Intro Log: Puddle Jumpers

[hadrielmods]

Who: New arrivals and everyone else!
What: The intro log for September
Where: The colosseum and all around the city.
When: September 10th-13th
Warnings: Fresh meat, lots of rain and angry ogres

If the rain on your face isn't enough to wake you up in the colosseum, maybe the thundering footsteps and- well, thunder- is. The first thing that you may notice is that it's incredibly wet around here, with winds that could knock you over if you aren't careful and thunder that brings with it a torrent of constant rainfall.

That's all fine though, because the gods saw fit to help you out on your way in and now everyone will be waking up wearing a rain coat! These coats are a little odd, and some of them are downright silly, but we trust that you'll make do. Of course, a few of the raincoats have additional sleeves, neck holes, and entirely too many buttons as well- but hey, it's the best we could do.

Wait, what was that about thundering footsteps? Oh right, as you're navigating your new fashion choices, there are some monsters afoot who will want nothing more than to grind you into a pulp and eat you- well, if you're organic, that is. If you're not organic, then they still want to grind you to a pulp, but maybe not so much the eating part.

Ogres are from many fantasy stories, but these in particular are from the Dragon Age series. With incredible strength and stamina and massive horns, fangs, and a bloodlust for violence, these monsters won't stop until everyone around them is a blood smear on the ground. They're also not too happy about this rainfall either, so be careful not to slip in the puddles as you run away from them!

Once you've splashed around a bit, feel free to run off into the stormy abyss of our islands. You can explore the rest of the city! Find a house, a new monster, a project to help with, or simply scavenge for supplies. Good luck, and enjoy your stay in Hadriel!

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

Comments

Colosseum

[dadyl]

[ Daryl wakes up half-choking on rain and sits up to find himself in the most ridiculous pink umbrella raincoat, almost as if it was issued to him with a cosmic sense of irony. For a few seconds, that is the most confusing thing to him, until gradually it starts to dawn on him that something is wrong. He isn't at the bottom of the ravine again, or lying sprawled and shot in Hershel's field. Squinting through the downpour, Daryl can see the beginnings of row upon row of damaged benches, a low wall... a hulking fucking monster...

All of Daryl's creeping confusion is replaced with outright panic and he doesn't even need to be able to compute what he's seeing for him to start scrabbling around for his crossbow. His heart releases the beat it was holding onto when his hand closes around it, the weapon seemingly flung just a few feet from his body like an afterthought. Good. At least I didn't lose this. He regains his feet, pushes wet hair out of his eyes, he's about to make a run for the edge of the pit when --

-- there's a kid, running, out of the corner of his eye. Or... a skinny little teenager, or something, hardly older looking than Carl, hardly bigger than Sophia, even if the blue hair clearly proves it isn't her. But who it is hardly matters because there's a fucking monster chasing the kid, roaring, stomping, the most threatening thing Daryl has ever seen. And he's seen a lot of terrifying shit by now.

It's far to big and noisy to be a walker, but something reminds Daryl distinctly of when he was damn sure he saw his chupacabra in the Georgia woods, except this is... decidedly not that either.

Abandoning his planned escape route, Daryl takes off at a run towards the path the kid is on, intersecting with him just before the ogre on his tail catches up. He grabs Sal around the waist like he's nothing but a football and hoists him off his feet, barely slowing down, and the abrupt change in its prey's direction slows the ogre to a stagger just long enough for Daryl to get a few dozen feet between them and their pursuer. He hoists Sal up and over the wall like he's nothing but a rag doll, hardly stoping to make sure the kid isn't about to fall off the other side before pulling himself up and over after him and lifting Sal down. ]

You okay!? [ It's only then that Daryl notices the mask, and the look of shock is plain on his face as he stops in his tracks, drawing back just slightly. It looks weird, okay? ] What the hell?

[sallyfaced]

[For a brief moment when he feels himself suddenly lifted off the ground, during a particularly strong gust, he thought the wind was going to straight up take him away or throw him into one of those barely standing walls. His heart skipped several beats - then he realized he was being carried by a person and not the sheer force of wind.

He's small and light and isn't putting up resistance since the stranger is obviously helping him, which makes him fairly easy to lift and pull off the wall...it's when they're safely - at least for the moment, but safer than they were seconds go, on the other side of the wall when Sal lets out a huge, relieved sigh, muffled by both his mask and the noisy weather.]

Y-yeah, I'm good. Thank you. [He's used to that kind of reaction by now so he barely acknowledges it at first, focusing on sounding as grateful as he felt. He's unsure if his flower raincoat made him look weirder or creepier...probably the latter.] Oh, the raincoat isn't my usual sense of fashion, I promise.

[He obviously knows that's not what the response is too...he's just making a joke to hopefully alleviate that weird alien quality to him. And to lighten the mood. He doesn't want to make anyone uncomfortable, especially given the circumstances.]

