eyemind | a bumpy start! {glyphcomm + action}

Entry tags:

a bumpy start! {glyphcomm + action}

You wake up to the sound of alarms and a distinct sensation of quaking, and you're quite obviously not where you're supposed to be. This room is strangely shaped, nothing you recognize, and you definitely don't remember how you got here. The room is bathed in soft red light, which might look pretty, except it's blinking in a way that you can probably guess signals danger.

There's a symbol on the back of your hand that you don't remember acquiring, either, but that's probably less important at the moment than the sound of the alarms shrieking and the prerecorded voice speaking over the intercom. It's one of those bland, agender voices, entirely too calm in tone for the message it's relaying:

WARNING
WARNING
IMPACT THREAT DETECTED
EVASIVE ACTION REQUIRED

There’s a loud crash and another violent shaking, as that impact threat collides with the ship’s hull. The warning message continues to repeat on a loop amidst the blaring of the alarm. All passengers should be conscious now, with the noise at such a high volume. Opening your cabin door reveals a nondescript hallway, with five cabin doors on each side for a total of ten on each floor; the doors to the empty cabins are unlocked and inside the cabins hold the same plain, basic furnishings as your own. Halfway into the hallway, there is a lift on one side and a set of stairs on the other.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Amidst this chaos and cacophony, you hear a voice - gentle, warm, mellifluous. Unlike the recording, it's not heard from over the intercom but projected directly into your mind. The tone of the voice is calm, but you’re able to pick up a sense of frightened urgency as it speaks to you:

There’s no time for an explanation - all of you, please, come down to the bottom floor. Quickly! We don’t have much time.

Should you choose to make your way down to the bottom floor - and you really should! - you’ll end up halfway into the hallway, either via the lift on one side or the set of stairs on the other. At one end of the hallway is what looks like a laundry room, with three machines each to wash and dry clothes, and instead of cabins in the hallway, there are empty pods meant to house passengers in stasis/cryosleep, twenty-five on each side of the hallway.

At the other end of the hallway is a large door covered with the same glyph symbol that has appeared on your hands, glowing green. There's an instrument panel and large display screen to the side, which displays diagrams and alien language. As you approach, the door slides open to reveal the Navigator. They are an agender being with a humanoid face and many limbs, the same grey color as the ship itself, and they appear to be fused to the command chamber, taking up the bulk of the space in the room. The same glyph found on the door that just opened and the backs of passengers' hands is also on the Navigator's forehead, glowing a steady green. The wall opposite the Navigator is covered in screens and windows, displaying a number of rapidly-shifting diagrams and lines of text in the same alien language that was found on the display outside the door. One thing missing from the Navigator's face is a mouth. It seems that the words it "speaks" are being projected telepathically to all passengers:

Good - you’re all here. I need your help -

The rest of the request is cut off by a loud, stern voice that cuts through on the ship’s intercom:

Attention! Rogue vessel number 27A-43!
You are in violation of the Primal Code and are hereby ordered to stand down.
This is your final warning.
If you do not comply, you will be destroyed.

You feel the Navigator’s emotions swing from fear to angry defiance as they reply:

Eat blangdark barnacles, Zerentian scum!

The only response offered by the other ship - you can see it’s a second ship now on one of the screens in the Navigator’s chamber, massive and imposing - is another projectile fired that makes impact a few seconds later, with the sensation of restrained recoiling in pain accompanying the crashing sound and shaking of the entire ship. The Navigator continues to tap frantically at the screens with their many limbs, but turns their head to address the crowd of gathered passengers with a plea:

If we’re to survive this attack, I’ll need your help - I’ve taken damage and I’m losing power. Please, link your hands together and form a chain, and those of you on the ends, take mine. This should restore enough power to shake these bastards.

Once the ship has completed its extremely bumpy landing, the sirens go quiet and the red light stops blinking to provide a gentle, steady glow instead. You’ve all survived!

The quiet only lasts for a moment, however - one of the screens flashes to life to reveal the face of a young adult human male. The face is framed with shaggy black hair and wearing an expression creased with deep concern.

