transport log » ❝ welcome to Exsilium ❞

[initiates]

Date & Time: Sept 23rd, 2012.
Location: The Initiative Hold & Courtyard.
Characters: Everyone.
Summary: New Transports have all arrived and have been 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. "This isn't standard," she's saying, walking perhaps faster than most of the people she's dragging around. "We don't normally have so many Transports at once. 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. 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. 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

[getwrenched]

She wasn't waking up, and there was still a fox talking at her. One who thought foxes weren't common to where she was from. She supposed they weren't, or they didn't talk usually. The only strange talking creatures out there were related to the kinds of things Ed and Al got mixed up with --

"If I'm not dreaming, then I'm actually talking to a fox. In the rain. Not in Resembool." There was no way that could be possible. "Am I right?"

She better not be. That was insane, as well as entirely impractical.

[twotailedgenius]

Tails was just going to have to get used to people refusing to believe that what they're seeing is real. He would know, that's how he felt about the whole situation too. Except when you deal with a mad genius who has tried to distort time and space more than once, things you believe and don't believe tend to blur together.

"Yes. This is not Resembool. This is the Initiative. They pulled you here from your world, just like they did to me. We likely aren't even from the same world."

[getwrenched]

Winry could agree with the fox's statement about them probably not being from the same world. None of what it said made a great deal of sense, though she was inclined to believe that no, she wasn't currently dreaming.

Crazy, maybe, but not dreaming.

Even if I'm crazy, I'm going to have to start dealing with it. Starting with getting in out of the rain. If it's real, I don't want to end up sick. If it isn't, finding someplace to sit down for a moment can't be a bad idea.

"I think I'd like to hear the long tail." Stop looking at its tail. "Story. The long version of your story, once we're out of the rain."

There. She sounded remarkably composed for someone feeling more irritated and confused (not to mention lost, but that was about as helpful as feeling crazy right now). She might even last for a full explanation of this craziness. "If you please."

[twotailedgenius]

"Okay, follow me." Tails began to lead her to the nearest building whichever building that may be because what is checking the layout and once he is able to ascertain that Winry is there, he starts with a few simple statements.

"This place is known as Exsilium, and it's in the year 3312. Which is actually about 1200 years after my current time. But it's on Earth. ... which I hope isn't the same Earth I live on."

[getwrenched]

Once they were in motion, Winry found herself focusing on the momentum. Moving helped her think right now. Moving out of the rain was it's own secondary, practical motivation.

Listening to a walking, talking fox was -- surreal, but she would deal.

"Over a thousand years in the future. Time travel? Time travel." That is what he was talking about. Was it even a he? "How could it not be the same Earth you live on?"

[twotailedgenius]

"Yeah, time travel. That's how they brought you here. So time travel I guess definitely is invented in the future." That's something even Tails knows not to mess with when inventing things. The flow of time, that is.

"I'd just like to think that the world I lived in couldn't become something like this a thousand years in the future. Unless it went through a dark age, the technology's lacking for that kind of leap.

Besides that, I've met a few people who have different technology than anything here or back in my time, and they claim to come from a similar time period to mine."

[getwrenched]

If she accepted this delusion at face value, maybe it'd pay off in showing her a way out of this delusion. If she'd gone insane after recent events, she simply had to find her way back to sanity.

Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes, then exhaled. When her eyes opened again, it was with new determination in their depths. "If we came here, then there's a way back. Have people found it?"