lifeaftr | August Intro: All Will Fade and Petrify

August Intro: All Will Fade and Petrify

INTRO LOG: AUGUST

Who: New arrivals, and you!
What: New souls arrive to the archipelago of LifeAftr
When: August 4th and onward
Where: Primarily Umui, though Ensō is also likely
Warnings: Mark as needed!

New Arrivals: Bury Me Alive
When you wake, it's initially to darkness: musty, stuffy, and dense. Your eyes may take some time to adjust, but when they do, something will rapidly become apparent - namely, the fact that you're underground.

Exploring your surroundings will reveal a few more unnerving discoveries. Take, for example, the fact that you're currently trapped in what appears to be a number of buried houses, walls and ceilings compressed against one another thanks to time and pressure. The walls may have held up the weight of the soil above your head for a time, but it'd likely be best not to hold out hope that they'll continue to last. Your supply of air down here is rather limited, after all.

Unfortunately for you, it's not merely earth that separates you from the surface. It's also flowers in rich abundance - an untold, innumerable weight of dead and decaying plant matter, twined around the ancient bones strewn underground along with your sweet self, pressing down from above, peeking through the cracks in the metallic folds of whatever material once comprised these buildings' ceilings, walls, and floors.

Whether it's a mass tomb or something more sinister, you'd better figure a way out, and quickly. If you didn't show up with a shovel or some means of teleporting yourself out, you may very well need to resign yourself to digging your way out or making a lot of noise to attract someone who can, before this becomes a more dedicated grave.

Everyone Else: All Will Change and Calcify
As for the rest of you, well...if you're anywhere near the regions of G5, you might hear the sounds of a not-insignificant number of people finding themselves displaced underground, and requiring your imminent assistance in getting out. Perhaps you'll recognize the place. It is, after all, very well marked. They'll probably be properly grateful if you mind offering the help, and hey - it's a welcome break from the eerie, ever-present silence that clouds almost the entirety of Umui. As long as you don't mind digging around that old cenotaph half-buried in the flowers and scraping through sheets of metal, a lot of flowers, and...oh, yes. The first bones you'd be finding since arriving here.

If you've been hanging around the laboratory near the island mana pool, on the other hand, you'll definitely be getting a break from the silence - namely in the form of ARUM-25, whom a number of you have been devoted to repairing since their discovery, learning that a great deal of their systems have come back online, right around the time that the newest arrivals are properly unearthed.

Including their diagnostic systems.

The warning, repeated shrills will undoubtedly be heard by anyone who passes:

ALERT: STAGE ONE DETECTED
ALERT: STAGE ONE DETECTED
ALERT: STAGE ONE DETECTED
ALERT: STAGE ONE DETECTED
ALERT: STAGE ONE DETECTED

And that's probably fine. Right?

All new arrivals will awake with knapsacks, their names stitched to the front. The contents of said knapsacks can all be found in your acceptance notices!

As a final note to those who participated in the Test Drive Meme, bear in mind that 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.

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 )

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Well. Isn't that nice. She can feel a headache coming on already with the whole entire situation, but one thing at a time.

She does trust Wash though, which says a lot, and there might be a small snort.]

Just try not to land on me.

[Could her grappling hook help any? Maybe it there was a bigger hole and she needed to get herself up. For the moment, there's no way she can fit anyway. But she can work on a few things in her spot, moving some of the roots and decay away, and yes, that's most certainly a rib bone in her hand...]

[The upside to this: he doesn't have to examine the complications he now has with Carolina's arrival, nor does he have to come to terms with the conflicting soup of relief and trepidation and wariness and let's not forget, of course, the fucking guilt that accompanies all of that.]

[So it's time to SHOVE THAT CRAP RIIIIIIGHT OUT OF THE WAY and focus on getting her out instead.]

As long as no one else tries to shoot their way out we should be good.

I'll keep it clear down here, Wash.

[Because the last thing that she does need is for someone to do something stupid and bring it all crashing down on them. So far she hasn't seen or heard anyone doing something that reckless, but she also has no idea who the heck is all down here, and if they've all woken up at the same time.]

Worry about your own end.

Worry about my own end. We don't even have shovels that aren't rusted to hell.

[All muttered under his breath as he starts to brush aside the dead grass and flowers and clods of earth to get at the metal sheeting beneath. It's dubious that shovels would even work against this given the amount of wear on the things, but that's not about to stop him from being bitter about having to do this in the least efficient way possible.]

[All told, it's not the worst thing he's ever done. He's dirtied his hands before.]

[She's a knife, for what it's worth. Not her own, but it was next to her, so she'll take it. Gravity is more or less on her side as well, but also against her in some regards. Her armor is likely going to need a good scrub by the time it's all said and done, yet that's nothing new either.

Digging, clawing, scraping, clods of dirt and bones and debris is dropped to the side. It's not exactly fancy or fast, but she can slowly start to see the efforts of her work as she works at the hole. It's still not large enough from her end, but work first on getting a complete hole to the surface, and then she'll worry about enlarging it.]

[The first warning sign is the way the ground begins to tremble beneath his weight. He starts scrambling back, but not quickly enough - the floor caves in underneath him, and Agent Washington goes skidding into the chambers of the earth in a graceless tumble of dirt clods and dead plant matter.]

[The impact blows a confetti puff of stars out from behind clamped-shut lids. The murk takes some time adjusting to, once he opens them.]

[But as they do, the green-turquoise-whatever-the-fuck-it-is shade is damn near unmistakable.]

...ow.

[Some things never change.]

[It's the first little chunks that start to trickle down that has Carolina slowing her own pace. She has no idea about the topography of this place, about any of the composition. Her armor's not at peak performance at the moment, which is something else she will need to look in to, but it's enough to keep her protected anyway.

Yet it's that split second between being sandwiched and moving that Carolina does manage to shift to the side, avoiding the small landslide of earth and roots that accompany a familiar suit. Before the rubble has even settled, she is moving next to him, a hand extended and yes, there is a certain amount of wryness in her voice. What can she say- the sim troopers have rubbed off on her over time.]

Nice of you to drop in...

[Yep. It's her.]

[if it wasn't apparent before, it is by the time he grasps her hand to help lever himself to his feet, because it's Carolina: teal and black and sheathed in competence, a fucking rock that was driven into his brain as the thing to look for in a fight.]

Good to see you too, boss.

[It's probably still wrong that he can't help but feel - relieved.]

[It's a feeling that's mirrored in herself. For the longest time she didn't allow herself to have friends or family, and now that she's got them again? She'd go through hell or high water for them and rue anyone who stood between her and them, because they wouldn't be standing for long.]

Care to give me a rundown of what you know?

[And she could do the same, although it's lacking and limited.]

[Right. Sitrep. It's an easy instinct, and, thank god, achingly familiar.]

There's a little less than a hundred of us, and we all ended up at this archipelago. From what I hear, people come and go, and different islands come and go. There's no reliable way off that anyone can find and the basic tech level is pretty abysmal, so almost everyone is just working to survive.

[...and then context. The worrisome part of it.]

People come from different...universes, I think you could say.

[Her focus does remain on him, with some of her attention on their surroundings, listening as he speaks.

Anyone else but Wash saying that... She'd have likely dismissed them outright. After all, it sounds like the plot of some book or show, but she knows that Wash isn't one to mess around in a situation like this.

This whole different universes bit- she's going to take a moment to digest that before going back to it.]

I'm getting the impression that you didn't just arrive today.

No. I didn't.

[He can beat around the bush for as long as he likes; if it were him, he'd appreciate things being direct. More direct than Freelancer ever was with either of them.]

I showed up here a couple months ago with...[ o h b o y ] ...C.T. And I do mean the one we knew.

You do realize CT is...

[Dead. She doesn't need to finish that sentence though. They'd found her armor. Her dog tag.

But she gives a shake of her head.]

You weren't- aren't- missing, Wash. I just saw you- before waking up here.

I know. I know, I'm -

[I'm not crazy.]

[It nearly bites, that insinuation. She doesn't say it, she doesn't even imply it, because it's phrased more like a reminder, just in case he got lost in the routes of someone else's memories again, in case he's lost it again. He's not Epsilon. He's not Church.]

[The only Church here is her.]

I don't know how time works here, but everyone says that at home, it's like everything goes on pause. It's not this linear thing.

[It isn't something that she would suggest, that she would say. Yet none of this does make any sense. That odd dream, waking up. She'd almost think that this is still some unconscious part of her mind, but her dreams are more nightmares, nothing at all like this.

But she can't rule out that she is here, and that it seems real. It's not like anything out of the ordinary had been happening, at least as far as she can remember. Just another day of their retirement.

There are scenarios that she can rule out, and that she does, which leaves her with fewer possibilities of what this really is.]

What is the last thing that you remember before coming here?

We'd just gotten to that island. Retirement. It was over, all of it.

[Hopefully that makes a fair amount of sense to her. If C.T. can be nabbed from straight after her death, displaced into some kind of...murder-based television series, and then show up here right around the same time he does? Then it's fair to say that linearity isn't exactly a priority here.]

[The important thing is that Wash hasn't grown his beard yet. Scandalous.]

Just gotten there?

[Which yes, it is what he says, but she is just confirming. It isn't as if decades have passed by her point of view, but they had gotten in to some things since arriving there. Like dinosaurs, scented candle fires, and a water park. Fighting gravity and mushrooms.

And yes, his beard...]

We've been living there for some time now. That's what I remember.

C.T. remembers dying last.

[In case either of them needed that, uh. Reminder. In case either of them had forgotten how it felt to sit in the sluice of their guilt and failure to prevent the inevitable. In case they hadn't marinated in that nearly fucking long enough.]

So time isn't...necessarily on our side here.

[She doesn't. Carolina can recall that day easily enough, their mission, their failure all around. She hadn't had any desire to see CT hurt, and yet she couldn't say the same about Texas. For a time she had hoped that the tomahawk hadn't finished the job, but she knows now that it had.]

Is she alright?

[Or does the strangeness extend further to some... what? Ghost? ... zombie?]

She's as all right as any of us ever get.

[So...not very, no. That's not getting into the fact that she was murdered, again, on her little spatiotemporal detour through a murder-television show, and ended up getting engaged in the interim, but you know what? You know what. That's not Washington's story to tell. He is not going to be the one to drop that bombshell.]

[C.T. can do that bit herself.]

[Carolina somehow doubts that CT would even want to speak to her... After all, the last time they had met hadn't been under good circumstances. She can't say that she blames her either after how everything had gone down. Carolina had been bitter and jealous, resentful and close minded. Even if she had been told the truth back then, Carolina wouldn't have believed it. York had tried.

One thing at a time though, and at the moment, being in a cave is the matter at hand.]

I didn't see anyone down here that I recognized, and I think it would be safe to say we'd have heard- or seen- something if any of them were here.

My radio's pretty much busted, anyway.

[It had worked for one brief, glorious moment upon arrival - and then promptly shorted out and never worked again or since. Which shouldn't be possible, given the fact that their armor is technically waterproof, but a lot of shit that's supposed to be impossible is, as it happens, completely possible.]

I haven't seen them either. Anyone else, I mean. [From home. Though he doesn't say it.]

[Arguably it is one less thing to worry about, even if Carolina doesn't find the situation all that good anyway. But it means that she doesn't need to be concerned about the rest of their team. They're... safe enough at the moment back home, as safe as they can be. They do seem to have a knack for surviving anything.

She gives a nod, huffing out a breath before looking back up the route that he'd come down.]

We'll make due.

Picked a hell of a time to show up.

[And he proceeds to not elaborate on that at all, instead settling for trying to clear away the debris from the...loosely defined "ceiling" to allow them both to clamber out with a minimal assault to their dignity.]

[With a minimal assault to her dignity. Wash doesn't think he has any left to speak of.]

What can I say. I like to make an entrance.

[Although she's not actually too flashy most of the time, but sure, she can't deny that in the past, she has made one. That wayward tip of her head, voice wry for a moment.]

As do you.

[That soft camaraderie to her voice as her visor turns back upwards. She trusts him with her side, and that's not going to change. They've been through enough together that it's not even a question.]

Worth my grappling hook?

[Although he is in luck today. No crotch shots. He knows the surface though.]

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