Welcome to Gaia! ::

Blackness ebbed to cover the vision of those civilians who had felt thudding hearts beating against pale rib bones like wide-winged birds attempting to flee a cage. Was it unconsciousness? Was it death? Was it something beyond either of those two dire things? Just as the omnipresent darkness seemed to whisper of a permanent affliction, it began to recede.

Pinpricks of light brightened in a blanket of black. With each passing second, they grew brighter and brighter. More and more lights flickered into existence. Then the lights stopped getting brighter. It took a few moments to realize that these lights were actually stars, and the black blanket was the emptiness of outerspace.

A long rainbow road stretched out beneath the transplanted civilians. It had a gossamer sheen, but felt as solid as concrete, albeit glowing concrete. In the distance, the spires and high walls of floating castles were visible, but they were too far off to make out many details.

All that existed were fifty-one civilians scattered across a rainbow road surrounded on all sides by the vastness of space. Should a brave soul attempt to walk over the edge of the flat multicolored trail, a sudden barrier would flash into existence, glowing a sparkling gold. It stood five feet tall and prevented unfortunate mishaps, but without someone touching it, it disappeared entirely.

For an unknown reason and an unknown purpose, the lost civilians of Destiny City were at The Surrounding in the depths of outer space.

[ Please reference this to learn how your character got here! Only those civilians who applied for a new character in our metaplot contest may be here -- plus some Zodiacs. This is the entry thread for all civilians! Feel free to RP here, but please don't have your character wander too far from the group. Things will happen too -- but now is the time to meet your fellow transplanted civilians~ ]

Joshua Harvey had been sitting in his dorm room, having returned from visiting his family in Vancouver a few days ago. The school year had only freshly began, and he hadn't been assigned his new roommate yet, his former having graduated the year prior and moved the hell out of Destiny City and it's strangeness.

He couldn't blame him, not really. He'd spent most of the summer trying to convince his parents to let him come home permanently, but they thought he was making things up when he spoke of monsters. Apparently the news didn't reach this far.

Joshua had been sitting on his bed, shorting some Magic cards - the next breath, he was gone from Destiny City, his vision blanked out, and his heart doing laps in his chest. One hand rose to try to ebb the discomfort, and after what seemed to be forever, the darkness cleared out.

...

"What the hell ?"

He stared, from where he was now sitting, hazel eyes blinking. Once. Twice. He was dreaming. Surely, he was dreaming. That, or he had died and this was his mind going ape before blanking out completely.

There was no damn logical explanation to what he was seeing at the moment.

She sat down hard on the shimmering 'road' under her feet as her head continued to spin. She still felt like her heart was about to beat itself to death and her head was going to explode from the pressure. "Holy crap ..."

Rubbing her temples she risked looking around again but didn't find the sight any better than before. She was still sitting on what amounted to nothing in the middle of outer space with a bunch of other people milling around her. It wasn't where she was suppose to be at all. She was suppose to be sitting at her workbench at home tinkering with those rings she wanted to give to her cousins for christmas.

This so wasn't it. Jocelyn was not a happy person

Getting up with a groan she looked around again as she heard someone ask a question. "Define alright."

Natalia had been in her bedroom, laid back against the copius amounts of pillows with a beading kit beside her and her CD playing blasting some good ol' 90's. She must have fallen asleep. That's what she assumed anyway, as she looked around at the vast canvas of black all around her, dotted with stars, then to the gossamer rainbow beneath her feet.

Yes, definitively dreaming. A dream that had suddenly gotten very lucid. She had never had a truly lucid dream before, but she heard you could do pretty much whatever you wanted in one. A grin a spread on her mocha face and sparkled in her pale blue eyes.

Guys. She was going to effin' fly.

Natalia took a running leap, attempting to jump off the rainbow pathway and fly though effin' space but her attempt was abruptly stopped by the barrier around the pathway. Bouncing back off of it, she landed on her butt. And the damned rainbow wasn't too soft a landing either, no matter how soft and fragile it might have looked.

This couldn't be right. Damnit this was her dream! Why couldn't she freaking fly if she wanted to!? The hard-headed girl was determined that this was a dream, and that damnit by hook or by crook she would fly! But first perhaps some answers were in order. Natalia's face scrunched up and she blew a raspberry at the barrier which was once again invisible. Then she crossed her arms over her chest. Then, after a few minutes of that, she started hearing the voices of others, not too far off. Oh crap, had anyone seen that? Oh man, how embarrassing.... She decided to walk over and talk to these dream people.

"Dear people of my dream world, I demand an explanation. What is this s**t, and if this is a dream, why can't I fly?" Natalia asked.

Layton blinked wearily on the ground. Where ... where was she? Her head was spinning vehemently, her vision blurred and she stumbled back onto the ground.

Well let's start with what she could remember. Layton's memory swam a bit, but she could remember small details. Her name was Layton Quince. She had an older brother and two parents. She enjoyed swimming- did she? Yeah, she did. There ... there was a turtle .... ?

