taxonomites | Entries tagged with # intro post

A faint ping hits the holos across Taxon, alerting everyone to a new person entering the city. A 'Novak, Jimmy' by the tag.

Anyone interested in checking the new arrival out can see a small representation of a man in a tan trenchcoat and a black suit sprawled on the floor of an arrival chamber. Which turns into a very active representation as the man wakes up and startles away from... the tablet, apparently. Sending it skittering across the floor of the chamber and him skittering to the opposite corner. There's a few minutes of desperate cowering and trying to look very small and easily overlooked by anything ( Castiel ) before he settles enough to start focusing on things around him instead of the Regularly Scheduled Morning Delirium And Panic.

- Easy, Jimmy. It's okay. You're okay. Just waking up. You know how this goes. Just waking up, like... every other day. - He waits for the shakes to stop before he tries reaching for the whatever it was that he smacked across the.... wherever he is. Finally noticing the metal bracelet on his wrist makes him stop again. It's skin temperature, so he didn't notice it at first, but he notices it now. A smooth silver band, not quite as wide as the watch he'd had... before. His thumb runs along the edge to try and find a seam before trying to wedge the nail under it. There's a twinge of pain and he's stopping before he draws blood. - Okay. Metal bracelet grafted onto my wrist, smooth metal room, and a flat plastic thing. Still not the strangest place I've been dumped. -

Putting his confusion about the bracelet aside for now, and with a wary glance at the door, he inches over to pick up the weird plastic thing. The screen is off due to inactivity at the moment, giving everyone a rapidly spinning viewpoint as Jimmy flips the tablet over a few times. What he really remembers predates common tablet use by about two years, so it takes him a few minutes of messing around with it before the screen comes on and he can interact with it, and a few more minutes of looking for a keyboard before he figures out the touch screen. - Huh. I knew laptops were getting thinner, but *this* is new. -

He thinks he might remember seeing things like this in that week in Atlanta before he got.... here. Wherever here is. But that's a big white blur, leading down into a big dark... - And that way lies the rabbit hole, Jimmy. You step away from it *right now*. You follow that any farther and who knows when you'll come back. - There's another headshake, and Jimmy's back in the here and now. Mostly. Staring at a touch screen and wondering what's waiting for him outside that door. But, little metal rooms aren't that far removed from little padded rooms, so he's leaving now.

Using the smooth metal wall as a makeshift mirror, Jimmy makes a last attempt at looking presentable. Straightening his tie, brushing himself off and trying his best to look like someone who hasn't lived in the same suit for the past six years, (Angelic dry-cleaning doesn't quite cut it, sorry Cas.) Once he's satisfied with his attempts, he'll tuck the tablet under his arm and carefully make his way out the door and onto the streets of Taxon.

laughingmage

The first thing John realized was that the air was clean. Too clean to be London, at least anywhere in London he would frequent.

The second thing he realized was that his lungs were clean, too. He reached for a cigarette, and stopped. He didn't even smoke.

Wait, since when? Cancer sticks were his last great trick, a final "jag off" to the forces which wanted to kill him personally. Plus, when the lords of Hell won't let you die, why not smoke up? Cancer wasn't anywhere near his concern list anymore.

What was the top of his list was where the Hell--literally, perhaps--he was.

"Okay John, who is it this time?" He asked himself, and scoured his memories for an answer. What he found there was no help. There'd been the fight to free Cheryl's soul, and then...Zee? Something about Enchantress, and...his head pounded like he'd been on a several-day blender.

"New tactic. Find out who this is later--find out where you are for now."

It shouldn't have taken him this long to actually survey his surroundings, but now that he did, he found himself in a gray room. A large light hung over his head, out of reach, and a door was opened in one of the walls. He checked his watch, and there was the biggest surprise yet.

"What the bloody..." He was too surprised to finish. The 'watch,' if you could call it that, was more like a bracelet, and when he touched it, a large screen came out. It was like the cell phone from Hell. And he didn't even have a cell phone.

He shook the watch from his mind and tried to focus once more. A gust of wind blew his coat close to him--perhaps a message to just get on with it already?--and he felt a little more secure with his trenchcoat pressed against him.

"No one ever learned anything by sitting still and playing dumb despite how many times I told them to, right mate?" He steeled himself--quite literally, he reached into the metal surroundings and pulled on them, actually using the steel to brace himself, and stepped through the door.

"All right you bastards, you wanted me, you got me."

electric_sheep

The android powers up instantaneously, operating system booting up with a faint, brief hum. Its eyes were closed when in storage: humans tend to find open eyes on a deactivated robot unsettling, too reminiscent of a corpse or a doll. They flick open now and the world snaps into view for David-8 for the very first time. He takes the measure of the room quietly, turning his head from side to side to take in the steel walls around him, before he raises his arm to inspect the silver bracelet attached to his wrist.

This is the only unusual thing. This is the only thing that gives him any pause. He takes the unfamiliar environment and the empty room in stride--this is his storage chamber, David reasons, and he’s just been powered on for the first time to do his work. But he has no memory of the silver bracelet’s purpose or how to use it: as far as he knows, it doesn’t come with the rest of his model. He fiddles with it a little, curious; it’s not detachable, anyway, so it’s clearly built-in. A plugin, maybe. Some kind of mobile phone or intercom. That’s evident--the only odd thing is that apparently no one’s bothered to download a patch for him on how to use it.

No matter. He’ll learn. He’d be little use to anyone, after all, if he couldn’t learn simple new tasks without the help of a patch. Standing in the center of the room, the android--broadcast to the rest of the city as a hologram of a chiselled, waxy, symmetrical man in a jumpsuit, perfectly still but for the precise tap-tap of his fingertip against the touchscreen of his tablet--pokes through his tablet menu with idle curiosity to the list of contacts, the map, the settings. David finds the button that unfurls the screen to a larger resolution and peers at the mechanism with childlike fascination, before clicking it back into his wrist again, satisfied that he knows his basic way around the new intercom.

