ARRIVAL ▒ 002

[ataraxites]

CHARACTERS: Any and all.
LOCATION: Basecamp, Medical and beyond.
WARNINGS: Implied (and possibly explicit) nakedness.
SUMMARY: The Tranquility jumps again.
NOTES: Can be found at the bottom of the post.

T H E   C A M P   ( C U R R E N T   C H A R A C T E R S ) Clouds have rolled in, obscuring the high noon in grey shadow when the alarms start. Wailing through the air, not as keenly as it had when base camp still huddled in its shadow, but still loud enough to turn heads and give people pause. It sends a shiver of nervous energy throughout camp. They were out of range the last time, and there is no sudden scrambling attempt at retreat, but the crowd does begin to thin. Some pick up and go, just to put distance between themselves and the inevitable, because you never know. Others stay behind, for whatever that reason might be. Those who were closer towards the ship emerge from the treeline in a hurry. It's ten hours later when it happens. A tremble in the earth, shaking up through the trees, sending the jungle's wildlife into distressed flocks of movement and alarmed cries. Under the shrouded sun the wreck of the Tranquility begins to cord with lines of white light, threading across the hull like veins, some patches remaining dark, standing out against the vision like splotches burnt to the back of the eyelids. There's no great sound. In an instant, the ship is gone, a soft whomp, a feeling of air rushing past, the trees bending towards the site as if blown by a fierce wind. It's only a second. With a crack, the wreck returns, a rumble rolling through the air like thunder. The earth shakes. The trees tremble. The ship groans, the sound echoing out like the cry of a wounded beast. The jump has passed. Before search and rescue can gather and see for themselves if anyone new was dragged from their homes, something strange happens. A gas mask, old fashioned and heavy, round-eyed, with a filter like a muzzle at the mouth, lands in the packed earth at someone's feet. With a clatter of plastic and metal, something that was once a radio receiver apparently plummets from the air, shattering on impact when it strikes the metal framework of a communal tent, and another lands in softer earth, intact. Tin cans of food, earthenware bottles of water, candles wrapped in paper and tied in string, a box of matches, a set of well-used playing cards with roughed up corners, a rough woollen blanket, a pillow, a gas lamp all hit the ground throughout camp, or are discovered in the jungle beyond. This unusual rain of items ceases, hardly a minute after it has begun. M E D I C A L   ( N E W   A R R I V A L S ) 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. All around you is chaos: the sirens of alarms are shrieking in your ears, close and claustrophic in the wreckage of the medical bay you've awoken in, lit dim and red. Around you, others are waking up, falling from other gravcouches, stumbling to their feet. Light catches your eye, and you look up to see a huge rend in the outer wall high above you, overhung by broken structural beams and damaged cabling. Climbing up takes all the strength you have. You emerge in bleak, grey sunlight, surrounded by an immense, vast jungle. As your vision clears, you realize you stand on the hull of a colossal spaceship, crashed on an unknown world, two moons hanging heavy in the sky above. In the distance, far out on a great swathe of torn up earth through the jungle are a clustered crowd of figures, moving towards the wreck. Your welcome party, but are they friend or foe? N O T E S Anything remaining within a mile radius of the ship when it jumps will be irreperably damaged. Soft organics will be pulverised, while all trees and plants will initially appear fine but crumble to pieces within a day (or sooner if disturbed). Non-organic material will also be weakened, bending or falling apart when touched. Newly arriving characters venturing through the medbay will discover their inventory items somewhere in the heavily damaged locker banks. They will also 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 wreck will show increased signs of instability for a few days after the jump, and will have seemed to have sunk further into the rock of the cliff than it was before. As mentioned, items as described above will also rain down on camp and all areas beyond it. Feel free to find these in sporadic quantity. If you have any other questions, please don't hesitate to contact us via PM, the FAQ or Questions pages!

Comments

Re: Out and About Around the Ship | OTA

[hairrands]

[Out on the forest line, the one between where the trees are still more or less hale and the ones that have crumbled to dust, AJ can be found with a very similar mask, one that she had found in her mad scramble to collect on all of the goodies. She's had the presence of mind to double-check on all of her little stashes of experimental, in-process moonshine, just in case any other scavengers have gotten overzealous, but now she's distracted playing with the stupid thing because she thinks she's completely alone.]

Breaker-breaker one-niner, [KSHHHHT] We, er, got a code red down here at the Burp-N-Go, could use some backup on this sludge bucket, do you copy?

[As she's checking in on her month-old brew of something she's been calling dingleberry brew to nobody but herself. She's also been huffing Darth Vader voice, but that might also just be the action of the mask.]

[throwsdown]

[SUDDENLY, FROM IMMEDIATELY BEHIND HER, in a child's own Darth Vader huff — ]

Breaker-breaker...!

[There is inexplicably a child behind you also wearing a gas mask.

Sorry, were you trying to be sneaky with your horribly named brew?]

...

...

What's a one-niner??

[hairrands]

[AJ does a faceplant into the ground in front of her, having been startled completely by the higher-pitched voice so close and as though from out of nowhere.

She whips back up and pulls her mask off, all ready to be completely irate... but the little kid standing before her throws her off again.]

Where the f-... where did you come from!?

[throwsdown]

From the tree up there!

[He points up WAY HIGH ABOVE. What's up?]

I heard you talking to your mask! I thought maybe I was s'pposed to do that, too.

...

But I dunno what you were saying.

[hairrands]

[AJ's busy scratching her head, trying to spot a lower branch. This kid... thing... whatever, he's giving her the creeps in the full suit and mask business.]

I'll tell you what I was saying if you tell me whether or not you're a human, [she haggles, because she would not be surprised at this point if she's speaking with a tiny child-robot.]

[throwsdown]

[He makes a face at that, looking at her like she suggested he's a dog or something.]

Huuuuh...? Oh, uh! No, m'not an alien! I won't eat you, promise.

I'm from Tokyo!

[hairrands]

You're from ff--udging Tokyo? [AJ catches herself just in time, fudges her own curse in the face of the child confronting her. God, this is going to get awkward fast if she can't curb her tongue.]

What's your name, Little Tokyo?

[throwsdown]

I'm Takeshi!

[He sways back and forth, looking content with his hands behind his back.]

... But Little Tokyo sounds real cool, too.

[hairrands]

Little Tokyo's what you get, then. [His reverence is enough to convince the clone.] Or LT.

I'm AJ, so we can match, huh?

[Holding up her mask over her face, she draws in a deep, Vader-like breath one more time.]

What's with your fancy pajamas?

[throwsdown]

I like it!

[Good job, AJ, you've gotten his companionship. Which isn't hard to do, but still.]

This is my suit! My special suit. It turns me into a superhero, kinda.

I can throw people down hard when I wear it. And jump far! And run fast.

[hairrands]

[There are some things that AJ is still having trouble adjusting to, and arguably, the more mundane superimposed on the fantastic is one of them. She can see LT whipping this all up from small-child imagination, remembers in fact doing something similar as a kid. Samus Aran's slightly off-brand un-fourth-walled version had been a favourite badass to emulate when AJ had been a little girl.

So she doesn't outright challenge the boy's claim, but she can never be sure with other people that there isn't a kernel of truth.]

You gotta show me your moves, then; I've never seen a real super hero before!

[throwsdown]

[..................

Only one person before ever asked to see his moves.

So he kind of stares in surprise for a moment before he perks up.

And maybe flexes his arms just a little.]

Y-yeah! I can show you! What should I do??