Summary:An introduction to Posse's armory over drinks. Log Info:Storyteller: None |
Related LogsTheme SongNone |
  |
The timing couldn't be any more perfect. By the time Neena arrives on campus, gets screened through security, meets up with good ol' Karl and heads on in she's lined up for a perfect interception point for one Chief of Security as she's going off the clock for the day. No dust is given a chance to settle this time! Not bad for someone who hasn't been around campus all that much lately.
"Hey Q-Tip" she greets with a toothy grin. "Feelin' social?"
*
Ava turns towards the unfamiliar voice a gives Neena an odd look as she absentmindedly tugs the hem of her jacket straight. The cyborg is dressed down such as she is in slacks and a tan top over black fabric, and her hair seems to be continuing its glacial rise back to a full covering atop her head.
"Sure I've got some time," she answers before immediately following with her own question. "''Q-tip''?"
*
Aside from blue tinted eye shields and a fitted black leather biker jacket Neena looks like her usual twisted self in that oilslick-like thermal gear. The shades are removed before she taps the side of her head with an amused expression. "Bit slow on the draw tonight, soldier. Been a while since we've hung out, I've barely had a chance to admire the upgrades. You keepin' sane around here?"
*
Recognition dawns in the cyborg's green eyes and Ava chuckles as she shakes her head. "Still passin psych evals. You gettin into any new hostage situations lately?"
*
Neena makes an act of looking ceilingward and tapping the side of her jaw in thought. "Well there was that one guy…" she trails off before the grin returns. "Nothing so illicit. Though I did get a bike. Some great roads around here once you get past all of the urban mess. Before you ask, it's not electric. You still hold that monopoly."
*
"Not one I asked for but the performance won me over," Ava admits as her brow lifts with interest. "Got an idea for that social thing? You can tell me about that bike on the way."
*
"I could admit to the same" she suggests with a smile which more than borders on the sly. To the question she considers "Drinks..evening run..tour of this mythical armory you keep hinting at…" while ticking points off on her fingers. "Or maybe we could sit down and work on our communication or whatever" she adds with a casual eye-roll. "I'm interested, not picky. This is your time off, choose something and let's get to doin' it."
*
"I'm always up for a run but I did handle my PT for the day," the bionic woman considers as she folds her arms and appraises the albino. "You really want to see the lil' collection I've got? Sure, let's take a walk." Ava grants before turning to head down the hallway, leaving the albino to follow her.
*
"Is that a trick question?" Domino asks while suddenly wearing a blank expression. "The mere idea's been slipping into my dreams for months, it's like the lost city of gold. I -know- you've got more than some Civil War trinkets stashed away somewhere around here."
At Ava's 'let's take a walk' the albino's gloved hands swiftly come together once before she sets off after the cyborg with an honest to goodness bounce in her first step.
"Is this a private showing or can Karl join in on the potential droolage?"
*
"Just us," Ava grins with a nod back to the woman's security detail. "I'm sure Karl's got other things to do besides haunt you pasty butt all the time."
Leading Neena down the hall and through the Swamp she takes the albino on a noticeably different route and down a few stories in the elevator before arriving at a biometric-locked door that parts to a wave of her hand. "New construction, new digs," she explains simply while stepping into a foyer and living room that's familiar if not identical in its layout to her former suite upstairs. The 7-barrel volley gun still hangs prominently over her couch and the dining nook continues paying homage to its trio of black powder firearms. "Y'want anything for the tour? Pop, beer?"
*
Another monochromed smile soon follows, "Just the way I like it." As Karl gets dismissed Neena watches him go, withholding her thoughts for the rest of their walk.
The route is filed away in memory as the cyborg leads though more questions start lining up in the queue. The new layout may be a little different yet everything within seems downright familiar even to her.
"Sure, beer me. What prompted the change of location? Oh, and speaking of change… Any chance of us updating my situation a little around here? Now that you've got my ass tagged like a migrating bird and all" she says with a motion to the ankle tracker. "The badge, the band, Karl seems a bit like overkill. I already get enough weird looks around this place without the aid of an escort."
*
"I'd like to if I could find any magic experts to give me a definitive briefing on your passenger. They ain't exactly in Yellow Pages," Ava responds as she ducks into the kitchen and pulls a bottle from the fridge. "I told ya, just new construction. That was my temp suite earlier."
