Breaking the Seal... (Character, Any!)

by **Sunset** » Mon Jan 13, 2014 6:46 pm

OOC: Getting straight to the point! Why read pages to figure out what's going on?

Who: Single character. It doesn't have to be someone from your nation, it doesn't have to be human. It just has to be a single, sentient, person.
What: What your character is. You don't need to write out a hugely detailed description, but you should have a good idea in mind. Or even just an archetype so you can fill in the details as you go along.
Why: The big unknown! Your character has a somewhat instinctive knowledge of who they are but they don't know much beyond that. They don't know where they are from, what they are doing there, and similar. Mass amnesia.
Where: Your character wakes up in a hibernation pod. Ideally they will be in some kind of dangerous circumstance, such as deep underground, on the edge of a volcano, trapped in the wreckage of a building, or similar. They could be in the same circumstance as another character. Up to you.
When: The future!

The Setting: The characters awake to find themselves on an unknown world. They don't know why they are there, but they know who they are. They quickly find themselves in the ruins of what appears to be a settlement of some kind. It could be anything, and nearly anywhere, but they all find themselves in the same place, forced to work together to survive and to learn where they are and what they are doing there.

What you get to do: You get to help decide what happens, where they are, what the world is like. You can focus on small details or just talk to your fellows. I'll provide a Google Docs link to anyone who posts so that you can work out any details or ideas with everyone else out-of-character before posting.

Feel free to jump in!

by **Sunset** » Mon Jan 13, 2014 7:59 pm

"I got you!"

Water sprayed and the giggling girl who held the water gun jumped aside with a shriek. Kat pulled the trigger again. Another jet of water caught her friend in the face. Howling with delight, she turned and ran, her body leaving a clear path through the tall grass. Together they plunged forward, madly squirting away as the hot sun beat down on them.

"Alright! Alright..." Kat's friend begged as she unloaded spray after spray into her face. "I'm all out!"

Together they returned to the old water pump under the tree in the middle of the meadow. Rusty metal squeeled in protest but soon clear, crisp water was flowing out of the spout and splashing over the rocks that had been piled around the base. Her friend leaned down and Kat pumped, soaking her hair and sending the stream down her neck to soak her shirt. With a shriek she jumped away, laughing gaily, and Kat dipped her face under the spigot. On the hot day the cold water felt so good...

So cold...

So good...

So cold...

With a gasp Kat sat up and opened her eyes. Water, cold and clear, splashed down her face and she raised a slim brown hand to her eyes but found it did little to shield her from the torrent of water that was falling from above. Staggering to her feet she stepped blindly, only to slip and slide on a pile of loose stone. Her feet flew out from under her and she flailed wildly, desperate to grab on to something, and her hands caught something.

It looked like a coffin. Long and silvery, covered with handles, and with a long, clear, transparent lid. Water from far above was pounding down on it and it was already nearly full. Looking up, she followed the falling water to it's source, a vast circle in the earth that opened out onto a clear sky. Where was she?

"Only way to find out is to go up," she said to herself as she hauled herself up to the edge of the coffin. Water surged over the edge and she nearly slipped again as the rock shifted under her feet. The pile of rock was under an overhanging ledge but on the far side of the sink there seemed to be a dry cliff that she might be able to climb. Plants of green and purple grew in wild profusion on it and she stepped over the coffin and through the downpour to the other side.

Sliding down the loose rock on the far side, she found herself at the edge of a little stream that emerged from the base of the rock pile to flow into a small gully and from there into the darkness. She could hear the water flowing down there, splashing down over another waterfall or perhaps some rapids, and she carefully skirted the edge of the gully to reach the base of the cliff.

From here it looked steeper than it had from the rocks but something in her gut said that she could climb it. Had climbed something like it before. One foot, one hand. Three points of contact. She started up. Little niches and handholds were abundant and every step took her further up into the sun where it would dry her soaking wet clothing. Her clothing.

She looked down at it. A sleeveless, creamy brown shirt was plastered to her body. She was wearing shorts too; A sturdy looking grey pair with plenty of zippered pockets and a black cloth belt. Was this what she was supposed to be wearing?

Another foothold and her four wide toes sunk deep into a crevice filled with dirt and roots. She was close to the edge already, another few feet and she'd be able to pull herself over the edge. She paused, her toned and muscular brown arms supporting her easily, and looked around. Was she supposed to climb out? Maybe whatever reason she was there for was down in the pit. She looked back.

There it was, laying there, water still filling it and sloshing over the side. It was bigger than she remembered, but she'd been in a hurry to get out of the waterfall. Maybe she should go back? But something in her chest said she should go forward. Like she was a person who went forward. With a final effort, Kat shoved herself up and over the side of the sink to roll out onto her back and look up at the sky.

by **YellowApple** » Mon Jan 13, 2014 9:11 pm

"Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company."

- Mark Twain

Ed's eyes opened, searching for something - anything - familiar. He tried to turn his head to find north, but found it to be immobilized by something hard and rough. His arms, legs, and wings were similarly pinned, but he pushed with his hands and feet regardless, eventually finding his right hand to push through the obstruction - upward, he hoped - into mild air. That hand fumbled about, feeling for stones and tossing them away in an effort to free the rest of his arm and allow him to - hopefully - emerge. His left leg eventually pushed outward, but his right leg - instead of escaping - hit something hard and hollow and pushed that something away from him.

With a few deep breaths and a hard push with his right shoulder, Ed's torso and head emerged, and his eyes were overwhelmed with light; that overwhelming sensation gradually subsided, and Ed once again tilted his head side to side, noting magnetic poles to his front-left and back-right, before noticing himself to be in some sort of shallow crevasse. He gently pulled his right wing out of the rubble beneath him, followed by his whole left side, only to experience a rather sharp pain in his upper left wingbone - a pain which sent him into a rather loud shout as he gingerly attempted - and eventually succeeded - to extract that fractured wing from the rocks upon it.

Ed rubbed his hands over the rough skin on his face, then through the down feathers protruding from his scalp, before he placed them on the ground and pushed himself onto his feet. He immediately felt dizzy, however, and fell back down onto his bottom after a moment of wobbling to and fro. He tried again after a few seconds, and this time managed to keep himself upright. He hobbled forward a bit and reached the object he had kicked - a long, hollow, metallic container turned over and still somewhat covered in rocks - then made his way to the edge of what he now knew to be an elongated crater.

As Ed peered over the edge, he noted the green and violet vegetation surrounding his crater, and subsequently noted several slightly-magnetized structures in the near-distance. He struggled to climb up, but upon doing so, he felt dizzy again and fell onto his stomach, enjoying the warmth of the sun as it radiated through the grey-and-yellow camouflage uniform and into the sparsely-down-feathered flesh on his back, and helpless against the sudden urge to fall back asleep and slip into - or possibly out of - some sort of strange dream.

by **Senkaku** » Mon Jan 13, 2014 10:28 pm

Light....

And a faint, fuzzy, rushing noise....

Krishna slowly opened his eyes, and then blinked. It wasn't every day you woke up in what appeared to be a hibernation or escape pod of some sort, surrounded by smashed motherboards, leaking holoscreens, and a smashed air filter. He had absolutely no idea how he'd gotten there, nor where he was, but his head felt like it had been hit with a baseball bat.

A smashed air filter....

The Brahmin swore creatively in several languages, not bothering to consider where he was or how he'd gotten here. It was irrelevant. What mattered was that he had no idea how much air he had left in this little pod, and based on his dizziness, it wasn't much. He quickly looked at the shattered control surfaces, swearing under his breath as he struggled to read the weird hash of Russian, English, and Chinese. Then he found the button he was looking for and pressed it.

The hatch on his little distress pod exploded into the air, and water came pouring in. Krishna choked as he was slammed against the control panel, then painfully extricated himself from it, his augmented muscles driving him past the torrent of water and up, until he broke the surface. The capsule left a little trail of bubbles through the crystal-clear water, which was quite warm. It appeared he was in some tropical lagoon- fish swam beneath him amidst coral formations, white sand stretched up the sea floor to form a perfect beach, and lush green vegetation engulfed the shoreline, which was lapped by waves. Krishna, wondering if he was high, as there was no other explanation for all of this, swam easily over to the shoreline and lay on the warm, firm sand, his silk shirt, dark jeans, and simple turban all soaking wet. Now, what appeared to be a fourteen or fifteen year old human male lay, sleeping lightly, on this beautiful, picturesque beach, wondering subconsciously whether anything he'd just seen was actually real.

OOC: more about his biology will be revealed later.

by **Sunset** » Tue Jan 14, 2014 6:38 am

For a long time Kat lay on her back looking up at the sky as the blazing white sun dried her clothes and warmed her skin.

"Is it supposed to be that way?" she asked, talking to no one in particular. "The sky... Is it supposed to be that color?"

Something about it struck her as wrong. Not wrong. But... different. Different than what she remembered of the dream that was now fleeting. Memories of a sky tinged red and pink with...

Sitting up, she pushed herself onto her haunches, toes splayed wide to support her as she looked down into the pit. The coffin had slid down the hill and now rested at the bottom, wedged up against the sides of the gully that led down into the abyss. Should she try to retrieve it? Would it tell her something about where she was? Who she was? That question was settled for her as she watched the cylinder shift, break free, and disappear.

"No," she rose to her feet. "The answers are somewhere else now."

Under the pale purple sky she found herself standing in a long, shallow depression that seemed to run down the middle of a much wider slope. She couldn't see much further uphill. Plants and trees grew in riotous assembly there and after only a few meters it began an impenetrable tangle. To her left and right it was more of the same, though perhaps not as dense. Behind her, though, seemed to be a clear slope down to something. Far in the distance she could see blue water but before she could make up her mind to follow the slope something else caught her eye.

Above the vegetation on her left she picked out something that didn't below. Something artificial. It almost looked like a tree, long and slender, but it was too smooth. There seemed to be something hanging off it though but it was too far away to see clearly yet though, unlike the trees, it didn't seem to be moving in the breeze.

"Down the slope, or towards that?" With one hand she shielded her eyes and the other went to her hip where it felt something. "What's this?"

Looking behind her, she found a black piece of cloth in one of the back pockets of her shorts. Pulling it out, she turned it in her hands. It was a bag, a pouch... No. A hat. It was also soaking wet still. She wrung it out, the water splattering all over her toes, and pulled it on and forward to form a brim. It wasn't much but it did provide a little shade.

