#aopstarter

"Think fast!" Beyond making sure the person he was talking to had seen and heard, Skylar gave no further warning before he chucked a small, wrapped object in their general direction. Not hard enough to hurt -- if anything, it would most likely fall short, unless the intended recipient was quick about leaning forward to catch it. Oh well, good thing it wasn't fragile.

It had been rather nice staying on Kor'Sel'Koo, Daniel thought -- even nicer than he'd expected, really. He'd managed to settle in rather well, to the point that he was sort of disappointed by the fact that the crew of The Prosperity would soon be taking off for the next destination, even if the KBW was no longer terrifying to him in the way that it had been when he'd first landed there to join the crew over two years ago now. It was quite the opposite now, even - save for the leaving Kor'Sel'Koo bit, he was actually looking forward to visiting the waystation. For a wedding... had Zuytri been seeing someone all that seriously before? He didn't recall, but then from the group chat it had sort of sounded like perhaps that wasn't quite a mandatory criteria for Zuytri to meet prior to marrying someone.

In any case, going to a wedding meant getting ready to leave. Daniel still had a few things he wanted to get done before leaving Kor'Sel'Koo, so he reckoned he'd better get on with those sooner rather than later if he was to do them at all. With the garden tended to for the time being, he made his way down the corridor, off to complete one such task. He did stop short, however, upon seeing someone else. "Oh - hello there!"

With everything that happened at Colonial Williamsburg, Salem realized that he had to work a little harder to get his stamina up. He was lucky enough to not be directly involved in any of the heists, but he definitely needed to build up his core strength just in case an emergency scenario arose. That, and it had been quite embarrassing when he couldn’t keep up with Robin’s running. He had managed to keep his upper body pretty toned over the years what with long haul flights with his family, but lately there hadn’t been much room to fly about, so he figured he could use some of the ship’s facilities during this long trip to Molfaun. He grunted as he did a few pull-ups with his Sformer on, contemplating if he really needed to go on a run on the treadmill. He already knew he couldn’t make it 2 miles before being out of breath. 

Date: Late March, 2023 Location: KBW - Observation Room

So far, working on a smuggling ship was shaping up to be a deeply confusing experience. It was quite thrilling (in a terrifying sort of way) to be able to say now that he had been to Earth, though the trip had hardly seemed focused on smuggling at all - instead, the crew had gone to see... a concert? Daniel had never heard of My Chemical Romance prior to joining up on the Prosperity, but he could now safely say that some of their music was a little frightening. He’d quite liked some of the theatricality seen on stage though, so it had been a good experience overall. Until the subsequent realization that the crew had accidentally smuggled a human, somehow. That had led to several days of solid panic, during which Daniel’s primary focus had been getting through the day with his work done and sanity in place. Knowing that there was some sort of plan that seemed likely to keep everyone out of jail had helped on that front, at least enough that he was able to start enjoying life somewhat again alongside being terrified of the turn his had taken.

Being at the Kuiper Belt Waystation again helped as well. It wasn’t solid land, not even close - but still, it was quite nice to have a bit more room to move around as compared to the typical living and working space on the Prosperity. With the plants on the ship tended to and the cleaning that was his responsibility done, Daniel had a bit of time to himself, and so he made his way over to one of the KBW’s observation rooms - viewing the galaxy was one of the activities at the waystation that was in the range of what he could afford (free). Better still, there was a good amount of open space - and with the smuggling event over, he had the observation room to himself for the time being. After looking out at the stars for a bit, he got out his comm and began playing some of the Taylor Swift music that Ryder had shown him, through his earbuds so as not to be a disturbance. Truly though, there wasn’t anyone around... maybe now would be a good time to get some dancing in. With space limited on the Prosperity, he’d have to take his opportunities when he could find them.

The downside to having his earbuds in was that he didn’t notice as quickly as he otherwise might have when he was no longer alone - he jumped, startled when he saw a fellow crew member, and promptly stopped dancing. “Oh - sorry! I hope I wasn’t in your way,” he said sheepishly. He had been between them and the observation window, technically, though there was still plenty of space to see around him.

There was nothing like feeling like an imposter when you were in charge of routing a whole ship around space. Then again, his coordinates and trajectories were always precise, and he hadn’t crashed the ship thus far. He was always overly cautious and left almost no room for error, but he felt like it was only a matter of time until he made a mistake. He sighed as he sipped his tea. The shipped was docked on Earth, and he had already plotted the next few possible flights, so he pretty much had a lot of his time on his hands for himself. He hadn’t been on the ship long, but already people seemed to want to share their personal lives with him. He didn’t mind because it was nice to feel needed, but he didn’t necessarily want to be responsible for their personal decisions either. He glanced up as the air lock to the navigation room released and smiled at the new visitor. “Care for some tea? It’s rooibos,” he said nonchalantly as he took another sip.