station72 | EMPTY CHAIRS AT EMPTY TABLES

Entry tags:

EMPTY CHAIRS AT EMPTY TABLES

CHARACTERS: All
WHERE: Concordia - VEN DIAGRAMS HQ + BOUT IT OUT PARLOR + BEARINGS APARTMENT BLOCK
WHEN: Late Day :022 + Early Day :023
SUMMARY: The results of all your hard work - for better or worse. One win, one draw, one loss. Anakin Skywalker bites the big one.
WARNINGS: Violence, non-graphic character death.

IT’S BEEN A LONG DAY. Unfortunately, that’s not about to change any time soon. In the late hours of the evening, two things are happening: the final round of the Bout It Out expose between Kun-Kun and The Darkling is spooling up; meanwhile, the infiltration team at Ven Diagrams is working to retrieve information on H+H1 from the company’s security drive. Unfortunately, neither is going to reach the natural conclusion.

At the REGAL STREET GAMING PARLOR, emotions are running high. After a long day of simulation violence and the reveal of Kun-Kun’s new automaton fighting avatar, the crowd has been stoked to a few pitch. The music’s loud but the crowd is louder: cheering and booing, shouting for every landed or evaded strike. There’s an electric pulse of excitement in the air-- and then there’s a very literal one as an electromagnetic pulse rocks the Regal Street Parlor. The Bout It Out ring shorts and the entire parlor is pitched into total, window-less darkness. It doesn’t take more than a few seconds for the crowd’s excitement to melt into panic. Pushing, shoving, shouting - a piercing shriek as one of Kun-Kun’s representatives is stabbed. The nearby hosts (Lexa, Sam Alexander, and anyone in their faux attachment) should be able to help Kun-Kun and his reps to safety, but the crush of the crowd tangles up everyone else. When a rudimentary bomb goes off in the center of the parlor, it catches plenty of people in the crossfire.

There’s a white hot flash. A pulse of heat. A sizzle of agony. It’s a pain that guts, that persists long after the flash of the bomb and extends all the way to the infiltration team at Ven Diagrams. It’s like a limb badly severed. Anakin Skywalker is killed by the blast and every host knows it before they’re aware of anything else.

Unluckily for the infiltration team, they won’t have much time to recover. News of the bombing hits Extraspace in a matter of seconds, which triggers Ven Diagrams - paranoid from the recent attack on their own properties - to lock down their headquarters. All systems are tightened and security clamps down before the infiltration team can access the private servers. If you’re somewhere you’re not supposed to be, now’s the time to get the hell out of dodge.

Retreat, regroup. Upon returning to the Bearings apartment block, the hosts will find that two of their previously comatose friends have woken up: Hux and Aoba Seragaki will probably need to be briefed on the current situation.

     I. THE ROOM WHERE IT HAPPENS
In the Regal Street Gaming Parlor, a pulse flashes. Electronics sizzle. A fight reaching rhythm is shattered and darkness consumes the parlor in its entirety. There’s something like a collective inhale - and then the panic sets in. Screaming. Pushing. Elbows in the dark and a wave of bodies forcing their way toward wherever they think the exit is. Parlors like this one are supposed to be shielded from this kind of problem, but today that doesn’t matter. In just a few short moments of panic, a bomb - basic compared to the one that blew out the Ven Diagram warehouse only days ago - goes off.

There’s a buzz. An electrical hiss. In the wake of the explosion - in the wake of the agony of Anakin’s death -, the parlor’s fire systems go off flooding the upper and lower levels, the spectator balconies with flame retardant powder and coolant. The emergency lighting kicks on, throwing the carnage into stark fluorescent light. The probable intended victim has escaped, along with his entourage, but there are plenty of wounded - groans and weeping permeate the chemical stale air. In addition to Anakin, three people have been killed and two androids have been rendered into scrap by the explosion. Countless others could use help; maybe even a few other hosts have been wounded by the blast.

     II. MEANWHILE...
If you’re part of the infiltration team, you’ve officially overstayed your welcome. Security tightens to a chokehold; if you’re somewhere you shouldn’t be, it’s time to leave. An alarm blares through the development laboratories. The building is evacuated and then sealed throughout. The powerlifts cease operation. All networked systems go offline.

     III. FROM THE JAWS OF DEFEAT
Back at the parlor, the evacuation continues. The parlor is half-collapsed, there are injured to tend to and local authorities to deal with. In a matter of minutes, the the parlor is swarmed by public security and medical personnel. If you’re able bodied, you’re welcome to assist with rescue efforts - or try to find a lead on who could’ve been responsible for this. Some evidence, some sign - anything to make this worth it. During this time those with Kun Adetokunbo will have the chance to make their case.

