[Location: Arrival Plaza] [ETA: Closed] to everything turn, turn, turn

[chainsarebroken]

“Welcome, traveler.”

Waking up in a strange place always begins with an inventory: functioning toes, arms, spine, check. Lightsaber, check. Wits, probably. That’s almost everything. Anakin Skywalker sits up and touches his flesh-and-blood hand to his temple with a grimace and looks around himself, first for dangers, then for Obi-Wan Kenobi. Neither immediately present themselves. It’s just as well, if he’s been captured--again--that his master hasn’t been captured alongside him. Of course, after a fashion, it would also be convenient if he were. But that’s no reason to wish it upon the man.

The tinny droid-sounding voice is still saying something. Anakin’s not really listening; he’s getting to his feet, testing his balance, cracking the knuckles of his left hand. The room has the inoffensive dimensions of a hotel room, not a prison cell, but Anakin’s come to distrust what prison cells do and don’t look like. There are no immediate exits: not even barred ones, just no immediate exits, smooth wall all around. That’s unusual. He powers on his lightsaber--without immediate intent to use it, even, just to see if it works--takes mild, somewhat warlike comfort in its usual hum. Then it occurs to him that someone has knocked him out cold and abducted him (again!) and, again, not bothered to deprive him of his lightsaber.

That’s not comforting, for all the usual reasons. For all that the direct, somewhat Gordian workings of Anakin Skywalker’s mind tempt him to try and cut through the wall of his enclosure, one or two additional thought processes are popping up as well: and one of them says, did that work last time?

He powers it off again. The AI is repeating the same phrase over and over again, which catches his reluctant attention.

”May I have your name?”

That’s odd. Presumably any new captor already knows who he is. Anakin is a Jedi: he’s become somewhat accustomed to people knowing who he is. He frowns at the voice, trying to ascertain where it’s coming from, and instead his eyes alight upon what looks like a comlink on a chair--the room’s only furniture--miniature screen glowing brightly. He gingerly scoops it up with his free hand with the intent of seeing if it has any functionality; his last prison comlink has gone missing, after all. This one looks marginally different: of a slightly more up-to-date tech level, for one. And it’s prompting that he enter his name.

Instead he tests the channel of his Force bond. Nothing. Not nothing nothing--just no useful feedback. Obi-Wan is elsewhere, that’s all.

Anakin’s brow furrows. But he figures: why not? Maybe they do already know. Anakin Skywalker, he enters into the comlink and waits gamely for the rest of the lecture.

It’s short, and seems geared towards how to use the simple device. Obviously Anakin has missed the operative part of the orientation. He tabs through a few screens on the comlink and the AI sounds satisfied. He tunes it out again when it starts abjuring him to introduce himself to the rest of the network, whatever that is. Instead he opens the network on his new comlink and looks for a Contacts section in case a familiar name is already programmed in. No dice.

Across from him--as if in resignation--a door drops open like a hatch. A hatch in what appears to be… stone, stone lacquered over with some kind of insulation and wallpaper. Well, that tells him… virtually nothing, he observes philosophically, but that’s not quite the same as absolutely nothing. He gives up on his excavations, scoops up the comlink, and decides to go exploring.

He’s presented with: a plaza. An atmosphere. A sky? An unfamiliar sky, currently in the grips of something that approaches nighttime. The illumination is all from sources on the ground, anyway; he’s arrested briefly by the sight of what at least looks like a non-dome, non-artificial set of stars before he returns his attention to everything around him.

He’s surrounded by people, bustling. People he doesn’t recognize. Architecture he doesn’t recognize, either, though it’s certainly beautiful--a silvery spire unfolds itself in the near distance, and nearer are a set of cloisters and what appears to be some sort of silent-running tram. None of this does anything to explain what he missed entirely in his orientation, though, so he scans the crowd for familiar faces, not with particularly high hopes. He’s been lucky enough before to be captured alongside friends. It doesn’t seem likely this many times in a row. All the same he looks: and tries to make sense, again, of the world around him.

He doesn’t succeed, but existential dread takes a while to collect in a mind like Anakin’s. For now it occurs to him that he may have a mild concussion.

Comments

[sojournermod]

Within the open space (under that sky full of brilliant, wheeling stars), there's a humanoid male seated at a table that looks like nothing so much as a black rock ripped in half, revealing a brilliant gold-hued interior. (--the table, not the humanoid.) The top half of the 'rock' has been polished flat and the man is using it as a writing surface.

He looks up at Anakin Skywalker and offers a courteous nod and a raised hand of greeting. "Pardon my forwardness, but you have the look of a recent arrival," the man calls politely. "May I be of any assisstance?"