[MINGLE] PLOT: Brave New World

[sixthiteration]

WHERE: Bunker and beyond
WHEN: 12-30 September 2018
OPEN TO: ALL - MINGLE, but please read the NOTES
WARNINGS: Please warn on your subject line as needed
!!IMPORTANT NOTES!!: ALL OF THESE PROMPTS ARE OPEN TO EVERYONE, HOWEVER, INITIAL DISCOVERIES OF "HOW ALARMING" and "PAST & PENDING" ARE ASSIGNED! Any character may get in there, just please time it for AFTER the discovery. You don't need to wait for the discovery threads to finish, just please be mindful. Questions go here.
PLOT DETAILS | ASSIGNMENTS | BUNKER DETAILS | BUNKER KEY (USE THIS!)

---

It's only been a couple of weeks since the fraught discovery of the underground bunker, and it's far from giving up all of its secrets. The cold, industrial concrete of the walls and floors, the computer consoles, the abandoned labs all speak to a peek behind the curtain, but how far this rabbit hole goes is anyone's guess.

In the coming weeks, more will be revealed for those bold enough to seek it: Blocked pathways cleared, stuck doorways foisted opened onto the strange and disturbing. So really, just another day for our villagers.

POWER PLAY

In one of the smaller rooms resides a machine, pieced together from what seems to be spare parts, awkwardly made but functional. Boot it up and in the center of the hodgepodge a screen will flicker to life; on it, a list of abilities and a timeframe. Make a choice, follow the instructions to tap your wrist device to the adjacent sensor pad, and see what comes of it.

HOW ALARMING

Behind another door, a seemingly innocuous, inert computer console — But boot this one up and our intrepid explorers are faced with a prompt: IMMINENT DANGER ALARM ACTIVATION. After everything that's happened in recent weeks, maybe a little warning might not be the worst idea.

Everybody else, cover your ears. A test of the alarm is happening in 1, 2, 3...

PAST & PENDING

In a room with walls covered in multi-color flame insignias resides yet another seemingly-harmless computer console. When turned on, the screens display lists, numbered iterations with name upon name. Some are very familiar. Some are corrupted and difficult to make out. Few of them are particularly comforting.

This feeling begins just like a spark

[unpreach]

WHO: Kate Fuller + 1 Single thread + 1 OTA
WHERE: Bunker + Inn
WHEN: 10-12th
OPEN TO: Anyone! Though one only for her Bunker arrival, please :)
WARNINGS: None as yet

---

Caught in the riptide

bunker || ooc: single thread only please

[ People have a way of looking peaceful, younger even when they're asleep and the girl surrounded by water in the pod is hardly an exception. Of course, Kate Fuller has never looked a day older than her seventeen years. Even after everything she'd experienced in Mexico, she was just one of those people who was be cursed with a baby face. Like this, however, encased in water with her fine, dark hair billowing around her, it was hard to imagine she'd ever seen a difficult day in her life. Her features looked too soft, her rosebud lips too pure and her round face and full cheeks all spoke to an innocence she'd lost many months ago now.

As the water drains away and she opens her hazel eyes, you may get a sense that she's not your normal teenage girl, panic fast giving way to determination as she recovers fast enough to look for anything she could use as a weapon. There's nothing, of course, only the weight of the bag she has strapped to her back but Kate wastes little time in trying to twist it around her body so she can use it as a shield against the person who is releasing her from the tube.]

I swear - if you come any closer I'll make you regret it. [Her soft, southern drawl accentuated under the strain of panic she tries to suppress. It's a bluff of course and whoever is releasing her has to know there's nothing useful in her bag of tricks but if she's going to die here in this place - wherever she is - Kate's determined that she's going to go down swinging.]

I was searching for the truth

inn || ooc: feel free to approach her at any point within the following, heck you can go with spotting her at the window of the house she's staying in.

[No matter what she's told when she gets here, it will be several days before anyone gets a good look at the newest arrival. Just long enough for her hunger to reach a point where hiding is no longer an option. Until she walks into the Inn during today's lunch, Kate has been little more than a face somebody might have caught a glimpse of. She's been watching the others go about their day, trying to understand what exactly this place is. Has been reading the conversations on the network, yet hasn't once attempted to reply.

The smell of food cooking on her first day had almost been her undoing. Kate couldn't remember the last time she'd had a meal that hadn't come from a can or a fast food place and the way her stomach had grumbled and twisted in on itself as she watched people come and go from the Inn? It had taken every ounce of willpower she possessed to remain locked behind the doors of the little house she'd been hiding in.

By day two, she doesn't even try to fight it. Instead, she waits, watching the people come and go, hoping to find a perfect moment when the Inn might not be overcrowded. It's only once she's made it inside that she realizes, there isn't ever going to be a good time to do this, but if her alternative is starvation? She reasons that the middle of the day should at least be the safest choice.

