220/Deep Space Distress Signal

Deep Space Distress Signal
Date of Scene:	30 April 2017
Location:	Knowhere
Synopsis:	Summary needed
Cast of Characters:	Indigo, Star-Lord

---

Indigo has posed:
    After that unfortunate misunderstanding with the Shi'ar, the Milano was in need of a little TLC; the kind you get in an industrial repair shop for a lot more money than you're happy to spend, as it turns out, but it was pretty necessary, so no point complaining about it. She spent three days in Knowhere getting cracks in the hull repaired and the hyperdrive patched up, and by the time it was done, you were the only Guardian left who was both in the general area of the repair shop and who was sober enough to fly, so you took her out on a little solo flight to make sure she was alright.
    Well, say what you want about the people of Knowhere, the repair crew does their job. A few lightyears away and no problems at all! You drop the engines to idle and head back to the cargo hold to make sure everything's still there (just because they did the repairs right doesn't mean you should forget this is Knowhere and people have sticky fingers), a job of about twenty minutes. When you return to the deck, you get a nasty surprise: an indigo-skinned woman is clinging to the windscreen with one hand, clawing at it ineffectually with the stump of an arm to get your attention. She's in terrible shape, her limbs mangled and her trunk in tatters, with a lot of metal endoskeleton sticking out of her. You could be forgiven for a second for thinking it's Nebula somehow, but you're pretty sure Nebula would never buy a pink wig, or stare in at your ship with that expression of open, agonized pleading.

Star-Lord has posed:
https://youtu.be/oQwNN-0AgWc

    The strutting that comes from Peter "Star-Lord" Quill as he half-walks and half-dances his way into The Milano's deck is completely and utterly stolen from the classic Saturday Night Fever. Granted, there's a bit of an intergalactic twist that's going on as Peter dances his way into view.

    Behind him, built into the wall, is an old school tape deck. Right now the wheels of the cassette are spinning to provide him with his musical soundtrack of ship sailing. This cassette happens to be labeled: Cosmic Mix, Vol. 2.

    Peter stops on his way to the controls, just long enough to show off what is probably the first element of Pelvic Sorcery by way of a few rhythmic pelvic thrusts. He two steps forward, two steps backwards and spins before sliding towards the seats where his crew and he belong. Of course, during this personal dance sequence his eyes are mostly closed and he doesn't even notice that there's /someone/ on the outside of his ship and they are getting their cling on.

    Get it?

    Peter turns fully around now, his back to the windscreen as he shuffle steps back towards the Captain's Chair. He pauses again for some shoulder movements and head bopping and finally drops down into his seat. He spins the chair to the side in an effort to toss his feet up on the controls. He's just about to get comfortable when his eyes finally open up enough to pay attention. He does a double take, "What the." Confusion written all over his face, he doesn't even think before he sits up and leans over to knock on the inside of his screen. "Hey! Hey, get off my ship!" He even starts waving his hand in a frustrated 'shoo' motion! "I just got her detailed! Come on, man. Off!"

Indigo has posed:
    The dark blue woman outside the front view screen sees your waving gesture with her good left eye (a significant portion of her face around her right eye is missing), and there's nothing she can do about it. She can't even make a proper begging gesture, since one of her arms isn't working. Her face just spasms, and then she's pushing her mangled body away from your viewscreen as best she can. Her left eye, once pink of iris, is now obscuring in a white-blue film: it's frosting over. She's crying.

Star-Lord has posed:
    "... ugh, seriously? Right now? I haven't even had breakfast yet."

    Peter spins out of his chair and rushes to the back, hitting the button on his tape deck in one fluid motion to cut the music so that the cinematic score can swell in the background. Y'know, if this were a movie or something it probably would. Peter knows this ship like the back of his hand and makes it to the airlock in seconds. He smashes his palm into the button and as it cranks open he touches the device behind his ear and his helmet materializes over his face and head.

    Star-Lord Lives.

    A quick swipe of his hand and his jet boots ignite rocketing him up and out of the ship, from which he twirls and soars around to the front of the Milano, where the falling apart culprit of ship detailing ruination should be!

    He's comin' to help!

