ataraxionlogs | twenty-eighth jump;

Entry tags:

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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➝ pods

[ The moment he wakes he spreads his arms, shoves them roughly against the sides of the pod, feels the way the tube thrust down his throat already begins to move and he is disengaged, spat out against the ground. He gets a firm footing at first, it's easy--not so easy when he realizes he is devoid of his suit and the air is cold against his skin and one coordinated step makes for him going down onto his knees and wrists awkwardly. In the face of a Covenant brute, one might say that John is violently graceful, all fluid motions and calculated arcs of his knife. Never has he felt so clumsy, a small stream of blue running down the side of his face.

Cortana.

He feels the empty echoes of her, the unresponsiveness in the back of his head and it makes him breathe in once slowly and correct his mistake, pulling himself up onto his feet quickly. Faster, soldier, faster.

He's unprepared, stripped of his armor, stripped of his weapons (they hadn't even left him a knife). This isn't cryo, of that he's certain. Cryo is dry and cold--there's frost on your visor, your entire body is numb, dizziness, vertigo. Here, everything is just... irritatingly wet. Sticky. Still cold, but not in the way you can shake off. He spits the substance in his mouth out onto the floor, quick and easy, and finds his footing again. Slowly, he tells himself. Easy. He has take it one step at a time, but it hits him like a brick. This isn't the Infinity. This isn't any ship he's known (unless they're switching things up on him, sweeping out the old, making room for the new.)

After the plates came off, it's back in the box for the toy soldier for however long the world takes until it's fallen apart. He knows the song and dance all too well. Finds himself growing bored of it, maybe even learning to have the capacity to dislike it strongly (but never hate it--it's just a necessary part of the job.)

The current mission's objective is as follows, he tells himself. Find the MJOLNIR. Find a weapon. Get some intel. That is the mission. That is the mission and you can't be distracted. Goals. Objectives. No distractions. Mission first.

But no Cortana.

(You've worked alone before, this shouldn't be hard.)

He moves forward on careful feet with long strides, passing carefully through the sea of people, a brief touch there with his shoulder (everyone is wet, swarming lockers, it's disgusting). Stares will be ignored--he's used to them well-enough already. As he moves, he flicks a brief glance down as his hand, at the augmentation scars running lines up his knuckles and arms, down his back, his legs.

At least they've got something right:

028 » 117

One one seven.

That's you, John. That's you. ]

➝ lockers

[ Upon investigation of the lockers, John immediately finds himself filled with a sensation of relief and violation. They touched it. Whoever they are. The armor is stacked carefully on it's side in the locket, slotted perfectly so that it will fit with his shotgun and rifle.

He squints at the helmet that looks back at him.

He doesn't remember his visor being so dinted up. So he reaches and grabs hold of it, the weight of it good and proper in his hands. Putting it on now would be ridiculous--hell, the rest of the armor would be a pain in and of itself to put on, heavy as it is (but he'd manage it later, as soon as he could). For now, the crew's uniform will have to do. In all honesty, he's surprised that it even fits.

Piece by piece, he begins to examine his suit, arm plates first, chest plate, and so on.

The thing is massive as it leans against the locker, accumulating into the vague shape of a disassembled man. ]

( ooc: feel free to hit him up post-cryo, at the lockers, in the crowd, or in the showers! c: open to everything and anything, really! )

Edited 2014-02-08 06:03 (UTC)

[cortana wakes up with a gasping start, as if she was just plunged in icy water and her lungs fill with air. it isn't that she isn't used to this by now, it's that she thought she wouldn't live to see this moment. the fear that once again she'd be leaving the world behind without experiencing anything - without feeling something other than fear and need.

mutiny did not look well on her; it was more like a foolish, adolescent thing that was spurned by emotion rather than logic. at some point, she didn't want to think, didn't want to experience the feeling of thinking over and over again.

she's never cried before either. every situation she's been in, she's always had the master chief to look to, that his confidence was infectious and coupled with her own pride and hubris, they were an unstoppable team. she used to think that seven years was enough, that seven years was all that she wanted with him but now that she actually could feel being apart from him? it was unbearable.

cortana didn't know why, but for some odd reason all she wanted was to hear his voice. to hear that familiar "it's going to be alright" or "it's not over, not yet" - anything. she might be a sword, a shield but he was her rock, her everything. she lets herself have this emotion, the sobs of fear and relief just seeping through her as she has a third chance at life before she gets up. shaking, even as she gets out of the pod and she looks around before heading to the showers.

