Intro: action/video

[tothefly]

Who: Natasha
Broadcast: Fleetwide
Action: Marsiva
When: pre-Shuffle (4/18)


[Audio/Video]
[The beginnings of this broadcast are nothing but a black screen, a soft rustling, the sound of regular breathing. After a few seconds the breathing stops. Dead silence follows, then more rustling as the screen goes from blackness to a brilliant white, then a spinning blur that finally resolves with a clattering noise into the lovely white ceilings of the Marsiva. After another moment of silence, a head of bright red hair creeps into the image as the comm is picked up, eventually revealing the face and shoulders of a woman in her twenties who is clearly Not Amused. While her expression is more or less schooled, there's definitely a sense of things being repressed, emotions hidden, and words carefully chosen.]

If this is your idea of a joke, Stark, there is nowhere you can run that I won't find you.

[The threat is obvious.]



[Action, early:]
The bump on the back of her neck was obvious and irritating. Invasive. It was the first thing she'd noticed, taking stock of her own body, the loss of her weapons which galled her almost as much as letting herself be rendered unconscious. That implant seems to be the source of all the knowledge she's finding herself with as she strides down the halls, some foreign part of her mind supplying helpful names and details as she takes in her surroundings. None if it is immediately useful, so she continues to file it away in her own mind--

Until she hits the viewing bay, and even Natasha looks shocked by the view. Enough so that she barely notices the other bodies in the room as she stares, lips parted and eyes wide.

"Bozhe moi..."


[Action, later:]
They can put her in space, put things in her brain, but they can't make Natasha anything but what she is, and what she is is resourceful. Anyone visiting what passes for a gym and hoping to exercise will instead be greeted by a partially disassembled piece of equipment, and Natasha herself busily invested in the practice of trying to remove a panel from the wall by one of the entertainment console using a piece of metal presumably from said equipment, as her comm beeps at her insistently.

Comments

[tothefly]

"I'm not expecting a magic doorway back to Boston," she replies dryly. "But knowing more about what you're dealing with is never a bad thing. The thing they planted in my head tells me I don't need to do this? Kind of makes me think maybe I do." The question is, is he going to try and stop her.

[peacockherald]

"We are at odds, perhaps. Mine tells me that without there something being wrong, I should be concerned over your actions," he reached back into his hair, touching the augment on the back of his neck, face briefly flashing with displeasure, concern. Having it did help, but he worried for what else it could do, how this Atroma felt justified violating them so.

[tothefly]

She's still trying to prevent touching the implant--augment gives it too much credit--from becoming a tell. It's difficult to keep her fingers off of it, and difficult to try and keep from finding a sharp implement to dig the thing out. She's just survival-oriented enough to not try anything drastic, but that doesn't mean she doesn't think about it.

His words and slightly troubled expression have her arching her eyebrows at him, crossed arms dropping easily to her sides as she adjusts her grip on the piece of metal in her hand. Not that it would at all be an effective weapon. it's far too flimsy for that. "You can be concerned. Question is, are you going to do something about it? Because I can tell you that's going to be a bad idea. Almost as bad as listening to that voice in your head without question."

[peacockherald]

"You need not tell me of that. I have had more than my share of an entity trying to tell me what it is I think, what memories and desires are mine," his hand dropped, not wishing to start a fight, not here. For one he had no idea of her skills, though given here attempts with the metal crowbar he did not think she was magically inclined. It made it somewhat of unfair fight when he could call lightning with a breath - which might not be the most advisable thing on a ship.

"I would rather not find myself at odds with you if it can be helped, Lady...?"

[tothefly]

She's used to people underestimating her. That isn't a problem. What is, is that he's an unknown--and she's a little too used to people surprising her with what they can do, these days. Better to not fight unless she's certain of her surroundings and her opponent, though she's not afraid to fight regardless. But for once she agrees with what he says, and even finds a little humor in him calling her 'lady.' If only he knew.

"Natasha," she says, and a little of that amusement peeks through into her voice. "And you are?"

[peacockherald]

"Vanyel Ashkevron, a Herald of Valdemar," he greeted, slipping easier now into the polite role of the courtier, the finer graces. "A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Lady Natasha, circumstances what they are." He affected a sort of half-bow to her, dark hair sweeping over his shoulders.

