.01 [ action | video ] have we lost our way back home

[watermarks]

Who: Katara and you!
Broadcast: Video, from the Marsiva
Action: Action on the Marsiva and then then post!Shuffle on the Vanquish
When: Friday, 3/23

[Katara wasn’t always a heavy sleeper, but she never did enjoy waking up. It was a slow process, even here, as if her subconscious had already registered the wrongness of where she was and was well on its way to the land of Denial.

Eventually, though - her eyes opened. And she stayed very, very still as fear replaced sleep in an adrenaline spike sharp enough to make her stomach heavy. Okay. Okay. She still had her bending, in fact, that was at full force for the first time since the last draft, she can feel water in a distant room. But these lights… those walls… that… well, actually, she kind of likes the music, but she can’t -- this is definitely not…

And then she feels it - or she doesn’t feel it - and she forgets her caution and bolts upright, straining her head to take a closer look at her back.]

[She doesn’t expect a response, but she does get up out of the bed and glance around. Her balance is off when she moves, so she takes careful, deliberate steps, as she takes stock of what she has and doesn’t have and exactly where everything is in the room and pauses as the fact that there is music seeps in. What... what is going on here?

But that’s nothing when she spots the viewing bay. She pauses, transfixed for a moment, and then walks very carefully over to the window. She places one hand against it and whispers:] ...there are stars.

[As she spends more time on the Marsiva, she’ll explore the food and take advantage of the exercise equipment, doing what she can to try to get her balance to where it should be without the added (useless; she tells herself she’s glad they’re gone) appendages.]

[ Video Broadcast while on the Marsiva ]
[Serious blue eyes peer out in stark contrast to dark skin as a girl of about eighteen addresses the fleet.]

Hello, my name is Katara. I'm from the Southern Water Tribe, but I've spent the past four years [Had it really been that long? Her expression flickers for a moment.] in a place called Luceti. I understand a... lot of basic information about this place from the augment, but I'm sure there's more to this place than just what is implanted in our heads by our captors.

[Frowning, angry at that, needing to take a visible breath before she can continue.] I'd appreciate any additional information you feel it's safe to give out over these things. And... [Her gaze drops for a moment before she regains her composure and looks back at the camera.] ...if anyone knows the name Luceti, or has heard of the Southern Water Tribe, I'd appreciate it if you'd let me know about that too.

[She manages a brief smile.] Thank you so much.


[Action on the Vanquish]
[Katara had been working on her balance on a make-shift balance-beam in the gym section of the Marsiva when she was suddenly teleported -- fortunately close enough to grab a wall. She bats at the confetti with a frown with her other hand as she straightens -- so this is the ‘shuffle’, huh?

The happy little jingle just makes her frown deepen. Jerks, playing with people like this… She gives a deeply exasperated sigh.

Hopefully no one is there to catch frustrated!Katara as their first impression; she will try to make a better second one by exploring the ship, sticking close to the walls, and looking to see who her new shipmates are with a pleasant smile on her face in a few minutes. Feel free to catch her walking around with a smile in a moment or two, but right now, she is having a few mental words with the Atroma and they are Not Nice.]

Comments

[rebuildyourruins]

Yes - not so long ago, really.

[Part and parcel of Thor having to explain his own fractious relationship with his siblings. Sokka proved a good counterpoint in what that sort of family could be, if circumstances were better.

At the question, Thor shakes his head, though he grows more serious.]

Not long in the scheme of things. I have been here four months or so - I know that others have been in the Fleet for years.

[watermarks]

I see. [She thinks about that for a moment... heh.

It had been about that long for her when Shikamaru had come along. She'd known plenty enough to talk to him about it then.] Well, if you don't mind - what can you tell me about this place? What do you know now that you would have liked to have heard about it when you first arrived?

[rebuildyourruins]

Right, of course. My first concern was being able to find our captors and make them answer for their misdeeds. [He shakes his head, still irritated by it even now.] They make that exceedingly difficult though. They are almost never seen or heard from. And as far as I know, they have never been seen face-to-face.

[watermarks]

[...the unintentional outcome of this method of asking about the place is that Katara feels she suddenly knows Thor a lot better.

And she likes the idea of making their captors answer for their misdeeds, likes his attitude about the whole thing -- she can't help it, after being kept in a similar place for so long.]

Yeah, that's... unfortunate. It'd be pretty stupid of them to do anything else, though.

[Since Katara is sure there would be a Line and equally sure she would be On It.]

[rebuildyourruins]

It would be. It doesn't make it any less frustrating.

[He's in Line with the rest of them. God help the Atroma whenever they do accidentally set foot anywhere near him.]

The other thing worth knowing is that the augments can't be taken out, not at the moment. There have been several attempts and none were successful.

[watermarks]

[Oh, that's an interesting puzzle.]

Do they show up on X-Rays? [This is her medical training in Luceti coming out to play.] Has someone with chi or... chakra sensing abilities taken a look to see if they can tell what makes them so immovable?

