(no subject)

[initiates]

Date: December 1st
Location: The Observatory.
Characters: Everyone.
Summary: New Transports arrive and are shuffled into the Observatory after their initial briefings.
Warnings: None.

Your arrival here has been very unceremonious. One second you were somewhere else, and now, very suddenly, your feet hit the glowing white of the Transporter pad, and you're here. You aren't alone, either. There's a crowd of others around you, each seeming just as bewildered, angry, or confused as you might feel. At the head of the group is a woman in purple robes, solemn and taciturn. She hurries over a quick overview of your intended purpose here, and gives direct answers when asked for them, but to most things she simply shows you how to access the tablet you've just been given, or tells you that the DITR's greeters will explain everything. On the tablet, you can find the history of this place and a record of what your new cohorts have experienced. Someone stands on hand to give you a weapon, and though the armory is now greatly reduced, you should be able to find something to suit you.

You're shepherded down a walkway tunnel and into the Observatory, where you will find screens mounted on three sides of the wide room; they show multiple variations of satellite images, focused on... somewhere snowy. It's difficult to say more than that, but those that record heat readings seem to suggest there are people there, where ever "there" is. It's night outside the great wide windows, and the lunar landscape isn't much to look at right now. But, hey, at least all the lights are on, right? No more creepy red emergency lighting upon arrival — not that you'd know anything about that.

You're free to explore the base, visit and use any of the VR rooms, or discover your new room and roommates, but try not to step out of any airlocks if oxygen is a requirement for your system.

Welcome to the moon base, and to the remains of Exsilium.

[[ ooc; As a note for players of current characters: please keep your root comments confined to the various groups and organizations that set up root comments to greet new characters! We highly encourage tagging around here, but since it's a log meant for new characters specifically, we ask that they be the ones to set up root threads to the entry. Thank you, and happy playing! ]]

Comments

[dead_shot]

I don't like the sound of that. It almost sounds like she could've hit her head or something like that. [ The easiest conclusions are amnesia and/or brainwashing, with what little context he has. Those ideas are quite unsettling, and it's starting to show.

Though after a few moments of concentrated effort, he shakes his head. ] Headache aside, I don't feel like anyone's gone rotting around my brain at least.

[alightlost]

[ But of course. The same could be said for Seiya, but she always carried herself differently anyway - egos will do that. ]

If there is a reasonable explanation, it's still not good enough for me. I don't appreciate being taken away from my work like that - not one bit. [She smirked.] And it isn't star-gazing either. You?

[gillitine]

I know plants can't usually walk. It took me a while to learn, myself.

[she knows it's weird. there's a reason she didn't go out much back home. but hey, people seem pretty accepting here, so why not?]

[alightlost]

"Maybe you've--" She clammed up immediately to look embarrassed. "Sorry, I know you've forgotten. Anyway, I live with my two friends already - Taiki and Yaten - so I'm using to a bit of a rowdy climate." She laughed. "There was also this one rather chaotic night at your house..."

[redsea]

[ Kougyoku smiles upon hearing that they can practice another time. She can work with those terms! She'll just not use her djinn equip when it happens. ]

That's right. Each dungeon is ruled by a djinn, and after conquering the dungeon, the djinn will go to the one most worthy. This is a metal vessel that holds the djinn Vinea.

[ She shows him her hairpin. If he'll look closely, he'll see that it has an eight-pointed star on the pin's red jewel. ]

[fintastic]

It's probably about once a month. [ She looks like she has to think on it for a second. ] Who are you looking for? You can look them up on your tablet, you know!

[fintastic]

Hmm. I don't know. Can I see one of those fliers?

[ She holds out a hand expectantly. ]

Hoooboy /prepares self >_>

[alightlost]

"I... wasn't really thinking of my music like that." On the contrary, her aim had been entirely selfish. Whatever any of their fans saw in their music was their own business, so long as the Princess heard it loud and clear. "You really think anyone would want to listen to my music here?"

She was a little awestruck, actually. Music had always been a job - and that was what had gotten her into trouble with the musical's Director, hadn't it? They both had messages they wanted to spread, but the Director made Seiya care about what she was performing. Maybe focusing on that too much was part of the problem... it would explain why their Princess hadn't appeared.