Quickly she checked her other pockets. Nothing, though they were all closed with zippers. Did that say something about her? Was she afraid of losing things? Or was she practical and liked to keep things organized?

"Or maybe I get into a lot of situations where things could fall out of my pockets?"

Kat liked the sound of that. It sounded vaguely adventurous. And if she was adventurous...

"Whatever that is, let's find out!"

Turning to the left, she headed off across the slope through the thick growth and towards whatever it was that she'd seen above the treeline.

by **Scolopendra** » Tue Jan 14, 2014 7:47 am

The sleep, if it was that, was dreamless.

The awakening—that at least seemed accurate enough—was not quite right. She couldn’t tell why, but she thought about it for a moment with her eyes closed. She was reclining, but not flat; her head was higher than her feet. She was, therefore, on a slope. The surface underneath her was not exactly soft, not exactly hard, and she laid atop it like a body on an examining table.

She wondered why that simile came to mind. She dismissed the wonder.

Stretching one hand, she could feel that the material under her was plastic, and it gave way as though it was a thin, flexible sheet stretched over a foam core, or maybe it was inflated with air. She was definitely somewhere artificial. This failed to surprise her. In fact, it was oddly comforting. Still, something was wrong, and when things were wrong they could get worse very quickly, especially if she did the wrong thing. She knew that. The first thing was to identify what was wrong.

The awakening. She thought about it. She was asleep, now she was awake. That didn’t seem right. She tried to remember what would have been right but her brain suddenly bounced off a wall padded with springy cotton a mile thick. That was wrong too, and when she tried to remember why that was wrong she received the same effect. She didn’t like it, but at least she was narrowing in on the problem. Remembering things. Remembering things, or rather, her inability to do so was a problem. Well, she was thinking. She had an internal monologue. That meant she had language. She’d identified the material underneath her as ‘plastic’ and she knew what that was, so clearly not all memory was lost to her.

She was an amnesiac. How cliché. The thoughts simply came to her in recognition, and they had meaning. She tried to remember why amnesia is cliché and her mind simply bounced again. It didn’t hurt; it wasn’t even particularly uncomfortable. It was just… wrong.

Great. She was an amnesiac who knew that this was wrong and that she’d woken up wrongly but couldn’t remember what made it wrong.

She opened her eyes and accomplished nothing by doing so. She closed them then opened them again. Something about that problem-solving process seemed natural. Was she blind? No, that didn’t sound right. Stretching her hands, she began to feel around slowly. It was right to move slowly; she didn’t know why, but it was better than moving quickly. Her hands worked outwards from plastic until they met metal sides, then ran up the curved metal sides until they curved up and formed an arch over her midsection, then up until the arch became a cylinder that extended over her face and then curved back down in a hemispherical dome above and behind her head. Lifting her knees, she confirmed that the cylinder probably extended downwards at least as far as those, then scouted more with her feet. After a minute of this, she reasonably inferred that she was in a semi-circular tube.

How did she get into it? Bounce. That was no good. How would she get out of it? No bounce. She grew aware of growing uncomfortably warm and wet—the moisture was the worse part—and she figured that she no longer had all the time in her very little world to do something about her situation. Was there anything outside the tube? Bounce. That began to annoy her. Still, even knowing time was a factor, she found it hard to move too much faster. It was like in trying to hurry she was actually fighting herself.

She ran her hands around the perimeter of the metal tube along where it met the plastic cushions, feeling for a handle or a latch. None. She couldn’t bend down to check down along her legs, and the tube was too small for her to turn on her shoulders.

This was about the point where she started getting properly concerned, but her mind remained methodical even as she bit her lip. Her teeth were sharp, but not razor-sharp. She was in a tube. The tube could be the sum total of everything, but that didn’t seem right. It made sense to presume an outside of the tube. She had either entered the tube herself, assuming she didn’t originate there—that didn’t seem right either—or had been put there. In either case, the tube is openable. In the former, she probably intended to leave later so there must be some way to open it from the inside. If the latter, it could really go either way. If it was not intended to be opened from the inside… well, that could be a problem. It also did her no good to go down that mental path, so she thought about how to get out.

How would tubes open? No bounce, but no answer. Maybe that meant she just didn’t know.

She tried the simplest thing first: she brought her hands up and pushed outwards, increasing the force until she trembled with exertion—which only made the tube hotter and wetter. That didn’t work, and apparently it made the situation worse. Was her body heat a factor? Probably. She tried the next thing, using her knees to the same intent and with the same effect. Now it started to broil, breathing growing uncomfortable. She measured her breath then tried turning her left shoulder into it, using her body as a lever. She felt something give a smidge sideways, tangentially, then stop. The lid turned. As quickly as she could will herself to move, she switched shoulders, turning the other way. The meat of her shoulder dug in, pushed the moisture out of the way, adhered to the hot metal and—

Cold. Bitter cold. She shivered, but breathed deeply and smiled at the improvement. She felt the sweat cooling off her skin, in droplets on her face and in broad splotches elsewhere. That meant she was clothed, something she hadn’t checked for before. It didn’t seem important then and it wasn’t really that important now. It was still dark, though. Maybe she really was blind.

After making sure that the lid had opened to its fullest extent, spun out of her way, she slowly sat up, one hand in front of her face for early warning. She sat up completely without running into anything. As the moments passed, she stopped being cold; that was an additional improvement. She crawled onto her knees and explored the sides of her opened tube like a woman on a raft in the middle of a dark ocean, assuming of course that she was riding a wave in the process: the slope of the tube made this more difficult than it needed to be. Her tube was isolated, not immediately connected to anything from the sides. On one side lay a very short, sloped shelf too small and insufficiently level to hold anything up; the only thing that made it shelf-like was that it did have a flat surface. It wasn’t inclined to be useful to her, though. It didn’t slope with her tube; it sloped towards the ground. Like a console.

She realized she’d pulled her hands away from it. There was something wrong about pushing buttons that one didn’t know what they did. She didn’t feel any buttons, though… but it could be a flat-panel. She felt revolted by the idea, and she felt the increasingly familiar bounce inside her head when she probed that revulsion further. Putting that aside, she scrunched down towards the bottom of the tube, running her hands down until the universe not only went sideways but changed from metal to… ceramic tile? Smooth texture, not quite as cold as metal. She couldn’t feel any seams, though, so either it wasn’t tile or the tiles were large. She stretched out further and hit a seam. Large ceramic tiles, maybe nearly a third of a meter across. That seemed larger than she was used to.

Still, there was a floor, so she stepped down to crouch onto it. Assessing the situation, she noted that there was a floor and she didn’t feel any wind so she was probably in a room. If the room had no windows, then no light could get in, so she wouldn’t be blind. Or maybe she was blind, though that still didn’t seem right. The next step would be to scout the room, making sure that the floor was stable, then find any windows or doors she could open to hopefully and quite literally shed some light on the situation.

She sighed. This could take a while.

by **Senkaku** » Tue Jan 14, 2014 11:21 am

Krishna woke up somewhere strange for the second time that day. He felt cool, damp sand against his face, caressing his cheek and lip and ear, felt water splash around his feet.

He rolled over, looking at the clear blue sky, spotted with small, innocent white clouds, and decided to think very hard about the situation he found himself in.

Let's go over what I know. My name is Krishna. Earlier today I woke up in a... pod? Capsule? I opened it to get out and nearly drowned. I swam onto the shore and fell asleep. Now, where am I from?

Krishna felt as if this should be something that came easily to him. It did not. He could not for the life of him remember where he was from. He felt as if the name were on the tip of his tongue, remembering vague flashes of spice-filled bazaars and glittering glass towers, but no names. The faces were blurred together like the ground from a low-flying plane.

He couldn't remember if he'd been in a low-flying plane before, so he was rather unsure as to why the metaphor came to him.

Do I have family? Friends? How old am I? I think I'm in my twenties, but is that true? If so, what does it mean? How have I gotten here? Why am I here? How did I know how to read the controls in the pod? Where, exactly, was "here?" Was "here" real, or some abstract construct of the mind? The questions started firing faster and faster, blurring through his mind until he finally stood up in frustration and stuck his head in the pleasantly cool seawater, then sat down in the shallow lagoon, looking out to sea, trying to clear his head.

I will need food and water if I want answers. And I will need to get a clearer picture of my surroundings.

He stood up again, staring around, and saw a hill peeking above the trees.

Not a bad place to start. Maybe there will be something for me there. I will go and see where I am, then go back to my pod and see if I can find any answers down there.

Krishna, deciding that he really had nothing better to do, started walking, entering the lush forest and marching straight towards where he'd seen the hill peeking over the trees.

by **Roania** » Tue Jan 14, 2014 11:21 am

And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of
Silence. ~ Sound of Silence, Simon & Garfunkel

Darkness. Darkness was an old friend. For a hundred years, perhaps more, perhaps less... Time meant nothing to him now. A prisoner, trapped within a prison, counts the days, but only those days he knows to count. Was he a prisoner? Dubious. Time... time had passed. He knew it instantly, sitting cross-legged on the ground. How much time? How little time? Who was he? Where was he? Had he ever known the answers? Had they ever been important? Quiet. Darkness. Contemplation. Was sufficient. Had always been sufficient.

Raise a hand. Clink. Raise the other? Clink. Chains. Chains hanging from shackles on his wrist. Perhaps he had been a prisoner. was still a prisoner. But this prison, if prison it was... dirt, dust, decay... no, not decay. Life, of a sort. He lived, of a sort. Could he free his hands? Or were they bound to the floor? A lift, a pull. No, they were bound to nothing save his arms. Old chains, rusted chains. They don't hold him. Could they ever have held him? A moment of thought, of memory, of... no, it is gone.

When had he slept? Had his arms been bound while he slept or while he waked? Sleeping, waking... all was darkness. A century of darkness. He rose to his feet, feeling the weight of the chains pull him towards the ground again, but strong enough to ignore it. Stronger than he should be, after a century of sleep. No sleep? Not a century? Where was he? Who was he? The questions were asked again, and there was no answer.

Dragging the chains on the ground behind him, he set out to find answers.

by **Sunset** » Tue Jan 14, 2014 1:38 pm

Five stems with five leaves with five spines... Pink to red to purple.

