driftfleet | Starstruck March Mingle Madness!

[Floating through the vast reaches of space is the usual. So Max mostly just tinkers with things he's gotten from scrapped heaps to pass the time; one of his current projects is making a double-barrel shotgun at the small wooden desk left in the cargo bay. Tape, metal, wood, a concoction of the best MacGuyer has to offer. Just for... fun. Yes, for fun. Max is so good at doing fun things, guys. Look how fun he is.

In the background, his record player dishes out Johnny Cash's I Walk the Line, followed by his good old fashioned song, Folsom Prison Blues. Rock the dog lays chewing on an old bone from some alien creature, caught and eaten off the last planet. It's a surprisingly nice atmosphere, for someone who doesn't inspire one often. Maybe he's just had a decent last month, mild bouts of madness notwithstanding.

Regardless, he — as usual — channels most people out as he works.

But he's in a decent mood lately, so. Nothing too terrible.

Feel free to prod — or throw a wild card if you have one for March.]

[When Maggie arrives to the Starstruck's shuttlebay in her little pod, the last thing she expected was mood setting music. Still, it was quaint and reminded her of home. Rick, in particular, would have liked the Southern twang and the baritone sounds of Johnny Cash if he was here. It actually puts a bit of a smile on her face when she climbs out of the thing and into the Cargo Bay. That smile only lessens slightly when she realizes Max is already hear, the reason the music is playing.

She'd hoped she'd have a few minutes to think through what to even say to him. Instead she's left gawking and feeling a little lost in the coherent word department.]

Is that- are you jerry rigging a shotgun?

[It certainly kind of looks like one? With both feet on the ground, Maggie moves closer, getting a better look at his work when she does. She should probably cut to the chase and yet she feels guilty for interrupting his work. He seemed like he was in some sort of zone to just relax and her presence was surely anything but relaxing.]

[He blinks up at her, surprised by her voice — by her presence.

Yeah, he should have expected it, maybe. He didn't know her well enough to tell if she'd be too awkward, too, to approach him. But she's not, and he just looks at her like she's confounded him. The growling, scowling, surly man she'd met — the one who turned oddly comforting and soft in the aftermath — is an asocial creature who can't keep eye contact with her now. He's a different beast, it seems. It's hard to remember you can't just walk away from people here and never see them again. That's the hard part of staying still.]

Aahm...

[He looks at the shotgun, half-made so far, his brow furrowed. One hand slides over the handle, two of the fingers stiff and a bit mangled from past events. Pinky doesn't even unbend anymore, actually.]

... Seemed like a good way to use the scrap.

[ peggy, too, feels a buoyancy in her mood. hers is difficult to track -- though it seems to have first ballooned sometime following the 14th of the february. concurrent with that date, she's started wearing a pretty little blue-green necklace. but it's more often than not hidden beneath the collar of her blouses -- seen only when she dons a thick-strapped tank top and sweats for her evening workout. although she's no stranger to jewellery, this piece seems to harbour some incongruity with her usual style.

ah, well. she's not thinking about it or about the 14th when she strides into the cargo bay. mid-evening, and she's got her heart set on a session with the punching bag. but there's music playing -- so her path deviates away from the corner where all the gym gear is stacked, and instead she crouches down to scratch rock on his head. if she has any immediate thoughts about what max is clearly working on, she says nothing.

says nothing, indeed, until i walk the line runs its course. ] Who's that? [ she asks -- calmly curious. ]

[ Kubo doesn't ask for Max's company or disturbs him. But he does tap his foot to the rhythm as he tries to copy the same notes on his shamisen. The paper in his bag flickers and turns into men on on hoverboards, fluttering around Kubo's head as he works out the kinks in a Johnny Cash song with a shamisen. ]

[~~So basically you're saying he's Daryl Dixon~~. Maggie looks over his work, nodding in agreement to his words.]

Seems like. Keeping it handy in case we get more bandits our way?

[That's what she would do, at least. As for how well the thing works - she has no idea of whether his skills would be up to it or not. Still, it seems decently - if not crudely - made.]

So... ah. I guess there's no point pretending I wasn't trying to hunt you down. Guess it's a good thing we're all listed on ship rosters. Made it easier to find you.

[ the month of march brings a change with it. Quite unlike each previous planet, Steve Rogers seems to not frequent the underwater one. Visiting the underwater cities for an hour on the previous system was one thing but a long, overnight stay doesn't seem to be in the cards as far as he's concerned. His presence on the planet will be sparse and he'll spent most of the time on the dry, steady floor of the Starstruck.

