thebastion | Event: Day 355 [OPEN]

... if... if we all get sent back to our worlds...

[Ibuki's voice was loud and clear, because she was still near the microphone she'd set up for her concert]

[She looked over at Ikuri, the person standing closest to her, before just clinging onto her suddenly]

I... I can't... I don't...

I... I can't go back...

[She had just wanted to continue playing her music... and she was disappointed that her concert had been cut short to argue what they would do with the completed Bastion...]

[... but this was it. This was seriously the final discussion, wasn't it? She couldn't help the tears as she considered just what might happen next. If they decided to select restore... there was no guarantee she'd remember anything. It was likely she'd have to re-live those years of despair all over again...]

... Ikuri-chan... Ippo-chan...

... everybody...

The idea of losing all of you... of never seeing any of you ever again, I...

[... it was unfair to her friends that she'd lost in the calamity but...]

I can't ... please don't make me lose everything here... please!

... don't... don't send me back to the world I came from... that world full of despair...!

[This...this was a bit beyond Ippo's usual straightforward tendencies. It was a lot to take in, all things considered, but as per his usual, he decided to take care of what he could see in front of him, and right now that was Ibuki.

He took a few steps forward on the stage and placed a hand on her shoulder, even if just to let her know that he was there while he tried to find the right words. Admittedly it took him a few seconds, but he did finally figure out what he wanted to say to her.]

Hey...you don't have to cry okay? We're together, remember? We can handle anything if we put our minds to it and this situation isn't any different. Besides...I promised I wasn't going to leave you on your own, and you know I don't break my promises.

[He was hoping his smile would make her feel a little better...but considering the situation, it might only do so much. It was worth a shot though!]

[On the whole, this situation had moved a little fast for her. Before she knew it, they'd been swept up in the final decision for the Bastion - the fate-deciding course she'd hoped would not be for a long while yet. It felt too surreal.]

[Well, that element did. But much like Ippo, her heart was most drawn to what was closest to her - physically and otherwise; the part of all this she did understand, that she could respond to. Ibuki's tears would have pierced her on their own, but this...everything Ibuki was saying...it felt as though they were being pulled from Ikuri's own heart.]

[She didn't want to go back. A world of despair awaited...and it would not allow her to escape again, that much she knew. Nothing in Otherworld could have answered the threat that the infection possessed; there wasn't even a hypothetical response, no plan of action. If Ikuri was drawn back...it would be the death of her in every sense. And so much worse it would be, knowing what love had felt like, what family had felt like...]

[Being able to keep what was human; only starting to appreciate it, too late. And even if her memory were rewritten...all that meant was forgetting everything wonderful about the Bastion and her life here. Zuko, Ibuki, Colin, Ippo, Megaera...Otoha, Parthuurnax...]

[...it would be just like every other illusion she suffered back home. Hope for a better life, for an escape from the nightmare... only to find herself back where she started. No, she would not go back there. She couldn't. Especially not now...knowing that Ibuki feared return to her homeworld also, hearing that it too was a place of despair.]

[She didn't want that. Not for herself, not for the one she loved most.]

[If any doubt remained about what their course must be, Ibuki swept it away. Simply going back to the past, revisiting everything horrible about it... that will not do. This man may have been convinced he could fix what went wrong in his own world, but he knew nothing of the horrors that had engulfed hers.]

[She would like see him partake of those horrors, the darker part of her thought. See him shiver and wince after feeling them taste him. Where would his confidence be then?]

[Her arms had been around Ibuki ever since it had become clear that the poor girl was upset...but for all the prior thoughts, her hold's that much tighter - protective now, even vaguely hostile, as though she expects some menace to come from the crowd at any moment.]

No. We cannot go back.

Our worlds are different. Mine alone...was broken by something mightier than you, capable of surpassing all your best weapons and intelligence. You may be intent on saving your own world, but I cannot allow it at the cost of what we have built.

[But for all that tough talk, she seems to hesitate...and then, unexpected to her, she softens.]

I know what it is to want back what you knew. I know that pain...I understand it. I mourn for those who have left me even now. Sometimes, still, I wake at night...and I will cry for them. I will pray with my heart to get them back; I will offer up anything, so I believe...

But I realize then that I cannot offer up the happiness of others. I cannot give her happiness away, [she says, obviously meaning Ibuki but making no outward indication of it,] even if it means my home and those I cared for must stay dead.

We have a home now. All of us do. The Bastion is that... it's a home for those without any. A place for the lost. If we sacrifice that, for this restoration you speak of...we would destroy the hope we've found, for a hope that may be impossible in the end. We would forfeit everything we've worked for, everything we were fortunate enough to find, strong enough to build, and brave enough to defend. Our hope...our family...our community... our future.

