modblob: (Default)
Mods ([personal profile] modblob) wrote in [community profile] redshiftlogs2019-08-02 02:02 am

august 2019. welcome to the void.

Who: Everyone in Anchor.
What: Second Introductory Mingle
When: The Month of August 2019
Where: Around and outside the city.
Warnings: Please add any warnings in the subject lines.

Redshift: Welcome to the v͖͕̺̲̘̱̜͎o̴̦̣̠̦̘̹͞i̯̖d̛̪̬͈̱̦̝͍̕.

Click here to read what characters will experience when arriving in Anchor.

a. bright spots in the darkness.

The redout and accompanying power outage has been going on for over a week now - even though someone must have managed to get the generators up and running so things are a little less dismal, that doesn't mean that everything is fun and games. The generators are enough to power the essentials, like lighting, the MedBay, resident sat phones, sanitation facilities...basically just the things that make life livable instead of kicking the whole city back to the dark ages.

Sometime during the second week, though, around the end of July, residents might start to notice bright spots in the darkness, mostly around the Agricultural levels. Little bobbing blobs of bright blue or vibrant green or glowing red that move soundlessly through the night, poignantly noticeable because everything else is so dark. At first, and from a distance, they might look like your typical swamp gas fake ghost, little glowing smudges in the darkness. Could be promising...but it could be dangerous too.

If residents are brave enough to head up to the Agricultural levels in the darkness and investigate the source of the light, a mildly harrowing mission, they will find that the source of the glowing is...animals. Barely differing from the usual animals one might see in a daylight in the Agricultural levels, these animals prove to simply be nocturnal versions of the usual animals that might survive in the wild and who have made their homes in the faux forest and grasslands. And when everything else is dark, these creatures roam the night, letting off a curious and almost radioactive glow.

There are, however, a slightly wider variety of these animals, who are descendants of animals exposed heavily to radiation that mutated but did not kill them. While there are the usual deer and wild horses, foxes and monkeys, rodents and insects, there are also domestic creatures that seem to have thrived in their glow-in-the-dark forms where non-glowing ones were picked off by predators. Anyone investigating may find glowing kittens and puppies, domestic mice and rats, snakes that are open to being touched, and even a few more exotic domesticated pets like ferrets, hedgehogs, turtles and foxes. While these creatures are still wild, they are the descendants of domestic stock, and with a little effort and coddling, they might turn out to be passable pets, once they're scanned in the MedBay and found to not give off dangerous radiation.

It's not all puppies and kittens, though. Some of these seemingly predatorless glow-in-the-dark creatures are mutated, just like their regular counterparts, but to a more extensive degree. Keep a close eye out while you're trying to tame that adorable glowing purple kitten, because you might find yourself as the prey to a huge mutated lizard or spider, or maybe an oversized glowing wild warthog.

Nighttime exploring, after all, is for the brave at heart...and comes with pros and cons!

b. nightmare swarm.

As if the mutated glow-in-the-dark creatures in the Agricultural levels aren't bad enough, there's something new in Anchor to cause problems. A couple of weeks after the generator room was opened, strange apparitions start showing up in various places around the city. At first they're nebulous clouds that gather in places where there's strong evidence of past violence - in the upper levels of the city where there's serious fire damage, near the security station, hovering outside the armory or wherever there are burns and gouges into the stone walls of the city. But as the month wears on, the clouds start to take shape, and some of those shapes might be very familiar.

Starting at around August 8th, whenever a resident passes by one of these ominous clouds, it will start to coalesce into a solid form, the particles coming together into a concrete shape - the shape of fear. Whether the particles coalesce into the shape of a monster or villain from a character's homeworld or previous game setting, the nebulous representation of their worst fear, a person or thing from their past that evokes a terrible memory of trauma, or even just a generic horrific monster that would particularly frighten that particular person, it's something that is guaranteed to terrify. Essentially, they will turn into the worst thing that your character can imagine.

