A TRAIN COMES INTO THE STATION.
You wake up on a train.
Your phone is buzzing. It's in your pocket, in your hand, on the seat next to you. It's a normal phone, and you're on a normal train car. One of the lights flickers, a little further down. The world is very quiet. It feels like you're right where you're meant to be. On the phone's surface is a white screen and the words—
WELCOME TO THE CITY. BEGIN ORIENTATION?
▶ NO
Please take a moment to complete your orientation.
Once you're finished, the subway doors slide open to let you out onto the train platform. To your right, the platform continues on and eventually ends; to the left is a set of stairs that will lead you up into the station itself. The platform is quiet, clean, empty–there's no one else around, and the only sounds you can hear are your own footsteps, your own breaths, and the occasional faraway sound of a creaking pipe or rush of air. The train you disembarked will stay there as long as you do, its doors still open, until you finally decide to venture up into this new locale.
As you make your way up the stairs to your left, you find yourself in the belly of City Hall station. The station is large, a sprawling underground mini-metropolis of corridors and storefronts. Here, you may find others like you, freshly-arrived city residents from other realms (or even your own). There is also a subway map, which will give you an idea of the layout of the neighborhood, and ticketing machines, which can currently only be used to buy tickets to a handful of stations located on lines 1, 2, and 9.
If you're hungry or in need of any kind of supplies, there are plenty of storefronts inside the subway station as well—snack stands, convenience stores, restaurants, clothing stores, a pharmacy, and a variety of empty shops that may or may not have ever been in use. Everything is unlocked, and you can take whatever you need.
Characters may stay on the train platform indefinitely, and may re-board and re-disembark from the subway as many times as they like, but the train will not depart nor will the doors close. Once they go up the stairs into the train station, they may hear the train doors closing and the train departing. Another train will not arrive, no matter how long the character waits. Only once they come up the stairs into the station itself may characters encounter their fellow newly-arrived residents and take advantage of what the city has to offer.
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WELCOME TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD.
The station is located in the city center. It has three major exits that lead to areas of interest in the district, but there are several other smaller exits that lead in other directions around the neighborhood. You are welcome to use any of them, but may find the north, southwest, and east exits to be the most welcoming.
TO THE NORTH
The northern entrance to the station leads up into the sunlight and puts you out in a brickwork plaza. There's a modest building in front of you, three or four stories of stone with a welcoming facade. There's a sign above the entryway–it says City Hall. You may be tempted to explore, if you're interested in learning more about the city and how it functions, but prepare to find yourself disappointed–the folders in the records rooms are full of empty, blank sheets of paper, and the logbooks and balance sheets are similarly devoid of information.
Immediately to the west of City Hall, you will find a small building that houses the tourist information kiosk. The kiosk is not currently operational, but you may want to remember its location...
TO THE SOUTHWEST
The western exit of the station takes you up into a city park, lush and green with a very light fog still hanging about the trees. There are lampposts on the walkways and benches where you could rest, and plenty of flora, although you can neither see nor hear any signs of animal life. You walk the paths that meander idly through the verdant grass and you feel a sense of peace, some of your unease about this place easing into a pleasant calm. The air smells fresh, like it's recently rained, and you'll find the grass ever so slightly damp should you decide to take a seat.
As you make your way deeper into the park, the trees grow denser and the smell of soil and plant life grows stronger. This is the older part of the park, very nearly a forest, with ivy climbing the trunks of the trees and plants and shrubs growing riotously around their bases. As you turn a corner, you find yourself first in the statue garden, although the statues are harder to see now, choked as they are with ivy. There are many statues, some partially obscured, some fully–very few of them still stand free of the vines and clinging roots. (It doesn't feel quite as peaceful here.) If a statue's face looks a little bit familiar, you may not want to look at it too long.
