july 2019. welcome to the void.

[modblob]

Who: Everyone in Anchor.
What: First Introductory Mingle
When: The Month of July 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. bot party.

A few hours after the first arrivals, odd noises start to filter up from the pavilion and park at the base of the city. Limp whistles, the gunfire pop of small fireworks, and music from what sounds like a broken kazoo. It seems as though the still-functioning robots of Anchor are trying to welcome their new human overlords, based on programming that hasn't been exercised in... uh, shall we say "a while"?

Three of them have formed a tiny off-key band playing unfamiliar tunes from crackling speakers. One of the three punctuates the music at odd moments by smashing together a pair of cymbals that seem to have been constructed from a flattened pot and a trash can lid. Two others man the refreshments table. Some of the food looks downright inedible, but there are piles of wild berries from the upper floors. Raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, strawberries. Apples and cherries. Fruits that shouldn't be in season together but somehow still are. There's a strange and vaguely triangular pastry that tastes like hot cinnamon candy. There are piles of vegetables, too, though the only preparation they've had is to be washed and dumped in baskets.

One of the chef bots has put some work in, though, and there are a couple of stews and soups available for the adventurous. All of them are made with the raw ingredients available to eat on the tables. One of them even has meat in it, though that's best consumed by people with very hardy stomachs.

At the end of the refreshment table is a cluster of fresh-pressed juices and unlabeled alcohol bottles, with uneven stacks of cups stationed around them. (Careful, some of the cups are cracked.) Even the good old bar bot is doing his part, pouring out glasses of orange juice and straight shots of tequila. A very generous compromise in place of his usual tequila sunrises. Right? Right.

The most conspicuous robot is the one setting off fireworks. It’s already blown off one six-fingered hand, but by god that hasn’t stopped it. With every small cluster of colorful explosives, the thing throws back its chunky head and gives a sound that can only be described as a metallic cackle.

Might want to watch that guy.

b. life signs in the wasteland.

In the wee hours of the morning after the robots' attempted welcome, the impacts against the dome overhead start. Meteorites, some of them as large as a person's head, bombard the shield and the area around for miles. The alarms that start throughout the colony are enough to wake anyone up, if the thunderous noise of the cosmic storm wasn't enough to do it.

And the alarms aren't for the meteorites. The red shift is rising up around the colony, that phenomenon that no one from the past had the foresight to give more than vague warnings about. New residents who have done some digging will know exactly what’s going on, but for those who’ve avoided even thinking about what’s happened to them, well. It could be a nasty surprise.

Anyone sensible would stay inside with all of that going on, but there's something else: life signs. The communication devices given to residents on arrival light up, indicating the presence of no less than five flecks of life out there in the wastes. Odds are good that at least a few of them are monsters from other worlds, or twisted radioactive creatures warped by the planet itself. But one of them is very human, and has been here for a very long time.

Should residents venture out to investigate these life signs, they’ll find the farthest one to be a man in protective gear, flickering like a badly received signal. As the red shift starts to fade, he solidifies, and as the shift finally dies away, he wrenches off his helmet with one hand and falls to his knees. He's as twisted as the creatures the planet has corrupted, one eye socket nothing but a depression sealed by flesh. His lips on that side curves sharply upward, barely hiding teeth too sharp and long for a human mouth. It's clear now while he pulled off his helmet with one hand--the other is a wreck, a blackened stony mass sealed to the cuff of his radiation suit.

He can hear you coming, if you're brave enough to approach. He can hear you coming, and will turn his one orange-irised eye to watch you until you speak.

c. hairy repairs.

Welcome to Anchor, where sometimes you're the only thing between you and the catastrophic failure of life support systems. After the red shift ends, the radioactivity warning alarms will at least fall silent. The cosmic storm has passed, and for a little while there's quiet under the dome.

But those exploring the upper reaches of the city might hear new alarms, much softer and less insistent than the radiation alarms. They're coming from one of the survey rooms near the garage and the exits to the surface. It might take a little doing to pull up the screens triggering the alarms, but you'll be glad you put in the work. It turns out, those meteorites damaged several of the exterior sensors and one of the major radiation and light transfer panels that help keep anchor supplied with energy--and help keep the shield dome in good working order.

While the damage is easy to see and isn't too hard to fix for those with some technical know-how, there are life signs moving slowly closer to the colony. It's quite possible to fix the damage and get back inside before those life signs arrive, but there's also the risk of being caught in the open and facing down some of the planet's native creatures.

In this case, they're large, furry millipede-like creatures no less than seven feet long. They're perfectly harmless, if you don't count the fact that they seem intent on trying to eat the protective gear and tools you've brought out onto the surface with you. It's not their fault that your arms are inside those delicious radiation suits.

d. shadows of the past.

A few days of genuine quiet follow the fixing of the exterior damage. Time to explore, to get lost, to drink more than your doctor might recommend at the colony's only serviceable bar. Enough time to feel the weight of Anchor's emptiness.

The next time you walk into the bar, there's a see-through stranger at the pool table, smiling warmly in welcome. "Want a game?"

Get too close, and he disappears. But he was there--he was clearly there. The cue he was holding clatters to the ground and rolls over to rest at your feet.

Down in the pavilion, there are children playing in the park. Throwing balls, playing tag, their laughs echoing somehow in the open air. Invisible parents call for them to be careful or slow down. Now and then one of them will vanish midstep, only to appear again back where they were ten minutes ago and start their run through the park all over again. They can see you. One or two might even invite you to join their games, taking your hand in their own, leading you toward their fellows. And when they do, you can hear their parents' voices exclaiming in shock. A rush of shadows scoop up these phantom children and whisk them away into some invisible world where you can't follow, only hear the children crying in fear.

