CYOA : Last Liberal Alive

[Chromeo]

You open your eyes and frown. It has a huge crack right across the face. You only just bought that watch, with the last of your shore allowance. Trying to think back to think back to where you bought it, you are slightly troubled to realise you can't. Confusion turns to panic as you realise you can't move your arm. Mind racing, you try to mentally recollect yourself. Who are you, where are you, and what happened?

Suddenly it clicks. You are a staunch liberal, and part of the crew of the proud "Sea Shepard", an organisation founded to do what Greenpeace couldn't and aggressively protect intelligent whales from barbaric whalers on the open seas. That brings you neatly to where you are, aboard the 'Aureole', a new larger size SS "mothership". This ship serves as a base for smaller 'attack' vessels, designed to harass active whaling ships. You serve as the ship's junior communications officer.

As for "what happened", that one seems somewhat more difficult to answer. Your head aches towards the back, so you suppose you must have hit your head on something and been knocked out cold. But that only leaves a larger question, namely why are you still laying here alone on the floor? Calming your feverish breathing for a moment, you can hear the rumblings of a storm outside. It sounds incredibly close, if not upon you already.

Shakily, you decide to try to get up. Looking back at your wrist, you manage to twitch your hand spastically. After that, feeling to your arm seems to return. It feels as if the blood is just rushing back into it. You drag your palm across the ground and lever yourself up until you can use your legs to kneel, and then stand uncertainly. You grab hold of a nearby filing cabinet to steady yourself for a few moments. The ground seems uncertain under your feet. In a storm, ships are usually designed so they can sway side to side, but the Aureole seems to be leaning hard to one side. Moving your palms from the cabinet, you are alarmed to see that they are tinted red. You look back over to the cabinet to discover that is is smeared with what appears to be your own blood. You're lucky to be alive.

Steeling yourself, you stand up on your own volition. You look around to discover that you are in a room used for communications storage. In this room you keep spare radio and Satphone components, along with files full of worldwide naval codes and translator books. The door appears to be unlocked.

So... who are you, again, and what are you going to do next?

A - Male, Darren Mineau
B - Female, Rachel Vasquez
C - Male, Other
D - Female, Other

1 - You are from the United States
2 - You are from the United Kingdom
3 - You are from Canada
4 - You are from New Zealand

7 - Look around this room for medical and navigational supplies
8 - Go outside and try and figure out what happened
9 - Go outside and try to hail any other radios on the ship / any nearby ships
0 - Other

Reply like this, "A18", choosing an option from each category.
Sorry about all the questions, we need to get this sorted out before anything else happens.

[Deleted]

C27
Alexander Anderson

[Mastery]

^I'll go with this.

Off to a good start, though.

[Tails82]

C28

[Chromeo]

You're all agreeing with Zetta on the name?

[sunfalcon8]

C37

[Chromeo]

Right, well, that gives a total of 3 votes for C,2, and 7. [Alexander Anderson]
I'll write up the update soonish...

[Chromeo]

This whole situation stinks to you. If you've been in here for any length of time without anyone coming to find you, something pretty bad must have happened to the rest of the ship. You have no idea what lies outside, so you decide to prepare as best you can before you go out there. Your first port of call is the Lime green First Aid Kit on the wall. You're no doctor but Sea Shepard required all of it's crewmen to take a basic First Aid course, so you quickly know what to look for. Patting your hand to your scalp you find that you're still bleeding slightly, but there's not much you can really do with this equipment short of wrapping a bandage around your head, which might be more dangerous than it's worth. You do find some painkillers and a bottle of distilled water, which you quickly gulp down to reduce both the aching in various points of your body and your growing thirst.

Thinking to yourself for a moment, you detach the kit from the wall and place it on the desk in the middle of the room, and rifle through the shelving to find something to carry it with. To your delight, you spot a messenger bag with a multitude of pockets and zips on a low shelf filled with electrical repair tools and batteries. Tipping the contents of the bag onto the floor, you slip the FAK neatly into the middle compartment. After a few minutes of hunting through various drawers and cabinets, you also add a few more items you think will be useful to the bag. The first thing you grab is a complete map of the Aureole, and a pen. You find your current location on the map and mark it for future reference. Right now, you're on the lower level of the command deck, in a storage room that leads onto the ship's main communications room. From the angle of the floor, you deduce that the ship is leaning towards the Starboard side, opposite to your current location. The most obvious conclusion is that the hull has been breached somewhere on that side. Thinking further, your eyes wander to the wall mounted digital clock above the desk. Currently, it reads "10:34". Unfortunately, You don't know whether that refers to AM or PM. You look towards the watch on your wrist. It no longer ticks, but you can see that it's hands have stopped at "2:11". You know that you set it to local time when you left port, and that the ship's clocks would have had the same done. Assuming your watch stopped when you fell, and you fell because of whatever collision caused the breach, the hull must have been breached for at least 8 hours. However, you suppose the hole must have been closed off by the ship's bulkhead system a long time sooner than that, since the ship is still at least partially afloat. Feeling fairly pleased with yourself for figuring all that stuff out, you discard your broken watch.

