Tweak

InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Put it on me."

Tom Sully Jr. (tom_jr) wrote in spinningcompass,
@ 2018-04-22 13:21:00

Entry tags:

!closed, izzy, sookie sully, tom sully jr, ~izzy shaw

Who: Body-swapped Tommy and some Sullys
Where: In a spaceship!
What: Weird Reunion
When: Today!
Rating: !!!!!!!!!!
Open: Nope
Status: Ongoing

Tommy was teaching himself how the technology native to the Station worked, or how it went together at least. He'd found something in one of the maintenance bays, and then taken it back to his lecture theater to dismantle it and then rebuild it. He'd finally managed to reattach what he thought was one of the main computer parts, and had been about to show Rawm, when he blinked and was suddenly... not where he had been.

"What the hell..." he muttered, and looked around from where he'd been staring at something. Had he swapped with someone?

He was sitting on a couch, for one, and not sitting cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by his tools, and Rawm was not there. The sounds were not those he was used to from the Station. A glance down at his hands simply confirmed what he'd suspected. These were not his hands. They were familiar, but he couldn't say how just yet, and they were grimy and calloused from work. His hands had their own callouses from all his working with tools and the odd spark or burn from where the electricity was grumpy with him, so the state of his current hands didn't bother him all that much. Standing up, he absently noted that he was a similar height to normal, and yep, male. His clothes were in a similar state to his hands; a bit grubby and with patches on them in places, and when he rubbed at his new face, it was scruffy. And... huh, his hair was curly. He needed to find a mirror, though. And to see who was near.

Except there was no phone nearby. Brilliant.

"Uh, hello? Is there anyone around?" he called out, making his way up to what looked like a kitchen, and then towards a door. There was a low curl of panic starting to form in his gut, wondering if the Man had captured him once more, but he was ignoring it so he could find out what was going on and where he was.

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tom_jr
2018-04-25 09:53 am UTC (link)

Tommy nodded as Sookie explained, and zoomed in to the limit of blurriness. The star field around him showed four, maybe five systems, and three of them had red dots in them. "I'm, like, 95% certain that it's one of these three," he said, and turned to look at his sister and niece. "How far away is that from here? And we should go get Mom, right? And... hope she doesn't think Dad's finally cracked, I guess."

And then something occurred to him. What if everyone liked being Space Pirates or Space Couriers or whatever. What if they were only going to visit? "You're going to come home, right?"

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sookie_sully
2018-04-25 06:50 pm UTC (link)

"It's about ((alien measurement of space distance)) . That's like ((distance)) miles. We can get there faster if I use this universe's equivalent of a jumpgate into hyperspace. There should be some along the way." She nodded, her eyes getting a little wider. "Mom! Of course, we should get her!" She'd be even happier to see Tommy than Sookie, if that was possible.

Izzy giggled and used her communications device to call her mother. "I'll see where she is. Probably with the kids."

"Oh, Tommy! You can meet them too! There's even more of us!" Sookie giggled at herself. "I guess you figured that out, seeing as Mom was pregnant the last time you saw her." She was too happy to think of how they'd almost lost her mother and siblings in their escape. "Of course, we're coming home." And it was home as long the rest of her family was there. "We belong with all of you."

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izzyshaw
2018-04-26 01:48 am UTC (link)

The elder of the two Izzys arrived on the bridge soon after getting her granddaughter's call to come up. She'd been going over the ((alien language)) alphabet with the younger children while the older ones worked on math problems.

All the adults had a hand in taking care of and educating the kids. With seven of them there were too many for her to try and handle all on her own and she gladly took all the support from Tom, Sookie, and young Izzy she could get. With Errant Venture flying and the ship's systems working as they should there wasn't much need for her as the Engineer to do more than monitor them, so she was in mom mode at the moment.

"What's the matter?" She looked between the other three adults, wondering what it was that had them all clustered on the bridge and looking at a zoomed in star chart. "Is there a problem with the route?"

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tom_jr
2018-04-26 04:09 pm UTC (link)

Tommy looked round the instant he heard his mom's voice and couldn't help but stare for a moment. Then he realized that she'd asked a question so he probably should answer it. "The... uh, delivery? route is fine? Sookie was flying so I don't see why there would be a problem?" He glanced at his sister as he was speaking, and then stepped closer to Izzy.

"Okay, so. I've already gone through this with Sookie and Izzy. I'm not Tom Sully. Well, I am, I'm just not this Tom Sully. I'm Tommy. And Dad's in my body, but we're not on the island any more, we're on a space station and I think the station is in one of those systems that are projected behind me. I recognize the maps around it, I found them on the space station." He rubbed at his hands, especially his knuckles, as he spoke even though his hands currently weren't sore. Of course they weren't, they were his Dad's hands.

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izzyshaw
2018-04-26 07:25 pm UTC (link)

At first she thought Tom had lost his mind and was playing some kind of sick joke on everyone but she discarded the idea almost immediately. Izzy stared at the person claiming to be her son inhabiting her husband's body and debated what to do.