Continue down the path and you will find yourself in a graveyard, one that seems centuries old. Most of the headstones are worn away by time and covered in moss, rendering them impossible to read. The few that are free of moss are blank, or bear only suggestions of names too faint to be understood. (Was that the name of–no, it couldn't have been. Could it?) Many of the headstones stand at an angle or are toppled over completely, having been subjected to either strong winds or the roots of the trees that grow up from some of the graves, spreading branches toward the sky.
TO THE EAST
The final exit of the station, to the east, puts you out on a quiet surface street. Are you hungry? Or are you paralyzed by choice? There are plenty of restaurants, offering options of almost any food you can imagine. You could try a convenience store–it's well stocked, and the items there seem free for the taking. How about a restaurant? There's no one to take your order, but when you look in the kitchen, there's something on the stove, and it's just what you've been craving. Imagine that.
A few blocks down, you come in through the lobby of a tall building and find yourself in a corporate office. The fluorescent lights are steady and unforgiving, and the cubicles and offices are empty. There are a few pieces of paper on desks, a few folders left in organizers, but everything is perfectly blank. Despite how empty and quiet the office is, it nonetheless gives you the feeling that just a few minutes ago, this place was bustling with workers going about their daily business.
You enter another building and find yourself in the lobby of an apartment complex–finally, a place to rest. The first door you try opens easily into a completely empty living room, freshly vacuumed but without a single piece of furniture. It's a nice apartment, quiet, but with a little too much echo for your taste, maybe. Still, and perhaps oddly, you have no trouble envisioning what life here would be like.
The second door you open leads to an apartment that feels lived-in. Why does it feel lived-in? It's fully furnished with items that seem to go together perfectly, true, but the feeling is more than that–the room feels like someone was just here, maybe standing right in the kitchen only moments before you swung the door open. The air is a perfectly comfortable temperature, and it somehow smells like home despite that you've never once set foot here before. The refrigerator is stocked, and the cabinets are full of spices and flatware and kitchen utensils.
As you look around the living room, you find that there are pictures in frames on the walls and some of the flat surfaces–a seascape, a field, a shot of a city park bench. In each of the photos there's something just slightly wrong with the angle, as though the photographer were aiming for a subject that can no longer be seen.
Characters are welcome to explore the district around the City Hall subway station to their heart's content. The City Hall building itself contains several floors of offices and file rooms, but none of them contain any particularly interesting information. Nonetheless, characters may wish to team up with other newcomers and try to find some hints about the nature of the city. They can also spend a while in the park, the statue garden, or the graveyard. In the blocks surrounding the station there are plenty of options for food and housing, as well as office buildings, storefronts, and alleyways to look around. There are no workers in any of the buildings, and there does not seem to be an honor system for payment, nor any consequences for taking food from the stores or setting up camp in an apartment or office building.
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A WASH, ANYONE?
The coin laundromat is tucked into the first floor of one of the tall apartment buildings. Soap is complimentary, and while the machines say that they cost a quarter per load, in reality they are fully operational without any money being exchanged at all. If you have any clothes that need a wash, perhaps items that have been dirtied by your explorations (or your travels before arriving in the city), you may want to take this opportunity to wash them for free.
From the soap dispenser, you can retrieve packets of detergent in different strengths. There's plenty of stock of for mild to moderate grime and for heavy-duty stains, but there are also a handful of packets with slightly less obvious purposes. For things remembered, says one. For unhappy accidents, says another. Feel free to use whichever seems most suited to your needs.
When your laundry cycle has ended, the buzzer sounds and the door pops open so the clothing can be retrieved. You grab a laundry basket and reach in to start pulling fabric out of the machine by the handful. But wait a second–the more clothing you retrieve, the less familiar the items seem, and by the time you've retrieved the last bundled sock from the depths of the dryer you're absolutely positive: These clothes don't belong to you.
You're sure that you put your own clothing into the machine, but these are someone else's clothes entirely. Did someone sneak in while you weren't paying attention and swap out your laundry? Or did you accidentally open up the wrong dryer to retrieve the wrong load? Maybe you'd better look around at whoever else is in the laundromat with you and have a go at trying to find the owner of these clothes.