All around the colony, shades appear and vanish, some solid enough to touch, some just barely visible. Some are inexplicably aggressive, attacking anyone who tries to talk to them or get too close. Just as many run screaming or sobbing at the sight of you.

But there are others, too, who seem to recognize you. One of these is a young woman holding a gun like she has no idea how to use it. When approached, she almost starts to cry. "Oh, thank god. We have to get the kids to quarantine. We have to get them into lockdown. Those bastards-- Those sons of bitches-- The kids should at least have a chance."

She starts to turn, and a laser blast rips through her, lancing across the wall right where a deep score mark still exists, not in the least ghostly or unreal. If you touch it now, it feels warm.

e. ping from the rubble.

As though the presence of past residents sets it off, a persistent signal begins to broadcast from the collapsed library. It turns out there's a section not buried quite as deeply as the rest. A row of broken terminals, ending with the one sending the signal. A warning signal about the structural integrity of the library complex and the need to back up crucial data. Too little, too late, but with time and patience some of the partial files on the terminal could be reconstructed....

For those less versed in computers, there's a mysterious door just past the terminals, partially blocked off by rubble. If that can be cleared, the door leads into a dusty room with more broken terminals, but beyond that, there's a small library of real hardcover and paperback books, with comfortable chairs (some of them needing TLC), low tables, and lights (currently broken). The books are in a variety of languages, both Earth-based and alien. A flickering "skylight" at the top of the room shows a blue sky flanked by swaying trees, or a thunderstorm, or other, stranger but still friendly skies. It blinks off, sometimes, but seems determined to keep playing its peaceful scenes for those below. With some cleaning up, this could be a good retreat from the sometimes oppressive emptiness of Anchor.

Navigation.

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klaus hargreeves (hadriel crau) 👻 ota 👻 cw: descriptions of injury, possible drug use

[substances]

👻 i. first encounter (locked to ben hargreeves)

The decontamination thing is a trip. A bad, bad trip. It reminds him too much of going to prison, so he basically checks out until he's in the shower room, pulling the bandage off the puncture wound in his shoulder that he'd so stupidly forgotten about after the war with the Null and accidentally waved off the offer of a heal on his way out (saying 'nah thanks' to a god after fighting a war to protect said god was probably a bad idea, but Klaus isn't known for his good ideas).

The bandage is dirty with old blood and dirt when he drops it on the floor of the shower with a heavy splat, and he spends a few minutes under the spray hissing as he lets it soak into the wound, eyes squeezed shut against the pain. The skin around the wound is a little red and warm, but it's hard to tell if it's an infection yet or just angry. Either way, he doesn't have another bandage. So he just snatches Dave's dog tags out of the decontamination chamber as soon as the door opens and slides them over his head, then takes the freshly decontaminated bag of his stuff and pulls on a clean shirt and his leather pants and his boots. Taking the vest out, he investigates it quickly to see that most of the blood stains came out, and slides it on, giving it a little tug at the bottom.

Then he leaves the room, bag slung over his left shoulder, his right arm cradled against his belly to spare the shoulder movement, with no idea where he's going, and nothing really but a sense of dull shock at being in yet another new abandoned place after thinking he was going home to help Five and the rest fix the timeline, avert the apocalypse, and maybe hopefully see Dave again. No such luck. Instead, he's just...alone again. More alone than he had been, because he's here by himself, he doesn't have Drake or Julie or anyone, and he hasn't even seen anyone.

Until he turns a corner after going down a few floors, and sees a familiar form. Breath catching in his throat, he speeds up to a jog.

"Ben? Ben, is that you?" he shouts, voice pitched ridiculously high. He sounds so hopeful.

👻 ii. the wagon

This is probably the stupidest party he's ever been to, but it's been a while since he ate something halfway healthy, so Klaus is standing off to the side (well away from the fireworks robot, thanks, last thing he needs is his face blown off by a malfunctioning pyromaniac) with a tiny plate piled with berries and a glass of orange juice.

It was a close call for a minute there. With the day he's been having, it's really, really tempting to grab one of those unlabeled bottles of vodka and go hide in a corner. There are, of course, the couple of joints he has in his pocket, but he knows he needs to save them for when he really needs them. Then again, this is really starting to feel like a moment he needs one. Maybe the half joint.

He can be found at the party either picking at a plate of blueberries and strawberries and some orange juice, or tucked away in a corner trying to light a stub of a joint with a lighter, hands shaking.

👻 iii. alarm bells and ghosts

Klaus is pretty much useless in this kind of situation. In Hadriel, at least they'd been in familiar terrain fighting a familiar way, but when it comes to radiation shields and damage to said shields and all the screaming alarm bells and bleeping life signs on the sat phone (that was what they called it, right?) he's completely useless. He's gotten used to phones after Hadriel, but his understanding of anything more advanced than a rotary landline or typewriter is kind of stunted due to the fact they hadn't really had that kind of thing back home.

Mostly, while all the alarms go off, Klaus can be found taking shelter under whatever stone ledge he can find, sitting with his knees up, hands over the back of his neck, trying to just ignore the sounds of it all because he can't...really do anything.

It's even worse once the spectres start showing up. Sure, Klaus is used to that kind of thing. He's used to seeing ghosts, weird remnants of the people who used to be around. He'd seen them in Hadriel, the Hosts, like giant nautilus snails with tentacles and whatever else. He'd seen the people that his friends and acquaintances had killed. He sees them here.

He can't tell if it's better or worse that other people can see them, but he knows it's definitely worse that some of them can touch people. Whenever he sees them, he's turning on his heel and immediately leaving the area - feel free to run in him mid-flight.

👻 iv. wildcard

Toss me a starter with your character doing whatever or hit me up on plurk at caffemisto or on discord at coffee #6251 to plot.

