[x] Protein
[x] Maps, books, papers
[x] Your stability. You've done something wrong. Something terribly wrong...
We got some good medicine, anything papers we can grab which will help us use the more advanced stuff (or inform us of potentially other franchise locations we can poke at later) is going to be welcome. Additionally, Protein is likely to become a bit of an issue as time goes on. The more glass an animal is, the less meat there will be to harvest, the less we can provide for our continued fitness. Various plants can help of course, beans and legumes come to mind, but anything to let us stretch limited sources as long as possible is a great boon.
As for the Loss... We're due for a proper breakdown, and the longer Orchid puts having one off, the worse things will likely be when one finally DOES hit. Hopefully Orchid can get back to Jill for the worst of it, but in the end, they need this release. Plus, the belief is right out, Orchid can HEAR them. These people are victims of this too, and though we may never be able to help some of them, we can at least respect them and any dead that occur.
Breakdowns with support can lead to better mental health overall for our poor 2 days old bean.
I might let this one cook for a bit, get discussion going and give an opportunity for new folks to maybe vote. I'll call it when I wake up unless a very clear consensus forms.
While a certain someone is having its first experience at a pharmacy, four other someones are having a meeting - excuse me, five, Clara just hauled herself through what would be a submersible port, if THEY STILL HAD A -
"Seashell bras do not work," Clara bitches, resting her chest against the floor. "But the good news is, while fish dream, they mostly seem to dream about food, sharks, and sharks made of food."
"How do you get a shark made of food?" Jalex asks, quirking a glass eyebrow.
In answer, Clara points out the glass walls of Station 104; the other four turn their attention to it, and watch a massive, terrifying shark made completely of kelp swim past, ignoring the schools of fish that are nibbling at it. Bits of glass beads fall off when leaves get too torn to hold them.
"Gods above," Millie sighs. "Okay. So no massive beasts from beyond the stars, no unsettlingly sexual tentacles, nothing of that nature. I'll chalk that up." And they suit deed to word by standing and going to a chalkboard that currently has two columns, W and L, before chalking a cherished third tally under W. The L column is looking pretty fucking crowded. "Strict rationing means we've got maybe two months down here. Only having one person who can fucking leave but not go on land -"
Clara flips Millie the middle finger.
"- is a problem. Rupert, how's your patient?"
"In my medical opinion? I'd rather have the tentacles." Doctor Rupert pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs. Brianna, his patient, has been unconscious since the world changed; even now, as everyone is watching, more of her vitiligo fills in with glass. "She's not losing any blood, and she's not getting worse physically, but..."
"But," the others say in unison, sighing. Clara hauls herself up and out, well past the point of caring about what is essentially her now-obligate nudity; a long tail, all of glass and scaled in stained glass, has replaced her legs. The newly-crowned mermaid wrings saltwater from her long brown hair. "Who fuckin' knows what she'll be like mentally," Clara finishes. "Jalex fuckin' turned into the fish whisperer but only for glass fish, I'm godsdamned this, which, thanks, never knew turning into my fursona would suck this much fucking cock, Millie...Millie, have you fuckin' figured out what you do yet?"
In answer, Millie returns Clara's previous gift by slowly cranking one hand as if to lift her rising middle finger with a jack.
"And Rupert's a fuckin' horror monster."
Oh, did I forget to mention that? Excuse me. The good doctor has large spider legs made of glass growing out of his back. Please carry on.
"I...have a suspicion about that, actually," Rupert muses. "But I'm loathe to test it until my patient is on the mend. I've been looking through some of the books..."
"And?" the others ask, leaning in.
"...And I believe these legs match the profile of the West Coast Sea Spider. The one that traps air bubbles in its webs. I've been able to weave strands of silk-like glass -"
"Kinky," Millie and Clara say at the same time.
"You two are going to be the death of me," Rupert shoots back, with a resigned sigh. "We have time. Give it another week, and then we can see about someone with legs perhaps making landfall. In the meantime, keep trying to communicate with the surface. Someone has to be alive up there, and as Clara so often reminds us, the death of perhaps eight furries takes down global telecommunications for an indefinite period of time."
