TDM 004: WASHED ASHORE

[erkumods]

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. ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● 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. ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● 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! ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● 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! ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● N A V I G A T I O N

Comments

[meticulousity]

[ it's kind of a lot to take in, and caroline does so silently, waiting for him to finish and then sort of just processing it for a while. it's weird, but is her life really any less weird than what he's just described to her?

if he's being honest with her, she should return the favor. she knows this, and yet it still takes her a minute. she downs about half of her fruity slushy whatever before she makes he attempt. ]

I'm kind of that, too. [ dead, but she doesn't think she has to clarify. ] I was murdered by my friend's...well, they call her a doppelganger. She made me into a vampire.

[ which kind of gives the whole 'maybe they're all dead' theory more credibility and she doesn't really want to think about that. but she remembers dying pretty vividly and has almost died a few times since, so she'd like to think she'd remember it happening again, for good this time. ]

[chestburster]

[ He assumes she's deciding whether or not to believe him and, based on that, how to react. Which is more than he can ask for, considering what he laid on her. Out of habit, Ben keeps watching her for too long, then remembers his corporeality and switches to observing the party. He has another swig of water, measured this time, and looks back to her as she starts speaking.

A vampire? He honestly doesn't care if she's making fun of her yet doesn't think she is. She looks as taxed as someone admitting a difficult truth. Doing that is a lot harder than lying. ] I'm sorry that happened to you, Caroline.

[ And if she is pulling one over him, his sincerity ought to beget some guilt. Until proven otherwise, he'll proceed under the assumption of innocence. ]

Can I ask you something, one dead person to another?

[meticulousity]

[ no one's ever really said that to her before, she realizes as he does. not for getting turned, or all the things they'd kept from her before she was. it's kind of a sobering realization, so she swallows the rest of her drink before taking her water bottle in both hands, turning it over in them. ]

Thank you. [ it's soft and a little sadder than she'd like it to be, but they are talking about death. ] I'm sorry it happened to you, too.

[ then he asks if he can ask her something, and her brows lift in curiosity. ]

Yeah, of course. What is it?

[chestburster]

[ Ben hasn't heard it in so many words either but he's had seventeen years to come to terms with his siblings' guilt and his own. In the end, he blames their father. Perhaps not for his death itself but for ensuring it was as painful as possible for those who survived it, and the one who didn't.

He holds out his cocktail in case she'd like it, since he hasn't had any. (He's not sure if there's alcohol in it and it seems uncouth to ask now.) ]

You don't have to answer if you don't want to. But do you ever wonder what it'd be like if you died died? Moved on? [ He's not as afraid of going into the light as he was at sixteen. By that same token, he hasn't asked Klaus to help him find it again. He's curious what someone in a similar situation might feel about it, the arrested development they're in. Sure, he's aged for some reason, but his experiences and memories are all secondhand. It's not actual living. ]

cw: murder by smothering, blood consumption.

[meticulousity]

[ she accepts it with a grateful half-smile (there is alcohol in it, she's pretty sure; she hasn't had a chance to eat but she's been less hungry than she should be) and sips a little from it as he asks his question and she considers her answer. ]

I don't know. [ she hadn't really been sure what was happening as it was happening, no one had explained it to her. there was katherine hovering above her and instructing her to pass along her message before shoving a pillow over her face. there had been struggling, gasping for air, and then blackness. then she'd woken up, hungry for something she couldn't put a name to until she smelled it, thick in the air, that wouldn't be sated until she consumed it.

would she have made the same decision if she'd known what was going on? ]

I guess I haven't.

[chestburster]

[ Oh, well, that's nice to hear. Ben smiles patiently, seeing as there are no wrong answers. There was a time he didn't think about that kind of thing either. When he was profoundly relieved and grateful to Klaus for saving him from the unknown, even as he discovered more and more aspects of life he could no longer partake in. A childish attitude. He's had nothing but time to work through and get over it. ]

Well, if you ever do, try not to be too hard on yourself. [ His tone carries the weight of experience. ]

[meticulousity]

[ she smiles, sipping lightly from her drink again. she's had a habit of doing that in the past, being hard on herself and thinking that the people in her life would rather have her out of theirs. while damon would have been happy to kill her and bonnie and her mother had hated what she was, elena and stefan had surprised her. even while distracted by elena's evil twin ancestor who was also stefan's ex, they'd looked out for her and even helped the others come around. ]

I'll try. [ she takes one more sip, then sets the glass carefully in the sand. ] Can I ask you a question now?

[chestburster]

[ He blinks, taken aback in the moment. Nervous all of a sudden and excited anew. Klaus may on occasion ask for his opinion but he uses it more like a sounding board to confirm his own convictions and double down on whatever he was going to do anyway. Nobody else knows he's around in order to ask him anything. It's not quite the same as talking at or even to someone. Ben will do his best under the pressure. ]

Yeah, I mean, it's only fair. Go ahead. [ He has a sip of water just for something to do with his hands. ]

[meticulousity]

You don't need to answer if you don't want to, either, but I - I'm kinda new to the whole being dead and having superpowers thing. Like, I didn't even know vampires were real until I became one.

[ she pauses to take a breath, then a drink of her water. ]

So like - you didn't freak out when I told you what I was, but what are you, exactly? You said you had powers, and that your brother was the only one who could see you, and I've never heard of that being a thing before.

[ granted, there's been a lot that was kept from her. but his version of unusual sounds like a whole new version of unusual. ]

I'm sorry, is this too much?

[chestburster]

[ Vampires have superpowers? Wait, that tracks. The downsides occurred to him but none of the benefits. Invulnerability. Glamour or mesmerism, maybe. Eternal youth. He'd still rather have the freedom to soak in the sunshine, given the choice. She wasn't, though, which really does suck. ]

No, no, it's okay. Most people know about us back home because we were kind of famous. [ Fully not a brag. Allison is the only one of them who can handle fame even a little. ] Nobody knows why exactly but we were all born on the same day. Out of nowhere. Like, our moms weren't even pregnant. Seven of us were adopted and brought up together. All our powers are different.

Our brother Luther is super strong. Klaus can summon the dead. I, uh... I have this portal in my body. I open it and a monster comes through. [ A self-effacing expression, mouth flattened. If not crappy compared to the others, it is at the very least highly situational. ]

[meticulousity]

[ she can actually do that, though not without the ring she's wearing. she's not quite invulnerable but she can do mesmerism and will be seventeen forever, but would she have picked this if given the choice?

well, she definitely wouldn't have wanted to get murdered for it.

she listens to him, eyebrows raising a little at the story. it sounds a little nuts to her, mostly the whole 'our moms weren't pregnant before they gave birth to us' thing, but they go really wide at the monster coming through a portal in his body detail. ]

Like what kind of monster? [ she's a little curious to know if that's how he died, but it doesn't feel right to ask. ] Can you still - can that still happen if you're dead?