thebastion | Day 248 ♈ Closed

Entry tags:

Day 248 ♈ Closed

Who: the Emissary, the Disciple, the Helmsman
Open: Closed
When: Day 248
Where: Skyway
What: So three aliens walk into a bar, only instead it's a crashed spaceship on a ruined planet, and there's no booze. Actually, wait, this joke sucks.
Format: starting with log, but will match.
Warnings: well, Psii's gonna be a bit messed up.

[0. Skippable wakeup scene]

In retrospect, she wasn't really sure what she'd expected a Scratch to feel like. Amazingly, the written record is kind of sparse on what it's like to be retroactively wiped out of existence. She'd known it was coming, of course. She had plenty of time to prepare herself. It was time to wipe the slate of the universe clean and start over.

The last thing Aradia had expected was to survive.

The Battlefield hadn't been so lucky. It had been torn to shreds, and now great chunks of the little planet's checkered surface floated in midair all around her, cracked and littered with debris. A few spots were surprisingly intact, though, including the one where she'd woken up. Her breath caught, and she whirled to check on her companions. "Tav-"

Oh. Oh, no. No, no, no.

Tavros and Sollux hadn't moved from where she'd last seen them. They stood together, tall and still, gazing up at the shattered sky with blind, ashen eyes.

The Emissary was no stranger to death. She'd grown up steeped in it, with spirits for her playmates. She'd seen wars, and the aftermath of wars. She'd lost friends. But... "Not like this," she whispered. "Not like this." There was a gap between them, where a moment ago she'd been standing. Their flaking hands still grasped the empty space where hers had been. Her boys had been incinerated where they stood, and she'd escaped without a scratch. Why? Why only me?

... After a long moment, she finished getting to her feet. What now? She had to... to go somewhere, do something, but what? She'd thought she would be dead for this, she hadn't exactly made any plans. But she couldn't stay here. They were dead. And if the dead hadn't lingered, then the living had no excuse.

"Well," she said, forcing herself to smile. "Looks like I missed the train again, huh? Sorry about that. I'll have to catch up with you later. Don't cause too much trouble on the other side, all right?"

She leaned forward, took their hands one last time - and jerked away as their fingers fell apart beneath her own. Followed by their arms, and their torsos. "Oh, shit." Tavros's head fell backwards from his collapsing shoulders, and without thinking she moved to catch it, but when it landed in her hands it disintegrated into a cloud of black dust that made her cough and set her eyes watering.

Eeeeyup, those two were well and truly not coming back.

[I. Hours in the future, but not many (Disciple)]

She wandered the fragments for probably hours - maybe less, it was hard to say. The black-and-white chessboard of the Battlefield gave way to greener pastures, quite literally, but she hadn't passed out of sight of it by the time she spotted the light in the distance. At first she took it for a reflection, but on the second look it was too steady, and not at all as far away as it had seemed.

Without any better options, she made her way toward that for a while, until something else caught her eye. Something bright red, pointy, and large, with a column of smoke rising from it. She squinted at it. Some kind of spaceship? It couldn't be carapacian, theirs only came in gold and purple.

Well, that was a much better lead than a light. Curiosity and something like hope took hold of her, and she bounded down the crumbling pathway toward the ship, unaware that anyone else might be around to see it...

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

He was alive. His psionics were still active. This time Aradia noticed the screen as it lit up, and finally she had the chance to read the whole thing. He was awake, if only marginally. The tension left her shoulders all at once. All tangled up in a horrific biotech nightmare, and he could still make those dumb quips.

"You're not hallucinating." Wait, scratch that, he still easily could be. "You're not hallucinating us," she corrected herself.

But... the Psiionic? That... that wasn't Sollux's title. Only after that little discrepancy did her think pan finally latch onto the fact that she wasn't the only one who recognized him. She eyed the Disciple oddly, as if just remembering she was there. In a sense, she was - when she stopped acting like a hysterical dame for half a second and thought about it, nothing about this situation made a lick of sense. It was an oddly surreal moment, in which it occurred to her that she really had very little idea of where she was, what she was trying to do, or who these people really were.

