If God Was In Hell We Would All Be Dead [OPEN | MINGLE]

[inconsequence]

Who: Who wants to kill some slavers? You do! Of course you do!
When: May 15th and onwards
Where: Slave trade outpost in the Runoff
What: The slavers that targeted the crew of the Moira in July are overdue for some justice. Chara breaks some regulations to make that happen. THIS IS A MINGLE LOG; anyone and everyone who wants to get in on this and kill some slavers is absolutely free to do so! Chara is relying on there being some chaos for this to work.
Warnings: PROBABLE DEATH. Probable references to slavery, trauma, and also death. Chara.


The Ingress opens to a spilling wash of gray and white, a monochrome cast of shadows and hard angles. The Runoff, it seems, is not a place of many colors; every inch of it is drab and washed out, cold and impersonal as the people who would employ such a place for their own twisted ends. A swirled nebula of stars glimmers overhead. It is night.

Knives are useful tools, but their reach is limited. A quiet transmission to the network, a select few messages delivered to a select few individuals, the hissing strike of a match igniting on the edge of a box. The place is angular and looks to be comprised of some sort of galactic equivalent of asphalt, likely inflammable. Still, it is entirely too dark. Too gray. Too poorly maintained. Tents and shabby establishments line the streets, places where, evidently, personal agency may be bought and sold on a whim.

It does not take long to find a structure of cloth and wood, and the whole of it soon emanates the rank, coppery tang of some interdimensional brand of gasoline.

Knives are useful tools. But they did not come with knives.

Or rather, they did not come only with knives.

One of the stalls is alight in a matter of moments. Red and gold tongues of flame gobbling the establishment whole, filling the place with both the color and light that it so lacked. Knobs of wood harvested from the wreckage form handy torches to set anything else aflame, to thoroughly raze the entire area to the ground, every stall and ship and vendor that supported and enabled the inflorescence of slave trafficking and slave keeping. Armed guards begin to converge on the disturbance at once. But small as said disturbance is, there is no guarantee that it will not come to grow.

That is, of course, where you come in.

One child alone cannot possibly take the entire place down, and flame can only take things so far. It is hardly enough when their aim is one of total destruction, however unrealistic an expectation that might be. They'll need help. Lots of it.

So won't you join the dance?

Comments

[gainedlove]

Frisk barely notices the passage through the Ingress, the discomfort and twisting of reality around them. The only points of focus in their mind are greenyellow and blackred, everything else blurred and indistinct, not of consequence until pieces break apart and move forward.

They are inspected, questioned, but Frisk has no words for these. Whether due to their age or an urgency for something else, they are moved past over to Asriel. One hand still clutches around their disk but the other reaches for his paw, sticky with red but they don't care. He's alive, he's safe; they made sure, they made sure and that's all that matters.

Until another spark of red reappears, and the pieces sharpen into focus.

The words don't parse, but the meaning does. They can see Chara's clenched fist, the stiff smile--it's a FIGHT, stacked and unfair, ready to take their Partner without a single thought. It's only Asriel's presence that makes Frisk pause, tense and ready to spring but not yet, not quite yet when their brother still needs protecting.

Not again. Not again.

[pleasereset]

Asriel, on the other hand, reacts immediately when he sees Chara. He doesn't give anyone time to inspect him or ask him questions, and instead tries forcing his way through the crowd towards Chara. They're going to take them, they're going to take his sibling away just like that slaver planet was going to take them away and Asriel will kill all of them if he has to-

Stained with splotches of red, covered in injuries and electrocuted badly enough to nearly cause him to pass out, he tries to charge anyway. He's too weak, and he's immediately pulled back by the collar of his shirt. He howls angrily, trying to swat and scratch at anyone holding him back. It's not really effective when his attempts to fight are so weak.

"Let go, let go of me!"

[notglitching]

Not good. Not good at all. Not with Frisk's hand still locked around their disk; Asriel lashing out but too weak to deal damage. Not with that circle of weapons locked on Chara's frame. Rinzler shifts forward a step, noise ticking out in quick, low warning as one hand slips out of sight behind toward his own disks. Could they delete the Savrii? Maybe, though more had to be converging on this place. Could they do it without losses?

Probably not.

He'd come along to assist Chara. They'd focused on the need to keep their siblings safe. Rinzler had promised he wouldn't allow Asriel to come to harm from their acquaintance, and if the creator-admin who extracted that agreement is no longer present, that's all the more reason why he needs to keep the beta safe. Both betas. The opaque helmet tips from Asriel, to Frisk... to Chara, bristling and ready. 'Rescind your weapons and stand down.'

He came here for all three of them.

There's another factor, though. Another variable unaccounted for—one he's taken on in combat, one he knows not to dismiss. Rinzler's stare returns where it first settled: back to Shepard, noise scraping out a little louder as he pointedly tips his helmet to the side. Is she here to fight? Chara's her ally.

Or is there another plan in place?

[squadgoals]

Shepard started moving as soon as Lavellan had alerted her, as soon as she'd spoken to Chara. As soon as she'd arrived, she'd said her piece, handed over her weapon — all there had been left was to wait. And it had been a long wait.

The gore-spattered participants began filtering through, one by one, subjected to scans, questioning, release. She watches each go mutely, waiting on the "instigator" alone, staring into the flashing, twisting energy that was the Ingress unblinkingly, an unreadable mask.

When Chara comes through, she leans over, whispering something to the bristling troops, a wave of confusion creeping though the force — not enough to stop them from surrounding the smaller target, but enough that it's done peacefully.

She'd caught Rinzler's first look, and pointedly not returned it — but now, his rumble hitching, she turns, staring at him directly — and slowly shakes her head, hands open, empty.

This was a surrender, not a battle.

[gainedlove]

Frisk surges forward in tandem with Asriel--a hair behind, but with just as much intent and fury as his tiny body holds. They're battered and bloody, but not so badly as him--their wordless charge has more bite to it, and when the guards grab onto them they turn to swing with a disk blazing white.

They will not

be

stopped.