Civil Discourse

Crew Quarters  -
 * The narrow passage opens up into a small wardroom. This space is ingeniously outfitted; its furniture and surfaces configured to serve either under nominal local gravity conditions, or that provided by the freighter's acceleration. Flanking the wardroom are a set of personal bunk modules containing a bed with built-in cabinetry, storage lockers, and privacy screens. Forward, a compact efficiency kitchen is located starboard, while to the portside is a small refresher unit. Between the two we find a little fitness space with a punching bag and workout center and a cozy niche with a fold-out sleeper couch and holoviewer.


 * Gentle light flows down from coves recessed into the dorsal and side wall framing, softly illuminating the room. Its deckplates are sturdy and diamond-gridded and provide a tough, rugged utilitarian feel.

-

A tentative calm has descended over the crew quarters during the night-cycle, broken only by the occasional snore from one of the occupied bunks. At least one member is still awake and occupied - slumped against one of the pillows; Kit is, as ever, fixated upon a tablet, propped up on her knees while bare feet rest upon the edge of the bed. A lukewarm mug of hot chocolate waits upon the stand beside her.

Less than ten feet away, Mika continues to make herself the living example of intolerable and insufferable behavior by straddling a chair, folding her arms atop its crown, propping her chin atop them, and staring Kit down.

Kit casually reaches down, to unerringly grasp the mug by its edge and bring it up for a sip; outwardly oblivious to either stare or the crew quarters' goings on. But as she sets the mug down again, she inputs a command with her other hand...and Ariel materializes between herself and Mika, hunched comfortably upon thin air, its saucer-wide eyes staring unblinkingly right back at Mika.

Though one eyebrow slowly lifts, Mika seems completely unimpressed by the unspoken and yet naked threat Kit lays before her. Her response is to shift her weight ever-so-slightly, her right foot extending until her ankle bumps against that of the daemon's mistress.

The barest twitch of one ink-black brow, nearly hidden by the low fringe of her hair, and Kit's eyes continue to rake across the steadily marching reports that the tablet dutifully displays. And one foot - the one untouched - shifts to plant itself firmly against the seat back which Mika is leaning against, with enough strength behind it to give the chair a warning wobble.

Mika swallows down a gulp, a crease slicing across her forehead. She's never one to back down from a challenge, however, particularly when it involves Kit - so her response is to produce a cigarette lighter. One tiny source of flame, flicked to life with a thumb, and held dangerously close to the 'pad's small power source.

One heartbeat. Two. And then a hand rises - the pad of the thumb licked - before it stabs downwards, straight atop the port from which the flame extends, extinguishing it. Then, finally, a pair of near-black eyes rise to glare narrowly at the rogue.

It's a Mexican standoff, circa 3008. Ariel's hovering, translucent eyes burrow dangerously into Mika's freckled face, though she pays the creature no mind. No, her eyes are only for Kit, two sea-green orbs narrowed in slitted, sinister promise.

One corner of her mouth creeps toward a crooked grin, pearly whites peeking through.

No matter the stakes, when one makes a display like that, Kit is not about to back down - her lip curls up, in a blatant display of teeth in a wholly maniacal grin, eyes glinting with wicked promise that the next move Mika makes may very well be her last if she is not careful.

At first, Mika may appear defeated, the way she withdraws that lighter. But ah, after a moment? Her true intent becomes clear. Its counterpart, the dented and dogged pack of discount Quaquani cigarettes, is slipped from her jacket's interior breast pocket. She slides a single deathstick into her mouth and ignites the tip, watching Kit all the while.

She sucks in a drag. One long, lung-damning drag, eyes reflexively lidding as her chest swells. And then... she exhales a slow, steady stream of smoke, right into the cyberwitch's face.