... No, she couldn't get hung up on that right now. Later, maybe. The Disciple was right - their first priority was to extract Sollux-or-maybe-not-Sollux from his hideous slimy prison.

Somehow.

"I don't know," she admitted. She scooted around to get a better look at the connectors, although since she lacked a bioengineering background, the inspection gave her little more than a mild sense of nausea. They were everywhere - his arms, his entire lower body, his spine. "We can't just tear him out." Even in a best-case scenario, he could come out paralyzed; she didn't want to imagine anything worse, much less say it right in his sponge clots.

2ur3 y0u c4n, wh4t'2 th3 w0rst th4 c0uld 4ctu4lly h4pp3n? L3t2 s4y th3 m3nt4l s2h0ck 12 3n0ugh t0 4ctu4lly 4ff3ct m3 1n th3 4ctu4l n0n-cr4zy-4ctu4l-r34l1ty w0rld, l1k3 1 g1v3 4 fuck 460ut l1v1ng

Hopefully they're ignoring the screens, because the Helmsman isn't exactly being helpful right now, and also still steadfastly ignoring the inquiries about his actual name.

R32cu3 4tt3mpt2 4r3n't r34lly 4 n3w n1ghtdr34m but 21nc3 th12 i2 2uch 4 n3w 2p1n 0n th1ng2 m4y63 1 c0uld 3nt3rt41n 1t. W4nt m3 to pr3t3nd t0 g1v3 y0u th3 3m3rg3ncy pr0t0c0l2 l1k3 y0u d0n't 4ctu4lly 4lr34dy kn0w?

...Or maybe they shouldn't.

Edited 2014-11-12 06:36 (UTC)

She's looking around blindly now, for anything. A panel, a set of controls, anything. Her eyes land on a screen, fixate on the words. It hurts. It hurts in that same way the first depressive swing he had in their presence hurt, when she didn't know how to help. Her hands clutch at the fabric of his ridiculous suit, trying to process that. He needs to give a fuck, he needs to, because she always had to and it's not fair. He can't come back and just leave her alone.

She blinks back tears and they focus her. His words that blurred come back into clarity.

"Emergency protocols. Yes--yes what are those? And--in Alternian so I can understand you, you know I'm terrible at these things."

Emergency protocols. That's right, he'd mentioned that - or the computer had? - whatever, they had been mentioned. The Helmsman can be removed, there's a way to do it. "Yes! Emergency protocols are good," she exclaimed.

Sorry, he'll get to that in a second because for the first time since those doors first opened, the Helmsman reacts. To be specific, Disciple's fingers clawing against his suit make him react, pulling back as much as he's capable which isn't much at all as the biowires strain and stretch in protest. There's a noise, too. Not any sort of words, just a low keening desperate noise from a throat that's not used to speaking anymore.

The words on the screen, in contrast, keep coming like nothing happened.

W3ll 1'm g01ng t0 n33d t0 233 20m3 6ulg3l1ck1ng pr00f th4t y0u'r3 4ll0w3d t0 b3 h3r3 f0r 0n3 th1ng.

Her hands let go at the rising keen and she stumbles backwards. She practically falls into the water in her haste to let go. What was wrong, she didn't know, but she knew better than to touch someone who reacted that way. Her hands are trembling as she straightens and looks at the screen. Nothing, no evidence he even acknowledged it.

"Oh--Like we're allowed. Like rescue parties are allowed to be in here. I'm Meulin Leijon, the Disciple of Signless, I don't know what more you need. Are you not...I don't understand." She gestures at Aradia, to speak. Maybe this is her Sollux, maybe she's chasing a futile dream.

Edited 2014-11-12 07:18 (UTC)

Oh, no, that piteous wail was just too much. On the one hand, logically, it meant he still had some awareness of his body, but that just made it worse. She couldn't even begin to imagine how much pain he must be in. Nobody deserved a fate like this.

... And yet he was still hung up (wait, no, bad choice of words) about their identification. God damn it, Captor, she couldn't even with you.

Aradia watched the Disciple as she spoke. So you are Meulin, she thought. So on top of everything else, they had temporal shenanigans to deal with. Had Meulin been trapped in the Medium after the Scratch? For how long? ... And wait, wasn't Meulin deaf? She thought she remembered Meulin being deaf.

