Log:Heliost: Do You Want to Talk About It?
Mollie and Sela prepare for a job
OOC Date: November 6, 2015 (Optional)
Location: Heliost
Participants: Amallia Madine, Sela Modonric
RP Rating and Summary
RP Rating: PG-13 (Some crude remarks, alcohol) Summary: Amallia Madine and Sela Modonric discuss an upcoming job, as well as the violence endemic within the galaxy at large.
Log
[ Amallia Madine (Mollie)]=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Hyperjumps in the Heliost are fairly comfortable affairs. The ship's been outfitted with all manner of gravitational and inertial stabilizers to make reaching hyperspace comfortable, but nothing compares to cruising altitude aboard one's little mobile townhouse. Mollie is set up on one of the couches (her favorite couch) in the crew lounge, lazily draped over the armrest on the far side with her feet tucked beneath a small pillow on the opposite side. She's got a datapad that she's flipping through but, well, you know our girl. She hates reading.
"Oiiiii, I hate readin'," she whines, hanging her head back and looking upside-down towards Sela who is (let's be honest) probably sitting cross-legged on the floor and tapping away at one or two or even three (!) datacomps at once. Mollie reaches for a bit of plastic that had, at one time, housed a bunch of crispy air-puffed space pops. She balls it up. Crnchcnrchnrchnch. Gives it a toss!
Sails high. Wide. Right and left, somehow. Not her best work.
[ Sela Modonric (Sela)]=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Sela Modonric is sitting on the deck. However comfortable a hyperspace jump aboard the Heliost can be, she defiantly refuses to subscribe to the homey comforts. No, with all that acceptably-nice furniture lying around, she's sitting on the deck. Wrapped with a coarse woolen blanket over her lap and a nice soft white throw rug over her shoulders, though she is not particularly cold. In front of her sit two datacomps, one in front of each knee, which she leans over to tap at with a back-wrenching lean that she'll habitually repeat every day of her working life until she wonders why she's got such pains all the time.
Let nobody say that Sela is afraid to be a stereotype. In one thing only does she defy the odds: she only works on one of the datacomps at a time. Type-type here. Turn at the waist. Type-type there. She does not type in stereo. She does not have the seamless multitasking brain for that sort of job.
As she proves when a plastic space pop bag whips not that close past her head. She jerks up and watches it go, like a cat who's seen an ankle.
The packet bounces very far. Sela stands up. She pulls the throw blanket tighter around her shoulders, while the woolen blanket falls away and is kicked aside. She walks to the packet, bends over, picks it up, which is probably actually much better for her back than what she had been doing, and puts it in the bin.
[ Amallia Madine (Mollie)]=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
This is fascinating stuff to Amallia Madine. She watches the entire display unfold before her eyes with a bemused and puzzled expression. The fact that Sela is wrapped so tightly up in blankets. The way she just sort of seamlessly transitions from hunching over to standing up. The fact that, as if compelled by some unknown force, actually throws the garbage away. "Ha," Mollie says. Sela probably can't hear her, either. Too busy listening to music in her headphones or whatever she's got going on. Mollie's jacket is on the floor, leaving her in just that pair of high-waisted jeans and her cropped spaghetti strap tank. The whole landscape of her arm tattoo is on display, with mere bits of the one that sprawls across her waist, hip, and thigh peeking out between distressed jean and tank top. She reaches for another bit of trash -- this one's a can of some sort of beer. Azeezel's favorite. She crumples it up and tosses it again at Sela.
Fweeeeeeee, clatter clatter clatter.
It hits the ground and rolls a little bit, and Mollie observes.
"You know it's warm in here, right? No shortage of heat when you're sitting on a fusion engine," she says, uncertain if the woman can hear or not. "I can turn it up for you, if you'd like. I'd do that for your comfort, you know. Kind captain that I am."