Still wearing the pale grey scrubs that allow her to blend in, Kate slips into the line of people cueing up for their meal, copying everyone else in getting a bowl and a spoon as she attempts to become part of the scenery. She thinks she's rather good at that and perhaps it would work for her back home, but around here there aren't enough people for newcomers to easily disappear. Her mere existence in the village is what makes her stand out and the more that people cast looks in her direction, the more she seems to resemble a deer in headlights, complete with wide, round eyes that she desperately tries to keep averted from those around her.

She can feel the panic begin to rise in her chest, her legs wanting to buckle under the weight of her anxiety and anyone within earshot might hear her growling something under her breath, a harsh whisper meant only for herself that at least seems to have the desired effect. She straightens then, rolling her shoulders back and projecting a confidence she doesn't entirely feel but she had a good teacher when it came to allowing bravado to take the wheel for a while.

That bravado will only get her so far, however, and she's not about to take her bowl into the middle of the dining area. Instead, Kate sticks to the outskirts, finding a table close enough to an exit that she can almost relax, her serving of what she assumes is some sort of stew, smelling better than anything she's had in a long time. She might change her mind if she were to discover that she's eating some small, woodland creature, but the way her stomach growls at her for taking too long? It's doubtful even that would matter.]

Uprooted and replanted somewhere else (Arrival)

[houmaprotector]

WHO: Alec Holland (+1 thread for (oorah and reactions + OTA)
WHERE: Bunker / on the way out to the forest.
WHEN: 11-13th
OPEN TO: Anyone. Anyone who wants to pick up on that welcome thread and find him be warned. He'll be angry and panicky because he's been disconnected from the green. Feel free to comment with reactions though if you're in the bunker. For his run to the forest it's fair game.
WARNINGS: Alec is a panicked swamp monster who has been replanted in a strange place, proceed with caution. He can't really do much apart from run around and roar at you and shove through you (he's a pretty strong dude.)

arrival; you've been replanted.

[All he knows is solitude. That's all he's known since he returned to the green.

It is a pleasure not to think. Not to be human. To dissolve and become something else entirely, to lose his shape and his humanity. When he forms himself again, When Jonah and Capucine come to speak on him, he abandons them and they leave him be. When he them all he remembers is Abigail. The look on he face. The grateful smile. The sad little look on her face as she faded away like a storm of leaves in the wind. It's not even that he doesn't want companionship. It's that he's far too tied into the green now and when he thinks, when he feels, it shifts and disrupts itself. It's better not to think.

Better to set Alec Holland aside. Better to hide. Better to fail to feel. The world can move on without him and he can govern this realm with the parliament's will without opening his eyes and seeing her. In time it starts to fade (though he has no real concept of time. persay.) but then-

The words day and night blur into one another before he dreams and the dream is not of the green. He hears Abigail, calling his name, and he runs after her. Don't leave, Don't leave - Abigail don't leave me please, don't leave me Abby-! Foolish. They'd agreed to this. They both knew what they had to do. For humanity, for...

All of his burdens are gone then and he sleeps. The green, the world, it all falls away.

On the outside, one of the tubes, a particularly large one has begun to drain but the water isn't clear. It's sludgy and thick, green and overflowing with plant parts. There are pieces, leaves and sticks and twigs that rush out of it as a big green hand grips the edge of the tube. The hand clenches and the thing starts to rise. Slowly, water and plants drip across the floor before the massive being drags a big hand over his face. The creature is hideous, plants and leaves growing from it's shoulders. The water sloshes over the edge of it as the creature takes a great big step and he's...

Out.

Realization dawns on the thing and Alec Holland growls. Fingers...toes...shoulders...eyes...I must be logical. I have to...gather my thoughts because...I'm...not...not in the green. The creature lets out a grunt, a low rolling noise that echoes through the chamber. Must...try to think. The green. Where is the green? Where...]

...The...Green.

[The creature's moan deepens, echoing through the surrounding area. An inhuman sound.]

Where...am...I the green...

[I'm not in the green. I'm not in the green -where is it? Where-where is it?! I can't-

His panic doesn't really articulate itself well. Instead there's just a pained and muted roar and the thing lashes out, desperate red eyes glaring around the room looking for an enemy, a scapegoat, someone. anyone who could explain what was going on.

If they can calm down a giant green monster.]

--

Oh sinnerman (where you gonna run to?); To the woods.

[I'm disconnected from the green. Maybe if I get out of...this. Away from...that...I can figure it out. Get out into nature. See what's going on. Try and...Try and center myself because...because...

He made an impression in that bunker and despite the scrubs (he resolved to get rid of those clothes as soon as he could.) he's...still a monster. I stick out like a sore thumb.

Weaving through the inn and houses is a large greenish/black shape. If I'm not connected to the green, I can't regrow my body. I might die. I might actually die.

The thought makes him pause behind one of the buildings, hand gripping it. If he passed on he might go where Abby was. He could be with her.

In his contemplation, he might be far easier to spot, a great green lump attached to one of the buildings.]