re_alignment_logs | OPENING LOG: Awakening

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OPENING LOG: Awakening

WHO: Everybody!
WHERE: The Junk Pile.
WHEN: Right here, right now.
WHAT: Game opening! Our Heroes find themselves in a strange place not of their own world, however familiar (or not) it may be.

Consciousness is slow, and a struggle to obtain. The moments before darkness are hazy enough; a great vertigo, a twisting, and then, falling. Falling for what seemed like forever. And when you are finally aware of your surroundings, it is most decidedly not where you came from.

Instead, you are now in what appears to be a wasteland. A wasteland...of junk. Debris as far as you can see, heaped in mini-mountains that offer only so good of a view of the world around you. Perhaps in the distance, you can make out some flatter land, perhaps you can just make out what looks like a crevice - but it's difficult at best. The light here is all wrong, the two greatest sources being a white line in the alien sky that doesn't so much give off light as simply have it - and something in the south that glows like a setting sun.

You may or may not notice it at first, but you, too, have something alien - something on your arm, more likely than not. A marking that glows softly, but offers no clue as to how it got there - no pain, no sensitivity. It's simply there, as you are here.

So.

Now what?

((OOC: This is it, you guys! Have a blast! Please remember to keep everything under the first thread for now; we'll be adding the Firstforged in in a little bit...

OKAY There is now a second thread to post in! Feel free to make new threads there to react to the arrival of the Firstforged, or respond directly to the Firstforged themselves.))

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The lumbering metal giant was limping indeed. He hadn't had a chance to replace the wheel he'd lost in the tunnels under New York-- never mind that his own pride was somewhat to blame for that. After all, there were plenty of rims and tires on the Nemesis, but they were all calibrated to fit the troopers. Knock Out could have easily taken one and rigged it to fit as a temporary crutch, but he preferred not be seen with such a pedestrian wheel in his well. No, he'd simply planned to tread carefully until he got a chance to machine one to his exacting specifications in the shop on the Nemesis. It had been his first priority.

If he'd known he was going to be dumped into another world and assaulted immediately by Autobots he probably would have considered taking that replacement, its ugly asymmetry be damned.

But he hadn't, and so he limped. His injured foot pained him with every step, and the empty space in his leg meant that even the simple stresses of walking were distributed wrongly all up his leg and into his hips. Gone was his usual easy, elegant grace. No, every trudging step was only wrenching the servos and actuators in his limb that little bit more out of place.

Every trudging step hurt, and it showed on his face.

He wasn't wholly preoccupied with his misery-- not with Autobots and at least one of their little squishy friends loose in the mountains of junk-- but long experience had calibrated Knock Out's sensors to be aware of Cybertronian presences first, everything else second.

One human was easy to miss, especially among all the visual noise of the trash surrounding him. Oblivious to the fact that he was being watched, he trudged on, muttering occasionally to himself as he walked.

Korra narrowed her eyes once she heard the thing mutter. Her ears strained--yep, definitely the clink of metal. She tried to take cover as she crept closer to see. She was about to come up really level with the thing, side by side, until she spotted an outcropping of rock that went slightly over the tank. Korra tried to scramble up it as quickly and quietly as she could. She stopped, crouched on her outcropping, and watched. She blinked from her vantage point.

This mech tank, though covered in dirt and banged up, looked much nicer than the mech tanks below Hiroshi's mansion. It had actual eyes like a person's, and a mouth too. Its skull looked more like it was adorned by a red Fire Nation helm it could take off. Actually, given the red all over and the set-up of the metal plating, the thing really did remind her of Fire Nation armor. Come to think of it, even the face was white like the masks of Fire Nation soldiers pictured in historical texts.

The mech tank muttered again, and Korra marveled how its mouth even moved like a person's. Korra reconsidered the dirt and grime adorning the thing; it looked pretty messed up. Probably couldn't hurt her. The pilot sounded worse off than her.

The pilot was probably an Equalist searching for her....

Before panic could seize her, Korra reconsidered the tank's damage again; why would an Equalist pilot a damaged mech tank to search for her? Why not a pristine, functioning one? Maybe the pilot had run into Tarrlok--

Korra's back stiffened at another pained wheeze from the mech tank. The pilot's voice was soft and strained. A man's.