Kat counted them as she slipped past. Not on purpose. The five thing had just caught her eye. It was the most common plant she'd come across so far; Growing in wild profusion and coming up to nearly her chest. Below them were grasses of various kinds, some with tiny flowers in blue and gold all along their length and others straight stalks that came to sharp points. She'd learned to avoid the little open circles that they grew in but they were curious.

In the middle of some were small holes, perhaps dug by some animal, but not in others. Did they live together? It was also a good reason to avoid the circles. She didn't want to risk getting a toe caught in a hidden tunnel. Or nibbled on by some wild animal. Were they good to eat? She stopped and looked at the long, round shoot of brown and contemplated chewing on it. No.

She pressed on, looking up occasionally to see if she could spot whatever it was that she was moving towards. There it was, but it didn't seem to be getting any bigger. Either she wasn't making very good progress or it was very large already. Or was it moving away? She stood still for a moment, looking at it, and it didn't seem to be moving. It could still be moving though, if it was very large.

"Best to keep moving. If it is moving, I'll never catch up by standing still, and if it isn't, I'll never get there either!"

But it was only a hundred more steps before she was distracted from her goal in the sky by something more immediate. A single large rock turned into a row of stones which turned into a wall that turned into a building that sat in the little niche created by the wall. It was, at once, both familiar and foreign. Thick timbers had held up a series of transparent sheets to create something like a shelter. Or they had. Now they were tumbled and scattered; the sheets of material broken and ragged. But there was something beyond them, a cave.

Not quite a cave though. There was the feeling that it had been constructed. A regular shape despite it's irregular appearance. Leaning up against one of the timbers, she peered inside. It wasn't low inside: In fact it felt quite open. There had been other things inside; A low bench, a table, perhaps some bins. But these too were scattered and broken. But under these was something else. A door, built into the floor.

Kat turned to look over her shoulder at the long, graceful curve of the object that poked up above the trees. Should she go there? If there were other... people? Was that the right word? If there were other people, they'd head for it too, wouldn't they? But if there weren't then a shelter would be good too. She sat down on a large rock next to the tumble-down dwelling and stretched her legs. She looked at her four toes as they rippled and flexed. '

Stay, or go? The coffin had made the decision the first time, but now she had to make it. Was she a decision maker? A leader, or a follower...

by **Scolopendra** » Tue Jan 14, 2014 4:35 pm

With a grunt she prepared to shoulder open yet another sliding door of the kind the architect of this facility seemed to have liked so much.

That was one of the conclusions she'd come to during her very cautious exploration of the pitch blackness. This place was a 'facility,' not a 'home' or an 'attraction.' Starting from what she called The Capsule, she'd worked in a growing spiral and discovered several things. In order of discovery, they were:

One, a simple portable tray on casters. It was of light but durable construction, made of curvilinear sheet metal welded together. Its three legs supported an oval-shaped tabletop, upon which she had found--

Two, a long, thin cylinder with a stud on one side, a fluted end that ended in a rounded ball, and a wider cylindrical 'base' on the other end. The entire thing had the form factor of something like a pencil with a plastic bottlecap (but solid) on one end and the rounded end on the other. She had declared this The Candlestick and, finding that the lips of the ends would keep the stud from being accidentally pressed, immediately pocketed it.

Three, that she had pockets. She was wearing a close but not constricting jumpsuit made of a rough, durable material--something like thin canvas--over another tight, compressive garment made of elastic strings and panels with metal rings around her wrists and ankles and a stretchy lip around the base of her neck. Upon feeling them, she'd instinctively realized they were hers. The thin undersuit she recognized as a pressure garment after some additional poking and prodding, but it was missing its gloves and booties. This bothered her for some reason that made her brain bounce if she thought about it too much.

Four, that the room containing The Capsule was roundish. The architect and whoever stocked the room liked rounded, tall things. Most of the objects she felt were round and stretched in the vertical. She identified large pods about head high which were probably equivalent to cabinets, given the presence of latched handles--she guessed from feel, at least--and similar pods on the floor of presumably similar function. The floor-cabinets were topped with flat, empty counter space with the occasional depression with a hole in it, which suggested a sink, but searching around the rim of the sink and the wall next to it failed to reveal something she was expecting but her brain bounced when she tried to think of what exactly it was. Incomplete sinks, then.

Five, the door that was the only detectable exit from the room. It was also oval, with sills that extended out along its entire perimeter. It had a molded handle bolted to one side, but the door did not respond to pushing or pulling; instead, it slid into a recess in the wall. Gien the amount of effort she had to put into moving it, she figured either that whatever it slid on was stuck or clogged or she was working against some sort of inactive machinery.

Six, that sliding doors and curvy rooms were the standard of this facility. The oval door from the oval room opened up into a curved hallway, which may have been circular but could very well have been oval as well. She traced its inner diameter, then its outer; similar oval doors ringed both diameters. She couldn't easily estimate how long the hallway was or the size of the building based on it; it seemed rather large since she counted thirty-six doors on both sides of the hallway before returning to where she started (if she stretched her arms out, she could touch the both walls).

Hence she'd decided to start opening outer doors, muscling them open in turn. Most opened up into other ovoid rooms; more collections of cabinets and shelves but with central tables instead of additional Capsules. The outer rooms seemed larger. After three doors, she'd found a radial hallway. More interested in escape than exploration, she'd taken that outwards to another circular corridor, now with thirty-nine doors on the outside. Reasoning that the radial corridors would be immediately across from each other, she had--after carefully crawling down the circular corridor again to do this counting--simply headed for the door opposite the one she arrived from.

Which is where she was now. Braced against the door sill, fist tight around the handle, she heaved. The door started to move, got maybe a centimeter across, and stopped.

She grit her teeth and pulled harder.

The door failed to comply with her wishes.

Left panting, she felt the door. It was flat. She felt along its rim where it entered the wall. Gap at the top, couldn't feel anything towards the middle, gap at the bottom. She ran one fingernail along gap she found at the gap at the top. It got stuck about a third of the way down the side of the door.

The door wasn't flat, it was bowed inwards, towards her.

She tried leaning hard against it with one shoulder while pulling the handle again. She got it another centimeter, maybe, but then it stuck again. The metal the door was made of was too stiff for her to unbow with just her body, and she hadn't found anything that she could use as a lever.

Her exertions faded into the silence of the unlit Facility and she frowned to herself. "Okay," she said to herself, hearing it echo loudly (as far as she could tell) down the hall and back to her, "this door is stuck. There's thirty-six doors on the inside of this hallway, and thirty-nine on the outside. Thirty-six, thirty-nine. Thirty-nine minus thirty-six is three.

"At least I know how to subtract. Three, thirty-six, thirty-nine. Thirty-six over three is twelve. Thirty-nine over three is thirteen. So thirty-nine only has thirteen and three as factors, so that... means... hrm."

She would be happier if she could see what she was trying to figure out. She'd be happier if she could see anything. She rubbed her eyes and suddenly saw lights.

She paused, then applied gentle pressure to her closed eyelids. More glowing splotches. That struck her as normal, so she relaxed. She tried to remember if that meant anything and her brain bounced gently off the wall again. She thought a little more, aloud. "Okay, I'm in some sort of structure. Or construct. Anyway, it's circular. There should be more than one way to get anywhere. Unless it's a labyrinth. If I keep testing doors, then I should come across another hallway. Or I might find something in one of these rooms."

Returning to her hands and feet, just to be careful, she scuttled over to the next door before situating herself against the sill and getting ready to pull.

by **The Lunar Underground** » Tue Jan 14, 2014 11:56 pm

"For too long my brothers and sisters of the underground have perished. The Langsho empire is merciless killing our fellow underground members and their own civilians leveling towns even cities of their own! Only leaving nothing but ash and rubble behind... But from those ashes we rise willing to fight to free our people from this grasp and evil. And I red leader will end this reign of tyranny on our people.... but now will we prevail? Its up to you to prove!" ~ white noise

As moon turns of the radio he looks out of the armored car window only to catch the glare of the tactical gas-mask's against his eyes.

"Sir, they shut down the radio stations how will people hear your speech!"
As moon looks towards his adviser he reply's in a calm voice,
"You can't stop the seeds already planted."
"pardon me sir?"
Moon looking out the window, once again sighs and simply reply's.
"No matter if they can hear my speech or not they will fight for the cause with me red leader on their side!"
As the armored car pulls in to the hidden command center moon simply walks to the map room only to close the door and waits patiently to strike at the enemy.

by **Tseaby** » Wed Jan 15, 2014 12:07 am

It was quiet. It was really quiet. It was silent--, no not silent. If it was they would be able to hear the sounds of their own body. They? Their? They are a him! Her? Does it matter?

Yes, it matters. But... why does it matter? They sighed. That's when she... he... Alright, time to nip this in the bud. They felt over themselves.

Okay, she -- she's pretty sure this time -- she noticed the air. It was musty, and as she breathed in she felt herself tingling. How does one tingle? That doesn't sound right. I tingled today? I've been tingling idly? No matter. It was a good tingle, although she wasn't sure why. She noticed there was a lot of things she wasn't sure of. Like why she felt so good at that moment, even though she was in a dark place, presumably alone, with nothing but a small light blinking.

"Oh! Light!" she thought to herself. She blinked a few times, her eyes feeling dried out, trying to get a clearer view of the room she was in. A small green light, blinking on for a half second, off for a half second. She sat up, realizing she was in a rather sunken bed, if it was one. She immediately got dizzy and fell back onto the bed. Alright, no matter, I'll just let my body adjust and I'll try again. This has happened before, no big deal. Right? ... right? While lying there her mind started to wander, bouncing from subject to subject that involved absolutely nothing at all. That didn't make sense. "Fffff." She made a sound. She blinked a few times, surprised to hear it. She started to hum nothing in particular.

A minute or two passed and she sat up again. Much better this time! She leaned over the edge and saw the floor was lit, albeit barely, by some strip lighting around the base of the bed-type thing she was on. Swinging her legs up and over the side, she gently let her weight shift to her feet. They were about the only thing she could see in the dim light, although she had to bend forward a little to fully see them. She was wearing thin black socks with red lines, ending midway up her shin, giving way to equally thin leggings of some sort. She reached down and felt the material. It was smooth and slightly stretchy. She liked the socks. Nothing else made sense right now except for those socks.

