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

[circumitus]

While he's moved away, she goes to bring a hand over her face just to realize that she only has two fingers left on that hand. She blinks slightly through her narrowed eyes, squinting through both the pain and falling water as though she's seeing this for the first time.

In all fairness, right now it is. At least the missing digits don't hurt like everything else does.

"Think you're not the only one." How she got here, what her name was, what this place even is... She's running a blank on all of these things, and she isn't sure whether or not it's a comfort to know that she isn't the only one.

She manages to pry her lids open long enough to peer at him at his suggestion. Was he being serious?

"No offense, but doubt that more pain is going to help." Her teeth clench as she slowly wills herself to uncoil, biting back on the fact that every fiber of her body is resisting. "Need to get up. Just need to stand. Get out of here. Maybe."

It's a start, right?

[foundafamily]

He doesn't apologize for the idiotic suggestion, but he does bob his head, relenting to her superior wisdom.

"All right." That he can do, right? She's hardly bigger than him and he knows from moving around that he's less of a toothpick than he looks.

He kneels down and tries to grab for her shoulder. It would be awkward to try carrying her completely, but he's sure they can make do with her using him to rest on. "Can you walk? Gimme your arm, you can lean on me."

This'll be fine.

[circumitus]

"Not--"

Before she can finish, pain erupts in her shoulder. Was she shot there, if she even somehow knew what being shot felt like? She sensed that she did know.

Agony flares down her entire arm as well as her back as she yells out once. Although she doesn't feel it herself, for him it's going to be like placing his hand over a burning hot stove with the heat turned up on high, enough to melt a good layer of flesh.

[foundafamily]

He yanks his hand away as soon as he can, gritting his teeth against the pain and desperately trying not to cry out. No, it's not quite soon enough and he's almost afraid to look at the damage; the picture in his head is bad enough. "Shit--! What the hell'd you just--?"

He sucks in air and opens his eyes--he has to face the music sooner or later.

Not he does gasp, but with surprise rather than horror. The skin that had blackened and gone waxy is... changing. The least affected areas pucker back up into pinkness and the healing seems to flow inward to the rest of the damage.

[circumitus]

A quick and barely audible "sorry!" escapes her as she hears him pull back. She couldn't see what happened, but she felt something, then hears and smells the hot sizzling of burning flesh, but can't move enough to turn and look.

"Maybe... Should get... doctor."

For both of their sakes.

There has to be a doctor around here somewhere, right?

[foundafamily]

He shakes his head one last time as he stares at his hand? "The hell is goin' on here..?"

At her request, Firo's already craning his neck to look when he realizes he doesn't even know what to look for. "If you can point me to one, lady, I'd be happy to help you out."

He doesn't sound particularly hopeful, considering it seems they've both lost their memories. At least there's plan B, though--scream his head off for anyone who might remember they're a doctor.