maskormenacelogs | [ MOSTLY OPEN / ONE CLOSED ]

WHO: Jess Pava AND YOOOOU
WHERE: Nonah, De Chima, Maurtia Falls
WHEN: Pre-Registration, Post-De Chima Monster Shenanigans
WHAT: A noob exploring and taking advantage of the Porters: angsting at bars, bein' illegal in Maurtia Falls, raiding junkyards for parts (and maybe accidentally making some of those parts float). Also an encounter with THE DARK SIDE.
WARNINGS: None that I can think of ATM, though there will probably be talk of war et cet.

A. De Chima

After talking to TK-622--after talking to Poe on her first day on Earth--Jess needs to get away. She needs to exercise some small bit of control over her surroundings, even if that just means choosing a bar where no one will come looking for her. She leaves Poe a note each time to say she's going out (though not where) and when she's coming back, just to reassure them both that she hasn't and won't disappear.

But the goal is to make a space of her own, which is how she ends up in a De Chima dive called Wish You Were Beer, drinking a hard liquor mess lovingly referred to as The Nuclear Option. One-third in and she's already buzzed, which bodes well.

There's a sailing competition on one of the large TVs behind the bar, which makes Jess intensely homesick. The ships look close enough to solar sailers to be, in their own way, offensive.

Sounding somehow both forlorn and annoyed, she hails the bartender and points to the TV. "Can you change that to something else? Anything else?"

B. Maurtia Falls

Jess knows a chop shop when she sees one. Cars go in, cars come out, and one never seems to quite mirror the other. It takes her a few days of coming back to endear herself to the mechanics--the first day they openly threaten her for hanging around. But she asks good questions, questions about the vehicles, how the engines work, what kind of technology goes into the hover capabilities. She does not ask about the legality of changed VIN numbers or extra hiding spots built into doors and trunks.

Soon, they're letting her actually work on the guts of some of their cars. She get her hands dirty tuning things up under the instruction of some of their lead mechanics. They like that she learns quick. They're impressed when she starts suggesting improvements of her own--improvements that just might work, with the right technology. They still don't trust her, quite, but they like her. It's not above-board, maybe, but it's the quick and dirty way to learn how the cars here are put together.

So she hangs around there, in a tanktop and jeans, smeared with engine grease and looking pleased with herself. Or she can be found, just as filthy, eating at a local diner at various times of day, depending on when she finds time to work in the shop. If she's at the diner, she'll be there with a notebook, scribbling away with math and diagrams and drawings done to scale--and if she's focused enough, there will be little equations and strings of text floating around her head. She's already gotten used to this little mental halo enough to ignore it.

C. Nonah

Jess was told she can loot junkyards, as long as she gives them notice of what she's taking. And by god, she's going to use that. She's already setting out to build herself a vehicle, with all that work she's been doing in Maurtia Falls to figure out how they're put together (and taken apart).

For the moment, she's near one of the entrances talking to its owner, who is in turn showing her an array of car parts she asked him to procure. None of them are too big for her to carry--she doesn't have even a rented set of wheels to take things home with yet--but all of them are necessary to start this particular project.

She's made her selections and is walking out of the junkyard with them piled high in her arms when she runs smack into someone walking down the street and half the materials tumble out of her grip.

And none of them hit the ground.

"Sorry--!"

She freezes. Jess is quite suddenly the sun at the center of a system of auto parts, all of them floating slowly around her. She drags in a sharp breath, and they all clatter to the ground.

Under her breath, she says, "Force."

It's hard to tell whether it's an expletive or not.

D. closed to Kylo

Even if she'd rather be working at a hack shack in Maurtia Falls, Jess still has an actual day (sometimes night) job. It pays the junkyard-raiding bills.

Today has been largely uneventful, and Jess has more or less tuned out. It only takes so much attention to drive the same circuit around town over and over again. It's like flying patrol--you learn to look for the things that are out of place, unexpected, and let the rest slide by.

Maybe it's not surprising that in this state, her mind would wander in ways she's not used to. Her thoughts drift to her passengers, touching each one's mind lightly, skimming thoughts and feelings from the surface.

This one, worried about her daughter's grades. That one, preoccupied with bills. A girl with an imPort spotting blog who hasn't gotten many hits lately. It's all mundane, so normal, thoughts that could belong in any galaxy. Jess sinks into the comfort of them without realizing it, and loses her focus on the road.

Not for long, but it's long enough that when she snaps back to attention there's someone in front of the bus.

[ MOSTLY OPEN / ONE CLOSED ]

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