Red Fishies

[mortalcoil]

Who: SS Red Fish crew and visitors
Broadcast: No
Action: Aboard the SS Red Fish
When: Around the drifting week (and probably a backtag party!)

[watch the newest episodes (and catch up on a few reruns) of your favorite dysfunctional fish in the fleet! what kind of drama will they create next? you can find out right here, right now!]

Comments

[mortalcoil]

action, cargo bay →
[Coil isn't much of a builder (when it comes to things not made of flesh and bone, anyway) but he has learned that asking for help from Engineers is sometimes more trouble than it's worth. and he's proud of the supplies that he'd acquired from his time spent with Savvy anyway, so he might as well work with them himself. he's even in an upgraded, Savvy-approved outfit instead of his usual hoodie and grungy jeans.

maybe his stint of working planetside with like-minded creeps had made an impression on him and he's now feeling industrious... or maybe the isolation of drifting in nothing but deep space is getting to him, and reliving some of that time keeps the cabin fever at bay.

whatever the reason, he's working with honest-to-goodness wood and nails in the cargo bay, constructing what seems to be some sort of (very) roughly-human-shaped practice dummy. there's a fat beam of knot-marked wood for the body, with thinner rods sticking out at angles for arms. the head, though, is proving trickier than expected. he might not even notice someone else in the vicinity as he tries to wedge the dummy's blocky head onto what is supposed to be its neck.

he'll get it eventually. probably.]


text, filtered to Asuka →
[and later that evening, he's too tired to do much but lay around in his room, but not tired enough to actually sleep. which means it's the perfect time to pick up his communicator and make bad decisions.]

are you still mad at me

action

[witheringlotus]

[Look who else is in the cargo bay. It's the new guy who showed up on your bridge on Friday and promptly fucking disappeared to who knows where.

He's back, and this time he's watching Coil trying to build this thing and not lifting a single finger to help.]

A training dummy?

[mortalcoil]

[and, you know, that is Coil's favorite kind of crewmate. granted, he's a little disappointed to see him reappear at all, but it's still better than many alternatives. maybe he won't have to figure out a reliable way to lock the med bay door after all.

and the lack of help? he doesn't mind that either... though, he could do without an audience to his struggles.

he pauses in his work to look over, giving his new crewmate a little assessing up-and-down glance before nodding. he then sort of draws an implied circle around his own head and neck, and points to the dummy--because though they have a perfectly good punching bag, it's lacking some things that a real person would have.]

[witheringlotus]

[Kanda hasn't been in there more than two minutes. He walked in, looked around, and then left. He has no interest in playing doctor even if the augment insists he should know how.

Kanda makes notes of the scars around his face but he doesn't remark on them. Looks like this guy's a mute. Doesn't make a difference to Kanda-- he has a blind teammate. Kanda steps closer.]

... Let me try.

[hey, at least he's asking.]

[mortalcoil]

[there's a hesitation at first, as he tries to decide which would cost more of his pride--letting someone else take over, or continuing to struggle in front of them.

and being that his fingers are already dinged up because hammering nails while missing an eye is not easy... he eventually takes a step back from the dummy. and he holds out the roundish block that is destined to be the thing's head.]

[witheringlotus]

[Kanda takes it with surprising gentleness. He inspects the hole, then leans over to look at whatever is passing for the neck.]

It's cut a little crooked. That's why you're having trouble.

[He rolls up his sleeves. There are two stigmata on the insides of his forearms, deep like wounds but refusing to bleed.]

Do you have a knife or something? I'll take the hammer if you don't.

[mortalcoil]

[he doesn't really bother to hide the fact that he stares at his new crewmate's arms. he looks at the mysterious marks with the same expression he looks at everything, however--just a keen, neutral gaze ticking from the dummy's head and neck, to Kanda's arms, his face, and then off in the direction where he'd last shoved the toolbox.

just give him a moment to step over and dig through the cluttery thing, and he comes back with one of those finicky multi-purpose pocket knives that are apparently as popular in space as they are back home. and being that he's finding himself in a particularly cooperative mood right now, he hands the knife out to the stranger without hesitation.]

[witheringlotus]

[He notices Coil staring, but he doesn't offer an explanation. When Coil hands the knife to him, Kanda gives him a thankful nod and gets to work. He flicks the blade out with the sword of wicked quickness one would expect of a soldier, and then he gets to work: carving at the neck piece of wood so that the 'head' will go down better.

This time when he jams the head on, it actually completes with a satisfying thud. He takes a moment to test it, to see just how easily it comes off. Looks like it's pretty stable, actually.]

There.

[He folds up the knife and hands it back to Coil.]

