station72 | A CURRENT FLOWING

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A CURRENT FLOWING

CHARACTERS: Everyone (really)
WHERE: Outside of the Memory Bank, On the Lam, The Stealth Ship, and Station 72
WHEN: DAY :052/DAY :001
SUMMARY: Things don’t go exactly as planned. When do they ever?
WARNINGS: Violence, death, allusions to weaponized suicide. Will update further if necessary.

THE RIGHT PEOPLE:
Erastos Loke & Friends
When you finally catch up to Erastos Loke - his paper, his pens, his elegant furniture and his heavily-lidded eyes - it doesn’t take long to get him to talk. All he needs is a little persuasion or a lot of torture? Or, wait. Maybe we got those two mixed up. Either way, he starts to give the strike team intel once the screws are turned on him.

You’ve already begun to suspect most the information Loke gives over. H+H1 has stayed hidden by avoiding any strong organization and by staying extremely low-tech. Additionally, the most powerful members have been quietly manipulating Concordia’s politics and security to keep the actions of the organization obscured. They’ve tipped off Gorram Saffit, they’ve mislead and blackmailed the police. When you begin to press Loke about who gave them the devices that have allowed their bombs to become so deadly, he tells you frankly that he doesn’t understand them. They were given to him by a man - or someone who looked like a man, he clarifies, when Carata asks - who he had assumed to be some wealthy foreigner until he realized he couldn’t find any evidence of the gentleman’s existence. The mysterious stranger had given Loke the devices which consisted of two dozen small parts that could easily retrofit almost any bomb and allowed them to bypass Concordian security systems looking for highly modernizes tech. Prior to the stranger’s involvement, Loke had already been working with a number of his H+H1 associates - the stranger had sympathized and supported them, and the devices provided the power they needed. Who else has access to these devices? No one. Only Loke.

Unfortunately, when the hosts ask further probing questions about the mysterious stranger’s identity - Did he say who he was? Where he came from? - something goes very, very wrong. Erastos looks briefly stricken, then dabs at his nose. It’s bleeding? Quite a lot, actually. He barely has time to cry out before he begins bleeding from his eyes, his nose and his ears. Then Loke drops to the lush carpet beneath his feed, dead. Oops.

Before the hosts have time to react, an alarm starts to blare through the townhouse. Apparently Loke has a second security system tied to his vital signs. Suffice to say, your cover probably won’t survive this long. It might be a good idea to get the heck out of dodge and make your way to the rendezvous point for extraction.

IN THE GAP WHERE IT SPARKS:
The Memory Bank & H+H1’s Bomb Squad
Thanks to the Batman + Prep Time and the Jr. Technophile, the bomb planted by H+H1 deep in the depths of the Omega Memory Bank is successfully located and disarmed although not without cutting it dangerously close to the wire.

Unfortunately nobody gets the chance to wipe the sweat from their brow. The H+H1 bomb squad knows the exact moment the bomb was supposed to go off, and they know exactly when they’ve failed. So even though Sirius and Company seemed like they could handle three average everyday people, they don’t get the chance. The lead Bomber makes the subtlest move towards her pocket - and triggers a secondary, smaller explosive on her person. The three members of the bomb squad are eliminated (hope you were standing a safe distance away, Sirius n’ Co), and while the collateral damage isn’t anything to sneeze at, it’s far from destructive enough to destroy the bank. Further, the explosion isn’t laced with any EMP blasts. While the hosts may not even be injured, the explosion definitely trips the Memory Bank’s fire suppression system as well as its local alarms. Soon (very soon), Concordian Public Security and Fire Teams will be on the scene. The hosts won’t want to be there when they arrive.

SHEPHERDS AND YOUR CROWNS OF STARS:
Escaping Concordia & Returning to the Station
With Loke dead and the secret of the Enemy’s retrofit tech gone with him, and H+H1’s plot to blow the Memory Bank hamstrung by the efforts of the hosts, it’s time to get off planet. Lets be honest: your cover identities were never going to survive this. Luckily, between the minor explosion and a jail break causing riots under the city, Public Security can’t exactly rally their forces to come chasing after the hosts. They have much bigger fish to fry. Carata and Nirad made sure that all the hosts - Loke’s infiltration squad, the bomb disarmament group and the prison breakers - knew where to meet up after their respective assignments: a concrete channel for runoff where a familiar bus is waiting to sweep you all away to the outskirts of the city. It’s less pressing to be invisible now. No one will be left on the planet to suffer the consequences; any comatose members of the Nest have been carefully packed into the bus too. Isn’t that nice?

