lifeaftr | August Intro: You Think...You Wink...You Do A Double Blink...

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August Intro: You Think...You Wink...You Do A Double Blink...

INTRO LOG: AUGUST

Who: Everyone!
What: New souls arrive to the archipelago of LifeAftr.
When: August 3rd
Where: Ensō
Warnings: Mark as needed!

Part I: Get Wrekt
You rouse to a splash of sea salt drying on your skin. A haze of glass-white sand glitters in your vision, dappled by lush palms and thick, curling foliage that disappears into a jungle of deep jade. From behind, crackling wood and sawing rope groan from a mangled life raft ran ashore. A petering wash of tide over pebbled sand fills your ears as you struggle to gain your bearings in a vast portrait of tropical color…

No...no, no, that’s not precisely how this story starts.

Why don't we start over?

You rouse to a splash of sea salt, spraying across yourself and the wooden floor beneath you as it breaks across the edge of the platform. The light as it dances across the sea is blinding, dappling white spots across your vision as you slowly come back to consciousness and realize that - this is not where you last remember being.

The middle of the ocean is likely not a place most recall being at all. As you struggle to fully comprehend the new scenario in which you have found yourself, three things become quickly apparent. The raft you find yourself upon barely constitutes as something that should float, never mind a boat. In the distance, perhaps a few hours away at most, a large island beckons to you, a wide strip of beach surrounded by cliffs making it very clear where the most fortuitous of directions shall be.

Lastly, of course, you’re not alone. Hopefully your new companion(s) are just as keen to get ashore before nightfall as you, or voyaging together will not be the most positive experience. At your side you will find a knapsack, one to every member of your raft party, and upon inspecting its contents, you will discover any rewards you may have accrued - as well as a few other items to give you a fighting chance.

A note to those who participated in the Test Drive Meme: those threads, if all parties involved would like, can be game canon in the form of dream-like memories involving a place very much like this one, though the layout is considerably different.

Part II: Choose Your Own Adventure

By fortune (or misfortune, as it were), you eventually find your feet meeting sand, blessed shore to stagger upon as you shake off your newly found sea-legs. There are those that may find this place familiar, as though it appeared in a dream, though the expanse of shore certainly seems larger. The beach stretches off into the distance on both sides, curving around sharp ridges and cliffs, mist obscuring the view the farther along it goes.

So here you are. You’ve found land. Company. Supplies. The sun is now beginning to trek rather low upon the horizon…spending the night outside in such an unfamiliar land is unappealing at best and outright dangerous at the worst.

There is one silver lining in the midst of this mess. Directly ahead, the beach curves up a gentle slope until it meets forest, some manner of building visible through the trees. Further exploration of this area will reveal a dilapidated building of sorts; the architecture is indiscernible to even the most skilled eye. Despite looking as if it has seen better days, there are areas that offer some form of shelter...and who knows what else. Just because it appears uninhabited doesn’t mean you won’t wind up pleasantly, or unpleasantly, surprised.

So what shall you do from here, traveller? There is land to be explored, strangers to meet, friends to reunite with. Supplies to inspect and plenty of questions in need of being said aloud. Choose your path, make haste, and above all else: survive. And whatever you will, take heart.

Your story is about to begin anew.

Feeling a tad adrift? Make sure to check the Locations Page, which has details regarding the starting areas and a handy map for those who feel better with a bird's eye view!

LOGS ● OOC ● STORIES ● MAIN NAVIGATION

( CODED BY BOOTYCALL )

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He'd recognize that low rumbling voice with the slight Brooklyn-esque accent anywhere.

Wade's eyes pop open upon hearing his name and, doing his best not to jostle the form of the sleeping cubone at his side, he levels himself up on one hand, using the other to hike his mask up to wipe the sleep out of his eyes. Sans's skull, illuminated by the dying coals of the fire, paint an eerie picture as he gazes down on Wade, but the goosebumps that rise on Wade's skin right now have nothing to do with fear.

He remembers Sans coming up to his broken body back at the castle; remembers seeing, through his fading consciousness, Sans's eyelights guttering out as realization dawned. He'd been given a second chance, of course, but he'd hardly dared to hope that Sans had gotten his.

Deep within his chest, he feels his wounded and scarred heart skip a beat.

His face doesn't seem to know what it wants to do, but after a few seconds of blank staring he manages to maneuver it into something resembling a coy grin. It feels just as false on his face as he's sure it looks.

"Well," Wade starts, his voice coming out more breathless and raw than he'd intended. "Ain't you a sight for sore eye sockets."

