Learning the Ropes.... Again

[Lorna DeLaTour]

"Poky! Come here! Don't munch on that card box." Agatha rushed to fetch her female Jax. While Poky was a few years older than her male buddy Kronos, she was a real spitfire. The blonde doctor had moved so much in the past few years that boxes had become a semi regular type of playground to her pets. After her last work on Ithor, she had seized an opportunity to join the medical crew aboard Jovan Station. Truth be told, she preferred living on an actual planet than in space, but she had previous experience serving on a medical frigate in Wild Space, so at least Jovan Station allowed for a more civilized settings.

The appartment she rented had a small patio where she planned to turn into some kind of mini garden when she'd have time to take care of it. She hadn't unpacked fully yet. As usual, she had spent more time at the medical compound to get the hang of her new colleagues and the equipment available than learning the station layout and all that was available there.

Her direct superior had given her the contact information of a woman named Vulcan Tanner who would be able to tell her more about the station. Using her one day off, Agatha had made sure to reach her. Tanner had agreed to meet up with her and she should be here fairly soon.

That would give Agatha just time to retrieve the couple of card boxes, now empty, and put them away before Poky made a full unhealthy snack off of them. The blonde much prefered steel containers that resisted Jax teeth, but she had made do with what she had when organizing her move from Ithor to here.

[Vulcan Tanner]

Vulcan drew in a deep breath and released it slowly, letting it escape over the course of several steps as she strode down the corridor to Doctor DeLaTour's apartment. Her pace was faster than usual, but not because she was late or in a hurry; she needed her heart-rate up, needed her blood pumping around her system quickly. A pair of fingers pressed to the inside of her wrist, mentally calculating the rate of her pulse. That was good. That would be enough.

Delving into a pouch on her belt, Vulcan pulled out a compact medical device, glancing at it long enough to ensure that it was correctly calibrated before she pressed it against the inside of her wrist, where her fingers had just been. She felt the familiar tiny scratch as the dispenser punctured it's way into her circulatory system, pumping the prepared dosage of chemicals into her bloodstream. It was an unfortunate but necessary part of her life on Jovan Station: at first she'd blamed the symptoms on a new environment, on the loss of the familiar Mon Calamari humidity from her last assignment, some defect in the Imperial atmosphere filters - it had taken months to properly diagnose her allergy, triggered by the vast feline population of Cizerack aboard the station.

It was a minor inconvenience, and one easily treated; one usually dealt with within the privacy of her own quarters, in fact. Today was different though. Today, Vulcan's conscientious attention to detail had modified her strategy. She'd seen the datawork involved in the Doctor getting permission to bring her Jax pets aboard; one of the many assorted things that passed across Vulcan's screens over the course of doing her duties. She didn't know if her allergy would be triggered by all felines, or if it was just something specific to humanoid ones, or even just Cizerack; but better safe than sorry. She had soldiered through her shift on the command deck today without the benefit of medical aid, all so that she could dose herself at the last possible possible moment, and hopefully make it through the rest of the day itchy eye and sniffle nose free.

A right turn at the appropriate corridor intersection, and Vulcan found herself mentally tallying off cabin numbers as she honed in on DeLaTour's new home. She didn't bother to check she was remembering the number correctly; didn't need to. One of her many talents. Her adoptive father always blamed her brain tails - Of course you remember good, look at all that extra space you've got to put it! - and Vulcan supposed she'd simply just accepted that as fact, even though the more rational part of her psyche knew that her lekku didn't quite work that way. It was a nice falsehood, like so many of the multicultural beliefs she'd been exposed to growing up within the Rebellion. It was like believing that your emotions came from your heart, to explain why your chest felt the way it did whenever you experienced them. It made a certain poetic sense, even if rational sense had other things to say.

Reaching the right point, Vulcan breathed in another deep breath, trying to suck in as much Cizerack-tainted air as possible as a challenge to her allergy, daring it to protest. Satisfied that her immune system's overreactions were being held at bay for now, she reached out for the intercom beside the door.

"Doctor DeLaTour?" she inquired, subconsciously leaning a little closer to the device, even though she new the equipment was more than capable of hearing her even if she stood normally. "It's Chief Tanner, I've been sent to show you around?"

[Lorna DeLaTour]

When the door buzzer interrupted her feeding the Jax, so they would be all taken care of while she spent some time visiting the station and getting to know it better, Agatha looked at the chrono on the wall and grinned. She liked punctual people. Sealing the food container again, she placed it in a cupboard.

Walking up to the door, she opened it, before offering a handshake. "Hello, Chief Tanner. Thanks for seeing me today. I appreciate it." She smiled to the Twi'lek. She was familiar with the species, having worked on Ryloth for a couple of years. The weather had been quite challenging at times, but it had been one of her most rewarding experiences as doctor. She had learned a lot during this.

One of the good things about living aboard a space station was that you didn't have to factor weather issues as much as on certain worlds. She stepped outside and locked her apartment door behind her, before one of her pets decided to scamper off. "Sorry, just being careful with my Jaxes. They are curious and so used to going from one place to the other that they jump on every opportunity to explore."

[Vulcan Tanner]

For a terrifying moment, Vulcan half-expected that sentence to end with jump on everybody, and Vulcan's mind had already begun preparing herself to panic. Fortunately she had plenty of practice keeping those things deeply buried beneath the surface. It was one of the first things that slave masters taught you: hiding your fear, disgust, and sadness away so that the Masters couldn't see them, regardless of what it was they were doing to you.

"I'll make sure to bring a net with me next time then, ma'am," Vulcan quipped, letting an easy smile settle onto her features. That was something else the Masters had taught. Be likeable, little one. No one will want you if you do not smile. It was strange to think about how much of what she'd been taught, how many of the skills that she'd learned back when she'd been nothing but property, proved genuinely useful for her as a free woman. Perhaps she should be alarmed by that: how similar military service was to the slavery she'd once known, with it's superiors that were to be obeyed without question, and it's mandates on how to act and how to dress. On the other hand of course, the Alliance let her carry a blaster just in case, and a punch to the face of anyone who tried anything they shouldn't was considered fairly close to acceptable. It was the small differences that all conspired to build an entirely different life.

While one part of her thoughts dwelt on those matters, another aspect vanished in a completely different direction, contemplating what she knew about the cabin behind that door, and how it fit into the grander scheme of the Station. "Have you spoken to Maintenance about Jax-proofing your place?" she genuinely enquired, a very slight frown tugging at her violet brow. "I'm not sure how well the vent covers and conduit panels would hold up against creatures that small: I doubt the Imperials had pets in mind when they built this place, and well -"

She trailed off, the glance thrown in Agatha's direction carrying with it a mix of reluctance and apology. "We have quite an assortment of species here on Jovan Station, and there's at least a few of them that might see a couple of stray Jax as a tasty potential snack."

[Maggewetok]

Finally finding her new apartment door, Maggewetok relaxed a bit as she then tried to access the door. Sliding the card tailored to her fingerprints on the surface, the Alliance agent was dumbfounded when she gained only two red lights instead of green. Sighing, she tried it again, then heard the neighbor's visitor then start talking about a potential predator stalking these halls. Hazel eyes drifted to the pair of females, straightening as she did so and then adjusted the large pack over her right shoulder. Unsure if she should interrupt or offer her own concerns, the native Saami knew the predators that wandered Belsavis, but hadn't ever seen a Jax yet.

"How big do those get, if you don't mind me asking?"

Dressed in a casual, dark blue jacket and pants, shoulder holster hiding her Morellian pistols, the agent had been allowed to keep her weapons and never left home without her ulu, a keepsake from home.

[Lorna DeLaTour]

Agatha chuckled at the Twi'lek's quip. "A good thing is to waggle any sort of feathery item in front of them. Works every time. I'm glad, because back on Ithor, they scampered off into the garden of the complex I lived in." That had been one heck of a chase to get the Jaxes back. One day, she would have a nice house on a planet, some kind of permanent residence, but for now, she ignored when it might even happen. She was making the best of life as things came her way and her pets had always been happy no matter where. They liked their comfort and having food and toys, so they were relatively easy to please.

"Yes, I have spoken to them when I first arrived. There definitely needed to be adjustments made in my appartment. One room is still not done, but I just make sure it's not accessible to them. It should be all fixed by next week." She appreciated Tanner's practical approach. It made things so much easier when people had common sense, in her view.

"I had to fight off a Gamorrean once when he thought that Poky was a free meal, when living on Ryloth. It was an interesting and kind of scary experience." She still recalled that giant porcine alien trying to steal Poky as she carried her in her box while traveling to her new home there.

When another woman interjected in the conversation, she looked at her, answering the question: "Did you ever see a Nexu or Manka Cat newborn? A Jax's adult size is similar, though my female, Poky is quite large by the species' standards, but she likely had wild Jax in her lineage, and they are a bit larger on Rori."