Hinckley

Gabriella, before following Arthur out of the lounge, heavily rolls her eyes at Jack. The severity of the situation has minimized any sense of Blue Star customer relations training Gabriella had in her. "You don't need to put hair on the doors, dumbass. The ship has sensors...oh, but someone messed with them. You know what, stuffy guy? You're smarter than you look. Put hair on all the doors, stat. You know what, on second thought, your hair looks old and frail. Take some of mine." Gabriella finds the paring knife for the citrus behind the bar and removes a huge swath of hair from her beautifully quaffed hair bagel and hands it to the pretentious author bitch. "Use gaffers tape to secure it to every cabinet, door and drawer that you have access to. Wait the fuck a minute. Why don't we just use the gaffers tape?" Gabriella hands Mr. Mallory her roll of gaffers tape and takes her hair back. "Give me a strip of that so I can tape my hair back in place, please." Gruffly turning to follow Arthur, she stops and turns back to Jack. "Good thinking, civilian. Thank you."

Gabriella swigs her coffee. "I should join you. None of the crew should travel alone while someone has messed with the sensors. Maybe while we check on Misters Peck and Perry, you can answer those questions you ignored." Gabriella joins Arthur, if he likes it or not.

Gabriella's head snaps in Oliver's pretentious direction. "Oh? You'd imagine, would you? And where were you when the ship suddenly decelerated? Was your head up your ass? Or did you shit your organs across the room? Or did you somehow brace for the impact? While you were imagining what it would be like, I was getting my ribs bruised against my sink. Where were you?"

Gabriella blushes when she notices all eyes are on her. Not accustomed to being the center of attention, she stammers a bit before addressing the passengers and crew. "The FTL drive was momentarily taken offline. This is what caused the sudden lurch which caused all of our drinks to be spilled. I was able to get the FTL drive running again and all systems are online and operational. The safety of our passengers is our top priority and we've run the necessary diagnostic checks to ensure the shutdown didn't have a negative effect on any of the ship's systems. The shutdown only affected the lights and sensors. We don't know who triggered this shutdown, but we will find out." Gabriella would like to look at the newspaper on the floor to see if there are any interesting articles in it, regarding any of the ship's passengers or crew. She would also like to search the cubbies in the room divider. Once she has checked out those two things, she would like to check the local memory on the lounge's terminal to see if any files have been uploaded. "Arthur, can you please get me the ship's strongest coffee, stat? Thank you." Gabriella looks around the lounge at all the damage, feeling lucky that it wasn't worse. "Arthur, what rank were you in the UEN? What was your specialty?" Gabriella does a passenger count. "Fucking-A. Where are Alfie and Ezra? Were they in their cabins when the drive shut down? Please tell me someone thought to do a safety check on them. The sudden deceleration could've caused them serious injury!" Gabriella would like to access the lounge's terminal again to link to Ezra's cabin. Gabriella would like to access the lounge's terminal again to link to Alfie's cabin.

"Jupiter fleet? We were in the same fleet? We called it the Jovian fleet. I must be quite a bit older than you I suppose, then. I was on the UES Juno." Oblivious to social norms, Gabriella doesn't catch that the steward's naval history may be a touchy subject. "What sort of bad luck? Ooops, I fell down kind or the Ooops, I banged the Captain's wife kind?" She finishes off her scotch and picks up her fresh martini.

"Bitch." Gabriella realizes she's had too much to drink. "Oh, apologies Ma'am. I didn't mean it. I meant...bitch." "Oh, just being smart, I guess," Gabriella says between sips, "What about you? What outfit were you with? Were you a pilot? How'd you end up as a steward?" Gabriella smiles, feeling good about picking up enough social etiquette to ask about...whatever his name is. "I don't ever remember doing that. Sounds awful, though. Sounds like something only getting blackout drunk could get me through...oh, that's why." "Deal me in." Gabriella looks around the lounge, or dining room, or wherever the hell they are at this point. "Did we eat already? God, this day seems like it's been going on for a week. Has anybody been murdered yet?"

Gabriella looks around, self-consciously? "Is the crew eating too? Or are we being relegated to the crew lounge during dinner service. Mac and Cheese with a side of bacon, if so. If we're having dinner with the guests, I'll do Salt and pepper calamari, Macadamia crusted barramundi, Hot fudge brownie with ice cream." "Ed...thur? Arthur? Could I get a refill on the martini, please? This last one was excellent."

Gabriella mulls over the choices. "Which ones did the assassin spy poison?"

Did you mean it would be served "soon?"...

Gabriella shakes her head at the vapid, bouegy passengers. "Wrote funny stuff on your napkin? Like a comic strip?"