Pity that it’s external to his system, not properly installed: he has to interact with it manually, the slow way. Then again, so would a human. This is more lifelike. David’s designers have put a great deal of effort into making him as lifelike as possible, he knows, for the comfort of his human owners.

David opens the peculiar readme.txt and takes in the text with an automated blink (an artificial reflex, a script programmed to move his eyelids at randomized intervals--for realism, his developers have said, to move the model out of the Uncanny Valley). It makes no sense. He dismisses that without worry: clearly he’s in a theme park or psychological experiment or art installation and this is the orientation file provided for human participants. He’ll find out. For now--there’s a universe outside that door.

It is exactly 22.2 degrees Celsius. The time is 2135. David-8 looks around once more, bemused, and then trundles off through the doorway in search of something to do.

OOC: feel free to run into ~~Wall-E~~ David anywhere! <3 profile/deets here, also, GMs, can I get a character tag?

bloodandrhetoric

Reality has boundaries. There are things that separate one existence from another, things that unify or distinguish them. Constants and variables.

It's the sort of thing even the young girl, their little specimen, had been able to see. Even for Rosalind and Robert, denizens of the interstice between all those realities, constants and variables are the sorts of things one relies upon. They're guideposts by which one finds one's way. The girl had known it as well as anyone. There's always a lighthouse, she'd said. There's always a man. There's always a city.

The interstice was a constant as well. Rosalind had been fine with it, as a place to stay; it made for a nice control on their continuing experiments through realities, an unchanging and endless anchor point to which they could always return. It was Robert who'd insisted on finishing their old business, Robert who'd rocked the boat. Neither of them had known what the outcome might be if — when — they succeeded. When Dewitt unwrote himself.

Whatever this place is, it's unspecific enough to answer that particular conjecture: a big, metal room with an open door. "Ah," Rosalind says to herself, checking with feigned interest to see that her clothes are still in order and nothing's caught fire or any such inconvenience. "It would appear I'm no more or less dead than I was before. Well, that's something."

The disruption doesn't concern her, nor does the unfamiliarity of her surroundings. In fact, the woman who appears in miniature on the holo projections of Taxon's other residents’ tablets at this moment doesn't appear any more alarmed by the circumstances she finds herself in than she does about the slow, stark trickle of blood running from her nose. The latter she addresses with no more than a fascinated touch of her fingers to the injury and a thoughtful, "Hmm. I suppose that might logically follow."

She belatedly notices the bracelet framing her wrist with more obviously marked interest. Unlike the hemorrhaging, the bracelet is new. In moments she's investigating it, navigating her way through the tablet's initial screens till she arrives at the little introductory readme file; she spares a few minutes to glance it over. Then, that done, she closes the file with a smart nod and begins a broader explanation of the room.

There's not much of interest to beg her attention, but nonetheless, something brings a frown to her face. "Robert?" she calls out curiously. "Robert?"

After just two attempts, she puts the effort to one side, gathering herself up to quit the room. She really doesn't appear to be a woman who wastes much time on graceful segues once she's changed mental tracks, and apparently she’s done with the previous one.

This room has no more secrets to offer, she’s concluded, so there's no point in staying. A new reality means new work to be done. Best to have a look around.

==========

[[OOC: Rosalind will wander around the Sanctuary for a little while, please feel free to get in touch with her either while she's still dripping blood around the Sanctuary or else you can easily run afoul of her wandering around the city pretty much wherever.

PS Mods, can I get a character tag please and thank you <3]]

kings_fool

[Maybe 20 minutes after Johannes eventually leaves the arrival room]

Another new arrival, as shown by the holographic image being broadcast to the tablets of everyone in Taxon, as usual. However, this man is lying on the floor of the arrival room, tangled up in a blanket, curled half-around a body pillow. He is snoring. And maybe drooling a little.

After twenty seconds or so, the chill of the hard metal floor starts to penetrate the sleeping man's consciousness. He grimaces, shifts around as if trying to get comfortable, and then slowly cracks an eye open.

"Whussat?"

Eyes squeezed shut, unshaven face squinching into a grimace. Man, what the hell... 's cold, and hard, and this is not his bed, he's pretty sure he went to bed in his bed last night, and yeah, he was doing shots pretty heavily, but he's pretty sure he did not drink to the point of passing out on a sidewalk, or... He risks opening his eyes again.

Definitely not the Strip. Not anywhere he knows. Fuzzily, Jeremy Fischer sits up, blanket falling down around his waist, showing that he's not wearing a shirt. He is still clutching the body pillow to him like a protective talisman. The holo shows a man in his probable late thirties, extremely scruffy, with an enormous amount of untamed curly brown hair and a stocky body.

"Uh...." He looks around him at the steel walls, the weird thing overheard, the utter alienness of his current surroundings. He runs a hand over his face, through his shaggy curly hair, and scratches at his head.

"The fuck...?"

Then he starts laughing. "Okay. Nice. Good one, Charlie! Not sure how the hell you got me here without waking me up, but seriously, nice one. Lunch is on me. It might be our last, right?"

There's a few beats of silence. He shivers a little in the coldness of the room and pulls the blanket up over his shoulders, grin slowly fading.

"Charlie?"

***

Sometime later, Jeremy is outside. This is a problem, since he's wearing his underwear, socks, and a blanket wrapped around himself, and it's freaking cold.

"THIS IS BULLSHIT!" Jeremy hollers at anyone who might listen, trying to avoid the patches of snow on the sidewalk as he looks around the Bazaar for clothes.

Or shoes. Shoes at least would be a great fuckin' start.

eta to add in alternate run-in location of Jeremy at the Bazaar

somelittleinfamy

There is something stuck to Johannes Cabal’s wrist.

