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Who: First prompt OTA. Attempted murder thread closed to Christina and later Shaw (and possibly others pending additional plotting)
What: Some open log and then an attempted murder
When: Somewhat after port ended/now-ish
Where: Speakeasy and Level 3 Common Room
Warning: A lot of violence in the attempted murder thread

Speakeasy [Open]

Since the puppy got him a few things from the last port before everything went to void, the Eleven decides to start some of his work in the Speakeasy. Best not to leave all the eggs in one basket. His own cabin is too small and too bare to hide anything, so Ger's cabin for initial storage, and the work itself spread out over Chris' cabin, the Ghoul's cabin (he still needs to ask the Ghoul about that), and the Speakeasy. And more places if he can find some. The Speakeasy is hardly private and he knows word may get back to his warden, but there's value in hiding some things and not others. Try to hide everything and Jedao will know for certain he's hiding things. Hide only some things and look like he's trying to hide others, and maybe the decoy secrets can keep Jedao's attention. And what he's building right now isn't dangerous.

He can't build a temporal modulator with Victorian technology, but he can build other tools with Victorian technology, and with those tools build increasingly sophisticated devices, and eventually he'll have what he needs to build a temporal modulator. And a psychic booster. And a number of other useful things.

So he sits in the corner with watchmaker tools and materials and an untouched glass of whisky and mutters to himself as he works.

*****

Level 3 Common Room Attempted Murder [Closed]

After leaving the Speakeasy, the Three suddenly becomes talkative and so the Eleven ducks into the nearest common room to have a semi-private conversation with hisselves.

"No, Three, how many times have I told you, we can't pickle Bright. I don't think the kitchen would let us borrow that much vinegar."

"And the pesky issue of the Admiral's restrictions," the calm and measured voice of the Two points out.

"Not to mention the size of the mason jar we'd need," the posh voice of the Five adds.

"Not if I cut him into pieces," the Six growls.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Taking a slow walk to clear her mind is starting to become a habit. It's not helping clear her mind at all, either-- in fact, it makes her think about how much she hates that she's here at all when it could've been over if she hadn't been brought here, and that thought annoys her to no end-- but it feels nice to move, and it helps her sleep, so Christina keeps going on walks.

She walks the barge from top to bottom or vice versa, depending on where she is when she starts. Normally, any chatter she hears on her route is just part of it, but the conversation happening in the third level common room is alarming enough that she can't ignore it.

"It's generally not a good idea to resort to that level of violence," she says to what she imagines will be a group of people, but... isn't. Still, her point stands, especially given the propensity for murderous violence that the barge's population allegedly has. "Perhaps a mediator might help resolve whatever the issue is?"

He prowls the common room as he speaks, circling around to stand between her and the door.

"A mediator?" the Eleven gives a soft, raspy laugh at the notion.

"Don't want one!" a shrill voice abruptly comes from his mouth.

Then his voice shifts to elderly and frail. "Young lady, I'm sorry to say this is considerably less violence than typical." The woman may not be young, but the One thinks almost everyone is young.

This is clearly someone in some sort of crisis. Unfortunately, it's been a long time since she took the relevant training for this kind of situation, so she's at a distinct disadvantage. Worse still, he seems to be aggressive, what with immediately going to block the exit.

She can remember the guidance to stay calm, so she stays calm-- or rather, she tries to project calm, even though being trapped makes her more than a little uncomfortable.

"I suppose that's something. Look, how about we go for a walk? A change of scenery might help us."

The Eleven laughs and creeps closer. "Change of scenery? On a prison ship?"

"I believe she thinks we're mentally disturbed," says a brisk, nasal voice.

"Kill her," he says in a low growl.

"Settle down, Six," the Eleven's own raspy voice returns. Even though he's admonished the Six, there's an air of hostility about him. He asks the woman, "Who exactly is a walk supposed to help?"

Well, this is escalating quickly. Here she is, trapped with someone talking in different voices as if he were different people, thinking about attacking her. Making his way into her space. Terrible, bad position to be in when one is so unprepared. Hell, even if she were been prepared, it wouldn't be hard to overpower her. Not much to fear about someone who's not truly prepared to use violence.

He doesn't know that, though. She might at this point look a little alarmed, but he doesn't know she's not the violent type.

"You and me. Especially if we use that Enclosure place." Great, she's doing great. "After all, you don't want to hurt me. What have I done except be nosy?"

In the background, she's wondering what she can use to hit him with if it comes to that. The lamp? Might not do any real damage, but it should scare him enough for her to slip past him and out of the room

"Who says I don't want to hurt you?" And this time it's the Eleven's voice, speaking with a smile. He can't hurt her right now, not with the restrictions the Admiral's put on him, but he's enjoying her fear. It's been months since someone was afraid of him, and that's much too long. She's hiding it very well, but his senses are more keen than a human's.