[ Sela Modonric (Sela)]=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Sela watches the beer can smack the deck by her and roll nearby. In the tactical situation it is ambiguous whether Amallia was throwing the can -at- her, or trying to throw the can away and taking advantage of the maid being up. If the latter it was considerate, really, and so Sela picks it up and puts it in the trash with a carefully-studied, neutral expression.
And she can hear, thank you very much. She can at least hear that something is being said. And when she notes it, she pulls out her Spacepod, the fashionable little white thing that's currently blaring a podcast about refridgeration or something at a surprisingly sensible number of duradecibels.
"I'm not cold," she says. A hint of defensiveness. She pulls the throw rug tighter over her shoulders, tug tug, in protection. "I just, there's a draft." Yes, it's called ventilation, it keeps them from suffocating in bubbles of motionless carbon dioxide, space ships generally seek it out. "I don't like the draft on my bare skin." But she says it strongly, without self-pity. Looking up and looking Amallia in the eye. Sela Modonric's life is difficult, but she pwoers through and she does not complain.
[ Amallia Madine (Mollie)]=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
"Then why're you--," Mollie starts to butt in. It's a bad habit of her's, talking over people. Something she'd picked up in her time in the military. Speak loudly, clearly, and often if you want to go anywhere. Especially as a pilot. But she's catching herself. Learning to adjust to the world of civilians. She shuts her mouth and lets Sela explain the draft, and how she doesn't like the feeling of it. Mollie tips her head to the side and shifts now, rolling over onto her tummy so that she can press both of her elbows into the armrest instead of using it as a backrest. The engineer of the sofa is likely grinning ear to ear.
She picks her porg-sock covered feet up off the couch and swivels them in the air. The little grippy bottoms of the socks (that keep her from falling over) point towards Sela now. The little tag from the Porg Sanctuary on Chandrila is still proudly displayed, hanging from the left sock. Despite wearing them, Mollie fancies them a bit of a collector's item.
"Well, I can't do much about that. Seein' as if I turn that bit off, we all suffocate," she says. Don't think about it. Don't think about it. Don't think about it.
"Goddess, I try not to think about it. We were never meant to go so fast, you know? Anyway. I've been eyein' a bit of a job. Wonderin' if you'd want to take a look? See if you could, ah, I dunno. Come up with something to get us in? C'mere," she says.
[ Sela Modonric (Sela)]=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"We don't want to suffocate," Sela confirms. There's a hint of concession in the laconic way she phrases that. She supposes that the mere flesh and blood people, the people who interact with machines on the physical rather than the spiritual level, wouldn't want to suffocate. But to Sela, who knows that the software which keeps them from suffocating was written in Durarust and has three memory leaks and nine unpatched security vulnerabilities, suffocating now would have the advantage of not letting her worry about suffocating later.
But a bit of a job? That piques Sela's interest. She stoops over, picks up the wool blanket with one hand, holding the throw blanket with the other. She walks to the couch and sits down by the porg socks, on the edge of the cushion. Close enough to be friendly, but not so close as to actually sit on her captain's shins. "Tell me more," she says, her eyes wide. A purr of interest rolling through her voice.
[ Amallia Madine (Mollie)]=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
"Not unless we're with trusted loved ones and have picked out a safe word," Mollie quips, seamlessly transitioning from that topic and into the next without letting her words really sink in. She leans forward to pick up the data pad from the floor, consequently pushing her butt up and towards Sela's face while she has actual time to contemplate what Mollie just said as the pilot retrieves it. Her body twists then, going back to using the arm-rest as a back-rest and pushing her feet under Sela's legs to warm them up. She leans a bit closer now, tipping the datapad towards the girl.
It's a travel brochure to some far-off pleasure planet. A luxury yacht in a vast oceanic planet made up of chains of islands and big, big seas. She scrolls in a way that is likely infuriating and endearing at the same time. Slow and a little unfamiliar, but adequate enough.