And these representations of fear? They're not ghosts, they're not digital afterimages, they're not apparitions or holos. They're real, or at least they feel real, they can do real damage, and they're almost impossible to kill. The best way to survive an encounter with the nightmare swarm? Run fast. Because they're generally confined to areas where the echoes of old violence linger, and the quicker you leave those areas the better. Get into whatever light you can, get somewhere safe, and the fear creature will dissipate back into a nebulous cloud, lying in wait for the next victim.


c. power up.

On August 2nd, the dust storm causing the redout and power outage will subside, and a stiff wind will take its place, washing away about two thirds of the red sand piled up on the dome. This fortuitous change in weather will make it possible to start work on getting the power back up. Residents will be able to exit the city through the usual channels so they can work on clearing the dust out of the various installations outside the city that transform wind and radiation and sunlight into power that keeps the city up and running. After they're cleared off, residents can start to get the power up by making repairs to the dust-damaged computer systems. Thankfully, once the power installations outside the city have been cleared off, an automated computer subroutine will boot up on some of the computer panels in the common areas of the residential quarters, with a user-friendly guide to repairing sand damage to the power system.

Mind you, the user guide assumes that residents have a lot of tools, supplies, and assistant bots that the current population doesn't really have on hand, so user-friendly or not, it's tougher than the system seems to think it is.

Thankfully, there is another option. Anyone with a particularly tech-savvy mind who's encountered the nightmare clouds might have picked up on it already, but the clouds are actually swarms of nanites. Released from the room that held the generators, these nanites were originally intended to conduct repairs on the city (there was a reason that room and those generators were so pristine!) that have been corrupted and are malfunctioning due to the ambient radiation in the city that has only increased since their creation. Anyone with even a basic knowledge of computers (and a very strong spine) could collect a sample of the clouds in one of the containment units from the labs or the R&D area, where the semi-functioning computer can be used to work out what's wrong with the nanites...and fix them.

If characters are able to work this out and deploy repairs to the various swarms around the city, those nanites might be super helpful for fixing some of the malfunctioning tech around the city. Food for thought!


d. the wreckage in the wasteland.

Once the emergency situation with the power is sorted out, residents might become a little curious about what caused all the trouble in the first place. The dust storm was, after all, initiated by a loud crash landing outside the city. With the dust storm abated and the windows in the Observation Area cleared off, residents will be able to see the wreckage of a spacecraft crashed into the ground, several miles out from the city. Far enough away to make it impossible to see any identifying marks, but close enough to be a tantalizing mystery for anyone so inclined.

Adventurous souls will be able to suit up and trek their way out to the site of the crash in the battery Jeeps to see what's going on, risking the rough ever-changing terrain and the possibility of a red shift, to see what might be salvageable from the crashed ship, or just in pursuit of knowledge. Once those characters approach, they will find the hulk of a badly-damaged spacecraft, about as big as a medium-sized cruise ship. The hull is badly burned, with tears in the metal, and it will be obvious to anyone who's got any experience with space travel (or even anyone who's watched enough sci-fi movies) to see that the ship didn't do well on its slow fall through the atmosphere. The metal is melted and punctured, anything that might have extended away from the hull has been burned off and lies in tatters, and the sand around the crash site is littered with metal and plastic debris.

But the one thing that's still possible to tell from the wreckage? It probably came from Anchor.

The ship is pieced together from salvaged materials, the tech will be familiar to anyone who's been in the colony for more than a couple days, and there's even a few corpses of very familiar bots lying in the sand. Approaching a large tear in the side of the hull will reveal a way inside the husk of a ship, giving access to the ship's small crew quarters section. If explorers choose to proceed inside, they'll be able to dig through what few personal items remain and find personal tablet computers and sat phones with their hard drives corrupted but possibly salvageable with the right skillset and the right technology repaired back in Anchor. They will also be able to find a way down further into the ship, though it's dark and clouded with sand and...well, quite menacing.

Because it isn't just the darkness and the danger of the red shift coming while you're trapped down there, or the danger of the ship's hull cracking with the weight of the sand piled up on its shell from the dust storm...but looking into the darkness, there's a flickering bluish glow. Digital and glitchy, it flickers from wall to wall, with the faintest impression of a human form. A face. A hand. The movement of hair or clothing. And then there's the echoing sounds - soft laughter, snippets of childrens' rhymes, unintelligible whispers or mumbles.

Well. Enter at your own risk.


ooc: exploration info.

As you can probably tell, this final prompt is kind of a doozy! While the first level of the ship is available for anyone to explore with the information provided in the prompt, going further into the ship will require mod guidance, via an NPC.

Any questions can be asked in the mod questions thread below, and if your characters have progressed to the point of wanting to explore deeper in the ship, please hit up the NPC request thread with a link to where the NPC should tag in.

Have fun guys!

deadlycurves: (Default)

[personal profile] deadlycurves 2019-08-03 02:00 am (UTC)(link)
In MoM canon basically the nanites are part of the digital tattoo that comes stamped on them, and it keeps the displaced stable in the universe, gave him the additional powers he was given there, and had some added healing/regenerative properties (which I know you guys said on his acceptance the healing/regenerative part was non-functioning).

So, I was wondering if there would be any particular weird reaction between the two forms of nanites.
killedwithlove: (Default)

Nightmare and the Ship

[personal profile] killedwithlove 2019-08-03 05:34 am (UTC)(link)
Cole is, in many ways, not that different from the nightmare thing, which is basically a Fear Demon from his world in many ways. This, coupled with Cole's innate abilities as a spirit, it feels like there should be some kind of interaction, that Cole could learn something about this place and what happened here (he could totally be used to drop information that you want the players to have). Would this be a doable thing, that Cole can learn stuff to tell people?

And if so, could he do similar with the crashed Ship later in the month? I'll be gone from August 9-20 though.
itsnotaonesie: movieconnoisseur (*teenager noises*)

Peter Parker | Open

[personal profile] itsnotaonesie 2019-08-03 04:36 pm (UTC)(link)
Bright spots:

When Peter's not scrambling around trying to make sure the generators are doing their jobs (they are, calm the fuck down Peter), he spends the majority of his time bored out of his goddamn mind because there is fuckall to do when it's pitch black everywhere. It's less a matter of bravery and more a matter of just needing something to do when he decides to go scope out the glowy blobs bouncing around on the Agricultural levels. The first thing he actually spots in the area is a gigantic fuckoff spider though, and he decides "nah. Naaaaaah". Just because he is very much spider-themed doesn't mean he wants to deal with this shit today.

He manages to evade turbo-spider detection while he makes his way out of this forested area, up until he feels something sharp and pointy trying to climb up his pant leg. Okay, so maybe he panics a little, maybe he leaps back in surprise and fires his webshooter at whatever was on his leg. Maybe he even yelps. He's thinking spiders; he'd just found a bigass spider, there were webs that weren't his stretching between a few trees, it wasn't too far of a stretch. What he sees tangled up in his web isn't a spider though, it's an adorable little kitten that is glowing blue and making the saddest noise any kitten has ever made in the entire history of kittens.

Peter made a kitten sad and now he feels like the world's biggest asshole, oh no. Turns out sad kitten noises are also very good at attracting giant mutated spiders, which also sucks. Not wanting himself or his new kitten friend to get eaten by bigass spides, Peter scoops the kitten up and turns to run the fuck out of there, only to charge face first into a giant spider web. He can probably break out just fine on his own, but he is momentarily stunned by this ridiculous irony.

"Oh, come on!"

The kitten agrees that this is bullshit.

A couple hours later, after the spiders and the bullshit, he can be found in the MedBay nursing a few spider bites and carefully picking dissolving webbing out of the kitten's fur. And also he's covered in webs and just. Man what a stupid day. But at least there's a kitten?


