Unknown Seas Mods / NPCs (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bathymetric) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
unknownseas2020-04-05 02:03 am
bathymetric) wrote in unknownseas2020-04-05 02:03 am
Entry tags:
COMMENCE EXPERIMENT
Fun fact: Did you know that the Pacific Ocean has a surface area of 62.46 million miles? That's not even accounting for depth.
You awaken to a sharp jolt, like you've just hit the drop on a roller coaster. Then it passes, and you're in a bed, suddenly very clearly awake. Is that right? Were you asleep? Your memory is a little fuzzy as you come down off the adrenaline, but it puts itself into place soon enough. This is not, as one might say, your beautiful house. If you have a beautiful wife, she sure isn't here.
The positioning of the bed inside your new room gives you a very clear indication of where you are - or at least, where the building is. Above you is a decent-sized window looking out on... well, the ocean. But not in a fun beachside resort way, to say the least. Fish swim by pretty frequently, here to keep you company - but they cannot hear your screams, and do not seem particularly bothered if you tap on the glass unless they're right by it. It's thick, man.
On the bedside table, you'll find two things: a key card with a number between 1 and 25 on it (no points for guessing which one is on whose, unfortunately), and a small handheld device, a little like a smartphone but mostly like a blackberry? Remember those? Anyway, accessing it will reveal only a scarce few functions: a list of profiles, a map of the building, and a very ominous set of rules. You might try to ignore that last one! Unfortunately, you'll find them in a frame by your door. And in a frame somewhere in every room of the place, if you go out exploring at all. The tablet also has a message for you when you open it:
Greetings. Please take an hour to become accustomed to the facilities, then proceed to the meeting room north of your dormitories. Attendance is mandatory. - The Professor
But hey, it... it also lets you play Snake! Who doesn't love Snake, huh?
Anyway, head out into the halls! Make some new friends - or maybe enemies, wouldn't that be exciting? Look around a little! Just make sure to be back for whatever this meeting is - after all, you want a chance to face off with your captor, right?
You awaken to a sharp jolt, like you've just hit the drop on a roller coaster. Then it passes, and you're in a bed, suddenly very clearly awake. Is that right? Were you asleep? Your memory is a little fuzzy as you come down off the adrenaline, but it puts itself into place soon enough. This is not, as one might say, your beautiful house. If you have a beautiful wife, she sure isn't here.
The positioning of the bed inside your new room gives you a very clear indication of where you are - or at least, where the building is. Above you is a decent-sized window looking out on... well, the ocean. But not in a fun beachside resort way, to say the least. Fish swim by pretty frequently, here to keep you company - but they cannot hear your screams, and do not seem particularly bothered if you tap on the glass unless they're right by it. It's thick, man.
On the bedside table, you'll find two things: a key card with a number between 1 and 25 on it (no points for guessing which one is on whose, unfortunately), and a small handheld device, a little like a smartphone but mostly like a blackberry? Remember those? Anyway, accessing it will reveal only a scarce few functions: a list of profiles, a map of the building, and a very ominous set of rules. You might try to ignore that last one! Unfortunately, you'll find them in a frame by your door. And in a frame somewhere in every room of the place, if you go out exploring at all. The tablet also has a message for you when you open it:
Greetings. Please take an hour to become accustomed to the facilities, then proceed to the meeting room north of your dormitories. Attendance is mandatory. - The Professor
But hey, it... it also lets you play Snake! Who doesn't love Snake, huh?
Anyway, head out into the halls! Make some new friends - or maybe enemies, wouldn't that be exciting? Look around a little! Just make sure to be back for whatever this meeting is - after all, you want a chance to face off with your captor, right?
no subject
A human?
[She remembers Greg, on that beautiful lit stage, only wanting to understand and be understood. She's loved humans in the past, but she never felt anything with any of them like she'd felt that night. Could they have...was she just not trying?]
Gems can't fuse with humans. I would know if we could.
no subject
[ To Jasper, it reads as nothing but an admission of the fact that she's tried. Her fists clench. ]
If that... thing you were fell apart, good. Fusing with another gem is enough of an abomination. [ Everybody loves hypocrisy! It rules! ] To do it with a human — I didn't think even you would sink so low.
no subject
Nothing compared to the kinds of things they would say to her before the war.]So you saw it happen? How did it work?
cw for shitty space eugenics??? idk it might get unpleasant in here
It was to save the runt. You two started running at me, and then it just — happened. Like you weren't even trying.
[ She bares her teeth again. ]
I guess being an embarrassment just comes naturally to you Crystal Gems. Amethyst certainly doesn't know anything else. [ So it can't be that this happened during the war, at least. ] You really should have let me put her out of her misery.
cw woof
Rose immediately sobers. She's always been so glad that Amethyst got to emerge in a world entirely free of Homeworld's influence. There was never anyone to call her defective or off-color; she simply was, just like any of the rest of them. She still doesn't understand how any of this could have happened, but she can't stand the thought of Homeworld somehow still reaching out to hurt even the one Gem they never touched.]
