december 2019. welcome to the void.

[modblob]

Who: Everyone in Anchor.
What: Sixth Introductory Mingle
When: The Month of December 2019
Where: Around and outside the city.
Warnings: Please add any warnings in the subject lines.

Redshift: Welcome to the v͖͕̺̲̘̱̜͎o̴̦̣̠̦̘̹͞i̯̖d̛̪̬͈̱̦̝͍̕.

Click here to read what characters will experience when arriving in Anchor.

a. the generic holiday cheer prompt.

It's a dark, quiet, uneventful night. Only those up and about in the wee hours will notice something odd starting in the park.

It's snowing.

The phenomenon seems to be coming from a small bank of unmoving clouds hanging suspended above the trees and lake. A cloud that, upon closer inspection by any scientists in the room, appears to be made of harmless nanites whose sole purpose is to unleash a cheery, blustery kind of weather that remains mostly contained to the park.

Some bots are out serving hot chocolate, cider, flavored snow cones, and other small baked treats. Others are building a solid-looking bit of scaffolding that the snow is rapidly turning into a sledding ramp. In fact, there are sleds ready and waiting at the foot of the slide. The smaller ponds have frozen over in a sharp cold snap that came with the nanites' release, and there are other bots handing out ice skates - careful, though, because one of them is a chef bot and he's made the blades of the skates ridiculously sharp. At least they'll glide well?

Around the middle of the day, the intercoms squeal loudly, crackle, and start pouring generic seasonal music out into the air. Is it for Hanukkah? Christmas? Kwanzaa? Some strange holiday no one has heard of? Who knows, since half of it is in alien languages, but man, it sure is peppy! And kind of annoying after a while! Maybe someone should hack the system and change the music up?

b. the body heat trope prompt.

As the day wears on toward evening, the nanite winter storm starts to gather a little more force, sending cold seeping through the halls of Anchor. There are pockets of warmth here and there - notably, for once, the agricultural areas are largely unaffected thanks to their temperature regulators--but most of Anchor has a wintery chill, and snow is starting to bluster across the levels from bottom to top. Temperatures continue to drop when the suns go down.

The bots are out being helpful, though they can't stop the storm. They're rolling around handing out blankets and thermoses of warm drinks. Unfortunately, it's one blanket and one thermos per two people. Better get cosy - it's going to be a long, cold night!

c. the terrifying monster attack prompt.

The cold has woken up some creatures that have been slumbering away in one of the sealed-off areas of the labs. They couldn't get through the door that kept them caged, but they sure could freeze the windows and escape that way when they got cold enough to break. The little critters make a beeline for the park, prepared to wreak havoc-

If eating snow and ice and rolling snow into tiny balls for meal stockpiles is havoc.

These little creatures look conspicuously like the western dragons of Earth, though most are no bigger than a person's forearm. Their wings - some strange shade of white that sparkles when they move - seem largely decorative. They use them to communicate, to posture, and to keep themselves balanced when they rear up on their hind legs, but none of them appear able to fly. They're a mix of colors, blue and silver and white, some of them with a variety of shades swirling down their bodies, others with one color on their bellies and contrasting colors on their back and head. Some have splotches, or speckles, or tiger stripes of blue. They breathe steam and can freeze things with their clawed forepaws.

Also, if you feed them a flavored snow cone, they will follow you forever. No, really. You'll have yourself an undyingly loyal new pet.

Navigation.

Comments

[theweakhavepurpose]

"Well I'm only telling you the interesting stuff, and usually the terrible things. There's not a lot to say about the months where literally nothing happens and the only calls I get are from the trailer park where someone is complaining that their neighbor is watching Married With Children too loud." And it's times like that he really regrets joining the police force. Sure the pay was good and 80% of the time he didn't have to do much but drive around and play Pokemon Go, but then there was dealing with people who thought that their ex-husband's dog pooping on the lawn was a lethal offense and went after them with a shotgun.

"I've never understood ice fishing. Fishing is relaxing, you sit by the lake and drink some beer and wait for fish to show up. But with ice fishing you have to punch a hole in the lake, hope that you don't fall through it, and then freeze your ass off for hours."

[itsnotaonesie]

"Hell, I don't even get the point of regular fishing, but that's probably just because I'm from New York." Look sitting by some water and waiting on fish does not sound like a super fun time at all, but then this is the kid who used to regularly jump off of buildings and though of that as relaxing, so.

