InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Daddy I Want A Golden Goose"

Jaime Elizabeth Davies (finder) wrote in indarkness_logs,
@ 2010-06-23 22:01:00

Entry tags:

2032 06, jaime davies, kaylee frye, malcolm reynolds

RP: Sunning
Characters: Jaime, open
Time/Date: Thursday, June 24, noonish
Location: Pool
Warnings/Rating: None
Summary: Jaime suns
Status: Open, ongoing

Jaime, like so many of the other female residents, had raided the mall for swimwear. She wasn't completely sure she'd be at the party come Friday - it smelled like a bad idea to her - but that didn't mean she couldn't enjoy the pool before then. It was definitely warmer than it had been, and the temperature spike felt unnatural.

But then, what about this place was natural?

She'd thought about manning up and offering her unique skills to the general population, and thought she'd wait on it. She was certain the kidnappers knew about it, but she wasn't sure she was ready to make it public knowledge that she had genetic anomalies. But then, from what she'd glimpsed in the network post she'd skimmed through, one of the doctors was on the verge of pimping her out anyway.

Jaime wondered a little if it was wrong of her to ... settle in so easily. But what else was there to do? Tantrum? Throw a fit? She'd already tried to find her way out, and that hadn't done any good. So the only thing to do was observe, and wait for them to slip up. Maybe get together with some of the others. She'd already talked a little with Lily and Tyler, and they were pooling their resources by unspoken mutual agreement. They were the only two so far she'd told about her ... skills. But they had freakish gifts of their own, so it was sort of like preaching to a choir, or something like that.

Stretching out on the lounge chair, Jaime closed her eyes behind the the shades she wore, and kind of wondered if the sun (which she was pretty sure was fake) was actually tanning her, or just making her really hot.

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accordingtoplan
2010-06-26 03:26 am UTC (link)

Mal both was and wasn't used to hot. You didn't get hot in space - there was something about cold being the absence of heat or something that he didn't understand, but at any rate any heat they had in space came from the ship itself, and it wasn't like they had the resources to keep it balmy. But at the same time, most of the border moons were edging on pretty close to their suns for a lot of the time, and he usually didn't dress for it.

Course, he was usually better prepared than this. It wasn't every day that he woke up to discover he'd been kidnapped.

...

It was at least every other week.

He had run into Kaylee in the hallway, looking entirely too not-clothed for his liking, really, and she had giggled and assured him that it was the latest style in swimwear. Whatever... that meant. She'd then invited him to the pool, and he really thought this whole thing was a little bit too bizarre for him to really grasp, but it was Kaylee and she was familiar so he'd followed along obediently as she led him up to the roof. Where he'd met with the aforementioned heat problem.

"Where... d'you say this was again?" he asked, holding a hand to his head and looking up at the sun as though that would clue him in to where he was.

"We dunno Cap'n," Kaylee said, gazing around the pool cheerfully. She spotted Jaime tanning, and offered her a wave whether or not she was looking over. "Hullo! Hope you don't mind if we..." she waved her hand in the direction of the pool indicating her intentions to go swimming.

"You seem well adjusted to that fact," Mal said through gritted teeth. He wasn't too sure he was adjusted to the fact that he'd been kidnapped to be studied by some scientists. His eyes moved in the direction Kaylee waved, and he frowned slightly, feeling vaguely uncomfortable about just how casual the females around here seemed to be about showing skin. But he supposed that was just him being old.

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finder
2010-06-26 03:35 am UTC (link)

"S'a free country. As far as we know, anyway," Jaime offered as she studied the strangers. She was getting real used to strangers, lately. Everyone here was a stranger, and she really missed home every time she met someone new.

"I'm Jaime," she offered. "I ... share a room with the talking dog, and if he gets on your nerves at any point in time, just ... throw a ball and run the other way," she offered - mostly because the older guy looked like the sort that would be highly annoyed by Dug. "And if you don't have a ball, pretend you do and go through the motion anyway. He'll fall for it."

