ARRIVAL LOG 004

[larkers]

WHO: Everyone
WHERE: New Amsterdam
WHEN: Night of August 05
WHAT: The fourth arrival
NOTES OR WARNINGS: Coercion and loss of autonomy. Further notes at end of log.

> ARRIVAL LOG #004

Awareness comes to you in blurred snatches, cloudy fragments of sound and light, color, sensation. Hazy and difficult to grasp on to, but slowly aligning into focus. A series of regular, rhythmic beeps. A medicinal, astringent smell. The sensation of movement, a low hum and accompanying vibration under you. Your eyes are heavy, hard to keep open, but in the glimpses between slow, dark blinks you see four people in black body armor seated opposite you, as well as a man in dark gray scrubs. You realize there are others next to you. All of you in white scrubs, hair recently cut but at various stages of growth, restrained by straps across your chests, arms, feet, holding you to the bench under you. To your left, an armored interior door, two more people visible, the movement of streets passing through a windshield. You try to open your mouth to speak, but it's as if your tongue is coated in tar, and you manage nothing more than an empty parting of lips. The vehicle stops. The guard opposite you stands and comes to unbuckle you from the bench, helping you to your feet. Your limbs feel wooden and heavy, slow to move. One guard opens the back of the vehicle, bright sunshine and the rushing sound of a crowd flooding in, a heavy wave of warm air. The nurse moves to stand at the back, checking each passenger over one by one just before they're helped out of the vehicle, quick and methodical. He doesn't climb out after you, moving to sit as the last passenger is unloaded. The guards keep their heads down. Their actions are quick, firm, but not entirely unkind. Once all the passengers are out, they climb back into the vehicle and close the doors. The engine powers up again, and then the bus is gone. You're left alone in an alley, with no idea of where you are or why you've been brought here. The sound of the crowd nearby carries on uninterrupted. Music, chatter and laughter, the occasional sound of a large splash into water. At the end of the alley opposite to where the van left you, the street opens out to a wide artificial river. Gathered on the banks, on several boats across the surface and in the water are hundreds of people: a giant pool party under the blazing summer sun. ◉ Though entirely capable of independent action and thought, new characters will find themselves completely, unquestioningly compliant to any verbal statement which could be taken as a command or request.

> THE PARTY

The message from El comes the same as previous: insistent, not waiting for any active attempt to open it. Scrolling within your vision as if being written while you're reading it. Who's ready for bus #4? Looks like they want you to have some fun this time, they've dropped them off right on top of the river party. Someone get down there and find them before they fall in, please. The New Amsterdam River Party is a near annual event, scheduled for whenever the heat begins to really climb. Located roughly at the middle of the river's length, six large boats take anchor, blocking any water commute for the day. Smaller boats move between them and the river banks, taking any passengers who'd prefer not to get wet back and forth. The area is decorated for the occasion, with several huge palm tree and mermaid sculptures curving over the river, flashing in alternating neon colors. Curling strings of bright lights are strung between them, dangling low and promising a truly flamboyant light show when the sun goes down. For the moment the the focus is fun under the sun. Colorful floats, balls and slides are strewn across the water and banks, with a wide array of water pistols, balloons and slings available at stalls. Beach umbrellas offer shade along the banks, and music blares from the boats, where food sellers have booths and tables to feed the crowd and provide plenty of cool drinks. Lifeguards take posts, watching everything with careful eyes, and large, marked stalls declare themselves to be skincare centers, handing out free sunscreen and reminding everyone to regularly reapply, especially if they've been in the water. In all the colorful, skimpy swimwear and sunglasses, six bewildered people in white scrubs are sure to stand out. Hopefully the citizens are having too much fun to care, but with such attentive lifeguards and event security around, it would be best to find the new arrivals in the crowd as quickly as possible.

