WELCOME TO THE A.S.PRAEDA

[pradeda_mods]

Who: Everyone!
When: Day 1, as you wake up.
Where: starting at 2-B Cryo-chambers to different sections of the ship.
What: Welcome to the Pradeda
Rating: PG to PG-13, presumably.
Warnings: To be added as things go along.

You wake up somewhere unfamiliar

Comments

[nohistory]

As claustrophobic as it was, there was a certain relief to submitting oneself to a kolto soak. Atton definitely could use it, in any case. He might've won that duel with Darth Sion (as if there had been any doubt), but the match had been gruelling enough to leave him bruised and sore down to the bone. A small mercy he'd been able to walk afterwards - might not have much in the way of dignity, but at least Atton had been able to leave that little slice of hell on his own two feet. It remained to be seen whether he'd be more a liability or an asset wherever she was going, but he could at least start the trip with-

A kolto tank? His eyes opened to a blur of green, and less than a blur of memory when he tried to recall how he'd gotten here. He couldn't. Atton thrashed, mind and body, but while the fog slowly cleared from his head, his limbs were still dragged down by the kolto. Get up, he silently shouted at himself, willing those sluggish synapses to fire faster. Get out! His attempts to escape seemed to have triggered something, because he felt the thick liquid receding and a sudden blast of cold air a moment later as the pod opened and he crashed into a hard floor.

Translucent goop squelched beneath him, the colour and consistency all wrong. He coughed, needlessly - none of it had gotten into his lungs, but it made him feel better, anyway, just in case some had. From the sickly green cast of it, it probably tasted a lot worse than kolto. He didn't even want to think about how he probably smelled. "Ugh... great." He shoved himself to his feet, a little shakily, but his strength held. Raking his sodden bangs out of his eyes with one hand, Atton took in his surroundings: smooth metal and too-bright lights, arranged in the sort of cramped architecture you only found on starships. Reassuring, if this was the Ebon Hawk, but it wasn't. It wasn't like any ship he'd ever seen. "That is... just great."

On the plus side, he wasn't completely naked. A very plus side, given that he apparently wasn't alone. "Hey!" Barefoot and freezing, Atton walked over the kid - because it was a definitely a kid, standing at all five feet of scrawny goop-covered kid limbs. He was dressed much the same, in a short thin shift which Atton imagined looked equally ridiculous on him. "You just popped out of there too?" He eyed the nearby pod suspiciously, as if it might hiss open again and pull them back into that claustrophobic mess.

[godhooded]

The voice made John start. He hadn't really thought about how long it had been since he had talked to another person until now. Like, a person-person. The funny guy in the sheets and the little guy with the colorful clothing, they were pretty cool, and he guessed there had been the salamanders who had talked to him a little. And Liv was amazing, of course! But the last time he had seen another totally fleshy and talking human being had been... well, the last time he had been with his dad, he realized. There was a brief moment where he didn't know what to do. It wasn't that he felt sad, exactly, but it suddenly made everything weird and unreal to think about.

"Uh," he said. It was kind of a dumb response, but it pretty accurately expressed everything he was feeling right then. Well, sort of. This guy was (probably!) not psychic, which John was grateful for. However, it required he do more than stand around stupidly, shivering. It was so fucking cold in here!

"Yeah, I guess so," he agreed, and slowly the bewilderment turned into a smile. He removed one of the arms that he had wrapped around his body for warmth in order to scratch his wet head. But on second thought, that was definitely not worth it, and he immediately went back to two-arm bear-hugging himself. "But I don't remember how I got in there in the first place. Is this, like, the veil?"

And then something occurred to him.

John had to check. He had to just look. I mean, after all, adults always say you should suspect that other kids you talk to on the internet are actually creepy old men. Maybe this guy was secretly Vriska or something! But- no, no horns on him. He looked very human anyway, so it had been silly to check. No chutes or nooks or chitinous whatsits. It was kind of a huge relief.