“Navi, are you OK? Your vitals are off the charts, and I - ”

He stops, having noticed the group of passengers, blue eyes lighting up with surprise. “Ah, OK, that explains it.” He offers the crowd a friendly smile and a wave. “Hi, everyone. Welcome to space? I’m Tim, and I’m guessing you all have questions.”

This is not the first time she's been in a situation like this before. It's not even the fourth time, to be honest. She's dressed in her office wear, her supersuit beneath her clothes, and her first inclination is to get out there and Do Something about this threat. But there's so much she doesn't know, for all the familiarity, and the fact that none of her team is here... that she doesn't know how she got here... that she's so far away from home and hearing names and words she's never heard before even from the Kryptonian archives-

It has her feeling frustrated but still, at least for the moment, deciding to stay here and do as the voice tells her to do.

Her hands go out on either side.

There is definitely something familiar about that face. It reminds her of-

Of Tina, honestly. She hasn't seen her in the last few weeks (things had just been hectic lately) but there's definitely a... a Tina-ness that she can't shake. It's an odd kind of deja vu to add to the rest of the weirdness going on right now.

But none of it is a reason not to talk back, so she's going to step towards the console, offering a friendly little wave.

"Hi, Tim," she offers easily enough, a smile coming to her lips. It's all warmth and reassurance; it's a Superwoman smile and whether it's for Tim or her or the people here or all of the above, she's honestly not sure.

"And you're not wrong about that. But we did just crash land so... I don't suppose you know if there's anything else we need to be doing right now first?"

This is definitely the first time Murmur's been in a situation like this. Blaring alarms, flashing lights, heck he didn't even know space ships were possible! How terribly exciting! Although the probable, imminent death did take a little edge off the excitement. Just a little. Between the alarms and requests there really wasn't any time to investigate or ask questions. He resolved that should they survive this he will absolutely become the most annoying about asking questions.

Later, now was apparently hand holding time. "So much for introductions." He murmured as he took one of the offered hands in his gloved one, offering for another. For all the excitement he appeared completely calm.

"I've met some of my favorite people this way," she notes, not quite cheerful but at least somewhat positive. Trying to keep her chin up, anyway. Her hands are firm, firmer than they really ought to be quite frankly, but the skin is soft.

Tim's eyes widen in concern. "You crashed? Is everyone there OK?" He scans the passengers, looking for signs of injury, and relaxes when he sees a lack of anything dire.

"Navi should be fine. They're self-repairing, it just takes time. Right, Navi?" The Navigator nods their head slowly.

Yes, my essential systems are still functional. It will take quite some time to repair the damage I took, however. Luckily, the planet where we landed is compatible with all life forms currently on board, and the local population is friendly and hospitable. We should be safe here, for now.

She nods.

"We're all right. Nothing too nasty." She hasn't smelled any blood or heard anything grinding in a way that makes her teeth itch. Then again, she hasn't done a comprehensive scan.

She's not sure of anything and doing anything too obvious seems like a bad idea.

"So since you didn't know about the crash, I'm assuming you're somewhere else. Are you safe?"

"Should we be congratulating you, for that?"

If he sounds a little tetchy, it's probably because he is. Not only has he been dragged off to somewhere unexpected without so much as a word of warning, but he's had to suffer alarms on top of that. Which would have been quite enough without having been asked to literally join hands with the rest of people who seem to also have been dragged into whatever this happens to be. People who are - at least for the time being - as good as strangers.

(He does not immediately offer a hand either. But he hasn't left outright, for all his apparent distaste of the idea.)

She just smiles back at him, because while you might catch more flies with honey than vinegar, sometimes it's more fun to stick with the honey for other reasons, regardless of what you might catch for it.

"You can if it'll make you feel better," she says easily enough. "So did you miss the instructions or just don't feel like being a part of saving our lives?"

"More than a few, yes."

The idea of being in space is not, perhaps, as much of a surprise as it could be, given the general level of technology current available on the Source or any of the thirteen shards. But even with that, it's not anywhere he'd wanted to be.

Jane crosses her arms over her chest, hands tucked into her armpits.

