Intro Log: Off my chest

[hadrielmods]

Who: New arrivals and everyone else!
What: The intro log for April.
Where: The colosseum and all around the city.
When: April 10th-13th
Warnings: Newbies, explosions, and things that are definitely treasure chests and not evil monsters out to get you.

Welcome to your first day in Hadriel! Enjoy your surroundings, meet your fellow travelers, and be sure to start exploring so you can collect as much loot as possible!

On the ground around you may notice bang snaps, scattered haphazardly. Try not to step on any of them, or you might burn your feet! Feel free to gather them up and use these baby fireworks however you see fit; there are dozens strewn about on the ground. Popping them will emit clouds of smoke of various colors, and... well, not much else.

Is there anything else lurking around? Glad you asked! If you look around, you may find a few innocent-looking treasure chests. Which you know, normally means free loot- except, in Hadriel, nothing is quite the way it's advertised of course and the chests are actually dangerous mimics. Mimics- often disguised as treasure chests- are monsters with surprisingly quick movements and gaping maws filled with teeth. They exist to try and fool an unlucky traveler into thinking they've gotten something good... only to lunge at them in their moment of triumph and prove that life is actually terrible and nothing comes for free.

Good luck!

Once you've managed your daring escape from the colosseum, feel free to go explore the rest of the city! Find a house, find a new monster, or simply scavenge for supplies. Good luck, and enjoy your stay in Hadriel!

► This log covers April 10th-13th.
► Feel free to make your own logs, as well!
► All characters now arrive with phones that have network communication.
► Please put your character's name and open/closed in the subject line of your starters!

Comments

Rey | Closed and Open

[circumitus]

I. The Colosseum (Closed to Glacius and Nick Valentine)

"It is your beating HEART!"

Those words vibrate like an echo in she mind when they dissipate like smoke.

Rey can easily be found among the new blood, prone over the Colosseum floor over her back, just as she had moments prior. Her vision blurs in a burst of pale light, pouring from overhead. Instead of the white skies of Russia, she is gazing up at the stalactites of Hadriel. The chill of cold snow is replaced by the freezing drafts breezing through the cave city. One minute she's being lectured at by a synthetic woman who's had too many loose screws in her robot brain, the next she is lying on the ground of a different world entirely.

Pop!

Her brows scrunch together at the unexpected sound coming from elsewhere over the ground, turning her head the other way.

When she tries to stand, she can't. She blinks through her bleary vision to look down...

And rediscovers a rusty rebar run straight through her lower chest.

Pain reminds her that she's still alive, and that the aim just barely missed her real heart. But she's clenching her teeth and trying to rise up from the ground, only to fall back down to the weight of the thick metal pulling her back down. Part of it has come back lodged through the earth, pinning her in place.

Despite this, Rey tries again, teeth clenched this time as she grabs the rebar in front of her chest and tries to pull herself through. She screams. Not due to the pain but from strain of the effort in trying to release herself from her snare. Perspiration beads from the corner of her forehead.

"F-fuck, FUCK!" are the words that finally come out of her mouth. She collapses back down over the ground, her legs sprawled and fingers weak, and she can't fight anymore. She fights back the choking feeling in the back of her throat. "Fuck..."


II. The City (Open)

Rey looks like shit. She really, really does. She looks like she had just been through a meat grinder and came out on the losing side. Her left eye is swollen nearly shut with a bruise appeared, clocked over that side of her face. Her lower lip is cut, with dried blood down her chin that she just hasn't cared enough to clean yet. There are better things to do, after all.

She had not only been hit repeatedly in the face, she had been on the receiving end of many blows to the chest and stomach. The pain of a sniper woman's wrath still lingers in the recent injuries sporting across Rey's body.

One may also easily note the heavy way she carries herself. While she should be in bed, Rey is found staggering the streets instead, her hand over her chest where the phantom pains of the rebar having stabbed straight through her body still plagues her. She stumbles a few times as she attempts to visit shops, the bar for a drink, the park for some peace, or any place that isn't the solitary walls of her apartment or the cooped up confines of some clinic.

