ataraxionlogs | twenty-eighth jump;

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twenty-eighth jump;

CHARACTERS: Any and all.
LOCATION: Gravity Couches and beyond.
WARNINGS: Maybe some swearing, or even some violence, and more than likely some implied (and possibly explicit) nakedness.
SUMMARY: Another month, another jump, another round of new faces.
NOTES: It could just be the standard sensation of air on wet skin, but if you bother to check, you might notice the steam rising from your body, barely there and gone within a minute. By the time you get to the showers, it will be clear that it's not just taking you time to adjust. The room is cold — colder than usual, but no worse than the last jump. While it's nothing dangerous, it's certainly motivation to hurry through the usual routine and get dressed quickly.

It's getting closer.

YOUR EYES ARE OPEN.

KEEP LOOKING.

You wake up in darkness.

There's a breathing tube jammed down your trachea, and you're suspended in a tube of clear blue fluid. Upon registering your level of consciousness, the gravity couch drains the fluid surrounding you and retracts the breathing apparatus; the doors in front of you open, and you're deposited on the floor of a stark, sterile medical bay.

You are not alone.
There are others who have come before you, others who are awakening beside you. Some may be familiar to you, perhaps even friends. Others have much less amiable plans. Some are merely alien and inexplicable, but there are always those who might mean you harm.

After you catch your breath and your vision returns, you notice a number on the inside of your forearm. Maybe it's a familiar number. Maybe it means something. Maybe it's just a number. But the number—completely unique to you—is a tattoo, and it does not come off.

If you enter the room adjacent to the medbay, you will find a small locker with your number on it, surrounded by rows upon rows of identical lockers. Inside, you will find a few of your personal items, a communications device, and a ship's uniform in your exact size. The comms device is fully powered and connects directly to the ship's network; it's your only means of communication beyond physical conversation. Upon turning the device on, a neutral, automated voice will say, "Please take the blue lift to the passenger quarters." Any other attempts at communicating with the rest of the network are met only with static.

This is your welcome party.

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Great.

[ She's not mad at you, Blue. Just... well, resigned. For now. ]

Anything else I should know other than the towels are less than fluffy?

[ she's angry. he's not surprised at all, but he doesn't particularly care. she's alive to be angry. that's the point of it, that she isn't a puddle by the door of the bridge. ]

Yeah. Me.

[ flatly, derek shaking his limbs out, steadying himself. he doesn't know dana well enough to predict what happens from here, but he's certain it's going to be ugly. he know that right down to his bones. ]

"I'm a schoolteacher," still sounds strange to say, even three years and change into it. "Not any subject relevant to space travel." He pauses there, unsure how to really explain his interests as 'everything', because it's not really true, but sort of covers it.

He settles on, "I like knowing how the world works. Are you a university student?"

University, college, is sort of fascinating as a concept to him. As a very small child before the idea of Hogwarts overtook his entire consciousness, he thought about the half-dozen prestigious muggle universities he might attend. He'd never admit to to anyone from home but part of him would still like to go.

"Not this. Definitely not this." Vague on purpose, but not hostile, though whether or not that's due in part to the raised hand is anyone's guess. For as bad as she's capable of feeling despite not actually being at fault, Claire has spent too long being too cautious and paranoid and terrified to just relent and offer up specifics to someone she doesn't even know. Not to mention, how the hell is she supposed to explain to someone that the last thing she was doing was hurtling herself off of a Ferris wheel on live TV?

"You know me?" Or you think you do, at least.

Of course.

[What a wonderful place he's found himself in. Irritation threatens to rise, but he pushes it away with practiced ease.]

What I am to expect here? I'd prefer to return home as soon as possible.

[She nods, fluffs up some pillows, nudges him back towards them and fills a space next to him. Co-sleeping is how she got through so much of the bad stuff. It's how she'll get him through this, she decides.]

[His brows darken at the mention of that.]

They die? By whose hand?

Claire nods, saying, "Yeah, I'm about halfway through my first year. I haven't managed to figure out much about how the world works yet, but I made it past Thanksgiving, so I feel like that's an accomplishment." She could relate to being interested in how the world works if she wasn't already so mired in her own dramas with regards to that question. There's a level of fascination that she's always going to maintain, but given her circumstances and experiences, it's never not going to be colored just the slightest bit jade. "I'm not sure if they consider getting sucked into some kind of giant, interdimensional spaceship a qualifying reason to ask for an extension on midterms, though."

Not that it actually matters. If time is still ticking away at the same rate back on planet Earth with all its abnormalities, the last thing she has to be worried about is trying to determine what major she wants to declare.

"It's a little weird to know that schoolteachers still get into fist fights." Not that he's obviously proud of the fact - or maybe he is; she clearly doesn't know enough about him to say one way or the other - but he does look awfully young to be a teacher. Claire supposes, though, that despite her more recent exposure to TAs, her perceptions of teachers are still firmly rooted in the ones that she had in high school, and he absolutely does not come across like her chemistry and Spanish teachers. "What do you teach?"

[ derek looks immediately sour, irritated like chris is ruining his day. though to be fair, chris does that simply by existing. he doesn't have to work very hard at it. ]

What?

[ yes, this is true. if chris texted derek asking questions derek would probably delete and ignore them out of spite. ]

I never ran away.

[ defensive, though he might have wanted to at one point. however, she can't prove it, and derek's not allowed it. ]

Do you need something?

