002 [VIDEO] DAY 18 - NOON

[biobitching]

[Oh look, it's everyone's favorite angry half-naked lady.  Who couldn't sleep and ended up wading through a fuckton of leaves up to one of the watchtowers lining the perimeter of the wall.  It's part restlessness, part paranoia; she has no idea what to expect from this place and it unnerves her.  Jack doesn't like talking to people, but this is

Comments

video response, might as well. Private. -- also s-sorry /edits forever

[femshep]

Say we get four of them. Say we use them and send someone off. What happens then? How do we find out if they went back to Citadel space or somewhere even worse than this place?

Erik's group seems hellbent on getting their tokens and getting the hell out of here. We're going to see what happens when a few of them start racking up all four. Let his group be the guinea pigs, not us.

video! Private. lol no worries~ o/

[biobitching]

[Just... Jack being quiet on this end, which is as good as assent on her part. Yay paranoid minds thinking alike.]

You saw his post. Some people got 'em, some didn't. Doing the mission didn't guarantee squat.

Could be some kind of rule we don't know about-- sadistic fucks love shit like that. Or they could just be messing with us, trying to get people to turn on each other. Soon as the going gets hard, it'll happen.

[femshep]

Closest we've got to a theory is that you can't just stick to the frontlines if you want one every time. But then, none of us are worth a shit at sitting around and doing recon. [Yeah, 'sitting around and doing recon' about expresses the extent of how Shep feels about not being in the mess of the battle.]

And you're right. They could be. But they turn on us and they've got about ten seconds of life left to contemplate their fatal mistake, you mark my words.

[biobitching]

[Ugh, reflexive lip curl.] Sit around watching with a thumb up my ass? Hell no. Save that shit for Joker.

Still, I don't like the layout of this place. Too fucking narrow, too many civvies to shoot, and not enough cover.

[femshep]

Thought you'd say that. And for the record, I'm right there with you, on that and the layout. But there's not much we can do to change it, so it looks like we're working with what we've got.

[biobitching]

Doesn't mean I have to like it. [a low breath] I fucking hate this place, Shepard. There's no-- space. I can't so much as walk across a hallway without tripping over some clueless dumbass.

Makes me wanna kill every last person I see.

[What she can't quite voice is the increasing sense of claustrophobia, too many people and not enough space as the walls closed in all around them. Even in varren-infested shitholes like Omega she'd never felt so crowded, but then again, nobody gave a shit about you in Omega. That was half the charm. Here, everyone got into everyone else's business, everyone was too damn close.]

[femshep]

Watch yourself, Jack. I want you on our side, but if you start massacring the locals, you know I'll have to stop you.

[Shepard knows. She feels a little of that herself, and even if she didn't, she's gotten surprisingly good at identifying with Jack in the past few months back on the ship. And she almost understands Jack's need to smear some blood around, which worries her a little but she's not going to think too much about that.]

I'm here to spar, if you need it. We did pretty good last time. [The fact that Shep hadn't ended up a pile of biotic mush on the floor was pretty much the only prerequisite for 'pretty good'.]

[biobitching]

[Yeah, she knows that too. A low breath.] Haven't sunk off the deep end yet, Shepard. I'll keep it together.

"Pretty good," huh? Ha, that's one way to put it. Didn't take you for a masochist. [But you know, she'd enjoyed that too, all things considered. There's nothing like some cathartic violence to make the demons go away.] You know I'm always down for a good spar.

[femshep]

I know you will. [Shep's harsh sometimes but she really does have faith in Jack. Even more than Jack's probably earned but... technicalities.]

Training hall in ten? [She barely keeps from calling it 'that room we ransacked', but she doesn't want to encourage Jack's destroying things.]

[biobitching]

[Never in a million years will she admit it, but paradoxically, that's one of the reasons Jack sticks by Shepard.]

See you in ten.

[femshep]

[She's waiting in the training hall, dressed like last time and standing with her hands behind her back. She's totally ready for you, Jack.

As you're approaching, she doesn't give you much time to react, just (without looking) lifts one of the punching bags behind her off of its chain and lobs it Jack's way. Loud enough for the still-approaching Jack to hear:]

Hold this.