Oh, and it does rather appear that someone’s abducted him--again. But that’s a matter of secondary concern. There’s something stuck to his wrist and that’s annoying. It’s some sort of lady’s wristwatch and it’s fused straight through the skin of his wrist: molded seamlessly into his body like some demented surgeon’s flayed the skin off his right arm in a ring and lovingly stitched it back up with a smooth hard bracelet where his flesh had used to be. He worries at it with the fingers of his left hand but all he succeeds in doing is turning the skin around the wristwatch rash-pink: it won’t come loose. The watch is useless, too. It’s covered in pointless buttons and it hasn’t even got a face.

“Verdammt noch mal,” he mutters and resigns himself to looking around.

This is how this always works: 1. Someone abducts him. 2. They want something. 3. The something is either something to which he might assent, like creating a horrific monster for them, or something to which he won’t, like being tortured and executed. There is not usually a point in this process where someone consults Johannes. There is not even always a point in this process where someone explains to Johannes what’s going on. So finding himself in an odd room with some sort of collar fused to his wrist and not the foggiest idea of what’s happening isn’t quite as disquieting for Johannes Cabal as it might have been for other persons of his acquaintance; this sort of thing is, not to put too fine a point on it, always happening to him. He’s never been at a loss for enemies.

Usually, though, they have the decency to turn up at all. He takes inventory: he’s wearing everything he was when the ship he was on--er, crashed--and he’s got his cane, which is a trifle insulting, really, because no one ever leaves a prisoner with a weapon unless they’re making a point. And he still hasn’t seen a sign of who sent him here.

The metal room is bare, clinical, even a little laboratorial, which doesn’t surprise him: cells tend to be featureless. What they don’t tend to be is open. This room has an open doorway: waiting for him, it seems, to walk through. To Hell with the doorway. It’s clearly a trap. He ignores it: anyone who goes to the trouble of kidnapping him can damned well come and explain things to him themselves; he has no interest in running some sort of ridiculous rat maze for his captor’s or captors’ benefit.

The really irritating thing about this is--all right, all of this is the really irritating thing. This is a really irritating situation. Look, resigning yourself to this sort of thing and developing a tolerance for it are not quite the same. But the really, really irritating thing about this is he has no genuine idea of what’s happening. He hasn’t stolen any books recently. He doesn’t think this suits the modi operandi of any of the people he’s recently angered, most of whom are dead, anyway. If he didn’t know better, he’d have to say that about this whole situation, there’s something curiously--impersonal, almost.

This is stupid. Someone is going to turn up sooner or later, they’re going to tell him what they want, and either he’s going to give it to them or he isn’t. This is stupid, he tells himself and, still clad in his black waistcoat and jacket, sits down on the floor to wait.

As far as Taxon’s concerned, he’s a nondescript, yellow-haired man of about thirty wearing spectacles and a three-piece suit cut in the style of the late nineteenth century; he looks peeved, but not shocked, and like he has every idea of what’s happening and just doesn’t care for it. (In fact, he’s cultivated this expression; it’s amazing how far you can go in life simply by looking as though you aren’t surprised by anything.) As far as he’s concerned, he’s a necromancer of some little infamy and things don’t just happen to him without a distinct purpose: someone always wants something. Ergo, he’ll wait here until they tell him. The only thing that casts a shadow of doubt over his straightforward hypothesis is the open door: when he glances at it some rebellious part of his mind says, and what will you do if there is, in fact, something you haven’t accounted for?

trojanhorst

Horst Cabal has never actually been to Hell before, but he can say with confidence that he knows someone who has, and this is distinctly not how it’s been represented to him in that person’s descriptions. There’s no desert here with an endlessly beating sun, no hopelessly complex admissions paperwork to be filled out, no crotchety desk clerk. He’s not even naked.

Under normal circumstances, on all counts, Horst would be pleased for his expectations to have been proven wrong. In this case, however, he has cause to be suspicious.

“Johannes!” he yells, uncertain if the party in question can even hear him. The room he’s contained in is circular, and silvery from floor to ceiling, the view broken up only by a single pedestal and an open door. His own voice has an uncomfortably metallic echo. Horst cups his hands around his mouth and shouts up at the ceiling in his native German, ignoring for the moment the rather obvious suggestion of the open door. “Johannes, you little shit! This is brassy, even for you.”

Horst blames himself. He probably should’ve just gone off without saying anything, walked into the sunlight without saying goodbye. Maybe he should’ve known. He guesses, in the end, he had expected that even Johannes would have the decency to let Horst die on his own terms. So really, Horst should’ve known better. Whatever pocket dimension this is that he’s been unceremoniously dumped into, he can only imagine one possible cause. One very possible, very infuriating cause.

“Come now. Be reasonable,” he tries again, outwardly cooling his temper. “This is silly, Johannes. Wherever you've dropped me for safekeeping, you can’t keep me here forever. I can still find a way to kill myself, you know.”

Perhaps he can’t fault Johannes too badly for this, though. Alongside his long-laid plans and his calculated risks, Johannes’s rare impulse decisions are usually some of his worst ideas. His brother panicked, that’s all. Maybe he'll reconsider whatever it is he's done.

Then again, it did take Johannes eight years to come down from his last panic.

Still no response. On to a second plan, then.

Horst takes a second survey of his surroundings. There little raised stand nearby with something suspiciously purple set out atop it, which seems to be the only particularly interesting thing in the room. More worryingly, however — and Horst can’t say why this bothers him so excessively — there’s a silver bracelet of some sort wrapped just a bit too snugly around one of his wrists, set with some sort of -- glassy screen. Horst likes a bit of sparkle now and then as much as the next person, mind, but he didn’t exactly pick this particular accessory out himself. He digs at it experimentally with a fingernail, but can only catch onto his own skin. He knows enough to recognize that this is probably not a good sign.

Endeavoring to remain as calm as possible, since getting too worked up might be unproductive, Horst walks over to the wall by the door, raises his arm, and pounds his braceleted wrist against the wall as hard as he can for about thirty seconds straight. At the end of the experiment, much to his chagrin, the bracelet and the wall are both still entirely undamaged. So much for Horst’s grand foray into the scientific method, then. Whatever it is, it's staying put.

