station72 | 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 )

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ She understands his point, realistically. They are not safe, they have known that since they were brought here: that the Enemy is looking for them. But, she does not have to be on her guard here. She does not fear being devoured at any moment. Does not fear that violent moods of the Godking here. Does not have to witness so much death and torture here.

She feels often that everyone in the Nest could really benefit from a shift in perspective. ]

All I truly want is to be in the garden. I know I will be taken away often, but it is what I have always done. Tending to the plants.

[Sometimes, a shift in perspective is exactly what Bruce needs. Even if the man doesn't always realize it himself.

But far be in for him to search for it on his own. He's not the type, too willful, too much of an unmovable object.

Regardless, at her comment, he offers a bit uselessly,] I've never been in the gardens here.

[ She makes a contemplative little noise, and then puts down her little web of wires and strings, standing. ]

Shall we, then?

[Bruce blinks in surprise, not meaning for it have been a request. But, honestly, what else had he to do? He told himself that he would explore the station proper, and the gardens were a part of it that he hadn't ventured into just yet.

If Ilde was familiar with them, he'd not shun her company.]

Sure.

[ She offers him a faint little smile that doesn't quite reach her eyes. She's not at all put out, but she's just a somber and serious creature. If the two of them were left alone for too long, they would likely lapse into total silence.

She folds her hands neatly as she pads off, barefoot, down the hallways. Sometimes the Station still turns her around, but there are some things she can never misplace: her brood, her garden. That knowledge always leads her back again, and she is sure-footed as she leads the way.

The doors part automatically as she approaches them, and they step into the Circle Gardens. It is a large domed space, initially looking like a normal park, carpeted with grass and littered with all variety of plants. The main feature, however, is the the large spiral of tiered plots that leads almost the entire way up to the ceiling. Each tier is different, almost like a little world all its own. ]

What do you think?

[He follows only a few steps behind, actually putting a hand into a pocket as they walk. Bruce commits the route to memory, like he does with most things related to the station itself. Some paths were winding and confusing, requiring too much of even his focus to properly recall; this one was straightforward enough, as if begging to be labeled "familiar" with the passage of time.

The Circle Gardens are unlike anything else on the station, in that it teems with life in a way the rest of it does not. The spiral of tiered pots, however, is the most eye-catching. Bruce cranes his neck up, taking in the sight, wondering the sort of effort required to allow such a project to flourish the way it has.]

This is yours?

[ She huffs a breathless laugh, ]

It belongs to all of us, but yes. I speak for it more strongly than anyone else.

[She says that it belongs to all of them, but Bruce has a difficult time feeling ownership over something he had absolutely no hand in crafting.]

You say that, but I'm not the one with the green thumb.

[Good luck getting him to even remember to water a potted plant in his office, back home. Alfred was always around to take care of that, admittedly.]

I hear that so often. But, truly, the garden was here before me, I cannot take ownership of it, any more than you.

[ Her garden was somewhere far away, left behind in a life that is no longer hers. What she tends now is merely a pale comparison, a pantomime of what had once made her so important, so full of purpose. ]

You grew the plants, you took care of them. Communal garden or otherwise, responsibility tends to lend authority. If even just a little.

[But they could go back and forth on that all day. He's really not terribly interested if she considers it belonging to the whole of the station, or just herself.]

Is it something you've always enjoyed doing, or did you pick it up to pass the time on the station?

I was the Godking's gardener. It was a special task to have, plants did not grow anywhere other than his palace.

[ She contemplates, and corrects herself, ]

Perhaps slimy things underground in the caverns, but it was not safe to venture there.

[He looks at her, a flicker of curiosity in his features. He wonders what sort of world allowed only plants to grow in a palace, of all places, and why.]

The Godking?

Godking Dreus. He took over our world and ruled with fire.

[ She's explained this many times, and she anticipates questions, but she allows him to decide which matter most to him. ]

A CURRENT FLOWING

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