Just Hangin' Around

"Ok Holly." Jamie said, trudging down a corridor with a toolkit in his hands. "Where's this fault?"

Holly appeared on a screen nearby. "It's in the ceiling above you there."

"In the ceiling?!?" Jamie said, looking up. The ceiling in this room was a good 10 feet up. Technically you could die from a fall of your own head height, so adding a few feet to that wasn't the best way to survive.

Thinking back to his time on Fernandos, Jamie looked up at the ceiling. There were pipes and wires running along its length, perfect for what he was planning.

FLASHBACK!!

<"Be careful. You have to control your breathing, or the blood will rush to your head, and you will fall.*">

Jamie was above the Ssala hunter, hanging upside down in a tree. He had his homemade bow in hand, and an arrow nocked on the string. The Ssala hunters often hung from the trees, so the animals they were hunting coudn't reach their attackers. Most of the things they hunted were very strong, and able to do a lot of damage before they went down.

<"Control yourself, and you will remain in the tree for hours.*">

Jamie was silent. He was breathing very purposefully, and had his eyes closed while he did so, controlling his braething deliberately, and slowly. Eventually, he opened his eyes, and hung there, upside down, bow in hand.

<"This method only stops the blood flow to your head, it does not increase your strength enough to stay in the tree for prolonged periods, that is up to you.*">

* Translated from Ssalan.

END OF FLASHBACK!!

Jamie was now hanging upside down on the ceiling of the corridor. He had rigged a rope pulley to lift his toolkit up to that height as well. He reached inside the ceiling panel, and pulled out a component.

"Huh... Holly, this looks burnt out, but there shouldn't ever be enough voltage through this section to do that much damage." He said, tossing it down to the floor below. "Send a skutter to get rid of that, would you?"

He grabbed a tool from the kit, and reached back into the panel.

Phi then wandered through the corridor. She was looking where she was going, but who walks up to the ceiling? The requested skutter skimmed past, picked up the broken component, and skittered off. (see what I did there?) Making sure she didn't trip over it, she watched the floor..

Then had a face full of hair.

"Holly-" Jamie began, but was cut off by a rather loud scream. The only response Jamie's interrupted mind could come up with was a return scream, though his was far more manly.

"What the smeg are you doing up there?!" Phi yelled, breathing heavily.

Jamie grabbed hold of a pipe, swung himself over, and landed in front of her. "I was just fixing something Holly reported."

"And so you thought you'd hang upside down from the pipes?!?"

"What? I was only there for 5 minutes..." Jamie said, knowing that he could last several hours up there after all the practise he'd had over the years.

It was then that Alex and Eve walked past their corridor, and glanced their way.

"Look. If you need to get to the ceiling for something, get a ladder! Hanging like that is dangerous!" Phi chastised. "If you had fallen from there, we don't have the resouces to put your head back together!"

Jamie was getting a bit baffled. "I learned it on Fernandos. It's easier than climbing a ladder..." He said, shrugging.

"If you must do it that way, at least put a sign up to warn people... You could give someone a heart attack appearing from the ceiling like that... And don't expect me to put you back together, humpty."

Then, Phi walked off. Jamie stood watching her leave for a minute, before looking confused again. "Humpty?" he asked no one in particular.

<I know it's a bit late, but how's that for some jungly stuff, Alex?>