open ( ☄ ) across the sea of space, the stars are other suns.

[realists]

WHO: Jyn Erso & YOU
WHERE: Around the ship
WHEN: The first few days after her arrival (Dec 28-31)
WHAT: Getting her bearings, exploring, etc, etc.
WARNINGS: SPOILERS IN COMMENTS PROBABLY; mark in the subject line if you don't want them and I will steer clear. I will match format as well, so come at me.

--

[ 001 - HANGER BAY ]

Jyn knows something familiar from home is in that hanger bay and it drives her insane that she can't reach it. Which is probably what draws her back to the door morning after morning, checking to see if the doors will open.

They do not. She kicks them. They still do not open.

Something something put your freakin' dog tags on and get over it, Erso later and she gets inside to peer at the other ships, but mainly it's to throw herself on Cassian's U-Wing and just sit there. It's a study of pointlessness since she can't go anywhere on it, but it's from home and that's all that really matters.

[ 002 - TRAINING FACILITIES ]

Her trips to the training facilities garner better results, at least if you consider siphoning off excess energy through a violent explosion of fists and feet to be something better. The training dummies fare better than, say, a person would, but it's honestly hard to tell if Jyn would pull her punches with a person. She works herself until her limbs are shaking and her muscles are strained to breaking point and then simply moves on to the next apparatus.

The circuit she makes quickly becomes her standard, even when she ventures into the gym late into the night. Boxing, running, climbing, running again.

She's hooked into the climbing wall when her fingers slip and she goes flying down before the auto belay catches her and jerks her to a stop with a hastily aborted shriek of surprise. She kicks the wall. It does nothing.

"Damn it!" She jerks on the belay to lower herself down but finds herself... stuck. Which is just great. She jerks at it again. Jerks at it gently like maybe if she is nice it will give in to her. Guess what? It doesn't. Stuck and only half unwilling to wrangle herself out of the harness to climb down freely, Jyn glances around for someone else to press the button from the bottom. She tips all the way back until she's basically upside down and calls out, "Hey! Could you give me a hand?"

[ 003 - SHOPPING CENTRE ]

Maybe, maybe, if her assigned job wasn't as an exterminator, Jyn would actually work. She has no particular distaste for bugs and parasites, but she also doesn't have any real need to work with them on a daily basis. Not being incredibly social doesn't mean she wants her companions to be bugs.

Still, she works at least one single, solitary shift for the extra credits only so she can paw around the shopping center without dragging Cassian away from his own job. His own much less generally offensive job. Meandering around a market is not something she ever had time for, usually striking with precision and retreating. Now she wanders, unsure of how to find what she's looking for.

The confusion doesn't look comfortable on her expression, eyebrows knitting together in annoyance.

Comments

[realists]

Once the line loses slack, she straightens up with a little jerk and pushes herself off the wall to repel the rest of the way down the way she was meant to in the first place if it weren't for that shameful slip.

Her boots touch the mat and she stands up, shimmying out of the harness like it's personally offended her.

"Thanks." It's not much in the way of gratitude but, honestly, that much is a step in the right direction for this mannerless heathen.

[yokunaru]

"It wasn't a problem." He looks between her and then harness she's just discarded, not that he can blame her, considering what just happened. "We should let one of the crew members know this one's acting up, so no one else gets trapped up there."

He begins to bow in greeting, but pauses, thinking better of it. Yuuri extends his hand to her instead. "Yuuri Katsuki."

[realists]

Years of hiding her identity have left Jyn with a slow connection for introducing herself, but she shakes his hand, grip firm but brief.

"Jyn Erso." There's some hard quality to how she says her name, like it's armor. Maybe it is, but only against men in white capes and this Yuuri person is only one part of that. No white cape in sight. "I can leave a note."

[yokunaru]

"That might be for the best," he agrees easily. There's a pause as he notices the guarded way she speaks, and that's probably what makes him stay put, instead of simply leaving it at that.

With a tentative smile, he says, "There's a desk up near the entrance. I didn't see anyone there, but I could look for a pen and some paper."

[realists]

"Sure."

She doesn't move to go with him, crouching down instead to free the harness so she can hang it when the rest. This is still better than say, abruptly abandoning the conversation all together like she was debating.

It's a hard life when you have no people skills and an apathy towards trying.

[yokunaru]

It's about what Yuuri was expecting, just from the way she was acting earlier, so he doesn't seem to mind. After a quick look around the front desk, Yuuri emerges with the items, triumphant, and returns to the climbing wall.

"This should work." He uncaps the pen, pausing as the nib hovers over the paper. "Um... what language do you think we should write it in? We all know different ones, don't we?"

[realists]

"I can only write in High Galactic and Aurebesh." God bless you. Her mouth slants into a thoughtful frown before she tugs her dog tags free from one of her pockets. She does not wear them because she is stubborn.

"But these can't be in either because we're not in the same galaxy so there wouldn't be the same languages." Which means what? She can spontaneously read another language with no prior education? They're directly next to her own galaxy and somehow the language crossed over but not the people? That seems a litte far-fetched, even for her life. And why has this not occurred to her until right now! "But maybe my High Galactic is their... whatever this is."

It's certainly not aurebesh. That would be fun to translate.