Whether the characters have had their clothing swapped or simply opened the wrong machine to grab someone else's laundry is up to the player's imagination, but one thing's for sure: you have someone else's clothes in your basket. Maybe these are clothes that belong to another character in the laundromat, or maybe they're garments that belong to someone that character knew back home. Players are encouraged to mess around with the premise and use it to get to know other characters!
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COME ONE, COME ALL...
Have you ever noticed that flickering sign hanging in the window of that little building around the corner from the parking lot? The one that says PSYCHIC READINGS in bold neon lettering?
You step inside the shop and immediately smell a powerful combination of aromas: herbs, candles, incense, something spicy and warm underneath. It's a small space, cluttered with objects. A crystal ball covered in velvet sits in the center of a table, and there are tarot card sets and drawers full of dried herbs and flowers. On the shelves are various remedies with labels printed so neatly it's impossible to tell whether they're typed or handwritten. Headaches, or hemophilia, and also irascibility and fits of sighing. There are also jars full of less easily-identifiable contents, but a close examination may show you frog legs, fish eyes, rat tails. For some reason, it feels like sticking your hand in one of these jars might not be the best idea.
Toward the back of the shop is a glass case that holds the bust of a woman. As you approach, your movement triggers a light inside the case to illuminate the woman's face–or where her face would be, if she had one. The normal human features of her face are smoothed out until they barely resemble a face at all, with slightly hollowed divots for eyes and a faintly raised bump for a nose. The closer you get, though, the more strongly you feel that despite the absence of eyes, the woman is indeed watching you.
The lettering at the top of the case states FORTUNE TELLER, and a sign affixed to the front of the glass says, Ask for anything, but be careful what you wish for.
You form a question in your mind, then ask your question out loud. The woman shifts, straightening up, and you hear the faint whirring of clockwork and pneumatics moving inside her. She gathers her hands in front of her, cupping them like she's holding water, and strange light emanates from her palms, casting harsh illumination on the blank space where her face should be. Although she has no mouth with which to speak, you nonetheless hear a vaguely female voice intone, "Your fate has been read."
A paper slip emerges from a slot in the front of the case, your freshly-printed fortune, the ink barely dry.
Although the crystal ball will not actually show the future, characters with any kind of herbal knowledge may clock that the herbs and remedies in the drawers and shelves of the shop are legitimate. Characters can ask anything they want of the fortune teller, or make as many wishes as they like. They'll get as many fortune slips as correspond to the number of questions they ask. Players are encouraged to come up with whatever vaguely-accurate fortunes you think work for your character, but if you're low on ideas, you can always try an online Magic 8 Ball or fortune cookie generator.
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WILDCARD.
The city is by no means small, and there are plenty of things for you to see. There's no rush in exploring, so feel free to take your time looking around and peering into various nooks and crannies and alleyways—and don't worry, you're not very likely to find anything peering back.
If none of the above prompts appeal, feel free to check out the Locations and Maps pages and write your own freestyle prompt using one or many of the available locations.
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citylogs2023-06-01 12:00 am
Keith | Voltron: Legendary Defender | OTA
[ for anyone venturing through the park, they may run into keith sitting on a bench with a plastic baggie of pilfered food, keeping his eyes on a delicious-looking chocolate chip cookie that's just lying on the sidewalk.
interrupt him? or watch the watcher? or perhaps you catch him when he gives up on whatever this whole endeavor is and mutters: ]
Did this place get irradiated? Even the ants are gone.
CITY HALL
[ in a way, going to the most obvious building to come looking for information feels like a trap. not to mention, keith's experience with government authorities hasn't exactly led him to believe any bumbling official will actually have any help, but being at a loss for how it is he got to this place, or why the city has been evacuated, keith does eventually make his way to city hall to look for ... well, if not answers, then something.
there aren't any guards to block him from entering, but it becomes clear soon enough that there isn't anything to guard in the first place. empty shelves, empty filing cabinets, empty desks -- keith's expression grows sourer the more he looks. ]
Where'd all the records go?