Shifting slightly on the lounge, she let her eyes drift closed again. Maybe being so complacent was going to get her in trouble one day, but she didn't think anyone who wasn't working here was really going to hurt her. "So when and where are you guys from?" she inquired. She assumed they were from the same place and time simply because they'd come up together and they seemed to have a familiarity that she hadn't yet encountered between the new arrivals here.

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shellfoolya
2010-06-26 06:23 am UTC (link)

"The Jaime?" Kaylee asked, her eyes sparkling. "Oh it's shiny to meet you! Just met Dug the other day, ain't he a sweetie?" She started to move towards the girl, in order to have a better conversation. "Dug's the dog," she clarified for Mal, over her shoulder.

"Right. Course. Shiny," Mal said. Talking dogs. Made perfect sense. Just pretend to throw a ball if he got annoying...

"M'Kaylee," she added for Jaime's benefit. "This here's Mal. He just got here and he's a bit out o'sorts. Were from Earth-That-Will-Be," she grinned a bit at that - she and River had come up with it a few days earlier. "'bout 500 some years from now or so, by River's calculations."

Mal blinked, turned to Kaylee, turned back to Jaime and blinked again. He really couldn't understand why more people weren't freaking out about this.

"S'hot out," he observed, because at least he understood that.

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finder
2010-06-26 07:17 am UTC (link)

"So, I'm famous then?" Jaime replied with a slight grin before she shook her head. Pale eyes slipped toward Mal, and she thought he looked ... well, pretty shell-shocked. But who wouldn't be, kidnapped here? They'd all dealt with it in their own way. Most of them were still dealing with it. Did you ever really stop dealing with being kidnapped?

"It's been getting warmer the past couple of days," Jaime agreed. "Probably just ... weather of the area. Not like any of us know anything about the place," she added.

"It ... it really isn't that bad, for a prison. I mean, yes, the captive part, the away from home part, all of that is horrible, but ... so far, it's not ... it could be worse," she amended.

"But what do I know? I've only been here ... a few days. A week or so." There were a lot of people showing up, from so many different times, and Jaime was ... concerned.

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shellfoolya
2010-06-26 08:09 am UTC (link)

"T'anyone who speaks t'Dug, a'least," Kaylee said with a bright grin. "Which seems t'be jus' about everyone, way he goes on about it. S'nice, havin' a cheery face 'round like that, even if it's a bit odd, him bein' furry," she grinned a bit before shooting a glance to Mal and bumping him with her hip. "Better'n some grumpies I know."

Mal listened to Jaime's words about how this place wasn't bad for a prison, his jaw locking slightly. "Still a prison," he observed. "No matter how y'slice it. There any truth t'that bit about the line?"

He was going to ask what had been done in terms of grouping together to see if they could overthrow the scientists based on the arsonry they'd been provided with - he still had his gun and bullets, so either the folks who had kidnapped him were very confident, or very stupid, and somehow he didn't suspect the latter. But he bit his tongue for now.

Kaylee's grin darkened when the line was brought up. She didn't really like to think about it, and shuffled her feet sort of absently, shrugging her shoulders. "I think someone went over. People say he fell into acid?" she wasn't really sure. She was hearing that third or fourth hand.

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finder
2010-06-26 08:14 am UTC (link)

Jaime nodded to Mal's question. "A few people have crossed it." She gestured to Kaylee, and nodded her agreement. "Chase ... fell into acid. He still has burns on his legs. Someone else ... got caught in quicksand, or something. I only heard that in passing so I'm not completely sure on that. Some of us have gone to look and investigate as well as we can without crossing, but even hucking big rocks over doesn't seem to be quite enough to trigger them. Not in the area we were, anyway.

"Honestly, we're not even sure what sets them off. Whether it's our weight, or ... if they're hiding in their lab and watching with their cameras, and opening them up when we're on them." Which seemed dumb to her, but she wasn't someone running this place.

"Sir Leers-a-lot was shooting over the line the other day after he found bullets to fit his gun in the hardware store," Jaime offered. "But if anything happened, I didn't hear about it."

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accordingtoplan
2010-06-27 07:00 am UTC (link)

"So it's real then," Mal said gruffly, his eyes looking around the pool area. "I don' get it. Wha's t'suss out about some washed up ol' ship captain that y'go through all the trouble of pullin' him out of his ship an' put him on an island? Don' make no sense t'me. 'Less it's Alliance-based."

