[ closed/open ] Highway to the danger zone

[volitaunt]

who: Poe + CR + ALSO YOU, MAYBE??
what: Catch-all with closed and open prompts
when: April/May
where: ALL AROUND LE TOWN, more prompts to come i'm sure
warnings: Poe attempting to babysit ten thousand tiny Star Warses and then self-destructing when he doesn't have that distraction any more???

Comments

i. - closed to castmates -

[volitaunt]

[ It takes some doing, some bribes, some trickery, and a lot more fucking patience than Poe has to be honest, but somehow he manages to corral the tiny stormtrooper, the tiny assassin, the tiny scavenger, and the tiny... he's not sure how to describe tiny Jyn, actually.

They are now all in his and Finn's apartment. Poe leans against the front door, staring into the entryway and living room and wondering what the hell he's supposed to do now.

Keep them from escaping, probably, but he's outnumbered and probably outsmarted if he's honest.

This is gr8. ]

[realists]

[ tiny menace would be the most accurate description of jyn erso in miniature. hopped up on sugar and already prone to violence toward cassian in particular -- she will tell anyone who asks that he is some impossibly derogatory swear in huttese that no six year old should ever know about.

and yet.

here we are.

and here is poe, leaning over said unhappy kindergartner who has her hands on her hips and a displeased pout on her round face. how dare poe bodily pick her up and intercede before she punches cassian again? what a jerk move! her expression is the very epitome of a scandalized how very dare. ]

I hate you.

[ however much her accent is softer from picking up on her father's accent over the years, she still manages to make the statement sound like its laced with poison. and she's six! ]

[volitaunt]

[ Poe stares down at her tiredly, wondering how much trouble he would get into if he just figured out a way to drug everyone in this apartment right now including himself. ]

Didn't anyone ever teach you not to hit people?

[ Those words actually just came out of his mouth. This is Jyn Erso. Hitting people is and apparently always has been Her Thing. ]

Just. Don't hit him, all right?

[ From the other room, BB-8 makes a concerned noise and Poe has to stop himself from running in there to check on whatever it is. Hopefully the droid can handle it for the moment. ]

It isn't nice.

[realists]

He isn't nice.

[ why don't they get along? who even knows. two little kids with clashing personalities and none of the self-control of their adult selves. ]

How come he isn't in trouble for inst-inst- instaging.

[ instigating. she means instigating and she is so proud of her fancy and incorrectly used vocabulary word, puffing up happily and defiantly. ]

[evasives]

[cassian is here for one reason and one reason only: he assumes poe has weaponry. he looks and acts like a soldier, albeit in a much more open sort of way. but soldiers always have weapons.]

[also maybe with all the other kids around, it'll be easier to snoop! no one else knows how to be subtle around here.]

[he makes his way into a bedroom while poe is otherwise distracted with a screaming jyn (good, because she won't stop punching him! what a brat!), and immediately starts to dig through the drawers and closet. there has to be something, he's so tired of being unarmed.]

[volitaunt]

[ It takes Poe about two minutes to calm Jyn down and instruct BB-8 to watch her and another thirty seconds for him to count kids and realize Cassian is gone.

Fricking. Frickity. Frick. He would love to be able to swear right now.

At least his and Finn's apartment isn't that big. It doesn't take long to find Cassian rooting through his stuff, clearly looking for something. ]

Just browsing, or can I help you find something specific?

[evasives]

[he freezes for a second when he hears poe come in, but he's worried he's going to be stopped again from finding a weapon, so cassian immediate starts digging around again. no time to waste!]

Browsing. [for something specific.] You probably aren't going to help me, so you can leave.

[IT'S WORTH A SHOT?? none of the adults here like the idea of him with a gun, poe is no different.]

[bythehand]

[ That's a pretty cool existential crisis Poe is having. Honestly, out of everything that's happened so far, every weird person saying things that are either flat-out wrong or don't make sense, the vaguely lost expression on Poe's face is the first thing any adult's done that contributes to FN-2187 feeling... bad for them?

He's pretty sure this is an elaborate and sinister New Republic hoax, but at least one person on this entire moon looks about the same way that he feels for once.

The tiny stormtrooper in question, once corralled, will proceed to have a generally Bad Time.

It involves a lot of standing up straight and staying still for as long as possible. Looking at all these other kids like they're aliens. His life has taken a hard swerve from full regimentation to chaos hell central. He doesn't know what to do??? Not a single thing here makes sense? It's bad and he hates it, thanks for coming to his TEDtalk.