Once they arrive at the outskirts of the sprawling diamond-glittering city, a point of black in the sky elongates and expands as the stealth tech strips back from the ship that once brought them all here. With straggles wrangled and comatose friends carefully stowed, everyone boards the ship and rockets off from Opia’s surface. Concordia with its high rises and neon, its holographic advertisements and its press of humanity, its ever present buzz of synthetic paired with organic, falls rapidly away below the ship until it’s merely one bright point of many on a densely populated planet. And then Opia too drops away, becoming a dark marble in a deeper, blacker space. When the stealth ship jumps away, it does so with a nauseating jerk.

It’s a short trip back to the Station, the closest thing any of you have to home. Cathaway and Prince are waiting there to collect their equipment (though any additional souvenirs are yours to keep) and to welcome them back.

It’s been a long time and there are new faces to greet you. Time to get caught up. Set your clocks to DAY: 001.

((OOC Notes: Feel free to play any of these events out. We’ll dip in with NPCs and so forth if it seems necessary/y’all ask, but feel free to take control of anyone if it lends to your threads. Backtagging and backdating is, as always welcome.

As of this log, all hosts have (more or less) safely arrived back on Station 72; all hosts - newly hatched and old hats - may now interact. YAY!

If you have any general questions, please hit up either the FAQ or MOD CONTACT pages!))

NAVIGATION • SETTING • FAQ • MOD CONTACT • GLOSSARY

( CODE BY WHAMBAM )

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Again, he's wandered too deep into the station. This would be the second time, wouldn't it? Since the day of his arrival.

And again, he had merely been exploring, looking desperately for ways to fill the open hours which he hadn't yet found a purpose for. Familiarizing himself with the layout of the station, he told himself, was as good of a goal as any. Especially if this was supposed to be his "home", unwilling as he was to label it as such.

Bruce finds himself in a square room with Cathaway lounging in its center. A quiet sort of hum seems to blanket the area, indescribable and indecipherable, and Bruce immediately frowns; a reaction not from disapproval of even discontent, but merely his default state when met with uncertainty. Her question whether or not he'd like to play further causes him to cross his arms.

Regardless, he draws closer.

"A hand of what?"

"Conquest."

She lifts her face to him and smiles. There's an edge of the sly to it, something like a joke in the twinkle of her too-reflective eyes. He reminds her of a person who is easily unsettled and there's an unquestionable pleasure in the familiar.

"Would you like us to teach you how it's played?"

Bruce's expression remains the same, unwavering in the face of Cathaway's smile. He doesn't allow a pause to pass between her question and his response, not this time.

"Yes," he states, quite plainly. The name of Conquest sparks a curiosity in him that he cannot help but pursue, as subtle as it may be. He pushes aside his uncertainty for now, or perhaps merely buries it deeper within him for the sake of the game.

"Excellent." She cuts and deals accordingly, clearly expecting him to take a seat across from her. The cards are divided into two face down stacks.

"These are your leader cards," she says and deals three to each of them, face down. The cards in hand are elaborately drawn and may be either a young weeping princess wearing a crown of flowers, a commander with a broken goblet, a stag wearing a chain made of the moon and stars, or an empress with a gilded spear. "The princess has a stamina of one, the commander two, the stag three and the empress four. Pick which of your leaders you'd like to use first."

She turns one of the cards in her own hand and places it face up on the floor. It's the commander.

Cathaway then deals them each five cards from the larger stack. "And here are your combatants. There are two colors - purple and gold - and a possible number spread from one to nine. Purple is a defensive action, gold is an attack. At point of play, we will both choose a combatant. The highest number wins the engagement. If an attack wins, the loser's leader loses a point of stamina. If a defense card wins, if both cards are defensive, or the combatants are equally matched, then no stamina is lost by anyone."

She reorders the combatant cards in her hand before her. "Questions?"

Bruce listens with an intenseness that is certainly trademark of his person. He eyes the cards dealt to him as Cathaway explains. Already his mind is churning at the possibilities, of which leader to choose, and when Bruce makes his decision, he turns his leader card face-up. It's the princess.