I still mourn those I lost. But every day, I find the strength to rejoice in who I have. This place and these people, they healed me. They took me in and accepted me when I was nearly too shattered to ever belong anywhere. They returned my humanity to me.

And you would erase that? Erase my love, my family, and send me back to hell?

You cannot, Zahi. You cannot.

Edited 2015-10-17 16:27 (UTC)

If you want to stay together, then stay here, in the Bastion.

The Bastion itself is causing time to go backwards, so it would need to keep itself 'the same', so to speak, to fulfill it's process. That is, I believe, why Zulf and the others were able to keep their memories of past events, instead of forgetting them along with everyone else. They were in the Bastion at the time.

If I am correct, then everyone who is currently within the Bastion would be taken to Caelondia along with the Bastion itself, and retain their memories of what happened. Those outside of it would be sent back to where they came from, just like all the monsters from last time. So those who wanted to help me, or those who wanted to stay together, they could come with us to the past of Caelondia.

I know many of you are ambivalent to the idea of going back, but it is really our best choice. At the absolute worst, we end up back where we are now. It is very little risk for the chance to fix everything.

Edited 2015-10-17 22:12 (UTC)

Monsters From "Last Time"?

Do you have anything to back up your statement? Or do you just want everyone to believe that you know what you're talking about?

Because so far, I can prove that at least two bits of what you're saying are wrong.,

One of which is absolutely, catastrophically wrong.

Edited 2015-10-17 23:30 (UTC)

[Going back would have brought so much lost to Rin, like her sister and all of the friends her and Ryuji left behind. She would see people she had missed for so long, be able to hug them again, and tell them how special they were to her...

There was a part of her that ached for that, so much so that she nearly considered what Zahi was trying to do as something worth doing.

But hearing Ibuki cry, hearing Ikuri stand her ground, even Colin's words of distrust and uncertainty brought her back to where she had been before all that. She shook her head, squaring her shoulders as she stood with the others.]

You can't promise anything! You can't! All you're doin' is goin' on the assumption that this is even gonna work, let alone actually let us stay here while everythin' is bein' changed!

Why are you willin' to risk so damn much on this?! You said so yourself, that the worst possible outcome is that we wind up back here! Do you even understand how much pain that would cause so many of us?!

[This time she addressed the rest of them, hoping to sway those who were still uncertain.]

How many of you have lost people you cared about here?! How many of you have watched some one you loved fall to the monsters on the skyway, to starvation and illness and everythin' else that has hit us here?! Do you really want those people to return only to suffer again?! That is this man's "worst case scenario" if his plan fails! Think about that!

[Ryu's been silent through all of this, trying to be a solid pillar of strength and hope and determination, but as everyone speaks, he just... seems to crumple. To turn inward. He doesn't want to hurt people, and he doesn't want this to happen again... but to abandon his world? To allow everyone to simply die, without a chance to bring them back?]

[To abandon half his soul and continue with this horrible emptiness in his heart?]

[... He doesn't know what to do. He just wavers there, keeping his mouth shut as tears start to stream down his cheeks.]

They will not die again, because this time we would have more information to go on, and we could save them!

[He is getting more insistent now.]

What of your sister? Or even the other version of her, from another world? You cannot tell me that you would not take the risk for her sake!

And for all of you- [He is addressing the whole crowd now, not just the PCs. Because he has to win them over too.] -yes, it is a risk. But aren't your loved ones worth it? That is what I am fighting for, so that my daughters and grandchildren may survive the Calamity and live on. Don't you want that too?

This is our best option.

[Zahi please stop trying to appeal to sentiment. She gets wanting to but that doesn't make it the right choice. Zuko's made some very wrong choices based on what she wanted, instead of the facts.]

We don't know enough to say that it's our best option.

There aren't any experts here on how the Bastion works. Or how the Calamity works either.

Winding up back where we are now isn't the worst possible outcome. The first time it happened, only people from this world wound up here, right? We don't know if it hit any other worlds before. Maybe repeating it made it worse. Trying again could just make the Calamity spread. And then all of us would be responsible for that much more destruction.

What the Bastion can do has already been tried. I don't want to give up on our worlds, but I think it makes more sense to keep moving forward. We have a lot of smart people here. If we all work together so we don't have to worry about fighting each other or just surviving, we might be able to find another way.

[Mitellux for awhile had been blending in with the crowd, in human form so that she could keep an eye on things]

[She was all for hitting the restore function. She had no desire to live out the rest of eternity surrounded by humans, and the existence of the other dragons were of little comfort to her. They were not her kind, and none of her children were here]

[... but she didn't live this long by letting emotions overwhelm her senses. ~~And maybe she was a little attached to Kizuna~~. Somehow, the multiversal organization her world was aligned with hadn't picked this up before disaster struck. If they couldn't have detected and corrected this anomaly, what are the chances that this Zahi who came from a technologically inferior world could fix it]

[... and so far, it didn't seem Zahi was providing any hard evidence. Mitellux kept silent, though. Let the others argue it out... she felt she would better serve this occasion by keeping a discreet eye out for any potential threats in the crowd]

Edited 2015-10-18 20:30 (UTC)

It was tried with just four people. Zulf's attempts were noble, but there just weren't enough people to change the future. But with the numbers we have now, it's possible.

