Deck Seven: Common Living Area for all the new guests

[fallaces_sunt]

The living area in the section of Deck Seven all of the 'guests' have been corralled isn't...terrible.

Comfortable, even.

Natasha - her suit jacket looking slightly rumpled despite her best efforts, especially around the sleeves thanks to being pulled over her Bites - has claimed herself a seat at one of the tables. It's a good spot, as far as she is concerned; not along the sides so it looks like she's hiding, and yet still maintaining clear lines of sight.

Not that she looks like she's observing lines of sight. No, at the moment, Natasha appears to be giving a set of three-dimensional chess her full attention.

Comments

[stark_spangled]

Steve may not be in the good graces of the captain right now, because Steve may have threatened an officer. Or four. To be frank, the only thing that kept him from storming the ship in search of the command deck was this little girl who found him just after he arrived. There's been a lot of talk of memory alteration and time manipulation and the fact that they're on a spaceship, in outer space, and honestly Steve's less than pleased to be here. He's had enough of losing time and losing homes, thanks.

But here is where he is, and after the security chief strongly suggested he find himself a room and stay there, Steve realized he had to calm down and follow the chain of command. For now. There didn't seem to be a safe way off this boat, and the last thing he wanted to do was get thrown off it into open space. So, fine. He allows security to escort him to Deck 7, he finds himself an empty bed, and he forces himself to cool off.

Now that he's feeling calmer (and satisfied with where he stashed his bag, so curious fingertips don't try to break into it), he wanders around the large common room, taking in all the unfamiliar sights. If he's going to be here for a while, he should gather as much intel as possible.

He's wandering past that chess game when he looks up, and blinks. "...Nat?"

[fallaces_sunt]

People she did not expect to see: Steven G. Rogers.

(Stephanie G. Rogers she didn't exactly expect, either, but she's been expecting to see her again at any rate.)

"...Hi."

[stark_spangled]

"...Hey."

His brow crinkles. Nobody here he'd questioned about SHIELD had ever heard of them, but now here's Natasha. His partner. He steps around the game to close in on where she's sitting.

"How long have you been here?" he asks. "Are you OK?"

[fallaces_sunt]

"I'm fine. Given the circumstances. Clint's here, too. We arrived yesterday."

She lets out a breath. Good. Former partner and best friend, and her current partner. Alternate version of her current partner. Thing are starting to look up.

"You?"

[stark_spangled]

Clint. Hawkeye. They arrived yesterday. Steve soaks the information up silently. So Nat and Hawkeye are here. And Kate. That makes three people he knows personally, two of them SHIELD agents, and a small mountain of unanswered questions.

"I'm fine," he says, with that edge to his voice she'll probably recognize as thinly-veiled frustration. Steve likes to know what's going on. "Do you know what's going on? Is Fury here, too?"

[fallaces_sunt]

"In reverse order; not that I've seen, and only what they've told us."

Yes, there is a semi-colon. Natasha can get like that.

"Wanna take a seat, Rogers?"

[stark_spangled]

Those weren't the answers he was hoping for, but they don't really surprise him, either. To be frank, he's glad she says Fury isn't here. If he were, Steve might burn his bridges with security permanently scouring the ship for the one-eyed bastard.

He glances at the open seat, and runs his hand over his hair.

"Guess there aren't that many other options." He settles in beside her cautiously. Steve's not always the best at relaxing, but he does turn his head to smirk at her. "I should have watched those movies you told me about, but you never said they might come in handy in the future."

[morphitudinous]

Billy should be much happier than he is now. He's traveling beyond the stars, isn't that incredible? His previous obligations constantly weigh on his mind, and that takes a good part of the fun out of things. Every time he sees a new tech or something curious, he longs to tell his friends about it---but he'll just have to catch Adam later.

But even when he's feeling his lowest, he can appreciate a beloved game. Chess---the one social activity he'd had success at in school, and even this had changed over the centuries. There were now several layers of the board...and someone was already seated here. Who better to ask?

"I guess the rules of chess have changed too," he mused. "Did anyone fill you in?"

[fallaces_sunt]

Natasha glances up, and smiles faintly.