The girl bit her lip. If the pilot was hurt, why did it stay in the tank? Surely the pilot couldn't treat itself in there. Why stay?

The tank's pilot coughed, and Korra winced.

What if the pilot was trapped in there? The tank was busted--what if its closing mechanism was so messed up he couldn't get out--

Korra shuddered at the thought. That would suck massively.

Half-standing up, the girl paused one more time, running over everything through her head. Captured by Tarrlok; left in strange place; Equalist mech tank passes by; tank looks screwed up, pilot sounds hurt, probably not a threat and probably not looking for her; the pilot could be dying for all she knew, and that would be a really shitty way for anyone to die, inside some metal prison....

The young Avatar stood up, holding up her hands in a time-out signal. First she should try to stop a fight from starting (totally new for her). "Hey there, Equalist Pilot...guy. Truce, okay?" She didn't wait for an answer, calling out again, "Are you, um, stuck in...stuck in there? You sound kinda...hurt. Do you need any help?" Belatedly she remembered the freakin' water. Korra almost cursed. Instead she said, "If you have any water, I can fix you up...."

Oh no, don't mention bending in front of him!

But it was too late, the words were out. Korra only hoped that last offer wouldn't set the pilot off. (Still, she went over in her head what she would do if the mech tank attacked.)

Edited 2012-06-22 04:05 (UTC)

He really hadn't noticed the skin job creeping up on him until it started yelling, the voice seeming to come from directly above him. He started visibly, whirling away from the shouts, looking up--

An empty metal canister crumpled beneath him with a crunch, the collapse jarring his whole leg. The servos in his knee and hip gave out with a whine and he toppled backwards, sending up a flurry of smaller debris as he collapsed to the ground.

Knock Out swore. He knew he ought to get back on his feet, but really, what could one skin job do to him? Surely it wouldn't hurt to just lay here for a moment and let his stressed systems stabilize a bit.

He thought about ignoring the organic, but he had noticed it calling out to him (even if the content of the words hadn't registered). It probably wouldn't do him the favor of creeping quietly away and never mentioning this to anyone if it wanted something from him.

So he shoved himself upright on one elbow, hissing through his intakes as he did, and pinned his black-and-red eyes on the human. "Can I help you?" he asked, his voice incongruously genteel despite the grimace on his face. Unthinkingly, he'd spoken in English-- although the language was the default setting in his limited pack of human tongues, so perhaps it wasn't that surprising.

Korra's eyes had bugged out and she'd raised a useless hand--then recoiled, eyes squeezinng shut as the mech tank fell over, making the earth shudder. Damn it, should've caught him with earthbending. Scratch that, Equalist pilot probably wouldn't have appreciated that. Crap, what if he'd died from the impact?

To Korra's relief, he heard the pilot make a clearly-not-dead sound. She blew out a relieved breath, placing a hand over her chest. Can't believe I got so worked up over an Equalist...though I guess Avatar Aang would've done the same, actually. Couldn't even kill Fire Lord Ozai when all the texts suggested he was an awful man. Then she frowned, her hand stiffening and falling away.

What the hell had he just said?

"Um, mind repeating that?" She called down to the pilot.

Not English, then, but that wasn't a human language he had to use very often, or he'd have recognized it immediately. And of course, there was always the chance it wasn't one he'd encountered yet at all...

He lifted his other arm, the one he wasn't resting on, and circled his fingers. "Keep talking, skin job," he invited, switching to one of the other Earth languages in his codec-- German, this time. Farsi was next. "I'm not getting it yet." And then Japanese. "Any of this sounding familiar?"

Edited 2012-06-22 05:31 (UTC)

Korra blinked as the pilot's voice shifted very strangely. "Uh...."

She remembered his circling fingers--holy shit, the mech tank had fingers! Way different from the ones she'd seen in Hiroshi's secret lab.

"That--!" Korra startled, pointing, as the last thing he said sounded vaguely comprehensible but still off. "That's--what are you doing?" She deflated, tilting her head. Was she too far away to hear him right or something? Was the mech tank so damaged it was interfereing with the pilot's voice.

