sixthiterationlogs | [EVENT] The Simulation Ends

[EVENT] The Simulation Ends

WHERE: 6I Fountain Park & Elsewhere
WHEN: April 1
OPEN TO: ALL - Mingle
WARNINGS: N/A

In the snug circle of an old park, a fountain sits burbling beneath a broad, midday sky.

Once-neat paving stones have buckled and cracked from the slow nudge of wayward roots. Benches stand covered in lichen and rust. Three paths push into the underbrush like the spokes on a wheel, the encroaching forest creating lush tunnels through the dark.

But the fountain stands singular and pristine, brightly splashing in open rebellion of the deep, muffled sounds of a place long ago gone to seed. A vibration hums through the ground, there and quickly gone, and the water in the fountain trembles, lapping against the high walls of its cool, pale reservoir.

Far, far away, in a place that isn't really there, people begin to blink out of existance.

It is the first of April.

It is precisely ten o'clock in the morning.

[Please see event details and guidelines here.]

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Nothing much gets anyone used to waking up underwater, especially when he's forgotten half the instances. At least the sun is shining on his freezing ass as he pulls clear, rolling over the edge onto cold ground, grass shimmering with heavy dew. It's fucking freezing, same as always, and Kira sputters and spits as he rolls over one more time, ass over elbow and eventually his head pops upright.

His hair's in his face.

Pushing it back--and back--he gets both hands in the wet curtain. There's nothing shaved or trimmed; it's long. When he lets go, it sheets back down in a dark curtain, eventually separating into ragged twists as he squeezes cold water from it.

He's just starting to take stock--black scrubs, no backpack, attention grabbed by the fucking LED watch on his wrist--when he hears the people behind him. Whatever's happened, he's not alone, and he immediately turns back to make sure everyone gets out of the water. They can't stay out here like this; the early spring morning is still too cold for comfort.

--

After a change of clothes from the brick house, and a second round of villagers out of the water, Kira's back at the fountain with a canvas boat full of towels and blankets, getting down names and band-colors as people come through. The list he'd made before isn't complete, and some of the people were already gone--but it's enough to compare to, and it means he has an answer when someone comes back to ask after a friend.

There are a lot of no's, early on. He's glad for Ravi and Nerys, and the number of people he recognizes keeps growing. No reason to stay nervous, with every tale of disappearances, people being confirmed as seen on the other side.

No reason but human nature; there are a few names he won't be satisfied until he ticks off--Bodhi, Bela, Karen, Mark--and even if they all come through, he's still not sure what they're coming into. Aurora and Hoshi had been at the house when he came through, and the goat had been staked out in the yard--but he hadn't seen a single other person, Ravi and Nerys aside. A ghost town, a rapture. A rustier version of the prison they'd already been in, like someone had dumped them into an old tank to clean the new.

"Make sure you go check your place for your belongings, check on your animals," he tells the latest arrival, putting their name and color down on the next line.

In the lull, he checks his wrist again. It's strange to have anything report the time, but it's the date that narrows his eyes. Whatever this is, it's a bit much for a fucking joke. Not for the first time, he tries to ease the strap down over his hand, smoothing his fingers over it for some hidden clasp. There's nothing but the smooth edge, and he's not quite ready to chew off his hand to be rid of the cuff.

Like clockwork, the nurse had still made regular passes by the fountain and had done so the evening before. It always made her think back to the day she arrived. There hadn't been any new arrivals as of late and that both relieved and saddened her. Still, Claire knew that there was always a possibility of being there to help a new arrival. She didn't, however, fathom having to go through the whole process herself for the second time.

But, there she was, hanging off the edge of the fountain after surfacing, coughing and sputtering before a hand is offered to pull her out. It's freezing and why that surprises her is a mystery but she clings tightly to the towel placed on her shoulders for a short minute before she's heading to the house she and Karen shared.

Less than 15 minutes later, she's returned after making a few more discoveries. One of which being her hair being several inches longer than it was the "day" before and the newly acquired piece of jewelry on her wrist that couldn't be taken off.

There's still plenty questions that will need answers, but for the moment, Claire is going to help as many as she can until there aren't any more people.

Or, animals.

