etrayamemes | 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

( for some reason, despite natsuno yuuki always living up to full fledged Best Friend status by seeking to alleviate her guilt and back her decisions, clarke still tries to impress upon him how awful of a friend she is. how bad of a human being she is, how those hard calls have molded her into an even harder person after years and years of making them. remember that sweet, innocent girl who played chess with bottle caps and bolts, and liked watching ancient soccer matches with her dad? yeah, she grew up to be the product of a bloody, violent environment and can't even look at new faces without wondering if someday she's going to have to kill them too.

he just never seems to take it to heart. and that's always equally exactly what she needs from him, and incredibly frustrating. i didn't even do better, i just did what i always do, she almost says

but he's prompting them towards the tree line before she can even formulate a full counter argument to why she's horrible and should honestly have been one of the last people echo chose for this task; outright saving or just keeping alive for a little while longer. and with a belated nod, she spares the dropship one last look as an arc of light flitters from inside the door — they're welding now — and has to wonder if, once it's complete, things like the bullet dents in the hull and floor will be included.

then clarke turns on her heel and waits for natsuno to fall into step beside her. they walk. )

...I like your get-out bag. Why didn't I think of that?

( take away the prison clothing and natsuno almost looks like a respectable citizen contributing to the betterment of the populace with that emt bag. meanwhile clarke's tinkling pillowcase fits with the prison suit to make a very profound statement: reckless, lawless, vagabond. and none of it's even untrue, but best believe if they don't manage to escape entirely she'll be posted up outside the shops until the helper bots finish their construction. )

[Natsuno falls into step the moment she turns, acting like the drop ship isn't even there - like they were walking purposefully from the start instead of lingering. He assumes there is no way out, that sooner or later they will run into a barrier, or perhaps a gaping void. Still, they should get the lay of the land. And maybe, just maybe, they will find something they aren't supposed to see...

He shrugs.]

Your pillowcase probably has more useful stuff. [He opens the bag to show her it's been stuffed with sharp surgical tools and adrenaline syringes.] Once I figured my powers are back, I just wanted to stock up on weapons.

( yeah, the weapons track. it's like since the day she told him the most effective ways to harm another human being with handheld blades, natsuno's always had a knife on hand or quite a few of them splayed around his cabin. this ought to be the moment one looks upon their friend and yet again wonders just in how many ways she'd aggravated his issues instead of alleviating them, but instead clarke's just peering into the bags contents and making mental notes.

at least that's what she's doing before violently double-taking at the fact — ) Your powers are back?

( that's good news! that's great news! and she will belatedly kick herself for not asking after his abilities and welfare right off the bat. the curse of being Simply Human and escaping malin's dungeon is apparently forgetting, at least momentarily, that others had more to gain back than just their freedom via escape attempts. )

That's — good. That's a relief. ( deep exhale moment here, followed with a light smile before she's pulling the pillowcase off her shoulder, opening it up, and fishing out a few snacks while still walking. )

But yeah, you missed a few essentials. Just because you don't need them doesn't mean... ( and she trails off, dropping a few protein bars and packs of beef jerky on top of the weapon cache. )

Mm. The shiki stuff and the sun magic, too.

[You know the first thing he did after getting his hands on a scalpel was to cut one of said hands to make sure he still regenerates.

The protein bars and beef jerky are nostalgic, in a way. A reminder of aimless lifeboat trips, pretending they can get away from the Eterna at least for a little while. The thought weighs heavy on his heart - Clarke is here, but others aren't, and who knows what'll happen to them or to their worlds...]

Thanks. [Pause.] I already ate, actually. Found blood bags in the hospital.

( it's a cool feature and all, but "sun magic" is never not going to make her internally blanche and mentally launch herself back to that moment outside the bridge door; the needle, his pain, and the trudge back to the cabins as natsuno intermittently burned and vomited liquid sun. but it's an old wound, greatly overshadowed by her more recent fuck up regarding the string. and if that one's dead and buried in light of this new, still-forming cityscape around them and all it's new mysteries, clarke doesn't insult natsuno's capacity for forgiveness by lingering. or even acknowledging.

by themselves, the ready availability of her recognizable staple foods from the serena eterna hadn't seemed all that odd. they certainly made a lot more sense than some of the other items clarke had skimmed over in the buffet line, though in concert with the arrival of the dropship and the readily accessible blood bags natsuno has apparently already found... )

Wow, they really have something for everyone here...

( gal friday and the captain had known their pasts and even bits of their future. this shouldn't be odd, it's actually really not that odd. but certainly lends to the fact echo, and by proxy probably aurora too, know... too much. they're free from the prison cells. the sun is shining. the trees are green and unique and individual. if she strains, clarke thinks she can hear birdsong. but will they ever truly be able to escape the shadow that the ship cast over them?

a beat passes. then — )

Keep the snacks anyways, on the off chance we do manage to get any distance between ourselves and this place.

( it's just another lifeboat trip in the end, right? deep down they both probably acknowledge the likelihood but they have to hope. )

TDM 001

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