( video )

[mucked]

Who: Peggy Carter + OPEN
Broadcast: video
Action: s.s. starstruck
When: mid-morning

[ ah, tea. however-bloody-many leagues into deep space and there's still provision for tea. nearly two months on, and she can at least depend upon leaves steeped in hot water as some sort of intergalactic lingua franca. cheers the soul, really. it isn't perfectly like her preferred cuppa on earth, but it suffices. and so this morning finds her sitting within arm's reach of the starstruck's comms, while her fingers wrap around a mug of that precious brew. ]

-- The battle that happened before we came across the planet. Is that a common occurrence? Bouts of cackhanded shooting, followed by the fortuitous retreat of our opponents. [ to be fair, she doesn't really know if it was all bad shooting. she's no expert in space-warfare. everything looks a little cackhanded when there's no ground to anchor your view. and let's not begin to count all the things she doesn't know about nebulas. more importantly: ] How often does the fleet come under enemy fire? Can they even be called proper enemies? Can anyone explain why were being shot at?

[ she's still new here, and she craves answers. but even she can hear that grinding note of too much tension in her voice. she knows it's time ease off the throttle. peggy takes a long (savoured) sip of tea and regains a measure of her own composure. ] Heavens, but it'd be nice if these godawful food pastes could be slapped together in a combination that even slightly resembled a Garibaldi. Tea isn't tea without a biscuit.

Comments

[mucked]

I'm not sure there's all that much to say. [ her smile is small -- brave, in that careful fashion one might have of smiling through sharp personal pain. ] I could describe the claustrophobic streets and the smell of fumes, but you'd only think me mad for missing any of it.

[lord_wizard]

[He can empathize with her in that respect. Most of his life was full of those kinds of masks]

Hardly. Time always lends a favorable lens, even to things we once never appreciated. Or perhaps especially to those things. [He shrugs slightly]

Where is it you come from?

[mucked]

-- It's a couple places, all told. London. Some time in Paris. Most recently, New York. Do any of them ring bells?

[ because she's spoken to people who know so little of earth, here. ]

[lord_wizard]

Earth cities. I know them by name, only. Although I did spend time in, well...a facsimile of Paris. [He gestures - another half-hearted shrug] It's a long story. But suffice it to say that my knowledge is mostly secondary.

[mucked]

That's perfectly alright. I imagine my knowledge far less than secondary when it comes to whatever your lands are called.

[ which is absolutely an invitation to be told, of course. ]

[lord_wizard]

[The best part of telling people about his homeland is that they're without the context to question it. Not that it's a lie, but it's also complicated by details better left to later conversations.]

I'm from Marathat. Mélusine, specifically. My world appears to be one of the more obscure locales, as far as potential kidnapping centers go.

[mucked]

More to your world's credit, I suppose. For either it's coincidence, or else something about these variations upon Earth make it more susceptible than the others. [ a meandering thought. she reins herself back in. ]

Mélusine. Is that a city or a nation?

[lord_wizard]

[It's an interesting meandering thought, and he can't help but comment]

My world was lacking for attributes in it's favor. I'll take what I can get.

[But onto the question.]

A city. The capitol of the Protectorate, actually. Meduse is the name for the world as a whole.

[mucked]

[ mélusine and meduse? french, certainly, but still not unknown to her. one could be considered a coincidence. but both? peggy hides her thoughtful pause behind a bright smile. whatever the reason, this man's world had naming conventions bizarrely close to european folklore. ]

Ah, capitol living. You must lead a busy life -- I've never met a capitol city that wasn't bustling in its own fashion.

[lord_wizard]

[There, she isn't at all wrong in her observations. He'd once discovered that his native language veered very close to a mixture of French and English, and that wasn't the first of similarities.]

[He chuckles, though there isn't any humor in it] That much is certain. As a matter of fact, Paris reminded me quite a bit of my city. The architecture, the river, the...[he stopped himself before saying 'catacombs', not wanting to begin a discussion of the Arcane, a feature of the city most seemingly gentile folk like himself should have no knowledge of]...parks. Simply add walls and subject a few decades of development...depending on whence you came, of course.

[mucked]

Paris is lovely. [ she admits. staunchly british though she is, peggy admires the french. their resistance during the war was....tremendous. inspiring, on many fronts. ] Tell me, does the fleet ever manage to stop by planets with any proper cities in them?

[lord_wizard]

Not quite. One of the cities was respectable enough, though it wasn't very advanced. And apparently fake. The rest have been all backwoods towns and villages.

[Which is very disappointing, if only because finding a replacement wardrobe has been difficult]

[mucked]

By design, likely. [ she sighs. ] Harder to slip the collar in a small town.

[lord_wizard]

Hard to slip a collar when it's embedded in your neck.

[She doesn't seriously think she can, does she?]

[mucked]

It does put a spanner in the works, doesn't it? When figurative language fails in the face of reality and its concrete horrors. [ she rubs the back of her neck -- conscious of the augment. ] I haven't had the courage to try and cut it out. I imagine it doesn't help much, anyway.

[lord_wizard]

[The movement gives him a sympathetic sort of itch on his neck that makes him want to mirror her.]

That would be too easy, wouldn't it? But, no...only one person I know of has actually attempted it, and it ends poorly. Or, rather, it ends in pain with very little result.

[mucked]

Frankly, I'm surprised it's only been one.

[lord_wizard]

[He laughs, though it's a flat sound, in part because it wasn't funny at all and because the one person who knew of he'd grown to care for before he'd, predictably, disappeared from the fleet]

Well, as I said, that I know of. There might once have been a day when I'd have considered digging into the past to be something worth my time, but I don't have the energy for that any more. In any case, it had clearly by tried once before even I arrived, as I was swiftly warned against it.

[mucked]

Duly noted. [ deadpan. ] Not that I had any plans to make an attempt of my own. Self-surgery isn't exactly my forte.

[lord_wizard]

Neither is it mine. [He smiles, his head tilting in curiosity]

What is your forté?

[mucked]

Communications, apparently. [ a smile of her own. it's a half-true sort of answer. ]

[lord_wizard]

[That sounds a lot like hedging to him, but he would know]

Just because Atroma thinks that's where you fit, doesn't mean it's true.

[mucked]

Their best guess turns out to be rather appropriate, actually. [ her smile persists. ] I used to work for a telephone company.

[ ah, her favourite cover. ]

[lord_wizard]

[He only has the faintest idea about telephones, thanks to his brief introduction to versions of Earth]

Was it anything like your current station?

[mucked]

What's a comms position besides a rather highly technical way of merely connecting calls? It's near enough the mark, I feel.