Kit's eyes narrow to mere, gleaming slits when the pack first appears, body visibly tensing in sure anticipation of what is going to happen. Nevertheless, her expression gives Mika her last warning, the last few seconds before that fatal step which cannot be withdrawn...and finally, as that acrid cloud begins to balloon toward her, she emits a single growl before snatching both feet back to her own chair, hand flashing out to snatch for the cigarette between Mika's lips. "Ariel, panel double-A twenty-three!" she snaps. Not even a wink from the hologram, before that familiar buzz of charge bites upwards from Mika's feet.

A yelp breaks down into strangled, red-faced coughing as oxygen duels with carbon monoxide for control of Mika's windpipe, but even as the charge is racing from toes to feet to ankle and toward her spine, she is flailing desperately with both hands for Kit. Her chair topples forward, cigarettes and lighter go flying, and the rogue herself is convulsing even as she half-lunges, half-falls onto the Specialist's bed.

A subtle, but important miscalculation. In those fractions of a second which electricity takes to travel those few feet, Kit blinks and nearly misses it. But years of trigger-honed instincts are trying to kick her back and out of reach as the madwoman - a truly terrifying sight by now, snorting and steaming smoke with clawed hands reaching, hair already beginning to spray outwards with the building static charges - lunges forward...and the cyberwitch promptly topples backwards over the bed's edge, one leg seizing in an uncontrolled cramp when Mika happens to brush her bare foot, the tablet skidding across the deck while its owner tumbles after it with a satisfying thump.

Not like Mika can relish in that victory, such as it is, sprawled facedown and twitching among the bedsheets. Her bony frame shakes and jerks involuntarily, wracked with protests from haywire nerve endings and equally overtaxed lungs. She coughs and gags into the mattress, gasping greedily for air.

Ariel, meanwhile, has been overtaken by an uncontrollable urge to groom itself.

Kit is also down for the current count, blinking haze from her vision as she takes in the uncharacteristic view of the ceiling - uncharacteristic in that she recognizes the panels overhead as not being the ones immediately above her chosen bunk. But as the twitches of her own affected leg and the pins-and-needles of its slow return to functionality gradually muscles its way to the fore of sensations, she eventually props herself up with hands behind her, head still wobbling from the impact it had taken, to glare blearily at the rogue and awkwardly use a half-working foot to shove at Mika's hip, trying to kick the woman off the bed.

Those contests before were mere scrimmages in the eyes of Mika Tachyon. She can do little to resist Kit's shoving with weak limbs and numb digits, but damned if she does not try. Her fingers are like lead, her arms as frail as a newborn kitten's, but they work well enough to close feebly around Kit's ankle. Coughing and, by this point, drooling, the Jackal fights the only way Jackals know how:

She bites at the leg of her prey.

Annoyance, perplexity, and finally, blank astonishment - all have their time crossing Kit's face as the abused nerves of the leg reluctantly corroborate what her slowly clearing vision is showing her. And when all the information is finally processed...a wordless snarl, and she is lunging after the rogue - never mind that puny human teeth does little damage through denim, it is the principle of the thing and the video that is inevitably recorded - hands seizing straight for the neck.

Well, that certainly does not help the breathing problems, does it. Mika responds with a wide-eyed urk, tumbling head-over-tailbone backward while clawing fruitlessly at Kit's wrists. She gets nowhere in the struggle, but definitely goes places physically - to the deck, to be specific. The back of her head cracks against diamond and hullsteel, singed scarftails whipping in the wake of her abrupt shift in momentum. And then, they are wrestling on the floor.

Small and skinny, with no muscle mass to speak of, the pirate has never fared well in close encounters. So when prying Kit's fingers from her neck proves to be a no-go, and precious life-giving air is once again at a premium, Mika abandons the attempt in favor of pinching her adversary's earlobe between two fingers and twisting.

