THE CRASH

[ataraxites]

CHARACTERS: Any and all.
LOCATION: Medical and beyond.
WARNINGS: Violence, implied (and possibly explicit) nakedness.
SUMMARY: Arrival in the crashed Tranquility

W E L C O M E You wake up, alone in the dark. There's a breathing tube jammed down your trachea, and you're suspended in a tube of clear blue fluid. Through the fog you can see shadows of movement, the muted sound of alarms crying. 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 suddenly dropped several feet onto the opposite wall. The impact is painful, winds you, and it takes several seconds to overcome and persuade uncooperative limbs to move. You barely have the time for it. All around you is chaos: the sirens of alarms are shrieking in your ears, drowning out the cries of confusion from the people awakening around you, trapped in their gravity couches or stumbling through the wreckage. Louder than that is a deep rumbling, coming from somewhere farther away, vibrating through the metal underneath you. It's hard to make out much of anything in the dim red light, but you catch sight of a sprawl of garbled black on your forearm and wonder-- Who are you? How did you get here? A drip lands on your cheek. Another. You look up as a flash of light illuminates a rend in the outer wall high above you, a steadily increasing fall of raindrops showering through. Another rumble rolls through the wreckage around you, and you pull weak, unsteady legs underneath you, rising to a shaky stand. M E D I C A L There's a shout, nearby, and your attention turns from the hole high in the wall to the room around you. Standing sideways, the smooth doors of gravity couches under your feet, fallen wreckage and debris making obstacles in your path. But there are others here, climbing through it as best they can, or trapped inside their gravity couches, injured, or worse. You step over the body of a man in a jumpsuit, venturing further into the gloom of red. The shout comes again. Someone might need your help. Or they might have answers about what happened here. O U T S I D E It takes all the strength you have to climb up through the fallen structural beams and hanging cabling, metal slipping wet beneath your fingers and feet. Eventually you emerge, and in another flash of bright light realise you stand on the shell of some colossal structure, the shadows of dense jungle all around you. The night sky above is a violent flux of colors, a dense, roiling tower of cloud crawling with lightning as if on fire, thunder booming again and again as the deluge pours down. In the brief flashes of light you start to notice figures, further away, scattered across the shell. Dressed in dark jumpsuits, their shouts are drowned out by the storm, but their struggles are evident; lashing out, grappling, fighting each other for their lives. There's a sound behind you, and as you turn one lunges towards you, a jagged shaft of metal in his hand. His eyes are wide, teeth bared, and as you stagger back he yells something, coming for you again: "You did this!" N O T E S Venturing through the medbay will discover the lockers and main bay, all heavily damaged. Characters will likely be able to salvage some belongings from the destroyed lockers - otherwise they will be able to find jumpsuits and other standard clothing in the wreckage. The alarms will cut after two hours, a which point a looping audio message telling passengers to make their way to the blue lifts will be audible. The lifts, if investigated, will be missing, leaving only empty elevator shafts. The nexus of the strange superstorm will disperse out into colorful clouds after approximately half an hour, at which point rainfall will ease to something less torrential. The storm will pass entirely after five hours. Dawn will come two hours after this. The Tranquility's original crew members can be found amongst player characters, either in medical or outside of the ship already. They will similarly be suffering from memory loss, but worse than that, a small number of them will be extremely violent in attacking player characters, other crew, or even harming themselves.

Comments

Magneto | OTA

[sorrycharles]

Jungle:

[ Erik jolts to life with a nose full of water, choking, spluttering to the sensation of thunder rolling through the trees around him, booming in his bones and between his ears. He’s already soaked through, jumpsuit heavy with metal and rain when he’s spasmed through the initial shock into half a sit, and up, nearly to his feet.

Halfway there, a stabbing pain pulled deep into his side drops him right back down to his knees.

Lightning close enough to sizzle the air barely breaks through the foliage; his eyes are slow to adjust, bleary with rain. The earth under his hands is black and clotted thick between his fingers, full of leaves. Rain rips through the canopy, drumming off the back of his skull while he drags the air knocked out of him back in. The racing of his heart spurs him back up onto his feet before the pain has time to ease off; he staggers upright with his elbow pinioned back, one hand pressed high against his side.

He’s still unsteady, but more careful the second time, reaching half-blind to brace against a break in the wind that happens to be a tree.

Even in the chaos of the storm, it's clear that he's wounded. ]

Later/Less Jungle:

[ There’s a break between peals of thunder, and he hears shouting through searing lightning and driving rain. Voices.

It’s slow going, through the vines, and the trees, with one eye to gauge distance by the light of strobe lightning. But he knows where they are, and eventually, the foliage thins out enough for him to make out wet shapes lashing out at each other in the mud.

