goneawayworld | Your Friendly Neighborhood Shadowrunner

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Your Friendly Neighborhood Shadowrunner

Who: Saturday… and you?
What: Open prompts
Where: Locations noted in title
When: in the period between the intro and the next big event
Warnings/Notes: Second prompt may lead to discussing disturbing events in Saturday’s past. No sexual assault, but warnings for violence, child abuse, and eldritch horrors.

1. Free Tickets to the Gun Show [location: communal bathrooms]

Saturday looks at herself in the mirror and nods, satisfied. Even Maggie couldn’t argue the rightness of this; these uniforms were hideous, and too long, and she didn’t like them. Therefore…

She picks a thread out of her newly-created sleeveless jumper. It won’t stop unraveling, so she yanks and breaks it. Her former sleeves lie limply on the sink before her as she admires herself. The room is empty (to the best of her knowledge); her dignity is safe. She starts striking poses.

In her defense, those muscles are pretty impressive.

2. Let Sleeping Adepts Lie? [location: gardens]

The gardens aren’t really gardens, except for the patch that Bunny and Gadget have taken over, but they’re green and they’re quiet and it’s easy to avoid people. These qualities are why Saturday is kneeling in a remote corner of them, hands cupped open in her lap the way her father taught her. Holding emptiness. Control is an illusion. Go with the flow.

Keep your distance, and she looks peaceful. Come closer, and you can see her jaw is tight and trembling, and tears are trickling out from under her closed eyes.

3. Come Fly Away (Or Dream You Can) [location: rig exterior]

The rain never actually stops, but sometimes it lessens into a misty drizzle, the kind of thing a true Seattleite scoffs at. Saturday, being one of those, is out on the deck. It’s evening, going on full dark; the western horizon in orange fading into pink, and the sky above is clouded velvet. She’s tied cloth around her hands and feet for grip, and is running the pipes. Her shoes are sitting neatly at the base of a large beam. She has no destination in mind, no particular purpose; she isn’t in the training area because she wants to be outside, unrecorded, unmeasured, moving for the sheer glory of it. It almost feels like freedom.

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Saturday follows her gaze and shrugs. "It was kind of a spur of the moment thing. Don't like sleeves anyway, always feel too hot."

She gathers the sleeves up and offers them to Catra. "You can shred 'em, if you like. Figured I'd use them for grip." She mimes wrapping something around her hands, by way of explanation.

"Neat," Catra replies. She takes the sleeeves and begins neatly shredding-slash-slicing them into lengthwise strips. It's kind of terrifying how sharp those are.

"Yeah, I don't like them either. Maybe I'll do the same thing," she says, clearly pondering the idea. "But who knows what counts as breaking the rules around here--I haven't got that figured out yet, which is really getting on my nerves. You know, aside from trying to break stuff."

"If I get zapped, you'll know this is." Saturday watches the speedy shredding with appreciation. Catra would make a good razorgirl; she's got force and finesse, and she enjoys using her tools. "Thanks for the assist. How're things with Adora now, anyway?"

"Um. I dunno." The question is one she should have expected from Saturday but she still feels kind of awkward about how to answer it.

"We... Well, I don't hate her. I don't really know how she feels about me still. It's weird. Tense. It makes me wish I could go back to having her mad at me. At least I know what to expect then."

Saturday nods. "Change is pretty scary. But you're trynna change things for the better, right? Just gotta be patient and not freak out and act too soon."

She pats Catra on the shoulder briefly. "At least you ain't gotta worry about a stab in the back."

Catra rolls her eyes, though it's good natured.

"Please. Adora would never stab someone in the back. She'd run up all 'ARRGH I'M GONNA FIGHT YOU!' She's not sneaky at all." She offers the shredded strips of jumpsuit back.

"Here. Hope you make some Jorgmund jerk mad."

Edited 2020-05-01 22:27 (UTC)

Saturday laughs as she accepts the strips back and starts wrapping them around her hands.

"I can appreciate that, honestly. Been way too many skulking, sneaky, plotty bastards in my life, lately. As long as you can trust each other in the field, the rest can wait til you get home, yeah?"

"Adora has always been that way. It's part of why I like--I mean liked, her." She feels that she has to correct herself. Because whatever is going with Adora, she's still not really sure.

"And yeah. That's the important part. Not sure I trust anyone here, though," Catra admits, leaning up against the door frame with a scowl.

"I think we can trust the other new hires," Saurday says thoughtfully. "Most of 'em seem decent, or at least able to focus on the present problem. Group like this, you'll get personality conflicts, but Jorg is doing a real good job of setting themselves up as the ultimate bad guy."

