Welcome to Promethia! [T]

[Robotnik]

In the Westmost tip of the Milky Way galaxy sits a little planet by the name of Promethia. It's right out on the tip, last system you'll end up hitting if you're heading out in to the abyss. A hundred years ago, this little ball of dust and lightning was discovered when the first military convoy headed out that way experienced first hand why no one ever travels to Promethia; the planet and its entire solar system are wracked with ion storms harsh enough to shred the electronics in the hardiest vessels, preventing safe travel to or around the system. This first vessel, the Dauntiless, came to rest on a plateau in the middle of the equator, which turned out to be both the safest and the most viable place to live for a bunch of crashed military men and women.

The Dauntiless was wrecked beyond repair, and beyond salvaging the comms relay and some of the robots they held in the hold, they had to start fresh. They discovered that the planet was not as hostile as the violent storms that raged around it, with plants and animals native to the world being a reasonable source of food and protection in some cases. They took to calling their little settlement "Shipwreck", and the name stuck. When word got back to the expanding Galactic Federation, they had the perfect use for the planet. Sure, some people wanted to settle a planet way out in the boonies, but the real draw for the Fed was how inescapable the system was. That was the start of the "Great Prison Exodus", as it was called by the locals, massive fleets of ships barely running and filled to the brim with the scum of an expanding galactic court with more non-humans than it could shake a stick at. Some of them were the worst people possible, others were just folk who ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time.

You're a new arrival to Promethia, fresh from the ion storm and you even survived the landing with most of your parts. Maybe you're a settler here to carve out life on a hostile planet. Maybe you're some psycho that wants to burn the world. Or maybe you just won the bad luck lottery and had your warp drive send you rocketing to the worst system in the galaxy. Who knows? There's just one problem with ending up on Promethia. Lots of people set foot on Promethia... but getting off of it, that's a whole 'nother story.

__________________________________________________ ________________________
Shipwrech
12:45PM
Doc Zod's Clinic

But before you get let in to Shipwrech, it's a law to have to go through customs at Doc Zod's clinic, and so there you came either conscious or not. Of course she took good care of you, fixed up everything that needed to be fixed up and did the job right, et cetera. And as you're coming to in the clinic, or getting annoyed at how long you're having to wait in the clinic, you can hear a robotic voice humming a tune over the droning of an old and laboring air conditioner. The building is made out of junk, but it's sturdy enough, well made and properly arranged like a proper medical facility. There were two rows of five tables each along the walls, with the sensitive junk in the back through a door only barely large enough for the doc herself. The doc, of course, was a large box shaped machine with faded blue paint and a single blue photoreceptor that spun around her upper body like some sort of trippy belt. Tiny arms extended occasionally from little flaps in her body, and she roved about the room on a single tire with remarkable balance.

"I'd say that's a clean bill of health for the lot of you. If you'll come by and collect your papers, you'll be set to enter the town of Shipwrech! You have to understand, of course; not everyone can just come and go around here. Too dangerous these days, since the Exodus. Please let me know if I've attached something to you that isn't yours or if I've left an ear out of place in my repairs, I'm not quite familiar with all of you. Chop chop, please, I have patients that need my care urgently if you don't!" The robot said, its voice garbled a bit from generations of repair. In its primary manipulator arms it held a number of small metal sheets, each the size of an old credit card and each with a name and serial number carved in by a very precise laser scalpel.

"Well then, who's first?"

[Winter]

OOC: First post! Sorry for the ridiculously long intro to Ryza and Aerys, guys...I might miss RPing a bit, and have gone a little overboard, lol. Don't mind it too much.

Ryza
???
???

It was dark, darker than dark, actually. Blacker than the blackest night she'd ever sat out in, and twice as heavy as the heaviest thing she ever remembered lifting. The world she found herself floating in was black, empty, and silent. Her head throbbed, but she didn't quite understand why, she had no memory of hitting it...then again, she didn't really have memories of anything. As she finally found the mental strength to wonder why, the black world was illuminated by momentarily blinding blue. This blue formed what she thought was called a "word," but she wasn't quite sure what it meant.

Breathe.

The single "word" pulsed before her, almost demanding, but she wasn't sure how to fulfill its request.

Breathe.

What does it mean? She wondered, How do I do that? She had no idea, however it seemed that something within her did.

"...And you..." a male voice murmured among the blackness, "you will be strong willed and firm, the protector, the big sister, do you understand? The little one over there is going to need someone to watch her, to protect her, and you're going to be the one to do that. You are both meant to protect people, but you're meant to protect each other, too... And you will balance out her flaws. You see, she's sweet, kind-hearted..." The voice carried on in the darkness, and the more she heard it, the more she felt she knew it, though she wasn't sure how. It carried a kindness interlaced with obvious power, an authority she knew she couldn't ignore. Floating in the blackness, she listened, and she let it flow through her. Before her, the single word still pulsed, its demand unchanging.

Breathe, it said.

"...Now, girls, it's time for the final touch," she heard the voice say. "I've done my part, the rest is up to you, but I promise it's a simple enough task. I need you to listen to me, and do the one thing I ask of you...breathe."

She still didn't quite understand what it was requesting, but it seemed some part of her understood, and complied. The single word gave a single flash, and then pulsed faster for a few moments before it disappeared, and a wall of letters and numbers rose in its place. She didn't understand most of that, either, but something told her she never quite had. Slowly, her memory trickled back in, like a stream of water, slow and steady. Her name was Ryza, and she was a Guardian. She wasn't an incredibly old model, and she had already partnered with another Guardian. Actually, she had been born with a partner, a "sister" model, and they were the first to be born that way, created as two halves of a whole from the beginning. She was a happy, naive little thing and her name was...

She watched as the wall of gibberish disappeared, only to be replaced by standard startup screens that didn't quite appear...standard, though she wasn't sure why. It was one of these that caught her eye--"Current Network." She knew this particular menu would tell her how many Guardians were nearby, as well as their designations. She watched as a circular icon below the menu spun, gathering information, however a sense of dismay shot through her when it was replaced by text.

Nearby Guardians: 1

In another moment, this text was replaced by what should have been a list of Guardian designations, however there was only one.

Her sister model's name was...

Aerys

And suddenly the darkness lightened, and the world was pain.


Aerys and Ryza
12:45 PM
Doc Zod's Office

Aerys received warning that Ryza had finally woken approximately a half second before her sister model shot up on the table her unconscious body had been laid out on, and curled in on herself, agony written all over her face. Her networking menu had finally picked up Ryza's signal as her systems re-activated, which was when everything seemed to go haywire. The robot who had looked over both Guardians and everyone else in the room had just announced they all had clean bills of health, and were free to go, though it had seemed something had been missed. "Ryza!" she gasped, promptly dropping her sister model's scythe in order to reach for her, "Ryza, what's wrong?"

The other Guardian almost didn't hear her through the pain splitting her head. Both of Ryza's hands reached towards the source of the pain, as though trying to ease it, to no avail. Her optical screens, once filled with startup menus were now clouding with gibberish, something she vaguely recognized as abnormal. "Ryza!" her sister model gasped again, and as suddenly as it had come, the pain vanished. The gibberish on her optical screens gave way to startup menus again, and she was highly aware of Aerys standing next to her, a hand on one of her shoulders.

"Shh, Aerys, not so loud," she murmured, easing her body out of the curled-up position it had wound up in slowly, taking in her surroundings as she did. A relatively small room that looked like it had been built inside a scrap heap--a very old scrap heap, at that, it was a small wonder to her that it stayed together--filled with a few metal tables, a few strange beings, and some kind of boxy robot that looked as though it had seen far too many years running, and not enough maintenance to keep up with the years.

"Ryza? Are you okay? What was that?" And then there was Aerys. She was covered in dirt smudges, and her long blonde hair looked like a mess, but otherwise, it seemed the Guardian was unharmed.

No thanks to you.

Ryza tried to hide her cringe as the thought invaded her head without warning, forcing a tight smile and reaching out a hand to pat Aerys' hand where it still rested on her shoulder. "I'm fine, little Sunshine, I don't know what it was, but it's gone now, no need to worry." The words didn't seem to reassure her younger sister model, but Ryza knew Aerys was easily distracted, at times she was like a puppy, or an exciteable child. That was why she turned to the others in the room, unsure of what was going on.

