redstringtheories

Entry tags:

!tdm

TDM #1

➥ Arrival

(cw: potential for severe disorientation/vertigo, claustrophobia, arachnophobia, body horror)

It happens in the blink of an eye. You may have been asleep. You may not have. You may have stepped through a door or turned a corner. You may have seen a flicker of something at the corner of your vision and turned to look. Or maybe you didn't.

It doesn't matter. What matters is that you find yourself somewhere entirely new and entirely unfamiliar. The arrival point is not always the same. (If you're lucky, it might be a canteen or an open office. If you're not, well... you aren't claustrophobic, are you? Or arachnophobic. These ducts do seem to be a bit cobwebby.) There is no one waiting for you but you don’t seem to be alone, either. Even in a janitor’s closet or the bathroom, you’ll find at least one person who seems to be just as out of place as you are.

If characters have arrived in a location devoid of NPCs, they may want to work together to figure out what is going on... or to avoid their 'kidnappers.' If you’ve arrived in the middle of the entry foyer or the gym, there may well be a few people who startle a bit at your arrival and try to approach (or discreetly leave the room... where are they going?). Will you cooperate or fight? Do you even understand what they're saying? You might need to find a translator, if you’re not immediately willing to follow a stranger.

After characters follow their new hosts (or are forcibly taken in) there will be a limited tour and the chance to settle in at the ADI-provided housing. (Do you enjoy living with strangers? Well. It's a new situation to navigate, anyway.)

➥ Sticks and Stones

(cw: hallucination, potential mind-control)

Weird things happen in Dogtown, everyone knows it. The Apocalypse Disruption Initiative (ADI) is not above taking advantage of that to test out the waters for its newest arrivals. They're not looking to send anyone to their death, though. That's far too much paperwork, you'd been assured with a wink from the employee who'd directed you to the park trailhead. You've been left with another person. Maybe they're a new arrival, as well, or a more seasoned 'veteran.' Either way, you're together for the next while and you've been asked to find and record any paranormal activity in the park. You have your phones and any other equipment you might have brought with you. Those who succeed in documenting anything peculiar will receive a $100 reward to be used as they see fit.

This month, there seems to be something odd afoot with the stones around the park. Instead of the questionably useful advice they offer, there is, instead, something embarrassingly or horrifically true about you carved into the stone. Trying to show your companion or gauge their reaction will net nothing; they will simply see their own truth. It's only when you admit to what's on the stone that it seems to become visible to others or any camera in your possession.

Take a picture. The least you deserve for the trouble is some money.

➥ I Will Survive

"We'll have others with you, but all of you will be out on your own for missions, so to speak," the ADI employee who had led you down to the underground training facility explained. "You'll need to have some basic skills. Even if you're not going out soon or ever… it's safer to know these things."

Basic skills, in this case, appear to mean survival and weapons training. The room you've been brought to on Floor B3 below ADI Headquarters is a massive, underground gym, and there are sections set up for various skills practice. One side of the gym is dedicated to fighting: bare-knuckles, wrestling, knives, and tasers are all out on display. There are also a few guns, but those are reserved for people who can prove they can manage the other weapons first. The other side has areas for fire-making, building a shelter, navigating without a phone, supply preparation, cooking, and basic first-aid. Through a side door, there's also a small pool where people are being taught the basics of swimming.

Any or all of these skills would be useful in a dangerous situation, and there aren't enough native ADI employees to cover training for all of them. If you show that you're proficient with something, you'll be asked to man one of the areas to assist in training others. If you're at a loss and looking lost, you will be pushed toward whatever skills practice area is physically closest to you, whether you wanted to learn anything about that or not. Best make the most of it… and try not to kill anyone or burn anything down.

Even those who have refused ADI Housing and taken themselves to Bonnie's Flophouse will find that they're welcome for this training under the strict understanding that no supernatural abilities will be used. Bonnie will have informed them of it and helped them get to ADI to ensure they learn some of the things they might need to survive... and also just to bond with the people they'll be working with for the foreseeable future.

➥ Shifting Perspective

(cw: body horror, implication of near-drowning, violence, potential for blood, gore, drowning, death)

The beaches around Gloucester are numerous and varied with reported supernatural activity at many, if not most of them. For those working with ADI, they'll receive the direction in a mass email from Reyes Amador, the assistant to the Head of ADI. For those not technically working at ADI, Bonnie will provide the same information.

All,

We have received reports of strange noises and sightings at Coffin Beach. Please take at least one other person and investigate. A $300 bonus will be offered to those who bring back evidence of the source of these reports.