Amethyst is perfect exactly the way she is. On Earth, she can be herself - she's much too good for Homeworld.
no subject
Maybe if you hadn't lied to her, she'd have known better than to get in my way. She didn't even know what she was supposed to be until we came back!
[ If she had enough self-awareness to fill a teaspoon, Jasper might be able to figure out that that's what makes her so angry. The idea of a defective gem not knowing exactly how she'd fallen short, not feeling shame for it, not realizing that to be from this failed colony is disgraceful enough when it's something she'll never forget...
Well, she's pretty sure she fixed that. Annoying, how Rose wants to pretend she doesn't remember it. ]
But you know what? You're right. A failed, misshapen, abandoned attempt like that — she's perfect for the earth.
no subject
You're from there, aren't you? You look like you came out of the Beta kindergarten.
[Beta...it was such a beautiful site, with the striations in the canyons. At least there wasn't quite so much organic life to kill out in the desert. Many of the Jaspers and Carnelians didn't come out exactly perfectly, which luckily had been overlooked due to the ongoing war, but...yes, she thinks she remembers hearing there were some very well-formed ones.
Or maybe just one.]
no subject
Shut up!
[ Even though she's lunging forward, snarling, it's only because hearing this has taken her off-guard. It's not that she didn't think Rose knew — Jasper's assumed from the start that she was perfectly capable of putting it together, once she knew she fought in her war — but that she's stating it here and now, in this way. It sounds almost like...
She doesn't know what it sounds like. She doesn't want to think about it, or to hear her act like she's the one who's wrong, for seeing nothing in this husk of a world she was made to secure. She remembers that she can't manifest her helmet about halfway through her charge, but she can't stop running now. ]
I am a soldier. That's all I want — that's all I live for! Don't you get it by now?!
[ The second she's close enough, she swings at Rose's stomach, but the punch lacks the force it would have had if it had been her original plan. (let's not question how she was able to deliver all of this dialogue while still running at her when it must have only taken a few seconds, it's jasper and where there's a will for melodrama, there's a way) ]
Whose war do you think I was made for, Rose?
no subject
I never wanted a war! The Diamonds could have left Earth alone whenever they wanted!
[They never needed it. If it were a large or valuable colony, they never would have wasted it on Pink. They just never could stand not having absolute control over anything.]
Homeworld is the one forcing their war on you. They made you to be their tool, but that isn't all you have to be!
no subject
Yes, it is! The only reason I'm alive is because I was fit to serve. I was better than that place. All those defects you care so much about, who came out wrong because they rushed the site, what do you think happened to them? All the other Rose Quartzes — where do you think they are?
[ And the only reason she's not with the ones who managed to survive the war, keeping vigil over a zoo nobody will ever visit again in some long-forgotten corner of the cosmos, is because she came out strong enough for her failures to be overlooked. All of them, every Quartz produced on earth, has only gotten what they deserved.
Except this one. ]
And it's because of you. Because you defied her, you betrayed her, you shattered her. And now that she's gone, you think you can blame this on her?
[ The plural completely misses her. After all, no matter how deeply she's internalized the ideology of all the Diamonds, everything else about her, every toxic branch in the system that makes up Jasper's personal cosmology, spreads from one initial, crushing failure. Her Diamond, and her Diamond. Jasper slams her fist into the side of the tunnel she's still in without even thinking about it, and the rebound effect this time is immediate. The glass goes green around her hand, and whatever screed she was about to continue is cut off by a howl of pain. ]
no subject
[The other Quartzes - she doesn't know what happened to them, actually, but she's thought about it. The other Roses - she was going to go back for them, same as the zoo humans, but she couldn't in the end. She expects the Diamonds destroyed everything she left behind. Of course it's her fault.
It's the Diamonds' fault too. They're the ones who did it. But it's easy for her, too, to just carry on blaming everything on Pink.]
She was -
no subject
- are you okay?
no subject
[ The pain takes a path all the way up to her shoulder — if it weren't for the total lack of patterns on her skin, she'd think the Professor had gotten his hands on a destabilizer — and Jasper's clutching it to her chest with the good arm when Rose's question hits her. She bristles like an angry cat. ]
Do you think I'm weak?!
no subject
[come on now]
no subject
I've felt worse.
[ But her hand really does feel bad, and it's an unwelcome reminder that she's at a fraction of her power right now. If Rose weren't in as bad a spot as her, wouldn't she be attacking right now? ]
Don't waste your energy faking pity, Rose — you'll need it later. I don't know what your endgame is... [ Jesus Christ she's really just starting to back out of the tunnel isn't she... even she knows how dumb it looks, but the soldier in her refuses to turn her back. ] ... but this is just the beginning. You can't manipulate your way out of this. If you really are trapped here—
[ And she's back at the other side of the tunnel! ]
You're trapped here with me.
no subject
I - yes, it does...look like that.
[okay let's go learn more about this trapped situation from, uh, anybody else]