A CURRENT FLOWING

[onemind]

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 )

Comments

the darkling ( open ).

[unsea]

DAY 001 - ONE MOURNER, ONE FUNERAL.

[ There had been a mission, to complete. Matters of a personal nature had to be set aside in favor of other pursuits, but upon boarding the Station once more, the Darkling's absence is immediate and sharp. Broodmates will know him to be naturally remove, with a mind akin to a frozen lake - treacherous and full of the casual dread of a misstep. The nest will know him to be naturally and skillfully evasive. Neither division may be familiar with such forceful distance, as he keeps both their minds and physical presences far from his own. There is a sense of ( hands full of blood, the tumbling of a frail body through the sky, the crushing weight of loss ) preoccupation to him.

He's lost, to the depths of the Station's halls. To a place that Cathaway had shown him, the day he had arrived.

There is someone he needs to pay his respects to, complex as he feels towards her.

Hosts that seek him out will find him in a still, cold area of the Station. The proximity of stillness, the weight of the dead, is inevitable and oppressive. There are few hosts left unfamiliar with the loss of one of their own. This space is that sensation. Magnified to the point of madness.

( There is a tomb, around the corner. The walls are full of the dead. )

Before him, carefully placed in an airlock - for both security and utility - there is a pyre. It's already burning, and looks as though it has been burning for some time. There is ash on his fingers, across one cheek. There is a sense of stasis about him. As though, for just this moment, he's ceased to truly exist. Underneath it, there is grief, and fury, and resentment and even, yes

a moment

just one

of ( true ) attachment, as it burns away before his eyes.

There are no tears, but he's visibly grieving. And it makes him look tired. Eyes far too old for such a young face. ]

( HI GUYS I ONLY HAVE ONE OPEN PROMPT - LMK ON forzare if you want anything in particular. Or comment here, with/for a closed starter of your own. :') ilu all )

[erbier]

[ She comes in behind him, as silent as a ghost. She wants to see before she disturbs him, to decide if she even will. They have looked upon such things before, bodies burning, but never one with any particular significance. His silence is significant. His careful wall of ice, all too familiar as she too was so often ringed in it. Has been, since she tortured Fahima Hanne in her lover's apartment. It was how one kept control of things that could not be tamed. She is there behind him for several moments before she steps in line beside him, fingertips light at his elbow. He can choose to send her away, she'll go, but she will just as easily stay. ]

[unsea]

[ The chill of Ilde's mind is more welcome than the press of her fingertips, but he does not strike her from his person the way he might another - during this, a most trying of time. It has been some time coming, and though his eyes are dry and his expression schooled to betray no sentiment, his mind is low, humming with pain. He can't hide it, not even from her, and instead heaves a deep, shivering sigh.

( He lifts his arm, to curl his fingers around her hand and crane himself to one side. Brushing his mouth over her knuckles, as the flames lick higher in the alcove. ) ]

Thank you, Ilde.

[ For far more than just this, he means. For the things she had done, for all of them, to settle their business once and for all. ]

[erbier]

[ She tilts her head slightly, letting him take her hand and do as he likes with it. She recognizes the tremor inside of him, the empty cavern where a feeling has been scrubbed away year after year after year. Almost empty, but there are always a few tender membranes lingering in the crevices. She knows, all too well. She had cried into Steve's shoulder for the first time in what must have been fifteen years, a feeling, a reaction, she had been so certain she had purged herself of.

She wonders if this will be it, if with this burned body he will be free. Fire had such a way. Her eyes flicker towards the pyre, wondering when her own final cleansing flame will come. Her destiny is different now, and she no longer knows what to expect from the world. ]

I'm sorry you had to wait so long.

[ How long had this body been here in the Station, waiting. He had joined them so early on Concordia... ]

[unsea]

She was well-kept, by Cathaway and this Station.

[ A neutral comment, as his fingers curl around her wrist. Remembering now, how close the two of them came to igniting in the prison. Their connection had been rife with her madness and his empowerment. He remembers bleeding, quietly, afterwards. Wiping at his nose until orange cloth had been heavy with red, long before the tide had stemmed and he'd rejoined their ragged band - ready to leave that terrible, advanced place. ]

Baghra, [ he says, to Ilde and to Ilde alone. A small truth, shared between the two of them. ] Her name. Baghra, my mentor and my mother.

[shiro2hero]

[His wandering brought him here. Mapping out the station to memory. Or maybe it was the whole 'broodmate' phenomenon bringing him here. Who knows. Either way, he's here. Standing quietly in the doorway he'd entered from. Debating if he should go or not.]