All the surface reveals are just flesh wounds. Underneath is something by far more insidious that's been growing for a long time.


[ooc: Rey has been canon updated, hence this intro comment. You can read all about the changes and terrible things here.]

City

[mismanagement]

Maketh isn't expecting to run into anyone on her daily patrol - see them, perhaps exchange greetings - but not crash bodily into them. Especially not someone with blood still on them, drying tacky and dark against their clothes. She staggers back - should have been looking where she was going, why does she keep doing that - and nearly swears. Then she sees who she crashed into and says a very bad word.

"Rey? Oh--what happened? Where are you injured?"

[circumitus]

When you're a walking tank, a little bump is no big deal. Usually. But when you're a tank that's just been put through the ringer, that's a different story altogether.

Upon impact, Rey instinctively retreats a few steps, almost recoiling before she sees that it's Maketh, a more or less familiar face. The corner of her split lip twitches as her fingers clamp over the spot in her chest where she had been impaled.

"No worries, it isn't as bad as it looks." Not anymore, anyway, even though she still has that stagger from the pain of moving around.

[mismanagement]

"It looks pretty bad," Maketh observes. Of course Rey has power, was designed for battle so far as Maketh understands it, so if it hasn't killed her yet, then maybe...

No, she needs medical attention. That much is clear.

Maketh straightens her back. "Show me where you're hurt."

[circumitus]

It does look pretty bad. Not just her face, but the way Rey carries herself, too. For a soldier who is more oft to stand at attention, she's slouched forward like someone had just been punched in the gut.

In truth, someone did punch her in the gut not too long ago, though strangely it didn't happen here. Rey is still trying to wrap her head around that...

"Just here." She looks down with her one good eye at the spot where her hand is clasped over, before returning her gaze back to Maketh. "Was able to heal it a little, but it seems Hope's blessing doesn't last forever."

At least she made some use of what little hadn't yet decayed.

[mismanagement]

All right. Her chest, then. Maketh takes a hesitant step closer, hands extended. Move slowly, keep it deliberate, nothing sharp or sudden. Rey is strong and she's injured - she might lash out if Maketh does the wrong thing, and that would be an unfortunate ending to the evening. "Can you show me?"

They have healers with power beyond what Maketh thought possible. Rey will live. It's foolish to think she won't.

[circumitus]

Reluctant, she nods.

Lucky for everyone involved, Rey's injury is low enough not to make this awkward. She lifts her shirt only enough to show some extra bruises on her stomach, and a fresh wound a little higher in the shape of a hole, about two inches in diameter. Rey managed to heal it the best she could with her own hand, but not enough to stop it from becoming a new scar.

"It's nothing serious now. Just hurts like hell." Having a rebar rip through your body is bound to hurt a while.

I. The Colosseum

[glacius]

Though Glacius has been trying to acclimate himself to his life in Hadriel--and his park-side passout after Delight's party had sort of ripped the bandaid off when it came to him attempting to completely conceal his presence from the city's inhabitants--he was still a somewhat reclusive being. He'd been keeping mostly to himself as he wandered throughout the city, searching for any escape routes and attempting to familiarize himself with its layout. Today his circuit had taken him by the crumbling colosseum, and though he originally had no plans to go back inside that arena--it called up a lot of old, bad memories-- seeing it again had given him pause.

This is where he was brought into the city, wasn't it? This is where there has been the most concentrated or noticeable activity of the Door. If he's attempting to look into any and all possible means of escape, maybe he should spend some time investigating this place to see if he can discern anything out of the ordinary. When the alien carefully makes his way inside, he certainly finds that--and though it does seem like the Door is active again if all of the new people people being beset by strange box-like monsters are any indication, this is not what he'd been expecting. Once again his curiosity has placed him right in a highly undesirable situation. He can't turn away now, not when he knows that there are confused and frightened newcomers that have been placed right in harm's way by the despicable "gods".