She could remember this feeling before, emerging from the fountain breathless and in shock. The world around her muted, as though she lost her sense of hearing and any perception of where she was and what she was doing. All Margaery could remember was being in the barn with her animals and then suddenly surrounded by water. There was no death, no explosion. Nothing that might lead her to think this was some afterlife as she had before. It was all natural, as though she had been pulled through by the hands of the Observers.

There were a few people already around the fountain, all of them in a similar state. It was only when she was out of the water that Margaery had the chance to look at herself. Her hair was longer than before, reaching down to her thighs, tangled and matted from her indelicate entrance. She was back in the hideous scrubs, only now there was something on her wrist, a device she didn't recognize or like looking at.

There wasn't much time to marvel or remain dazed. More and more people were coming through, all of them as disheveled and haggard as she felt. She held her breath as each group was hauled out of the fountain, her heart thrumming anxiously for signs of Robb and Loras. Each face giving her hope until the sudden recognition destroyed it. It was only as the last groups were emerging that hope won through and she found those she cared for. Quick embraces were given before being interrupted by the appearance of animals.

Her animals.

They didn't have their ribbons or flowers about them, but she had spent enough time with her livestock to know what they looked like. "Someone help me herd them back to the village?" If the village was even the same. Where were they?

It's been long enough since Nerys last dragged herself, disoriented and dazed, out of the fountain, that she's mostly forgotten what it felt like. It certainly isn't fun by any stretch of the imagination, though there's a slight improvement in that this time, the last thing she remembers is not 'shot at close range with a Starfleet issue phaser'. She had been checking traplines.

Now, clearly, she's not, but priority goes to getting the fuck out of the water, which Nerys does pretty much on auto-pilot. It's not a very graceful maneuver, but there aren't that many people there to witness it, just the other Kira and that doctor guy, Ravi.

Once she's out and, you know, breathing oxygen, the first thing she notices is that none of them are wearing anything remotely like what they would have had on earlier in the day. Scrubs would have been far too thin for this time of year. In fact, by the light in the sky and the length of their hair and Ravi's beard, it's almost certain that this isn't the same day at all. Or even the same month.

The other thing that's strange, on the scale of the already odd things that are happening, is that there's some kind of chronometer and comm unit attached to her wrist. Chief O'Brien could probably jury-rig it in a few minutes' time, but hopefully Picard or Beverly have better engineering skills than Nerys herself. Though, until the next group sputters upwards several long minutes later, she half-believes nobody else is there but the three of them. Not that the company is bad, but the prospect is pretty lonely.

-----

Because of this all, and the process of getting resettled, finding her bungalow (which is no longer shored up by her novice building skills, and the oilpaper of the windows is glass once more), and trying to adjust to the prospect of the world being wiped nearly clean...it takes a little while for Nerys to fully understand the biggest change of all.

Her heart has been pounding, adrenaline rushing, for a good hour. Now that she's not soaked to the bone, now that she's in the Inn and has had a glass of water and a change of clothes, and she has somewhere to stay, hopefully it'll ease back into a normal pace, because it keeps feeling like it's skipping around. There are some people going through the large boxes nearby, and she's resolved to go help them, really, once she's done with this water and her chest feels less tight.

Nerys reaches for the glass of water, and her still-wet hair falls, irritatingly, into her face. She reaches to peel it out of her eyes once more with a faint noise of frustration, then winces as her nails catch on her brow ridges, scratching the thin skin.

She blinks, closes her eyes as her fingertips graze the pronounced bone, and tries to get a hold of herself, check why she's feeling so disoriented. That's about when she realizes why she's feeling so damn strange. It's now beating sideways, the right way, as compared to how it has for nearly two years.

Her eyes snap open. "Hey," she says, and then swallows to get some more saliva, because the noise had sounded like a croak, and was pretty quiet. "Hey, um, I...are any of you a doctor?"

Edited 2018-03-31 22:56 (UTC)

To suggest I am irritated would be an understatement.

You'd think I'd be elated, or at least reassured to some degree. Everything about this ordeal seems to point to my theories being correct. I think we were in a simulation, and a look around at all the long hair and beards would seem to at least partially confirm that fact. Then again, we could be in yet another version of the simulation, for all I know.

But that's not the thing. The thing is the way it all happened.