[ then, glancing up to whoever else is in the room with him: ]
Think some city suits will come running if the fire alarm gets pulled?
LAUNDROMAT
[ it's been a long day. not that this is any real excuse for zoning out the way keith has while waiting for his laundry cycle to complete, but there's only so long a person can stay sharp before thoughts start to wander.
point being, keith is pretty sure that he didn't snatch up a pair of cute kitty socks. or this alien t-shirt. after giving both a puzzled look, he turns to whoever's next to him, holding up both articles of clothing. ]
Did you sneak these in?
WILDCARD
[ hit me up with whatever ideas you have! pm this journal if you'd like to plot something out. ]
Laundromat
[What a weird thing to ask. Jamil looks down at the apparently intrusive articles of clothing, and… does Jamil really seem like the type of guy to wear socks like that? Or that shirt?]
I’ll take those socks off your hands, though. If you want.
[They’re almost ridiculously cute. And it’s a bit damp outside, so in case his own socks get wet, he’d have replacements ready.
Logic, Jamil. Logic. He totally doesn’t just want the cute cat socks.]
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buuuuuuut,,,. ]
So the socks aren't yours, but you want to wear them anyway.
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I didn’t say I wanted to wear them. Have you seen it out there? It’s weird. Cat socks are one of the least creepy things I could have on hand to give someone, or show someone.
[This is only half a lie. As if Jamil is the type of guy to just pull up his pants leg or slip out of his shoes and declare: “Hey! Look at my cat socks!” These socks just seem like the sort of thing that might make someone smile. Not someone like Jamil, but someone nicer. Someone nice.
He glances back over his shoulder.]
So are you going to give me them or not?
sorry for the late, allergies have been a pain.
Uh, no. Because they're not yours. For all I know whoever actually owns these socks might show up and want them back.
[ not that keith plans on sticking around the laundromat forever until this hypothetical real owner shows up, but at least while he's in here, he can certainly do them the favor of keeping their socks out of the hands of good samaritan sock thieves. ]
Did you actually run into any little kids out there in the city? Cuz I didn't see any.
City Hall
The fire alarm is the boring option. [ For a former terrorist who is very much not ashamed of it, sure. Duo stops pawing through files for a moment to tilt his head slightly, popping a stiff shoulder before he's right back to it. Who the hell knows what might be hidden in here, though -
He pauses for a moment, gears clearly turning before he's rifling in the pockets of his leather jacket, producing a yet unopened pack of cigarettes and a multitude of lighters. ]
Actually, that may be the easiest solution.
See if anyone comes runnin' for a certain place if the whole joint's going up.
Everything in here is the most vanilla gossip I've ever read, anyway.
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but then again, he's not judging -- not yet at least. he closes the desk drawer he'd just opened up, shooting the guy a curious look. ]
Guessing you're in a rush to get answers quick too, then?
[ because that at least, is highly relatable. ]
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Well I figure it’s what they should do if I’m gonna be here.
[ yes, he agreed to be here in a round about way, but it’s probably some form of coercion when one is already in a very creepy location.
At any rate, Duo is debating all the ways he can possibly think of to make a fire and fast. ]
This place is creepy silent anyway. Might as well liven it up, right?
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Right. See if this place actually has a pulse.
[ that's it. apparently that one bit of incredulity was all the brakes keith had in his system. he opens up another desk drawer, this time finding a. blank legal pad, which he holds up in his hand. ]
This'll at least get the smoke detectors going.
[ a beat, then: ]
Keith, by the way. You're...?
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He’d intended to use it for cigarettes of course, but here they are in these circumstances. ]
Duo. [ finally his hand lands on something that isn’t a doughnut wrapper or some other snack food, and Duo shows the lighter to his companion. ]
If the entire pad is lit from one side to the other it should burn for a decent time.