Too Spooky: (heads up for some fucked up Infinity Wars flavored body horror shit <3)

So far he'd just dismissed these weird clouds as an inconvenience, something that he'd look into in more depth later. Like, after the lights all come back on, and making sure the generators can get them to that point. He's on his way to check up on said generators when he comes across one of those weird cloudy spots, which he proceeds to just roll right on past it since they hadn't really done anything up until this point. It isn't until he realizes that the clouds are moving that he stops to investigate. Cool, more wacky new tricks that this place is gonna play on them. At this point Peter's ready to just roll his eyes at the latest inconvenience and add it to his list of shit to fix later, but he doesn't quite make it to that point before the cloud starts pulling it's shenanigans.

It doesn't take the form of anything threatening. No monsters, no killer robots, no giant purple aliens with magic space rocks. It's just a lady. A lady that Peter immediately recognizes as his Aunt May. What a twist!

Were he in the right frame of mind, he'd have realized immediately that this is bullshit in several ways. New arrivals don't just manifest in the middle of the goddamn hallway, for one. Unfortunately, he can't make himself logic his way through this one just yet, especially not after she reaches for him. Part of him wants desperately for this to be real, another part hopes to shit that it isn't. While his brain is busy fist fighting itself over whether or not he should trust this, instinct takes over and he reaches back for her. She feels real. He's hugging his aunt for the first time in a year, and there's a hundred different things that he wants to say to her that he can't manage to form into words just yet, but that's fine, he's got time.

Except that he doesn't, because a moment later, May's gone. She doesn't just vanish in an instant, though. Nah, she straight up disintegrates, crumbles into ash in Peter's arms and blows away. Somehow. There's no wind in here, the nanites are just trying to be dramatic.

He doesn't have a chance to wrap his brain around what just happened, since no more than a couple seconds later, a few more human forms manifest from the spooky cloud. His best friend Ned, their friend MJ, a few other kids he knew from school. They all appear in the same way that May had, they all reach for him before they crumble into ash and dust. Before long, there are dozens of people manifesting in the same way. Other people from home, people he met in Hadriel and in Anchor all forming, reaching for him, grabbing his arms while they fall apart before his eyes. Maybe it's just his mind playing even more tricks on him on top of what's already happening, all those months of repressing his fears and traumas coming to a head, but he could swear to God that he feels himself beginning to crumble away again, too.

He isn't, but he's well past the point of being able to apply rational thought to this situation. Panic sets in, and he yanks himself out of grasp of the dust buddies. It's one of those fight or flight situations, and seeing as this isn't exactly a situation he can throw a punch at, he turns to run.

And then slams right into someone else, someone who isn't a crumbling terror-vision. What's up.


NANITES!!!!

While it would be so much easier to just distract himself with diving into fixing the dust-damaged computer systems, Peter is still feeling personally attacked by the cloud bullshit. He needs to find out how it happened and why, if only for his own peace of mind, which unfortunately meant going back out there with a containment unit to try to collect a sample.

Admittedly, he isn't feeling particularly brave when it comes to actually doing the sample collecting, so in an effort to keep himself as far away from the cloud as he can, he's rigged up a complicated sample gathering scheme which involves suspending the containment unit from the ceiling with webs, and lots of other webs rigged up in some sort of pulley system. It's a fucking nightmare in this hallway, okay. He doesn't want to get caught up in the cloud again, don't judge.


Wreckage quest: TEXT, Un: Spides

Who else wants to do something really stupid and dangerous and go check out that crashed ship outside? Because I am so going.

Probably need a driver though. I mean I guess I don't need a licence in space but the last time I drove a car it didn't end too well for the car. We need space Uber.
benhargreeves: (uncertain)

too spooky

[personal profile] benhargreeves 2019-08-03 06:19 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Ben might not know the first thing about Thanos, or nanites, but he's seen some crazy shit in his day. Awful, nightmarish stuff. But people crumbling into dust like that - not all at once, but slowly, so they knew it was happening as it happened - well, that's a new one for him.

