Chapter 1: The Arrival

Clutching at her own throat and reeling back after the screaming wave of flames, AJ falters back slightly, wide-eyed. Slowly, the sides of her lips curl up into the hints of a grin. Heat, power, and dopamine flowed through her like a drug. Or at least, she would assume this is what drugs felt like. Continuing to ride the high, more searing heat began to pool into her fingertips. With a flourish and snap of her fingers, her arm surges forward at the surviving creature as embers engulf her hand.

Novac moves behind the ast creature standing after AJ did some flaming thing again he attacks with his shiv.

Of we have hero points in would like to use it.

Novak stared, speechless. The Monkey Man was one thing—a bizarre anomaly, perhaps, but something his rational mind could almost accept. But AJ and Al? Breathing fire? Throwing bolts of electricity? That was a whole different level of strange. "Okay," he began, gesturing wildly, "can someone explain what just happened? I was just starting to wrap my head around being here, and then you two pull that?" He turned to the man whose name he'd yet to learn, noticing the cut. "How bad is it?" he asked.

Dalton was breathing heavy as the creatures fell. For a moment he panicked about his asthma and wondered if he had his inhaler, but after a moment he realized that he was not in distress and breathing quickly eased. He looked at the carnage around them. The sleeve of his coat seemed to be smoldering, his coat had a slash in it and he seemed to be bleeding. "I have no idea what happened... I've never been able to do that before."

He glanced at the person next to him which had breathed fire. "That was impressive..."
Dalton looked confused by the question, "What?" he looked at his arm which seemed to have been cut. Maybe he was in shock, he had not noticed that he had been injured. "Damn..."

Pulling off the winter coat, Dalton looks like an impressive athlete, with strong shoulders, arms, and a broad chest. A tight tee shirt has a picture of several Avengers characters and the words "Trust me, I'm a Super Hero" in bold letters.

The cut on his arm seems to be slight, but seeing himself without the bulk of the coat for the first time "Holy crap, I'm ripped."

Breathing heavily, Al looked down to his hands to see if the power he felt earlier remained - but it had already dissipated. "That kind of felt familiar..."

Al snapped back to reality and turned to face the man in the process of taking his winter coat off. He started to walk towards him with a hand outstretched. "Looks like I'm not the only one who's been changed. I'm Al, are you sure that cut is alright?"


Al then addressed Novac and AJ. "I don't know how I summoned electricity, in all honesty I wasn't really sure what was going to happen. It kind of felt like cracking your knuckles. Not sure if you felt the same way, AJ"

Dalton tried to resist, but he just couldn't, he pulled up his tee shirt to glance as his six pack abs. So that's what those were supposed to look like. He smiled like an idiot for a second and then realized someone else had asked about him.

"Sorry, I'm not usually this dense. I think my brain is on overload - can't process it all."

He took a breath, "First I guess, the name's Dalton."

As soon as he said it, it felt wrong and right at the same time. He paused for just a second, like when you try to remember your bank PIN number and its just out of reach or standing at the gas pump with it asking for your zip code. That was it, right. His own damn name should be easy. Everywhere he looked in his memory, the name came up Dalton, but it felt like a Word document where someone did a Find/Replace, and whatever had been there is gone and now it was Dalton.

In the long list of strange life events, that was going to have to sit at the bottom.

Dalton took a hard look at the cut, "Bleeding a little..." he pulled a cloth out of his back pocket and pressed it on the wound. "With a rusty metal I probably need a Tetanus shot." He looked around the jungle "I sincerely doubt there is a 24 hour CVS near by."

He looked around at the stones in the circle around them. "Everyone is obviously different than they were 20 minutes ago. Couple of you have magic, I apparently know karate, and we are now in a jungle being attacked ape men."

Dalton stared at the stones for a moment, "These were glowing when we fell from the sky. Anyone else getting that Dr Strange, multiverse feeling - which has been totally overdone and they need to move on to a new plotline."

After watching the convict in his underwear shank a monkey to death, AJ backs up some while staring down at her hands. Her ragged breathing was coming under some control now. The glow of fire had calmed down now, leaving only this dull white glow around her that didn't seem to leave. Her burning orange eyes seemed out of place amidst the monochrome of her skin, hair, and the light. Briefly snapping out of her stupefied trance, she looks around at the others.

