July Arrivals Log

[thepull_mods]

Who: July Arrivals, Greeters, NPC recruiters & anyone else who happens to be hanging around the Tower Apartments to 'welcome' newcomers.
When: Throughout May, 2012 (Please Specify Date & Time in Thread Header)
Where: The Sector 4 Baseball Diamond, Parking Lot & Lobby of the Tower Apartments
Summary: This is your catch-all one stop log for arrival interactions! New Newcomers can also meet and mingle in the apartment lobby.
Warnings: Nausea, potential for violence, language- add on any warnings or ratings as they come up.

It feels like a whiplash, like being plucked up into the sky and sucked through a very tight dark space before being deposited rather roughly in the City. Your character will be disoriented, dizzy, slightly nauseous, and very sore upon arriving in Siren's Port It is your choice whether your character arrives during the safety of the day or the danger of night.

Until recently, no one knew why, but every new arrival from another world gets deposited in the dead center of an ill-kept baseball diamond.

Some of the fences and signboards have been replaced with information and welcome signs, frequently kept up by Newcomers as encouragement (though from time to time some form of degrading tag might appear here or there, 'Go Home!' or 'Now You're Fucked, Newmeat' 'Welcome to Sirens Port, Population: Too Many to Add One More' and 'Attention Newcomers: Please wait here till sunset sirens to receive your welcoming package! =) ')

A person is thrown from their pull somewhere within the fenced-in baseball field, either in the dirty infield or tossed rolling into the overgrown dirty outfield. A recent fire has charred the left side of the outfield, and grass is only starting to grow back.

Standing on second base and facing home plate, one will see a rotten, old and deteriorating backstop and chain link fencing, much like any little league baseball field. Broken down bleachers made of worn out green painted wood can be seen in disarray behind this, and some old trees line the wall and fencing along the right side.

To your left is a walled in Dugout with a secured door. The dugouts are made of thick concrete and set low into the earth. This one has been outfitted as a safe place to enter during the night to hide and wait out the morning. Sometimes Greeters can be found here, waiting for people to show up. The Dugout to the right has also been cemented over and secured with a heavily guarded and armored door.

The Baseball Diamond is held by the Neutral Government, allowing greeters access to the infield to retrieve new arrivals. However, the small building constructed over the right dugout is still guarded heavily by government-controlled Voids, to block public access to the Core. Those who cooperate with greeters will be treated fairly and be given helpful information, lead to the Tower Apartments and offered a month's lodging. Those who put up a fight will be met with Voids and detained by police.

Just beyond the fence, in the Tower Apartments parking lot and lobby, SERO and AGI recruiters will be passing out informational leaflets presenting company propaganda, including discounted coupon booklets and travel-sized toiletries as a "Newcomer Welcome Package".

Other then the lights around the Core dugout, there is one single electric light above home plate that remains on, even in the Darkness. There is an open walkway near the dugouts that leads into the parking lot of the Tower Apartments. The front doors of Tower One are always kept unlocked, but you had best close them again quickly if you slip inside during the night. The office of the Landlord is well marked near the lobby, and you'll receive keys there.

The second tower is abandoned, it looks like there was some kind of bombing. Asking around, you might hear about the anti-newcomer movement and an attempt to blow up both towers, explosive charges set up in the elevator shafts five months ago. Tower Two's weren't disabled in time. The building is taped off and you'll be advised not to go wandering in there- it's no doubt structurally unsound, though the first tower still stands tall and (mostly) functioning. Though temporary housing services are funded by SERO and AGI, they are now run buy the Newcomers themselves. With heavy funding and support contacts from both companies, the building is in a state of slow remodeling.

Comments

July 8th, late afternoon

[hulkbusted]

Bruce wanted many things out of life and he knew he wasn't going to get most of them - there would be no white picket fence, no Betty, no 2.4 children and a dog, no Nobel prize, but he looked around at his unlikely group of friends, smiling at Steve as he held the door for Natasha, and Thor let loose a belch that made the windows of the Shawarma Palace rattle, and he thought that maybe he might be able to have something like fami--

Between one step and the next the thought was cut off by vertigo, by nausea, by the universe jolting out of true, sending his feet out from under him in a fall that felt endless until he landed on his back with a hard thud that knocked the breath out of him.

He blinked up at the sky - blue and cloudless and most importantly devoid of the smoke of a day's hard-fought battle - and drew in a whooping breath while he struggled to keep the shawarma where it belonged.

[ooc: Hulking is imminent unless someone has a bright idea for keeping Bruce calm. :D ]

[blondejokes]

"Hey!" Ino, on her way back to her apartment in the free (and crappy) building reserved for newcomers, had never really seen a newcomer come in before. And today wasn't her lucky day, either, but he had obviously just woken up. She hopped over the fence and pulled out a small water bottle from her medical pouch on her hip. She had been almost dying of thirst when she had arrived.

"Here, this will help with the headache." Maybe she could be a full-time Greeter. Her medical skills could probably come in handy.

