>>136946
>What put you here?

>What put you here?

>What put you here?

You probably don't need to wait 10 minutes for your first few threads.

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>>137016
I think I'll ease up on the 10min rule at first, yea. Might employ a "first choice to [x] votes" rule in the future, based on how hype this gets.

>>136965
>>136977
>>136980
>What put you here?
>Song: "I Don't Like Who I Was Then" - The Wonder Years

You ground your soul away, earning meager sums of money and occasionally taking a class or two to get certified for better jobs. You earned a good chunk of change, by the time you were twenty-three. Feeling like you could buy Earth, you slapped your computer screen's input devices to get a ticket to the furthest colony you could get to.

You were able to afford one on the outermost of Outer Colonies. So far out, in fact, people considered it the edge of known-space. Its placement on the edge of the galaxy, or what part of it humanity had carved as its own at least, earned the star system the name of New Eris, and its one habitable planet being given the same name. You didn't think too far ahead, you realized, as you went broke getting an apartment for a few weeks. You figured you'd end up couch-surfing for a bit, making some money, and getting a job on the planet's surface in no time, doing something romantic and awesome like building habitats, drafting building plans, maybe even being a manager of some retailer's branch. As you took a job on the docks, you found yourself shoveling the hopeful luggage of people who maybe thought a little better than you did.

Some days, you hope they love it on the surface. Other days, you lament that they're going and you're not.

Watching the desert planet below you, spinning gently in a silent ballet with stars beyond your fathoming, you grimace at the fact you still haven't been on that rock. You don't even want to be there anymore, you're just upset you fell short. But it's been some years; you're making nice pay, your apartment's furnished well, and you can even afford top-shelf liquor! There are upsides, however hollow they feel some days. But here you are, guiding the muscle to get people to the next chapter of their lives.

>Where are we?
>Where'd you come from?

>>137083
>>>Where'd you come from?

>>137083

>>Where'd you come from?

>>137083
>Where'd you come from?

>>137100
>>137137
>>137148
>Where'd you come from?

As a kid, you were born on a city colony that was packed to the brim with people. Nearby colonies would bring it food, and it would send people looking for jobs, and these people would sometimes get together and man colonial fleets that were going to start the cycle of human expansion on newly terraformed planets. Was it the ideal image of society? Maybe not, but it worked, and nobody forced it. Well, beyond "hey the housing is pretty damn cheap here" being a damn good motivator, of course.

You were the oldest of a family of eight kids, four brothers and three sisters. Being the oldest, you were the one everyone kind of looked to for greatness. Never really wanted that greatness, but what can you do? You picked up odd jobs as much as you could, making sure food and such wasn't an issue. You never needed to do that, but you felt it was necessary. You wanted to do the right thing, and the right thing as a kid was doing chores and saving your money to help pay for stuff like holidays and nice nights out. You had a lot of family, and knew a small army's worth of people. Small-town mentality, in the layer of your city you lived on. Towering skyscrapers and massive walkway networks were what you were used to, always keeping your head on straight in crowds and such.

Uncommon to your colony was a reduced crime rate. This was due to being an Inner Colony. There was a long history on Inner and Outer Colonies, with some kind of event in history you didn't pay attention to in school, but Inner Colonies enjoy thorough protection of the Republic militaries. Earth's Celestial Military Forces, known as the ECMF in common tongue, were able to establish a lot of infrastructure on Inner Colonies during that big event in history. You think it was called the "SCAR?" It was some kind of mnemonic with a song attached.

You were pretty awful with history, in general, because you looked forward. You wanted to be there when history was written, or to at least see the places in the books. The colony of Prosperity IV was pretty insignificant in the history books, which led you lusting for more, and deep down you wished you were born somewhere significant. Earth would've been a bad-ass birthplace, because that was where mankind started!

Thinking of "started," you were reminded of Mom. You haven't called your mother in months. She seems to be doing alright, writing every once in a while. Your other brothers and sisters don't talk much, most joining the Republic military. Breaking from your reflection, you see a ship coming in. It looks to be the final ship of the day, based on the time. You have a few minutes though, before you have to get off your perch and actually work. Docking protocols and all that crap giving you a few minutes, you could laze about some.

>Where are we?
>Get to work.

>>137220
>>>Where are we?
Might as well get this wall of exposition done and over with.

>>137220
>Get to work.

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>>137227
>>>Might as well get this wall of exposition done and over with.
I'll make it quick; learning the balancing act.
>>137238
>Get to work.

You're on the space station Braldy's Escape. Floating over the desert planet of New Eris, you stare down at a budding mining colony day in and day out. Founded by some rich guy with a lot more money than sense, Braldy's Escape is the result of a stock market baron wanting to retire and play governor for a good while. He was pretty good at it, making nice-nice with the criminal outpost, Leuans. Considering how you get paid by Braldy almost directly, you can't outwardly complain much.

He's the same guy, you huff as you get into your EVA suit, that decided you were so good at this job you should stay on station.

Putting the mag-boots to metal, you clomp to the last ship. You hear the voice of a coworker in the communications line, singing off-key show-tunes.

"We'll just gliiiiide, starry eyed..." he laughs like he just stole your sense of hearing, "Oh, hey, it's the boss!"

That's Stubbs. Called so, because unlike you, he replaced all of his limbs with prosthetics. The technology for them's not awful, so it's fully functional prosthesis complete with touch and other senses. He's just really determined to make fun of himself: a trait you and he share.

"Done sleeping up there?" he chuckles.
"Got all your joints oiled, you bag o' bolts?" you jab back, a little more venom in your voice than you intended.
"Owch, boss!" He laughs it off, when you kind of wish he wouldn't.

The last ship of the day goes on without incident, almost too well. Large containers are pulled in by drones, you find a few redpacks that are in need of survey. You find a bit of suspicious stuff in these packs: the digitized storage of stuff like plants and certain food items sets off several alarms you have to sift through.

SUSPICIOUS ITEM LIST:
>48x chicken eggs
>200x Cashews
>16x Potted sunflowers
>1x Bottle, Martian Scotch

Chicken eggs? That's just gotta get sent through another department of customs. Cashews? Really? It's only flagging because it's a seed of some plant-life. You scan it over, and find that the cashews are boiled and salted; no worries of invasive flora. What the hell are "potted sunflowers?" You send an alert to Customs, figuring they could be drugs. However... Martian Scotch? That's some good shit. Out of your pay bracket, and most certainly not allowed to be passed through without a specialized container. You double-check, and your policies say that stuff gets confiscated outright if it isn't stored properly. Doesn't say who gets it, though.

A stupid law, one the old fat-cat Braldy put in because "that's an insult to the beverage!" One more reason you dislike the guy: prices for Martian liquors skyrocketed here. But, this is an interesting dilemma for you.

>Send it to customs, keep it clean.
>Reroute it to your locker.
>Let the dipshit colonist keep his booze.

>>137418
>Send it to customs, keep it clean

>>137426
>Send it to customs, keep it clean.

You weigh it back and forth in your head for a while, eager to get your hands on top-shelf liquor. However, you decide against it. As you send it up the chain, you hear laughter behind you.

"Royce, you goodie-two-shoes, we could've split that bottle!" one coworker says: she's the party-girl, always eager to drink with everyone after shifts and pass out on someone else's couch like it's some kind of accomplishment. You still don't know her name.

"You owe me fifty credits," Stubbs interrupts her laughter, "Fess up, Beth."
"Screw you," she frowns and starts tapping on a datapad.

"Yea, yea, bet on me taking stuff from the colonists. You guys are the best role-models!" You chide, there isn't much laughter from your subordinates. They seem too busy waiting for you to open the airlocks so they can go punch out. One sighs loudly as you turn back, closing out the terminals as you're expected to. When it comes to work, you do things by the books. You didn't get this job by bending rules willy-nilly. Population A's foreman might be an asshole who steals liquor, but you're not Population A's foreman.

Besides, you have at least one glass of the local brewery's honey scotch. Synthetic honey isn't nearly as sweet as the real deal, but you only had the real deal with your ex the night she decided you weren't good enough. She's screwed off to some other side of the Confederacy. Good riddance. You miss her cat, though.

Cycling through the airlock, Beth cracks a joke. You can't hear it because of the mechanisms of the airlock, and the muffled sounds of your EVA suit changing its pressure. Everyone looks to you after making it to the timeclock. Beyond the timeclock is the pod that removes your EVA suit and puts it away in a digital bank of the station's. It's a rental, after all.

>Ask everyone what they're staring at you for
>Order everyone to punch out first
>Get punched out and into the pod

>>137583
>>Ask everyone what they're staring at you for

>>137621
>>As everyone what they're staring at you for

"What?" you ask into the silence. One of the guys huffs and goes to his locker, cursing under his breath. Beth laughs, and Stubbs chuckles.

"You're supposed to punch out first, boss," he explains.

Somewhat embarrassed, you quickly punch out as best you can with the EVA suit. The fumbling size of the gloves makes things somewhat comical, and that eases your flustered mindset. You hear the timeclock beep as other people set their out-times, and you lean into the pod. It whirs around you, various machinery stripping the parts off in the exact order necessary. There are some flashes of light as the gear's digitized, put away in some far off warehouse. The pod opens, and you put a foot down to walk out, feeling relieved everything went without a hitch after you awkwardly stared at people wanting to just go home.

Your heel catches on something, maybe the lip of the pod's entrance. You don't know, what you do know is you hit your face square on the tiles. There's more laughter, not from Beth this time.

"Oh shit, Boss, you alright?" You feel Stubbs' cold hands on your arm as he tries to get you up. You landed square on your nose, and there's the reflexive water in your eyes. You think of how you've been stuck on this station for four years, how you thought about how you got here and shit, and now you bust your face.

What a fuckin' day.

>"Yea, I'm fine,"
>"No, this is the worst fuckin' day."
>Say nothing.

>>137700
>"Yea, I'm fine,"

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>>137827
>"Yea, I'm fine,"

You shake your head, concealing how awful you feel over face-planting. You hear a camera snap, and some transmission noises. You're probably going to have that on the inter-foreman mail system for a few weeks.

"Ey, Royce," Beth chimes in, sliding up to your locker with a bottle of booze already in her hand, "You wanna go drinking? A faceplant like that needs some good ol' fashioned painkillers."

Any other day, you'd probably go for it. Hell, maybe she'd end up somewhere besides the couch of your place. But today? No. Shitty day, shitty punch-out, and shitty tube. Your exterior kept shit rolling, nobody knew you were feeling like garbage. A few minutes later, you were walking home. Your apartment at the end of the twelfth residential district, eager to get into the last of your booze.

As you approached the building your apartment was nestled in, you saw a holopad light up. The column was about waist-height, and a small holographic pigeon showed up on it, fluttering its wings before you.

"Royce Arnolds, are you well?" It asked, the dumb AI not having true sympathy protocols, "My scans of your vital signs show your eyes are at ground-level, there is an elevated temperature in your cheeks, and your teeth are clenched. Your overall productivity is down by a double-digit percentage."
"Shove off, bird," you scoff, "I feel fine."
"Your vitals indicate you are angry."
"Your scans are off."
"In your case, I ran a diagnostic."
"Oh?"
"My systems are accurate. In fact, they are at peak efficiency."

You scowled, irritated at the pestering of a stupid bird-AI squawking a pretense of care. You wouldn't be surprised if Braldy was golfing on the ice-caps of New Eris, laughing at how funny his stupid AI he paid half-price for was.

The elevator brought you to your apartment's floor, where you fumbled with some keys and lights opened up around you. The windows simulated evening by creating an orange light. The locks secured behind you, and it struck you: it was Friday. Were you really that lost to the grind? Your stomach rumbled, and you eyed over the room. There was an empty fridge, an old TV across from your ratty couch, some gaming desktop you bought second-hand, an old-school jukebox, and an empty box of pizza.

Shit, you needed to order more food. Flopping onto the couch, you poured yourself some of the scotch from the bottle that was on an end-table. With that glass full, you now had the dilemma of the weekend: what did you order too much of, so you wouldn't have to leave all weekend?

