(no subject)

[initiates]

Date: April 1st
Location: The Initiative Hold & Courtyard.
Characters: Everyone.
Summary: New Transports arrive and are shuffled into the Courtyard after their initial briefings.
Warnings: None.

You've just been hustled and bustled through mazes of information and literal, wide corridors of the Initiative Hold and you've been equipped with your weapon—be it a gun, a sword, or even your existing powers. They've handed you this light netbook and a small pouch of coins (or a debit card, if you're more inclined), and there are several Transports before and after you going through the very same motions. You can hear the Greeter's voice as she walks alongside large groups, telling them all about the history of this place and sharing with you your purpose here in a hurried and urgent tone. "You're in luck that we have enough rooms for all of you; the housing building is getting awfully full. Please, let me show you into the courtyard."

You pass what looks like huge gymnasiums, all with dummies and targets strewn and splayed around the room. Training areas. There are even classrooms, and a few small offices. You're rushed past a large library while the Greeter informs you that you can find almost all your information there, if you've got the time to look—and trust her, you'll have time. You don't spend a lot of time in the bank, and it's a bit of a blur of exchanges with more and more of these strangely-accented and oddly polite-seeming members of the Initiative.

Soon enough, you're in a massive courtyard bustling with all the other Transports. It's not exactly what you'd expect, and it looks more like barracks than anything—huge walls of concrete and stone, separating you from all of the hallways you'd just passed through. It's raining heavily, and dark clouds loom in the air, though it hasn't turned to snow. It's a chill cold, and there are shelters—long cloth hangings that extend from the walls of concrete to house you from the rain, but not enough. Most notably, the courtyard is filled with a marketplace. Even in the cold and the rain, there are several citizens seated at their covered booths and tables, bundled up against the weather. They're selling all manner of their own handmade goods and foods, and citizens and Transports alike are traveling from one small covered shop to another in search of all manner of necessities.

The Greeter's voice has become so faint now, but you swear you can make it out in the back of the crowds as she tells you, "Good luck. Be safe!"

Her voice is drowned out by the busy marketplace, though even the transactions taking place are somewhat subdued. Nobody is overly happy, really, though most citizens can be found with smiles on their faces. It doesn't seem like they're that shocked to see you, either; even if you're not bound in tattered rags and wrapped in heavy shawls as they are. You're welcome to walk up to a shop, and find yourself something to eat—hey, maybe you'll even find something akin to a raincoat. Or, you can join the others under the coverings against the walls. Where am I? What war? She was talking so fast, and it didn't all make very much sense… did anyone else catch it all?

Welcome to the courtyard. Welcome to the Initiative Hold—and most importantly, welcome to Exsilium.

Comments

[speakveryclearly]

[Much like Troll Bella Swan, Kanaya hates the rain. It necessitates that she wear both a black coat, even though it's the season of sprung by the calendar month of April (totally sprung, right), and boots instead of her preferred flats, which instead of papping elegantly against the ground, indelicately "PLOP" in all the puddles.

But she is generating a great deal of noise nonetheless because she is using enough of her supernatural speed to almost cause a stir in the courtyard. Not a blur, but undoubtedly running. As soon as she catches sight of those endearing nubby horns.

When she gets close enough for him to run into her, she stops still and quickly puts her hand on his shoulder, manually urging him to look up at her - and it's definitely, though not by much more than half a dozen inches, up: She's 7 solar sweeps old at this point. Green makeup covers her eyes and lips, both of which are shaped into a plaintive expression.]

Karkat?

[metastatic]

[ karkat flinches when he's touched and attempts to jerk away from the offending hand, mouth open for a reproachful snarl -- when she says his name, and her voice registers.

it's enough to bring him to look up at her; lifeless white eyes meet hers before he can remember he's supposed to be hiding those.

it hadn't occurred to him that he might not be alone here. ]

Kanaya?

[speakveryclearly]

[She looks into his eyes and her undead pumpbiscuit is moved. Her first feeling, she can't help it, is warm: He's dead like her; he's finally joined the club.

The possibilities cycle through her mind - Karkat went home and came back like this; Karkat is like this in the future - but from what she knows so far, the casual spoilers that have been dropped her way over time, how clearly she is looking into the same face she did before leaving the veil so long ago (with one exception), one possibility stands out above all the others: He's doomed, just like her and her brother his moirail. While her thinkpan tears itself in two over how this could have come to pass for dear sweet precious Karkat, her heart sings. Finally her leader won't be married to the alpha timeline.