Catch everyone on the flip-side, dudes. That is to say, catch you during numerous and increasingly bad escape attempts, because the longer he's not where he's Supposed To Be or at least trying to get back to it, the closer he's probably inching to a good old fashioned breakdown. He's going to be in trouble for this, what is so hard for people to understand.

I tried to think of a better general Small Finn opener but at every conceivable level I failed. He's all the same levels of disaster in a more concentrated, compact form. Bright side: give it like a day or two, he'll be back on his usual grownup bullcrap and picking children up to argue with them. ]

[volitaunt]

[ Oh look Poe is physically hoisting Finn away from a (locked) window and dumping him onto a couch!! He finally got the other psychopaths down for a nap Finn don't ruin this by running away and making him leave them unattended.

He's learning so much more about his friends than they probably ever wanted him to know. He can see this kid, this kid who's determined to refer to himself as a sequence of letters and numbers, slowly coming apart, and he has no idea how to help him this time. Calling him Finn just seems to make it worse. Push him closer to a breaking point that no one, never mind someone this young, should have.

Poe kneels down next to the couch, heart feeling wrung out already. ]

Look. I know you hate this. I don't blame you. But I can't let you just run away. You're not going to find home out there. We're nowhere that the First Order can reach. The New Rep... The New Republic doesn't exist here. None of it does.

[bythehand]

[ He's almost starting to think that his escape attempts aren't that good or subtle. He pushes himself towards whichever end of the couch looks furthest away from where Poe is kneeling. ]

You're lying. [ Poe is undoubtedly in charge here. Maybe that makes him a superior officer. You don't tell superior officers that they're liars. FN-2187 lets it slip out anyway. ] You're not even trying to make sense.

[ He wants to crawl into the smallest space he can find. He wants to close his eyes and put his hands over his ears until everything stops, because there's too much of it. He wants to go back to his camp and to have the fact that he tried to get there, that he kept trying, to be on his side. They'll know if he tried, they'll know if he lies about it.

He'll only know for sure if what he does to try to get there is enough once Captain Phasma tells him what she knows.

FN-2187 considers the possibility that he did something wrong and they sent him here on purpose, and it gets harder to breathe. ]

I have to go back.

[ His voice fractures on the tail-end of the statement, but it's edged with all the fatigue of someone who's tried to explain the world's simplest fact a million times over. He feels like he's been telling people that water is wet, only to have them say they don't know what water is.

It's not fair. ]

[talentedscavenger]

[Rey isn't sure why she was wrangled up and in a room with children. There's one girl who is screaming, and two other boys who seem to be complete opposites of one another. The reasons why she was brought here aren't good. Was this man trying to see which one of them was stronger? Or a better scavenger?

If she failed, did that mean she would be locked in here forever? No...no that couldn't be it. Could she take the older man on? No, he was too tall, and would pick her up and drop her to the ground. So she had to find other ways to escape....

Having the other girl screaming is the perfect distract that Rey needs to sneak into the kitchen, looking up to see if there was a window to climb out of, or anything sharp for her to use.]

[volitaunt]

[ Oh god where did Rey go now. It feels like every time he gets three of these monsters wrangled a fourth one disappears. ]

Bee, no tasing anyone. Just. Yell if one of them sets something on fire.

[ Then he's off looking for Rey, checking the bedrooms first before he makes it to the kitchen. A brief surge of relief--at least he got here before she found anything to stab people with. He needs to move the knives somewhere out of reach, but that means getting the knives out and ten million militant babies seeing where he put them. ]

What are you doing?

[talentedscavenger]

[Rey was preparing to climb up on the kitchen counter top. She wanted to see if the small window lead out to. Surely, they couldn't be too high up, or maybe it had stairs connected to it.

Either way, she freezes when hears Poe talking to her. Did she run? Did she try and go through with her plan? Or did she try to make a move for a sharp object?

The tiny girl got down to the floor, facing the pilot and stared at him.]

I want to go. I don't want to be here.

[Her tone was hard as was her glare, trying to make herself look more mean than anything...and then she was dashing to a drawer to see if she could find something sharp to protect herself with.]

ii. - open! -

[volitaunt]

[ Poe doesn't go bar hopping to drink. In fact, he's back to his tonic and lime habits, in spite of the strong temptation to have something harder. It would be too much of a cliche, and besides, the last time he got really, truly drunk, John was there to pick him up off the floor.

He burned that bridge. He doesn't need to remind himself of that.

In fact, he's bar hopping for a very different purpose. He's bar hopping to find the biggest, drunkest, easiest-to-provoke thugs he can and throw down.

