Your muscles are sore, but in a good way, as you tote the wooden box of swords back into your game and crafts shoppe, the Dice Drop.  The gaming convention was pleasant, and sales were brisk.  The masqued dance was fun, the D&D game you ran went well except for the power gamer, and the impromptu boffer sword match with the kinda-cute geek left you with a bruise across the ribs.

Your fairy girl masquerade costume won third prize, and turned heads in the convenience store when you got out, forgetting it was still on.

Oh well. No biggie.

Inside, in the dark, you drop off the boxes, and then collapse in the chair across from your sewing machine, and the leather cloak of many pieces you are making out of the scraps from previous projects.

Sleep claims you in the dark of the game shoppe, and you fold your head, not even making it up the stairs to the apartment upstairs where Shadow, your cat reigns supreme.

A phone ring jerks you from your sleep, and hard-wired SCAdian/big city instincts have the sword in your hand before you can get fully awake.  A message from an old college chum asks if you have gotten the package.

Bleary eyed, you still can't wait to check it out.  Because thats your way.  You reach over the glass counter, and pull up the box your clerk had left there when the UPS man dropped it off.

Opening it with a ready knife, you see in the faint light of your book light, a  new Gameboy Max Scriff-enabled.

"Scriff."  You'd been reading up on this new thing, an article here, one there.  An odd material recently discovered that for unknown reasons boosted computer performance in certain uses.

You unscrew the back, put in batteries you retrieve from the well-organized stash beneath the counter.  Irritably, you see that the clerk, Stephanie, had left her Big Splash on the counter, and you reach for it.  But you're tired, and you knock it over on the ground, and the Gameboy with it.  You reach, but the liquid reaches the active...

...A start button must have been pushed in the landing...

...Gameboy...a flash of light...yellow globules flying everywhere...

=======================================================================

You wake up hearing Shadow meowing frantically, kneading your chest, and smelling oil and metal, and hearing a background thrumming noise.  Opening your eyes, you see that you are laying on your back in a metal-walled, and dimly lit corridor.

What are you going to do right now?

Playtester

I get up and take a look around.
"where am I?  This doesnt look like the shop..."

The floor is an occasionally rusted, oil-touched metal grate which seems removable as it shifts slightly under your feet. However, it seems very sturdy as well.

The walls are vertical to your immediate left, and ")" shaped to your right.  They look to be metal pannelling of a dark brown with a slight yellow tinge.

In front of you, the hallway curves off to your left after about ten feet.  To your right, a narrow doorway leads down.  A rectangular button pad to the right of the door with five different buttons guards?? the door.

Behind you, about four feet is what can only be described as a hatch.  A large circular door about five feet in radius, with huge metal hinges, and a spinning handle to open and lock it.

About your feet, and up and down the hallway lie some of your most prized items from your shoppe.  Your two favorite swords, the one-handed broadsword, and the rapier with its companion main-gauche.  A huge purple Royal Crown dice bag, and another dice bag you made on your own with dolphins stitched on the outside.  Your laptop, and charger.  An Xbox with assorted games, your Luke Skywalker (autographed by Mark Hamill) backpack, an Iron Dragon railroad game, an uncompleted fantasy novel manuscript, a David Weber novel, and a copy of the Deed of Paksennarion, a three liter of Mountain Dew, and so on.

Shadow climbs up you meowing in distinct cat language.

*What have you gotten me into, human?!?*  Not that you can actually understand his meows, but the tone seems clear.

PT

What do

I put as much of my stuff in the backpack as i can, and wander down the hallway.  "I wonder where we are?"

You follow the hallway around the curve, the grating clanking under your feet, and meet a locked hatch in front of you, and an open door to another hallway to the right.  Curious you take it, and proceed up the long narrow passage.

A couple closed metal doors are on the right, and one on the left, and then another, an open one on the left.  Up ahead, about fifteen feet is another half-open door just up from a small set of metal stairs, and through it you can here a light baritone voice tunelessly humming/singing to himself.

"tra-la-la--mmm-mmm-mm-tra..."

What do you do?

Playtester

I go toward the singing, quietly.  And peek around the corner at the singer.

You stick your head around the corner, barely breathing in your nervous excitement, and see two large control panels.  The one to your left is empty, and the one on your right has an obviously bored man, blonde, sorta spiky hair, a friendly face, spinning his chair right and left.

He stops and reaches up to the dinosaurs on the top of his console.  Picking up two, he begins to have them 'fight'.

"I'm the king of the jungle." And the red one prances in his hand.
"No, you're not..."

What he's doing fades away, as you look out the windows, and see stars spinning, and then a planet comes into view...from space....

Your brain stutters for just a few seconds.

And you look back, and you can still see the planet.

Playtester
This message was last edited by the GM at 17:00, Mon 14 Nov 2005.

My mouth falls open and i just stand and stare at the planets.

As you stand in the doorway, the pilot spins his chair at the noise of your hand hitting the doorway, and further shock is added to you.  Its that actor from the show Firefly, um, Wash, or Tub, or something.

He looks at you, and gives a start, and then puts on a professionally calming smile while tagging something on his console.

"Zoe, dear, you might want to come up here. Now."  There's a subtle undercurrent of tension in his voice.

"Right away, baby."  You hear another familiar voice come out of the console.

Then "Wash" or whoever this actor is, turns to you.

"Its okay. Never been in space before, I take it. We can set you back down on Foghorn no problem.  Nothing to be worried about."

He's talking to you in roughly the same tone a person would use to calm a skittish cat.  His left hand is resting underneath his chair.

PT

"What's Foghorn?"

"Foghorn?" He gives a nervous laugh. "Foghorn's your planet."  When you look unconvinced, he swallows. "Right. Its a nice place, fog shrouded. Farmers tilling the soil with ox and plow, or sometimes with a hoe. Very pastoral. Peaceful.  Lots of good healthy manual labor. Actually a lot of times with a hoe because oxen are pretty expensive."  He pauses, and looks aside a bit.

"Now maybe you have amnesia, which would be just what we need. We already have one female on board Serenity who's an amnesiac, not sure what we'd do with two. Although I'd suppose they would be a matched set."

He's mumbling to himself by this time.

Playtester

"i don't know what you're talking about!  My planet is named 'Earth'!"
...isn't that the planet you're from??," She asks softly, and starts to look nervous.

"Earth?" He looks intensely skeptical. "Earth-That-Was don't you mean? And how can you be from Earth-That-Was? I mean my great-great-grandfather was from Earth-That-Was back in the Twenty-Second Century, old date scheme.  I was born on Delleriese which is now under Alliance control.  You don't look several centuries old."

You hear footsteps behind you.

"Hitting on the stowaway, husband dear?"

You hear a familiar, serene, yet dynamic voice from behind you.  Turning you see the actor "Zoe" or ....?  She's got her hand on her pistol, but its still in her holster.

Playtester