Finally, he lifts his gaze to Cathaway, attempting to read her expression -- as futile as it may be, where strategies are concerned.

"And the first to run out of leaders loses, I'm assuming?" he asks, even as he picks up his own set of combatant cards, seeing what hand he's been dealt.

"Correct." She seems pleased by his intuition and by the placement of the princess. It's close to a tangible thing, something sweet on the tip of the tongue or a perfume scent passing on the still air between them. She draws her knee up close to her center and sets her chin on it as she begins to sort her hand. "At the end of each match, your combatant goes to the graveyard and you draw a new one from the stack. The leaders go there as well when their stamina fails."

She lifts her eyes to him; she seems easy and comfortable, lethargic like a cat sunning herself in his company. "Ready?"

He nods, finding the rules straightforward enough. Quietly, however, he thinks he may be at a disadvantage; simplicity or otherwise, there's still a level of anticipation required to win. Judging how one's opponent may react to his own cards played, how they strategize, how they think.

A tricky sort of thing where Cathaway is concerned.

His first card he places down, simultaneously to her own choice, is defense. Its number is six.

"So is this what you do to pass the time?" he asks. It's more prying than it is idle conversation.

Her own card, a three, is also defensive. He wins the round handily, but to no end. The two combatants are swept into the graveyard and she draws a card to bring her hand back to five.

"Sometimes." They play the next round. Her card is an attack: a seven. "The Station used to require more maintenance, but it's been quiet for some time. We have been forced to acquire hobbies. Luckily, we collected a number of interests to draw on. For example, this one didn't used to enjoy gardening but now we find it cathartic."

After drawing, he places his own card down again. It's an attack card, and being that its number is only five to her seven, he loses the round -- and as a consequence, his princess as well.

His lips threaten to pull into a deeper frown, but he doesn't linger on the loss for very long. Deftly, he sends the proper cards to the graveyard and draws anew. He places a new leader down, the stag.

He does take a moment to consider a combatant card to use, and in the meantime, he fills the silence with his response. "You have a number of interests to draw upon." Her phrasing is repeated, and Bruce finds something unsettling in that simplest of statements. "Meaning hobbies conveniently borrowed from within the Nest."

"Not exactly." She studies the stag versus her commander, then sets her fingertip to one of her combatant cards. (Ready when you are. )

"They aren't borrowed, really. They're ours, they just don't belong to the older version of the mind that used to inhabit this body alone. She liked cards and ships and the color green. We like all those things too. We just also like the color purple, reading, and sweet things. Have you ever met a person who showed you how to like something because they loved it, Bruce?"

It's not so different from that, except she's teaching herself things she didn't know.

The whisper of a thought that doesn't belong to him flitters through his mind, and on impulse Bruce immediately strengthens his mental fortitude. It's not that he doesn't completely trust you, Cathaway, it's just that he doesn't completely trust you.

And yet on the outside, his expression and body language remain the same. He gives no notion of this sudden spike of mental shielding, beyond what might be clearly felt through the Nest's link.

Bruce places down his combatant card. It's another attack, with a number of 8.

"Yes," he says. He keeps memories the memory of his parents sealed tightly within him, the memories of Alfred when he was young and troubled pitted in his chest. He refuses to let those slip out. "But it's different in your case. It's not a handing down of interests, picking and choosing what you actually end up liking. It's an integration. You pluck it from a catalogue, and it's yours. Simple as that."

"We understand the sentiment, but we disagree. The catalog is also ours and always has been ours. We are not made up of pieces of individual minds, we are the entirety of them in collection." How monstrous would it be if they simply hacked hosts to pieces, taking what pleased them and leaving the rest to disappear into some unspoken void? What a cruel place this Station would be if that were so. The multiverse is already dangerous enough; she can't stomach the idea of this safe home being the same.

She must minimize loss to the best of her ability. It's her duty.

Cathaway places her own card in turn: a defensive card, but only a four. His eight destroys it and both are swept into the graveyard. She taps her commander once to note it's damage, draws a new combatant to her hand and then places another - an attack six.

"It's always been yours? That's assumptive of you, isn't it?" His retort is complimented with faint raise of the brow and a thin frown. Bruce knows that it's unlikely that they'll find even a small modicum of agreement on this particular subject; he's asking this in order to understand, but not necessarily to accept. A bullheaded sort of approach, to be certain, but he'll at least let her say her peace before he offers his. "What about my part of the 'catalogue'?"