"It's basic Sela stuff. Access. Encryption. Maybe a teensy bit of fabrication and forgery, but you know I'm good for those bits. There's a certain someone aboard the massive liner that likes to do a bit of a... side hustle, yeah? Spice. We'd need to get aboard and make the delivery. Figure we may as well take a day an' enjoy the pleasure cruise as well," she says. And then tips the data pad towards Sela, knowing she'll want more details.
"What do you think, Glasses?"
[ Sela Modonric (Sela)]=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Sela Modonric, who has talked to Amallia Madine before, passes over remarks about safe words like Mollie's feet pass under her programmer's butt, honed from years of sitting on anything that's not a chair. She takes the datapad when it's offered, pushes up her glasses by the bridge, looks through the bottoms of the lenses, and skims through the brochure as though she's some socialite considering each cruise line's competing offerings but really eying up which of the pool boys look most liable to be pliable.
"Good hustle on a boat like this," Sela observes, noting all the artfully-posed pictures of people and aliens having stock-photo good times by glamorous seas, holding cocktails with their orifices open in laughter, a game of quoits happening on deck, a picture of crowded, stupid pleasure just crying out for copious amounts of hard drugs.
She pushes the specs back up her nose again, and looks over at the skipper. What does she think? "I think choking and suffocation are two different erotic experiences." She offers the data pad back. "And also it's probably a scootch harder than you think, computer-wise, but only a scootch. Cruises lines tend to run a pretty tight ship." She doesn't even smile. "But we'll manage it."
[ Sela Modonric (Sela)]=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"Drug busts?" Sela addresses that ominous topic, that possibility of life in one of the -bad- prisons, with an air of interest. She throws an arm over the back of the couch, and her fingers scritchy-scratch on the cushion contemplatively. The little raising in her voice, the little light in her eyes, the little smile on her lips. "Sounds like we're in demand." Such is her respect for the government of this pleasure planet.
She listens to Mollie's perspective with interest. When she sips on space beer, she holds her hand out for a sip of her own.
"I'll have to look at it," she says, with the cautionary note of the accomplished information technology professional. "Let me poke and prod and tell them my name is Azeezel and I'd like two first-class cabins and see what they do." Shrug. "But I don't think it should take -very- long..."
[ Amallia Madine (Mollie)]=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Sela's joke about saying their name is Azeezel prompts a brief smack from Mollie on the shoulder. Nothing hard or earnest, but rather playful and joking -- just as the remark itself had been. "Let's avoid using names that are wanted in lawful sectors and 'ave bounties in unlawful ones, yeah? Incognito is the trick here, and Azeezel is... what is the eopposite of incognito? Cognito? He is very cognito," she says thoughtfully. She settles back on the couch and gestures grandly with her hand (the one holding the beer) in a sweeping motion from right to left.
"I can see it now, you know. Lounging about on the deck of that liner. Soaking up some sun, having a few drinks, -existing-. Haven't done a lot of existing in awhile, and plus I told Phia I'd take 'er somewhere nice after that... Thyferra thing. That planet is too hot. Not nice," she says.
"You do your thing, Glasses. Let me know if you hit any hitches or if you are in need of my," Mollie starts to say, and then wiggles her fingers, "Fabrication services." Any excuse to make a fake ID.
[ Sela Modonric (Sela)]=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
When Mollie smacks Sela on the shoulder, Sela grimaces and rubs her shoulder as if it hurt, though it plainly didn't. "Hide in plain sight," she replies, and leans over to whack Mollie back, with the back of her fingers, light and soft in exactly the way this much-abused space couch isn't.
But she doesn't push the point. Instead she rolls her eyes slightly, in mock-resignation, and shakes her head. "Very well, Captain. I will not use any names of the crew getting involved in the smuggling operation to case security for the smuggling operation." This sounds like a deep, powerful concession from her. As though observing the most basic tenets of operational security somehow takes the zest off the lemon. Or she's still being sarcastic.
It's probably that last one.
