Second Pirate Transmission

[hollowvictor]

Who: Panem!Bucky and anyone + Some closed
Broadcast: Yes
Action: Wherever, if wanted
When: Now

Closed: Sam (AU)
[His first thought was little more than a blurry observation. The recycled air was a soothingly familiar sound. He felt stiff and weary, like all the nights of rest he'd missed over the past eight-plus years were weighing on him as one, but that sound was almost enough to lull him. It had been a source of frustration in his early years of Thirteen, but now it was a gentle constant. A small reminder things were okay.

The larger reminder was the warm weight against his back, more comforting than anything else in Thirteen or even Panem. A smile stretched across Bucky's face even as the weights on his eyes still won out. Blind to the room, he reached out behind him to find some part of Sam he could touch.]

Closed: Natasha
Think you forgot to mention the part where sometimes they flip an off switch.

Open: Text
So, being comatose for no reason is apparently normal here. Good to know, even a little late.

That part definitely wasn't normal where I come from.

Made me think: what else is similar or different between places that steal people from where they belong?
Comas, method of getting people there, motivations, anything. If this isn't your first time in a place like this, I'd like to gather some intel. See if we can't draw some lines.

It might be nothing. But it also might be something.

Comments

text

[sassy_assassin]

I haven't been in a place like this before, so can't help you there. But I work at the Space Bar now and you'll have a glass of water waiting for you if you want to come in sometime. We could compare general notes.

text

[hollowvictor]

Do you? Well that's certainly just as helpful to know.
Do you like the job or did you simply get bored?

text

[sassy_assassin]

I'm not sure those are mutually exclusive. Can't have a busy bar all the time, even here.

text

[hollowvictor]

Guess that's fair. The bars in Panem were always busy, far as I know.

But you still didn't say whether you liked it.

text: closed

[outstandingbalance]

My oversight. It does happen.

Sometimes it happens, and you wake up with with new memories. Injuries.

[Hair.]

You okay?

Re: text: closed

[hollowvictor]

Good to know.

Doesn't look like anything's new here, same old injuries and memories. Has that happened to you? Is it common?

[There's a pause in his response to her question.]

Honestly? Rattled. The last time I was in a coma, it was for medical reasons. This wasn't normal in Panem.
But ultimately nothing that can't be recovered from.

[outstandingbalance]

It's not uncommon. Just how often it happens... depends on you. Some people seem to get more often than others.

I'd say, usually no more than a couple of times a year?

[Is that better? Or worse? Natasha's not even sure anymore.]

Not really a fan myself.

[hollowvictor]

Fills me with confidence and relief.

Thanks.

[Yet another thing being done to them that they, seemingly, can't do anything about. He hadn't even been able to fight it, he'd just gone to sleep as normal as ever and woken up less so.]

[ text ]

[dothelokimotion]

You must not have been paying attention then.

[ way to sleep on the job, super spy. ]

What kind of intel are you hoping for? Even if you do find a point of contention then what? It simply means their methods are adoptable or similar.

[ text ]

[hollowvictor]

[He does what he does best with smart-ass responses: ignores them. It's not the first time, won't be the last.]

If you know how to make something, you know how to break it. Any similarity could be important and we just don't know it yet. I know the inner-workings of the device that took people from their homes and brought them to my world. Perhaps there's something similar at work here.

[Calm patience...that was the best thing when dealing with Offworlders. That or indifference. He was not going to be snappish back. Definitely not.]

[dothelokimotion]

Oh? And what kind of device was it?

text;

[unbearablynaive]

Welcome back to the land of the awake. I don't know that we've properly met yet? [Which is to say, he's not sure if this Bucky would know him from a hot minute of fighting in an airport parking lot or not.]

I've only been here myself, but I had a close friend from another world with a similar kind of mechanic. She said it was the work of a powerful corporation, and that they brought in "new blood" to combat a virus - something like a zombie virus, though not exactly. They grafted ports onto their subjects' spines, and they could certainly cause comas and other sorts of interference. I do know for a fact they could rewrite memories and do a bit of personality tweaking, as she had been altered so badly her memory was little more than a lacy construct.