"It's fucking magic, man. We're all different now. Some more than others. I don't know how it works, but that felt amazing. This shit is dangerous. Cracking knuckles? It was more like a euphoric mixture of catharsis and adrenaline being injected straight into my heart. Fuck, I'm hot though."

Sweat was beginning to run down her forehead. The shirt was already showing wetness under her arms. Dalton's mention of Dr. Strange elicits a nod.

"Yeah, you and me are on the same train of thought. Or the Jumanji reboot movies, if you've seen those. We're not in our world any more. I'm not getting any signal on my smart watch either, if that means anything. Anyway, it's nice to meet you guys. I couldn't figure out shit from those archways. Magic somehow, but not a clue as to make it come back. We're gonna have to figure out a different way back."

"Damn ... that sounds really intense, AJ. I felt more grounded, almost like I could hear the hum of the earth." Al furrowed his eyebrows. "I wonder what else we can do."

Al then approached Novak, intent on studying the strange creatures that attacked them. "Whatever's going on, it's good to know we're all capable of defending ourselves."

"Bingo!" Novak exclaimed. "Look what I found! We've got a map." Novak shared his find with the others. "Anyone fancy another field trip?"

Dalton picked up his jacket, but decided he was unlikely to ever need a snow shovel where they were currently. Although given the current temperature, he was not likely to need a winter coat anytime soon either. Dalton also picked up an axe, a dagger, and the belt pouch.

"The boy scout in me is saying we might need some tools if we are caught out here, especially at night. Of course, wilderness survival was 40 years ago and I caught bronchitis, so hopefully we reach that village on the map first."

Dalton ties the belt with pouch around his waste and tucks his newly acquired tools into it.

He looked at Novac, "You sure you don't want to get dressed?"

It had suddenly occurred to Dalton that Novac had admitted to being a criminal and was damn good with that knife. Something to keep an eye on.

"Anyone else wondering about us being ambushed 2 minutes after we got here? These things seemed to be expecting us."

"Yeah, nothing like that for me, Al. It felt like a raw chaos inside. Painful almost before I let it out. I'd wager our powers are probably quite different if our experiences are anything to go by."

AJ walked over to the corpses of the creatures. A different world it may have been, but standing over the bodies of dead things wasn't something she was suddenly used to. Her expression was hard and serious. Leaning down, a dagger made its way into her hand.

"Better to have it and not need it then to need it and not have it. And you never know when you might need a knife. A map is a hell of a find though. Means these things had some measure of intelligence... You gonna store it in your tighty whiteys?"

Seeing Dalton approach, she gave him some space to take things from the dead. A part of her wondered how the others looked before the shift. Had any of them been women? They haven't given any sign of it. Then again, I haven't given any sign that I was a man. I don't know if I feel safe expressing that yet... She left the thought behind. It would have to be something picked up at a time when they weren't at risk of dying in a jungle.

"Well, there's no telling how much light or noise the magic that brought us here gave off. Or even what triggered it, really. Those things might've been attracted by us just showing up."

"Well," Novac replied to Dalton, "since we seem to be in some kind of alternate dimension where monkeys come out of the woods with hatchets and daggers, I think it's safe to say that nobody would recognize prison jumpsuits. So, I guess I can get dressed again. Although, for some reason, they're very tight. If you don't mind, I will take one of those hatchets and a dagger." He looks at the map again. "This is a very crude map, pretty much just pointing us in the general direction. So, what do you guys say? Do we want to follow the map, or do we want to stay here? My vote would be to leave this place before we get any more visitors."

"Hmm, yea we should head out to at least find out where we're going to spend the night."

Al looked down to his own clothing, which consisted of dusty work clothes and an orange construction safety vest. "At the very least, it would be nice to find less ... distracting clothing. In any case, I say we follow the map."

Al wasn't sure why, but he had a feeling that the discovery of the map wasn't a coincidence.

It was difficult to tell looking at Dalton if the tight tee shirt was his normal style or not, hearing Novac's comment. "My clothes are all different also. I'm at least 6 inches taller and 30 years younger as near as I can tell. Even in my twenties I was short and heavy, so nothing like this body."

He stopped for a minute, "Years ago there was a show - "Sliders" I think where the character bounced from world to world, but in each place he inhabited the body of someone else. Maybe something like that has happened. We are borrowing someone else's body and skills.

My money is still on traumatic brain injury and the EMT's are carrying me to the hospital."