outsiderslogs | welcome to omega, round two.

Entry tags:

welcome to omega, round two.

who. everyone!
what. in which the new arrivals join the outsiders.
where. landing pads for new arrivals, who then head through the markets to the residential area.
when. today!
warnings. n/a

This time, when the shuttles arrive, the landing pad isn't so empty. There was no saying these people wouldn't show up again, and though Aria isn't going to be happy that they appear to be coming on a schedule while the rest of the system is grounded, there doesn't appear that there's much to be done about it. A group of her batarian agents are there to escort incomers off the ship; some are taken aside for questioning, but when it's clear they know nothing of their origins, they're let go. Some new arrivals may notice that these shuttles don't simply depart -- a number of them are escorted off by other shuttles, deeper into the station.

After that, though, there's little the batarians can do about them. They're sent towards the residential district by way of the markets and financial sectors. The housing areas they arrive in aren't in the best of shape; while there are other outsiders to this galaxy already at work trying to repair the damage, others aren't bothering with it at all.

This is Omega. If you don't find some way to pull your weight, you'll be dead in no time.

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[ Settling in has taken time, but when it comes down to it, Wash thinks it could have been worse. Considerably worse. Though he's still getting used to being around so many other people (or, well, aliens), he can't say it's a bad change. It's dangerous, sure, but he'll take danger over the crushing emptiness that was Sacrosanct.

He's done some work in the residential district, enough to earn some credits to his name. York's got her own thing going on, but for now, all Wash really cares about is keeping themselves fed and armed. On those ends, they're doing well so far -- but he knows they need to upgrade to the local arms if they stay here long-term.

But for now, he needs cat food.

At the moment, he's wearing most of his armor, but he'd foregone his helmet -- it's easier to go food shopping without a HUD in his way, he's found. He'd picked his way through the market until he'd found a stand selling fish, or at least something claiming to be fish, and he's engaged in a conversation with the volus behind the counter. ]

No-- look, I just want fish, okay? Fish. Are you sure these are right?

Edited 2013-02-16 22:02 (UTC)

To say that the Master Chief...stuck out a bit among the new arrivals was an understatement. He wasn't the only one that appeared to be military and he wasn't the only one in armor, but he was the only one who fit both those properties and was also built more like a krogan than a human. He was on guard throughout the conversation with the four-eyes aliens (batarians, apparently) before they eventually directed him towards the residential district of...wherever he was without much in the way of answering any questions he had.

He doubted he was going to get any info out of them (and felt like the feeling was mutual), so he was about to leave the landing area when something caught his attention.

"What is that? A credit chit?"

"It was on that shuttle," the batarian agent said to the other, gesturing back towards the spacecraft. "I thought I saw a hologram in it, but it's not like any VI I've ever seen." When he gestured, the Chief caught a glimpse of what was in the agent's hand - a chip. More than that, one he recognized. A data crystal chip, of UNSC design. The Chief stopped dead, hesitating for a moment as the two batarians continued inspecting the chip, trying to figure out its purpose.

Well this had certainly been an enlightening day.

Especially when there were a lot of 'hows' to be asked, and unfortunately zero explanations Cortana can find while lying around some unknown shuttle like a discarded clip. To say this wasn't normally how anyone would want to treat a highly advanced AI would be a gross understatement. At least it did allow for some observation, and what she found was far from what she hoped to gather. There were aliens, but nothing she could remotely recognize. It was possible they were an unknown Covenant species, but unlike the others patrolling Requiem there weren't that many that came off as hostile.

At least the shuttle flight was a short and relatively peaceful one. The other passengers seemed much more concerned of their own problems that when they did land, Cortana was the one left behind. "Great." Cursing under her breath a bit, now she had to contend with trying to figure a way off the shuttle and find a platform that might give her some answers. Importantly where she was and where Chief managed to run off to without her.

And in an instant, it seemed like she got her wish. An alien, batarian from what she had managed to gather, found her chip and picked her up-so far so good-but before she could pipe up and ask some of her questions, the batarian was already off with his friend as they both failed in guessing what her data crystal chip was. It was embarrassing to watch.

