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

[deservesadaisy]

"Dr. Gallo, I believe?" because they haven't met, no, but she'd made public network posts and he'd had a few weeks to do research about the person keeping him relatively sane before the crash.

"Not much, to answer you question. When we first crashed my instinct was to run off, and that kept me away from people long enough for my memory to filter back in." He sounds more tired than on edge, though she knows enough about vampires to guess he's both.

In many ways, her reaction to him strikes him as saner than Charles'. That doesn't mean he needs to piss her off further.

[milagros]

The lack of response to her name is a confirmation, in its way; he is correct, she doesn't dispute his conclusion, there is no need for this interaction to waste time on niceties she has no interest in sharing with him. It irritates her enough that she's doing this in the first place - there is only so much courtesy she's prepared to extend for the sake of Charles' sensibility.

And it is for his sake, and not Ivan's, that she handles this with the pretense that she thinks Ivan should have a choice in anything that happens to him going forward.

"Describe to me your current state."

...not much of a choice.

[deservesadaisy]

Honestly, there are worse ways Ivan had pictured his return to camp going. He almost visibly doesn't take offense.

"On edge, but my control's firmer than it was a few months back." When Enfys dragged him into xenobio, yes. "I ran up against the boundary on how far one can go from the crash site, but that doesn't seem to have caused any lasting damage." At least that he can tell. The ongoing headaches are annoying, but not to do with his blood addiction.

[milagros]

Her measuring gaze has not significantly defrosted, throughout their conversation.

At length, she says, "I am able to provide you with a blood source that should be more - suitable to your needs." He does not imagine the way her lip curls when she says your needs; she's restrained, but barely, and the contempt she has for his entire species is no small thing. "I'll show you where I live, and I expect you to present yourself when you have a need."

She is confident in her ability to handle him if he should come to that place she lives with an intention of doing anything but meekly accepting what he's given. The set of her jaw doesn't suggest it would be wise to test that theory.

She waits for agreement; doesn't waste her breath on threats about what she'll do to him if he crosses the line.

Cross it. Give her an excuse. She'd love it.

[deservesadaisy]

The pause is, perhaps, a bit longer than it strictly has to be as Ivan considers her. "That would be convenient, thank you. It would probably be wise to arrange a time relatively soon." Before his control frays - before his hunger trumps his instinct to survive among these people, in this place.

She doesn't need to threaten him; similarly, he doesn't feel the need to spell out for her the fact that he would have never elected to be shut up in a spaceship and then marooned in an alien jungle. He supposes death isn't in the habit of consulting one.

[milagros]

She wouldn't have chosen to let him continue living afterwards. They're all having a hard time, right now.

(This is the problem with having friends and professional ethics.)

"I will show you the way."

When she spins on her heel, she presumes he will follow her, and that he's too calculating to try anything. If she's obliged to quash any disappointment at the thought, well, that's between her and whatever god she feels so inclined towards.

[deservesadaisy]

A part of Ivan would really like to try something, but he has that impulse well in hand. At least for the time being. He also resists the urge for a "biting the hand that feeds you" joke, proving his self-preservation instincts are more or less intact.

Instead, he just follows obediently and silently. Neither of them want this, but it's a resource he'd rather not lose.

[milagros]

The tree she leads him to is a ways into the jungle - not so far as to make it an inconvenient walk to and from the camp, but far enough that it is a trip you have to decide to make. Already large, it's evident that her meddling has expanded parts of it, although from the ground it's difficult to get a sense of the details through the branches. Whatever living space there is, it's high up, and it isn't immediately obvious how she gets from here to there.

It will come as little surprise she prefers that.

"If you need sustenance dealt with sooner rather than later, it'll be a few hours."

[deservesadaisy]

"I'm not yet cutting it quite that fine," he says, simply, looking around enough to memorize the location to find it again. "If there's a time that would be more convenient to you than another."

They can continue playing at polite through gritted teeth, her for a friend's sake, him for practicality's. It's a truce neither of them relishes, quite obviously, but it will last for now.

[milagros]

"Exactly how fine are you cutting it presently?"

The hint of sharpness is just that - only a hint. But the suggestion it carries with it is blunt: he ought not cut it too fine, and if he does it out of courtesy, she will actually scream.

[deservesadaisy]

"Not so fine anything will happen between now and the point at which I return a few hours," he say, blunt himself. Ivan is many things, but he isn't slow. "I don't intend to see how long I can go to prove a point."