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

Probably got a bunch of guys lined up if we say 'no', huh?

[ And he never even got the name of his symbiote before it moved into his head and started sharing his brain functions. ]

Guess I didn't even think to choose death instead of this because ... maybe a part of me thinks that after all this is over, there's still a chance I can go home.

I believe the thought is that the longer that we are here, the less that we will desire that. Who we are will be defined less by our lives before, and more by the next. Carata told me that she doesn't know how long she's been here, but it's been so long that she's lost count. It doesn't matter to her. [The words are haunting, but they come with some sense of discomfort, one that radiates in the air between her and Peter. They may not share a brood, but she still hasn't come to deal with this fact. Not completely. Her mental trip with her fellow commanders had only served to exacerbate this particular problem.] More to the point, the longer we are here, the less of a chance that we will have something to return home to.

[It's all about the passage of time. What are homes without the societies that define them? Who would they be to the worlds they left behind?]

Man, that's - I mean, I guess that might be reality of this whole thing, but -

[ The thought of never seeing his Aunt May again or New York City ... of seeing Queens and swinging through the skyscrapers of Manhattan ... it's almost unbearable. It's weird to think that he could miss something so much, but then he'd never known anything else. The furthest he'd ever gone was New Jersey, and Jersey ... well, after that visit, he didn't think he was missing all that much.

(Sorry, Jersey.) ]

You think that's gonna be true? For all of us?

Yes. [Lexa would like to pretend that she feels nothing about this. She would like to feel no remorse in sharing this. Unfortunately, neither of those things are true. Perhaps being in the Nest has made her care more for others—or made her more aware that she always had. She is the leader of her people, after all.] Unless we find a way to end this conflict quickly. But we have no way of knowing when it began.

Not yet. Right? I mean, that kind of information can't be gone completely if we do a little digging.

[ So, okay, maybe Peter is jumping on board with this idea a little quick. The 'unless' is like a beacon of hope. It's his way back to Earth. It's his way back to Aunt May, and that - to him - would get him up and dancing if someone only asked. ]

We just gotta - find the right source.

Yes, but if there is no beginning, how can we be certain that there will be an end? [Despite Cathaway's offers of information, Lexa still has her doubts that Cathaway can be as forthcoming as she'd like. It's why she's trying to do all that she can to corroborate what she knows, to take things in step. They have time, even if some of the other hosts don't think so. She desires the chance to return home, too, even if she might die soon after. But they can't strike out in ignorance.]

I guess that's a good point.

[ There has to be a beginning though. Peter is confident about that. Every story has a beginning. Every mission, every path, every war, every call for peace ... it all started with something. They just need to find that point.

As for the end, well the end is a little more vague. ]

But there's always an end. Even if the end is ...

[ Peter shrugs, miming the hand motion for 'death' by drawing a finger across his neck. ]

[Lexa's lips quirk at the mimed action. It's part amusement, part bittersweet thought.]

My people believe that life doesn't end in death, only our fight. [The words come easily, with a lightness to her tone that surprises her. But perhaps it's still that bittersweet thought slipping in. (It likely is.)]

I believe the thought may be true here. We may die, but the Nest lives on. So part of us may live in the Nest, whether we like it or not.

Your people?

[ Peter realizes he actually doesn't know a whole lot about Lexa, or a whole lot about anyone he's sharing this spaceship and thoughts with. Glimpses of foreign imagery, sharp edges of emotion are all he has to go on. It's like being on the periphery of something that feels so familiar. ]

The Nest. [ He repeats. ] I'm starting to get some really creepy vibes about this Nest.

Where I come from, it's a common way to refer to ourselves. [Only in arriving here has she seen the difference. It's odd, to see the stakes being placed on family or on something else entirely. She doesn't always see it, or investigate it, but that's because a lot of it is new.] More than that, I'm their leader. Being brought here meant that they were without. In that, I didn't only die, but I disappeared, and a part of our culture disappeared with me.

That's a lot of responsibility to put on your shoulders. But - nah, I get it. Makes you getting back home to your people a whole lot more important, doesn't it?

[ Don't let him get into his 'with great power' speech, because he will totally do it. ]

Who's to say that my return will mean anything? People adapt. I've been gone for a long time now.

[It's hard to say how long. Her perception of it is skewed, thanks to the back and forth on missions.]

A CURRENT FLOWING

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