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more than likely, duo's probably doing the same. it's a weird thought, though keith doesn't miss a beat in holding out his hand in silent request to take the lighter. ]
Got it.
[ giving the corners of the room another lookover to check for cameras that he knows doesn't exist, he furrows his brow. ]
You gonna stick around to see what happens or do you need a few minutes head start?
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[ Terrorism upon Earth and space does that to a kid. For the moment, Duo is definitely taking note of Keith's willingness to cause a little chaos, but it's little more than that. Who knows what they'll be up against here, anyway, and he has to know who has the ability to play the game, even a little.
He passes over the lighter easily enough, leaning against a nearby filing cabinet as if they're discussing where to get lunch that day instead of arson. ]
It'll take a lot more than a little fire to scare me off. Go ahead and light it.
[ He is usually the one lighting fires and setting off bombs, so it's nice to get a little bit of a day off. ]
Hopefully the first one to come runnin' isn't Wufei.
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park
[... For a long moment, Izuku just stands there looking at the other boy looking at that chocolate chip cookie on the ground. Because part of him is curious about what he's doing but another part of him is far too polite to ask him what he's doing...
... So it's this weird moment of silence. Diligently watching that cookie on the ground.]
Ah-
[Izuku gets it now?!]
You were trying to see if any ants would come to break up the cookie and take it away!? ... I was wondering...
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Yeah. Couldn't help noticing this place way more than just people. Pidgeons, squirrels, bugs -- you know.
[ pausing to frown at the uneaten cookie on the ground, keith goes quiet a moment before swinging up onto his feet to pick it up. ]
Guessing you're not actually from wherever this place is either?
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[Izuku is totally thinking that he was somehow dumped into an empty city that had some sort of environmental issue that made everyone evacuate. Nuclear issue? He sure hopes not...]
But yeah... I'm not from here either. I arrived on that train like some of the others have.
[There aren't a whole lot of people around but all the stories seem to be the same so far. Arriving on that train.]
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Yeah, Only other thing I can think of right now is maybe the critters don't come out at this time of day.
[ but that's still kind of an oddly specific pattern of behavior if everything's gone nocturnal or something. after giving the cookie a final lookover, keith throws it neatly into the trash can opposite the bench. ]
Do you even remember how you got on the train? Cuz I sure don't. I kinda fell through a wormhole and blacked out, so I assumed something must have dragged me out of my lion and put me on the train, but there's just nothing here that seems like it would have caused that.
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Izuku frowns as well as he listens to the boy's considerations because it sounds a lot like what happened to Izuku as well.]
I don't remember much either... I was in the middle of a fight with a villain that I was trying to stop ...
[His last memories before coming here are difficult. He doesn't want to put that on someone he's only just met. So he swallows his breath and shakes his head.]
The next thing I knew I was waking up in that train as well with an old phone vibrating at me. It looks like we have more questions than we do answers right now...
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A villain?
[ the scenario described overall isn't actually all that weird. arguably keith was doing much the same prior to escaping via wormhole. it's just -- there are a lot of ways to describe zarkon and the galra empire. evil. for starters. cruel. vicious. destroyers. villain would be apt too, and yet... ]
... like a comic book villain?
[ .... or is this actually code for "i was in the middle of playing video games." ]
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[In Izuku's world villains aren't restricted to comic book stories so he does look a tad confused at first. But he shakes his head to clarify.]
Ahh... No, a real villain. I'm a hero in training and there... was an incident.
[And incident- to put it lightly. Again, it's the same kind of boat where it's hard to explain the intricacies of villains and how Shigaraki is a mass murderer and how Izuku is trying to stop an all-out war...
Gosh, if it was only video games.]
