Chapter Text
Exhausted. Restless. Hungry. Sore. Angry. If Juno Steel was asked to describe how he was feeling in that moment, any of those adjectives would be good candidates. But the one emotion that took over the rest of them in that very moment was annoyance.
“And that is short for…?” The ‘therapist’ prompted. Juno highly doubted the person behind the mask was actually qualified to be therapist.
“Maximum. It’s Maximum Action. Look, I don’t want to talk about it,” he snapped, glaring at the man across from him who snickered at the name. It was a stupid name, but (at least for now) it was his name.
The ‘therapist’ spoke again, a couple short words, and chaos erupted around Juno. The former PI sat in his seat, choosing not to take part in the brawl.
A tall woman with brown and teal hair and square glasses that reminded him painfully of Nureyev’s sat beside him. She was very beautiful, with her strong features and the intelligence behind her eyes.
“Nastya Rasputina,” she introduced herself, holding out a hand for him to shake. She had a thick accent from somewhere in the Outer Rim, probably. He figured he shouldn’t ask about it.
“Max,” Juno did not feel the need to provide the last name assigned to him.
They sat in silence, contemplating the physical fight that had very quickly broken out amongst the other inmates. Nastya was tapping her fingures against her thigh in the exact place that made Juno itch for the reassurance of his blaster. So she was a shooter, then. He wondered what she was in for.
The man who’d laughed at his name before split from the crowd, knuckles busted and one of his eyes heavily bruised. “Oh! You’re the one with the silly name!” He exclaimed, catching sight of Juno.
“This is Gunpowder Tim,” Nastya said. They knew each other? Where from? There wasn’t much time to get to know people in this place and Nastya’s voice indicated more than a passing knowledge of his name and nothing more. The logical conclusion to come to was that they’d worked together, but on what?
All that could wait till later, though, because Juno had a score to settle. “I’m sorry, your name is Gunpowder Tim and you had the audacity to call mine silly?”
Gunpowder Tim (was his last name Tim?) stared at him impassively, like what Juno was saying made no sense to him.
“Anyways, Nas, you should totally come join.” He had a wildly different accent than Nastya, more akin to Nureyev’s if anything. Was this ridiculously named man also from Brahma?
“I’ll pass, thanks.”
“Are you still moping?” Gunpowder Tim flopped into a chair beside Nastya, leaning towards her dramatically.
“I am not moping, Tim,” Nastya retorted and Juno felt like he was eavesdropping. Then again, for large portion of his professional life he’d been payed to eavesdrop, so he shouldn’t be too uncomfortable about it.
“Sure.” Tim nodded slowly in that way people do when they don’t believe a word they’re hearing. He turned to Juno, resting his elbow on his leg and his chin on his hand like some overeager psych. “What’re you in for, Miss Action?”
Juno ran through the story in his head, grateful his fictional crime matched his real life one. “Nothing much. A bit of space piracy.”
Nastya looked at him, eyebrows raised in intrigue. “Is that so?”
“Yeah. You?”
“The same thing.” Nastya narrowed her eyes at him like she wasn’t sure he was telling the truth. Which, in many ways, he wasn’t. “Did they get your crew?”
Here was where Juno faltered. If he said yes they’d ask more questions and he did want to dig himself his own grave by saying there were people in the prison that knew Maximum Action, but his crew was there. At least part of it.
Luckily for him, the issue resolved itself when Gunpowder Tim decided to speak. “They only got three of us, and it was more that we went along with them.”
Juno noticed something about Tim’s eyes that made his heart stop in his chest. They were bionic. They were too advanced to be something like Buddy’s, though the visible metal in his irises and pupils indicated it wasn’t a Theia, at least. There were marks around his eyes, probably from when they’d been put in. But if there were still visible marks and yet he wasn’t struggling with them at all, indicating enough time had passed, they couldn’t have been put in by a surgeon. Which begged the question: what the fuck?
“I know I’m pretty, but what’s got you staring like that?” Gunpowder Tim — just Tim? — said, cocking his head to the side.
“Is your bruise supposed to be that color?” Is what Juno replied, not thinking of anything else on the spot.
Tim furrowed his brow and looked to Nastya for support. She shrugged, face giving away nothing. “Oh my god, kill me quick, it’ll go away,” Tim said to his crewmate. She glared. “I can’t lose more eyes, Nastya! I don’t have any more eyes!” Tim clutched his bruised eye.
“You’re not going to lose more eyes,” Nastya said, annoyance in her voice. “These ones are securely in your skull. Now go beat someone up with a chair, or something.”