I.

[benhargreeves]

[ Ben beat his brother here. Not by long - only a handful of hours - but it has been enough time for him to adjust at least a little to the immediate shock of being alive again, and of being in this place. He had gotten through decontamination in a haze so complete it was honestly probably closer to dissociation. Since then he had wandered around this place, down to the living areas, through any corridors and levels that looked semi-functional and had lights on and people in them.

The strangeness of this place and the people in it - with all their stories of being gathered up from far-flung universes or dimensions that weren't their original homes - had kept him from thinking too much about what all this means for him, personally. It is like a dream, with no connection to his actual life. Or, well, afterlife.

That is, until he hears a familiar voice, turns around to see his brother. ]

Klaus?!

[ Ben's breath catches, and the funny thing is that he feels it in his chest. All these physical sensations - it's going to take some getting used to. But he doesn't focus on that right now, because his brother is here, and he hadn't known how much of a relief that would be until he showed up. Ben quickly closes the distance between them; Klaus is wearing that same vest he'd had on ever since his little time traveling accident, and he looks - pale. Stressed. But then, who could blame him. ]

Klaus, look-

[ Urgently, eagerly, Ben reaches out and rests a hand against Klaus's bare arm. His palm is warm, solid, real, alive. And he can feel Klaus there too, in a way that he hadn't felt any person in so many years. Ben's expression is one of intense confusion, but there's a happiness underneath, waiting to come forth. His heart is hammering away, and the frantic rhythm of it, the rush of blood in his veins - it is all so inexpressibly wonderful. ]

[substances]

[It doesn't really register at first, that something is different about Ben. It doesn't click that Ben is holding and carrying himself differently, that Ben seems a little unsteady in his body. He's just, frankly, so happy to see him after months of being separated. All that time alone, without any of his siblings, in a place where he was sober and had to navigate friendships with people who hadn't grown up with him, had made him realize how much he mentally and emotionally relied on Ben as a sort of invisible safety blanket. A person who was always with him, watching over him even if he couldn't do much to help protect him or get him out of bad situations.

Frankly, Klaus had never really felt so alone until he woke up all by himself in Hadriel.

But still, his instinct isn't to reach for Ben because there would be no point. He can go right through him, as he tends to remind Ben every time Ben tries to block his path to something he'd rather Klaus didn't get to. Instead, it's Ben who's reaching for him, pressing his hand against Klaus' arm.

For just a second, Klaus stays completely still, staring down at his brother's warm, solid hand on his arm, then looking back up at Ben's face, then back down to Ben's hand. A moment later, he's shifting into quick motion, pulling Ben's hand between his own, hissing through his teeth thoughtlessly as it jars the injury on his shoulder to move his right one. Pressing two fingers against Ben's pulse point, Klaus stares at him with his own heart beating hard and fast in his chest.]

Holy shit, Ben. You have a pulse!

[benhargreeves]

[ Ben catches it, the way Klaus sucks in a sharp breath, and the way he's holding himself isn't right. Normally, Klaus is loose-limbed and throws his body here and there, banging into things, tripping, letting momentum take him where it will. He's holding himself tight and still, right now, and that's notable. But it's one tiny observation that is currently buried under a mountain of 'what the everloving fuck'. ]

I know.

[ And what else is there to say? He's sure the same questions are racing through Klaus's head as were racing through his when he first arrived here. How? Why? Who had done it? How can he be alive again? How can he be alive in this body, at this age? Could it be a trick, an illusion, a trap of some kind that he is letting himself fall right into. ]

Somehow, whatever brought me here must've just... made a mistake?

[ It's an unsatisfying answer, and that is audible in Ben's voice, but he isn't sure what else to think. He keeps standing there, letting Klaus hold his wrist, grateful for the way it steadies him and reminds him that yes, this is real. At least, probably. ]

Have you seen any of the others, or heard from them? Did Vanya wake up yet?

[ For him, it had been instantaneous after all - one moment they were in a circle in that theatre, linked, hurtling themselves into the unknown to try to go back and stop the apocalypse. If Klaus is here, maybe all of them are here, and Ben is worried for his sister. She had been so empty, so unlike herself on that stage. Draining her brothers, trying to kill them. That manifestation of her powers had been a little too familiar for Ben's liking. And if he is alive again - if he is, he can actually talk to her. Maybe help her. ]

[substances]

[Klaus can't pull his hand away, not for a long few moments, because it's so amazing, just feeling Ben's heart beating under his fingertips. And it isn't like Ben is pulling away or objecting to the contact, and Klaus can't blame him. When Ben replies, Klaus glances up at his brother, green eyes locking on Ben's dark ones, and he raises his brows, manages a big stupid-looking grin.

Of course there are questions running through his head, it's hard to believe, it's kind of crazy, but their whole lives have been crazy lately, especially Klaus' with the whole Hadriel thing and everything that had gone down there, and the war and all that, and then Ben is saying maybe they'd just made a mistake bringing him here, and Klaus is shaking his head. He can tell Ben doesn't like that suggestion any more than he does.]

Man, maybe? When I went to Hadriel it was a mistake, I think? Might be the same for this place, but I haven't met whoever brought us here yet, so.

[He lets go of Ben's wrist and takes his hand instead, because he doesn't want to stop experiencing that feeling of Ben's warm, solid hand against his.

Then he glances over at him, and it connects. Klaus remembers Hadriel, and he'd been alone there, without his brother, or any of the other siblings. And the way Ben is talking is definitely like he hadn't been to Hadriel. Everything is so muddled up in Klaus' head right now, and his brows furrow a little.]

Wait, you weren't in Hadriel, right? Because there's no way I would've missed you being there. No way, man. I...

