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WHO: Hera and Y O U
WHERE: Various
WHEN: The first few days after Hera's arrival, Jan 4-7 or so
WHAT: Hera adjusts. Or pretends to. Or actually just tries to sneakily figure out what's actually going on here, either/or.
WARNINGS: none as of yet

001. Exploring

Naturally, Hera's first thought upon being kidnapped (again) was that this was some sort of new ploy by the Empire. Maybe they'd developed a new way of getting information from dissidents?

But the more she sees and hears, the less likely that seems. Oh, sure, some of the Empire's worst are devious, even cunning, but by and large, they're not imaginative. Why be subtle, or use trickery, when there's brute force and truth serum?

So, okay, she's probably not somehow imprisoned on an Imperial Star Destroyer. That leaves the story she was actually given, or... what? Hera means to find out, and to that end, she is exploring every inch of this ship, this Eluvio, that she can get away with. She might pretend to be on a cleaning crew or something, to get into a room here or there. If nothing else, the more she knows about this ship, the better equipped she'll be to - run away from it the first chance she gets.

002. Shopping district

"You expect me to what?" she shouts at the unsuspecting shop owner. Incredulous. Her voice rising, angry, sharp. "Let me make one thing clear, you pile of blurrg droppings: I am no one's model, or dancer, or pretty piece of furniture."

The tirade continues for approximately eight minutes, before Hera storms out of the clothing shop and into the shopping district, ready to glare daggers at anyone who might even think about putting her in a dress against her will.

003. Atrium

Truth be told, the Ghost feels pretty lonely to Hera. She's glad to have it with her, she supposes. If nothing else, it'll probably end up being her getaway vehicle. It's hers, and she couldn't do without it. But it's also empty now. It's just her. Not even Chopper is around to liven things up a little, like in the old days before she met Kanan. It's depressing, so she has to find someplace else to spend time quietly. The Atrium fits the bill relatively well. The zen garden even reminds her vaguely of the province on Ryloth where she grew up.

Hera's not big on meditation - that's really Kanan's thing. But she finds herself sitting, watching the calm waters. Whatever this situation is that she's in, she's going to have to get herself out. Make plans. Find allies. She's done it before, she can manage it again. She has to get back to her family.

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Jim isn't exactly filled with trust and optimism either, and it's with a fair amount of distrust that he's been exploring the Eluvio. The larger and most populated areas are the first, and that way he gets to cross paths with a number of people, both the native crew and others that were brought here the same way he was.

At least the place seems fairly harmless— although he knows better than to take that at face value. It could very well be a trap, or there could be more to the story they've been told. Rumors are fleeting and quick to spread, though, so Jim tries to keep his mind open and his judgment impartial. He'll trust hard evidence, until then he's not taking anyone's word for it.

Closer to the end of the day, Jim decides to check out the quarters assigned to him on the Eluvio. He's got the Enterprise and he's definitely planning on sleeping there more often than not, but he can't say it's not convenient to have a place on the main battleship too, when he's just too tired for a shuttle ride back to his ship, or an emergency situation might actually prevent him from traveling back and forth quite so freely.

The thing is, he hasn't been here long enough to figure out how the lock system on the doors works, and it's his mistake to assume it just locks on its own. So he's stepping out of the bathroom after a long shower —a shower with running water is a commodity he doesn't get to have on board a starship, so that's a nice perk—, only to startle when he realizes there's someone else in the room.

"Jesus—!" Well at least he got his underwear back on. Downside is that he only got his underwear back on. Which he'll fix right away. "You could've tried knocking first?"

Hera has gotten pretty good at making herself more or less invisible in plain sight when she needs to - at least around Imperials, who tend to believe what they want to believe, especially of a Twi'lek.

It's as much a surprise to her, discovering a half-naked human male in one of the rooms she thought would probably be unoccupied, but she does no more than give him the briefest glance before ducking her head. She'd at least had the presence of mind to grab a bucket and mop for her tour of the sleeping quarters to explain her presence, so she falls into a servile kind of stance. This guy isn't an Imperial, but maybe he'll react like one. Or maybe she'll have to punch him, who knows?

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" she exclaims, feigning shock. "I thought this room was unoccupied!" Hopefully he won't notice that the bucket is empty and unused.

Hopefully she'd decide she didn't need to punch him, because really scaring the shit out of him seems to be more than enough for a first meeting. He relaxes once he realizes she's not one of the weird natives, or at least doesn't act much like one, and heaves out a sigh while tugging his pants back on.

"No, it's fine," he shakes his head. Not like he's that much of a prude about being naked in front of other people, so he's not about to get pissed at her, even if she did just barge into what's technically his room. "Should've probably... figured out how to lock the door."

His eyes fall to the empty bucket while he talks, train of thought derailing. "I think you forgot something. I mean, assuming you're here to clean," he leaves that open. Just in case cleaning wasn't the ultimate goal here.

So, he is more observant than the average stormtrooper or mid-level Imperial bureaucrat. Which isn't saying much, but Hera keeps her guard up, regardless.

"What can I say?" she says, still feigning at least a little bit of innocence. "I'm new here. Figured it couldn't hurt to have a look around. Beyond the official tour."

Jim considers that, then raises his eyebrows and offers a shrug. "Right. Fair enough." Not like he can talk much, when he himself has been going around trying to poke his nose into all sorts of places. Especially places where he's not supposed to go.

"Too bad we can't sneak into restricted areas, though," for now, anyway. Jim fully intends to keep trying. He might just do it on his own so he doesn't drag anyone else into trouble along with him.

He grabs his shirt and shrugs it on, glancing at her. "I'm sorry to tell you that my room doesn't hold a lot of interest. Not as far as information on this ship goes."