"Hey, do you think... if I wrote a new song, maybe continue the one I started back home - well is there anyone else who plays instruments here? It's not like there's concert speakers anywhere."

She reached out to pat Lucy on the shoulder. "The person and the memory are alive and well, so there's no dishonor." Usagi and the Princess; she hoped they both stayed that way, even though she kind of alluded to them as one person. She smiled. "And I don't think you're the type of person to do that, anyway."

[crab]

"Time travel won't solve their problems. That's not how time works. All it can accomplish is creating offshoot after offshoot after offshoot," is his impatient criticism. "Even if they manage to create a timeline where they get what they want, it doesn't necessarily mean it's the alpha timeline, and they'll all fade out of existence as a result, anyway."

He refuses to believe that time travel could allow you to correct your past mistakes in this universe. That is the absolute fucking height of unfairness, and on top of all the other unfairness he feels right now, it's just not somewhere he wants to go.

He does understand what she tries to communicate with what she says about the United Earth and their methods, however-- it strikes a very uncomfortable chord within him. He thinks of New Vesuvius, of the utopia-dystopia, and its parallels to United Earth, to what he's heard of this planet.

"They're the Vulcanus stand in."

[juneshero]

[thankyouomg]

Whoa... [he does take the opportunity to take a closer look at the hairpin. It's incredibly ornate and well made, which is something that even an average teenager like Yosuke could see straight off the bat. Like, seriously, so legit]

So that crazy blue sword a second ago... Is that because of the Djinn or is it magic?

...! [a laugh] We don't really have something like this back home, so uh... let me know when you want to stop playing twenty questions- or hey, how about we go to the cafeteria to talk? Instead of standing in the hall.

[moonlitlove]

"...you went to my house?"

Oh wow---they had to have been close. Even Mamoru didn't come around that often.

"What did Mama think?"

[alightlost]

"I came over because your Mom was going to be gone for the night and there was a rash of break-ins." Seiya chuckled, teasing. "Ah, you were so scared to be alone~ I just had to offer to be your bodyguard."

And then her expression fell. "Then everyone else showed up as I was trying to tell you I was Sailor Star Fighter, including Tenou who I'm convinced hates me." She look over at Usagi pointedly. "Ah, this was just as two high schoolers you know? Before we were..." Hm. What exactly? Better to just go with the other truth. "Before I knew you were Sailor Moon."

[heartsink]

He gets it.

Not just about United Earth, but about the tactics, about what changes, about what doesn't, and all Ruka can feel in that moment is relief, a sagging of her shoulders and the weight falling in pieces. Now, at least, there's someone else who understands how futile this sort of tactic is—someone who can see the fault in both sides, in the same way she does.

"I thought the same thing," she replies, her hands shifting position, one cold hand covering the other. "When I arrived, I thought this could have been the future of ours. I..."

She frowns, letting her gaze drop again.

"... the day I left was February first, the same year as you. And I arrived here on February first, the same year it is now. It seemed... too much of a coincidence, you know? I thought these worlds were linked, more than any others. But..."

But Karkat's arrival, she says with only a glance up, Karkat's temporal discrepancy punctures too large a hole into that theory.

[jailbreaks]

Yeah, 'wow's about right for it.

[He shakes his head.]

Not really. They're kinda needy but at least you always know what they want.

[hoody]

Time was relative, so the date wasn't of much use (and that was even assuming that they used the same calendar where Annie was from, which was not confirmed). But, still, a year. The knowledge sits ill in Annie's stomach. She doesn't like the idea of being so completely separated from everything for so long, adrift from her mission and the promise of home. She feels as though separation would cause some dissonance between her and her directive, which couldn't be allowed to happen.

Time travel — right, they had mentioned something like that. A technology which not only brought them from their separate worlds but could also place them in certain points in time in this one. All of that still flies a bit over Annie's head; she's an intelligent girl, but she's often single-minded, and the technology back where she's from is so many centuries behind all of this. It was hard to catch up.

"So..." she ventures, her voice uneasy, "We are sent... back into time, to fulfill missions so that we can fix what is happening now?" Her brow furrows at the non-linearity of it.

[bunnivore]

[ he'll never be safe.

normally she would probably just scoff and say no, SHE'S THE GREAT ALICE, but this just makes her remember her question about parents. ]

Yeah. I don't remember anything [ memory loss etc. ] so, it's just Alice.