"I still think I might wanna visit Montana some time. I'll look totally out of place, but that's me pretty much anywhere I go, so."

[theweakhavepurpose]

"You're gonna stand out no matter what. Even in the biggest towns everyone knows everyone so people on vacation are pretty damn obvious. Lean into it." He shrugs, there's no way around looking out of place when everyone else there has known each other since birth.

"I hope the version in your world isn't all fucked up like mine is."

[itsnotaonesie]

"That's nuts, man. I can't imagine knowing literally every single one of my neighbors. Small towns are pretty cool that way. Unless everyone's an asshole, I guess."

Imagine a small town but it's populated entirely by New Yorkers. Whoof.

"You said there was something crazy going on, right?"

[theweakhavepurpose]

"It kinda sucks. Remember that embarrassing thing you did in fourth grade? They do." Part of why he became a cop was so that everyone would have to respect him instead of bringing up all the dumb shit he did as a teenager all the time.

It only kind of worked, now they just talk about it behind his back.

"There's a cult that took over."

[itsnotaonesie]

"Ooooh yeah, whoof. I can see that being kind of the worst." At least it's not to his face? That's kind of better. Or worse. I guess it depends on how you look at it.

"Right, right, that was it. You mentioned that, right? I think you mentioned that. I-- dude, I'm gonna be honest, the past like year and a half are kind of a giant blur for me."

[theweakhavepurpose]

"Yeah. I crashed my parent's car into a fence when I was like fourteen and everyone in the whole county remembers that." It had seemed like a good idea at the time. And fourteen year old him had figured: how hard could it be to drive? He's good at Mario Kart, it can't be that bad. But unfortunately his parent's Chevy is not a car from Forza and a steering wheel is not a joystick. So it did not go as planned.

"I feel like we lived through some sort of mass fever dream. You know I casually mentioned that time I skinned one of those bear mammoths in Hadriel before I realized how fucking crazy that sounds. Oh sure I lived somewhere with emotion vampires that fucked with us so we'd be happy or sad or whatever. That's normal."

[itsnotaonesie]

"Wow. You almost need a secret identity in a small town more than you do in a huge city. I stole one of my classmate's dad's cars and flipped it, and nobody has any idea that it was me. ...That's not a brag, by the way, it's just a thing that happened."

It was kind of a brag, Flash was kind of a prick.

"I know how that feels thought, man. I've mentioned that expedition we went on a couple times and, and honestly if I didn't have photos of it, I'd swear I hallucinated the whole damn thing."

[theweakhavepurpose]

"It'd be hard to pull off though. When there's only a few thousand people it'd be pretty easy to pinpoint who the guy in spandex is because it's one of like ten people that height, and who isn't in the crowd right now? You'd be found out in about an hour." Hey if he could flip cars he'd brag about it all the time. All he's got right now is his hunting ability and pilot skills and he doesn't even have a helicopter to use that second one.

"I think I'm going to never bring it up to people who weren't there. We sound insane. But I guess it does make this place seem like an improvement. Though having my own house on the beach was pretty nice. But I'll take 'not running out of food' and 'no one trying to murder me' any day."

You know what this place doesn't have? Caedra. That makes it wonderful in his opinion.

[itsnotaonesie]

"Yeaaaaah, fair enough. I hadn't thought about it that way, but I was also the kind of person that nobody really noticed back home so I bet I could have gotten away with it for about a week at least."

"There were parts of Hadriel that weren't so bad. I really miss the people. Most of the people." Everyone but Caedra, pretty much.

[theweakhavepurpose]

"Yeah, we had some good people. But I'm sorta glad they're not here. That means they went home right? Or wherever they wanted to go when Hope let people out. I dunno what went wrong for us." But if getting out of this place dumps them back into Hadriel he's gonna have some words with Hope about it.

"I hope those nautilus things are okay."

[itsnotaonesie]

"I hope it means they went home. My only guess about up ending up here is that the door somehow got hijacked by... whatever brings people here. I don't know, I have no real way of researching it."

Not that he'd have time anyway, what with overworking himself trying to do a bunch of shit in Anchor because Peter Parker has no chill.