It’s a long, protracted clean up and triage; it’s absolutely possible that some of the infiltration team members might make it to the site of the explosion to assist or care for their friends.

     IV. WE TEND OUR WOUNDED, WE COUNT OUR DEAD
In the early hours of the morning on Day 023, the hosts limp back to Bearings. Maybe it should be achingly quiet, but it’s not - there’s a murmur of activity in the mental air as Hux and Aoba muddle out of their way from out of their comas. From here, it’s up to to the hosts to recover, to discuss how they want to proceed, and come up with a way to recover from this setback - and from Anakin’s death.

((OOC NOTES: Here it is, your wrapup log for the event! You may have noticed that the Hosts didn’t succeed at the Ven Diagrams infiltration. We thought this was a better way than asking everyone to handwave a huge amount of plot or simply having the NPCs get the evidence. Don’t worry though - there will be other mysteries to unravel soon. Very soon, in fact.

There will be an NPC top-level for the escape with Kun-Kun, but otherwise you’re free to make your own top levels! If you have any questions please feel free to ask them in the event OOC post.

Thanks everyone!))

NAVIGATION • SETTING • FAQ • MOD CONTACT • GLOSSARY

( CODE BY WHAMBAM )

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[It'd happened before, one member of the Hive getting abruptly torn away, Sam knows that. But the one time it'd been because of death had happened before he got there, and those that had slipped into comas seemed to be more of a quiet ache. None of them had ever blown up quite like this - pun mildly intended - and he's not sure if it's because of who'd been involved or how it'd gone down.

Either way, it means now that they're all heading back to the Bearings, Sam's hanging out at the edge of the common area. He's more banged up than he should be, for someone who wasn't around at the time of the explosion, but that's what he gets for trying to help in the aftermath. He's not so much worried about the physical side of things, at the moment. There's a confusing twist of grief and an echo of emptiness that he can't exactly get a handle on, considering he hadn't even known Skywalker. It's a symbiote thing, has to be, and he can only imagine how much worse it's gotta be for Castor.

He's keeping quiet, for the most part, watching everyone as they slink in and disappear off to where ever, or convene to discuss what happened. But when he spots the younger Sam, he heads over. He knows that Sam had been at the fight, and he'd be lying if he said he wasn't worried.]

Hey, man, how you doing?

[ Sam's still trying to put the pieces together into some kind of coherent idea of what happened; he and Lexa had been outside when it started going down, and everything he'd felt from the rest of the nest had just been an overwhelming jumble of anger and pain and something he's hard-pressed to find a better way to describe than oh, shit. It's still not making much more sense than it did while things were going down, but the how is probably less important than the what, he knows.

They're all going to be feeling the echoes of this for a while. ]

Few scratches, no big deal.

[ He realizes that his physical state probably isn't the real question being asked, but Sam's used to bottling things up and pretending he's fine. His family needed him to keep it together. His friends had no idea about any of the superhero stuff. The older Avengers probably didn't need one more reason to doubt bringing the kids on, and Miles and Kamala always seemed a little more comfortable with each other than he was with them.

And the Watcher was dead.

Bottle it up, brush it off, and try not to explode. That's just routine.

It's a lot harder to be convincing about it with the whole hivemind thing, though. ]

[ One eyebrow raises up a little at that response, but he doesn't bother clarifying that's not what he was asking about. Even without the trickle of feelings from the hivemind, he can guess that Sam could probably figure that out.

Instead he huffs out a small laugh, shaking his head. ]

And here I was worried that you weren't gonna be one of the 'ignore it all and it'll go away' types.

[ Not that Sam has any room to talk, really, considering his own history of pretending shit ain't a problem until he's forced to admit it is. But he likes to think he's gotten better at that, since his time at the VA.

For a moment, he thinks about letting it go, offering to take a look at what few scratches the kid does have - but it's probably not a good idea, now that he's figured out the extent of his symbiote ability. He's not going to be able to patch anyone up the way he's used to until he figures out how to control it better. ]

You don't always have to be fine, you know. It's cool to be not dealing so great.

I'm in high school. We're good at ignoring stuff.

[ A joke, mostly, but a completely true one. Teenagers can get pretty mean, even to those who aren't already starting the social race with a few big handicaps. Showing weakness in a place like that...well, it's like being the wounded gazelle on the Serengeti.

If you want to get out in one piece, you get good at pretending it's no big deal, until you can't anymore. ]

[ There's an amused snort at that, and his smile goes wide and amused for a moment. ]

You know, it wasn't all that long ago that I was in high school.

