1st Spare - What Will I Do Without the Internet?

[reconstructs]

[Action; 5722 Cunningham Lane]

[There's a moment of shock when she wakes up, but realizing there's no immediate danger, the sensation passes. In any case, this is a strange situation.

Examining her room and area, she can't find any of her possessions. Was she kidnapped? This doesn't even seem like Japan though... and at such an important time too.

Oh, well.

In any case, Nico is wandering around the house calmly scoping the place out, though her quick movement belie some of her concern with the situation]

Hello? Anyone here?

[Phone]

[The first thing heard is a rather bored monotone voice of a young girl:]

Ah, oh no, what a frightening witch's barrier I seem to have fallen into.

Just kidding. It's pretty obvious this is something else... so who else is here? I don't really think I'm special enough to warrant kidnapping just me, so are the rest of you girls here? This is certainly an unexpected twist.

...I can't believe I'm using a phone with an actual dial on it.

[Action; Around Town]

[There's a young teenage girl being harassed by a pair of drone boys around her age. The reason? Rather than a dress, she's wearing shorts and a hat that clearly got swiped from some drone boy's closet. While the drones call her a tomboy and childish insults for not dressing like a girl, she just stares off with a bored look on her face.]

...you're really kind of annoying, huh?

Comments

[cullscuttlefish]

It's good to meet you, Nico! Anyway, yeah. This place is called Mayfield, and it's around 50 Earth years - give or take a few - in the past. Everyone here is from different places and different time periods. Nobody's entirely sure why we're here, though.

The main thing is, don't trust the town itself. Once a month or so, it will decide something absolutely horrible needs to happen, that affects everyone. Stuff like making it look and feel like a nuclear bomb fell. Or zombies. Or mass hallucinations.

At any given time, any of that stuff can and will kill you. It used to be that you'd come back a day later, but some idiots went and broke the revival mechanism. Now, you come back, but it's a lot longer, and you have side effects. Like thinking you're still dead, or reliving the moment you died.

[reconstructs]

[She wonders if "50 years in the past" means anything if everyone's from different times, but it works out conveniently for her]

So we're basically here to be messed with? Strange place.

Coming back from the dead, huh? That's definitely a weird one...

[cullscuttlefish]

Something like that. Though I have to admit, things have seemed too quiet lately. I don't like it, because it makes me feel like something really bad is going to happen.

[She nods.]

More than once, in my case. Three times and counting. It wasn't actually so bad the first couple of times - I mean, it sucked, but I didn't wake up hallucinating, so.

[Shrug.]

Um, if I can answer anything...?

[reconstructs]

Quiet before the storm, huh?

Well, I can't think dying is ever particularly great, but yeah, hallucinating afterwards sounds bad.

[Questions, huh? Well, might as well start with the obvious one]

So... what are you? If you don't mind my asking.

[cullscuttlefish]

Somefin like that. It just seems like around the end of last year and the beginning of this one, things were flying at you left and right. Now? Way too quiet.

Hallucinating afterwards was almost worse than actually dying, if you can believe that. It's messed up either way you look at it.

[Oh, right.]

Feferi Peixes, heiress to the Alternian throne -- oh, shell, I can just say I'm Feferi and I'm originally from a planet called Alternia. It's a long ways away, not that I particularly want to go back.

[reconstructs]

Huh... sounds like you've been here a while.

I can believe it. Might see stranger things than reality. [Though she was familiar with a pretty strange reality]

Alternia... so you're an alien? Relatively speaking, I mean. An Alternian?

[cullscuttlefish]

I've been here about eight or nine months now, but it seems longer. A lot longer.

I think I have seen stranger things than reality. Though reality's weird enough, particularly when it involves the stuff I've seen in reality, and I've seen some weird things. Really weird things.

And haha, yes. Feferi Peixes, the heiress to the Alternian Empire, or would be if it still existed.

[reconstructs]

So you live in this house, I guess?

Really? I'd like to hear about them sometime.

Well, it's only my second time meeting an alien. You seem a lot nicer. [But really, looks could be deceiving, couldn't they?]

[cullscuttlefish]

Yep. I have since I got here. I think I'm lucky - there are some awful people here, and I'm glad I don't have to live with any of them.

[There's a small laugh.]

I don't know...it's pretty violent stuff.

...second time?

[reconstructs]

You couldn't just go live in one of the other houses if there were bad people in this one?

[A nod] If you don't like to talk about it, then you don't have to.

Mm, yeah. Bey-yan was the first. He's a lot cuter, but that's only because he looks like a small furry animal.

[cullscuttlefish]

Nope. You can only stay away from home for two nights at a time, if you try a third, you get droned. Droning is like --

[Feferi heads to the closest window, waiting for a drone to pass by. She points, after a minute.]

Anyone that's cheery to the point of being eerie about it. Too cheerful, insists on really old-fashioned roles for men and women even though that's definitely not true, generally creepy as shell.

[She shakes her head.]

Seeing everyone you care about hanging, covered in blood, or dying in other ways. Seeing yourself die over and over in increasingly horrible ways. Things like that.

Bey-yan? Sounds cute...

[reconstructs]

Brainwashed people, huh? Creepy stuff.

Sound like you had a pretty tough life.

He's very cute. Just be careful of his teeth; they're sharp. I wonder if he'll show up here...