trans_9 | Meatslop: It's what's for breakfast, lunch, and dinner [Open]

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Meatslop: It's what's for breakfast, lunch, and dinner [Open]

It had been months since Stacy had released Sarah Kerrigan but the meatship hadn't seen very much of her. It wasn't because she preferred to spend her days alone, at least not solely. It was safer this way. For her and for everyone else on the ship. She had come clean to the Captain, given him a short explanation of her reign as the Queen of Blades. She knew that he could not legally imprison her for crimes she had committed in her own universe but she was still surprised that he hadn't arrested her on the spot. It's what he should have done. Murderers shouldn't go unpunished, especially not when they'd murdered billions people. But then just because Kerrigan wasn't behind locked away didn't mean she wasn't a prisoner. She didn't remember everything but what she did was played out in brief bursts. Images flashing into her mind before vanishing as quickly as they had come. But that was good. That was what she deserved. And slowly she became accustomed to this new life. Barely interacting with others, training, waking up wracked with sobs and shaking.

And then he came. One day. One day with Jim Raynor. Because Stacy hadn't tormented her enough.

If one were to speak in metaphors, you might say that there was a hole in her heart. Kerrigan would say that was a terrible metaphor as she no longer had one. It was more a reminder of what she was missing. What she could have been had the zerg not claimed her.

Now Kerrigan sat in the messhall. It was not as popular as it once was now that there was a supply of real food but it was not as empty as she would have liked. Usually Kerrigan ate quickly and left but today, and in fact every day since Stacy's surprise "gift" to the crew, she sat staring at her slop but not seeing it at all. You would expect more from a telepath. They were supposed to get lost in others' thoughts, not their own.

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"Not as appealing as it look eh Kerrigan?" The voice had traveled besides her even before he approached. Telepaths had that nasty habit of speaking in people's minds uninvited, Splicer just took it a step further and 'tossed' his voice wherever he pleased.

But it wasn't like he was making his presence hidden either. The tell-tale orange glow from one of his cancer sticks was hovering closer and closer until he stepped out of the shadows of the mess hall, bringing in some real food and a small bowl of slop. He had a tendency to mix and match to make the best out of the slop's nutritional values.

He didn't wait for an invitation, or a greeting, or even acknowledgement. It was the Queen of Blades that he was with after all. But he had a feeling that she wasn't all there... not that she blamed her with the sudden 'surprise' the loopy ship had tossed at her.

"I've seen and tasted worse." But of course he would know that wasn't the reason Kerrigan hadn't touched the slop.

She looked at Splicer, briefly considering telling him to leave but deciding against it.

"With the fact you used t' be part of the Dominion too? Don't doubt it. Hell man, sometimes it was best to go hungry than eat some of the shit they served at the barracks." Specially when the cook had been drunk as hell.

Splicer began to cut and eat his share, taking equal bites of real food and slow so that the mixed tastes made it a lot more bearable.

"You know, you should still eat. You need all your strength and energy." He would know, he was a lot like her in the ways of energy expenditure.

His first comment earned a burst of amusement from Kerrigan. She watched Splicer eat, still not taking any interest in her own food.

"So I can do the Daligig's dirty work?" Her voice barely rose at the end to indicate that was a question.

"Naw, they can go shove their many-tentacled ships right up where tha stars don' shine. For yourself. I'm sure ya don' wana be here as part of their little experiment as much as most everyone else."

Kerrigan would be those types who hated being played with... just like himself. They had gone through enough at the hands of scientists and this whole war seemed like just that. Some fucked up social experiment meets Frankenstein' s fucked up lovechild and the war of the broods.

He could've gotten used to carnie food.

John Crichton could say one thing with any certainty and that was that he really, really, really didn't like Stacy's idea of food. It made food cubes look five star. At least that didn't have puke's texture. He didn't care how filling it was supposed to be or how it was supposed tailored to a human's nutrient needs. It looked like old puke and felt like it, if he'd made it a point to go running his hands in week old - all right, stopping that train of thought right there.

Not too many people in the mess hall. The mess hall on Stacy didn't feel like the one back on Moya; didn't sound like it either, none of the same hums and groans in the hull. Kinda bothered him. Eating by himself didn't really do it for him either, John looking around for someone he could sit with. Eating alone meant that weird throb in his head would start up all over again and he'd get those hallucinations if he wasn't careful. Spending all that time convincing Aeryn he wasn't going crazy meant he had to at least keep up appearances. Swatting at invisible voices tended to not really help that along, did it?

"Not a fan of the food, either?" John motioned at the seat across from the crewmate. Woman. Looked human, but the segmented tentacle dreadlocks on her head looked more alien than anything else. John took it in a stride. He'd been stuck in the Star Wars cantina on loop for several cycles, so yet another alien wasn't going to do it for him.