One by one, every person around me disappeared. We didn't know what was happening. I'm supposed to be the steady one, the calm one, and I was pretty fucking far from it. If people were terrified, I couldn't blame them. I was more than a little terrified myself. And now here we all are, soaking wet in some kind of next-level deja vu, looking like we just spent the last month sleeping under an overpass.

Sitting on the lip of the fountain, cold water dripping steadily from my beard, I glance around, relieved at least to see that it seems we're all here. Just transferred. Just someplace the same, but not, although I can't put my finger on how it's changed. Frowning, I glance down to my wrist, stare at the digital readout for a long, steady moment, and when I look back up, I see it. The thing that's off.

"Um, guys," I say, slowly standing, my gaze tipped up toward the horizon, over the lush line of trees. "The canyon's gone."

Two hours. Roughly. Give or take. Two hours, give or take, of people vanishing in threes and now here is another group. It's announced loudly, after the initial spluttering and cursing, because Miss Kate Kelly, Mrs Kate Kelly-Sorellin, is in an almighty temper.

She's back in those dreadful blouse and trousers, back feeling oddly naked without her proper underthings. Her hair is heavy and she can feel how knotted it is. Unlike so many others, it isn't any longer than it had been a few minutes ago, but the curls are a mess. It's tangling around her, snaring on her clothes and a strange bracelet, and that is what finally tips the balance.

While trying to untangle her hair from the strange, glowing bracelet, Kate stars to curse. Loudly, eloquently, mixing up peculiarly Irish-Catholic swearing with old-fashion Australian outback, she swears.

"- you wombat headed, big bellied, magpie legged and splawfooted complete bastard sons of inbred dingos," she shouts at their nameless, faceless captors, finally tearing her hair free. "Where the fuckin' bloody hell are we this time? And what on God's green earth is on my arm?"

Later, once she's calmed down enough to be sensible, she goes to the inn. The Inn. Hers. She's jangled, twisted up and frightened by it all, but everyone is wet and scared themselves, and they need shelter, food. She can do that.

At the Inn she's met by the outraged clucking of her flock of hens and Tomdicken Harry, her charming (to her, anyway) rooster. There is dust in their feathers, but from what she can see, their henhouse and pen is still there. She clucks at them soothingly, but moves back to the building itself. A cat launches herself at her, all cranky, shattered dignity and telling her, very loudly, that none of this is meeting with Miss Hoppity's understand of the world, and her human has been very lax in dealing with it all.

It's then that Kate notices the state of the main room. It's filthy. There is dust everywhere, as if she hadn't spent all that time sweeping and scrubbing and dusting. It's enough to make a grown woman cry, except...

Except there's a large crate. There's several large crates, in fact. Cuddling her annoyed cat, Kate makes her cautious way over.

"What is going on?" she mutters to herself and anyone following her.

Edited 2018-04-01 07:22 (UTC)

The first group or three (or four, embarrassingly) of people vanishing had gone unnoticed by Benedict. In his defense, he had been somewhat busy, so people he didn't see regularly not being where he hadn't expected them to be wasn't exactly difficult to overlook.

And then Kate had vanished, and Benedict felt his heart stop.

It had never occurred to him that they might be returned to their worlds separately. Their lives had become so entwined — hell, they were married, for all intents and purposes — that it had seemed impossible that they wouldn't remain together, and the hour or so he spent after her disappearance becoming more and more frantic is not one he would wish on anyone, ever.

Finding himself underwater is an experience Benedict had hoped to never repeat. For all that his Kate has tried to teach him to swim, he had deemed the whole thing a wasted endeavor and simply decided to stay on dry land for the rest of his life, thank you very much. He can hardly focus on anything but frantically trying to kick himself to the surface, and when he manages to reach it, it's all he can do to cling to the edge of the fountain and gasp for air. At least this time he hadn't inhaled what felt like half the fountain itself, but he can hardly feel pleased about that when he is cold and wet and still frantically worried about his wife.

Slowly, still gasping for breath and doing his best not to let himself succumb to a panic he has hardly ever let himself feel, he rolls out of the fountain and lies on the ground. As of yet, he has not noticed the fact that his hair is long or his beard is dark, or the fact that he has regained a set of very prominent, very sharp canines that would indent his lower lip when he stops sucking in air through an open mouth.

