(no subject)

[theguidinghand]

CHARACTERS: EVERYONE
LOCATION: MED BAY
WARNINGS: ... Partial nudity? It should be pretty tame, but let me know if I need to add anything.
SUMMARY: Side-effects of a jump may include disorientation and temporary memory loss. Fortunately, there are a handful of others who have been through this before.
NOTES: Yes, it's a rehashing of the game premise. Don't worry, you can personalize your own (re-)introduction!


You wake up, alone in the dark.

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.

Don't worry, 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. They will help you through your disorientation, even though they might suffer from it too.

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

OPEN

[grndnpnd]

Tommy's first semi-conscious thought is: Didn't think Brendan had it in him. His second thought, a moment later and less a thought and more a physical impulse, is that there's something in his throat that shouldn't be there, and he needs to get it out. He tries to shift his hand to get at whatever it is but just as he does, there's a mechanical whirring noise, and the tube pulls out, and he's dumped all at once in a heap on the floor.

Between one thing and another, Tommy's been in and out of hospitals since he was a kid. He even spent a while in one after the thing in Iraq. He knows what they look like, and this doesn't look like any hospital he's ever been in before. If his shoulder wasn't still busted, he'd wonder if he was dreaming, but it hurts like hell, way too much for this to be a dream.

He wipes the goo off his face with his good hand and shifts his other arm around so that his thigh can take most of its weight. And then, with his head a mess of too much to take in all of a sudden, he just sits there for a moment because fucked if he knows what to do next.

[addictive]

There's a long moment when nothing happens save the obvious moving back and forth of people in distant places, the sound of maybe shuffling, maybe talking coming from an adjacent room. Then, without much warning (Mouse doesn't make much noise, even on a good day), there is the sudden and inexplicable appearance of a droopy mass of white blond hair (red at the roots) in the doorway. Said hair is attached to a small, bobbly head with a skinny little face which appears in the mouth of a hood of what can only be described as an oversided parka.

The boy in said parka, with the hair and the hood, lifts his eyebrows in some kind of Buster Keaton-esque pantomime before pulling the rest of himself to stand awkwardly in the doorway. If he wasn't already small in comparison to his parka, it's obvious now that he's just small, period. Silently, he lifts a hand and waves it back and forth a Tommy the way a very small child might. Mouse smiles in a way he hopes is vaguely cheerful, though it's mostly curious and questioning. His other hand holds out a folded up towel which he then trots over, his bare feet oddly nimble despite the muck on the floor.

"Hi," he says. And that's about it.

[grndnpnd]

Tommy's brain is so busy trying to make sense out of everything that even if Mouse had been noisy, he might not have noticed. No matter how he tries to shove this in to the last things he remembers, it doesn't fit. The best he can figure is that he passed out after the fight and got taken into custody and whisked off to a hospital. But there's no way in hell this is some VA facility, and that's where it all falls apart.

Mouse's appearance, when he does notice it, makes Tommy start, his teeth gritting and his one good hand curling into a fist instinctively. But then it's just a kid, and that's disconcerting and hard to explain in itself, though it also makes Tommy relax slightly. If there's some goofy kid hanging around here, how bad can it be?

"Hey," he grunts back. "You know what the hell is goin' on here?"

[addictive]

Goofy is a pretty fairly accurate description for the scrawny kid in the huge parka with the metal in his face and awkwardly oversized mouth and platinum blonde hair with a mind of its own. The hand that's offering out the towel sort of mushes it around until it finds a corner and then lets the bulk of it fall loose, unfurling it with a series of short little tugs and jerks. Mouse dangles it out in front of Tommy like he's thinking of doing a little toro, toro only he realizes that Tommy could probably step on him and leave little more than a Mouse-shaped smear so he stops after a moment, still smiling lopsidedly.

He brandishes his other hand, counting off words finger by finger as he says. "Five words or less? Kidnapped. By wormhole. In space."