[Exhaling, he remembers what they'd been doing back home before he left as a sort of hazy fever dream, remembers Vanya and the destruction of the Academy and mom and Pogo and the bowling alley and the theatre and trying to stop the apocalypse only to have to try to time travel to get away from it. He'd been so dope sick he'd wanted to give up on life, he'd been hurting so much the end had almost seemed like an escape.

He's not feeling like that now.]

I haven't seen anyone but you yet. And...Ben, I've been gone from home for a couple months.

[benhargreeves]

[ Ben has never heard Klaus mention 'Hadriel' before and it seems an odd sort of a name for a place in Vietnam, but perhaps it was the name of some kind of U.S. station or-

-or it is something else, entirely. Because Klaus is looking at him with dawning realization and asking whether he had been there at this place, and the two of them both know he had not traveled in time when Klaus had. Worry knits itself across Ben's brow, and his jaw goes tight and his expression set and neutral in a way that betrays his unease. ]

Again? Was it - a briefcase?

[ How strange to think that, now, those briefcases are the comparatively familiar mode of travel that Ben can mostly wrap his head around. He had heard the same welcome materials as everyone else. He was paying attention, even during the bits where the inhabitants are warned that they or others may be coming here from a secondary location.

Even moreso than the specifics of how this is possible and where he was, Ben gets stuck on that vague sum: a couple of months. Klaus had been gone for him for another significant stretch of time? It had been so jarring the first time, realizing with a lurch that in a few hours, months had passed for Klaus. He'd hardly blinked and his brother had become a different man. Had it happened a second time? ]

You didn't miss anything. I wasn't anywhere. All of us were there together, with the moon going to pieces, and- now we're here. Right?

[ Aren't they? Except Klaus has no reason to lie about this, and Ben has seen no sign of his siblings, so how can he really argue that they all must have been brought directly here? His breathing quickens, hand wrapping around Klaus's wrist and hanging on there. ]

[substances]

No, it was some kind of door, I never really understood it but...

[Klaus' voice trails off, and he falls quiet, just looking at Ben while his brother explains that he didn't miss anything, that Ben wasn't there, that they'd all been together with the moon going to pieces...]

That's the last thing from home I remember too, then I ended up in Hadriel before here. I don't...

[He drops his hand from Ben's and pushes it through his hair, brows furrowed, shaking his head. Unlike Ben, he hadn't really listened to the welcome speech video, he'd been too busy panicking and dissociating to really get it all into his head. Klaus' chest starts rising and falling heavily, and he starts to lift his right hand to put them both behind his head, only to hiss and drop it, hunching over a little and wincing while he draws his right hand against his belly again, shaking his head.]

Good, though. I mean that I didn't miss you there. I would've been pissed if you were there the whole time and I just couldn't see you for whatever reason.

[A pause, and then he steps forward, throws his arms around Ben despite the sting in his shoulder, and rests his chin on his brother's shoulder, hugging him tight, breath hitching at the pain but ignoring it, because this is important right now.]

I missed you, man.

[He keeps hugging him tight, eyes sinking shut, and then he speaks again, carefully.]

If they're here, we'll find them. You and me.

Kabal || OTA

[kaballin]

A: It's a dead man's party
The raucous noise is enough to have Kabal grouchily stalking over to investigate what the hell is going on. He's in a foul mood, which is different than his normal not caring attitude because he had to fight with a disembodied computer voice in the decontamination room about his mask because he was not about to die taking a shower. Welcome to Beacon, go ahead and suffocate to death naked in a weird communal shower while they sprayed his jacket with something that still vaguely smells clinical and reminds him of hospitals.

Wow that sure is... music he supposes. Or it's trying to be anyway. At least there's food and alcohol. So maybe it's not all bad.

He'll likely be standing near the fireworks bot, waiting for it to shoot off some more hands or start detonating them into the crowd. Either way that's at least something interesting to see.

That mask does actually come off, and he'll be taking it off to shovel food in his mouth because he's been dead for twenty years prior to this and fuck did he miss food. Under there he's just as burnt up as his exposed chest and what can be seen of his arms. At least he still has hair. It'll only be off for a few minutes before it's strapped back on. A man's gotta breathe after all.

D: It's hard to hustle shadows
Kabal is by the pool table standing near ... well he was standing near someone. Someone who keeps kind of flickering in and out mid-game. A game that is getting increasingly frustrating when the guy he's trying to beat keeps straight up disappearing. He's not even cheating right now because it's pretty easy to win when half the other guys shots don't land as he vanishes. But he is very aware of how absolutely insane this is.

"Do me a solid and tell me you see this guy too and I'm not hallucinating. Lie to me. I don't care."

[benhargreeves]

[ Ben accepts this new and upsetting information silently, turning it over in his mind. There had been a slip-up once more with time, and Klaus had been parted from him, in some unknown place, surrounded by unknown people, without his family, without backup, for - months. He hasn't had a lot to hold onto, since he died. But he had always at least had knowledge, and presence. He knew where Klaus went, who he was with, what was going on with him. He could try, in his indirect and ineffective way, to keep his brother safe.

So it doesn't just feel like something that's happened to Klaus, him going through a door to this Hadriel place. It feels like a thing that happened to Ben, too.

There's no mistaking it this time: the way Klaus winces, can't seem to lift his right arm up all that much. Through all the things that confuse him and that he cannot change, Ben focuses on this familiar thing. Klaus is injured, and hiding it. And he is not going to let that slide. But he doesn't have a chance to voice his opinion on the matter before Klaus is pulling him into a hug, and it takes all the wind out of his sails.

Ben can't remember the last time he was hugged. Even when he was alive, those last few years had been... fraught. He hadn't liked anyone touching him, coming too close. It all seemed to grave to him, so important - that he protect everyone by not letting them get too close to him, a monster. ]

Klaus...