(mission objective: showers, gather intel, find out what happened and how we're alive)

these are things she can do.

the sight before her? something she can't. 6'10, brunette with a sort of primal attraction around him, scars across his left eye, down his jaw and - and his eyes. emotion takes her over as she bolts towards him, remembering that all she wanted was for him to break down that bridge door and rescue all of them - just like he always did.

she didn't know why she was glad to see him; he shouldn't be here, he lived and she died so that he could continue to protect and this place is awful. it's not the case, her arms around his neck and her face is buried in his shoulders as she just holds him and never lets him go, her feet far off the ground.]

[ John has never been font of surprises. A snap to the neck, however, usually finishes those in less than a second and he can move on.

This surprise, however, is not one he would like to break, maim, or throw down. She is blue and small, throws herself at him without a single word. I've waited so long to do that, she'd told him, touching the front of his chest plate, and he felt for a moment, that synapses connected, that he felt something he ought not have felt. That it wasn't enough. He's still slick and wet, steam rising off of his shoulders and the crown of his head as she buries her face.

The faint whisper of her makes his arms curl slowly, disbelieving.

(How long has it been since you've wrapped your arms around something that wasn't a plasma cannon? Handled something even more delicate than the smallest pieces of a standard-issue DMR?)

He doesn't want to crush her, but he feels every nerve in him shake on overload. He brings his arms together anyways, around her, as if maybe desperate to pull her inside of him again, feel her flitting through waves of information, a hummingbird ghosting along electric waves, protecting him. I am your sword. I am your shield. All he knows is that his chest tightens, that the sensation flits through the irregular pulse in his jaw.

John is normally a man of silence, but even now one might call him dumbstruck with lips parted in breath and eyes bright and wide, even as he holds her tightly to keep her from sliding down his slippery front.

He breathes her name. ]

Cortana.

[ She feels real. All warm skin. Her data pulses on her shoulders, her back, her swinging legs--they don't move, they don't travel. They are stationary. She is but a fixed point in time and she is real. ]

[he's everything that she imagined that he'd be. not by looks, because she has that memorized. what person can say that they have another's neural pathways memorized? not another. it is because there is no other john, no other master chief. there may be those who are smarter, faster, stronger, more cunning, but they are not brave like him, self sacrificing like him or as lucky as he.

he is hers and she is his and once more everything is back to being one as it should be. or as close as it can be anyway.

his skin is rough like him, scars feel like jagged stories across his skin, just like her data pulses once were. his mouth is just as it always is, stern and taciturn and once again she finds herself crying.]

What are you doing here? [you should be saving people, protecting them from whatever they've unleashed on the galaxy. was the didact dead, did they find a body, what about Requiem's status, did he ever find Halsey? all of these questions, but all of them boil down to why are you here?]

I know we've done strange before, but this, this is beyond even my understanding. [says the AI come alive.]

[ It's not an accusation, John can hear it in the tone of her voice. It is disbelief, maybe something else. Cortana has been more to him than anyone--when his brothers and sisters were lost, she'd been there, only her and only him. He used to work alone, now the thought of it makes him fidget inwardly. Alone never felt so unappealing.

He tries to think of various ways to answer her questions, all lightening quick, but nothing fits. Your guess is as good as mine.

They were removing his plates, they were pulling him apart piece by piece and now he's here and Cortana... Cortana is here too.

For once, John finds that he can't care for about two minutes. He can't prioritize anything else. He shakes his head slowly. ]

Where is "here" exactly?

[she can't help the smile across her face, the deep breaths of air that she keeps taking as if she's been running for miles. it's excitement, the first time that she's felt that biological reaction to it. cortana wants to hug him again, hold him so close so that he'll never slip through her fingers or that she'd never have to say goodbye. earth might be john's home, but here with him? that was hers.]