>Order Chinese takeout
>Order pizza
>Order something mildly healthy

>>138007
We ordered all of it. Sometimes we get a mighty powerful urge to just have a feast, like a king. Never the best of ideas though.

>>Order Chinese takeout
>>Order pizza
>>Order something mildly healthy

>>138033
>FOOD FOR THE FOOD GODS
>+40kek

You say "fuck it," and start ordering. You don't have anyone to lose weight for. The only woman who could claim that on you called you an asshole and left, taking the cat the both of you bought. You were really attached to the cat, you realize, as you down the entire glass of scotch.

James Brown is dead, has been for thousands of years, you turn on a song that says the same thing. There's a nice couple of lyrics where it talks about a pair of size sevens, but whatever. You're ordering the healthy food first: you pretend you're going to eat it first, and nibble at all the unhealthy trash the rest of the weekend.

NAY, YOU ARE THE KING OF THIS CASTLE!

You order Chinese, basically running down the menu. It takes a while, as you feel the scotch warm up your thoughts, and realize this might be a solid endeavor spanning an hour. The TV talks about the acquisition of some planet by another colonial interest, some one-world faction called "Dominion." Whatever, they're dicks, you have General Tso's chicken coming to your door.

After about fifteen minutes, it shows up. You are asked where the party is by the eager delivery boy, and you slur "James Brown is dead!" as the song you've been looping hits a high note with that line. By the Progenitor, who even is James Brown, anyway? That's what you get for listening to music that's about four thousand years old. You order an XL Supreme pizza, that shit's going down first. That takes a single-digit amount of minutes, this time delivered by drone. Not nearly as fun to mess with. You pat it on the head, and pour yourself another drink.

You're gonna party hard, you think as you dial in for the healthy food joint. However, unlike the usual instant-pickup food places get, you have a ringback. It's an older song, like what you're listening to, starting with a guitar riff with lots of flanger. You start bobbing your head back and forth, not even aware of who is singing. The lyrics though, you dig. "I'm a mess, such a wreck, don't forget about it," you catch yourself nodding along and completely forgetting you're actually calling someone. The music stops, though, as the other end picks up.

CALL DURATION 0:01
LYNELL MARTIN

Shit shit shit

A screen pops up on your neural interface, making a window in your HUD where you see a webcamera. You hear the muffled sounds of something in darkness, like blankets? Some kind of fabric? After a few seconds, a head lights up as a lamp is turned on off-camera. You widen your eyes, and you see a woman sweep some hair out of her face.

"Uh, hello?"

>Get suave out of fuckin' nowhere; you're drunk it'll work you swear
>"WRONG NUMBER FUCK"
>PANIC

>>138225
>>Get suave out of fuckin' nowhere; you're drunk it'll work you swear

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>>138236
>>Get suave out of fuckin' nowhere; you're drunk it'll work you swear

"Uh," you sputter, the alcohol affecting your vocal chords, "Hi,"
"Progenitor's balls, who is this?" she squints into the camera, seeing your wide-eyed, bloodshot, glass-of-scotch-in-hand havin' ass.
"Well, funny story," you let the alcohol take over. At this point, she was awake and you were feeling chatty. What the FUCK are you doing, Royce?! "I'm on the Braldy's Escape, and are you the level 49 pizzeria? If you're delivering, you got a repeat customer for sure."

With a thought, you put a preview of your face on your view. You wondered what she saw, and man was it awful. She saw you, with a half-grin, your hair a mess and the scruff of a beard starting to form. She laughed though, and you couldn't help but smile back.

"Haha, no, I'm not the pizza chick on your station. I'm on Earth!" She paused, "But, pizza does sound pretty fuckin' good. What's your favorite kind?"

Wait what that fucking worked? Progenitor's left nut!

