ataraxionlogs | forty-fourth jump;

Entry tags:

forty-fourth 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: Awareness comes to you slowly in the smothering quiet of the blue fluid. In the light piercing through from the medical bay you realise there's a shadow, a figure stood at the glass of your gravcouch, a hand pressed to the surface just above your face. Fear spikes through your gut as waves of alien sensation crash into your mind, a rage that feels endless, all-consuming, furious, molten hatred that you know is for you.

When the fluid drains, door sliding open to deposit you on the medbay floor, you remember it. Remember it coming again and again, like a nightmare that plagued your sleep over and over, leaving you with no respite, no rest. Days. Perhaps even longer.

You remember that the light coming through from behind the shadow was red.

New arrivals will find messages spray-painted in red across their lockers telling them not to follow their tattoo numbers, and instead to find a room on Floors 001-010.

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ＹＯＵ͘ ̨ＷＡＫＥ̢ ̧ＵＰ ́ＩＮＤＡ̛ＲＫＮ̢Ｅ̕ＳＳ̶

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.

ＹＯ́Ｕ̴ ̧Ａ̨ＲＥＮＯＴ҉ ̷ＡＬＯ̨ＮＥ҉

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.

ＴＨ̀ＩＳ͜ ̶Ｉ͠Ｓ͡ ͘Ｙ̵Ｏ͝ＵＲ ̕Ｗ͝Ｅ̛Ｌ̨Ｃ͡Ｏ͝Ｍ͏ＥＰ̛ＡＲ̴ＴＹ͜

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[pods]

Coming out of the pod this time did not go as smoothly as most jumps. Instead of falling out only to pick herself back up again, Rey crawled a good several feet across the sterile floor before flipping herself in order to throw her back up against the wall. Legs kicking, bare feet slipping and sliding despite not being able to move backwards any farther than she already has.

For several seconds she gaps at the pod room like it was a psychedelic trip -- a feeling she had not experienced in quite some time. Not since the first jump, when she had woken here barely remembering her own name. She barely remembers it now, but not in the same way as she had back then.

Her body is trembling, fueled on pure adrenaline; her trembling arms out in front of her--

Seven fingers. Five on the left hand, thumb and forefinger on the right, leaving three little stumps where the remaining fingers had once been. It seems as if she's seeing it all for the first time, until her mind is able to rifle through the crowded memories in her head...

Her head... Quickly she touches her hair. Much shorter now than it was before having reluctantly entered the gravity couches the last jump. A memory that she's slowly recovering now, among other things. Things about here, the Tranquility. And also things about home.

Home.

Her hands slide down to her throat, feeling the vertical scar over her windpipe.

She remembers, but only little things here and there. Pieces of a puzzle revealing themselves bit by bit. The mob, shouting. "Burning Woman!" The knife, stabbing her in the throat. Down into a dark hole, falling, and falling. There are many others, flashing by in her mind at lightspeeds. Hard to keep up. Can't keep up.

Another piece then falls into place. A jagged piece: Dark. More recent. Something that had been peering at her through the glass just moments before slipping out of the pod. Something that is angry and wretched.

(in the shadow of his hand he hid me)

Did she really see that -- or was it another hallucination, brought about by her own fear?

The rush of it all makes her dizzy now. The pod room spinning relentlessly. So she sits there, wide-eyed and gasping. Getting her bearings once again as to where she is now and how much time could have possibly passed. Because it's like waking up from a long dream, only this time presenting a significant haircut, with new scars revealed by minimal clothes under a layer of blue goop.

[lockers]

Bearings? Check. Showered? Check. Clothes?

She needs clothes.

Rey really needs clothes, since a towel is hardly enough material to hide the evidence of newer injuries to her body. And, well, clothes being a necessary article of life and social graces. That, too. She's made it this far from the showers, until nausea takes hold and she stumbles. First slamming a shoulder against a couple of long since abandoned 001 lockers, then slowly settling down over the nearest bench.

The row of first jumper lockers is eerily derelict. The only current sign of life is a woman hunched over the bench with her hands over her head, panting like she's just run a marathon.

"Get your shit the fuck together, you cocker..." Rey hisses to herself.

[choose your own adventure?]

[What it says on the tin!]

[ooc: As of this jump, Rey has received a canon update! Refer to link for more details.
Additionally, I can toggle between action and prose, whichever you prefer.]

Edited 2015-06-08 22:42 (UTC)

Firo's sloshing to his own locker, clad--as he is every jump--in his old Tranquility-issue jumpsuit. The typical light nausea and headache vex him, but they're almost unnoticeable now. Especially after last month.

His plan is to look for his friends after he has some proper clothes on, but he stops in his tracks when he sees Rey.