There is no satisfying yowl at the savage attack - in fact, barely more than a yelp emerges, and that more in surprise than anything else. Mika may be laboring under the twin disadvantages of fighting an opponent that is not only a touch sturdier but quite a bit more resistant to physical discomforts, but one thing is apparent - Kit has absolutely no experience with a plain and basic cat-fight. Looking fit to murder with any of the knives she habitually keeps on her person, she valiantly refrains, and instead, plants one hand firmly on Mika's face to keep the rogue's head down whilst the other fights to pry the woman's hand from her ear. "...ridiculous!" she spits out as if it were as good as a swear word.

This, of course, only leads to Mika biting at the offending hand, although only a thumb is in handy reach of her nicotine-dulled chompers. Grunting, growling, and yes, still stifling coughs, she clamps down hard on the balljoint where the base connects with the web of the hand, shaking her head both to clear her vision and jockey for access to the other four fingers.

With her gloved hand helpless in Kit's grasp, the other gropes blindly for a handful of the Specialist's frustratingly close-cropped hair, grabbing two or three times before she believes she has enough to haul off and yank.

Her usually knife-edged efficiency hampered by the general wish to keep Mika in relatively functional order, bewildered by the terrier-like tenaciousness of the woman's junkyard tactics, Kit is beginning to realize for all her training and knowledge that there is one particular brand of physical altercation she has been woefully ignorant about. Growling fit to earn her name, she scrabbles in mirror for a hold on Mika's longer locks, trying to plant a knee in the woman's solar-plexus to keep her distracted long enough to give her head a good thump against the deck.

Ariel has absolutely no idea what to make of this. Which is nothing to be overly concerned about, as the creature peers up from licking at its hindquarters only long enough to blink once at the bizarre and inexplicable brawl on the wardroom floor - a brawl Mika is, at the moment, losing.

A sock to the gut not only hurts like hell, but it effectively disables the rogue; the breath goes out of Mika in a heaving whuff, her eyes practically popping out of her skull. A good three or four frantic seconds tick by before she regains her senses, and by that point, she is at Kit's mercy. Lacking her opponent's pain tolerance, she does scream; a raspy, wounded "O-o-o-o-o-ow!" that echoes throughout the ship's compartment as her tacky dyejob stubbornly clings tight to her scalp.

At this point, she is reduced to flailing and kicking, her free hand jabbing up to return the favor and scratch at Kit's face. With nails. She is a feral animal at this point, desperate to free itself from the jagged metal teeth of a hunter's trap.

Kit is not at all far behind the rogue in her fall from grace. By this point, she has thrown all restraint to the winds and is reeling out curses - many of them quite familiar to Mika - as quickly and fluently as an eidetic memory can manage. Her hand finally freed from the terrier's hold by the knee-jab, she flails just as indiscriminately with one hand to try and ward off the worst of Mika's wild scratches - not so successful, when one has one's eyes closed - before, in a wild spasm of feet and fists, she tries to fight her way free and clear long enough to gasp out, "Ariel!" and go for shock number two on her opponent.

"--Cheatin'!" Mika spits out, the rest of her accusations rendered incomprehensible by hacking coughs. She's panting as she picks herself up, tears streaming down her cheeks and saliva smeared from mouth to jawline, but that burst of adrenaline and plain stupid panic keep her from doing anything but rolling onto her belly and swiping an arm out in an attempt to catch Kit by the foot and trip her up.

As if the back of her head is not already sore, now it is at least balanced as the unexpected catch has Mika's nemesis performing a faceplant. This time, a hand whips around and light glints off tempered steel unsheathed from the small of her back...the weight and balance of the hilt in her palm so ingrained in memory that instinct has already angled the edge toward the rogue before Kit's conscious thoughts catch up. There is a distinct and detectable pause as two desires battle it out...and then, with a cry of pure frustration, she slams the dagger onto the deck, snatches up the nearest item - the ill-fated and previously forgotten tablet - twists around, and begins to beat Mika about the head and shoulders with it. "...bad enough you are sabotaging your own order but if I have to get a shot because you bit me twice I am adding that to your invoice and you owe me two desserts at the Trellis...!"