"I like a good supreme, on some days I go large. Though most of the time I get an extra large and pretend I’ll diet tomorrow," your heart-rate was calming down. Maybe it was the booze? She laughed in response, and you relaxed into your couch.
"No shit! I get a meat lover's when I'm pretending to diet. So," she said, adjusting her arms under her head, "What's your name, Supreme?"
"I'd ask the same of you, with a similar nickname... Meat lover's. Wait..." You facepalmed, "Wow, that's the booze. I'm Royce," Through your fingers you looked at the smile, and you can't even remember what happened today.
"My name's Lynell. Wanna enter a virtual chat?"
You recognized that lingo. It was a way to simulate an environment, like a meeting place, to have a bit of a chat and use some virtual reality tech to have a face-to-face, instead of the somewhat oppressive HUD-enabled facetime you had going on now.

>Hell fuckin' yea!
>Chicken out

>>138386
>>Hell fuckin' yea!

>>138406
>>Hell fuckin' yea!

In the words of some long-dead fad: "Yolo."

With a mental agreement to a pop-up dialog box, you feel your implants kick into overdrive and your body go into a state of lucid-dreaming. Running a program you somewhat log into, you find yourself at a coffee shop.

Normally, when there's a drastic difference between what the system scans and what the person logs into the system with - something like hugely different physical characteristics - this chat program pings you. As Lynell walked over to the solitary table, you realize there aren't any pings. She's wearing a simple little pencil-skirt, black leggings, and a white button-up shirt with a bowtie at the top. Cute as a damn button, and here you are wearing a hoodie with the Braldy's Escape logo on the right pectoral, and a plain t-shirt underneath. Oh yea, the program keeps a passive check of your most common attire, which in your case happens to be a shitty pair of jeans. She's dressed for a dinner date after work, and you're some hobo on the street. Nice.

"So, Royce, you like coffee?"
"Hell yea!" You both exchange some info on favorite flavors, make a short discourse about baristas, and how they could be less robotic. So what if they were actually drones, there are AI with more personality.

"What kind of work do you do, Royce? I did a quick search, Braldy's Escape is over new Eris. That's super out there!"
"Oh, I'm a dock foreman," you say, somewhat dejected, you inhale and are about to say how it's nothing to write home about but she lights up like starship console.
"A dock foreman? Like, you move the freight people bring when they move into the colony?"
"Yea,"
"That's awesome! I just push pencils all day, a secretary. I bet you the view from the station's gorgeous,"
"Oh man, some days it can be!" You think on it and realize this is a new thing, "Where are you a secretary at?"
"Digital Rain Records. A small musical company based North America."
"No shit? Like on the ground, in the gravity well?"
"Yep!"
"I'm jealous! I haven't felt actual gravity in years. Say, Digital Rain, that's the bunch that handles old remasters right?"
"Yea, not nearly as cool as I would like it to be-"
"Whoa," You interject what you see in her eyes and hear in her voice, "They cover my favorite Pre-Promethean Era tracks."
"What! What subgenre's your favorite?"
"I dig their old punk rock, the later pop-punk scene, but I always fall back to-"
She joins you: "The Last Rock!" She threw her arms up and spun on her little stool with laughter.
"Ms. Martin, you have impeccable taste."
She calms down, "You do too, mister Arnolds." She points at the nametape under the logo on your hoodie, and you chuckle. She continues: "So, this is too good to be coincidence. Did you plan this?"

>Sure did.
>I don't even know, honestly.
>Most definitely not.

>>138543
>>Most definitely not.
Was ordering healthy foods to feast LIKE A KING.

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>>138558
>Was ordering healthy foods to feast LIKE A KING.

"Nope, not at all. I was actually two glasses of scotch deep, and was ordering enough food to last me the weekend," you laugh, thinking fondly of that General Tso's, "I was gonna eat like royalty."
"Well, you certainly planned THAT, at least. Lemme guess, Chinese food?"
"Lots of it. But, I was going for some healthy alternatives."
"Like pizza? Good ol' Italian?"
"No..." You realized you didn't ever actually order the healthy stuff, "Well, technically yes."
She rolled her eyes, "You're a goofball."

You looked around the room, your buzz affecting your concentration, and your memory. You felt like she'd mentioned this prior.

