video

[handing]

[Well, might as well get to it. The video starts, revealing a calm, put-together woman with a easy smile. This isn't Pepper's first public broadcast, and she's got what she wants to say down pat.]

Good afternoon, all.

I'm Pepper Potts, and apparently I've been brought here to be your new Chief Morale Officer. I'm aware that the idea of maintaining morale among a group of people who have been stolen from their homes against their will is at best humorous, and at worst a slap in the face. I'd still like to make something of it, however--not for the captains or whatever power brought us here, but for us. Whatever the reasons for our kidnappings, I'd rather not give anyone the satisfaction of our suffering while we're here.

As I've only just found myself here in the past few days, I'm still finding my way around, as it were. I understand that there are people who have been here for some time already, so if anyone could give me an idea of some of what you've been through, I'd be grateful. I also would like to hear from anyone who has also been assigned jobs related to morale, given that the title of "Chief" implies there's a group of us. Lastly, the brief job description I was given mentioned I might be working closely with the Navigation and Public Relations Officers; I'd like to get in touch with you as well, to get an idea of whom I'll be working with.

Thank you all for your time and your cooperation.

Comments

[hyperkinesia]

[ He'll work through it, somehow. He'll have to. It's not like he has that many options, even if he's never had an incident with consequences this catastrophic before. He'll just have to find a way, like he has a number of times before, and probably like all those times before, it won't involve him actually talking to anyone about it.

The counsellor on board has already tried, and Bruce only ended up closing in on himself even more. Not only does he not want to burden anyone else with the weight of it all, he also doesn't feel nearly comfortable enough to expose himself like that. Not even to people he knows, people he might be closer to. ]

No. I had it checked, by the way, and it's not actually doing me any harm. It's just... there. [ He tugs the collar back up and leans away from the camera again. ] And it doesn't bother me much, honestly. Some days I don't even remember it's there.

[ That is, until he looks into a mirror. Thankfully he has no recollection of the experience either, so it's not like it comes with its own set of traumatic memories. ]

It's in one of the locked rooms. I know what you're thinking: why not just throw it out the airlock? But that could be dangerous to other ships, I think. Or even our own ship. We don't know nearly enough about this creature to know if it would survive that kind of exposure, or worse yet, if it could even continue to function in an environment like that. [ The last thing they needed was to have that creature tearing apart the outside of their ship or something like that. ] It doesn't comfort me much, honestly. Having it here. But I don't like the other options, either.

[handing]

[Maybe it's a good thing then, that some of those people he's close to tend to pry at whatever's sealed shut around them.

The promise that the scar isn't hurting Bruce only does so much to reassure. His earlier words ring through her head: once to mark, twice to kill. It feels so much like animals that are caught and tagged, only so that the scientists could find them again later. Does this creature, whatever it is, do something similar? Do the marks call out to the thing in some way they can't detect, taunting it with the promise of whatever it might gain from touching them again?

Still, if Bruce can avoid those thoughts, all the better. He's calm enough about this, and Pepper doesn't want to shatter that. Bad enough he's already thought through aspects she hasn't, calling her out on what she hasn't said.]

Was it that obvious? [She glances down with a sheepish grin, because of course that's exactly what she'd been thinking. But Bruce is right; it's easy enough to see once he's pointed it out, and she sighs quietly as she resigns herself to his logic.] And there's no way to...I don't know. Communicate with it, figure out what it wants?

[Why it hunts and it kills, with such ease as to be frightening.]

[hyperkinesia]

[ The same thought has occurred to him, too. That the creature can somehow get a sense of where the marked people are, how to get to them. So far it seems that as long as it's kept away, it can't do anything to them, but what if it managed to get freed again? Would it know to hunt down for the marked ones first?

He does his best to ignore those thoughts, though. Even if he knows that people can be brought back, he remembers that the only two people who got touched a second time really died, never to be resurrected. So, he can't really be sure that it would just be fine. But there's just no point in mulling those thoughts over now, not when the thing is locked away and there's nothing else they can do about it.

He smiles a little at her first words, shrugging a little. Sometimes it's just easy reading between the lines - sometimes people's real thoughts and worries are so similar that it's nearly impossible not to see them mirrored in each other. ]

Not that we know of yet. It can't talk, or if it can, it's not like us. It certainly can't understand us. I guess we could do tests with certain energy pulses and see if it responds to any of them, but that would involve setting it free. Or at least getting someone else in there. [ Obviously not something anyone would want. ]