Chapter Text
The lift opens up with a klaaaang. Green steps out of the lift and settles into a seat at the back, past the TV screen. The room wasn't large, but it was intended for showing an audience an informatical video, like at a trampoline park. White, swaggering in, hops on a chair all bouncy and that. The lift travels up to another level with a futuristic whirr, and the TV turns on. The introductory video for interns begins to play. “Fun, Engagement, Fun-gagement! Here at M.I.R.A corporation, the company culture is sooo fun-gaging," the recording says in a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed tone. //Creepy...//
//'Fun- gagement'. Yes. Because is so fun to be killed//. Green thought.
Being poked by White, Green jumped out of their thoughts, and turnt their head to White, gave them a smile and straightened up.
“Hi... I am Green. You're White, aren’t you? I think I saw you on TV," they give White an off-putting smile, unintentionally.
“I get that a lot, heh, probably because I’m on TV a lot. Obviously because of all my hard-hard-hard work,” White is pointing at themselves and being all smirky.
-A silence- “Uh. So, how did you end up here?” Green asked politely.
“Let me tell you! One day, I was walking down the street, completely minding my own business, when suddenly, out of nowhere, my parents offered me a board member role at their pharma-pharmaceutical company. Yeah, farmeh-sooty-cull. Then while vacationing as a verb. On my pretty yacht, my sommelier, whose name I don’t recall, presented me the cork! On the underside was, you guessed it, a winning ride on this very ship. So pretty the much same kind of thing that happens to everyone,”
//Oh, how they go on and on about their perfect little life.//
“Hey! What’s your equally as enterprising life’s story?”
“I grew up on a worm farm, but now I am an unpaid intern.”
“How... err... rustic” White sounded underwhelmed.
Green swoops in and grabs the remote to the play the rest of the video. As it finishes, the door starts to open up. Orange steps out into the lift.
“It was me, but now I’m real. Welcome to the Skeld. We’re so happy to have you among us, or is it among us?" In a jaunty tone, “I always forget which one it is, grammatically,” And they are sounding a bit confused.
All start clapping mindlessly at Orange for their small speech. Orange looks at us, and in a chipper tone, continues, “That's right, it is me. Now, when you catch the trust ball, you have to say a fun fact about yourself!” throwing the ball up in the air and caching is “My fun fact is that I have two different pairs of shoes, one for normal day wear, and one for when I’m feeling scrumptious” Orange winks while saying that last part rather sensually, and then throws the ball to White.
As White catches the ball, they begin to speak. “Uh, it doesn’t matter how much sleep I get, I always awaken feeling well-rested and ready to start the day,"
White throw the ball then to Green, but they missed the catch, and fumble the ball dreadfully and they have to pick it up from the ground. As theey get back on the seat, they just look at the ball “Uh, well, I grew up in a pretty poor area, but everyone back home believed in my dream to one day to become a Captain! (Like Captain James T!) The whole town pooled their meager resources, and sent me off to school in order to,” Green made the decision to say what they said last time, he needed a lie to not have any uncomfortable questions.
Getting interrupted by Orange, “Wow! What a unique dream to have. Now, everybody knows you’re both coming... so let’s start our meet and greet!” putting out their hands, they grin.
They head into Storage. //Freezing and see the egg... the egg... they're not rocks, they are eggs.//
Cyan puts down their box and look at Green. They smile cutely (aww), “Hey theeeerrree, are you okay, my friend?”
Cyan stands in-front of Green. Green snaps of their panic, but they still look away. "I am... fine, yeah,” they head out of the room and wait for Orange and White to finish up.
Black and Orange argue on about paperwork.
“Well, the paperwork is actually bullshit,” Black is pulling out a knife. Gasp. Green, White, and Orange run to the Reactor room.
“...and here’s the Reactor room! Sometimes your duties will require you to fix the-”
Orange gets interrupted by Lime crawling out of the vent, which makes them all scream. White screams like a little girl. Green screams internally. Orange screams bodaciously.
“Fiiinally. The Reactor room. Those damned gremlins must be turning the vents around. Got to flush them out with a healthy dose of holy water,” Lime holds the holy water out and looked into it with sparkly eyes.
Green interrupted Lime with a stammer, “What do you mean 'gremlins'?”
“They live in the vents- they turn vents around- with the hot metal goop. They're master welders.”
Green gives Lime a (confused) nod.
Orange looks at Green with a judgemental glare from their visor, “This is Lime. They're our engineer.”
“I’m also an ordained minister,” Lime points out from the blue.
“Oh. Ok. Umm, why are you in the vent even?” White asks.
“What are you, a cop?”
“Noo. Obvious-losley, I'm just friends with cops, I'm friends with all kinds of people. Landlords, influencers, politicians, childrens, people who green-light live-action versions of animated movies and mobile games, people who are in live-actions..." White begins counting off on their fingers.
They were swiftly interrupted by Lime, “I ain't got time for you snake-oilers... Get this out of my fur. Come on—ow,” the vent rattles.
“Uh, Li-Lime is our most unambiguous crew-mate.”
Green and White both nod at the same time.
“Next up is Purple! Who should be...” Purple was not in security. A tumble-weed literally broke the laws of space and rolled past from nowhere. “Aww, hot damn. We’ll just have to skip to the next crewmate, who I totally like the same amount as everyone else,” Green trailed into med bay just as Orange started to blush at Blue. “Oh, hello, our good Doctor,”
Blue turns and looks at Orange, their visor was reflecting sparkles from Blues radiant, shiny fur as they whisper, “Hello,”
Orange is very flustered, and says to Blue, “Oh! Umm... trust ball!”
“After my time building structurally sound horses for the unhorsed in Northern Mongolia, I found trust that isn't given. It's built,” Blue throws the ball back to Orange, who is busy gazing with big sparkly eyes (The whole medbay is very sparkly, actually), leaving Green to duck and dodge the ball.