Without a by-your-leave she reaches over to grab the datapad again, to scroll back through visions of shipboard bliss. "Might be fun," she says, with a voice of surprising optimism and hope. "Something a bit different. It's less crowded than Nar Shaddaa. Probably smells better."
[ Amallia Madine (Mollie)]=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Amallia Madine's nose wrinkles when Sela winces from the half-smack to her arm. "Ah, I'm sorry princess," she quips, and looks at her own palm, as if she, perhaps, somehow wasn't able to fathom her own strength. She was, of course. Amallia is a strong woman, but she's certainly not the sort to accidentally cause pain from something as benign as a smack to the shoulder. Still, play along, play along.
"Y'know, in the Republic, you'd say 'Yes sir, sorry sir'. But I suppose that will be enough. At ease, cadet," she says, and slings her right boot up onto the metal table with a heavy -thunk- of the reinforced sole atop the surface. She takes a tip-back of that ale and looks across the bunk and towards the railing that oversees the cargo bay and bottom hatch. Stars stream by so fast, they look like ribbons through hyperspace. They'll be here awhile longer.
"Bit different, yeah. Less crowded. More warm. Definitely smell better," she says. Her breath on the lip of that bottle washes a bit of condensation across the cool surface. Big green eyes turn Sela's way now as the woman beeps and boops on the data pad. Mollie's face gets a bit more serious, now. Hesitant, too.
"D'you want to talk about it?" she asks. There's a pregnant sort of pause, now. A moment where Mollie lets the weight of her words sink in.
"Pakko's. That job out in Thyferra. You're not used to it, yeah? How ugly it all can get."
[ Sela Modonric (Sela)]=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
It is, at first, all jollity. "Well I specifically did not join the Republic, did I, sir ma'am sir?" Sela asks with a smile on her lips, that same spark in her eye, a straightforward pleasure that goes far beyond getting a free cruise, just by doing enough specialized and difficult work to pay for the cruise legitimately twice over. It's a good moment. When they're in space and no-one can hear her laugh.
But things get serious. Does Sela want to talk about it? She raises her data pad in front of her face visibly. Her head drops down, as if to read through the top of her glasses. Her bangs fall towards her eyes, but they can't cover them, nor even do more than brush the tops of her frames. She's hiding, she's not a hider.
"I see a lot of things getting ugly," Sela points out. Her voice is level and straightforward and she's taking her time over every phoneme, so that she may go over the syllables before she enunciates them and wring out every trace of self-pity or fear and express her opinions in perfect, jaded, cynical neutrality. "I went on a pub crawl on Nar and there was a gun fight. Everything gets ugly." Recited like a third-grader doing a report on sticks. "Of course I'm not used to it."
[ Amallia Madine (Mollie)]=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Mollie's not going to push the conversation any more than she already has. It's a simple question, really. Do you want to talk about it? But simple questions aren't always simple to answer. In fact, a simple question can often times prove the most vexing. Thankfully, Mollie gave a bit more of a thread to pull on. Though Sela doesn't answer her question directly, she does begin to -talk-. And talk is good.
Mollie lifts her bottle to her lips and takes a thoughtful sip, turning it forward into her palm and then around a few times in the pad of it. Her fingernail catches a bit of the label and starts to push it up. "There are gun fights on Nar Shaddaa for less. People die for less. Credits or egos," she says with a soft shrug, and then turns to look back at the stars streaming through the viewport. She listens to Sela, though. She doesn't offer any advice or ultimatum, but she does listen. And delicately tap her thumbnail against the glass of her beer bottle.
"You don't have to get used to it, you know. You don't have to do anything. Not with us. But the galaxy we live in... the things we do. People are going to shoot at you. They're going to shoot at me, and Azeezel, and Phia, and Zevin. You don't have to shoot back, ever. But you do need to think and act. Run and hide, if you have to. No more of this freezing up," she says. And then takes another thoughtful sip.
"You run and you hide, d'you hear me?"
