Sameen Shaw (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cactusy) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
revivalproject2023-12-31 11:48 am
cactusy) wrote in revivalproject2023-12-31 11:48 am
→ 002 | action | OTA
WHO: Sameen Shaw and OPEN
WHERE: Around Temba
WHAT: Shaw is taking her new job very seriously.
WHEN: Late December into early January
WARNINGS: N/A for now!
It's been three weeks and change, and while it would be a stretch to say that Shaw has settled in, she at least feels like she's gotten a good handle on the lay of the land. Beyond the basics (new planet, space travel, drafted by aliens who need their help) and the logistical matters (Data Points, communication devices, replicators), the ultimate conclusion that Shaw has come to is this: she's not going to be given any sort of direction from above, and so it's up to her to figure out how she's going to pull her weight around here. The people that she's met so far have largely been cooperative and communal, a real bunch of team players who value things that she also values in an abstract sense, but that she's never been any good at providing on a personal level: looking after the young and the vulnerable, making sure that people are cared for, fostering peace and hope and goodwill towards man and all that mushy crap.
So what's a girl to do when she's not the type to decorate trees and hand out presents in the city square, but she still sees the value in protecting other people's ability to do just that? She signs herself up for security, grabs a big gun, and sets out to patrol the city, that's what. According to the crew rosters, only a handful of other people have picked the security expertise, which means that only a handful of people can fully defend themselves. As far as Shaw is concerned, that means that people like her are here to pick up the slack.
She's not necessarily obvious about it. When she sits on a rooftop for hours and surveys the streets below for danger, she's easy to miss. When she patrols down on ground level, though, she's a little more conspicuous, especially since this doubles as urban exploration: and in the absence of bad guys to fight and with the memory of that one girl falling down a hole still fresh in her mind, this turns into an impromptu safety inspection. "Hey," she might say, popping her head out of a broken second-story window and as she calls down to a passer-by. "You know where I can get spray paint? There's a lot of sagging floorboards up here; I wanna write some warnings on the walls."
The wilderness around the city is where most of the real danger lies, she knows, and so if she spots someone heading out of town - particularly if they're alone, and particularly if they're weaponless - she'll drop what she's doing and approach. "Need back-up?" she'll ask. "Been a while since I've roughed it, but I can hold my own."
Shaw has always been good at moving forward. It's easy enough to accept this as her new life, because there's nothing much left for her back on Earth: just Lionel, who she knows will get along fine without her, and Bear, who she knows Lionel and his kid will take good care of. She misses New York, misses the restaurants and delis and the way unplowed snow sparkles in the moonlight at night, but she can exist just fine without it. She misses her team, but her team is dead, and that's that. Here on Agra 10, she has Root's leather jacket to keep her warm, and she has a cool new gun to help her protect her new crew, and she has her legs to keep her moving forward. And that will have to do.
WHERE: Around Temba
WHAT: Shaw is taking her new job very seriously.
WHEN: Late December into early January
WARNINGS: N/A for now!
It's been three weeks and change, and while it would be a stretch to say that Shaw has settled in, she at least feels like she's gotten a good handle on the lay of the land. Beyond the basics (new planet, space travel, drafted by aliens who need their help) and the logistical matters (Data Points, communication devices, replicators), the ultimate conclusion that Shaw has come to is this: she's not going to be given any sort of direction from above, and so it's up to her to figure out how she's going to pull her weight around here. The people that she's met so far have largely been cooperative and communal, a real bunch of team players who value things that she also values in an abstract sense, but that she's never been any good at providing on a personal level: looking after the young and the vulnerable, making sure that people are cared for, fostering peace and hope and goodwill towards man and all that mushy crap.
So what's a girl to do when she's not the type to decorate trees and hand out presents in the city square, but she still sees the value in protecting other people's ability to do just that? She signs herself up for security, grabs a big gun, and sets out to patrol the city, that's what. According to the crew rosters, only a handful of other people have picked the security expertise, which means that only a handful of people can fully defend themselves. As far as Shaw is concerned, that means that people like her are here to pick up the slack.
