in a world you've grown | OPEN

[leaderboards]

WHO: Agent Carolina + OPEN (+ state-named castmates)
WHERE: various
WHEN: Jan 5-9 or so?
WHAT: get adjusted + making friends
WARNINGS: n/a for now

a | check out the new training room fixture

[ in terms of familiarity, she'll take what she can get. the training areas are a damn good place to feel at home on a strange ship, so she's going to wind up a regular within her first few days.

there's a lot of time in the rooms set up for martial arts training, beating the shit out of a punching bag or pushing herself through drills. there's even more time on a treadmill, eyes ahead and focused on just keeping herself moving so this feels less strange unless someone takes up a space somewhere around her, when she'll give them a nod. if you're here two days in a row at the same time she is, she might comment on it. if you look like you know what you're doing with any particular skillset... well, she's probably going to comment on that, too. ]

b | being a loner in the atrium

[ it's been so long since carolina really had to be social. chorus doesn't count, being a warzone and all, so there was never anything as bustling as the common areas of this ship there. and besides, a war zone means never having to bother being out of her armour, but it's too weird to wear it here and so she isn't, but then she just kind of winds up feeling naked. there's no way to not feel weird about being here.

the shopping centre reminds her of having a life back before project freelancer went to shit. the residential areas remind her of the mother of invention. she can't live at the gym and her new job. so she's here, looking terribly awkward as she wanders the atrium, eventually finding a place to sit next to a pond and dip her hand into the water. if she looks like she can't quite remember how to enjoy a scene like this... well, it's because she can't. ]

c | she leaves wash alone for like ten minutes and this happens [ closed ]

[ at first it's just the this feels like the moi sensation that has her thinking that the man down the hall, a leash around an uncooperative cat, is someone she knows. surely, surely, wash isn't here and trying to walk a cat. but then he talks to the cat and oh god, it is him. on one hand, it isn't entirely out of the question that if she were dragged here, he would be too - they'd been fighting together back on chorus, along with the local armies - but on the other: really? ]

Washington. [ it's the explain command tone, coming from behind him, carolina's arms folded across her chest. it's not meant to question his presence here, just the cat. ]

d | fun police wildcard

[ maybe you're running in a potentially dangerous public area. maybe you're messing up a store's front display. maybe you're just being loud outside her room when she's trying to sleep and it's really getting to her. regardless of circumstance, you're suddenly getting a hand on your shoulder or a glare-down by a scary-looking redhead. ]

You need to stop.

[ or! if you're lucky, carolina's just lecturing someone else. hopefully she doesn't make that one npc cry in front of you. could be awkward. ]

Comments

( a )

[rumbling]

[ Speaking of regulars, Maine is absolutely one of them. The first day he was on this ship he found the training area and has made it a point to come every single day.

Or, at least, on the days he doesn't keep himself locked in his bunk because sometimes he just needs to be alone and not near other people. For any number of reasons. Half of those only one other person on this ship can understand ( two now, he'd suppose... ). Half not even Maine gets. He's not healed or right by any stretch of those words, but he's trying. He knows he's dead ( or something like it, anyway ). He knows he has no AIs ( in a manner of speaking, he has that chip now that he's still hesitant to use ). He knows all the things he's done and sees them with immaculate clarity. Usually at night when he's trying to sleep. Ghosts walk the halls of his mind, just like he haunts the halls of this ship.

When he comes out of one of the side rooms—every other day there's a krav maga class that he likes to attend—and decides he's not yet ready to leave is when he catches something out of the corner of his eye. It's a flash of red and he can pretend he doesn't see the flickers of memories in his mind's eye, but he also really can't. Doesn't mean it is who he thinks it is. The color red isn't that uncommon. Still. Curiosity gets him and he moves silently between the machines to get a better look, spooking a woman on a nearby elliptical. ( He catches her before she falls and he does offer an apology. )

It's definitely Carolina.

Maine knows she's not dead; Wash told him what happened after the whole thing with Tex and the sims. He was relieved to know Carolina made it. Doesn't wash off all the blood on his hands, but just a little bit. Just a little. Part of him doesn't want to alert her of his presence, if only because he knows how she is and disturbing during any kind of training session is just asking for a straight kick to the balls. ( Which Maine gets—he likes to remain focused on his training, too. ) But the rest of him knows they need to have this confrontation. This area is likely the best place to do it.

So, he waits until she finishes one task and he can see just from her body language she wants to do more. He approaches from the side, but he isn't silent about doing it. While he may look like an oncoming threat, he doesn't want to appear as one. Not right now. He doesn't have his comm with him, so he opts for conversing in the way he had been back on the MOI: by letting out a low rumble that he tends to use as a means of greeting. ]

[leaderboards]

[ carolina nearly trips. it isn't much, just a scuffle of her foot over the seams where the floor of the general gym area changes, a little lurch in her step that on anyone else could be justified by the tiniest fluctuation in the ship's gravity or weak legs between workout rotations. but there are no reasons for it with carolina outside of former teammate.

maine here, not just wash's words. maine here, deliberately coming her way. maine here.

she realizes she doesn't actually remember the last time she saw him out of armour. long before eta and iota, it feels like. it must have been, because she can't remember the last time they talked about anything that wasn't important to a mission or the team, even with sigma helping the conversation along. it's been so damn long and just as much of her wants to relish in seeing her friend again as wants to hurt him, get some payback for pulling the chips from her still-sensitive neural port, for the sudden disorienting lost of fragments who didn't want to be in her head anyway, for the snow and the ice and waking up alone with every inch of her frozen and aching from a fall she's still not sure how she survived without her helmet on.

the uncertainty of how she wants to react delays her reaction enough that there's a moment of her just staring at him, her water bottle making a little crackling noise at her side as she squeezes it too tightly. ]

Maine. [ it's her usual tone of greeting - familiar but not warm. she adds a stiff nod, her jaw tight. ] I heard you were here.