She could shoot him without killing him and then lock him in one of the empty cabins until they could get him to a doctor, and she had to restrain herself from dropping her hand to the pistol on her hip. It was a bit paranoid to be carrying onboard ship, but they'd gotten into pickles before where being armed came in handy. So she'd gotten into the habit of wearing her rig as automatically as she used to put on a watch.

The body language of the man in front of her wasn't Tom's, that much was clear, and they hadn't talked about the island or their children from the other timeline with strangers. They'd also been in deep space for several days now without encountering or communicating with anyone. So there was a good chance that he was telling the truth, but it paid to be paranoid these days. He'd convinced Izzy and Sookie though, so she was willing to hear him out first.

"You'll want to stay right where you are and give me a better explanation than that if you want me to believe you." She told him levelly. "How about we talk about it over tea and carrots?"

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tom_jr
2018-04-26 07:39 pm UTC (link)

Tea and carrots? His mom couldn't have picked a grosser combination if she'd tried. The look of sheer disgust that must have passed over his face was probably hilarious to someone who couldn't pick up on the sudden tension in the bridge at that point in time. "Carrots? I, uh. If you want to... I'll pass on eating, thanks, but, uhm. I'll explain whatever you want. How did they get carrots out here? Izzy made me some of that jawa coffee drink, can I drink that instead? Please?"

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doesntneeddye
2018-04-26 08:16 pm UTC (link)

"Mom." Sookie kept her voice calm. She understood her mother's concern. They encountered many strange and dangerous aliens, ones that would happily redirect them from their path to make them vulnerable to theft, kidnapping, and worse. If she hadn't been so excited, she might have reacted the same way. But the appeal of a reunion was too strong. "Dad wouldn't make this up. And a shapeshifter, or a changling or someone with a changling net wouldn't know about Tommy."

Izzy's attention was on Tommy and she grinned at his reaction. That look was pure Tommy. Tea and carrots didn't sound that bad to her, especially after all the time in the shelter eating gruel and some of the alien foods they'd tried since then. Maybe the suggestion was a test. Did Uncle Tommy hate carrots or hate tea? She couldn't remember. She made sure to stop grinning before she looked at her grandmother. "Is it a bad explanation? The island magic sent me to Panem, sent Aunt Sookie to the technomages, sent other people places for years. Island magic swapped people too. Couldn't there be like station magic on Uncle Tommy's station?"

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izzyshaw
2018-04-26 11:46 pm UTC (link)

"It pays to be cautious, Sook." She reminded her daughter. "We've been burned before." Not like this, granted, but with Tom incapacitated at best she had nine other souls on the ship to protect.

Izzy kept her focus squarely on the person claiming to be Tommy and watched his reaction to her suggestion. If he thought it a wonderful idea then she knew it was an impostor, but if he didn't...a smile broke out on her face at his response. That was pure Tommy all right. "Yes, Tommy, you can have the not-coffee instead. After you tell me more about this station you were talking about. Is that where everyone's been all this time?"

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tom_jr
2018-04-29 06:24 pm UTC (link)

He nodded, unable to keep from smiling in response to his mom.

"Okay. Um, okay, we're on a station. It's massive, we think it could hold a million beings easily, and it orbits a gas giant. We woke up there about eight months ago now, back in September, and it had no gravity and was on emergency lighting, but we got that all sorted out. I was telling Sookie about how it had been abandoned because there are things all over the place. If you go into an apartment, it'll have all kinds of things lying around it, like clothes and ornaments...well, I think they're ornaments? Not everyone that was on the station before us was human or even humanoid. There's all kinds of habitats, there's flooded places for the merfolk and Uncle Jake has a part in the park that's got Pandoran atmosphere, and it has Doors like on the island because we got to go to New York and Tortuga last month, so that must have come with us. Along with the body-switching," and he paused there to gesture at himself, "and all that stuff. JR's currently a woman, Blue Uncle Jake is a kid again, Sarah's swapped abilities with her new boyfriend and Dad's getting to meet everyone in my body."

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sookie_sully
2018-04-29 08:48 pm UTC (link)

Sookie nodded. "I know Mom. I just can't help being excited." She listened carefully as he brother spoke. Some of it he had already told her and much of it was new information. She tried to store each detail in her mind and create a mental picture. It sounded incredible and there were even doors. She'd have her family and doors again! "It sounds more awesome all the time! Sarah's got a new boyfriend?" That particular detail made her a bit nervous. "New like he's new to being her boyfriend or new like he wasn't on the island? Are there a lot of new people on the station?" She had always loved new arrivals on the island with their stories of other universes. This felt different. She'd made enemies, along with her parents. The people who ran the 'shelter' and later in their adventures working in space. What if those enemies had made it to the station somehow?

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izzyshaw
2018-04-30 01:57 am UTC (link)

Izzy nodded at her daughter's question. She could see the wheels turning in Sookie's head now, the excitement still there but concern making her more cautious. It was better to get the information now than come into it unawares. "Have you met anyone from this reality?"

