Entry tags:

August Event Log: Part I

Who: Everyone
When: August 9 and onward
Where: An unexpected destination
What: The newcomers go on a trip and end up far from where they expected
Warnings: Potential violence. Please label your content!

NOTE: PLEASE READ THIS OOC POST FIRST.

When the time comes for the travelers to go on the off-world trip that will help restore Thisavrou, they are not alone. Others who have settled on the planets longer and come to call them home are also prepared to travel; through the Ingress and do their part. Yet when the newcomers step through, whether they stepped through the Ingress seconds or hours apart, they will find that they have arrived at the same time, and only newcomers are in sight.

What awaits them is not a land of plenty. The land is barren, and dark storms in the sky resemble those held at bay by the Ingress complex—but much, much closer. Those who traveled on the Moira may recognize the landscape; though they have come through at a different point from the crash, they are on the Midway Hub. And there is no portal back. They are trapped.

hitting the road

Though some have been here before, the Midway Hub is not as they remember it. The storms fill the sky, leaving it dark and ominous even when they are not sweeping across the landscape—but they have clearly done so in recent times, and often. While never a lush land, large patches of ground an acre or more wide looking nothing more than utterly dead; the thistle that naturally grows is brittle, black and unable to be consumed even with the usual preparations to make it edible, and here and there animal corpses are found twisted into unnatural poses, but seemingly uninjured. These places are particularly concentrated near the broken Ingresses litter the landscape. While Midway Hub as a whole may seem naturally arid, these dead spots leave no hope that anything can possibly live there again.

The travelers have two options: stay where they are, or move on. While it might seem that they've been tricked into coming here and been left abandoned, those with the technological ability to do so may detect a sign of hope: a familiar energy source, far in the distance. Although none of the Ingresses they pass will ever work again, the faint energy shows that one still-functioning Ingress lies far in the distance, days away.

Although technological scanning or impressive memory of the landscape indicates that they are not separated from their destination by one of the gates that divide the land, they are also far from the shelter of the facility at the center of the Hub. Any attempt to travel in a direction other than that of the energy signal will result in a strange disorientation after several hours, bringing individuals back to their original path as though they've gone in circles. Meanwhile, though travelers will feel the need to slake their hunger and thirst through any natural water sources they discover, wildlife they can hunt for food and any supplies they have on them, if they don't find sustenance, they'll find that they will never pass out or reach the point of starvation. Instead, they'll be left alive and awake but feeling utterly hollow.

storm front

At regular intervals, the energy storms above descend onto the land, bringing not rain but violent clashes of negative energy and thunder so loud that nothing can be heard above it. The passing of the storms leaves some strange effects. The ground is warped and rotted by their touch, even solid stone degrading to a spongy surface. The air is tepid and oddly charged. Prolonged contact with air or ground will not supply energy, however — it drains it from organic and synthetic life alike.

Those who remember their last trip to the Hub, or simply explore in the right direction, may come across the cave complexes with their glowing surfaces and streams. The light is dimmer now, a sickly green, but drinking from the streams will still restore the energy lost, for a time. This time, however, the lethargy that inevitably follows is much more severe, and the drinkers are left with a raw, empty feeling leeching in from the wasteland around.

Those who are exposed to the storms, either by finding themselves in very close proximity or even closely observing them for too long as they approach, may lose their sight, or hearing, even much of the ability to feel touch — whatever sense they used in observation. What lingers in its place is a numbness. A hunger. And as time passes, the time between storms decreases; what seemed like hours between the storms becomes scarcely one, and their intensity grows.

wild life

Sentient beings are not the only ones affected by the storms; these creatures, attracted to sound and able to track by scent, and these panthers, which once looked normal but have been twisted by the storms into more monstrous forms, are numerous enough that travelers must be constantly alert for their presence. Though natural predators, the threat the creatures represent is not itself natural. They are also more aggressive. Some strange instinct drives them, not a need for food. While the panthers themselves can be caught and their meat cooked, it has little taste, offering nutrition but not satisfaction.

old familiar places

Although it's difficult to track the passage of time without day-night cycles, after what seems like more than a week of the travelers' unexpected trip, the storms abruptly come rushing in at the group of travelers, as if they're herding the group to move faster toward their destination and the Ingress energy that awaits them. The true nature of that destination becomes clear when debris appears on the horizon; the energy comes from the wreckage of the Moira, the interstellar ship that crashed here months ago.

