ten_fwd | [Ten Forward]: Halloween Plot (sneaking this in belatedly)! OTA

This will not go down in the books as one of Steve's favorite weekends ever.

The costume has been humiliating enough, meeting people from his world, his future, while in said costume would be the cherry on top of the rotten sundae. Or you would think, anyway. But putting a soldier whose metabolism burns four times faster than normal on a candy-only diet for a few days, and you've got a recipe for one miserable man.

And -- because of course there's more -- that candy is apparently booby trapped. Steve thought the war was over. Just tell that to his hair, which is currently a limp shade of green -- and not a nice green, but a sad, tarnished penny green. It just adds to the lackluster expression on his face as he sits off in the darkest corner he can find, concentrating on keeping his knees together.

He doesn't think he's given women enough credit over the years. This is a lot harder than it looks.

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Once he's had plenty of time to brood, he decides no good ever comes from hanging back or hiding. He's heard about there being missions to find replicators that will produce real food somewhere on the ship, and he's interested in what the result of those missions has been. He can't be the only one on this boat who needs a square meal.

"Has anyone located a working replicator yet?" he calls to the room. "Or any food stores we can tap into?"

[ooc: The bit after the linebreak is for Dylan Hunt in particular, but consider either scenario OTA for any character! Steve's dressed as a USO girl, and my but don't those pumps make his legs look shapely? Powers and personality remain the same, save for the colored hair. :)]

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"Thanks. And yeah, understandable."

Judith extends a hand. "Judith Rassendyll." Who knows if Captain America pays attention to things like who's the current queen of Ruritania, but he said his full name, so she has to return the courtesy.

"Nice to meet you, Ms. Rassendyll," he smiles, shaking her hand.

The name isn't familiar, but he had been on ice for a long time. There's a lot yet he has to catch up on.

"Are you new here?" he asks, hoping this isn't her first impression of the ship and everyone on it. Then again, there's nowhere to go from here but up, right?

"Been here just long enough to get a proper roommate -- from 1820, I think they are -- and settle in here, so still relatively new, yeah. How long have you been?"

He arches his eyebrows, and his smile ends up a little more full-bodied than it was before.

"I'd like to tell you the time differences feel less strange after a while, but I would be lying," he says, ever the honest guy. And he probably knows the feeling better than anyone else on this boat, since he was dealing with timelines skewing long before he ever ended up here. "Me? Long enough that I probably should have known to stay in my room tonight."

He chuckles dryly, and gives his short skirt another useless tug. "About five months, give or take a few days. I think I was one of the first to show up, because the crew were a lot less organized for it back then. My guy, uh, my roommate I mean, is from another planet. So that took some getting used to."

"I bet that would. Major culture shock for everybody. Well, I try to be flexible, no matter what some friends of mine might say to the contrary."

"You can say that again," he says with a crooked smile. Steve's a soldier (and before that just another scrappy kid trying to make it by in a big city), not a spy, which means emotions pass freely across his face. That self-deprecating smirk shifts into sincere interest. "Your friends like giving you a hard time?"

"Well, one of them especially. And I'm not saying he didn't earn the right, but it's not really fair to go on about how I'm bad at adapting to circumstances just because I'm not comfortable in life-threatening situations. My roommate seems to be yet another adrenaline junkie in my life, but at least they seem to understand the concept that some of us are civilians -- with all due appreciation for those of you who aren't."

Steve lets off a chuckle, holding his hands up. "I don't exactly look the part of a soldier tonight, so you aren't going to get any lip from me."

And even if he was in uniform, he would still respect that about her. Steve flourishes under life-threatening situations, and always has; it's his inborn stubbornness not to let this case of pneumonia be the last, or that case of scarlet fever to take him down. He's just passed that bullheadedness on to other areas of his life. Like saving the world.

"To be honest, ma'am, I have all due appreciation for those of you who stay out of the fight," he says, rubbing the back of his neck. He wouldn't give up a second of fighting for his friends and his country, but he does wish sometimes he still had the privacy of a mundane life, or the invisibility he loathed back before Project Rebirth. "What do you do back home? Other than run marathons."

"Well, you do at least have a helmet, should any emergency arise." Judith smiled. "And much appreciated."
Then she looked embarrassed. "Politics, unfortunately. I was a psych major, but I kind of got dragged into politics during my last year at ESU. Wanted to find some way to get out of it, but," Judith would be surprised later at how much she found herself opening up. "The tax system was downright regressive, environmental regulation was some kind of foreign concept -- and still not as foreign a concept as marriage equality -- and instead of wriggling out I started reading people the riot act, and then I was definitely stuck in it."
...As much as she whined about being queen, fixing even some of that crap had felt good.

Steve has a way of putting people at ease. Well, depending on the person. He charmed his way through life in Brooklyn, inspired a group of tired soldiers to follow him once more unto the breach, won favor as America's symbol for freedom, but he'd done it all with his fair share of split lips. He just chuckles when Judith jokes with him, taking it in stride, and listens attentively while she speaks.

"Politics, huh?" he says when she's finished, eyebrows arched. "We need a few good people in office. I can't imagine it's an easy job, but it sounds like you're doing it for the right reasons."

And a good reason not to get involved in the fighting. As much as he hates the politics sometimes, he knows what he does hinges on the decisions of those sitting in the big chairs, and he has a healthy respect for that. He smiles at Judith. "You tell your friend back home to stop giving you such a hard time."

[Ten Forward]: Halloween Plot (sneaking this in belatedly)! OTA

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