Feeling old distaste for his captors well up, Glacius strides forward, fully intending to deal with the mimic threat. He gets only a few paces in before angry, frightened shouting reaches his ears--the voice is familiar, but the tone of it is not. A pang of concern stabs at his hearts and the ice alien follows the sound to its source... only to come across Rey, one of the more tolerable and helpful individuals he'd encountered in this city covered in blood and stuck to the ground by an ugly metal pole that's impaled her clean through the chest. Cursing in his native tongue under his breath, Glacius swivels his head to one side and then the other to scan the immediate area for threats, then bounds up to her side.

He doesn't waste time asking Rey if she's alright--that seems to be an obvious no-- nor does he hound her for details in regards to how this even happened, or who did it to her. He's not going to waste her time, he's just going to help--just like she did for him, not too long ago. "This area is not safe--I am going to free you, so that we may evacuate," he informs the woman, voice steely and calm despite the hell breaking loose around them. "Would you be able to tolerate me removing this metal piece completely, or should I simply cut the base so that you can move?"

[synthedick]

Nick has made a habit of checking on the Colosseum around the same time each month, making sure to swing his daily patrol of the city streets by the ruins just in case something is going on that day. So far, it seems that's when the Door pulls in new people... and monsters with them. Maybe the Door works on its own internal calendar, or whomever is opening and closing it just likes consistency, but like clockwork, there they are: a batch of folks who look bewildered as to how and why they've suddenly appeared in a strange, new world.

However, this month sees a wrench thrown into the works. Though there don't seem to be any obvious monsters around -- a suspicious number of boxes, but nothing that looks threatening yet -- someone is still injured... someone he recognizes.

Nick's eyes widen, his processor kicking into gear as he runs over. He's not the first one there: there's that alien from the park, the one who makes Nick's thermometer drop when he gets close and could commiserate all too well on the qualities of being inhuman. He's either helpful, or they have a common ally; either way, Nick is grateful.

He makes it over to the two of them in time to hear Glacius ask Rey about removing the bar. At least that's one thing covered. While Nick isn't sure how this happened to her, he files that away as a question better saved for when she doesn't have a chunk of metal skewering her like a kebab. Spotting one of the boxes moving on its own out of the corner of his eye, he decides they need to get moving, and the sooner, the better.

"I don't know how much of her is organic," he calls to Glacius as he reaches the alien's side -- he's forced to look up at him to meet his eyes, the alien practically a giant by comparison -- "but she might bleed to death if you pull it out right now. Let's get her clear of this area, then see what we can do."

[circumitus]

With part of the rebar stabbed into the ground below her, it was going to be tricky trying to get herself out of this mess on her own. Fortunately, it doesn't take long for a couple of the older arrivals to appear. Much more preferable to crossing one of the greener individuals in this scenario.

Rey's trembling fingers slowly release the rebar, her arms dropping at her sides as she looks up at the two. She can taste blood in the back of her mouth, and the bitter, metallic tang makes her want to gag rather than speak. She even starts to at first, then chokes on the pain erupting in her entire body.

Her jaw clenches, suppressing a scream between her teeth as she closes her eyes for a moment. The world bursts into a flash of white, and for a moment it's difficult to perceive Glacius and Nick standing over her.

"Get it out." Rey coughs, fighting the pain so that she can talk. She lifts her right hand, bearing Hope's blessing on the back of it. "Can heal it... Just get it out."

[glacius]

Now Glacius hesitates, but it's only because he's just gotten two conflicting responses--and he has no idea how to gauge which one is the more true one, given that both of the beings next to him are human-but-not-really. Rey looks human enough, and he knows how fragile humans can be, so Nick's caution seems wise--but at the same time, he remembers Rey hinting at being more than that. Even now she seems adamant about it being removed--but is that just pain and desperation speaking?