[nohistory]

"Veil? No. I mean, I don't know either." So they were in the same boat. Ship. Whatever. The longer Atton stood here, finding his balance and his wits again, the more certain he was that this couldn't be anything but a ship. The air throbbed from the particular exhalations of a giant machine, and for a silent moment, Atton fixed his heart on the steady hum, emptying his mind, reaching out with his senses. Eyes closed, he saw the shivering young life in front of him, and other sluggish heartbeats ticking away within the nearby pods. "We're not alone here."

Atton stepped up to the one next to the pod which had spat out the boy. An unfamiliar name was written on the plate, which he ignored as he searched for... something. A button, a glimpse of a face through the green, cords or control panels or some hint of the pod's purpose, aside from keeping them locked up and sedated somehow. He wouldn't have been surprised if something about the system pumped in drugs to keep them under, but nothing about the structure of this thing even vaguely reminded him of a kolto tank.

"Strange," Atton muttered. He looked around the room again, only to get attacked by a sudden bout of shivers so strong, they made his teeth rattle. He glanced back at the kid, who was staring at him with an unreadable expression on his face. If Atton looked anything like him, he probably made a sorry sight. "Let's just... figure out where this ship is going before we catch something. Uh. Which way's out?"

[godhooded]

"Not alone?" John echoed. His eyes darted around the room. That was the sort of thing someone said right before a monster jumped out of the darkness, and maybe a few weeks ago that would have made John nervous. It still made him a little nervous, just for a second, because who knew where Jack would be. But John could feel the air moving around him, and he knew he could at least handle any imp or ogre that decided to attack them. It was really hard getting used to being magical. There was so much stuff he had to remember he could do. Bluh.

Anyway, being some magical wind god or whatever made it sound totally reasonable to go explore the ship, even if he was only wearing a little hospital dress thing that he was so going to be made fun of for. The cold was definitely playing a part in inspiring him to not worry so much about Atton's words. He'd figure all this out when he was clothed. Doing any thinking while worrying about being kind of sort of naked and probably definitely being seen by Rose, Jade and every troll ever was just not going to happen.

He pointed in the most promising direction. "There's a door," he started. "Man, I hope our clothes are around here somewhere."

John was seriously considering elaborating more on how much he hated this situation, but it sounded like someone else was with them. Someone else who possibly hated this even more than John. The hallway was dark and creepy and misty, and he couldn't see who was calling to them. From the sound of it, though, they were probably lying somewhere underneath the chilly fog.

"Wait, do you hear that?" John didn't wait for the guy's response, and took off in the direction of the pleas, which really didn't sound all that distressed, but whatever. They still needed help.

"Where are you? I'm- oh, shit!" There was something in the middle of the floor! Something big and metal, and John barely avoided falling all over it. (As an afterthought, he remembered that he should probably be more careful about swearing around adults, but this was a special situation.) "Wow, who left this out here? Did you trip on it? Jeez, I still don't see him."

[nohistory]

Atton was already headed for the door when a rambling, distressed voice broke the silence. He turned back in time to see one of those pods close again, near-silent except for the squelch of draining goo, except there was no sign before them of whoever had been spat out this time. None, except that grating voice. Maybe he wasn't a Jedi, but he could still do something as basic as feeling life through the Force. The kid ran in head-first looking for danger, and the moment was so instantly familiar that Atton's right hand dropped to his hip, where his blaster should've been.

"Hey, watch-" He reached out automatically when the kid nearly tumbled over seemingly nothing except swirling mist- ah, hang on. That hadn't been there a second ago. Atton listened for a moment, but neither his head nor heart were screaming at him to be careful, so he decided to brave one major appendage by nudging the metal thing over with his foot. A bright blue light blinked - because that was the only word for the way the metal shutter opened and closed - up at them. This... this was the one who needed their help.

