Survivalist Plot: The Envy of Eden

[meat_mooks]

Day One

Stacy calls Cedric Diggory, Diana Ladris, Guru Clef, Howard Bassem, Karis Needleteeth, The Master and Maxine Hunkel to the deck.

Planet Designation: Eden
Status: Terrestrial, H-class.
Non-sentient life: Sparse levels of flora, no natural fauna
Semi-Sentient Life: None
Sentient Life: Small human colonies created to mine Eden's limited precious elements. As of last Eden 'year', population 300. Settlers do not typically make permanent stays.
Water: 75.6% of the planet's surface.
Climate: Dry and moderate during the day. At nights temperatures drop to below 30 degrees Fahrenheit. Infrequent rains, risks of flash floods.
Landscape: Desert and sedimentary rock mountains. Most water is retrieved by wells or from cargo ships. Sparse vegetation.
Air: Type I (breathable)
Sky: Grey
Warnings: Electrical storms may interfere with omnicomm function.
Mission: Investigate source of distress signal picked up on Stacy's sensors.

For the most part the trip down to the atmosphere goes uneventfully, even if it is a little cramped in the shuttle, but as soon as they get within a few thousand feet of the ground things start to go wrong. Communication with Stacy cuts off; Stacy herself is cut off mid-sentence while warning the crew to use iodine in any tap water they find. The omnicomms go similarly blank. The shuttle lurches through the sky and tilts sideways. One of the engines blows. The automatic seatbelts unlock. A section of the shuttle's roof rips off, letting in thin, hardly-breathable air.

More terrifying still, the superpowered members of this crew may have time to notice that they no longer have their abilities.

About thirty feet above the ground the shuttle tips into a barrel roll, the autopilot fritzing out as it tries to right things, and the crew goes tumbling out and scatters amongst the town moments before the shuttle crashes into a far cliffside.

[OOC: Tag into your designated subthreads! In a little, once we've established what's going on a bit more, while I'll put up a thread for them all to reconvene. I will be NPCing monsters in these threads, so please drop me a line if you want the monsters to do anything specific or if I'm being slow on a tag.]

Comments

Maxine and the Master

[meat_mooks]

Maxine and the Master end up hitting the ground in the courtyard of an abandoned church. A thick layer of dried, yellowed grass breaks their fall. The church itself is in a state of considerable disrepair; the steeple leans to the side like some frail person favoring a leg. What might have been a garden is now only withered and trampled flowers. The stained glass windows that might have once been glorious are now busted in.

Once Maxine and the Master have a chance to get their bearings, they might notice that one of the doors to the chapel is resting ajar, and a slick, slight trail of grease leads in.

Re: Maxine and the Master

[syncopath]

On the shuttle ride down to the planet's surface, the Master speaks to no one, looking grimly out the window and tapping on his arm rest the entire time. He would have thought he deserved at least a little break after spending five months enslaved to Daniel Jackson, of all people. But apparently Stacy has seen fit to throw him into a situation of the lowest priority: a rescue mission. Worse yet, his current pet projects are out of reach-- the Doctors, the TARDIS. John Crichton. Eva and River Song. That little Howie is present doesn't quite make up for it.

And then, of course, everything goes horribly wrong.

But there's an instant, just before the shuttle tilts sideways and spills them out into oblivion, when the Master stops tapping, looks up with a dawning horror that has nothing to do with the omnicomms and everything else failing in spectacular fashion.

He's alone. Before, when he woke and Gallifrey was gone, there was at least the Doctor, burning like a tiny brand in the back of his mind. Now he can't sense anything.

Then the Master's hitting the ground rolling, his body making it a few painful revolutions before landing in a pathetic heap. Somewhere in there he regrets his earlier impatience with what seemed to be a fruitless mission. This certainly isn't boring any longer.

He lifts his head, groaning softly, and glances around-- more to get his bearings than to check on the rest of the crew he cares so little for to begin with-- before pushing himself to his knees. The drums rage in his head as pain flares in several different places. He's more or less intact, though; Time Lords can survive a fall or two.

[windwitch]

Unfortunately for anyone near Maxine, there's a brief instant-- the one between things starting to go horribly wrong and the climax of them losing everything-- where the teen goes into a panic. She covers her head, tries not to scream, and the air around her kicks up into a flurry, certainly not helping things. And then, just as quick as it had started, it's done. She feels utter stillness, even worse than what she'd faced during the attack on the ship. Like a part of her had just shut off.

But she doesn't have a lot of time to dwell on that before she's slammed into the ground near a church, pain rocketing first through her side and then into the rest of her, causing her to see stars and lose track of what's going on for a moment.

