TEST DRIVE #18 - Ten Forward & the Low Grav Gymnasium

[ten_fwd_mods]

Option 001. Ten Forward: The first thing you see is a bar. A large, lively bar filled with many different faces and many different smells, sights, and sounds. This is Ten Forward, the Enterprise's off-duty lounge; feel free to get acquainted with your fellow travelers and try to find somebody who's in charge: this is your new home now, after all...







Option 002. The Low-Gravity Gymnasium: The gym is a large room with several alcove-like sections housing the aerobics and martial arts areas, a parrises squares area, an anbo-jyutsu court, and a separate fencing room. Most noteworthy is the area dedicated for zero-gravity training.

Zero-gravity can be, well, kind of weird, because it's not like a gradual loss of the pressure holding you to the floor--you may have taken the turbolifts, just expecting to take a leisurely run, or maybe work out with a treadmill to get in some cardio, but the minute you step into the gym you're floating, as is anything you might have been holding or bringing with you.

What now? Panic, flail, and try to swim through the air back to where the gravity is normal? Do you make the best of it and tough it out to get your exercise in? Or, as we recommend, do you start having fun with the sudden game of weightlessness? Pick your personal scenario and have fun with all the other weightless people.

Boy, this is gonna make hitting the showers after your workout awkward...

Comments

[anexquisitecreature]

Raven's clothing does not stand out, and neither does she, because right now - despite the collection of not quite your every day people on this wherever the fuck they are - blue is only going to draw attention she's not ready for.

Blending is a thing.

It's a thing he's not doing, which is either arrogant as hell or a really good defence.

"You really are shit at subtle, aren't you."

If she sounds annoyed, it's because she is. Also, she doesn't know where she is, which is mildly concerning.

[prefers_magneto]

He glances over. "Am I? I really wasn't expecting to end up here; sorry I didn't dress for the occasion."

He also doesn't know where he is. Or how he got here.

Then again, she could be hiding in plain sight in a face he doesn't know, but she's here talking to him...

"Do you know how we got here?"

[anexquisitecreature]

One eyebrow lifts. She's still kind of mad at him, but this feels like the sort of place where it's mutants for all and all for mutants, since a stadium is missing, along with the leader of the free world.

"Rude of you not to wear your helmet."

The one she still has, tucked into a backpack. There's enough metal here that he might not be able to feel it.

Raven shakes her head in answer to his question.

"If he wasn't dead, I'd have a suggestion. Do you know where here is?"

[prefers_magneto]

"You're the one that took it from me."

He hasn't had a chance to do more than flit out of the stadium. He'd barely touched the ground when he took a step and that step was into this bar. The fresh state of the wound on his neck will testify to that. And he doesn't feel anything specific. Even if he realized the metal was in her bag, he'd assume she had... weapons or something. Anything but that. Why would she have that?

He glanced behind them, gesturing to the expansive windows.

"Those say 'space'. I haven't decided if I believe them yet." Because how?

[anexquisitecreature]

He's answered his own unspoken question, and she shrugs noncommittally in response. Her own statement was kind of rhetorical, anyway, and not that important in the scheme of things. She turns to take in the windows when he draws her attention there.

"Yeeaaah. I can see why they'd say it. Stars, and all that emptiness between them."

She turns back to him, and bites the inside of her lip in thought.

"How is a good question. Why is another one. Where's everyone else springs to mind."

[prefers_magneto]

"Everyone else? Like who? Charles?" His expression hardens slightly, because nobody pisses him off on principle as much as the furry mutant that insisted on being a skinny kid with more brains than brains. "Hank?"

There hadn't been 'anyone else' around him in a long time. Considering where 'everyone else' was was a hobby he'd given up years earlier. Because wherever they were, they sure as fuck weren't coming for him.

Until one day they did.

Because they needed his help.

To stop her.

In hindsight, talking to her might have been a better idea. But hindsight was always 20/20, wasn't it?

"Their resilient friend?" Erik was pretty sure that guy was still at the bottom of the Potomac.

[anexquisitecreature]

"Or anyone, you don't have to jump to obvious conclusions."

Dirty look, directed. Then relaxed, with a sigh of irritation, because for all that he's an unremitting asshole, this is not actually either of their faults.

"Maybe you didn't notice all the secret service guys and soldiers while you were pulling that stadium stunt, but it wasn't just about you and your cape and your flying, ok? There were other people there, and none of them are here. Why just us?"

[prefers_magneto]

Oh. Those people. Well, they were just sort of there. They didn't do anything of any importance. Even their job protecting the President. She'd done that.

He shrugged.

"Their being there didn't really have much effect on my 'stadium stunt', did it? Whoever brought us here probably didn't notice them, either."

It took a lot of energy and/or money to pull of something like this kidnapping. Why waste it on nobodies?

[anexquisitecreature]

Yeah, because he'd shot her and now she had to be all damage control and propaganda and face of mutant-kind so they weren't used for experiments. You know, the kind she was trying to prevent? Jerk.