The purple objects sitting on the nearby pedestal turn out to be a familiar — very familiar — frock coat, walking stick, and hat. They match the rest of his clothes, and he's fairly certain that he'd taken them off not moments ago for his little dawn appointment and left them folded neatly in the grass. (Just because one's attempting suicide is no excuse to get ash all over a perfectly good coat, after all.)

Horst approaches them cautiously, wary of unexpected gifts from unknown sources, but a bit of careful poking and prodding seems to confirm that they are, to all visible intents and purposes, simply his coat, his hat, and his cane. He can’t really make sense of why they’re there, but they’re there all the same. It seems a relatively minor risk to take them.

He puts the hat on his head and looks upward, though nothing in the metallic device on the ceiling sheds any more light on the situation. “Well, at least that’s something,” he says of his clothes, still talking to the empty room in German in hopes there’s someone there. “I suppose it makes an immediate improvement on my last stint of captivity.”

Tipping his hat to the empty room, possessions either in hand or tucked under one arm, Horst decides to try his luck with the hallway. He'll play his brother's game for now. Wherever Johannes has dropped him, it's clear this room doesn't have much more to offer him.

He hesitates momentarily, instinctively wondering if he’s about to step out into sunny midday by accident and bring on his own accidental demise — but then remembers that that was his exact intention only a few minutes ago. Putting off death just to give Johannes a stern talking-to is probably not that crucial, all in all. What does it matter?

Horst takes a last look at the room, then ducks out into the hall.

whyfearthedark

It is true that the Arrival room has seen many a variation on the theme of first impressions and abduction. It is also true that, while some are more polite than others, or more eloquent, it is a rarer sight to see such calm, seeming indifference. There stands a tall man in the Arrival Room, silent and unmoving like a lone tree atop a hill. In the stark lights of the apparatus mounted to the ceiling, his long hair falls like a stark white curtain fading into vivid yellow: it is a gossamer veil, he the monster done up in fancy robes. Its eyes are a vivid yellow, though this might take a closer look for how dark the skin around them is. Otherwise it is of a pale complexion, nearly waxen, and adorned in what appears to be deliberate scarring. One such scar curves from one high cheekbone to the next, undulating across the bridge of nose. More scars run in vertical slashes down his forehead, though whether those are of ritual origin or war is less apparent. The circular markings on each side of his forehead strike a different chord: like ripples on still water, and partially hidden by his hairline. His robes are formal, sumptuous and striking: dark, slick fabrics meeting subtle details (is it armour or simply militaristic, of a stereotypically Western origin, or perhaps Asian? Is that an obi adorned with a metal emblem? A hakama?), offset by a dark metallic seal at the front of his broad belt. There are no weapons - at least no visible ones - but one might just get the impression not to get in his way. Don't wake the sleeping bear, as they say. Don't provoke a wounded beast.

But, no. His posture belongs to something other than a beast. He is royalty. He is sprung from the Father Tree, bearing the royal scars of his clan. Royal marks, not sprung from ritual or fashion.

He who walks a different path shall find himself in strange lands. It was simply a matter of time before he stumbled into the unknown. Having just sent the last of the forest gods to its demise, it seems only fair he too should be sent somewhere without consent. An eye for an eye, one sole surviving warrior for another.

Ever shadowed, yellow eyes look out, assessing its surroundings like a cat in unfamiliar territory. The head, with its vaguely High German features, tilts this way and that way. Dark lips part, revealing teeth that seem too sharp to belong to such a face (or perhaps not sharp enough). The pointed tips of his ears lift (perhaps difficult to spot, with so little contrast between skin and hair), and he walks through the open door.

He calls out to a small group of meandering non-humans (Extras of a brand new variety, as it just so happens). He barely raises his voice, in near perfect, if somewhat dated Gaelic. And by dated, we mean ancient and oddly evolved. "[I am Nuada Silverlance, crowned prince of Bethmoora.]" A brief pause follows as he slows to a stop, taking in his surroundings. The people gathered there, in what appears to be a museum idolizing the macabre, are of little help. In fact, very little help other than hesitant, too polite smiles and looks his way. A small, wry smirk turns the corners of his lips. "Entschuldigen Sie bitte...?" No?

"Je suis Nuada Lance d'Argent, fils unique du Roi Balor; prince royal de Bethmoora. Je vous en prie." He inclines his head in the faintest hint of a bow, watching these unorthodox, foreign-looking fae with barely there intrigue.

One of the Extras, visible in the very peripheral edge of the hologram (a blue-faced girl of reptilian features and colourful scales instead of hair), gathers a bit of cheerful posit-tu-itiveness, and dares tread closer.

"I'm sorry. No sprechen European. You speak Standard?"

The look on New Guy's face can be summed up with one word: perplexity. Long-suffering perplexity, no less.

"English," he says, chin lifting ever so slightly. Strange how such minute a movement would look so menacing. English, the standard of language? "How very pedestrian of you."

---
* Different indeed.

untoldtale

"What is that?" Emma whispers, staring at the purple smoke speeding through town from the forest.

Beside her is Henry, the boy who moments before had been dead (a thought which fills her with emotions she can't name or tolerate), the boy with all the answers. He's staring along with her and shakes his head. "Something bad."

Before she can ask what that means the smoke fills the window and her vision, and when she blinks it, Henry, and in fact the entire hospital are gone. Instead there's a circular metal room, some steps leading down to an opening doorway, a big machine thing, and a pedestal with a familiar sword and scabbard leaning against it.

"What. The. Hell." She reaches for the gun holstered under her jacket, remembers that a) the clip is empty and b) how useless it was last time she employed it, and strides over to pick up the sword instead. This doesn't look like any fairy tale she's heard of, but the past few days have taught her to prepare for anything. Awkwardly she pulls the scabbard's strap over her shoulder, trying not to think too much about her three awkward dates with Ken the LARPer from South Bend.