She's not necessarily obvious about it. When she sits on a rooftop for hours and surveys the streets below for danger, she's easy to miss. When she patrols down on ground level, though, she's a little more conspicuous, especially since this doubles as urban exploration: and in the absence of bad guys to fight and with the memory of that one girl falling down a hole still fresh in her mind, this turns into an impromptu safety inspection. "Hey," she might say, popping her head out of a broken second-story window and as she calls down to a passer-by. "You know where I can get spray paint? There's a lot of sagging floorboards up here; I wanna write some warnings on the walls."
The wilderness around the city is where most of the real danger lies, she knows, and so if she spots someone heading out of town - particularly if they're alone, and particularly if they're weaponless - she'll drop what she's doing and approach. "Need back-up?" she'll ask. "Been a while since I've roughed it, but I can hold my own."
Shaw has always been good at moving forward. It's easy enough to accept this as her new life, because there's nothing much left for her back on Earth: just Lionel, who she knows will get along fine without her, and Bear, who she knows Lionel and his kid will take good care of. She misses New York, misses the restaurants and delis and the way unplowed snow sparkles in the moonlight at night, but she can exist just fine without it. She misses her team, but her team is dead, and that's that. Here on Agra 10, she has Root's leather jacket to keep her warm, and she has a cool new gun to help her protect her new crew, and she has her legs to keep her moving forward. And that will have to do.
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Donnie pulls his collapsed tech-bō out of his pocket again, thumbing it to full extension. "I'd say at most we can probably still use the windows, maybe? Glass, anyway," he mutters as he jabs at the soggy boards with the end of the titanium staff.
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She looks at the kid, pauses, and then amends, "Crew habitation. I'm just fine living on the ship, but it sounds like a lot of you are expanding into the city. Besides, even when the Agrii back, we're still going to... live here, right?"
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He grips his staff tighter at the suggestion that they're going to have to live here, looking almost startled at the suggestion. "Wait, you mean like, permanently? N-no, that's not how it's supposed to go."
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The suggestion that they'd all be expected to dwell here happily after being kidnapped and fixing the problem seems so unreasonable that he'd never considered it an option and that someone's suggesting it now makes that awful homesickness come back up.
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"Look, I just got here; I don't know anything. I'm sure you're right; they'll let us out of the contact eventually or whatever."
And then she'll have to find another job. It's not anything she hasn't had to do before.
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"...I've been here almost a year and I still feel like I don't know anything. Nothing pertinent, anyway. Talking with them is a headache and they don't seem to know much more themselves, which is super frustrating. We have new ships, but that doesn't seem to make much difference if we can't use them and still haven't figured out how these stupid storms function."
He sinks down to sit, arms still draped around his staff as he pulls his knees in.
"I just want to go home..."
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She walks over to him, carefully avoiding the worst of the waterlogged floorboards, and awkwardly pats the top ridge of his shell a few times.
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He hardly expects said stranger to be offering him any attempts in comfort, if it can be called that. It has him lift his head enough to glance up at her.
"...you're not really good at this kind of thing, are you."
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Does he even have people here? He says he's been here for a year, and people here take care of kids; he must have someone.
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"...no, it's fine. I just need to distract myself or something." Because that's clearly the healthy way to handle things, of course it is. It's been working great for him so far! Donnie sighs, eventually bracing himself to get back up again. He'd rather not test the integrity of the floor here any longer than they should.
"I'll come back later and see where to start in taking things apart. Snowblower'll definitely be the easier fix," he murmurs as he carefully steps around her back towards the window.
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"I'm Shaw," she says. "What's your name."
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"Donnie," he replies once he's by the window. There's been little point in giving whole names when literally no one ever tended to use it anyway.
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"Thanks for helping me out. You wanna go get that drone now?"
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"It's weird," she allows. "Aliens, and people living on other planets - that's not a thing where I come from. But a lot of people think it could be, someday, so that idea wasn't totally out of left field. And I needed a new job anyway."
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He could almost be amused at how matter-of-fact Shaw sounds about the whole thing. "What was your old job?"
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Another pause as she reaches the bottom of the fire escape, dropping down onto the ground.
"We were freelance. Underground. People didn't know we were helping them, most of the time."
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"Well... maybe not as direct, I guess. Except for when we stopped a crazy rampaging suit of evil armor from attacking people, that...that was a pretty direct threat."
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She gives him a baffled look; aliens she can buy, but this weird alternate New York with Japanese spirits and mutated turtles is apparently a step too far.
"You know what, I'm not even gonna ask. Are you guys, like... a teen superhero team?"
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