Sans doesn't precisely remember getting to his feet, not that it lasts for long; he shuffles around the dimly-glowing fire, gropes blindly at a somewhat indistinct shape he guesses correctly was Wade's gloved hand. Y'know -- just in case his phalanges go straight through, in case handling mysterious island flora managed to do something funny to his own monster physiology somehow.

But, uh, nah. He's pretty much solid as he's ever known the guy to be, as irreverent.

Holy crap, he thinks, skipping like a scratched record. Holy crap.

There's a clack of bone on bone when his other hand spreads over his grin as he laughs, something a little high and ridiculous, little more on the giddy side of hysterics, for Sans. If he doesn't stuff it down now, there's no telling what the unfamiliar thing swelling in him like a bubble might just erupt into.

He thinks he's relieved, yeah. That's probably it.

"For a guy who can't die," Sans manages, "You sure know how to play dead like a pro." He's got one hand occupied, so the other arm does the shrug, "Uh... is this where we do the reunion hug? Don't leave me hangin'."

Wade huffs out a laugh at Sans's remark, mostly to try and ease the pressure of something hot and suffocating rising in his throat at the familiar feeling of phalanges on the back of his hand. "Heh. As far as the goopy cliches go, you don't do anything by halfsies, do ya? Should we have the theme from Love Story goin' while we're at it or what?"

He doesn't turn his hand over; doesn't make an attempt to grasp Sans despite every nerve in his body howling for him to do so. But neither does he pull away from him. God help him, but he's missed this dumpy skeleton in the dingy hoodie that still smells faintly of ketchup and hot dog water, and as he stares into Sans's ever-present shit-eating grin, his resolve suddenly breaks completely.

"C'mere you fuckin' asshole--" His voice is little more than a hoarse growl as he suddenly grabs the back of Sans's hoodie and yanks him forward into a fierce hug. He feels solid and real, and Wade takes just a moment to indulge in this one decidedly unmanly action; this one affirmation that one of his best friends is actually still okay.

He'll do a bunch of merc type things later. Blow up some ancient temples or something. Just to balance out his street cred.

Sans isn't typically the 'overt gestures of familiarity/PDA' kinda guy, tends to keep things to claps on the back and handshakes, maybe aim the point of his elbow at someone's ribs to accompany a particularly awful joke. Typically, the only exception was always Papyrus, who in his opinion was prize-winning with the whole hugging thing.

But, uh, this? This is ok.

Alright, so maybe he's fibbing. Maybe he actually needs this a hell of a lot more than he's willing to admit to himself, where he's got his phalanges clutching like he half expects the cloth beneath them to crumble into gray powder if he doesn't somehow hang on. Wade's embrace is fierce enough his bones feel like they're creaking, but it's warm, too, a restorative kindness.

(Sans's HP was maxed out.)

"Aw, crap," he wheezes, trying to crane to look down, around. "Where'd Tibs go, hope I'm not steppin' on ya, kiddo."

There were usually no such things as second chances for people like him. Life for Wade seemed like a series of nosedives interspersed with short periods of leveling out, with no real way of knowing if he'd ever finally hit the ground. It was the hoping that was the worst part, sometimes-- the hope that someday life would just throw him a bone for once.

He didn't expect his silent wishes to be taken quite so literally, but hey-- he'll take what he can get.

Wade straightens slightly without breaking the embrace; looks around for Tibia. He finds her sitting up a few feet away from them, rubbing her eyes as she gazes across the fire at them. Eventually she raises her arm and gives Sans a sleepy wave. Wade utters a laugh that's barely distinguishable from a sob.

"Hey there, Tibs. Look what the cat dragged in, yeah? Didn't take him long to haul his bony ass over here to mooch off of us again."

He doesn't want to let go.

Once he sees where Tibia is -- and more importantly, that she's not too disturbed from where she'd been sleeping -- Sans sort of... sags in place, a kind of physical manifestation of relief. He's alive.

That thought keeps playing on loop, over and over. Like the duplicate statues staring sightlessly at stone walls in the shape of his brother, from a multitude of different timelines in a dusty old castle.

So a sleepy wave is met with a flex of phalanges, and Sans drops his brow against a shoulder that has a warmth and bulk that his own will never have. He doesn't know how long he remains like that, with his phalanges fixed to the cloth at his back, his brow planted against Wade's shoulder, because those minutes are full of the memory of when he'd seen him last.

Laughing over meals in the mess hall, talks in the back seat of a car that would never drive down a hallway, whether it was snow or rain that fell on their conversations, they happened. Those minutes mattered, and he has them back again.

There is...

So much that Sans meant to say, and never had the energy or motivation to. And doesn't now.

"Joke's on you, pal," he manages, lamely, "Hope you like mushrooms, cuz I gotta buncha those."