Slowly she made her way over to the blinking light to see what it was, sliding her feet along the smooth floor, weary of banging her foot against something. She leaned over and looked at the blinking light. It was an indicator for something, but the entire panel was blackened. She scratched at the light and discovered the plastic top of it was melted and curled some. Why did she know what melted plastic looked like? She must have melted things before. "No matter,” she thought to herself, her inner voice getting more pronounced. She realized again she felt the tingling and quickly started shuffling about, looking for an exit of any sort. She didn't know why she was in such a hurry. It was a good tingle, after all. No, it felt good. Ahh, that's what it was. It just felt good... Oh! Right, finding an exit...

by **Senkaku** » Wed Jan 15, 2014 8:05 am

Krishna looked out over the wide, forested coastal plain that spread before him. Lush jungle, occasionally interspersed with hills and what appeared to be immense mounds of sand covered the whole area, rising up to gentle, not-too-tall mountains with razor-sharp ridges and lush green sides, striped with waterfalls. The lagoon below glittered a blinding blue, a peculiar formation of bubbles and vapor stretching in a small ring where Krishna presumed his pod had been.

But it's been hours since it sank. Surely all that should have dissipated by now? Apparently not. He put his arms out as the breeze picked up slightly, swaying the branch he surveyed the region from. What are those huge slag heaps? They look quite odd. And somehow menacing. I know! I'll make a list of things to do. First I go back to the pod, now that I sort of know where I am. Then I find food and water, if I can, and if I can't, I die within a few days. Then maybe I go look at a slag pile, and then I'll go from there. He frowned slightly, looking up, feeling some memory near the surface of his subconscious, but then it subsided, diving back into the deeps. He gritted his teeth and looked down at himself. His clothes had mostly dried, and now here he was, perched fifty feet off the ground at the top of this overgrown little hillock, and muttered a few half-hearted curses, looking around again.

Something flashed, up in the mountains, perhaps ten miles away. Something most definitely metallic glinted, reflecting the light of the afternoon sun, almost like one of the huge glass buildings that teetered like a child's blocks in his memory, needing only the slightest push of his vain attempts to remember to topple over like a house of cards.
Cards. That was something he remembered. He remembered playing cards. With who? Where? He had no idea. But now he smiled slightly as he felt the memory of playing cards burst into his kind like a breaching whale leaping from the waves, and looked back at the glinting whatever-it-was in the mountains.

Once I do everything else, I will figure out what that is.

30-odd minutes later

Krishna had decided to leave his clothes on shore while he went swimming. He wasn't sure, but he didn't think the salt water was good for them. He found he could swim just as well as he'd been able to earlier when he escaped his sinking pod, and was glad he hadn't forgotten that too. As he reached the ring of foam and vapor that surrounded the capsule's sinking site, he put his head underwater and looked down. It was blurry, and hurt his eyes, but he could see the pod, laying between two huge chunks of coral and surrounded by fish, around fifteen feet below.

After a deep breath, he dove down. Swimming underwater wasn't hard for him, and he easily crossed the short distance to the pod, which was laying on its side, which appeared to be blackened or scorched. Two long, glittering wings made of blue tiles had protruded from its sides on metal spars, but one had been smashed against the sea floor, and the other was missing some tiles and was clearly damaged. The rear of the vehicle- it definitely looked like a vehicle- was all nozzles and thrusters, as if for some rocket motor. Steam and bubbles were slowly rising from a smashed panel at the rear of the pod, from some machinery inside which also glowed. Krishna swam deeper, his lungs automatically regulating his oxygen use as he managed to get into place above the door to where he had been, which was only the front of the little pod. He could see the smashed control surfaces, shattered computer screens, and noticed there was a small case next to his seat, along with a folding device. Since they appeared to be the only things he could pick up, he grabbed them, slightly surprised by their weight, and looked around the room. He could read what everything said, but the frustrating thing was he didn't know what language it was even written in. It seemed to be several, but his lungs were starting to burn for air a little, so he pushed himself up and out of the pod's front section. There was writing along the sides, as well as several holes, as if for something to be launched out of, but Krishna ignored it and kicked for the surface, bursting into fresh air with a gasp and swimming slowly to shore. He used the long wrap of fabric that was his small turban to dry off, then put his clothes back on and sat in the sand, opening the case and putting the folding thing to the side. Inside were several things that he inexplicably recognized and knew what to do with, despite never recalling seeing before. He felt more memories shudder beneath the surface, trapped below the ice of his strange amnesia and looking for a way out, but he set the flashlight and first aid devices to the side, as well as the strange grey device with a single red button. Red buttons were bad, in general, he knew, so he didn't press it. He also removed the small, black handcuff thingy, and the bags that were labeled "dehydrated rations" and "hydration pack". Then he set to work on the unfolding the folded-up thing, and it sprang out to become a device about the length of his arm, with one end that appeared to be supposed to rest against his shoulder, and one end with some sort of nozzle or hole. Krishna experimentally pulled the small latchlike trigger down near the shoulder rest, and was surprised when the folding thing fired a projectile down towards the tree he'd been aiming at. The plasma fléchette went almost all the way through the great jungle beast, badly scorching it where it struck, and Krishna smiled slightly. Once he got the hang of this machine, food was not going to be a problem.

He repacked everything, including the seemingly-useless red button and the single handcuff, which, after experimental uses, had done nothing (though the red button had lit up and refused to stop blinking), and after eating part of the rehydration packet as directed on the back, headed back into the forest. It took another thirty-odd minutes to get back to his perch in the tree, and he looked down calmly at the sun as it sank towards the horizon.

The metallic building was still glinting.

by **Sunset** » Wed Jan 15, 2014 9:21 am

OOC: Gonna shoot yer eye out with that thing.

----

Sorting through the detrius in the earthen shelter, Kat poked through the contents of a small wooden bin. The bin itself would be useful, of course. A sturdy wooden framework that was then interwoven with the long leaves of the same five-frond plant she'd encountered earlier. But it was what was at the bottom that caught her eye.

They were seeds of some kind, long and narrow, and there were a lot of them. Were they still good? Did she even know how to plant them? She did know they were seeds, so that was something right there. Plucking them out of the basket she put them in one of her pockets. The basket could be used for other things; things like...

"Hmm. What could I put in the basket?"

There were shards of the transparent material that had formed the angled outer wall of the shelter laying around. She picked one up, carefully, and ran it along one of the planks that made up part of the wooden bench. It wasn't a deep cut, but the transparent material didn't seem to be dulling either. So it was a knife now. Several more shards, long and narrow, went into the bin. Another quick search and a few pieces of wood joined them. They were already thin and dry, so maybe they'd be good for handles?

"What about this?" she nudged at the door in the floor with a toe. It wasn't a very heavy looking door, enough to support her weight but not more than that. She'd already been side-tracked by the shelter. Investigating the door and whatever lay beyond it might take the rest of the day, or it might take a minute. She opened the door.

"Ew."

It was a cellar, but only a few feet deep, and it was full of mushy melons and other fruit. But after a moment she realized that even this was a good thing and she sat down on her haunches to survey the contents. Whoever had lived here had eaten these things, so if she found more, she could reasonably assume they were safe.

"Good to know."

Dropping the trap door with a rattling thud, she picked up her bin and looked around again. Nothing else caught her eye and she walked out to look at the shelter one last time from the outside. Someone had lived here once, presumably, and had picked those fruit and made this bin. But who? There wasn't any clues as to who or what had built the structure. No artwork, no carvings. Just a forlorn little earth ship.

Turning her back on it, she looked up to spot the long curving arch of whatever it was in the distance and nearly tripped as her toe caught on something.

"The hell?"

A quick search of the ground brought about another find, but it was more grisly than the last. A bone, long and yellow, lay half-buried in the soil. She didn't recognize it but then again she couldn't remember seeing her own bones either. She just knew it was a bone.

"Could be an animal," she said to herself, kneeling to pluck at it. It came out of the ground quite easily, despite it's size, and she turned it over in her hands. It was nearly as long as her arm, but felt very light for it's size. What did that mean? She didn't know, but it went into the bin. At worse it was a club. At best, it might be a clue she could ponder later.

by **The Elsani City States** » Wed Jan 15, 2014 10:18 am

Crunch goes the silvery metal cylinder as it topples from its' earthen perch to the long grass below. It had apparently been sitting atop that mound of discarded-looking earth for some time, waiting for some unfathomable reason to discharge the one that slept within.
Oh dear oh dear. is the occupant's first thought when they come to. A slender green-toned humanoid, clad in now torn grey jumpsuit and the earth she'd hit, hard. That reality comes to her swiftly, a searing pain in her right arm bringing some sense to the still dazed creature.
"Whuh..?" her first utterance, followed by wincing. Left to stare up at the sky, a moment of wonder before she would brush a hand through light brown hair and attempt to get her bearings.
She knew she had to. She knew she had to be closer to others, yet she is alone. She knew, instinctively felt that desire, yet the pain in that arm and the reality of her status makes her frown in disappointment.
Stumbling to her feet, pondering her surroundings. Grass. Earth, a looming something barely visible in the distance. An Ow is followed by an urge to leave, to get away, to flee that cylinder-prison. She doesn't know why she must, yet flee she does.
Whatever she is, she does not quite understand, but it seems her instincts compel her to find others, shelter, and something to numb that pain.

Names-the who's of this woman-are not her priority.

by **Scolopendra** » Wed Jan 15, 2014 8:09 pm

Shouldered up against the sill of the next door, she braced and pulled and was once again blind, but it was a white blindness instead of a black one. Closing her eyes tight didn't help; the light poured through her eyelids and she felt herself tear up in response. She covered her eyes with one arm while she continued to pull with the other, needing to get out a little more than she needed to be excessively cautious.

A warm, moist breeze blew in from the widening aperture, only wet compared to the dryness of the air inside. She pulled the door fully open then retreated to the far end of the extended sill, laying up against the wall as her eyes adjusted. She pulled her arm away as that stopped hurting, and the white turned green, and she opened her lids a sliver to peer in vain through the tears trapped between her lashes. She opened them more fully as soon as it didn't hurt to do so, and she saw a large egg-shape of light on the wall opposite the door she'd just opened. The wall was a pastel purple, a flowery shade in her mind, and glossy. It wasn't perfectly smooth; it looked as though it had been painted in several layers. Carefully, she pivoted around the door sill, half out of caution as to what may be on the other side and half to let her eyes adjust naturally even as she squinted again.