The metaphor's already started. He may as well continue with it. Bruce situates his cards in his hand after drawing again. He sets down a defense card of seven, winning the round.

"Do you consider that yours as well?"

"In a sense." She brushes the cards into the graveyard. "But we are arguing semantics, Mr. Wayne. We feel there is no difference between you and us. Whether you realize it yet or not, the divide is arbitrary. You are us, we are you. Your wants are our desires, our wins your successes. Your catalogue belongs to us and ours belongs to you."

She places her next card face up: an attack five. "Think of yourself as talking into a room instead of just to Cathaway. There are many of us in the room. One of them is you. Further, you've been in the room since you woke up, though your mind has constructed a wall between us to pretend otherwise. This is a game of solitaire played by committee. You are your own opponent as much as we are."

"I don't like the idea of talking to a room, Cathaway. I prefer the idea of talking to an individual." The response slips out of him without much hesitation. And it continues in the same manner, even as he places his defense card down -- a weak number of two. Quickly it departs to the graveyard, a motion he's already adopted as automatic in their short play time together. His stag only has a stamina of one left, and he's managing to keep track despite becoming further engaged in this particular brand of conversation.

"Before you tell me that it doesn't matter what I prefer," he glances at the cards in his hand in consideration, though his gaze is soon lifted above them, to look directly at his opponent, "let me tell you that I'm hardly the only one that feels this way. Do you realize how disturbing it is to be told that there's no difference between you and I?" Between them and himself. "You can comprehend that, can't you? The fear of losing something important to oneself."

She cuts him a bemused look across her hand of cards. "What do you take us for? Of course we understand that. Would you prefer we pretended otherwise for your comfort?"

The line of her shoulders shifts, re-aligns by a degree so narrow that it ought to be imperceptible but somehow isn't. She lifts her chin. The angle of her wrist tightens and somewhere - in the room or the air or under her skin - there is the sensation of a series of threads being twisted so tightly together that it would be impossible to pick them apart. She grins at him, a convincing facsimile of girlish good humor despite the lines on her face.

"I can lie to you if you want me to. It isn't hard. You don't really know anything about me, do you? If I had some secret agenda in place, it would be so much simpler to hide it just by pretending everything is perfectly normal. You might feel something wasn't quite right but if I hadn't said anything to the contrary, could you possibly begin to guess what it was?"

Cathaway lays down an attack four.

Her words cut close to the edge of discomfort. No, Bruce does not prefer for anyone to pretend anything, nor does he wish for her to lie — the truth, in all its uneasiness, is always paramount. He straightens, his own shoulders realigning, his spine even with the rest of him. The ambiance of the room tugs, like a soft cocoon constricting, and Bruce's eyes narrow, as if trying to puzzle out something otherwise imperceptible in Cathaway.

“I’m not accusing you of lying, or keeping all your secrets to yourself,” he clarifies, though how sincere that is remains up for debate. “But yes, I would notice if I was losing a part of myself to a larger whole. I know myself too well to not realize when pieces are slipping away.”

It’s said with unerring confidence, a self-awareness that he’s certain he possesses. Even if it’s a bluff, even if there’s a sliver of doubt, saying it aloud strengthens this belief for Bruce. He wants the words to cut through the atmosphere in the room, to be stark and jagged against the clean lines and even, disturbing conformity.

“Didn’t you feel it?” He doesn’t make his move yet. He wants to hear her answer first.

"I didn't meant with you, I meant with me. If I didn't tell you that something was different about me from the moment we met, how long would it take you to suspect exactly who I was?"

She touches her fingers to her breastbone; her touch is slightly calloused, her knuckles nicked by old small scars. There are lines on her face and her hair is greying. She looks-- normal, the reflective spare in her pale eyes notwithstanding. Would he have guessed her to be something more than she looks? It seems unfair to assume that he would. Dishonest.

Cathaway drops her hand with a chime of the charms looped at her wrist and elbow. "But as for myself--" She sighs, all the invisible tension in her made visible as it slips free of her and she rearranged the line of her shoulders and the sharpness of her awareness in this moment and place wanes by a degree. "Of course we felt it. Just like we feel the tug on us now and have to refuse it."

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A CURRENT FLOWING

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