TDM 010: PARTNER UP, PARTNER

[erkumods]

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

Comments

[filingsystems]

Call us the new crop then, huh? Wish we'd gotten a ghost train in or something instead of being so much flotsam.

[ She retracts her hand and gives her jacket another few fruitless shakes. That sand isn't going anywhere. ]

They are pretty high-tech. Is there nothing like that where you're from? I already gathered from them that not everyone is from the same place. Or even the same dimension. [ She draws a hand over her hair - and promptly clunks her new bracelet off her head. Lowering her hand, she glares at the glowing device. ] Not to mention these bits of high fashion.

[hedalexa]

My people do not use technology. [At least, nothing with power, and weapons no more advanced than swords and bows.] We do not have any machines that are not turned by hand.

[This, while true, also does help sell the "simple, innocent young woman" angle rather than give any hint as to her true capabilities or how much of things she understands; which might be limited compared to most but isn't nothing either.]

I have not seen anyone from my home. Nor do I much understand the bracelets. They seem like some way to control us.

[filingsystems]

Really. That's interesting.

[ She's just going to take a seat beside you now, resting her arms on her knees. ]

You say you don't use them - does that mean they still exist, and you choose not to use them? Or they aren't readily available?

[ Ahh, but she shouldn't dig too far, too fast. Mariska sits up enough to give Lexa her personal space with a sympathetic nod and smile. ]

I can't say I was expecting anyone I know to be rambling around here either...but it can be difficult to be all alone. Good thing we're not, right? [ And the smile widens to a grin. She can hear Agent Chubb mocking her sales pitch voice in the back of her mind. ] As for the bracelets, we may just have to keep an eye on them and see how we go.

[hedalexa]

There is not much left after the great fire. What isn't rusted or melted is forbidden, using it makes the monsters come. [The Mountain Men were men only, but to her people they were monsters who could see and hear places no human had any right too. And the wiped out villages for so much as holding an empty gun. She makes sure to sound a little nervous about it, almost frightened, lowing her gaze at the same time.]

At least the bracelets do not come with chains. [God she wished Clarke was here, she would know what to make of them. Or Raven, not that Raven had much reason to talk to Lexa. But the girl loved a puzzle.]

It is good to meet you. [She agrees, still sounding nervous and reluctant.]

[filingsystems]

You too.

[ There's a lot going on there. A lot unsaid. Mariska judges it for a few moments more, letting the silence hang between Lexa's words, before deciding to risk a consoling hand on her shoulder. ]

Can I ask what you mean by 'monsters'? It's all right if it's too difficult to say.

[ Her mind is whirring on overdrive, scanning through her own recollection of occult and standard history. A great fire, everything melted, monsters - it'd have to be far back in the past. But then what about her relaxation around technology? What about the language barrier? ]

Those robots didn't mention anything like those sorts of threats. I think it's very possible you'll be safe from them here.

[hedalexa]

[It's not that hard to pretend to be frightened of them in the way her people were. She had once been young and unknowledgeable about the truth of things, they had once really been monsters to her. The kind with claws and pointed teeth, part bear, part wolf, part anything but human that would rend her into pieces with a swipe of a hand.

So when she was asked about the "monsters" she bites her lower lip, letting herself glance nervously at Mariska, her fingers rubbing together like she was trying to get the feeling back into them.]

Whenever anyone uses something from before... a great fog comes, it burns you, you can't breathe, if you don't shelter you will die. And then the white suits come. And sometimes there are guns. And sometimes there are beasts that look like old loved ones we lost, but monstrous. They will tear you limb from limb. eat you. kill you. Even the children.

There is no mercy.

[filingsystems]

...jeez.

[ It's pretty hard to keep an upbeat attitude about that. The situation she's describing is just...relentlessly bleak. That's nothing so simple as a slavering beast. That's poison and gunfire and the cruelty of men.

Definitely better here, she notes. All of a sudden, she finds herself aching for the safety of the broad stacks of the MSD Archives. ]

I'm so sorry you have to deal with all that, Lexa. It sounds horrible.

[ For her part, she's buying the act entirely. Spun around in this new world, thrown together with no people, there's no reason to assume this woman wouldn't be horrified by this nightmare she describes. ]

Um, hey, looking on the bright side...it's pretty likely the worst we'll have to worry about here is those guns! Maybe. [ Wince. ] Bad joke?

