ercookies | TDM 004: WASHED ASHORE

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TDM 004: WASHED ASHORE

Arrival

This time, you come out of the water. While the Augur reboots, the Nameless Island's own inherent energy draws people in. It's like being suspended between realities and walking through a rift in dimensions. It may make you sick, or that might be the motion of the ocean, lifting you and carrying you to shore.

Waterlogged and covered in sand, new arrivals will be greeted by robots who welcome them with towels and bracelet devices. The A5 card is already loaded up. Inventory will be found a day later, wrapped up haphazardly and delivered to each person's makeshift home.

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I. Feel the friendship!

Recent arrivals and visitors to the beach may notice a sudden influx of hundreds of bright red crustaceans crawling (and coupling) across the sand. It's crab mating season, as it turns out, it's a regular invasion! To keep the beach a pleasant place to gather for the island's inhabitants, the robots are offering credits to especially enterprising crab-catchers. Grab a bucket and get to work! Be sure to watch out for their pinch, mind you. Their little claws are tiny, but that doesn’t mean they don’t hurt.

Surprisingly, there is another effect that even the robots don't anticipate: islanders who are pinched by the crabs find themselves feeling instantly buddy-buddy with the next person they spot. Did you just become best friends?! Get pinched one too many times, however, and those feelings may sour into a crabby mood, indeed.

If you are feeling particularly vengeful (or just hungry), the little crabs do make for delicious gumbo. Once cooked, they have no side effects whatsoever.

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II. Phallus Phestival

Although the Augur is offline and supplies are scarce, the robots of Erku are still eager to make their run-down little island a welcoming place for the new arrivals. To that end, they have arranged a three day festival to boost morale and promote the generation of plenty of Eros energy to assist in the restoration of the damaged and decayed parts of the city. The robots claim that this celebration was once a cornerstone of the long-lost civilization of the island. By the dawn of the first day, every island resident will find at their doorstep (or tent flap, mobile suit, etc) the traditional costume of the ancient islanders to wear to the festival. It appears to be... a giant sheet? There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to the sometimes garish colors and patterns of the fabric, but at least the robots have uploaded instructions on how to wear it to your bracelet device.

Attendees will find food (mostly crab-flavored), confections, and household necessities in rather suggestive shapes, as well as goods you might find handy to complete your A5 squares: sex toys, pervertibles, sexy maid outfits, and the like. While islanders are welcome to set up shop on the festival grounds and sell (or charge) whatever they like, all items from the robots are offered up for free to those who wear their traditional island garb!

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III. Fireside Adventures

Each night of the festival is wrapped up in style with an enormous bonfire on the beach, where drinks, fruity cocktails, and lively music appropriate for dancing is all provided at no cost by the robots. Even if you’re not usually much of a dancer, the longer you stand by the fire and allow it to warm your limbs, the more you feel like moving! Not only that, but everyone is looking quite beautiful by the firelight, are they not?

If you’ve grown tired - or if dancing just isn’t your thing - you might prefer to sit back and swap stories on one of the many driftwood log benches the robots have prepared for seating. Or, maybe you’d prefer to rough it for the night in one of the beachside canvas tents. Better claim one quick, though, or be prepared to share… there’s only one sleeping bag!

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N A V I G A T I O N

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[ Wow, it's his crab? He killed it??

She can have it though, he's too busy bristling over these insults to his (furry) person. There is so much wrong with what she just said that he doesn't know where to start.

First of all: ]

They're not cat ears. [ Said cat ears twitch angrily. And second of all!! ] And Flamek isn't tacky.

[ Yes, the gun has a name. Yes, it's tacky as hell. But that's not the point here. ]

This gun has done more in two minutes than you have all morning.

[ Add 'creepy people watching' to his list of crimes, go ahead. ]

[ She doesn't comment out loud on the name Flamek, but the way her expression flatlines says everything you need to know about how much less she now cares about anything he has to say, despite the fact that he could easily murder her at any moment with his lame Anime Whypo nerd gun. ]

You think having a firearm makes you so superior? Hah! Anyone with half a brain could shoot a couple crabs.