Gabriella mulls over a response. "Did you just do some coke? Or do you not like your father?" She stirs her drink with her finger. "Sorry to be nosy. I just assume an artist might not have had support from their parents. Especially your art." Not realizing she's continuously insulting someone she's started to see as a new friend, she barrels forward. "I mean, that one with the flying whales and the penguins in sweaters playing poker in the garden of Gethsemane? I like the giraffe on stilts in the background, actually. But I never could decide if it was an homage to or a ripoff of Dali. It's kind of barf on canvas." She looks to Arthur to see if he's finished talking to the uppity bitch who wears too much perfume. "Spies, though. Maybe, I don't know. The Captain is a joker. She likes to play pranks. She's just making shit up to get everyone talking. She's a character. Ha! Definitely nothing to worry about. Nobody should panic." She smiles at her own assessment of her clever response, thinking she's smoothed over the Captain's audacious discussion of confidential information. She takes the last sip from her martini and slides the empty glass to the drink rail, hoping it will give Arthur an out if he needs one. She winces as the smell of Emily's perfume begins to induce a headache. "Bitch," she mutters under her breath.

Gabriella looks up in welcome surprise that one of the passengers is showing her empathy. Unfortunately for her, she's not accustomed to human interaction and it comes off as a dirty look. "Whoa, you're not a complete twat?" She says, intending it as a compliment, "Would you like to join us for a scotch, Mr. Artsy-Fartsy? We're drinking to our fathers." She intends to be welcoming, but not knowing how to do so, turns her back to Oliver, displaying body language not conducive to further conversation. She just doesn't know... "Good cover, Captain!" She awkwardly salutes her superior officer as her body begins to contort over how to broach the subject she wishes to convey to her superior officer. "At the risk of over-stepping my bounds," she whispers, "I believe I would be more effective as an undercover agent to find the assassin spy, if you didn't reveal the plan in front of everyone." Gabriella immediately blushes as she mentally kicks herself for the bold advice. A sudden thought strikes her and she leans back into Captain Bennett. "Oh, sorry! Were you coming on to me?" She blushes even harder at not considering keeping this possible revelation to herself and looking for more signs. "I mean, there's a double entendre in under cover. And you mentioned your cabin instead of the bridge. Not that I'm into that. Unless you did mean that, in which case, I'd totally be into it. Except that I don't mean that if you didn't mean that." An awkward silence results. "Drink? "

Gabriella sits back at the bar, busying herself with her palm com, trying to hide the fact that she's stifling back tears. She takes a healthy swig from her martini.

"Or perhaps like this?" "If it's a physical object, can't you just show it to us? I mean, is this a real thing or are you just role playing?" *that was the first image that came up when I googled "LEGO plush demon."

Gabriella looks confused. She starts to speak, thinks better of it, and returns to her drinks instead. She takes a sip of her martini, then changes her mind again. "A hair??"

Gabriella nods as the steward turns to the guest. She suddenly swears to herself for forgetting to ask the stewards questions about him, instead of rambling about herself. "Oh, is this that type of mystery? Oooh, maybe someone will be possessed! So, there was a demon in your medicine cabinet?" Gabriella gets up from her bar stool, excited with a new thought. "Maybe you've been poisoned at you're hallucinating it. I mean, no offense, but it sounds pretty crazy. A stuffed demon? Like, with an apple in its mouth, on a platter? Can you be more specific about what you've found? Do you have the demon on you right now?"

Def did a couple of games that involved picking Actions that had pseudonyms. I'm thinking about potentially running a game like that, but different. But, that would allow me to be trickstery without having to put so much on a player.

Learning roleplays standards... Gabriella's face lights up at the appearance of the scotch. It is a reasonable facsimile of a genuine human smile. "My father drank scotch. Prefer Irish whiskey myself, but I'd join you for a scotch to our fathers." The engineer takes a healthy swig of her martini. "I think what's beautiful about Callisto is that everything is covered in ice. I'll never forget how when Jupiter rises, the light from the coronas reflect off of the ice. It fills the landscape with intersecting rainbows and long dripping strings of color that reflect off of the solar winds. I wasn't part of any of the exploratory missions. As Chief Engineer, I was tasked to stay with the ship, but the scientists made time to take people down to the surface who weren't on the missions. You can google me, I'm the first woman to step foot on Callisto. " Gabriella takes a self-conscious sip from her drink. "So, I was Chief Engineer for the Jovian Exploratory Fleet. My outfit designation is classified, though." Gabriella starts to take a sip but slams her glass down. "I'm sorry! Was that emasculating? Sometimes I forget the fragile male ego may be wounded by higher ranking females. I meant no offense. I actually wanted to be a pilot but I had a degree in Engineering so I went directly to officer school. I still wanted to pilot, but they needed me in Engineering. There aren't a lot of engineers who understand FTL drives. It comes as second nature to me."

