Eli
You wake up alone in the center of a huge circular room, leaning against a pedestal resembling a short marble column. Most of the room is a sterile light gray, but the walls in all directions are lined with bizarre doors with colorful door frames. You stand up and stretch, but as you look around you realize that every door other than the one you were facing had pedestals in front of them not unlike the one you were leaning against. Each pedestal bears oddly shaped indentations, as if specific objects were meant to be placed atop them. There is only one exception; the pedestal in the center of the room, the one you were leaning against, which instead bears a large red button just begging to be pressed. You resist the temptation, unsure of the consequences.

Try as you might, you can’t remember how you ended up here, or anything in the past for that matter. You start to worry you have brain damage or something, but you don’t seem to have any trouble remembering your multiplication tables or how the water cycle works. You know your name is Eli, and that your favorite food is steak, but for anything beyond that you draw a blank. You start to look through your clothes for some kind of clue, but besides the discovery that your belt is made to look somewhat like a tail, there’s nothing to give you any indication of who you are.

Turning your attention outward for clues, you walk up to the door without a pedestal. Upon closer inspection, it’s completely flat without a knob or any apparent mechanism to open it. You look around and realize all the doors are like this, but this one seems different. The door and door frame are pitch black, and unlike the other doors, it bears a large lock connected to numerous chains which lead off into the edges of the door. You reach past the chains to the black surface, but it just seems like a solid wall. The other doors seem to let you see through them a bit, with a blurred preview of what lies beyond. You pick a random one with a blue frame and move over to it. You reach out your hand, expecting to be able to lean on it so you could look closer, but it instead phases through, and you almost fall right in. You pull your hand out on instinct, but after confirming you are unharmed, you venture a peek inside only to see a pitch black void. You hesitate for a while, pacing about the room and occasionally eyeing the big red button in the center, but since you still don’t trust the button, and you have nothing else to do, you eventually go back to the blue-framed door and cross its threshold entirely. After but a moment of inky nothingness, you suddenly find yourself on your back, on a bed of sand, staring directly up at the sun.

Your memory is pretty foggy right now, but you're pretty sure you've seen the sun at least once before. This sun... isn't the same. You can look straight at it without any issue. It just doesn't seem nearly as bright, not even as taxing on the eyes as a simple lightbulb. In spite of that, the sand and the rest of the beach you are just now becoming cognizant of lights up beneath it. As you examine it curiously, you notice a slim wedge cut across its radius. You try to figure out what it is for a while, which is made easier as you notice it slowly growing bigger.

Yes, this must be… a distraction.

Where the hell are you exactly?

As far as you can tell, you’re just on a beach near some kind of resort, except there’s enough ocean visible in enough directions to know you’re on an island. Who builds a resort, or anything for that matter, on a tiny island like this one?

You get up and start taking a not so long walk on the beach. Even if there was more beach upon which to walk, you want to check out the resort. You were just in some place that was clearly indoors, so there are only so many ways to reconcile how you got here. Still, as unreliable as your memory may be, you’re pretty damn sure there wasn’t any interim between stepping into that blue door frame and waking up on the beach.

As you get to the lobby, you find it’s pretty mundane, if tropical. It seems like a standard hotel lobby, albeit with an open air design that makes the waiting area furniture stick out a bit. You don’t see any guests, but there are a few human receptionists available for you to accost with your arrant inquiries. They don’t acknowledge you as you walk up to them, simply staring off into the distance unblinkingly. It’s pretty weird after a couple of seconds, but the nearest one immediately turns to face you when you try to get their attention.

”...Hello?”

“Welcome to the Last Resort, the Last Resort you’ll ever need! Can I get you a room?”

“No thank you. Could you tell me about this place and how I got here?”

“The Last Resort is a beach-front luxury resort. We aim to provide our guests with everything they need for a restful and relaxing vacation. You got here by walking.”

He speaks matter-of-factly, without a hint of sass. He radiates customer service to the point that it’s slightly disturbing. In any case, he doesn’t seem to know anything, so you sit down in one of the surprisingly comfy chairs, considering your next course of action.