[ She jabs a finger at his head. ]

And they're clearly cat ears!

[ She knows the trope!! ]

[ What crimes did he commit in a past life to deserve having to listen to her prattle on? Free him. ]

That puts you out of the running then.

[ Translation: she has zero brain as far as he's concerned.

Anyway. It's time for him to exit stage right because he's thoroughly used up his limited stock of patience for the say—except someone else on the beach, clearly inspired by Ema's brilliant technique, has also been swandiving left and right and sending both sand and crabs flying through the air.

One of them hits Eustace on the head and pincers right onto an ear. Thanks, bud. ]

Ow!

[ He grabs the crab and yanks it off, flinging it unceremoniously to the ground. But the damage has been done. The desire to Make Friends™ has been passed to it. His hand, now free of the offending crab, points to her bucket. ]

That's all you've collected so far?

[ This is....how he bonds....... ]

[ She can't actually tell the difference between Grumpy Cat Boy and Friendly Cat Boy because they seem equally prickly, nor did she experience the nice phase of crab pinching herself because she immediately got pinched like a hundred times at once, and so she has no idea what's coming. It did seem like he was on his way out of her life until five seconds ago, though, and so she eyes him warily at his question. ]

So what if it is?

[ The bucket contains one (1) bullet-pierced crab. Ema crosses her arms defiantly, expecting more rude commentary her way because she'll be the first person to admit that she is Not Good At This. ]

My calling is science, not crab-nabbing. And why do they have to be so pointy, anyway?! It's impossible to get a hold of them.

[ Yes, that's clearly the problem here. ]

[ Yes, the crabs are clearly the problem here.

He's no expert crab hunter himself, but surely hunting crabs can't be all that different from hunting other things. Like, say, people. Crossing his arms, he surveys the beach. ]

Then think things through instead of using your hands. [ Even if he's still not fully convinced she has a brain in that head of hers. ] Build some kind of trap, lure them in with bait, and then catch them all at once.

[ Easy, right?? ]

[ The ongoing jabs at her intelligence are really starting to wear her thin, especially coming from a trigger-happy adult in cat ears, but grudgingly, she can't deny her lack of results. Is it her fault she grew up as a city girl who never had to fish for a single live crab?? Her frown tilts dangerously into a pout. ]

All right, big shot. If it's that easy, then why don't you show me how it's done?

[ He will absolutely show her how it's done, thanks, never mind the fact that he too has never hunted a single crab in his life. But surely it can't be that difficult? They'll find out either way.

First matter of business! ]

See if you can find any snails or plant matter. Anything the crabs can eat. [ And since he is not above getting his own hands dirty, he follows that issued order with: ] I'll work on building a walled-off area in the sand.

[ He has gloves and she doesn't, it's only logical if they want to minimize annoying little crab injuries from their crustacean buddies crawling all over. Speaking of (the effects of) annoying crab injuries: ]

Since you can't catch crabs, what can you do?

[ Technically he's asking about her interest but boy does it sure not sound like it. Maybe he would make friends better if he knew how to talk to people. ]

[ She may be prickly and poor of temper at the moment, but she isn't above taking instruction where she knows she's beat. With a huff at his rudely phrased question, she settles her glasses over her eyes and surveys the beach for any rocks or debris that might be sheltering snails. ]

... I'm a detective. I investigate crimes. Scientifically!

[ No one ever asked her to do it scientifically but by god that is what she does, standard operating procedures be damned. The spark of passion that entered her voice dies as quickly as it came, and she frowns glumly at the beach. ]

I get the impression that the laws of this land are fuzzy at best, though, so I suppose that makes me doubly useless.

[ Investigate crimes, huh? Maybe she's not as bad as he originally dismissed her to be, and he peers over at her again a second time, studying her while he flicks crabs away right and left in his quest to build a little crab trap. ]

Crimes such as murders?

