ercookies | TDM 010: PARTNER UP, PARTNER

Entry tags:

!tdm

TDM 010: PARTNER UP, PARTNER

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” barracks. Your inventory will be found a day later, wrapped up haphazardly and delivered to each person's makeshift home.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

I. Laid Bare Basics

There is a new addition to the scenery at the beach, and everyone is welcome! Especially new arrivals, who will be ushered to the recently-established Laid Bare Spa, where (provided they don't slip away from the bots' helpful grasp) their uncomfortably wet, sandy clothing will be stripped away and they will be lovingly pampered by the cold metal hands of the resident robots. Long-time Islanders and newbies alike are welcome to enjoy such amenities as hot and cold baths, sauna rooms, scrub-downs, thorough whippings with birch brooms, skin treatments, massage and energy work, and more! All rooms are thoughtfully decorated with tasteful murals of naked and disrobing bodies.

Maybe you'll see someone you recognize?! (Maybe you'll see... you?)

Islanders who happen to find their clothing mysteriously missing are welcome to borrow a Laid Bare branded towel to cover up with on their way home.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

II. Tattoo to You, Too

The Augur understands that sometimes, it's difficult to find a partner to indulge you in those favorite Auspicious Acts - especially for new arrivals, but surely even long-time residents could benefit from a little assistance now and then. That is why ever-benevolent entity has gifted Her precious Islanders with tattoos which feature their most secret, urgent, and/or shameful of desires! (Even if that desire is to simply complete a Bingo.)

The tattoo may be a picture or a word, and it can appear anywhere on the body. At first it is pleasantly warm to the touch, like a soft glow of light on your skin. It soon becomes apparent - through either robot advice or a notification on your communication device - that your task is to find a match for your tattoo and complete the depicted act with that person. The longer one goes without completing the act, the more the tattoo seems to heat up, until it feels like it is burning into your skin.

Take too long, and the tattoo may become permanent. Otherwise, the tattoo will fade within hours of completing the Auspicious Act.

[ For TDMers: feel free to select any favorite kink for this prompt! If you complete a kink that doesn't appear on your card, you may switch one square for the completed kink. For current players: by participating on (tagging into) this TDM, you may switch one kink into your card (it must be the kink in the toplevel prompt you responded to). ]

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

III. Creepy Crawly Caterpillar Crawl

Are you on the hunt for credits? Then have the robots got a task for you! The 'bots of the Nameless Island are recruiting Islanders to go bug collecting in the caves, crevices, and hollowed-out logs of the wilderness. The quarry? The (shudder - literally, the robots will shudder) doom-summoning harbinger bug. They describe these creepy creatures as fat, fuzzy, and rainbow-colored, with long, fluffy antennae that look like rabbit's ears.

The robots describe these critters as so dangerous that Islanders should only hunt them in pairs. Should your team return successful, you both will be rewarded very handsomely for every caterpillar caught!

The bugs are typically very docile and seem to enjoy soft pets, judging by the cooing and squeaking noises they make (especially to scritches behind their "ears"). Poke or disturb them however, and they may bite! Body parts bitten by angry caterpillars will swell up cartoonishly, and can only be treated by having someone else suck the venom out. Good thing you're traveling with a partner!

The 'bots strongly recommend against keeping these little buggies as pets, but they're not your dad.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

N A V I G A T I O N

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

There's a new suit in the hangar. Zechs couldn't help but walk up alongside it, on the catwalk, intrigued. Later on, he would have to see what it was like within the simulator, he thought.

It appeared there was movement up there? Curious, Zechs called up to him, "Good afternoon."

Mika has never been terribly social. He doesn't hate talking to people, but he has learned to distrust people who are not in his 'circle'. At best, they see people like him as 'rats', and at worst they want them dead. He has no reason to believe that's different here. He doesn't care what people outside of Tekkadan think of him, but he does care that he's in enough pieces to go home.

He's no good if he can't help Orga, so he has to live and go home. That much is simple.

He hears a voice call up to him. At the very least, it sounds like the voice is meant for him. A small face with wide, intense blue eyes peers over the open hatch of Barbatos's open cockpit. He debates for a moment, wondering if it's worth the energy to answer.

Mika has to eventually start getting tangible answers about this place and not answers from those... things. They're pretty useless, as far as he can tell.

He calls back, firm and flat: "Who are you?"

That was the look of a fighter. A soldier, perhaps not - but a warrior, definitely. Young again, distrustful, alert, wary. There was strength in the gaze peeking out of that cockpit.

He held up his hands, showing he wasn't currently holding any weapons. (It would be a lie to say he was unarmed.)

"My name is Zechs Merquise," he told him, calm and firm. Not gentle, yet really, he wasn't good at gentle. "You've been recently abducted, I'll assume."

Mikazuki might have recognized the universal sign of surrender, but he could only trust so much. From his perch, he kept a hand over the hilt of the gun tucked into his sling. He wasn't going to aim, not yet, but he would be ready to take him out if he needed to. It was the easiest way.

He'd asked for his name, but chances were, he wouldn't remember it. It was a weird name, hard to say and hard to tuck away into his head.

"Zek... su... hm," he repeated back without much care about how right he might have been. He nodded his head slowly, eyes completely trained on his current conversation partner. He, at the very least, did not look like a mouse eying a cat on the prowl anymore.

"By those things... the metal guys."

A little bemused, Zechs reflected that at the very least, he didn't go by the name given to him at birth. It was far more of a mouthful. But he didn't voice that thought aloud, of course.

He nodded, expression serious. "Yes. As was I - and anyone else you'll encounter on this accursed island. We're given clothes, a few things from home - our mobile suits, if we're pilots -"

Zechs gestured vaguely towards Tallgeese III, a bit of a ways off, but shining and proud, well-maintained, "- and, eventually, tasks. Had the robots told you why they've taken us?"

Mikazuki followed Zechs's gesture to look at Tallgeese, leaning forward to check it out a little better. He hadn't bothered looking at the other suits in here - he didn't care much about what they were nor who was piloting them yet - but he might as well get an understanding of what kind of weapon this man was working with in case he had to worry about it later.

He wasn't a strategist, but he has no reason to believe this man isn't a threat.

"Mm. They want us to do those kinds of adult things. That stuff Shino always gabs about. I don't get why, but if we're getting back by doing it, I'll do it."

Zechs mentally readjusted his guess for the boy's age downward a couple of years, and tried his best not to scowl. Oh, he definitely wanted to take apart the Augur right now, if it were only possible. Perhaps blast it from space using the Tallgeese's beam rifle.

Perhaps the boy was a soldier - a warrior - and likely deadly. But such a comment made him sound ... Zechs took a moment to count mentally back from ten, in Latin, calming his temper against the machines.

"It's hard to say why the island works this way," Zechs told him, "but the robots, the artificial intelligence that controls them, and the various forces here will do a number of things to force that to happen. They will drug us, they will try and change our behavior. They will transform us and they will manipulate our memories. It's impossible to avoid every means the Augur can attempt to control us - but you should be aware of the dangers."

"Hmmm."

Mikazuki's capacity for listening had stopped about halfway through Zechs's little speech of warning. He'd been drugged, he'd been transformed and the rest made no sense to him. Mess with memories? Change behavior? He'd only seen that happen with head injuries... or the kids that saw way too much. So what kind of things did those metal guys do here? His expression soured.

"Why hasn't anyone got rid of them? You have mobile suits. Should be easy, right? They're small."

"The robots are merely extensions of the actual threat," Zechs explained, "like ... drones, or mobile dolls, for the Augur."

"And it's the Augur which is the force behind our kidnappings, it has set the tasks it wants us to complete," Zechs told him. "Given how it can mess with our minds - and given that the robots themselves seem to be produced endlessly - it's too dangerous to attempt an open, direct assault against it."

Mikazuki did not necessarily believe what he could understand of this man's words. A lot was beyond him. He was not familiar with mobile dolls and what an 'Augur' might be. The robots made some sense to him because he could see them. The metal guys were right in front of him and something he could damage.

"So the one I shot... it'll come back? And something else is ordering them around."

He didn't look happy about the information.

"How did they get us here? Is this place on Earth?"

"It'll be replaced or repaired," Zechs agreed. He scowled a little. "We haven't determined where the replacements are manufactured."

Now, that would be a place to target, if they could somehow be shielded from retaliation. But if they couldn't - the Augur could do just about anything to them. Completely rob them of their will, turn them into mindless sex slaves. He wouldn't put it past them. And these pilots didn't deserve that.

Really, Zechs thought Mika's irritation with this whole thing was entirely understandable.

"It doesn't seem to be Earth. There are creatures here I've never heard of before, and there are different stars visible on select nights than I've ever seen," Zechs told him. "But I don't remember how I was taken here, and neither has anyone else I've spoken to. The 'how' is a big question - I was in a difficult place to be kidnapped from."

"Ah..." Mika took the word at face value. He had no reason to disbelieve him for now and, given the situation, any information was a start even if it was a lie. At least it gives him something to disprove if he had to. It was not the kind of thing he was good at, but it was the kind of thing he could be good at if he needed to be.

'Not Earth' and 'Not Mars' were not much to go on. It was not a colony because there would be no beach. Any of the other outer settlements were foreign to him and not yet able to be ruled out. So, where was he? Where was Mars? How did anything slip by all the others and why would they take him?

"Where I was... the others would have noticed those things."