[ Sela Modonric (Sela)]=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"I don't -want-. To run and hide." Those shouldn't be two sentences. But they are, when Sela says them. The snap at the end of want is crisp and clear, and the look she gives Mollie is sincere and straightforward and refracted through droplets of angry tears. She scoots forward on the couch, leans over, and grabs one of the bottles of ale out of the space cooler. She does not ask for permission.
"It's not like..." she has to pause. She snorts. She wipes her eyes off on the throw rug that's still wrapped around her shoulders. She tries so very, very hard to defiantly refuse to acknowledge emotion, but they're getting through anyway. "It's not like, okay we're doing a dangerous thing today, stay out of the way Sela. That's fine." She whacks the edge of the bottle against the table, like Mollie did. The cap doesn't come off. "Like, okay. Fine. Whatever. I'm not the shooty heroine. Good." She whacks again. The cap still doesn't come off; the glass rim of the bottle gets a big scratch in it.
She holds the bottle up, in her hand, and there's phlegm in her voice and she looks at it and stares at the bottle like it's the entire stupid galaxy, because everyone on this ship is enough of a badass to open a bottle without a bottle opener except her and she lives in a galaxy where bottle openers are reserved for the rich and famous. "But like, I go out for -lunch- and mercenaries start coming in killing people and it's not like 'oh run' it's like 'oh there's needless violence everywhere I hope they think I'm pretty but not too pretty.'" She holds the bottle up, by the barrel. As if she's just going to smash it across the table and be damned. But she gives up. She thinks better. She puts the bottle back into the cooler, all chipped and dinged.
"I want to know how to shoot. Just a little. Just enough that if I point a gun at someone they'll think I can use it."
[ Amallia Madine (Mollie)]=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Mollie is not an unfeeling woman, but Sela's tears do not move her to motherly affection or compassion. She's not cold, mind you, but there isn't a projection of sympathy that comes from her when Sela begins to cry. She takes another slow sip from her ale and looks away, in fact, letting the woman talk it out. To speak through the phlegm and the salt in her mouth and throat. Mollie lets out a soft sigh through her nostrils just before she swallows her ale. The pilot watches Sela struggle with the beer bottle and, though she knows there's an opener on the fridge in the galley, she doesn't speak up. She just lets the girl hit at it and hit at it and hit at it, and only when she's about to give up does Mollie intervene.
She leans forward and grabs that wrist, guides the bottle down onto the edge, nesting the corner of that table right up against the seam where the glass meets the cap.
"There. Smack it right on the top. A little fulcrum and lever. At least, I think that's what they call it," she says. Pantomimes a fist lifting and dropping, right atop where Sela ought to give it a smack.
"No such thing as needless violence, love. No such thing as needed violence either. Violence is just violence, and it is a thing that is endemic to us. Perhaps in a different evolutionary paradigm, it would be different. That's my point. I can teach you how to shoot, but if you want to learn how to survive, it isn't something you ever turn off."
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[ Sela Modonric (Sela)]=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
It's lucky for their relationship that Sela is not pity-crying. She's trying not to cry at all, she's trying really hard, and she's not managing it, but the tears are of rage. She's frustrated and she's really really angry and she's scared and she wants to solve her problems by getting a gun. It's not consolation she's after. It's the hand guiding her wrist back to the table and showing her how to open the bottle of beer. Which, when she knows how, takes a modest level of force, and who cares that the bottle's shaken up enough that some durale comes fizzing out the top and Sela has to hold it over the deck for a bit; she's not an expert bottle-opener but she's infinitely better than she was before.
"I don't plan to turn off surviving." The action-hero one-liner, complete with a short, a 'huh', a swig of beer, and drinking at least is one star warrior skill Sela Modonric possesses already. "But being a non-combatant sure isn't--" bleeping "--working."