This seems to surprise Mouse by being actually five words or less, like he'd said and so he bounces once on the balls of his feet cheerfully before sticking his hand back into the pocket of his parka. He gives the towel another little twitch.

[grndnpnd]

Tommy grabs the towel with his good hand and tugs it shortly out of Mouse's hands because he thinks he sees where this is going and figures he might as well help the kid not piss him off for a little while longer. Besides which, the goo is getting tacky as it dries, and he'd rather wipe it off sooner rather than later.

That's how he winds up with his face in the towel, rubbing to make sure he's gotten rid of all the crap hiding in the creases around nostrils and sticking to his eyebrows, when Mouse offers his explanation. It's fucking ridiculous, so he lowers the towel slowly and stares at the kid, waiting for him to crack and admit that he's joking around.

When that doesn't happen quickly and the chances of this being even a little funny have disappeared, he narrows his eyes. "Are you shittin' me?"

[addictive]

The face that Mouse gives Tommy is equal parts crushed that Tommy wouldn't believe him and pleadingly earnest in a "please don't squash me, I'm not lying" sort of way. It's true that Mouse has dealt with some pretty hard assholes during his time with the Calling, but most were of the lean and scrappy variety, not the "I rip doors of the tanks" variety. (Which, for the record, Mouse would find pretty damn cool if he knew this to be the honest truth rather than just a phrase that people say as short hand for "huge, menacing motherfucker").

He shakes his head fervently, so much so that the hood slips down over that soggy tuft of white hair and down onto his forehead, obscuring his eyes with a swath of fake fur. "Nuh uh," he says, giving a petulant huff as he pushes the hood back off onto his shoulders. "Ask anyone. You'll see." Mouse lifts a finger and gives it sort of a twirlaround in the air, his cheeks puffing with air as he gives a warbling sort of whistle. "Totally space."

A beat and he's smiling again, brushing away his brattiness momentarily to say: "Mouse. Hi." He points at Tommy's arm. "Sweet ink."

[grndnpnd]

Sending a kid was smart, in a way, because even Tommy can't quite bring himself to start yelling at Mouse. Kidnapped, he'll buy, even if it seems like a lot of work to go to for not a whole lot of gain. But the stuff about space is still clearly bullshit. Mouse seems to genuinely believe it, though, which is why Tommy doesn't growl or swear and just keeps mopping at his hair instead. It's not the kid's fault he's been brainwashed by some psycho alien cult.

"Tommy. Thanks," he says finally, dropping the towel into his lap and looking down at his shoulder. It reminds him that he should probably do something about fixing that sooner or later, especially if he's going to need to fight his way out of here. He looks back up at Mouse. "This is some kinda hospital, right? Have you got any Asprin or anything?"

[addictive]

A task!

Mouse may not be the most capable of assistants, but he has been making an effort to do what he can to thank Watson back for his supercool parka (that beyond being supercool as stated, also served as Mouse's security blanket between his skin and the rest of the world). This means that Mouse may still not know how to draw blood or take somebody's pulse (too much touching) but he does know where the space Tylenol is. Caleb had once gone on a very long rambly rant about the space Tylenol and how it wasn't actually Tylenol or Ibuprofen or Insert Some Big Technical Word Here That Makes Caleb Seem Ubersmart and Therefore Way Cool, but how it did the job anyway and Mouse should look for it here, in this drawer.

"Totally!" Mouse exclaims, suddenly enthusiastic that this means he'll be able to be helpful for once and then noisily scampers off to another part of the Medbay, only to return a moment later with a blister pack clutched in his very tiny hand. He gives it a rattle like it's candy or presents and then grins as he holds it out to Tommy, making sure to pull the sleeve of his shirt over his hand, mittening it where it pokes out from the overlong sleeve of his parka. "Space meds."

A pause and then Mouse frowns. "No water, though. One sec?"