*
When the bottle emerges Dom's right there to catch it. "HQ does seem to expand a lot" she absently remarks while looking down to the cold brew. A subtle nod follows, it's a subject which they can revisit later. For now she flicks the cap into the nearest garbage and gives the bottle's contents a sniff. "The high road was nicer. Liked the view. Now where are you hiding the little darlings, under the sofa? You'll be graded on the supervillainness scale. Bonus points for a lava moat."
*
To that Ava laughs and opens the left door out of the living room, leading Neena in after her before flicking on the light. "Chief of Security doesn't buy me the defenses this place deserves. But hey, 'least AIM isn't shelling us with ing mortars."
Inside the second room is well, four walls, a ceiling, a respectably-wide double door for a closet… the room might once have been intended as a bedroom. Instead, it's filled out like a gun shop. A thick workbench with vices, drawers, and a pegboard tool rack sit in one corner within a halo of spray cans, rags, and reference booklets. Punched out targets line the same wall along with a loose smattering of photographs, and on the opposite wall, protected by a glass face, is one long and continuous multi-shelf display case of arms. Rifles, a carbine, pistols, and shotguns; bolt-action, lever-action, semi-auto, and muzzle-loading are all represented here and there, and in a couple cases several, several times. Despite the work that goes on in one corner the room itself is largely tidy and perhaps thanks to the vet's drones, the display glass is clean to the point of being nearly invisible. It is, in truth, no 40-gun armory and Neena won't spot anything larger than a long 30-06, but Ava does seem to have at least a couple backups.
*
"Don't say that too loudly or you might give them ideas," Neena mutters while stepping through.
And then comes the heavenly chorus.
The albino makes a point to not linger or stare until she can position herself in as close to the center of the room as possible so she can look around in a full 360 degree rotation. At the end of this journey is the Wall of Guns, a display so neatly laid out and pristinely presented that she's got her arms held out wide like she's about to receive something divine.
"Honey..I'm home."
Sure, maybe there isn't as much high end military ordnance as she's accustomed to playing with. No H-Bar M2's or man-portable M134's around here but she is sooo not about to dis the cyborg's collection. Clearly a lot of attention and a lot of love went into this room.
"If you ever lose track of me on campus? You can find me right here. Like a goddamn museum. Is that…" she steps closer to the display and squints a little. "Holy shiitake it is. Yeah..okay, I'm just..gonna…" she again trails off before stepping back to Ava. One hand goes around the cyborg's shoulders, the other hand guides the beer to blackened lips.
Domino's totally in her happy place.
*
Ava smiles proudly and chuckles at the awed reaction her "modest" armory gets from the albino. "Like what ya' see?" she teases with more than a little amusement as her own arm wraps around Neena's waist and gives her a squeeze, then untangles enough to give her a quick swat on the rear - just as she's taking a drink. "Go on up to anything that's got your eye. It's not a lot but I can show it to you in detail."
Looking across the displays there is a semblance of order and grouping to the various firearms though the choices aren't always obvious. It could be called mostly sorted by size, with a Thompson Omega running across the top shelf and well polished but not mint M1s starting the group of long guns on the left - rifle and carbine both, and just like her gun case, the AutoMag III is conspicuously out of place with its fellow .30s. A mix of modern and wooden frames constitute the furniture, with plastics painted mostly black but here and there in striped woodland camo.
Smaller but substantial in quantity, Ava's pistol collection contains a healthy supply of 1911s with strikingly distinct designs, along with her sleek naval P226, still massive HK. , and others that - while recognizable - aren't exactly common.
***
In some ways for Neena it's almost like a family reunion. For someone who had been running solo on the move with no place to call home she's spent a lot more time with various pieces of hardware than with another person or place. Even the old Garand brings up memories, the monochromed merc smirking faintly with a glint in her eye before Ava's swat brings her back to reality.
"Once chased a guy five days through the jungle carrying nothing but an M1. Same color of this one's stock. At that point it might have stood taller than me. Never shot one before that day, grabbed it off the back of a truck and beat feet. Nearly jumped out of my skin after shooting the damn thing. When there's nothing but birds and bugs for days a thirty caliber being touched off seems -so- out of place."