Training's important. ... Keep it up.

text

[interstices]

[Asuka had known this was coming, but that doesn't stop her from making a disgusted noise when she sees his message finally pop up. She's avoided having anything to do with Coil since calling him out over the communicator, aside from that plate of brownies left outside his door on his birthday. She'd tried to talk herself out of even that favor, but the glimpses of his memories she'd gotten at the tree held her back. Remembering Shinji on his birthday held her back. And so, guiltily, there she'd been, irritably bartering to get her needed supplies. Not that it really mattered.]

Coward. You can't even ask me to my face?

text

[mortalcoil]

[she answered. it's a step, at least.]

so thats a yes

text

[interstices]

I'm not the one you need to talk to, idiot. Shinji is.

text

[mortalcoil]

im not saying anything to him

text

[interstices]

Then this conversation's over.

text

[mortalcoil]

are you on the ship

are you in your room

[child_of_bhaal]

[She finds him at some point, around the day that Zhas said was his birthday, to be specific, in the cargo bay working on his practice dummy. She has both hands behind her back as she approaches him, a little smile on her face. One hand comes around to wave hello.]

[mortalcoil]

[he pauses in his work when he notices her, and he lifts his chin a little in his usual greeting... but his expression quickly changes. Syeira smiling isn't a strange fact in itself, sure. but there is just something about her approaching him with that small smile in particular that strikes him as vaguely suspicious.

so, his eyes almost immediately narrow a little bit. what does she want?]

[child_of_bhaal]

Oh don't look at me like that.

[She kneels down, still chipper, on the other side of the dummy.]

It's nothing bad.

[And then the other hand comes around holding a rectangular wooden box. It's not wrapped or anything. Just held out to him as is.]

Happy birthday.

[mortalcoil]

[her reassurance unsurprisingly does nothing to ease his mind, especially when followed up by mention of his birthday. he almost sneers as she goes to offer something out to him, beginning to lean back away from it... but that all stops when he actually gets a glimpse of the thing.

slowly, his expression eases out, and then his eyebrows raise. give him a minute to look at the box without reaching for it, and he'll eventually turn his gaze up toward her, questioningly.]

[child_of_bhaal]

Zhas said you liked puzzle things, so I got you a puzzle thing.

[She keeps holding it out, giving a little bounce of it to urge him to take it from her.]

I got some other little things and had the shop keeper put them inside. For when you figure it out. There should always be treasure after solving puzzles.

[mortalcoil]

[after looking at her for a few more seconds--as if he needs the time to understand the words she's saying--he finally takes the box from her.

he jostles it gently and listens for what might be inside, before running scarred fingers over all the carvings and details. because not only is it something that that simply holds a secret to puzzle out, it's beautiful on top of it. as someone who considers himself a craftsman, priding himself on working impossible intricacies into simple matter, he can't help but appreciate the skill that went into making something like this.

when he looks up at her again, his expression hasn't really changed. he still looking nothing but questioning, like he still doesn't get what's going on here.]

[theboogieman]

[Zhas wanders into the cargo bay in a pretty good mood, at least for him. the last set of planets was fun. he's got himself a working weapon prototype. Coil has a birthday coming up. all good things.

he could have been wandering in for any number of things--but of course, he stops at the sight of his friend in the middle of some sort of morbid woodshop project...

he comes to a stop in the middle of the cargo bay, nowhere helpful, with a curious look on his face. his attention isn't on the hardware, though. he's looking attentively over Coil and those fancy new clothes of his.]

[mortalcoil]

[if Coil hadn't already been irked over both his approaching birthday and his current woodworking-related struggles, he probably would have caught on more quickly to what exactly Zhas was looking so curious about.

as it is, once he notices him standing there and staring at him, all he does is huff and turn toward him long enough to sign a pointed and impatient 'what?'.]

[theboogieman]

[Coil's attitude doesn't phase him. if anything, he thinks it's kind of funny.

'good clothes' is what he signs back, bringing his hand down and up to indicate that he means the entire look. 'new?'

they must be, but maybe they were purchased, or maybe they were a present, or maybe Coil's secretly been keeping a badass costume change at the bottom of his closet. a second later (as it finally occurs to him to be somewhat helpful), he crosses over and reaches for that wooden head-shape to help steady it.]

[mortalcoil]

[he looks down at himself, a little surprised and uncertain. even though new things aren't exactly his style, he still hadn't considered the fact that someone might point it out.

and now that a certain someone has, he can't tell if he's being made fun of or not.

'S-A-V-V-Y,' he halfheartedly spells out, as he lets Zhas kind of take over the dummy's head-block.]

[theboogieman]

[he makes a little sound, his minimal version of an "oh, yeah..." of agreement.

now that he's the one holding the fake head upright, he winds up with only one hand to sign himself. he tries anyway, really wanting to give him a compliment in earnest. this seems so far out of Coil's usual realm that he can't help but be impressed (and hey, he appreciates the dark-assassin style, you know?).

'looks good on you.' the head wobbles, and he takes a second to wedge it halfway onto its post so that he can attempt again with his free hand, 'makes you look older.']