It's just like old times. Current location is unknown, we're lost in deep space and all navigation systems are down. We can't get access to the ship's systems, they won't respond and all attempts have been... futile to say the least.

[she isn't going to tell him that it almost cost her her life. she isn't going to tell him that she sat in a corner of the bridge away from everyone staring at the door waiting for him to barrel through in his armor and holding a knife as if he carved the door open again. ]

John, I think we're even further away from home than before.

[ If only he had a knife right now. He'd like something in his hands.

Empty hands didn't suit a soldier.

He keeps their distance short between the two of them. I'm not losing you again. He's already nearly lost her too many times--truly lost her once. He's not letting go of her this time if he can help it (and he will.) She briefs him and there is a rush of ease that floods through him. The information is meager at best, but knowing Cortana, there will be more where that came from if the proper questions are asked and their time is spent in all the right places. Looking for answers. ]

Futile.

[ Attempts have been made. Fine. ]

It'll be alright. Far as we are already.

[ That is what John has grown used to telling himself, telling others, telling her. He carefully bumps her shoulder with his own. ]

I just need a weapon.

[ Typical. ]

[just like old times. her arms tighten just a hair around his neck as she nods her head off to the showers, not really caring that they're both covered in goo and naked.

she has to dig around more, her curiosity has been replaced with drive to get answers so that they can get out of here. this isn't going to be another didact, or another halo, but it won't be the end to the both of them.]

Understood. First, showers. Then, lets see if they brought along your armor and some other weapons. Knowing your luck, there'll be something in there that might be able to help you.

[it doesn't matter if she's in the back of his head laying out objectives or if they're like this; this is how they operate and it's good - so good - to have a sense of normalcy.]

If not, I'll put you in contact with two departments on the ship that will be able to help you and that you can give your assistance. [A beat, almost biting her lip.]

I can't check your vitals, so we'll see if we can't sneak into medbay. Showers are right behind you, let's go.

My vitals are fine.

[ Everything is fine. It's all raw and ragged like a wound, the memory of her, floating in space devoid of her voice. It's the slowly snowballing sense of failure (I was supposed to take care of you) that despite what she'd told him of taking care of each other... he still felt as if he'd somehow missed the target, abandoned her.

Forget it.

She's here now.

He turns his head to find the area where a small line of people forms, filing in one by one. A shower would be good, he realizes, sliding fingers through his tacky, razed hair briefly, nodding. ]

Passenger run departments?

[ He moves with her gradually in the direction of the showers. ]

Edited 2014-02-08 08:53 (UTC)

[her breath hitches for a moment, as if she's been running too fast and hit a wall. she wants to ask it, the "after everything" thing after the hard light protective barrier faded. her fingers trace a scar on his cheek, wondering if this was a new one that's become old or an old one that's been rather stubborn to fade.

cortana hides it by running her fingers through his very tacky hair before measuring it in her fingers even as they walk.]

Correct. Most are run by civilians and there is a very limited military presence here.

[a beat:] People who are from our universe are as follows: Spartan 006 [since there are other people around.], an AI by the name of Juliana, and at my count two from "Project Freelancer". Here's the kicker Chief, we're all from different points in time.

006... [ John's lips thin even more so at that. It'd been too long since he'd heard those numbers. Too far out. On their own. Juliana and these "Freelancers" however, were beyond his knowledge. ]

Since when did the UNSC make use of freelancers?

[ He raises a brow, partially out of curiosity, somewhat out of concern. ]

Is that an issue? [he doesn't need to tell her, but she's there if he needs to. she's learned what certain inflections or the way that he just puts an emphasis on even a syllable what he could mean.]

During the war, apparently. Surprising that neither of us would know about it, isn't it? [especially her.]

Come on, let's get you showered.

No. Just a surprise. [ Maybe a good one. Maybe a bad one. It's been too long, and usually when there are years between these sorts of things... it makes it difficult. His lips twist carefully, a subtle motion of thought as she mentions the war.

He would have known, wouldn't he?

They would have told him.

They would have told her for sure. We weren't gone that long. Four years... ]

Alright. Lead the way.

