thebastion | [Day 225] [EVENT] A sinking feeling

[Day 225] [EVENT] A sinking feeling

Who: Anyone and everyone
Open: Open
When: Early morning on Day 225
Where: Everywhere in the Bastion
What: Remember how cores used to be a thing? Yeah, they're still important.
Format: any
Warnings: terrible modpuns

[Early in the morning on Day 225, most people are probably asleep. For the couple of stragglers who may still be awake so late, though, they may notice something strange. At 2:31 am, any lights that are on start to hum, and flicker in and out of dimness.

At 2:32 am, every light in the Bastion (excluding the emergency lights) shuts off entirely.

At 2:33 am, a horrible grinding noise can be heard throughout the Bastion, seemingly coming from everywhere at once. This sound continues on for several minutes, throughout everything else that begins to happen.

At 2:34 am, for anyone outside Nathaniel can be seen running from the Apartments towards the Monument as if his life depended on it.

At 2:35 am, ever so slowly, sections of the Bastion begin to sink.

What do you do?]

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[Anyone who's interacting with Nathaniel at the moment, go here for a group thread. Currently Nathaniel is running towards the Monument, dodging around sections of the Bastion as they start to sink.]

[Ryu rushes out as he hears the noises around them growing, and follows Nathaniel. He's transformed, and his fists are flaming in order to provide some light. Fortunately, he can hover, and so he makes it to the Monument pretty easily.]

[Roxas is woken by his Samurai, who's been on watch and already seen what's happening to the Bastion. Roxas doesn't need much to be running out of the house in his pajamas and directing the Samurai to herd the chocobos out to the Skyway. Getting out himself is not his main concern since he can portal out at any time.

Spotting the other two headed for the Monument and not the Skyway, he shouts:]

What's going on!?

[Why thank you for that light, Ryu. It makes it a lot easier to step around the sinking parts of the Bastion while he runs.

To Roxas, he shouts back:]

I don't know! It's never done this before! But I've got to get to the Monument, that's where the control panels are!

[Yeah, he figured. He touches down briefly and grabs Nathaniel's hand with an extinguished fist if the Mancer doesn't move away too fast.]

Come on! I can carry you!

[Why touch the ground if you don't have to?]

Edited 2014-09-01 20:47 (UTC)

[What Roxas gathers from that is that Nathaniel might be able to fix what's happening. He isn't sure what help he'll be with any control panels, but most everyone else seems in too much of a panic yet to lend a hand. If nothing else he can fetch someone really quick.

For now he runs after them, falling behind as he still has to navigate the sinking land, but he doesn't want to use any of his portals just yet. He'll catch them up at the Monument.]

[Oh okay, carrying works. Whatever gets them to the Monument the fastest.

However they manage to get there, though, Nathaniel will immediately go over to a rather large side panel and pry it off, tossing it aside. As soon as he looks in, he curses loudly.

Inside are switches. There's at least fifty or so, and they're all large switches, not unlike the ones someone might find on a circuit breaker. And each switch is currently glowing red.

And then Nathaniel pulls off the next panel, to reveal another set of switches, all red. Slightly over a hundred in all, and they're all labeled with numbers, not words.]

Of all the times!

[Nathaniel pushes in one, holding it in for about a second or so, until the light changes from red to a soft blue. Once the light has changed, he lets go of it.

That particular switch makes the lights in the Distillery jump back to life. Darn. Not the one he was looking for.

He starts pressing the others in, going two at a time (one for each hand) as he calls out to the people behind him.]

Just- Just keep hitting switches until the ground stops sinking!

[The horrible grinding was enough to wake the dead, and so too did it bring forth Raile who made a beeline for the monument. Everything around him was sinking...almost like the Bastion itself had lost all its power; it didn't take him long to get up behind Nathanial as he peered in at the panel.]

T'hell happened? Did t'Monument lose power or somethin'?

I don't know!

[Ryu punches switches, trying to get things to work. Does it need to be a rhythm? An order? He has no idea. He's just trying everything.]