It was bright, and the brightness faded a little, and it was another oval room except this one didn't have a far end. The floor extended until it cracked and disappeared except for the occasional bent girder; the ceiling did similar, but it disappeared more quickly. Tiles that had made up the ceiling now added to the floor in sharp shards, and the wall towards the previous door, the stuck one, buckled inwards towards her. Crumpled pods she recognized as cabinets either hung limply from the walls or were smashed together in the end furthest from the bright void. That void quickly resolved itself into what she could only imagine were towers; round, made of stone or metal, she guessed, based on the weathering; the light colors eroded away towards dusty tones and rust. The rest of the room was crumpled metal, bits of plastic, ceramic shards of various colors. Unlike the rest of The Facility, the room had bits of dust in the corners.

She looked at the arrangement of the walls, floor, and ceiling again. One wall was peeled in towards her. The other buckled outward. The floor was straight until it dropped steeply, extended further in thought by girders that ended in jagged twists. The same above, but closer to her door, with the occasional wire hanging down like a forgotten shoelace, and a wide, flexible plastic tube towards one corner, hanging down, waving gently in the breeze as it dangled.

She smirked inappropriately at it for a moment, then chided herself for doing so. She wasn't certain why.

Anyway, obviously there'd been an explosion. Somewhere higher up and off to the left, she figured. That at least could explain why The Facility was abandoned--or at least seemed to be abandoned. It didn't explain why she was still there. If it was evacuated, why wasn't she evacuated? Was she not worth evacuating? Did they just forget about her?

"Thanks a lot, guys," she said to no one present to mask her hurt that no one could see. Her voice got lost somewhere between The Facility and the buildings she could see dozens of meters away. Looking down at the floor, she wondered if it could be trusted. Looking up at the ceiling, towards some nearby wires, she figured they'd make serviceable ropes and wondered if any of them still carried a current. It seemed unlikely, but she didn't get the feeling she regularly took chances. She instead looked back down and scanned the debris. The ceramic shards looked sharp; there were some curvy strips of metal she presumed were once the legs of another tray table and a coppery bent pipe within arm's reach of the door. Kneeling down on the sill she leaned out, hanging from the doorframe with one hand, and retrieved a shard, a strip, and the pipe.

She looked at the coppery pipe, then at the wires again. These two objects were related because... bounce. Well, she didn't want to touch the wires because she'd get shocked--shocked, that's it, the wires could shock the pipe. Copper conducts electricity. This recognition felt like it came naturally to her. She knew about electricity, then.

She looked at the pipe, at the wire, at the painted metal wall. It'd be a way to check if it was powered--throw the pipe between the two, hopefully contacting both, and if there was current, there'd be a spark. She hefted the pipe in one brawny arm--she could see now that her jumpsuit was orange and the undersuit black--judged its weight, then pitched it to complete her grounding test circuit.

The pipe missed by a clean country mile, bouncing off the wall, then the floor, then flew out into the air and disappeared from view. After a few seconds she recognized that she should be counting time, so she started counting very softly, slowly, to herself. She didn't even get to one before she heard a quiet but sharp metallic clang. How far was that?

Anyway, she was out a pipe. She looked at the metal strip. Maybe that would work. It was also somewhat longer, so it'd be easier to bridge the distance. She let it fly and it struck too high, bouncing off the ceiling, then the wall, then the floor, then out into space. This time she counted to four. That, she knew, meant she was very high up.

So far for all her troubles she'd only acquired a shard of ceramic, and there wasn't much she could do with that by herself. Her jumpsuit seemed sturdily built but she didn't want to risk using it as a safety rope; that was the point where she recognized her risk-aversion was getting close to being counterproductive. She looked at the wire. It was within arm's reach, just on this side of easily so. The Facility was, as far as she could tell, dead. It had no windows. Without power, it couldn't operate with no windows, so it made sense that since it was dark as a cave inside the wire had to be unpowered. Convinced but gritting, she snapped her arm out and grabbed the wire.

Nothing happened.

"Of course," she muttered to herself as she leaned back, drawing the wire out from the ceiling. It must've been severed somewhere because it came easily, and for her efforts she gained about nine meters of electrical cabling. She tied it off to the door handle--she could tie knots, she realized, and do so by instinct to boot--and then hung off of it on the hallway side to test its strength, bouncing up and down a little. Both the wire and the handle held. Content, she wrapped the other end around her waist a few times and tied that off with a sturdy knot and, with her safety line, ventured into the only lit room she'd found so far. She kept close to the near wall, moving over to the cabinets. The first one she reached was from the opposite side of the room and door-side down; she kneeled down and flipped it over. Its door flopped open as she moved it; out tumbled a cascade of small plastic containers shaped like tiny jugs with rubber stoppers on top. These seemed like something she shouldn't fool with, so she continued to explore.

Eventually, she came up with another sturdy strip of metal, a length of rubbery tubing, a small roll of thick plastic film--she recognized it as important, but she couldn't make herself know why--and a few empty squarish metal bowls or pans she could stack into each other easily enough. After depositing her gains on the safe, hallway-side of the door, she ventured out carefully to the edge of the destroyed room and looked down.

It was a long way down.

Oddly enough, she realized the sudden vertiginous sensation didn't bother her so much as cause her to instinctively lean back a little so if she fell, she'd fall backwards. Taking advantage of this, she looked around. As far as she could tell, she was in a roughly cylindrical building. Looking up, a large hemispherical chunk had been taken out of it and a great deal of the upper floors immediately above the hole had sheared off and fallen down into a rubble pile below. What hadn't collapsed revealed a structure that looked like a cross-section of a plant stem: circular walls all butted up against one another, split by rings and, where the analogy broke down, radials. She counted the number of exposed floors on the opposite side of the hole roughly level with her; she guessed she was easily about thirty stories up.

This meant that to escape she'd have to somehow descend thirty stories in the darkness of the stable interior.

That thought made her frown as she carefully pulled herself back towards the door.

by **Tseaby** » Wed Jan 15, 2014 11:58 pm

“Well this isn't good,” she stated plainly in her mind, putting fists on her hips and looking annoyed at what was probably a wall. Her eyes seemed to have adjusted as best they could to the very dim light, but it was too centrally located to help her make out what was on the walls. She hopped up and down, feeling around as she did so. The soft sound of her feet hitting the floor echoed in the quiet room. Maybe echo location could work. She knew blind people managed to make use of it for navigation... Maybe. Where did she know that from?

She huffed in annoyance at not being able to remember things, then immediately regretted it. A shock from the sharp intake of whatever was in the air made her nose start to burn like she just ate a pepper. Spicy peppers are good, though. They're red, like the stripes on my socks. Just don't eat the seeds straight up. So there's that. She knew she liked her socks and that peppers were good. This might be useful if I could get OUT OF THIS BLASTED ROOM, she yelled in her mind, kicking at the base of the bed-thing, and once again immediately regretted what she did.

Ouch number two. Note to self, try thinking first.

She looked down at the bed, feeling up the shadows to make out the rounded shape of it. I was packed like a... a... what gets packed in cylinders? Jam? Ugh. She put her hand on her face and breathed out in a rather staccato manner, sort of laughing at herself. She stood for a moment before hefting her short self up – Short in comparison to what? – and lying back down in the bed, noticing her chest tingling as it settled. Oh, right. That. Too bad. I can deal with that in the morning.

Minutes passed as she lay there, her body all over tingling now. She was enjoying it. A lot. Something in her mind kept telling her to leave, but she was too darn comfy in this thing. She reached up and pulled down the cover until it clicked closed. Huh, how did I know that was there. To close it. That was weird. Wait... No, lost the plot again. It so nice and warm. I'll deal with this tomorrow.

by **Sunset** » Thu Jan 16, 2014 8:33 am

Morning.

The second day.

Pink light slid across Kat's face. Slipping between the cracks it tickled her eyes and she awoke with a yawn and a long stretch. Even late into the evening it had stayed warm and when she'd finally tired it had seemed best to just settle down at the base of a tree and get some sleep. Perhaps not the best place to sleep, as the needles and bits of leaves stuck to her arms might attest, but it had served.

Pushing herself up, she looked around her impromptu bedroom. The bin was still there, along with the half-dozen fruit she'd picked along the way. The inventory she'd made from the cellar had been accurate, or at least she hadn't thrown up yet, and she grabbed another one of the stiff-skinned multicolored fruit and took a bite out of it. It was sweet but there was a tang to it as well. An acidity that just touched the edge of her tongue.

"Rum?"

"What's rum?" she mused aloud. She'd taken to talking to herself a lot more. She hadn't found anyone else, of course, and that verbal musing had brought up another point as well. "Where are the animals?"

She'd seen birds, insects, and other small creatures, but nothing larger. Were they keeping their distance? She'd slept in the open last night... She looked around her campsite. No prints, nothing missing, no... What would she be looking for, anyway? Was she a tracker? It didn't feel right.

Then she looked up.

There it was. Whatever it was. It was quite enormous, that's for sure. A huge arcing span of white and gray that spread from a jagged point high above her to a wider base perhaps four or five times as wide somewhere nearby. That's what her destination was. When she held her hand up, her finger just about covered the jagged tip. At the base, both fingers.

There was also something hanging off of it on either side. From this close she could see some details. It seemed to be mostly-transparent, something like the material she'd scavenged from the shelter, with a pattern on or in it.

A while later, judged by nothing more than a feeling that time had passed, she found some of it. A large tile with six sides, it seemed to be made of exactly the same material she had in her bin. Looking up she could see where the tile had fallen out of a larger section and plunged to the ground. It was as big as she was though, useless for anything immediate, and she left it where it had fallen. The grass had mostly grown up around it and that also said something about how long it had been there.

https://dragcave.net/user/Bellumsaur13 · by **Saurisisia** » Thu Jan 16, 2014 12:25 pm

Brutus awoke with a growl to find himself in a confuined, dark space with nothing but the occasiuonal blinking light to suffice for actual ligfhting. His saurian snout barely had room to move and his tail was tucked behind him in an awkward and rather painful way. Worse, it felt like there was a slight tremor every once and a while, like whatever he was trapped in was being gently shaken by some unseen giant. He knew he had to get out of here so he could figure out where he was and how he even got here in the first place. So he tried every manner possibleto and push against every nook and cranny in his tight, dark prison. Finally, he realized that the wall in front of him seemed to move when he tried to shove against it with his left shoulder. Realizing that was where he had to apply the pressure, he began repeatedly pressing against the wall, each time increasing in force. At last, he managed to force it open only to be blinded by the bright sunlight outside of his confinement. When his sensitive eyes adjusted, he leaned forward only to see there was a considerable drop below him. Looking around, Brutus could see that whatever he was in was perched on some sort of cliffside, barely on level ground.