Those who seek him out will find that he keeps a rather busy schedule. He spends a rather unnerving amount of time on the treadmill but you could also find him in the kitchen with a pile of books, seemingly busy in devouring them one after the other, anything from modern plays to a portrait of a lady.

the evenings will mostly be spent on drawing. You may recognize landscapes from previous planets. The little music player will be firmly by his side, he has grown rather fond of it. it'll play 12 songs in repetition, anything from billie holiday's summertime to judy garland's somewhere over the rainbow.

he's hardly in a bad mood, quite the contrary, even though it is a little quiet. ]

[He blinks up at her, distracted from the nearly finished shotgun.

He'd been used to her usual punching bag thing, but time had gotten away from him. Not that it doesn't tend to usually anyway. He turns in his chair to face her a bit, leg outstretched and arm draped, relaxed, along the backrest.]

Ahh... Johnny Cash. Mostly popular in the United States.

[A thoughtful pause.]

Used to play free concerts for prison inmates.

[He hums to her question, which seems to be an affirmative; she'll have to get used to the language that is Max Rockatanskian. He's a mysterious creature to be sure, and as he listens to her explain herself, he huffs. Curse him for being more loose with giving his name to people. But it is what it is — and he nods.]

Didn't need to hunt me down. I don't...

[He pauses, unsure how to phrase it. Hard to put words together, sometimes.

Especially in a situation like this.]

Don't expect anything out of you.

[Max doesn't interrupt or shoo Kubo away or anything. Sometimes too many sounds overwhelm him, make him anxious, but he appreciates the fact that Kubo's actually trying to adapt and learn, even if it's something as simple as learning a song far beyond his time. His eyes flick to the little paper men — and you know, the first time he'd seen that, he had wondered if he was just hallucinating something very new and very unlike him.

The half-finished shotgun is lowered, and he raises an eyebrow as the song ends.]

Not bad.

[ He flashes a small smile. ]

Thanks. I'm still working on it. So the thing you have to play music . . . it's a jukebox, right?

Mmm, not quite. Jukebox's a little different.

I've got a vinyl record player.

[He motions to it with a lazy hand.]

It plays a record at a time, n' you gotta manually put the record on instead of pushing buttons to pick. [A pause, as he sorts out his thoughts.] Jukebox's are... bigger, got more records to play inside 'em.

So this one can only play one song?

[ Maybe technology can't fully replace an actual musician. ]

[ curious, really. both max's calm body language and the prospect of a man in concern in the prison system. peggy doesn't look up from where she's still scratching rock under the chin. ]

I'm surprised that was allowed.

[He shrugs.]

Guess people in jail're still people.

Just easy to forget, when you look at some of their records.

[Max used to do his best not to remember. That they were people, lives.

Because then he had to face what happens when they die in pursuit.

... Of course, Max was still troubled, anyway. Consciences are a real bother, aren't they?]

Some people, I suppose. In some jails.

[ peggy waits a moment while she listens to the music. ] But I've put away some real monsters -- not the sort who will be getting any concerts any time soon.

[A thoughtful pause. He rolls a pair of empty shotgun shells in his hands.]

Mhmm.

So've I.

[Then he went crazy like one.]

The SSR had its own prisons for that sort of monster. There's little honour found in black sites, but -- facilities like the Rat were necessary. Just after the war.

[He snorts, quirking his eyebrow.]

You're speaking alien to me, captain.

I patrolled half-dead highways.

[Your agent is showing.]

[ a hum. she shakes her head. she wonders how best to explain herself. ]

You remember your history, yes? The war -- and what happened during it?

To a degree. Was... younger, when it all started.

The war never really stopped once it got rolling, though.

[Obviously. Apocalypse, and all.]

Mine, I mean. [ peggy tilts her head. ] If only to try and explain the sort of war criminals the SSR put away in the months that followed the treaties.

Ahh.

[Sometimes he forgets that they're alike, in that way. History, that is, until something nasty happens and diverges those timelines. Admittedly, he didn't know much behind the months that followed. The treaties, the work put into trying to make things better. He just remembers with vivid detail the Oil Wars, the Water Wars. Fighting for Guzzoline.]

Nazi bastards?

[See, he's quick to reroute.]

Precisely. Once the signature ink started drying, I was tasked with hitting their deep-science division's last few hideouts across Europe. Put as many of them behind bars as I possibly could.

Aah.

Must've been pretty cathartic.

Starstruck March Mingle Madness!

Max | Cargo Bay | open

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

STEVE ROGERS ✮ OTA

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject