etrayamemes | TDM 001

Entry tags:

!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

Yeah. A promise.

[For someone supposedly as practical and realistic as Rita, she takes promises pretty seriously--and believes in Clarke, believes this isn't something made lightly. Rita takes the offered hand--squeezes it tightly, but resists going in for another hug (one is becoming weirdly normal, but a second? embarrassing).]

I'm glad you're--I mean--you know...

[She'd been stuck unable to see or hear Clarke in the prison, even though they were only a few cells apart, and it'd hurt, wondering if that was how they were going to be stuck. Is it selfish if she's happy to see the other girl now? Even under these circumstances?

But instead of properly voicing all that, Rita clears her throat and tries to tamp down the gross emotions a little--and then takes proper stock of Clarke now that the initial surprise has faded.]

Hey--your hand's still injured.

Edited (wait forgot I wanted to write something else instead) 2024-03-05 21:17 (UTC)

( it does feel a little selfish to be happy in this moment, doesn't it? also a little deranged. they've essentially been kidnapped to another realm, and while there's no apparent barrier preventing them from leaving, the one around the ship had been invisible too. aurora has a face at least, but there's still the daunting task of apparently saving a world or two while they're here, and not enough of the rules have been spelled out. the second foot hasn't dropped, the curtain hasn't been pulled aside — but hey, those sure do look like real trees in the distance. and (again, selfishly) so far clarke's only encountered familiar friends, and none of those who seemed dead set on killing her for the part she'd played in tightening the string around the captain's neck.

speaking of which, oh yeah, her hand.

still tied tight with a torn strip of her shirt, black blood soaked through and dried to the point of flaking. it does hurt, but pain always takes a back seat in times of high adrenaline — she's never been good at resting and recuperating. but with rita's added attention, clarke has to look down and acknowledge it doesn't look great.

so naturally, she says: )

It's fine. I stole some gauze and antiseptic from the hospital, I'll rewrap it eventually.

[When everything else feels so strange and surreal, there's nothing grounding like seeing a familiar and friendly face. Rage and rebelliousness will surely take hold later, but for now? She's going to be damn relieved to have her friend at her side, after all.

Speaking of which--most of Clarke's injuries do actually look much better than the last time Rita saw her, before she and Natsuno tried (and failed) one last-ditch effort to stop Malin's plans. So it's with some confusion that she's noticing the still-wounded hand. Is that a strip of Clarke's pajamas used as a makeshift bandage? Oh, no. Nope.]

Eventually? I don't think so. We're doing it right now.

[She holds a hand out expectantly. Gauze and antiseptic, please. Rita has zero medical training or knowledge but how hard can it be?]

Rita —

( typical martyr bullshit right here, but her injuries really aren't that important at this moment. clarke hasn't stopped to look in a mirror let alone marvel at the fact her face is almost entirely fine but the wound on her wrist remains, but if she had. the conclusion would be somewhere in the middle of aurora ran out of time before the drug wore off and i've always been fated to wear a scar gifted to me by darcy lejeune.

but as it stands, without being waylaid by the heartening discovery of rita mordio parked on the lawn, clarke would have already been halfway out of the little city scape and into the trees. she still wants to get out of here first and foremost.

also historically rita fought her over nose plugs and winced at bone magic, the other girl is not her first choice when it comes to medic.

clarke makes no move to open her pillowcase, but does gesture off towards the distance stubbornly. )

Can we at least get outside of city limits first?

[And just as stubbornly, Rita's eyes narrow into an insistent stare.]

No, here's fine. Or are you just trying to stall?

[She waves the hand again, but isn't likely to wait a third time--if Clarke doesn't hand anything over, Rita will make a grab for that bag.]

I'm trying to get us out of here before the powers that be realize it was probably a mistake to allow us free reign to just walk around —

( yeah, she's gonna have to just snatch it. )

[This time she sweeps said hand in a wide, look around us gesture.]

Clarke, they haven't even finished construction. Something tells me they're not that on the ball. So-

[Bag-snatching time!]

-Give it here!

( picking on the wounded who can't really use their dominant hand to fight back here, are we rita? clarke's even stubbornly dug her proverbial heels into the proverbial ground of this argument, and still it's relatively easy for the other girl to snag that bag. )

Hey! ( comes the expected protest, then the subsequent (admittedly a little half-hearted but fully frustrated) attempt to grab the sack back with an accompanying angry growl from the back of clarke's throat. ) Come on, this is not the time.

( re: the pillowcase — it's honestly pretty well stocked if not poorly organized, and if rita were to unfurl the twisted end clarke had used as a handle, she'll find a solid top layer of prepackaged snacks and water bottles. beneath those are the medical instruments, seeing as clarke had raided the upper levels of the hospital first. gotta dig a little for any gauze, try to avoid accidentally uncapping the needles and getting stabbed, and not shatter any of the morphine vials in the process. )

[It's not often she gets the chance to physically overpower Clarke! Of course she's going to take advantage. When the other girl tries to snatch it back, Rita simply turns around to shield it from Clarke's grasping hands.]

It's the only time. Just because the ship defied all common sense doesn't mean you're not at risk of infection here.

[She sets the bag down and leans over it, absolutely upsetting whatever slim organization was even there in the first place as she rummages-]

You seriously have needles in here? Geez- [Alright, well, she'll be a bit careful. Let's see, a water bottle, some...antiseptic? Oh, there's a bottle of concentrated alcohol. And--gauze. That's probably all, right? Turning back to Clarke, she points at the ground.] Sit.

( bone-deep friendship aside, there's nothing like getting physically one-upped by someone with the build of a toddler to make clarke want to dig her heels in and be Extra Stubborn. yeah yeah enjoy your victory now rita, it only came about because she was physically mangled what feels like three days ago. )

We're the purported "saviors of our universes" here, you really think they're going to let us die from infection?

( still, solid argument on the other girl's part. this world isn't the sterile clean nothing rots here environment of the ship, and it's truly a statement of how clarke's worldview was altered by their time on the serena eterna that she didn't consider gangrene and sepsis an hour ago. there's a minor new bruise blooming in the wake of rita's point, this time entirely on her ego.

clarke lets her rifle and disrupt the contents of the pack, but when bid to sit she doesn't move. just looks a little warily at the bottle of pure alcohol and package of gauze rita's come away with in her hands. )

Can't you just burn it? Jade did that for me once. It was painful but efficient.

Have you considered they might just see that as a fail-state?

[C'mon Clarke, do you really want to lose this fake game by chancing an infected wound? From Darcy, no less? Rita thinks she's making a very reasonable argument here!!

An initial raised eyebrow at Clarke not following her instructions quickly morphs to--blank surprise.]

Don't be stupid; that would just--wait, what? He did what? When the hell was that? And why?

( ... oh. judging by rita's reaction, she hadn't known about the couch cauterization all those months back. which is... honestly kinda weird to think about? so many hard moments in their ship-based life shared, it comes as a shock there are still any secrets even despite the two of them not being very good friends at that time.

the mask of surprise across clarke's face is pinched in the corners, head tilted slightly with the unspoken you didn't know? as spells out the story in staccato questions in turn. )

Cauterized my abdomen? Before the diner expedition? And because I was bleeding out all over 109 after Pratt stabbed me?

[Colour Rita feeling equally blindsided--if not even moreso--by apparently being out of the loop on Clarke getting stabbed and having it cauterized by Jade, right across the hall from her own room, no less. First aid attempts momentarily forgotten as surprise and disbelief make her brows furrow.]

Wha--what the hell did you do to make that guy stab you?

[Because obviously Pratt has never been anything but a harmless weirdo, right???]

( okay, first off, deeply offended here because: )

I didn't do a thing! I'd just met him outside in the rain, asked if he was okay and all he could talk about was "culling the weak" and killing everyone on board!

( ah staci pratt, their beloved local mashed potato eating weirdo. something of an unofficial apocalypse cousin to clarke, who'd gone from threatening to kill him if he'd ever misstepped again to embracing him in the middle of sundries upon her return and professing her love for him over an ice cream sandwich. who once got triggered so bad by a bloody vest that he'd definitely proven himself to be anything but harmless, and had been dealt with appropriately. )

All I did was make sure he couldn't actually follow through on it.

[Look--look, she's come to trust Clarke enough that she generally believes what the other girl says, but-]

That doesn't sound like him at all. You sure you're remembering that right? I mean--the timing doesn't line up with the possessions, unless--argh, that doesn't make any sense!

It was way before the possessions, he's just a little — ( conflicting impressions of pratt make the next adjective a little hard to settle upon. fucked up, traumatized, ruined, the product of his environment. oh but he'd made so much progress, he'd even burned the vest. ) — broken.

( it rubs a little the wrong way though, that sure you're remembering right? but it's fine, she trusts rita has the best intentions behind it. and regardless, clarke has proof. she reaches for the ripped, fraying edge of her prison shirt and lifts it up just enough to show the ugly scar just above the curve of her left hip. it's pitted and gnarled in the middle, right where the knife went in. shiny and purpleish where the white hot scalpel had kissed the open blood vessels with a horrendous sizzle. and, for no other reason aside from being horribly susceptible to traumatic flashbacks, for some reason clarke can taste orange juice on the back of her tongue for a split second. )

But trust me, I remember that night very clearly. ( at least to the point she'd passed out, but — ) That was the only time on the ship I actually killed anyone.

[Clarke says broken and lifts her shirt, and that sure is a gnarly scar--Rita doesn't think she's that squeamish, but visceral knowledge of just how painful searing flesh is suddenly makes her almost want to gag. But suddenly distracting, well-]

Wait--you killed him?! How the hell am I only just hearing all this now?!

[Maybe Rita should have been quicker to slot together the hints of things not quite right with Pratt's history, but truthfully she'd never put much thought into it--except for the Village, when he revealed an apparently-previous experience with brainwashing...]

So--possession or not, he wasn't himself. That's what happened?

( dangit rita, how is she supposed to trust you not to faint mid-stitch on her wrist when you can't even look at a fully healed stab wound without suddenly looking a little green around the gils???

sighing, with no answer about how rita missed the Clarke Griffin Murder Memo other than a big shrug, and subsequently releasing her shirt to shroud the ugly scar — )

More or less what happened. I'd call it a psychotic break, he's had one or two. ( the other most notably coming mid-possession event, which she hadn't even seen until the next morning and had then beelined to windjammer in all her gory glory to just make sure he hadn't regressed to cannibalism. but instead of delving into that instance, a lightbulb sparks and clarke has to ask — )

Have you seen anyone else? From the ship?

[Wow who said anything about stitching!! It's fine if she just dumps some antiseptic on it, right?? But also, yeah, she might not handle it well if Clarke ever needs another cauterization for some reason...]

Hmph...geez, that guy...

[Any Pratt-related grumbling she might have had is quickly set aside by Clarke's pretty pertinent question. (Should it be unsettling, how quickly she's able to brush aside her shock over this incident? She doesn't stop to think about how the ship has altered what death means.)]

No... Just you. There's other people around, but not from the ship. Unless it's like the Village, but...it doesn't really feel that way...

[Troubled, she looks over at the robots hoisting metal beams and filling concrete for some building. Any pocket dimension related to the ship wouldn't have bothered with actual construction. Which just means that...they're cut off from anyone else. Again.]

( r.... rita, you weren't planning on stitching up these teeth holes in the first place? suddenly all the more reason to keep the other girl distracted by chatting about traumatic home-ship things. )

None of you ever really explained what the Village actually was, but...

( clarke trails off here for a second, sparing a moment to glance around the grassy spot just outside of the hospital that they're currently occupying. she looks at the original building itself, recalling how stocked the shelves were and how diverse the food in the cafeteria was. then out across the areas of construction, buzzing with those busy little worker bees. and even without the knowledge of that last excursion, she can agree:

this feels different.

maybe it's really not a trick, which a slip of paper with friday's handwriting had warned them about years ago. maybe this was real and new and fresh and still growing; an unfamiliar beast of a world they now must tame.

...that's a daunting thought, but not all together a bad one. the only real drawback in clarke's opinion is that they're currently missing the likes of natsuno and jade. )

We're both from the ship. Maybe we missed the others, they could be out exploring or just now waking up.