Edited 2018-04-01 03:37 (UTC)

Kate could have timed it by minutes. She has a watch around her wrist now, so she doesn't have to rely on the sun. Yet, now, she distrusts watch and sky both. They are somewhere else, again, and everyone is stumbling around like they've woken up in a fairy circle, so no. She doesn't trust. And yet, it feels like maybe an hour. Maybe an hour between her spluttering and gasping and swearing her arrival, and a familiar, lanky body flailing his way out of the fountain.

The clothes are the right colour, the arms and gestures are right, the same with the length of his legs and oh, but his hair had been so dark when he arrived, that there is no hesitation. Kate, coming back to the fountain park after checking the inn and changing into dry clothes, gasps, picks up her skirts and runs.

"Ben! Ben, Ben, dearest, are you all right?"

She'd meant to just land on her knees next to him, but instead, she's flung herself against him, clinging hard.

Still trying to get his bearings and not being all that successful in the endeavor, Benedict can barely get his feet beneath himself before he hears the rapid-fire thud of running feet and a very familiar voice calling his name.

"Kate!"

He just manages to get himself steady on his feet when she throws herself into his arms and he catches her practically on instinct alone, wrapping his arms about her and nearly lifting her off her feet. "Kate, I was so worried, what happened? You just vanished, I was so afraid..."

He pulls back a little, wanting to frame her face in his hands but also not wanting to let go of her and compromising by lifting one hand to cup her cheek so he could peer worriedly into her face. "You aren't hurt, are you?"

He's here, he's here, he's all hale and hearty and in one piece, and she just hugs him as tight as she can. He's as drenched as she had been (as her hair still is, despite her best efforts with a slightly dusty towel), and she doesn't care. Ben's here.

"I just, I just vanished like everyone else," she tries to explain, almost speaking over him. "Arrived here like the first time, 'cept we all got this long hair'n'bears and everythin'-"

Kate looks up as he touches her face, for a moment just content to stare at him, into his eyes and take him in, because he's here and they are together.

But as she looks into her husband's eyes, the staring goes on a little too long. Her brows crinkle, and she lifts a hand of her own to trace out his mouth. With the beard, she has to look more intently at other features, which would be fine, she's used to that, except-

"You're not... Benedict, your eyes. And your. Hm."

For a moment, he doesn't understand her confusion. It has been so long since he has been aware of his obviously warriorborn features that he has almost forgotten about them completely. He has grown used to seeing dull golden-brown eyes looking back at him in the mirror with perfectly normal round pupils, his teeth straight and white and all the same length. Being ordinary had become so comfortable, he had more or less convinced himself that he would never have to feel different again.

Smiling down at her, too relieved to fully take in her words for a moment, he strokes his thumb across her cheek. "What about them?"

And then he realizes why she would look at him like that, and his expression shutters immediately. He doesn't quite pull away from her, but he stiffens, suddenly tense in her arms, and looks off to the side, like that would make his obviously odd eyes less noticeable.

"...are they... different?" He knows the answer. But he needs that confirmation.

While the whole experience of suddenly being surrounded by water and having to drag herself out had been shocking, it wasn't as confusing as everything else that followed once she had herself sitting on the ground trying to figure out what was going on. It wasn't just the feeling of being disoriented but it was also the feeling of, well, feeling different.

Just as she had been the first time she came through the fountain, she was wearing her red colored scrubs instead of her regular clothes. Not only that, her shoulder length hair was longer than it had been moments before. Quite a bit longer, in fact, since it now fell to the middle of her back in long wet waves. Her nails were also longer than she normally kept them, looking clean and neat instead of chewed on which was how she normally kept them short.

She was still frowning over it when she glanced up to see a familiar form and felt a rush of relief. Scrambling to her feet, she called out. "Margaery?"

There's that lisp again. Similar to when he arrived. But as he stiffens, as he turns away, all of that vanishes, because he's turning away from her. No matter he'd been peering at her with strange, strange cat eyes, no matter those canines, he's turning away from her and she can't have that.

"No, no no nonono, darlin', don't do that." She slides her fingers down to his jaw and presses, trying to turn his face back to her. "Look at me. You'll all right, yes? You."

Kate takes a calming breath, trying to still herself before she flies completely off the handle. Before he flies off the handle, too.

