...And then she's somewhere else.

sunbather has joined the game

Bacon goes to greet the new player, or at least figure out who they are--

--And then he is towering up, he has learned his lesson about non-vanilla....whatever this is. A player, apparently? He's not touching it and is really hoping it can't climb. He switches between double-handing totems, for staying alive longer, and holding pearls in one hand, for faster running.

"What the fuck. Can you, like--can you hear me? Are you a person or are you just--I don't know, another--whatever the fuck the exploiters are doing--"

Ash isn't online but Spoke and Vitalasy both are. Could also be something they can do without being online--this looks modded, who knows how deep the rabbit hole goes. 

baconnwaffles0 whispers to PlanetLord: come to spawn
baconnwaffles0 whispers to PrinceZam: are you with vitalasy right now
baconnwaffles0 whispers to PlanetLord: come to spawn
baconnwaffles0 whispers to PlanetLord: come to spawn
baconnwaffles0 whispers to PlanetLord: come to spawn

AAAAAAAAH SHE'S NOT IN WATER—

A Yeerk can actually survive for a few minutes, out of water. It's not quite as quick as a human drowning in water. However, Alita isn't familiar with the sensation. Shocked by the relief from the pain of Kandrona starvation and the instant imposition of a new kind of pain, she loses her resolve not to morph. She takes the form she's most used to morphing: her old host, a young human woman, in tight clothing and with pink hair. She's a fast morpher; she catches the words "whatever the fuck the exploiters are doing".

Two thoughts cross her mind in rapid succession: how on Earth am I alive? and oh gosh I really shouldn't have done that.

"Hi!"

Baconwaffles does not jump back, because he is on a pillar. He stays safely shifted, not that that will help against a player. He settles on holding pearls instead of a second totem, since she's not holding a weapon and doesn't seem to have any particle effects right now.

baconnwaffles0 whispers to PlanetLord: COME TO SPAWN
baconnwaffles0 whispers to PlanetLord: COME TO SPAWN
baconnwaffles0 whispers to PlanetLord: COME TO SPAWN
baconnwaffles0 whispers to PlanetLord: COME TO SPAWN
baconnwaffles0 whispers to PlanetLord: COME TO SPAWN

"Um. .....H...i." She doesn't sound like anyone he knows, and she doesn't sound like she's using a voicechanger either. Unless they've gotten better when he wasn't looking, which is always possible. There's, like, AI stuff now. Not the most likely option, but something to keep an eye out for. He tries to remember if he knows a sunbather from events or twitter or anything. He doesn't think so?

He's got a lot of questions, like does Parrot know you're here and do you happen to know Spoke, by any chance, and how did you just do that, and why are you here. But he can do introductions first. No need to start needlessly antagonizing right away. He can say at least one sentence without needlessly antagonizing his conversational partners. (Shut up, Planetlord, he totally can.) "I'm, um, I'm Baconwaffles, it's nice to meet you."

PrinceZam whispers to baconnwaffles0: no
PlanetLord whispers to baconnwaffles0: fiiiiiiiine im coming
PrinceZam whispers to baconnwaffles0: we've got a meeting soon though
baconnwaffles0 whispers to PrinceZam: COME TO SPAWN
baconnwaffles0 whispers to PrinceZam: trust me
baconnwaffles0 whispers to PrinceZam: you need to see this

That pillar looks, um, physically improbable. Is she in an alternate universe? Or maybe she was wrong about Heaven, and it is a real place after all. She's pretty sure she did die.

He's speaking English. If you'd asked her what an alternate universe might include she wouldn't have guessed people who speak English.

"I'm Alita! It's nice to meet you also. Where...are we?"

"Spawn? Uh, Lifesteal SMP. You seem... lost."

That's... an understatement. Hopefully Planet and Zam will be here soon and he can start interrogating, he's recording and he wouldn't send either of them faked footage but even with that it's better to have someone else actually there.

"I'm very lost. What are the rules of this place? How does one acquire resources?"

"Um."

Lifesteal is a whitelist-only server, he's, like, 99% confident of that. Well. He was 99% confident of that. If the whitelist got turned off and they got a random kid or something--

--No, that doesn't make sense. There was some modded bullshit going on, and it's been pretty obvious for a while now that at least one person has some sort of backdoor, the obvious explanation here is that Spoke thought this would be funny. For some reason. Or Ashswag, or Vitalasy. 

"Try punching a tree to get wood?" He looks around and realizes that there are not actually trees around spawn other than Subz's custom trees. This... Makes sense, given everything. "Actually, I'll just give you some stuff as long as you agree you owe me one, alright?"

He mines down the pillar, places an ender chest. She doesn't seem like an immediate threat, at least. Still holding those ender pearls though. And the totem. And he's keeping an eye out for Spoke or Vitalasy or any of the creatures. "Here, have some pork chops. Free sample from IHOB." Wow, he's kind of broke. He can... craft a diamond pickaxe. He really needs to beg Planet and Zam more often. Or just organize his ender chest, there's definitely lots of shitty diamond armor back at the base. He's got the one backup set but ideally he'd have more, especially if he's going to be around spawn. (He doesn't glance at the maze when he has that thought, but he does definitely suddenly remember the presence of the maze.) Oh, here's a set. Not great enchants but it's better than nothing. She can have that too. She doesn't try to steal his shulkers, which is nice.

baconnwaffles0 whispers to PlanetLord: WHERE ARE YOU
PlanetLord whispers to baconnwaffles0: almost there
PlanetLord whispers to baconnwaffles0: chill

Oh heck that is not the lead up to anything good, but she doesn't really have much of an other option. Hopefully she can pay off her debt quickly.

