intro

[pinkprismstaff]

You don't remember getting knocked out.

That's the best descriptor for the feeling you experience before you wake up. There's a glittering absence of color to your field of vision, and a sensation that you aren't yourself, you aren't anything in particular. Abruptly, unpleasantly, you wake up in a strange, sunny location. Where that is might vary--laying in a sun chair on the pool deck, draped over the skee-ball machine in the arcade, face down in a cart in the laundry room....or just stretched out in the long, long expanse of sand surrounding the island.

There doesn't seem to be anyone else here, aside from the others who have woken up and have as little clue where they might be as you do. It's a silent, empty island filled with a lot of questions and few clear answers. What you can conclude are a few things: that you don't get hungry or tired, that any wounds you have don't seem to either heal or worsen, and leaving the island doesn't seem to be possible.

Maybe it would be good to meet with the others who have woken up?

Comments

[baskins]

Uh... sorry about the zombies, I guess? Plus side, haven't seen any around here.

[shoveltalks]

Yeah, this place seems clear of it. ... Oh, but there is blood everywhere. No sign of what happened, though. Just thought it's better to know ahead of time.

... I hope you clocked one of the Russians good.

( bonding over violence. #justgirlythings. )

[baskins]

Oh, a crime scene resort. Cool.

[ She laughs, in a way that starts dark but becomes less so. ]

If they weren't cowards who kept coming at two teenagers with machine guns and torture, maybe I would have.

[shoveltalks]

Yeah! You know, in case we haven't seen enough.

( she's not normally one for this sort of humor- but yuki's not here and therefore, keeping the brightest outlook isn't as necessary anymore. it's still needed, but... she can be real.

the machine guns and torture takes her out though- )

Jeeze, that's such overkill! What did they even want?

[baskins]

God, Steve and the children's choir of Hawkins explained it to me, but uh... they were doing evil Russian science, basically. Which is frowned upon in the middle of America.

[shoveltalks]

I would imagine it would be frowned upon anywhere. ... You and the kids were okay before you got here, right?

[baskins]

For a given value of okay. There was a worm, and that was bad, and the redhead kid's brother - that lifeguard guy at the pool I think? - died, which was a bummer for her and. Everyone. And there were a lot of minor injuries. Probably a bunch of trauma. I was still a little out of it on Russian interrogation drugs.

[ ... ]

But none of the kids are dead! And that was an hour ago! Today is sure going for the gold.

[shoveltalks]

( so she was in a really bad situation just before this, too. ... other than the general fact that it happened, anyways- )

We'll get you back to them. But, uh- if you wanna talk about it at all, I'll listen. 'Cause I get it.

[baskins]

I mean I am very new to all of this, they're all... I just helped by translating and breaking a Russian code so we could break into the secret base they built under the local shopping mall, it's... this is not an environment for processing any of that.

[shoveltalks]

It sounds like you did good work- and you should be proud of yourself for it, even though it's scary.

( but kurumi won't press. even if she disagrees with having a 'right environment' to deal with things- that luxury could never come, after all. it's a hard truth she learned fast, and... she doesn't want to add to the stress. )