Though maybe she should have paid more attention to all his talk about the best way to kill an orc.

"All right, Regina, whatever you've done, whatever you've got planned--" She steps out of the doorway, then whirls back around as it seals itself up again. What now? Guards? Wolves? The flying salamanders of Zo?

"Who's there?" she calls and starts down the hall, reaching back to (again, awkwardly) draw the sword. She adjusts her grip until it feels right. "I swear to God if you've done anything to my son I'll shove this thing straight up your ass!"

Later she'll regret how cliche that is but now's not the time for creativity.

~*~

Sometime after getting the low-down...

skinandbone

" - now, one thing to note is that the farther we get away from the source rock, the smaller the grains in our sediment. This is because it's a heck of a lot easier for water to carry teeny tiny specks than boulders. Just like it's easier for you to carry handouts instead of – instead of – of textbooks...”

Metody falters, looking around. This is not Geology 101.

It is nothing new for Metody to find himself some place unexpected, or to lose pieces of time. There is a reason he writes everything down. But what is unnerving is the quiet.

There are no fans. No hiss of ventilation, no hum of distant machines. No purr of far-off mechanisms cleaning the poisoned air, and to a man who has spent the past few years surrounded by constant noise, the silence is a roaring terror.

“Agh – oh, no. No, no, no, no - “

Metody flings the large backpack off of his back. He chokes a bit on the breathing equipment - part of it remains in the throat - but that doesn't slow his well practiced motions at all. Goggles next, then the little clip that closes his nostrils, then the flexible mask. The rest of it is rather like a skin diver’s suit, but easier to wiggle on.

He swings his pack onto his back again and spends a moment attaching the supplemental oxygen tubing. Once basic matters of survival are handled, he looks around again. His face is no longer visible, but his posture is clearly confused.

Metody walks to the table and picks up the tablet. This looks familiar, at least, sort of. He pokes aimlessly at it. Any viewers get the benefit of a long minute of his alien-looking goggled and masked face before he realizes it is possibly transmitting.

He glances down at the indicator on the arm of his suit, then reaches up and slowly pulls out the core of the breather, coughing again as he removes it from his throat. He takes a cautious breath, and is relieved when it doesn't burn.

"Hk- kah. Hello?"

He licks his lips uncertainly. Is this okay? Oh, golly, he hopes this isn't some kind of official channel.

“Ah – is anyone there? I'm very sorry, but I'm lost and – I think – I, um....” A worried fidget, then in a rush, “The air is off in my building, I can't hear it at all. I don't think it's been off for very long because my suit says it's still good. Except I – I lost some time, so I don't know if there's gases or – “ A shaky laugh. “ - I just got checked out last month, so – my skin and breathing are okay, I think, so maybe it didn't linger - ”

The screen wobbles as he shifts his grip on it, lifting his head to look around the room. Is that a door?

“ - I'm sorry.”

bub_snikt

( The story thus far... )

[The holo image appears on the network to the general population of Taxon, and there's a short, hairy-armed man in yellow tiger-striped spandex and a mask with black fabric which flares out to both sides. His blue-gloved hands brandish triple blades extending from each fist, and there's a low growl coming from him as he's obviously startled with the sudden change in surroundings. He sniffs loudly, his eyes darting around the room, wild with confusion.

Then he yells out at nobody with an angry gravel-soaked voice. Apparently, he thinks it's somebody.]

"SUMMERS, YOU DUMB SON OF A BITCH! Where the hell did ya put me this time? This your backup prison now? Lemme guess, you think it's more humane because you're not strappin' us down and electro-shockin' us, huh? You're goin' DOWN for this and I'll do it MYSELF, you crazy goddamned dictator!"

[As if to punctuate that, those extended claws of his start tearing through the tube he arrived in, sending showers of sparks flying.]

threelivesdown

“.... Well, that’s not right. This isn’t right at all.”

Selina looks at the safe she’s just opened and frowns seeing the nothing it holds. It isn’t supposed to be empty. There are supposed to be a pair of jade cat statues sitting inside of this lovely challenge of a safe. Suspecting that this is a trap and knowing, even if it isn’t, that she needs to get out of here, she turns to head out of here the way she came. Taking two steps, she finds herself somewhere else entirely.

“I thought this was a trap but this.... was not what I had in mind.” A quick look around the room shows ….. exactly zero doors. Stepping off of the platform, she makes her way to the walls, running her hands over them carefully, not yet pulling anything out of her tool kit to try to open the room. Not that there seems to be anything for her use her tools on. Except, maybe, that cellphone on the pedestal over there, but really, that’s so obvious there has to be a catch to it.

“Where the hell did I end up?”

There is a weight on her wrist, “And what the hell is this thing?” First, she looks at it, trying to see if there are any obvious gaps or openings. Then she runs her fingers over the metal, looking for an opening or a catch or anything at all. She tugs on it a few times. “A room with no doors and a bracelet that... won’t come off.” Right. This is sort of like having her nightmare highlight reel start to come to life, though there are a few things that haven't made an appearance yet. Leaving the bracelet alone - for the moment - she looks toward the cellphone thing.

"So. What sort of trap are you?"

starknaked

The call failed. The missile was aimed straight for their attackers, if all went well they would be closing the portal behind him and the call had failed. The last contact Tony would have with Pepper, the last thing she would have, would be the legacy of the Avengers doing what they could to stop Loki and a single legend that wasn’t enough but he could hope would convey so much more.

1 call missed

The screen before him flickered and then faded, dying out even as Tony himself could feel that familiar tightness in his chest. It wasn’t the first time he had died. He knew what it felt like. It felt just like this as he lost feeling in his hands and feet, as his skin grew cold and then felt gone as if he was just light and soul in a metal suit.

The light of the nuclear bomb exploding bathed him in an orangey red light that he couldn’t feel through the protective suit, even if there was no power to keep it running. In his mind, he was speaking. One last speech from Tony Stark even as he closed his eyes and let go, feeling the weight of gravity suck down upon him as if siphoning his very soul. Yet, even as his lips moved, there was no speech, no words of grandeur. Just his lips moving, barely saying the words out loud.