"I think you're, uh, like. Like you told me were before. Cat eyes, long, um. Teeth."

She doesn't understand why, and she's not sure about how he looks or what she is feeling. But this is Benedict, and his face went from grateful and relieved to shut off so quick, too quick.

Edited 2018-04-01 10:20 (UTC)

He'd heard the shouting loudly enough to recognize her voice; Finnick's hiding spot is near enough to the fountain to be able to hear and he's partly relying on that to be able to hear Annie arrive.

The cursing isn't Annie, but it is someone he trusts enough to want to speak to her: Kate Kelly. So he waits, and he watches; Finnick has a good view of the direct path to the Inn from his tree, and he waits until he sees Kelly's distinctively red figure head off in that direction before he edges back around the trunk of the tree and drops down out of its branches.

"Kelly!"

"JesusMaryandJoseph."

It's not exactly a shout, nor is it a startled whisper. It's a shocked, fast breath from the woman as she whirls around to face him. Her hands have gone into fists without thinking, her feet moving into a balanced stance.

Then, she stares.

"Odair?" Her eyes narrow. "Finnick Odair, I know you've been a trifle odd at times, and this is a bit of bleedin' trying day, but really. Droppin' out of trees is no way to behave to your acquaintances."

Kate takes a deep breath and lowers her fists.

"That said, I'm glad you're in one piece. Has your missus turned up?"

Swimming is an instinct to Finnick. Fall off a boat in District Four, and it's swim or drown. He doesn't need to be prepared or to expect it, and he's not: one moment, he's out in the woods hiking along the river to check on traps, and the next thing he knows, he's kicking upwards. He gulps in air as he hits the surface, but he only takes a moment to glance around: stone basin, fountain, village park, a couple of other people in the water with him.

He'd spent months expecting this, and in honesty, he'd been less vigilant lately than he should have been, lulled into complacency because it's hard to stay alert all the time, even after a lifetime conditioned to fear.

Finnick hauls himself out of the fountain, as far away from the others as he can. He pauses long enough to recognize the people he'd arrived with as Oliver Queen and Lyanna Stark, but he doesn't stop to see what they're going to do. He runs. He runs until he's out of sight, then he ducks behind the nearest building and takes stock. Red scrubs, no backpack this time. A scratchiness on his face that turns out to be a beard -- not just a few days or even weeks without shaving, but a full, untrimmed beard and long hair. There's something around his wrist, too: he glances down and sees some sort of bracelet, the same red as his clothing, with some sort of tiny computer screen on it showing what looks like a time and date.

He grabs for it and tries to pull it off, but despite its appearance of something rubbery, it doesn't expand (of course not), and he can't pull it off. He smashes his wrist against the wall of the building, expecting to at least be able to break the thing (why is it there, is it a tracker? why the sudden need for them to know the time?) but it's unscathed, not even scratched, and he tries twice more before giving up, aware that the adrenaline of fear is threatening to make him do something stupid enough to hurt himself.

He needs to think. No screams, no sounds of violence, but something's changed and he doesn't know what. More important than finding that out, though, is finding Annie. There's an unsettling quiet in the village, and the plants look more overgrown than he remembers them. Something's deeply wrong here, and he doesn't trust anything about it.

The most important thing, though, is to find Annie. He considers running for their house, but he doesn't want to risk that, unsure as he is of just what's going on. That leaves staying in the village and looking, waiting for her. He can hear more sounds from the direction of the fountain, and nobody's ever shown up here from anywhere else, so if -- no, not if, when, it has to be when -- Annie arrives, that's where she'll be.

Back to the park, then, but Finnick doesn't approach the fountain. Instead, he circles around the edges of the park until he finds a tall, sturdy evergreen and starts to climb.

Finnick has a good view from up in the branches, and he's far enough away that he doesn't expect most people will both to look too hard at the tree, but he can see what's going on by the fountain if he peers through the needles. He takes off his shirt and spreads it on the branch next to him to dry, eventually warming up as the sun climbs higher through the sky. The prolonged damp is far from ideal in the still-too-cold weather, but the winter is past -- it's April, if the bracelet he's wearing is to be believed -- and he's not going to freeze.

Careful as he is, though, the bright red of his scrubs is clearly visible from below to anyone who's looking, and there are some people Finnick is watching out for.