Green looks up, and as they see White and Orange leaving, they follow after them. But not before giving the Doctor a smile.
“This is the Cafeteria. I think, maybe we can skip over this very boring, but very fair working environment,”
Green looks back at Yellow 'n Brown, and smiles at them like a little cat that smirks.
Already halfway to the door, Yellow shouts boldly at Green, “How many beans you being paid, Intern!?”
Orange tries to dissuade by stammering, “We don’t need to discuss our rate of beans,” Orange gets in front of Green to stop Yellow from discuss the rate of beans.
Yellow reasonably yells at Orange, Green flinches ever so slightly, and Yellow starts again, "The discussion of wages is protected speech!" while Yellow tosses Orange away with the power of ten thousand warp cores.
Brown walks over to Green and pleads, “Come on, Green, spill the tea,”
“Ouc- Oh! is there salt on this Pizza? I really do love salt” Orange grimaces.
Yellow starts counting “One, two, three,”
Yellow and Green say, “Nothing, I’m an unpaid intern,”
Yellow walks to Orange and takes the ball off of them “Give me that,”
“Unpaid internships favor the wealthy, while being a capitalist exploitation of inexperienced workers under the guise of helping them achieve their personal and financial dreams,” Yellow preaches.
Green raised their hand studiously to the ask, “What’s a Capitalism?”
Yellow blinks at Green and says, "Capitalism is a economic system that pities private ownership of the means of production and its use for the purpose of obtaining profit, this has lead to a class divide. regardless of the wider population, ability to afford basic necessities such as housing, food and medical care as it favors the wealthy ability to squeeze more out of the masses, as they have it difficult to even gain financial independence. This is backed by governmental systems under-funding public services, for the lower class can't gain the information to understand the systems in place, and even if you do get a well paying job, you'll probably fall into debt for the majority of your financial career. This makes your children have to go into the same financial hardship to get an education, and inevitably just become another cog in the machine."
White says 'me' at the same time.
Everyone ignored White. Green asks “ What is an economic system even?”
“An economics system is a system of production, resource allocation and distribution of goods and services within an economy,”
Orange was at the doorway, about to go to the Captain, “Greeny, do you wanna to see the Captain?”
Green was giving Yellow and Brown a smile as they left, “Nice to meet you, Yellow 'n Brown,” as they ran off to go see the Captain, the ship starts.
The first thing that is heard is Red and Purple arguing in the cockpit.
Orange begins, “Let me show you the crew quarter,” and, as they walk past the cockpit, and get to a landing and skipping up that to six rooms. Orange goes up to an unmarked door and opens. Inside are two bunk-beds. They are built into the wall. “This is your room. Let's settle you both in,"
“Wow, Green, I can’t believe we have to share. I've only seen, like, people in the poorhouse do that,” White groaned, disgusted.
Green does not reply to that. Of the bunks, Green takes the left, and White takes the right. Green carefully places their precious blanket and plush up on their bunk, and then draws the privacy curtain to.
Green goes to the drawers to put their shirts inside. The first one has a classic worm print on it and is the same emerald colour as the grazing grass back on the farm. The second is a lighter green and is plain, sans a small stain near the collar, but that was negligible. One of their Papas old t-shirts, is was a bit baggy on Green (they were a little guy) with a wash-faded graphic of an old band. Green did not have much, especially compared to the roommate nearby who was used to a life of luxury.
He grabs his informatical visual dictionary of worm raising and puts it up on the shelving unit with the shirts inside, and took out their socks they'd won at a farming event, and dropped them into the draw.
“Bye, White. See you later,"
White looks up and waves 'bye' with their free hand. The other was already busy searching into the padd they'd been given for work. It was most definitely not work-related and infact holiday destination related. White was already planning their shore leave.
Green leaves their and Whites quarters and strolls to the cafeteria, goes to one of the seats, and sits down.
Half an hour later, Purple interrupts Green, (who was playing an unbanned online game on their padd), “Hiii. You're the new intern, right?”
“Yeah, that's me, I'm Green,”
“Good. I'm Purple, from security... ummm...” they bounce on they heels slightly. Purple was not the sharpest in casual conversation, and it was particularly obvious here. They'd been told by Orange that they had to introduce themselves. Purple was looking around, bored.
“What happens in security?”
"I watch the cameras, do patrols of the ship, assess risk to the crew," It was a very textbook answer.
(1-hour later)
Captain Red comes into the Cafeteria and looks straight at Green (who was just about to leave), “Heya. I'm Captain of the Skeld,”
“Hi. I'm Green. The unpaid intern. What's it like on Skeld for you? Also; what do you do as Captain?” Green asks. They are bouncing about by the big window that looks out into space. Green was waiting to be released from conversation, and so bouncing more bouncily than Red. Though, Red was also pretty chipper with his big sum of bean pay and also bouncing lots.
Red looks at Green and smiles. But only on one side. Like an evil smirk. "I pilot the Skeld. I do commands. I do decisions and assign tasks. Oh! By the way, There's a meeting at 0700 hrs. It's for all of crew, so you'll need to be there,"
(2-hour later)
There's is a pizza party going on. Green is talking to Cyan about their crystal collection. Green had spoken to Lime earlier, and now? They were in a vent nearby. Lime is suspicious of the rocks, but Lime is suspicious about a lot of things, so it doesn't even really mean much. Anyway, Cyan has said there's a sinister energy on the ship, and it's especially strong in storage. //But, how am I supposed to get them to know about the eggs without them getting suspicious of me? Or thinking I'm batpoop crazy? How?// Green was brought out of their thoughts by Cyan poking them. Green gave a awkward smile, "So! What's this one called?"