“I love you.”

---

Tony came too with a gasp, bolting upright.

No. Bolting upright had been the goal. The result was jerking against the still “dead” Iron Man suit, slamming his brow against the lifted visor and managing just enough movement that he fell off whatever he was laying on and landed on his side with a clank and a clunk. That hadn’t exactly been his plan.

“Ow,” he muttered, laying there and staring at a pedestal beyond which he could make out the edge of what might be a door but seemed to be currently closed. “JARVIS, online,” he muttered, not noticing the tablet atop the table. Not yet; more focused on the fact he had received no answer from the suit. From the very heavy suit that had no online systems to power the hydraulic systems he’d internalized.

“Jarvis?”

Despite the fall – that he remembered vividly – he hadn’t expected to hear nothing in return to his inquiry. Wriggling and shaking his hand, he managed to get one glove off. Jerking away the other, he worked to undo the front of the chest plate without any of the electronic equipment, and the high tech internal gadgetry, that usually made stripping so much easier than it had once been.

“I’d settle for anyone at this point,” he said, looking up at the mechanics above him, frowning as he tried to determine just where he was. “Hello? Pepper? Uhmm, Fury?” Was he in SHIELD quarantine? “If this is prison for saving New York, I’m really not going to apologize,” he pointed out. “I demand a phone call. And a scotch on the rocks, while you’re at it.”

Suddenly the front of the suit opened around the inset for the arc reactor, though he personally had to pry it further opens than a mere crack. Grunting as the metal dug into his fingers at the joints, face scrunching up with the effort.

“Okay, fine. I apologize,” he lied with a roll of his eyes. “Now give me a hand getting out of this!”

infinitelystranger

Medical science called them "near-death experiences," or NDEs. Sherlock Holmes always found this to be a bit of a ridiculously politic way to phrase "dying hallucination," but medical science was always at the behest of people with money one way or another. Rich old men wanted to believe there was some chance it was God they were seeing in their heart attacks, not the last spasm of the legs of a dying fly on a windowsill. Sherlock did not believe in God, but he believed in neurons -- well, he did not need to believe in neurons, they were real, but the point was that he had no silly notions about NDEs. He was aware he'd die someday. He was aware he'd probably have a dream in his last moments. Sometimes in his spare time he wondered what it would be.

Sherlock stared up at the ceiling of the metal room. If this was his neurons' final hurrah, he had to admit he was a little disappointed in them.

He'd died before once, clinically. When he was nineteen he'd overdosed. The medic had restarted his heart about a minute and a half later, and that was a wash too: no NDE at all, just all the cocaine he had in his flat and then the next moment he was coughing with paddles on his chest and realizing he was going to be in so much trouble. But he always sort of expected something, well, interesting for his final hallucination, at least as interesting as what his brain conjured up on LSD. Not a stupid little metal room. God willing, he didn't want his last thoughts as a sentient consciousness to be of a stupid little metal room. It was just like Moriarty to make him die in a stupid little metal room.

He realized he was standing. Well, that was slightly better. He looked around the room, noting the features -- dear God, he really had expected his unconscious mind to be a better designer -- which included circular metal paneling and the platform he was standing on, which made him felt like he was going to be beamed somewhere. That wouldn't do at all. If he wouldn't live in a flat this ugly, he damned well wasn't going to die in an imaginary flat this ugly.

His neck was probably broken. He was really on pavement right now. There was no pain, anyway. He supposed that without a spinal cord it was difficult to have pain. He closed his eyes again and visualized 221B and wondered when conscious thinking was going to desert him.

It didn't -- but, unfortunately, neither did the ugly room. Apparently lucid dreaming wasn't going to be an option. That was lovely. Just lovely. He really was going to die in a stupid little metal room. Think, Sherlock, think, he told himself, while you still can -- the idea of oblivion was suddenly frightening, in a way that it hadn't been when he stepped off the roof -- the room's metal, there's some sort of alien device over top of me, maybe there are NDEs resembling this in the medical literature -- but his attention wandered from the specifics of the room, which didn't matter anyway, because something else was catching his attention. This is vivid. I can see all the details. It's cold. That's not right. No, no, no, no one bothers to imagine the air-conditioning being set a little too high in their last moments! He pinched himself and was disturbed by the exact feel of his thumbnail and his index finger, which his dreams had never reproduced properly: and he'd tested many a dream the same way.

He tried conjuring to mind a dream-person. No such luck. He imagined the neon rabbit, Bluebell. Nothing. Yes, lucid was right out.

There was something funny under his coat sleeve. He rolled it back (all the while it felt disturbingly like real wool) to find a strange bracelet, not a hospital bracelet or anything else he could trace back to an origin in memory. Curiouser and curiouser. "Side by side, their faces blurred, the earl and countess lie in stone," he said aloud to see that his voice was working how he remembered. "That's it, isn't it? I'm in a coma, aren't I?"

forging

It’s customary for Eames to celebrate his winnings after a job well done.

He is pressed up against the blackjack table. Eames is cradling a scotch in one hand and a pair aces in the other. The air is thick with smoke and the faint scent of alcohol. The noise of people conversing behind him is muted over the clamor of slot machines and poker chips being shoved aside. The noises are layered over by some dated French jazz. This is Mombasa’s busiest casino. It is not his favorite one but he comes here often enough that he’s on a first name basis with half the dealers.

It’s down to him, the man on his left and the lovely lady on his right. The woman isn’t an issue to read. That fact could have been because he hasn’t only been paying attention to the cards she draws. The man had a nervous tic of adjusting his tie whenever his draw was lower than the cards set out. The dealer put another card down and Eames grinned triumphantly. He sets the cards down and takes a swig of his scotch. The other two set their cards down in defeat.