[rebuildyourruins]

That, I do not know. I asked around about the augments not so long ago, but no one mentioned how easily they can be detected. Most of the conversation was about what's been tried to remove them.

[Nearly all of which are ghastly stories.]

If you mean using magical senses, that isn't a skill I possess. The difficulty in removing them comes from where they are, and what they do if you try to dislodge them physically.

[watermarks]

No, sensing chakra and chi isn't magic, it's just... [How to put this, when this is the part of her bending that she understands least and she never really got a chance to talk to someone from Shikamaru's world about it. Heck, the person who'd provided her with the most helpful information about chi had been Zoro, and that was because he was a swordsman, and that was about as far away from magic as you could get.

...granted, he fought with three swords, one of them in his mouth, but...] Every living being has life in them. I can't speak very well for the ones who use chakra, but the way it works when I heal, I can sense the chi pathways in a person and... encourage them to flow along their natural course of healing. Something like this, that implants so much information in our minds, they'd have to be more than physical, right? They'd have to be implanted into our neurons - or at least so our body's electricity can send and receive signals to it in order to draw information...

[She's just thinking out loud at this point. She wonders, not if she can remove them, not yet, but if she can figure out how they were integrated. She'd need a test subject so as to better be able to concentrate and take notes, though... and their placement makes no sense, shouldn't they be over the spinal chord or at the base of the skull by the brain stem? Hmm hmm hmm...]

[rebuildyourruins]

[The concept isn't entirely familiar to Thor, his knowledge of power being tied to the magic inherent in Asgardians. Still, he nods at Katara's explanation, because on some level it makes a kind of sense. It may be something Loki would recognise better, being more familiar with arcane things.]

That may be so. I haven't encountered technology like this myself, as it is not the kind of thing Asgard would create. [It's too artless for them, and invasive.] The closest I have experienced was an external disc that would electrocute you if the wielder chose to do so, but those were much simpler. They weren't connected to the mind.

[watermarks]

[Katara cringes at this. She is not a fan of electricution.]

That sounds awful.

[rebuildyourruins]

Oh, they were. But ultimately much easier to remove, since there was a controller that would turn them off.

[The whole 'not being embedded in their skulls' part was also helpful in that regard.]

This still reminds me too much of those, especially as we are captives here.

[watermarks]

[Glowering.] It's a funny kind of captivity, to live our lives for other people's amusement.

[She is Not Amused. At least, in Luceti, there was a war. There was a reason why they'd been kept locked up like lab rats, even if it was a lousy reason. This...

This was just humiliating insulting.]

[rebuildyourruins]

[Thor's expression is equally stony.]

And yet it's not even the first time I've seen it happen. Even so, I have less understanding of what the point of this Fleet is, since we never see or hear from those who run the show.

[watermarks]

Never? Really?

[That is odd.

And. She's not sure if it's good or bad.]

[rebuildyourruins]

Well, I have heard that occasionally the supposed hosts of the show are in contact with us. But I got the impression they aren't the ones in charge of things.

[watermarks]

[Huff.]

Of course not. Why would they be.

[Grumblegrumblegrumble she HATES places like this.]

[rebuildyourruins]

Sokka may know about them, since he's been around longer than I have. Otherwise some people have notes about these things.

[Thor's gotten some of that information, but he's not really a note-taking person. Not for the Fleet mysteries, at least.]

[watermarks]

...so they leave us pretty much alone, then? We're just... here? Drifting around?

[This sounds so... unreal.]

[rebuildyourruins]

Oh, I'm certain they're picking where these ships land every few weeks. But other than that we have little contact with them. We land somewhere for close to a month, then go somewhere else.

[watermarks]

I see. [She frowns a little in thought.] What have the planets been like so far?

[rebuildyourruins]

The first one I was here for was hostile - the locals shot down the ships and tried to kill everyone. So, that was bad.

[Thanks for the clarification, Thor.]

After that we went to a planet that was mostly snow, and fairly uneventful. The last system we were in had three worlds at different parts of their orbit around the suns, and then there's this one, which is ... empty of people. Those are all I have seen myself.

[watermarks]

[...yes... that... sounds bad.]

Wait - what? Why did they attack, does anyone know?

[rebuildyourruins]

[He looks a bit apologetic when he replies.]

I'm afraid I don't remember that part. I arrived in the middle of it all, when the ships were already down, and just joined the battle to disable their ground cannons. It was also a long time ago for me because of... [He waves a hand.] reasons, so I've forgotten some of the details.

I do recall the natives were cannibals. That might have had something to do with it.

[watermarks]

[Katara registers that handwave as something to ask about later, but this is just so -- so -- an entire planet full of cannibals? With the kind of technology to shoot down space ships?

But even if they ate people, that meant they still were people so -- there had to be a reason!

It's just too much and her indignation button gets pushed, basically.]

So -- what, we showed up above them and they thought 'free meat' and tried to shoot us down?

[rebuildyourruins]

They might have also thought "free ship parts", but yeah.