RP: YSS Miharu Prologue, Day 3

"Let's dig in!"

She lifted a large slice of tuna-steak onto her plate, then lifted her fork. She eyed the food suspiciouly - But just then, BLAM! The fork landed on its first offensive, direct hit to the steak's hull! ~MUNCH~ BLAM! The next hit destroyed the steak's weapons systems! ~SWOLLOW, MUNCH~ KABLAM! Another hit tore into the steak's reactor! ~SWOLLOW, MUNCH~

"Mmmmmm," she mumbled, with her mouth full.

Another superior. I'm going to be bowing so much on this trip, I'll need to replace my hip once a week... Rising from her seat briefly, Tomi returned Chigusa's bow. "Santô Hei Saito Miyoko." She tapped one of the green panels on her uniform. "I'll be in charge of keeping you all in one piece and playing with anything new we find."

Kotori seated herself at the head of the table. Chigusa immediately diving for the food when the others weren't yet seated and that some other members of the crew hadn't arrived drew a tolerant sigh out of the Miharu's commander.

She was not going to tout table manners. But she was going to lead by example in this instance.

Chigusa was happy. It was the first real meal she had eaten since before she was stationed at the Iori. The instant ramen, canned soup and beans had been growing on her.

"Oh my god, so... Yummy..."

Leutre broke from his meditation when he heard the announcement sound over the loud hum of machinery. Time to eat, he thought as he made his way up to the main deck. Boy, what I wouldn't give for a bowl of stroganoff and spiced wine.

When he finally reached the wardroom, he paused and took a long glance around at the occupants. 'Damn it, Kotori is already here. And Nyton too. Fantastic. Maybe skipping a meal or three might be a good idea. If Kotori actually knows what happened, she really will attempt to throw me out an airlock.'

As he thought this he unconsciously looked about the room, until his gaze fell on a head of pink hair. Pink? Leutre could of sworn that the Mizuho had more of a fuchsia tone to her hair. 'Ah, there she is over by Nyton. Yup, it's more a fuchsia or purple, but not a pink-- Wait, if Mizuho is over there then who is...' He studied the pink haired Neko for a moment, until he caught a glimpse of her young face.

Leutre's jaw dropped as he came to the realization that she was in fact a stranger. Pointing a finger at Chigusa he cried out, "Holy hyperpulse drives, you Nekos really are multiplying behind my back! I was only kidding back in the loading bay, for Fate's sake. You didn't have to actually go and do it!"

"This is our new yamataian technician, Amagasaki Chigusa-Hei." Kotori replied, nodding her greetings to Leutre. "Try to get along?"

After Leutre, the raven-haired Masako entered the room with a polite bow to everyone before sitting down at the table. Placing her datapad off to the side, she looked around the room only for her eyes to lock onto a new member at the table. Yet another person taller than her, which wasn't hard, with strikingly pink hair. The young neko couldn't help but look at the new recruit with a hint of confusion before deciding it was best to introduce herself instead of rudely staring. "Welcome aboard," she replied with a smile. "I am Kurohoshi Masako-Santô Juni," she introduced herself with a nod of her head.

"I don't believe I've seen you onboard and I must say, I'm quite surprised we're receiving a new crew member at this Iori." the young neko explained.

"Wait, Yamataian... New crew member?" Leutre followed suit and took a seat at the table. He then turned to the pink haired Yamataian and stared at her intently. "You know, now that I think of it, she doesn't actually look like a Neko clone. Oh, thank the abyss. For a moment there I actually thought that she was..." He gave her a silly grin and chuckled. "You know, I really need to stop inhaling those coolant fumes. They can't be good for me."

Nyton had taken a spot on the table near Mizuho so they could continue to talk. Or rather actually begin since they had not gotten very far before the dinner announcement had been made. He studied the new Yamataian woman before he watched Leutre enter. With interest he made sure to note the man's behavior during their meal. He was after all under his heavy scrutiny now.

After others had greeted themselves and Leutre's comment about coolant fumes Nyton waited for Chigusa to be between bites before he introduced himself. "I am Nito Juni Nyton Claymere. Nice to meet you Chigusa-Hei."

Chigusa swallowed a mouthful of Tuna Steak and smiled, giggling.

"Nice to meet you all. I hope to be a valuable addition to the crew."

~BLAM~ Another hunk of the Steak's main reactor was just torn off!

"Amagasaki-Hei, you were greeted for the first time by superior ranked officers and did not stand to at least offer a bow. Furthermore, your table manners are unseemly: haven't you noticed you are the only one eating? The cook has not invited us yet to start on our repast." Kotori's eyes did not blink as she regarded the girl - the golden orbs were flat and expressionless. "Once you swallow, please get up, offer proper greetings to the others and then you will get down and do fifty push-ups as atonement."

Leutre lowered his eyes and looked away from the table. Oh dear, this seems oddly familiar. Almost exactly like when Kotori reprimanded at breakfast. That poor girl, if she's anything like I am she's going to be in for a world of hurt.

Looking up at Amagasaki he said, "There are three things I've learned in the Star Army." He leaned forward across the table and lowered his voice. "First, anyone of higher rank than you will have no sense of humor, nor will they like being reminded of that fact. Two, always bow to everyone... Just in case they might be important or obnoxious. Three, don't ever threaten to kill anyone in their sleep. Ever. You never know when they may take it entirely out of context and threaten to space you for it." His gaze flickered over to Nyton a moment before he sat back down.

Chigusa immediatly set down her utencils, swallowed, jumped up, and bowed.