[As Nathaniel and Ryu keep punching switches, different parts of the Bastion jump back to life. And as they do that, Nathaniel takes a moment to try to explain.]

All of the circuits got thrown, which means we either had a power surge or we were trying to do too much with only a little bit of power.

[Both of which are scary prospects.]

But hitting each one turns one part of the Bastion back on, so we just have to keep hitting them until they're all back on-

[Suddenly, the control panel for the Monument jumps back to life. One of the switches that just got hit must have been the one for it. Since it's on, Nathaniel can start diagnosing the problem.]

Just keep pushing the red buttons, I need to work on this.

[He'll stand up and move out of the way, so someone else can help Ryu with the switches while he starts entering commands into the keypad at the Monument.]

[Roxas hurries up to help Ryu with the button-pressing. That's something he can do, does one of them control the floating? Shouldn't that one be labeled or something?]

What- would cause a power surge?

[And what does that mean? His voice goes quieter mid-question as he realizes Nathaniel might need to concentrate, and he probably doesn't even have an answer.]

No idea...

[Raile said, thinking back for some kind of solution. Eventually he reached to his back and pulled out his city crest, holding it towards Nathanial.]

I dunno a thing 'bout machines, but Rucks always told me this thing had a bit 'o t'Bastion's power in it. Maybe it'll help balance things out?

[It wasn't much of an idea, but it was something at the very least.]

[Ryu keeps hitting as many buttons and switches as he can reach with clawed fingers, and keeps one of his fists raised with flame so that they can see. This is a problem, they need to move people. He glances over his shoulder and spots people evacuating. Good. They're going to need it.]

You guys would have a better idea than I would.

I'm not sure how much one thing will help-

[Oh hello, there goes the power to what keeps the Bastion up! For about thirty seconds, it looks like the falling is stopping, and some patches of ground even look like they're starting to go back up!

But then the lights dim again, and shortly after everything shuts off once more. All of the lights that had just been blue? Yeah they're back to red now.]

...well, I figured out the problem at least.

[He does take Raile's crest this time, though, and he sets it right on top of the control panel, hoping that it's enough to get those controls working at least. Lo and behold, Rucks was right about what he had said to Raile, and it's enough to jump-start the control panel.]

Whatever ones you guys just hit, get those ones first. One of them was the stabilizers, which is what we need first. From there, turn them back on slowly. We're low on power, so I've gotta switch off the non-essential things as they come back up, so they don't drain what power we do have left.

[Oh, they had it! Roxas quickly presses the last few switches he did again and pauses hopefully. That's when he finally notices that Ryu is using one of his hands for light and decides he can do one better.]

Ah, here-

[The Organization only taught him to use his powers for attacking, but luckily he's had a couple years since then practicing with book lights. He summons a ball of light and lets it just hang there above the group, glancing over at the control panel Nathaniel is at.]

What else can we do- to give it more power? Will shards help?

A little, but let's worry about getting things up and running first. Then we can work on gathering shards to shove in the monument.

[The extra light is good, though. It makes everything in the area much more visible, so the people working on turning the switches back on can actually see what they are doing, rather than just jabbing fingers at the lights and hoping to hit the switches. It also helps Nathaniel, who can see his control panel much more clearly.

With everyone's combined effort, they can stop the noise and get the Bastion stabilized within another ten minutes or so. Fortunately the ground was sinking slowly, so it doesn't take much energy to put everything back where it should be. But the fact that the Bastion is low on power is very noticeable: once they pass the halfway mark on switching things back on, there is a slight dip in power as Nathaniel quickly shuts off non-essential functions.]

Okay...I think we've got it. But to be safe, when we're done we should go out to the Skyway to tell everyone what's going on, rather than have them come back here.

Got it. We... we're gonna need to find another core again, aren't we? Since those give a lot of power...

[Looks like a job for an adventurer! Or just a Ryu.]

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[Day 225] [EVENT] A sinking feeling

NATHANIEL THREAD

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