Brutus peered all around him, trying to formulate a plan on how to escape without plummeting to his death below. Once that was done, he began carrying that out, gently leaning forward in a way that wouldn't push his cramped prison over the edge and he tried to grab hold of an edge of the "doorframe" to the container in which he had been trapped in. Stretching his left leg as he leaned out toward the edge, he slowly put his digitgrade three-toed foot on the cliff and then gradually, through a series of bodily contortions, he managed to set foot on solid ground. It was fortunate indeed he had such an athletic, flexible body otherwise it would have been impossible. Calming down, he sat by the towering pillar of rock above him as he eyed his former prison, which looked appropriately like a dark coffin before it at last tumbled down off the cliff. Now that he was free, there was still the matter of figuring out how to get off this cliff, which would have to wait a while for Brutus just wanted to rest for a bit after that tail-raising escape.

by **Midlonia** » Thu Jan 16, 2014 2:12 pm

Call my name and save me from the dark.
Wake me up.
Bid my blood to run.
I can’t wake up.
Before I come undone.
Save me.
Save me from the nothing I’ve become.

~Wake Me Up, Evanescence.

Movement within the pod, a body stirring, slow and clumsy at first as if it didn’t understand what was going on. Finally the flaining and hitting of the fists against the top of the capsule yielding the judder of an old motor, finally moving the pod lid to one side. Fingers clawed at the revealed edge before turning it further.

Hands gripped the edge as the figure slowly pulled themselves upright. Tousled, confused hair, dirty smudge marks covered the face of the man as he looked slowly around him. Pale, yellowy, eyes explored every inch of the room before they slowly pulled themselves out. The clothes were simple, three quarter trousers covered in pockets and a simple shirt. Both soaked through thanks to the capsule. The figure tugs at them a little, then removes the shirt and shorts, putting them onto a surface after checking it for dampness.

The figure pats themselves down and then removes the boxers he was wearing also, placing them on another surface. He looked around, checking cupboards within the room. His capsule is the only one in there and he frowns, comprehending what exactly is going on but then shaking his head in annoyance when whatever memory he tries to call upon inevitably fails.

He licks his lips and looks back at the capsule, it still contains moisture and he runs his finger along the lid, gathering some and sucking it off of his finger. He does this a few times and then looks towards the solid metal door at the end. There’s a crack of sunlight at the very bottom where it has become twisted.

His frown deepens as his initial efforts to open it yield no fruitful result. His fingers coming away the moment he feels the sharpness of the metal against them. He looks back into the room, searching for something that might help him open the door. After throwing around a few of the empty boxes that litter the room, he finds a section of pipe, looking at the pipe and its thickness it would be too big to fit under the door. Looking around again he finds another, heavier looking block of loose metal, lifting it carefully he brings it down a few times on the pipe, bending the end until it’s flat enough to fit under the door.

Wedging the pipe into the crack of sunlight he throws his weight into getting it open. The begins to scream in protest as it begins to move, slow and sluggish the man is sweating by the time the door is even remotely open for him to look out into the bright, outside world.

What greets him is about two feet of corridor, followed by more of the presumably same corridor with a twenty foot gap in between.

Ah.

He tugs on the door some more, perhaps he isn’t that far off of the ground and he can drop down onto the hillside this corridor is presumably a part of, and then find out what exactly has happened.

The door groans in protest some more before giving way with a sudden crash and shudder of metal. He steps forward carefully and looks down, noticing the steep, but tolerable hillside.

Then the entire room he’s in shudders and tips forward, whatever metal holding it up giving way with a crunch as the whole room suddenly, and inexorably begins to slide down the hillside.

Not knowing what else to do, the man throws himself behind the doorframe as the entire room tilted and shakes and roars as it careens down the hillside, eventually it smashes into a pillar and comes to a rest at a 45 degree angle.

The man inside, is knocked unconcious again. Darkness retaking him.

by **The Fedral Union** » Thu Jan 16, 2014 4:35 pm

Bannons Dilemma

Issac's eyes shot open the blurry images they took in quickly became sharp and clear. with a hiss the hatch to his pod had unlatched , the blinding light of the sun and pinkish sky beat upon him making him squint. Issac sat up slowly, his mind still foggy from his long slumber slowly regained its astute and sharp barrings. Issac looked around it was only a moment before he had realized his situation, his pod and himself teetering by a hairs width over a cliff ledge.

His heart began to beat faster and adrenaline flowed through his every muscle, the pod shifted lightly; here he was at the edge of a massive gorge the edge of a vast abyss that bellow was lined with jagged rock formations. He nervously and precariously looked down, wishing he hadn't as it only confirmed his fears, each time the pod teetered on this brink to its doom his body almost had a spasm in panic.

Time slowed for him, the result of a instinctual reaction to his peril. He had no time to think, only to react, regaining his composer he snapped his head around looking from any possible escape route., Issac spotted his way out, a petrified log just behind the pod; cautiously he began to move slowly planting his hands upon the back side of the pod, Issac could feel the cool silvery metal with his nimble digits. He placed a hand on the log grasping what he could grab firmly, he began slowly hoisting himself out of his would be tomb.

Again the pod shifted this time violently with a scrape on the ground, it almost sent the good doctor tumbling back to add terminal pressure to the balanced stasis unit, Issac grit his teeth reaching with his left arm toward the log grasping it. With a grunt Issac pulled himself up, the slender silver pod finally tipped behind him right as his legs were upon it. The support for Issac’s legs began a quick trip toward the bottom of the gorge the echos of it scraping and clanging loudly against the side of the cliff rang in his ears.

The hunting noise of what could have been his demise was clear in his ears. His legs struck the side of the cliff, the jagged rocks taring through his tan flight suit and in to his smooth skin. Without noticing nor thinking of his laceration he pulled himself up along the cliff wincing and straining. Finally he sat at the edge solidly on ground, Issac panting and reeling from his ordeal looked over once again. This time he had cheated death, only just barely and hardly unscathed.

Again his mind muddled in thought of what could have been, his untimely demise on a strange unknown world. The pain from his gash sunk in to his mind as his adrenaline wore off, he winced and gazed down at his leg. Red viscous blood dribbled down his leg from that gaping gash, Issac examined it closely-touching it with two fingers, the stinging sensation cascaded through his body his digits now covered in his own life liquid. After a few moments of examination however he had determined that it wasn't serious, it was deep for sure but it wasn't immediately life threatening.

The thought of infection came to mind but he figured he had no time to worry about that right now, he had more pressing matters to attend to and questions he needed or wanted answered. Where the hell was he, where was this place, and for that matter how and why was he here. Nothing made sense, the memories of anything relating to this place were obscured behind a veil of blank memory, no matter how hard he tried to remember he just couldn't. He looked around the warm wind gusting over him, Issac stood up, He was tall unimposing but not easily missed had brown hair blue eyes and a five o’clock shadow across his face, he appeared middle aged and donned a tan flight suit that fit semi snugly to his thin form.

Issac looked around he surveyed the abyss bellow far and near then looked behind him up toward a higher outcropping that seemingly lead away from this place. Issac placed a hand over his olive skinned face the features of which were made darker by the odd lighting under this alien sky. For a moment he lay in thought, for now he couldn't dwell on his failure to recall the events that lead him hear and it was no use sticking around. He had no resources, no gear it was just him and his wits. ”Fuck..”

He muttered to himself, upon his survey he failed to find an easy way up that cliff face to the ledge above. Issac let out an exasperated sigh, and decided he had no alternative but to make the trek up by climbing, and so he walked across the lip he was on forgoing all the questions to the back of his head and clamped his hands upon the rocky outcroppings of the short face. Issac strained and began to make his way up, “Gah!” the doctor lost his grip on his right hand a rock went tumbling down with a crackle and knock he hung there for a second by his left arm struggling before clamping his right hand to a rock above his left.

After what seemed to him an eternity of climbing Issac reached the summit of his trek, he hoisted himself up over the ledge and on to the grassy plateau. Sweat beaded on Issac’s forehead and began to drip down stinging his eyes for a moment, it was humid with only a warm breeze from the south west to alleviate the heat. Again the doctor looked around, he could see behind him the death trap he had left and before his eyes directly ahead a small track of jungle; it was thin enough that he could just barely make out patches of sky between the thick fern like leaves of the trees. To his right and left was merely the cliff face running parallel to the gorge, meekly Issac made his way forth, his eyes glancing around focusing upon the ground mainly.

Batting some foliage out of the way the doctor trekked through the small sliver of under brush, he had no idea where he was going but the first thing that came to his mind was shelter. On the other side of the trees and bushes he could see the vast expanse of white sandy coastline that from either end seemed to stretch for an infinity to the naked eye. The brakes of the waves from the crystal clear water made a noise that he could hear even from this distance, the sound of ocean the tranquil and yet in this instance haunting noise that brought yet more questions to the doctors mind.

Again Issac delayed his thoughts, having no time to revel in them so far everything while eerie was uneventful, or so least Issac had thought; he hadn't been the subject of a random “surprise” from this strange new place. It felt almost surreal in a way, whilst looking around Issac spotted an incline down to the shore, he quickly made his way toward it his feet crunching on the ground bellow. As he reached the sandy bottom a sudden deafening noise reverberated in his mind it was as if his body was in a vibrating chair for that moment. Startled Issac snapped his head in every direction, his eyes narrowed as he spotted something, right above him perched high on the edge the plateau.

It wasn't anything like Issac had seen before, it had a long body with a sizable mid section and a black segmented armor like shell with vast moth like wings that clearly had an intricate pattern about them; legs that were at a glance pointed at the tips with foreboding serrated spines around them, its large claws and sharp mandibles for a mouth gave it an almost sinister appearance at last its crimson red eyes situated on each side of its head slightly protruding seemed to individually move scanning all around. The creatures whiskers twitched, its mighty mandibles opened once more to let out a few smacks and clicks then a roar the same scale as before. Issac was petrified, for a moment he couldn't move the being seemingly looked right at him piercing his very soul with its predatory gaze.