I know I don't have concrete proof to hand to you, to show that it will definitely work. But neither do I have evidence that any of the other choices will turn out much better. Evacuate? We have no idea what will happen, but the word itself suggests abandoning the Bastion entirely.

Would you really throw away the one option we have that we actually have working knowledge of, tangible experiences provided for us by Zulf and the others, for something nobody has experienced before?

You could try it with a million people, and it would still be an unreasonable risk. Shard! Display still image, Iowa Hellmouth C591164.

People, if you have sensitive stomachs, I advise you to look away.

[The holodisplay by the monument, gone so long unnoticed by most, immediately hums to life as Colin speaks.]

[Even before his mouth closes, a large still image manifests. It might very well be a piece of abstract art. Half of a human torso seems to stuck in the smooth gray wall of a building. Where the head should be is instead a tree branch, and where there should be uniform portions of anything readily identifiable, instead it is an abomination of assorted plant life, animal life, and building. It's as though everything is trying to occupy the same space, and failing.]

[Perhaps the only blessing of the image is that there doesn't appear to be blood anywhere...]

Your worst case scenario is a pipe dream, Zahi. You want your worst case scenario?

That's it. Right there. And it's already playing out in places. Haven't you noticed the portions of your own worlds blending into the skyway? Into what's left of Caelondia and the terminals? The mish-mash of reality and the broken laws of physics that keep this place running?

It is a temporal maelstrom, the result of worlds colliding without the veil between worlds to buffer them. No matter can occupy the same location as other matter in space, or in time. THAT is what happens when you damage time enough for that rule to go out of the window. THAT is why I was so terrified when this first came to light!

We know for certain this has happened once before, WITHOUT our worlds getting dragged into it. This time, worlds across the multiverse have started getting pulled in.

Do you really want to see what happens if it happens a third time?

Edited 2015-10-18 23:26 (UTC)

[See, initially, she was going to start out with a similar argument. Numbers alone do not win battle. Had Otherworld several thousand extra warriors to its name (or, she believed, even hundreds of thousands), they would've died just the same, because nobody knew how to fight the battle brought to their door. It wasn't enough just to have the will; lack of knowledge could be your death. Ikuri herself could have died here, even in the very beginning of her days at the Bastion, if she'd continued to act in ignorance.]

[Zahi was citing numbers and power as their main asset, but sometimes that wasn't enough. What they most needed was knowledge - and everyone seemed to be agreeing they didn't have enough. What they needed was to find the truth.]

[For that matter, Colin was someone she would have trusted to know what he was doing, but he seemed firmly against Zahi's plan. Zuko too, for that matter. The words of those two alone would have been good enough for her, but they're the more so here, because they're echoing what she's already thinking.]

[But then? Before Ikuri could vocalize any of it...there was that. That horrible image.]

[...]

[Colin had warned them to look away. Ikuri found that she couldn't.]

[...and her arms around Ibuki are the tighter for it.]

Edited 2015-10-18 23:53 (UTC)

Holy shit.

[Probably the only reason Rob can be heard right now is because he just broke the moment of shocked silence following that picture appearing.

It probably says something about him that after a moment he's pulling out his datapad to look for more information on "Iowa Hellmouth" in Colin's database.]

[Bringing up her sister - bringing up Yukio who had been there for a time and made dealing with the loss of her world a touch easier than it had been was enough to make Rin clam up. Her breath hitched visibly as her shoulders tightened, fingers working in to shaking fists at her sides.

She wasn't about to side with Zahi a hundred percent... but it did make her think twice.

Only for a moment, though.

Colin brought up that image, and what had been nausea as a result of nerves, uncertainty and anxiety turned in to the taste of bile rising in the back of her throat at the sight of it.]

Oh God... is... is that really what's happenin'?

Edited 2015-10-19 03:31 (UTC)

Obviously not, because Zulf came out of it whole.

[Zahi points a finger accusingly at Colin.]

You're just trying to scare them into doing what YOU want done!

How is that any different from what you're doing?

[A different voice spoke up this time, and a very large woman with massive pink curls came to stand at Colin's side, not even bothered by the disturbing image he had produced.]

You may not be weaving fear through the crowd but you are still using your charisma to win over others even with your lacking evidence. At the very least Mr. Starfury has proof that these sorts of anomalies can turn a stable universe in to an unstable one. All you have are words, and I for one am not impressed.