"Why did you even need a stadium? For a statement, it was pretty over the top." She slides onto the bar stool next to him, dumping her backpack at her feet. There's a heavy clunk as she does so, but she doesn't seem worried. "You're bleeding, by the way."

Where she shot him. She's still a crack shot. Good to know.

[prefers_magneto]

He reaches up and swipes at his neck. So he is. "That's what happens when people shoot each other," he notes mildly. He really can't blame her for that, since he'd started it.

He glanced at her.

"The stadium served two purposes. One was privacy and infrastructure." It was set up with tv cameras. And it stopped more police getting in. "Two was that it was a big enough object that flying it in there scared the everliving fuck out of those assholes. I knew they'd hide in their giant steel box without even thinking about it. Then they were fish in a barrel."

[anexquisitecreature]

"And what expert marksmanship it is," she points out. He could have been dead. How nice is she? Still, bleeding from the neck isn't necessarily a good thing. It seems sluggish, though. Flesh wound.

The awesome thing about bars is they have bartenders; Raven signals this one, and asks for cold water.

"I just want to point out the oxymoronic use of privacy when the cameras made damn sure the whole world watched your little showdown." Water arrives, and she reaches for a paper napkin from the little metal thingy, dunks it in the glass, and holds it out to him. "Seclusion, I get. Privacy, not so much."

Although it was pretty impressive, all told.

[prefers_magneto]

He'd admitted it was a good shot. In his way.

"Seclusion, then," he says in a tone that suggests that if she wants to get semantic, then fine. English is his second language, Raven. "What the cameras didn't capture was me being tackled to the ground by seventy fucking police officers because they couldn't get in."

He slapped the damp napkin to his wound like it irritated him more than anything. Like a mosquito bite.

[anexquisitecreature]

You're welcome for not killing you, Erik. Also, she thought English was like... his fourth language. If they're being pedantic about semantics.

"Nope, just a blue woman shooting you and saving the President," she replies, half smug and half irritated. "Thanks so much for making me a god-damned hero."

Not that she'd stuck around for it. She'd nicked his helmet, then walked straight out of the stadium... and onto an alleged spaceship. Something about this feels vaguely deja vu.

[prefers_magneto]

Her not killing him is a pleasing development because she probably doesn't hate him. Nobody would have blamed her for killing him after his...misapprehension in Paris.

"You had it in you all along," he told her glibly. "I just brought it out."

[anexquisitecreature]

It's tempting to hate him. But there's no point to it. Hate is a wasteful emotion, and if she's completely honest with herself, she does understand why he did it. It doesn't make him less of an asshole about it, but bullet for bullet? They're even.

"Oh, yeah?" She raises an eyebrow. "So why are you the one in the cape?"

[prefers_magneto]

"When you're cursed with having to wear actual clothes, you have to make fashion work for you," he says, his expression suggesting - just faintly - that he might be teasing.

[anexquisitecreature]

"Erik. That is a costume, and you know it."

Her lips twitch in badly hidden amusement.

"You were putting on a show, don't even try to deny it."

[prefers_magneto]

He shrugged a shoulder and leaned on the bar.

"That's the only thing people know how to pay attention to."

That was the plain and, as far as he was concerned, ugly truth. Put on a good enough show, and you could convince people that anything was right. The difference between this time and the last time he saw it was that he intended to put together at least as compelling a show as the enemy. You fight fire with fire.

[anexquisitecreature]

"So that was the opening number."

She has a mouthful of the water she'd asked for, now that his bleeding seems to have slowed. No sense in wasting it if they really are in space.

"At what point in your book was the kidnapping to space with only two of the players? It seems like a sudden plot twist."

[prefers_magneto]

"It is. I don't know what it has to do with anything. How did we even get here?"

[anexquisitecreature]

"No clue."

She's still mad at him, but there's a solidarity in this, and part of her still trusts him. A little bit. They need to stick together.

"I might have left you to Charles' tender mercies and stepped out of your stadium and into... here."

[prefers_magneto]

He frowned. "I was blocks away. I had a motel room I was using. I was stepping through the door, except this was inside."

And that didn't quite line up. They were brought very close together, but not in the same moment.

[anexquisitecreature]

Well, that doesn't make sense, and her frown echoes his.

"How-- so-- wait. You were still bleeding. Did you not get it seen to?"

Because that's what's most important right now. Health and safety.

[prefers_magneto]

"I was going to clean it up," he told her, almost defensively. "But I didn't get into the hotel room."

[anexquisitecreature]

"So Charles just left you? Bleeding from the neck?"

Ignoring the fact that she'd done the same thing, Raven is quietly indignant.

"For fuck's sake!" One finger is pointed at him. "You're getting that looked at. Somewhere. There's probably a med bay or something, I've seen Star Trekkers or whatever that show was called."