Issac snapped out of his trance and quickly darted down the shore, the sand his feet pounded against flew in all directions. He stumbled trying to maintain his balance, Issac didn't look back he didn't have the heart too, the mammoth beast flew overhead in chase its large wings flapping seamlessly, surprisingly for its size it seemed to easily catch up to Issac. The doctor could hear another roar and a series of clicks, he glanced behind only to find more of an incentive to run as fast as he could. The being swooped lower and lower its feet poised by design to snatch and impale any prey it might be chasing, in this case Issac.

Issac closed his eyes and darted to the left, he dove in to the ground near some rocks the instant the creature came with in inches of him, its massive wings creating a gust of wind that bore down upon him and kicked up the sand in a furious whirlwind of dust. Issac crawled he looked up watching as this thing began to come over for another pass, he noticed an opening in to the rock it looked like a cave, without a second thought he stood up and ran for it. Once more he could feel the wind or even the very breath of this monster as he thought against his skin making the hairs on the back of his neck stand up and goose bumps appear over his body. He dove in to the cave which turned out not to be a cave at all but a tunnel. “Son of a bitch, fuck.” Issac exclaimed and mumbled to himself, he looked out toward were he came in from, no sign of that thing.

Issac exhaled with a sign of relief , he rested for a second. Sweat dribbled down his face and on to the sandstone ground bellow, he was covered in sand and black dust from the cliff he had to climb. To his astonishment he was alive. His thoughts once again receded in to a tense calm, he focused on his shelter issue and noted that while this place was open at two ends it seemed as good a place as any to set up shop per-say. He looked and gazed around, he noticed the perfectly smooth texture of the walls, and then upon closer examination something stood out.

Blue paint, specificity figures and objects runes and even a few depictions of that creature so it seemed that had chased him. This entire ordeal, this affair was infusing the inquisitive doctor with so many unanswered questions it almost made his head spin. It frustrated him, and gnawed at him that he couldn't remember a thing about what transpired to land him in this world, this world that was turning out to be a death trap. He studied these symbols and paintings as he sunk to his knees.

by **Scolopendra** » Thu Jan 16, 2014 7:12 pm

The instant she found what she figured to be an elevator shaft was the instant she knew she'd be climbing down the hard way. In the pitch blackness, well away from the little light admitted by the doors she left open behind her, that there was no floor as far as she could reach made her stomach turn. Gritting her teeth and cursing her stubbornness, she stretched her arm as far as she could reach all around the open door, pressing herself up against the frame. She felt pipes, but nothing she could identify as a ladder. The clangs and huffs of her explorations reverberated back to her from above and below, distorted into the warbling noises of hunting machine-animals. She figured she could make a harness from her wire, slide down the pipe... maybe... until of course it was bolted to the wall somewhere and she'd be stuck against a wall, no idea how high up, nothing within reach--

She breathed in the warm sunlight, catching her breath. She hadn't ran; that would've been dangerous. She simply walked very, very quickly. Her back up against what was now an outer wall, shattered facade in front of her, cabinets full of bottles she didn't want to risk using. The Facility was designed to be used while it was alive. Now that it was very clearly dead, it was... inimical to life. She looked out at what little bit of the city-scape she could see through the missing wall across from her. Empty, with only the sound of the breeze brushing against the buildings. Windows broken in the skyscrapers across from her, the occasional flap of something behind. A city, in the classical vein, all concrete and steel and designed for a very specfic kind of life and its hangers-on. Not designed for anything else.

She sighed and picked herself back up off the wall that still existed. She'd have to make it work. Uncoiling the wire from around her shoulder, she sat cross-legged and started molding it into the shape she wanted.

The descent was actually aided by the fact that the cabling was stiffer than a proper rope. Wrapped in her harness, put the loop on the far end around a girder; lower herself down hand under hand until her bare feet touched the next floor down; lift the loop off the exposed girder, and repeat. It was easy.

That was when she was walking to the next girder and the floor gave way under her with a crack. That allowed her to go flat before it snapped and slammed into the next floor down, rolling her like a bowling pin up across the tile and up against a wall of plastic cabinets with a hollow thump. Coughing from the dust, she looked at her right foot as it stung. A thin gash crossed the top, red blood flowing freely out of it. That was both good and bad, she recognized, and she brought the foot up to her hands, holding it above her torso to keep the blood in her body from draining out to it. Red poured through her green fingers as she applied pressure and then, after about thirty seconds, it oozed. Within a minute it stopped.

She gently pulled away her fingers and looked at the freshly scabbed-over wound. She knew, somehow, that she should apply pressure for longer. She also knew that, for whatever reason, she didn't have to. This was just something that she did.

She looked at the blood on her hands and, making a face, wiped them off imperfectly on the sides of her jumpsuit. It was sticky and nasty and gross, and then it stopped being sticky and started being flakey. She sat for a few good minutes brushing her hands against increasing areas of her suit, the arms and legs, just to get the flakes off. Her hands were now brown rather than their healty green, but she sighed and decided it would have to do. She suddenly recognized that she felt wet and squishy and dirty and miserable from her exertions and all that was, somehow, worse than being thirsty and hungry. It was easier to ignore the latter two for now.

She picked herself back up and kept making her way down, being more cautious on the transitions from here on in, tracing the girders back to the walls and out to the edges. The Facility changed as she descended, from metal and plastic Labs to plastic and fabric offices--here she stopped to tear apart some fabric walls to create makeshift wraps for her feet and prepare bandages--then worked her way lower still to what started looking like Homes, made of fabrics and soft things and decorations. She was still ten floors up when the sun disappeared behind the 'scrapers. It'd get dark quickly, she figured, so she stopped where she was and started scrounging.

The doors and rooms were still oval, but no longer made of metal or mechanical or even particularly sturdy, everything being made of what seemed to be a thin fiber layer, like stretched starched canvas, over the building's structural steel skeleton. The fibers were dyed directly rather than painted in flowing... 'patterns' would have been inaccurate. Flowing streams. Yellow and red and green tigerstripes in a fantastic palette that certainly didn't jog any memories in her. The furniture appeared to be made of some sort of light, thin wood, lacquered, and thngs which looked like crosses between chairs and egg cups were padded with a squishy cottony material bound inside soft fabrics. She pocketed some 'cotton' poking out of holes in the upholstery, and wandered into what screamed 'kitchen' in her brain. Lots of flat counters, like above, but in the same lighter construction of everything else.

She opened all the cabinets.

Most of them were bare, except for some plastic jugs like family-sized versions of the ones she had seen in The Facility above. She sighed, took one, and uncorked it at arm's length. She smelled ammonia. Corking that one, she took the next and uncorked that. She smelled alcohol.

She could use that. She corked it again and, with a strip of fabric torn from a 'chair,' she made a makeshift belt to tie it onto. Symbols on the jug suggested writing to her, but she couldn't read it; maybe she was illiterate. Then again, she had made the mistake of wondering if she was blind before, so she didn't dwell on it.

The next room revealed a cushion on the floor and a large, open-topped ceramic vessel like a bathtub in one corner. On the cushion was a flat disc made of a floppy, soft fabric with several strings hanging out of the center; a thin glass hexagon the size of a small book with barely visible wires embedded within it, and several small plastic channels or sleeves, much like those that serve as the edges of cheap picture frames. None of these items struck her as immediately interesting so instead she gravitated towards the tub, which was surrounded by a series of fluffy fabric strips she couldn't help but identify as towels even though they were shaped oddly, like fat tildes or stylized 'S' shapes. This made her consider that other than in the vertical, she'd not seen an intentionally exposed straight line if anyone could possibly help it.

She also considered that she was icky and smelly and so, on an impulse, felt around the tub for controls. The light from outside the door grew too dim, so she quickly punched some holes through the wall (after knocking first to dodge any beams) for more light and thus found levers on the tub. She pulled one.

Something deep past the tub rattled, and then brown liquid shot in from one side. She recoiled, watching the brown fluid swirl down the bowl-shape of the tub and into a drain at the bottom. The fluid then cleared, and she dared to dab it with the tip of one pinkie finger. It didn't burn, so she dipped her whole pinkie in. Still no burning. Retracting it, she gingerly tasted it, and found nothing to comment on other than her own salt and iron.

She took a good, long drink after that. Then she stripped for a bath, but the tub shuddered again and the water stopped flowing. "Spite," she said more forcefully than she meant to. Looking at the alcohol jug, she wet one of the smaller towel-analogs with a bit of alcohol and rubbed it over her, scrubbing out where she felt worst. She ignored any burning from irritation or freezing as it evaporated off her skin, then grabbed more towels to create a little nest on the cushion that she could crawl under for warmth. It still wasn't too dark to see, but she was done for today.

*-*-*

Hours later she arose and looked over her things now that they weren't on her. The elastic undersuit actually came in two pieces--she had undone them instinctively the previous dusk--and had hard plastic bits along the groin and the sides of the ribs. She pulled it on and, after clearing her mind, sealed it back together along its high waist; she felt as though her body settled into it like a horse into a well-known saddle. That was the metaphor that popped into her head. She shrugged and looked over her orange and blood-brown jumpsuit. It was a jumpsuit and it meant nothing to her other than it was hers, so she put it on and, after making a bindle out of a towel, collected her finds, put her harness back on, and got back to making it to ground level.

At two stories up the rubble pile from the collapsed section just about met up with the floor, so she unmade her harness and coiled it back up. The Apartment there was more of the same but in different colors, much more furniture, and a wide variety of bric-a-brac rendered absolutely unidentifiable and completely useless by the minor apocalypse that had shorn off half the floor space. She still looked around, though, and found nothing but a series of long fabric tubes of stretchy fabric, closed on one end, and covered with a rubbery material. They resembled large socks to her, so she rolled two up and put them on over her wrappings and the hems of her jumpsuit.

Then it was a simple leap over to rubble pile and walking down a collection of shards and metal girders and concrete chunks, and she was glad for the shoe-socks. She smelled old meat, so she kept going once she hit the street, just picking a direction and heading down it. Constructs weren't for living in once they were dead, and this place was dead. The pavement, more curved tiles by the look of it, extended neatly down the street as buildings rose up on either side. It was relatively swept-clean--except for debris from the collapse--with anything that could move in the wind already swept into corners and crannies. She had a strange feeling that there were things missing, but of course her mind bounced when she tried to remember what. All she saw was buildings and streets that came right up to the foundation of the circular buildings. No life or signs of life of any kind, except for the occasional fabric banner or solid sign hanging from posts extending from the structures and waving in the wind.