[He opts to stay. But keeps his mental presence inside his walls. He'll stay, in case he's needed after -- he'll stay and keep to himself.]

[unsea]

( You don't need to hover, Shiro. )

[ It's -- relatively hard to hide from a fellow broodmate, he's come to find out. They attract, the way polar opposites might. Atoms, seeking out their likeness. Like calling to like, and even though the Darkling has done his best to separate himself from the rest of Gacrux, he wonders if his attempts were more of a beacon than a warning.

Also, he spotted Shiro's movement just off to the side, which -- he turns his eyes from the flames and beckons to him. Reaching out, quietly. ]

( It's better, now that it's done. )

[shiro2hero]

(Didn't want to interrupt.)

[But now that there's a real invitation, he does approach. Slowly and respectfully, he hopes. Now that he's got a better look at it... that's a funeral pyre. To be sure.]

[But who died? Weren't they all supposed to feel it if that happened?]

(Do you want to talk about it?)

[Whatever 'it' is.]

[unsea]

There's nothing to interrupt, now.

[ He's been at this for some time now, judging by the healthy flame and the blackened body, collapsing in upon itself as the makeshift pyre begins to sag and burn through. Hearty and strong, and painfully ironic. His people were put to the pyre living, or dead, it seemed. Shiro comes closer, and the Darkling is the one to reach out and brush the back of his knuckles over the man's temple.

It might be soothing, if he wasn't trying to wipe away some of the soot that's begun drifting through the hall - smearing it over Shiro's brow. Sorry, dude. ]

She wasn't one of us. When I arrived - I brought her with me. I couldn't leave her behind.

[doggo]

[A draw nearly greater than that of his broodmates has brought Sirius here, so insidious a pull that he hadn't marked it as part of the greater connection. Not until he feels some separate other, a consciousness that bumps up against his in some adjacent room or level or space. There are a half a hundred metaphors that he could use to describe the sensation, and all of them would be inadequate.

Even when he becomes aware, he doesn't turn from the path he's on. There is some awful familiarity in the yawning loss that is waiting for him. Press your finger into this bruise to remember how it feels. Climb down these steps into this cellar. It's all he knew for years, the company of the dead so gone that there weren't even ghosts. Grief, fury, hatred, twisting deep. I

When he reaches the source, he doesn't cross the threshold. The man isn't anyone he recognises, beyond that adjacent awareness that they all have. And it's impossible to go unobserved when that awareness is flickering between them, lively like the licking flames on that pyre, but still, Sirius holds his silence. It suits the mood better anyways, a muffling weight, beneath which lives all that fury.]

HI THERE DIRTY PUPPO

[unsea]

[ The flames are dying, scavenged tinder and materials collapsing with sharp pops and snaps. His hands are heavy with soot by now, from tossing the smoldering bits and pieces of the pyre back into the airlock's boundaries. Clean up would be easy, and the mere thought of jettisoning the cremated remains of someone who had been so dear to him once upon a time was laughable. Mad, and laughable.

( Gone. She was gone. )

And he hides the dull laugh behind the curves of his fingers, brushing ash across the bridge of his nose as he leans back along the wall opposite the airlock he's been observing for -- it feels like hours right now.

( He laughs, because despite himself, he cannot be alone in this grief -- someone else hovers on the peripherals of their mutual connection. Someone who seems so very, wonderfully, intensely familiar with fires and pain. ) ]

Can you hear me? ( You don't feel far. )

[ His laughter dies slowly, muted behind his words as he tips his head in the direction of the other Host. ]

Do you know how this - [ a gesture to the airlock's controls on the wall before him. ] - works?

ello woof woof

[doggo]

[Sirius flinches back from the touch of acknowledgement, aloud and--not aloud. Not a flinch out of fear, but discomfort, fur rubbed wrongways. He hates that instinct; the moment he's recognised it, he pushes past it, digs in against it. Looks at the square that the man gestures to. Narrows his eyes.]

No.

[The word comes out rough, brusque. He looks back at the man. The other Host. Soot and ash. That same feeling of grief, a deep undertow.]

Who was she?

[Not a polite question but really, even at his best, Sirius wasn't always ready with impeccable manners. Sensitivity, at times. Discretion. Azkaban has weakened certain facets. If he pressed, could he pick out the answer on his own? Maybe. He waits anyways.]

[unsea]

[ The grief within him turns malicious, for a fraction of a moment. He wants to press his mind into this man and hurt him. He wants to hurt any soul who ventures close enough to connect, to remind himself of what he is and how he has been seen, for years and years. The grief, he realizes, is what is doing the talking, and he is nothing but a creature of control. Self-discipline. ]

My mentor. She made me what I am.