[grndnpnd]

Tommy plants his hand flat on the ground and tries to push himself to standing. It's awkward, first because he's still disoriented and feels a little like throwing up and then because his arm is hanging like a dead weight on his left side, shifting his whole centre of gravtiy from what he's used to. He stumbles back against the pod that just spat him out and uses it to leverage himself the rest of the way out to standing.

"Yeah, sure," he agrees and holds out his hand so that Mouse can drop the package into it, then he tucks it away in one of the pockets of his boxers. He could probably do them dry -- file that under skills he's picked up in the last year -- but Mouse has already run off to find water, so Tommy figures that works too.

It gives him a chance anyway to find a stretch of wall not cluttered with weird machinery and line himself up. He grits his teeth and lifts his bad arm up with his good hand, ignoring the fact that the pain makes his eyes start to water all over again. He props his elbow on the wall and pushes against into the resistance with his weight. For a moment, it seems like nothing's going to happen, like something's blocking the way, but then, just as suddenly as it popped out, he can feel things pop back together, and it doesn't hurt any less, but it doesn't feel so strange anymore either. Involuntarily, Tommy lets out a little grunt and then shuts his eyes and leans heavily into the wall while he gets used to the feeling of having a working shoulder again.

[addictive]

It takes a while for Mouse to get back, since he's not exactly sure where the water is in the Medbay, or at least not where there are any cups and so he fiddlefarts around until he's like oh fuck it and ends up dumping a jar of pills into a little silver tray so as to use the jar itself as a makeshift glass for Tommy. In the end, it turns out to be little more than a shot's worth of water, but Mouse makes sure to be mindful of the slosh as he trips his way back to the gravity couches, the container held carefully with both hands as if it were the Arc of the Motherfucking Covenant. For some reason Tommy doesn't look any better than when Mouse left him and so he makes an apologetic face as he holds out the water for him to take.

Poutingly, he says: "Kinda sketchy." He means the bootleg excuse for a glass. "Sorry."

[grndnpnd]

Tommy shifts himself around so that he's facing Mouse again with his back pressed up against the wall. He rubs at his shoulder with one hand, just to make sure everything feels more or less like it should, and then rubs his nose on the outside of his wrist before pushing himself forward.

"Don't worry about it," he tells Mouse, as he retrieves the blister packet of pills from his pocket. He doesn't recognize the brand and has no idea about dosage, so he pops out three just to err on the side of less pain and then takes the glass from Mouse, tosses back the water, and then downs the pills too. They don't do anything immediately, obviously, but he feels kind of better knowing that they'll do something soon. It clears his head enough to retrace the conversation and pick out the next thing that needs to be dealt with. He runs his tongue over his bottom teeth and says, "So kidnapped, huh?"

[addictive]

Mouse nods again, his eyes large and expectant, like he half expects Tommy to keel over any minute. He doesn't have a doctor's gaze and so he can't recognize the signs of Tommy's condition for what they are, and so he simply assumes the grav couches have been him the once over — way worse than the next guy. If Mouse were bigger and taller and not afraid of human contact of any kind, he would have probably offered to help Tommy at least get to the locker room, but for now all he can do is thumb over his shoulder towards the doorway he's just come through and say.

"Clothes and comm and stuff," he explains. "Way helpful. Or, maybe. Dunno." Mouse wrinkles his nose awkwardly.

[grndnpnd]

Tommy follows the gesture and squints in the direction of the doorway, trying to get a good fix at what lies beyond. It looks, mostly, like a whole lot more metal stuff, which makes it pretty indistinguishable from the room he's standing in now. But whatever's past that door, can it really be any worse? he asks himself, and the answer is pretty clearly no.

So he shuffles forward, taking two experimental steps toward the door, and relaxing a bit when it seems like his legs are responding better now than they did a moment ago. His shoulder's maybe even starting to hurt less, though he keeps it pressed tightly against his side anyway to avoid tearing anything new.

"You been here long?" he asks, trying to get a better read on whether Mouse is a helpful kidnapper or a helpful kidnappee.