Day 248 ♈ Closed

[emissaries]

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...

Comments

[emissaries]

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.

[polariity]

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.

[disciplewhomsignlessloves]

"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."

[emissaries]

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.

[polariity]

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.

[disciplewhomsignlessloves]

"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."

[polariity]

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

[emissaries]

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."

[disciplewhomsignlessloves]

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.

[polariity]

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?

[emissaries]

"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.

[disciplewhomsignlessloves]

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.

[polariity]

That would be for the second set of arm tendrils, dragging out another wail from the Helmsman in his bonds as his body shakes from it all. There's one bit of good news, however. With a sickening fleshy sound, the last spinal tendril detaches and sluggishly ascends back against the ceiling to rest and inevitably die. The Helmsman's voice lowers into mere whimpers.

There's a bright side, although Aradia wouldn't understand the technological babble on the screen that tells her this. The only thing that's really left to unattach from the Helmsman would be the deceivingly delicate looking tendrils which wind out from his goggles up into the mass above him. The lower connectors have been detaching much more subtly with the other connections.

Of course, normally, there'd be a lowerblooded helper or drone to keep him held upright for this whole procedure- the initial arm tendrils are halfway off his arm, now, and he'll be going limp on that side soon enough.

But, well... They'll get to that when it happens, however unhelpful the Helmsman is.

[emissaries]

Lucky number three. Aradia paused a moment to watch the two of them, her hand resting on the edge of the console. The spine was done, and the two arms were starting to come free... but the ones on his head were still attached. Was that supposed to happen later? How deep did they go, anyway? She wasn't sure she wanted the answer to that. At any rate, she doubted they could hold his weight by themselves, no matter how emaciated he was.

"Great job. We're more than halfway done," she said. "Disciple, you'll need to be ready if he falls. Keep an eye out."

She glanced back at the controls. She wasn't a medical doctor, either, but his vital signs made more sense to her than the rest of the technobabble. No alarms were going off yet, at least where the Helmsman was concerned, but she didn't like the way the readings were fluctuating.

After a moment, she asked, "How are you doing? Do you need a minute?" It was directed at both of them, though.

[disciplewhomsignlessloves]

From her veil of hair, she hears the whimpers fade into the disturbing noise of slithering wires and what has to be the beat of her own bloodpusher, loud with the effort of pulling and her own adrenaline. It seems to take a minute to get things ready again so she waits, not sure she wants to look him in the eye again.

"Oh--right." Her gaze skirts his face, up to the arms held above his head. They're coming into view again, queasily, slowly. They'll fall and he might fall with them. She shakes her head at the instinctive thought, can she hold him up and pull? Of course she can. She could have done it with him before, let alone with him skinny and frail.

"I'm--I'm okay if Psii is okay."

She doesn't say that the sooner the better. The quicker they're done, the quicker she can get out of this suffocating room.

More suicidal thoughts, more Captors being unhelpful

[polariity]

Y0u kn0w wh4t w0uld 63 n1c3? 1f th12 b3c4m3 4 dy1ng dr34m. H4v3n't h4d 0n3 0f th023 1n 4 wh1l3

Casual (if bleak) words in contrast to the harsh sob that wracks the Helmsman's body as the wires release up to his elbow, yellow blood sluggishly dripping down into the salt water, onto the bottom connections, onto Disciple. As he shudders in his station, the Helmsman sends more words onto the screen.

1 c4n k33p g01ng. Th12 dr34m 12 0n 4 t1m3 crunch, 12n't 1t? L3t'2 233 h02 f4r 1 c4n g3t b3f0r3 1 g3t dr4gg3d k1ck1ng 4nd 2cr34m1ng b4ck 1nt0 r34l1ty.

[emissaries]

Aradia didn't know what to tell him there, and ultimately decided against saying anything about it. The best thing they could do for him was ease his suffering. Hopefully they wouldn't have to end it.

He wasn't wrong about the time crunch, though. "All right," she said, continuing the sequence. "One second, and... node four, ready."

[disciplewhomsignlessloves]

She can't help but read his words, between looks at Aradia to gauge their progress and glances up at the biowires slithering away. She feels the blood drip onto her fingers and slowly down her arms as she stands on tiptoe to feel around, to grab and hold on to the.

"You can tell me all about them when we're back in safety and I'll tell you about mine and we'll be even. For all you know, you're both my dream. I still haven't rule it out on the long list of reasons why I'm here."

She pulls hard, dropping down to place her arms loosely around him. He's going to drop soon, better her arms be there.

[polariity]

0nly 0n3 m3nt4l br34kd0wn 4t 4 t1m3 D11. 4nd 1 th1nk w3 b0th kn0w 1

And as the knob is yanked into place, the text stops although the instructions for Aradia remain on autopilot. The Helmsman takes in a sudden deep breath, shifting a little like he's just woken up.