Debating this all in his head is clearly getting them nowhere, so the ice alien discards all these questions and focuses instead on his confidence in his own abilities. If the bleeding does get too bad, he can use his powers to slow it... and after that, he's more than capable of transporting Rey to someplace where she can get proper medical attention. Giving another curse in his native tongue, the alien's large hand grasps the rebar tightly--the other gets hooked under Rey with a surprising amount of care, both to brace and support her. Then, without any further word or delay, he yanks the steel bar clear out of the ground--and out of her body. A stream a crimson blood drips from the rusty end of the rebar as it comes clear, and then Glacius casts it away, trying to assess the damage.

"Let me know when I can move you," he rumbles, still painfully aware that Rey's injuries are not the only threat to her here when she's in such poor condition. Now the alien switches his gaze to Nick. "This level of injury seems as though it should require serious attention. Where is the nearest medical center?"

[synthedick]

Having nodded in reply to Rey's command -- he doesn't know how she can heal such an injury, but he knows enough about her to assume she knows her own body better than anyone -- Nick is already thinking along those lines when Glacius turns to him, scanning his memory for any mention of where the clinic is. He's not been there himself, but he's passed it a few times, taking note of it once he knew just what it was -- he can thank the folks on the network for that.

His eyes affix themselves on the growing pool of blood beneath Rey; he's all too aware time is a luxury she might not have. "There's a clinic on the main drag. Painted up building, hard to miss. Run by a Doctor Banner. We'll get headed that way, see how much healing she can do on her own."

There's a clunk behind him; Nick turns, and there's that box he saw moving earlier. It's moved again, and is now far closer than it was before. "Can you carry her? Because we need to move. Now."

[circumitus]

The pain is excruciating, but Rey has endured worse. She's been shot to shit, blown up, and even lost several body parts along the way.

That doesn't mean she's quiet and calm when Glacius extracts the rebar from her chest. Animal instincts kick in, her body thrashing momentarily. Blood pours out from the gaping wounds, both on her front and back. She can't help but scream against the force that's now holding her down.

After that's out of the way, her limbs collapse and she forces herself to focus. Think. Her hand comes back over the wound in her chest, applying pressure against it. Her mind is racing with all sorts of nonsensical gibberish, urging her to concentrate in the end.

She coughs out another yell as she releases the energy of Hope's blessing from her right hand and into her open injury. It's enough to stop the bleeding and close up the hole, maybe even take care of some of the internal damage. The power in her right hand, however, begins to crackle and fade.

Should've known that she was on borrowed time with this thing.

Spitting the blood from her mouth, Rey whips her head towards Nick. "No doctor. Just need someplace to finish healing." Call her stubborn all you'd like, but she would rather avoid having someone she doesn't know poke and prod at her. She's not even fond of the idea of being carried, or touched at all. But even she knows she isn't walking out of here on her own two feet.

City

[foundafamily]

Firo's leaning on the bar, savoring a drink, when he sees Rey making her visit. His glass freezes halfway to his mouth and he gives her a long once over. She looks like hell and worse--did she get clobbered by one of the monsters out there? After his and Carlisle's brush with the mimic, he'd believe it, though her wounds don't look like they came from that.

"You want some whiskey to pour on it?"

Surely coming to the bar for a simple drink wouldn't be a priority when she's in that state? But having spent his whole life around tough guys... Firo realizes he wouldn't be too surprised.

[circumitus]

After Maketh's lecturing, Rey has at least had the sense to get some medical attention for her more serious injuries before deciding to prioritize alcohol. She still looks like someone who's just stepped out of a boxing ring, though she cares little for appearances.

When she catches Firo at the bar, there's no effort of hiding when it comes to her face. Her one good eye just gives him a tiring look, the other barely squinting at him under a nasty bruise.

"No, but will just take some of that whiskey."

[foundafamily]

He motions for another round, which is promptly set down on the bar before her. Firo leans against it and gives her another long look--it's even worse up close.

"What happened? You look like you pissed somebody off."

Maybe a seventy-foot snake came to get revenge for its smaller brother. Firo keeps that comment to himself, though.