Of course, as she walked--even in the shade as she chased it while the sun slid slowly through the sky--she started getting thirsty again, and all she had was rubbing alcohol. That would be a problem. She was still hungry, but she knew, somehow, that addressing that before her water situation was secure would only make things worse.

Still, there was nothing she could do but walk. So walk she did.

by **Tseaby** » Fri Jan 17, 2014 12:23 am

She awoke to tears streaming down her face, gasping for air as she threw the lid of the pod open. Fresh air rushed in, but it turned out to be worse than it was in the pod and made her throat feel like it was burning. She clumsily tumbled out of the shell, barely holding on to it to keep herself from hitting the floor. Her foot slid out from under her a few times until she finally managed to launch herself upright. Her head was pounding, an ear piercing tone undoubtedly only heard because of her mind handling pain signals from all parts of her body.

Lurching forwards towards a small crack of light on the floor she stumbled and fell again. She pushed her face up to the crack, still gasping, hoping to get some clear air but whatever was in the air in the room was causing air to escape outwards, not inwards. She half limply groped at what she had previously thought was a wall until she found what felt like a latch. She pulled. She pulled again. Her hand kept tugging at it as one part of her brain hoped the door would spring to life, the other half telling her to look. Through bleary eyes she saw the striped outline of a square next to the door. She got her face up close and tried to read what it said, but couldn't make out the text, if it even was in a language she knew.

But it was fogging up quite easily. Glass? Her brain was in panic mode, there was no thinking, only instinct, and she elbowed it as hard as she could, which wasn't much at that point. It was enough however and the safety glass shattered, tiny bits forming a pile below. She reached in and grabbed a handle and pulled. Then tried turning it one way. Then actually did turn it the other way. Something hissed and the door seemed to settle. She stumbled over before managing to get up and grabbed the door latch once more and pulled with both hands, tears soaking her shirt as it ground against the mangled frame, opening slowly. A whistling was heard as light started to pour in through the door.

With a renewed vigor she pulled harder and managed to get the door open about half way before it felt like it was jammed. She was already feeling better, and though weak at the knees shuffled over to the opening. Breathing in the air the tingling began to reappear as the pain subsided. Still holding onto the door, she leaned out and looked around to see just where she was. She didn't have a damned clue. Ugh.

by **Midlonia** » Fri Jan 17, 2014 5:04 am

Pounding headache, back in a kind of dull pain and everything at a 45 degree angle.

The man slowly came to, his left hand coming to his temple to rub his head as he slowly got up from the doorframe. He coughed and wreched, causing yellow bile to splatter onto the floor. He wiped one big hand from his mouth and slowly looked at his semi-familiar surroundings. He got up slowly and felt some slight pain in his leg. A rumble escaped his lips before he climbed back into the other room. The whole room had been thrown into chaos, everything from the pod to the contents of the cupboards had vomited across the room, thrown across the far wall it had punched some of the rusty material.

The pole he had used to open the door was somehow still in his right hand, and the large heavy metal block he had found had been turned upside down, revealing a circle with a pattern inside.

Screw threads His brain said and he blinked a couple of times at the sudden comprehension. He checked the unmolested end of the pole and found more screw threads, they looked about the same size. He tried putting the two items together, sticking the pole into the metal block’s hole and twisting it. They fit! Slowly he kept turning it until he heard a slight click, and the pole refused to turn any further. Lifting it up he looked at the contraption he had made and nodded slightly. A hammer.

That’ll be useful. Not sure why…

Leaning the hammer against the doorframe, he had to throw a few of the big boxes around to recover his clothing, pulling on his shirt before he found his underwear and then eventually his pants, they had dried during his time knocked out.

The boxes hadn’t felt particularly heavy as he’d thrown them around somewhat easily, but was surprised to find them filled with things when he opened them. He chewed his bottom lip for a moment, then began rummaging through one of the boxes. Inside he found little of use, parts that had been twisted out of shape from the violent fall. No food or water, which was a problem.

Buried near the bottom of the box were two items that could be of use though. A pipe wrench, he knew what it was the second his hands touched the heavy metal. Then there was a small, weird feeling green bag. The white cross on the front made him however think this was a good thing to keep. He turned it over a couple of times, but didn’t open it, placing it along with the wrench onto the side of his pod, which had tipped itself entirely upside down and instead created a convenient table with it’s flat bottom.
He dug into the box again, but didn’t find anything further of use.

He began to check a second box, but when it yielded nothing of use but random strips of fabric which he began to frustratedly dig his way through, he was about to throw the box to the side when his fingers brushed something mesh-like. He paused and then pulled the mesh bringing with it a battered rucksack. It looked just about big enough to fit him, and after he tugged at it a few times, he pulled it onto his back and settled it down. Nodding he checked the inside, seeing only a tiny, empty plastic-like bottle which he shrugged at and left inside, before putting the wrench and green bag inside. His foot caught something on the floor and he ducked down to pick it up. He turned it over a few times in his hands and looked beneath it. It was a hat of some form, with a large round lamp on the front Crimson-coloured it must have spilt from one of the boxes or been thrown by him to the side when he wasn’t looking. Experimentally he tried it on, it fit. Small flash of recognition again as his hand instinctively went to a switch by the lamp, but nothing happened when he flicked it.

Looking to his hammer he checked the head, it felt slightly loose but good enough for now. There was a faint recognition somewhat to it and the hat, and he wasn’t sure why. It still bore flecks of crimson paint on it but was otherwise oxidized. He lifted it up and onto his shoulder with another moment of recognition, nothing concrete but the weight of it felt… right somehow.

He ducked under the doorway as he stepped out into the wider world. His eyes blinking at the sunlight a few times before his eyes suddenly became shaded. It felt natural to him and he shrugged it off after a moment of bewildered comprehension. Licking his lips slightly, he began to head down the slight remainder of the hill and into the city that lay before him. His feet crunching on the undergrowth slightly as he moved forwards. The city was empty. Rusting hulks of metal lay scattered about and his frown only deepend when he was faced with a crossroads.

Which way do I pick? He thought to himself.

by **Sunset** » Fri Jan 17, 2014 10:35 am

What had it been?

Kat ran her hand along the crisp white surface of the object. Despite the abundance of long grass and a few shrubs and vines around the base, the paint was still as fresh and clean as the day it had been brushed on. Brushed on? Did she know something about painting? Maybe. Here at the base, the object was nearly twice as wide as she was tall and soared high into the sky, gently arcing over until it was nearly parallel to the ground.

Starting right at the base there were regular slots that had once, and occasionally still did, hold more of those hexagonal plates or half-plates that would allow the whole to be one seamless sheet. But what was it for? On the outside of the arc there was a little stairway, barely the length of her forearm, and this led up to a little platform. She had already climbed up this, just to look out over the barest tops of the shrubs, but it went higher. A long ladder had been built into the side of the arc.

"It looks safe enough," she decided. "I'll stop if it gets windy."

Up she went, her four-toed feet pushing her steadily upward as she grasped the thick, white-painted rails that ran along side. After a bit the ladder turned into steps and she stopped to look around.

She was definitely on an island, but it wasn't remote by any stretch. Calm blue waters with gorgeous, rolling waves surrounded it on all sides. Further out she could see the tips of reefs in areas and these were a riot of color under the surf. The base of whatever she was standing on was quite near the edge of the island, perhaps a few dozen paces from the edge of the sand, and it was not alone. To her right there was another one, though this one was much shorter, and then again to it's right another.

"They're broken off, perhaps?" It was a guess and nothing more. There was another to her right, again, short enough that it would be impossible to see from most of the island.

Now she was curious and her touch on the rails was light as she walked the stair-path to the end of the arc. From here she could see everything, including another broken stump in the far distance, up on a hill on the left side of the island.

"It's like a fence," she mused. "With all the plates and spines."

To what purpose though? She looked at the far stump for a long while, mentally connecting the shapes together. They wouldn't all meet, unless the top had been flat for quite some distance, and she hadn't come across any broken bits in her travels. Or had she?

"The shelter..." The beams that had made up the outside of the shelter. And the transparent pieces.

"Someone else must have been here, put those together."

The bone.

Was that them? The poor, unfortunate soul who had built that little shelter?

"Or am I just trying to tie a neat string around the whole thing?" A neat string? Where did that come from?

Kat looked down at the island, looking out from where she was to where she thought she had been. She thought she could see a clearing where perhaps the sinkhole was. It was nearly at the other side of the island though. She turned around, slowly, and sat down on the steps. She was still looking at the island but her eyes drifted to the horizon and caught on to something.

Just to her right, where they had been behind her when she'd been climbing, there was a chain of island. They were smaller than her's, but they led off towards another, much larger land mass in the distance. The closest thing to her was a rocky headland, massive and towering, but just beyond it she could see the very top of some more white objects. They looked vaguely rounded, and there were several that she could see. Whatever they were, they weren't natural.

"Should I go that way?"

She sat there and looked at them for quite a while. The breeze stirred up, warm and gentle, and she turned her face into it, enjoying the warm sun on her skin and shaking her hair out.

There was the little shelter just about in the middle of the island. And her coffin. Something, or someone, had put her here. And someone else had built that shelter. Or maybe it was one and the same? The shelter seemed like something she'd have managed. But she wasn't sure about the coffin. Why would she have put herself there? No, probably a silly idea.

"Maybe they never climbed up here." She looked back at the white somethings in the distance. "Never saw them, so never went to look."

It wasn't that far. She'd have to swim from island to island. Or float on a log. But it wasn't very far. She could grab the bench, and the table from the shelter. That was a raft, ready-made! But what if someone else was here, and they were looking for her? She didn't have an answer for that.

"I haven't seen anyone so far, so if I'm alone, I'm free to do what I want."

Her mind was made up. She'd go back to the shelter, grab the table for a raft and a board for a paddle, and fill her bin with fruit for the trip. Turning around she started to climb back down when a strong gust of wind blew past her, lifted the hat from her head, and sent it down into the long grass below.

"And get my hat."

Breaking the Seal... (Character, Any!)

Breaking the Seal... (Character, Any!)

If you wake up at a different time, in a different place...

Moon "red leader"

Sail

Cy Young You Ain't

Inimical to Life

Here comes the drop

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