memorialfoundation | (no subject)

1: girls who have words
content notes: fictional space alcoholism, warframe spoilers (kind of)

They're about five canisters of distil in and, thankfully, Maroo's buying, because Drifter - who used to have a name, if anyone besides a half-psychotic reformatted god-machine and a bunch of waveforms zombie-burnt into the fabric of the space outside spacetime would ever bother to use it - isn't sure which pouch she left her expendable credits in anymore. Golden Lords rot distil, the horrible muck.

Supposedly the Grineer invented it as a side effect of the aimless deforestation process they'd been engaging in down Earthside for the better part of the last few centuries, a freewheeling "let's try fermenting this waste product and see what happens" sort of approach to playing with biohazards that had all the hallmarks of Regor-pattern ingenuity left exposed long enough to Earth-standard levels of oxide it had rotted off the parts of their brain telling them to avoid acting on their funny little ideas. When what passed for their Council came a-calling to see why production had suddenly crashed to a sludge-overrun halt and found rotgut-swollen clones half-dissolved in their own drool, the recipe passed into the hands of what wasn't yet a coherent enough group of rebels to earn the name of Steel Meridian, and from there out into the wider clutches of the Origin System, where it was refined into something only slightly less potent, but still recognizably the kind of toxin that'd kill off enough braincells to make a life spent dancing between the rails worth actually living, once in a while.

Drifter found it an easily acquired taste - it meant a dreamless sleep every once in a while, and she could use those, and it guaranteed she could attract the most obnoxious gossips around every time she drew up to a relay for another "social call". Case in point: Maroo. Who did not share Drifter's rail-jockey line of work, per se, but did pay half-credits upfront and the rest on completion for doing that kind of work for her, and whose hunger for coin, trade, and rumor was significant enough she'd hollowed out an entire unused relay station to squirrel her five-finger flexes away inside. Not that that was common knowledge, but ... well, the way Drifter liked to think of it was that she knew a guy who knew a guy and those guys were in tight with Maroo's favorite muscle, the Tenno, so Drifter was in the rare company who actually had visitation rights to Maroo's euphemistically-titled little "bazaar".

This ... is not Maroo's bazaar. This is the canteen in the interior ring of the Larunda relay, where drinks are cheap and the view is free and the Tenno are whisper's breath and a decon field away in case anyone gets so drunk they forget where they are and try anything serious. "Serious", of course, being a matter of opinion, and short of mortal injury the Tenno opinion was that it couldn't be that serious.

Fucking knifeskins. They acted like the entire system was theirs to arbitrate and then barely involved themselves in it, like children playacting the role of interplanetary policemen. It was enough to make a stranger miss the fucking Dax. Speaking of -

"Now this is the part where it gets interesting," Maroo is saying, although, as Drifter had noted before her own spot of mental woolgathering, they're five canisters of distil deep so Maroo's Jovian-or-close-to-it pile of squawking syllables comes out more like "Naa thiss' zparht werrigetss innarestin'," instead, but Drifter's used to the motormouthed scavenger's idiosyncratic accent enough by now her brain unscrambles the consonants reflexively. "See, you know my girl, right? My girl Varzia? My bestst bestest best backup in the whole galaxy, Varzia? See, usually I don't go out on ... excursions, myself, right? I've got people for that. People like you, my good, good, goodest friend, people who get me enough to make it so I don't have to get got, myself, to get what they're after, you know what I mean?"

Drifter nods, sips her distil as gingerly as she can without risking putting too little drink and too much aftertaste down her throat. Somehow, despite the five times that sentence almost got away from Maroo, she did, in fact, know what the other drunk meant. "You pay good money for work that keeps me busy, Maroo. Can't complain about that, at all."

"Yeah, exactly! You and ... y'know, the scary robots, you're some of my best customers that way." Maroo pauses, and Drifter can almost see, behind Maroo's protective visor, the languid blink that accompanies her pause. "... actually, I'm not even sure if they do talk? Maybe I've just gotten really good at reading body language. Yeah. Anyway." And like that digression didn't happen, she's off to the races again. "So there I was, me, getting my feet wet just because I felt like it, poking around that creepy moon orbiting Earth, lately, because - as you well know - a place like that, you know it's just full of fun things I love to find, like Ayatans - and wouldn't you know it, but instead of an Ayatan that I can fit in a case, I find, just lying out in the open, one of those old Orokin stasis pods, still sealed!"

Well. That is a find. Drifter's eyebrows lift appreciatively, and she even whistles. "That's the kind of find people retire on," she says.

"Not that I'd ever retire," Maroo replies, saying the answer Drifter's already thinking she'd say. "But yeah, if I wanted to, I could have ... except I must have jostled something loose when I went to start transporting it, and it opened the thing. And you know what was inside? Can you guess?"

"Not a clue", Drifter lies. "What?"

"A lordsdamned Dax, is what! And a fine specimen of the pedigree, too, mm mm mm! And there I was, too busy being struck dumb to stop her from killing me!" At this, Maroo stops for a breath, and to drink a gulp of distil while Drifter's face recovers from staring in bemusement. "But it turns out, the hot number in all that sexy armor thinks I got the sweetest face - and that the rest of me's not so hard on the eyes either. Can you believe it? So between that, and my skillful speechifying, I got this hot chick to lower her sword long enough to let me catch her up to speed a bit. I mean, not that I mind a good looker holding a blade to my throat every now and then but I like it to involve a safeword or two, right?"

Drifter can't quite say she understands - but she nods anyway. "So what's this have to do with your girl - Varzia, you said?"

"Oh, right, you ain't ever met her, have you?" Maroo's tone is flippant, almost condescendingly so. "If you had, you'd know. The Dax I'm talking about is Varzia. How's that for a meet-cute?"

Drifter considers that. Considers how much it says about Varzia that Maroo almost certainly did this much talking when they first met and instead of that turning the woman away it instead apparently turned her on. She hums. "Huh. Yeah, you found a girlfriend in a box. That is cute."

The bruise Maroo leaves when she punches Drifter for it: worth it.