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

i. i can't save the world if i'm not happy anymore ( arrival )

( oh. she's been in this situation before.

...twice, actually, which is already two times too many, and it's honestly wild it's happening a third time now. the odds had always skewed more in favor of dying outright, so how does she keep bouncing back from burning alive, choking on her own tongue, clawing through the dirt, climbing over dead bodies and running for her life — all just to wake up in a sterile new bed? at this point it's beginning to feel like fate's idea of a joke.

clarke barely manages to sit up before aurora appears and scares the absolute hell out of her. she half-climbs, half-falls out of the bed and crowds herself against the far wall as the projection (not a.l.i.e, not gal friday, but something in between) speaks to her. it's probably only shock encircling her throat like a vice and preventing her from even squeaking that means she gets the full run down of this new place — étreux? atreyu? no, etraya — and when her heartrate lowers enough for clarke to consider asking aurora questions, she chooses to run for the open door instead.

...after snatching the pillowcase from her bed, that is.

being dressed in an almost cartoonish black and white striped prison uniform isn't really a contributing factor to the way she ducks and weaves from room to room, half expecting guards to descend. but it sure makes for a funny (questionable?) visual. when it becomes apparent no one is going to hunt her down and drag her back for bone marrow extraction or something, clarke can be spotted lurking a little less obviously throughout the hospital —

( a. ) in the cafeteria, a steaming chicken cutlet hanging from her mouth as she seeks to shove any relatively shelf stable food into her makeshift pillowcase-pack. apples? water bottles? gatorade? protein bars? they all go in. and if you notice her grimacing at a bag of prepackaged peanuts or beef jerky, it's fine and no you don't.

( b. ) exploring the higher levels of the hospital? so's clarke! well, less exploring and more pilfering. she's just got here and already seems to be packing for a very intensive journey, face set in grim lines like she even has a clue where she might be going. gauze? scalpels? antiseptic? a box of disposable gloves? needle and surgical grade thread? all going into the pack. she barely stops to read labels, let alone marvel at this seemingly full and complete medical workspace, the likes of which they could only vaguely remember on board the ark...

oh, that certainly is a lot of morphine bottles in her hands right now, uh.

( c. ) outside the pleasantly bright sun nearly blinds her, and for a long few moments clarke has to stand with a hand held up to her face and just blink. the world comes into focus slowly, and it's utterly jarring. breathtaking might be another word for it, a beautifully clean city with signs of infrastructure and people. not an ocean in sight, brand new clothes in the window of a storefront, fresh food that hadn't been dug from the earth by the hands of anyone she'd known. pavement uncracked by the weathering of time, shiny new panes of glass carried carefully by helpful bots.

it could be nice here.

...she can't stay.

still, on the quick trek towards what appears to be a distant tree line, she is waylaid by the half built bare bones of something familiar. the dropship is an ugly, boxy, metal contraption that looks entirely out of place between the structures on either side of it, but to clarke it is a vestige of times long passed. something she never thought she'd see again outside of memories. and she takes a step towards the entrance only to be gently warded off by a companion bot. )

But that's my — ( my home? my ship? my friends tomb? eloquence fails, and the best clarke can articulate is a forceful, near pleading ) — that's mine!

ii. setting fire to our insides for fun ( water )

( the nice robot dudes warnings aside, this really shouldn't be unexpected by the invisible powers that be. give her free reign, the chance to roam, no lock on her hospital room door and clarke griffin flees back to nature. the makings of the city are beautiful, but stifling; a good few miles away from it, she finally relaxes the tensed set of her shoulders and really breathes. takes a moment here or there on her walk to pick a blade of grass and rub it between her thumb and forefinger, kicks at a rock or two, admires a pretty pale blue flower patch.

she hears the river before stumbling upon it proper. standing on the edge, it looks deep and the rapids a little unforgiving, but undeterred, clarke begins to walk along the grass in tandem with the current. she has no idea if the laws of nature really preside here, but this little spot on wonder seems untouched by the neat organization of the city — if the river is going to let up, it'll be downstream.

and sure enough, she is eventually rewarded with a few outcroppings of rock nestled within the water that look jumpable. ...maybe. they're a little far apart and covered in moss, but in lieu of a rope swing, it's better than trying to wade all the way through. she's set down her pack and just begun to wonder what to do with her hair (she remembered to grab surgical gloves but not hair ties, smh) when... the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. enough years of being pursued, and prey instincts rule. her fingers twitch towards her hip despite knowing this stupid outfit didn't include her gun belt, and just barely turning her head to scan the trees at her back, she calls out — )