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WILDCARD.
but he leaves his commandeered apartment anyway.
dallying there won’t help. it’s not as though lying in that too-soft bedding will grant him the sleep he desperately needs, not when he can’t dial down the anxiety. it’s a near constant these days, the restlessness of his consciousness so ingrained that he hardly notices just how overwrought with tension he is. it’s a byproduct of – what was the count? two-hundred and seventy-four, give or take a day. it’s difficult to keep track of the passage of time when held captive in an alien prison.
but he’s not there anymore? by some miracle – or some disaster, because optimism for himself is long dead – he’s on… earth? the architecture certainly looks human made. he’s yet to find anyone who knows what the hell is going on here, though. the cellular device provides dismal answers, not even the most basic of necessities like the date, and everyone he’s spoken to in person or on the network is similarly baffled, so…
looks like he’s on his own. what else is new?
no real direction in mind, shiro simply puts in the hours of foot-traffic in hopes of finding… something. inevitably, he makes his way into the park. it’s… nice. more than nice. having spent over a year in space at this point, he hasn’t been surrounded by greenery in what feels like a lifetime. there, miraculously, shiro takes a breath and feels at peace for one gloriously long moment. but quick and fleeting, the feeling curbs as he wanders deeper to come across a cluster of statues. one, two, three… they’re life-size, all of them dressed in… battle gear? space suits? what are those? the face of the third, smallest statue is distracting for another reason altogether, because it almost looks like… matt?
not quite. shiro talks himself down from running with that, because if true, what is he meant to do with that? it’s too unsettling, too weird, too… not something shiro wants to think about. so his gaze falls on the empty pedestal in the middle. there are two, actually. one in the very center and then another to the right of it, which is then flanked by the thinner male statue. it’s a strange compulsion then, to wander closer and step up onto it. glancing again, to the one statue to the right and then to the two on the left, shiro frowns and crosses his arms, wondering why these two pedestals have been cleared. what had been here? more impractically dressed spacemen?
and god, he needs to stop looking at that matt one. ]
and so it begins
voltron doesn't have that kind of time. Keith doesn't have that kind of time.
so instead of making sure to build up stockpiles of ration of food and other supplies, keith has been on an absolute warpath trying to bruteforce his way to answers. so yes, maybe there was an attempt to start a fire. maybe there was even an attempt to commandeer an abandoned car. but it's all led to nothing so far. arguably, worse than nothing because this morning, keith's woekn up with a pair of handcuffs slapped on his wrists.
does he remember anyone approaching in the night to put them on? no. are there any signs of a break-in? equally no. but most pressing of all to his immediate needs, keith can't seem to get them off either. frustrated with his predicament as well as the implications of a silent police body watching them after all, keith ends up on a long walk through the city to try and clear his head.
an affinity for the wilderness over concrete landscape leads him to enter the park, and beyond that the cluster of statues that he hasn't thought to investigate. though he prefers quiet by default, the totality of it still grates at his ears. the effect is made eerier by the walls of stone eyes watching on either side of the winding path. still, keith doesn't take his cue to leave because there might be something here that can help break the cuffs, right?
a rustling noise from around the corner makes keith jump, ducking behind a hedgge before cautiously peering around to look at an open space with a cluster of three statues with twi apparently missing from the pentagon shaped platform.
but it's not really the statues that hold his attention. rather, there's a familiar figure standing there, dressed in black clothing. he can't possibly assume that it's shiro, but he freezes in place, heart beat accelerating so fast that the world does a quick spin around him before keith remembers to breathe and come out of hiding. ]
Shiro?
[ he knows better than to hope. truly he does, but that one name is filled with so much expectation and yearning for some sign of familiarity that in an instant he's made it clear to any potential enemy listening in where his allegiances lie. ]
begins with tl;dr... i set out to make this short
a rustle, a change in atmosphere, the hair rising at his nape… all of it points to having eyes on him and with that feeling, his heart rate picks up and his fingers clutch harder at his arms. the metal ones dig in too harshly and he has to consciously relax as not to give himself bruises. a recent addition to his appearance, the false arm is something shiro is still becoming accustomed to: its capabilities, its strength, its weight.
he does know its usefulness in a fight, however. so if someone is trying to get the drop on him, then…
shiro?
