HOPING FOR MORE, WISHING FOR LESS

[circumspector]

WHO? Angel & You!
WHAT? Angel comes back and throws herself into the thick of things.
WHEN? Over the span of couple of weeks.
ANYTHING ELSE? Things on the ship, as well as moon side.

I | WHERE HAVE I BEEN? ( closed: anyone on base)
It'd been a journey, coming back. The weeks confused, whens she had realised just what had gone wrong. That she wasn't where she should be. That she needed to survive being where she was - if she ever stood a chance. Surviving, the tribesmen, the Latin-Roman soldiers. Using old lessons, about being mute and mistaken for dumb could get her a lot further then speaking, sometimes, of how to snake her way in and out of situations all by herself. Surviving the war that erupted between them when the Queen of the Iceni could stand no more.

Then the chance of finding someone else from COST, let alone another cell - the madness of that. The relief of that, to know she was stuck here. Even if - maybe, it was hard not to like it, out and wild against a cold empty landscape compared to what it had been in the Trenches so shortly before. Learned things she liked more, then the suffering which was just - old names for older things. About how the women would grow their hair long, about how they would straighten it out to look like a horse and cry out to a Goddess, called Epona. The bitter, grainy taste of beer. The only way to see her own face on badly polished bits of brass and still pools of water. About hymns. Of figuring out how to pin her own clothes. Disjointed bits of learning that came to an end, when the city burned.

She thought of Steele, and the respect she demanded. She thought of Maya, pushed too far, thought of Lilith when it all went up in flames. Tried not to think of herself when the Queen of the Iceni took poison rather than give in.

It leaves her wondering a bit wide-eyed and out of place as when she first joined albeit for different reasons, as she wonders the ship trying to work out which room was hers, this time. The long spear held in one hand. Her clothes a heavy wool, edged in brighter golden patterns that were pulled in tightly around her waist with a heavy chain that wrapped around twice to hang in a length at her side. Another cape that hung over one side that was another colour completely. Her hair grown out for the few inches that time had been worth and swept to hide her implants on her skull. The braids that women had favoured did the job well enough, with a bit of fiddling.

Ventures when she sees anyone that looks like they might be free - "Hey - got a second- ?"


II | UNTIL MY BODY ACHES ( closed: anyone on base )
She hates, hates the glitter. Which is probably, fairly usual.

It wasn't even that it was glitter, it was the colour. Purple, shimmering. Misery was that colour. Misery was drowning in that colour. It stuck, all the way down her arms, her skin. She could endure it just fine, as long as she was training, as long as she was working towards something. After all, hadn't that been the trick Jack had played for so many years? Kept her busy enough to not notice, that it was killing her. Until she would always need this colour, love, love was the colour purple, not red. Not as far as her life has gone.

She can't stand it.

So the hours in between training, stopped in the bathrooms, having given up anything but the most fitful frustration of getting the stuff off: she takes a pocket knife, leaning her hip against the sink and draws the small blade against the underside of her nail. Hooking it around - not careful that when the shake in her hands gets too much, she knicks down the side of her fingers. She hisses, the little sharp pain enough to make her bite her teeth into her lip then draw the bit of purple off her skin. Scraping it against the edge of the sink.

Fuck this. Fuck Jack, too.


III | POWDERED WITH ASHES ( COST QUARTERS )
This had to be the first place COST had been too that offered even the slightest chance of doing any kind of maintence on herself.

She'd done her best to keep her implants clean, but there was only so much between France, Gallipoli and then Londinium after it, that could really be done. Not like any of them stuck these kinds of screws in their head. So it's part being seen, flaunting her position as an artificial with such obvious implants, and as she gets used to the Araneans and the moon she'd landed on - and part taking advantage of it while she can that she maybe goes about pampering the part of her self she knew how to do that with.

Which leads... to anyone that might be walking past one particular bright morning in COST quarters with Angel poking about..... in her own skull, with the door wide open to her room as she does so ( safety precaution, just in case she did manage to short-circuit herself ). Though there is nothing particularly disgusting to it, no squishy bits visible. It's all very clean, organised. Black casing, some fine, delicate wires exposed. An odd balancing act between dabbing some cleaning spray as she hums - something horrendous off key - and...

Well, there's no getting around it, there's definitely a screwdriver jammed into the side of her head.


IV | THERE AIN'T NO HEAVEN ( SPORTS BAR )
If there was one thing being hooked up to the Echonet without a need to sleep and eat, or in fact, do much of anything that took up a normal person's time, taught her to do - it was give a lot of hobbies to do without actually interacting with it.

Video games rated up there, after watching Torgue's arena fights.

She'd played all of them, at least once, and many of them, at the same time. Though here, that probably counted as cheating. After all, their brains weren't hooked up directly to succeed at this one thing amazingly well. Technology, and the world's within it, something she could manipulate with but a thought. But where was the fun in that?

Angel watches the first few matches. Sipping on beer - it tasted different, here, but maybe that was because she was sipping it through a straw - in one of the many bars dedicated to it. Somewhat of a purpose that she'd come with tonight, sitting with whatever COST recruit was there. Waiting to see if any Regency agents showed up, but even so, her eyes were on a particularly intense game of an FPS, watching the players, the game itself. Until, when a Regency agent does turn up - and she takes her plan into action, as the crowd cheers the two players sitting at the consoles at the cleared space at the bar.

She snatches up the rest of the beer to knock it back all at once. This was going to get her arm bitten off, probably, and stands up ... okay, no, not tall enough amongst the Araneans tremendous size. Wait, hold on, she just needs to use the chair for a second - okay, there we go.

"You call that a K/D ratio? I could do better than that with my eyes closed."