> THE SAFEHOUSE

Access to the safehouse is a hatch hidden behind stacks of empty storage shelves in the back of an abandoned supermarket in an outer district of the city. The immediate area is similarly abandoned, empty stores, flanked by several blocks of dive bars and clubs which cater to more niche tastes. A place where people can come and go unseen, or, if seen, not spoken of. A dark haired woman called Gaby is ready to greet the new arrivals and get them settled in, brusque and no-nonsense – she'll be open for in depth questions later, but will advise everyone to ask the people who brought them in for the beginning bits of information. ◉ The safe house is a large open space, filled with rows of basic cots set up to sleep a large amount of people. Basic, but outfitted with everything necessary for daily life. A few doors lead to back rooms for storage, medical care and a large communal bathroom, and past the long rows of cots there is a communal kitchen, fully stocked, and an eating area. Privacy is at a minimum. ◉ New characters will be asked to pick their beds, and provided with a change of (second-hand, mismatched and somewhat threadbare) clothes and basic toiletries. ◉ While there were previously also NPC occupants of the safehouse, natives to New Amsterdam, these people have now been moved on to somewhere safer. A few of their belongings remain, discarded or accidentally abandoned. ◉ Gaby will make it clear to all new arrivals that if they have any requests or queries, they should contact her or El. ◉ The drugs making new characters compliant will remain in their systems for a few hours after their arrival at the safehouse before finally beginning to fade. They will be gone entirely after a night's rest. In the meantime, they may want to be careful of what others say to them. ◉ New characters will be given rudimentary access to the network on arrival in the safehouse, but will not have their ID set up yet. They will be able to make posts and replies, but their messages will be anonymous and they do not have inboxes yet. ◉ New characters will not be allowed to leave the safehouse until AUGUST 09. These 4 days are for them to adjust, learn about the world they've arrived in from their fellows, and for El to speak with them and work on setting up their IDs.

> FINAL OOC NOTES

Welcome to Meadowlark, newbies! You're now free to post to the network and logs comms. To reiterate, your characters will have no IDs or inboxes, nor be allowed out of the safehouse until August 9 (November 16). At that point it's expected they'll have gotten a good idea of their new situation from their fellow characters, and will have discussed their background and job potentials with El in order for their false IDs to be set up. If you have any questions or ideas about how you'd like to get your character involved in the world, or if they'd like to join Morningstar, please head over to the plot engagement post and drop us a comment! For questions specific to this log, there is a thread below. Please check out our November calendar rundown for a look at things happening this month. As a reminder, AC for new characters will be 10 comments across 2-4 threads, while current characters will need to provide the full AC of 20 comments across 2-4 threads. AC will be posted on November 20 and close on November 27. If you do not reply to AC, you will be considered idled and dropped from the game. We will not post a warning list.

> NAVIGATION

Comments

thanks for publicly announcing that i asked for this

[quipper]

[ Unlike some cave-people, Steph and Kara are househunting. They're viewing places, rejecting grody bathrooms and sketchy landlords, taking their time — what's a few more weeks in the safehouse, anyway? Besides, with her new powers firmly on the uneasy and uncontrolled side of the scale, she likes having more people around, just in case. Communal fixtures ain't no thing, either, when everyone looks like they were hit by a truck during the outbreak (and that the truck, like, backed up to hit them again, for good measure).

After the initial rush for the showers, Steph treats herself to a long one (someone dumped a cocktail on her earlier when she she tried to distract them from the weirdos in scrubs at the beach party, so that's her day in a nutshell). Maybe Daisy's post about 90s sad bangers put her in the mood for familiar tunes, so I'm not saying she's occasionally humming and singing a line from Natasha Bedingfield's Unwritten to inject some early 2000s into this dystopia, but — ]

Aw, crap.

[ Her stupid bar soap goes skidding into a nearby, occupied cubicle. Great. She's supes into saving the environment or whatever, but, like, bar soap sucks. Someone put soap in a biodegradable container so she doesn't have to poke her head out, blonde bob wet and stringy, and interact with another nude human being. ]

Hey! So! If you just got hit by a rogue bar of lavender, that's all mine. Big investment for me, y'know, so if you wouldn't mind returning it to your fellow human trafficking victim, that'd be, uh, swell.