Is that the sort of information you're looking for?

text;

[hollowvictor]

I don't believe we have, you never showed up in Panem
Your name is Vision, right? I'll admit, I've only really heard of you, I don't know much about you.

[And that news pulls a heavy sigh from him on his end. That sounds pretty bad as well. He wished he could say Panem had never messed with anyone's memories like that when it came to the Offworlders, but then there was Thor and Sam, perfect examples of what happened when the Capitol got their hands in the heads of their Tributes. It had left one dead and the other scared and paranoid.]

That's exactly the sort of information I'm looking for. I'd be surprised if you knew, but did she ever find out how they were stealing people away?

text;

[unbearablynaive]

Then I'm glad to meet you, and I am indeed the Vision. I'm an android created by Tony Stark and Bruce Banner, among others, and I'm currently on the Twin Roses.

Not that she knew of, or perhaps not that she remembered. Her government wasn't exactly forthcoming with accurate information.

Her city was called Proles, though, and the world was named Zeus.

[namoe]

This has come up before. It's a topic of much discussion among those of us who get lucky enough to see more than one of these places.

[hollowvictor]

Glad I'm not the first, then. Don't suppose someone helpfully wrote it down somewhere?

[namoe]

I did, though I don't have it on me. I can give you the cliff notes version. There's a multitude of different places way too similar to this one out there. They all have the same elements:

1) Something stupidly powerful calling the shots;
2) Weird stuff going wrong on a regular basis;
3) People coming and going from different times and places, and vanishing without notice

But they all have different excuses for our being there. You can take them all with a grain of salt, I bet.

text

[scanninggaydis]

I did a little bit of research like this, if you're interested in it. Here.

[And he sends along his findings.]

I didn't ask about comas...it didn't happen the last place I was, as far as I remember. But people did just go missing for short periods of time. Sometimes there were explanations.

text

[hollowvictor]

Thank you, anything that stops us from repeating ourselves makes this easier.

Any small detail could help.

What were some of those explanations, if you remember?

[scanninggaydis]

One of my friends was taken for "mandatory bed rest" because she was sick. Another two friends were taken because one of then "needed counseling" and the other was apparently a suitable companion for that.

It was all bullshit, though.

text

[lord_wizard]

Everything and nothing, is the short answer. Coma's weren't uncommon in Paradisa, though it sometimes used more creative methods to make someone inactive for a period. A friend of mine was once turned into a statue for a week, for example.

text

[hollowvictor]

I didn't think I would say this, but I think I prefer the coma.

Was there a causation?

[lord_wizard]

None that I could prove, but he'd been wishing quite a lot prior to that, and I always felt it might have been a trigger.

In general, however, people being unconscious usually coincided with something about them changing - similar to the times when people here fall asleep and remember going home for a period.

ugh sorry this is so late

[sizeofyourbaggage]

[ Sam has - not been doing well. Better than when he first couldn't wake Bucky, maybe, after he'd calmed down enough to accept visitors, to talk to Natasha and Vision and share in Looma's violence, but none of it has been any substitute for having Bucky. It's just been enough to keep him going, to hold on until Bucky wakes up.

He doesn't let himself think about there being a possibility that he won't.

It hasn't exactly felt right, sleeping next to Bucky's unmoving form like this, but part of that is the split second in the morning when he wakes up and forgets. He's not willing to be anywhere else, though, so mostly it just means he hasn't been sleeping all that much.

So he's only dozing when he feels Bucky start to stir, and the touch jolts him immediately into the present. For a moment, he holds himself absolutely still, barely even breathing - afraid he'll find out he was imagining it if he moves, honestly. ]

Bucky?

how very dare you

[hollowvictor]

[Sam goes completely still and Bucky's brow furrows in concern. Despite the foreign feeling of sluggishness and protesting muscles, Bucky shifted and turned so he could see and touch Sam.]

What's wrong? Did you have a nightmare?

[That was the only reason he could think of for Sam's hesitation.]