He stays put just within the tree line, breathing ragged and one shoulder stooped.

People are kicking the shit out of each other.

Excuse him for a moment while assesses the situation -- and the great hulk of the Tranquility looming over it all. It’s probably safer for him to stay where he is.

Someone hits someone else across the face with a metal shaft, knocking them flat. Erik blinks hard -- shifts his weight, feels an uneasy tickle at his heart.

It’s probably kind of a dick move for him to stay where he is. ]

less jungle;

[milagros]

( probably. although that is possibly not the opinion of the woman who stops short of a collision with him, scrambling on bare feet and scraped legs; he is not going towards, but she is actively going away from, ugly bruising forming on her shoulder and scraped open flesh (scoring through a tattoo that covers most of her back, the bulk of vines twisting across her skin rising from just above her backside) offering up a quick and straightforward explanation for the whys and wherefores of that decision. her hair is plastered across her neck and her face, curling damply, and through it her expression is--

mostly annoyed, in the way of people who respond to their own fear and confusion by becoming angry at the entire situation for existing. it would help if she had any idea what 'the entire situation' was beyond the immediate obvious, but as she also isn't completely clear on things like her own name or where she is or what the fuck is the... ship? above them? it seems like it might actually be a lot to ask, it turns out.

she tried fighting, initially. now she's tired, and sore, and nothing makes any damn sense, and when instinct told her to turn to the trees, there wasn't anything else to tell her different. she moves like she's thinking about hitting him, also, and then changes her mind; it plays across her face in moments, easily read--

she makes a quick 'shh' gesture instead, and a curt one across her neck as a suggestion for alternatives to not remaining fucking quiet where they're far enough out of sight to regroup and consider.

consider.

... something. maybe fighting the crazy people for their pants in a more organized fashion. )

[sorrycharles]

[ That Erik looks like the sort of person you’re liable to trip over under a bridge isn’t a help to his cause: his blind eye is shock white in its socket in the stormlight, and he’s missing part of an ear, bristling with smeared earth and scruff. He’s only as clean as the rain allows, runoff channeled off his nose and chin when he stiffens opposite her designs on decking him.

It’s nice of her that she doesn’t.

He looks warier than he does grateful, unsure of her company. She’s naked.

He looks.

Because of course, but more than anything it’s a you’re naked sort of look. A little judgmental. Like she hasn’t noticed.

But two pairs of feet go crashing through the brush behind him, tearing deeper into the jungle, and he takes her advice, which for the moment entails being quiet. This is fine; he’s still breathing hard, keeping a closer eye on her than he is the clusterfuck farther afield, now that she’s here.

The lack of any sudden movement around his person renders him more or less inert, by comparison. Potentially to the point of being less than helpful.

He already has pants. ]

[milagros]

( she is naked. and pants-related meta-cracks aside, she hasn't really given the matter much thought, not so much consciously deciding upon its lower place in priority rankings as not giving it one in the first place - there have been other concerns, like 'not knowing who she is' and 'getting attacked by people she doesn't know' and 'being in a crashed ship and then a jungle' and 'torrential rain is a problem'.

he is not naked. she doesn't imagine he is substantially less cold, given the wind and the water and the general unpleasantness, but it does give her a moment's pause; oh. right. clothing. some of the people she's seen have been wearing it, others-- not so much. (and some of them looked much stranger than she was expecting, if she was expecting anything, which-- was she? should she have been? she was surprised, so maybe. she doesn't remember.) that's now one thing that she knows about herself: not terribly impacted by judgement regarding pants and the lack thereof. he still looks like hell, so having them doesn't appear to have particularly improved his lot in life.

it's a lot of thought to devote to this one thing they aren't actually discussing, based off the eyebrow motions of someone without any depth perception. that is something that happens sometimes, in pressure situations. fixating, rationalizing, clawing sense out of chaos. that it is a typical response is comforting even as she isn't sure how or why she knows that.

she crouches against the tree, lingering for that sense of familiarity, and settles into watchfulness. rainwater stings where it mingles with blood, but nothing is so deep to feel urgent - she is conscious of him, alert, but that clusterfuck still has the bulk of her attention. like if she watches for long enough, something will start making sense.


then, frowning, refocuses on him. his injuries. there is something she should be doing--

but she gestures, wary, rather than just abruptly manhandling him to get a measure of the severity, as seemed to be her initial instinct. gives him warning and the option of furiously declining. or, you know, calmly, which would be novel right now. )

[sorrycharles]

[ This isn’t so far removed from descriptions of certain circles of hell that Erik is keen to trust, whether he recalls the specific connotations and text or not. Suspicion is hard-wired into his system, besides -- he tenses like a stray dog when she gestures, sharper lines cut out into the hunch of his posture. Suspicion is hard-wired into his system, or someone else has already had a go at him in the time he’s been awake.

