taxonomites | [holo]

"So, like I was saying, it's great. You should really give it a... try."

Jaden's train of thought stopped dead in its tracks as she realized she was no longer sitting in her seat at the roadside diner where she had been previously.

".. What the fuck?"

She looked around the chamber and briefly felt like she was in an episode of the Twilight Zone. It was circular, and made of metal, kind of like a teleporter upgraded from the kind you'd see in the old sci-fi flicks that played on TV in the very early morning. Jaden reached out a hand to touch it, and make sure it was real. That was when she noticed the bracelet.

"Is this thing in my skin?!" She tried pulling it off, with no success. "Who the hell's idea was that? And where the hell am I?"

She began checking the rest of her body over, looking for any other things that she specifically did not remember having done to herself. That was when the thought occurred to her.

"Oh, shit... It's hunters, isn't it? I slipped up, and now they've gone and tagged me and I've been turned into some weird Discovery Channel special for them to beat off to while they place bets on how long I'll last against some team of absolutely crazy bastards they just set loose in the nearby vicinity."

Jaden had never been an overly optimistic person, but even so she was trying to hope for the best. Hunters would be a problem, definitely, but as long the hunters were just human then they were the lesser of two evils. Drugging a 'monster' and dragging them off to a game like this was something the Ashwood Abbey hunters would do and they were total pricks, yeah, but at least they weren't mages.

"Great. Wonderful."

The only thing she could do right then was to find out for sure what she was dealing with, and she wasn't going to do that by staying put. As she moved to take the steps out of the chamber, however, something she'd missed caught Jaden's eye. She picked it up, and thumbed it open.

"What kind of idiots leave a girl a cell phone to dial up some help with?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Ah, the familiar strains of a panicked new person. Xander knew that sound well. In his most Ambassador-like tone (which wasn't all that different from his normal tone, actually), he responded:

"I know not of these 'hunters' you mention, but I can tell you that you're in a city called Taxon-- as for the idiots, I really couldn't say what kind they are, they're not very conversational."

"Holy shit!"

Okay, so maybe it wasn't exactly a cell phone. At least not like one she'd ever seen before. True, Jaden wasn't the most technologically savvy person ever, but she was pretty sure she'd have noticed if all of the sudden they could start projecting images and answering without having had anything dialed onto them.

"...Yeah."

Well, this was going smoothly. Jaden frowned and mentally kicked herself. This was not how one went about getting a grip on situations.

"You said Taxon, right? Never heard of it. Not to mention I was way out in the middle of east Bumfuck, Egypt the last time I checked, so where the hell is this place? I'll let you get to that before you explain how the fuck I got here."

He raised a couple of eyebrows at Jaden's florid use of expletives, a cross between amused and sympathetic. He quickly resolved to make himself a bit more useful, or forthcoming with information at any rate.

"I wish I could tell you where it is-- but I don't know, nobody does. My money's on some kind of alternate dimension though. All we know is that it's underground, and that whoever controls the place seems to pull people from their worlds randomly-- everybody arrives the same way you did."

He paused, to roll his sleeve up and show her his wrist. "Everybody also has one of these. They don't really do anything, but they seem to be some kind of tracking device."

Jaden stayed quiet while the guy filled her in on what she needed to know. Or tried to, anyway. None of it was very definitive, or made much sense, but it narrowed her suspect list down just a little anyway.

"So it is a tag. Damn, I knew it! Not that that's a very reassuring thought, at the moment."

She sighed, and ran a hand back through her hair, as if it wasn't messy enough naturally.

"Worlds, you said. Don't tell me we've got the 'little green men' equivalent running around here. Normally I don't believe in that shit, but between that thing," She pointed back at the chamber. "-this thing," She indicated the tablet. "-and now what you're telling me, it wouldn't surprise me. Maybe."

"I don't know about aliens-- though that is pretty much the most credible theory right now. You don't want to hear the others-- hint, they involve ninjas and/or pirates." He answered, trying his best to shoot for optimistic cheerfulness, as opposed to heavy measures of doom-- it wasn't good to demoralise the newcomers so early on.

"But yeah, there appear to be people from various different worlds here. In any case, however-- you're not trapped in that room. You can leave through the door at the bottom of the stairs, as long as you take the tablet (fancy cell) with you. Oh, and I'm Xander by the way."

Well, at least it wasn't little green men. As for the rest of the information (if you could really call it that, seeing as nothing was very certain) it sounded like the sort of thing she would work out as she went along. As things were then and there, the first order of business would be to get moving, and hopefully find somewhere to stay. Finding out what time it was would be good too. It'd been night when Jaden had been in the States, but this wasn't exactly Kansas.

"Xander, huh? Can't exactly say it's been nice meeting you, champ, but it could of been worse I guess. I'm Jaden."

She turned the cell - the tablet - around in her hand a little.

"So I can leave with this thing? Pretty useful. Does it come with a clock too?"

[ooc: aha, I'm sorry for the late, late reply. real life snuck up.]

[holo]

[holo]

[holo]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject