etrayamemes | TDM 001

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!tdm

TDM 001

⏵ arrival⏴
Arrival goes as anticipated. Characters awaken in the pristine, new hospital, greeted by Aurora and potentially getting a rundown of what's happening depending on their approach to being dropped somewhere new. The door to their room opens, and new arrivals are left free to explore their new environment.

Or what exists of it anyway. Exiting the hospital will show that there isn't much of anything just yet. Generally, Echo can build new facilities before new arrivals awaken, but it appears that this time… well, it didn't happen. The apartment complex exists, standing just beside the hospital, and there are a few facilities that are half constructed, companion bots carrying around rebar and other necessary bits and pieces, but they're not quite ready. Oops. But maybe, just maybe, one of those half-built facilities is familiar - a childhood home, a favorite supermarket, the run-down garage they worked at as a youth, a grounded spaceship in the middle of one of the massive bridges connecting land over rivers.

The companion bots will offer quiet apologies if approached; they were expecting new arrivals to touch down, but not quite this early. They'll be ready soon! A few more days at most, they promise. In the meantime, do not stray too far from the hospital. While most of Etraya looks habitable, they have not finished verifying that it's safe for its new inhabitants.

The apartment building and hospital are safe, and the land directly around them is fine, but beyond that? Stay away. But hey, the hospital's cafeteria is fully stocked with cuisine from across the multiverse! Please feel free to settle in, choose an apartment, and get to know your new friends.

⏵ water you doing?⏴
Decide not to listen? Well, the companion bots had offered their warnings.

Etraya is a new establishment, one that received newcomers before it was ready. And as such, the land has not quite been prepared for their arrival. Wandering off the land the apartment building and hospital are settled on comes with very, very poor results. Take a step down into the river below, and you'll find yourself uncomfortably hot. Or cold. Or hot and cold, because whatever that 'water' is, it wasn't meant to be played in. The only way to resolve the temperature regulation issue, as Aurora informs, is finding a buddy to cuddle up with. Those who are lucky may have a nearby friend they're familiar with and don't mind leaning a shoulder against. Those that don't? Well. . . have fun having a very uncomfortable conversation with a stranger, asking them if it's alright if you lean into them or hold their hand for a bit. Any physical contact will do, as long as it's directly skin-to-skin.

Except that's not where the contact stops. Characters will find that, for the next several hours, they'll feel everything that their companion feels. Frustration, anger, amusement, homesickness that comes from being so far away from their families and friends - all those feelings? They're not your feelings, they're our feelings now.

No explanation is given for how the empathy bond and the temperature regulation are related, but it may have to do with how since they had decided not to listen, it was time to test how well they could cohabitate with their new friends.

⏵ bonding bingo ⏴

Maybe it feels a little too much like Obi-Wan had when receiving Leia's message, but all new arrivals are their universe's only hope. Except they're not the only ones arriving, and not the only ones who are trying to keep their worlds safe. Instead, they've arrived with several others who carry the same weight on their shoulders. And they aren't meant to go through this alone. The people they've arrived with are both their new companions and their competition. Both comrades to fight beside and enemies to battle against, depending on what the specific mission of the month is. But currently?

They're here to bond. It's important to get to know those who they'll be spending the next unspecified but lengthy amount of time with, isn't it? To that extent, Aurora's hologram waits just inside the hospital's front doors, offering bonding bingo cards to those willing to participate. It's not necessary, but she does specify that this is one way to get ahead: cooperation is important, especially given what they're going to face together. Bingo cards are three long and three across, and offer a multitude of activities you can do to check each box off.

Some examples include:

Learn someone's biggest secret

Get into a fight

Tell someone something that you've never admitted out loud to

Throw a drink on someone

Win a game of pool in the apartment building's recreation room

Cheat on a card game without getting caught

Hug a new friend

Get stabbed

Steal something important to someone

Pull off an elaborate prank on a stranger

⏵ matchmaker ⏴

When the earpiece is put on, a nice green HUD(head-up display) lights up in front of new arrivals. It asks them for their name, which is fairly standard for these.

Except it seems it wants them to put together a profile to help pair them off with other new arrivals. For some, this information may autofill with what Aurora was able to discern about them from watching them in their home worlds. But some lucky individuals may catch their profiles before they're posted live, and have the opportunity to edit out information included in fields, even if they're not able to clear it out entirely.

Welcome to Aurora's idea of matchmaking. Have fun getting paired off with a buddy or four, with your profiles exchanged between one another. Maybe they're the perfect match. Maybe this is a nightmare in the making.

⏵ OOC ⏴
Welcome to our first TDM! We're excited to have you here. For more information on character arrivals, click here. For any questions relating to the TDM please reply below. All other questions can be directed to the FAQ.

⏵FULL NAVIGATION⏴

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Kate's looking for a place to sit and enjoy her own order of fries when someone speaks to her. She looks him over before making up her mind to join him or not.]

You don't happen to have stab someone on yours, do you? I'm really not in the mood, even if it's only by fork.

[ A look of faint resignation crosses Krouse's face. He sets his bingo card back on the table without looking at it again. ]

No.

[ He sits back in his chair, putting his hands flat on the table. ]

I have 'get stabbed'.

[ Which either means they match, and she's talking about not wanting to be stabbed, or that she actually has 'stab someone' printed somewhere on hers. Either way isn't ideal. ]

I'm not sure that's a bonding activity.

[His answer seems to pacify her enough that she takes a seat across from him.]

Well, I mean you could bond over bandages, scars, so much from a simple injury.

[She might have done something like that before.]

[ There's something about a girl like this deciding to sit at a table with him that strikes Krouse a little funny, but the thought doesn't linger. It's not important. She can sit where she wants. It probably will save her neck strain. ]

I guess.

[ He's still not sure it makes sense, but that's fine. Plenty of things don't make sense. ]

Like a blood oath.

[ He supplies, after a moment. ]

[As long as he doesn't plan on stabbing her, Kate has no problem with the guy. Visit new worlds, make new friends, something like that or other.

He's getting the idea, or she thinks he is until he makes a sharp left turn out of nowhere.]

What? No. A blood oath would be more binding than bonding wouldn't it?

I meant like - in the movies.

[ He didn't mean for it to sound that serious. It was an image that swam up unprompted, sourced from some hazy childhood memory. ]

Kid stuff.

Oh yeah, that would work. Just be careful who you do something like that with. Some people take their oaths pretty seriously.

[She knows more than enough people who would do a blood oath and then make sure it only works in their favor as well.]

Get any other squares marked off?

[Other than being stabbed, since it doesn't look like he's bleeding anywhere.]

[ It's worth keeping in mind, even if he's not eager to start mixing his blood with strangers'. ]

I haven't started yet.

[ His boxes all remain unticked, sitting empty in anticipation of Krouse taking the initiative to get on this new assignment. He looks down at them with a faint blankness around his eyes, reviewing what's on offer without really taking it in. ]

What about you?

Same. Figured it would be easier to work out how to do some on a full stomach rather than empty.

[She makes her point but pointing at him with one of her fries before popping it into her mouth.]

And hey! You can mark off the make a new friend square. I'm Kate.

[ Krouse hasn't had an exactly unblemished track record with friends. But thinking about that would be overthinking it, and he only has enough bandwidth to be reminded that he sat down to eat. ]

I'm Krouse.

[ He picks up one of his lukewarm fries and takes a bite, chewing methodically before he swallows. ]

You can mark off that square too.

[ Why not. Favour for a favour. ]

[Kate either ends up friends with people or they try to kill her. Her own father's tried to kill her as well, so she much prefers making friends.]

So, where are you from? How much of this feels normal and how much is late night sci-fi movie?

Earth.

[ They're talking worlds, he assumes. It's an assumption that lets him avoid getting more specific. The second question takes slightly more weighing before he answers. ]

And this is different, but not outside of the range of possibility. I've heard of alternate worlds before, and the technology is a lot, but there are people who can do things like this where I come from.

[ No reason to keep that to himself. It just happens to leave out how any of that relates to him. ]

What about you?

Earth. Manhattan, New York to be exact; although I've been living in California for a while now. I jumped around the multiverse for a long time once. Met myself as a sad, married, housewife. Not my favorite universe.

[Kate has no trouble offering up details even on a normal day. ]

[ Krouse stares at her like he's waiting for a punchline, and then, unexpectedly, finds a trace of a smile briefly touching the corner of his mouth. ]

Was it the married, the housewife, or the sad part that got to you?

[Hey, she made him smile! ]

All of it. Thankfully, we weren't there for too long.

Lucky.

[ He actually means that; another surprise. ]

How did it happen?

[ The multiverse hopping, not the sad marriage. He can guess at that one. ]

We, my friends and I were on the run from an alien that was taking over our parents. Not that my dad wasn't already a super douche, but it was a whole thing with aliens and magic gone wrong. So, we had to jump around until we could fix things.

[No big deal, she shrugs. Just another get together of the Young Avengers.]

An alien was taking over your parents.

[ He repeats after her with raised eyebrows, but not disbelief. ]

That's a new one to me.

[ His burger is getting cold. He should give it another shot, so he does, taking a dutiful lukewarm bite. ]

So you and your friends, I'm guessing you're not just a volleyball team or the student council, are you? [ He sets the burger aside and picks up a fry, but gestures with it instead of eating it. ] I'm probably going to sound like a fanboy, but - are you a cape?

It was something.

[It was a mess of their own making, but they did fix it in the end, and Mother was vanquished.]

Oh please, you sound the least fanboish. You'd have to meet Billy to understand the level I'm used to. No cape, but I am an Avenger. [West Coast Avenger, but whatever.] Which probably doesn't mean much if you aren't from the same world.

If you have heard of the Avengers, I'm Hawkeye. The better one.

[ Krouse lets out a quiet breath several steps below a laugh as he drops his eyes at the quasi-compliment. Least of the fanboys is something. ]

I haven't heard of you or your team. [ He looks back up, the line of his mouth crooked, wryly apologetic; so it goes with alternate universes. ] But I'm glad I'm dealing with the better Hawkeye.

And sorry. 'Capes' is just what we call people with powers, back where I come from. Most of them don't wear actual capes.

[ He finally eats his fry instead of underlining his words with it. After he swallows, he folds his arms on the table behind his lunch tray. ]

Were your parents okay? [ He asks, lowering his voice. ] After.

[Not the first time someone hadn't heard of her. At least he's not asking for Clint, which wouldn't be bad if he were here right now. ]

Superheroes. Not all of us have powers, some are just awesome humans.

[His next question has her munching on her fries for a bit before answering. There's a sigh before she spills.]

My dad wasn't actually part of the trouble, but he was already causing issues before then. And after. My mom died when I was a kid.

[ The apologetic look Krouse gives her isn't wry anymore. ]

I'm sorry. That was a shitty question.

[ His shoulders curl forward further as he stares down at his plate, then draw back as he gets himself together with a shake of his head. ]

Family's complicated.

[ He says, like that sums it up. He thinks it does and it doesn't: at least it lets her know he gets it. ]

Maybe it's better if we stick to the fanboy stuff.

Dad's tried to have me killed a couple of times, and I've ruined his plans. It's all good. Not like you could know.

[About that or that her mom is actually a vampire that worships the sun. Better just to think of mom as dead. She does.

Kate brightens up beaming at him.]

Tell me about your fanboy crush.

[ Whatever carefully couched response Krouse was going to try to have to 'my dad occasionally tries to kill me, but it's no big deal' dissolves instantly at Kate's request. Krouse stares at her, temporarily stricken, with a cornered, goggle-eyed expression common to teenage boys being asked unprompted about their crushes. There's only a faint edge of a deeper, more unsettled reaction, something teetering between guilt and shame. ]

Uh.

[ He coughs into his fist, looking away. He doesn't have an answer. A normal guy would have an answer - but there's only one person, first and only real crush past middle school flutters, and he can't say her name. ]

Dragon.

[ Not his crush, but someone else's. ]

She's a tinker. Best in the world. She makes these mech suits, and a hundred other things. Most of the frontline PRT tech is her design, or something she improved on. It's not just her power - she's actually a genius. That doesn't happen with tinkers as often as people think it does.

[Kate's an expert on unsettling people with unprompted questions. ]

Oh, so like a female Tony Stark. Hopefully she's a lot nicer.

[After everything with the Superhero Registration Act, she's still not his biggest fan. When someone has to be the smartest person in the room, they forget there are still things they don't know. Sometimes that thing is how to listen to other people.]

To play fair, mine was Hawkeye. Not myself, Clint Barton, the original Hawkeye. I thought it was so cool that he was just this guy with a bow and arrow when everyone else around him was super powered in some way, or used an armored suit, or was an actual god. And there he was just risking his life to save everyone else.

[She was one of those people he saved, which is how she started on her life of superheroing.

She stops to smile, grabs another fry to pop in her mouth.]

And then I met him and found out he's a total mess. One of my best friends, but still a hot mess.

TDM 001

bonding

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