[ But that's all he can manage. Because being hugged? Is actually kind of wonderful. He doesn't know how he had ever hated this. Klaus is squeezing him tight, and Ben shuts his eyes. He has never been one for big displays of emotion, but because of that, any betrayal of it stands out. And his breaths go shallow and very shaky, like he's about to cry. He doesn't, of course, but it's a close thing there for a moment.

Then, swallowing, he makes the choice he's gotta make, because he knows Klaus, and knows that sometimes you just had to help him cut through the bullshit. Ben reaches out and sets a hand against Klaus's shoulder, where he thinks he must be hurt. Ben doesn't squeeze hard - he's not a psycho, and he has never (ever) liked causing pain. But his grip is steady, and even just that gentle touch provokes enough of a reaction that Klaus isn't going to be able to deny it.

What does surprise Ben is that his palm comes away wet. He had thought Klaus was bruised, had maybe wrenched his arm badly in some what. But there is blood - not a lot, but any blood is too much - and Ben's guts twist up unpleasantly looking at it, smelling it. ]

You need a doctor.

[substances]

[While Klaus had been in Hadriel, Ben was the one he talked about most to the people he met there. Ben, his external conscience, the dead ghost brother that nags him when he tries to sleep in a dumpster; Ben, who's been looking after him for years, trying to help him as much as he can when Klaus doesn't listen half the time and Ben can't touch Klaus. To Klaus, it feels like a thing that happened to both of them, too.

He's not used to being separated from Ben.

So he hugs him tight, despite the throb in his shoulder, and Ben says his name softly, and Klaus can hear the way Ben's breathing (god, he's breathing, he's alive and breathing and Klaus can hug him) goes shaky and shallow, and Klaus knows that sound. Remembers it from dozens of nights spent with Ben sitting on his bed with him trying not to cry because it made dad angry. Rubbing his back, Klaus makes a wordless sound of comfort in his throat, reassurance, and when Ben pulls away to talk to him, Klaus doesn't want to let go, makes a whine of protest as Ben pulls back to look at him.

Then Ben presses his hand against Klaus' shoulder, and he winces, recoils a bit, hisses through his teeth.]

Ouch! Hey, why'd you...

[Then it registers. Ben hadn't been around to see Klaus get the shard of wood through his shoulder. Ben didn't know the circumstances, so all Ben sees is Klaus ignoring another wound and bleeding all over his new clean shirt. Sighing, Klaus lifts his left hand and scrubs it over his face.]

No, no it's okay. I'm fine, it's just...I lost a fight with a tree branch in Hadriel. We had a whole...robot war in the jungle, one of them shot a brain scrambler beam at me and I thought I was in Nam again and fell over.

[He shrugs, then laughs.]

Graceful as ever, right?

2

[shouldstoptalking]

Alex is walking around the party with the sort of look of disbelief on his face. What the hell was all this? Robots throwing a party? It seems so... wasteful honestly. Like all that work going into the robots would probably be used for something else. He also honestly isn't used to robots like that. His world has plenty of autonomous or semi autonomous machines but none quite like this.

He grabs himself a drink and a plate of food and walks over to a guy he sees watching the fireworks robot from a safe distance. He glances over at the robot, shaking his head. "That seems like a disaster waiting to happen."

Julie Grigio (Hadriel CRAU)

[redwinekindofgirl]

a. bot party.

[After all that time in Hadriel, you know what Julie doesn't trust?

Robots.

There's nothing about them, as innocent as they are, that doesn't give her the creeps. She stands far back enough that it's not clear she's simply observing them but it's entirely clear that is exactly what she's doing - her eyes never leave them for a moment. Her attention slides from the musicians, to the chef, to the... whatever you'd call it setting off fireworks and blowing itself up in the process, and she doesn't even think about touching the food.]

Who the fuck do they think they're trying to kid... [She mutters, sliding into a chair at the bar and giving a hard stare at the shot of tequila that's immediately lined up in front of her.

It's probably poison. But you know what...

She's going to knock it back anyway.]

Fucking creeps.

d. shadows of the past.

[Oh, she can deal with the ghosts. The guy who disappears at the pool table. The kids with their parents outside who vanish when she gets too close. She can deal with all of that, with the things she's already seen before, but when that laser blast strikes through the spectres near her, she screams.]

What the fuck!? [The words burst out of her if only to cover the fact she just shrieked loudly enough to draw the attention of anyone near by. With her heart pounding and located somewhere in the middle of her throat she gulps in a few breaths and realises, with a faint touch against it, that the old scorch-mark on the wall is...]

... What the fuck... [She whispers it this time, her fingers twitching away from the warm stone.] What the hell is this place.

e. ping from the rubble.

Hey.

[She waves a hand to catch the attention of someone near to her. Exploring collapsed buildings is something she's been doing since she was a child, and this is no new thing to her.]

That signal, you hear it? It's coming from in there.

[The young woman grins, and there's something wild and dangerous in it.]

Wanna go in?

wildcard!

Wildcard me!

Poison (The Box & Hadriel CRAU)

[writtendestiny]

b. life signs in the wasteland.

[She isn't asleep when the bombardment begins. Poison is awake, though her two cats are startled out of their naps by the noise, and she spends the first few minutes gently calming them down. It offers a distraction, at least, from the burning anger that's been smouldering under the surface since she first arrived here.

The red shift comes as no surprise to her. She may be furious about where she is, but experience has taught her to be as well-informed as possible in these situations. How many times has it saved her before?

Poison doesn't go outside, but she moves as close to it as she dares. With an eight-legged Technician experiment purring in her arms and a small black cat winding around her legs she watches the phenomenon rise from the safety of the dome. Her attention strays frequently to the marks of life on her communication device, but she's curious, not utterly stupid.