Eventually she manages to reassert herself though, green eyes opening in a panic and looking around frantically: she only stops the wild movements of her head once she realises that it hurts and that maybe it's not a good idea. She can't see most of the others anyway, but she does see one of the older men, one she doesn't really know. She manages to crawl over a little, feeling like her head is swimming still, and she manages to ask quietly, "are you okay?"

[syncopath]

The Master's head swivels toward the woman, his eyes snapping with what almost looks like annoyance at the question.

"Right as rain," he drawls sarcastically. And then he closes his eyes and bows his head briefly as a wave of dizziness hits him.

At least the Doctor isn't here to see him like this, but he still doesn't like feeling this defenseless with anyone. And it's not the fall; it's the awareness of being alone, naked, cut off from the last of his kind and his own senses. It's almost unbearable.

[windwitch]

Maxine's expression wavers a little more when she sees the hint of annoyance in the man's face, and a hint more again at the sarcastic response.

"Well, I guess this isn't really a good situation, but there's nothing serious, right? Like, if you're not hurt and we can find the others we should be able to at least figure out what happened..."

God, she's not felt this still and stifled since-- well, the last time she'd lost her abilities this totally. She didn't like it. She tried not to think about it.

"Where do you think this is?" she asked instead, looking up and around. A church-- so the society couldn't be that alien to her own, right? But-- "What could that be?" On the ground, some kind of grease.

[meat_mooks]

From inside the church, somewhere behind the doors, is the whimpering sound of a scared child.

[syncopath]

"Goodness, but you're full of questions, aren't you?" Coming from the Master's mouth, it definitely does not sound like a compliment.

The grease, actually, is troubling-- though the Master isn't sure whether it's due to external forces or a property of the substance itself that makes him difficult to work out what it is. Or where it might have come from. He stares at it for entirely too long before giving up and clambering to his feet with a dismissive grunt. The Doctor would taste it, taste anything presented, really. But the Master has his limits.

He hears the child and a small line appears between his eyebrows. In most situations the Master would pay a crying child no mind; they whimper and whine all the time. But something isn't quite right here. He swivels his head toward the church and stares at the door as if he expects something to come bounding out toward them. But he makes no attempt to move or investigate further.

[windwitch]

"Um, I guess so," Maxine says, but her voice makes it clear that she's disheartened by the commentary. "I guess I'm just a little nervous, you know? It's hard to keep my mouth shut when I am and I probably shouldn't have even said that..."

But it isn't like she could say much more, because as she gets closer to investigate, she notices what he had already heard: a frightened kid. She exchanges a look with him briefly, but he's staying back and he seems-- distrustful, maybe. Maxine takes a tentative step forward and calls out softly, "Is someone there?" She can't just leave a kid alone, can she?

[meat_mooks]

Out of the ajar door, a person emerges, a dark-haired human girl who can't be more than eleven or twelve years old. She's dressed in stained clothing and her hair has clearly gone unwashed for many days. She walks as much with her hands against the door as her leg, as the other foot is injured and looks like it has a nasty infection; coagulated blood runs up a cut from her heel to the front of her knee, and the skin beneath it is red and shiny. She looks dazed, as if she can't quite focus her eyes on the two of them, and her cheeks are flushed.

"D-don't go in there." She flails a hand back at the church. Her voice is thin and raspy, barely audible. "Do you have water?"

She seems to be asking Maxine more than the Master, either because she suspects a kinder soul or because Maxine was the one who asked the question.

Karis and Clef

[meat_mooks]

Karis and Clef land about four hundred meters from the Master and Maxine, although they can't see their crewmates from this location. They've hit the ground in a rock quarry, though thankfully nothing vital was broken on the hard earth. The reddish rock lies in stacks and piles around the quarry, as well as various worker's tools, although they've all been gathering dust.

The dried bones of a human hand sit close to a basketball-sized hole in the ground. The whole travels back at a slant, too far back for anyone to see what's in there from the surface.

Re: Karis and Clef

[teethofneedles]

"I hate crashes," Karis mutters to herself. This has not improved her mood. She drags herself to her feet nad carefully checks to make sure nothing too terribly important is missing. Weapons, check. Armor, check. Alright, good.

"Where the Hell are we?"

Re: Karis and Clef

[bequiet_hescreamed]

Clef pushes himself to his feet and dusts off his clothing, scowling faintly at both the pain and the acute sense of being without his magic. In itself it wasn't the terrible feeling of loss or numbness that one would expect after losing one of one's senses and ways of interacting with the world. No, for Clef it was simply a lot like staring into the face of an angry bull: one is reminded of one's relative smallness and squishiness compared to the rest of the universe. No combination of age, wisdom, and inner peace could make this a less unpleasant sensation.