"Uh, Rey? You all--?"

Though he hasn't yet seen some of the nastier scars, the ones that are visible are enough to make him concerned. Wounds and the fact that she's hunched over like this, how can he think anything's okay?

Forgetting modesty for a moment, he grabs for her shoulder and tries to look her full on in the face. "What the hell happened?"

Fortunately a good big towel covers the majority of her bodily injuries. The ones on her neck and arms and the significantly tinier hair length, however, are not so easily guised to convince someone that it's nothing.

Particularly when that someone happens to be Firo.

His hand on her shoulder rips Rey back to reality. She jumps, her head whipping in his direction so she looks up at him from where she sits. She's still rattled from everything. Waking up, seeing that shadow in front of her pod, and the cocktail of new memories swimming about. The fear...

At first it's like looking at a stranger. But she hasn't been gone for that long. Rather than years, it feels more like she hasn't seen him in months.

Shit, it has been months, hasn't it?

"Yes, fine. Really. I--" She blinks down at her left forearm (the numbers are still the same) and then her right hand. The stumps move, feeling the strange sensation of phantom fingers. "What jump is this?"

He automatically offers a smile when she jumps, intending to reassure her that it's just him and nothing to be wary of.

...All the same, the lack of recognition--no matter how brief--is a little chilling and enough to fade his attempt at a cheery expression.

"What jump?" He blinks at the question. Shouldn't she know? "It's... It's the next one. Forty-fourth."

Something's up. If he didn't think so already, he'd definitely be thinking it now. "What happened to you?"

Forty-fourth?

If this hadn't happened already, she'd think that was impossible. She may even chalk it all up to being a dream, no different than what happens sometimes when they're in stasis. But that's not possible, either. Her left hand crosses over to her right arm, touching the new scars just to confirm this fact once more.

"Was gone. Or, it seemed that way. Not for very long, just--"

Just long enough for it to make all of this feel like a bad trip.

"Told you this had happened before." She looks to Firo. "It's happened again. That's all."

No, that's not really all. A lot of shit can go down in a few months. Her life on this ship has been a huge indicator of that.

He thinks back to their conversation in the gardens and nods slowly. It sounds bizarre, but what other explanation is there?

While he would be certain it was something anyway--because hello, wounds--Rey's insistence that there's nothing more to it makes him certain that something very big went down. Something big enough that she shouldn't hide it from her friends.

He shakes his head roughly, probably sending droplets of water flying, but he doesn't care. "But what happened? You're all cut up! And your hair's different and don't tell me you cared enough just to switch it up."

Sorry, Rey, you just don't strike him as the kind of person to get a real haircut.

At Firo's mention, she runs her hand over her head, feeling the present ever-growing length of her hair. She's as much bothered by it now as she was back then. That is to say, she doesn't give a toss. It's just hair. Hair grows back, as it steadily has been.

"Turns out hair isn't as fireproof as the rest of me. Burned up after overcharging." She's quite nonchalant about it. Like having her body spontaneously burst into flames is no big deal. It's only some hair loss and singed clothes.

No big deal at all.

"Had a bad run-in with a cult, though that happened after my hair burned off, so--" She stops, touching the scar in her throat, as if checking to make sure it's still there. "If it makes you feel better, this wasn't meant for me. Just got in the way."

As if that's supposed to make her friends feel better about being stabbed. For her it does, because she was trying to help someone else. It was the same case when she overcharged and burned off her hair. That's good, right? Helping someone is good.

It's with much dismay that he asks, though she's essentially already answered. "You put your whole self on fire?" It hurt enough just letting her fry his hands--he's a little ticked that she did more than that to herself.

No, it doesn't make him feel better. He raises an eyebow. "Dependin' on who they were goin' for, they're still assholes."

"...And they're still assholes no matter what, actually. It's the outcome that matters."

In Firo's line of work, even if your pal got hit by a stray bullet, you still went after the shooter and made them pay. It was simply the most sensible thing, right?

He folds his arms and watches her, waiting for more details.

"Not on purpose, obviously!" Rey quips. It's not like fire can hurt her or anything. "Just got overexerted from wrecking shit and pushed my limits."

The context would undoubtedly be more off-putting to Firo than the sparse details, but hey. She's not going to start painting Faye in a negative light for egging Rey on to push said limits biting off more combat-ready synthetics than she could chew.

Shhh, no judgments.

"Not going to argue with you there. But there wasn't much time to retaliate under such-- extenuating circumstances." She tries twisting her mouth into a strange smirk. "Besides, this isn't so bad. You should see the other guy."

It was pretty gratifying seeing a pretty face get split into something hideous. Because he was an asshole.

Rey | Open

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