[ Like you always do. ]

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overthought - 2014-02-13 06:10 (UTC) - Expand

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nuked - 2014-02-26 00:43 (UTC) - Expand

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overthought - 2014-02-26 05:35 (UTC) - Expand

[ cortana echoes through his mind, loud enough and present enough that it catches anderson's attention — and then it lingers for a moment because he is tall. he is tall and obviously military, that much is apparent both in the set of his shoulders and the lines along which his mind runs.

she doesn't step in his way and her eyes don't linger on his nudity, don't stray from looking at his face now that she's looking at all. anderson herself is just as naked, but it's never really bothered her. she can be professional despite it. ]

She's here.

[ anderson has talked to cortana. ]

[ John turns on his heel, shoulders squared and back straight. There is always a professional air to him and maybe it's just the ideas hardwired into his brain that say keep it straight without much effort. His eyes meet her own and for a moment, her words don't quite connect. ]

Who's here?

[ She?

It almost makes John hopeful.

There's only one "she" he's looking for.

But maybe this one's just mistaken him for someone else, doubtful as that may be. ]

Cortana.

[ anderson is used to the disconnect; few people expect someone to pick up the thoughts that sit at the surface of their minds. she's been told it's an invasion of privacy, but — she isn't going to stop, not when it's saved her life to be aware of the thoughts and intensions of those around her.

she doesn't try to hide it, though. ]

How did you know?

[ It's blunt, and John doesn't move, but he still hears the old brag of Cortana's name in the back of his head, a mantra, something he'll never forget. He needs her. He never used to need anyone, but here he is and all he wants is a voice sliding up his neural lace telling him objectives and figures and facts, sharing her observations.

"Where" is another question he ought to ask, but one thing at a time.

Contain yourself. ]

You were thinking about her.

[ are thinking about her. her answer is equally blunt as his question. this is the kind of language that anderson has dealt with most of her life; orders, information, objectives — ]

Invasive.

[ But helpful. He looks a bit towards the pod and then back to Anderson, his brows furrowed slightly. But it's helpful none the less, calming even (and Chief doesn't remember a time when he needed something that badly to grab onto. ]

Who are you?

[ his comment is met with a brief incline of her head. invasive, but necessarily — at least that is her view on the matter, and she isn't likely to change her opinion anytime soon. ]

Cassandra Anderson, sir.

(considering all the ridiculous things isaac had seen in his life, one wouldn't think a nearly 7' tall man would grab his attention like it did. it was almost mundane in comparison to tentacle monsters in space, but isaac's mind couldn't help itself.

"that guy would make a hell of an ubermorph," it provided, and isaac cringed.

morbid, isaac. rude, isaac.

he quickly pushed the thought away, pretending he'd never had it in the first place as he looked around, making sure he wasn't the only one seeing this- he wasn't, which was a relief. before he even had time to consider the situation, he was moving, slouching down and weaving his way through the crowd a few feet behind the massive stranger. all eyes would most likely be on him rather than isaac, and that served him just fine.)

[ Chief is always listening. It's a blessing and a curse. The steady sound of bare feet against the floor, no real pattern to them: here someone is shuffling, there someone is running, another person is maybe stomping. More importantly, however, someone is... following him. And It's a little closer than he'd like (a few feet is close enough--you can bridge the gap between a few feet in seconds). He bides his time a bit before quietly letting the pace of the crowd get ahead of him, moving back just a bit before glancing at the stranger. ]

I make for inefficient cover. I hope you know that.

(s h i t. of course he'd be discovered, he should have known better. still, it was nice while it lasted. now just play it cool, isaac...

initially he'd shrunk back a short ways, but he stood what little ground he had left, giving himself a brief dizzy spell by looking up- and shrugged.) Don't be so hard on yourself, you're doing fine.

[ He raises a brow just slightly, a twitch of motion. ]

Hiding from someone?

(yes.) Not really? (or so he hoped. he breathed out a short sigh, looking away from chief. he watched nearby groups of strangers as they lingered or brushed past instead- maybe he was lying, maybe he was trying to deflect further questions, maybe he was getting a crick in his neck. hard to tell with him.)

I guess I don't like crowds.

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twenty-eighth jump;

mcpo john-117 ➝ ota

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pods!

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