"Miss me with this Star Wars kumbaya bullshit. Are you going to sing a campfire song too?"

Her tactic is one he's used himself, from time to time. Not that he's in much of a mood to care for it, much less actually admit to it, but he recognizes the sense of it, on some level.

"I never said I wouldn't do it."

He just doesn't like it, and isn't going to shy from making his displeasure known. He does, however, grudgingly offer his hands afterwards - other than the gloves he's wearing (white, with gold embroidery down the backs), they're nothing particularly notable.

"If the ship tells me to, sure," she says right back and she doesn't hold back a roll of her eyes. "Or someone who knows what's going on or how any of this works has a better idea. So far, I'm not hearing any."

Ah, a cute little optimist. People like her are so tiring.

"The way it works is that thing fucks us if we do what it wants. It doesn't care about us. If you're fine with that, cool, your choice. I don't consent."

"Cool, your choice," she repeats after Jane, and uses her free hand to offer a thumbs up. It's definitely... less than genuinely cheerful. "Got any evidence to back that up? Or... other suggestions?"

For all that she was trying to act with haste, she can appreciate having issues with this situation; she has issues with this situation. They're just issues she figures can be dealt with when they aren't in a life or death situation where they have very little information or, seemingly, the ability to help much otherwise.

She'll take his hand.

"Duly noted," she says with a quick nod. And it's very very genuine. She appreciates him cooperating even if he's not happy.

"We ask those guys to pick us up." She gestures to the screen on which the attacking ship is pictured. "They're attacking the asshole who kidnapped us. Makes them the good guys, doesn't it?"

"Not necessarily."

His feelings about the kidnapping aside, there's no way to tell for certain that their attackers are even so much as aware of their presence. Or much inclined to bother to return them to where they've all come from besides.

She presses her lips together and takes a deep breath in.

"And your plans for how we'd communicate with them in the middle of said attack."

She tilts her head to one side.

"The thing you're forgetting here is that they're also attacking us. And, for all we know, they could be attacking us and this being is trying to protect us. We don't know. But..." she tips her head down to the hands, "from my experience, things that work through holding hands usually play ball a lot nicer than things that work through shooting at you."

"Oh, I don't know. This one sounds a little like rebellion to me. Who doesn't enjoy a bit of rebellion now and again?" Murmur offers from his corner where he's going to go ahead and take the strange alien being's hand. They might as well lend what they can to their captor and would-be savior.

"I'd still take a chance on them. They haven't already fucked us over, this thing did."

No one said anything about this ship returning them home. Jane assumes it has no intention of doing so -- that's generally the case for kidnappings. Odds still seem stacked that the attackers are better people than Navi, to her.

All parts accounted for, check. No one inconveniently dying, also check. Good. In return to Tim's greeting Murmur offered a slight bow. No sense in not being polite, despite their less than polite circumstances.

"Numerous. Perhaps the most pressing being how, and why, have we been kidnapped?" Not that he really minded an additional kidnapping. Better than wasting away in a mostly empty city bored out of his mind.

Memories of group therapy, of "healing hands" and holding the Talking Pillow and being dragged back to her room, restrained, and beaten, flash through Jane's mind and she shakes her head. "Then clearly you have no experience." She'd take violence over "loving" manipulation any day.

Her outline flickers for a second, like a reflection in disturbed water, and when it re-solidifies she looks exactly the same. She's just smiling now, breezy in the face of danger. "Okay, that was a good idea so I'm gonna s--"

Flit disappears. A few seconds later she reappears, that flicker runs over her again, and Jane's instantly tense, her hands forming into fists. She takes a deep breath. "Yep, this ship is a piece of shit."

“Cool, so you’re just like this with everyone, huh?” Jack snaps, recognizing Jane and having no reserve of patience for her nonsense, in light of current circumstances. She then reaches for the nearest open hand to hold onto. “Why don’t you just go hopscotch out of the airlock if you’re so determined to side with the obvious bad guys here?”

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 1 of 8

a bumpy start! {glyphcomm + action}

{pre-crash}

{post-crash}

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject