When Jim came to, he would have thought that he had indulged in too much Glug again, if not for the fact that he could remember everything that had happened. His mind seemed to be clear, but his body was heavy and sluggish, his head pounding and his mouth dry.
"Aj...a?" Jim tried to sound out, prying his eyes open only to cringe back as they were met with a harsh, florescent purple light. He could smell Aja's familiar ozone scent close by; he could also smell the scents of many other things, some unknown, but most were distinctly human. As the heaviness in his head began to lessen, he cautiously blinked his eyes open again, his vision clearing as they adjusted to his surroundings. Again, he was met with the purple light, and he realized that it was coming from a couple of surgical lights above him, but they were pointed away from him, their beams visible, but directed at the ceiling. Jim tried to lift his arm to shield his eyes, but was surprised to feel that both of his arms were strapped down by his sides. Testing his legs, he discovered with a growing sense of dread that they were strapped down as well.
A groaning sound to his right caught Jim's attention, and he jerked his head to the side quickly, cringing and hissing in pain as his horn clanged against the metal surface that he was strapped down on. When the echoing in his head and his spinning vision finally faded away, he was met with the sight of Aja lying right next to him in her alien form. Her expression was scrunched in pain, her head lolling to the side weakly, like she was just coming to as well and felt just as bad as he did. In fact, Jim noticed that her normal glow was extremely dull, barely giving off any light at all, and her complexion was dark and blotchy. He was surprised to see that the metallic black suit that she had been wearing was gone, and she was strapped down as well. Jim was even more shocked to see that her naked body was transparent, her bones and organs (or what approximated to organs, he guessed) clearly visible through the thin membrane of her blue flesh. He realized now that the thing in the center of her chest that he had assumed to be an emblem of some sort was actually within her body, pulsing with a brief light in a patterned time... like a heartbeat. The structure of her body was very doll-ish, in that she seemed to have the shape of a human woman (albeit, with extra arms), but none of the distinctive features, very much like a Barbie doll. He hadn't thought much about her suit when he had first seen it, only noting that it covered almost her entire body and even most of her head and neck, but as he looked her over in shock, he realized that it was meant to protect her vulnerable body — without it, she was completely exposed and easily injured or killed.
"Aja," Jim said again, his voice low and frantic. He was struggling against his bonds, but he couldn't even manage to loosen them. He didn't know what the heck they were made of, but he knew that he should have been able to rip through even steel chains with the strength that he was using. "Aja, wake up!"
"I am awake," Aja moaned, cringing at the sound of her own voice, and Jim knew that her head was likely pounding in the same manner as his. "But I do not think I want to be."
"Can you break your restraints?" Jim asked, attempting to reach out with his fingers to touch the straps holding her two left hands down next to his, but it was just out of his reach. "I don't know what they're made of, but mine are holding tight."
Aja's arms tightened at her side, and he watched in fascination as her muscles flexed and her bones shifted beneath her transparent skin. She struggled for almost a minute before groaning in agitation and wrenching her eyes open to glare down at her left wrists. "I cannot— oh!"
"What?" Jim asked, frowning in confusion as Aja twisted her head away from his direction, and her glow began to build back up quickly. He winced as he saw her brain and brain stem beneath her skin as she turned her head. "Aja? Are you feeling sick?"
"Uh, no," Aja said in a tense voice, what little he could see of her face becoming blotchy again, but with an extra bright glow instead of the dimness that it had been. "I... am not covered."