Who's there?

iii. the devil works hard but i work harder ( bingo )

( several hours after that unfortunate hiking expedition, clarke griffin returns to town a little bedraggled but mostly dried out. also mildly humbled, working overtime to fold her initial (resentment, frustration, bone deep need for isolation) confusion into a game plan. she stares hard at the buildings both complete and under construction — and also at the people milling around the city center, but quickly diverts her gaze if anyone tries to stare back. somewhere between the apartments and the hospital she pauses and fishes out the folded bonding bingo card that she'd all but snatched from aurora during her very anticlimactic escape (you know, having never been a prisoner in that hospital bed in the first place) and carefully unfolds it. the corners stick, the ink has bled a little due to the river water but it's still legible.

she's tried playing the political games from both the side with the majority and minority by now, and never had the end goals spelled out quite as clearly for her as right now. if simple tasks like this are all it takes, salvation should be attainable, right? but it's not actually about just what's on the paper, the ask here is that they bond.

clarke can do that. she has done that. the problem is, every time it only ever ends up hurting. it's a big ask...

( a. ) with a very tired sigh that has almost nothing to do with hours of walking/shivering/overheating, she sets down the pillowcase full of stolen hospital provisions and fishes out a water bottle. breaks the seal, takes a good long sip and then —

hurls the uncapped bottle at the nearest strangers face. (this should count for two, right? dumping a drink and starting a fight? we aim for efficiency in this house.)

or —

( b. ) find her removed from the street, in the belly of the apartments and staring down the pool table before deciding, nah, can't fake that well enough to win. instead she retreats to a shelf beside an old, beeping arcade machine and comes out with a deck of cards. anyone who ventures too close is beguiled with a tiny smile that doesn't quite make it up to her eyes first, then besieged with a request. )

Hey. Excuse me, do you know how to play Blackjack?

iv. does this app have a dislike button? ( matchmaker )

Clarke Griffin (19-20)

Former space princess turned Earth-side warlord. Enjoys chocolate cake, drawing, destabilizing governments, holding hands, performing field surgery without proper protective gear, and crying a lot!

v. wildcard!

( hit me with anything! or hit me up for plotting via pm or at inb4circlejerk. crau rundown: ya girl spent two years on a suffering-powered murder ship, personally fucked all that up and landed them in prison — hence why you may see some teenagers running around like "o brother where art thou?" convicts! happy to expand on that or keep it at a minimum, and will match action or prose formatting! )

( to haru's credit, at least his reflexes aren't too bad.

it's just the blur of something in his peripheral, but as soon as haru's mind registers that something is coming at him, he manages to flinch back with a yelp. his arms only just come up in time for the water bottle to smack against them.

ow...

the bottle rolls along the floor at haru's feet, and for a moment, with his hands still half raised from blocking it, he just looks at her. just blinking in disbelief as if he's expecting her to explain why she whipped a water bottle at his face out of nowhere. girl what did he do to earn that. )

( also to his credit, haru did absolutely nothing wrong or worthy of this unprovoked attack. literally the only crime was entering the vicinity if clarke's throwing arm, which is apparently punishable by drenched sleeves.

on her end, clarke watches the water bottle connect and then subsequently braces. she's been on the losing end of a fair amount of fights lately and reasons with herself what's one more? like it's some sort of comfort. the dark haired young man tries to protect his face, and she's ready for immediate retaliation but all that echoes between them is the sound of plastic clattering against pavement and the gentle patter of water dripping off his clothes. she waits, but the moment passes.

and then it's just awkward.

another few heartbeats pass and she forces her spine to straighten, rucks up her shoulders in a light shrug. )

...sorry? It slipped?

( clarke fucking griffin, like you don't have the bingo card in your other hand right this very moment... )

[Great minds - or more accurately, paranoid fuck-up minds - think alike. Natsuno had followed the same steps of alarmed awakening, pilfering the hospital for sharp objects, packing some provisions and getting the hell out 1.7 seconds after Aurara advised against it.

There's no particular destination in mind. With the place clearly under construction, he expects some sort of barrier edge soon. Still, he needs to start mapping out the place, figure out what other things the bots might be building in service of the grand mission a mysterious force insists he's been chosen for...