Carefully, Korra began to climb down the outcropping, toward the downed pilot in the mech tank.

Edited 2012-06-22 05:37 (UTC)

Ah, there, she'd reacted to the Japanese. Although her response made it clear that he hadn't quite found the right dialect yet... He flipped mentally through his options, watching the skin job start to work its way down from the rock outcropping at the same time.

"All right, how about this?" he asked in standard Chinese. "Or this, is this better?" That time had been in Mandarin Chinese. "Does this ring a bell?" Cantonese.

[[OOC: So it turns out that 'Chinese' encompasses a lot of things, ahaha. Mandarin Chinese is probably a good choice as the analogue of what Korra speaks, but you're playing her, so ultimately it's up to you!]]

"Uh, yeah, that's better--" Korra's eyes widened when the guy's talking shifted into something less comprehensible.

"--no, the one before, that one, that one was a good one--!"

Korra slid the rest of the way down the outcropping, the rock making a comfortable grinding sound as her feet hit more level ground. Even with the mecha tank down, she still looked slightly up.

"What were you doing with the weird talking thing? You weren't making any sense." Korra asked. "Was that Equalist code or something?" Then she remembered one of the White Lotus guards banging the old radio when it was acting up, despite an older guard's protests that he'll just break the thing. "Or was your radio acting odd--are you using a radio to talk--?" Korra thought it sounded like Hiroshi used a radio thing to talk from his tank, with the way his voice had echoed.

Knock Out jumped back one language pack, triggering the Mandarin module again. "This? All right. My, wasn't that... fun~." His words were deadpan, sarcastic, but a thin smile curved his lips anyway.

"It's not a radio, it's my vocalizer," he said, "and I was just trying to figure out which language you were speaking." He gave his free hand a negligent little flip and glanced sidelong down at the squishy. "You Earthlings do seem to have a plethora of them, after all."

Korra tried to comprehend the rush of new words. 'Vocalizer,' not 'radio'--okay, probably a term unique to mech tanks. But different languages? Korra had only known her whole world to speak the same thing. She thought about that though; hadn't one of her frustrated tutors said that ancient texts on like the spirits spoke a little differently?

And then there was--

"'Earthlings?'" Korra arched a brow, folding her arms. "Is that slang for earthbenders or something?" Korra had to admit, she still wasn't up to all the particulars of the lingo in Republic City. It had taken her a while to realize what those Triad thugs meant by 'fresh off the boat.'

Again she marveled at this particular tank--despite the damage, it still moved rather smoothly, like a real person.

Edited 2012-06-22 06:19 (UTC)

It was Knock Out's turn to mull over the unfamiliar terminology, though he'd ignored it only a moment ago. His head cocked slightly to the side in a very human gesture of curiosity.

"Earthbenders? No, no, Earthlings." He waved his hand again, fingers fluttering. "You know, denizens of the planet earth. Humankind. Homo sapiens. Your particularly breed of organic life, squishy."

He knew he should be trying harder than this to be discrete, but it wasn't like his local camouflage hadn't been compromised already-- if it was still local at all, which he was starting to suspect wasn't the case. Even were he still on Earth, though, he was simply too tired to dissemble . Only a derided fraction of the skin jobs took stories of extraterrestrial contact seriously anyway.

[[OOC: I've got to call it a night on my end, I'm afraid. But leave a tag and I'll get back to responding in the morning!]]

Thanks for letting me know. :)

How do I leave a tag? What is that? ...Is that a reply? (I will be replying to your last thing!)

Haha, yeah, sorry. XD Tag is DWRP slang for a comment in reply to a thread or a post. X3

Watching his fluttering fingers with fascination and listening to him talk, Korra became convinced the pilot had seriously hit his head in the fall and was delusional right now. Every other word of his made sense. "Homo sapiens" was a big chunk of gibberish right there.

"Uh...right," Korra said uncertainly, trying to drop the subject and get around to helping the pilot. He seemed like he wasn't going to attack, which was a good thing. Korra felt some of her confidence return.

"So, do you need any help? You sounded kinda hurt." Korra began to walk closer to the tank. She knocked experimentally against the metal, shaking off some of the dirt. "Are you stuck in there?"

Edited 2012-06-22 07:26 (UTC)

[[OOC: But I'll tag as I can when I have the time! Just keep on responding when you get my replies and, I'll tag back as I can around my errands and such!]]

The skin job actually had the temerity to reach out and rap on his plating? Knock Out flinched away, his pleasant expression twisting into a scowl. Still, he was gentle as he dropped his arm between the human and his plating and nudged her away with the door-panel plating on the limb.

"I doubt there's anything you could do for me," he said with a thin attempt at a smile. "All I, ah, appreciate the concern."

Not really, but he wasn't really in any position to alienate anyone right now, even an overly-curious little human.

Korra blinked, too surprised to resist as the mech's arm gently nudged her away.

When she'd knocked on the metal, it hadn't sounded as hollow as she thought it would. But surely not all of it was hollowed out for the pilot, however would it walk, let alone fight?

The girl, blinked, again, as the Equalist pilot appreciated her concern. An Equalist!

Then Korra bit her lip. Was it an Equalist pilot in there? She'd only ever seen Equalists in the mech tanks, but theoretically others could pilot them. But Korra couldn't see how anyone else could have hands on that tech besides Hiroshi, unless there was another secret factory for mech tanks (superior ones, too), and that was a bit of a stretch. Right? Korra massaged her forehead, eyes closed. Like she was an expert on mech tanks or how technology really worked.

The girl shook herself, and tried again, this time keeping her distance from the tank. The pilot was still wary of her, clearly.

"Well, we don't know that for sure, do we?" Korra rested her arms on her hips, head tilted up. "Why don't you just come out of your tank and we'll see if there's anything I can do for you or not?"

Edited 2012-06-22 17:37 (UTC)

"My... tank," Knock Out repeated blankly. He blinked down at the human, trying to parse that, but he couldn't. He wasn't in a tank, either of the cylinrical storage variety or the heavy artillery variety-- and he certainly wasn't wise enough to human culture to realize that she thought there was a squishy like her inside of him.

So finally he shrugged awkwardly. "I have no idea what you're talking about," he admitted.

"Crap, you did hit your head badly--" Spirits, maybe it was an Equalist with amnesia?

Korra took a breath, trying to calmly explain since the other guy probably needed calm. "Yeah, your, y'know, your mech tank--" Korra gestured, taking in the huge metal weapon. "--the mech tank you're piloting." Korra shrugged, her outstretched arms shifting as if she were measuring two options. "Granted, I've never seen a mech tank like this before with like real eyes and a mouth, but y'know, mech tanks probably come in different builds like Satomboiles do--"

Korra's eyes widened as she realized she was rambling, and she jerked into a stiff straight backed position, arms flat against her body. She coughed roughly into her fist.

"Anyway Sir, if you come out, I can help you...unless are you trapped? Can you not get out?"

The girl frowned. She had no water, she didn't see how fire could help, and the earth beneath her feet was actually sort of...odd. And forget about airbending.

Still, earthbending looked like the only thing for it right now.

"Look, I'm not much of a metalbender, but--" And slowly Korra bent up a small pillar of earth.

"--I can use earthbending to get you out. Reeeally carefully."

And then she let the pillar quickly drop and merge back with the relatively level plane. "Or if there's a specific thing I gotta to do to let you out of that mech tank, like flip a switch to let you out--just, y'know, instruct me."

The last thing Knock Out really wanted right now was to listen to human babble, but he was a bit of a captive audience-- and he was a bit curious. Only a bit, as his assorted aches and pains and the fact that he was somewhere other than where he should be both took mental precedent, but he could still manage a little curiosity.

He could definitely manage a little curiosity when he got to lay back in the junk pile to listen to her speak. When the underlying assumption of her prattle finally became clear to him, though, he shot right back up, staring down at her incredulously.

"I get it! You think there's a skin job like you--" he said, talking heedlessly over her right up until the pillar of earth rose out of the ground beside her. He fell silent, staring with wide optics.

"Did you do that?" he asked, leaning forward intently. "That thing with the dirt?"