He takes another step closer.

"I say," she says. "We don't even know each other."

He'll notice the way adrenaline is ready to flood her system and send her into survival mode, how her heart rate is increasing, her blood pressure rising. She can't help it. Every time she faces convicted murderers who wanted nothing more than to attack her, there were armed guards all around them, ready to restrain the would-be assailants. She doesn't have that backup now. She doesn't even have a wait out that won't expose her to danger.

"Look. Let me leave. I'll pretend I never heard a thing."

She might even not tell anyone!

"You're new here, aren't you? You think it matters? You could tell a warden I threatened to kill you, I could actually kill you, and what are they going to do? Put me in prison? Maybe they'll make me write 'Don't murder the other passengers' on the chalk board a hundred times."

From what he's seen of Barge punishments so far, he can't take them very seriously.

All right. Nothing's working. She's done trying.

"Let me through."

She'll attempt to get past him, and if he doesn't immediately move out of her way, she's not above shoving him.

The Eleven isn't interested in making anything easy, certainly not by stepping aside. But when she shoves him hard enough that he rocks back a bit from the push, he grins.

"Bad move."

The Eleven is fast. And now that he can attack, he does, grabbing her shoulder and pivoting to slam her head into the doorframe with tremendous force. And after the first blow to stun her, he grabs her hair at her crown and slams her into the doorframe again and again and again with ferocity and inhuman strength. It should be enough to kill her, to crush her skull. He's killed enough humans in the past to know how it's done.

But she's still breathing. This close, he can hear her heartbeat, fast, but still strong.

The Eleven snarls and moves to snap her neck. That should do it.

It doesn't. She's still not dead.

And so he throws her to the ground and drops into a crouch to squeeze her neck with enough force to crush her trachea, cut off blood supply to her brain. She should be dying, her pulse should be weakening...

You can take the girl out of the spywork, but you can't take the spywork out of the girl - which is why Shaw has a habit of regularly swinging by wherever her inmates are hanging out. She doesn't always initiate contact, nor does she always spend time watching - but all things, considered, it's a tiny-ass ship, and it's so easy to make sure that paths are regularly crossed.

And when she walks into the common room and sees Christina in the process of being choked to death, this strategy is validated for her a hundred times over.

She doesn't hesitate for even a second, nor does she plan. She simply launches herself at the pair, latching onto the Eleven's back and doing her best to pry his hands away from Christina's neck. She's very strong, especially for her size, but she's in no way superhuman. Best of luck with this, Shaw.

"Oh goody, another human!" the Three is delighted. The first human isn't dying (which is admittedly peculiar, but might be some sort of power she has), so he'll kill this one and then come back to the first one with some new methods. Because if at first you don't succeed, try, try again.

First the Eleven needs to get her off his back, so he smashes backwards into the nearest hard piece of furniture, which turns out to be the edge of a coffee table.

It happens so quickly that she can't do more than realize it's happening, and even that takes time to register. There's pain, so much blinding, nauseating pain, and the notion that she should be dead. She thought, after those first impacts with the doorframe, that she was going to die, but she's not even unconscious. And then her neck refuses to snap the way it should. And then there's a vice grip around her neck that should have her out cold as she scrabbles uselessly at his hands and fingers, doing little damage if any at all with her short nails and feeble strikes. It's. It's just. She shouldn't even be awake.

Then suddenly she can breathe again, but she wishes she couldn't, because she's afraid that too much movement will leave her paralyzed. But there's a fight going on, and this man could hurt them just as badly or worse.

Christina doesn't even realize it's Shaw until after she's pulling on the back of the Eleven's shirt, hoping maybe the sensation of a constricted airway will distract him enough for the other person to-- what, get in a hit? Knock him unconscious? Anything, at this point, to make the all stop.

Eleven's reaction is not a concern to Shaw. In fact, she sees it as a net good. Christina may be a cop, more used to physical confrontation than the average civilian - but she's not a soldier, and she's an inmate besides. If either one of them is going to take the brunt of the attack here, there's no question of who it should be.

The sudden jolt backwards only makes her hold on more tightly, both to keep herself upright and to keep him from flying forward towards Christina again. He's not human, she knows, but she's hoping for at least human-like anatomy, and so she attempts to send a sharp elbow straight for his solar plexus, hoping to knock him out cold without killing or injuring him badly. The corner of the coffee table digging into her hip hurts, but that's fine. She'll live.

