5520/Milano Tales: Lower Decks

Milano Tales: Lower Decks
Date of Scene:	10 March 2021
Location:	Lower Deck - Milano
Synopsis:	Karen interrupts Rocket and Nebula being grumpy, serves them both up a dose of hope even if she didn't mean to.
Cast of Characters:	Nebula, Rocket, Karen Starr

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Nebula has posed:
    The thing about the lower decks of the Milano? They're quiet. Just the gentle hum of the engines vibrating through the structure of the ship. The lights are usually dimmed down here too. This is where Nebula 'lives'. Where she spends all her time away from the others. She knows they don't like her so she finds every chance she can to keep out of their faces.

    A cargo palette has been set up like a table and on it, a disassembled plasma rifle. Nebula is staring at it as in her mind she is assembling it in different ways to improve efficiency of the action. Virtual training.

    There's smatterings of her blood on the table top too and a knife stuck in to the wood. Who knows what it is she really gets up to down here. "I can hear you," she says possibly to no one at all but may be someone is lurking. The mood of the place seems to be shifting.

Rocket has posed:
"Good, you were supposed to." It's Rocket's voice, and he's lugging around something generally gun-like, and heavy from the way he's dragging it, pulling on a couple ropes worked into a big canvas bag. "I got some work to do, and I don't need you or anybody else screwin' with it," he says, in his usually charming way.

Once he's arrived at a workbench, he struggles a bit with the weight and bulk of the thing, more the fact it's just so much bigger than him. He wouldn't be dealing with it if he couldn't actually use it, would he? Maybe it isn't meant to be carried around. It looks like some sort of gatling gun, and it makes a heavy metallic thud when he gets it in place, then he scrambles up with a set of tools before sliding a pair of goggles down over his eyes.

Karen Starr has posed:
    Around the time that Rocket gets his gun onto the table, the loading dock for the Milano starts whirring to life, and thuds down onto the cargo bay for Maxima's cruiser.

    Striding onto the ship is what people keep referring to as one of /four/ Kryptonians, a fact that is easier said than believed. At six-three, she's probably the most imposing person in the room. She's idly looking down at a small tablet-like device baring a logo of tech from Earth, Starrware specifically. Isn't likely to mean much to the two in the room, but it's there.

    "Either of you seen Kara? Blonde hair. Wears blue. Trying to find out if she's tested the suit a bit."

    Once she looks up from her tablet, she raises a brow. "Can you even use that thing?" she asks Rocket, moderately disbelieving regardless of his answer.

Nebula has posed:
    Nebula was about to come to a satisfying revelation that most of the gun is pointless when Rocket emerges with his stupidly big gatling gun. She scowls a touch. Thing is, Rocket's weird weaponry has been useful to her. Even the flame thrower found a purpose. She opens her mouth to tell him how much she dislikes him when the loading dock springs in to action.

    Dark eyes survey one of those Kryptonians as she walks back on to the Milano. "I've read about Kryptonians and no where does it say they can fly, shoot lasers from their eyes, or absorb ship based plasma blasts," she says with a touch of annoyance in her voice. "And there isn't a weapon in the galaxy Rocket can't abuse and misuse," she says feeling defensive about the crew for some reason.

    She stands up, no where near as tall as Karen and says, "I haven't seen your sister." She listened to when Kara was talking about her family the last time they were all stuck on this ship together.

Rocket has posed:
Rocket nods once to Nebula, emphatically. "And don't you forget it. Wait.." Misuse? Oh, no. They are never misused! Greatly used, yes! He squints after his crewmate, a slight curl showing at upper area of his muzzle.

Karen, he stares at. Fortunately, the lenses of the goggles are tinted just dark enough that eye movements aren't completely obvious, but the direction he's looking in is usually a good sign of where his attention lies. "The first question to ask is 'Do I care about your sister,' to which I say 'No, I don't.' You guys are just a payday to me, so we'll help you get to whatever's left of your busted-up planet, you can pick around in it to your heart's content, then we'll take you back home and wipe our hands of it all." He mimes doing just that. Remember: charming.

