ataraxionlogs | ARRIVAL ▒ 003

Entry tags:

ARRIVAL ▒ 003

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 )
Dawn is just shy of breaking when the alarms start. The wailing is distant enough that many manage to sleep through it, but inevitably wake up to the long, piercing siren coming from the crashed, early morning shape of the Tranquility.

The coming jump puts a feeling of nervous energy about the camp, but it's becoming a routine, and they know there are long hours until the jump sounds. People clear the surrounding area of effect, and otherwise go about their day.

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.

Everything turns white.

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 is the site of a camp.

But there is no welcome party coming to greet you. Perhaps you are alone, or you encounter someone in the same situation, but regardless, you must make it down and away from the ship without the aid of anyone who knows what's going on.

Should you choose to head for the camp, it's dead quiet.

The men and women who have made this place their home are scattered around, in the midst of having gone about their day, but all of them are in a state of frozen catatonia. Entirely unresponsive to any kind of stimulus, they are as still and as unseeing as statues. Within two hours since you woke in the wreck of the ship, they suddenly and simultaneously begin to stir, regaining consciousness to a prompt nose bleed and the unsettling affect of lost time.

N O T E S
Anything remaining within a mile radius of the ship when it jumps will be irreparably 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 scattered beyond the ship. Feel free to find all of your inventory items, or lose as many as you like, as they will be randomly distributed around the jump radius. They will also be able to find jumpsuits and other standard clothing in the wreckage of medical.
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 described, all current characters will simultaneously enter a state of strange catatonia when the ship jumps, essentially freezing in place. They will see only blank whiteness, and be unable to recall how long they spent in this state. Upon regaining full consciousness two hours later, they will be left with a headache and a nosebleed.
If you have any other questions, please don't hesitate to contact us via PM, the FAQ or Questions pages!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

William's mouth tucks itself up in the corners, a smile that has very little in it by way of mirth, but sincere nonetheless. Seen some shit. They all have, but he can tell from her scars-- that a lot of them are older than anybody's tenure aboard the Tranquility. He wraps his free arm over his knee, slouches forward, his chin settling onto his knee. Like a kid loitering in the playground, waiting to be picked up. He turns his eyes up at her, wide and dark with more patience than real curiosity. The impartiality of ancient demons allows him this particular reserve.

But it still surprises him, when she makes her calculations. A tiny line cleaves in between his eyebrows. "Really?

"Cunting Hell. I mean-- I suppose I was sitting down, physically. I shouldn'tve gotten tired. But that's a bit long." He straightens up, leans over her shoulder to peer into the communicator's tiny clock, even though he doesn't know what time she'd started out at.

Hand clamming up under the communicator, she blinks at the numbers until they don't seem very discernible anymore. Eventually she tears her eyes away, looking back at William who is staring down at the same thing.

"Well, either time leapt forward or we just lost it. Hard to say which." Neither one sound very comforting, but it wouldn't be the first time they lost time because of the Tranquility. "The jumps obviously have some freak effect on the environment around the ship. If those guys from DUPRR weren't lying about it, it could have something to do with the way the places we stopped at in the past were wiped out."

Which doesn't bode well if the jumps are slowly affecting this planet. The way the nearby plants and trees crumble afterwards is also disconcerting.

"What? They-- oh." He remembers now, in a flash that feels nearly like inspiration. The DUPRR, before they became flesh-and-blood bodies that fell gorily to pieces when he went to kill them. Before Rey had sent one into the white place. Before all that, they had issued warnings on the radio, and made a heroic attempt to board the Tranquility for reasons as varied as the personnel themselves had been. "Fuck. I forgot all about that.

"You'd think one Jump out wouldn'tve bloody destroyed entire space stations, though." His brow furrows slightly as he glances toward camp, trying to remember how wide the radius is. A mile? "That last one we was at, where those cunt elves went off and took people." His voice doesn't even shake anymore, when he talks about that. When he thinks about what he did, what he became, when he took Cassandra, Ianto, and the rest of them. He's healed now, or less human. Both. Either. "Arima. That place was way bigger than the circle of destruction we been wreaking, and it took ages to get there by shuttle, even." A beat.

"I'm not arguing with you," he adds hastily, the consternation clearing from his brow just like that. He looks to Rey. "I suppose the mystery thickens."

For Rey, it's much harder to forget. Even with all the memories of other people flooding about in her head, being something with a mind such as hers makes forgetting details impossible.

When William mentions Arima, though, she grimaces. He does make a few valid points. At the moment, she's just thinking aloud without having enough information to figure out what the hell just happened. The pounding headache and the bloody nose doesn't do much wonders in the way of her concentration, either.

"Suppose so. Should check if the same thing's happened to anyone else, just to be sure." Her jaw then clenches. "Would feel better if we weren't the only ones, actually. Is that selfish?"

Recon syndrome, that's what she's referring to. While she may feel somewhat relieved of the affliction, she can never tell for certain whether they're entirely free of that influence. It sucks.

"No," William answers abruptly, sitting a bit higher. He flaps his hand when an iridescent insect of some type takes a divebomb at his head, not too impressed by the shenanigans of local fauna. The mystery of the white light coma is considerably more concerning, and he thinks that the scarred woman is certainly onto something. He hadn't thought of it himself. Partly because he's barely spoken to anyone in some months.

Fortunately, his haphazard nightly invasions of dreams and periodic ventures in astral projection have ensured he remembers how to talk. "That's a very good notion. If it's a recon thing, then-- I s'pose it could be related to that... tentacle demon cunt that Xavier detected in our minds back when." Yes. Yes, he's very good at talking to people. Evocative imagery and so on. He does actually recall Charles' investigation of psychic walls within their minds, though, the way that the recon syndrome sufferers' had thinner partitions than the others.

Creepy.

"These things call out now? It ain't just mirrors?" He juts his chin at her phone, having forgotten propriety about things like not looking at people's screens when they're trying to talk to someone.

The tense muscles slowly unwind at William's concise reply. It wasn't like Rey expected any different answer from him, but actually hearing it out loud does somewhat help to abrogate her concerns.

"Suppose so," she agrees absentmindedly, nodding. Though she'd rather if that wasn't the case. "Haven't really felt the same way since the crash. The symptoms, they're not as bad as they were before."

She looks to William again to see if it's in any way similar to his experience as well. Rey knows that she isn't quite alone in feeling respite from Recon Syndrome, it'd just help to confirm that this is the case for all of them. Whoever is left that was caught up in that whole mess with the room...

Fingers tightening around the phone, her eyes dart back to the screen. "Yes, we've managed to get them back up and operational. Not as intricate as before." She shrugs. "Beggers can't be choosers, as the saying goes."

That's heartening. The recovery of technology means that things are better at camp now, and this means that things are better for Takeshi there. A smile creeps across William's face, all the way up to his eyes. He winds up interlocking his hands together. He wonders how the boy is doing, but when he looks at Rey, he finds himself thinking she probably isn't in the habit of caring for children. It might be an incorrect judgment, a bit of a leap, but one that he can't help but make.

And then he's distracted again by recon syndrome. Which-- he would be. William's problems had been somewhat more expansive and widely-affecting than some of the symptoms that people had suffered. "You're right," he says, nodding. "The symptoms have reduced, or at least lifted. Charles Xavier had a look in my head not too long ago, and we found out that a few things had gone back to rights. The division between me and my powers is back." Although that's a little hard to believe probably, considering he left camp months ago and seems morosely content in the company of trees and stones and acid rivers.

That, though, he apparently has in common with Rey. He peers at her a moment, recalling the way that her recon syndrome used to work. And his eyes brighten.

"You've been out here on your own too. Haven't you? The... alone time doesn't fuck you up anymore. Emotionally."

The immediate answer would be no, Rey is not exactly what you would consider child caring material. Though she has her moments, even if none bears to mind in conscious passing. She's familiar with Takeshi, and she's grown rather fond of Muscovy. There have even been a few rare incidents in which she had found herself protecting another much smaller and weaker than herself. She would tell anyone that she is a killer before she is a protector, but sometimes one also kills in order to protect.

Just when Rey was then about to suggest seeking a more direct diagnosis to their condition, William goes and already has that part covered. "That's-- That's good, to actually know. Have felt different since then, but wasn't certain."

How could she? After everything that had happened, there was never such a certainty. Perhaps the thing that had latched onto them wasn't completely lifted, but dormant? It wouldn't be the first time she's had to concern herself with such things.

She then shakes her head.

"No, not alone. Been out here with Firo since some time after the crash. Neither of our recon symptoms from before have been giving us trouble, though."

"Oh, fuck. I didn't Firo was in our shit as well." William remembers the woman talking about this person before, and he's curious about Firo for a moment. He sounds nice. Somebody trustworthy, no doubt, considering Rey does. Rey had put up with William himself when he was murderously out of his mind, even though she'd demonstrated strength of character far, and he's never forgotten it. That she can tolerate people more fallible, weaker than she is. So maybe Firo is too. They do seem awfully close, though.

And you know what they say about birds of a feather. "Is he doing well? I feel like a bit of a tool, I never asked for introductions." And then here comes a brief and peculiar pang-- that he hasn't really been involved in village life at all lately. He doesn't know who's running the farm. He doesn't know who's been organizing the shelter builds, delegating cook responsibilities, foraging. He doesn't know who in Medical Bay is left. He scratches his thigh and pushes that peculiar feeling of irresponsibility back.

"I'm a bit out of the loop in general," he admits. "I'd like to look in, after you check with some of the old recon syndrome sufferers."

"We were on the same team together," she adds matter-of-factly. "Asked him about his symptoms recently as well. He said about the same thing -- that he's also doing better."

As far as Rey knows, Firo doesn't make a habit of revealing to just anyone that he's got a couple dozen alchemists and a murderous psychopath living in his brain. Getting mixed up in your own mind isn't a concept she is unfamiliar with, either, and knowing him it's more personal. Luckily, she isn't one to gab about her friends' head problems, and leaves it at that.

Her lips tighten into a straight line when William mentions the other recon members. "Not many of us left. Been keeping track, and it looks like there are only five of us here. Which isn't very surprising, given the nature of this place."

Having been around for as long as she has, it's hard to be taken aback when people start disappearing.

William's face tightens slightly. He does remember. Brad left awhile ago, and he couldn't find Thomas last time he ghosted through the tents at dusk. He understands. It's no longer something to be taken aback at, just-- progressively sadder and sadder, dissolving into a liquid, slow-spreading puddle of malaise and nostalgia. William had never been very good at hope to begin with. The loss of Heather had been bad enough.

"Heard Kate Bishop was still around," he says, finally. No offense to Kate, but he doesn't sound incredibly ecstatic about that. Merely a function of them not being all that close. He imagines it's better she's past her recon syndrome, too. Hers, he thought, was particularly unhelpful when it came to social pragmatics.

That's four of them already. He pauses for a moment, finds himself unable to name the fifth and last, but he's a little too dispirited-- or carefully indifferent to want to ask. He shakes his head. "Glad he's all right then. You seen Takeshi back on camp?" he asks. "Wee Japanese tyke, he's who used to hang around the Gardens with Ned and Heather. The one who found that creepy fucking tomb with me."

"So, that's three out of five confirmed for our recon symptoms, then. Can assume it'll be the same case for the other two." Rey shrugs, sharing the same feelings as William on the matter, given the lack of contact she's had with most of the other recon members.

More than anything, she is used to loss. Whether they were killed or she was the one to die in one of her many previous lives, Rey has seen too many people in her lifetimes to feel anything for it anymore. It's just a washing sadness, and then life goes on.

She blinks at the mention of Takeshi and Ned, the latter being one she hadn't heard in a long time. Rey actually had no idea that there were people still around who remember him. "Have spoken with Takeshi on occasion, yes. Seen him at the camp, but don't go to visit there very often." Only when she feels like she has to, be it for supplies or checking in on the usual suspects.

Surprise proves a brief break from William's ambient blues. He hadn't fully realized. "You've been living out here too? Full-time-ish, I mean?" He knows that plenty of people tend to wander out for a variety of reasons, not the least of which he imagines, lately, has been exploration. Especially after the discovery of the tomb. "Shit, I didn't know that. It ain't bad out here, is it? I mean I barely know jack and shit about bloody wilderness survival, but at least it's not cold enough to freeze to death.

"And it didn't take too long for my guts to get used to eating seed pods all the time. They're everywhere." Obviously these are not really good reasons to live in hermit-like isolation from other people, or at least, they aren't the primary concerns that people tend to have when you say 'I'm living in hermit-like isolation in the jungle.' But it really isn't a terrible lifestyle overall, especially when you're of above-average, magically-enhanced durability. "I'm glad Takeshi's doing all right. We ought to exchange jungle addresses," he suggests.

"I'm about half a mile that way." William sticks his arm out one way, out further to the tomb. Easily within walking distance of camp. "I marked the path with red paint on the tree trunks. X-marks."

She just nods in response to William's first few questions. After the return of her memories, it was difficult wanting to be around people knowing that it was her fault the ship had jumped back into Miraxian space. It was more her own guilt than a fear for her own life, as Firo is the only one she's ever told -- and she promised to keep it that way.

"Have enough experience in wilderness warfare to figure out how to make a go of it out here. Know a thing or two about tracking and hunting, and even found some of the local plants and insects to be edible."

That's right. Rey has absolutely eaten bugs before, and not just during her time on the Tranquility or an alien planet.

Gross.

She takes in a mental note of the direction William points her to. Rey then gestures towards the way she had come from, just before time had froze. "Am living northwest from the base camp, about a mile and a half away. Built a structure up in one of the trees to keep a better watch of our surroundings. Was also nice to have that elevation when the stampede came through."

"That fucking stampede," William says, crossly, his anger the sort that seems more like agreement than anything else, even if Rey hadn't been saying anything about it besides that there was one. "Like we haven't got enough bloody problems." He shakes his head and wipes his hands on his pant legs. This move ultimately changes neither the streaks on his hands nor the streaks on his pant legs. "Yes. Umm.

"I have not yet begun to eat bugs, but that's probably at least partly because I spend a lot of time not being flesh-and-blood lately." He looks at her a little quizzically. Not entirely turned off by the prospect of such cuisine, in part because the older traditions of his people held to that, and the newer depths of poverty-- well, certainly worse dietary tendencies than that. His eyebrows crease slightly, but it's a different furrow to the one when they were talking about lost friends. "I'll have to ask you which ones are any good."

That fucking stampede is about right. "Been less concerned with the animals and more worried about those spears."

Since the implications of the spears would indicate a civilization out there somewhere. And whether or not they're friendly, that's up for debate.

Sending William an amused look, Rey lifts her brows at him. "You'll be the first to know, then. Perhaps it may be worth sharing a few recipes on our newly restored network." She wiggles her comm device.

Then her expression becomes more sobering.

"What's with the whole out-of-body thing, anyway?"

Yes. William looks at the communicator device jiggling in her hand and supposes he really ought to get one of those. More reasons for than against, certainly. In his head, Guangtou makes a vague susurrus of agreement, not particularly moved to interject with an enumerated list of reasons as long as William is on the way to doing the sensible thing of his own volition. Though William, by now, has come to think of himself less and less as a person, he's never going to seem like much of a demon to the real one living out vast tracts of eternity in his head.

"Oh."

The out-of-body thing. Definitely one of those experiences that tends to make William feel less person-like. But Rey has so many peculiar and wonderful powers herself, it doesn't occur to him she might be concerned. "The scientists termed it astral projection. I knew a girl who could do it in the old world, but it was different for her-- she was invisible. I just go a bit see-through. The mechanics are similar, though. Leave your body behind, and take some intangible version of yourself out. I can see, hear, smell everything the exact same way." He leans back on the tree trunk a little, resting his hands on the moss. "Would've been useful for recon back in the day."

A beat.

"Unless I would've gotten completely fucking lost and never came back," he admits. That. Possibility.

Considering everything else they've dealt with so far, including everyone being connected and developing psychic powers, believing William is by no means stretching.

Rey does blink at his little addendum, though. "No, that sounds like it'd probably be bad." And by probably, she means most definitely. She can't imagine detaching yourself from your body and never being able to reconnect with it again to end with positive results.

Something else struck her then, when she considers how William mention it would've been useful during recon just a moment ago.

"Take it that means you haven't always had this ability?" It doesn't sound like anything they've developed here, either.

"Oh, no!" He straightens slightly and remembers the confusion of the first few weeks, when he'd first come back. Remus had been very angry with him about things, and he hadn't even been able to remember why. "Between Jumps, I moved forward in my timeline. I mean you probably can't notice right now because we're sitting. And I have terrible posture." A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth, a familiar kind of self-deprecation. "But I'm taller, actually. A few fucking inches. Yes, good job William."

He pats himself on his shoulder, mostly to be funny. Guangtou spares him a distant amused sound in the back of his mind.

"Got some powers along the way. Which was the easy part, actually.

"The hard part was remembering time. Took me awhile looking back over my comm device and thinking about to properly put everything in its place up here." He taps a forefinger on his head and his posture is terrible again. Even sitting straight up, he wouldn't be much taller than she is actually-- two inches on her maybe. There's a lapsing pause, a little more strangeness about him again; he hasn't talked to anybody in awhile. "You ever have that happen to you? Go home for a bit, pop back in."

As Rey listens, her eyebrows lift a little more, until William asks the magic question.

Sadly, she does have some sympathy for what he's talking about. "Yes. A few times, actually. Lost-- or, well, suppose it's more like, got more time instead, since no time was lost here between the jumps. Was home for about four years and then returned a long while ago. Went back more recently, that time for only a few months. But still--"

She touches the scar around her neck. Even healed, it's a nasty gash. The corner of her lip twitches as she glances to William out her peripheral vision.

"Stabbed by an crazy cult leader." Though, they're probably all crazy, now that she thinks about it.

In any case, it hurts her head just thinking about all the years that melted together like hot wax. It helps that her own memories were already a mess, even without the jumps throwing them around.

"Well shit." At least he just came back taller, as opposed to, you know, having nasty keloids from where insane religious people tried to murder him. William's eyes stay on the scar on the side of her neck a little long. There's a part of him, very well-studied as a doctor and with years of field experience at this point, able to separate himself into a clinical examination. The wound looks exactly as she says.

Had Rey not been Rey, she might not have made it. "What-- was that some kind of a human sacrifice or something? I didn't know you were mixed up in religious stuff.

"I thought you were some sort of a supersoldier mainly." With powers involving fire and the incredible ability to haul full-grown (at least 85% grown) men around for miles through an alien ship carrying a full complement of reality-altering and mind-control powers. "Thought it was how you got your other ones." He wanders a forefinger over the air above her arm, but without touching. She has an egregious amount of scarring.

Being nearly impaled through the neck would have killed any normal human. William wouldn't be the first doctor to tell Rey this, if he had made a mention of it. It's one of those times where she is, fortunately, not a normal human.

"Not quite. Wasn't exactly the intended target when it was being thrown, either." She shrugs, like it's no big deal, having a knife slice through you. "Am a soldier-- or was. Used to. Though that isn't where the scars came from. They're intentional."

The fact that most of them now, especially the visible ones, are self-inflicted after her father had attempted to heal them is something she's never been crazy about divulging to anyone before. Mostly because she was crazy at the time.

"That right?"

William straightens a little, like about halfway before deciding he doesn't want to sit bolt upright and give this piece of information so much weight as to make things awkward. She isn't the first person he's met before, who took a fair bit of time to share they'd hurt themselves at some point. Wary that people how people might react, or more specifically, overreact. His eyes sketch her near arm again, reassuring himself that they're old. "I ain't going to pretend that's good news to me.

"Are you still doing anything like that, or is-- the urge, sort of. Different now?" It's been a long time since he received training on crisis management, as such, so he can't remember exactly how it's supposed to go or what he's supposed to say. But he does know it's never helpful to sound like a fucking robot reading off the page, so he adds, "Lots of people think about dying sometimes."

The vivid details of her madness will never not haunt her. The sort of person she had become, the people she had hurt, including even herself... It's hard to forgive, let alone forget.

At William's question, though, she nods. "No worries, things are different now. Better. It's been a long time since things were that bad." She pauses, biting the inside of her mouth. Though she may not have harmed herself physically during her tenure aboard the Tranquility, she did plenty of harm psychologically at one point. But then she shakes her head, thinking about what William just said. "Don't really want to die. Not anymore, at least."

To Rey it's as simple as that. Dying had been so prevalent throughout her lifetimes that it doesn't feel like such a big deal, except that she had made her father promise to stop bringing her back.

This is it. Her final life. No more resets.

Edited (wasn't finished grr) 2015-12-21 01:45 (UTC)

"I'm glad to hear it."

William's only lived once, himself. He looks at her, his eyes shadowed with thoughts that he wouldn't know the words to express even if he wanted to talk about them. His breath is quiet through his nose and the rest of him doesn't move much either, nearly as still as the shag of ivy and scaly ferns sitting undisturbed by the wind around them. "Oi, let's walk to camp," he says suddenly. "Check on people. Yeah?

"You feeling all right to walk now?" There is not even one real part of William that genuinely believes Rey would still be overcome. And if she is, that she won't feel better once she's in motion. Warriors, he's decided, tend to be wired like that. "I'd like to see if the kid is all right."

Takeshi, he means.

ARRIVAL ▒ 003

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shall we wrap this one soon and do january things? :)