John grinned at the woman. "I'm pretty sure it's not Soylent Green."

The corners of Kerrigan's lips twitched at the word "experiment" but aside from that her face remained neutral. Her mind was not so restrained. It was clear that she didn't hate how the Daligig had ripped her from her world and altered her further. She loathed it.

Kerrigan stabbed the slop with her fork, breaking it into pieces. "For myself." She whispered. Then louder. "No, I don't want to but it seems we don't have much of a choice in the matter."

"See, silver linin' an' all that stuff." At least that's what he remembered most of Raynor's crew living on. Hell, they were the most wanted, they had lost many, their ship, while a beauty, was falling apart and it was hard for them to get resources. And yet, good ol Raynor and his crew stood steadfast.

It had been one of the many things that kept piling up and preventing him from carrying on his orders as far as 'giving it to the man'. He had never had anything personal against him and frankly, he had ended up liking him as a war hero.

"But really, you seem to be thinking 'bout lots. Care t' share tha load, or y' gonna keep it building up?" Which for them types? Was never a good thing.

Kerrigan's first look at John was one of annoyance but that softened after a few moments. Though soft was not a word that accurately described her face. It was still hard and cold but set into a look of neutrality.

"Soylent Green?" There was a time when she wouldn't have needed to ask but the Daligig felt that mind reading either wasn't an important power or it was too much of a threat. Now she had to focus if she wanted to read someone and that was something she would rather avoid doing.

Kerrigan had been a little busy making the storm cloud to go with that silver lining.

"You don't know all ready?" She actually ate some of her slop. It gave her something else to focus on not to mention there wasn't the expectation for her to keep talking.

John took that as his invitation to park himself across from her. He didn't seem too fazed that she wasn't opening up right off the bat. After Aeryn, he figured he was used to it.

"People. Y'know, '73 movie? Guessing you didn't see it." John didn't hold out his hand like he would've if he thought she was human like him. The aliens he met didn't quite seem to know what to do when he did that and after awhile you stopped trying after the hundredth "what are you on?" look. "I'm John, by the way. John Crichton."

Movies were probably the last thing on her mind, look like that on her face that he felt was probably universal enough that a clumsy old human like him could get. Something was bothering her and while he could say there was an entire ship of people probably not okay with what happened with the Ohm, that didn't mean he couldn't stop every now and then to see what was up. Wasn't that far gone...even if he refused to go anywhere without his pulse pistol on him, but hey, Winona was one of those girls you had to take everywhere. Anyway, Dreads here seemed like she was peaceful so far, if kinda down.

"I'm sure of the reason why yer thinkin' stuff. I'm jus' worried yer just gonna keep pilin' it up on top of all the shit ya already have t' deal with."

He paused for a moment, giving her a once over before frowning a bit concerned for her well being.

"Ya know, if for the hell of it, you can trust me long enough to talk things out. I'll listen. I'm sure I made it pretty clear that I'm not yer enemy here, even with our colorful past." Not that he had one any better, the digits where the about the only variation.

"Sarah Kerrigan." It still felt weird to introduce herself as that instead of proudly declaring that she was the Queen of Blades. Especially since she didn't feel like Sarah Kerrigan anymore, more of a hollow shell of her.

"I've never seen a movie. And it hasn't been 2373 in a long time but I take it we are from very different universes."

That was a human name right there, so he'd guessed wrong. His mistake. In his defense, he'd seen so many species that looked near human or kinda-sorta toeing the line that he almost wasn't sure what to do these days with a red-blooded human. Bug dreads or no bug dreads.

"Yeah, that's what I'm hearing. I mean, last I checked, it was 2000 for me," John said. Felt weird to be using Earth dates again, "years" instead of "cycles". He resisted the urge to go pointing at Sarah's dreads, if only barely. Definitely would've stood out back home. "So you're serious? Not even one? Star Wars, Star Trek (with the whales), Blade Runner? Nothing?"

Wow. Talk about depressing if nothing at all made it to her time. He would've thought at least the Three Stooges would've made it. John wasn't sure what would get her to smile but he figured if she was anything like him, talking might at least distract Sarah. It was either that or they could eat in silence and he didn't know about her, but he knew he wasn't ready for that.

Kerrigan gave Splicer a not so pleasant smile. In fact, it was one of those smiles that made grown met wet themselves and cry for their mothers or at least it had in the past.

"Everyone is my enemy. I made sure of that a long time ago." Everyone but the zerg. "Talking about what I did and how I catastrophically fucked not only my life, others' lives, and the entire universe isn't going to change anything."

"It'll make ya feel better and you'll be less likely to blow up" again, he thought to himself.