Moving onto the sight of an HK 91 Dom's expression gradually falls vacant. A few seconds pass as her focus drifts somewhere far away from the present while a thumb subtly rubs at her left side, just beneath the ribs. Snapping out of it a moment later her head dips forward before she nonchalantly takes another drink.
The naval P226 earns a humorless smirk, her expression more bittersweet.
Then to the familiar looking AR with its green mag release, prompting her to ask "You keep your working tools on display? I'm surprised you don't have it somewhere with easier access."
***
Ava's eyes slowly pass across her collection as well and she falls quiet to listen, then replies with a low whistle. "I started on 5.56. .30-06 is serious business. That must have been crazy - and after a five-day hunt…" Choosing not to dwell too long on it, the cyborg nods to Neena's question. "Working tools are in the ready room. I've got other guns for big threats and others I can ready faster than the AR. It's defense in depth; I'll grab what I've got time for."
***
Neena chuckles softly, "I hear that. Sometimes we don't get the benefit of being picky. And don't get me wrong, I also started on the NATO stuff. They come and go, sometimes a situation comes up where I'm fortunate to have any gun at all. But -this-…" she trails off while frowning at the display and pointing to a -very- peculiar looking AK variant. "For as many times as I've used and been shot at by variations of Mikhail's work I don't know what the hell I'm looking at here. What manner of curiosity have you stumbled across? That's… I'm not even sure where to start. That looks like a kitbash Kalash. Is it even street legal in this country?"
***
"Use what ya got, I hear ya," Posse agrees before chuckling and walking around Neena to open the display case and lift the all-black assault rifle out for inspection. Sure enough it's… well half Kalashnikov? The grip and stock are distinctly AR in style, along with the lack of its iconic lever safety, but then there's the muzzle brake and thick operating rod cover. "Technically~ yes. Kalashnikov's AK-107 with some tweaks - this here's a Saiga MK-107, a little AR-ified. It's a dual-role firearm: counter-flanking CQB and a smooth-shootin long-range carbine like you won't believe," the cyborg begins while unconsciously checking the mag and chamber before tipping the weapon to show its most distinctive feature. "The Russkis put a second piston in it that slams forward to cancel the recoil. It still likes a muzzle brake as much as any other Russian but you don't get that distinctive *thwack* that says you just discharged a Kalashnikov."
***
Oh, this is grounds for setting down her beer. Dom's got her hands free in a heartbeat as the device is separated from its display. "No shit, a Saiga? The window for ordering one of these must have been the size of a thumbtack. I'm just..I'm so confused. Those Russkies and their search for a recoilless infantry rifle, just in case the AN-94 wasn't complicated enough. But…" she frowns further while puzzling over the design oddities.
"A bayo lug which can't be used because of the brake. What looks suspiciously like a few M-Lok thrown in as an afterthought. Furniture likely ordered straight out of a Brownells catalogue. A damn mag funnel. The mucked up safety…"
Dom gives up. After having a chance to look it over in person her shoulders hang while peering back at Posse. "It's confirmed. You stock oddballs on top of the common stuff. Even my stockpiles aren't so esoteric. Hang onto this one, chances are your entire retirement could ride on its value. Total respect."
***
"Trust me it's in competition for the smoothest shooter in my collection," and that includes her tricked-out AR. "And yeah heh, I'm just hoping nothing on it breaks that Toni can't fab. I don't go out to find odd guns but… you know how it is when you're chasin something," Ava replies with a wink before gesturing back to her display. "The real wicked * of the west to import was the PPSh-41. I had to pick through the knock-offs on this. Pretty sure one of the originals sent a round right past my ear," she recalls, gesturing the flight path with her metallic hand.
***
The part about chasing something brings a lopsided smile to Neena, reaching over to run fingers through the cyborg's shortened mop of white hair. "Otherwise I happen to know someone who's pretty good at finding things." Switching over to fluent Russian she adds « Might even have a few contacts left in the Motherland. »
Oh. Oh my. The albino must have completely missed the historic icon while seeking out all of the fancy modern tactical stuff. "Well would you look at that" she almost whispers while looking at the earlier pattern SMG in question. "You might consider charging an entrance fee and opening this place up to the public."
