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

base camp;

[vdova]

The face is right, but everything else is wrong. He's shorter, skinnier; Natasha's memory supplies her with a photograph she'd seen in files, once, of Private Rogers during basic training. She stands slowly from her spot near a pack she's sorting, watching him the entire time she rises. Timelines are strange here, especially after a jump, and if this is Steve, it may be one who doesn't know who she is.

But that's not going to stop her from trying. Natasha drops the rope in her hand into the pack at her feet, and then approaches Steve casually.

"Hey, soldier. You looking for someone?"

[ex_paragon697]

Gee, thanks for that, Natasha. Steve looks around at the sound of her voice, eyes widening slightly on her but no less assessing for that; they flick, oddly, to her hair, and whatever he sees there makes him frown. Pretty rich coming from a guy who looks less like the Star Spangled Man with a Plan than a refugee from a dystopian future, which— well.

"Found you," he says, with military honesty — which isn't to say that it's at all what she asked, or that there's no sentiment to the fact. Thank god he's plenty easy to read. "How long have you been here?"

Not where are we or how the hell did we get here, just... how long. Probably telling in and of itself, somehow.

[vdova]

None of it gets by her. Natasha's eyes narrow just a tad, probably even imperceptibly to people who don't know her at all. There's more than just his body type that's off, here. An illusion, maybe? Brought on by whatever it was that was still tethering them to the ship? She'd hope those had gone away once the ship had crashed itself, but apparently not. His commentary is telling, almost too much so, and she hides her disappointment well as she lifts a shoulder in a shrug, turning and beckoning for him to follow her. She'll play along with whatever the TQ wants to do to her, for now.

"On this planet? Two months, give or take. On the ship? I lost count after the third. The lack of a day night cycle starts to make the hours blur together." She kneels at the pack, back to her task of winding the rope in her hands.

"What's the last thing you remember?" She says it casually, but she's probing. Steve's one of the few, in fact, who gets the courtesy of knowing she's interrogating them. She's still working on being honest, so it's the least she can do.

[ex_paragon697]

That earns a bit of a wry huff, but so turned inward that she'd be hard pressed to take it personally. He'd kept in step with her carefully, listening to her answer, but when she kneels he stays standing despite a perceptible unsteadiness on his feet, face drawn and his relatively light belongings seeming to weigh him down. It doesn't mean there's nothing for her in it, though. Two months, give or take.

"You went on a mission without telling me," he answers, and if it's not the last thing he remembers (two months, give or take), it's still the truth, and vague enough to allow some probing of his own. If she remembers, she can say so; if she doesn't, it's not exactly unthinkable as something she would do, won't raise any suspicions.

The whole line of thought is wearying, not least because he's missed her. Hadn't even been sure he'd ever see her again. He doesn't like them talking in circles around each other like this, but like it or not, he'd be a damn fool to assume any of this is real after what he's seen. Steve raises his hand to his head, running it through the dried clumps of his hair to the edge of the port in his skull, brushing the hidden metal with his fingertips before letting his hand fall.

[vdova]

He's one of the only ones who gets to see her; after everything they've been to together, it's only fair. So the brief, not even a second, look of shock that crosses her face isn't one he'll miss, not by a long shot. It's still Steve Rogers, more or less, and that means her guard is down. Not good. She covers it up quickly with a neutral expression, humming a little in response.

At his movement, she looks up at him, putting the rope into the bag without looking at it, like it's something she's down hundreds of times before (more like at least a dozen, but who's counting after eleven, right?). She zips it up and stands, motioning for him to walk with her again. There are ears, here, even ones that don't mean to listen in on anything. She's silent as they walk; she needs to process what he's said, because while it's just one sentence, it means so many things.

He knows who she is, for one. Despite looking the way he does, scrawny and just about her height, more or less. That was the thing that confused her the most, and the one thing that was causing her to casually lean in the direction that he wasn't real. Somehow he'd been pulled out of her mind, although why it was the Steve that hadn't taken the serum was anyone's guess, except for her because she didn't have one. That troubles her.

Two, it meant that they were partners. If he was real — if this was the Steve that she knew, that meant something beyond their trials and tribulations of running from Hydra. They worked together before, sure, but there hadn't been a whole lot of trust there from either end. Friends, sure. Friends to the point where he'd be pointing out that she went on a mission without him? Not likely, unless he was from the same 'time' (and that made her head hurt; this entire deal with timelines and alternate universes and parallel universes was something she really needed at least one bottle of wine to deal with) that she was. Maybe even after, like Clint.

She stops them in a secluded part of the camp, in an area where the jungle is starting to get a little more dense. She sets the bag down, and crosses her arms.

"The last mission I went on at home, you were with me. And then SHIELD imploded. So are you before or after that?"

[ex_paragon697]

Well. That answers his question. He doesn't hide his own disappointment nearly as well, somehow all the less so for the way his expression falls into something hard and resolved, steeling himself against it. Still, it's quite a difference in effect from the same expression on the face she knows, without the strength to back it up. And maybe she does know it: this doesn't mean she's not real, just that she's not the same person who pulled him out.

"After," he says, "but I haven't been home for a while." He looks weary with it, glancing around them through the thickening foliage rather than toward the camp, just as he had been when she'd spotted him, though now it also seems like maybe it's as good a reason as any to avoid her scrutiny. He's not so sure why he's the one on the receiving end of it and not the other way around, and maybe he'd feel more hopeful about that if he had the energy. Or the time. He shouldn't be out here, on the edge of visibility. He looks back at her, says, "We found him."

It will have to do, in lieu of more details that he's not ready to give.

[vdova]

She frowns slightly at his reaction, but the real reaction to his words doesn't come until the 'we found him'. There's quite a bit to unpack, here. First off, the fact what he's saying doesn't match to what she's seeing. Second, his disappointment at what she'd said. It clearly wasn't what he wanted or expected to hear. Third, and probably most important?

"Where was he?" Because there's only one person Steve could be talking about. The ghost Natasha Romanoff grew up hearing whispers about.

It's the only thing they're talking about that makes sense to her. So that's what she chooses to focus on.