Now with 20% more mechanical grunge!

[birdsbirdsbirds]

Who: Bloodsport Crew, ASSEMBLE.
Broadcast: Maybe??
Action: The ship (or on a station I'm not picky)
When: After all that Marsiva nonsense

[GOOD MORNING, EVERYONE. instead of waking up in the cold, super-sterilized rooms of the Marsiva, you come to back in your very own room on the Bloodsport! some of you have never met each other, and a few of you have never even stepped foot on the ship before... but it's never too late to explore and greet your neighbors!

and in case anyone was wondering, yes, there are still a dozen fishbowls scattered around the ship. the glowing fish inside them seem perfectly fine. you may all rest easy, or wonder why the hell there are so many fish on this ship in the first place.]

Comments

[mikangirl]

[Her lip twitches up at that. Ignorance noted also, but that generally means it's a no-go zone in terms of conversation anyway.]

It'd be fitting. I mean-- apart from the obvious reasons.

I agree, though. It's just nice to have a way to easily recognise your world when people talk about it.

[Though she's tempted to tell Luffy their world is called Agnes from now on or something. He'd take her seriously.]

[birdsbirdsbirds]

[and the absence is noted. he's always paying attention to things like that--and is quietly glad she's moving on without any fuss about it.]

You aren't wrong either. You aught to take that up with someone when you get back.

[as if that was easy or possible... but he leans back in his seat, shifting gears. his posture's very casual, but he crosses his arms in a way that says "business".]

So... How are you doing, after everything on the Marsiva? I feel like I've fallen pretty far out of the loop...

[mikangirl]

Mmm. Well, I could have done without the whole dream-walking thing. [She slouches down on the other side of the table, chin in her hands.] I'd rather find things out in person, not go ransacking through their memories.

Apart from that-- I'm pretty much the same as before. The place has a great view and nothing's trying to kill me here. [Yet.] But I'm still down a weapon and I just want to go home. So. I guess I'm biding time.

How long have you been here for, anyway?

[birdsbirdsbirds]

[he nods emphatically in response to her first point, about all that dream-walking... he remembers bits and pieces, but it bothers him just thinking about it.

the rest is met by his attentive gaze, because it's all pretty important. being questioned gets him to finally squint up at towards the ceiling, remembering...]

I was one of the first, so... Us showing up in that ship marked about a year. Which means I haven't been home in... [he makes a vaguely pained sound.] ...Four years?

[mikangirl]

[She winces.] Ouch. That's a long time. [Though she hadn't been aware he was here from the beginning. She makes a mental note.]

Where were you before this? Stuck in another terrarium?

[birdsbirdsbirds]

Terrarium, ah-- [he nods!] That's another good name for them.

I've been to three and a half, not counting this one. [which he says somewhat casually, at this point, even though he rarely feels very casual about it.]

[mikangirl]

[Her quick grin fades at that count.]

...that's a lot of different places. Should I... ask what the half is?

[birdsbirdsbirds]

Well... It's...

[he doesn't look apprehensive, just... stuck, a little, on how to explain it. after a second...]

Okay, first I was in one place. And then I was in a second place, which happened to be someone else's homeworld in the very far future, I think. The half was still that second place, except I was suddenly even further in the future, by at least a century, and a dead person I'd known showed up from a point in their history before they were dead, and there was also a girl from old Japan stuck there as well for... no apparent reason.

[he slowly freezes his hands where he was gesturing, making exactly the chopping and pointing motions one would expect...]

So it's. Kind of a half? Trust me, it didn't make any more sense at the time, either.

[mikangirl]

Yeah, that uh... sounds complicated. At best.

You've got so many different places to keep track of in there. It seems to be common, though-- not to your extent, but I've spoken to so many people who've been stuck in more than one of these places.

{Really hoping the same won't hold true for her.]

[birdsbirdsbirds]

[he nods, in agreement...]

I'm an odd case. In a lot of ways...

Can I ask about your last place? Ad... String? [he thinks that's what she called it.]

[mikangirl]

Yeah. We call it that-- it's less of a mouthful than Adstringendum.

[Hm. It wasn't nice at the end, but--]

It was a lot different to here. Some bunch of scientists were messing around with things they shouldn't and ended up pretty much destroying their world and putting a bunch of cracks in their universe, so... a lot of people and spirits and monsters from different places kind of got sucked in by accident. It was this really weird place full of bits of different worlds and ruins, and you couldn't go far from the safe areas because you'd hit weird places in the wastes that would trap you in time.

Nobody was keeping us there-- we just kind of fell in and couldn't get back out, and there was so much infighting with the more powerful spirits that attempts to magically get a way home kept getting interfered with.

[birdsbirdsbirds]

[he listens to all of this, very interested. while he has a little more experience with other "terrariums" than most, it's still unlike any of the ones he'd been a part of.]

And those spirits... [he starts, but then changes his mind, approaching it another way.] Were they in charge of the place? Or were they just a... feature of the environment?

[mikangirl]

They fell in like the rest of us. They were just more powerful than the rest of us. It was like being stuck with a bunch of childish gods.

Mostly they left us alone, but we'd get caught up in their infighting sometimes. One of them was actually pretty nice; she gave us gifts a few times. Some of them...not so much.