"You know what..I might have half a box of spare mags for one of those back in Italy. Ooooh wait no, that was the place that got firebombed" she thinks aloud. "Some of those Families have no sense of humor."
Looking back to the PPSh for a moment leads to one brow hooking upward before she turns a sidelong grin back to Ava. "Hey. How'd you feel about converting the little lady back to her former 'full' glory?"
***
"What a charmed life," Ava chuckles while she eyes the merc back with amusement. "Hey if you can get fun guns in the cheap way I'll take one, but I gotta' keep my nose clean, you know that," she confesses with regret. That /is/ quite an offer.
"But~… nothin says you need the tax stamp on your bumper for every piece you bring to a range," the cyborg hints.
***
"Duly noted" Neena airily replies while reaching for her beer. Anything else on THAT particular thought is left alone for now.
Motioning toward the display with an upward tick of her head, she asks "Got a favorite out of this bunch? I know, it's not easy choosing amongst your children. And 'whichever one is there when I need to shoot a thing' isn't a valid response."
***
"Heh, well it's not a fair contest to put anything against my AR. I can operate that thing one-handed in the dark, so I've got to say if I had one gun it'd be that one," Posse admits without even needing to think first. Setting her converted SMG back into its display, she wanders the length of the cabinets eyeing the others, noting as she goes along.
"The AutoMag's a pure /fun gun/. After the AR the Steyr's nice for just how portable it is; best gun for a long ruck. P38 wins for 'easiest gun to maintain'," she adds, indicating the Walther. "Got that one for cheap and replaced the bad recoil spring with one from a mechanical pen. It /cycles/. That's one step short of a Sten gun. I swear there's not a part for that gun you can't make from sheet metal and a hammer."
***
A slight rolling of eyes follow, "I -knew- you were gonna go straight back to your darling Armalite. Set the training aside for a moment, soldier."
A nod from the albino when the AutoMag is brought up, "And fun that noisy little bastard is." Then again to the Steyr, "Can't go wrong with one of those on a hunt."
Domino looks curious with the Walther's makeshift repair story, however. The piece in question is eyed up with one brow higher than its neighbor. "I'll keep that in mind." Just in case she happens to get a contract against a WWII reenactor. It could happen!
"Let's rewind a bit here" she suggests while motioning toward the pistol racks. "You've got the Navy Sig despite me never seeing you carry it for yourself. The first time we met you had an M9 AND a 1911. Do you gravitate towards those because they were standard issue?" Pausing to grin, she asks "Would it turn your stomach if I handed you an M17?"
There aren't a lot of polymer framed handguns in this collection… In fact, there may not be -any.-
***
"Wouldn't know, I never handled one. But if they're anything like the M9 then I might cry a little on the inside at what the green weenie has done to it," Ava chuckles as she walks back over to Neena and with her the pistol portion of her display, arrayed in ascending age with a separate space dedicated to her 1911s, all symmetrically aligned in their different styles.
"M9's kinda crap for a service pistol but build it with good parts, take care of it, and you can't tell me it's not a reliable smooth shooter." The bionic woman's eyes linger briefly on the same pistol, of which she has only one, before it passes along the others of her collection, hanging longer than it did on her rifles as they carry the weight of memories with them. A flesh-and-blood hand comes up to point first at the M92FS. "Learned pistols on that one. Still think it's a great civvie gun."
Next comes the bottom 1911 in mud brown with skeleton trigger, a skull stenciled on the grip, and an "MSOC" serial number on the slide beside an inscription. "OEF, first deployment. Got this one off a SOC Marine after the fact."
And above it a similar model in tan with unadorned finger-grooved grips and the simple slide marking of 'SF-45-A'. "Special Forces on my second deployment. We were out with some Group guys and Para put a 20-order min to do custom etch work so I went in with 'em for one," Ava explains, pointing to the unit inscription further along the slide before moving up to the P226 above.
"Pulled security for these guys /all/ the freakin' time my… fifth or sixth time out. Had a couple of 'em get fragged, left behind kids. Not like the pricks we had'd let me lay hands on their sidearms anyway, so when SOWF spun up a commemorative line for donation it was a no-brainer."