"I've been informed that it's like flat chess, only you can go up and down as well," she says.

[morphitudinous]

"Wow, that's really something. I led a chess club before, but it was nothing like this."

An eager Billy now observes the board from every angle he can, making a mental map of this new twist on an old game. It really looks like an interesting challenge to keep track of the pieces on this grid.

He grins. "Were you interested in trying it?"

[fallaces_sunt]

"I'm not exactly a former chess club leader," she says, "but I wouldn't say no."

It'll pass the time. She has a suspicion that there is going to be a lot of time to pass.

[morphitudinous]

"All right. Hopefully it hasn't changed all that much in a few centuries."

Billy rolls up his sleeves, or so to speak. He glances at the position of the pieces: a classic starting position, he guesses. And so he cheerfully studies the board once more, thinking he might have an idea of how this works.

"White or black? And I'm Billy, by the way. Pleased to meet you."

[fallaces_sunt]

"I'll take white. And I'm Natasha.



Of course we could always make up the rules," she adds, tilting her head to peer at the board.

[abyssum_invocat]

"Do you know how to play?" asks the girl who's been watching Natasha with that chess set for a while now.

Well, she's been staring at the chess set at any rate, she's attempting to avoid much contact with people. She only just got the headache to stop feeling like her head was being squeezed open.

[fallaces_sunt]

"Not exactly, but I'm sure it can't be that hard to work out," Natasha says, giving the girl a little smile.

[abyssum_invocat]

"I wonder if there's a rule book," she muses aloud, and slowly uncoils herself from the position she'd taken up on the not-actually-a-window's sill. She moves far more steadily than most eight-year-olds and doesn't look away from the woman or the chessboard once, until she gets up to it.

Her eye color is extraordinary, a deep and soft brown with liberal flecks of bright, bright blue scattered around the iris; her face takes after her father far more than her mother at the moment. "If we can find one will you play with me?"

[fallaces_sunt]

The strange focus makes Natasha's own sharpen. Not suspicion (any more than her thoughts already run towards the professionally paranoid), but almost caution.

"If you find a rule book. You might try that machine over there, the replicator? It should be able to create one."

[abyssum_invocat]

Her gaze cuts over to the replicator, and without a second word she moves over to it, looking over the buttons to see if any make sense to her. It takes a few minutes and a few tries, but she does come back with a rule book, and no superfocused look this time.

It happens when she's concentrating on something, the looking through the object she's staring at. But she doesn't say as much.

"I found one," she announces, setting it down on the table. Regular chess she's pretty familiar with; she plays it and go sometimes, because they're strategy games. It's encouraged.

[fallaces_sunt]

"Thank you," she says, picking the book up to flick through it. "I'm Natasha."

[from_the_outside]

She'd caught sight of Rome before, but in the chaos, she hadn't wanted to either move too far from Rogers or give away her identity, so she'd stayed far away, keeping an eye on the other arrivals out of the corner or her eye.

Today, though, she makes contact.

Kate wouldn't notice lines of sight, but Sharon still makes sure she takes a seat that gives her a good view of the room, shifting the chair a little and disguising it by peering at the chess set with undisguised curiosity. "Do you play?"

[fallaces_sunt]

And that answers that question: if anyone is going to break Carter's cover, it won't be Natasha.

"I'm still puzzling out the rules." Wry, "It's something to do."

[from_the_outside]

She might still be undercover, but at least she can relax just a hair: Rome's as pro as they come.

"It turns out being whisked away to a starship has a lot more downtime than I would have ever expected."

Although, if this is the Enterprise -- and it seems to be, some actual version of the ship she's known most of her life -- how long that downtime might actually last before someone tries to blow them up is a matter up for debate.

[fallaces_sunt]

She laughs, the sound little more than a huffed breath.

"At least until they decide how to send us home, or have us scrubbing the floors to earn our way."

[from_the_outside]

"Or wash dishes," she supplies, making a face at the three-dimensional board. "That would be a lot of elbow grease, considering the distance."

[fallaces_sunt]

"Buuuuut it'd be something to do."

She is not, it should be said, a woman who copes well with boredom.