At least it provided a more plausible idea of who the Helmsman was. Sollux was dead, but there was one other person who would fit his profile. Give him ten or twenty sweeps and a haircut, and voila, twinskies.

Edited (hurr it's capitalized) 2014-11-12 16:29 (UTC)

Abruptly, she realized that Meulin was looking to her for help. Her mind raced. She had to do something, but what...? Just as suddenly, though, an idea began to form in her think pan. It was crazy, but... maybe it was crazy enough to work.

Aradia straightened to her full height, mindful of her footing on the slippery mound, and took a deep breath. He wanted proof? All right, she'd give him proof. She'd tipped her hand already. Now it was time to go all in.

"I'm Aradia Megido, Emissary to Her Conscientious Majesty, Empress Feferi," she said, her voice taking on a marked tone of authority. She spun her sylladex - one reel, two, three - and equipped a signet ring on her index finger, holding it up so they could see. "By her authority, and in the absence of captain or crew, I hereby assume command of this vessel."

There. How's that for 'allowed to be here,' kiddo?

While Aradia was going over the mystery of this special little clusterfuck in her head, more words appeared at Disciple's protest. Unlike the last times, they didn't come in rapid fire quickness. No, they were... slow. Almost gentle in it.

1 kn0w wh0 y0u 4r3. 1 2h0uldn't try t0 ju2t1fy my23lf t0 my 0wn d3lu210n2 but th12 12n't th3 f1r2t 1'v3 h4lluc1na4t3d y0u... 4nd 1 kn0w th4t'2 h4pp3n1ng b3c4u23 0l1v3bl00d2 d0n't l1v3 f0r 1425 20l4r 2w33p2.

1425 solar sweeps. How long he's been installed. Certainly much longer than yellowbloods should be alive.

There's a pause as Aradia straightens herself, the machinery and tentacles whirring and slithering as it processes what she's saying and even the type of fetch modus she's using. When she finally holds up the ring, the Helmsman moves once again. In contrast to the alarming wail he'd made before, he seems almost bored as he looks over the ring. The only thing missing that would make the picture complete would be him chinhanding. The screens go blank for a moment before he lets his head fall again and race with yellow text once more.

0h TH12 21 4 n3w 0n3. 20 w3'r3 g01ng w1th 4 h31r322 2ucc2210n 2p1n th12 t1m3, p4n? p01nt2 f0r pl4u2161l1ty 0n th3 g3n3r4l 1d34 but 1'd b3 h4rd pr3223d t0 f1nd 0n3 th4t w0uld ch0023 4 mar00nbl00d f0r 4nyth1ng.

There was a brief pause as the Helmsman sighed, a wet sound that had yellow drip slowly from his lips. The ship really was dying, as much as its Helmsman refused to believe something so good could actually be happening, and he wouldn't be able to deal with the resulting aftermath.

V3ry w3ll. 3m3rg3ncy H3lm2m4n r3m0v4l pr0t0c0l2 f0r h3r C0nsc13nt10u2 M4je2ty'2 3m1224ry! 4nd h3r 42212t4nt wh0 12 m02t D3F1N1T3LY n0t 4 pr0duct 0f my br0k3n m1nd. 21nc3 0f c0ur23 th3r3'2 tw0 0f y0u, w3 c4n h4v3 0n3 4t th3 2cr33n 0f y0ur ch01c3 4nd th3 0th3r w1ll g3t t0 b3 r34l 4cqu41nt3d w1th my b10w1r1ng. Wh0'2 g01ng wh3r3?

She's slow to process the things happening around her. Her attention flies back to the words, slower and easier to read. 1425--impossible. Her lips form the word silently, hands limp at her side. It's him though, him. Her eyes close and she struggles to form the words.

"Fuck you, like I didn't hallucinate you all too. 5 sweeps. It's been five..I think. Maybe 6 or 7--I lost track. Your memory must be off."

Because it's impossible to process the alternative. That they're off in time, that he's been here in this prison, surrounded by the sight of imperial pink and the smell of the sea they both hate. That he's been dreaming of a rescue for 1425 sweeps that never came.