Last up the list is the fully-kitted large and in-charge HK Mark 23, which Posse almost doesn't explain, pursing her lips for a moment as she pushes more memories back down, her mood now somewhat subdued from the casual banter of earlier. "Weird, heavy, and spendy for a civ gun, but it's a treat with NODs and'll put anything down you ask it to. Took it out for CQB until I got a real hand on my foregrip. Might've been the last pistol I handled before we switched to phasers."
***
"You know how it goes," Neena says with a slight shrug. "Lowest bidder. I mean, they're guns. Technically. I'm really not sure if you'd prefer the thumb safety they insisted on including or not. It looks out of place on a 320, but given your habits…" she trails off while noting that -every one- of the pistols here all has some manner of manual safety. "I'll put out some feelers, see if anything falls off the back of a truck."
Regarding the Berettas, the albino chimes in with "They're also great for John Woo flicks. I put some miles on an all stainless one back in the day. The blued models rusted way too easily around saltwater."
Then it's onto 1911 Land and Dom has to bite her tongue about Ava's affinity for a pistol which is over a hundred years old. It's endearing, really it is. Though for all of the people this mercenary has ended with the old warhorse she can't fling -too- much shit.
What she CAN do is give Ava a toothy grin and wait for an opportunity to say "You're adorable."
The cyborg's reaction to the last one is worth another lingering look. The albino's free hand comes up to rub at the back of Ava's neck while returning her attention to the massively sized SOCOM Special. "Anything you want to vent?"
***
"Heh, you want the corrosion-proof coated stainless for that."
Ava turns to Neena in surprise and the fog of memories clears around her eyes after a moment of staring. "/Adorable/? That's not what I was expectin," she admits, sounding puzzled more than anything else before willingly or not turning back to her array of pistols. "It's not really somethin I ever planned to need but… just feels like there's a hole in all this, ya' know? I've got a seriously high-speed knife comin on order but there was one mission…" Ava trails off momentarily and takes a breath, recollecting in the reflection of the display glass. "Dime-a-dozen offset infil to a farm house we had ISR on. We broke cover and fanned out to sweep a field with drainage channels. Took some fire so we returned fire at a dead sprint before taking cover in the channels. Field dominated, and then the treeline opened up on us in enfilade so we suppressed it with a fucking JDAM. How do you put /that/ in a gun cabinet?"
***
"Would you rather I called you Boomer?" Neena suggests with a playful smile, teasing a little further about her pistol affinity.
The following story keeps her quiet and listening, somehow it's always nice to be able to learn a little more about the white haired vet. At the end she sums it up with a rhetorical "Pretty intense, huh."
Dom has to bite her tongue to Posse's question. 'Oh it's real easy, just gotta space the pegs a bit further apart.' "Maybe that one can stay tucked away in my cache" she suggests with an almost sad smile which completely fails to prove whether she's kidding about the idea or not. "Not that many ranges would let us play with it."
***
"Yeah… 'intense' is the word for it," Ava agrees in a distant tone. "Not just the JDAMs, rollin seventy miles an hour under NODs, multi-point simultaneous breaches… hell the first company shooting contest I was in, two squads had a dead tie and their tie-breaker was whose squad leader could do the most push-ups."
"I never did win one of those," the cyborg recalls with a rueful smile as she glimpses the reflected photograph on the back wall and shakes her head.
***
For the first time since entering the armory Neena's attention is more on Ava than the collection. "Seventy in lights out?" she repeats, surprised. "That'd be a real clencher."
The albino smiles as well, leaning closer to rest her head against the other woman's own. "Maybe not, but I'm thinking you still managed to come out ahead."
Finishing off her beer gives Neena a chance to sort through some thoughts. "Hey, speaking of clusters… That whole indel dump back in the meeting room. I know you've got a different way of doing business around here compared to your old days but I know that a big part of you misses how things used to be. I was trying to give you some of that action. Figured if there was anyone here that could give you the opportunity…"
Shoulders lightly roll. "Won't happen again. At least not until you've built up some trust with me."
***
"We were experts at the crazy sierra, a hundred percent and then some," Ava sighs as she backs away then turns to face the back wall with its shot-out target silhouettes and old photographs - some in uniform, some not. The cyborg reaches a hand up to rub the bridge of her nose while she takes a deep breath, collecting herself.