Something - confusion? - steals over Mika's features when the steel comes licking out, settling into open and unguarded hurt when it becomes apparent that Kit actually requires a moment to weigh the options of slicing her root to stem. Green eyes flick to meet black ones, uncertainty and very real fear behind them, but she does not move.

Not until it's time to be confused all over again, and subsequently find herself whacked upside the head with a datapad. And in the face of a renewed verbal spar? Mika does what she does best: she laughs, sniggering like a loon with a sloppy grin to match, and returns volley. "Might wanna -- ow -- rethink a second d'ssert," she taunts, gathering her legs beneath her so she may wrestle the tablet back and forth with both hands. "Coul' lan' a blinkin' capship on yer backside these days!"

Her impromptu weapon abruptly captured, Kit bares her teeth in a growl - just as savage now, panting and with her hair in even wilder disarray than usual, a pair of scratchmarks crossing one brow and cheek - before shifting one leg stiffly between them and planting a foot against Mika's chest as if to bodily pry her off the data tablet. There is no force yet, though, simply the threat of it; some of the fight visibly draining from her when the match is taken onto a verbal plane. "Still not as good as your chest, as flat as it is," she spits back.

"This comin' from th' broad wot makes a spook look suntanned," Mika retorts, though she does release the datapad... with her nude right hand. The other merrily prolongs the game of tug-of-war while she licks her open palm and wipes the spit across Kit's bare foot.

The insult is wholly overlooked as an expression of horror creeps over Kit's face. "You did not just...that was absolutely..." Still searching for words to properly express her disgust and looking as if all her fur would be standing on end if she had been a cat, the cyberwitch snatches the defiled foot away and promptly tries to kick Mika out of reach with the other while clinging stubbornly to the battered tablet.

Mika is all too happy to disengage at that point, laughing like the scavenging hound tattooed upon her wrist. She rolls with the kick, rocking onto her back. "I win," the rogue declares, pumping a fist into the air. "I get th' second d'ssert!"

Kit mutters something of which 'crazy' is the most flattering term, scrambling to her feet and staggering to her bunk. The tablet is dropped onto the mattress without another look. The Sivadian is still muttering beneath her breath as she reaches into the cubby space next to each bunk, withdrawing a small, stapler-like object, and without word or warning, crouches down next to the cackling Jackal to reach for the nearest ear with both hands, tagging-gun at the ready.

Though she scuttles backward on both hands and feet, Mika cannot hope to escape Kit. She has the high ground, after all. "'ey," she puzzles, all smiles going the way of Ungstir as suspicion captures her countenance. "Wot're ye doin'-- Kittanni--OW!"

Kevlar slaps against skin when Mika reflexively claps her left hand to its corresponding ear, grimacing. To say she is dumbfounded when she gapes at Kit is the mother of all understatements. "That blinkin' 'urt," the pirate accuses, quite as if they hadn't been catfighting for the past fifteen minutes.

KA-CHAK The tagging-gun absently put up as if it were a real pistol held at the ready, Kit casts a smugly impassive gaze down upon her arch-enemy. "Do not be overdramatic. You already have half a dozen bits of metal in your ear. One more is not going to count for much." A further exploration would divulge a sort of ear-cuff now tacked neatly into the cartilage rim - a thicker and heavier sort of stainless steel than most might sport for purely aesthetic reasons. Any die-hard pet lover or veterinarian would either stare or fall over laughing if glimpsed...the cyberwitch has tagged Mika like livestock with a tracker.

Mika is, for once in her life, without words. So, well, she states the obvious, and manages to look like the poster child for cluelessness while she does it. "Ye pierced me ear," she observes, oblivious to the true nature of the cuff. Then, well, the exact meaning of those words sinks in, and her expression grows gradually more bewildered. "Ye pierced me ear," she says again. "Who th' Christ pierces somebody's ear? Wot th' shit 's wrong with ye?"