If she catches they eye of someone approaching, she'll lift her head to comment--]

You're not actually thinking of going out there, are you?

c. hairy repairs.

[Poison explores because it's in her nature. She roams to the furthest edges of the city in her search for information, and as she makes her way to one of the highest point she can find, she hears the faint, gentle alarms. Good sense is overriden by curiosity as she approaches the source, but for all her experience she isn't quite knowledgeable enough to bring up the screens with any kind of haste.

Fifteen minutes of increasingly frustrating attempts later, she finally brings them to life, and she squints at the readings on them.]

Ugh... damaged sensors. [She mutters, pursing her lips and blowing her cheeks out for a moment.] Come on, Poison. You're not going to let this beat you, are you..?

wildcard

Wildcard me!

[benhargreeves]

[ Ben is ready for Klaus's indignation, and he is ready for the minimizing and excuses that come with. This is a conversation they've had in so many different permutations. Klaus, wounded; Ben, worried; Klaus, dismissing. Only usually, Ben had been powerless to do anything about it. And he realizes, with his first real rush of happiness since he had understood he was alive again, that now he isn't powerless.

He sets his non-blood hand on his hip, holding the other between them, palm-up, incriminating: ]

You're bleeding. That is the definition of not alright.

[ What Klaus says about how he got injured is a bunch of jumbled nonsense that makes no sense right now to Ben, but they can work out those details later. First aid comes first - it's in the name and everything. He looks around them, wondering if this place has medical facilities. Had the video covered that? He'd missed some parts... but even if there is some kind of clinic Ben wouldn't know the first thing about finding it, or even finding someone who can help to find it.

He sighs shortly, frustrated, and says: ]

At least let me take a look at it.

[ They'd had to learn the basics of battlefield wound care, because if you were Reginald Hargreeves, that was a sensible and practical skill to teach a bunch of ten-year-olds. Ben gestures at a nearby pair of benches, and then remembers he doesn't just have to gesture. He sets a hand on Klaus's back and steers him over, nudges him to sit down while he remains standing. Klaus isn't that much taller than him, but it will be a better angle. ]

[substances]

[When Ben holds up his bloody hand accusingly, Klaus wrinkles his nose, looks down at his chest, and sighs.]

Dammit. I just got into a clean shirt...

[By the time Ben is speaking again, Klaus has pulled his shirt away from the wound, and is peering down the front of his shirt at the puncture wound. It looks angrier now, the skin pink and smudged with blood around the hole. Sighing again, he lets Ben push him over to the benches, and he sits down, looking up at Ben.

This is more familiar, he's starting to feel at home - Ben looking down at him with that disapproving look on his face, frustrated with Klaus ignoring another wound.]

Okay fine. I mean, it's only bleeding because I didn't have another bandage and the other one was dirty. I didn't want to slap it back on there, it had a lot of dirt on it.

[Hopefully that's enough to calm Ben down and make him feel like Klaus was at least trying to be responsible. Still feeling the echo of Ben's hand against his back, because it's new and amazing and Klaus is still trying to get his head around it, he slides off his vest, delicately pulls the shirt off over his head. His torso is a mess, not dirty considering he'd just showered, but covered in aging purple-yellow bruises and half-healed scrapes, burns, and cuts, though the most prominent is a swollen and pink patch of skin just below the ball of his right shoulder with an indented puncture wound in the center. And from the wound, a trickle of blood dribbles down his chest.]

See? I cleaned it out in the shower, I just didn't have a new bandage.

[benhargreeves]

[ He recognizes the little story that Klaus tells him - about not covering an open wound with a dirty, gross, used bandage - as an olive branch, meant to calm him down and reassure him that Klaus is perfectly capable of handling things. It might have worked, in a more familiar setting, if Ben didn't feel so much like everything is terrifyingly spinning out of control. But he hadn't even been there when Klaus got hurt, and that makes it exponentially worse when Klaus takes off his shirt and is just covered in bruises.

Ben covers his mouth with his hand, rocking back a little on his heels. The puncture wound is the worst but the amount of other injuries, even if they all seem small, is almost as terrible. Not all of them look new, either. The rainbow of different colors from the bruises, the scabs and mostly-healed burns, all of that indicates ongoing low-level injury that actually makes him feel a little nauseous.

The frustration is gone from his expression and body language, replaced by numb shock and fear and hurt. It's a familiar sensation, this sudden awareness of his own helplessness to prevent harm from happening to his brother. But even though it's been there for as long as he can remember, it never loses its sharpness. ]

Klaus, what...?

[ His voice is tight with emotion, dark eyes concerned and loving as he tears his gaze away from the injuries and looks his brother in the face. Ben is reminded then of how much of emotion occurs in the body. All those times he had seen Klaus hurt and in peril and ODing, he had been afraid. But he'd had no heart to race, no stomach to turn, no body to go cold with anxious, overwhelmed terror. ]

That's way deeper than I thought it was gonna be. We seriously gotta find you a doctor. There could be internal bleeding or you could get tetanus or some shit.

[ If this place has the technology to bring people here from other worlds, they must at least have a hospital, right? The only trick is going to be finding it... ]

[substances]

[When Ben puts his hand over his mouth and rocks back on his heels like that, looking shocked and thrown off and afraid and hurt, Klaus blinks a little. Ben has seen him go through so much shit, even watched him get tortured for two days straight, it seems strange to see him react so intensely to this. It's a bunch of bruises, and sure, he's sore and exhausted, but it doesn't seem like such a big deal. Maybe it's because Ben is alive now, maybe it's easier to comprehend how much things hurt now that he's back in his human body.