"You know, unless you plan on driving yourself crazy in this already messed up place, I'd suggest you get out more. Even if you don't want to speak with someone like me, there must be others you can vent or simply chat with. Jus' lookin' out fer ya Kerrigan."

The sad thing was how close he came to guessing right. Not quite human, not quite alien.

"None. I never had time for them." Which was a nice way of saving she spent her formative years drugged, neurally reprogrammed, and killing people instead of sitting around watching movies and eating popcorn. "Some of them sound vaguely familiar. A lot of people cling to what we have left from Earth. Sentimental or wishing for better times."

"Please, when has anyone ever had my best interests at heart?" But he had a point.

Kerrigan was silent but it was clear that she was on the verge of speaking. When she did her voice was low but full of tension. "You know what it's like to wake after years spent in a drugged haze and realize what you've become, what you did, the people you killed. Now try to imagine... No, you can't imagine what this feels like because even I don't know."

~~Jim Raynor did!~~

Splicer raised a brow and leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms. "No, not drugged in haze... Consciously however? Yeah, somewhat. Unless ya count the inhibitor chips the Dominion tags us with to be the equivalent of the drugged haze."

He was well aware of the atrocities he had committed in the name of the Emperor. But he had tried his damnedest to stop himself as much as possible, especially on the missions that led him and his team far away from Dominion control.

~~Kerrigan will agonize over whether he did it to save the universe or if he would have done it anyway for the rest of her life- or until he wakes up again.~~

"Yes. And what they gave us to to repress the memories. Words can't describe it, can they?" Kerrigan gave up on her food completely and pushed it away.

The one bad point to shore leave, aside from Land of the Pharaohs... or nearly getting detained because of Vala, banned or just about everything else, was that once you had a taste of actual food, it was hard going back to the slop Stacy insisted on. Just as you thought you might get used to it, you got a moment's break, tasted something so much better, and then you were expected to go back to mediocrity.

Daniel sat down at a table and stared at it. Even the almost-tagin was much better looking. It certainly tasted better. Looking at his plate, Daniel was more than willing to pay an arm and a leg for the tagin again. He looked at the woman across from him out of the corner of his eye.

"You'd think it'd get less terrible the more we got eat it," He said. She didn't seem inclined to talk. That never stopped Daniel before. Maybe if he talked, it would distract them both from just how unappetizing this was about to be.

No, Kerrigan wasn't inclined to talk and no, that didn't stop anyone. It made her long for the days when she ripped out someone's tongue if they said something she didn't like. That brief moment of longing horrified her.

If she were smart she would leave and never talk to this man again. Or maybe that wasn't smart. Maybe she'd done enough avoiding. No one can run forever, not even Kerrigan. Especially when the person she was running from was herself.

"Getting used to it doesn't mean you lose your tastebuds." Kerrigan didn't look at Daniel as she replied but she did finally take a bite of her slop.

"Well, no, but it'd be nice to build up a tolerance. Then you'd wouldn't notice it as much." Like staying too long on a dig, no showers or baths, crammed along with people who were just as un-showered or bathed. It probably smelled horrific, but after awhile you got used to it. Barely even noticed it. Then you stepped away, got showered, came back and it was like being hit with a wall of body odor and sand. Daniel swirled the utensil in the slop. Right now, he'd rather take the too-many-people-on-a-dig option than eat this. He watched her actually take a bite and felt his stomach want to retreat somewhere far, far away.

Daniel started to hold out his hand, then hesitated. What if they didn't use hand shakes where she came from? Or they did something else? It was too late to draw it back by now, so Daniel just went with it.

"Daniel Jackson, by the way," he said.

Kerrigan wanted to laugh at the gesture but at the same time something burned inside her. A memory of the last time someone had offered her his hand, although not for a handshake but simply to hold.

She shook Daniel's hand. She tried to make sure her grip was loose but not hard enough as it was still firm. "Sarah Kerrigan."

"Nice to meet you." This strategy of his, to talk until he didn't notice he was eating, wasn't actually looking so good when Sarah (or did she prefer Kerrigan?) did the efficient thing and stuck to the bare minimum. Kinda like Teal'c. Not much of a talker, was she?

Daniel tried a bite and made a face. Even Vala's hamburger sounded amazing just about now. Someone needed to talk to Kennedy or Stacy about the slop. Didn't Kang say something about supplies, produce? The second bite didn't go down much better.

"So. How was your shore leave?" Daniel asked. Mine... wasn't fun. Parts of it were okay, but mostly, Daniel thought, it was a constant trial on his sanity as an Egyptologist. Vala tuned him out when he tried to fill her in on exactly what was wrong with just about everything in the park, and she wanted to hang around him for some reason. Sarah, as a stranger, probably didn't give a damn about the intricacies of Egyptian religious figures.

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Meatslop: It's what's for breakfast, lunch, and dinner [Open]

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