She shouldn't ask him what happened. While she wanted everyone to ask about how she turned into a rainbow drinker (he might not even know and that sends delicious shivers down her spine), if there is one thing she knows about Karkat it is that he is touchy.

The water seeping through his turtleneck onto her palm and the raindrops falling onto the back of her hand give her the answer.]

Karkat, you're soaking. You need to get inside, and also a coat later. What's your block number, you should have been given a key with it.

[metastatic]

[ karkat's heart, on the other hand, clenches -- her eyes are filled in. that's good. that's great. kanaya should be alive, that was how it always should have been.

he only wishes he could be too. ]

No, hold on, I'm not-- [ her karkat. ] -- I don't-- [ need anything. ] How many of the others are here? [ how many of the others are alive? ]

[speakveryclearly]

[She blinks, raindrops dripping off her eyelashes and taking off a bit of the jade makeup to reveal the natural black underneath.]

Gamzee's off on mission. Sollux, Nepeta, Equius, Eridan, Feferi.

[He's her Karkat now. Of this much she is certain. She's never seen such a short gap between disappearances and replacements. Nevertheless even if he were a clone who never knew her (he said Kanaya? of course he knows her) he'd be a transport and a troll and god he's back he belongs here he's clearly someone else if he asks who's here instead of who's left. He's hers. This is a lot to process.]

You need to know that... we've been here. A while.

[metastatic]

[ karkat visibly shudders at gamzee's name, an echo of that same blinding terror threatening to wrap him in its embrace for a second time. his heart leaps up to thunder somewhere in the region of his throat, and he balks, taking a step back.

he almost doesn't take in the rest of what she says, it threatens to consume him so. ]

Yeah, I, uh. [ he should push her away, push them all away, but can he bring himself to? the thought makes him so lonely. but it's certain, the initiative must have meant to bring alpha karkat here -- they'd mis-aimed by a timeline or two. ] Look, I'm sorry, but where I came from everyone was in the midst of enthusiastically slaughtering each other, I'm pretty sure I screwed the humans over as thoroughly and spectacularly as anyone was ever screwed, Vriska'd flown off to fight Jack like the gigantic, throbbing sack of masticated bulges she is, and he showed up, like that wasn't the most laughably predictable outcome, and-- [ he can't help the way his hand crawls to his sternum, gently rubbing backwards and forwards across the place where the sword had pierced flesh and bone and muscle, as easily as a knife would slice through warm butter. ] I'm just freaking out in every possible way there is to freak out, Kanaya, and probably some new ones that I'm going to have to put out a patent on, so you're gonna have to give me some time to process all of this.

[speakveryclearly]

[A little hurt by him moving back enough to take her hand off his shoulder, at this distance she can't help but flick her eyes down when he gestures towards where he was shown his stabs. The veil as a freak show that was irreplicable and the demon on their tails; the truth soaks across her skin like a drink of warm blood she's been expecting for ages and up till now only getting water.]

I understand. I've been here before, remember, we've all been grubnapped. It's all a terrible temporal mess, a lot of us were torn up when we came here too - my slaughterhive memories aren't the usual set either. Don't you think we should get back to your block before the rain gets even worse. It's a better place to get your bearings than this crowd of aliens, that I can promise.

[metastatic]

[ he swallows, and drops his gaze to the key in his hand, before shaking his head. ]

No, no, let's just -- let's just get out of the rain. [ he gestures towards some run-down awnings, not too far away. ]

[speakveryclearly]

Okay.

[She'll willingly move in that direction, doesn't try to touch him again yet, but she is close to hovering.]

Okay. Tomorrow I'm going to have to buy you a coat. [And gloves. Like she got him for Christmas. Oh, god, don't go down that travel guidance structure, at some point she's going to need to grieve alpha Karkat - one step at a time.] I got this one for Christmas, which is human Twelfth Perigee's Eve. That was some time ago. We've been here for a rather long while...

[metastatic]

Yeah, apparently you don't get to bring sylladex contents with you into the afterlife. Or out of the afterlife? I wasn't really there for long, I didn't get a chance to check. [ she might not be able to tell, what with his lack of pupils, but he is currently having a hard time meeting her eye. ] How long?

[speakveryclearly]

Months. [She does a little awkward eye-averting herself for a moment as she thinks about how little he's probably had the displeasure to learn about Earth at this point.] Months are this awful human way of measuring seasons.

[metastatic]

How long is a month? [ well, earth culture is a much safer subject to broach than that of his timeline, his eyes, or anything that could possibly be related to either. ]

[speakveryclearly]

They're not even all the same length, that's part of what's so awful about them. But... thirty days, about.