[rumbling]

[ Right. Sigma "helping" the conversation along. Because that's what Sigma did. "Help." Except for the part where that's a goddamn lie. The only thing Sigma helped was himself. Still, though, Maine can be glad for one thing in that he's the one who got Sigma. It fucked everything up, yeah, but after everything he went through he's glad it was him and not Carolina. Or anyone else.

If he let it, things could get bad right here. He can almost hear the wind whipping around them, hear the ship settling in the snow, hear the rocks splitting and falling into the chasm beneath them. He can feel Carolina struggling in his hands. He can feel the heat at the base of his skull and feel the drive to keep pushing for more, get more, have more. Take more. There's a tense knot building in his stomach and he can feel that painful throb near the implant entry. It's empty; he knows that. Doesn't make it any easier that in the blink of an eye they're back on that mountain.

This was probably a bad idea.

Still, they can't avoid each other forever. Not with Wash as a neutral tie between them here. So, he nods, the intention behind it that he heard the same. Probably best she heard from Wash first rather than running into him as a surprise. He presses his lips together for a second trying to assess the best way to handle this. Neither one of them are inclined to talking about their feelings. No one in the Project had been, really. He doubts Carolina has vastly changed in the time that's passed since Maine died. They're physical people and get their frustrations out that way.

So, he's giving a sort of peace offering. He glances over to the side where there's things like a boxing ring and mats. Fighting each other won't erase what happened, but it might make them feel better. He looks back at Carolina with a brow raised in question as he gestures with his thumb over there. They can talk with their fists. ]

[leaderboards]

[ fighting is probably for the best, in some incredibly messed up way. it's not like there's any chance of them just standing there and apologizing to one another, for all the ways they let one another down and hurt each other and both played their parts in fucking everything up. even if maine could talk, they still wouldn't do it.

soldiers like them don't talk about their feelings and carolina wouldn't even know where to start. ]

Yeah, let's go.

[ and she's leading the way to one of the simple mat setups. nothing fancy, because that's how she prefers it. she drops her water bottle and toes off her shoes, knowing full well that she's going to wind up kicking him and wanting to have some decency.

she takes up position one on side of the mat and waits for him, flexing her hands, trying to ignore the memory of eta in her head, trying to get her to move, trying to tell her that maine isn't coming to help. and shit, now she can't tell if she wants a friendly spar to get some complicated aggression out of her system or if she wants to hurt him. it's complicated. it's always complicated. ]

[rumbling]

[ If it helps at all, Maine knows she's likely going for blood. And that's fine. He deserves it for what he's done. He's not some martyr and knows this isn't going to solve everything, but it might help take the edge off. Or it might make things worse. They're all used to that by now: try to make shit better and it only winds up making everything worse. Par for the course in Project Freelancer.

So, whatever happens, happens. Maine knows Carolina can only go so far and he can subdue her if necessary. He doesn't think it'll come to that, but. Better to be prepared. He knows her weak points, just like she knows his. This won't be a pretty fight.

For a few passing beats, he watches her and attempts to decide what tack to take. Then, because he figures it will either spurn her into moving or they'll see what kind of damage he's really caused, Maine doesn't hesitate a moment longer and lunges for her. ]

[leaderboards]

[ the best way to win a sparring round against maine has always been to get out of his way as quick as she can and it's not like carolina's forgotten that. as soon as he starts to move, she's a step to the side. by the time he hits her at the shoulder, she's ready for a step back to steady herself, absorbing the impact and immediately retaliating with a fist to his side. whether it hits or not, she follows it up with another to his other side, her punches full-force but not aiming for damage just yet.

maybe she won't after all. maybe this will be enough to get her brain to disconnect this maine from maine in the snow, the first signs any of them paid attention to of his turn to the meta. ]

[rumbling]

[ It's not that he's lost his particular "touch" as it were. He can get out of things if and when he needs to ( most things, usually ). It's just that right now he doesn't want to. Yes, he was under the influence of something back then, but he's still the one responsible. So, he needs to get some kind of punishment for that. Wash won't beat the shit out of him unless Maine really, really pushes. But, Carolina will. And he barely has to push at all.

So, he doesn't block that punch when it comes, instead he absorbs it. He wants it. Years spent training together have him knowing Carolina's fighting style, so he pivots on the ball of his foot to change direction. Out of his suit, he's a bit faster. He feints one direction but swings up with the other. ]

[leaderboards]

[ intuition and a lucky guess are the only thing that have carolina moving back instead of to one side when maine gets his next swing in, meaning that he gets air instead of her. and that's the way she likes it, because she knows how hard he hits, knows how strong he is compared to her.

don't think about that.

she rocks her weight back, shifts, throws a punch to his jaw that probably won't hit, but uses it as momentum to bring her leg around in a high kick, aiming at his shoulder. ]