"Well shit if you want to bring that up, try stickin to facts and analysis if you don't want your head taken off, " the green-eyed woman cracks as she looks back to Neena somewhat incredulous. "I thought you were tryin to hire me for some fuckin merc shit the way you opened that. Maybe don't give the top officer a mission in public."
***
"Hey I'm doing my best here, okay?" Neena counters while letting some space open between the two. "I went at it the way I'm used to going at it, and it -wasn't- meant to be public. So sorry for trying to be thoughtful."
Catching a quick breath, she looks about ready to say something else but instead turns back to the wall of weapons.
***
"You set the invite list. How's that not supposed to be public?" Posse puzzles at the albino's reply.
***
Neena gives the cyborg a surprised look. "Did you really believe that I didn't work all of this out in advance? Everyone that got an invite had a role to play. Give me -some- credit here, I know how to allocate resources."
***
"That's what's called _public_, the cyborg stresses in a slow dead-pan.
***
"Did you see a …" Neena starts in then catches herself. "Oh. I get it. You meant between -us.- See, I didn't know that you were willing to go off the books for an op. Thought the better play would be to show that I can organize something on my own and get the rest of the team involved since that whole 'teamwork' idea had been pretty well drilled into my head since I got here. There've been a lot of mixed signals, you know. I'm still not sure why they even let me stick around."
***
Here it's Ava's turn to shrug. "Runnin' in after that nanobot mess I think. You got on Roni's good side," the white-haired vet guesses.
***
"It's been a longer second chance than I'm used to getting," Neena admits with some tension ebbing out of her shoulders. "Though I still don't fit in that great" is also suggested while she reaches out to try and open the display case..only to find out that it doesn't open for her. "Oooooh-kay, either you've got the magic touch or my ankle dingus won't let me get some fingerprints on the merchandise."
***
Posse's brow lifts in mild amusement as she watches the albino try - and fail - to open the deceptively plain door of her display. "'Chief of Security'," she reminds slyly. "Just because I can't load this place with CRAMs doesn't mean one front door'll give you my whole collection. Which one you want?" the cyborg offers while walking back over.
***
"Yeah yeah, next you'll be putting a biometric lock on your fucking fridge" Neena teases before admitting "I didn't get that far." A quick glance and a subtle sigh leads to her pointing to the mud brown colored 1911. "How about that one. I can sense its importance."
***
"I've sold most of the ones that aren't," Ava mentions as she grips the same handle without any special secret movements and the glass door opens. "And it'll be a cold day in hell before I lock my fuckin' food up. You need food it's yours, just let me know what to restock," she admonishes with a glance back to the blue-eyed mutant before taking the 1911 from its stand and offering it along with its double-stacked .45 magazine.
***
Ava's promise earns a lopsided grin from the mercenary. "Aww, you -do- care. Beer, and plenty of it. The canteen around here's rather decent, no chance of going hungry."
The magazine is taken first and tucked away so her hands can be free to safety check the sidearm, a habit both automatic and well practiced. Right after the two pieces are reunited then the sights angle toward the floor long enough for her to dry-fire then reset the hammer.
Then the formal training gets shoved aside and Domino mechanics take over. The unloaded sidearm is briskly rolled around an index finger until it's pointing to the ceiling with the grip neatly falling into her palm.
"Even double stack these have nice balance. Steel frames do have their uses."
Turning to gently lean against a wall which doesn't happen to be covered in glass she then looks back to the cyborg with an idle look of amusement. Through all of this the heavy pistol gets flipped and spun about in her hand like she's been running through the motions since she was a kid. "I keep feeling like I should be saying something whenever we have a moment but damn if I know what to say. It's just good hanging with you, Av."
***
Ava watches the safety check with quiet approval. She might have skipped it herself on purpose. Folding her arms as she sidesteps away from the display, the white-haired cyborg smiles at the bit of cowboy stunting. "S'cool, Spot. I get ya'."
Here the bionic veteran chuckles. "I didn't realize showing you some old gun-steel was 'having a moment' either. Where's that heart-string tugging background music and dramatic close-up? Our camera man's gettin lazy," she mock gripes while looking around the room and towards the ceiling.
***
"Around here I consider any time alone with you to be having a moment" Neena suggests with a sideways dip of her head. "You've got a whole facility to watch over and I've got the rest of security breathing down my neck."
