TEST DRIVE MEME #4 - The Arboretum/Ten Forward

[ten_fwd_mods]

Option 01: Aboard the Enterprise, The Arboretum: In exploring the Enterprise, you end up on Deck 17, section 21 alpha: the arboretum. Instantly upon entering you can tell this room is different from all the others. For one thing, you're now standing on grass. It's no illusion, no simulation; it's real grass, leading up to a small pond in the center of the room. All around you grows a variety of plant life, trees and bushes and hanging plants, flowers and herbs and even what one might consider weeds. The arboretum is, for all intents and purposes, a botanic garden, used both recreationally for passengers to relax and enjoy, and scientifically for research and study. After all, the scope of alien plant life is impressive, from the Cyprion cacti down to the Earth variety roses.

The room is well lit and large, with benches to rest on and small walking paths. Children are grouped off in one corner working on botany projects, while some passengers are seen kneeling in the dirt carefully tending to their garden patches. There are even windows along one wall, allowing for a view of space while the room itself gives the illusion of daylight. It's the perfect spot to relax, read a book, or grab a spare spade and dig in the dirt. Or perhaps you've been looking for the right moment to say hello to the passenger standing off by the venus flytraps.





Option 02: Aboard the Enterprise, Ten Forward: Or maybe not. You've just arrived, and you have no idea what just happened. One minute you were somewhere else, and now you're in what looks like a spacious, well-appointed bar. The hum of the crowd is inviting, and the drinks look invigorating. There are people eating and drinking, some in uniform, others not. Some are clearly aliens.

Try to find out why you're here, or catch a drink at the bar; there's always something happening here.

Comments

[cleanslates]

Selina Kyle has been stuck on the Enterprise for too long, each passing hour making her feel less and less comfortable. Skittish, even.

Not exactly the type to stay in one place for very long, for obvious reasons (the main one being her profession), getting stuck in an oversized tin-can in the middle of space is almost downright scary. Of course, no one would ever guess that from the way she carries herself - an effortless calm, coolness, as though this is exactly how she'd been planning to spend her week - but it's just another mask, another secret to add to the ever-growing list of them.

She looks the part of a stranded tourist when she passes through Ten Forward's doors. There is no trace of Catwoman, not even in the way she moves, each step controlled to look as though she's lost and scared and feeling it all. Her hair hangs loose around her shoulders, her blouse and jeans are relatively standard - mindfully curated to emit a sense of fashion flare, but nothing to the usual standards of Miss Kyle - and she wears a string of pearls around her neck. Yes, those pearls.

There's a moment when she scans her surroundings for an empty seat, notices one particular newcomer, and raises her eyebrows. And if her heart-rate suddenly increases, well, no one will ever know from the way she immediately schools her expression back into one of mild interest.

"You've got to be kidding me," is said under her breath.

He'll see her eventually. The ship isn't that large and anonymity is impossible with so few people to disappear into. So she takes a breath and approaches.

"Well, well, well."

She smiles.

"Look what the cat dragged in."

[more_than_revenge]

He looks completely different from the last time she saw him. Then, he'd been shaggy-haired and unshaven, stumbling around his recluse's wing at Wayne Manor. Now, he's neat, shaven, dressed once more in one of the sharp suits that are
characteristic of Bruce Wayne, or were before he disappeared from the world. It's been a long time since a suit was the natural thing for him to wear, but he slides into them as easily as he does the mask that goes with them.

Bruce Wayne, billionaire.

The hand that's not in his pocket is on the handle of his cane, and he's leaning on it, but everything else is changed.

Including the fact that he smiles at her as she saunters over.

Selina Kyle. Catburglar who's been plaguing Gotham.

"And I could have said the same."

His eyes narrow, for just a moment's flash of irritation, when he sees what she's wearing.

"An interesting choice of words," he says, his voice carefully light, almost teasing, and his smile entirely faked. "For a catburglar."

[cleanslates]

Oh, Selina isn't fooled by that smile. Not one bit. After all, she practically invented that smile. Only hers is usually the last thing someone sees, not the first.

Her expression goes completely flat.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," she says innocently, tilting her head in an obvious charade. "Now, is this any way to treat a familiar face?"

[more_than_revenge]

"Now, that depends," he says, his voice matching her words for feigned innocence. Still light, still apparently friendly to any onlooker, still entirely Bruce Wayne, still entirely fake.

She's good. There's even a suggestion of genuine amusement in his eyes, because as much as he wants that string of pearls she's wearing back, he can ... appreciate a certain skillset. One that Miss Selina Kyle most certainly possesses.

Nobody without those skills could have cracked that uncrackable safe. Could have gotten past him and away. Would be walking over to him now with so much self-assurance when, as far as she knows, he was a safe target, a reclusive cripple who never left the house.

She chose the wrong man to burgle. For both the pearls and the prints, even if he's not sure yet just who wants his prints and why.

"On whether that face was one you last saw jumping out of your window with your mother's pearls."

[cleanslates]

"Unnecessary details."

