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(no subject)

Who: Natasha Romanoff & You
Broadcast: Fleetwide
Action: Marsiva
When: 6/24

Video

[Transmission starts at the same moment the woman laying in fram shifts from unconsciousness to tense stillness—her eyes open, darting, and she goes tense, but otherwise there's no movement from her for the first four or five seconds. That seems to be how long it takes her to process that she's in an unfamiliar space with no memory of how she came to be lying there. Then one hand balls consciously into a fist. Her eyes flutter. Jaw tightens.

Natasha takes a deep breath and forces her body to relax muscle by muscle.

Seems like spies don't make for great entertainment when they first wake up. Not unless you find tension and veiled suspicious looks riveting. The first minute or two isn't much more than that. She wakes up. She sits up. She swings her legs over the edge of her cot and stretches her back, trying to flex the adrenaline out of her muscles.

She looks directly into the camera at one point, her expression flat, lips tightening in a frown. She taps the edge of the lens experimentally.]

You know, if you're gonna kidnap a girl you could at least buy her dinner first.

[Her voice is just a touch to defiant to be neutral as she speaks.

Then she hauls herself to her feet. The last thing caught on camera before the broadcast ends is a shot of her catsuited figure walking away.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

So it's no use asking how you get out.

[She figured as much, still bears saying.]

Are there people staying by choice?

Not as of yet. Atroma may not seemingly practice much oversight, but that is one thing it does take notice of. There's really just not enough data to form a real escape plan, in my opinion. I've never even heard of these sections of space before, and considering the different worlds we've all be pulled from I'm of the idea we're in a different dimension entirely.

_{[ He shrugged. ]}

I can't say for sure, but I don't think it's an unreasonable assertion. Not every world is a pleasant one, after all, and it would be... insurance, for Atroma, that even if we did find a way home, some people might not choose to go.

_{[ Like Westeros. It just sounded like a hot mess, to be honest, from
what he's learned from Tyrion. ]}

I wouldn't call it unreasonable. Just another complication if it's something that's actually happened.

[She rolls his suspicions around a bit, but in the end, she doesn't know enough at this point to call one way or the other whether they fit the data. At the moment, it tells her more about him than it does about the fleet or the Atroma.]

So the score so far is no say in when we show up, no say where we're assigned, no idea how we leave one way or another, and no idea if we have a say in whether or not we stay.

Bluntly? Yes, that about sums it up.

At least I'm more or less up to speed.

[She's not. She's sure she's not. It's going to be quite a while before she's satisfied she's actually up to speed on what's going on here.

But it's a start.]

_{[ Sadly, Kirk would argue that you never feel quite up to speed. It's
made worse by the fact they learn so little about the Fleet, it anything.
Atroma guards such information jealously. ]}

I would give you more information, but I simply don't know it.

_{[ There's an implied sorry at the end. ]}

Mind if I ask how long you've been here? Just to get an idea what I'm in for.

I've been here for... three or four months now, but I'm still considered fairly new. Others had been here much longer than I have.

How much longer than you?

[The questions keep coming. She's not sorry for it, either.]

Just how long has this been going on? Has anyone been here since the beginning?

_{[ He doesn't seem to mind. He had asked a lot of questions too. ]}

I don't know about since the beginning, but I do know some people have been here over a year.

That's a long time to be held captive. Even if you're on a ship with doors that go outside and everything.

_{[ He let out a soft chuff at that. Nice, Natasha. ]}

I'm aiming not to celebrate that particular anniversary, myself, but I'll cross that bridge when I get there.

That's about all you can do, most of the time.

[Presumably.]

Which brings up the question of what you do to kill time around here.

On my ship I workout, read, work on little pet projects, and okay tri-dimensional chess. But we do have the Iskaulit, which is the "entertainment" ship I think you could call it - a bar, library, obstacle course, public gym, a garden, meditation rooms, some other things.

So we're more or less on our own when it comes to killing time.

When it comes to more or less everything, really.

We know that for sure?

It's not that I don't believe you, but we have to be a pretty big investment for these Atroma. It's hard to believe they don't take any interest.

I never said they don't take an interest. I just said that we are more or less left to our devices. Aside from choosing the planets we go to and providing us with basic necessities, as far as I can tell they don't interact or do much with us. But not interacting hardly means they aren't interested in us.

I see the distinction you're making here. Still, it seems like if we're all bored, them we're probably not making for good entertainment.

Well, you know what they say - idle hands and all. And trust me, from what I've seen so far, we make more than enough situations of our own to be interesting. I mean, plenty of us got involved in the plight of the previous planet we were on. Most of us are good people here - we just can't ignore when someone's in trouble.

That's sort of what I mean, though. They know who's on board, and they control where the fleet goes.

They do, as far as I can tell anyways. But like I said - beyond those things, it doesn't seem like they give us anything in particular to work towards.

[Maybe Natasha has a suspicious mind. It's a hazard of being in her line of work. Either way, she has a hard time believing it was coincidence that the fleet ended up where they could play heroes.]

From the sound of it, they don't have to.

[She shakes her head a little even as she finishes saying it; dismissing her own suspicions.]

_{[ Oh, no, Kirk doesn't think it's all coincidence either, Natasha. He
is HIGHLY suspicious, but doesn't have much to back it up beyond said
suspicions. ]}

No, it really doesn't, does it?

_{[ The tone of his voice said quite a lot - that he didn't think it was
all so clandestine and pure as some people might believe, as Atroma would
have them believe. ]}

Good TV.

[At least they're on the same paranoid page with this.]