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...

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... only when she tried to lift him, nothing happened.

For a moment she just stood there awkwardly. She looked at her hand, turned it over a couple times, as if it really had anything to do with her powers, and then tried again. Still nothing.

"That's... weird," she said at last. "There's some kind of... psi-dampening field, or something." It wasn't impossible, anyway. Maybe it'd be better once they got outside the ship. In the meantime, they'd just have to do this the old-fashioned way.

Aradia sighed and moved in to take more of Psii's weight. "Alright, let's see if we can't get him onto my back for now. The less of him goes in the water, the better."

That...was an odd trick but one she could appreciate in the darkness. Better for dealing with this than a normal illumination stick. She made a mental note of it, not that it would fit on her oddly shaped horns. Things tended to slip off them the moment she dipped her head. In the quiet, she waits for something to happen, for Aradia to help her lift or something, for Psii to come sparking back to life. Nothing, it's silent, with only the bright white light to be seen.

"I can--Let's--fine. We should take turns on the way back ways." She knew how long the way back was and any oddly possessive feeling she might have right now weren't helping either of them. She gently shifted him upwards, trying to angle him onto Aradia's back. It felt odd to treat him like nothing at all and she starts speaking to him.

"Psii, just hang in there. And--don't worry about the sun outside. It's bright but it doesn't burn. It won't hurt us. Though who knows what time of day or night it is. The night doesn't come out here."

Get a good grip on him, ladies. There's not as much blood as there could be thanks to the secretions the biowiring gave as he was disconnected, but there's still enough that he might be a little slippery.

As he's moved, the sobbing lets up just enough for him to... make some sort of garbled noise that's not really talking. He's forgotten how to use his mouth, there's never been any need to since no one gave a fuck what he said anyway. It was a waste of time. Figures, why can't this be one of the more relaxed hallucinations? Staying so realistic takes the fun out of what's surely a temporary break from his punishment.

A little slippery he was, but Aradia's grip was pretty strong, and Psii was unsurprisingly lightweight. Once he was secure, she started toward the exit, the sound of splashing water filling the humid space.

His garbled speech was disconcerting to say the least. She really hoped they'd done everything right, that they hadn't given him lasting brain damage or something. But there wasn't a thing they could do about it right now.

The air still tasted salty as they left the helmsblock, but it was cooler and fresher, far less oppressive than inside. As they made their way down the darkened hall, Aradia spoke up again. "Disciple - this town you mentioned. Do they have a doctor there?" Even if it wasn't one who knew anything about troll biology, it might still be better than nothing.

She watches them intently, following a pace behind them. Once out of the water, out of the suffocating room, she feels better. Not much better but it's less immediate, the feeling of wanting to claw at the walls.

Her eyes are trained on Psiionic and she almost hits her head on a fallen beam. She ducks quickly and thinks about the response.

"I haven't made many friends. I don't actually know." Which feels terrible. A time ago, she would have known the best places to eat, hospitals, places to buy supplies. It feels off to have lived in a place and know so little about it.

"Thmblvntr." What that means is anyone's guess, but it's the Helmsman's contribution to this discussion, mumbled against Aradia's shoulder. His fingers give the occasional sudden violent twitch or spasm, but there's no real pattern or cause to it. Just having fingers again is... sort of a new experience.

Thimbleventer indeed, my friend. Thimbleventer indeed.

Aradia smiled gently. "That's all right, don't worry about it." She didn't know how long Meulin had been living there, but she was well acquainted with culture shock herself, and didn't blame her. "We'll find out when we get there."

The parts where they had to duck - fallen beams, collapsed portions of the hallway - made for slow going, between her huge horns and having a tall guy on her back. Once she stood up too early and bonked her horn hard enough to hurt, but she only hissed and kept moving. You'd have to be some kind of asshole to complain about stubbing your horn while carrying somebody who was half-dead.

(Heh - half. She wondered if Psiioniic was as into twos as his ancestor had been. Sollux might have gotten a kick out of that pun.)

Before long, they made their way back to the junction with the monitor and camera. Aradia shone her light down the other hallway, the metallic one they hadn't followed earlier. "Yeah, this is the one," she said. "We were thinking it might lead to the outside." Her passenger started to slip a bit, and she shifted him slightly to adjust her grip. "I'm sure Psiioniic knows the layout, but I doubt if he's in any state to tell us."

His words worry her a little more and if they stop on the way there she'll definitely be offering him some water. She wonders if he spoke. He never spoke to them in there. Had he forgotten how? It was impossible to say right now and she had slightly more important things to worry about. Like the way out of here.

"I certainly hope it does. I guess we could make it be a way out if need be but that might be drastic." She looks at Psii and tries a smile.

"Yeah, rest your voice Psii. I'm sure the screams didn't help."

A low and short-lived whine is what comes out as he's adjusted, and then there's a giggle that's not really there. No, no the screams didn't help. He wants a refund, this hallucination sucks. 3/10, would do again with no other alternative.

But he can confirm something. There's a low hum, sort of affirmation. That other path can get them out well enough. There's no sort supply of other paths out of the ship, considering its condition, but that's definitely one of the better ones.

Hm? Was that a yes? She was taking it as a yes. Down that path we go! Or up that path, rather; the way the ship had settled made the floor slope gradually upwards.

It wasn't long before they found a bulkhead blocking their path, helpfully labeled as an airlock. "Oh! Would you look at that," she said brightly. It would be a set of two doors, of course, but at least they were the last two. She passed her light around its edge, looking for and quickly finding a keypad. "Looks like it takes a code," she said. "That is, if the ship's even got enough juice to open it."

If the psi-dampening field (or whatever it was) was weaker here, though, it'd be trivial to force it. On an impulse, she scrunched up her face and gave it the ol' college try.

This time it worked. With a loud, metallic bang, both sets of doors exploded outward, allowing the light to stream in onto their faces. Outside, the doors proceeded to fly off the edge of the Skyway and achieve the most unreal air time known to doorkind. Yeah they're not getting those back.

Aradia squinted against the glare, doing her best to block it with her hat, but her eyes adjusted fairly quickly. "Well!" she exclaimed. "That went better than I expected."

Her lips are pressed into a thin line. He doesn't look any better the further they get from the helmsblock but she won't really know if he's okay until they can get back and put him in a bath or in a pile she made with one of those 'beds'.

"Well how do we get out th--" Oh. Oh well that helps.

"I'm surrounds by psionics I swear. Could make one feel inadequate. Let me go ahead, this helps with paths." She lifted her amulet. That had been her second discovery with this thing, the first being that it translated for her. One way. At least they all spoke the same language. She strides forward with only a little trepidation but a path forms for her obediently.

"Now it's just a long walk back."

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Day 248 ♈ Closed

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