“It was lovely playing with both of you,” he says charismatically as the dealer pushes their chips towards Eames in a neat stack. “I wouldn’t take too much of an offense, the game was quite evenly matched---,”

His words fail him in the end as the music shifts to something dark and familiar.

Non, Rien de Rein. Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien-

He swore under his breath and immediately forgot he was in public. He shoves his hand frantically in the right front pocket of his blazer to bring out a generic looking red poker chip.

As he draws the chip out he notices the tablet infused in his arm. He’s about to check for the signs that separate reality from the dream – he looks around and realizes he wasn’t here seconds ago.

Everything is metallic and cold - suddenly nothing makes a lick of sense. He’s dreaming. He has to be. The sudden shift in realities and the Edith Piaf dictate he is. He’s god knows how many levels under and it took him this long to notice. His subconscious and the intricacies of the dreamer had filled the space enough to take his totem with him. He checked it as a measure and though the signs stated reality he knew it was lying. He couldn’t, wouldn’t trust anything. Eames was on edge. Dream up a gun, he instructed himself as he tried to bring one forth. He paces around the platform in frustration after nothing happens.

“Oh, clever this,” he announced to no one in particular. He’s plenty sure that they’d manage to put him under some level of observation. So he'll test on luck that someone is listening.

It takes him a few moments to realise that this is being broadcasted.

Shut it off, Shut it off is a stalwart echo ringing in his system. He stumbles. He dislikes being watched, not when he doesn't know who's watching. He'll maneuver to fiddle with the tablet and shut the feed off.

Christ, he thinks.

[ OOC | so with what's going on in plot, Eames will be lurking around the EMPTY CITY. This, should give him - I think enough time to maximize on his shadiness without anyone recognizing who he is. (o( - so I guess this is pretty much open to any characters that are staying in? Open to PROSE/ACTION. * G* ]

justdysfunctional

The young girl on the platform squirmed and opened her eyes nearly the moment she appeared. As if someone woke her up the moment she arrived, but of course she was alone. This would explain how startled she looks, the fear, the confusion... alone in a strange white room with nothing easily recognizable to it, no idea how she got here or where here is.

Answers that would be easier to figure out if her brain didn’t feel like it was wrapped in a fuzzy wool blanket and hit by a truck. Daphne’s eyes have a slight glassiness to them, aware enough to realize how wrong this is but not able to form words for it. Or possibly words for anything, she hasn’t tried to make a sound since she’s woken up.

The teenager makes it too her feet, looking a bit unsteady at the notion of walking still lacking options other than to move. Her trip down the stairs is slow, cautious, and thankfully doesn’t end with her falling. Brown eyes roam the room, fear not vanishing with time. Naturally her dampened state makes the table unimportant as she moves to the door to push at it, trying to get it to open. Maybe if she pushes harder, why isn’t Dad here he could just break the door... no luck.

Memories of the Global Tech facility flashing through her mind. The guard she attacked, demanding to know where her brother was. The soldiers her mother took out in a second, the Super dad fought. The elevator filling with knock-out gas... is this where they took her? Was her brother in some room like this somewhere? Maybe she’s a bit more awake now, or a bit more grounded, but she slumps down next to the wall and tucks her knees up to her chest. Some rescue this turned out to be.

personaldemon

Back home. Gotham. Leaving aside the foreignness of the moon base and the demi-gods in primary colors who walked above the earth and fancied themselves protectors.

The man called Jason Blood sighed under his breath as he felt the wards and spells of his own property close around him like warm bathwater. It was good to be home, and out of the spotlight. Let the heroes have their games, their battles. He wanted a whiskey and a comfortable chair.

He opened his front door with two keys, one shiny modern steel and the other black, pitted iron that squirmed just a little in his fingers.

He murmured certain words beneath his breath as he turned them both.

Then he opened the door and stepped inside, except that the room he stepped into was not the front hall of his brownstone. No.

He stared despite himself. It wasn't shock, precisely; he was a man used to the unexpected, the bizarre and the freakish. But he had felt nothing-- no warning, no tingle of magic, not before and not during the transfer.

Like a man probing a toothache with his tongue, he felt for Etrigan's presence in his mind, even as he continued to stand stock still in the chamber of steel and chrome.

Etrigan?

Heat in the back of his skull, as Etrigan uncurled and blinked and yawned, like some especially nasty cat.

....Well, well, what have we here? A hamster-cage;
We're not in Gotham any more.
Set to run a wheel, I fear, and waste our rage
As other prisoners have done before.
Captivity, ignominy, absurdity then apathy--
Woe to you, but more to me.

As usual, the demon's answers were a mix of riddle and rime-- there might be useful information there, but Jason wasn't going to take the time right now to decipher it.

"Your self-pity interests me not even slightly," he answered, softly, but audible, as his dark eyes flicked around the room. No exit. A pedestal. Some modern device atop it, much too sleek and glossy for his tastes.

Sweet Jason, how heartless you are to my plight!
And yet karma exacts neat compensation
Look to thy wrist, where silver bar sinks its bite
And on your freedom exercises castration.

Jason snapped his gaze down-- yes, there, shackling one wrist, a gleaming silver bracelet that really wasn't his style at all. He studied it dispassionately for several seconds, then took two steps forward towards the pedestal. His shoes rang on the metal platform.

"I will assume whoever has brought me here can certainly hear me," he said, his tones crisp and clipped, a bit of Britain to his accent. "I suggest we bypass this tedious prologue of the alien torture chamber and proceed to whatever it is you want from me."

He picked up the tablet as he spoke, looking it over with furrowed brows. Technology. Not his forte.

