driftfleet | 01 [ video / action ]

Who: Dean doing the OTA thing
Broadcast: fleetwide video
Action: anybody on the Marsiva
When: 1/27 - 1/29

a; (acting alone)

[ The video cuts in accidentally (are accidents ever accidental?) to Dean using a plastic knife of all things to pry a panel, about four feet in each direction, off the wall in front of him. It takes some jimmying, but after a couple seconds, it pops right off, and Dean catches it before it falls more than an inch or so open. He looks around quickly as he slides the panel aside (got to work fast with cameras on and no easy way to disable them), but when he looks to what the panel was covering, his head jerks back in surprise. Then he crouches in close to get a better look. ]

...Really?

[ Behind the panel is a network of machinery, all interwoven, some of it whirring quietly as it moves together like... like nothing Dean's ever seen. He stares at it, his expression as openly mystified as he feels before he slides the panel back on and snaps it back into place. He stands, loose-limbed and completely clueless as to what the hell he's supposed to do with that. ]

Oh, this is way above my pay grade.

[ Seriously. Where are the air ducts? The red and green wires? The, you know, normal wall stuff? Dean thought he could figure this spaceship thing out, but damn it, Shatner and Ford never prepared him for this level of sci-fi weirdness. ]

b; (the buddy system)

[ In the cafeteria sometime later, Dean is scouting out anybody who looks like they could throw a decent punch. Why? To fight them, of course.

Now, he's not going to go right up to somebody and just sock 'em one. Come on, he's not stupid. No, he's going to try to antagonize them into punching him, instead.

Look, alright, it's worked before. ...Except the other guy ended up dead. It's a long story. Anyway.

You can find Dean staring at you if you're the kind of type who looks rough and tumble and easily angered. Or you might find him eyeing up the big burly-looking guy in the corner in a completely no-homo kind of way. You might also observe his fine table manners, as while he's doing his "sizing up" of the room, he's also shoving food in his face and chewing with his mouth open, because damn, you get hungry after puking as much as he has in the past two days.

Or you might find Dean getting the crap beaten out of him by someone twice his size (which is saying a lot; he's not a small guy). You might want to help him, if you're the helpful kind of person, because the non-existent authorities sure aren't going to step in, and somebody should. Or you might find him after nobody did step in to help him because, let's be real, he deserves the black eye and busted lip and bruised kidney he gets. Just don't expect him to apologize if he got any blood on you. A little blood's not going to kill you, and everybody knows a blood splatter always makes for good TV. ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Most of them are still douchebags. Trust her on this. But Nami just grins wide.]

I know, right? I sail with the best crew. [She wonders if she should tell him Sam kind of joined it, if only technically.] Sam sailed with us for a while. Before he went home again, anyway.

[Close enough.]

[ Sam was a pirate? Same went home? Damn it, Nami, why'd you have to cram those two things together? One Dean wants to ask about and the other he has to ask about, and he balks for a second while the part of him that's still a kid and the part that's responsible are momentarily at war. ...Of course, the protective older brother side wins out. ]

Hang on a second. Sam went home? From here or the other place? And did they drag him back, or did he...

[ Run away from home, from Dean, full tilt again. ]

He say how that happened? How he got home, how he came back?

Oh right, that might be confusing huh-- hold on. [If only so she can work out how best to phrase this without confusing him more.]

I don't know if Sam's told you, but time kind of stands still for you guys back home. Or it did in Adstring, which is where we were together. We went through a lot there, but eventually Cas-- Castiel? I'm guessing you know him better than I do-- performed a ritual that allowed us to open portals to our own worlds so we could go home again.

It had been kind of rough on everyone, so I extended an invitation to Sam to sail with us for a while. So he used the portal to our world. He didn't stay very long-- I think it was a week. Then he went home from there.

[She peers at him, because that was probably still confusing as hell. But no Dean, Sam didn't run out on you. Just got some sun and put a little more weight on before returning home.]

[ She explains it well enough, or Dean thinks he gets it, anyway. Doesn't sound all that different from catching a ride to or from Purgatory, after all. Dean's not even a little surprised that Sam spent a week with his girlfriend instead of going right home. And if time was standing still for them, then why not? Honestly, Dean's surprised he didn't stay longer. Honestly, he's surprised Sam even came back.

