twenty-eighth jump;

[ataraxites]

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.

Comments

[gilding]

Another mysterious rescue from our friendly smile?

[He lets her step past him without a single attempt to stop her, can recognise her reaction quite well at this point. He doesn't stop speaking, though, turning easily on the spot to continue as she passes. Her frustration is misplaced, turned inward, when there were far more complexities to the situation than one hero's failure to save the day.]

Of course then the question is, why keep you locked away for so long, convinced you were facing your doom?

[uncurse]

[ she stops as she passes him, rolling her eyes. goddammit gold. do you really need to rub it in. ]

Hell if I know. [ she turns. ] I don't think they want us dead. Whoever's behind those messages, or whoever's still got their hands in running this damn ship. They're getting something out of screwing with us - I think they dosed the bridge with some kind of hallucinogen. We were all tripping. But, we're not expendable.

[gilding]

[Rubbing it in often gets results. Usually it's some kind of gleeful satisfaction. This time, apparently, it's interesting pieces of information.]

You saw something.

[It's accompanied with a pointing finger, but any overt investment he might have is covered over with a more casual tip of his head, hand falling to settle on his cane again.]

I wouldn't dismiss anything too quickly, Miss Swan. This ship is a riddle, and, as with most riddles, you have to see the whole before you can find the answer.

[uncurse]

I'm not saying I've got a solution yet. [ she shakes her head. ] But if we were pieces they were willing to lose, I'd be dead, and Haymitch's ghost would be floating around this ship singing "I told you so."

[gilding]

[He doesn't think that it's possible for any one person to find the solution individually. Collecting pieces from various sources had led Sark to a mess of notes, but it was better than most could boast. Emma says something about the bridge being dosed with some kind of hallucinogen, and that follows too much of a pattern for Gold not to be curious about what was seen - but Emma doesn't seem too amiable to being questioned at the moment. Maybe later, when she isn't covered in blue goo.]

It was the first time in a while that a large group have made such an independent move.

[As was shown by the huge reaction to it.]

Perhaps the risk of death was never truly on the table, and you were being given a warning. Now you have to decide whether to heed it.

[He very much doubts she will. Not entirely, at least.]

[uncurse]

Well, if that's what they were trying, they got the opposite. [ she's discouraged, admittedly, by the futility of their attempt. but despite the discomfort associated with tripping out the past few days in there, they'd at least done something. and they'd had some minor success in doing even that. so, she'll do it again, and again, and maybe sooner or later, they'll have something to show for it. that's just how charmings work. if headbutting it doesn't work, headbutt harder. ]

[gilding]

[That gets a thin smile, hard to tell if it's just amused or if maybe there's something vaguely fond in it.]

Some lessons do have to be learnt the hard way.

[Not particularly clear whether he means Emma listening to warnings, or whatever larger forces they're being manipulated by realising the difficulties in dealing with Charmings.]

[uncurse]

I can't imagine how uncomfortable it must be for you. [ it's hard to tell if she's taking a genuine dig at him or if she's finding reassurance in the familiarity here. ] To not be the one teaching them.

[gilding]

[It's unfortunate moment whenever someone manages to get enough of a read on him to land a mark like that. Fortunately his temper isn't so close to the surface for it to get any more of a reaction out of him than a slight tip of his head, a gesture of touché rather than anything too defensive.

But it isn't just him suffering the downsides of that particular power structure.]

Better the devil you know, Miss Swan.