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

[ There's a moment of silence from the big soldier as he processed the information. So he's aboard a ship but it's not an Alliance one. He knows that much from the graffiti sprayed over lockers. It's too nice for a merc ship and he's going to go ahead and assume it's not Cerberus - it's not nice enough for that. But the name, Tranquility hits some memory buried deep in his brain, nagging him like crazy as if he just has to reach out and get his hands around it.

It remains just out of reach but even as he's glancing around and checking the place out over and over again, he's starting to the distinct markers of deja vu. ]

Riiight. [ A snort of amusement. If the name is anything to go by it's probably anything but tranquil. Just something Vega has picked up on his various stints on all sorts of ships with names that are sometimes ironic as hell. He glances back at the woman in front of him and gives her an assessing look, too. ]

You're... who? Not a grunt. Not an officer. Not military.

No one is exactly sure how or why we end up here. [ She allows herself a wry smile then, because what else is a proper reaction to this place? His assumption is right, anyway. ]

Medical crew. [ There's a pause here but it's more thoughtful than anything. ] I'm not aware of the actual percentages, but I know that many of us on board were civilians and were recruited into departments as our skill sets allowed. [ So a little rag-tag, but it isn't as though they don't know what they're doing. Uh. Generally speaking. ]

[ There are several alarm bells going off in Vega's head but the loudest is the very real possibility that if he doesn't push away from these lockers and either do something or lie down, he's just gonna end up staying here all... day? Night? What the hell time is it anyway? It's not the first time since he thunked into the waking world that he's been thrown off-balance, and with what Red's saying right now, he figures it probably won't be the last.

The second loudest alarm bell is telling him no good comes out of not remembering what he thinks he should be remembering. It's familiar here but he can't quite put his finger on why. James Vega likes a cerveza but he can't remember the last time he drank so much whole portions of his memory went missing. ]

This is loco... [ More to himself than to his medical crew friend here who is being patient as hell, Vega thinks. ]

Sorry. [ He holds his huge hands up by way of apology and tries to will away how green he's feeling right now. ] Hard to know what to say when you go to sleep in one city and wake up somewhere in space. We even in the Sol system?

[ She lets him take a moment, quiet and accommodating. She was far worse off when she first arrived, so in her opinion, he's doing pretty well. He can take his time and she won't mind; she isn't in a hurry anyway. ]

You don't need to be sorry. Most everyone here can empathize in some capacity. [ This next stills her for a moment and she frowns, shaking her head after she considers how to answer for a moment. ] No, I don't think we have been at all since at least I arrived. From what I've seen, no one on board recognizes the systems we've traveled through as their own, either.

Damn.

[ Somehow Vega figured she was gonna say that, like he's a mind-reader except he's really not. It just all sounds pretty much like he expected - the worse-case scenario's not one he usually jumps to but this is all kinds of strange.

He finally folds his arms across his chest and contemplates his rapidly shrinking options as they hurtle from out of his reach. He could keep asking questions he assumes she and nobody else on board has the answers to. Or he can be smarter about this, like a certain former CO, and get to grips with his new situation. Allies are awesome but if there's one thing that Vega learned from Shepard, it's that people matter. All of them. Getting caught up in the fighting without remembering the what for is less good. ]

'ey, thanks for answering my questions. I'm James. Guessin' your name isn't actually Red but I'm probably gonna call you that anyway.

[ Something in her falters—albeit briefly—when he says his name, a flicker behind her eyes, but her smile returns in force and when she has a hand on her hip there's something far more self-assured and on top of things than the concerned air of asking after him previously had probably seemed.

She likes to help, but all the same a bit of levity in the face of ... whatever, is always nice. The ease looks better on her, and it's probably more palatable. ]

Any time. I have to admit it's Lily, but I don't mind a nickname. [ Her mouth quirks a little at this next, not self-depreciating but in acknowledgement of the situation. ] I'm glad to meet you even if the circumstances aren't ideal.

Yeah.

[ A blanket agreement to everything Red says. It's good she doesn't mind him being so unimaginative with her nickname - not like he remembers anybody by their given names anyway and he's given people far worse. He's got no reason to dislike her, though.

As for the situation - he's had worse. Much worse. ]

Circumstances are never ideal, no? Ideal's pretty boring anyway. [ James Vega wouldn't know what to do with himself in ideal circumstances. He's grateful that he's at least got time enough to ask a few questions before anything majorly life-threatening happens. ]

[ She laughs a little then, quiet. ] You're very right.

Things seem to hover somewhere between ideal and catastrophic around here, from what I've seen. It never quite tips the one way, but every so often goes the other.

[ To catastrophic. It never gets ideal, let's be honest here. ]

Eh. Like I said. Ideal's overrated. What would people do around here if they didn't have somethin' important to get done?

[ It's like that old saying about idle hands... not that he's religious but he's seen some messed up shit happen because people weren't given anything to do. Hell, he got himself into trouble on Omega when he was out drifting. Until Anderson came along and gave him something important to do. He's pretty sure if he'd been left out on Omega, he would have pissed off the wrong people once too often. ]

Then when it's good... it feels real good, right?

[ It's like the smashing together of two phrases and ideals, Vega style. He likes smashing things together, even his words. ]

[ She's still smiling a little as she listens. When she nods, it's decisive. ]

When things are too good all of the time, it's harder to appreciate it.

[ Okay, so she's had more than her share of bad days. So has Vega, probably. But it's good to try and be optimistic about things at least. ]

That and when people don't have anything to do they seem to go looking for trouble anyway.

[ Vega grins because yeah he knows a little something about getting in to trouble when he has nothing better to do. See: Omega. ]

Exactly. I bet there's a lot of trouble people can get into around here.

[ Like the small matter of trying to hijack a shuttle last time but... no big deal, right? ]

thirty-fifth jump;

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