Mostly Annie, but not only her.

He feels a little like he's been dropped off the side of a Spire. One moment, he was so relieved to find her again, to have her back and know that despite whatever strange things are happening around them, he hasn't lost his lady love, and the next, all he can think of is that she has never seen him as he truly is and surely she must find him hideous and frightening.

Even people who are familiar with the warriorborn find them disturbing, some staring, some avoiding his eyes at whatever cost.

"I see." God in Heaven, he's lisping, like he's never had to deal with these teeth in his life. Very carefully, he continues, trying to make light of the situation. "I suppose you won't want a kiss, then."

Realizing that all he is doing is showcasing his disturbing features, he stops talking and carefully folds his lips around his teeth to hide them away from view.

A couple weeks ago, the village had been treated to first-row seats to the louder side of Annie's panic. When Finnick had been locked in the Inn with the others, and she'd been locked outside, she'd gone into hysterics. Loud, piercing hysterics, complete with panicked banging on windows until her strong hands had bruised. She'd been inconsolable, screaming and crying.

This isn't like that. The woman who appears in the fountain in the afternoon, kicking her way expertly to the surface and then treading water as she gets her bearings, is silent. Wide-eyed and silent.

Finnick had vanished hours ago for her, and Annie has long since worked herself into a state of mute terror. She'd been searching for him in the woods, trying to keep calm, and think, and smart and not get killed by any trap, but she'd heard the commotion in the village about people vanishing and that, well...

Her eyes are a little glassy as she stares around the park. In the fountain are Sansa Stark (committed to Raleigh Beckett) and Loras (brother, she thinks, to Margaery Tyrell), and Annie ignores them once she establishes that they aren't a threat. The establishing is done almost subconsciously, her training taking over despite her mental exhaustion.

There are people. Familiar people. No one is killing each other.

She can't see Finnick.

Familiar park, same park, same time of year, same time of day when she vanished. She's in the uniform again. No backpack. A band on her wrist, and that gets through Annie enough for her to duck under the water, swim down a little way so she's safe to peer at it. A watch, maybe. Time, maybe a date counter. It's not immediately dangerous so she swims back up to the surface.

She can't see Finnick. She doesn't care about anyone else, not enough not really not now. Somewhere, she thinks about her birds. It's enough to get her moving.

Annie swims to the far side of the fountain and climbs out. Her hair is heavy, tugging at her head and weighing her down. But not enough. She takes one last look around the park, then turns and starts to run.

Edited 2018-04-01 13:33 (UTC)

Her first reaction is to want to kiss him, to prove him wrong. But looking at him, she doesn't. Something tells her that to kiss him, after he said that, wouldn't do anything to counter his doubt. Maybe she's wrong, but it's her instinct and she's going to follow it.

"Not in public, darling. And," Kate adds, tiling her head a little archly, "not with that broom attached to your face."

Instead, she hugs him. Goes on tiptoe and holds him close, closer, trying to make up for his attempt to draw away. "Come home, Ben," she says, softly. "The Inn's still standin', I got the main fire on. Come home."

Of course he's one of the last through. Kira can now accurately note that it's been several hours, people crawling out of the fountain in increments--barely enough time to assure one group that the best thing to do is calm down and find some dry clothes before the next surfaces. Which seems to mean it's been several hours of steady disappearances, on the other side.

Sympathy just isn't his wheelhouse, today. With the other two written in his book, he'd had to look through the slim crowd to find Mark on his ass, some dignified reversal of his own arrival. He's marching over with a towel when Mark stands up, three hours late to astute observation hour. "Nice of you to wake up and join the class, Mr. Watney," he says, tossing the towel over Mark's dripping hermit-hair.

It's his version of so good to see you. While Mark is under the towel, he writes down his name and with a glance, the color of his scrubs. Until the next person crawls out of the water, his journal gets stuffed back into the waistband of his pants; already a dubious fit, he's tempted to break into his supply of rhinestone belts.

"Canyon's gone, we all look like we've been road-tripping with Charles Manson for the last year, and there's an old timey schoolhouse again."

He is, maybe, still a bit upset about rolling into this with only two other people: one of whom's nose had accordioned into her eyebrows.