But it's the good kind of surprised. For all the times Sam's run away from his family without looking back, there are the times where he's chased Dean down and done all he could and more to save him: to get him out of that crossroads deal, to bring him back from Hell, to drag him back from being a demon, or rip that damn mark off his arm. All the times he's broken Dean's heart, there's just as many times when he's come through. Turns out this is one of them. He could've stayed with Nami as long as he wants, and no one would've known. But he didn't. He went back. Came home.

After being quiet for a couple seconds too long, Dean clears his throat. ]

I guess this, uh, world portal that Cas came up with... it's no good to us here?

[Okay, good. He seems to have got the idea. As to the portals--]

Unclear on that. Adstring was a place where nobody was directly keeping us there, so as long as we could find a way back to our own worlds off our own backs it wasn't a prison. Here is... different.

Cas has only been here a week longer than you have. We haven't talked about the ritual, but he's probably looking into it. I don't know what he needed for it-- you're better off talking directly to him.

I'll ask him, thanks. I'm sure it won't be too long before I run into him anyway.

[ Because if he doesn't find Cas, he's sure it'll happen the other way around. Cas has always been independent, but does what's right in the end. Of the two of them, most of the time, it's not Cas that Dean's worried about.

Anyway, even if the portal won't work, it's worth trying. What she says about this place being different, though... Doesn't sound good, and it strikes a chord enough for him to ask. ]

This place being different. You're talking about Atroma? You know anything else about it, or what it is? Nobody's giving me a straight answer.

Yeah, the Atroma. Adstringendum was a more passive kind of... accident. And here, we're pulled here and kept deliberately by the Atroma. They claim we're on television, but there's absolutely no proof, and they're capable of transporting us without our knowledge or consent without warning.

A couple months ago, everyone on the fleet just woke up on the Marsiva where you are now. We had no idea how we got there. And then they put us back the same way a few weeks later. So... a group that has such power over us like that is bound to be more than just a hiccup in any escape attempts, magic ritual or otherwise.

[She hesitates, then throws her fellow fleetmates a bone. They aren't doing it on purpose.] There's not a lot of straight answers to be had about the Atroma. I've talked with one precisely once, and I've never seen any sign of them other than that. Everyone has their own theories.

[ The more he listens to her, the more he likes her. She's tough, she's smart, and she asks questions. She probably kicks Sam's ass up and down the block. She's alright. ]

You talked with one of them? Okay, that's a start.

What were they like? Were they human? Wearing a uniform? Did "Atroma" sound like a company name when they said it, or a species? Something else? Anything unusual about them stand out? Anything weird at all?

[ If she knew any of that, she probably would've mentioned it. But old interviewing habits die hard, and better to ask a couple stupid questions and get "no" for every answer than to not ask and miss something important. ]

[Ah, it's an interrogation. Not that she minds-- he's asking all the right questions, and it makes her examine her own evidence as she thinks it over.]

There were two-- Diamond and Beau, I think their names were. I spoke to Diamond. As far as I can tell they're human, or at least they can pass for human. Ah... they smile too much? But that's generally what assholes in power do.

...my own bet is Atroma's the name of a company. [She has to think harder about the uniform angle, because she didn't see much of Diamond.] I can't remember what she was wearing. Sorry. It wasn't an obvious uniform, anyway. She's a blonde with blue eyes and perfect teeth.

[ Sorry, Nami. The day Dean stops hunting is the day he's dead. ]

Suspicious, alright. The TV show pitch is a good cover, though. A smiling blonde named Diamond is so fake, she'd fit right in with the Hollywood crowd.

[ But she humors him and he gets his answers, which may not be much, but it's something to go by. So he lets her go at that. ]

Thanks for filling me in. I know you're a friend of Sam's and everything, but you didn't have to go out of your way. I appreciate it.

When you see Sam again, tell him to buy you a drink on me.

Oh, well if there's free drinks involved, I'm sure I can tell you all you want. [Heh. She grins at him.] I'll be sure to let him know.

[He'll be sure to roll his eyes, but she'll collect, you just watch her.]

You want to catch up in person some time, I'm the bartender over on the Iskaulit-- she's one of the bigger ships in the fleet. So I'm pretty findable.

Another bartender.

[ Dean can't quite help the sour bite that leaks into his voice at the reminder. He's gonna have a lot to say to Sam about this, alright. But that has nothing to do with Nami, as far as Dean's concerned. And he's a big fan of bartenders who aren't his brother. ]

Yeah, I'll come visit, once I find a way off this thing. I'll need a damn drink, soon as I can get one.

Thanks. See you around, Nami.

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