"You," Kit asserts at that question, expression shifting into a scowl before she sniffs - and winces, gingerly exploring the bridge of her nose from its brief meeting with the deck. "You are what is wrong with me. I just made sure I can actually keep track of the problem now." Except that, as she is trying to figure out the extent of the damage to her nose, a finger brushes across one of the scratches on her cheek - and then she is following the lines of that incredulously. "What is wrong with you? Isn't being shocked like misbehaving cattle enough?" she asks, seemingly completely innocent of the irony.

About a thousand different retorts are conceived and aborted by Mika, whose tongue utterly fails to produce complete, coherent statements. She rubs at her tagged ear with her good hand, getting a true tactile measure of the site and piercing, then stands up. But even when she's standing, she's still fooling with the damn thing, her motor functions evidently just as useless as her vocal ones.

"Who shocks somebody? Wot th' Christ kinda person ye gotta be ta jus' up an' go," -- and she affects an East Enajian's accent and articulation, all the while keeping her actual intonation as dead and lifeless as a flatlined EKG -- "'this is jus' unacceptable. Ariel, mark, blah blah blah.' ... An' calls that a blinkin' sane an' rational way o' dealin' with people wot's a bloody problem? An' I fail ta see wot I do wot's such a goddamn problem," she concludes, even as she's appropriating Kit's forgotten hot chocolate and sipping from it.

"And being well informed of my probable actions, you call yourself sane when you stare both me and Ariel down while deliberately goading me with the cigarette and the invasion of personal space?" Kit retorts with an unconscious stab of the tagging-gun in the rogue's direction. "And get your own hot chocolate!" The action also brings into her field of view the neat little crescent marks of the woman's teeth surrounding the base of her thumb. "And you tried to chew my fingers off! I think there is nothing left to argue about," she concludes flatly, whirling on a heel to limp back toward her bunk, a careless toss ending with the now-useless tagger ricocheting off the lip of the recycler to clatter to the deck.

Gesturing dramatically with one hand, Mika fires back, "ye tried t' strangle me!" A melty marshmallow 'stache clings comically to her upper lip, but alas, she is aware of its presence. Her tongue flicks out to lap it up. "Then ye pulled me 'air an' then ye pulled outta knife, an' that's jus' tot'lly uncalled fer an' a serious breach o' et'quette," she drawls out, now retroactively penning rules to their bunkroom brawl. "So yer disqual'fied. I get th' other d'ssert. An' furthermore," that mug comes to her lips again for a second sip, "ye throw like a girl."

"You were pulling my hair first!" comes the snippy comeback as Kit slumps onto the edge of the bunk, wincing and shifting her weight onto one hip while rubbing at the other. Speaking of knife, she leans over to pick it up - at least, this time, when she decides to gesture with the object in her hand, she does so with the blade between her fingers and the hilt pointed at Mika. Then again, that is also the classic grip for flinging a knife. "Furthermore," this time consciously echoing the other's speech, "I pulled the knife but did not, in fact, stab you with it. And you never had any issues with how I threw things before, though I would be infinitely glad to give you another demonstration of how a girl throws," she hisses with saccharine congeniality.

This time, Mika does not actually seem threatened by the weapon's introduction into conversation, and even throws an amused glance its way. "'ear that, Ariel?" Mika asides to the daemon, who patently ignores her and goes right about the very important task of luxuriously stretching its long limbs and yawning widely. "Yer mum's gonna throw ye 'way. I tol' ye mummy didn't love ye. Ye were an acc'dent."

Kit blinks, the knife still poised before her...frowns...blinks, and then scowls darkly. "What?" she blurts out in her distraction as she tries to follow the rogue's reasoning before finally huffing in frustration and re-sheathing the knife with a quick, well-practiced motion. "Go away. I can't wait for this day to end," she ends up groaning into the bunk as she rolls over to bury her face in the pillow. Only to be forced to change the angle with a grimace when it jars her nose, less concerned by pain than simply the thought of further damage.