"Conscientious--we had a change in leadership? When?" Her head raises up to Aradia, confusion making her clumsy, grief and guilt making her slow. It's impossible--or is it. An heiress like that, one who takes in a maroon as a companion of any sort, that had to be one worth supporting. Her heart lifts a little, did things get better?

"Never mind, we can talk about it later. Psii, I'm not a hallucination--stop saying that. I'm not--I purromise." She trips over the pun, too long unused, and runs her fingertips over the nearest biowire.

"I can do the wires, if you want to take screen." She's quick to offer it before her guilt at leaving him to this makes her pass off on the harder task. At least this way he can't call her that again.

Edited 2014-11-12 23:22 (UTC)

The Helmsman's sarcasm was noted and overruled. Hey, at least her gamble had worked. Imperial authority meant nothing and less in the Medium, especially with the Empress herself dead and her planet lying in ruins, but they didn't need to know that just yet. He was cooperating now, that was the important thing.

"Thank you," she said. Meulin's question she heard, but didn't acknowledge. They could iron out the details of the line of succession and their respective timelines later on, once they were all safe and not bleeding. They were on a time limit now. If the ship were to die with him still attached...

She nodded, though, accepting that division of work. She certainly didn't know what she was doing with this level of technology, besides which there probably wasn't time to dispute it, besides which Di knew him better. (Although thank god that said "biowiring" and not something else, she'd read that 1 as an L initially.) Without wasting any more time, she made her way down to the edge of the water -

- well, okay, she just wasted approximately 4.13 seconds to equip a different set of clothes. Her favorite dress was already stained and damp from the tepid seawater, there was no point in completely ruining it. So now she had a pantsuit with high boots, black trimmed in red, in a more modern style. ~~Don't judge her priorities, okay, it only took 4.13 seconds, jegus.~~

With that out of the way, then she crossed into the water to where the nearest screen was standing. Why they'd engineered it so you had to be ass-deep in seawater to use it was anyone's guess. Because seadwellers, probably.

"Ready," she said.

Th12 12n't th3 1mp3r14l 64ll, c4n w3 f0cu2?

Because of course this has to be made harder with snarky douchebag commentary, right? Still, the Helmsman waits until Aradia is closer to the screen before throwing up the appropriate commands.

W3'll h4v3 t0 r3r0ut3 p0w3r 64ck t0 m3 21nc3 1'm n0t p3rm1tt3d t0 d0 20 my23lf. 34ch 23ct10n put 0ffl1n3, D11, y0u'll n33d t0 r34ch up 1nt0 my upp3r w1r1ng, 1gn0r3 th3 gr022 6ull2h1t of 1t 4ll, 4nd pull h4rd 0n th3 th1ng wh1ch f33l2 l1k3 4 kn06. Th3r3'2 f1v3 1n t0t4l.

Edited 2014-11-13 00:53 (UTC)

His snark is almost reassuring. Almost. It's like he's really still in there somewhere after all. She shakes her head at him and leans up to look him in the eye. Being shorter, this doesn't work as well as she hoped but she can at least see his eyes behind the goggles.

"Be nice, she's helping." She tries to crack a smile. It almost works before she falters and turns away. It's easier to distract herself with the new yellow words. Knobs. Five total. Waiting for Aradia, she eyes the tangle of biowiring above him uncertainly. A slimy odd looking mess to be shoving herself into. She resolves to get a bath for the both of them when they get back. A proper one. If he can stand a bath.

"Up there? I might have to touch you to get up there, is that okay? Is this going to hurt?"

It sounded straightforward enough. Honestly, Aradia was a little relieved she wasn't the one sticking her arm in there. All she had to do was reroute the power. Should, uh... should be a piece of cake. Her hands moved above the controls with less than absolute certainty. "Right. Reroute power..."

The Emissary was many things to many people, but a bioelectrical engineer was not one of them. And, big surprise, whoever designed this system hadn't expected laymen to be using it. Practically everything on the screen was tech jargon, and the user interface was unintuitive enough that she suspected the designer was using it for job security. It didn't help matters, either, to know that putting in the wrong command could literally kill him. Suffice to say her journey through the menus got off to a slow start.