Selina waves her hand, dismissive, and lets her fingers - long, graceful, nails painted a dark black this time - graze the jewelry in question. They're pretty, and while they're not exactly what she'd originally sought to find at the Wayne Manor, they were there - and now they're hers.

"Somehow I'm just not so sure you could really pull them off. They might clash against that thousand-dollar suit."

She shrugs, stepping back to remind him of why she'd even approached him at all: Ten Forward, spaceships, space.

"Though I've gotta admit - you do clean up nicely."

[more_than_revenge]

"Now," he says, still almost laughing, still wearing the persona he'd slipped into the moment he found himself here, "some people might say that's rather a large detail to just wave away."

He would.

Not because he values the possessions that clutter up the manor, but because she took one of the few things he does value. After the fire, there was even less left of his parents than there was before it. And those few mementos are the closest things to treasures that he has.

His eyes narrow as her fingers brush against the lustrous necklace around her throat.

They do, actually, look good on her. But they're not hers, and they're not for her.

"It would be an eccentric look, but that might be too much, even for Bruce Wayne."

[cleanslates]

"Hm. Yes, I'd say it's a little too much - even for you."

Even for the rest of the pompous high society elites who parade around wearing their fortunes in a show not unlike peacocks flaunting themselves in front of each other. Their parties are the worst, when their lavish lifestyles are thrown about with little care, all in the name of some charity they have no real idea about.

It's fine, though. Selina likes these events because that's when her marks are the easiest to target. Drunk, happy (for a given definition of the word), and uninhibited ... it's a little like (as the saying goes) taking candy from a baby. And most of them barely notice what's gone missing the next day. Or the next. Which shows just how obscene the class divide is in the city.

Not that Selina's all for social justice and equality. It's a nice ideal, but that's just it: it's an ideal. The reality of it is that sometimes you just have to do things for yourself and come out a little further than everyone else in the end. It's more about survival.

And, maybe, pretty things.

She lets her hand rest by her side and nods her head towards their surroundings once more. Now that she thinks of it, this might not be the worst arrangement, her and Bruce Wayne grounded on the Enterprise. After all, here he is without his butlers and his riches, on a more equal field with every other idiot stuck too. And Selina's already got the upper-hand on him, having been here just that much longer.

She quirks an eyebrow.

"So, Mr Wayne, what do you think of where we are?"

[more_than_revenge]

"Even for me," he agrees.

There's a moment of amusement in his eyes.

Not because he's taken in by her, but because he appreciates the game she's playing. He should; there was a time when he was the master of that exact game, moving in the circles Bruce Wayne was born for, smiling, laughing, joking, while all the time feeling little but disdain for the pretense of it all.

"Of course, I was never planning to wear them."

Selina Kyle is certainly not trying all that hard not to show her disdain. If he were being honest, which he never is, not with this smile and this suit and this invisible mask on, he'd share that disdain.

But here, now, for her, he is that man she's sneering at.

In fact, her lack of pretense is almost refreshing.

Almost.

In truth, he doesn't yet know what he makes of where they are. He's been watching, assessing, calculating, since the moment he arrived, and he has no clue how or why he's found himself on what appears to be a bar, on a spaceship.

It sets every one of his highly-trained if somewhat out of practice instincts on edge.

"It's a bar," he says. "I'm assuming, if I need to, I can get a drink."

He doubts she's going to buy his smile or his words. She's too good at this game. But that doesn't mean he's going to let her win that easily.

"What more do I need to know?"

[cleanslates]

"These beauties are far too lovely to be hidden away in a crackably-uncrackable safe, Mr Wayne," she says, her voice nearly a purr.

And if she'd revealed any emotion on her face besides a decidedly bland amusement at everything, well, that's just her bitterness getting the better of her and she will need to control it a little better. There's just something about high society that really grates on her nerves.

She might even call it injustice. But then she can't exactly say she's got much of a moral compass to determine something like that beyond how it might personally benefit her.

Nevertheless, she allows Bruce Wayne to continue his charade of acting like he isn't assessing ever single detail in this space-bar. She'll humour him, even, if it suits her. He acts like a dumb block of wood, but there's more to him there - which is ... interesting at best, annoying at worst. He's not like the rest of his privileged class, is he. She can see it in the unsaid words, the too-controlled tics in his movements, the darkness that flickers in his eyes when he's not playing someone. She notices because she does it too. She'd be a fool to underestimate him. She knows that.

There's a small nod of her head, eyes following his, her mouth set into one of her coy smiles.

"Now, that is the question, isn't it?"

[more_than_revenge]

"Mmm." He doesn't bother to hide the fakeness of his smile. His eyes are cold, narrowing.

Were he a different man, were they a different set of pearls he's wearing, he'd be inclined to agree with her. She's a very attractive woman, and she knows it, and they are a lovely set of pearls. But they were his mother's, and that means they're off-limits.

Not that there's anything much he can do about it. Not here. Not now. Not unless she's foolish enough to step close to him so he can make a physical move.

He raises one eyebrow at her. This time, the curve of his smile is thin, but ... perhaps more genuine, a hint of real amusement in it.

"And you think you have the answers."