"Exactly," Zechs nodded. "And, if there are others you know, who are kidnapped later - they won't remember you being taken. They'll be surprised when you tell them you've been here for weeks, or months. There is something very, very strange going on here ... it defies any explanation using knowledge I had from my previous reality."

He folded his arms, frowning. "Even if it doesn't make any sense that we're here - we are here all the same. So we need to go from there."

"Hmmm..."

Mika took all the words in, but he couldn't make sense of them. He couldn't process them. Concepts like this were a little outside of the realm of what he knows and understands. These moments were why he wanted to learn to read. He could understand things better, be more useful to Orga and the old man and Kudelia, if he understood more things. It was frightening to think about any life that didn't involve fighting, but he was trying. He was learning, slowly, how to grow things properly and maybe reading maintenance material was on the horizon, too.

Maybe he could understand the kind of things this man was yammering on about.

"I don't really understand all of that. But they could come here, too, then?"

At least he was here first. He could protect his family if he was here first and knew the situation as well as he could. He was not the strategist or the leader or the type of person who can pick up the slack if Orga needed a second in command... but he could fight. He could win. He could learn how to survive and teach them the way Orga had learned how to survive and taught him.

He wasn't sure if he'd be good at it, but he could try.

"Mm... I guess that's true, even if I don't understand."

He wasn't used to being on his own. He hadn't been alone since the 'day he was born'. When Orga had taken his hand, that was it. That was the first memory he held onto, and now they were separated. Was Orga okay? Were Atra and Kudelia okay? Would Tekkadan be okay if he wasn't there to help Akihiro and Shino? If something happened without him around...

He was having trouble processing his own frustration. He knew he was lonely, but how to deal with it... that was beyond him right now.

"They could, if they're very unlucky," Zechs nodded in agreement, his expression serious. "Until then, everyone who's been kidnapped is in the same situation. We're all expected to complete tasks - of an adult nature, as you put it - and the Augur might control us in ways we can't counter in order to accomplish that."

He saw the frustrated look on Mika's face, and hesitated. The Gundam pilots he knew were fiercely independent. Hell, Zechs himself was fiercely independent, not wishing assistance from anyone, especially at that age. (Or the age he guessed Mika to be.) Offering reassurance to a civilian was tricky enough.

"So people here will provide assistance and resources," Zechs told him seriously, "or backup if you're ever in need of it. The situation here is dire, but people have been surviving. And, certainly, things could be a lot worse."

Mika wasn't sure how to process that information. Should he hope for their arrival to quell his loneliness? If they were here, he could protect them. But if they're here, he wouldn't know what other enemies might appear. He'd seen some odd looking people around while he was getting his bearings. Would it be more dangerous here? He did not know yet. The consequences for survival and 'gain' here would be difficult for the younger ones, though some of them had come from situations where he would not be foreign.

He was conflicted. His brow furrowed and he went quiet for a long moment, flexing his hands. His life had been very insular up to now. Being thrown out of his circle and away from the only people in the world he could trust felt ... wrong. Incredibly wrong. He felt unsteady and it frustrated him all the more.

"I see... hmm... people don't really give that kinda stuff to people like me. So I'll just go and get it on my own."

That made the most sense to him. At least he knew he could rely on himself.

"That kind of stuff," Zechs repeated, his own brows furrowing, working that out - "you mean to say, help and resources?"

It's not that he thinks he could manage without - he thinks people simply wouldn't offer it?

He shook his head, expression stern. "I don't have any context or knowledge of how you were treated before - but things, perhaps only in some ways, are different here. You've little reason to trust me, as one example, but I would still attempt to assist you. I don't believe anyone should be left defenseless here."

"Yeah."

It was a simple response, devoid of anger or concern. He just knew how things were and always had been. Tekkadan always had to rely on itself. The Turbines were, in essence, the only real exception to the rule. He didn't assume it would be different here. Why would it be?

"Hm... having sex with me would get other people things, so I guess that part makes sense if that's assistance," he replied, flat out. "But no, I don't trust you. And I don't see why you'd help me otherwise. But if it makes you feel better to offer, I guess that's fine."

"That's not the only assistance people are willing to offer," Zechs said, just as straightforward and blunt. "Even given these circumstances, people have varied interests, tastes, and drives. Understanding that, many people are simply helpful in exchange for labor, craftsmanship, or even simple favors. Some might offer sex. Only the robots seem to require it."

And he's not surprised by his statement, but; "It's a manner of not wanting to see someone defenseless or helpless. No matter whom they may be. It's nothing to do with an ... attempt to proposition you."

Zechs had thought he'd gotten over any awkwardness on this topic, but apparently not.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

TDM 010: PARTNER UP, PARTNER

00. Arrival

I. Laid Bare Basics

II. Tattoo to You, Too

III. Creepy Crawly Caterpillar Crawl

Hangar

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