TDM 009: I'M IN LIKE WITH YOU

[erkumods]

TDM 009: I'M IN LIKE WITH YOU

00. Arrival This time, you come out of the water, the Nameless Island's own inherent energy drawing people in. It's like being suspended between realities and abruptly pushed from behind through a rift in dimensions. It may make you sick, or that might be the motion of the ocean, lifting you to the surface 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. Feel free to explore the Island, though there isn’t much to see. Most of the buildings are abandoned and in dire need of repair, and beyond the city lingers a thick fog that obscures much of the wilderness from view. Wander too far into this fog, and you will find yourself mysteriously looping back to where you began, your memories of what you were doing and how you got there erased. With that in mind, it may be wise to stake your claim on a rundown apartment, a tent on the beach, or a bed in the “comfortable” new barracks. Your inventory will be found a day later, wrapped up haphazardly and delivered to each person's makeshift home. ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● I. STARGAZER On the first night that new arrivals wash ashore, the moon rises. It's full and beautiful and surrounded by stars. The robots quickly bring old, dusty telescopes out of storage and line them up on the beach to help people get a truly spectacular view. "Look to the heavens! Behold, the chicken, the cat, the owl, the donkey!" It's... the cock, the pussy, the hooters, and the ass. For the rest of the night, characters will become fixated on the specific asset associated with the constellation they've gotten an eyeful of. Whether this leads to some body worship or just casual appreciation is up to you. You can learn about the stars and constellations later this month in some of the rare, non-pornographic books in the library. (More info will go up soon, so please be patient!) ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● II. STIMULATING CONVERSATION An ancient courting ritual has been announced! It involves the give-and-take of candy hearts with slogans printed on them. Of course, since these hearts are being manufactured by robots, their sense of taste is a little... off? Or perhaps off-putting? "You'll do." "5/10." "Acceptable." "Sloppy Seconds." Receiving a negative heart makes one feel insecure, jealous, and submissive. "Be mine." "Nicest ass." "Swell bulge." "They're good lays, Bront." Receiving a positive heart will make one feel confident, boastful, and dominant. Your friendly neighborhood 'bots will give them out to anyone who asks - and maybe even those who don't. ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● III. Eat Or Dare The robots have set up a stall by the beach with a banner that reads: Eat Or Dare. They have procured bigger candy hearts than ever before -- fist-sized and larger -- with actions written on them instead of derogatory slogans. "Take a dive." "Lick me." "Get handsy." The name of the game is to follow the instructions or forfeit the challenge by making the evidence disappear into your mouth. Delicious! Those who eat the candy hearts will feel themselves getting giddy and unreasonably invested in the love affairs of others. They will feel compelled to play matchmaker to spread the cheer. ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● N A V I G A T I O N

Comments

[braidedwonder]

[ Wufei you under estimate Duo's ability to hate things that are inconvenient to him. He makes a bit of a mocking expression as Wufei tells him to suit himself, tongue sticking out a little before his eyes roll.

Look, no one said he wasn't childish as hell sometimes, okay? ]

Then go, man. I'm a big kid. I can take care of it.

Go take your wet t-shirt around and ask for help.

[zerofive]

Perhaps I will!

[This last being called over one shoulder, though with an accompanying blind wave, to indicate the lack of actual sentiment, vague as it was. Duo wouldn't sit there, forever, after all; as ridiculous as his priorities often seemed, he was ostensibly as much a Gundam Pilot as any of them. But whether or not he sits there forever, he'll hopefully still be sitting there half an hour later when Wufei appears again, far down the beach, but moving with speed towards him.]

...There is a hangar, a mile, that way. [He points in the indicated direction. Wufei's a little out of breath. Not from the run, really, but from the magnitude of what he'd seen.] They have our Gundams.

[He needn't mention that that is absolutely impossible. They already had that conversation, after all.]

[braidedwonder]

[ Duo gives some dismissive little wave as Wufei tells him that he will, grimacing slightly at moving around in his wet jeans and the rest of it. When Wufei returns Duo's lounged on a rock, soaking up the heat and sunshine, his shirt tossed aside to dry along with his jacket, shoes perched upside down for the exact same reason.

His braid, too, is pushed outward to dry into some crusty form of its usual braided shape, which is why Duo kind of groggily cracks an eye open as Wufei approaches, then, only somewhat half listening at first. Honestly, he's expecting some sort of long talk about how the hell he's still here laying and drying out, but instead -

- Instead, he hears the word 'gundam' and is sitting up, quickly, brows furrowed in confusion. ]

Our Gundams? [ Say no more, Wufei, Duo is moving to gather up his shirt and pull it back over his head, near feverishly gathering his things before he asks, almost desperately - ]

How the fuck do they have them!?

[zerofive]

[He waits impatiently while Duo scoops up his things and then paces him as they go.]

They are most likely copies of some kind.

[Because the originals and the aforementioned smithereens they were blown to. Even reconstructing them from pieces should not have been possible, and would have left signs.]

I cannot be certain how accurate.

[braidedwonder]

But then how good would they be? [ Is he already considering fighting his way out of here? Possibly. Duo's barely slung his jacket back over his shoulder before he's near jogging toward the hangar, clearly eager to see any form of Deathscythe Hell, even if it was a weird copy of the black-cloaked Gundam he hadn't seen in so long.

Still, he's too curious not to check it out, casting a side long glance at the 05 pilot. ]

I would ask why you didn't investigate before, but. This way we both can at the same time, to be fair.

Anyone else's suits here that you recognize?

[zerofive]

Wing Zero. Several mobile dolls. Talgeese— two of them. And others I don't recognize.

[As a Preventer, even one mobile suit would be a problem. In any capacity, a Gundam, multiple Gundams, these scenarios would constitute a serious threat to any idea of peace. The idea of new Gundams, of mobile suits in configurations and forms that no one had seen before? New models. New construction, new resources, new... threats. Threats to the very peace they had all fought for, that so many had died for.

Someone, possibly many, were going to be very sorry they had involved Duo Maxwell and Chang Wu Fei in their little warmongering scheme.]

You know what this means.

[braidedwonder]

So, presumably, Yuy and Merquise are here too. [ Duo tries not to seem so eager to see Heero Yuy again, but.. well. Wufei likely knows already. They've always been oddly close for two gundam pilots that came to Earth unknowing that there was more than just themselves on Operation Meteor. Of course this was only after Duo had shot him, and Heero had stolen his parts but...

Eye for an eye or whatever.

Still, Duo's main focus right now is to see Deathscythe again. ]

What? That we're maybe gonna have to fight out way out of here or something? Count me in. I wanted to keep Deathscythe anyway.

[zerofive]

[For a moment it is just like the war, exactly like it. There's a moment of camaraderie, the grim grin before battle, and he looks at Duo first with the eye of someone as embedded in his own self, and in his duty, as ever. The joke comes automatically, an echo of easier times, and more difficult.]

Not before we— [pay them back. That's what he would have said.]

...

[It was hideous, then, to remember... to startle back to the present where there would be no payback. They should gather evidence enough to expose this plot, blow the hangar sky-high, and steal a shuttlecraft or its equivalent to make their escape. They should be dedicated to peace, more than their own adrenaline-fueled self-satisfaction. His smile faded, mutated into a simple nod, which wasn't an agreement]

You know why we shouldn't. [Nataku. It hurts. But he knows what is right and what is wrong, here. That is true even if, like Duo, he hates it.] And we cannot leave the others, in any case.

[braidedwonder]

Before we what? [ Duo casts one of those easy, toothy smiles Wufei's way - that kind of shit-eating smile that says he knew what the hell the other pilot wanted to say, but wants to hear it come out of his mouth instead of filling it in.

Somehow he's surprised as Wufei's face morphs into something else, a small frown crossing his face before it melts back into determined lines. ]

I don't buy that total peace forever bullshit, Wufei. Fuck that. If they give us the tools to destroy them, I say we take the opportunity for the fact that they took us, too.

[ And Duo can't stomach having to blow up Deathscythe again, not by the way he's nearly flying in to the hangar as they reach it, his momentum making it hard to stop. Two, three steps happen before Duo comes to rest, shifting to a wider stance as his turns his head to look up.

Above him stands the folded black wings of Deathscythe Hell, its serious face staring straight out, vaguely demonic as it is. Next to it stands Wing Zero with those white chrome wings, and to the other side, Altron. For a moment Duo is inscrutable, though the way he swallows hard explains for him what he's holding back on without all the actual, outward fuss, and Duo releases a long breath out he didn't know he'd been holding. ]

No. That's it, Wufei. That's Deathscythe.

[zerofive]

[He narrows his eyes at Duo, half-derisively, half in exasperation. What do you mean that's it, of course it's Deathscythe, he had said as much! You doubted him, and that's hurtful.]

Yes, from the outside. [It warrants a closer look, at least.] It is definitely Deathscythe.

[Because even if it's not the same exact gundam, it's still the same model, same material, same experience of looking up into the almost human face of a monster made for war, named for a god, and representative of the spirit of your home. Wufei can't actually make direct eye-contact with his own, a fact that he can barely acknowledge, let alone express.]

I'm... going to keep moving. [It's justifiable. Particularly if Duo is going to reduce this place to rubble, he'll need to gather more information. There is, after all, significant illegality here, one way or another, and Maxwell has always been a highly skilled mechanic, in Wu Fei's experience. He is capable of making the evaluation on his own.]

[braidedwonder]

Well I'm definitely gonna check the works, too. [ Duo knows his own work, and the Sweeper's work, enough to know where something may have been tinkered with. It takes Duo a moment to acknowledge what Wufei says, turning for a moment to make an almost absent-minded little 'uh-huh' of acknowledgment. ]

I'm gonna get climbing. [ Because of course Duo couldn't leave it be for a moment longer. He's too used to climbing the massive legs of his gundam to get to the next part that he begins with a kind of assurance only a Gundam pilot could have, ditching his jacket on Deathscythe's foot.

When Wufei is done casing the place, or perhaps curious, Duo has the cockpit of his gundam open, a few panels popped and is, intently, looking through all the little details, a small furrow in his brow as he does so. ]