[ Yes it was, Wilson. Especially to someone who's actually still in it. But not so long ago that he doesn't remember what it was like - and he makes a little face, because Sam's right. ]

All right, all right, yeah, point to you. But you're not in high school here.

"Longer than I've been alive" is kind of long ago, dude.

[ Boy, it sure would be embarrassing if he were off by a decade or something, but it's not like that ever stopped him. ]

Ouch, man, is that how it's gonna be?

[ But he's laughing now, and the only thing that's stopping him from holding a hand over his chest like he's fake wounded is the fact that he's actually wounded, and he doesn't want to aggravate anything. ]

You might not be that far off. Doesn't make my second point any less true, though.

Yeah, well.

[ Pause.

...no, actually, he doesn't really have anything to refute that second point. He shrugs. ]

Habit?

Uh-huh.

[ The hieght of his eyebrows is a direct correlation to how impressed he is with that answer. Habit, man, come on. But he quirks a little smile, shrugging one shoulder back. ]

Look, I'm not saying you gotta spill your life story to me or anything. But you don't gotta lie like you're fine if you're not, you know. I'm not gonna judge you. Hell, I'm not fine, and I wasn't even there.

[ Isn't people judging each other half of what life is made of? Or is that just high school?

Though, to be fair, it's not only avoiding judgment that keeps him bottling things up. It's also the part where his life has gotten into the kind of weirdness that he's only halfway sure how to even start explaining, and doesn't expect most people to get even if he did. (Although other superheroes would probably come closer to the weird parts, even if not the normal parts that just muck up the weird parts.)

But then again, here, he doesn't really have to explain the same way he would anywhere else, does he? ]

It's...

[ Sam's not good at keeping his feelings from bleeding all over the broodlink, but maybe that's helpful, because he's not really sure how to phrase "all this stuff struck uncomfortably close to bad stuff that happened not even a month ago and I was just starting to maybe get enough emotional distance from it to stop thinking about it all the time, but that just went straight out the window."

Instead, he finally settles on: ]

It just reminded me of stuff.

[ It's not the first time that Sam’s felt the flood of emotions through the broodlink. But it's different than it’d been with Barnes, who'd very obviously been fighting against it.

And hell, Sam knows that feeling real damn well, has had it more than once. It hasn't been all that long since he was chasing after Rhodey, fast and desperate, with the remnants of Riley in his head. He doesn't let the images surface, but he doesn't stop the feeling from bleeding out a little, a dimmer echo of what the kid in front of him is putting off. ]

Tell me about it. I learned the hard way that just because it's not on your mind every day doesn't mean it ain't still lurking there, just waiting to lunge back up.

[ There's a pause as he considers, before venturing; ]

Who'd you lose?

[ Oh, boy.

There's really no way to give the short answer to that question and have it make much sense. Sam winces. ]

Okay, I kinda have to back up a little before I get to the who, because it gets...complicated. And it's gonna sound pretty crazy.

[ He's pretty sure his mother watches soap operas that are less ridiculous than where his life has gone in the last few months. ]

So...my dad disappeared a while back. Into space, because as it turns out, all his stories about being a space cop before I was born actually weren't BS that he made up to feel better about being a loser? And there was this Chitauri fleet parked around Jupiter, and he went after them and didn't come back, and long story short, I wound up finishing up for him. And as long as I had the cool space powers anyway, I've been trying to find him ever since.

[ And most of that, he could skip too, he figured, even if a lot of it played into why everything sucked so hard - that he'd hit that kind of a setback after putting so much time into it, following the trail so far, and thinking he'd done it only to have it all wiped away. ]

It took a while, but I thought I found him. We went home. Everything was really good for a few weeks.

[ Better than it ever had been, really, because it hadn't been until his father disappeared that Sam realized that things shouldn't be so bad between them. ]

So then - it turns out I didn't save him. They cloned him. And another one showed up to kill us both, because the first one decided he liked being my dad more than reporting back to Warbringer, and after we handled that, then he tracked down the ship where they had the rest of them, except my dad still wasn't there, and then when I caught up to him he said none of them should exist and he blew the entire ship up.

[ The further into the story he got, the faster the words kept spilling out, and by the end he wasn't sure if he was talking too fast to even be understandable anymore, but he hadn't really unloaded on anyone since...probably not since before the Watcher died. Once the floodgates were open, there was no putting it all back in the can. ]

[ Man, there ain't nothing like being a superhero that turns rough shit like 'I lost my dad' into an even worse mess of clones and aliens and supervillains. He'd say he missed the days when he dealt with more routine issues, but, well. In his opinion, the shit the vets he used to work with had been through isn't something that should ever be considered just routine.

Still, if there's one thing Sam's pretty damn good at, it's listening, even if it's a hell of a lot of messed up coming at him all at once. He's quiet until the kid finishes, and then he lets out a slow, steady exhale. ]

I appreciate you sharing that with me, man. Takes a lot of guts to let loose like that.

[ And he's not being sarcastic there - it does, Sam sure as hell believes that. ]

How long ago was that?

[ There are plenty of daddy issues that the short version skims right over, but there's only so much sharing Sam feels up to in one go, even if there's not really much keeping secrets here. ]

The ship blowing up was in the last week before I got here, so... [ How long ago did he get here...two weeks? Ish? ] I guess that'd put it not quite a month ago?

[ Sam's eyebrows shoot up a little. ]

Man, you know what I did when my dad died? I ran off and joined the military, took me over a year to even think about talking to anyone about it.

[ He gives Sam the smallest bit of a smile. ]

You're a lot smarter than me.

Well, I was getting set to skip the planet and not come back until I found him for real, so I dunno about that part.

[ That, he'd known, would've probably gotten him expelled for real, if he vanished and missed that much more school, and this time there'd be no convincing them to let him back in...but as much as he didn't want to be a dropout with a dead-end job like his dad, he wanted his dad back a lot more.

The only time he'd started to have a functional relationship with him, it hadn't even really been him, and knowing that stung just as much as losing him again had. ]

[ He can't help but give a low, dry chuckle. That sounds like something he would've done when he was a teenager. Hell, it was just a few years ago that he essentially skipped out on his own life to try to find his best friend's best friend. ]

That how you ended up here?

[ Seems like everybody's got some reason, or at least had been in some kind of trouble before they found themselves here. ]

Yeah. I was gonna swing by Knowhere and see if I could get any leads, but on the way I ran into...something. That Enemy they talked about, I guess.

[ He's not really sure how to describe them. Granted, it's a big galaxy and there's plenty he hasn't seen yet, but they felt...wrong, like they didn't belong there. ]

Sounds familiar. Ran into... whatever the hell it is in Wakanda. But we're both in one piece, so guess I'm grateful they reached out.

[ Not that Sam doesn't have his doubts, sometimes - a lot of the time - but now's not the time to go into that, not right after the explosion and losing one of their own.

He thinks about trying to get the kid to open up a little more, convince him that talking doesn't have to be a bad thing and Sam's always happy to listen if he needs it.

But he doesn't wanna push it, and even if he does want to put the offer on the table, he figures it might go down better with some food. ]

Come on, why don't we move this to the kitchen? I'll even take requests, if you help me with some of the prep.

[ Sam doesn't - light up, exactly, but there's definitely a little more perk in the way he looks up when he hears kitchen. ]

Sure, sounds good.

[ He's not quite sure when the last time he ate was, which probably means it's time to do something about that. ]

[ Score. Sam's not gonna say it out loud, but there’s a definite hint of contentment that Sam'd taken him up on it.

He'd do something potentially dumb like setting a hand on the kid's shoulder before they started walking, but he's not sure if Sam had actually meant he'd just gotten scratches or if he was just being tough. And he doesn't need his symbiote ability kicking in without him wanting it to.

So instead he just nods and starts toward the kitchen. ]

You in the mood for anything in particular?

Most of the stuff I really want, I don't think is happening here. Like, have you found a good hot sauce since we got here? Because I've been looking and everything I find sucks.

[ Sam has very strong opinions about hot sauce. ]

[ He can't help but chuckle, shaking his head. ]

I'm not touching any condiments here, man, none of them taste right. I'm lucky I managed to find a couple of spices that aren't too bad, and you don't even wanna know how much trial and error that took. I'm sticking to simple, least I can manage a pretty good tomato or garlic and butter sauce.

I would seriously punch somebody in the face for a good breakfast burrito. Maybe like. Five people.

[ Depending on who they were. He'd punch some of the guys from school many, many times, even. ]

Whatever you can make that's pretty close to normal would be cool?

'Willing to punch people for decent food,' I'll remember that.

[ He's teasing, shooting the kid a little grin, but also honestly, Sam doesn't blame him. MREs have gotten better in recent years, but Sam still remembers days back in the air force when he'd have punched someone for a good steak. ]

Tomato sauce is probably your best bet there, so - spaghetti or pizza?

EMPTY CHAIRS AT EMPTY TABLES

[closed to Sam Alexander, iv]

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