WHO: Rocket and OPEN!
WHERE: The deck, the halls, deeper into the bowels of the ship...
WHEN: During the flood
WHAT: Rocket officially hates empathy
WARNINGS: Emotions spilling everywhere

I. Cabin Fever?

Rocket's first awareness of the flood is being woken up from a sound sleep in the late morning by... a feeling. At first, he thinks it's his, but that doesn't make any sense. He'd been asleep. There's no reason for him to be feeling that.

Then it abruptly changes to another feeling, which isn't annoyance or confusion like he would expect, and that's when he figures something must be wrong. He barges out of his cabin, teeth bared and wrench in hand, ready to whap whatever is on the other side of that door with it.

The fact that it's just a passing inmate or warden probably isn't going to look great to either of them.


II. Panic! on the Barge Ship

Feeling what everyone else is feeling is actually really, really shitty. People talked about being empathic and sympathetic and understanding other people like it was such a good thing, but Rocket, getting a head-full of whatever was going on in the heads of other people, was pretty sure it is the worst thing ever. Especially since strange things keep happening whenever he gets a strong surge of emotion from somebody, and it seems to him like everybody feels things strongly, around here.

Unfortunately, his range is pretty big, so avoiding it is just about impossible. So he tries to find places high up or low down, perched on the highest places he can find on the deck or in the depths of engineering. During the times he braves the corridors or the main deck, he's jumpy, skittering as fast as he can-- sometimes faster, boosted by an emotion-based power fueled by fear-- but hitting him with a feeling can in fact make him stop and curl up and throw his paws over his head as if that might somehow help.

It also makes him look very childish, but he doesn't care, which is a first. He just wants it all to go away.


III. What likes Beneath?

And of course, there's that deep aching feeling that won't go away no matter where he is. Rocket tracks it as stronger, the lower down in the ship he goes, and in an attempt to avoid people, he tries seeking it out, going as far down and in as he can. If that requires a warden's help, he might even brave asking one of them for a favor....