[hulkbusted]

It was one thing to wake from a Hulk fugue to sudden strangers offering clothes, ambulance calls or water, but he hadn't been gone behind the green curtain while the Hulk did his thing; he'd been walking out of Shawarma Palace with the other Avengers and now he was flat on his back, and adrenaline was already gearing to run its own version of the Tour de Bruce through his nervous system.

Bruce was everything he tried to avoid - he was tired, he was sick, he was frightened, disoriented, and he was angry. He stared first at the bottle the girl was offering and then up at her with eyes that shaded from brown to green in moments.

[blondejokes]

That wasn't good, right? A person's eyes changing from one color to another meant one thing, and that was danger. Whether it was somebody tapping into a sealed beast's chakra or a henge/genjutsu failing for a moment didn't matter. The kunoichi in her went on alert.

"Are you alright?" Her free hand went immediately to her weapons pouch on her leg. She didn't withdraw anything just yet, in case it was ... normal from whatever his world was.

[hulkbusted]

"No!" Bruce shouted because he had to give her warning to get away. He'd give this girl a chance to run and if she went on the offensive, it was on her head for choosing the wrong side.

He hoped she'd make the right choice because he could feel the change building up steam fueled by the runaway adrenaline flooding his system. His shoes were cutting into his feet, his shirt was pulling tight over his arms as muscle bulged with gamma radiation-fueled growth. He didn't look to see the first flush of green suffuse his skin. "Run!"

[blondejokes]

His shouts ran in her ears, clear and urgent. She pulled out two kunai, taking an offensive stance, the water bottle forgotten at her feet. It was like a flashback to her first night here not too long ago, waking up to find monsters ready to attack her just as easily.

She probably should have started running, but what about the others who would no doubt end up showing up in the diamond? And the Greeters? The least she could do was hold him off until ... back-up, or something, arrived.

The big green ... thing in front of her was terrifying, but she could handle it. She'd been in some pretty terrifying battles on her own before. (Granted, this was her first solo one, and she wasn't exactly prepared to be fighting. This was what she got for trying to help somebody out.)

"What are you?"

[hulkbusted]

Daggers? He told her to run and she pulled daggers? That was answer enough for Bruce. He stopped fighting the change and let it come, welcomed it even. His shirt finished splitting, tearing off his chest in tatters, his pants stretched and door, and his feet almost exploded out of his shoes before the Hulk roared a challenge at the armed girl.

[blondejokes]

Gathering a small amount of chakra in her feet, she ran a few steps then leaped, flipping over ... whatever it was and throwing one of the kunai at its back. His back. Whatever. She didn't look back to see if it hit; instead, she ran away from the diamond, shinobi-mode fully activated at this point.

Hopefully she would be followed until she made it to the poorer districts that she had scoped out earlier. Mass destruction wouldn't stand out as much there.

[hulkbusted]

Hulk tracked her in her leap and barely registered the impact of the blade bouncing off his back. She wanted to throw things? He could throw things. He jumped to the dilapidated bleachers and ripped one out of the ground, turning to throw it in a tit for tat this is how it's done.

[blondejokes]

Ino made a mental note of that. Big, green, strong, and resistant to her weapon. The other kunai disappeared back into her pouch and she scaled the side of a building with ease. Could he climb?

It was times like this she wished she knew a little more offensive moves. Then again, if she had known that the guy she had been trying to help would turn into this thing and try to kill her, she would have just kept walking. Cowardly, maybe, but alone she was useless in combat and she knew it.

[ OOC: Hey, if she put him under a genjutsu (an illusion, basically) that makes its targets fall asleep after making them think they're disolving into sakura petals (hey I didn't make the genjutsu OK), would it calm him down a bit? She'd probably try it after realizing that she could seriously die fighting against this guy. ]

[hulkbusted]

If Bruce were in charge and able to hear her inner monologue, he doubtless would have noted that he told her to run and that she attacked first. But he wasn't, and the Hulk was much more interested in ripping up another bleacher and hurling it at her place on the side of the building with body-crushing force.

[ooc: I have to wonder if his overwhelming rage coupled with the intense gamma radiation that permeates his entire body would allow that particular attack to work on him. As much as I would really like to end this fight before it begins, I'm going to have to say that at most it might disorient him a little.]

[blondejokes]

"Ah-!" The building shook, knocking her completely off balance. She landed in a crouch on the street below.

"Hey! I'm not your enemy here; I wasn't the one who kidnapped you." She reached her hand back into her weapons pouch, but didn't withdraw it.

[hulkbusted]

Hulk didn't want to listen. He was in full fury at being denied his rest, at being taken from his friends, and because this girl had something to do with or why was she attacking him?

He roared his wordless rebuttal at her and leaped into the air, his trajectory aiming him directly at where she crouched.

[blondejokes]

She withdrew another kunai - this time with an exploding tag attached to it - and jumped out of the way, throwing it at him. It. Whatever. She wasn't aiming for his body but instead for the ground, hoping the debris would distract him/it/whatever for just a few seconds so she could perform the seals for a genjutsu.