Sorry, the only thing I was referring to was your mis-statement about the absorbed roles not working. I'm relieved it was just mis-stated as I would feel really bad if you didn't realize that. My fear is that the role is too complicated and too much work for the player. Do you have any advice for how to improve it from this round? I would love to co-host a game with you! We should definitely start working on a concept.

"Oh, um..." And then I sit there. Like a deer frozen in headlights. Nobody gives me compliments on this ship. Ever. What do I do? Stare. Stare like a deer in headlights. "Thank you!" Oh, that was good. Like human interaction. "I...um...I really want to join one of the exploratory missions. I've been applying..." I remember the walls have ears. "Not that I don't love working for Blue Star, the best company in the solar system. And I would never leave. But I have sent my resume to the Extra-Solar Exploratory Commission several times. The maiden voyage of The Orion launches for The Pleiades in six months and I haven't heard back. It's such bureaucratic nonsense, though. I'm not good at that stuff. I'm good at Engineering. There aren't a lot of ships yet with FTL drives. The Excelsior is the only one in the Blue Star fleet. I'm in high demand for FTL drive engineering, but the ESEC is filled with bros that don't like to be commanded by women. I learned that in the United Earth Navy. I got a reputation pretty quickly for being slutty. Oh! That's not what I meant. I mispronounced intelligent. Men in leadership roles don't like intelligent women. How many years since the 19th amendment and women are still treated like that?" Good save. There's an awkward silence so I sip my drink and then stir it with my finger. Then I remember there's a stirrer in my glass and I'm in a bougey lounge with high society types and this probably isn't a good idea. I feel like I should converse more if I'm going to be friends with Edward. "I was on the first mission to Callisto. I got to play with the warblers that they captured. There was one that really latched on to me. I named him Sneezy. Warbler snot is actually super gross." Maybe I'm talking about myself to much to forge a friendship... "How are you? How is your spouse and offspring?"

I flash a wan, half-sarcastic, half-appreciative smile at my crew friend...Stuart?...wait, no, his job is Steward, right, right. Ethan? Something like that. Anyway, I freakin' smile at him which is more than these high society bitches get. I admire Ethan Steward, whatever his name is for being able to smile while all these bourgey society shits badger and pester him. He's so patient. I'm not patient. What was I saying? Perhaps I'm getting a bit too tipsy. "You know me so well," I manage. I frown inwardly at the failure to convey my thoughts to Stewart...or Evan...or whoever. Or maybe I'll try to make another effort. I've known Arvid for years. Why not turn a friendly work relationship into a friendship? "A beefy ginger like you is wasted in that stuffy white tux. I'd like to see you poured into an Engineer's boiler suit. Woof." Ah, fuck. That was even worse.:facepalm: I awkwardly turn and freeze, not ready with a quip like I am with anyone else. The one person I respect on this ship never seems to respect me. "Yes, Sir, Captain!" I say as I salute her. I step in close so the others won't overhear, "Maybe it's my mistrust of high society types and pseudo-celebrities, but I just sense tension here. I'm a bit worried but I can pinpoint why." I bring my glass to my lips but before taking a sip I mutter, "Oh, is keeping the FTL drive working really so simple? " I silently commend myself for my ability to mutter an eye roll. I turn to the whiny little bitch and say, "At least you haven't been murdered yet!" I eye the old geezer with an ounce of newfound respect. Before I take another sip of my drink, I mutter, "Old pervert," then look away in case he heard me.

Gee, Arthur, excuse me for wanting a break. I'm the only Engineer on this ship. I'm always on the clock. So, when am I supposed to drink?

Hi Kyle, um, Jack. I really did enjoy your book. I bought you a drink. It's rude not to drink it. Tell me more about your time on Mars.

Naturally, a-doi! I meant, what other things have you invented previously that you can talk about? Anything we might all know or use on a daily basis? Did you invent my hair bagler? It probably would've but I fixed it now, so you're welcome. Come back to the lounge for another drink. It's way too early to turn in. Come on. I have lots more questions for you. I find people so interesting. Oh, that was a good book. I should talk to him about that. Maybe he's not a piece of shit like the rest of them. I'll go buy him a drink. I voted against Sawyer to for her unspecific political office. Did you just disagree with her policies? Or were you running against her? Or maybe someone you loved was running against her and her win ruined your friend's life or she has some motive to kill you or something like that? Another martini, please! Straight up and dirty with a twist. Thanks, darling. Put it on my considerable tab. *hic*