[dadyl]

Ain't the coat I was talkin' about, kid! This look like mind t'you? [ He flicks at the pink umbrella part of the raincoat that is draping his shoulders and keeping the rain off. Seeing someone else in a weird coat actually made waking up in this seem somehow more normal. At least, normal compared to suddenly finding himself in a damn run-down old stadium -- because that's the only thing Daryl can explain this place as. He can't be far from the farm, can he?

He's caught between wanting to get him and the kid moving again and staring at the oddity before him, cagily, like he doesn't want to make the kid nervous by staring right at him. Daryl knows how he looks under the damn raincoat, and he isn't a non-intimidating sight himself. The walker ears still looped around his neck have got to be weirder for the kid than the mask is to him. But Daryl still thinks he must have passed out and fallen down another ravine to... somewhere, and the idea that there's a kid running around alone in a weird Halloween mask in the middle of the damn apocalypse is just... bizarre.

But there's a vicious roar from too close to them behind the wall, and even though Daryl has more questions, he's not asking them now. ] C'mon! We gotta get up these seats an' outta here. Let's go! Can- can you see? Take that thing off! [ The mask was probably why the kid was having so much trouble before Daryl got to him, but he's too injured from the wounds he took to keep carrying him. ]

[sallyfaced]

[Sal may have been a little torn on the ears - having just found a freezer full of skin in his teacher's apartment, but seeing as how the stranger saved his life and didn't let him get eaten by a demon, well, that pretty much earned him his trust, even if he should have his own good reasons for being paranoid of people he didn't know right now.

He reached under his hoodie quickly and undid the second set of buckles holding up his mask. He didn't take it off, just lifted it slightly so he could properly wipe the water out of his eyes and the hair that ended up clinging to his face from under the mask, his features still covered.]

I can see fine now! [His voice raised because of all the rain and commotion but it was pretty insistent. Intent on not taking off his mask he buckled it back up and began to move up the stairs.] You're right though - let's go before any of those things start trying to knock us down from here!

[dadyl]

[ Daryl watches as Sal readjusts his mask, thinking at first that the kid is going to take the weird thing off, but when he doesn't a shallow sort of understanding dawns on Daryl. Maybe he's disfigured or something, or burned. In his opinion, there's no sense being shy about that shit now, not with everything that's going on (in his world, he thinks, escaping the dead as quickly as you can is far more pressing an issue than any level of vanity or self-consciousness), but he's not about to yell that at a little kid who might be ashamed. Even if they aren't on the run. Daryl remembers that feeling too intimately.

But as soon as Sal is moving, Daryl is right alongside him, taking the steps two at a time but never running ahead of the little guy. He keeps his body half-turned and his crossbow trained behind them, just in case they're followed or the thing decides to charge again. He doesn't know if the arrows will work on it, not unless he manages to hit an eye, but he'll sure as hell make the effort. ]

What's your name, kid? An' where'd you come from?

[sallyfaced]

[The relationship between he and his mask was a complicated one. He would take it off in an emergency, but funnily enough this situation didn't seem to call for it yet. Working around it was as natural as pushing a strand of hair out of one's eyes.

He keeps up well enough, not looking back because he doesn't want to see what's behind them and instead focus on moving forward, especially since Daryl seems to have that under control.]

I'm Sal. And uh, I don't know where this is, but I live in Nockfell. The Addison Apartments. [Where he had just been, and he's still not sure how the hell he got here.] Do you know where we are?

[dadyl]

[ The fact that the kid -- Sal -- gives him what amounts to an actual address is weird. No one has offered that much information to someone else in Daryl's world for some time; they just shared the general area they used to live before the world had ended. So the way Sal describes himself living somewhere, in the present tense, is strange to his ears. The fact that Sal doesn't know where they are either is unsurprising, he supposes, but disappointingly frustrating. What the hell is going on?? ]

No a clue, kid. But we've got bigger things t'worry about.

[ When he spots an arching door out of this place Daryl gestures sharply with his chin, following Sal until the roars of the ogres have started to fade a little. His side is still burning and his head is pounding, a fresh wash of blood coating the side of Daryl's face, so he slows once he thinks they're out of trouble. ]

How'd you get here, I meant. [ He finally has a moment to clarify himself, more than somewhat out of breath, leaning heavily against a nearby wall to support himself. ] Last thing I knew I was comin' up on the farm we were stayin' at, but this don't look nothin' like Georgia to me.

[sallyfaced]

[Well, that kind of sucks. But it's still a plus from ending up eaten by a giant monster. Or kidnapped by some crazy cultist, or what ever the hell else could have gone wrong before he got here. He can't afford to be down about anything now.