That wouldn't do, she knew. "I don't see it," she said. The I'm not an engineer, please walk me through this she left implied.

N0 0n3 c4n h3lp m3 4nd 3v3ryth1ng 4lw4y2 hurt2

Reassuing. There was a loud sigh at Aradia's questions before more yellow text appeared on the screen, helpfully directing her to what she needed to do. This much he could do, at least- Helmsman protocol said it was best to help a personal Emissary of the Empress after all.

Edited 2014-11-13 04:06 (UTC)

"Psii, we're right here. We're helping. I know everything always hurts but it'll hurt less when you're out."

Though, he still believes they're hallucinations. She's not sure how helpful he would find her fake counterpart telling him it would be okay and they'd fix it. Honestly, she's still not sure it's real herself but it never stopped her from trying to save him in dreams. Why would it stop her now. On her tiptoes, she reaches up into the mass, feeling for a knob like thing. She wants to be ready when they get him out.

"Do we always know how to get you out in hallucinations cause that's dumb. You know I can't figure out how to turn on a husktop." She tries to chatter to fill the space but it's been too long. Her ability to fill silence with talk is diminished and she struggles for something he would care about. Or that doesn't hurt.

"I live on the top floor of a hive tower here. Easily defensible. No one else on that floor and three respiteblocks. Turns out they don't have caves in the town. You should be happy, you never liked the cold rock. You're welcome to stay there too, Emissary. If you don't mind a long staircase."

Edited 2014-11-13 04:17 (UTC)

Well, thank god he knew his way around the system. Aradia kept her mouth shut as she worked through his instructions. Realistically, there was no guarantee it'd hurt less once he was out of there; it was entirely possible he'd be in pain for whatever remained of his life. But if it made either of the other two feel better about the situation, she wasn't about to dispute it. It was easier to stay optimistic when you left the negative parts unsaid.

But the going was a lot quicker now, at least. Before long, she had the first of the five reroutes underway, and she looked up while the progress bar advanced. "Not at all, it's good exercise," she said. "I didn't know there was a town. Is it very far?"

The console chirped. "Oh. Ready on the first node," she added.

Not very helpful, as it turns out. There's not even anymore responses to Disciple's claims- the screens are just blank status reports on auto besides the one Aradia is in front of.

Not the first time he's hallucinated her, not the first time he's hallucinated a rescue attempt, and certainly not by any will of his own. If he had his way, he'd stop thinking about it because he just makes himself more and more miserable thinking about these things. Spite and stubbornness, that's all he's running on now because the other option is giving in, is seeing that goddamn saltblooded fishbitch look satisfied at having finally broken her precious battery in.

At least there's one bright side. Queen Wader can't slaughter the hallucinations in his head in front of his face like she has with the actual rescue attempts that've happened.

So he just stays quiet, waiting for the power surge or solar flare or whatever goddamned thing is responsible for this mental clusterfuck to pass so he can go back to doing his fucking job, doing his best to ignore the pair of trolls beyond the instructions on the screen.

"A decent walk. Full of weird people. Not trolls. Pinks and browns nd all sorts of colored skin. Like I walked into a town of lowbloods that had all the color on the outside, not the inside. You'll have to see it to believe it. Their hair is all sorts of colors too and it doesn't always match the skintone. It's so bizarre."

Her words don't echo in here, swallowed up by the masses of flesh and tentacles around her. It's suffocating in some ways and she feels like it all might come to life and consume her whole. She's no helmsman, no psionic, but she keeps looking at the biowires, wondering if they'll slide down onto her when they're free. If they'll burrow into her own flush. The proclamation that a node is ready is a welcome relief from her own mind and she renews her grip on it. She's not sure if the nodes are in order or something and Psiionic has gone radio silent, face giving nothing away. In the end it seems best to just pull.

"Here goes nothing."

It takes work to pull the thing out of place in its mess of tendrils. Nothing impossible for someone like the Disciple, of course, but it's a stubborn thing regardless. When it finally gives way, psionic energy can be heard crackling deep within the slimy mass- beneath the Helmsman's sudden scream, anyway, body jolting and quivering in pain. The biowiring is starting to shift now, slowly but surely.