"And given that I'm one of them," Clara intones, grimly, "the clock is fucking ticking."
In your universe? I dunno, do they even run on the same time? It's clearly not Earth as we know it, and we know nothing about what day, date, month or year!
You fucked up. Maybe peace could have been an option? But you fucked up, you panicked, you didn't know what you were doing. These are rational explanations, to be sure, but you're not feeling rational and in any event what the fuck even is 'reason'. You killed those people. People like you, victims of Impact...
You better make it worth it.
You pull your mask down and spit your chew onto the concrete floor of storage (a faint memory, barely heeded, corrects your thought: this is backstock). The adrenaline leaving your body has nothing to replace it, and your limbs feel hollow and worn. Your heart hurts. Your wrist aches. Those poor people....
One had thanked you. Maybe...
...No, ask Jill about that. Jill knows how to be a person. Jill can...
You breathe, hard, and try to ignore the way it wheezes past your throat. There's still work to do. Still. Okay. You can do this. Stand up straight.
Stand up straight.
Stand up straight gods fucking take it -
Your self-directed fury resolves into a lunge at a shelf, growling under your breath, and this gives you the chance to examine it. A cursory examination with your eyes reveals that it's wrapped tight in thick wax paper that prevents you from seeing a godsdamned thing, so you cut a slit with your fire axe and peel the paper aside. Beneath the paper is a thinner layer of nearly-translucent parchment paper, and through it you spot the telltale signs of a large amount of stuffed animals. Fuck this pallet.
You walk away and go looking for things that might actually be relevant, taking your time. You tell yourself that this is so your body can recover, but honestly you might just not have a choice; the post-adrenaline drop is fucking real. It takes a few pointless examinations (revealing adult diapers & related supplies, a MASSIVE quantity of toilet paper, yet another pallet of toilet paper, a third pallet of toilet paper, shaving supplies, hair care supplies...) before you walk back to the stuffed animal pallet, tear open the paper with your hands, and pick up a very huggable grey wolf with big blue eyes that you hold close to your chest with one arm. Its name will be Barkley.
Belatedly, the thought occurs to you that this place must be sorted somehow. You look around and are rewarded; one end of backstock becomes a thin hallway behind the freezers, and this is where the overstock of the food is kept, already pulled from its pallets and sorted in a manner convenient to the human(?) eye. Motivated primarily by spite you fill some of your many, many pockets with snack-sized packs of jerky, but precious backpack space is for the glass jars of peanut butter, somehow untouched by Impact. This place has some kinda odd paper, not waxed (dunning, your mind says, and when you search for a specific definition all you get is that dunning is This Paper, Which Is For Packing Things), and this proves very useful in wrapping jar after jar after jar after jar. After some thought, you also similarly wrap and pack in a couple fuckin' huge cans of beef stock, only to immediately regret this when you find bouillon cubes.
"You saw nothing," you murmur to Barkley, before the tiny jars of cubes vanish into your Infinite Fucking Pockets. You shake, rattle, and roll, then repack your pockets until that stops making noise. Good. Now to -
- Holy shit the back-deliveries of magazines and shit are here too -
You snatch up a local atlas (Western Reformed Imperial Atlas), open it, and are both pleased and annoyed to learn that 'atlas' is the wrong term, this is a fucking roadmap, for making car trips. Once upon a time the branded advertisements on the maps telling people exactly where to go to meet the people willing to pay the publisher must have been super fucking annoying, but right now they're a blessing. Into the backpack it goes. Three cookbooks, selected basically at random. Your hand hovers over a self-proclaimed nutrition guide, and you hesitate. There's a feeling here, a familiarity tinged with revulsion, even stronger than the familiar annoyance the damn prepper magazines gave you.
No nutrition magazine. Instead you sweep up a variety of word games, a small selection of romance novels (Everlasting Lady why does every single one of them have people with their chests out on the cover and why do the people with no breasts get to have their entire chest out? What the fuckin' fuckity -), and one crime mystery stamped with Local Author! on the cover. After a moment's thought, you also take one of the odd clipboards - wooden things that are sorta like boxes, hinged so you can open them and put papers inside - and steal every scrap of shipping information you can find and then some. Might be useful, might not be, but at least you've got a clipboard.