"Oh, give me a few weeks," Hera says with a faint smile. She's made a career out of sneaking into restricted areas. She just needs some time to figure things out.

"But that's okay. Interesting people can be just as good as information. My name's Hera."

"Really, just a few weeks?" He raises his eyebrows, somewhat impressed. If she really manages to do that, then Jim will have to make sure to keep her around, as he very much wants in on those restricted areas himself.

"Depends on the questions you ask them," he smiles, though, nodding. "Jim. Nice to meet you."

Gesturing to the mop and bucket, "So are you still gonna clean my room or should we go see if we find a more exciting place to explore?"

"Give or take, depends on how good their security systems are and if I can find people willing to help me out," Hera says frankly. Getting stuff done is all about finding the right allies, in her experience. But she has patience, too.

"I think we can leave off the cleaning for now. I'm sure there are lots of places to get into trouble, especially if there's two of us."

In other words, sure, Jim, if you'd like to come along.

"Every security system has cracks. Flaws you can break through or use to your advantage." One just needs to be good enough to find and exploit them. Something that Jim so happens to be very good at— and he knows it.

"Good. Since you were all fired up..." he trails off, gesturing towards the door after fixing up his hair. "Lead the way."

"Exactly," Hera says with a smile. "And I'm sure, given enough time, we'll figure out what those flaws are."

This isn't the first time she's met a roguish nice guy willing to help her out - but then, that's what Hera does. She may not be a hacking expert herself, but she's good at finding the people who are - and convincing them to join up.

So she smiles at Jim, and waves him out of the room.

Jim raises an eyebrow, looking visibly pleased. Not that he didn't expect to find likeminded people in one way or another, but it's still a nice surprise when he's proven that he's not the only one unwilling to play along with this scenario, not so easily anyway.

Lips twitching, he tips his head in a single nod and steps out of the room, closing the door behind him before walking alongside her down the hallway.

"Is it rude if I outright ask what species you are? I mean, I've met green girls before, don't get me wrong, but none of them quite like you."

Hera laughs a little as they head down the corridor, poking her head in a couple of the open rooms as they go.

"I don't think being curious is rude. I'm a Twi'lek. My home planet is called Ryloth."

"Well, you never know. Some people might take it to heart."

He's glad that's not the case, though. She does seem friendly and fairly easygoing so far, he can definitely appreciate those traits on a person.

"Sorry to say I've never heard of it. If it exists in my galaxy, it's got to be on the farthest edges of it," he says, further adding. "I'm human, for the record. From a planet called Earth."

"I know a lot of humans," Hera says with a faint smile. "The funny thing is, while humans seem to exist in a lot of different galaxies, only the ones from mine have ever seen a Twi'lek."

She pauses a moment, then turns to look at Kirk.

"I've never heard of Earth, either."

"You haven't?" Jim raises his eyebrows as he looks at her. "So... a universe where humans either didn't originate on Earth, or where Earth's gone or forgotten at your point in time."

He'd go with the former rather than the latter. Only because he can't imagine humans moving around and not keeping records or at the very least myths or legends about their planet of origin.

As a certain Vulcan would put it, "Fascinating."

"Humans come from a lot of places in my galaxy," Hera says simply. "But they're just one species among many."

"Yes, but all species originate from a specific planet, where they evolved long before being capable of things such as deep space exploration. Might be that it's been so long ago not even they know where they started, but they started somewhere."

But he nods at her answer. "Sounds like space travel is very commonplace in your galaxy."

"If so, it would've been a very, very long time ago indeed," Hera says with a smile.

"As for space travel, yes. That's also been around for a very long time." She waves a hand vaguely around them. "But so far as I know, no one's ever gone beyond the reaches of the galaxy." Until now, apparently.

"Deep space travel's probably pretty new to us by comparison. Two hundred years, give or take, so all things considered it hasn't really been that long."

Definitely not long enough for humans to forget about Earth, or for the planet to die out or become uninhabitable.

"I'd say this is pretty beyond the limits of our galaxies. A whole other universe entirely, and all that. It must make us some kind of pioneers, huh?"

"Wow," Hera says, stunned for a moment. "That's... remarkable." Only two hundred years, really? Amazing.

She shakes her head after a moment, and shrugs. "I don't know. That's a little hard to wrap my head around, you know? A different universe?"

Also she's not sure she wants to be that far separated from her crew - her family.

Jim raises his eyebrows a little at her, then smiles as he nods. "Yeah, I guess it is, isn't it?"

It's such a normal thing for him, he's never really stopped to think about it before. But it really is impressive to think of all the advancements they've achieved in his universe in such a short amount of time.

"I can't say that's the same for me. I've actually come into contact with an alternate reality myself, before coming here. Or rather, someone from that reality came into contact with mine. So I do know it's not that unlikely, even if it takes a lot to manage something like this." So many people, from so many different places, all converging into one. More than just a time travel incident creating a ripple effect.

"Really?" That is even more surprising. Alternate realities?

"I'm having a hard enough time working out things in my own universe, let alone coming into contact with an alternate reality," she murmurs with a half-smile.

"Yes," Jim offers with a smile, looking every bit serious even as he smiles.

"I've met an older version of my first officer. During his lifetime, he knew another alternate version of me, as well as of several other people that also exist in my own reality."

Hera blinks in surprise at him. "Wow. That's... I can't even imagine what that must be like."

"Confusing doesn't even begin to cover it." And Jim hasn't even mentioned the mind meld, which was by far one of the strangest and most intense experiences in his life. That was a whole other level of trippy, honestly. "I'm sure it was even stranger for him... seeing all of us again, so much younger than he remembered."

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1, whoops I'm not sorry, but let me know if this is not okay

no i love it

excellent

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