[ Not a Host. She is devoid of the sense of lacking that comes with the sleeping and the dead. ]

You're the one from the garbage. There was a fight - you and another. We have drinks, from time to time.

[ Now, he's viciously curious. ]

.

[adamance]

[Lexa does not approach during the fire, but there is a sense at some point while it's occurring that she's aware. The smoke mixed with burning flesh is familiar to her nose. After all, that is how her people have been allowed to pass on to the next life, even if she now knows that this "next life" had always been an illusion, a certain degree of mysticism developed in the years following the loss of Becca.

It's the following day that she follows him, eyes steady as she seeks him out, mind searching for his presence in a persistent fashion. She knows that the individual lost is not one of the Nest. She doesn't feel that distant, agitating ache. When she finds him, it's with some difficulty, as he doesn't make himself easy to find. And why would he? She hesitates from a distance, eyes still steady, mind still a stable wall to keep him from prying about her deeper intentions.]

How long is it that you typically mourn?

[unsea]

[ He'd felt her awakening. A distant thing, perhaps allotted to him only because he had come to learn of her, during their mission. As much as he'd wished to greet her, to welcome her back from her slumber and speak to her in regards to -- the two young men who had once shared a world with her -- he'd been unable to. There were other matters to attend to, namely the flame now dying before him. He's waiting now, for it to die out completely. ]

I'll be finished, soon.

[ It's not reassuring.

Some mourn for days, unable to control the surge of grief and feeling that consumes them when they lose someone. Some lash out in a moment, and strangle their emotions afterwards. He feels, poignantly painful, for the duration of that fire. And he'll drown the last of his memories of his mentor, when last he releases her ashes to the darkness beyond the Station. ]

Welcome back, Commander Lexa. It's a -- relief to see you once more.

[adamance]

[It's true: some people never stop warning. But people like them are unable to allow them that freedom. They can only allow it for fleeting moments, moments in which they steal away and allow the pain to pour out. Mourning breeds weakness, after all. They cannot risk being weak.]

Is it? I wasn't aware that relief was a part of our relationship.

[Leave it to Lexa to be as straightforward as necessary. While the two of them have their agreements about how to go about things, there's the distinct matter of differing in how to approach the hosts that remains between them.

Then again, she wonders if "relief" is akin to how Bellamy might feel. They are in the same brood, and unable to completely stymie the blurring of the lines because of the circumstances.]

hi, i'm not late

[wille]

[ How like her to gravitate toward the things she hates (fears) the most. Strange how comfortable the familiar is, how we can even prefer it, however terrifying. And so it goes. Her mind is far less guarded than his, and not for lack of trying, but at least now it simply acts as a mirror to his own, reflecting back grief with grief, the unbearable numbness that remains, like ashes and dust rendered harmless after a great fire.

This is fine. Only natural.

Misato spares a sideways glance at him as she stops to stand by his side, crossing her arms over her stomach as if surveying the construction of a project, rather than the burning of a funeral pyre. ]

It doesn't get better. [ Presumptuous. ] It just changes. Or you change to become used to it.

hi because I AM LATE!!

[unsea]

And, I am quite used to it.

[ She is new among the nest. A young host, a young woman. Presumptuous, indeed - though her attempt at engaging in a conversation is far more welcome than the silent lurking, the tiptoeing, the avoidance that others have shown him throughout the process of laying his mentor to rest. ]

She's not the first that I have seen burn. I was far more concerned that setting a fire aboard this place would infuriate our... peculiar caretakers.

[ A wry laugh. He hasn't seen hide nor hair of the Prince or Cathaway. ]

[wille]

[ Misato doesn't lurk. That would be a waste of time better spent charging head on against all forms of fear and danger. Not that she's afraid of him, yet. She manages an amused smile, albeit measured, despite the occasion. ]

Act now, apologize later.

[ Her life motto. It's true of this instance too. ]

Who was she?

can i still tag in im so late im so sorry bUT I WANT THIS pls

[spideys]

[ Beyond the usual sensation of thoughts, feelings, senses pressing in and against his brain, there's a foreboding sense of not okay ... something that makes his spider-senses tingle. And like the fool that he is, Peter Parker needs to investigate the source.

It leads him down a series of corridors, into a space on the Station that he's never been ... where he catches sight of the Darkling. They've only spoken once, but he remembers liking the guy well enough - even if there's a vaguely troubling factor to him that he can't quite shake.