Usually this ends up with him and his blood smeared across the floor and him and said thugs getting thrown out of the bar, but hey. It's a hobby. ]

timmy is stuck in a well, a dramatic retelling

[bythehand]

[ You know what Finn's still never really ended up doing in the near... what, five months he's been in this city with Poe and BB-8? He's never really ended up learning how to understand droid. It's just. Been not a huge priority.

Who needs to learn when his best friends are fluent and he's been living with at least one of them this entire time? No one, that's who. Realistically, he probably meant to get a little more into the prospect at some point. Things have a way of happening. Life gets busy.

He's picked up a thing here and there, though, over all this time. The very specific series of sounds that BB-8 uses to address Poe, and the same for Rey. And judging by their reactions to several other specific beeps, at least three straight-up strings of profane insults.

So when BB-8, sans Poe, comes rolling up to him at top speed and lets out every string of insults Finn can remember and possibly then some, and the sounds that are presumably Poe's name, Finn can only assume it's the intervening-party version of getting another "I did something stupid" message. This is where the real Lassie recreation comes into play, because Finn is booking it after BB-8 and doing a lot of "what did he do" even though he literally can't understand the answers.

BB-8 leads him to... a kind of trashy-looking bar. And Finn figures yeah, that might as well be happening, a solid bad sign. And from inside the bar, what can only be described as the tell-tale signs of a ruckus.

BB-8 makes a long and detailed series of low-pitched sounds. Finn just says "I'm pretty sure I agree with that" and pushes his way in.

How bad is this vibe and does he literally have to come in swinging? Because he will if he has to. He spars with Jyn all the time, his fear can no longer be reserved for big slow drunk dudes. ]

[volitaunt]

[ Well, that sure is Poe getting thrown onto a table. He rolls off of it just in time for the guy who tossed him there to punch the polished wood and then reel back, holding his hand and yelling in pain.

Poe doesn't finesse it. He doesn't use any of the hand-to-hand he learned in the Navy or since.

He just straight-up bullrushes the guy and tackles him into two other guys, who look less than happy about it. ]

[bythehand]

[ Okay, you know what.

He doesn't know what he expected. This, probably. He was kind of hoping it wouldn't be this, is all. But that's life. Getting exactly what you expect when you really wish you wouldn't.

Step one: get the hell into the fray.

Step two: get Poe by the back of the jacket and haul him up.

Step three: didn't think terribly far ahead, and known for making impulsive team-based decisions. He guesses he's just going to try to finish as much of this fight as possible so that Poe doesn't get the satisfaction? Finn thinks he's angry about this. Still working on being sure. It should depend on the circumstances, right? This could be a first-time thing. This could be a misunderstanding. All he knows is that BB-8 wanted him to come here, maybe because he thought the odds weren't looking great. Benefit of the doubt.

Finn has a gut feeling that his doubt is well-founded.

So he puts thinking about anything on hold for a little while and knees a gentleman in the stomach. It's fine, this is fine. Two minutes, easy. ]

FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT

[killthepast]

[ Time and time again, Ren's tried (somewhat) to keep his temper (somewhat) at bay when dealing with the dregs of the Resistance. Which is to say he hasn't gone on a rampage and killed them yet, because the potential consequences would be too much of an inconvenience while he's trapped in Quarantine with no place else to go.

Normally, it's enough to stay his hand until one of them (Poe. Let's be real here: it's Poe) tries to strike him first.

BUT YOU KNOW WHAT? He's sick of always having to react while Poe makes a fool of him. This time, when Ren sees the opportunity, he takes it.

This is how Kylo Ren ended up shoving Poe's own opponent aside, like some kind of knight in shining... monochromatic black... Only to launch his own fist into the pilot's face.

That felt good. ]

[volitaunt]

[ This just in: Kylo Ren is a giant dude. A giant, heavy dude, who knows how to punch, a lot better than some random thug in a bar.

Poe goes down like a sack of kelsh bricks, hitting the ground on his back and barely keeping his head from cracking against the wood floor.

His chosen target backs off in favor of watching what happens next, and you know what? Poe can't really blame the guy.

He also doesn't question why Kylo Ren would come after him with a punch instead of using a good ole Force choke. He doesn't care. He wants a fight, and it looks like he's got one with someone worth beating.