Either way, whispered demands for character references are out of the question in the tumult -- the thunder’s so loud he can hardly hear the rain driving at his head and shoulders.

The best he can manage (at length and after some clear thought) is a near-bellowed: ] WHO ARE YOU? [ through the storm that proves he is only low-to-medium skilled at following directions. ]

[milagros]

( she doesn't actually lower her face into her hands, but somehow the sentiment is there in the way she stares slightly past him for a long moment as if to say to some unknown audience: that really just happened. and it definitely isn't a delaying tactic around the horrible awareness that she doesn't have a confident answer to provide to that question, no sir--

it's really that he thought so much about doing it first, that's the thing that gets her. jesus christ.

she makes a sort of two-handed 'why, what the fuck is wrong with you' gesture, in lieu of an answer, mainly because the thunder is going to oblige her to roar right back at him and she is not entirely convinced that that will help anything. or anyone. or at least, maybe too many people are already punching each other for it to matter?

she peers out into the bleak struggle of what's mostly, at least, humanity, and is satisfied with approximately none of what she's achieved thus far. )

[sorrycharles]

[ Chagrin is subtle behind the persistent ??? in the slack of his jaw and a knit at his brow, while he struggles to make the most of this gesture. But ‘subtle’ doesn’t translate well through tearing wind and rain.

In the broad strokes the weather does allow for, he looks stupid. Worn down. Maybe a little disappointed.

Should he already know?

He looks at her far longer than she looks at him, talons curling in after some hint or indication -- he eventually follows her gaze back out to the fighting. Not too far away, a man with black hair and no shirt is dragging someone in a jumpsuit backwards into the jungle. Erik’s profile fixes in on their progress, following along for an uneasy moment.

He’s thinking again. ]

[milagros]

( should he already know? it's a good question. she thinks she should, at least, and anyway-- )

Georgiana!

( --is an abrupt answer, coming only after he's already stopped looking back at her, and having given it she seems a little startled at herself. not only because she was annoyed about the idea of yelling through the storm.

and anyway, she totally knows who she is, fuck all y'all.

or her name, anyway. she's sure of that, suddenly.

... if only she were sure of something useful. like 'who is that shirtless guy in the jungle', or 'should I/we be doing something about ... that', for example, both potentially very helpful. )

jungle;

[technologist]

[ There's an uncomfortable sense of deja vu to all of it. To the way he wakes up confused to emergency lighting and smashed tech, less so to the other stragglers dragging themselves over the hull of the ship and through torrents of rain.

But at some point, somewhere, his field training actually left a mark. That's what leads him to give the wreckage more than a passing glance instead of just panicking and fleeing into the rain, and that's what leads him to a jumpsuit, soaked through and filthy from the crash. He puts it on, stumbles over a small kit, smashed open, half empty. The contents are familiar enough, gauze and needles, and he tries to snap it closed before hauling it outside into the rain.

It's a fucking mess. He can't see far between the dark sky and downpour, doubts he could see far even in daylight through the thick maze of the jungle. He's standing in the mud, shell-shocked, one hand lifted to shield his eyes from the rain while the other holds the kit, and that's when he spots a figure staggering to its feet farther off in the trees. Start-stop, then it tries again and stumbles against a tree.

He has no idea who any of these people are. He has no idea if they're friends or otherwise, but some direction feels better than any; even a potentially wrong one. Fitz braces against a gust of wet wind before starting forward, and when he finally reaches the tree the man's taken shelter behind, he feels more like he's about to pass out than provide any real help. ] Are you hurt?

[ He's yelling, but he can still barely hear himself over the weather. ]

[sorrycharles]

[ Erik has stapled his back to the trunk by the time Fitz is upon him, raw and lean as a drowning tiger, and approximately as dangerous to helping hands, all eyes and teeth in the dark. ]

I can’t see, [ isn’t entirely true, ragged with panic under pressure.

Strobe lightning paints a clearer picture: the scarring clouded over his left eye is old, wet and pale opposite the ice pick intensity of the right. The rain is washing blood thin through the filth between his fingers, where he’s clutching at his side, but he doesn’t mention it, blindsided by adrenaline shock. And half-blind...ness.

He doesn’t recognize Fitz. There’s no familiarity to be found in his scruffy, mud-smeared face.

He just wants help. And for the lightning to stop. ]