He grumbles under his breath as he produces a small, portable torch from his set of tools, firing it up to do a little fine work on the gun. "Thought all of you were supposed to be dead, anyway..." is part of his griping.

Karen Starr has posed:
    "Thanks for answering the question," she states, to Nebula. She puts the device away, folding it up as if it had some internal seams that aren't at all evident. It stows away in her gauntlet's wrist compartment quite nicely.

    "And of course you haven't read anything about what we can do. You guys -just- got to Earth for the first time. Everyone reacts that way." Then, Rocket does Rocket things. Karen frowns- which, frankly, considering the things she can do, ought to be a rather unnerving prospect.

    Stepping forward, Power Girl reaches to grab up the massive firearm Rocket was working on. "Let me be clear," she begins, looking it over. "There are a /massive/ number of reasons you should care about every last one of us on this ship. None the least of which is that you are /at best/ a convenient solution. My sister's first idea was to enslave a star, and drag it around behind us to where we wanted to go. What should bother you about that is not that we had the idea, but that we /could do it./ With our /bare hands./" Idly, she starts putting some pressure on either side of it- not bending or breaking it yet, but making the material complain about what she's doing to it.

    "If we get into trouble, we'll be helping /you,/ not the other way around, and remember when that happens that /we/ paid /you./"

    There is a darkening of her expression, then, and her eyes start to softly glow a horridly violent hue of red. "We've made our peace with the death of our people, but we're not above catharsis. Do not /ever/ pretend that we're blind enough not to see the kind of people you are. We are /very/ forgiving. We are seeing the good in all of you. If you hide it for even a moment, we might not be so kind."

Nebula has posed:
    Does Nebula come to Rocket's defence? Hell no. But her eyes and brain, cybernetic and organic, study Karen's strength as she starts to apply pressure to that weapon.. and then to the immense energy built up around her eyes. Hope. She feels a sudden swelling of hope. She pushes it down as best she can.. but, still, the idea is in her head now, the notion.

    The worst part of it? she knows if dad ever got hold of her he'd see it too -- everything she just saw. A person, capable of destroying him. She has to be smart about this. If she just outright says what she wants it'll be recorded too.

    "Thank you for your patronage. I have to ask though, do you have a price if someone needed smiting?," she asks. Thanos needed smiting and she really wanted to be the one to do it.. but hey, if she can some how convince this tall weapon of convenience to do it for her... somehow she seems the most amenable to the notion of murderifying Thanos for her. Then again, she doesn't really know Karen, even if Karen thinks she knows what kind of person she is. "Sometimes a person needs a good smiting."

Rocket has posed:
Rocket is usually smart enough not to poke bears. Usually. He also has a mouth on him that has got him in and out of trouble more times than he can count. "Hey! I'm workin' here!" he blurts, raising his voice as he glares at Karen giving the big gun a squeeze.

"If your sister can do that with a star, then why the hell did you come calling on us? And don't underestimate us. We're pretty good at what we do, too. We've already saved a backwater little planet or moon or whatever it was from some loser runnin' a scam." He does not look very happy about her just taking his gun, but he seems to understand he won't be getting it back until she decides he can. He /does/ know enough about Kryptonians to know what they're capable of.

Then comes a muttered, "Yeah, you look like you wanna fry me right now. Maybe you should, just to put me outta my misery. You ain't the only one who's had a lotta shit happen to them. The universe just laughs at me one day after another." His little arms cross as Nebula of all people opts for a measure of politeness.

The goggles continue to hide the eyes. That's a good thing right now.

Karen Starr has posed:
    Karen's head turns slightly, and her eyes lose that red glow. She doesn't look directly at Nebula, but she's got her in her sights over her shoulder. "I don't really charge for smiting services. If there's someone out there who needs it- if someone's in danger, just let us know. We'll try to find them and put a stop to it. Warworld was a difficult thing to catch, it was always moving and reports weren't static- before it rolled up on Earth. Beat the shit out of Mongul twice." she claims- and, frankly, it's not difficult to believe except for the fact that she isn't dead.