Oh. Okay. This really is one hell of a hallucination. It's not often he dreams of being disconnected from the ship like this. It's just plain not efficient. Makes it run on the lowest possible power settings before auxiliary can take up all the slack, and clumsily at that if anyone ever asked his opinion. (They never have.) But now it really does feel like he's being taken down for maintenance and...

Hell, maybe he is, and his thinkpan is just constructing an elaborate rescue fantasy. Maybe there really is some blueblood engineer patiently disconnecting him who he'd rather see as maroon, and maybe the arms wrapped around him aren't one of his long and faded beloved's but...

Thinking of the alternative makes him shake even harder in Disciple's grasp before the biowiring finally releases one arm and it flops uselessly down around her shoulders. He used to actually have some muscle to him, once upon a time, but you'd never guess it looking at the thin and shaking limb laying against the oliveblood now.

[emissaries]

Nowhere to go but forward, now. Aradia hardly looked up this time, just enough to verify that the arm falling out of there was still attached, before returning to her task.

"Last one," she said after a minute. "Ready."

[disciplewhomsignlessloves]

She can't look at his arm. It's thin, frail, not like his at all. He feels emaciated, like no one cared for him, did he ever eat. Did that empress feed him. Did he need to be fed all wrapped up in this or was his need to eat pushed away by the same thing that kept him alive so many sweeps. His other arm is going to fall soon and she should get that knob before it does. She doesn't want to deal with his body falling while she's setting him free.

It's a balancing act now. An arm looped around his waist and the other hand above her head. It's a blind search, given she's unwilling to let him go, to let him fall, and it's a solid minute before her hand falls on the knob.

"There!" She yanks, sharply and it slides into place.

[polariity]

He knows it's going to hurt. It's going to hurt and he's going to have to be here for that hurt, not hidden away, closed off in the system and only half aware of his own body. Hallucination, not hallucination, it doesn't matter which.

Despite this knowledge, the scream that tears out of his throat is even worse than the first one he made- shrill and strangled, broken only be desperate sobs and incoherent wails for words he can't manage anymore. There's blood on the back of his tongue, a sensation that's familiar to him now, and his free hand gives a manic spasm against Disciple's body. The biowiring connected to his goggles, to his face, is twitching and writhing and the movement is mimicked in smaller ways beneath his skin. He keeps screaming, stopping only when saliva, blood, and his own tears become too much.

The long thin wires connected to the goggles snap wetly, lashing back up into the ceiling right around the same time the biowires with his other arm finally release it. He collapses, not even any attempt to try to keep himself up from drowning in the water, boneless despite being made of nearly nothing but bones. He can't stop crying.

Congratulations, Team Nine Lives. You now have one (1) crying Helmsman on your hands. What now?

Because without its Helmsman, the ship goes dark.

[emissaries]

With that scream, the hasty palisade Aradia had thrown up around her emotions collapsed. Her breath caught in her throat, and her eyes burned with tears that she made no effort to wipe away. Instinct wanted her to cover her ears, to shut it out, but another part of her knew she had to hear this. It was a darker part of her, one that had seen little use in recent sweeps, but still alive. And as the Helmsman's voice diminished into anguished sobbing, as the lights went out, a simple thought filled the ensuing void.

Actually, she could think of one person who deserved this fate... the one who had done this to him. The one who'd thought this was an acceptable way to treat a fellow troll. If that person was still alive, they'd better pray they never cross paths with the Emissary.

Because she would make them pay.

Letting her eyes adjust to the dark was mostly futile. Even troll nightvision needed some light, and here there was only enough to make out the vaguest of shapes. The water sloshed as she made her way back to the center of the room, or at least where the sobbing was coming from. A bit of fumbling found his arm, and she moved her hand to his shoulder, resting her hand there as gently as she could.

"That's it, dear," she said. "You're free."

[disciplewhomsignlessloves]

Her tenuous control on her emotions hasn't quite snapped. It's still there, keeping her in the present, forcing her to hear his scream, thick with pain she can't help him with. Limp in her arms, he feels like he'd be dead if not for the shaking and the sobbing. He's too thin, she thinks. Thinner than he had been as a slave. Her lips press to his forehead, eyes closed and she lets him sob in the darkness. It's only really when Aradia touches him that she raises her head.

"We should get out. If you have a illumination stick or something, now would be a good time." Pitch black and all. As it is, she's struggling to get a good hold on Psii, to lift him up and away without hurting him more. This is probably a futile thought.

[polariity]

The shoulder beneath Aradia's fingertips just gives a sharp spasm. The Helmsman's sobbing doesn't seem to lessen any, either. Still, it's a nice thought. Always pleasant when his hallucinations decide to be nice to him for once.

He seems content, so far, to be dead weight in Disciple's arms.