(no subject)

[therewerefifty]

Who: Makie and you guys
Broadcast: Fleetwide
Action: Marsiva
When: This evening


[Makie wakes feeling more relaxed and a lot clearer than she has in a long time.  It's enough that, for a time, she just stays in bed.  An odd bed, a very soft one.  Given she'd spent a year sleeping on the floor-- and her last memories-- it's a luxury she indulges in.

She knows this is an unfamiliar place. She just doesn't care. 

Eventually she pushes the coverlet back and stands, collects her shawl from the stand nearby and settles it across her shoulders.  Her clothes are clean and in good repair.  That's interesting.  The shamisen is there and she picks it up, freezing for a moment as she registers the difference in weight.  Notes it, dismisses it.  She doesn't...need it here, does she?

It's not until she explores that she begins to feel the first confusion.  This is not at all what she would have expected, alien and unfamiliar walls and machinery.  Not only that, the more she exerts herself the more the heaviness in her lungs becomes more pronounced, and eventually she sinks into a nearby chair to get her breath back.  She's better than she was by far, but she's still sick. She shouldn't still be sick.  Surely. 

All right, then.

After a while, unnerved by the silence and emptiness of the place, she begins playing her shamisen.  If she'd explored a little more, she might have found others, but she's tired.  If there are others, they can come to her instead.]

---------

[Eventually, a broadcast.  It's short and to the point and delivered in a thin, tired voice by a Japanese woman in a kimono with exceedingly pale skin.]

I understand this is no longer Adstringendum.  [She still stumbles over that name, even after a year.  Too many damn consonants.  And then her tone turns wry.]  It is also very clearly not the land of the dead, and this communicator is... familiar.

I apologise as you've no doubt heard these questions many times before, but I should like to know where I am and why.

Comments

[video]

[imahologram]

[She's told people the explanation before and likely will again after this. It's a basic courtesy and--though it's something small--a kindness that's easily granted the new.]

You're correct. This is a group of spaceships called the Fleet, and we're far away from the people you would have known at home.

[Which is what Adstringendum is, right????? RIGHT.]

[Video]

[honorbends]

[ -- !! ]

Adstringendum?

[ what is with all of you fucking weirdos that he doesn't know jesus christ ]

[video]

[therewerefifty]

[RIGHT. She kinda prefers Adstringendum to home by a long shot.

Makie smiles faintly when she sees the video switch on. She wasn't wrong, then-- this is like the comms she's used to. But it fades into confusion soon after; being far away doesn't surprise her, though she feels a pang of regret, but...]

I'm afraid I don't know what a spaceship is. Are we on the sea?

[Video]

[therewerefifty]

[Don't be hatin' Zuko.]

That's right. You know it?

[imahologram]

...You've never left your planet before, have you.

[It's not really a question--she's getting used to the idea that so many people have yet to explore beyond the ground beneath their feet, but it still isn't her first assumption.]

When you were at home, and you looked up at the sky, and saw all the stars... [Please don't have come from an underground society.] Well, that's where you are now. Somewhere among them.

[Video]

[honorbends]

I was there before I was dragged here.

[ it had been involuntary but the past few days have put him in a relatively decent mood. ]

You don't look familiar, though.

[therewerefifty]

[...oh.

Huh. She hadn't thought that was possible. A ship in the stars. But then again, she knows how many centuries are ahead of her own, and some of the most bizarre concepts are fact for some people. Sam or Castiel might be more familiar.]

I see.

[That's all. Accept it along with the rest.] Thank you. Should I assume I cannot leave again?

[Video]

[therewerefifty]

I didn't know a great many people. But I suppose we could also have lived there at different times. [She'd certainly remember Zuko if they'd met. The scar alone. Also the matching hair It does make her wonder, though.]

What was... the last memory you had of Adstringendum before you arrived?

[Video]

[honorbends]

I don't remember the city changing, if that's what you mean.

[ nami sort of spoiled that for him oops ]

There are a few people here that do, though.

[imahologram]

It sounds like you've done this before.

[After all, her own first reaction to all of this was more along the lines of now let me out of here.]

There's no way to leave that I've found, or I wouldn't be here. But plenty of people are looking.

[therewerefifty]

I have. It was very disconcerting, then. I suppose it's odd I have grown used to such things.

[Though to be fair, she wasn't expecting to jump worlds again.]

Have you had any contact from a group called the Animus?

[Video]

[therewerefifty]

[They could have been there at the same time, then. There were a lot more people before the city changed and she only met a handful of them. But that means precisely nothing to either of them, probably, and the other thing he has to say is far more important. Her gaze swings back to him, suddenly more sharp and a little hopeful.]

Others? Is there a little girl here? Fair hair? She was probably calling for her mother.

[Yeah apparently everyone else can go hang, she just wants her feral not-daughter :c]

[imahologram]

It's hard to imagine growing used to this.

[Sure, the low-level tedium must become a sort of hum behind everything else in the world, but surely the ache to leave never disappears.]

I haven't. Are they the ones who held you prisoner before?

[therewerefifty]

Not quite. They were trapped as we were, just more... powerful. [They got caught up in their little god-fights more often than she'd like.]

It was a broken universe, and the inhabitants fell in through the cracks. That's how it was explained to me. Something terrible going wrong at the hand of scientists. That isn't the case here?

[Did she fall back out again at the wrong time? Seems as likely as any other bizarre explanation.]

[imahologram]

No--here, we're being kept by a group called the Atroma. You were kidnapped from Adstringendum to serve as entertainment here.

[And if Leia's expression is anything to go by, she's not impressed by that.]

Your new captors don't deign to be involved, for the most part, but they seem to have power beyond what the rest of us do.

[therewerefifty]

[Makie stiffens, her expression shuttering into something far too carefully blank.]

What kind of entertainment?

[imahologram]

[Leia knows how to recognize a purposefully neutral expression, even if she doesn't entirely know what to make of it. Without knowing where to tread carefully, she settles on answering with the full truth.]

Supposedly, they have holocams in every room. They're watching everything we do.

video

[effluent]

[Hm... on the other end of the video feed is a bored looking blonde girl. The way that her chin is propped up by her hand, and she seems to be slouching makes her look very small in the video feed. Her expression doesn't change when she finally talks]

You're on a space reality show made by assholes. It's not as glamorous as it sounds.

[therewerefifty]

[She sorts through what a holocam must be-- she knows what a camera is now in an abstract sort of sense, it must be much the same thing. Makie glances up and away, round the room with curiosity.]

And what is it that we do?

[The only thing she can think of are the practices of Edo, where in Makie's narrow experience women and entertainment always meant one thing.]

video

[therewerefifty]

[The hair colour has Makie look sharply at Sarah for a moment, but after one searching look she shakes her head slowly.]

It rarely is. Though I'm afraid this is my first encounter with space reality shows. [Leia has told her enough she can sort through what that's even meant to mean, though five minutes ago you'd have gotten a blank stare.]

We're here for their entertainment. Are we required to do anything in particular?

video

[effluent]

[hm, Sarah takes note of how well she rolled with that]

Not really. The rumor is that if we cause drama we get paid more, so you can go get into a fist-fight. Might help your chances.

But before we get off the topic... you came from some other crazy place like this one?

video

[therewerefifty]

[...lmao she's not sure what's less tasteful to her, the idea of starting a fight for funsies or her initial thought that she'd been dragged here for, uh. Sex. (Yeah, Makie has issues.)

Still, putting the whole notion of drama (?) aside, she gives a thoughtful hum.]

I suppose I did. Though the land I just came from doesn't seem nearly so bizarre as a space reality show. [And we had psychotic evil clouds and everything. There are just some things Makie understands better.] It was a ruin. People weren't taken there by force, they just accidentally fell in.

action

[monolike]

[Sorey and Mikleo spend very little time apart, and always within sight of each other but when he comes over to Makie Sorey is alone. Not that it seems to matter; nobody around can see or hear Mikleo anyway.

Still, he stands nearby with his hands behind his back, listening to her play before coming closer and pointing at the ground nearby, lifting his brows in question. Can he sit and listen?]

[Video]

[honorbends]

That doesn't sound familiar.

[ sorry makie :c ]

There's a man named Sam Winchester, and a woman named Nami. Both of them seem to know about Adstringendum.

[video]

[collegedropout]

[Hey, wait a second here —

He knows very very few depressing, sickly Japanese women in his life, okay.]

Makie?

It's Sam. You're definitely not dead, but I'm thinking you're getting that idea already.