text; un: Darc

[hiddenlights]

[In all honesty, getting used to his magitek jewelry has been one of the easier adjustments, something that fits into his schema of the world as he’d known it before this strange sideways stumble into an entirely different place. It’s just a form of magic he hasn't seen before, right? Like cursed jewelry back home, something belonging to some little-known tribe. What’s been harder is realising he's the only one from his world here, that he'd left at such an uncertain moment only to find himself among complete strangers in every sense of the word. There doesn't seem to be another Deimos among them.

It doesn't help that so many of you look so damned human.

Once again, his isolation weighs heavy on him, though in a different way than it had in his own world. The fact that he can't verbally communicate with anyone here only makes it worse, more intense. Perhaps one way of lessening the impact is to reach out to the rest of the 'team' via the jewelry, find out how many others there are who occupy a similar position to his own, if any at all.]

Well this is fun, eh? A bunch of people thrown together in a situation where we can't even talk to each other, and yet somehow we're supposed to be working as a team. What a worthless place this is shaping up to be.

Well, I have some questions for you, and if this is the only way to be understood then so be it. How many of you are the only ones from your world? More importantly, how many of you are something other than human? If I have to be stuck here then I wanna know that it's not just gonna be me amid a sea of overgrown monkeys.

[Because despite how rude he sounds, he doesn’t want to go through this this again. To be the only one who stands out as so obviously different on top of everything else. It's only just started to really sink in that he may be stuck here for a while.]

Comments

text | username: olivia

[winces]

Hello! Um, if it helps at all, communication was never really an issue until we got back here, and the bugs started... eating things...

[ she's not even entirely sure how it works. ~magic science~ is a bit beyond her. ]

But, um! I'm the only one from my world... And no one else's that I've met seem to come from anywhere similar...
I haven't been able to understand anybody since this all started.

[hiddenlights]

But it's an issue now and that's what matters.

[He's been working on the bugs - may as well make himself useful - and evidently so have others, yet they're still here, making things needlessly complicated.

It's something, though, hearing that he's not alone in this situation, but--]

And what have you been doing since this started? Doesn't it piss you off?

text; un: cardmaster

[fateality]

My my, we have such the charmer here.

Far as I can figure so far, I'm the only one from my world here, and that fits me just fine. If it's any consolation, there seems to be plenty of non-humans here for your delicate sensitivities.

[hiddenlights]

I don't need to be charming, that's a human concept.

And it's perfectly reasonable to have concerns about being surrounded by a species that can't be trusted as far as you can throw them.

un: L . L

[asscan]

Oska may suffer its malfunctions, and the staff in charge of keeping its finer elements running may be lacking [In thumbs! take that, cats!] however it is a last line of defense between smoothly running worlds and an inert jumble of cosmic shards so hopelessly over your head you cannot imagine the complete devastation.

If we have had the misfortune of adding you to our ranks, it means you've been mobilized to act. Destroy the repulsive bug creatures whenever you find them, or find someone who can do so for you if you possess no spine of your own.

[He means that metaphorically, but also possibly literally, given his ears were originally pricked, so to speak, when he'd noticed a message about non-humans. Almost as an afterthought, he adds] You will find little respite from the sea of flat-faced, beige-toned bipeds here. Even those who profess to share no origin with the species in question share most of their traits.

Many of us are one, or two of a kind here. There may be more who share worlds, but you might consider praying for the world from which they arrived, if that is the case. It can only mean that rifts are consuming their place of origin.

[hiddenlights]

[As much as he dislikes the implication that the situation he's found himself in is somehow over his head, it's not something he can reasonably argue against-- he doesn't understand all this, not yet, not any of it. That there are worlds outside of his own - worlds in just as much disarray and perhaps even more danger - is so vast a concept that he is struggling with it, feels more than a little out of his depth. So he keeps quiet about that, but as for the rest--]

I have plenty of spine. The bugs won't be an issue for long, but I have my own concerns to get back to. My own world and people to defend. I don't have time for this.

[It's a concern though, isn't it? Does his being here mean that more rifts could be opening up in his own world, that it now faces a danger even larger and more nebulous than the one he and the others just put a stop to? It's not something he likes thinking about, and if it's the case that the more of his people end up here then the greater the danger his own world faces, then perhaps it's better to find himself here alone. Still--]

It's disconcerting to know there's so many of them about. Humans, that is. Though I'm not gonna pretend it's a surprise that their worlds are at risk-- they're a danger to themselves and everyone else.

And what about you, eh? What kind of people do you belong to?

un; jedikiller

[sololoquy]

If you believe this to be the worst of your trials to come, then perhaps it is best for you to lie down and wait for the end to find you instead. It would be faster.

What manner of alien are you, then?

[hiddenlights]

Did I say anything about this being the worst of my trials? It's an annoyance, that's what it is.

And I'm Darc, he who will be king of the Deimos. That's all you need to know.

text | un: evan

[evantuality]

[It's easier over text, to sympathize with the frustration of a newbie, but even if this had been a railing rant of the verbal variety it would have struck home. What if this had been his first introduction to his teammates? How awful would it have been to be dumped somewhere amidst such confusion?]

You've definitely gotten the short end of the stick in regards to arrivals; welcome to Oska, I promise we aren't usually an aspiring polyglot's nightmare.

As for your question, I've been making a minor study of that. Most of us are in fact the only representatives of our worlds here, in the sense that none of us would have been liable to run into each other back home, but it's a little more complicated than that: our happenstance employers borrow people from multiple iterations of individual worlds. We have a large proportion of people from different versions of a world called Earth, and then a smaller minority of individuals from other worlds. Those from Earth don't always share a context, either, as some of us have been taken from vastly different locales and even time periods, I think spanning something like a thousand-year spread of time. Anyways, I think it's something like half again the number of Earth people as people from non-Earth worlds.

Proportion of humans versus nonhumans, though... to be honest, I haven't looked into the numbers. You're not alone, though, and it may be something to consider that some of us who look human aren't. I can't speak for other iterations of Earth but on my own home world nobody who couldn't look human makes it very long.

[Sorry, Darc, you asked him about statistics.]

[hiddenlights]

[Well...it's a thorough explanation if nothing else, even if there are a couple of words in there that elude him. Deimos aren't exactly known for their wide and varied vocabularies, and they have no literature to speak of. Any words he doesn't entirely recognise he's just going to try and infer from the context though-- he wouldn't want to look unknowledgeable in front of someone he knows nothing about.]

So you're saying there are multiple versions of the same world? How is that even possible? As for the time anomalies...I suppose if the rifts appear at random then at least that makes a kind of sense. In a way.

And non-humans who look human...are you talking about similarities, or an exact likeness?

[It's another thing he can kind of understand...being part human himself. His 'human' looks have caused him a lot of trouble in the past. Though that's a source of contention for him and not something he's about to bring up outside of further questioning.]

And I suppose the humans of your world kill off anything that seems different from them, eh? If that's the case, it seems like they're the same no matter where they come from.

TEXT. UN: LOKI

[selfimage]

[ this sounds familiar. painfully familiar, actually. it's an echo of a former life, when the details of humanity were lost on him beneath the glory of Asgardian war horns. ]

Feeling a little judgy today?
They're really not so bad, I promise.

[ it's a roundabout way of answering the question, but an answer. ]

[hiddenlights]

[More defensive than judgy - finding yourself alone amidst a sea of people who've always been considered enemies will do that to a guy - but no doubt there's a bit of that going on, too.]

With good reason. And I suppose I'm gonna find out whether I want to or not.

text | username: xXx_trueblue_xXx

[competing]

hey it could be worse
at least we all don't have to go through any rigorous team building exercises
i think i've had enough of those to last me a whole lifetime

[hiddenlights]

Yeah? And what do team building exercises consist of, exactly?

[He and his ragtag group just got the hell on with things and worked out their differences along the way, after all.]

text | username: JASPER

[hardnosed]

They're not the only ones wasting their time here. Name your species.

[hiddenlights]

I don't take orders from anyone. Besides, I asked first.

text | un: beloved

[dailydouble]

There was another from my world, but she is no longer with us. There is no one else here who can understand any of the languages I speak.

[hiddenlights]

That puts us in a similar position, then.

Text @SERENE

[sereneflame]

So what are you if you are not a human? I come from Callirhoe, where many of my countrymen are not human, but you will find the majority of people telling you that they are from earth will never have met a non-human in their life.

[She's hopeful she might have found another Callirhoan]

[hiddenlights]

[Alas, he'll have to disabuse her of that notion.]

I'm Darc, he who will be king of the Deimos. My father was from the Drakyr tribe, a race of Deimos.

[Which...is half an answer, but an answer nonetheless. Time for some deflection--]

You lived alongside other species in your world? How did you get along?

text; un: deathweaver

[respired]

I am alone, and I am not human.

[hiddenlights]

Two things we have in common, then.

► text, un: andromeda

[ex_clobbers559]

Even if you are the only one here from your world, you aren't alone.

( Kara is often oblivious to a lot of things, but this is a sentiment she's struggled with all her life, herself. To him, she'll no doubt sound painfully optimistic.

But her words are borne of experience. )

[hiddenlights]

[Painfully optimistic, all right. But there's something familiar in that, it reminds him of someone else he knows, and because of it he isn't quite as harsh as he could be.]

And I suppose you'd know about that, would you?

text, @Doc Knock

[paintjobs]

I wouldn't be so quick to judge those monkeys. You sound organic.

[hiddenlights]

Not this again. What are you, another 'gem', I suppose.