She glanced at the map again and made the decision. Ordinarily she'd let Tom make the call, or at least consult him when there was time if it was something she needed to do herself. But he wasn't here and Tommy having been swapped with him was probably a sign they were meant to go to this station, at least to investigate it and visit until they switched back. "Sookie go ahead and change our course to go to where Tommy suggested we start looking. Then we can start learning about what's been going on the last eight months for them."

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tom_jr
2018-04-30 01:06 pm UTC (link)

Tommy looked round at Sookie when she asked about Miguel. "He's both, actually. He's a geneticist from New York, from the year 2099 but he's really into all kinds of different science. When those two get talking, it's fascinating because there's things he thinks are common-place but they're cutting-edge technology for us, but then again, he's lost a lot of techniques and theories that we think are essential, so there's a lot of knowledge being thrown around, which is pretty cool. And there's some new people, yeah. We have cousins now! Sunila had her babies, so there's baby Greg and baby Alex, but they also arrived on the station recently as adults, so older Uncle Jake and Aunt Sunila are pretty happy about that. And younger Uncle Jake and Aunt Sunila are getting married in a couple of weeks, which is cool. Richie's shown up as an adult as well, Richie Stark. Uhm..."

He stopped at his mom's question, though. "No, we haven't met anyone. I know a couple of people have taken their ships out for test flights, I think Kaya got to the edge of the system we're in, but we hadn't found the maps yet. I don't know if anyone's gone further yet. But it's just been us so far."

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doesntneeddye
2018-04-30 07:23 pm UTC (link)

"Wow." Sookie commented on her brother's description, then nodded to her mother and sat at the controls. As she entered the new course, her mind was still on what Tommy had said. Even if it hadn't been years for him, they'd missed so much. At least they could be the first people from this universe to arrive at the station and prepare everyone, just in case others found it later.

"Richie, huh? Are there a lot of other new guys I'm not related to, around on this station too? Or gals? Good looking ones?" Izzy asked, keeping her tone light. She was a teenager now, but she wasn't hormone driven enough to put that ahead of finding a way home or the possible dangers on the way. Since Sookie was already working, she looked at the map and then at her grandmother more seriously. "Does it look like we can get there safely?"

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izzyshaw
2018-05-01 01:16 am UTC (link)

"What about JR and Shepard, did they have their twins all right?" She was happy to hear about Suni and Jake, who was as close to one of her own children as could get without actually being one of them. It was a bit strange that he was technically her brother in law as well, but she thought of Blue Jake more that way than the human ones. "Maybe we can be there for the wedding if we're lucky."

Izzy smiled indulgently at her namesake's first question. It would be nice if her granddaughter could get the opportunity to maybe flirt and have fun with someone close to her own age who was safe.

"Our maps aren't 100% through this patch of space, but I haven't heard about anything. We should have enough fuel and food to be good for a few weeks without stopping if we have to, but hopefully we can stop and top off somewhere along the way."

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tom_jr
2018-05-02 09:56 am UTC (link)

"JR and Shepard had their twins, yeah. JR had them, they did a body switch thing," Tommy explained. "Thomas Kaidan, TK for short, and Ashley Ellenore, or Ash. And they're there as grown-ups as well. So's Addie who's another one of their kids from the future. She's really into programming and coding, which is cool. And Sarah had Henry! So there's loads of people for you to meet."

He looked round at Izzy after that and laughed at her question. "We're related to a lot of them, that's true, but, uh... there's not that many of us on the station," he replied, trying to think of single people they weren't related to.

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doesntneeddye
2018-05-02 10:41 pm UTC (link)

"My cousins!" Izzy exclaimed. Finally more kids from her generation. "I remember TK, Ash and Addie. Addie has magic too. Oh..Wait..Are they from an island future or a station future?" She'd be happy to meet them if they weren't the ones she remembered. "Is there a grown Henry too?"

Izzy chuckled. "Maybe I can ask the station magic to bring me someone." She wouldn't wish for it though. All these years and she still avoided saying that word out loud. Izzy nodded to her mother. "A few weeks. Could we be there that soon?" It felt impossibly good that they were this close to all the people they loved.

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izzyshaw
2018-05-03 01:07 am UTC (link)

"Goodness, poor JR." Izzy couldn't help the snicker that escaped her lips at Tommy's news. But more grandchildren were never something to complain about. "It's great news though, I'm glad everyone's doing well." She had tried not to think about the people from the island since they'd escaped the factory and begun a new life in the stars. It hurt too much and there wasn't anything that could be done about it.

But now there was a chance. "It certainly looks like that, honey." She replied to her granddaughter, and glanced over at Sookie. "We'll want to study the charts later tonight and see if there are any trouble spots marked we need to avoid and any good places to resupply." They were going in a completely different path from their planned route earlier, and into unfamiliar space. It paid to be cautious.

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