"It ain't," Kaylee said with a shake of her head. "I asked River an' she said it wasn't them."

Mal scowled faintly - he rather hoped it was Alliance. Give him another excuse to hate them. Not that he needed one. "She'd know," he muttered.

Kaylee sighed, "Come on Cap'n, cheer up. We jus' gotta sit tight an' stay outta trouble while them science types do they're watchin', an' then they'll send us home, an' it'll be like it never happened. There's all kinda nice folk here to chat with. Quit bein' such a party pooper," she nudged him again, before she offered an apologetic smile to Jaime. "Sorry he's bein' such a downer - he ain't ever been an optimist that I remember."

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finder
2010-06-27 07:05 am UTC (link)

Jaime shrugged her shoulders against the back of the chair. "What's to study about your average college student?" she replied. "None of us here can really figure out why we're so ... attention-worthy," she said. "Well. Most of us, anyway," she amended. "There are people I've met that can do things. Magic and stuff. But even so ... why us? Why here? Why now?"

Jaime stretched her legs out before she exhaled softly and flashed a little smile to Kaylee. She was very much of the mind that Kaylee and Lily should meet and become the morale committee. They definitely had the same sort of optimism, even if Kaylee's was a little more obviously.

"They probably will send us home eventually. It ... wouldn't make sense to drag us here just to ... off us." Which wasn't helpful, really, since kidnapping them in the first place didn't make any sense.

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accordingtoplan
2010-07-03 02:27 am UTC (link)

It would make sense to drag them here to off them, in Mal's book anyway. To him, it took a lot of power and money to bring random people here, and it would take just as much power and money to send them back. It was probably a lot easier to either just leave them here until they died or killed each other off, or kill them off themselves when they were done with the experiment.

Though... why they were being well fed and cared for in the meantime... didn't exactly fit into that explanation. But he was content enough to keep his mouth shut about that.

"Gorram scientists," he muttered in frustration. "Still think it's Alliance. Reeks of them. Or them... what're they called? That did it t'River?"

"Academy," Kaylee said with a roll of her eyes. Clearly, there would be no cheering Mal up right now. "You're in school, then?" she said to Jaime. "Never went m'self, there was always too much t'be done 'round home. S'it fun?"

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finder
2010-07-03 02:38 am UTC (link)

"But ..." Jaime hesitated. "Well, maybe, but would they be reaching out to a bunch of other planets and to people who'd never heard of them? And why? I mean, what would they be gaining from this?"

She nodded to Kaylee. "It's ... kind of a small, private college, but ... yeah. It has a really good athletic department. Not that I'm much of an athlete, but I get to practice my massage skills on our all-stars."

Jaime thought she probably shouldn't be amused to describe the Mansion and its inhabitants that way, but she wasn't exactly going to come out and say 'yeah, I live with a bunch of mutants and we take turns saving the world and junk' because that wouldn't go over well at all.

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accordingtoplan
2010-07-03 04:38 am UTC (link)

At first, it didn't even occur to Mal that she was following along in his conversation about the Alliance like it existed in her world as well as he launched into his, "Why not? Folks like that use the technology they got, without any thought t'the consequences of it. They can bust open realities, you bet they're gonna start."

Kaylee glanced curiously at Jaime, interested. "You been chattin' with River?" she asked lightly. That was how she figured that Jaime had heard of the Alliance. Then she waved it off, deciding it wasn't important. "Never one to be much've an athlete neither. More prefer working with engines and the like. They've got a better way'o talkin' than most people," she grinned. "You trainin' t'be a Companion?" she asked. She thought that practicing massages went hand in hand with the glamorous lifestyle of a Companion, but she supposed she could be wrong in that.

When Kaylee asked if the girl had been talking to River, Mal raised an eyebrow, and realized belatedly that he'd been talking about things that people from another time probably shouldn't have any concept of, and he got a little bit suspicious. He crossed his arms a bit and wondered if he should just stop talking about those sorts of things.