Take Care of Yourselves,
Reyes

Those who head to Coffin Beach will find that the sand beneath their feet squeaks softly with each step, like the faint sound of a poorly-maintained hinge protesting their movements. It makes stealth especially difficult, and those who wish to maintain their cover would do well to stay farther up into the vegetation and off the beach, itself. There aren't any houses out this way, just coastal marshes, the beach, and some higher ground with low-growing shrubs, tall grasses, and thin trees.

For the patient, those who wait for night to fall, they will be rewarded when they hear the sound of someone crying. Searching the beach, they will be able to spot a young person who appears to have washed up in a kayak on the beach. The young person is visibly injured in some way with blood coming out of them. Those who approach cautiously may get the sense that there is something not quite right about this person. Man or woman, their face is too long, their angles too sharp.

There is something wrong. It's not the injury.

There is something very wrong with what this person is.

They will not respond to any calls or move from where they lie, half-submerged in the surf. Anyone who approaches within a few feet will discover they're not nearly as helpless as they seem to be, though. The person will burst from the water with a powerful thrust, attempting to tackle anyone nearby and bite them. The person's face transforms into a long, fanged maw, trying to rip and tear and drag their prey into the ocean with them, away from any safety.

➥ Mod Notes

ARRIVAL: Two people will always arrive in the same general location together. Arrivals occur throughout the early month, not all on the same day or in the same place. Arrivals are not naturally fluent in English/other languages immediately upon arrival. Characters may attempt to evade capture, but they will eventually be snagged before they can leave the building. Please refer to the Arrival page for details regarding the arrival and onboarding process.
STICKS AND STONES: If so desired, to facilitate CR, characters may feel themselves compelled to ask about the stones when they see their truth written on it. Resisting the compulsion will become more and more difficult as time goes on.
I WILL SURVIVE: Characters may be students or trainers in this scenario. They might be able to get away with small displays of supernatural abilities if they want to risk it and if they find themselves with the necessary reserves of power. Anything significant will have them immediately removed and asked not to return to ADI for a few days.
SHIFTING PERSPECTIVE: Characters may fight off, capture, or kill the creature. If they successfully capture it and bring it back to ADI (or call for someone to come and do that for them), they will receive a significant monetary bonus beyond the promised $300 for their work. If characters successfully kill and document the kill, they will also receive the bonus and instructions to push the body out to sea. If a character is taken by the creature, they will be killed. Please bear in mind that if a character dies in the TDM prompt, they are dead. A different version who doesn't have TDM memories may be apped in their place.
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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

1. Arrival
It's a mere flicker between leaving the office (last one there, past 8pm and only twelve hours before she's due back again) and finding herself not in the corridor of the office building she spends the majority of her waking hours in, but in what seems to be the server room of an entirely different office building. Locked from the outside, doubtless for information security, far too small, and she's not alone either.

It's tight, too tight, for two people, and Meredith presses herself back against the server racks in an attempt to offer the other person in the room some space.

"I...what? How'd I get here? Who are you? What's going on?"

2. Sticks and Stones and Dislocated Bones
Meredith seems hesitant to accept the assignment when she hears that they're going to a park large enough to have trails. As most people have noticed, she walks with a cane and tends to be slow even on nice even carpeting or tile floors like in the office. But it really doesn't take long before she and her new partner spot a rock that makes her stop and squint at it.

"Well, that's just sort of rude, now isn't it?" She points it out, expecting her partner to see the same words she does: MORE OF A LOOSELY-STRUNG PUPPET THAN AN ACTION FIGURE. Clearly a jab at her joint problems.

3. I Will Survive. Hopefully.
Despite looking like the sort of prim polished office drone who never gets her hands dirty, Meredith's at least somewhat proficient in first aid, even for dealing with unusual matters like 'acid burns' and 'acute freezing of extremities'. While she's not a doctor, she can at least offer advice on first steps until someone can get to one.

This leads to her being put in charge of a first aid class. Someone's set her up with a whiteboard easel and a couple of markers, and she's just about done explaining the basics. "The really big picture is that you have to first get someone who's hurt safe, and then you begin to work toward stability, if possible. Remember to be vigilant for signs of shock. They won't always look the same in all circumstances, but after you've seen them a few times...you pick up on it. Any questions?"

The last thing that had happened? He'd gotten told off. Tim had felt the stinging of the strike against his left cheek, had put a hand on his hip in some guarded but exceptionally childish show of irritability and he had turned his gaze to the mesmerizing floor of his apartment as the front door opened and slammed shut in fervor.

And now he's here.

Same clothes (charcoal slacks, smart red button-down shirt that screams rich-kid-try-hard), same pose (he hadn't planned on shifting, what, dimensions? in the span of a blink), same detached sense of righteous, lonely superi-- Uh, surprise. Sense of surprise.