It hurts, the way any elbow into the body hurts, but his organs and arteries and nerve bundles don't entirely correspond to human function and location, and so although the Three squeals at the pain, it doesn't drop him like it would a human.

He snarls and tries to grab her arm to pull her off, or dislocate her shoulder, or anything to get himself into a more advantageous position than he's currently in. If she's close enough, he'll try to crack her nose with a sharp headbutt.

Shaw is correct. Christina isn't trained for this level of violence. It's not even supposed to get this bad. The pain is unlike any she's ever dealt with, which severely restricts her. Her vision is blurring from it, but she can make out shapes enough to reach for the Eleven's side, putting all the pressure that she can into her fingers. Maybe he's ticklish, maybe it hurts, she's not sure, but she can't just do nothing.

"Motherf--" she grunts as she feels the sharp crack in her face. It doesn't get her to loosen her grip, but it slows her reaction time for several precious seconds as her vision spins, seeing stars.

"Brand," she bites out, as she tries to get a leg wrapped around the Eleven to further immobilize him. "Run."

Being attacked by human women from multiple directions is giving him a strange sense of familiarity and the Nine offers up in his mind, Just like the Doctor's friends, and, yes, that's exactly it. He viciously kicks out towards Brand, leaning back hard into the coffee table for leverage with Shaw behind him to take the brunt of the corner.

With him distracted by Shaw, Christina stands a chance at getting away. The kick hits her, but all it does is serve to distract her from the awful aching in her head. She quite literally drags herself away from the fray, toward where she remembers the exit to be.

Leaning on the doorframe, she slowly gets herself upright. Is there an emergency call button here in case of violence like this? There should be. Whatever, priorities. One shaking hand seeks out her communicator to put out a call to literally anyone for help.

Shaw is vaguely aware of Christina leaving - maybe the room, or maybe just the general area - and she's glad for it. Not only does it mean that she doesn't have to split her attention, keeping Christina safe as well as herself, it means that Christina might have the good sense to call for backup. Cops the world over are good for that, right?

"Just you and me now," she hisses, breathing through the pain of that table edge and trying to tighten her grip on Eleven just a little more despite it. Without Christina splitting his attention, she knows, he'll be coming at her with full force now, but the fact that she's grappling with him from behind means she has a decent tactical position. To strike her hard, he'll have to awkwardly reach behind his own back, smack her against something again, or manage to dislodge her. She can't do much about the first two options, but she can try like hell to prevent the third. "Ready to give up gracefully yet?"

The call goes out, and he doesn't sprint. He just - falls, makes down the quickest route, through the halls and the stairwell, hairpin turns and all. He snaps to a halt before hitting Christina with the slightly unnerving, unreal-looking deceleration of a magbreak.

Conveniently, him and Shaw being locked together this way means the Eleven is holding relatively still.

Jedao focuses, very carefully, and uses gravity to squeeze, inside his body, all of the Eleven's major nerve clusters at once. Maybe he'll pass out, or maybe'll it'll put him in enough pain that he can't maintain his hold, or maybe it'll just spasm his muscles directly, but one way or another, he won't be a functional fighter.

There's nothing from him to suggest he's done whatever happens to the Eleven - no magic words, no Jedi gesturing. Just the steady breathing of a sniper and his absolute unblinking eyes on the Eleven's body.

The Four was about to mock the idea of admitting defeat to a human, when someone not a human arrives and the situation changes very rapidly.

The Eleven's eyes grow wide and he wheezes a sharp inhale and his face goes sickly pale, all in less than a nanospan, and then he collapses, completely limp.

It's so quiet once the Eleven falls over that Christina swears she can hear her head and neck screaming.

By this point she's on the floor again, kept sitting up by the doorframe she's leaning against. Her communicator lies nearby, dropped as soon as she made the call in favor of not keeling over and hitting her head again. Her vision is blurry, it hurts to breathe, and she is starting to feel cold as the rush of adrenaline recedes.

They'll want a report, surely, and it's always best to get it soon after the event. The problem is she can't think straight through all the violence Eleven put her through.

"Uh," she manages, "thanks."

Hot damn. She wasn't holding on that hard, was she?

The answer is of course no, she wasn't, and she figures that out for herself the instant she looks up and sees Jedao. She isn't exactly sure how his powers work, but he very clearly has them - and right now, that's just fine with her.

"Show-off," she says lightly, pulling herself off of the Eleven and to her feet. She beelines for Christina, kneeling in front of her. "Hey. Can you walk?"

"I'm being efficient," Jedao says mildly. He trades places with her, moving over to the Eleven to see what shape he's in, and give the women space.

"I can levitate her there, if not, but some people find that disconcerting."

attempted murder 👀

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cw: a lot of physical violence

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