"I am sorry, it would appear I interrupted something...would it be out of place for me to suggest carrying on as though I hadn't interrupted?" Ryza asked, glancing around the room again and wondering where in the world she and Aerys had ended up. It quite obviously wasn't what they called home.

[Dragon Master Mike]

James Fisher
12:45 PM
Shipwreck: Doc Zod's Clinic

James's eyes shot open. He immediately noticed he wasn't where he had been the last time he was awake, yet he still felt as though something was screaming at him to escape wherever this unknown place was. He could not quite even remember where he had been before, but it was somewhere he didn't want to be. James tried lifting his arm, but found he couldn't move. He opened his mouth to yell for help, but words refused to come out.

All at once the memories returned to him.

Two days earlier
The Orion: Crew Quarters

It was just after what would have been lunch time when the flashing lights and sirens began flooding the halls of the ship with panic. A voice came on the intercom. "We are under attack. Report to battle stations immediately." The voice repeated again a few seconds later. James had already used the communications device built into his suit to receive instructions from his superior officer to meet him in the Armory.

The Orion was a reasonably small battleship, containing only about forty crew. James had been assigned as one of four soldiers to stay on board. This was just in case of a boarding, but this was unexpected. Such a small ship would be easier to destroy from the outside than to board. As such, James, still being a rookie, was stationed on the ship.

James had almost reached the armory when a deafening explosion shook the ship, shoving James to the side. James heard chatter on the radio saying that the shields were already down, and that a missile had been shot directly into the crew quarters. The ones James had been in a minute earlier. Suddenly the ship was rocked again, this time with the explosion closer, and James was forced in the other direction. James started feeling cold. He knew the hall he was in must have suffered damage. He knew two things based off of this. The first was that the room was depressurizing. He had about thirty seconds to get out of the room before too much pressure was lost and he could no longer survive. The second was that with the room depressurizing, it was only a matter of time before the ship automatically detected the lack of pressure and sealed the room off. This would probably take place in less than the thirty seconds it would take to kill him. James raced for the door, feeling the change in temperature with every step. He was lucky he made it out before the doors slammed shut, sealing off the leak.

"The controls up here are shot!" a voice shouted over the radio. "Engine critically damaged!" Another voice yelled. A voice spoke on the intercom. "Preparing for warp speed jump to the nearest sector. All hands brace for warp." Another explosion briefly rocked the ship before it warped. Normally this would be a smooth process, but the damaged ship led to extreme turbulence. It only lasted a brief moment though before the ship dropped back out of warp speed.

All of this happened in the course of two minutes.

"That warp took everything the engine had left in it, it's completely shot." A voice said on the radio. A voice played on the intercom. "The situation seems stable for the time being. If your quarters are still in one piece, return to them and stand by. If they are not, please stay put for the time being." The voice paused for a moment before another voice began playing. "The ship's status is as follows. Outer Hull: Heavy damage. Inner Hull: Heavy Damage. Shield generator: Mild Damage. Reactor: Fully Operational. Engine: Crippled. Location: Unknown planet, suborbital trajectory." Of course, this didn't tell James very much about what had just happened. They had been told it was not supposed to be a hard mission. It did tell him one important detail however.

"Suborbital." He thought. Anyone with even the most basic understanding of astrophysics and how orbits work would know that this meant they were not in a stable orbit. And he also knew that with the engines dead, they would not be able to fix their orbit. In short, it meant that they were not going to stop themselves from crashing down into whatever planet it had been that they had stumbled upon.

Shipwreck: Doc Zod's Clinic

James didn't want to remember any more. As he thought, he had begun to calm down. "It's over." He thought. "Where am I though? Someone must have found me after I made my way out of the ship and taken me here." James leaned forward.

((That came out pretty poorly IMO. I intentionally tried not to make the fight too long, but at the same time feel like it seemed a lot better in my head. Not to mention the fact that 95% of the post was background, not something that actually happened now.))