He only catches the tail end of it - sees a cluster of people, only one of whom he recognizes. Peter, aka Spiderkid. They'd run into one another a few times since their adventure in the library, and Ben likes the guy. So, naturally, he heads over, to say hello. Only to stop dead in his tracks a few feet away when those people around Peter dissolve into ash and blow away into thin air. Ben's adrenaline spikes but he stays rooted to the spot, looking around for some cause - some kind of vaporizing gun?

Then, just as he is scanning the surroundings for whoever has clearly attacked these people, Ben staggers when something hits his chest. Or, rather, someone. It's Peter, running away from what he'd just seen. Ben doesn't hesitate; he grasps Peter by the shoulders and looks him up and down. He is solid, no sign of crumbling. But just because he's safe now doesn't mean he will continue to be: ]


Peter?! What's going on?
itsnotaonesie: (i can't believe you've done this)

[personal profile] itsnotaonesie 2019-08-03 07:23 pm (UTC)(link)
[Peter is one thousand percent in the middle of a straight up panic, so when someone else grabs him his first reaction is to pull away. Of course by doing that he leaves himself stumbling back towards the goddamn horror show. This also is not ideal, so he leaps up onto the nearest wall and starts sort of crab walking up it, just staring at Ben, waiting for him to crumble away too.

But he doesn't. He's still there, still solid and likely very very confused. Sucks for Ben, but having another living, breathing, not-disintegrating person around gives Peter something to focus on. Okay, Ben's fine, neither of them are getting all dusty. Something else is going on, something he can figure out, he just needs to focus.

He's still hanging out on the wall, his face looking pale in that you look like you've just seen a ghost way, but Peter's able to at least get himself to stop freaking out and start trying to piece this shit together.]


Please tell me I'm talking to a real person right now.

[He'll answer Ben's question in a minute, after he's worked the last bit of panic out of his system.]
deadlycurves: (Default)

[personal profile] deadlycurves 2019-08-04 03:24 am (UTC)(link)
You guys are amazing on that front, really. There's so much wiggle room for us in these things, and I think that's great.

I didn't particularly have anything in mind, but if I come up with something, I'll probably still run it by y'all just in case!
deadlycurves: (Default)

[personal profile] deadlycurves 2019-08-04 03:27 am (UTC)(link)
Sweet! You guys are amazing <3
benhargreeves: (? corporeal)

[personal profile] benhargreeves 2019-08-04 04:17 am (UTC)(link)
[ Even though he knows Peter is capable of it now, it still startles Ben a little when he just sort of jumps up and sticks to the wall, scuttling along it very much like a spider would, which makes sense of course. He sees how afraid Peter is. He also sees that Peter is not looking around for an attacker, or looking like he is aiming to dodge anything. Ben quickly revises his idea of this crisis in his head. Not an attack from another vantage, then. Something else.

Something had has Peter pale and wide-eyed and breathing like he's never been more scared. At once, Ben feels a rush of fear, himself, and of protectiveness, too. But how could he fight whatever had hurt those people? It wasn't something physical, a person he could rip in half... ]


Yeah, I'm real, it's me, Ben, were they not?!

[ He gives a small jerk of his head to where the people had turned to ash - at least reassuring Peter that he had seen them, too. Not a hallucination of any kind or flashback. Ben narrows his eyes when he notices there is no trace of ash on the ground. Not even a speck. Surely there would be some, even just a little, if those people really had crumbled. People are bigger than people tend to think. There was a lot of material to leave something behind, when they were undone, whatever the method.

Then, because he doesn't understand the situation and it seems worth it to reassure just in case, he says: ]


I'm not gonna hurt you.
writtendestiny: (058)

TEXT; un; poison

[personal profile] writtendestiny 2019-08-04 06:47 pm (UTC)(link)
I'm already getting ready to go. I can probably work out the driving part.

Are you coming?
itsnotaonesie: (guardians of the galaxy more like)

[personal profile] itsnotaonesie 2019-08-04 07:20 pm (UTC)(link)
I don't know.

[His eyes shift from Ben back to the crumbly horror show. As much as he doesn't want to watch what's happening, he needs to know for sure if it's real or not. The only way to find out is to study it, and after staring for a few seconds he decides that no, this in fact is not real. Or at least it's not actual people that he's seeing turning to ash. The lighting in here absolutely sucks, but as far as he can tell, the crumbly ashy bits are actually swirling back in with the cloud. If these were really people getting dusted, that shit would be building up on the floor. Peter calls shenanigans.

He's still very much on edge, but he's calmed himself down enough to at least think rationally. He lets himself drop from the wall, eyes still on the spookyness while he makes his way back over to Ben, grabbing him by the arm and starting to pull him away. Just because he's pretty sure that it's not real doesn't mean he wants to stick around here any longer than he needs to.]


No, it's- it's not real. We gotta go.

[Well, he has to go. This all may have been fake, but he's still super rattled by the whole thing. He just wants to be anywhere but here, preferably somewhere with a little light.]
itsnotaonesie: movieconnoisseur (what i was totally listening)

TEXT

[personal profile] itsnotaonesie 2019-08-04 07:53 pm (UTC)(link)
Dude I am so there. I need to get out of this place for a while.

So just out of curiosity, how much driving experience do you have?


[If tea bags are crazy where she's from, how common are cars??]
writtendestiny: (042)

[personal profile] writtendestiny 2019-08-04 07:57 pm (UTC)(link)
I sat in a car once.

I'll figure it out. How hard can it be?
itsnotaonesie: (i am not answering that shit)

[personal profile] itsnotaonesie 2019-08-04 08:12 pm (UTC)(link)
[uuuUUUUUM]

okay that's

we can work with that

probably
writtendestiny: (014)

[personal profile] writtendestiny 2019-08-04 08:31 pm (UTC)(link)
You drive or I drive. The alternative is walking.
itsnotaonesie: movieconnoisseur (lemmie stop you right there)

[personal profile] itsnotaonesie 2019-08-04 08:36 pm (UTC)(link)
[Or bringing alson someone who knows how to drive but EH YOLO]

We'll figure it out when we get to it, no biggie.
eudorapatch: from <user name="easystreet"> (Default)

wreckage quest

[personal profile] eudorapatch 2019-08-04 08:40 pm (UTC)(link)
Patch needs to do something. She doesn't want to do anything, but she needs to. If she doesn't, if she just keeps sitting here... it won't be good. She's got not one to blame but herself. She wanted to know the reason she died. Now she does. Can't change it. Can't quite get over it, either.

Finding the motivation is hard, though. Luckily, there's Peter.

Pick a vehicle and grab us some radiation suits. I'll meet you in the garage.

She knows better than to think she's going to stop Peter from doing anything that he sets his mind to doing. She's not going to let him go alone, though.

[[OOC: Feel free to have Peter already be gone, if you want. Once Patch gets down there, it'll be her excuse to just take a vehicle on her own and do something dumb.]]
benhargreeves: @malagraphic (! small)

ben hargreeves 🐙 open

[personal profile] benhargreeves 2019-08-04 09:06 pm (UTC)(link)
A | BRIGHT SPOTS IN THE DARKNESS
[cw: possible (optional) discussion of past animal cruelty & trauma]

[ There are a lot of animals running around up in the Ag levels; some harmless and in need of scooping up and rescuing, some dangerous and still in need of scooping up and restraining. They're never going to solve this crisis with the generator or sustainably move forward in the future using this area for its intended purposes if there are animals running around everywhere.