[ He's closer to a hitman than any sort of morally upright officer - that anime nerd gun has to be good for something - but he can understand a little bit of the process it takes to gather information. ]

There'll always be a place for that, even without published laws.

Not so much here, I should hope.

[ Implicit is the "you'd better not be the one doing the murdering, pal." Still, she recognizes that he respects the job, however grounded in cynicism the sentiment is. Oblivious to his peering, she exhales, the defensive edge to her posture relaxing into something more collected. ]

But I suppose you're right. Regardless of whose jurisdiction we're under, we still need to hold transgressors accountable for their actions. Anything less would be moral forfeiture.

[ They may be at the mercy of sex-obsessed robots, but at least they still have their dignity........ right??

Ema kneels at a promising collection of rocks and starts turning them over, plucking up anything that looks like it could be crabfood. ]

And what is it that you do?

[ But what if a little murder, as a treat? ]

It's classified.

[ Or, was, before everything went straight down the shitter. He doesn't know what's classified and what isn't anymore given the dissolution of old branches and new ones springing out of nowhere, but better play it safe than sorry, even if he's 90% sure his actions here won't track back home.

Still. He flicks another crab away, breath exhaling in a short sigh. One wall's sloppily constructed by now, the best he can do. ]

Mostly a lot of cleaning up after other people's mistakes.

[ If she wants to assume that means trigger-happy murder though, that's her prerogative. ]

[ no murder allowed!!!

Given that Ema's impression of Eustace is not exactly superlative at the moment, she's thinking less "mysterious murder assassin" and more "Area 51 restroom attendant". But hey, whatever pays the bills. ]

Hmph. Stingy on details, aren't you. You know, there's no telling how long we'll be stuck here. Are you going to be keeping up your hot shot routine the entire time? I'd like to know how much I should bother trying to talk to you, please.

[ She shoos away some nosy crabs trying to butt in on her crabfood. After some scrounging, she tosses some greenery and worms and a lucky oyster into her bucket. ]

[ "Area 51 restroom attendant" is better than he deserves, tbh.

She has a point: given how stingy every single robot's been about any amount of information concerning the island (including how to yeet oneself off of it), he's not convinced he won't be here for the foreseeable future. Not exactly an ideal situation, but he'll make do. He's learned to cope with worse. ]

Even if I told you, you wouldn't understand any of it. [ Wow, that sounds really presumptous. He makes a small hmmph noise and gets to work on Wall #2. ] Most Society members don't even understand.

[ We live in a Society.....literally. ]

[ It sounds like he's saying Society with a capital S, which is about as cliche a name for a super special secret group as she can imagine. Ema briefly raises her eyes skyward in search of sweet baby Jesus in heaven to help her before deciding to never ask this guy anything about his background ever again. Waste of time. ]

Riveting. So then, what do you think about the island? Have you been here for very long?

[ If she won't be getting any info on Eustace, she might as well dig for info on this place... ]

[ Wow........and after he bared one whole square millimeter of his soul to her. Truly, trying to make friends is a Mistake. Unfortunately, asking for any sort of information on this place is also a mistake. The question doesn't bring him any joy; if anything, it seems to turn his expression even more annoyed. ]

A few days. Long enough to find out that none of the robots here know anything worthwhile.

[ He'd given up after the tenth time of being told to go reap the karmic rewards of entering into joyful bliss with another person. ]

I think the rules of this place are beyond obtuse but I don't see another way to proceed other than following them for the time being.

[ So they're basically in the same boat. That might be a little reassuring, she supposes. The people who have already fully embraced the supposed law of the land are a little too far gone for her to relate to. ]

Well. We could always become an island of crab farmers. We've got all our starting materials right here.

[ She's not completely serious, but crab farming sounds a lot more palatable to her at the moment than gratuitous sex with strangers. ]

[ He can't help but stare at her then, unprepared for this sudden career change advice. ]

Crab farmers.

