[h3][colour=0080ff]Jax - "Progress"[/colour][/h3][hr]
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SCREEEEEEEEEEEEECH[/center]
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The sound of something heavy scraping metal echoed faintly through the Dullahan’s lower deck — another rearrangement. His quarters, a small, jury-rigged space just off the breaching bore, looked less like a cabin and more like the inside of a dismantled ordnance crate. A hammock swayed between two hand-welded hooks, half tangled in a mess of cables. The air smelled faintly of oil, and whatever powdery residue clung to his surface these days.

He was at it — again hauling his desk half a metre to the left, muttering to himself the entire time. [colour=0080ff]“Better line for the light. Yep. Better line for the light.”[/colour] The light hadn’t changed. It never changed. After ten days aboard, he’d memorized every flicker of it, every half-second blink of the wall strip that threatened to die but never did.

He stepped back, eyed the new layout, frowned, nodded — this time, surely, out of all of them, it was finally in the right spot. The process repeated in bursts: shoving, sighing, standing back to judge, as if the perfect configuration might suddenly make the room bigger, or maybe just different. 

He stopped, hands on hips, staring around at the small Kingdom of Jax he’d built. Tools, components, scraps of wire, half-dismantled detonators — each of them had its place, or had once had a place before the last rearrangement, and the one before that. The desk itself was scavenged from discarded cargo parts or plating, with a dent in one corner that he used to crack open whatever needed cracking.

Jax exhaled through his nose and crouched, pulling a narrow box from under the desk. Inside were the makings of something definitely volatile: little jars of powdered compounds, pieces of wire, and one dented detonator housing. His fingers moved automatically, his eyes fixed on the desk that was already starting to irritate him all over again. He checked seals, tightened screws, scraped the residue from a spent charge with a thumbnail.

He wasn’t building anything in particular; he was just [i]doing[/i] — Keeping the hands busy so the head wouldn’t start chewing on itself. [colour=0080ff]“Bulkhead Fondue: Mark II,”[/colour] he muttered, twisting a wire. [colour=0080ff]“The Fondue-...ening?”[/colour] He mulled for second. [colour=0080ff]“Pfft, Nah.”[/colour]

A faint spark jumped from a contact and fizzled out against the table’s surface, leaving a black kiss of burn on the metal. He didn’t even flinch. Just stared at it for a long second, then gave a slow, almost appreciative nod — a wide grin slowly forming on his face. The room smelled sharper now, like scorched copper and regret.

[colour=0080ff]“Yes! That’s it!”[/colour] He spat, dropping the concoction back into the box without a care, shooting up and grasping the desk once more.[/justify][/indent][/indent][/indent][/indent][/color][sup][h3][b][i][center][color=black] SCREEEEEEEEEEEEECH[/color]
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Outside, [i]The Dullahan’s[/i] lacking hum was a low reminder that they were still docked, the engines didn’t vibrate the hull like it should. It was bright and sickly outside — not that Jax could see much of it. He’d considered cutting a viewport into the bulkhead once, just to see the black, but even he had realised it was probably one of his “bad ideas” — the kind that people tended to “frown on.” So no, still stuck. 

A whole moon below them, and he hadn’t even set foot on it. Not when there was potential out [i]there[/i]: charges to set, things to blow apart properly. Instead, he was trapped in a box, rearranging smaller boxes, which probably had even smaller boxes packed inside.

He leaned back against the wall, running a hand over his face, smearing more than sweat across his brow. His reflection in the steel of one of the newer casings stared back — hair sticking up, eyes bloodshot, a faint smear of graphite across his cheek. He blinked, frowned, then glanced at the narrow box still open beside him. One of the contacts was smoking faintly.

From the corridor outside, there was a muffled pop. The sound was small, but sharp enough to make the lights bounce and flicker once before settling again. A faint haze began to curl out from under the door, carrying with it the acrid tang of burnt chemicals.

Inside, the air had turned grey. Smoke coiled lazily through the cramped space, settling on the cables and the hammock. Jax stood in the middle of it, blinking through the haze, flecks of soot peppering his hair and shoulders. He wiped a streak across his cheek with the back of his hand, leaving it darker than before.

[colour=0080ff]“Huh,”[/colour] he muttered, voice flat. [colour=0080ff]“Good seal integrity.”[/colour]

[colour=0080ff]“Progressssss,”[/colour] he hissed, shoulders dropping, tension leaving him like air from a punctured seal, and reached for his tools once again.
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