Despite the trauma of impact, large sections of the ship remain surprisingly intact, though few of them are properly vertically oriented. If travelers are able to make their way inside the damaged sections of the ship, they'll find familiar territory, if they are one of those who traveled on the Moira, as well as shelter—something that's increasingly necessary as the storms seem to center over the ship, leaving little hope for survival outside. Useful items may be scavenged from the ship if they are willing to explore, but no personal items of any kind remain.

Strangely, the deeper travelers go into the crashed ship, the less familiar their surroundings will seem, regardless of their orientation. The inward-leading paths into the ship become generic metal, and as with the travel on the surface of the planet, they may find themselves back where they started. And no matter how far they go or how hard they try, they will find themselves unable to make it to the Ingress chamber itself...for now.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

He'd looked for them. When Frisk and he had faced the shadow. Afterwards, between the other attacks. Even the eventual assumption that they'd been derezzed didn't halt the search completely—not with their TAB ID's continued presence. The Savrii disconnected TABs of those who left or couldn't be revived. But Chara's was still there.

And still not replying to his texts.

Maybe they encountered his shadow. Maybe they learned what he was to Clu. It's luck, as much anything that lets him spot the small frame, roaming past the outskirts of the group, and at first Rinzler hesitates Chara is intact. Chara looks fine.

Chara is an ally who he failed to protect.

Rinzler follows. His steps are light, no effort to broadcast the pursuit, but he makes no effort to hide the low rattling of errors either. It seems quieter than usual.

It isn't long before someone finds them. Inevitable, really. And of all the possibilities, admittedly, Rinzler is -

He's the least unwanted. They will admit that much, though not an inch more. The storm has gathered on the horizon in a slow, heavy creep of thick rainclouds, but they've not sought shelter. Not yet. What point in that would there be?

He's quiet, but a lifetime of paranoia built on the foundations of fearing the looming of someone behind them has them turning sharply, eyes narrowing to crimson slits. He's a spiked, oily streak of shadow behind them, but he's unmistakable.

"If you've something to say, sir, I suggest you say it," snaps Chara. They are, of course speaking figuratively - because Rinzler does not say things in the conventional manner, does he?

Does he.

Visuals. Scans. Audio, too, matches: syntax and tone in addition to the assumed default of vocal signature. None of the taunts the duplicate had leveled. Just irritation. Dismissal—almost, but not quite.

Rinzler doesn't reply immediately. Too busy assessing, too busy doubting and hesitating, a hex of failures and questions playing silently on loop. Clearly at least their recent absence was intended. Clearly the recent silence was, as well. When he does output, it's blunt and succinct. A match in tone and syntax, a careful, neutral line that holds more implication than it says.

There's only one difference, really.

He says it conventionally.

Aloud.

"Status?"

...

Well.

They certainly hadn't been expecting that response.

Chara stops in their tracks with a rapidly emptying expression, the vaguely irritated slope to their brows easing into something considerably flatter. Hilarious, is it not? The look on their face. Did he get them?

What a good joke for someone like him to make. Bet everyone was howling over that one. That IDIOT, Chara, buying into his ACT like any of it mattered!

But alas - someone left the lens cap on. Refusing to grant the satisfaction.

"Alive," says Chara. The word is cold. "Though I fail to see how it concerns you."