[ like pleasant conversation just doesn't exist in this world, like no one talks to derek without ulterior motive. ]

It's sort of dangerous? And you can probably learn a lot from your network device, it'll be in your locker after you shower. There are clothes in there, too. Things from home.

'Thanksgiving' sounds vaguely familiar but he's not sure what it is; decides he doesn't care enough to ask. Some sort of Americanism, probably. He's heard that the magical community in the US is more integrated to muggle culture than the community in the UK, but there's never been much information available on it. Who knows if it's good or bad.

"Everyone gets into fist fights in the right company," he says dully. No, he really isn't proud of it, and would like to have avoided it - he doubts he'll maintain a completely peaceful relationship with Black on board, but it'll never get to that point again if he can help it. Next time, he'll put him down immediately.

"I teach potion-making. Alchemy."

[For Bela, the uneasy feeling never really went away. It was always there, in the pit of her stomach because she was aware of what this place was capable of. Things could be thrown at them without much warning at any given time and it was something Bela thought about often.

She wouldn't blame anyone for feeling the same way. And if they didn't, well, all the more power to them.

With each jump came new people, and Bela wasn't surprised to come across an unfamiliar face through happenstance. She doesn't approach Stefan though, preferring to search through her locker and pick up anything new she might have received. Sticking to her usual routine.]

[Carefully, he crawls onto the bed and lets himself lean back against the pillows--even if he's not relaxed, not properly. Shutting his eyes helps, a little--at least it makes him feel like he's somehow doing the right thing--and he leans a little of his weight against her, the warm comfort of another person's presence.]

That is why you and I are friends, Spike. [He gets her.] I can celebrate being alive.

[Getting away from Tyler had been one thing, but now she's realizing just how easy it's going to be to smell this blood. This jar definitely isn't vacuum-sealed and the longer it takes her to move through the crowd, the more the scent is going to spread to her.

Her hand shoves her Goldfish crackers on top of the folded jacket, as she needs to brush her hair out of her face. She moves through the group, trying to just get out of there, but she can feel someone behind her. It's not a comforting feeling and now she wishes she hadn't gotten rid of Tyler so quickly.

She shifts her grip on the jar and just stops suddenly, stepping to the left so that whoever is behind her is going to have to either keep going, or make themselves known.]

You'd have to talk to him about that. [ there's the hint of an edge in her voice; if he loaned out a gun, it means he enabled this bullshit stunt and everyone in that camp gets a bit of her ire, in the moment.

she nods in return to the greeting. ] Tara. [ 'jax's old lady' is supposed to follow that, but even wearing the club's name across her chest in the moment feels a step away from too much. ] Medical.

[ she gestures vaguely across the hall, like they both don't know where it is— it's just something to do with her hands, something that isn't taking out her anger on strangers for asking innocent questions. ]

No better thing to celebrate.

[ he smiles, then offers her his elbow. ] Shall we?

"I knew a you. This place is kinda..." There's a long pause, and he realizes there isn't really a more delicate way to put this: "I live with your uncle."

She supposes that's true. If she saw Sylar right now, she's sure that she could be enticed and antagonized enough into punching him in the face. It's never actually taken much when it comes to him.

"That seems more like chemistry than magic," Claire points out, making inferences based on the whole leaving her dry, if not warm, thing back there at the lockers. "Has it done much to tell you how the world works?"

She's only being half-sarcastic with that one.

[ She'd be more relieved to hear that if she wasn't already focusing on the part about this being dangerous. ]

I figured this wasn't going to be the safest place in the world just... given the circumstances. The white van of outer space kidnapping people doesn't inspire a lot of comfort. [ Claire looks over in the direction that everyone is heading, some with a comforting voice of a stranger who has been here, others alone, yet more still who are seasoned veterans. Her head swims. She smiles. ] I'll check out that network thing.

"Chemistry," oh lord here we go, "is the scientific study of the changing properties of matter. It is more staring for hours into a blown-up slide of a cluster of atoms than it is things that fizz in jars. It is a mere facet of alchemy, which is not only study but practice, and is hardly confined by something as crude as physical matter."

He raises his eyebrows. "And it has."

[She's... slightly tired of people asking her if something happened. She understands that the people she knows have enhanced senses, but it becomes frustrating when it's not just a standard 'hey, I just met you, and this is creepy, but I can smell you, so call WHERE ARE YOU BLEEDING FROM?' or at least, that's how she's seeing it.]

It's nothing. [She replies flatly, protecting that jar.]

A little taken aback, Claire raises her eyebrows in return and doesn't immediately say anything. When she does open her mouth to reply, her tone is a little more agitated than it's been currently, taking on an edge that's expressly used for sass and exasperation. "Hey, when I took chemistry, there was plenty of fizzing in jars to go around for everyone. And we don't exactly have alchemy at Arlington."

If they did, she probably would have signed up for it out of sheer curiosity.

"Or magic."

"Strange?" she supplies within that pause, going with the only qualifier she can think of that adequately encompasses all of this insanity in one pocket definition. Of course, the majority of that strangeness is thrown out the window as one thought instantly amplifies.

Her face is swirling mixture of relief and trepidation, thrilled at the possibility of Peter actually being here and half-horrified that he's been here. She just saw him, moments ago, face dirty and turned up toward her. What will he think of her? She hadn't thought of that on the way down. All she can say now is: "Peter's here?"

The implications of this being his roommate are entirely lost on her in the face of wanting to see him immediately.

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twenty-eighth jump;

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many moons later....

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it's okay on all accounts!!

he ain't put a ring on it yet i am js

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