"A remote with a vocabulator?" Atton said incredulously, because if he'd been forced to come up something even more annoying and useless than that devious astromech she'd loved so much, a talking remote would've been on the list. From its sorry green-drenched state, it appeared as though it had come from one of the pods like they had, but dropping a droid into a biochamber made about as much sense as... well, installing a remote with vocabulator of all things.

Whatever. He didn't have time for this. "Hey!" Atton barked, interrupting the stupid thing. "Shut up for one second and tell us what's going on! Where are we?"

[godhooded]

For a few moments, John just stared. Stared and listened. The round robot ball kept talking, and the shutter slid open and closed to kind of express emotion. At least, that's what John wanted to see. He almost started a little when that big glowing blue eye settled on him for a second.

This... this was a robot. A real robot. Or rather, not a real robot. A real robot didn't do a whole lot. It made stuff in factories, or walked awkwardly in circles. Honestly, John found himself pretty disappointed in robots. They could never live up to the ones in the movies. One of their major failings was the ability to talk, which wasn't a problem here. Wow, this guy had a lot to say. For his part, John waited for the robot to finish, and it was pretty easy to do, since he seemed friendly and even had a proper sounding kind of British accent.

"Haha, yeah, I guess we're doing plenty of talking and breathing," John agreed, and crouched down slightly to get a better look. He resisted the urge to touch anything. John knew his impulse to poke and prod was probably extremely rude. You just can't go around being disrespectful to sentient robots struggling to find their place in the world of humans. "I honestly can't even think of why I would need to jump to talk," he said instead.

The man that he'd run into first didn't match John's level of awe, however, and in fact was pretty impatient with... the remote? "Um. What's a remote?"

[nohistory]

"Hey, don't get too close to it, it might blast you with a... oh, never mind." The worst any remote could do was cause a sharp sting, although Atton was starting to wonder if he should revise his assessment of "remote" to "droid." As much he disliked droids, he had to admit that remotes couldn't be said to possess a fraction of the intelligence it took for droids to speak... but then the thing kept talking, and Atton decided that intelligent would've been a hasty judgement.

Where were they? Big metal thingy with lots of lights, possibly filled with air. That HK unit would've been more helpful, even while prefacing each statement with Mockery or Thinly Veiled Psychotic Comment. If he was wearing boots right now, he might've kicked it. Instead, lacking a mouth to aim for, Atton dropped his bare foot on the robot's "eye" in hopes that that would get it to stop talking.

"Something useless. Come on." He jerked his thumb toward the exit, still keeping his foot on the yammering robot's face. "I'm not standing around freezing my thrusters off for another minute. There has to be somebody with answers around here."

[godhooded]

Through all the words, John could gather a few important things. For one, he was absolutely right that it was pretty stupid to put a machine in a pod that all science fiction told him was only for living creatures. Secondly, the robot had never gotten to see any movies, which was pretty horrible. He was probably busy doing robot things, whatever those were. Really, what good was a talking sphere? What was this guy for? They could have at least given him something to fly with. John couldn't say how that would increase the usefulness of a talking sphere, but it would certainly make life a lot easier for the sphere in question. While whoever made him missed the opportunity to make an awesome flying mechanism, John could step in and fix that, at least temporarily.

"Don't worry, dude, we're not going to leave you here," John promised, and all gloom he had been holding onto was dropped in favor of eagerness. It was a little because he'd feel bad leaving anyone here in the cold, and a little because using the windy thing was... fun. He shot a quick grin at the man, a grin that had pride and joy written all over it. He seemed a little distracted by giving sour looks to their new friend, but that was okay.

John extended his hand, and it was like he could feel every little shift in the air, every particle. Particles that Rose and Jade knew the names of, and John would probably need to ask them about it some day, because right now he was drawing a blank for anything except "oxygen" and he knew saying he could "feel the oxygen" was stupid. Being able to name it wasn't important for making it work, at least. The feeling was still novel, and it would never not be exciting to see his hand light up, blue wisps shifting and swirling around it. But the best part was moving the breeze like it was just another part of him, and gently lifting the robot off the floor. He was so light. It was so easy.