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

[lostsoldier]

[ Good. Relief doesn't make much of a dent in the pounding surge of flight or fight instinct through his veins, but all the same, James is glad for the small mercy of not having to drag the other man along. (Leaving him behind had apparently not been a consideration.) The unarmed hand he had been readying to do so instead ushers through open air behind the the stranger, keeping close pace.

It feels– familiar somehow, but, well, maybe he'll worry about that when they're not running for their lives. ]

Go, go, go, [ streams out of him, urging them forward as branches catch on clothes and skin, and behind them, each hurdle of foliage they clear explodes into leafy confetti in their wake. Dim light and angular lines make for poor visibility, but whatever it is, it's big — broad as the both of them put together, and gaining. ]

Shit— [ is the sound of James' boot catching under exposed root, and if it's only for a split second that's a split second they don't have. The creature lunges for his heel.

But doesn't quite close the distance.

Not chasing, then. Herding. ]

[forgodssake]

[ Running through dense jungle is hard work -- the ground is impossibly uneven, threatening snapped ankles and eating dirt at every step. Visibility is terrible. Obstacles snag and catch and every now and then seem like they're going to snare him like a fly in a web, but equally terribly, they keep giving to him as he charges through, forcing the nightmare on and on.

Charles hears that sharp curse, immediately twisting to see, and then diving backwards to help, just in time to flick a look upwards, wide-eyed, and see the creature for the first time. ]

The ship's-- we have to get back--

[ Breathless, he tries to drag the other man back into a run, just as a terrible snorting, foliage-crashing sound seems to wake up the jungle opposite them. Maybe it's nothing, but it sounds so much like the first beast that Charles doesn't even think. He diverts course immediately, his hand clawed on James' arm. ]

[lostsoldier]

[ James scrambles after, grateful for that clutching hand on his arm in whatever distant part of his brain isn't otherwise occupied by running and dodging. Mud skids under their boots as they bolt left, their footprints neatly shredded beneath the claws the follow. ]

No time!

[ The creatures' breath buffets at their backs, but up ahead, the early dawn light catches on a sliver of polished black beneath the leaves. Lids close and open around it.

Now it's James's turn to yank his new friend, via an arm awkwardly half-slung around his middle this time, as he wheels them around in a direction not toward that. Ribboning roots spill out underfoot, but in their path a great, hulking tree towers into the canopy.

Welp. There's barely a shadow of a shrug — here goes nothing — before James slaps a metal hand to the tree's surface as high as he can reach and digs in. Bark cracks, the arm's internal motors whine in protest, but steel fingers claw deep into the wood, and he hooks tight around Charles and pulls up.

Which for Charles may be a little more like being propelled face-first into a tree at a not terribly comfortable speed, but, you know. Trade-offs. ]