@vanovick

Soft bedsheets and air conditioning, is a combo Layke never expected to wake up to. She'd been given the world's shittiest job, and even she could see it past all the fancy titles they'd given her. She wasn't the smartest fish in the pond, but she definitely could tell when people thought she was one of them. Unfortunate as it ended up being, working alone and away from society had the benefits of not actually having to do the job she was assigned. After all, it wasn't even real in the first place.

Comfy bed could only last so long, because waking up in a strange new place was exactly how her last assignment ended up being given to her, and finding out if this was another "spontaneous" shift in duties was on the more important side of matters to uncover. She'd recognize a bog standard hotel room easily, and the place didn't seem like it was meant to be her new permanent residence. "Why" and "where" were the next questions to enter her mind, as no matter how hard she tried, remembering where she was last was difficult to say the least. Everything about her was the same, so unless she was in the best dream of her life, she could come to no other conclusion.

"Holy shit I've been kidnapped, and now I'm probably gonna get sold to some crazy person and they've probably locked me inside this room and this entire hotel is some illegal trafficking site for hundreds of people and they're just gonna take all my organs and sell them off and then I'm gonna be dead and gone forever and then oh god where am I wanna go home have to escape--"

Layke rolls off the bed towards the window, parting the window curtains aside to reveal a comforting sight, a wide view of the ocean past a long stretch of sandy beach. Water meant swimming, which meant freedom and not being "captured" anymore. But now the hardest decision had to be made, should she run now and hope no one notices the sprint towards the beach? Or should she gamble on sneaking out quietly and also hope no one would notice her, slowly creeping along the sand.

During the rough mental process of calculating these incredibly dangerous odds, her mind blanks as she looks at the rest of her room to notice her prized possession, her hat! Nice.

This newly acquired item did nothing to reassure her of where she was, but with this, she could now conceal her face as she went out, so stealth was now a more viable plan. It's not like much can hurt her anyways, right? And maybe, there was a chance she didn't actually get kidnapped, but acting under the impression that it could be was much more thrilling. Immediately testing the door and finding out it wasn't locked either took a lot more of the excitement out of her head. Yeah, it probably didn't make sense for her captors to bring along her hat...

The hallway had no other exciting reveals either, just a brightly lit passageway with room numbers dotting the walls, with some plaques indicating the direction of the lobby. Second theory came to her mind: drowning and washing ashore in a strange new land. Much more likely. At least to her. Maybe call to the lobby would be a safe option to start off with before leaving. She could only hope the list of numbers had someone with answers.

beep beep phone noises dial tone

"Last Resort, The Last Resort you'll ever need! How can I help you this morning!?"

Layke immediately slammed down the receiver. That had to be a joke of a name, and she was getting pranked. Hallway time.

The first person she came across in the lobby wasn't the worst sight to see, but the problems arose pretty quickly when she realized her disguise wouldn't do much here. That man in the chair was pretty flesh looking, and she was pretty watery looking. Glancing around the room to see several other fleshy looking yet robotically stiff humans was just downright disappointing. The fact that none of the workers were raising a fuss at the sight of her was good, but then again, the man sitting down had horns and wings, also kind of wacky. Yeah, she could probably take him in a fight anyways if he was mean, like what's he even gonna do? Fly away indoors?

All she could do now was walk around into his vision and hope his face was more inviting than his clearly devilish features.

@Ryik

Eli
As you find yourself spiraling down an existential concrete staircase like a tangled slinky hurled with great force, a flash of blue begins oscillating in your peripheral vision not unlike a runaway pendulum with nothing to lose.

You look up to find what appears to be an animate puddle standing in front of you, wearing clothes and a straw hat. You try and immediately fail to not let the confusion show on your face as you notice the living crab swimming inside of her.

"What-" You stop yourself. Maybe that's the wrong question. Given how you got here, making sense of every little thing isn't actually that big of a deal, and she may not even be able to give much of an answer. "I've never seen anyone quite like you before. I'm new here, so could you tell me about this place?" You stand up before the allure of your seat's soft embrace convinces you to never stand up again. ...And about yourself?

@vanovick