that’s all it takes to flip the script. giving up all pretense of being unaware of his would-be mugger, shiro whips around to the voice, face gone slack with surprise and soft, almost, with an emotion he hasn’t felt in eons. hope. arguably, he ought to have felt that the moment he woke up in the subway car. earth had come to mind and it still does with every part of the city he explores. there are humans here, too. he’s talked to them, some even in person, and yet, he’s maintained a detachment that has kept him from fully appreciating the kind of human contact that's been denied to him for months upon months.
it hits him now, though. because although the orange uniform is gone and age has made that face sharper, shiro knows him in an instant. ]
Keith? [ his arms fall away to hang at his sides, standing there vulnerable and defenseless for one, two, before his feet start moving. ] I can’t believe it.
[ and yet, there he is, different and the same all at once. caught up in the elation of not just a familiar face, but his best friend’s familiar face, shiro has yet to think of the odds and the implications of keith being roped into whatever this is. he isn’t tripped up by his scars or his white hair or his butchered arm, either. he’s outpacing everything that can ruin this. for now, he’s stepping off the pedestal and advancing on keith, gaze locked squarely with his, never straying to take in the glint of metal caught around keith’s wrists. ]
Come here, is it really you?
[ disbelief carries through his voice, but even so, he lifts his left hand as he travels, going for a mirrored version of their long overdue, patented hug. ]
shhh i accept you anyway
relief bursts out of the cage that keith has stuffed all his compartmentalized emotions into, and for a happy moment, keith isn't operating purely like a soldier or a palaidn worthy of being part of voltron. no, keith is simply himself and completely ecstatic to see his best friend coming forward. it's like shiro always says -- they can do this together. they're strong together.
his face splits into the widest grin as he jogs to close the rest of the distance between them. ]
Shiro!
[ wildly inappropriate as it is, keith actually laughs, automatically raising his left hand to clasp the one being extended to him, fumbling a beat as his right arm comes along for the ride. cuffs be damned though, keith doesn't let that slight bump in momentum stop him from the fist bump, clasp, and pull-in chest-to-chest routine. ]
Heh. Figures getting sucked through a wormhole couldn't keep us apart. You hurt anywhere?
yes good, as you should, bc /glues
what the hell?
momentum carries his hand through and they do clasp, though shiro goes rigid, missing the next beat in which he’s meant to pull keith in. in typical shiro fashion, he brushes over concern for his well-being, but at least he has an excuse here. he’s off-kilter and far too confused to process beyond the handcuffs and the utterance of wormhole. ]
Wormhole? What’re you talking about? I was – [ matt, sam. ] – we were abducted by aliens. Didn’t the Garrison…
[ report on that? okay, maybe it’s too much to hope that the running surveillance of the persephone as the three crew members traversed out on kerberos’ surface would have picked up that alien warship to ping the disturbance back to galaxy garrison. is that the explanation the brass gave, though? the persephone was lost in a wormhole? frowning now, shiro gives his head a quick shake and then grasps more firmly, turning keith’s hand over to see his wrist better. ]
Nevermind that. Why do you have these on?
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we were abducted by aliens. garrison. bump, bump, thunk. keith doesn't have much of a poker face, and his owlish staring probably leans comical as he plays the words in his head a second and third time. concussion? maybe shiro had a concussion or something. it's the first thought keith has, and can't seem to shake it off. gaze shifting up higher to look at shiro's head, he forgets the fucking handcuffs just in time for shiro to finally notice them.
one more bump for the road, and keith blurts stupidly:]
There was an incident.
[ a beat. ]
Are you okay? Did you bump your head?
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i just realized you left me on read
... omfg LOL. IT WAS AN ACCIDENT.
LIKELY STORY
wow. it's not enough that shiro doesn't believe keit. ET TU, TERRA.
at least shiro is starting to believe that his head is messed up
... but this aso makes me sad ._.
shiros are sad makers. it's what they are.
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