...
You also steal as many pens as will fit inside the clipboard on top of the papers, then put it, too, in the backpack.
Okay. That's your job done. That's good. You get the backpack back on, gently tuck Barkley into the metal frame, and plod towards the loading door. The chain that raises and lowers it is locked with a cheap padlock, which does not survive the hammer of your fire axe. You raise the door and zip outside, eyes up and everywhere. You lost some time, but this drag seems - seems - as abandoned now as when you arrived.
Something hitches in your chest as you blink in the sunlight. Tears well in your eyes, and you double over with a primal scream, raw and harsh and full of emotions you don't know how to name. It ends in a pathetic sob, and you spit blood from your poor throat, breathing hard. Those people. Those poor people...
Get it together and pick 1
[ ] Return immediately; you have information and some supplies, and you need...you need a friend...
[ ] Raid the dedicated hardware store in the nearby strip mall for specialty tools
[ ] This phone might need to be convinced that you're current on your payment plan. Hit the electronics store.
[ ] Fuck your day. Fuck your life. Fuck everything. There's a burger joint across the street and its sign is still flashing; make yourself real food. [ ] Bayview might be worth scouting out Jill said no. You already got jumped in a 'safe' store. Don't. Fuck. With Bayview.
[ ] Hit somewhere else?
As far as the write-in option goes, think about these kinds of freeway drags and strip malls in America. I'm not gonna stop you from hitting like, a nail care place or a hair salon, but I will veto options that seem unfitting or absurd.
And remember, you gave up prioritizing your safety. That doesn't necessarily mean there's new dangers, but, well...that scream was loud.
Remember when I said you might want to invest some thought into goals, though there's no rush? Orchid's gender identity is currently low on the to-do list given the Everything, but that might, or might not, be something to contemplate. It's gonna have some decisions and/or discoveries to make if it ever hits the point where survival isn't measured in minutes.
[X] This phone might need to be convinced that you're current on your payment plan. Hit the electronics store.
Changed my mind. We need to facilitate long-ranged communications, some walkie talkies would be nice, as would phone stuff or a short-wave radio to find other survivors.
Changed my mind. We need to facilitate long-ranged communications, some walkie talkies would be nice, as would phone stuff or a short-wave radio to find other survivors.
You're quite welcome to change your mind! However, and I ask this due to unfamiliarity, do you need to do anything to your prior vote so the autotally plays nice?
Dream logic?! My cup of tea! I already have a lot of thoughts for this tale and how to work with what's been presented-
I am wondering how much Write-Ins could be used, and how much we can do. I already have an idea for a little trick we could attempt.
Question though as I'm reading through this... do other people have those little lights in the back of their heads? Those Gifts that can blossom into something more, if only they plan along with desire, dreams, and will?
I am wondering how much Write-Ins could be used, and how much we can do. I already have an idea for a little trick we could attempt.
Question though as I'm reading through this... do other people have those little lights in the back of their heads? Those Gifts that can blossom into something more, if only they plan along with desire, dreams, and will?
Right now I'm keeping write-ins somewhat limited, as it's early and I'm trying to prioritize introducing readers to the world before I turn folks loose to just be wilding. That said, they've been available a couple times thus far.
As far as other people having potential access to Gifts...
Actually, expanding on my previous point here; if folks wanna discuss potential plans, ideas for Gifts, goals, that kinda thing....I am paying attention. Not every vote will or can have a write-in option, but I can't work in your priorities and ideas if I don't know them. For some unknown reason, God has not given me the power to read minds; this is a crime against me specifically.
On that note, it would be extremely on brand to have someone autistic who got a telepathic or empathic Gift owing to them being annoyed at not being able to understand people.
On that note, it would be extremely on brand to have someone autistic who got a telepathic or empathic Gift owing to them being annoyed at not being able to understand people.