[ Her mouth twists. Pure cringe ]

the public should be warned!!

[preceded]

[The faint humming and singing had been vaguely familiar- something that had certainly filtered into the back of his awareness during his best attempt to drown himself in poor water pressure- but so far removed from all of his other interactions with the newest Batgirl, that he hadn't actually registered the familiar as someone he knew.

He'd been ready to brush it off with being appreciative that someone at least comes from a timeline somewhat parallel to his, faintly amused with that particular pop song in question- and also, perhaps, a smidgen grateful that there was anything he could immediately latch onto to be amused by- when the bar of soap comes skidding into his cubicle and making an impressive thud against the side of his foot.

He looks down, perplexed for a moment. It's fairly normal looking, for a rogue bar in some kind of dystopian future with a neon fixation- soft, light purple- and he's about to bend down and scoop it up- either to set it aside for someone to collect later, or toss it back in a vague direction and hope it was the right one, when a voice claims ownership.

His whole frame freezes and he resolutely doesn't turn. Don't look, and please don't also be looking-, because dear God, he knows that voice. He has a stray, absurd thought that Barbara is so going to kill him if he ever makes it out of here, and then he's blurting out]

Stephanie?!

[Forget your soap, it died for a worthy cause. The cause of pretending this never happened]

opens drop post

[quipper]

[ His frame comes into view and she, uh, notices that the guy is built. It's gross to ogle your fellow captives, so she promptly averts her eyes, cheeks pink. It's just some random dude, anyway, not like she'll ever see him after this terrible encounter. The haircut, ass-focused angle, and awkwardness delay her recognition of the individual in question, so it doesn't hit until he says her name.

Hearing her name, in fact, is such a shock that she yelps, grabbing the curtain so quickly and with such force that she tears it down in the process, causing a horrible clang in the communal bathroom. His voice sounds less tinny without comms or the slightly gruff affectation that the bat-suit fosters in his tone, so it takes her seconds too long to solve the mystery of her shower companions identity. Bit busy taking a minor tumble on the tile and all. Gravity, as ever, proves to be her arch-nemesis. ]

Oh my — Dick?!

[ Her knees hit the tile in last minute drop-skid to save herself from a real ouchie. Thanks to her power, she doesn't feel a thing, even though it might yet bruise. ]

I'm, oh god, I'm okay!

[ whether that's said in time to save both their brains from melting is debatable. tim is gonna to kill her. no, babs would get there first. ]

hovers over delete account

[preceded]

What the-

[He looks. It's instinctive. After years of honing skills relating to situational and spacial awareness, the second the fabric tears and the metal bar clangs and echoes in the large space- he's had to see what happened. In situations he's more familiar with, the sound of striking ground would be the cause for concern. Would be someone in an altercation-

It's not. It's just Steph having an altercation with her own sense of balance and the reality of gravity, who's rules so vary rarely apply to him. Unfortunately, the sound rings out before her trying to smooth over the situation and warn him-

He catches a glimpse of miles of long, pinking skin from the heat of the shower, and a generous helping of soft curves- before his brain stops stumbling over the shock and catches up to what his eyes are seeing. He slaps a hand over them so fast and so hard that it stings- and waits a minute for her to get herself slightly situated. Hopefully with a helpful curtain toga.

Dick has a few seconds of inner debate, before he's feeling around for the small towel he'd been repurposing as a wash cloth and makes a quick tuck of it in and around his waist. It's short, but it'll make due enough for this. It's slow, and careful that he makes his way over to her, he's ridden blindfolded on top of a train, so he's confident he can manage it.

He's equally confident in seeing her in action, that if he leaves her to her own devices- she's going to spend the next ten minutes sliding around on the tile trying to get enough grip to heave herself up and he's pretty sure they're both beyond prolonging this, than they have to.

He stops when he feels the cold bar of the metal against his bare toes, curling them away instinctively, before he juts his free hand out and slightly down, carefully. The last thing he wants to do is smack her in the face on top of this- and braces his feet in preparation]

Here, let me help you.

[It was- mostly his fault, after all]