Korra's body tensed as the pilot leaned his mech tank close to her. His weapon really was freakin' huge.

"Uh, yeah, I'm an Earthbender...." Korra trailed off, feeling a sense of deja vu when they were talking about Earthlings. And she remembered that the guy was probably suffering a concussion or something, he was dealing with some serious delusions, gaps in memory.

Korra coughed, and explained in an overly formal voice. "As in, I can control the earth and make it do what I want."

She was about to show off her firebending when she remembered that the pilot had never seemed to recognize her as the Avatar, which could be because of the knock on the head he must've received when falling down. Probably would be best if she didn't advertise herself as the Avatar yet, not unless she had to use another type of bending.

Edited 2012-06-23 00:46 (UTC)

"By the Allspark," Knock Out said softly, astonished despite himself. "That's what you meant by 'earthbending', isn't it?" He leaned in even closer, his bright optics narrowing as he looked the human up and down.

Had he been mistaken? Was this particular organic not a human after all? As far as he knew, telekinesis-- even limited telekinesis-- wasn't exactly a trait common to the kind he knew. She certainly looked like a typical skin job, though, so if it was a case of convergent evolution, it was an astonishing one.

But she was speaking an Earth language...

"I didn't think humans were equipped with abilities like that," he said slowly. "Certainly I've never seen anyone do anything like your, ah, earthbending."

Korra fidgeted as the pilot looked her up and down.

She froze when he spoke.

"Uh...'humans?'"

The girl finally threw up her arms, exasperated. "How hard did you hit your head? You're acting like you're not human too!"

(And the thought bit at the back of her mind--she was forgetting who was human back home, hadn't she? She hadn't thought of Tarrlok as human when she kept coming at him and never stopped, just saw an enemy that had to go. Amon terrified her, she thought he was a monster--but surely he ate under that mask. And he'd been right about some benders, like Tarrlok. And Hiroshi was Asami's father, and surely those other Equalists and even that Mustache Guy had some sort of family or friends too.)

"And you've never seen Ear--well, okay, if your head's that seriously scrambled, you probably forgot about that too. Or maybe you came from some backwards village, I don't know!"

Korra wanted to pull at her hair. She just wanted to be home with Naga right now.

A slow, sharp smile spread across Knock Out's face. She hadn't realized yet, had she? She still thought he was just some shell wrapped around an organic core.

"Ah, but you see, that's the thing," he said, his voice lilting and singsongy. She may have been getting frustrated, but he was suddeny having a bit of fun. He straightened up a little tossing his head proudly and spreading his long-fingered hands across his chest. "I'm not human. Rather far from it, in fact~."

Korra frowned, eyes narrowed. "Then what are you--"

The girl's eyes widened as the thought struck her. Super weird place, strange mech tank now claiming it had no human pilot and yet still talking on its own, claiming it wasn't human....

"--you, are you a spirit?"

Korra went over the stories she'd heard of spirits. Even in the Spirit World, she'd heard spirits could take on shapes familiar to the mortal plane, something as tame as monkeys or overly huge and nightmarish centipedes. This one could be a spirit somewhat in the shape of a mech tank, and with Fire Nation style armor. And the place was strange--could it be the Spirit World? She was supposed to be the bridge between the mortal and spirit worlds, had she finally made a connection?

Excitement rose up in her chest at the thought. If this tank had no human pilot, it had to be a spirit, what else could it be? And this place was foreign and didn't match descriptions of places she'd learned about in geography texts, it had to be the Spirt World, right?

But if she was in the Spirit World...her body really could be locked up somewhere in a cage by Tarrlok. Korra inwardly shuddered at the thought.

Edited 2012-06-23 02:04 (UTC)

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ooc note: sorry if i mess up linguistics a lil'/i just know japanese writing does have kanji

Don't worry about it! I know very little myself, I'm just kinda winging it.

Re: korra refers to the middle mandarin chinese one

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OOC question--tag?

Re: OOC question--tag?

pm or email when you're back on the rp i guess? :)

I'm actually going to be on and off pretty intermittently for most of today...

Re: I'm actually going to be on and off pretty intermittently for most of today...

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OOC