Her little blue eyes blinked opened and she looked around. There was a great nothingness around her. She attempted to stand up, but it didn't work well at all. She was still just a tad dizzy, but it was quickly wearing off. Layton decided she would use the time to remember more things.

She had been out in her garden ... picking up some radishes right? She ... she was going to make soup. Right? Either that or ... She couldn't remember. She did remember hearing an overwhelming beat. At first the beat was assumed to be a neighborhood drummer- sometimes they got live performances near their house right?

But ... it was more than that. The beat wasn't just outside of her, it was inside of her. Layton had felt this overwhelming dizziness ... something like nausea and a headache, but all at once. Using her very extensive 14 year old knowledge, she assumed she was dehydrated. Just as she stood up to go get a nice refreshing glass of water, she had been ... teleported? Beamed?

Layton tugged on her braids insecurely. Maybe she had just fallen asleep and someone had kidnapped her? Layton's eyes grew wide and sort of teared as she realized that. She didn't want to be kidnapped!

As her memories faded and grew more fuzzy, she sat up, shaking off her dizziness. Just what was going on. Layton pulled her arms around her feet. Tears were coming on- not big bawling tears, just the tears of fear. She was scared. "M-mom? D-dad? Callummmmm," she whined into the nothingness. Where was everyone? What was going on?

Jett Draven had closed his eyes for what could have been only a fraction of a second as he hovered over the porcelain sink in his bathroom and proceeded to scrub at his teeth with his toothbrush. He expected to open his eyes, stare back into his reflection in the mirror above the sink, and spit out his mouthful of saliva and toothpaste. He did not expect, however, to suddenly feel as though he’d been yanked out of his skin and hastily shoved back in.

His eyes snapped open and his lip twitched into a slight sneer when he realized he was no longer in the private confines of his bathroom, but instead in some fantastically radiant environment that seemed more fitted for the theme of some prepubescent girl’s bedroom than some legitimate reality.

Jett was still slightly stooped, still in the position he would have been if he were intending to dispose of the minty fresh residue from brushing his teeth, so he casually reached up to remove the toothbrush from his mouth. He held it between his fingers and then decided there was no way in hell he was going to swallow, so he just leaned to his side and spat onto the ground before drawing a hand to wipe across the back of his mouth. He was still dressed for the day and hadn’t yet gone to put on his pajamas, so he didn’t have to feel shame for being underdressed. His white wife-beater was untucked and his belt buckle was unclasped; his hair was somewhat sloppily tied in a low ponytail. If these were people he’d cared about or really recognized, he might have been more self conscious that he was standing here without any shoes on, tooth brush in hand, but taking a quick look around told him that no one here was any more understanding of the situation. The expressions told him that no one seemed to understand where they were or why they were there, and since Jett didn’t want to admit that he was actually totally floored at what the hell had just happened, he wasn’t about to admit that he was extremely out of his comfort zone. These were people that looked ordinary—some seemed older, some younger, but no one particularly stood out in his mind. There were a few he thought he might recognize, but he couldn’t identify anyone nor place where he’d seen then, so gave up trying to identify them and settled for the fact that his mind was quite probably playing tricks on him to try and make him feel less awkward.

Externally, he seemed fine. He slid his toothbrush into the front pocket of his pants and rested his hands on either side of his hips as he surveyed the area. Excuses for logic flickered through his mind—had he fallen in the bathroom and hit his head? It had to be something severe to cause this kind of delusion. Had he fallen asleep watching some fantasy movie? A possibility, but Jett’s dreams wasn’t usually so colorful. Abducted by aliens? It did look like they were in space, but still—this was making less and less sense.

Avoiding the small puddle of saliva and bubbly toothpaste, he took a step, determined to find someone who wasn’t asking the questions, but was giving the answers. Tongue rolling across his smooth teeth casually, he hardly looked disturbed. One brow was raised as he once again surveyed the number of people he had suddenly found himself surrounded by. Some were asking questions, some were barking orders—but one thing seemed obvious about all of them: No one knew what was going on.

Regina's first thought was that she had died. She could remember that the light had turned green, the 'walk' sign had started flashing that she had only seconds to make it across the street, seconds, and she had made a dash and then... Pounding heart, shortness of breath. Regina Faith Hopewell was no more. Dead. Poof. Kaput.

Opening her eyes did not reveal the heaven she had once dreamed of, nor did it reveal the hell that she was certain so many others feared. No, it was much better than that, even if death was involved... What Regina saw was spectacular; absolutely incredible. It was proof. PROOF.

"My god, I knew it." She stood up slowly, eyes seeming even wider beneath her large, wide-rimmed, plastic-framed glasses (the sort no one ever believed that anyone picked out on their own *), and then she was squeaking with delight. "Aliens! I'm not dead, I've been abducted! This is... This is incredible. Spectacular! Oh, this is wonderful..."

The odd girl would continue spouting things off to herself up until she realized that, somehow, her camera had not made the transport with her... Or until someone shut her up, whichever came first.


*Regina had.