Naturally the next moment, the kid is open vulnerability and that's half of an act. This is a server room. Small, compact, tidy, appropriately cool. Tim's not a claustrophobic sort of guy, but if he's now sharing this space with...? And, searching the lady's face as she speaks and makes space and wow he can't believe he's the slow one on the uptake. Did he-- shoot. There's too many questions up in the air to even begin with the assumptions.

He shakes his head, steps back what tiny bit he can to increase distance between himself and The Other Business Casual. "I have no idea," he says, and feels a little better for being truthful. Low bar. "I was at my apartment and the next thing I know, you're asking me what's going on."

"Ah. Okay. Great." It's not a useful answer, except in the ways that it is. If he's also been blinked here, it's probably some sort of...anomaly. It's not just her spontaneously developing the power to teleport due to exhaustion (though wouldn't that be nice? It's save her a 45 minute commute each way).

"I mean, not actually great, but. Um. Probably better than you teleporting me into a tiny space like this on purpose. Definitely better. Let's just get out of here and..." The sentence trails off as she tries the doorknob and realizes they're locked in. "Oh, for fuck's sake."

He gets the sentiment. Tim pushes back a genuine grimace and deems his partner safe enough for now; he takes in the room with more calm confidence. It is, disappointingly, seriously nothing more than a server room. No trap doors. No Indiana Jones-style booby trap cover-up.

"Nah, we get tested for Spontaneous Teleporation in fourth grade. You're good with me," he says distractedly in a way that's so obviously a joke. And when she tries the door without luck and Tim's gaze flits to the bottom of that door to try and find shadows and finds nothing, he sighs.

This is... not good. They're sitting ducks. "And I don't even have my lock pick kit."

Tim gives a cable to his right an experimental tug. Element of surprise would mean a potentially very ticked off kidnapper. And he can't do that to her. He's stuck. He says, "Whatever this is, my dad can pay the ransom. We just need to see who did this to us. Think IT makes regular rounds out to this place?"

His confidence helps, but realizing they're trapped in this small space is definitely beginning to affect Meredith a little. She's clutching her cane in both hands, watching the walls as if suspicious that they'll begin closing in on them at any moment.

"IT tend to be lazy and do the least possible amount of work. They won't stop by unless there's a reason to. In my experience. Maybe we can bust the door down?"

The door hinges are positioned for the door to swing outward. Kicking it down is absolutely doable. Tim's done worse. And he had been looking forward to beating up Cricket (and that scrap of hope that Cass is going to sound the alarm of him missing is feeding into the adrenaline). A good kick and ensuing escape montage would lift his mood.

He tries the door again. It doesn't budge, locked. Time is always of the essence. Tim spares a glance to his partner and strains his ears to hear anything outside. Nada. "Hey, I've got this. We'll be fine."

Not much bravado, but it's probably for the best. Can they get by with throwing Bruce Wayne's money at this problem? Very likely not. But they'll at least face their captors in a larger space. "Alright, here goes," he breathes. Dress shoes and slacks. Not great for playing at Hero.

Tim takes a step back (he's a short guy, it's fine) and gets his line of sight, and kicks the sucker right near the handle. And again, because it's not going to be some poorly installed door. And the thing swings open, splintered by the lock.

Pros:

"Come on, it's clear."

Cons: kicking down a door is loud.

Of course, there's no one who's immediately waiting on the other side of the door, gun trained on the server room. The bang might draw the attention of office drones, but it doesn't seem like the immediate response is a swarm of security to deal with the escapees.

Not that they know this, yet.

Meredith moves to follow Tim, glancing around the hallway. Outside the cramped quarters of a locked room and in the halls of a building like this, she can handle her own much better. "We might be able to blend in, if someone finds us. New interns, got lost. Easy to play off."

They're at least one floor above ground. The immediate response is to steal a glance towards the large windows covering this story, but there's... no Gotham City skyline glaring back from the midmorning? sunlight. Not Metropolis, not Central, not San Francisco, not any big city. So, you know, that already blows.

Being demoted from CEO to intern in one fell swoop suddenly makes a lot more sense.

"Apex Detectives, Incorporated." That's their biggest clue so far, a literal sign with big, bold words stamped out front. "You really don't think they've got cams on their server rooms?"

Step one: start moving.

Tim keeps pace with... huh. There's... voices. Distant. Coming their way. They've got some-- so. Yeah. Step two:

He frowns and thinks all's forgiven if he doesn't go for a firm handshake right now. "I'm Tim Drake."

Edited 2021-07-07 00:56 (UTC)

"Meredith Idlewild. Nice to meet you, Tim."

As the pair pass an elevator bank, Meredith pauses. See, in spaces like this in office buildings, there's almost always an emergency exit plan in case of fires. That is, a map of the floor and directions to stairwells and other rooms on the floor. "Turn left ahead. There's a canteen, we might be able to blend in there among people taking their lunch break."

Meredith Idlewild - OC

arrival

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