He relaxes slightly, keeps his webshooters hidden from view when he approaches. He's quiet and watchful and is wise enough not to interrupt with a joke or ... well, anything really. It's kind of a first for him. ]

HI PETEY

[unsea]

You're not going to loom all this time, are you? Peter.

[ Like a parent admonishing a small child, for hiding in the clothes rack at a supermarket. Except that the Darkling knows what none of those things are, and has been admonished for acting in far worse ways in his own youth. It's funny, how someone's pain can draw others in, rather than keep them at bay.

( Spiders to flies, isn't that a charming analogy? ) ]

[spideys]

Huh -? Oh. Uh. Yeah, no, no. Sorry.

[ Caught in the act of doing something very similar to looming puts Peter a little out of sorts. He clears his throat, taking a step forward, and then another. ]

You - uh. You okay?

busts in, does whatever the hell i want.

[deployed]

[ Since the moment Bellamy woke in his pod, the Darking's consciousness has been hooked into his own. Bellamy feels him first, before any of his other broodmates. The Darkling's mind doesn't open freely the way Bellamy's does. But it's always there. Removed, maybe, but never closed off like this. Maybe Bellamy's used to the indulgence, after their thoughts had tangled so closely together over and over. But he reaches to find the Darkling and his fingers slip smoothly across his thoughts as if Bellamy were touching cool glass.

Bellamy isn't sure how much of the need to check in with each member of his brood is a compulsion of the symbiote and how much is just the same good sense that would have him reaching out to Clarke or Raven, if they were here. This is a quiet moment, good for regrouping, but the Darkling's mind is closed to him. Rather than wait, Bellamy restlessly seeks him out. It's a capitulation to the sense that something's amiss, even if Bellamy has no reason to think so beyond being so thoroughly blocked out of the Darkling's head.

He finds him standing before ashes. Bellamy's quiet, standing back from him. His thoughts tilt to Clarke standing over a pyre, to Octavia with her face like stone watching Lincoln and Sinclair burn. No one stands over ashes and doesn't grieve; that's all Bellamy's world has taught him.

There aren't words for this. If there are, they aren't word Bellamy knows that transcend his world. They don't help here. He's near silent as he moves to stand beside the Darkling, fingers reaching to curl in at his elbow. The suggestion is clear, even without the connection of their mind or the intrusion of Bellamy's voice. Come away from here now. ]

hdu you instigator

[unsea]

[ By the time that Bellamy finds him, there is nothing left of the pyre.

There are only embers, a large pile of ash, the singed and cracked surface of a bone that had survived the heat and the pressure - the Darkling, expression neutral, mind gone as still and quiet as the stifling presence of the rooms surrounding this hallway. The walls, full of the dead, are eerie and painful. A reminder of their own who had not survived the city and their mission. Minds he favored are silent, but none of them ache as badly - it seems - as the dull ache in his chest, when he looks upon her remains.

Bellamy isn't difficult to notice, when he approaches. He's always been the easiest within Gacrux to locate, to seek out. They are more than brood, he and this boy, they are twins. Hatched at the same time, and perhaps subject to a tighter bond. In this moment, the fluctuating feelings of loathing and artificial love that he feels towards Bellamy lean a little more towards loathing. Even as his hatchtwin reaches to touch him, he wants to sink his fingers into his windpipe and command him to go. This intrusion is one that he can stand less than Shiro's presence, as Shiro is wise enough and broken enough to keep his emotional and mental distance. ]

I'm not finished.

[ He takes Bellamy by the wrist, and holds him fast. ]

You lived aboard a station in space. How do I - [ Gesturing now, to the panel on the wall.

How does he vent the remains into space, Bellamy. These mechanisms are foreign to him. ]

i'm an innocent

[deployed]

[ Years ago, Bellamy made a costly mistake. Aurora Blake had paid very dearly for Bellamy's foolish attempt to give his sister the gift of a single night of dancing. Bellamy had watched her float, sucked into the nothingness of space. He doesn't know who the Darkling has committed to flame, but Bellamy still can't help but remember the last moment he had ever seen his mother before Shumway had pressed the button that ripped her into the oblivion of space. He meets the Darkling's gaze without attempting to shake his hand free. ]

I think I can figure out the control panel.

[ The guards had training for operating the airlocks. This station is wholly alien, but there's some base similarities that Bellamy's been able to exploit. He steps back, tugging the Darkling with him. ]

Here.

[ The Darkling's grief feels faintly like Octavia's. Bellamy would offer the same to him as he had to his sister; he'd bear up through a fight if that was what the Darkling needed. But for now, it's just a single gesture. He indicates a button in the bottom left corner of the panel without making a motion to push it himself. ]