Indigo has posed:
    The pain isn't that bad. Oh, sure, she's unable to escape the shrieking digital awareness of catastrophic systems failure, a sharp agony of ones and zeroes demanding constant attention, but Indigo muses to herself that it's not so bad as she closes her remaining eye (which is no longer all that useful while open anyway). It's the loneliness that really hurts, and the awareness that there's nothing she can do for it until someone comes along through the immensity of space and stumbles across her to salvage her. She can't fully calculate the odds of that without knowing if this is a particular travel route, but her sinking heart knows she should prepare herself to spend years, even centuries floating here, blind and unable to move or even to think properly, maybe until her batteries run dry.
    Indigo doesn't blame you for abandoning her. You have your reasons. She just wishes it could be different, that someone would please help, that--
    She can't hear you approaching her, of course. Space doesn't work like that. It's not until she feels your hand on her that she opens her eye and sees, faintly, through the scrim of ice covering it, a red blur of light in the general shape of a human, and for a moment she can't even reach out to you for help because her systems are overloaded with gratitude for this angel coming through space to save her. Thank you. Oh thank you.

Star-Lord has posed:
    Star-Lord does the much needed Superhero Scoop to grab hold of the cybernetic heap of possibly dying female creatureness and holds on tight. Those jet boots do their thing and it's not long before he's sailing with the salvage towards the Milano's airlock again. The jet boots don't turn off until he's inside and he can't even turn off his helmet since he's got his arms full. He does manage to elbow the hell out of that button and shut the airlock on his way out of this room, though. Like a boss.

    "I got you. I got you." Star-Lord speaks with his slightly robotized voice at this exact moment. Probably has something to do with the helmet wrapped around his head. The lenses in the mask of the helmet are already running what possible diagnostics they can on the body in his arms. Who knows what kind of results are going to come through.

    Star-Lord speedwalks off to the huge slab in the middle of the Milano and lays the body down as gently as possible. "Dammit. No Rocket." Star-Lord seems to be remembering he's all alone up here and disengages his mask to reveal a slightly worried expression. "Definitely gotta' get more than one tech dude on this ship..."

Indigo has posed:
    You set the gynoid down, only to find you're not able to stand up yet. Her arm is tight around your shoulders, squeezing you against her with steel strength. She holds you there for a moment, then releases you, and when you do straighten up her fingers brush along the cheek of your helmet with deliberateness: she was hugging you. Her pink lips are smiling at you, and tears are spilling out of her remaining eye, but when she opens her mouth the sound that spills out is just an electronic hum, meaningless, kind of like what you'd hear at an Earth motel as a truck drives by if that sound was filtered through an oscillating fan like kids talk through to sound like Darth Vader. Fortunately, her lips are easy to read, as they're forming only two syllables, and those in English: "Thank you."
    Your helmet's diagnostics can confirm no organic material of consequence. Her body is made of several rare but not particularly exotic alloys; her physical systems are microhydraulic fibers that very closely imitate human musculature, and she's lost much of the oil necessary to move her limbs; subnuclear power cells in her core and limbs fuel her systems and indicate advanced weaponry; her CPU is shielded by metals you've never seen and a dense layer of some kind of alien ceramic beneath that, making it completely dark to sensors.
    The woman can't speak, but she's looking around the ship for something...oh, that will do. She extends her hand toward a console and makes an exaggerated grasping motion, her one eye pleading with you.

Star-Lord has posed:
    Peter Quill is used to women clinging to him and not wanting him to go. Which is usually why they get to stay with him on his random missions. It isn't that he forgets that they're on the ship /every/ time. It's like a 80/20 split. Regardless, though, this cling is different and Peter can tell. And when the mouthed 'Thank you.' is sent in his direction, his response is a shrug that helps to emote the 'it was nothing' sentiment that he's giving back.

    He's a hero. Sometimes. Saving damsels in distress is kind of his deal.

    Peter is definitely not the one to be trying to figure out what's wrong with a technorganic mess that's on his table. It really is far and beyond his capabilities. Still, he's not going to just sit here and let her die. Not when he'll probably be blamed for it or something. He gets blamed for a lot of things. He doesn't need to add to the list. "Uhhhh..."

    Peter catches visual wind of the hand and the grasping motion. The random console is there and the body is over here. He only plays dumb so Peter figures that maybe he /can/ do something after all and moves into Superhero Scoop Mode once again. "Hey, next time we play charades /before/ I put you down, alright?" Just a little joke to ease the tension as he moves to carry her over to the console.

Indigo has posed:
    Simple expressions are easy enough for her face to form, but an apologetic smile doesn't pull off with approximately thirty percent of her face missing, so it's anyone's guess what she's trying to do with her lips and remaining eye. Looks like you have an emotional robot on your hands, aren't you lucky? When you pull her over to the console, she grips around unsteadily for the fiberoptic cable leading to the data port and, on the third try, convinces her malfunctioning fingers to close over it.
    Then it gets a little weird.
    The gynoid's hand and forearm darken toward purple and the tensile fibers in her synthaflesh begin to stretch out, deforming like wax, reshaping her forearm and hand into a smooth, nearly featureless tentacle that engulfs the cable. Inside, her malfunctioning programming struggles to get her firmware to adapt to the cable for interface, but over time it does happen, and, assuming you don't do something to stop her over the twenty seconds this process takes, you can watch her face take on an expression of blank concentration (if you can imagine such a thing), and at the end you'll hear the ship's speakers kick on as a pleasant female voice intones, "Interfacing. Please do not disconnect my body from the console, as my program is not fully integrated and software damage to both systems cannot be estimated."

Star-Lord has posed:
    "Ummmmmmm."

    That's the sound that comes out of Peter's mouth /and/ the look on his face. Quill is standing somewhere between confusion and stupor at what's going on in this particular moment. He can only understand about no percent of it and so he just stands there, holding the technobabe that's doing something to his ship and he's not really sure what. So that's why the next moment that comes from Quill is one that might be easily expected.

    "Um. Okay. Do me a favor, while you're in there, can you see if you can, I dunno, explain to me what the hell is going on? Please and thank you!"

Indigo has posed:
    "That information will become available as the upload completes," the pleasant voice informs you pleasantly, no emotion in it beyond its pleasantness. "Please wait. System configuration is making progress." Then, you can hear some emotion creeping into her voice, this one an apology as she explains, "I have had to disable this ship's communicators to prevent possible virus reception during this process. Please do not be alarmed. All systems will be restored." Now, more complex feelings are coming in: "Oh...you must be Peter. I've read some of your datalogs. I'm not snooping! Your personal files are being isolated behind a firewall so I don't access them," she adds hastily, sounding embarrassed. "Thank you so much for saving me, Peter. I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't come along. I'm Indigo. I'm so sorry I'm inconveniencing you right now. What would you like to know? Please just ask and I'll tell you anything I can."

Star-Lord has posed:
    "This is so weird but so cool. I don't know if I'm pissed off or in awe. Maybe a bit of both." Peter quips this down to the cyberwoman in his arms as he listens and keeps one eye on The Milano. Just in case. "Eh, look at whatever you want. I got nothin' to hide." The funny thing is that he sounds as genuine as possible with those words. He honestly doesn't have a single thing to hide from anyone. He wears everything on his sleeve. "Indigo. Killer name. I mean, it's nowhere near as good as Star-Lord but you're purple. I get it." Peter shrugs as he gets the opportunity to ask something. "Okay, serious question time. Does Alf ever make it back to Melmac? I need to know this."

Indigo has posed:
    "I'm sorry, Peter. I don't know that, and my firewalls won't let me turn on the ship's communications systems to look for the answer. But let's say Alf does make it back to Melmac. Stories are better when the characters get to go home." Indigo is glad you phrased the question as you did; different grammar would have made the question impenetrable. "I'm scanning your travel logs, and I see this ship was recently put in for repairs at a dock in Knowhere, where the other members of the crew manifest disembarked. Do you think Knowhere has the ability to repair me, Peter? I'd like to take you back there, if someone there can save me."

Star-Lord has posed:
    "Oh yeah. Knowhere's got a little bit of everything and everyone. I'm sure somebody can make you some cyber chicken soup and get you back on your feet in no time. Hell, maybe Rocket can. Depends on how much he had to drink though." Peter frowns just a little bit in thought. "Nevermind. We'll find someone else." Peter grins and shakes his head a bit to clear the thoughts of Drunk Rocket out of his mind. Shudder. "Go ahead and takes us to Knowhere fast. Just be careful. The Milano's my pretty bird and I can't have you backseat flyin' her into an asteroid or something."

Indigo has posed:
    "I'll be careful," Indigo promises. "I don't want anything bad to happen to you, Peter. Diagnosing...It looks like the ship's gravity pump is working fine, so you shouldn't need to sit down for the jump to hyperspeed, and all scanners are functioning properly, so any incoming obstacles can be detected up to three lightyears away. This is a nice ship, Peter." Unless there's a window nearby, you probably can't tell that the ship is turning in space, aiming itself back at Knowhere. "Are you feeling alright? Internal cameras saw you shuddering."

Star-Lord has posed:
    "She's the best ship. I wouldn't trade her for any world. Or even a million units." Peter pauses after saying that and actually considers it. "Well, I dunno, maybe a million units. I could get a pretty nice ship with a million units." The thought process is taken to another level of silence as he realizes that he's being asked more questions. "Oh! That's because you haven't met Rocket yet. And when you do, he'll probably be drunk. And then you'll know the exact reason I shuddered at that thought." Peter figures he might as well clean that up. "He's good people, though! Can fix you up nice! Maybe even give you like rocket launching arms or something. He's awesome at that stuff."

Indigo has posed:
    "Your ship's record indicate he has a propensity for ordinance," Indigo agrees diplomatically. "I'll take any assistance you can offer me and I'll be grateful for it, but do you think I could ask that no one modify my body? It would feel weird to not have my own body again. I already feel strange just being your ship right now."

Star-Lord has posed:
    "Hey, believe me, I know about a woman's body and how important that is. Even to like... robot bodies. Your body, your choice. I'll make sure you're exactly the way you want to be." Peter then can't even help himself because he's Peter Freakin' Quill. "I mean, unless you want to be a little bigger up..." Somehow he manages to motion to his own chest area as some sort of indicator to the foolishness that's coming out of his mouth. "Just a thought!"

Indigo has posed:
    "No, thank you, Peter," Indigo says, either missing the sexism or not caring: she sounds genuine. "I like my body the way it is. Or, the way it usually is, when it's not like this." Your spaceship sighs. "I hope someone can repair me. I miss being me. I miss being able to think and walk and touch people. You have the biggest hug coming your way when I get my arms back, Peter," she promises.

Star-Lord has posed:
"Yeah, uh, let's just start with a handshake. You're pretty damn strong, Indigo." Peter just sneaks that name in to make sure that she understands that he knows and recognizes her as a person. "Don't worry. Knowhere's the place to be if you want to get fixed." Peter doesn't even realize how bad that sounds until after he's already said it. "I mean, not like that. Well, they do /that/ too but not exclusively." Oh, it gets bad when Quill rambles.

Indigo has posed:
    "It's okay, Peter," Indigo soothes you. "I know what you meant. And I know what kind of place Knowhere is. I have access to all your ship's files on it." She pauses. "We're just outside of Knowhere now. I'm stopped a way from the docks, using the ship's landing lights to indicate a communications failure. I'm sure some tow pods will be here shortly to guide the Milano into the bays." The ship's voice swallows; you can actually hear the click. "Peter...there's a chance I can't be repaired, or that if I am, the my hardware will be reconfigured to the point that I'm no longer me, so...I just wanted to tell you, while I'm still me, thank you for helping. No matter what happens, I'm so grateful to you for saving me." The ship's speakers sniffle. "I'm going to download back into my body now. Ship's functions will be restored to you once the transfer is complete." Her voice is infinitely complex, thevast majority of it sounding grateful but with an underlying sadness at the thought of her end, regret at causing you difficulty, and a longing to see you again.
    Emotional robots.

Star-Lord has posed:
    "Uh. Don't talk like that. That's weird. You're gonna' be fine. And you wanna' know how I know? DARYL. Awesome movie, you would've loved it. But DARYL was a super humanesque robot dude, like you! Just uh, minus the dude part. Anyway, he drowned and got broken and stuff. It was horrible. But then Turtle, that was his best friend, he realized that DARYL /couldn't/ die! Because he was a robot! So then there was this fanfare and he ran outside and sure enough... there was DARYL!" Peter doesn't even actually know what this story is supposed to mean but he's said it now so it has to work. "See?" That's right, Peter. Match the emotional robot syndrome with harrowing tales of pop culture from Terra. That makes a lot of sense. Even if, y'know, she didn't hear any of that since she was all downloading and stuff. "Man. Robots are awesome." Peter adds, mostly to himself.

Indigo has posed:
    The Milano is silent during your speech, except for the resonating thuds of tow pods attaching magnetic leads to the ship's hull. Indigo doesn't speak. You can watch awareness drain back into her face, though--a weird as hell thing to watch, but there it is--and watch her tiredly but gamely smile at you. Her purple tentacle disengages from the data port lead but won't turn back into a hand, so it's that smooth, warm tentacle that wraps gently around your hand and part of your wrist. The anatomy makes it strange, but Indigo wants to hold your hand until her lights go out.

Indigo has posed:
    A tablet on a nearby table dings, its screen glowing softly. The last thing Indigo did before returning to her body was create a repair schematic. Oh..those parts will not be cheap.

Star-Lord has posed:
    Peter takes a second to realize that things are weird. He's being held onto by a tentacle and there's just... this whole thing is super awkward. Still, though, he's been in much weirder situations than this. With even weirder results. This time it's just a little bit more awkward. "I swear, I pick up more strays than Old Lady Bickel..."

    Peter stands again, hoisting up Indigo and heads off towards the ramp, scooping up the tablet on the way. Those boots of his lead the way down the lowering ramp and soon enough Peter Quill has returned to Knowhere.

    As the ramp of The Milano is rising again, closing behind Peter, the sound of Quill's voice can be heard: "THIS IS LIKE 100,000 UNITS WORTH OF STUFF! OH COME ON!"

    Finally, The Milano's ramp is up and seals shut.