[C'mon Clarke it's fine, just douse it in alcohol and stuff a bandage over it and it'll all knit back together just fine!! Right? See, Rita's genius enough to figure anything out.

Anyway, Clarke trails off, and Rita remains quiet despite what would be a convenient opening for an explanation--uncharacteristically quiet, even--because she's not about to volunteer anything but the most basic of details about the Village. And also because it's probably not important to their current situation. Yeah, that's definitely the big reason, and nothing to do with the trauma.]

...It's a possibility. [Her hesitation in responding comes from multiple places; it's not just a bit of jaded pessimism (though that's definitely there), but the conflicting feeling of whether or not she wants them to be here.

She wants to see them, of course. That goes without saying. But is wishing them here a good thing? It's a thought process that is very much keeping Rita's attention away from anyway attempted medical treatment right now!]

I just...don't know what's best right now.

[The cells? No way. But who knows what's in store for them here?]

( clarke herself has been through that emotional rollercoaster a few times before. back in the early days of the ship, she'd often found herself wishing the likes of bellamy and octavia blake, abby griffin, raven reyes would spontaneously appear because then at least she wouldn't be alone in processing the shock of going from apocalypse to cruise ship. and because she missed them. missed their faces, their voices, the familiarity; and because the veil of death was permeable on board the serena eterna, she'd also allowed herself to wistfully daydream about reuniting with her father or lexa. hell, she'd have even given a limb to see murphy again at some points.

but she'd always reprimanded herself internally afterwards. that was selfish, that was a want, not a need. and it didn't mean her friends would be any better off there than they had been on their irradiated homeworld.

it's a little different when she considers the passengers of the ship, though. despite coming to call it home after the last two years, clarke had never managed to make and sustain as many relationships as the others. her group was close and closed off, and she was content with that. would miss the likes of sharky and pratt, would mourn for the other members of team mutiny — and fio, just by virtue of her being a child. but with rita here, the only people she could think would be worse off without them are jade and — )

Do you think it's "best" for Natsuno to still be behind bars? Or should we at least look for him.

( rhetorical question. also the latter half not even phrased as a question. also, a little bit mean. and vaguely mirroring the time they'd hunted down his explosion closet in early october! but — damn if clarke griffin doesn't know her audience here, right? avoiding bad medical treatment is just a plus. she's found one best friend, now time to turn their attention towards the other. )

[It always was the biggest dilemma between heart and--not brain, exactly, but a different part of the heart. Wanting to see her friends so badly that sometimes it hurt, but not wanting them to ever have to be subjected to anything like the battle royale ever again...

Yes, it's a feeling they both know well.

And like Clarke, Natsuno and Jade are the two most at the forefront of her mind--of course they are, how could they not be, after everything they've all been through? And Clarke's not-exactly-a-question garners an instant indignant flush on Rita's face, hands planting themselves stubbornly on hips as she immediately snaps back-]

I--of course not! Who the hell do you take me for?! I'm not giving up without looking around!

[It would be an uncomfortable mirror of that explosion incident--if Rita were even thinking about, which she isn't. Not yet, anyway, though if Natsuno were to not show up soon, she'd make the connection whether she wanted to or not. But they're going to look for him. Anything else can come after they've searched high and low.]

( at the end of the day, clarke griffin loves her friends more than she'll ever be capable of loving herself. but that does not stop her from stooping so low as to insult rita mordio's commitment to natsuno yuuki just to get out of the other girl playing doctor right now. )

Then what are we waiting for? Let's go.

Edited 2024-03-29 02:22 (UTC)

Oh, alright! I'm coming, so--just calm down!

[Distraction from Clarke's injury: successful. Rita will realize later it was intentional--and she'll be pretty annoyed about it--but the most important thing? That they do find Natsuno.]

good to wrap this?

skaikru - 2024-03-31 03:26 (UTC) - Expand

perfect ending spot!

myagic - 2024-04-03 00:06 (UTC) - Expand

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

TDM 001

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

good to wrap this?

perfect ending spot!