"Boys, do you mind not waving me around for two seconds?" Finally getting a word in, Cortana's avatar flashed on, taking the batarians by surprise. "Much better."

[With arms loaded with groceries and necessities and her pocket lighter than she'd like after all her hard work since arriving, Ino walks by the vendor Wash is currently conversing with one of those fat, masked guys.

She seems to recognize his armor but hasn't seen his face yet, so it takes a moment for her to actually realize it's the guy with the cute cat she had talked to upon first arriving on Omega.

And she'd wave but her arms are full. She'll make herself known with a loud greeting anyway.]

Hey~! Wash!

And there was her hologram, both confirming the suspicion that the Chief had gotten when he saw the chip and subsequently presenting him with something impossible. While the two batarians stood in stunned silence at the hologram's appearance, the Chief did the exact opposite - it didn't matter that what he was seeing was impossible. He moved as much on extinct as anything else.

"Give me that chip." He had been standing a good several feet away a second ago and obviously his suddenly just being there threw the two batarians off for a couple seconds.

"And who's going to make us?" One of the batarians asked before the other grabbed his shoulder.
"It's not worth it." The first batarian let out a low growl but eventually seemed to agree, offering the chip to the Chief.
"Don't leave your junk lying around next time or you might regret it." Another time, the Chief might've dignified the thinly veiled threat with a response, but today, he wouldn't. He just took the chip from his hand and held it at arm's reach.

"...Cortana."

Funny. There was that feeling of not knowing what to say again.

Well on the plus side, the two weren't looking to sell her off right away. She gave them enough of a jump to reconsider that plan for the moment, but soon they would be on to bickering over what exactly her chip was.

That is, until they were interrupted by a familiar SPARTAN, a sight that instantly caused Cortana to brighten up. "Not a moment too soon." Of course, the batarians weren't exactly concerned about her input in this exchange. To them, she might as well had been a lost credit chit. Thankfully they didn't try to pick a fight with Chief and left them without too much grievance.

Flashing back on, Cortana gave the two a cursory glance before turning her direct attention to her SPARTAN. "Chief...I was starting to worry back there. I'm glad to see that you're okay."

In an instant, the weight of his best friend's body was gone from his arms and Kengo Utahoshi was no longer on his way to the Rabbit Hatch. It seemed as though he'd lost his breath, gasping in air and grasping at the empty space in front of him. While he'd thought it was a problem with his vision at first that he was seeing something completely different, the sound of his shoes on the floor of the shuttle and the rustling of other people near him made him realize that it wasn't just him hallucinating. -- everything was gone. ... where...?

By the time his mind began processing what was going on, the shuttle had stopped at the landing pad and began unloading, Kengo rushing out ahead of everyone before he even though about where he was going. In one hand, he tightly grasped the handle of the case he carried with him everywhere, containing powers for a system used by a someone who was no longer living. The completely unfamiliar environment and the variety of races and strangely dressed people around him were ignored for the moment, his mind in too much of a panic.

No... No, he couldn't be here. He couldn't be anywhere else. He had to figure out where his friend's body was. If he could just get Gentarou back to the Rabbit Hatch, he could save him! Even knowing in his heart that his best friend was dead, Kengo turned a circle and searched the faces around him, then glanced over the rest of the area, his body shaking. Another one of his headaches from overexertion seemed imminent.

"Kisaragi!!" Kengo yelled for the other boy, his breath nearly panting as he tried to fight down the panic. As if on cue, the first pangs of pain hit him, his free hand quickly moving to his head as he stumbled from where he'd stopped, making a soft noise in response.

I need to find him... he has to be here... I can still save him...

None of this made any sense to Marco, but life hadn't made sense for days. The adrenaline spike from waking up in the middle of being kidnapped by aliens had long since worn off, because he had a friendly shuttle ride with strangers to bring himself down into a nice, calm, rampaging internal panic. Was this all part of the Yeerk thing? Where did all his friends end up? How was he going to get back? How was he going to stay alive?