[yokunaru]

"And I can only write in Japanese and English," Yuuri says, frowning down at the blank paper. He tilts his head as she works through the problem, then finally nods in agreement.

"I don't know how the languages are distributed between the, um, different galaxies, but I did see a good mix of them in the books I was looking through earlier." He rolls the pen in his hand, absently. "Between the two of us, we know four languages. Maybe we could write the warning in all four. I...I figure if they have some way of translating all of our spoken languages with their technology, it might mean they've encountered them at some point."

[realists]

"Alright." Those languages sound like gibberish to her, but it's not like he's suggesting Huttese. Or Ewok, which is actual gibberish.

So cute though. "Sounds like a decent plan. If they can't read it, that's really their own fault." But they will have done their due diligence so that's that.

[yokunaru]

"No one can say we didn't try," he says, a sheepish smile tugging at his lips. And, honestly, Yuuri isn't sure what more they could do. So the sign will have to do for now.

Since the pen's already in his hand, he goes first, carefully writing the warning in English and then Japanese in the neatest print possible. "How long have you been here?"

Part of him asked to keep the conversation going, and another part asked because he's genuinely curious. He's gotten all sorts of answers when asking that one question already.

[realists]

"A couple days." She seems almost fascinated by the Japanese and the delicate way he writes. It does, however, look like gibberish to her and she almost wants to point out that there is no way that can be a real language but she stops herself because

that would be rude.

She does however point to his English. "That's the same as High Galactic."

[yokunaru]

He looks up at that, expression of mix of surprise and relief. "Oh, we got here around the same time, then. Everyone else I've asked has been here for a few weeks already."

And then he's back to frowning at the paper, though it's more out of interest than concern this time around.

"Really?" Yuuri finishes writing the last hiragana character before handing the pen to her. "Maybe that's what it is. We have the same or similar languages all across the galaxies, but they just have different names."

[realists]

That seems irrational and impossible, but that is unmistakably the High Galactic her father insisted on her learning as a child -- because it is the language of science and he is a scientist.

Pen in hand, she scrawls out the same message in the absolutely absurd written language of aurebesh. It looks like it belongs in space, however. It's a very spacey text. It is a garbage text. It looks fake, honestly.

[yokunaru]

There's no disguising his interest as he watches her write, the boxy-looking characters looking both incredibly alien and fascinating to him.

"So this is Au...aurebesh?" He stumbles over the unfamiliar name, but some of his earlier hesitation seems to have faded once they started putting pen to paper.

[realists]

"Aurebesh, yeah. They're both the written version of Basic, uh Galactic Basic, which is what Cassian and I speak." This is weird, but almost soothing in a way. Explaining the basics of her native spoken and written languages is weird, because she would never have to do this in any other place, but it's impersonal enough that she doesn't mind it at the same time.

[yokunaru]

"I...I see." Yuuri's never been good at hiding his emotions, his thoughts always displayed so openly on his face.

The fidgeting as he studies the characters gives away his restlessness, like he's dying to ask her something, but unsure if he should.

[realists]

It's okay because Jyn is here to be blunt, looking at him askance.

"What?"

[yokunaru]

Oops, busted. Yuuri smiles at her sheepishly, realizing there's no point to just trying to laugh it off when she's already caught on.

"Do you think you could...teach me? Aurebesh," he asks, some of his earlier timidness returning. "If we're going to be here for a while, learning some of the other languages we might encounter might be helpful."

[realists]

Oh.

She looks slightly taken aback for a moment, mouth awkwardly agape before it snaps shut. She didn't really know what he was going to say but that seems to be very far from any inkling she may have had.

"Sure."

[yokunaru]

"Really?" Immediately, his smile transforms into something brighter.

"Oh, if you want to learn Japanese, I can help you with that in return. It seems like a fair exchange, right?"

[realists]

"Yeah," she answers automatically. Jyn is naturally smart, with a clever mind, but she went to school for all of a week. And it was preschool. She's good at learning on her own or teaching herself, Lyra and Galen's homeschool education had given her that much, but it was also specific to their skills: Jyn knows plants and nature and anthropology from her mother, her father gave her math and science and how to entertain herself late at night when she couldn't sleep.

The humanities were less studied. She peers at the strange fancy word art, remembers drawing her father's symbols and equations around her art projects like a fancy border. Maybe if she looks at it like art, instead of words.

"Yeah, alright, that's fair."

[yokunaru]

"This is great. Thanks," Yuuri says, still not losing the smile.

"I've always wanted to learn some more languages back home, but... it's been busy." He blinks, the happier expression faltering. "I guess learning something new like this will be a good way to pass the time here."

[realists]

"Have you got a job to pass the time?" She assumes he is probably like Cassian and will actually do his job, unlike Jyn's plans to do nothing and enjoy it. It's not like the nothing of Wobani, it's nothing by choice.

[yokunaru]

"They...gave me a job during orientation," Yuuri says haltingly. The scrunched up look his face takes on probably says exactly what he thinks of it.

"I'm not sure if the random assignments are really working, though."

[realists]

"Is yours shit, too?" Instead of giving Yuuri her focus, mostly because she absolutely hates being the center of attention herself, she takes the paper with their mismatched writing on it and sets about wedging it on the auto-belay so it won't get brushed away by walking but can still be picked up when need be.

Too, obviously, implies that her own assigned job sounds like absolute garbage.