There's something different about the secretions it leaks now, a numbing agent that will tingle the Disciple's fingers if she touches it. It's the ones at his spine that are moving, slowly slipping out from his skin in a thousand different tiny tendrils at the thick ends. They squirm back into the ceiling, drops of yellow falling from their tips. Disciple should know his back has never been a pretty thing, but it's positively littered with pinpricks of insertion points... But they're not bleeding as heavily as they normally would be.

Each spinal tendril takes its own time in removing itself, but the Helmsman's text has finally popped up against one of the wall screens again. 1 gu322 w3 c4n m0v3 0n, th323 4lw4y2 t4k3 f0r3v3r

Aradia squeezed her eyes shut against his scream, only peeking again when the terrible noise had begun to die down. She'd known it was going to hurt him, but that didn't make it any easier to hear. Especially to hear it in that voice.

Part of her wanted to stop, was begging her to stop, to let him rest, just for a moment. But the rest of her knew better. Short of exacerbating his injuries, the sooner they finished this, the better.

She took a deep breath and a second to steel herself, then nodded to his message and continued the sequence. "Ready on node two."

The Disciple had the dubious privilege of the scream being practically in her ear. Tugging and pulling had been an odd sensation with all those strange fluids on her arms and fingers, suddenly turned tingling and strange when the knob gave way. The sensations fail to register when he screams. Piercing and horrible, like nothing she'd heard from him. Not the harsh curses of pain or the nearly silent sobs when they'd both realized everything was lost.

Her eyes feel hot and heavy with tears she's trying to hold back. She wants to hold him, but holding would garner more horrible noises. She's afraid and her head dips, hair falling in a messy curtain that conceals her from the two other trolls. He must have stood more but it's killing her to hear. It's five full seconds after Aradia speaks that guilt finally forces herself back up. The second knob is a little harder to find but she grabs and pulls, bracing herself futilely for the scream.

The Helmsman's own tears are falling freely in contrast, gathering up against the insides of his goggles and falling through the few gaps they find as he wheezes and rasps for breath. Sure enough, another warbling scream tears out from his abused throat. If there's any bright side, it's not as intense as the previous one had been. Perhaps the reason for this lies in the biowiring which is removing itself ever so slowly now, that which encases his right arm. In time, he'd found that was always the case. Every biowire insertion was painful, excruciating, except when you knew it for nearly 1500 sweeps, it became routine instead and he's learned to tell the differences. Limbs are always a fucker, but it's spinal and cranial insertions which really manage to drag him out of his virtual safe havens even a little.

He's quietly sobbing as the biowiring starts to recede, almost going slower than the ones on is spine which have yet to fully disengage, and yet the yellow text on the screen is still impassive.

Thr33 m0r3 t0 g0. Lucky numb3r, r1ght, D11?

Edited 2014-11-14 00:05 (UTC)

"You're doing great," Aradia called up to them. "Just a few more to go. You can do it!"

It wasn't easy to keep her voice from wavering, but she had to. She clearly had the simplest job here, out of the three of them. As hard as it was on the Helmsman physically, the Disciple had to be taking it almost as hard emotionally. The least she could do was encourage them.

The progress bar was full for the next one, but she hesitated. Maybe just a few more seconds, to give them a chance to catch their breath... But the actual timing was up to Di, she reminded herself. She was just the messenger.

"Node three, ready," she said.

Edited 2014-11-14 04:31 (UTC)

Someday she'll apologize for how she's falling apart, kept together only by guilt and determination. Her mind can't decide if it's needless or not far enough, if she should be sobbing like him or trying to cheer him up. Somewhere in the middle, she hides behind her hair, only lifting when the go ahead is called out.

It's a bit more of a struggle to reach the next one, buried deep within the wires, and she pulls back enough to assess the situation. Her eyes flit to the screen, read, shift back. Her lips pull back in a smile lacking all joy.

"Shut up Psii." She whispers, hating herself for it. Her hand lands on the knob finally, pulling it out in a quicker harder jerk. They're easier now that she knows what she's doing. If doing something three times can fit that bill.

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/sweats nervously and tags suicidal thought mention

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