Yeah, that.

He did his best to play as dumb as humanly possible while getting manhandled by some truly freaky looking freaks, and it seemed to have worked pretty well; before long, he was sent off to fend for himself in the wild, wild ~~west~~ markets. So here he was, an incredibly lost teenager in jeans and a rumpled Doom t-shirt, wandering around with his hands in his pockets and trying not to gape too much. He stuck near other groups; not so close that they'd think he was trying to squeeze in with them, but not so far away that he'd be easily identifiable as a loner.

Who was he kidding here? Based on what he's seen so far, humans seemed to be a pretty rare sight. Hopefully, that didn't make him a fine specimen for collection. Or a delicacy.

"Aaah!"

Marco jumped at the sudden distraught yell; he was already seriously on edge, still in the middle of his own information overload and just about as disturbed at trying to understand how and why he was separated from everything he knew. Once he saw the source of the noise that spooked him, though, his adrenaline level dropped from fight-or-flight back down to a mild panic. At least it was another human. Right?

"Hey, what the hell's your deal, dude??"

Edited 2013-02-18 21:15 (UTC)

For the time being, Kengo didn't even realize he was being spoken to. He continued to stand in place, his hand clasped over his forehead and his eyes as he fought to calm his breathing enough that the pain would subside. In any other situation, at least in his own country, Kengo wouldn't have stood out much at all. However, in Omega, a seventeen year old boy in a school uniform stuck out considerably more than anyone else around him, the bright blue of his jacket making him one of the more visible spots of color in the crowd.

When he dropped his hand, Kengo nearly jumped at seeing the other boy standing nearby. Only then did he seem to become aware of his surroundings, as though the other's voice had forced him out of his panic. He looked around himself, paying a bit more attention to the faces and the technology. This certainly wasn't the clean, sterile white of the OSTO moon base. ... this was honestly the complete opposite.

Kengo seemed to look back to the other boy only after he'd glanced over everything else. For someone with such a winning personality, Kengo couldn't think of anything to say. Apologies certainly weren't his style. "Nothing."

"Nothing? So you're like, screaming your head off and throwing a fit in the middle of the street because you have absolutely zero problems, standing there in complete perfect understanding in the most Zen-like way possible of the situation and just happened to feel like exercising your right to freedom of speech?"

Yeah, he's buying it. Wait, no. Marco folded his arms and tilted his chin up in his best 'nah not buying it' face.

"I'm not throwing a fit!" Kengo immediately bristled, looking more angry than upset at this point. While Kengo was usually in fairly good control of his emotions, the situation just before arriving had put him in an especially vulnerable state. Right now, he really didn't know what to do with himself. There was no point in bothering with such things as watching his mouth -- not that he ever did that anyway.

"I don't care where I am or what this place is! I can't be here!" His body was starting to shake again, the student running his fingers back through his hair and trying in vain to calm himself again. With his condition, staying in an angry state of mind for too long would drain him completely. Collapsing in a strange area was not on his list of priorities.

There had to be a way back... The gate had to be broken. That was why he'd ended up somewhere other than the moon, right?

"Uh-huh, and I'm the Queen of France."

Marco was pretty unimpressed with this guy. He was just as lost as the strange dude in the dorky jacket, but he wasn't about to have a breakdown in the middle of the street, either.

"You can, and you are, and--oh, come on, dude, people are staring. You wanna get us hauled off somewhere? 'cause if that nasty looking thing over there with the face-wibbly bits starts walking towards us, I'm outta here."

Not that he cared about blue-jacket at all. At this point, it was a passing curiosity for him, but Marco was ever ready to be on the lookout for his own hide.

If he had merely been dropped into the middle of a strange street on any other day, Kengo was sure he would have been in a much better state of mind. It was as though the universe itself was working against him today. There was a glare on his face as he approached the boy with the sarcastic mouth, grabbing at the other's collar with his free hand. His intention was to push the other back against the nearest hard surface and hold him there to let the other know he was serious. It'd been quite awhile since he'd done something like that, but the situation seemed to call for it.