[ Amallia Madine (Mollie)]=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
"Alright, then," Mollie says, watching Sela smack the top of the bottle and take a sip of that beer. She's no action hero, but then... neither is Mollie. Nobody is a hero, anyway. Not really. Mollie drops her hand to her left thigh's holster and retrieves a long, sleek sporting blaster pistol from it. It's a black thing that looks slim and trim, but also difficult to conceal. She ejects the powerpack from the bottom, discharges the conendsing coils with a back and forth slide and a hiss of static and air, and flicks the safety on. When she hands it to Sela, she does so by the grip, with the barrel pointed towards the floor.
"Drearian Defence Conglomerate. She's called the 'Defender', and I s'pose that's a good enough bit of hardware for you. Shouldn't kick at all, but the long barrel will teach you how to aim proper. Stun and kill settings, standard. Should do you nicely," she says.
"Go on. Take it."
[ Sela Modonric (Sela)]=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
When Mollie pulls out her D.D.C., Sela's eyes frankly go big. Her pupils dilate. It's so long and sleek. "I was expecting something a bit smaller," Sela confesses in a voice that's pretty small itself, though she is very fortunate in her choice of phrasing. She reaches out to take the sidearm with both hands, cradling the barrel between her palms like a baby sparrow.
Somewhere along the way, Sela's absorbed some memes about gun safety. She transfers the firearm to her right hand and her fingers curl ludicrously low around the grip, her forefinger miles from the trigger. She does not aim the gun at anything she does not want to destroy, which means she holds it out away from her, her elbow bent sideways and her wrist craned up, aiming it with tremors at the garbage can, or at least aiming it at the garbage can as well as Mollie aimed that bag of space snacks earlier.
"Can you teach me to shoot it sometime not here?" Sela asks, making up for when she divided one sentence in two earlier.
[ Amallia Madine (Mollie)]=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
"I know you were. S'why I'm givin' you this. In for a gram, in for a kilo. As they say on Corellia," Mollie says. The wide-eyed look from Sela gets a half smirk from Mollie, who goes about finishing off her ale with a long tip and two deliberate gulps to finish it. Mmmm. Crisp. She elects -not- to throw the bottle, but rather neatly place it on the ground next to... well, the one she set down there earlier. She leans forward to get another bottle from the little whirlpool before banging its edge on the table once again. Less foamy than Sela's by far, but then... she's had practice.
"There's a range in the Hutt District we can shoot at. Wouldn't take you down there without enough iron on your hip to make a slaver thing twice about tryin' to put you in one of those metal bikinis. Cute as you'd be in one," she says. She shuffles a bit closer, reaching out to level that blaster and adjust Sela's form. She double checks (and triple checks for good measure) that it's been cleared and the powerpack ejected. All good.
"Hold it like this. You want to align this--" she says, tapping the far end of the barrel, "To this..." And the pin-sights towards the grip. "One eye closed, both hands on the grip."
[ Sela Modonric (Sela)]=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Straightening Sela's form is a task for patience. She isn't used to handing a firearm. It's heavier than she thinks, especially when she's holding the grip like an idiot, and the barrel keeps wanting to droop doowwwwnnnn over the deck plating until she realizes it's happening and jerks her hands up to aim, first at the window, and then back to the proper level around the trash can. Aiming down the sights is easy for her, actually; something in her computer life has got her used to closing one eye, looking through the right part of her glasses, and lining points up, and she definitely looks like a marksman from that perspective. But of course her hands are all over the place to such a degree that she won't hit anything regardless of how well she does that one bit.
Still. That's not really the point, is it? She tries to control the gun with her arms more than the wrists and that just means she's full-body-wiggling the definitely-unloaded firearm around the walls that keep the crew of the Heliost from turning into the Hel-was-t. It's pitifully obvious what a first-timer she is. But she doesn't seem bothered by it. This is not the first skill which, in adulthood, she's tried to pick up from scratch.
"Thanks, Mollie," she says. It is pitifully sincere, and she realizes it too late. "For the bikini comment I mean."
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