ataraxionlogs | thirty-fifth 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: You wake feeling cold and alone. There is a strange sense of emptiness, and the jump holds no surprises for you. There is nothing buffering the jump sickness and disorientation for you this month, and those still suffering the lingering effects of August's plot may find it more difficult than usual to get through the post-jump routine.

New arrivals will find messages spraypainted 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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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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ she hadn't heard him show up, i guess she was that distracted by the pelt (with a face, i might add. kind of a face, anyway. a face with no teeth and empty eye sockets). her eyes dart to sirius when he speaks up, but he's talking about the pelt so she glances back to it now, wrinkling her nose a little. no, it's definitely not hers. time for a head-shake, which will have to suffice for 'apparently it is now' in light of the fact that talking would involve talking through her mouthful of stupid wolf teeth - at least three times as many as last time they spoke.

'last time they spoke'. that was before team techie and science tripped over a cure, so she's looking back at him know, scanning his face and as best she can see of that raw spot below his ear. making sure he's okay, actually okay. not that she has too much room to be upset if he isn't, considering at least part of it'd be her fault. ]

[Her teeth look bloody vicious. Not awful--if she really was a wolf, they'd be very nice teeth indeed--but growing in the mouth of cute Sally Malik, they look too big, too sharp, wrong. And there's more of them since the aftermath of the Lift Incident, which means that more of her teeth dropped out of her head at some point--which only reminds him that he's not seen her since her full moon, not properly. Glimpses here and there in the corridor don't count.

Sirius, for his part, looks only a little like shit. The black rot that ate up nearly half his ear had spread to his fingers and toes and the corners of his mouth, and it lingers like little smudges of coal dust. His face is still hollowed out, and his hair is still too long, though at least he was able to give it a wash this time. When he smiles at her, there's a few extra-sharp teeth, but they're no wolf jaws.]

Someone thought you needed the warmth, then.

[Downplaying the potentially creepy aspects of a werewolf receiving an actual pelt. He shifts his stance a little, giving her another subtle once-over.]

Are you all right?

[Besides said wolf jaws, and he gestures vaguely at his mouth to dismiss that before she says it.]

[ welp, so much for hiding the wolf teeth. in her defense, it's harder than it looks - like, it's a legitimate struggle not to have both an overbite and an underbite, which is stupid but whatever.

'someone thought you needed the warmth, then'. that's almost creepier, when you think about it. like, she hadn't thought to realize someone might have legitimately deliberately put this eyeless dead motherfucker in her locker. it still ranks below pulling a godfather, on the scale of unwelcome dead animal parts, but that doesn't make it any less unnerving.

his question almost doesn't get an answer, but the dismissive way he gestures to his mouth has her exhaling a resigned sort of sigh. ] I'm not puking my guts out anymore, if that's what you're asking. [ spoken with the worst wolf-teeth lisp, ugh. ]

Edited 2014-09-11 08:43 (UTC)

[The lisp is, sort of, weirdly cute. Or it gets a smile out of Sirius at least, though he's got manners enough to look away so it seems like maybe he's not laughing at her. And he isn't, not mean-spiritedly. It's just that other people wouldn't try and talk around wolf teeth, but Sally--somewhat predictably--can't help herself.]

Sort of what I was asking, yeah. But I did notice. There's a distinct lack of vomit around your feet.

[He still has her original teeth, the ones he'd taken from her in the lift. The thought occurs to him a bit late, more than a little unnerving--and not the sort of thing he's going to bring up in conversation.]

Can you even eat with those things in?

Kind of? [ the residual wrinkle of her nose says pretty much everything he needs to know, but she still adds: ] It's stupidly difficult, but whatever.

Right. I'd sort of guessed that.

[Even without her expression, he might have been able to guess at it, just from the growth of the teeth and their angles, and so on. And he's tentative about this, he's still not certain if he wants to carry on with having hurt feelings for a bit longer, but he gives it a go all the same--]

The real question is, of course: can you cook with those teeth in?

[ that's how jump day always goes - some kind of greeting, some kind of commentary on whatever weirdness went down this time, some kind of segue into food, and then they do lunch. last time's commentary was 'holy shit, aidan's gone' and the segue was 'you should probably eat sometime'. this time it's the pelt, and here's the segue and sally just doesn't want to play this game anymore. it's stupid and self-indulgent and it almost got him killed.

so she's shrugging into her jacket and rolling the pelt up with the head on the inside (so it's not sitting there staring). ] Not that it's not totally great to see you and everything, but I should probably... y'know, figure out what I'm doing with this thing. [ it's a flimsy excuse and she knows it, but she's already drifting back a step toward the exit. ] I'll see you later?

[Whatever response he was expecting out of her, this-- wasn't it. It's such a direct exit from their banter, cutting their conversation off at the knees, and Sirius nearly takes a step backwards himself out of sheer surprise. He gets the sudden sense that he's missed something in their conversation, something that he said to piss her off--but there was nothing; they've barely said forty words to one another.

His surprise quickly changes to irritation, bordering on anger.]

Yeah, 'cos you'll need to find someone to babysit your disembodied pelt, that's definitely a priority. What's wrong with you?

[But it sort of makes sense, right. She's carrying over shit from before the Jump, and his face colours a little darker at that relaisation.]

Hey, next time you want to tell me to sod off, just come right out and say it, all right? I'd hope that I at least qualify for a little directness.

[ ouch. that stings, pretty much every part of it - his tone, the words he's saying, it all sucks and she wants to give in now, to apologize like a million times and tell him she's being stupid so he'll quit looking at her like she punched him square in the face.

but that's her problem, isn't it? she can never do what you have to do to keep people safe. she ruins shit with the best of intentions, is what josh told her, when she tried to help emily. and going back on this now, she'd be doing it again. making them both feel better now, just to probably get him killed later.

so despite the way her face crumples just a little at his words - not much, but he knows her too well by now - sally pulls her shit together before more than a second or two and just swallows inaudibly and nods. ]

Yeah, [ she says. ] No problem. [ and then she's turning for real to head for the door, because she can't do this - this argument thing. she never factored any arguments in when she figured this was a good idea. the way it went down in her head, she stopped arbitrarily harassing him and in light of how busy he is with SEC and whatever else, he gradually forgot she was ever a thing. ]

thirty-fifth jump;

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