It also seemed to escape Kengo's notice that a few of the creatures around them had turned to see what the fuss was about with the two humans snarking back and forth, though some turned away again once they realized how young the kids were. It wouldn't be a good enough fight to waste their attention on.

"Then you can shut your mouth and get out of my way, if it bothers you so much..."

"...yeah. Me too."

Understatement of the century.

The Chief looked around at their surroundings. He didn't know every space station in the UNSC, but he at least knew what UNSC architecture looked like, and this was definitely not that. Hell, it didn't look Covenant in design either, nor did any of the aliens he saw milling about, including the batarians that he'd seen after the shuttle had landed here. Put simple, he had no idea what was going on.

"Any idea where we are?"

In more ways than one.

Omega. Well, that was unexpected. Kasumi had slipped off the shuttle as soon as it touched down, hood up and features firmly obscured. Technically, she knew she'd made a return trip from the city of Abax before. Almost a year trip, in fact. The difference? She hadn't remembered the fact she'd ever left. Now, though? Well. There was no way to be sure there was nothing missing, not without an outside confirmation, but something was there. A big step up from nothing.

Weird.

Certain something- very likely Shepard related- had to be up, Kasumi slipped into the shadows, scouting out the new arrivals and natives a like. She could dig deeper later, for now that had to be someone interesting looking to pry into.

[ooc note: if your character is dressed at all oddly or freaking out, feel free to assume Kasumi approaches them.]

"I was hoping you had the answer to that one." Now time for her own understatement. Landing on unidentified planets and stations wasn't all too uncommon, but the nature of their arrival definitely called more into question. "From what I've seen, the architecture and vehicle design are an unknown. Definitely not Forerunner or Covenant. Closest resemblance I can make is human, but even that's stretching it. Unless standards have fallen dramatically, it can't be UNSC controlled."

"Then we get to our welcoming committee." Rather not dwell on that too long actually but there is a point to be made. "There's a sizable alien population, heterogeneous in nature. A few humans, but nothing else I can identify. Obviously don't recognize UNSC hardware."

She takes a moment to dwell on her report. It's not that easy to stump her completely, but what information she had gathered, it was impossible to draw any conclusions. "Wherever we are, it's far from Earth. If we can find a terminal, we might get a better idea."

The Chief nodded and wordlessly plugged Cortana's chip back into his helmet.

"They mentioned entertainment, financial and residential districts. We can start with those." He mentally ran over his supplies, a hand eventually tapping a holster at his side - nothing but his combat knife and a handgun. If he got into a fight, he could work with those, but the place seemed peaceful - especially if there were human civilians here, he wanted to keep it that way. As he started to leave the shuttle bay, something occurred to him.

"Cortana," he started. "Do you remember anything before winding up on the shuttle?" For him, there wasn't much. He was on the Infinity above Earth, then...this. But maybe Cortana could fill in the gaps somehow.

[of course, it's omega. why wouldn't it be omega?

she steps across the landing pads tentatively, eyes carefully surveying the area. she'd been on a mission with her sister - and given the fact that she doesn't immediately see her, she can't help but to feel the worry crop up in the middle of her chest like an icy shard.

zo, where are you?

she brings up her omni-tool, stares at it for a moment before dismissing it again, huffing lightly behind her helmet before she decides to take it off. there's no reason for her to keep it on, really, even though it isn't protocol for an n7 to walk around without it when they're supposed to be on a mission.

she's pretty sure that this dictates a little bit of exception to the rule.]

None of this really made sense to North, either - and he was the one that had been here for a while already. But there was nothing more out-of-the-ordinary-looking than a kid walking around by himself with his hands in his pockets, and he .. might have to go comment on it.

(Because he was kind of a boyscout, and if the kid needed help, then who was he to .. not offer it?)