But Klaus has always had a high pain tolerance, even before he started doing drugs. He's always been the type to just carry on even when injured, and years of being on the street, homeless and high, had certainly made that even more of a habit. But now, Ben is leaning in and asking him what happened with that look on his face, and Klaus feels mildly uncomfortable. Glancing down at himself, he shrugs, makes a face as it pulls at his shoulder, and then sighs.]

I told you. Robot war in the jungle. It was like 2 weeks, I got banged up.

[Another shrug, a little more careful this time, and he sighs again when Ben starts going on about needing a doctor and tetanus or whatever. He scrunches his nose up and stands shakily, pulls the shirt back on and slips on his vest, holding his right arm against his belly to make sure he doesn't irritate the puncture.]

Can you get tetanus from wood? Because it was wood. I thought tetanus only came from rusty metal? I don't think there's internal bleeding...wouldn't I be spitting it up?

[Still, despite his protests and the way he's minimizing his injuries, he pulls out the phone that he'd taken from the arrival room, figuring he has a better idea of how to use it than Ben considering he'd used one in Hadriel for a couple months.]

Um, I think there's GPS and a map on here, or at least GPS...

Peter Parker (Hadriel CRAU) | OTA

[itsnotaonesie]

A: BOT PARTY

[There was once a time where Peter would have been nerding his entire brain out over a robot party on another planet because this is some Star Wars shit okay, but that time was like, a year ago. Before Thanos, before Hadriel, sure, this would have been pretty cool. Now? Shitty wasteland planets and robots were in spots 2 and 3 of his "top five things I never want to deal with again" list. Spot 1 was lasers. Just. No more lasers.

He'd been drawn to the party by the noise and had almost left immediately because, again, noise, but the refreshment table had caught his eye. Scavenging had become second nature during his time in Hadriel, and that's why there's some scruffy looking kid stuffing food into his backpack over at the refreshment table. He hasn't had fresh fruit in months okay, don't judge.]


D: AND THEN SHIT GOT WEIRD

[Okay.

Okay. The transparent guy at the pool table. That was a thing. Peter had played it off as some sort of glitchy hologram. Given the nature of this place so far, it hadn't seemed too far fetched a theory. This place has party robots, why not holograms too? Perfectly reasonable. The kids outside? Totally holograms. Just holograms playing on a loop. The hologram theory seems pretty solid to Peter, that is until the kids start trying to interact with him and suddenly he wants very much to not be here. His theory quickly shifts from holograms to oh my God this entire place is haunted why is my life like this, but before he can retreat, all Hell breaks loose. Ghost kids are getting scooped up, ghost moms are screaming, something about a quarantine, goddamn lasers.

Normally during overwhelming situations, Peter relies on his spider-sense and his instincts to navigate his way out of trouble, but right now none of his senses know how to react to this bullshit. He can't fight whatever's happening, can't help the spooky hologram ghosts, can't do jack shit but try to get out of there and maybe find cover. Which he does, next to YOU. Hi there.]

Oooh my God. Okay. That's happening. Oh my God, what is- what's happening? I'm not losing it, am I? Like, this is happening, right?


WILDCARD:

[wanna do a different prompt or something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT hit me]

D

[itsnotaonesie]

Peter has absolutely been watching this weird ass pool game, because who the hell wouldn't. Just sitting at the bar, sipping on some orange juice, and wondering just what the shit he's even looking at. Ghost? Hologram? A shared hallucination he's having with this mask dude?

Whatever it is, it's creepy. He's about to just turn around and pretend nothing about this is weird at all, but then mask dude speaks up.

"No, there's definitely a guy there. Sort of. He's not there now- Oh! There he is!" THE GUY'S BACK, Peter points right at him. Hello, pool man.

[benhargreeves]

[ A robot war. Ben doesn't even know what that means. Sure, they'd fought the occasional evil bot back in the day, as the academy. But that had always been all of them working as a team. And it had only been isolated murder drones and clunky automatons built by reclusive murderous geniuses. Not a war. Not something Klaus faced alone.

Ben asks the familiar question - one they'd come up with as kids, a quick and easy way to communicate just how bad things had gotten. At first they'd used it on missions, to assess the danger of an ongoing situation. Ben's forgotten at this point whether it was him or Klaus who first repurposed it to talk about one of their so-called training sessions with their father. Doesn't really matter anymore, does it? ]

Scale of 1 to 10?

[ Ben hovers as Klaus messes around with the small, foreign device. He had picked one, too, somewhat at random - not really sure what it did and much too concerned with thinking about how strange it was to be able to pick things up again to focus. But Klaus at least seems to know how to use it. Maybe, between the two of them, they aren't completely incompetent. ]

You can get tetanus from any kind of puncture wound, no matter what material it was, and you would only be spitting up blood if the wound hit your lungs or airway. Did you seriously never pay attention-?

[ But he breaks off, not finishing the sentence. Klaus is aware of this: how Ben very rarely manages to every completely talk about anything from when they were young. They'd all coped in their own ways. During their boring first aid lessons Klaus's attention must have wandered; Ben, meanwhile, was obsessively attentive, wanting to learn every protocol, every possibility. Wanting, also, to make their father proud with his studiousness, his good behavior. Ben tries not to remember that part of it though.

When Klaus does whatever he needs to on that device to get it to show them a map, and a little blinking dot, that's all Ben needs. He helps Klaus to his feet, cautious not to pull at the injured shoulder, and using the piece of equipment like a compass, herds the both of them in the right direction. He doesn't even wait for Klaus to put his shirt back on. It's not like this place is packed with staring bystanders, anyway. ]

Anyway... it can be bad without you seeing it or feeling it, and I think you're gonna need a couple stitches anyway, so- hospital time.

