mingle bells, mingle bells, mingle all the way...

[evildetector]

Who: The SS First Breath & any visitors!
Broadcast: Nah.
Action: All over the First Breath!
When: Throughout the month of March.

[ it's a march mingle! let's rub shoulders yo. ]

Comments

[ladybro]

[ at first, she's stretched out on his cot. laying on her stomach, actually, and idly scrolling through her communication device. kate barely looks up at him as he arrives, but she does scoot backwards and haul herself into a sitting position. her heels hit the floor with a soft thud. not that he hears it.

she holds up a finger (gimme a sec) and finishes reading through another message before setting aside the device for good. promptly, she lifts her chin and makes her mouth well-visible. ]

Took you long enough.

[vagabond_code]

Yeah, well I really wanted Ziggy to give me one of those darts.

[Commiserate with him, go on.]

I'd have come quicker if you sent a message. You didn't send a message did you?

[Because now he's about to check his device-thingie.]

[ladybro]

Nah, don't bother.

[ she waves her hand -- dismissing his attempt to track down any notice of her arrival. ] I didn't mind the wait. Besides, I know people. I kept myself entertained.

[vagabond_code]

Like Mad Maxine over there?

[He gestures toward the rest of the ship with a tilt of the head. Clint hadn't really gotten to know any of the other First Breathers himself. Just Nova and Furiosa really, and them not very well. He doesn't really want Kate to know that if he can help it. Especially since she could probably name everyone on her ship, and knew their birthdays, and knew their favorite members of the cast of Friends.]

[ladybro]

The other archer, actually.

[ a calculated reveal! kate wonders whether clint knows he shares his ship with another sharpshooter. she watches his face, eager to learn. ]

[vagabond_code]

[Well at that point it was just a process of elimination sort of thing. Kate wasn't talking about Furiosa, he could tell that much from the construction of her sentence. There was a good chance she meant one of the other people he'd barely spoken to, but he barely trusted himself to pronounce their names right so..]

Nova?

[Yeah, Clint's Mr. Cool Guy, playing it cool.]

[ladybro]

[ lucky guess, barton. ]

Yeah. Her.

[ kate crosses her arms. ]

[vagabond_code]

[Her confirmation takes him completely by surprise, and his surprise probably puts and end to his duplicity. Oh well, he's coming into the room now and setting down the bag.]

She any good?

[ladybro]

Can't say. Haven't seen her shoot. I don't even think she has a bow. [ yet. give it a few days, and kate will learn otherwise. ]

Here's the weird thing, though. She claims she's seen me shoot.

[ there's no point in hiding anything now. ]

[vagabond_code]

On TV.

[Well, it wasn't as though the Young Avengers had made any effort to avoid the press.]

[ladybro]

Not...quite. [ kate stands up. honestly, there's just something about being too relaxed around clint that she can no longer quite achieve. he might not be lock-step with her timeline, but the doubt's still there. lingering. ] She says she knew me from whatever gated-community-cum-prison she was in before the Fleet.

[vagabond_code]

Sounds like a doppleganger, but you've already thought of that and it's still freaking you out.

[Otherwise why would she be bringing it to Clint?]

[ladybro]

Not a doppelganger. Me. [ why does it bother her that he's being so dismissive of this? kate wags a finger. ] And someone else -- she was telling me about how where she was, previously, she'd ran into a few of the guys from my team. We're not talking about their homes, Clint. But separate, also-restrictive alternate dimensions where people came from all over.

[vagabond_code]

Maybe it was a holding-dimension. We don't really know how this travelling through realities works, but there could be some places that make for better meeting places than others. Say one reality is connected to six more but those six aren't connected to each other. We know they bring us in groups. If you want to move people in a group, you have to group them up somewhere.

[He accepted her premise without any fuss. If she said it was her, it was her.]

[ladybro]

They shuffle us in groups. [ she corrects him -- gentler, now, than she'd been before. ] But I don't see us actually arriving in groups. Or if we do, those groups are pretty staggered.

[vagabond_code]

Okay then forget the part about groups.

[But that didn't mean Clint would forget about it. There had been a handful of lookalike Avengers here when he arrived, but none from his home universe as far as he could tell. Then after him came Logan, Namorita, Kate, Ororo, a coincidental burst of familiar faces. Some of them he hadn't spoken to yet, but it had all the hallmarks of a trend. He'd been fairly good at keeping tabs -- between the bar tabs and the cab fares.]

The rest makes sense. People are always coming and going, and there's only so many ships. When you think about it they'd have to have some way of keeping people at arm's length while the ships are full, but making sure they were all in arm's reach for whenever spaces open up. Otherwise this whole thing - it wouldn't work.

[ladybro]

[ a scoff in the back of her throat. ]

Really doubt they're associated, actually. Talk to people who were in other places before this, Clint. There's no pattern, and there's few similarities.

[vagabond_code]

I'll do that.

[He just wanted a place to start. A foundation.]

Do you remember it? This place Nova told you about?

[ladybro]

Not a bit. I haven't done any world-hopping outside of -- well, you know. Stuff with the team.

[vagabond_code]

So what's your theory?

[It was genuinely curious, not combative.]

[ladybro]

Either the me she knew is from a point in time beyond mine, or -- [ and this sounds weighted a lot more like her genuine belief ] -- these really are distinct pockets of experience. No memories. No fingerprints.