Naturally, he was strongly motivated to consider resources outside of himself that he had access to - namely, the tools lying around.

"Some sort of quarry, I think," he replied, looking around.

Re: Karis and Clef

[meat_mooks]

Awakened by the sound, a nasty little creature deep in the hole decides the creatures standing outside its home sound like a delightful meal. One of them seems already dead - all the better - and the other is small enough that it should be simple enough to devour.

The monster bursts from the hole in the ground. It's about six feet long, with four claws feet with too many joints in them and a shriveled rat tail. Its mouth is distended, shaped like a many-toothed lamprey's suckers, and opened wide like a snake's jaw. Its eyes are jelly-like globs slapped onto the face as carelessly as paint on a child's craft, but they glisten with intelligence.

It barrels at Karis with the speed of a motorcycle, impossibly fast for something with only ten feet to accelerate, and leaps up, seeking to fix that massive mouth on her arm and rip it right off.

Re: Karis and Clef

[teethofneedles]

"Fantastic. There has to be a way outta here, right?"

That's as far as she gets before the monster bursts out of the ground. It's ugly. It's fast. Reminds her of a tundra worm or some of the other gribblies she's had to deal with. But that all passes through her mind in an instant. She reacts, bringing up her armored arm in an effort to ward off the blow, swinging in a vicious backhand as her other hand goes for the battle-ax strapped at her waist.

"Son of a-"

Re: Karis and Clef

[meat_mooks]

The creature sees the battle axe coming up and changes direction in a instant. It drops low and left and avoids hitting Karis with its full force, though as it zips by her it takes a grapefruit-sized chunk out of her rotting thigh.

It twirls around and speeds by again, swallowing as it goes, this time making a leap for Clef's head.

Re: Karis and Clef

[bequiet_hescreamed]

Clef had a chisel - one of the larger, pointier ones - in his hand by the time the monster changed its mind about Karis. Dropping low as the monster leapt in his direction, he held his ground and stared wide-eyed into its face as it bore down on him. Strangely, he wasn't feeling as vulnerable as he had been just a few moments ago. In fact, he realized in the split-second that he was staring up at it, here was something even squishier than he was. All those rows of teeth, and the way it darted around - this was something whose main mode of offense was surprise snacking. He wondered if it would even bother with them should they prove to be too difficult to eat.

In the last instant before his head became snack food, Clef rolled out of the way and thought he heard the smacking of teeth right next to his ear as he did so. That was partially luck. There wasn't going to be any dodging this thing again, but he needed a better window of opportunity to execute the vague plan he had in his head - something where it wasn't coming at him from above. He got to his feet and into a steady stance again only a few feet away from the monster, his weapon still low in front of him.

"Hello," he said.

[meat_mooks]

The creature spins around again and leaps for Clef, jaw unhinging to open him whole. Its mouth closes around Clef, head to foot, and it runs at Karis with Clef inside as if to bowl her over.

Cedric, Diana and Howard

[meat_mooks]

Diana, Cedric and Howard end up crashing through a roof onto heavily-carpeted floor. Thankfully, as the last to fall from the shuttle they don't have far to fall to the second story of a house, and the roof they fell through was structurally decrepit. It shouldn't leave them with more than cuts and bruises.

The room they end up in is covered in dust. Aside from the hole in the ceiling, there's also a sizeable chunk of the floor missing, with pieces of carpet and wood strewn up on the floor as if something burst from under the floor and up. The room clearly was a sparsely-decorated room for a young person; a few young adult books still sit in an old bookcase, and a poster above the bed, while faded, still bears the likeness of some pop star. The wallpaper is ripped up, but once had five-point stars on it.

Re: Cedric, Diana and Howard

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

Howard has the good fortune to mostly land on his feet and hip, so he avoids becoming the black and blue mess he would have been had he been unlucky enough to go through that roof face-first. As it stands the fall still stuns him, but once he's had a few seconds to realize that he's in a room and there isn't, as far as he can see, any immediate danger, he stands up and sits on the bed.

Nothing broken. Nothing even too badly sprained. Not that that means falling through a roof is an experience he cares to repeat. He's got a shallow cut on one shin and serious carpetburn on his palm and knee, but no serious injury.

He watches Cedric closely, Diana a little less closely but still with considerable scrutiny, as they get their bearings. He's lost his medical kit, so if either of them are seriously injured there probably isn't much he can do to help them.

"Just so you know, this mission has already set a new record for zero-to-suck. We weren't even on the planet before we got messed up." He looks around the room. "You guys okay?"

[theboywhodied]

Cedric's fairly worse off. Instead of bracing himself for impact, he'd pulled out his wand and tried to slow them down.

