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

[doggedly]

[That's-- not what he expected her to say. That's something that's nearly a joke, sort of, and he looks over at her, momentarily wrong-footed.

It's enough that she can grab hold of his wrist, anyways--and even if he hadn't been distracted by that comment, she still would have been able to, because she's quick and also, yes, Merlin, but she's stronger than she looks. Sirius really has no choice but to go along with her, stumbling just a little over his own feet. His knees feel weirdly weak after that burst of anger, like it took something extra out of him.

So, fine. He follows after her, staring at the floor, since she's guiding him along anyways.]

What for, then.

[Why the gym, is the real question, but also: why are you doing this. There's a weird closeness that he feels to her, if he remembers to drop his stupid pigtail-pulling act. It's all leftover from the three hours of handholding, probably, from that exchange, but he doesn't know what to do with it--and here it is, again.]

[strayed]

[There's something familiar in having him by the wrist, leading the way. It's a different situation, there's no spill over of his emotions in her head, and with the current state he's in that's definitely for the best. Going the other way, it'd give him an answer on why she's doing this - Cora herself acts as if she didn't even hear him speak until they get into the lift.]

For you.

[She doesn't let go, even though they're in a contained space and he's not putting up any fight on coming with her. She glances over at him.]

It gets some of it out.

[Hitting something that'll do less damage to his hands than a locker door.]