[ eats cookie violently with a message that basically says 'not that it's any of your business'. ]

[gamora]

Yeah?

( oh man are they going to sink this low? i think the answer is yes. )

[theguideless]

Facing ahead, Martin's eyebrows lifted. Forty was a pretty big number. Forty years...

Then again, years were a hazy thing in his head, so he was quick to accept it without questioning it aloud. And in any case, the teacup in his peripheral grabbing his attention and turning his head again washed out any chance of a question on it.

His turn? He looked confused.

Oh. Numbers...

Martin's head shook, moving ahead once more. "I don't know. I've never known! And I wouldn't know how to guess it...except it has to be more than twelve. That's the only number that ever mattered before."

[eyecontact]

[he blinks in turn, eyebrows lifting, starting to mirror the look she's wearing.

cautiously, he nods, staring at her for a length, trying to better paint her features on the Starfire he's known. it's not an exact match, but the similarities are too obvious to gloss over.

typing again, quicker:]

She is shorter...her hair is shorter too. She's an alien from a planet far away, but I don't remember the name. She can shoot green energy out of her hands...and is very strong. She's one of the main Teen Titans, where I'm from.

[crab]

He grimaces a little, at that. Should he tell her? She'd made it out pretty clearly that she's not likely to be the type to appreciate spoilers, but are they really spoilers if neither of them are ever going to go back?

"I thought this was a parallel," he admits, slowly, some of his own closed off posture loosening. He takes a step forward. "After you... a few months after February, Lachesis started sending us into other universes. They were all unspeakably terrible in their own special ways, but the common factor in all of them was Vulcanus' interference."

He takes a deep breath, stalling for time, runs a hand through his hair. "The worst was a place called New Vesuvius."

[skilful]

[ He takes in this, then blinks curiously. ]

Do mutinies happen often...?

[hoody]

Annie is unfazed by his snappy reply (but when is she fazed by anything?), watching with a very vague, dull kind of amusement she sometimes gets when dealing with Eren. As much as he would say otherwise, there was something about him that was naive. She thinks sometimes that it must be that streak of idealism that he has running through him, even now, after all he had seen — that, or the righteousness he gets to imbue himself with in addition to the idealism. Most had such traits drained from them, through wounds of body or mind, infected with disease and fear. He even manages to spread such inflictions to others; the change in Jean before and after Trost was one such example (though there had been more factors to that, of course). Annie still isn't sure whether or not Eren's effect on the other cadets was irritating or intriguing; she has to settle somewhere in between.

She has little to no care about UE, whatever they might be doing to this planet. She had heard tell that they might set some of their own home worlds in their sights; that was the only thing to get her even close to riled, but it was a little more than minor annoyance. So far, the only thing that was motivating her to go along with any of this was the offer of eventually going home. That, and the fact that they didn't really have much choice.

Annie shrugs, the action audible by the metallic clink of her maneuver gear. "These are not the same people as those who live inside Wall Rose. They fight for things of no consequence: money, status, passion. There is nothing greater for them to worry about. To them, the titans are still a world away."

That would have been different if Trost had been breached, but... Well, that hadn't come to be. Annie subconsciously twists at the ring on her right hand.

[skilful]

[ Totsuka smiles as he listens. It sounds like a nice place! ]

Ah, rib...? No mark?

[hoody]

It had always been on the top of Annie's list, to be aware of other's feelings (no, no one had ever really called her much of an empath). She knows that some of these people might be captured by the siren's call of a people in distress, in need. That would only lead to them sailing to their own demise, however, and Annie would want no part of it. She could function as a soldier without such motivations, or with such emotions getting in her way. She had done so handily for the last three years.

She looks up at the question. "Yes. Unit 109." She doesn't need to check her tablet for that; she'd memorized the number as soon as it had been told to her.

The idea of escaping this din did sound good, though going anywhere with Armin makes her vaguely apprehensive.

[tragicomedienne]

Well, that's the problem, isn't it...

[Nanami murmurs this under her breath, her eyes rolling skyward for a moment (can't really think about skyward, anymore).

Almost a year of dealing with people who make these ridiculous displays has made Nanami feel like something of an expert...despite any of her own ridiculousness.]

I'm serious! You can't just go walking out in space, can you?