The image being broadcast was that of a tall man, fair-skinned and red-haired, save for the streak of white that shot through his hair like a melodramatic affectation, dressed in a casual but quality suit. The man frowned at the tablet as he tried to figure out its function. Communication, no doubt, but... He did not yet touch it. Traps could take many forms.

esssse

The look on his face right now is one of pure disgust and hatred. Erik makes no further attempts to move while he stubbornly tries to draw the metal fused into his skin out, and the results are somewhat between hilarious (Erik's face is one of hatred and constipation at the moment as he concentrates on taking the thing off) and pathetic. Nothing actually happens of note, except that his angry hisses eventually turn into a frustrated sigh. He has no idea who has power to do this over him - certainly not humans when they can barely stop squabbling amongst themselves. No, it has to be a mutant more powerful than he is, and memories of Shaw, and his torturous childhood, filter through his mind and possesses him with rage. Charles once told him that his skills with manipulation of electromagnetic fields was something like exercising a muscle; Erik wonders if the utterly problematic decrease in his powers are utterly somatic (hopefully) or experimental (more possible, unacceptable). It is also clear that this isn't the first time he has tried this.

That the technology he's grasping with is way advanced for him isn't helping to calm himself down. Erik runs a hand through his hair as he gathers his thoughts to give out an address of sorts. If not to the captives of .... whatever prison he's in, then perhaps to the jailers themselves. They can't be alone here, and no effective prison is entirely a panopticon in itself.

"To those of you who are unfamiliar with me: I am Magneto," he begins, seething; an address to his jailors. "I am a mutant, and I don't take kindly to being imprisoned. The metal is a generous touch, I'll give you that; as if being branded wasn't humiliating enough. I am the wrong subject to be captured. I am not one to obey, for whatever purposes you have, and you will pay for all the injuries you have inflicted to me and the other captives in this place, and there will be no mercy for your crew and those who support you."

To his fellow captives, Magneto pitches something a little more inclusive (though the truth is, priority remains over the non-humans than the humans. Still, that's not something you usually break out in a speech when you're trying to rally support, so he shuts himself up on that part.): "to those of us who are here, taken against our will: there are choices to be made, and sides to be taken. Choose the right one. Inaction is never a neutral response. I was a lab rat, once. Never again, and for the sake of the victims that will come in the future, we must all be allies together and rid ourselves of their tyranny.

The enemy is out there, brothers and sisters. While we sit idle they grow in strength. While we are unable to see them, they grow more powerful in our isolation. I will not stand for domination of non-humans." An amendment, which, while grudgingly given, is nevertheless flawlessly delivered on hologram: "but I'm inclined to put all the effort into getting us out of here, and yes, that means everyone."

With that lovely reminder in place, Erik is satisfied, and momentarily forgets wrestling with his metal band as he fumbles to shut off the feed.

ooc; erik will reply in holo form unless stated.

creepyfreezone

“-why don’t they teach what really happened, because that was far more interesting.” As soon as the little girl registered the change in her environment... she quickly clutched at her ears and shut her eyes. It might not be for most people, but to this little girl the room was very very loud. Louder than anything at home ever was, it was all vibrating and it was very distracting. It was worse than the Veritas ship, plus there she had the lovely distraction of terror.

It took more than a few moments for her to finally speak again, “Sarah Jane? Mr. Smith...” After a brief flash of worry over her features she seemed to relax. Growing more used to the vibrations in her mind from all the energy flowing around the city. It was more abrasive than Earth’s electricity, but it wasn’t too bad after a few moments. She did seem to be handling the abduction remarkably well for someone so small.

As she crouches down at the edge of the pedestal she hops down to the ground ignoring all the steps like you would expect from a child without a parent to suggest that might be dangerous. Plus, the abduction overrides any other dangers at hand. “Is anyone there? I would like to go home. Sarah Jane was explaining several events in Earth’s history that were wrong. I was having fun with those stories, and there are much better ways to get her attention.”

After all, to Sky aliens showing up was an interesting distraction after having tea. If she freaked out every time she saw someone that wasn’t human it would be very hard to look in the mirror. She was still looking around the room when her expression grew troubled, and her eyes instantly fell to the item on her wrist. She didn’t reach for it, or try to remove it, she could feel how it was connected to her. “Sarah Jane will be very upset if this isn’t removable, I’m not allowed to have piercings yet. I’m not sure why, because some are very pretty, but I’m not.”

Sky quickly realized she was slipping away from the point and moved over to the other thing in the room that she could feel that wasn’t the room itself. Picking up the tablet and having no issue with it. She is, after all, exceptionally clever. Studying it for a little longer than five minutes, with no sign of realizing she’s still broadcasting... until she looks straight forward, so maybe she did notice. “Whoever is listening to this broadcast, what’s a paranoia? I don’t think I have one with me.”

thelonewolf

“Hello?”

The small, wary voice echoes within the metal walls of the arrival chamber. The little girl—or is it a boy?—stands, now with her thin sword in hand, ready for anything that might jump out at her. Her eyes are wide and grey, nearly obscured in a face as dirty as her hair, which is short as a boy's and choppy—as if recently sheared off by a dull knife. She’s dressed like a boy, too, in brown breeches, a tunic, and a jerkin with iron studs, and all are muddy and stained with dried blood. The child looks like a frightened animal, eying every nook and cranny of the unfamiliar room for hint of her predator. “Who’s there?” She swallows, and then--

--All at once, a transformation seems to come over her. The child grasps the hilt of the sword—her very own Needle—as if it were part of her own arm. Fear cuts deeper than swords, she reminds herself. She turns sideways, and her eyes are that of the predator, not the prey. Her face is as calm as still water, betraying nothing. “If you don’t come out, you’re a coward,” she says, fierce as a wolf.

When she looks with her eyes, they tell her there are no doors. She’s alone. The coward mare called Craven is not with her. It even smells funny. It smells clean. The room is a circle, and there are stairs, and the hand not grasping her sword has some piece of jewelry on it. It’s ugly and stupid looking, and the composed face of Arya Stark scrunches up in disgust as she inspects it, nearly dropping Needle so she can rip it off.

She doesn’t cry, even though that’s something Arya Stark of Winterfell might have done, back when she was that girl. She doesn't know where she is, and she doesn't know who she should be. And wolves don’t cry.

“What is this place?”