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

[theroadwarrior]

You're pretty resilient, [he says, supportive] and pretty good at dealing with pain. That's good — mm, don't go hurting it worse.

[Stop that, wiggle worm.

The medical supplies are just beyond them, and he carries her over to the wrecked place where first aid supplies are scattered all over the damn place. Still, he's got a good eye for what he needs. He doesn't put her down, bending down to scoop up fresh bandages, unbroken pill bottles that are some kind of pain killer he's pretty sure, and then of course something to clean the injury of bacteria. Last thing she needs is an infection on top of it. He holds each thing up for her.]

Just stuff it between you and I for now. You're my backpack. Seem good?

[anybodies]

[Wiggle-worm stops. Sags obediently against his back, but secretly looking over her shoulder to check for crazy attacker people. At least, until he dips to retrieve some stuff from this chaos of a room, she hears the clickety click of a pill bottle descending near her face. A small hand springs out into his peripheral vision to collect it, and obediently, she wedges it between them. He can't feel it through the density of his clothes.]

How come you're so good at talking to kids?

[The question kind of pops out before she realizes it isn't the most kid-like thing she could have said. Or is it. Unable to recall what kids are supposed to behave like, she mooshes the bandages down tighter under her chin, restless, a touch nervous.] I dunno anything. Your neck is weird. [The scar, she means. But she can't see it well.]

[theroadwarrior]

[He gives pause, considering a small pack of sanitizing wipes before he hands it over his shoulder to her. Hmm... Yeah, actually... that's a good question. He wishes he did know how he knows what he knows, or why he doesn't know what he doesn't. It's a royal pain in the ass.]

Don't know, really; can't remember knowing any kids. Maybe I'm just a natural.

[He smiles a bit, but it fades quickly at her comment.]

My neck's weird?

[anybodies]

Bumpy.

[The girl's fingers are light and brief on the back of his neck. She can make out a vague circle, although she suspects that she shouldn't be able to, and wouldn't be able to detect, if she weren't a bizarre scaley person with superpowers. Something in the middle of the relatively neat geometry. She can't make out what it is, but it's slightly rounded too, like a face.]

You musta got hurt, but it's not wet anymore. [She lets her hand float back over his shoulder, to take the next bottle or thing. Wedge it in between them, before running her hand back over to check her own nape. She doesn't have one. Abruptly, she decides that Max doesn't need to know that; that maybe this knowledge would be unkind.]

[theroadwarrior]

[He feels the round skin momentarily himself — a burn? He thinks this is a burn. It certainly has the texture, certainly has little feeling when he runs his hand over it, despite the urge he has to shudder. Silence falls over Max for a moment before he shakes it off, shrugging her up so that she's not starting to slide.]

I'm sure it's nothing. Doesn't even hurt.

You ready to get out of this hunk of metal?

[Because he sure is. It's unnerving, and the place feels like it can break even worse the longer he's forced to be in here. They have supplies, and the full pack he has from before he woke up... and that should do it.]