Sans grips him tightly as if he never means to let go, as if Wade's the only thing holding him up, and Wade can't help but cling back; to draw him tighter into his arms. They'll have time to be awkward later, no doubt, but for now any memory of their embarrassing last encounter is completely washed away among the waves of he's here, he's here, he's alive.

He would have thought it was just a dream if he hadn't seen Newt only an hour or so before, and found himself facing the possibility that such reunions could be possible. Besides, no dream could ever properly mimic the real McCoy. That dry, rasping laugh, that lazy voice with the slight Brooklyn accent, even the word pal, spoken in a way that is purely and completely Sans.

"No kiddin'?" Wade replies, as casual as if he'd seen the skeleton only a few days ago, as if he weren't currently clinging to him like his own living life preserver. "Better be careful with that whole productivity thing, dude-- wouldn't want people to start thinkin' you're reliable or anything, do ya?"

"Yeah, well--"

Here's where Sans would turn this into a joke, change the subject with a dumb and possibly amusing anecdote, or simply shrug off any implication that this might, in fact, be something of a big deal. He thinks about it. How there was a lot left unsaid when he watched his last, best friend's body cooling on the floor.

Decides maybe he can make an exception, this time.

"I, uh," he starts again, unused to a lot of what's going on here. Being a little more direct, for one, hugging? For another?? Can you even call this a hug anymore, that's the question. "Look, I'll be honest. I wasn't sure if I was dreamin' alla this or what," admits Sans, finally shrugging. He only half-succeeds, seeing as they're a little preoccupied.

"But hey -- turns out waiting to wake up or whatever is hungry work," he explains, "Found these, though. Pretty lucky, huh?"

Actually, he's hoping the mushrooms are surviving this whole reunion thing in his hoodie pockets. He can't really tell, but it's probably fine. Probably.

"You want some?"

Don't worry, Sans. Squashed mushrooms are easily salvageable. Besides, seeing his good friend's stupid grinning face again is definitely worth it.

"Dreamin' about me an' you on a deserted island? I wasn't applyin' suntan lotion to you or nothin', was I? 'Cause I've had those dreams before. N-Not with you or anything, just... um. People. Back home. That you wouldn't know. Probably."

Yeah, he should stop talking. Wade clears his throat awkwardly; finally disentangles himself from the embrace, giving Sans a few manly pats to the shoulder as if in an attempt to counterbalance the fact that they'd been essentially cuddling each other like a couple of affection-starved saps for God knows how long. How embarrassing. Definitely a huge blow to his street cred. The thought doesn't bother him as much as it probably should.

"But anyway. About those mushrooms. Guess you could say I'm gettin' fungi from a fun guy, huh?"

"Wow," chortles Sans, his eyelights rolling towards the sky, "Leave it to you to take this to a weird place, buddy. If it ain't late night texts about drinking condiments in a lascivious manner, it's apparently gonna be about the inappropriate dreams I ain't having but you are..?"

...Wait, he is? Jesus.

"It's ok. Nobody's judging."

Of course he's judging.

Fungi from a fun guy, though. An undignified snort-laugh is pretty hilarious, but maybe especially so from a skeleton with no real olfactory system to snort with.

"You know it."

He deposits the (slightly battered, gently bruised) mushrooms that he upends from his pockets onto the bed of leaves that the wrapped fish occupy.

"Ta-da," he drones, "A veritable smorgasbord of spores. They're safe. Probably. I'm pretty sure they're edible."

God.

It only seemed like yesterday that he was trading barbs like this with Sans back in Sol Raveh, but he can't believe how much he's missed it. His laugh comes out more genuine now, fingers reaching back to rub at the back of his head.

"Hey now, that shit was sexy. An' it wouldn't have worked so well if it didn't have some basis in fact, you filthy degenerate."

Sans isn't the only one who can be judgmental, after all. But Wade decides to set aside Sans's condiment kink for now, focusing instead on the very generous spread Sans has laid out. Wade whistles appreciatively.

"Man, for such a lazybones, you bring in quite a haul. What'd you do, just lie there and let 'em grow on ya like a sloth or something?"

He can't resist getting that one last bit of ribbing in. Feels like it's been so long since they've been able to laugh like this.

"I can't believe what I'm hearing," Sans retorts, lifting his hands, his shoulders, and then letting them drop in the least bothered gesture of pretend-exasperation. Just look at what he has to put up with. "And in front of your kid, no less. Yeesh," he concludes, plopping himself right down on the ground in a familiar sign that he has very little intention of getting back up again.

He kids. Tibs is sleeping, and nobody cares more about that tyke than Wade. She's in no danger so long as he's around.