And so, extremely reluctantly, Ben has agreed to help in the effort to catch the glowing animals and house them somewhere - either as pets for those who are willing or some other places where they can be contained and looked after. He is not enthused about this. In fact, by all appearances he is in a weird, quiet, or grumpy mood. The weirdest thing about it, perhaps, for anyone who might be working with him in one of these shifts, is that he doesn't seem to be happier dealing with kittens than he is with an actual mutated lizard that's practically the size of a komodo dragon. In fact, if anything he seems warier of the most domesticated and harmless of the animals. Any rodents in particular - mice, rats, guinea pigs - will cause him to go quiet and hang far back, waiting for whoever he's working with to step up. ]



B | NIGHTMARE SWARM
[cw: discussion of abuse; tentacles / body horror / gore; drug overdose & death]


1
[ Ben has seen one of these swarms in action before; it's just that, the first time he encountered one, it wasn't his own nightmare that manifested. He also did not see the part where it transformed from a cloud into someone's waking worst case scenario.

So he doesn't know to avoid it, when he walks past a cloud in a well-trafficked corridor near to the residences that has old gouges running deep into the walls. He gives the cloud a glance but barely notices it; he's attempting to perfect this new skill of typing on his device while walking. It isn't an image that makes him stop, but a sound. ]


Number Six!

[ The voice is crisp, accented, and horrifically familiar. Ben freezes immediately, rooted to the spot. It can't have been what it sounded like. Can't have been his father. His father is dead - has been for more than a month now. ]

I'm waiting, Number Six.

[ The feeling is not unlike if someone poured ice water down the back of his shirt. Every muscle in Ben's body is tensed as he slowly, slowly turns around and sees, right in front of him, real as can be, Sir Reginald Hargreeves, eccentric billionaire and adventurer, and yes, the worst thing he can imagine.]

((Feel free to have your character encounter Ben while nanite Reginald is still present, or immediately after when he's wandering around kind of dazed))


2
[ Ben grows a little more accustomed to what the nightmare clouds are capable of over the next week. He tries to avoid them entirely, the places they show up the most, and the shadows. But he is careless one day, and wanders by a spot that isn't on his mental to-avoid list.

Worse, still, the reason he is distracted is because he is walking with someone, talking to them - whether a stranger he has only just met or an older acquaintance. Either way, they will be in danger the moment the cloud coalesces into an extremely odd sight. There is a human-shaped figure - one that a keen eye might notice is the same height and build as Ben himself - but which looks like it has been molded out of a night sky - black and empty with tiny, distant, cold stars shining through. And then, from the stomach of this void-person, come pouring those too-familiar tentacles, whipping out, blood thirsty, ready to curl around anything nearby that is living and rip it limb from limb, or smash it to pulp against the nearest hard surface.

Fortunately, these tentacles aren't as fast or as strong as the real ones - but they still pose a very real threat. Ben has never been on the opposite side of his own power, before. And this vision - of himself, but erased, nothing but a portal through which violence pours and pours relentlessly - is such an old nightmare that it freezes him in place. ]



3
[ It's a bad night. Ben tries not to have them, but they do come, occasionally. Diego is sleeping and Klaus is somewhere with a friend from Hadriel probably, and Ben hadn't had the heart to disrupt either's plans. So, sleep-deprived and clumsy, he stumbles out of his living quarters, looking for somewhere quiet and bright to sit a while and try to banish the gloomy thoughts.

Only he isn't going to have much luck doing that, after he trips over the ankle of a body on the floor that hadn't been there a moment ago. He's too exhausted and already lost in his thoughts to connect this newest horror with those nightmare swarms. All he knows is that he sees Klaus's lifeless body on the ground, pale and not breathing, limbs at an awkward angle, and all the air rushes out of him.

He's seen Klaus like this before. He has so many memories of ambulances and CPR and hospitals and alleyways and good samaritans and close calls of every stripe. Ben just knows Klaus must have slipped, taken something, taken too much, and now it's too late. Ben hadn't been there with him when he happened. When he drops to his knees, whole body shaking, Klaus's body is rigid and his skin cold. Not dying, but dead. ]


Klaus - Klaus, no...