This time, he wasn't in armor; he'd managed to find some clothes that made him look more like he belonged here, and that was just fine by him because he was tired of people coming up to him and gawking at how "different" his armor was compared to everyone else's.

"Lost?" he asked with a small half-smile.

Once plugged back into the suit she was so intimately familiar with, Cortana instantly noticed something was...off. Chief's bioreadings were the first and hardest to miss. They weren't fatal, and he seemed completely fine. "In the meantime, I'll run some scans, see if I can pick up any frequencies I can actually identify." And perhaps figure out what this reading meant. She would have piped up to ask about them, but Chief was able to get his question in first.

"There's a gap in my memory, I can't make out what exactly happened. One minute we were on Requiem boarding with Gypsy Company, the next you and the company were gone and I was lying around in a completely different shuttle. Is it any different for you?"

Damn it. There goes trying not to look like a tourist. Marco turned around slowly at the voice, trying to push the nervous and slightly guilty expression off his face. He was calling upon years of being trained to pin a bright, innocent smile on his face whenever an adult tried to speak with him in order to throw off any sense that something was wrong.

The first impression he got was that North was large. Sort of like gym-teacher large, but with less dingy sweatpants. His appearance almost didn't match the tone of that simple question, helpful without being too patronizing, talking down only because geometry dictated it as a necessity. And that sure wasn't the expression of someone who would make him play dodgeball against guys twice his size. He almost seemed like someone Marco could actually trust.

Except Marco wasn't going to trust anybody.

"Just a little, sir," he said in his best dumb-child voice. "I'm just like, looking for a bathroom or something. I've been holding it in for a long, long time."

When he heard that a second ship of refugees had arrived, Dun immediately headed over to the landing pad with the faint hope that perhaps a line of transport had been established to and fro from Omega, and he could return home. Sadly, he was to be disappointed. Just another bunch of clueless and panic faces. Why did he even bother.

Well, if anything perhaps he should keep an eye out for anyone familiar. He'd rather not have his Cousin here to suffer with him but if Cao Cao and/or Yuan somehow find their way here, than it's up to him to locate them as soon as possible and brief them on the situation.

He's not very inconspicuous though; he's already standing out enough with the podao sheathed at his side, but it's that piercing glare that's searching the crowd that'll get Kasumi's attention. It's almost as if he's watching every step everyone makes.

Boarding with Gypsy Company... ...when they were getting ready to attack the gravity well. Well, that explained a bit. He had been...taken by whatever force had put him on that shuttle after fighting the Didact. Cortana had been taken earlier, while they had still been on Requiem. It just raised further questions, though. He'd dealt with Forerunner artifacts causing time travel before, but nothing like this.

...whatever had caused it, he decided to keep his questions to himself for the moment.

"A bit," he answered. "The last thing I remember is being aboard the Infinity, near Earth."

"We need to find a terminal. We'll try the market sectors first."

A waypoint was set up on his HUD and the Chief was on his way. He and Cortana could only discover so much about this station from looking around - letting Cortana into its systems would expedite things greatly, as they always did whenever the two found themselves stumbling over some Covenant ship or Forerunner world of some kind. Granted, those always tended to be less...crowded than this station was.

He didn't want to attract a lot of attention to himself, but it was kind of difficult, being taller than almost everybody (he kept getting stares from some kind of vaguely reptilian hump-backed species that was about as big as him in armor - he made a note to himself to not piss those ones off if he could avoid it) and his MJLONIR armor sounding off whenever he took a step. As he arrived at the markets and began walking through them, he eventually noticed something - he was having kind of a hard time finding a terminal that looked like Cortana would be able to interface with it. But he was seeing a lot of people with golden gauntlets appearing over their arms and then suddenly disappearing as quickly as they'd appeared.

"Maybe one of those gauntlets is what we need," he wondered aloud as he came to a stop.

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welcome to omega, round two.

open like ... an open thing.

Closed

Closed

the opposite of closed!

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open to everyone

open

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Re: Closed

Open all over the place

Re: Closed

Re: Closed

open!

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Re: Closed

Open | Chief + Cortana