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finder
2010-07-03 05:02 am UTC (link)

"Hm?" she glanced between them and shook her head. "No, I just meant ... why would you government - or whatever - start swiping people ... from different times and worlds? It can't just be just because they can," Jaime said.

She assumed the Alliance was their government, but what did she know?

"A ... companion?" Jaime's brow furrowed before she shook her head slightly. "I'm not sure what that is, but I'm going to lean toward no, with that. And I haven't met a River, so I don't think I've been chatting with her."

So, this was turning out to be a very interesting conversation, and Jaime smiled a little as she waited to see what fun twist they'd throw at her next.

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accordingtoplan
2010-07-03 06:15 am UTC (link)

He was clearly getting overly suspicious, and nodded his head somewhat absently. "S'what governments are best at. Stickin' their damn noses where they don't belong. An' they do a damn lot just 'cause they can." He grew more dark than he'd been. "River, she's our pilot, they went an' took out her way've blockin' emotions, so she's gotta feel 'em all. Can't rightly help herself."

Pilot? Kaylee's brow furrowed a bit. Jayne had mentioned something to that effect as well. Kaylee was starting to think that she was missing something, like everyone was in on a secret they were keeping her away from. She thought that she'd pester them about it later. "Companion's a girl who... who entertains menfolk for her living. Very high class sorta thing."

"Whore," Mal clarified, somewhat smugly for Jaime's benefit.

Kaylee scowled at him. "Ain't a whore. 'Nara's a higher breed'n that. She says..." Kaylee frowned. "Companion's more like a... a geisha, from Earth-That-Was."

She didn't really understand what a Geisha was, but maybe that would make it clearer for Jaime.

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finder
2010-07-03 06:22 am UTC (link)

"Oh, yeah," Jaime agreed. "We've got a ... slight government issue where I'm from, too," she agreed. Not that she was going to dive into the specifics of the war for mutant rights or anything, but she could relate about nosy government sorts.

She nodded slightly to the comment about a pilot, and while she assumed airplane, she was also open to the idea of ... more advanced than plane. "I see," she said as they clarified companion for her. "No, nothing like that." She paused, and thought about that before deciding that no, she wasn't quite. Sure, she entertained some of the guys, but only the ones she liked and had a friends-with-benefits thing going with. "I just massage aching muscles so our athletes can go play another day," she assured them.

Not that there was anything wrong with whoring, per se. People could make a lot of money that way.

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shellfoolya
2010-07-03 06:31 am UTC (link)

Kaylee was intrigued. "Oh yeah?" she asked, settling down into one of the chairs. "What sort's've things does you government get up to? War 'n stuff? Tha's pretty much what we're into now. Though'ts been pretty quiet last few years, eh Capt'n?"

Done with complaining for the moment, and slowly adjusting to the idea that he'd been pulled off his ship to this strange place with... potentially strange and hurtful people, Mal nodded as Kaylee spoke. He ran his eyes over Jaime with a mild curiosity. He thought she seemed young to have been kidnapped and be here on her own, and remarkably well adjusted were that the case. He also wondered a bit about this 'massaging' and what it entailed, but wasn't about to ask about it.

Also pretty. But that was hardly the point, as the age difference was enough of a turn off and things never went smooth for him in that department. But a guy could look, couldn't he?

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finder
2010-07-03 06:39 am UTC (link)

Aware of Mal looking at her and opting to pretend she didn't notice, she nodded to Kaylee. "Not ... war, exactly. More ..." She licked her lips. "Segregation issues. Which ... is bleeding into a war-like state, yes. There've been a few moves against the president, and ... it's just a really unpleasant environment. For some people."

She really wasn't sure what the climate was like to the normals, but she imagined most of them were untouched. This was sort of a Brotherhood/Government deal, and they were just bystanders occasionally caught in the middle.

Had she personally been involved? No. Was she learning self-defense so that she could keep herself safe when she did get involved? Oh yes.

"I'm one of the neutral parties," Jaime said, in case they got any ideas about her. "Don't support the government, but I don't support the attacks either, so ... I just go to school and try to be the best me I can be."

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