If you'd like more, I can certainly provide it.

[Colin shrugs off-handedly.]

All I'm saying is that the signs are there, and that I've seen it before. Is it happening yet? Yes, the very beginning of it is. Nothing as bad as what I'm showing you now. That comes after another temporal catastrophe.

Of course, since I'm sure you're a qualified temporal physicist, I should probably put more weight in YOUR words, huh? It's not as though you've lied to anyone or been responsible of deaths in cold blood, eh?

[Uh-oh.]

[That gets her teeth bared, and a low growl bubbling in her throat.]

[Ibuki wasn't really saying much now, though Ippo and Ikuri certainly helped the musician regain her composure. Though she definitely didn't look when Colin had warned them about whatever it was he was showing everybody]

[... but when Ikuri started growling-]

Ikuri-chan... not now, please, Ikuri-chan...

[She gave Ikuri a gentle squeeze. Now wasn't the time to exact vengeance for Crona. There were too many people here that didn't understand what had been sacrificed to get them here to the Bastion.]

Edited 2015-10-20 15:14 (UTC)

[She knows. Or rather, the words of her friend made it harder to forget. But being reminded of what this man was responsible for - and here he was, even now, trying to sow dissent...]

[Ikuri may not have much mind for politics, but even she can see what Zahi's trying to do. Hasn't he hurt them enough? Did stealing Crona not sate him? Now he has to threaten their home, their lives, their future? To fulfill his own agenda. He's already betrayed them; this is twisting the knife.]

[Her growl lessened, but only just, and for a moment in time her body tremored harder for it.]

First off- [To Rose in particular.] -none of us are from worlds advanced enough to even know if he is telling the truth or not. Secondly, if you doubt what I'm saying, ask Nate. He would say the same thing too, and he's the tech-guy who keeps this place running.

And as for you- [Now he's over to Colin.] -Of course I have lied before. I'm a general, which means I'm in charge of a lot of people at the same time normally. I've had to give orders that got people killed, and I have to live with that. And the way I live with that is by trying to make sure future mistakes don't happen.

But how about you? Were you planning on telling everyone about your secret project, or were you going to leave everyone high and dry when times got tough?

Ah, the classic 'oh look, a distraction!' technique.

Even if Colin has a secret project of any sort, it is entirely irrelevant to the situation at hand until flat-out proven otherwise.

[Megaera looks VERY annoyed as she pipes up.]

The facts are known. You'd need very specific resources you don't and won't have if you're going to go back in time and stop this, as Colin has already evidenced. Believe it or not, 'throw more people at the problem' is unlikely to be of any semblance of use.

[He takes a breath and counts to three internally, shoving down the angry retort in his head. Zahi will get his soon enough.]

Thank you Meg, but to answer Zahi's question let's do a very simple test.

[Colin turns to look at the closest cluster of Bastionites, then he looks around to everyone else.]

Hey! Everyone who knows me!

Who here wants to hear me talk at length about anything that I enjoy doing, in the way that you've all heard me do if you've been around me for any length of time?

A show of hands will suffice.

[He glances at Zahi then.]

I'm guessing since Gray got back to your group, you've at least had your people gossiping on what they know of me too. And if you're at all competent as a general, your agent with the Ura would likewise have known. I've got a bit of a rep, you know. All over, in fact.

Know what else my rep is, though? Talking. A lot. About everything except operational security. Anyone wants to know what I'm working on, all they have to do is be willing to listen to me. And believe me, I've got a LOT more than one secret project.

[He gives a cocky grin.]

I've also got a rep for helping... You know, growing enough food for two or three societies, trying to keep morale up, curing plagues, coming up with plans for macro-level housing and rescues...

I'm not expecting you'll see a lot of hands up, by the way. I'm an arrogant little shit that chases people away with my personality. Comes with being a know-it-all...

Edited 2015-10-21 04:04 (UTC)

[The general crowd consensus seems to be 'what the fuck is going on'. Most of the people here, they were either misled or had not been firm believers in what Zahi had been saying.

Zahi, however, is getting increasingly annoyed, and so are the people in the crowd who actually do believe him. They look ready to start causing trouble, but they haven't done anything yet. But for now, there is just a tense feeling in the air as Zahi speaks again, trying one more time to reason with the PCs.]

I am going to be very clear here, so there is no misunderstandings: we are going back. We are going to try again, and we are going to succeed.

Now, you can either go with me and help me, and be heroes who helped save many worlds, or you can be left behind while we handle everything. Either choice is fine by me, I can certainly understand if you did not want to help.

But you need to make that decision now, because there will be no more delays.

[Also, way off to the side by where Ibuki is, Zero pops out from behind one of the buildings to silently wave people over in his direction. Hmm what could he be doing?]

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