"Aresto Momentum!"

Unfortunately, he's powerless, and he spent the entire fall of approximately seven seconds denying this and attempting to cast it. He's only just spared himself from breaking both arm and wand, landing in a heap uncomfortably close to the hole in the floor.

It takes a few seconds for the shock and pain to fade, but gravity waits for no one. The moment he feels his foot slip, he yelps and rolls into the wall, causing even more dust to fall on him. Beautiful, right?

"That depends on what you're really asking. I don't need a medic yet, but I have a horrible feeling about this."

[keep_surviving]

Diana was holding her arm as she stood up, curtain of dark, flowing hair hiding her face, which she was thankful for because she'd flinched as she rightened herself and she did not want Howard seeing that.

She'd adopted what she called the 'telekinetic throwing position' when they'd fallen. Which basically just amounted to using her arms to protect her head, causing the appendages to be coated in the majority of her scrapes.

She could feel the sting of her cuts and the dull throbs on spots of her skin that she knew meant the onset of bruises, but all this she ignored, far passed the point of caring about such small injuries.

Her arm she was concerned about though, something had struck her elbow at an odd angle as they'd smashed through the roof, jostling and twisting her shoulder painfully. Her worry was it would be a more substantial injury, she didn't need that hindering her throughout this hellish road trip.

Hoping it was nothing more than a bad sprain, she gave it a rub and tossed her dark bangs out of her eyes to look at Howard. "Mmmhmm, just peachy. I'm already loving my first little 'mission', I don't see why people keep whining so much about them."

Diana glanced curiously as Cedric, on the way here it'd been clear that Howard knew him, but Diana had never crossed paths with the boy before. She didn't voice any concern for his well being, because well, she didn't really have any, and Howard had already taken care of it anyway.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

Howard jumps forward to try and catch Cedric from falling in the hole, but Cedric's already got a handle on it, so Howard takes a step back and sits down again. "Just checking to make sure nothing's broke. My kit's gone."

He pulls out his omnicomm. "No signal." He considers pulling his communicator to Zouichi out, but that's not something he exactly wants to be flaunting around in front of Diana.

He casts a glance at her. He knows she's probably on the same page he is; head downstairs and raid whatever medicine cabinet this house has, whether people still live here or not.

"What's up with your arm?" Howard doesn't catch the flinch, but he does see the way she cradles her arm as she stands up. Probably was hoping for too much for them all to fall through a roof without hurting themselves, but Howard has to admit - he'd rather Diana a little weakened than at her full capabilities. Not because she's a threat - at the moment they're all a team - but because they have an uneasy sort of acquaintance, one that can easily turn to enmity if the circumstance is stressful enough. And missions tend to be stressful. Howard would rather have an upper hand on her if things get down to it.

As long as she doesn't become too vulnerable. People like her, when they get vulnerable, get dangerous.

"Oh, by the way. Cedric, Diana. Diana, Cedric." He moves his hands between them in a gesture of presenting them to each other. "So, I guess it goes without saying that our mission is no longer about finding a distress signal unless it helps us get back to the ship."

[theboywhodied]

Cedric is slow to stand up. The rattling bones and blood and bruises are part of it, yes, but the root of his uncertainty is fear. He silently curses at himself. He didn't get enough training in before he lost his magic again, so he's just as useless as before.

Worse...there's no obvious reason for his loss of magic this time. SHODAN had explicitly said she was activating the dampers. Here, there's no clue. And that's a reason to worry, because there's no obvious way to recover either. If that's even possible.

When he realises that he's likely being watched, he pushes against a rotting wall and stands. He'll be even more useless if he lets fear take control so easily. Cedric makes himself face Diana, nodding. "I'm sorry the circumstances are so bad. So...we're looking for a way out? And things. I don't have anything."

No defences, no tools, just a dead computer-thing and an equally dead stick.

[keep_surviving]

There's a slight quirk of her eyebrow at Howard's attempt at rescue but she puts it away for later, too busy being irritated by the loss of Howard's (and therefore, and more importantly, their) medical kit. "Great. Good thing no one broke a rib then."

In response to Howard's question, Diana fell back on her old sarcastic eye roll and tone. "I fell through a roof, that's what's up with it."

She gives Cedric a nod back before taking in their surroundings. "Weren't there supposed to be people actually living here?" She looked around at run-down room. "Because it seems like that may have been a lie. That or did we just land in the bad neighborhood?"

[meat_mooks]

There's a sudden thump downstairs, and the sound of something crashing - pots and pans in the kitchen, maybe. A few more clangs and scratching noises follow, as well as the sound of snuffling.

From the stairs, only a little past the closed bedroom door, there's the sound of something heavy and wet being dragged.