"Gomennasai. It's nice to meet you all, and I hope to prove useful. As a Technician, my duty is to maintain and repair the YSS Miharu, become acting armorer of the YSS Miharu, and continue development to further the technilogical prowess of the Star Army of Yamatai."

She jumped to the ground, and began the motion with her body. Arms, down, chest to the ground, back up, over and over. She was doing them very well, in fact. It almost as though she were glad to have been given her first reprimanding and punishment.

This is so cool! she thought.

Kotori allowed the expressionless mask to slip - she hated to administer punishments, but she didn't want to look too sympathetic either - and smiled slighty, glad Chigusa was taking the rebuke in stride. It wasn't as if she hadn't heard what Leutre told in a hushed tone to the new crewmember: the cat-like ears she had were there for a reason - he wasn't getting away with a whisper with little background noise even at the other end of a 10-person rectangular table.

Leutre was a troublemaker. She knew that much from seeing the way her other crewmembers looked at him sometimes. She hadn't acted on it beyond asking for the basic courtesies: Nyton and Yukari could take care of shaping him up... but what really bothered her was the way he looked at her when he thought she wouldn't notice.

Dislike, fear or resentment. She wasn't sure what it was exactly, but she knew something bad was there. She wasn't sure she understood how she could have gotten on his bad side. When had she been unkind with him? The worse she had really done was to give him occasional reality checks on what she expected his job would be (which, namely, did not include sabotaging their equipment) and ask him for pushups when he had failed to greet her properly. Otherwise, she was trusting her ship's proper functioning to him and despite his eccentricity and his difficulty in adapting to military life, she accepted not sending him back to Nepleslia.

The young man was unpleasantly reminding her of the late Chisou, whom had fancied acting most distastefully with her coworkers when it would have been so much more convenient for everyone - especially her - to simply try to cooperate and get along her charge's coworkers. After all, they had been all on the same side. The same applied here.

"Veressis-san, I hear you are something of a space gypsie; being born on a ship and spending most of your life traveling around known space." She said, her voice clear and, she hoped, inviting conversation. "How did you come to gain Yamataian citizenship and enroll yourself in the Star Army? I am puzzled as to why you would have chosen that path instead of following up on your father's business."

Yukari managed to stick her head out of the kitchen area for a moment, another bowl of oil (a lighter one this time, without tomato) in one hand and a bowl of just tomatoes in the other. Whether she could be seen or not, she did not consider before flashing a queer stare at Chigusa.

How old is she? Miharu helpfully pulled up the file in an image panel and highlighted the age, which Yukari glanced at for just a moment. 19? She seems so much younger ... Yukari made the file go away with her mind, briefly noting how nice it was to have a MEGAMI unit that was not strange and a KAMI unit.

She turned her head back at Tom. "It appears you are not the only 'happy' one now, Freeman-Heisho." She smiled at him.

Chigusa finished her push-ups, stood back up and bowed.

She was contemplating blurting out 'Thank you sir, may I have another!', but she decided agains it. She sat down, and waited for the cook to allow her to start eating. She noticed something discontent between Kotori-taii and Leutre. She smiled to Kotori and spoke.

"Not only is this the first time since I joined the Star Army that I've eaten something besides fava beans and noodles, but this is also the first time I've ever been reprimanded aboard a starship."

She called out to the cook, who wasn't yet at the table.

"Hey! I love your tuna-steak, it's a lot better than canned soup!"

So Captain Boondocks and the Bubblegum Princess here are 2/3 of the ship's maintenance crew? Tomi shuddered slightly at the thought, images of the ship's almost-inevitable self-destruction running through her mind. I certainly hope Freeman-heisho knows what he's doing...

She leaned forward, resting her head on her chin and glancing at Leutre in response to Kotori's inquiry. "I'd be interested in hearing some of that myself, if you don't mind. Your earlier descriptions made your childhood sound... quite a bit different from my own experiences."

"Don't get me started on my childhood!" Leutre chuckled and shook his head. "As to how I ended up out here... Funny story, actually. We have this sport we play out there called unguided orbital re-entry. Bloody fantastic sport. It's when you take a load of shuttles, strip them of navigational computers, and race them down through the atmosphere of a planet trying to hit the ground first. Of course, we race at several times the speed of sound. If something important tears off or your fingers slip on the controls, you and your shuttle usually end up splattered over several square miles. Bloody stroganoff and scrap soup."

He leaned back in his seat and grinned. "I personally love the sport. Nothing gets the blood a-leaping like screaming down through the atmosphere at hypersonic speeds, you know? It's an incredible high to brush with death. But after a little incident where I nearly ended up a smear on the side of a mountain, Da finally decided it was best for me to go somewhere that would offer ST backups, since we couldn't afford them ourselves. I didn't mind so much because it was an opportunity to meet new people and try new things, so I went along with it. And here I am."

"I'll probably return home one day." He sighed, feeling a hint of nostalgia. It seemed like years since the last time he was home. "The Miharu is nice enough, bless her bulkheads, but it's just not the same as home. To people like me, there's nowhere as close to true happiness as a frontier colony. Good drinks, jokes, laughter, staunch friends, spirited lovers, and the occasional rousing pirate raid. What more could you possibly ask for?"

He keeps mentioning that dish. He must really like it. Kotori rested her forearms on the table and joined her hands together, interlacing her fingers. "I can see how service in the Star Army would have its appeal if it would mean you could have your thrills and not have to pay for them." She nodded sagely.

"What, you mean we've got more happy people aboard? That's impermissible! I'M the only one allowed to be off-the-cuff and fruity!â€