trans_9 | Meet-n-Greet

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Meet-n-Greet

After being released from stasis, having the slime removed from their bodies and clothed in the creepy, pulsing leaf-suit that everyone wore, and being taken to the Weapons & Possessions lockers to collect their belongings, the new arrivals would find themselves standing in the Observation Deck. Round windows lined the fleshy walls, revealing the bright display of lights that was inter-dimensional travel. They would also discover that there were people--members of the command staff and crew that had woken earlier--waiting for them.

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Indeed, the Force had never left Luke out of the loop when it came to things that were, to his perception, steeped in the dark side. It felt like the gravity well of a star, pulling inexorably forward; and tainted as he was, with all the brushes with the darkness that he'd had, Luke felt its tug.

He felt it coming, like he might feel a blaster bolt aimed at him, and reached out with the Force to find where this disturbance was coming from. And he found it, in the form of a girl passing by.

"Hey," he called out to her, masking his feelings in the Force so that in case she could pick up on them (though he doubted that) she couldn't read him too easily.

"Uh?" Roxie says as she looks over at Luke. Her mostly-cool face hides the confusion actually roiling within her, and the fear that could roll over into harnessed anger viper-quick. She's small—couldn't be more than thirteen or fourteen, and slender even for that—but her emotions roll along the mental partitions between thought and action like those of an experienced soldier.

Luke walked over a little closer, feeling the dark tug at him. It wasn't terribly strong, and Luke got the idea that the dark things weren't of his world but still not good. "You just arrived too?" he asked.

It didn't help that this young girl wasn't in the best state of mind, Luke thought to himself. An unsettled mind was a place for the darkness to easily take root--his father was proof of that. Maybe he could help her out too.

The girl nods, squinting at Luke. There's a little distraction in her features—she's sensing something about him, just barely. There's nothing to suggest she's actually a Force-sensitive, though...

"It'll be okay," he said bracingly. "Look, why don't we go together, get something to eat, or find a place to lay down? I'm sure all we've been doing in those pods is sleep, but..." he smiled at her kindly. "I'm exhausted."

He hoped he hadn't overegged the pudding there; it didn't matter if a person was Force-sensitive or not, powerfully dark artifacts could inspire things in the user or bearer that weren't pleasant. While she didn't seem to be too affected, Luke at least wanted to know her story, how she'd come by the things he felt.

"I wouldn't mind finding something to eat," Roxie says. She's suspicious—deeply suspicious—of Luke's sudden friendliness, but her face hides it well. But there's something in her that goes along with it for the sake of appearances... and with a quiet, solid confidence that she can and will anything bad that happens.

In fact, as her mind slides back along familiar grooves, a fair bit of that ambient fear and unease is draining away.

He smiled kindly at her, heading toward what he'd been told was the mess hall. "So tell me about where you're from," he asked. "It seems everyone's from a different planet--or a different universe, I guess. I'm curious."

"Earth," Roxie says. "Two-thousand-nine." Not that it's the same brand of the year that many of the others on board would know. "It's... what it is, I guess?" She shrugs in a way that suggests she's not really sure how to explain any differences without knowing the change in context in the first place.

"Earth?" Luke said, puzzled. "So it is a real place. Tell me about it--what's it like?"

"Tense," is the first thing that comes to mind. "Between the Reds and us there's enough bombs on standby to tip the whole world over into a great deep pit it won't be able to climb back out of."

She seems... almost disturbingly undisturbed by this state of events.

So Earth was in just as constant a state of near-catastrophe as the galaxy had found itself in with Corellia and the secessionists in the last year. "Did negotiations not work?" Luke asked.

"There are always negotiations going on," Roxie says, and her tone adds that she doesn't think they'll end until somebody hits the button to start launching things. "It's a cold war."

"A cold war." Luke thought of what that meant; likely a concentrating of military power, two groups working up to a war but not engaging each other. A horrific time to live in. Roxie's tone didn't sound too optimistic either, which made Luke feel sad for her; to have to live in such times...

"I guess they're not getting very far in resolving differences, are they," he asked.

"Not for the past sixty years, and that's when things ended up one side against the other, anyway." Longer—much longer—than she's even been alive. "They're the 'godless Commies'... it's a stupid label, the word doesn't even fit anymore now they've got a mixed economy going."

When beings started reducing each other to labels and vilifying them, it never meant any good would come soon. Turning the opponent into an animal was the oldest form of propaganda in the book, and it took a lot of talk and a generation's time at least before anything changed.

As they walked into the mess hall, a giant eye-like thing on the wall twitched slightly. Luke almost turned to see what it was, almost hit the wall in front of him and stared at the papery tray full of glop that greeted him. Picking it up, he inspected it with interest.

"I think this is food," he said half to himself.

"It looks like overcooked oatmeal," Roxie says, staring at the... 'sludge' is the word that comes to mind for her, and she immediately wishes it hadn't, as the negative connotations taint her mindset and immediately make the unappealing meal even more unappealing. Proceeding forward, she receives her own tray of the stuff, and her unhappy expression is enough to warp the usual subtleties of her face.

"I'm worried I might have to sleep-eat to make this stuff bearable," she says, as if that were a perfectly normal option for the situation.

"Reminds me of the stew that Master Yoda used to make," Luke said, heading over to a table and sitting, poking at it experimentally with the utensil he was given.

Roxie tries a little of it. Her face twists—it's not bad, but it's not there. It's the blandest thing she's ever tasted.

"...I don't know if I can eat that," she says. "I think I'd forget it was there and choke on it."

Luke grinned and chuckled, trying a little himself and staring in surprise at it. "I don't think I've had anything that lacks taste before," he said. "And I've had some pretty basic field rations."

"I've got a little waybread and things with me," Roxie admits, "but I don't want to use it up so quickly, and that stuff lasts forever, anyway."

She stares at the goop, trying to figure out how to make it at least vaguely more appetizing.

Luke smiled; he could feel her trepidation swirling thickly in the Force. "I don't think there's anything that can be done to make this better," he said, and simply tucked in as best he could. Luckily, there didn't seem to be that much of it, and if he closed his eyes and concentrated he could get past the fact that it had absolutely no taste whatsoever.

"I know Jedi are supposed to be flexible in the face of adversity and everything," he said, "But this is pushing it a little, don't you think?"

"Jedi?" Roxie asks. She has, in fact, no idea what the word means.

She pulls her legs up to sit crosslegged and closes her eyes--slowly, her emotions start calming into a meditative pattern. Maybe she was serious about that sleep-eating comment...

"Guardians of peace and justice," Luke recited, "People who use the Force for good." The Force rippled as Roxie started meditating, though, and Luke quieted, watching her. The darkness around those objects still grated at him but he put it out of his mind for now, curious.

The girl's face slackens as she relaxes: it takes a good minute or two and near the end, with the rigidity of self-control gone, she looks almost like a normal child. Her mind has dropped into something like sleep, but... stranger. It's like the presence of an autohypnotic, or a very lucid dreamer.

"What force?" Roxie asks, her voice vry fae away. Slowly, she straightens up again, her eyes flickering open. There's something lifeless about it, like watching a puppet move.

Luke felt the change in her mental state and leaned forward, the sloppy food forgotten for now. "The Force," he said softly, "The energy that comes from and surrounds all living things. How did you...?"

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