"Anyway, how'd you guess?"

He holds a phalanx up to his grin, a shushing gesture. "Don't go givin' away my trade secrets. Soon everybody's gonna do it, just lie around and let food come to them." But seriously, he picked them, sorta just found them wherever. He's no fool, though -- foraging might bring in a decent haul the first time through, but that's really no way to survive long-term. That Sans has thought about anything past the next twelve hours has nothing to do with him and everything to do with who he'd found sleeping by the fire.

It's not the first time Wade has, directly or indirectly, saved his life.

Sans realizes he's staring.

"Heh," his eye lights drop to the fire, "Considerin' how great that fight was goin', I was pretty sure that was the last we were gonna see of each other." Another shrug, because he's still not sure how he feels about that, about any of this, just that he feels something, a kind of pressure on the inside of his ribs. "Plot twist -- two guys," he says. Who couldn't wait to die, he doesn't say, "Get a second, second chance to live."

Why us? Sans knows better than to ask that kind of question. It's not about them, it's about what someone else wants, or something else, something that ultimately doesn't care how its motives or choices or powers impact lesser beings like them. That's how it always works.

"It's real good to see ya, pal."

Wade hardly bats an eye when Sans just flops down on the ground-- if anything, the act is so achingly familiar that it immediately puts him at ease. He sits down on the makeshift driftwood bench with a laugh and a shake of his head, watching as the light from the fire casts eerie shadows on Sans's skull. It reminds him of the fight with Sans's shadow; of the time he'd almost lost him to the chilling despair of the cloaked monstrosities that had almost drained both of them of their hope. There had been so many near-misses and close calls; so many times when their asses had been pulled out of the fire long after Wade had given up.

A second chance? Wade's long since stopped believing in those. Guys like him don't get second chances. Not with his history. Not with as much LOVE as he has.

And yet. And yet.

There's his buddy Sans lying across from him, hale and healthy, smiling that sleepy smile Wade's come to depend on. There had been Newt, who'd managed to endure the horrors of Haven and lived to tell about it. And he'd managed to find Clem as well, alive and in the flesh despite not remembering any of her time in Haven, with him. It can't just be simply luck of the draw.

"Told ya, dude," he quips, resting his chin coquettishly in one hand. "It'll take more'n that to get rid of me. I'm like a cockroach that way, y'know? I'm hard to squash."

"Lucky me," Sans answers, trying to make a joke of a gratitude he actually feels. He doesn't bother to try fooling himself -- this is a pivotal moment. Finding Wade has very resolutely changed his path away from another dead end. Sans is just... well. He's always been pretty bad at expressing -- let alone acknowledging -- how he feels, when it's so much easier to feel nothing and settle for 'good enough'.

There's a problem with throwing himself on the ground. It's actually pretty hard to get up again, and Sans, who might have otherwise made a show of pillowing his head with his own hands with another quip about sleeping off the good news, finds the very thought of lifting his hands off the front of his shirt much too troublesome.

So he huffs, instead, a low, "Good night."

Abrupt, when there's so much more to say, but the weight of his need to sleep is smothering him.

There is so much more Wade wants to say. It's as if the words rise up from his chest and lodge themselves in his throat, choking him; threatening to burst out of his mouth no matter how hard he tries to swallow them down. It's the fear of the unknown that keeps him silent; the fear of what would happen if he just laid everything bare right there and then.

Ironic, really. He never used to care what other people thought of him.

Sans suddenly falling asleep, as quickly as a child, comes as no small amount of relief. He watches as the skeleton sinks down onto the cold hard ground, his eyelights guttering out as the pull of sleep finally overtakes him, and Wade can't stop his mouth from curling upwards in an affectionately irritated smile as he gazes on the sleeping form of his pun buddy, bones illuminated by the light of the fire.

After a while it occurs to him that it probably isn't comfortable, sleeping like that. Though his own body calls for sleep, Wade rises from the driftwood and makes his way over to the sleeping skeleton, gently lifting Sans up long enough to press divots into the dirt to accommodate his hips and shoulders. The ground is hard enough for someone with skin and fat-- he can't imagine what it must feel like for someone literally made out of bones.

As per usual, Sans remains asleep through it all, and eventually Wade lowers him back down and makes his way to the other side of the fire, arms aching with a need that he's too frightened to acknowledge. He lies down on the mass of bedding he's constructed for himself, watching Sans's motionless back through eyes that are slowly becoming heavily laden with sleep.

"G'night, Sans."

What he'd had to say to him wasn't all that important anyway.

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August Intro: You Think...You Wink...You Do A Double Blink...

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