[ti]Ep 3.5[/ti]Bridge [Closed]
Nov 1, 2022 14:03:59 GMT -5
Post by Carbine on Nov 1, 2022 14:03:59 GMT -5
Episode 3.5 | Week 1 | Day 1
The walk down towards the brig was an uneventful one, and if Carbine had his choice it would have been a dead silent one. There was no effort made to start a discussion, and he didn't even participate if the others were chatting to one another. He was simply in his own mind, trying to roll himself back to an old mindset that he constantly tried to smash in a box off to the side... only to fling the top off said box and fling its contents all over the floor. Each time this occurred on Earth however, it felt as if the corners were growing weak, its structure breaking when it came time to re-pack everything within. He needed to get tape. Something. Try to bind and reinforce it so it could continue to hold it back when he needed... NEEDED to try to ignore it.
In his silence, Carbine would glance over, not really sure where Prowl had gone off to. Wasn't he about to play the bad cop? You needed two cops to play good cop and bad cop, and while he knew HIS role was to be a bad cop in the more... defector monster side of things... that didn't play a role in that dynamic of interrogation, and his past occupation was completely irrelevant. Which. Uhh...
Uh oh.
Carbine's form straightened up as his mind suddenly caught up with the idea of what he was doing here. He understood it was because they labeled him a piece of shit who'd have the experience to pull such a role off... yet that was what they thought of him. What their captive would think was the more important element here, and that meant appearances would play an absolutely huge role in this. It was how anyone was judged in Garrus. The way they walked, how their body posture screamed and what capabilities their frame even held. If they were scared and meek, or toughened already from experience. The smallest ones would be instantly labeled pushovers, while the largest could be a new contender to the top tier brackets of guard power to those more influential.
EVERYTHING there relied on that first glimmer that set the stage for the rest of their time there. It was why he had been downed as he had. Not just because he was donned in a uniform... but because he had been scared during that first walk. Terrified of where he was, and what it meant for him in the foreseeable future. The look of recognition in others that they had a new prime punching bag to vent anger. Pretending he was their own cop nemesis that had put them in there... It was a level of psychological horror that sure left its mark even before he was placed in his cell, everything after simply a fallout from his own poor life choices.
First impressions only worked once, they held profound power, and there was a certain awkwardness to the fact he was a police officer, being toted in to play undercover cop...
While wearing the fucking uniform.
His shoulder armor. He was screwed. The black and white plating he primarily wore wasn't going to be an issue. Red biolights? Also, not an issue so long as he didn’t toggle them from red to blue. However, his shoulder armor was a very large problem, the blazoned patterns across their compound curved surface created a bright yellow "hello! I'm an officer but please don't assume that means I am a cop right now teehee!" beacon that made Carbine internally grimace in a level of embarrassed cringe.
It wasn't even as though paint would fix the problem, because he had the light dome on each shoulder frame that were inbuilt to his systems. To truly hide what he was, he would need to have everything painted black, and the light assembly removed or blocked over somehow. He could have been convinced to do a color change there, with the promise it would be painted back to be what it once was. Possibly. Maybe. He liked how he looked and he wasn't really keen on changing that... However, to do that AND ask for him to have the light rig pulled out of him? Even with a medic he would have snarled no to that one.
So here he stood, just before the threshold between hall and brig while he considered this crassly obvious error in judgment. He would need to play it off some other way than he initially had loosely mapped out, yet would the others cope with what he had in mind? Probably not. Would they have a choice? Not really. He was free to do as he will to get the information he needed on his terms. Yet, he had, for the first time in so many countless years, felt uncomfortable with the attire that he normally wore with a sense of pride and arrogance.
Looking down at his hand, Carbine's deadened gaze rolled over the black and white plating, triangular fingers curling open before clenching down again in the new habitual action that he was using to ground himself. It caused his already aching digits to creak in protest, before he dropped his arm and rolled his shoulders, breaking himself from his inner thoughts to look over at Sunstreaker. He would then throw out a comm, a loose short open wave one that he knew their captive wouldn't be able to overhear through the shielding. He would have done a specific one, but he didn't know how to navigate his HUD enough to do anything really, normally relying on others to start a discussion first.
::SO! We goi͞ng įn h͘a̕n͘dc͞uffed?::
The bottom edges of his optics were crooked up into a sort of implied smile, an amused pitch to his words that sounded as though this was the best day of his life.
::I would let you b-borrow mine, bùt ͜t̴hos̵e ̕áŕe for special occasions, and I have al-ready had a jail-side loa̴n s͝t́o̸len from me::
Carbine's voice pitched to a low purr at this, though there was an inkling sense of an annoyed discomfort behind it all. His stance changed then however, looking over at the doorway nervously.
::I... uhhh... re̢co̴m͟m̛ęnd it...::