Gunpowder Tim looked between Nastya, Juno and the still ongoing fight, then got up with a flourish and threw himself into the fray. Nastya sighed.
“Not one for violence?”
“Usually I am,” Nastya said, picking at the rough clothes she wore. “But I haven’t been feeling it recently. Hard to take pleasure in anything in a place like this.” She said it mournfully, like an artist saying they couldn’t paint in a dreary box of a house. Juno knew what space piracy often entailed, on the aggressive side of things, and was quite uncomfortable with it, but that had never been much of an issue with his crew. Apparently Nastya’s had been different, a bit more typical in their approach to piracy. He was surprised he’d never heard of them: even if they were Outer Rim, Nureyev could go on for ages about his criminal crushes and people who’d done enough to get locked up here should have been on his radar. Maybe they were new?
“Are you missing someone?”
Nastya looked at him suspiciously before shrugging. “I wouldn’t say I miss them, but it is odd not being near them. My girlfriend and my brother, as well as the rest of the crew.”
“Oh, is piracy a familial thing?”
Nastya grimaced and seemed to think over her answer for a bit, before saying, “he got into it first, in a way. The crew grew from there.”
Juno nodded slowly, carefully filing this information away. He wasn’t sure how, but he got the distinct impression this woman and her crew were important somehow. “So your brother is captain?”
“He most certainly is not!” Tim appeared out of nowhere, scowling. “He’s the first mate and it would do him well to remember that!”
“It’s a point of debate within the crew,” Nastya said evenly. Tim seemed to decide he was no longer needed and retreated as quickly as he’d come. “Jonny says he’s captain, most others disagree. Since the Doc never got the chance to appoint anyone, the argument can go on for centuries.” Nastya hummed, as if lost in thought. “He’s a strange man.”
Juno didn’t want to pry, but it had been his job, even if he usually got his information after pissing someone off enough to leave him for dead in a gutter. “How so?”
Nastya shrugged, clearly done with the conversation. Alright. Juno stuffed his hands in his pockets. He was tired and almost itching to join the fight, but it was being pulled apart by guards who’d taken their sweet, sweet time getting there. Gunpowder Tim’s hair was a mess and he was panting, blood dripping from his nose, but he looked content. Juno sighed and settled back into his chair, preparing himself for a long four hours of verbal violence, now that the physical option had been taken away.
“What about your crew?” Nastya said, words going unnoticed under the shouts and wails of the other inmates. “I do not believe you ever answered my question.”
“Oh, they’re…” Juno thought over it for a moment. “Here. I can’t find them, though.”
“What are their names?”
“You seem like a very competent woman, Nastya, but I don’t think even you can find three people in this place.”
“What are their names.”
“Vespa Ilkay, Jet Sikuliaq, and Buddy Aurinko.” Juno knew that it was probably stupid, but he felt like he could trust this woman. She had a sort of timeless quality and he got the impression that anything he said or did would ultimately have no effect on her life. Plus, he felt confident in the assumption that she would not be speaking to the guards about jack shit.
Nastya seemed to take note of the names provided, and nodded slowly. The ‘therapist’ called on her to share before she could say whatever it was she’d been opening her mouth to say.
“Anastasia Rasputina? Why don’t you share with the group.”
“It’s Nastya.”
“I think I will be calling you Anastasia. It is important to be clear with our names here.”
“No, you won’t, because my name is Nastya.”
The ‘therapist’ just smiled. “Alright, Anastasia. Care to tell us about your home planet?”
Nastya shot up, snarling, and her hand closed around a blaster that wasn’t there. Instead, it followed through the motion and formed a fist. Nastya lunged at the ‘therapist’, hatred in her eyes. She was grabbed and forced away by two burly guards.
“Now, now, Anastasia, there’s no need for that.” They were just doing it to aggravate Nastya, Juno could easily tell. He didn’t quite know what to do. A lot of eyes had turned to him, now sitting alone in a corner and watching his conversation partner get hauled out of the room.
“I’ll be right back,” Tim said, standing up.
“I’m sorry, but you can’t go anywhere,” the ‘therapist’ said, falsely remorseful.
“Yes, I can.” Tim left after Nastya. At least no one was looking at Juno anymore. He was surprised no one else threw themselves at the doors to get out, but all that really showed him that Nastya and Tim hadn’t been in Aurinko Permanent Correctional Facility long. The group quickly fell back into their routine shouting match and Juno tried to put the two Outer Rim pirates out of his mind.