    Regardless, her attention goes back to Rocket. "It would have been really troublesome. Kara sometimes gets ahead of herself. She's young." There's a sigh, and a roll of her eyes at that. "And really, honestly, that's great to hear. The problem is that someone like me, /I/ worry that /you/ were just trying to cut out the /competition/ in that regard."

    At Rocket's outburst, she pauses a moment, and the blue of her eyes turns a little pale. She's looking through the raccoon now, and down to his very genetic structure, she's answering a question she's curious about: Just how alien /is/ Rocket? Just what was done to make Rocket, Rocket?

    "The only reason anyone treats you that way is because you act like you deserve it. Maybe you do, but maybe, just /maybe/, if you changed your tone, you wouldn't. It's entirely possible people like me wouldn't let the universe say a damn thing if that were the case."

Nebula has posed:
    She's seen too much. Heard too much. Now she absolutely must stay away from father. If he learns what Kryptonians can do he'll be ready for them. This has to remain a surprise. Earth, the backwater planet no one has even heard of - marked 'Terra' in most databases, just so happens to house four weapons of mass Thanos killing destruction. She allows herself to smile for the briefest of moments, probably at the most inappropriate time.

    "Free of charge, how charitable," she remarks and then looks at the way Karen is observing Rocket. "They brought humans with them," she says as a way of explaining why they needed the Milano, like it were the most obvious thing in the world to her. Her eyes roam back over the plasma gun and she has a satisfying revelation that most of it is unnecessary - for her.

    "She doesn't know who you are or what you've done Rocket," she says really talking about herself, "Take the win." There's quite a lot of bitterness in her voice when she says that though, accusingly. It's better that these Kryptonians not known she and her sister are mass murderers.

Rocket has posed:
Rocket grows quiet while Nebula and Karen discuss a few particulars of this and that, flicking his torch off in the meantime. "Oh," is all he has to say at first to the explanation about Kara potentially acting beyond reason. "Well, we like it better without any competition around. I ain't gonna lie about that. Makes getting jobs a lot easier." He merely shrugs at Nebula's mention of the humans. His opinion of 'humies' in general is no secret, and part of why he is sometimes scarce.

Karen's efforts to analyze him would show he's as much machine internally as organic. There has been..a lot of work done on him to make him the way he is, a strange combination of cybernetics and flesh, of real organs and otherwise. It explains how he can get around the way he does, how he can display the strength he does have, but whatever was done can't have been comfortable at the time and it looks like it took a lot more than just one time.

"Yeah, sure, whatever," he mumbles after Karen suggests he just..play nicer or something. He likely doesn't want to hear it right now. "Nebula, if you want me to tell her all the bad things I've done, we can all pull up chairs. I've mixed in a few good things once in a while, but I'm no saint. Nobody here is." Shoving the goggles back up to his forehead, his ears flatten back. "Or maybe I'll just fix my gun later and let you two talk over tea since you're fast becoming best friends already."

Karen Starr has posed:
    Karen sets the gun down primarily unharmed, so that when Rocket turns around to go back to work, he has his project. She sets her hands on her hips for a moment, and takes a page from Kal's book- something that it's hard to believe sometimes she's read multiple times over, and memorized several chapters from.

    The one she's more familiar with probably has some different verbiage in it, because her Kal landed in the 1930s, but we probably shouldn't discuss Karen's age.

    "It's not about what you've done, it's about what you /do/ about what you've done. Whether or not you're comfortable with the person you were, and how you act on that to make you the person you are and will be. We don't need storytime. It's about action."

    Having said that, Karen figures the message won't be heard- but it's there, at least. Time to go find Kara and Zatanna. The latter has the most recent suit, so hers should be fine- but they all need to be tested on target before they have to use them around Krypton.