He moves quickly and carefully when it looks like they're close to being out of direct danger. Now that things have slowed down Sal notices Daryl's state more clearly. He might have thought all that blood wasn't his before - he's not sure what he thought aside from that, but as far as he was concerned he didn't have reason to believe anything too bad. But now he's noticing that he seems to be in a bad way.]

...Dude, Georgia? [The way Sal asks that makes it pretty clear he himself was nowhere near Georgia.] Man, I just got in my bed to take a nap before school and I ended up here. I thought I got kidnapped in my sleep or something. But this doesn't look like Nockfell either. Or Jersey even, for that matter.

[Sal's only ever known those two places, neither of which look anywhere close to this. He doesn't let those words settle long before he's talking again.]

Are you going to be okay? Did you get hit by one of those things?

[dadyl]

So neither of us is in Kansas anymore, guess we know that much... [ Daryl doesn't have many pop culture references to hand, but of the few movies he saw on his dad's old black and white when he was younger, this situation pretty much seems like it could be some Wizard of Oz shit. Except without all the fun.

Jersey, huh? What the hell... ] Maybe you were. Hell, least that would be some kind of explanation about what's goin' on.

[ Daryl had no idea how he's going to go about finding his way back to his people, but he doesn't have too long to dwell on the thought -- the kid is talking again. This little guy sure is chatty, huh? Daryl raises his eyebrows at him, half amused, before looking down at himself like he's just noticed the state he's in. He's been feeling it for hours though, and it's just getting worse. ]

Nah. Fell down a ravine, got stabbed with one of these, [ gesturing to the arrows strapped to the crossbow. ] then had to kill two walkers gettin' up it again. Then... [ Daryl raises a hand to touch his bleeding head thoughtfully, looking at his bloody fingers. ] Not sure how I got this... I think somebody shot me?

[sallyfaced]

[All of Sal's pop culture references would be slightly different anyhow, though he gets the sentiment this time.

Not that Daryl can see it, but there's one hell of a wince from Sal while he goes on to explain what happened. Fell down a ravine, got stabbed with an arrow, and probably shot? He's silent for a moment, trying to unpack all of that, figuring out what questions he should ask first. "Walkers"? The hell is that? He's going to have to ask about that later.]

That's a lot of bad stuff for you to be standing here talking about it calmly. [He knows the basics of first aid but this is way beyond him and it's bugging him that he cant seem to help.] Do you want to use my raincoat as like...a bandage...to slow the bleeding? That's a thing, right?

[It's a flimsy raincoat that should be able to be torn easily enough, right? Well he's already about to take it off before there's an answer.]

[dadyl]

[ Daryl shrugs the shoulder of the side that isn't injured. Sure, it's bad, but he's been through tough scrapes before. He's not exactly the type to feel sorry for himself in situations like this, more likely to grit his teeth and try to see the problem through with sheer determination, but he is feeling the effects of his wounds. And he knows it's only going to get worse the more he pushes himself.

But Sal's suggested offer of his raincoat surprises him, and he's about to turn him down when the kid starts struggling out of it without waiting for Daryl's response. ]

Hey, hey! Stop that, you're gonna need it more'n me. [ Daryl nods up at the storm and then shakes his head, a part-baffled, part-impressed and almost thankful smile creeping in at one corner of his mouth. ] Ain't nothing bandage-like about plastic, kid. It wouldn't stop the bleedin' for long. Keep it.

[ But they are going to have to get somewhere safer, somewhere out of this wind and rain, before Daryl can do anything about his state. And anywhere is better than here. ] C'mon. Let's see what else we can find.

[sallyfaced]

[He stops, at least, and realizes that yeah...plastic would be a terrible bandage.]

Oh, yeah. You're right. Let's do that then. [Maybe he should look into carrying something more bandage-like around from now on. Apparently, you never know when you'll run into someone who's been stabbed and possibly shot.] But if you get tired or dizzy or something don't push yourself, okay? It's cool if you have to stop.

[He's not sure if Daryl is actually going to, but it's worth throwing that out there, he thinks. Hopefully they can find somewhere safe soon so that won't be a possibility anyway.]

[dadyl]

[ And maybe, maybe it wouldn't have happened if Sal hadn't tried to give Daryl his raincoat. Maybe it wouldn't have happened if Daryl hadn't turned him down, and maybe it wouldn't have happened if Sal wasn't still struggling back into the raincoat when a huge gust of wind caught it just right. Daryl will blame himself for all these things anyway for days afterwards.

Because half a second after Daryl has shot Sal a half-softened, half-dumbfounded look, like he's stunned the kid would care anything about him, the storm picks up with a whoosh and little Sal is carried away.

And, of course, Daryl runs after him, yelling, swearing at the cruelty of this place. This storm. Looks for the kid despite his worsening wounds, trudges around the empty city for far too long, but it's to no avail. The weird little kid in the mask is just gone. ]