forty-second jump;

[ataraxites]

CHARACTERS: Any and all.
LOCATION: Gravity Couches and beyond.
WARNINGS: Maybe some swearing, or even some violence, and more than likely some implied (and possibly explicit) nakedness.
SUMMARY: Another month, another jump, another round of new faces.
NOTES: There's a strange sense of contentment that greets you as you wake from the jump. Deep and certain, it doesn't warm you or cloak the unpleasantness of the stasis fluid on your skin and the disorientation spinning in your head. It feels disconcertingly distant, instead, a sense as though an answer has been decided on - and that you won't much like to experience it coming to fruition...

New arrivals will find messages spraypainted across their lockers telling them not to follow their tattoo numbers, and instead to find a room on Floors 001-010.


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ＹＯＵ͘ ̨ＷＡＫＥ̢ ̧ＵＰ ́ＩＮ ＤＡ̛ＲＫＮ̢Ｅ̕ＳＳ̶

There's a breathing tube jammed down your trachea, and you're suspended in a tube of clear blue fluid. Upon registering your level of consciousness, the gravity couch drains the fluid surrounding you and retracts the breathing apparatus; the doors in front of you open, and you're deposited on the floor of a stark, sterile medical bay.

ＹＯ́Ｕ̴ ̧Ａ̨ＲＥ ＮＯＴ҉ ̷ＡＬＯ̨ＮＥ҉

There are others who have come before you, others who are awakening beside you. Some may be familiar to you, perhaps even friends. Others have much less amiable plans. Some are merely alien and inexplicable, but there are always those who might mean you harm.

After you catch your breath and your vision returns, you notice a number on the inside of your forearm. Maybe it's a familiar number. Maybe it means something. Maybe it's just a number. But the number—completely unique to you—is a tattoo, and it does not come off.

If you enter the room adjacent to the medbay, you will find a small locker with your number on it, surrounded by rows upon rows of identical lockers. Inside, you will find a few of your personal items, a communications device, and a ship's uniform in your exact size. The comms device is fully powered and connects directly to the ship's network; it's your only means of communication beyond physical conversation. Upon turning the device on, a neutral, automated voice will say, "Please take the blue lift to the passenger quarters." Any other attempts at communicating with the rest of the network are met only with static.

ＴＨ̀ＩＳ͜ ̶Ｉ͠Ｓ͡ ͘Ｙ̵Ｏ͝ＵＲ ̕Ｗ͝Ｅ̛Ｌ̨Ｃ͡Ｏ͝Ｍ͏Ｅ Ｐ̛ＡＲ̴ＴＹ͜

Comments

[muscovy]

Once every two months?

[that's how often people were brought to the Drabwurld for the few months during which new people from other worlds came...]

[foundafamily]

[Firo's brow furrows.]

...I think it's been counted out to be closer to one month, but how'd you guess?

[muscovy]

They used to hold feasts every two months because people from other places would come then, but that hasn't happened in almost a year now.

[And even then... from what he has heard, it didn't start all that long before he was chased to the Drabwurld by some fairies that he thought were very scary back then.]

[foundafamily]

Hang on, you got people from other worlds where you're from originally? Just like in this place?

[He's always thought of the natives here--Ward and Resnik especially--as horribly alien and almost something else entirely.]

[muscovy]

I'm not from there originally. I'm just from there now.

[foundafamily]

Er--hang on, then... Stop me if I'm wrong, but you got dragged to somewhere else and then dragged here?

[This kid must have some really terrible luck.]

[muscovy]

[well that he has terrible luck is not wrong

He nods, tilting his head a bit.] But I wasn't dragged there, I ran away and ended up there.

[foundafamily]

Ran away? From what? And was it like this place where you can't go back and all?

[Hm. Maybe it is different, but he wants to ask a few more questions before he decides anything--he's really confused now.]

[muscovy]

From fairies. I thought they wanted to hurt me, yes? Because there are stories about fairies and they are never nice. But they can become your friends if someone has the magic for it. Sketto and Pityo are my friends.

And they said that we could leave after one side had won the war, but I don't think that that will happen anytime soon because the war has been going for very long.

[foundafamily]

A war... Huh.

If you couldn't leave before then, it seems kinda weird that you'd wind up in this place. ...But I guess that's how these things work.

[muscovy]

Sometimes people leave, though. Like my lord father. And his brothers and cousin and niece. And aunt Sif. And my nephew. And now I.

...Though my lord nephew left and came back, and my lord uncle left and came back and then left again.

But people who leave lose their shards.

[foundafamily]

...Oh.

[He sounds a little relieved; maybe the guy isn't dead.]

Yeah, all right, people do disappear here sometimes. I'm not sure if they just went missin' or if they died, though. So be careful.

Are shards important?

[muscovy]

You lose your shard when you go away, and then there are less people that hate you but you lose your room in the castle and the free food there. So it is better to not lose it.

[foundafamily]

...Huh. Yeah, that makes sense.

[Kind of. He's just going to nod like it does, anyway.]

Food here's free, at least. But we can get kinda stuck for supplies, though, so it's good to be careful about it. You get a room too.

[muscovy]

[He can't quite believe that food is truly free, there has to be a catch (eat our food but fight our war when the time comes; eat our food but swear us loyalty; eat our food but - he could continue). But for now and until he has figured out, he'll take them up on it.]

What kind of room?

[foundafamily]

Your own room. A clean one, mostly secure.

[The latter was the most important to most people, he imagines.

He holds up his wrist, showing the nanite tattoo.]

You'd open it with these things. Your room's the same number that's right on here, though you should probably move up to levels 1-10.

[muscovy]

But how can I open a room that isn't mine, and won't the person whom it really belongs to be angry about me taking it?

[He peels his sleeve back to reveal his own tattoo and looks down at it, trying to figure it out.]

[foundafamily]

A lotta the people who had those rooms are gone now.

[Which might sound kind of ominous, so he punctuates it with a shrug and a smile.]

It ain't that hard to do. You just swipe those things like you would to open it and it, um... it just kinda sets itself. It wouldn't work if it was already somebody else's room.

[muscovy]

Did they die or go away?

...So I couldn't accidentally pick a room that someone owns already, and I can lock it once it is mine? [That sounds like the best possible ways in which this could happen.]

[foundafamily]

Eh... Both, I think. I'm not gonna lie to you, kid, people've died here--it can happen to anybody. Sometimes people just disappear and we don't know if they died or just... wound up somewhere else.

[He nods at the next question.]

Yeah, exactly!

[muscovy]

Some people cannot die. So it can't happen to anybody. [It's mostly semantics - the number of immortals that he knows of who can not be killed is pretty short and mostly includes entities that represent natural phenomena and nations. But still, he feels that he should correct it.]

[foundafamily]

...Look, normally I'd agree with you on that.

[He frowns, both at the thought that he could be talking to another immortal and at the fact that he's going to have to deliver this bad news as well.]

But it's not exactly like that here. If you've got anything that pieces you back together, for example, it's not gonna work. 'Least not as well as it did.

[He tried to hold back from mentioning that he had encountered this problem firsthand, but he still found himself hesitant about talking about his immortality too much.]

[muscovy]

[He puzzles over that explanation for a little bit.

And while he's still not sure in the end if what he thought he understood is right, the thing that he thinks he understood is scary enough for him to look at Firo with wide eyes.] Even the General could be killed?

[foundafamily]

[Firo watches carefully, afraid that he may have been too quick with the warning. But it's necessary, isn't it?]

General who? Probably.

[muscovy]

General Winter.

He is like Mr. Jack Frost, just older, and he sometimes comes to help me.