"Thank you! Do you have a favor in mind that I could get started on now?"

She dons the armor.

"Is, um, armor something that people are in need of a lot around here?"

Hm. There are two obvious favors. Number one, ask her not to kill him. Number two, ask her for information.

...Planetlord has, what, 20 hearts in his ender chest? It's not really a question. Especially since she hasn't actually shown any interest in killing him.

"My teammate Planet is on his way right now. When he gets here, my favor is that you answer my questions honestly. Armor is, yeah, it's pretty necessary. Well. Less so these days, honestly, it's not like it saves you if Poopies or any of the other creatures get on you, and I'm not giving you any totems. But even then, like, there are mobs, and plus without it you kinda look broke. Which doesn't have to be a bad thing, people are more likely to pity you or make fun of each other for killing you if you're not wearing any armor, but it's nice to not be a one-tap. Um, I'm not getting you a fight kit, if you want that you can get it yourself. Maybe if you pay me or something, I guess. Or Zam was giving those out for a while, he's on his way too, you can ask him."

"I would be happy to answer honestly!"

A little too happy, really. She knows it's not smart, that it will probably bite her in the butt, but she's tired of lying and hiding things.

"What sort of things do people pay each other in around here? My priority—before an, uh, 'fight kit'—would be a place to stay, with some water. And, um, electric lighting, do you guys have electric lighting around here?"

If she can get her hands on some lightbulbs she can rig up a primitive Kandrona lamp. Hopefully. Otherwise her stay in Heaven-or-whatever will be pretty short. She's never heard any American talk about where they think people go when they've died twice.

"It's more unofficial barter system, honestly. You could pay people in diamonds or hearts and sometimes people do but not super often. Uh. Easiest way to get a place to stay is to make one. Ideally decently hidden if you don't want people stealing your stuff, but Mapicc's not basehunting anymore, you don't have to be too paranoid, don't listen to Zam when he gets here. The entire server knows my base and it's been, like, basically fine. For electric lighting there's redstone lamps--I don't actually know if we've got any at spawn?--" He looks around, only to immediately break off when he sees Planetlord and wave him over. 

Planetlord appraoches! He's not weirder-looking than Baconwaffles, who is basically a sentient walking piece of bacon with a face, but he's certainly not human or anything that resembles any species on earth either. They're both sort of surprisingly humanoid despite this but they are definitely not normal earth species of human. 

"I'd be willing to do an additional favor for some lamps, or being shown where to get the materials to make one." She thinks she's getting a sense of how things work around here. He talks like they're not so constrained by the resource limitations she's used to, stuff happens faster, you can just pick some land and build your own house.

"Hi!" She turns in the direction of the new person and jumps up and down.

"Deal," Bacon says, and "O-M-G hi!" Planetlord says, at the same time.

"Planet, do you have any redstone lamps."

"Ummmm. I don't know. I can definitely make one." Ender chest down; glowstone from potion-making shulker, redstone from redstone shulker, crafting table. Redstone lamp!

Bacon grabs it for now. They need to get back on track. They can talk more about redstone lamps later. "Alita, this is Planetlord, Planetlord this is Alita, introductions over, you can all talk more later. I said I had questions for you, right?" Okay, what does he want to ask first. Whether she's with Spoke is probably more important but it's the most obvious thing to play dumb about and also less likely to immediately catch Planetlord's attention. "When you first showed up, you didn't show up as a player model, you showed up as--I don't even know. It looked modded. Don't try to deny it, I've got the footage and also your redstone lamp. How did you do that, can you do it again, can you change into anything else, was there anyone in particular who gave you that power, is there anything else I would want to know about it?"

She can't get back home, that's her best guess, which means they can't go where she came from either. She isn't putting the movement in danger by explaining morphing.

"There was a device that gave me that capability. I found it in an abandoned construction site. I can't take it here with me, and I don't know enough about how the device works to reconstruct it. I can turn into any animal I've touched. Other things I would guess you'd want to know about it...I have a time limit of two hours—after that I would get stuck in whatever form I'm transformed into—and I can't turn directly from one form to another, I have to go through my natural form. That's a Yeerk, the thing I was when I got here."

"Word of advice, you probably shouldn't tell people about the time limit. I mean, um, I don't plan on using that against you, Planetlord won't either, but a lot of people here would try." Small noise of consideration. "Planet, do you think 'any animal I've touched' includes--"

Planet has started doing the parkour at spawn but he keeps falling at the double neo. "Ummmm. I don't know. We should test that."

Hey, he extended enough trust to her to give her gear on the strength of her "sure I'll answer honestly" statement. She's not gonna betray that trust by lying anyway. It probably will kill her, but—she's already died once. She's having a hard time remembering to be as afraid as she should be.

"Test what?" Is this about to be a chance to earn her lamp?

"Uh, you're probably gonna die, so we'll come back to that one. There's, like, some really dangerous animals around here to touch, I'm curious what would happen if you tried. Planet can cover the heart." (Planet makes a noise of protest in the background.) "Fine, I'll pay you back later. I'm really low on totems right now though and if we want to do things with Poopies I kind of need those."

"The...heart?"

"Oh, yeah, uh, this is the Lifesteal SMP, if you die you lose a heart, if you kill someone you gain a heart, it's, like, the whole gimmick."