm, but there it is. He's wound up very fond of this ridiculous corporal and he's not sure how he allowed that to happen.]

[deshabille]

[She gives him a look of exaggerated surprise.]

You know, that might just work! But I do like a diversity of targets . . . I could shoot at red things that move and you.

[broughtwhiskey]

[Okay, Philip is affected and has been fairly relentless in shooting as much Blue as possible, but what the fuck, Mal? What the fuck are you even wearing?]

[This is the only reason he is not firing at you. Because you may be Blue, but how can anyone who looks like that be even a little bit of a threat?]

[deshabille]

[She is wearing a visual delight, is what she is wearing. If asked, she would also explain how it serves as a wonderful distraction for people from Red team who would want to shoot her, and see? It's working. She's so clever.]

[Really she's just lost her mind a little, but that's neither here nor there: while Philip is staring, she shoots at him with a vicious grin.]

[broughtwhiskey]

[It's only once she shoots him and sets off the electronic chirping that Philip is brought back to the present moment. He's immediately very annoyed that he's been shot by whatever the hell this is supposed to be.]

What the hell are you wearing?

[deshabille]

[She smirks at him, rests the gun on her slim hip, and spreads her free hand out, demonstrating her ensemble.]

Clothing. And extras.

Worked, didn't it? You lose.

[broughtwhiskey]

[Philip scoffs. Some victory.]

It worked, [he says, flatly.] It doesn't really do anything except make you look like a fool.

[YOU DIDN'T WIN.]

[deshabille]

Doesn't bother me.

[Clearly it bothers him. But this is a milit'ry technique, right, so. Stuff it.]

It stopped you, though. Am I hurting your eyes?

[broughtwhiskey]

No.

[The whole of her is just insipid and plainly aggravating to him. It's most certainly not limited to the stupid outfit she's wearing. She should feel very proud.]

[Philip brushes past her roughly.]

[exnihilo]

[She can't yell who is it - the nanomaterial of the door interferes with sounds waves. If her DI were operational, she could just query the door. But it isn't. She never asked David to restore it, and he never offered. So she answers the door, realizes this was, of course, to be expected, given the announcement.

She's been mulling over it. She is - not sulking. She sulked at Cain, hard, at the idea of being passed from warden to warden with no impact like she was passed from life to life. She had expected to resent any new permanent warden just as much, anyone who would take David's place.

But Mal is hers, in the way victims are. And now she is Mal's, in the way that matters here. And Mira is - willing. Whatever this is, whatever this means. She leans in her doorway.]

Hello.

[deshabille]

[Mal looks up when the door opens, quite shrewdly. Her attention is on Mira and Mira alone, which is unusual enough to anyone who's ever paid close attention to her. She likes to keep her fingers in as many pies as possible, but for now, for this threat, for this woman, with her poise and her striking beauty and her shocking vulnerability, she must give all of herself.]

[She isn't sure when she came to that conclusion. Halfway through the file, maybe; she found herself moved in a way that Hannibal never moved her. In a way that Pietro did. Fascinated in the way all three of them caught her, head over heels in interest.]

[She cocks her head.]

You saw the announcement. [Not a question.] Let me in, please.

[exnihilo]

Please.

[Echoed slowly, contemplatively, like she's tasting it, gauging whether it was really a request or just a very pretty order. After a few more drawn out seconds, she seems to accept whatever conclusion she comes to, because she lifts her chin in a faint 'in, then' sort of gesture before turning, content with Mal at her back, leaving the door clear as she moves back into her room.]

You don't drink coffee anymore, right? Do you care about tea?

[They've never spoken before, that she can recall. But Mira has watched - Mal more than most, in the small space, because of Hannibal, still between them in more ways than Mal entirely know. Unless she does, unless she does, the last twitching moments - Mira doesn't know whether she wants Mal to know or not know, except that pain of uncertainty is exquisite. The knowledge of the disassembled struts of the crossbow stored under the couch, the surveillance equipment still tuned to the bug on Mal's collar tucked innocuously in the cupboards among other scanners and calibrators and mechanical tools that belonged to Dr. Torvalli's real lab assistant. Away and out of sight, mute but not off, always running in case she feels the urge to review it. There might even be a resonance, in this much proximity, a tiny amount of feedback. And suspended over their heads, directly under the lights, rows and rows of miniature worlds, still just water and feed solution and tiny unsprouted seeds in their nanoflex crystalframe test tubes, clear and hygienically sealed. Mira doesn't look at the couch, or the cupboard, or the ceiling. She gets what she needs to make tea.]

[deshabille]

[It was, more or less, an order. She doesn't normally give them in that fashion. Time and practice have taught her to be direct. But Mira is not a direct sort of person, and that's fascinating; she wants more of it, so she encourages it, in her own indirect way.]

[Stepping inside, she feels instantly, perfectly, comfortably on alert, her senses as heightened as they ever are. Something tinny in the back of her throat, vibrating in her ears. Mira is not looking anywhere but where she is going. Mira is very careful, or is not it.]

[Mal stops still in the middle of the floor, standing on her toes to brush her fingers against the test tube worlds. She is grinning. She has utterly forgotten to answer the question.]

[exnihilo]

[She sets it for one cup, watches Mal's fascination with amusement while it brews - pleased, flattered, and also a little strained by the attention, the tugging weight of it.]

David wanted me to have a project. Something more cerebral than kitchen duty.