[circumitus]

Someone had come for revenge, so Firo would be partially right, there.

Rey takes a moment to down a shot before she can formulate a coherent answer to his question. It's been several hours since her return and she's still trying to figure out the logic, only to conclude that there was none. This place is just insane.

"Was sent back home briefly. Needless to say, it wasn't a very pleasant visit."

[foundafamily]

Firo's eyes snap wide open. "Home?" His arm, which had been midway into lifting his glass to his mouth, drops down to the bar. So it's possible to go back.

Maybe he could still be of help to Ennis. He won't push his luck so as to hope to see all his friends and family again, but if he could just finish what he started with the FBI...

But those are thoughts for another time, and he won't get home by wishing.

He taps his glass again on the bar to jolt himself back into the present conversation. "No, it doesn't look like it. So, you happy to be back? Less people at your throat here?"

[circumitus]

Rather than going into the gritty details right away (Rey is way too sober for that), she just nods. She figures her face can speak for itself when it comes to how well that trip went.

She takes a moment to carefully drink from her glass, making sure to avoid the liquor from burning the cut in her lip. There's a slight twinge on top of the burn when she swallows the whiskey, but she doesn't flinch. When you've been impaled or blown up or even died as Rey has, pain is something one becomes used to.

"Wouldn't necessarily say 'happy' is the right word here, but... am alive here, at least. That's something." As she says this, she finishes her glass in one long swig.

oh no, my ruh boo D:

[watashinonamaewa]

In some drunken blur of a memory, Cibo remembers the park fairly well. She met a lot of people and hung out with a lot of new friends on the benches or in the grass. With new faces coming through, she tries to make her way through the city to help out. And then there's Rey.

That's her best friend (according to the memory of drunk-whiskey-karaoke-fun night) sitting on bench like looking like shit ain't shit to look like.

"H-... Hey. You good?"

She sits down beside her. Personal space is a respectable thing, of course.

aw cibooboo

[circumitus]

Still feeling the pangs in her ribs, Rey had decided to take a breather at the park. She doesn't like feeling cooped up in her apartment, and she likes being alone even less.

Considering the state of her face, it's no wonder why Cibo would ask such a question right away. Rey doesn't blame her for the curiosity. She looks like she's been through Hell and back.

Scratching her forehead, Rey sighs. "Well, am not dying anytime soon, if that's what you're worried about."

No, she's not really good. Her physical injuries are one thing. Her mental state is another story altogether.

[watashinonamaewa]

"That's part of what I meant." She affirms.

If she weren't dying, that's a bonus. If she wanted to die, then... Well, that's something else entirely.

"Need to talk about it?"

[circumitus]

Rey just shakes her head and leans forward, resting her elbows over her knees. She hisses a bit from the throb in her chest, but she deals just as she always does when it comes to pain.

"Went home. Am now back here." That's all there is to say.

Except not really.

[watashinonamaewa]

"Went home?"

She doesn't understand. These gods or whatever they are sent her home to get beat the shit out of her just to bring her back all over again? Why would they do that?

"Glad you're back. It's safer here."

Cibo can tell this is true for both of them. Their homeworlds suck balls. At least here they could look out for each other.

Her hands flex in the fabric of the suit. The nano-tech of the material really helps the healing process. If only she had a second one.

"You should wear this for a while."

[circumitus]

'Safe' isn't exactly the word Rey would use to describe Hadriel. Sure, after a month of partying it doesn't seem so bad, but having seen people buried alive and turned into monsters, she's inclined to disagree.

But then, it's hardly safe back home, too. Every day Rey risked herself for the sake of others. At least here she isn't at the mercy of a crazed synthetic who wants to become human, and is willing to rip out Rey's heart in order to achieve said humanity.

She shakes her head at Cibo's offer.

"No worries. Can usually heal from serious injuries faster than a human. It's one of the advantages to having an immortal cell line."

It just can't heal anything like scar tissue or bring her back from near death as the name would seemingly entail.