"I still have a chunk of one of their shells. Which is... kind of a weird souvenir to have now that I think about it."

[theweakhavepurpose]

"Yeah. Maybe me and you and Klaus and Poison and Nate all went thru one after another and this happened. And then it sorted itself out." Honestly he doesn't really remember the order of operations there. But either way, this had happened and they seemed to be stuck with it.

"That's super weird. What are you gonna do with a chunk of shell? And why did you bring it home with you?" asks the guy who went through the door with a bunch of rocks.

[itsnotaonesie]

"Not like I had anything to go home to anyway, so I guess I shouldn't complain." Which is kind of more depressing sounding than he'd intended for it to be, so he's just gonna move on.

"Wasn't really thinkin' about what I was packing, I was just grabbing my stuff and tossing it in a bag. I've just got it on my desk in my room right now, maybe I can use it as some sort of paper weight."

[theweakhavepurpose]

"Yeah, I guess that makes sense. I brought stuff that I thought would look really confusing on my corpse. How did a bunch of rocks etched with glyphs get down in this basement that no one has been in? At least it would be kinda creepy." Which is also why he had no clothes or anything very useful. What was he going to do with an extra pair of socks while he starved to death?

And sure Tinya had been insistent on bringing him to her world, but he'd never expected that to actually happen. Turns out he was right.

"We sure got on a real depressing topic while eating cookies. I think this is our secret talent."

[itsnotaonesie]

"I mean, if you're gonna die, might as well make it interesting."

Shit happens, man. Peter'd been trying to go home with Nate and Elena, and instead here he was, trying to help rebuild an abandoned space station and trying to keep everyone alive.

"This talent sucks, but I think it kind of helps to keep me grounded in a weird way. Maybe it's because I have someone I can relate to?"

[theweakhavepurpose]

"We're not getting complacent and then taken by surprise when the air turns into clam chowder or eels fall out of the vents or something." Sure that's kind of a silver lining. Leave it to Peter to be the optimistic one in the face of death and depression. Pratt needs that in his life and he knows it.

"Yeah. It's good to not be alone. And I don't mean just being with other people but with people who get it."

[itsnotaonesie]

"That got weird. That got a little weird." And now he wants clam chowder, thanks Deputy.

"I know what you mean, though. It's nice to have people around who I don't have to explain all my weird issues to."

[theweakhavepurpose]

"Clam chowder a little too much?"

At least they have cookies. Which is better than clam chowder in that they're portable and hand held. "Poor other folks who have to deal with us though. They don't deserve this."

[itsnotaonesie]

"Just the idea of breathing clam chowder. I would totally eat the hell out of some if we had any right now, though."

Yeah but cookies aren't delicious seafood. The portability is nice, though. "See, I don't think we're actually that bad. At least I try not to go too nuts with the weird stories."

[theweakhavepurpose]

"I'm not really sure I want to eat space clams. That seems like the start of a horror movie." And space clams are probably actually some sort of gross bug. He can think of a million ways this can be terrible.

"I try not to talk about myself. Means it never comes up. Gonna dodge that bullet."

Forever. Because that will work.

[itsnotaonesie]

"Technically, everything we eat here is space-food. Space meat, space veggies." Also lobsters are technically bugs, people already eat bugs, bro.

"I guess that's one way to deal with it. I think my life back home was so weird that talking about Hadriel just feels normal."

[theweakhavepurpose]

"Thanks for that, now I'm gonna worry about being poisoned by space carrots." He says it jokingly, but there is a real possibility he's going to go fret about what's in space carrots. Maybe instead of beta carotene he's going to overdose on some random other vitamin. Who knows.

"All of it is weird. This will be the normal one if we end up anywhere else. And that's saying something."

[itsnotaonesie]

"I'm sure all of the space carrots have undergone all kinds of quality control testing." Surely whoever's in charge of that will do whatever they can to make sure nobody OD's on space vitamins.

"I'm thinking life is just weird in general. That or the weirdness just follows us wherever we go."

[theweakhavepurpose]

"Like we're a magnet for weird? That makes too much sense and I kinda hate you made me realize that."

Because.. maybe it is them. This can't happen to everyone, can it?

"Have you met anyone either here or in Hadriel who didn't come from somewhere totally fucked up? Maybe these places know we're disasters so that's why they grab us."