I don't think he ever really understood that I didn't mind menial things. He felt they were degrading to his intelligence. But then, he was much smarter than most of us.

[Or maybe it doesn't bother her because she was made more successfully into a tool, because her lipid brain grasping for culture and parents is so much more susceptible to her makers' suggestions than his mechanical empiricism. He could do more, comparative advantage. His drudgery was a waste, QED. She doesn't know if she wants to be upset or not, that she finds it comforting, kneading bread and chopping vegetables and putting ingredients together.]

[deshabille]

[Something familiar, now - a tinny and blue smell, like nothing she's ever smelled before except maybe once. She closes her eyes against the little test tube worlds and tries to remember. Somewhere close, the oddest sense of deja vu, she wonders if maybe, just maybe--]

[Noise. Mira's talking. Distraction. But maybe she should focus. Mira is important, too.]

[Her eyes open, narrowed against the sensation of steam against her cornea. She grins again.]

I'm not taking you off kitchen duty. You can take on another task if you want it, but I don't know that you need it.

We haven't talked much. Which is funny, considering we've both been here quite a while.

I'll take that tea, thank you. We used to drink tea in the army hot and sweet and milky. Called it saloop. It's full of memories.

[She will remember.]

[exnihilo]

I'm not terribly social when I'm not working.

[The most demure. u_u But of course Mal will know what all of that means. She puts lemon in her own tea, programs the second cup to Mal's specifications. Memories, after all, are important.]

[deshabille]

[She takes the cup as she listens to the - what? Confession? Admission? Something in between, or something with no emotional consequences at all? - in silence. Not terribly social when not working. So she ought to stay working.]

[Still. It's odd, to someone like Mal, so invested in people; why avoid them?]

Why?

[exnihilo]

Because it's all lies.

I'm supposed to be - charming and impressive but eminently forgettable, delightful enough to get anything and go anywhere I need to but too scintillating to be a real person, just a story about the wonderful sorts of people you meet traveling, an interstellar fairy tale. And I'm very good at that, but I don't like it, and I don't need it, here.

So I don't bother.

[deshabille]

[This is all true. A little depressing, but surprisingly perceptive, for what Mal knows of Mira thus far. Her entire impression during this meeting, in fact, is of Mira being more perceptive than Mal would have expected. She understands herself while not understanding herself. It's curious.]

Well, what do you think you're like? If not scintillating and charming. If not a story. Or what do you want to be like, if you'd rather that question, but it seems sort of on the nose, doesn't it? I'm no psychiatrist.

[exnihilo]

[She's had a lot of time to brood on it, before and after coming to the barge. She tilts her head at Mal's questions.

Professional is the word she thinks first, immediate and unqualified, although she is not entirely sure which of the questions it is the answer to. Professional, she thinks, is the word for a knife that owns itself.

Who is she when she's real, who was she with Darling, who was she with Oscar Vale.]

Reckless. Dangerous. Thorough.

Young.

[deshabille]

[Young. Yes. Mira is very young. She makes Mal feel a bit old, which is strange, because for all of her age she often feels as though she's experienced nothing at all in her life. Reading that file, though, she felt the weight of years heavy on her shoulders. The weight of memories.]

[She shifts her weight, a touch uncomfortable at the reminder of her pending immortality.]

Takes a special kind of person to be reckless and thorough all at once. I, for example, am reckless, but very rarely thorough.

[exnihilo]

I would like to make choices recklessly, but then see them thoroughly through.

[Does that help? Does that make it more or less odd? She isn't sure. Except that Mal is looking, no matter how roundabout her way of reacting, and Mira wants her to see. Wants to draw herself with clean lines.]

[deshabille]

[It's not even really about odd; it's about impossible. This, what Mira is saying now, is not impossible. It's improbable, but it can be done. And that's what makes Mal grin all of a sudden, a grin that is as wicked as it is, indeed, reckless. It sends mixed messages. But she can't help but be pleased, whether or not Mira killed her after all.]

I see what you mean. It seems very extraordinary, to me.

[exnihilo]

It seems - not ordinary. To me.

I'm not sure those are quite the same thing.

I don't especially want to be unique. I've had enough of that. But I wouldn't like to be ordinary, either.

[deshabille]

Extraordinary does not exactly mean unique. I am extraordinary. But if you'd like the truth, I'm not quite unique.

[This is actually quite the confession, for Mal.]

You seem remarkably well-disposed to me knowing all of your secrets.

[exnihilo]

I'm pleased with how many of my own secrets I know.

[People like to share their accomplishments. She is learning to be a person.]

[deshabille]

[She smiles, genuinely pleased.]

What's your favorite secret?

[exnihilo]

[She considers, for a while, long enough that the silent would be strange, if they were the sort of people who worried about strange. Her favorite.]

I give good gifts.

[deshabille]

Really. I never quite mastered the art. Probably all that narcissism.

That's a favorite secret that's partially about other people, though. Isn't it?

[exnihilo]

That's why it's my favorite.

[deshabille]

Mm. And the best gift you ever gave?

[exnihilo]

[Iris's, she thinks. Arthas's was a smaller target to hit, but the clue - that was right in an unprecedented sort of way.]

...I think that's a secret I will keep.

[deshabille]

[Her smile is surprisingly warm, for someone so often so cold.]

Understood. [It sounds like a yes, ma'am, as though she's accepted an order.] You'll have to give me something sometime, to give me a taste of it.

[exnihilo]

I suppose I will.