Rolling ass over elbow out of the fountain is disorienting enough--the fact of rolling out of the fountain at all is disorienting enough. Then there's the hair flipped into his face, the shitty joke of a date on his arm--the fact of the watch on his arm--and the tremor in both hands that seems to have as much to do with the inexplicable drop in weight as it does with the shock.

It's a lot to take in; enough that he's pushed his hair back and stared at Nerys more than one time, a few assessing glances that ask the other, without asking, are you okay.

Then his brain catches up to his eyes, and he squints at her again. Biting his lip, he sucks his next breath through his teeth. The pain does not make the world reassert itself in any way that makes sense. "Nerys," he says, in the deliberately calm tone of the near-hysterical, "I think--you don't freak out, and I won't freak out, but something happened to your face."

The village has been strange most of the day. The normal people who should be around aren't. It's quiet, eerily so, and it's enough to make Beverly abandon her normal routine in favor of going to check on her housemates and then everyone she knows and can find. She makes it back to the house, just managing to push open the door and step inside before everything shifts around her.

And then she opens her eyes to cold water. It's not the first time she's done this, nor the first time she's seen anyone else do the same, but it's been so long for her that she has to fight the urge to inhale in surprise. She kicks hard, reaching for the surface. Eventually, she manages to find air, breaking through the water and gasping for breath as she clings to the edge of the fountain. A moment passes before she pulls herself out of the water again. She doesn't have a backpack this time, but she's got a new wristband and her scrubs are a different color. That's... new.

The other weird thing is that her hair has grown out and it's two different shades. Blonde at the bottom and red at the top. Her old dye job's been growing out wrong. Somehow.

It'll have to wait, though. She needs to be sure no one needs medical attention. Or help getting out of the fountain.

So she stands again and sucks in a deep breath before she starts looking people over. "Excuse me, I'm a doctor. I need to make sure no one's been hurt by our sudden reemergence. Just let me give you a quick examination and you'll be good to go. And if you happen to see anyone who needs medical attention, would you mind sending them my way?"

"Well, I'm not a doctor, but I'm pretty sure getting you into some dry clothes is more important than that," Kira answers, barely looking up as he writes down her scrub color and thinks a moment on the name. He's only starting to wear thin on his that's nice but it's cold as balls conversations, and he'd worn thin on most politeness by the age of eleven.

Having quite literally been in her shoes a couple of hours ago though, he sighs and tries again. "What I mean is, we have a couple of people working on that already, and you're welcome to help, but I really think you should go change first. It seems like everyone's belongings are still in their houses, if you had one."

His second glance turns into a third--his blanking on the name might have had something to do with the hair. "And once this is all over, if you want help trimming that down, I've got a kit."

Her eyebrows arch a bit, but he does have a point. At the same time, she's not in the mood to just run off if someone else needs help getting out of the fountain, too. There might not be time. So rather than address that or the fact that it is cold out, she squeezes some of the water out of her hair to give herself five seconds to ask an important question.

"I take it the entire village hasn't popped out of the fountain all at the same time, then?"

She'll deal with the cut and color later. It's the least important thing right now. If she does have time to run for some clothes, she can at least get herself warm and grab some towels to help anyone who might surface after her.

He doesn't immediately check the watch; even at home, he hadn't worn one, and it's been so long since he had a phone, he's more in the habit of checking how close the sun is to the trees. But he has checked it, reminded each time by the bands on everyone's arms. They haven't seemed to suffer any by coming through the fountain with them.

"Every quarter-hour or so," he judges, matching up the time now with the last group. "Plenty of time to grab a coat." Tilting the journal toward her, he shows her the names he's gathered already. "I think we've got about half the village by now, and Ravi was first out with me. If anyone's hurt in the next batch, we can spare you long enough to keep you getting sick; you can grab something out of the inn storage if your house is too far."

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[EVENT] The Simulation Ends

Kira Akiyama | Group 1 | OTA

Claire Temple | Group 4 | OTA

Margaery Tyrell | Group 3 | OTA

Kira Nerys | Group 1 | OTA

Mark Watney | Group 16 | OTA

Kate Kelly-Sorellin | Group 7 | OTA - Park & Inn

Benedict Sorellin-Lancaster | Group 11 | OTA

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Finnick Odair | Group 2 | OTA

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beverly crusher | group 8 | ota

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