[tothefly]

Fancy titles, sounding like they're straight out of a romance novel. Something with bodice-ripping and elf princes. It's not the sort of thing she'd ever expect to be dealing with, not in the flesh. Then again, he's dressed for a name like that, isn't he? Not to mention that hair. And it's not like she hasn't seen stranger, or heard things less incongruous, and even Thor had called her lady once. Just the once.

"It's just Natasha. No 'Lady' necessary," she corrects him, and there's a tiny bemused smile on her lips that she just can't quite seem to help. "And I suppose the pleasure's mine, assuming we aren't still in the middle of having a problem, here."

[peacockherald]

Well, Vanyel had certainly never ripped any bodices off anyone before, not even the three times in his life he had lain with a woman. And there were no elf princes, but he surely knew a magical people who lived in trees, so perhaps they might count.

"I do not see that we should, Natasha." he sighed, shoulders relaxing. "It is taking time to get used to sorting out my feelings from this thing implanted within me."

[tothefly]

It's really more of a trope than anything legitimate. He doesn't seem like the bodice-ripping type, in any case. It would be rude. Unseemly, even. Again, she feels a little bemused by his mannerisms, though it doesn't show as she eases up slightly, pushing off the wall where she's been leaning.

"It's a dangerous thing, not knowing your own mind. You'll wanna keep an eye out for that. It could get you in trouble." The gesture she makes is small, but it's clear she's indicating the thing they both know is at least partially to blame for this little standoff.

[peacockherald]

"I spent three years in a place that toyed with us just so, but with far less regularity. This shall be the easier," he assured her, and in truth it would be.

A constant presence would be easier to fight off that disparate assaults. Eventually he was sure he could build shields against it, or at least dampen its influence some. It was not as if the device needed to try hard to convince him to protect the ship, protect the people. As a Herald, that was already engrained within him, a core value that all Heralds shared.

"Eventually one does learn to ignore the chirping of crickets in the evening."

[tothefly]

Easier. She knows from cold experience that there's nothing easy about a voice constantly whispering in the back of your mind, wearing at your subconscious. Molding you slowly into something else, despite any attempt to resist it. It's insidious, and she doubts this implant is any different from the program's conditioning. His confidence wasn't exactly reassuring.

"That's very zen of you," is her dry reply. "Personally, I think you might be better off hearing the crickets. It's easier to notice when they stop chirping." The second you think that something like this implant can't affect you is the second you need to start worrying.

[peacockherald]

"Something my brothers once told me on the hunt," he said, the twist of his mouth suggesting how rarely he found their advice useful. Yet it was true enough that silence harkened danger as easily as sound.

He had survived an assault on his very mind by a man who meant to warp him into something dark and cruel. Survived it when he was ill prepared for it. Survived the voices that told him Tylendel's fate had been his fault, survived the horrors pushed onto him by the Castle's cruel machinations. What was more voice to push away? He might not ever be able to silence it, but he could certainly work towards making sure it's place was never the forefront of his thoughts.

"Though I confess the term 'zen' is one I have never come across."

[tothefly]

Natasha tilts her head a fraction, studying him for a moment. She doesn't know him by anything other than the words he's spoken, after all, and even with their current standing truce, it's difficult to just let it go like that. Anyone who just writes off a situation like this strikes her as brash, foolhardy. But she lets it sit, for the moment, instead thinking about zen and how to define it. It's a philosophy she finds a little more applicable than most, but he's clearly not from a place that's even a little inside her experience.

"It's a philosophy," she answers after a moment, "though some people consider it a religion. Better life through awareness of the self, acceptance of the world as it is. Zen philosophy is known for parables and phrases like that."

[peacockherald]

He chewed on that new information, relaxing the more they conversed, though he kept some of his guard. She was obviously a woman confident in herself, her aura that of someone who had known battle. His sister had the same when he crossed paths with her, though perhaps in not so deadly a manner.

"It sounds very peaceful," he finally said. "Which I think in any world makes it all the harder to practice."

[tothefly]

Confident is one word for it. Natasha knows herself, knows her limits, her weaknesses, exactly what she's capable of when pushed. It's not always the most comfortable knowledge, but it results in a woman who is almost always sure of herself and her place in her surroundings, even when they're new and unusual.

She's slightly more relaxed, herself, even if she doesn't quite trust this stranger, as the discussion slides further from the threat of violence. "Peaceful? I'm not so sure. Depends on your definition. There's a comfort in knowing exactly where you stand and what you have control over. Being able to let go is always the challenging part. I guess that part doesn't change no matter where you're from."