His gaze lingers on the dropship solely because it seems out of place. Still, he would've moved on if it wasn't for the blonde young woman standing beside it.]

...Clarke?

[He pushed back all thoughts of the Eterna. An emergency shut down was necessary to focus on figuring out the new situation. But it's all coming back at the sight of her - and she is HIS Clarke, their matching outfits leave no doubt in mind.]

Hey, Clarke!

( it's honestly ideal that this happens to be their first time colliding in this new realm. maybe just outside their hospital rooms, across the hall from one another like they had been originally on the ship would have been nice — it could have saved her the lonely anxiety, and they could have collaborated in their theft of hospital supplies — but this works too. because without intervention, clarke is on the brink of throwing hands with a (very polite, it's not his fault) robot. which never goes well for humans with breakable bones and normal paced healing.

still, she doesn't hear natsuno at first. she's got her eyes latched on the doorway of the dropship, currently lacking it's makeshift red tarp door, and is set on getting in there, no matter what tries to stop her. but, belatedly, amidst the pounding of blood currently deafening her ears to reason, that sure did sound like her name filtering through. and in a very familiar cadence.

recognition hits before she even pivots on her heel to face him, and something like ten years of stress lines melt off her face. she ought to be shocked, she ought to be wary; but if he were a mirage she'd follow him through the desert, and if he was not himself at least he remembered her name. ) I — Natsuno?

( torn between a remembrance of home she's not allowed to enter yet, and a figure from home hailing her — of course he chooses him. what starts as a few heavy steps on jelly-like legs quickly becomes a breakneck jog to meet him on the sidewalk, and she reaches out with her free hand to touch. to grab at his sleeve, to run up his arm, to grip at his shoulder; just to reinforce that he's real. )

Oh my god, you're here too? ( heightened emotions given the rollercoaster of waking up in yet another new world with pleasant set dressings but underlying secrets, give her a few seconds and she'll start tearing up. her emergency lockdown is breaking, the floodgates cued to follow and a little sentiment already thickening her voice like quick cement. )

[There's a slight relaxing of his posture when Clarke's hand rests solid and warm on his shoulder. He's still tense about the new situation, new rules to unveil and a new ragtag bunch of weirdos to decode, but at least his best friend is here. Bloodstained bandage on her wrist, hint of tears in her eyes and an overall readiness to claw at anyone trying to stand in her way - that's his Clarke Griffin alright.]

Yeah. [He gives her arm a reassuring squeeze in turn.] Must've missed you, back in the hospital...

[His eyes flick to hear own pack. Of course they had the same idea.]

You said - that thing back there is yours?

( blood, sweat, and tears sure do sum her up! give her an hour or so, and guaranteed she'll add the expected layer of dirt and grime to the mix as well!

but admittedly, the plan to run away gets waylaid by this reunion. the world seems to have righted itself then stopped (despite continued construction in the background) and she could contentedly stand in the middle of this patch of sidewalk forever with natsuno if necessary; just to make sure neither turns their back and loses the other again. in the back of her mind, she knows they'll have to move eventually. the forest is still the goal. he'd come with her, right? clarke doesn't need to follow the strap of the stolen, stocked ems bag to know that's true.

but... what if there are others?

they can get to that in due time, right now he's asked a question. )

Oh, it's the dropship. The one we fell to Earth in. It's not done, and no idea why they'd build it but — ( it's mine ) I would recognize it anywhere.

[He looks at the unfinished dropship. It's an ugly thing, and looks like it had been old and used long before it fell to Earth. That's where Clarke survived with her fellow deliquents during those first few weeks, where they cruelty of Earth first clashed with the horrors of space. Seeing it must be both painful and nostalgic, no wonder she was ready to fight the bot for the right to enter.]

I think they're trying to make the place more... welcoming, I guess.

[He thinks such "gifts" are a pointless mockery, but if Clarke wants it, that's her right.]

...that's just how it is, right? [He smiles, thin and humorless.] The rules change, but there are always set pieces.

clarke griffin | the 100 (+ sail crau)

iii-a

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dropship

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arrival (b) bc i have no self-control and this won't get out of my head

clutches my chest

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iii-a

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iv

eddieeeeee!!!!

what could possibly go wrong here

nothing at all, right? 🥲

nooooo clarke 🥺

iii-a

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the devil works hard ( a. )

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