She murmured the words under her breath. It wasn't one that she was completely confident in yet, nor one that she felt she had fully mastered. But desperate times called for desperate measures. Hopefully, if she had cast it right, he/it/whatever should be in a relaxed phase while thinking that his/its/whatevers body was slowly dissolving into sakura petals. The flower addition was what had drawn her to it in the first place.

[hulkbusted]

Hulk stumbled on the uneven surface, going to one knee before he pushed himself up to both feet. He moved much more quickly than his great bulk would indicate and he prepared to spring at her again before pausing. His brow drew down in deep furrows while he looked down at one hand.

The pause lasted a moment before he shook his entire body like a horse shaking off a swarm of biting flies.

[blondejokes]

Okay, so that didn't work. And attacking it didn't hurt it, instead it pissed it off even more. And that was not good if she wanted to live before the night sirens.

She stood there, waiting, trying to think of a strategy on the spot. Her NV watch thing was too complicated to figure out how to work in less than five secods, which made an SOS impossible to send out to Shikamaru. It didn't help that the genjutsu, even though it failed, had taken away a sizable chunk of chakra.

[hulkbusted]

He didn't know what had just happened but he hadn't liked it. To an outside observer the Hulk's next actions might look like a scaled-up temper tantrum, slamming his fists into the ground, but a toddler's fists couldn't have the same effect. Cracks opened in the ground under the force of his pounding and ran across the sidewalk toward the girl.

[blondejokes]

Her hands quickly moved to the Replacement Jutsu, replacing her body with a random small log. She materialized to the right, four more copies of herself surrounding her, each holding the small katana that came standard with becoming a Chuunin.

She hardly ever used it outside of training. The six kunoichi circled around him, going in for an offensive attack. Or so it seemed; simple Bunshin weren't like Kage Bunshin as really only served as a distraction. The real Ino was coming in on the right, tanto aimed at where she supposed one of its lungs were.

She'd deal with healing the injury later.

[hulkbusted]

First she was there, then she wasn't and there was a log and then there was a bunch of girls. Hulk found that the best thing to do with confusing things was to make them less confusing. Flattened things were rather simple. He struck out at the closest one only to have its fist go through nothing.

[ooc: Unless her weapon is able to do what bullets, rocket launchers, and lasers can't, that tanto isn't going to do much.]

[blondejokes]

She was really struggling with this. Her tanto was useless and now she was closer than she wanted to be to this thing. She back-tracked, trying to keep a sizable distance between it and herself. Was this permanent or did it have a time limit?

"Hey!" she shouted, a plan finally in her mind. This was an island, which meant an ocean surrounded it. An ocean she could walk on and this thing couldn't. "Come get me, you big green jerk."

Hopefully it's attention span would stick with her until they reached the coastline. And before evening sirens went off. Her only saving grace would be to use the rooftops as her means of travel.

[hulkbusted]

Hulk was fine with rooftops and he was perfectly fine with chasing after her. Of course, he also wasn't averse to picking up the odd object along the way to throw at her. At least in theory with Sirens Port's darkproofing, there wouldn't be much to rip off of buildings.

[blondejokes]

A few items scratched her arms and legs, but like hell she'd let that slow her down. Less than seventeen streets away from the diamond was the oceanside of sector 4. She glanced over her shoulder as she jumped off the last roof and took off running across the sand. He kept getting closer.

She inhaled, closed her eyes, and slightly slowed her pace as she ran across the water. She needed to concentrate to avoid drowning. She opened her eyes, watching him as she backed up across the water's surface.

[therightchoice]

[ Jesse is often on walks, exploring the city whenever he can. Of course, this often results in him being lost, but hey, he's half demon, so teleporting back to the Towers doesn't make it an issue. Or at least, it shouldn't, but he doesn't always have the best control on his powers. So sometimes he finds himself having to walk back to the Towers.

So he walks to the base field, curious to see the newest arrivals. It never stops being fascinating to Jesse when some people here are like superheroes - or are. He sees a man hunched over and, after overcoming a moment of hesitation, he walks over to him. ]

Are you okay?

[hulkbusted]

If Bruce had any idea how close a child got to him while he lost control he would be mortified. He was focused on the girl in front of him when he shouted, "Run!" He wanted to give her time to get away, but she pulled a pair of daggers. With all his focus on the threat in front of him, he didn't see the boy at all as the fury engulfed him, ripping through muscle and bone, clothes and shoes until the Hulk rose up, eight feet tall, green, and roaring with anger.

[therightchoice]

Oh, look, a lady is already walking up and taking to the guy, that's good because Jesse really doesn't know what to do if people are hurt without giving away what he is -

Wait.

That guy is turning green. And growing huge, what is going on - ?

No. Way.

Jesse stood there, awestruck, unable to move. He barely notices the blonde woman drawing out knives, he was so transfixed at what he just saw.

The roar jolts Jesse to reality and realizing what is happening, he turn around and ran to the Towers, as far as he can from the thudding footsteps of a very angry Hulk. ]