You also picked up a variety of other items, including a Japanese phrasebook and Naval codes, which you decide could come in useful for radioing for help. You looked for a Satellite phone, but eventually accepted that there wasn't one anywhere in the room. Packing all the items in your bag, you prepare to open the door, but hesitate. You quickly grab a screwdriver from the pile of objects on the ground where you emptied the bag, and clutch it firmly in your palm. You doubt it will do much good, but it's all you can find. It strikes you as somewhat paranoid, but who knows what could be out there?

Stepping towards the door you resolve to...

A - Go outside and try to find a fellow crewmember
B - Go outside and try to find out what happened/is going on
C - Go outside and try to hail somebody on the radio

Man this was a boring post ._.

[Mastery]

B

[Tails82]

A

[Deleted]

B

The first ones usually are in these things.

[Umbreon]

B for Brandon.

[Chromeo]

Steeling yourself, you lean against the door and push it open with one hand, peeking through the widening crack. The room seems quiet, so you push the door fully open and look inside.

You gasp and drop your improvised weapon as your eyes instantly register the wisened figure of Chief of Communications Mathius Jakobsson slumped in his well worn chair at the radio desk. Your heart instantly drops out of your ribcage, as some part you already knows that you've seen the Swede's easygoing smile for the last time.

You swallow anxiously as you find yourself inorexibly creeping towards him. As you lean across the desk to see Mathius' face, your mouth is bone dry.

You instantly cast your eyes towards the floor and take a step back. You can tell from your horrifying glance that checking his pulse would be a waste of time. You've never seen a corpse in real life before, but the powers that be have clearly chosen to pull out all the stops to make this moment "memorable". You hear that sometimes when people pass away they look for all the world like they're asleep. This is not one of those times. You can feel bile rising in your throat but force yourself to keep control. You realise grimly that this probably won't be the last body you see today.

Despite the horror, you cast your eyes back onto the man who had been like a father to you since you since you came aboard the Aurelius. Despite never having held a firearm in your life, you've watched enough American criminal drama to recognise a gunshot wound. You decide not to get any closer to the... perforation, as there is nothing more for the untrained eye to learn from it. Your mind wanders back to your memories of the great man lying here covered in his own blood, but you shake your head. There will be time to mourn later, if you get out of this alive. No... when.

You allow yourself a moment to feel emotion, however. You swear that whatever bastard did this, be it a whaler, a mutineer, or a pirate, you're going to make them pay. Standing there awkwardly over Mathius, you're not really sure what to do. Mathius didn't believe in god so much as a faceless force guiding existence. Eyes welling up, you wonder if this was his force's plan. Eventually, you just decide to close his eyelids with your fingertips, and to give him a proper send off after you get help.

Although emotionally overwhelmed, you look around the rest of the room briefly. It almost looks like a tornado had come through here. The papers and drawers are strewn madly around the cabin, and in too random an order to have been from whatever collision has caused the ship to take on water. It looks like somebody, or more than one person, was searching for something. The radio seems to still be intact, but... you don't want to move your old friend, right now. Besides which, it might not be safe to use it, if the butcher who did this is still roaming the ship.

There isn't really anything you can use in this room. Anything of value has probably already been taken, judging by the state of the room, and you're not going to rifle through Mathius' pockets. You turn around and retrieve your screwdriver. You've never seriously injured anyone before, but you just got given a pretty damn good reason. Even so, this won't be much use against an armed and trained killer, unless you catch them by surprise. You make a mental note to be on the look out for a more effective weapon.

There's no use sticking around here, and you really don't want to be in this room any more. You should get going.

A) Head upstairs to the Command Deck
B) Head further afield to the SS armoury
C) Check the adjacent and nearby office and navigational rooms for survivors and/or random supplies
D) Head to the "waterpool", where the SS interceptor boats and other craft are kept
E) Head for the lifeboats on the open outdoor deck, not far from here

F) Any other suggestions

Please be aware that although I don't want to be harsh, you're not invincible, either. Don't do extremely reckless things or I may punish or kill the player character.

Also, can more people vote plz? >_> I feel like nobody is reading this.

[Tails82]

C...

[Chromeo]

...? >_>
Well, is it good is it good huh