[ Just all of them on this island, with rolled up sleeves and straw hats, picking away at the crabs ready to decimate the island. Actually, all things considered, it's not a half-bad suggestion. It sounds peaceful, if nothing else, and only the gods know how much he needs that break. ]

Hmph. [ His hands, which had stopped moving briefly, get to work again. ] You'll need to practice your crab-hunting then.

It's what I'm doing now, isn't it?

[ She knows her hand-eye coordination sucks!! Get off her neck, man!! She digs around in the sand some more, scrounging up one more handful of promising crabfood before returning to Eustace with her haul.

She looks down at the top of his head as he works on the walls, does a double take, and then squints. After a moment, she reaches into her lab coat and pulls out a magnifying glass. Which she uses for a closer look at his head -- specifically his ears. She does this with zero shame or pretense of politeness, bending in for a nice, close look. ]

[ He doesn't have eyes in the back of his head (only the ears) but he's aware enough to notice her stand up with her haul of crab edibles and head towards him.

Except...she never gets to the part where she hands him the fruits of her labor. Instead, she stands there, shuffling around a bit. He stiffens, ears twitching irritably as he senses her leaning in closer. To do what, he has no idea, but he doesn't like it regardless! ]

What are you doing?

[ Hello?? They're supposed to be collecting crabs for credits here? Why even suggest being a crab farmer if she's not going to farm said crabs? ]

[ She's waiting for a certain someone to finish his dumb trap walls is why!!

She leans over to the left, then to the right, scrutinizing his ears from different angles as they twitch. Then, very calmly and coolly, she straightens and slips her magnifying glass back into her pocket. She looks into the distance as if completely uninterested. ]

W-Wow, they've really started making them lifelike. Technology's come a long way.

[ Pay no attention to her stutter. Everything is perfectly fine and his ears are definitely fake. ]

[ They're real! He's a real ~~boy~~ furry!!

It takes him a moment to puzzle out just exactly what she's talking about. His gun, maybe? Certainly beyond the scope of the average level of tech found in any of the skydoms he's been to, but there's no way she could possibly know about—

Ah. Of course. He really should have expected this from the get-go. What else could she be talking about, when everyone else he's seen thus far in this place has been in possession of tiny human ears?

He sighs, and gets back to work. Construction of wall #3 starting in 3...2...1... ]

Hmph. Are you going to tell me next that the rest of my body is made of wire and metal too?

[ Please do not vivisect him in an attempt to find out. ]

[ Excuse her!! Don't shatter her perception of reality, it's very rude. Her bucket rattles with tension as she snaps, irritated that the evolutionary tree would attempt to betray her so. ]

Cat ears on a person don't make any sense! Why would a race of humans become evolutionarily divergent over cat ears, and only cat ears? They're not even on the same area of the skull! How would you like it if I evolved my nose onto my chin?!

[ She's barely coherent by the end of that, but such is the enormity of her scientific wrath. ]

[ He's not a Science, he's never bothered to study the genetic deviations between Draphs, Erunes, and humans. Are they fantastic and wondrous to some sad nerd out there? Absolutely, but he is tragically not that sad nerd. Even if his whole schtick makes him look like one. ]

Don't know. [ Sorry, Ema's going to have to stay perplexed on that one. ] Does it really matter right now?

[ Make like Elsa and let it go. Although, actually, while they're on the subject, he feels compelled to make one last point. ]

They're not all cat ears.

Oh, zip it. I don't need to hear about your friends' stupid chinchilla ears.

[ She's done with this topic!! She already knows the biology of Eustace's awful cat ears will haunt her waking hours and she hates it.

She drops her bucket of crab delights and aggressively squats next to him so that she can glare at his work. Hurry up, geez. ]

[ What the heck!!

He's not a child, so he doesn't angrily retort back that those ears aren't in fact stupid, but he certainly does scowl further at the sand as he finishes up his handiwork. Once the last wall's complete, he abruptly stands. ]

There. Catch the rest on your own.

[ He's not going to stand here and tolerate insults towards his race. ]

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karintous - 2020-09-08 03:17 (UTC) - Expand

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