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

ARRIVAL;

[Naturally the last thing Helena is getting is a good explanation. If anyone is apt to show teeth to Aurora is going to be her. She's already tense in regular society unless she's putting on a mask and waking up in an entirely new place is just going to set off the wolf inside of her to a heavy degree.

So that's what goes down -- she immediately bares her teeth and tells said kindly not-human to fuck off in so many non-words. She damn near bolts out the open door too but her hurried strides through the half-built hospital have her stopping when she catches side of the companion bots.

She doesn't even need a smell to know they aren't human. When one apologizes for not being ready she can't stop herself from eyeballing the thing like it's going to attack her.]

... Where the hell did I end up.

[Okay maybe she ought to have let the woman talk. How was she to know about ... all this??]

Water You Doing?;

[She's not about to hang around this half-built bot-infested place but stepping out into what ought to be comforting wilderness just takes her to ... water. And maybe the water could lead into some kind of forest but she comes to the quick realization:]

It doesn't smell right.

[It's off. Not stagnant but just -- not good. She considers testing it further and ends up sort of eyeballing the water like she did the bots earlier, sort of like she's going to fight it.]

BONDING BINGO;

[She's here to do what now? Bond?

Helena's snort of amusement is not graceful in the least.]

I guess we could start a fight. That's on here after all.

[Oh, or. She shoots someone nearby a slight smirk.]

You mind getting a drink thrown at you?

[On. But details, right?]

MATCHMAKER;

Helena Blackburn (25)
(Aurora Generated)

She might have a snarky attitude but there's a good heart under it. If you can make it past th

[Here she is trying to actively delete the damn thing.]

WILDCARD;

[Info here. Helena is a wolf shifter with a not so pleasant childhood that has left her snappy and snarky to say the least.

Feel free to drop any prompts you like here! PMs or my plurk (goodluckstarfighter) are open for your plotting needs.]

Edited 2024-02-25 03:48 (UTC)

( that sure is a question. posed nicely enough, and at this point it's not like clarke hasn't already gotten her black and white striped prison get-up drenched in river water and thrown a water bottle at a stranger in the name of the same game. but still she sighs.

she's only just recently started to feel like she was drying out, and it will take even longer to come around to the idea aurora's well meant advice and suggestion cards actually hold any merit. but at least this time, with this new stranger, it seems like she has a choice.

with a heavy sigh, she shrugs a heavy pillowcase full of pilfered hospital items and food onto the ground and takes a careful step away from it. )

Sure, go ahead.

[... Oh. Uh. Well.

Helena hadn't meant it seriously. And with such a nice acceptance it sort of makes her feel like a real bitch to do it in the end. Still she stands for a moment, water bottle in hand and judging it like she's trying to decide on something.

Then she lightly tosses some water out of it with a light little flick of her wrist. It's approximately enough to maybe hit Clarke with a drop or three.]

That should work.

( she braces for watery impact. closes her eye, turns her head away, even holds her breath to prevent snorting any water up her nose, because throwing a drink at someone usually involves the face, right? but the deluge doesn't come.

there's a drop of water or two splattering against her cheek, but for some reason her immediate thought is that it's begun to rain. it takes helena speaking to coax clarke to crack her eyes open. and she absently reaches up to drag her sleeve across her face.

...huh. )

I guess the benefit of the card is we get to decide what counts or doesn't. That's something at least.

[Helena is always such a dryly bitter sort of person (in her own mind at least) but Claire's reaction manages to get a snort of amusement out of her. She quirks a grin as she does, waving the card in the air a little.]

Yep. I'm not about to let a card of all things tell me what to do.

( hmmm, rebellious then, huh? something something i like it, picasso — though outwardly clarke just twitches her eyebrows up in bemusement. )

Good. Because — I don't know about yours, but mine had stab someone on it. Which feels a little counter intuitive of the whole bonding aspect.

... Different strokes for different folks?

[Her face says she doesn't get it but frankly there isn't a lot she does get around this place at the moment.]

Mine has the whole 'get into a fight' thing ... and 'learn someone's biggest secret'.

[Her tone of voice says both are kind of ridiculous inclusions in her opinion.]

( clarke makes a sound of unamused agreement; she's met plenty of people who'd rather poke someone with something sharp and get to know them later — sometimes even leans that way herself — yet it never gets any easier to deal with them.

then she pauses as helena lists off a few more to do's on her bingo checklist. despite enough pent up aggression to readily engage in a fight, clarke searches herself and finds she's... mostly just tired. at some point in the near future, she desires a bed or at least a safe floorspace to curl up on and close her eyes. and as for secrets... )

Funny, isn't it? Most of these things would probably come along naturally anyways, if we were left to our own devices. ( secrets, fights... even stabbings! )

Maybe whoever runs this place knows we shouldn't be left to our own devices.

[Or more likely some of them are mildly antisocial assholes. Like herself for instance.]

( antisocial assholes sounds a lot more pleasant than the last place clarke had wound up, where her first day had been colored by the npc knowledge share that everyone always comes from scary places. and it wasn't like they'd been given free reign of the place back on the ship, some doors had been locked and there'd been more of a barrier than just a particularly cursed stream. but they had been left with their autonomy and free will, and thus the serena eterna had all but burned...

yeah, probably shouldn't be left to their own devices. which is a sentiment that goes hand in hand with probably time to test the limits of their supposed freedom. )

No, you're probably right.

( ... )

I'm Clarke, by the way.

Helena.

[She thinks on giving her nickname but she's not quite to that point yet. Maybe. Better to keep it to more "formal" names for now.]

So you got anymore idea what's going on than me?

Nice to meet you.

( though nice feels like a little bit of a stretch — at least given the circumstance, not necessarily the immediate company.

We've been yanked from whatever reality we lived in before and put down here, tasked with saving our home worlds because the whole universe is falling apart, and to do that we're supposed to earn some mysterious being named Echo's approval by —

( she flaps her bingo card in lieu of actually saying something to the effect of "doing stupid shit like this, i guess?" from her tone it's very, very clear that clarke thinks very little of this arrangement; spanning every emotion from affronted to preemptively exhausted to suspicious to even a little bit bored. )

No, it does not.

[ The man is standing a little up the hill from her, but it wasn't only the smell of the water that's stopped him in his tracks, but the smell of her. The scent isn't familiar at all in terms of his pack, yet he knows she is like him in some way.

For the moment he stays where he is, face betraying nothing. ]

I suppose perhaps the warnings hold merit.

[By now Helena's squatted down on the river bank itself and she can legitimately feel the harsh swivel of that wolf inside of her's ears. They point his way and she looks the same direction.

He's got the tact to betray nothing. She's too close to that wolf side of herself and ends up watching him with some shade of distrust before she wrangles her instincts back in line. Then she sharply looks away.]

No kidding.

[She sounds gruffling unhappy about that too.]

It makes me wonder where they do get their water from.

[ His gaze shifts off to the distance as if trying to see or hear another water source, but he returns his attention to her soon enough. ]

Though I wonder a great deal about this place and our being here in general.

... I would imagine they get it where most modern towns do? I mean some smaller towns still use wells and that sort of thing but that'd be less a thing in a place this size.

[Then again this place is weird so ... she outright snorts as she stands.]

Kidnapping is a pretty easy explanation. Hell if I know how they managed that though, at least with me.

[She's not boasting here, she just doesn't ever sleep deeply. You can't when your bed is usually a passenger's seat or the back of an old truck.]

[ He quirks an eyebrow in consideration. ]

What makes a town "modern?"

[ It seems an odd metric to him. Do people collective agree after a hundred years to rip up all the roads and such and replace them all? Is it when each and every building has been replaced at least one since the town's founding? ]

Indeed. I can't understand how none of us awoke at the first sign of change. Or an intruder.

[She quirks a brow right back at him.]

Indoor plumbing is a nice start.

[Then she waves a hand in the air dismissively.]

What I mean is most big cities have stuff like dams and water filtration systems and all that bullshit. It's not directly from the river to the city like that.

[Something about explaining this makes her tired. She cards a hand back through her hair and turns to look out where the river ought to naturally lead.]

I'd say they drugged us. Felt like it anyhow.

[Now she glances back to him. She never knows exactly how to take other shifters; whether he's exactly that or not, he's close enough to be slotted in that category in her mind. She can fake being mild and polite in other situations but right now she doesn't feel much like playing at that.]

What about you? You wake up in the hospital too?

Indoor plumbing sounds like a luxury.

[ It's said with a small amount of wonder at the concept. But it appears she has no desire to linger on it and he moves along with her topic shift. It's his way to be conciliatory. It's what he's used to. ]

I did, yes. Perhaps it was some kind of drug - as you say - for I woke up slowly and I was unnaturally groggy.

[Helena gives him a good bit of side-eyeing for the plumbing comment. She's not gotten the clue that not everyone here is from modern times or even the kind of world she knows. She'd spent just enough time snarling at Aurora and booking it out of the hospital to try to find a way out of the tangled mess of half-built things, particularly once she saw the likeness of her uncle's front porch.

Absolutely not.

His conciliatory ways do the trick though. She doesn't delve back into modern towns and their modern ways, instead huffing about the drug angle.]

Yeah, must have been that then. Once I find the bastard that did it though ...

[She gives a very canine sort of displeased huff. Then she begins trudging away from the river like she's going to follow the line of it's bank towards ... whatever is out there.]

[ He watches her move with the practiced air of someone who observes everything around him without looking as though he is. A silent sentinel. But he doubts anything he says will soothe her on this matter. He's irritated as well - he has a duty to perform, after all - but being away from his pack with their whispers and pitying looks for a little while isn't so bad a change. ]

It's unclear if such a person is in this area. The woman that appeared seemed to be a projection of some kind.

[That's effective at making her stop in place and halfway turn in his direction.]

A projection?

[She pauses to consider that. Helena only now seems to realize she hadn't smelled the woman before she saw her. That realization makes her grumble irritably at herself.]

Guess I was too pissed off to notice.

[Par usual. She sighs then, bringing a hand up to the back of her head. Should she even continue exploring out here then? She thought there had to be a way away from whatever this place was. She quirks a brow at him.]

What did she do anyway? She ran off on me.

[She leaves out the part where she bared her teeth at her and all that.]

Oh, just explained why I was brought here and answered what questions she could.

[ It's said mildly, which probably explains why she was willing to converse with him in the first place. ]

[Helena just gives him this bit of a side eye as he very calmly answers.]

... You've got way more patience than I do.

[Like that's very obvious and all but she still says it. She stops in her tracks and turns his way now, tucking her hands into her pockets. Just to show she's no threat in the moment.]

So why were you brought here then?

I'm known for my patience.

[ It's said with a lightness of tone he's not sure he feels. All the information he was given has been a lot to chew on, but he can at least fake not being overwhelmed by it. ]

She said I'm a representative of my universe and I'm here to prove it's worth saving. Apparently it's in some form of danger from a... person or god or something named Echo. We're all to be put through tasks to prove to Echo that our homes should avoid destruction.

[ Now his nose scrunches up a little: the only sign of how distasteful this is. ]

Aurora claimed that these universes - multiverses - were going to all fall apart on their own somehow and that Echo's duty is to trim them down so not all end up destroyed. So that's why they say we're here. What do you think of that?

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wolfishwander - 2024-03-07 22:35 (UTC) - Expand

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

TDM 001

Helena Blackburn | Original

bingo (drink edition)

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{ water you doing? }

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