Poe rolls to his feet, feeling blood drizzle down across the corner of one lip. He grins. ]

You punch like a Hutt.

iii. - open! -

[volitaunt]

[ When he's not picking fights, he's working on his mom's A-wing. It's a far, far way from operable. Most of the parts it needs don't even exist in Riverview, which means finding technicians, engineers, and metalworkers who can replicate the parts from BB-8's scans and Poe's own notes.

Which means a lot of waiting.

Still, he can work on the aesthetics of the ship while he's not working on its innards. So that's what he's doing in the PG shuttle bay, both before and after his usual shifts. Replacing panels, buffing scratches, scrubbing at the scum and dirt of left by the time the ship spent in the jungle. Repairing what he can without the new parts. BB-8 is constantly at his side, scanning, reporting, welding, just chatting with his partner as they work.

It's a better hobby than Poe getting himself beat to a pulp. That's for after work. ]

[vedaandme]

[Tieria paused. Seeing all these strange vehicles showing up in the jungle and watching people fix them back up had him wondering. First Kirk with his shuttle, now this... whatever it was. No lie, Tieria was wondering if a Gundam would show up next.]

Is that yours?

[He called out to the person working on the craft. That little robot, though... it reminded him a bit of Haro... just with an extra head.]

[volitaunt]

[ BB-8 dome swivels around so the droid can fix his photoreceptor on Tieria. Poe slides out from underneath the ship on a dolly, looking for the source of the voice for a second before his gaze lands on the stranger. ]

Uh... yeah. Sort of. [ He'll always think of it as his mom's ship, really, even if it passed to him when she died. ] Why?

iv. - closed to John Sheppard -

[volitaunt]

[ Poe didn't say anything when he noticed he suddenly wasn't seeing John around the shuttle bay. When he saw the schedules and noticed they'd been scheduled opposite each other for the foreseeable future. He can't blame John for wanting that. He'd hate him, too, if their positions were reversed.

Doesn't stop him from missing the sight of John in the bay, John at his desk. Doesn't stop him missing all those little tics and habits that Poe noticed, the dozens of unconscious choices that made up John Sheppard. Doesn't stop Poe from missing the way John looked at him.

When he climbs into the shuttle to do a systems check at the beginning of his shift, he's not expecting to see John sprawled in one of the cockpit seats, feet propped on a crate, fast asleep. He quickly hushes BB-8 as the droid starts to whistle a greeting.

Poe considers just walking out. Leaving John to sleep. He doesn't get enough of it, and seeing him now, Poe can't help wondering if he's been sleeping at all. Not that Poe himself looks a hell of a lot better--the constant fighting is starting to take its toll, even if he's dialed it back for Finn's sake. He's still bruised and has a split lip. He goes to the rear of the shuttle, opens one of the compartments there, and pulls out one of the blankets stored for emergencies. BB-8 makes a soft, inquiring noise, and Poe shushes him again.

He unfolds the blanket and starts to lay it over John--which is about when BB-8 decides he's had enough of this pussyfooting around and gives a loud, greeting whistle.

And then speeds out of the shuttle. WORK YOUR SHIT OUT, BOYS. ]

[deploy]

[John doesn't snap awake as quickly, or as violently, as he could. He knows BB-8's whistle, usually trilling at the least opportune moments. The droid had a funny way of finding his way into the bedroom even after being locked out.

When he opens his eyes to Poe's face, dark eyes staring down at him, he isn't immediately guarded. Because the sight of him is as familiar as BB-8's constant commentary, and because he'd been dreaming about him. Thinks he's still dreaming, everything still soft for a moment, until he takes he first conscious breath, and all those cuts and bruises come into focus.

This isn't the Poe of his dreams. This is reality. Which means the Poe looking down at him isn't John's Poe. If he ever was his.

John's suddenly aware of the blanket, heavy across his legs and chest, still held in Poe's hands. He doesn't know what to make of this assault, or why Poe chose to launch it against him, but the delivery is effective. It cuts through him like AP.

He's too startled to slam his shields up. All he can do is stare up at Poe for what feels like too long, alarm bells ringing in his head, quiet panic ensuing until the battle stations are properly manned.]

Hi.

[volitaunt]

[ Poe stays frozen for one moment. Two.

He's going to dismantle that droid. (That's a lie. That's a huge, huge lie.)

He slowly releases the blanket and stands back, clearing his throat. He's not sure what he feels right now. Seeing the dreamy look in John's eyes as he wakes up, changing slowly to surprise and then wariness. Poe misses those eyes so much. It hurts to see the change in them, to know that it's his own fault. ]

Hey. Sorry, didn't mean to wake you up, I'll... [ He gestures toward the shuttle door. ]