Saturday takes the moment to wash her face a little. "Be interesting to see how things shake out."

"Like I said before, I don't really trust people." Catra says, despite already trusting Saturday. She does her best, though. Really. Grr. She's prickly and mean, honest.

"Yeah, we'll have to wait and see. I guess. I don't like waiting and seeing."

Edited 2020-05-02 14:21 (UTC)

Saturday is very trustworthy; trust is a sacred thing once given, and if you can't hold it, don't accept it. Being someone Catra can trust seems like an easy job, so far. And the poor kid sure needs someone for the job.

"It's a pain," she agrees. "But it's good discipline. You ever learn meditation?"

That's kind of the tragedy of Catra. She badly wants to rust, but then... doing has only ever hurt her, as far as she sees it.

"Nope. Sounds stupid."

"Now, what makes you say that?"

She knows, of course. They always say that. And part of the whole process is making them think through what they say, and why.

"Because I hate sitting still," Catra says. Well, kind of. She hates sitting still when she feels like she has to sit still.

"And it seems like a waste of time."

"Mmm. Meditation isn't a way of sitting, it's a state of mind. You can do it moving, too - that's how I do it, when I can't settle."

She stretches and starts walking out of the bathroom, assuming Catra will follow, since a bathroom is an odd place to have a chat when you get right down to it. "My pops used to say, meditation is how you get control over yourself. And you gotta have control, or someone's gonna take it from you."

"I always thought it was like, sitting in one spot and focusing on your thoughts." Catra doesn't like focusing on her thoughts. They're usually bad, for one thing. She does follow Saturday, at least, stepping out into the corridor in her usual indifferent slouch.

"Sure, sounds good. Nice, easy words."

"I mean, that's one way of doing it, sure. The way I like, though, you can be sitting or moving. An' it's kind of focusing on your thoughts, but like - letting them go through you. Not trynna pick 'em apart, just letting them exist, being aware of them. Getting comfortable with 'em and then, it's real easy to let it go. It's like - cleaning yourself out. So you become a clear stream."

Saturday needs to find time to do that for herself, in fact. This place, the people in it, they keep stirring waters that had barely settled. She's all mud and debris right now.

"Control is about letting go, not holding on. Letting go is easy."

"It's really easy to tell people to let go," Catra says with the air of someone correcting a misconception. As they meander into the hallway she slouches up against one wall, arms crossed.

"It sounds really nice and easy when you talk about it, but..." She shrugs. "Most of the time people who say that something like that is easy are lying, either to you or themselves. Or both."

"No, people think it's hard, because it's scary. Scary isn't the same as hard, but it likes to pretend it is."

Saturday slouches up across from her. "What you did the other night, talking to Adora - that was a kind of letting go. You let go of the reasons you were holding on to for why you couldn't just say what you feel. It was scary to start, but once you did, was it as really as bad as you thought it would be?"

"I wasn't scared," Catra says, turning a glare onto Saturday for a moment. "I don't need some lecture about how easy things are from someone who's had a completely different life from me, okay? If it was easy, then everything would have been different." Her tail is starting to lash in agitation.

"Don't give me this crap."

"We haven't had the same life, no. But that don't mean I haven't seen my fair of shit." Saturday is, as always, unperturbed. "Nothing wrong with being scared. Shows good sense, strong survival skills. But sometimes it turns into a bad habit. And meditation is a way to get good at telling the difference."

She shrugs. "We can talk about something else, if you like."

"Whatever." Catra crosses her arms stiffly and looks away from Saturday, all bristling prickliness. She stares away from Saturday, going quiet for a long few moments. Why does Saturday always do this? She's always probing and asking stupid questions.

"Just stop trying to make me your little project. I don't need you or anyone else to fix me."

Edited 2020-05-03 15:13 (UTC)

"That's right. You're not a project and you don't need fixing," Saturday affirms mildly. "Meditation's just been real useful for me, that's all. If you don't think it's for you, then that's that."

God, Catra really is a piece of home in all this horror - cat ears and portal nonsense aside. Wanna-be hardasses and vulnerable kids are the same across metaplanes, it seems.

Catra's reply is to make a rude gesture with her hand.

"Well stop suggesting crap. Last time I had someone this concerned with how I was acting and whatever her name was Shadow Weaver. Stop acting like I need your help. I don't need you or your stupid suggestions or anybody else's!"

Edited 2020-05-03 17:29 (UTC)

Saturday raises an eyebrow. "All right, then."

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