[substances]

[Klaus answers without thinking and without lifting his eyes from the sat phone, almost as soon as the question is out of Ben's mouth, because that particular scale of awful is so ingrained into him after years of using it with Ben back when they were kids.]

Nine and a half.

[It only registers a moment later that he'd given it such a high rating, and he bites his lip lightly, green eyes lifting up to Ben's face, meeting his eyes for a long moment before he lets his gaze drop to the phone again.]

They were really hard to kill and there were a ton of them. Me and a bunch of other people there made traps in the jungle to try to take them out and stuff.

[A shrug, despite the pain in his shoulder, and when Ben starts rattling off details from first aid classes, Klaus winces. He remembers those classes. His mind had wandered for some of them, he'd stared out the window at birds, but he also remembers that the room they'd done it in had been haunted, that there was a dead man with his jaw half torn off and half of a leg missing, who kept slowly shuffling and trailing a line of ectoplasmic blood across the floor while he gurgled piteously at Klaus, some mangled attempt to say his name.

He hadn't picked up a lot of first aid.]

Well, you were always the smart one.

[His voice raises, takes on an affected tone as he says it, and he lets Ben pull him to his feet, hissing as he stands up and hands his device over to Ben without question, holding his right arm against his belly again while his left slides into his pocket to make sure there's still a knife there. Just in case.

While they're walking down stairs, Ben is continuing to explain why Klaus' injuries might be worse than he thinks, and Klaus is feeling the last of his energy drain out of him. with each step.]

You mean the stab wound? Man, here I was hoping it'd just give me a badass scar.

[benhargreeves]

[ Ben's stomach drops when Klaus gives his number, looks up at him and is silent for a few moments. He might not know the details, still - how Klaus got caught up in a robot war, why the fighting was happening, who was there with him - but he knows how bad it was. Some part of Ben's mind wonders if maybe a little of that was how little time had passed since Klaus returned from Vietnam. He knows how these things can bleed into one another...

Quietly, simply, Ben acknowledges: ]

Okay.

[ The corner of his mouth curls up at Klaus's delivery of that (perhaps backhanded?) compliment; Klaus is a lot smarter than most people give him credit for, and Ben knows it. They assume he's an idiot because he clowns around, because he refuses to play people's unimportant little games. But Ben knows better.

He notices as Klaus starts to lag behind, taking the steps carefully, shuffling along the halls like he's just barely keeping it together. With sudden clarity, Ben remembers when Klaus had decided to get sober, and the two of them had gone off looking for Luther. He'd been weak and sweaty and miserable then, and Ben had been terrified about his family falling apart, and in his fear and anger and helplessness, all he could do was goad Klaus on, berate him.

But that had turned out... not how Ben had wanted, and he realizes there is more he can do, now. So he comes up to Klaus's left side and, still holding the device out in front of them for directions, slips an arm around his back to support him as he walks. He wonders if he'd be able to carry Klaus, if it came to that. ]

Oh, yeah, it'll probably do that. A real macho one. Diego will be green with envy.

[ The medical bay ends up being a few more floors down, and Ben can see how pale Klaus's face is by the time they get there. When Ben opens the door and sees it empty, his heart sinks. But maybe the doctors were just in the back? He lets go of Klaus, making sure he's close enough to a wall to lean against it if he needs to, and walks in to assess the situation. ]

Cole (DriftFleet CRAU) | Dragon Age | For Ben Hargreeves

[killedwithlove]

life signs in the wasteland

Cole is drawn consistently to a single thing. Mortal suffering. He can sense a person in need from amazing distances and while this places fairly screams of the trauma that has happened here, overlapping and difficult to focus on, the real people are bright, flaring pin points of their hurts and needs.

When he feels that spike from outside... well, there's nothing for it, is there? He drifts towards the way out, looking for the things that will make going outside possible. He doesn't really understand what 'radiation' is, but he's been in space and he knows they needed suits to go out of the ships, so he supposes this might be similar.

But... he knows he might need help. And he met Klaus and Klaus knows someone who can help, someone with whom his hurts are so closely entwined that Cole already knows him. Finding him is easy, because Cole knows the pain of being dead and alone and lonely and he knows the suffering of hating your powers.

He appears in a curl of smoke that has no real scent. "Hello, Ben. Would you like to help me find the person out there?"

IV {Watching you unravel in the hospital

[deadlycurves]

Ben had mentioned Klaus being here. Here and busted up, laid up in a medbay somewhere not far off. The place was easy enough to find with his brother's instructions. Much like everything else in this place, it seemed largely empty. Which made it really easy to spot the one, occupied bed. He knows who's in it, but still approaches cautiously-- always err on the side of caution and suspicion, it's safer-- until he comes to a stop with near-silent steps at the foot of the bed.

Diego feels something sharp and jagged twist somewhere deep in his chest and get between his ribs. This isn't a sight he thinks he can ever really get over. Any of his siblings, unconscious and battered in a hospital bed. The thought of Allison, throat slashed and blood everywhere, months back now, flashes through his mind, quickly on the heels of this very thing-- Klaus, propped back on a bed in a hospital. It was only weeks ago at this point. Looking frail and weak, snapping sharp remarks about how shocked he was to see them there, to know they cared enough to be at all.

This time it's different. This time... he's not even awake to make snide, ruthless comments. He's just small and still, the only movement or sign that he is alive at al, the easy rise and fall of his chest with each breath. He can't stop the stray thought of just... how many times did this happen, how many times had Klaus narrowly dodged death in the last decade and none of them even knew? Diego didn't expect to be greeted with this sight again so soon, and he has no idea how his brother ended up so bruised and beaten.

He doesn't make a sound as he watches Klaus with an acute sense of the seconds that pass. But he doesn't deign to wake him up, instead only silently grabs what had probably been a doctor's stool once upon a time to sit on as he waits.