"So, Lynell, remind me if we've already hit on that, why are we in a coffee house? We could simulate all sorts of locales, why this one?"
"Oh? That's because I can't go a day without a nice cup of coffee," her blue eyes danced around the room, "I mean, you can see we didn't simulate the baristas for good reason."

You felt the alcohol kick in, and your beaming became a smoldering smirk in seconds.

"Well, in that case, I'm going to buy you a cup of coffee."
"What? Like a remote order?" She seemed caught off guard.
"Nope. Like go to your favorite shop, get your drink of choice, and hand-deliver it."
"Royce," a smile crept over her face, and she put a hand over her mouth, "You're ridiculous!"
"When I'm on Earth, a knockin' at your door, repeat that sentence."

You look at her, there was a look of surprise, followed by quiet wonder. Was it the alcohol? It had to have been the alcohol. You couldn't have been that charming. Looking back, that sounded super creepy. But, she reached for the virtual coffee cup in front of her, drinking from it as an emote more than anything she gained nutrition from, and you felt that she was taking in your features bit by bit. It was like she was waiting for you to say you were joking, but you were too buzzed to change your stance. You watched the streak of blonde in her bangs trace around her face, and you felt assured that you didn't want to change your stance.

"Alrighty then, you crazy dockworker," she smiled, gently punching your arm, "I'll be waiting. But, for now, I gotta sleep! Save my contact information! I want you to call me, okay?" With a wave that you absent-mindedly returned, the call was dropped.

That... Went much better than expected. You contemplate for a moment the wonder of how you drunk-dialing someone across the Confederacy can get you, not only a cute girl who wants you to call her back, but also so happy you want to leave your real job for-

You just promised someone you were going to Earth. Across the Confederacy of Man-fuckin'-kind. You set up your paychecks to split, so you can build up a fund for your trip. You wire your nest-egg into this additional account:

"FUND FOR LYNELL'S COFFEE"

>Just wing it until you have the money
>Try to plan out trip
>ENGAGE PANIC

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>>138762
Okay, I kind of gave three awful options. Gonna call session for now, shamelessly blather on out of character and get some feedback. Prologue's over, the quest will be picking up a pretty notable deal after this, as we start the actual "Visits Earth" part of the quest.

What'd you guys think? Any stylistic calls? I'm not sure second-person writing really fits me, so I'm debating switching over to 3rd person. Make it a kind of fixed-third-person style. Suggestions, requests, curiosities?

>>139082
Second person is kinda shit. Go with what you like. It feels like an actual animu, which is weird to see in some random quest, but stranger things happen. Things were fun and lighthearted. I kept expecting hard sci-fi, but was pleasantly surprised by each post.

As for requests: Give us a few choices based on what we do, maybe think of a few unusual stories to possibly go into of us crossing the confederacy, but wing it.

>Try to plan out trip
>Visit that one /fit/ness wiki. Some friend recommended it, and you could save a ton if you eat right, cook for yourself, and do it in bulk.

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>>139418
Yea, second-person is killing me. Been trained out of it, figured I wouldn't have problems in a quest thread, but man I kept switching 3rd-person mid post and having to double-back. The overall feel has been something I've been molding up, fancying it as a bunch of different mediums as I try to get progress on this big project of mine. Animu definitely something I've tossed around a bit more than most other mediums, though. That and an RPGMaker VN.

Onto setting overall is a bit brighter than what I'm used to seeing. It had its grimdark war period (and there's certainly a lot of lore from it), which Royce will encounter remnants of, but in creating this setting/story combo I made a point to keep it notably less grimderp than what I see plastered everywhere. The setting is more about living in it, and making the best of it, than how awful the setting is. It's the damn future, might as well make it enjoyable to imagine, is how I feel.

I don't have a set geography in mind for the Confederacy just yet, and there will be points where that simply doesn't matter; players will have some agency in running to different factions/colonies as he backpacks space. I have a few major locations that will be visited and may have some rails between them, but they can be rearranged based on demand.

The /fit/ness wiki will definitely get worked in tomorrow, when I pick up another session. Will probably put it in a new thread, so that there can be clean segregation in chapters/sessions. Thanks for the feedback, by the way!