E | NETWORK

[ Come ask the newly (self-)appointed librarian for book recommendations, or offer to help out with old documents / alien languages!]
Edited 2019-08-04 21:39 (UTC)
itsnotaonesie: sissybars (what is his hair doing though)

Re: wreckage quest

[personal profile] itsnotaonesie 2019-08-04 09:07 pm (UTC)(link)
[[OOC: I figure Peter's the kind of person who would definitely go back a few times, so I'm cool with playing Calvinball with the timelines and saying this is some time after his trip out with Poison if you'd like for him and Patch to drive out together. I am super flexible.]]

If there's one thing Peter's good for, it's motivating people to get off their butts. That motivation may just be stopping Peter from doing a dumb thing, but it still totally counts.

Already looking at some radiation suits, I wanna make sure I don't grab any with leaks.
tenuefarfalla: ** (Default)

Cho Takahashi | OTA

[personal profile] tenuefarfalla 2019-08-04 09:53 pm (UTC)(link)
A
Going up there to investigate is a horrible Idea. Like, top ten worst decisions in a lifetime levels of horrible idea. She knows that. The last time she wandered off on her own, she almost died. Literally, not figuratively, almost died. She needed rescuing, she put other people in danger, she almost died. Up there, where things are wild and dangerous and hungry, in the place where she definitely should not be.

The place with the little flashes of phosphorescence. The moving glowing lights that point to things living and adapted to the darkness. That's not what's so fascinating, though. It's that some of them are small. They're so very small. What could be that tiny and still survive with the monsters up there? How do they do it? More importantly, could the people who have newly made this place a temporary home use that same defense system to keep safe? It's something to think about.

It's something she can't stop thinking about.

Going up there to investigate is a horrible idea. Yet here she stands, with Marmalade's empty carrier gripped in her hand, staring at the lights.

"Going up there would be a very bad idea, right?"


Or, if a second person wants to take this prompt.

She's not the only one looking up at the lights. Not the only one tracing the movements through the oppressive gloom. Cho's not usually one for offering unsolicited advice, it's always seemed kind of rude to her, but in this case, she's willing to make an exception. "It's-- not a great idea to go up there alone. If that's what you're thinking. Some of the things that glow... aren't friendly."

-------------


B
Cho has been fairly lucky, to not get caught by the clouds of fear. Not that she knows what they are. Her own fears aren't exactly the kind of thing that comes after you in the darkness. Mostly. She did pass one cloud and end up with the utter certainty that Chad had managed to end up here, that he was angry, that he was looking for her. She's ducked him safely, and not encountered him again, so maybe it was just her mind playing tricks? Which is a scary thought for her on its own. Her mind is the one thing she can count on.

Someone else is not as lucky, when it comes to their fears. They're real and solid, not nebulous feelings and shames. Cho doesn't have context, but she also doesn't need it. The look says it all. "What's wrong? Are you all right? Do you need help?" Not that she's sure what help she could offer, but she has to ask.
eudorapatch: (pull the other one)

[personal profile] eudorapatch 2019-08-04 10:11 pm (UTC)(link)
[[OOC: works for me!]]

Patch is jogging down to the garage, eager to burn off some energy, especially eager for Peter's first attempt at driving to not be out in the desert entirely on his own in one of these hulking things that seem to each have at least one major problem. She's almost there when she sees his text, and so doesn't bother answering on the device, which is bulky and a little awkward.

"No leaks, good plan. Dying sucks."

Oh, look at that, almost glib, right there.

"So, you pick a truck yet? Cause I'm thinking, the bigger the tread, the better." She points to one of the trucks with some seriously beefy off-roading tires, the kind you need to plant at least one foot on to be able to get through the door of the cab. "And I happen to have already been under the hood of that one."

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