[hedalexa]

It is frightening, but we survive. We do what we must. [Survival was what mattered, after all. If you didn't survive you could never even dream of getting to live better lives, of making your children's lives better.]

But the sky here is strange, and it is stranger still that no one seems to mind. I do not yet know what to make of it. At least at home I knew where the monsters lurked. Now it could be anywhere, or anyone. The weapons could look like anything.

[filingsystems]

[ Right. Not the 'cheering up' type. Got it. ]

Yeah... [ She leans back a little, propping herself on her hands. ] That's another thing to file under 'you can get used to anything'. I don't think you should overthink it, though. Then you really will start seeing monsters where there aren't any.

[hedalexa]

Perhaps.

[Lexa says, looking at her with a little more ease.] Is it at all like this in your home?

[filingsystems]

Oh, god, not even kind of.

[ She lets loose with a big, cheery laugh there. It's so absurd that she can't help it. ]

My job puts me into contact with some pretty unique individuals, but I can't say I've come across any worlds powered by erotic energy and staffed by robots. [ A pause. An amendment: ] At least not outside of some guy's weird roleplay fantasies.

[hedalexa]

Roleplay? [Lexa genuinely hasn't heard that term before, her eyebrow quirks up in intrigue as she tries to work out what she could mean by that.]

I do not know how anything could be powered by sex.

[filingsystems]

You know. Like pretending to be a sexy nurse or a cheerleader or--

[ Wait. If her world doesn't even have electricity, it probably doesn't have that. She pauses and restarts the sentence. ]

Just...pretending to be someone you're not. For fun. As part of...bedroom time. [ Ugh. Bedroom time? Why'd you put it like that, Mariska? ] I don't know how intimacy translates into energy, but that's the gist of what I gathered from the robots before they brought me here. We've been summoned to create that energy and bring...wherever this is...back to life.

[hedalexa]

[Sexy nurse? ...Did Clarke count as a "sexy nurse"? she did heal people or help her mother do it but she wasn't quite what her people called a "doctor". That's a trail of thought that distracts Lexa, but thankfully she still looks absolutely puzzled more than anything else. Also, what was a cheerleader?!]

I did not know people did that. [Did people do that? Who had time for that??????] I do not take... lovers.

[filingsystems]

Really? [ Wait, no, that sounded judgey. ] Yeah, I guess there's not much time for that with everything else going on.

[ Just gonna try to slide past the other awkward questions she'd brought up there. ]

I'm no expert, but in my experience, people do pretty much everything. But anyway, I don't think you'll have to, like, step way outside of your comfort zone. Presuming this is a real thing and we're stuck here, like you said - too many people are relaxed about it. It wouldn't be this calm if everyone was being forced into weird prison sex labour.

[hedalexa]

My people believe that love is weakness. [Lexa herself had never really thought so, she just drummed it into herself because that was how she survived, how she kept drawing breath in a world that stole the only happiness she had ever known from her in such a cruel way.] When you are intimate you often become close with people and can be brought down by the loss of them.

[Lexa certainly wasn't a very casual sex person so even if she hadn't been Heda she would've had troubles.]

[filingsystems]

Sure, that's true of anywhere. Don't you think that's kind of a sad way to live?

[ She leans forward again, linking her fingers together. Staring down at them as if in serious thought. ]

Our connections to each other, when you take everything else away...it's kind of all we have left. I'm from a much less perilous place than you, it sounds like, but I really think it's the other way around.

[ A shiver runs through her. She tries to turn it into a light shake. ]

Even the thought of not seeing my friends again is kinda bumming me out right now, never mind lovers. Not that I have, uh, plural lovers.

[hedalexa]

Happiness never factored into it. It is about surviving. [So yes, it was sad, miserable even. But that wasn't now and never had been the point.]

I do not have friends at home, either. But I had people to look after that I cannot from this place.

[filingsystems]

[ Mariska knows Lexa is talking sense. Pursuing happiness and fulfilment on a certain level was a privilege of those with safety and security. She had seen her share of hardscrabble mancers, barely surviving, crippled by their own powers.

Still. The idealistic side of her wasn't so willing to back down. ]

I'm sure you have some friends, Lexa. You're very considerate. Those people you're looking after must consider you a friend.