An upward twist of the pistol lets her eject the magazine in an upward arc, catching it out of the air. "If you'd like some background music and a couple of close-ups we could always get out of here. Though I do have one more question."
She's probably decent at sleight of hand tricks given the way she can slap the mag back into the grip while holding neither in a typical fasion. Then she points to the display with the .45. "You don't own a single ten millimeter, do you."
***
"Take your time in here. I brought ya in so you could look around," Ava assures. It might be unconventional bonding time but it's not bonding she's in a rush to finish. Turning back to the display, her eyes briefly scan her collection from one end to the other. "Don't think I do. Why? You hoping to sell off an ammo case?"
***
"-Sell?-" Neena asks with a look of surprise. "What, are you kidding? Hell no. Jeezus, you're the only person I know who throws an AutoMag Three into the collection before a Centimeter."
Another neat flick and she's holding the 1911 by the barrel, offering it back grip first with the hammer at rest. "In that case, Iii see a Scout on that there wall. Heard good things about 'em but never had the privilege of taking one for a spin. What's your experience with her?"
***
Ava reaches out to take the offered pistol, holding it comfortably despite the over-sized grip to accommodate the similarly oversized magazine. It might not be a perfect grip for her hand size, but she's learned to manage it. As if to prove that, the modernized M1911 gets a couple slow twirls left-handed before she turns back to the display case and moves to return pistol and mag to their spots on the wall.
"Hey I got it at a deal I couldn't turn down, and I probably sold off more guns than a FFL dealer goes through in a month. It was a good excuse to flush my truck guns," the cyborg admits with an awkward glance aside. Oh look, her Scout! Moving to the end of the display, Ava pulls the iconic scout rifle out next and this time checks it herself. Neena will notice immediately and distinctly, that the slim rifle is hiding its second magazine in the stock.
"Honestly I like it. Got it after my crash course diet to see what a super-light was like one-handed. Long relief scope's nice, the spare mag makes for easy kit and helps with weight a little, and call me old-fashion-" *Click!* "but it's nice bein able to hand-load for a huntin shot then tap a ten-round mag in for extra fire. On pure handlin it's better than somethin this light has a right to be."
***
Neena's eyes light right up when -Ava- twirls the gun. "Holy shit — what was that. You really just did that. I saw it! You DO know how to have fun!" She looks so damn -proud!-
"Wait..how many truck guns did you have?" That awkward glance is met with a questioning look, the albino slowly resting hands against her hips. This look remains while Ava checks the chamber on the rifle in question.
The second admission isn't so cryptic, Dom knows exactly what the cyborg is referring to. "Still managed to get some trigger time during your down time, huh. Respect."
"It's a slick concept, alright. Next time we reach out to eight hundred you should bring 'er with. I'm always on the prowl for portable accuracy.
Small rooms aren't the best for looking through scopes but if given a chance to put her hands on it she'll be facing out the doorway when snapping the bolt gun up to her shoulder, both eyes open.
"Something like this should be killing it with hunters, I can't imagine why they aren't more common."
***
Ava parts freely with the rifle - it's why she took it out - and gives Neena the span of the room to test the sight. Unlike what she might be more used to it's not only long relief but low magnification. Combined with the fluted barrel it might not be the most accurate bolt-action in the world but peripheral vision is ample.
"I had… a few… dozen maybe," Ava admits with a shifty roll of her eyes and a guilty smile. "You try livin' around canebrakes, with a base the size of Atlanta, and see what you skim off the local gun economy."
"And screw walking. Once the dust settled and the caskets were buried the first thing I wanted was range time. Guns were my /life/. Still are," the cyborg adds.
***
From around that long eye relief scope the albino grins. There's really nothing more she can say to 'guns are my life.' It'll be a few hours before they've gotten through everything in this room which she hasn't already had a chance to see.
The Steyr's bolt is palmed and quickly cycled without breaking her shoulder contact or interrupting her line of sight. "Oh I like this. Bet it tracks cars real well. Not..that I'd be hunting cars with … Nice rifle" she states while offering it back.
Rather than pick out something else from the display the pale fingers poking out of truncated gloves move instead to lightly fall upon Ava's artificial shoulder. "I never did ask you about what happened. Didn't want to nose around in personal business before, but..we've kinda been crossing a lot more bridges lately."
***
Ava gives the mercenary a wry look before accepting the Scout back and shouldering it. She knows what Neena's about now, whether she fully agrees with it or not. "You want vehicle interdiction hump a light fifty when you can; gives ya more options to engage the vehicle itself. A Scout won't chamber anything HE." That… might be the vet's way of saying she doesn't mind.
At the mention of her injuries though, her white brow quirks. The albino's gloved hand rests where skin transitions to a solid alloy frame. Not too noticeable with her loose shirt on, the break in texture is still obvious to the touch, where the bionic amputee is neither flesh nor flesh-mimicking prosthetics. It's one of few blind spots on her body and absolutely rock solid. It's probably anchored into bone… somehow.
"Yeah we've cleared a couple," Ava admits with a chuckle, making eye contact with Neena and still mostly casual in her demeanor. "Not like it's any big secret; that big charlie foxtrot in NYC that you missed out on drew in Nat Guard-Plus-Plus. 82nd was up in it and I was in doing DA work when my bird took a Sentinel beam. Dropped the whole thing a couple hundred feet in the time it took to say ''Oh fuck this is gonna hurt''."
The white-haired former operator nods towards the far wall and one of its photographs showing a younger, more complete Posse among a group of men all sporting short hair, rifles - and yup that's a fifty - at what appears to be an outdoor range. She's even smiling. "It's kind of fucky really. I was doing raids /in CONUS/, and if I was anywhere else I'd be takin a dirt nap right now…" A noiseless sigh escapes the wounded vet as she turns her attention back to Neena and hikes a thumb to the scar that runs vertically across her left eye. "The eye was my own damn fault though; if you're ever crawlin out a bird that's been blown to shit, duck."
***
"Naturally" Neena agrees with a smirk. "Thirty for the operator, fifty for the block."
The joint in Ava's shoulder where tissue transforms into tech may be well hidden but she knows exactly where to look. Their first half dozen encounters had involved mapping out one another's potential weak spots and vulnerabilities. It had taught her plenty. Good times.
Not any big secret. "Maybe not, though I do try to respect -some- of your privacy" she teases before her expression shifts. "No shit. A -Sentinel?- But you wouldn't have been on the menu. Av… Is this seriously due to goddamn -friendly fire?-"
If she didn't have enough reasons to despise Sentinels before, now she does. Though there's a slight catch, something which has her looking almost timid. Looking at the earlier photo leaves her quietly thinking over the matter.
"You think what happened to you was the better option?" she asks with arms folded and a quizzical sidelong glance. "Hard to believe that being anywhere else would have been -worse- than ground zero."
The scar across Ava's eye brings a humorless smirk from the albino. "Kissed a rotor. That's a drag. And here I always loved flying helos. They're great right up until something goes wrong." Then it ALL goes wrong.
***
"Or somethin. The whole bird's a crumple zone in that situation. Took me a lot of flights to get over that head-screw," Ava mentions as she casually takes off her shirt and drapes it across her shoulders like a towel. There still a stim-suit underneath the action mostly just exposes the full extent of her cybernetic arm and its socket.
"Hey if I had to pick somewhere to crash the heart of the Big Apple's not bad. I hate to think they pushed someone off an operatin table to make room for me but I was too far gone to really vote," she adds with a shrug. "Faded in and out with a platoon worth of pain meds for a casevac out of state and after some sorta really impressive surgeries stayed not dead or eatin through a straw. So you're not the only one here with a lucky streak."
Ava grimaces, just slightly, and sighs again. "That was one fuckin expensive day…"
***
Dom's hand departs long enough for the shirt to be removed. When the albino's arm returns it's to drape across both of Ava's shoulders with a thumb idly brushing against the expensive tech.
"Faster response time, I'd imagine" she suggests. "Though you always struck me as hard to kill and I appreciate that" she offers with a smile to Ava before looking back to the display. "Alright, time for some better memories. How abooout…that one" a wandering hand singles one out at random to point at.
Maybe it'll be a lucky pick.
***
Ava's hands come to rest in turn on Neena's hips and she laughs dryly at the all too obvious change in topic before obligingly follows Neena's finger back towards the gun rack. "Heh… thanks, Spot," the cyborg murmurs.
Then, abruptly, a pair of lips seal tightly against the albino's in a heavy kiss.