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

also the first option pls.

[wiped]

"I don't know!" Thomas shouts back, squirming despite the knife. Or maybe because of the knife, because as ill-advised as continued movement might be, Thomas' need to escape at any cost prevails. "Let go."

He doesn't recognize her the way he'd faintly recognized Minho. She's dangerous, viciousness in her expression marking her a threat. Thomas isn't sure he could take her in a fight, but he's fairly certain he could outrun her if it comes down to that, if she keeps pressing for answers Thomas can't give.

[axeyou]

Dangerous is the right word, dangerous and vicious and crazy. He squirms; she pushes, driving her forearm against his throat. Fear makes her strong, but fear also eats away at her, twitches over her bare skin where the raindrops strike. Each one is a reminder of something she doesn't have a name or a memory for, something buried only shallowly. He's taller than she is, and her angle is bad, and he's determined, maybe nearly as determined as she is. Adrenaline will only carry her so far.

Make the most of it. She still has him, and her eyes play over his face, quick and crazy, like there's anything to learn there. Kill him, that would be easier, kill him, even if he's not lying he won't be a liability if he's dead--

Her fist tight around her shard of shrapnel, she hefts it again. This is more punctuation than anything else. Her grip is perfectly steady.

"Hold still. Or else."

[wiped]

"Or else what?" Thomas snaps, voice rising. "Get off! Get off of me!"

Blind panic is an excellent motivator. The driving need to survive has always served Thomas well, and fear of death plays right into that. She could kill him, but going down without a fight doesn't occur to Thomas. If he could just get out of her grip, he could get away. He knows this instinctively, trusts in his own speed even if she might be stronger and better armed.

"Get off, I don't want to hurt you!"

The subtext being that he would, that he will, if he has to. If it's between her or his survival, he'd do what he had to do.

[axeyou]

"Or else I put this in your eye."

This. The shrapnel. Intent puts weight in her arm; tightens her grip. He doesn't know anything more than you do. That's sensible fact. That's true. There are good liars out there--don't ask her how she knows that but she does know it, a tight true fact that keeps her shoulders raised up sharp, advanced defense--but he isn't lying. He's panicked and she's making him desperate, but she isn't afraid. Let him try her. She'll gut him. She will.

She digs her heels in to the dirt, her breath sharp between her teeth. "Who are you?"