Rinzler doesn't react. Doesn't move. His own expression (if he has one) is locked safely away, nothing but for the sharp stillness to telegraph the hit. No tells, but maybe an uptick of a quiet rattle. Maybe an eventual, fractional dip of the black mask.

He'd looked.

He'd failed.

He deserves the blame for that.

"Spoken—" A hitch, a stutter; wrong, adjust, rephrase— "Did you—" The low ticking seethes up louder, swallowing the gap. He can't edit. Can't correct so quickly. Rinzler ducks his head a little further, simplifying the string and looping twice before he outputs.

"Do they know?"

Immediately, it becomes apparent that this skill of his is newly learned - he is stuttering, erratic, correcting errors in the same moments that he makes them. What a good friend you are, Chara, for assuming that he'd simply thought to play a trick, a lie! What kind of person assumes that from the start?

The kind of person that speaks shortly, crisply, attempting - attempting - to betray nothing. No deviation from tone, and no shift across fault lines.

"You will have to be more specific."

The enforcer's helmet does tip up at that, a minute prick of irritation drawing in the curve of his spine. Not for the tone—and certainly not the earlier assumption. From Rinzler's perspective, the judgement is both obvious in its motives and obviously earned.

But Chara knows who he meant.

"Frisk. Asriel."

"Do they know what." They draw the word out, severing it in a terse snap of consonants. What is it he assumes they must know, then? What ever it is, it is of little concern of theirs; ideally, they will not be seeing anything of either child ever again.

And they will be grateful for that fact.

They will have no call to darken either one's doorstep any longer.

"That you're alive." There's a natural edge to Rinzler's speech, but the words, at least, come cleaner now. Mostly. There's a slight lag near the back end of the phrase, variables discarded and selected. You survived is an unknown; you're back just as theoretical, if in the opposite direction. Chara isn't saying what happened. From their earlier demeanor, he doubts they'd answer if he asked.

They weren't here. Now they are. Alive, and functional, by all appearances. But nowhere near the two they'd seemed to serve that function for.

Protecting them.

They shrug. It is never wise to shift one's gaze from a potential threat, even to prove a point, but at this rate, does it matter, any? He's proven far more dependable, in the long run, than they have. To no one's surprise, they're sure.

"I fail to see why it would matter," says Chara, clipped and brief. "As I recall, I was not doing them a great deal of good, was I?"

Is there ever anything that was not hurt, just by them being there?

...

They thought not, no.

...They don't know. It's enough to sharpen Rinzler's stare, the low stutter of corruption rising. Leaving him uninformed is one thing, but Asriel and Frisk do matter.

They matter, and he couldn't keep them safe. They matter, and neither had Chara. It's a clear enough parallel once he considers it. (Once he stops thinking of them as a user.)

That doesn't make the assessment right.

"They're..." glitched, edited, half-trained, weak. He shakes his head. "They're worse without you."

That inspires something akin to a glare, red eyes narrowing once more to skewer him with a pointed look.

"Yes," says Chara, drawing the word out with a dryness that would desiccate every drop of incipient rain in this ash-blasted wasteland. "I'm sure they are. I'm sure that Asriel misses me very much. He always did miss the things that hurt him most."

They

Can no longer look at him.

The toe of their foot drags through the dirt, kicking up sprays of grayed dust. So very like the pale sludge that heaped itself on the kitchen tile, ha ha.

"And Frisk," says Chara, their tone now rising like smoke in their chest, "why, I'm sure they miss me too! I'm sure it doesn't matter, the fact that I am not their Chara and never will be, because as long as they are not alone, it does not concern them, who, precisely, I am!"

...

Who are they talking to, again?

Glares, Rinzler can match. For longer than Chara, at least this time. Their gaze drops, and the lines that sift up in its place are half-sketched tangents, references to incidents Rinzler can only mostly guess. The shadow. Their former iteration? It's barely relevant. A thousand cycles as Clu's showpiece have made Rinzler very good at recognizing words not actually meant for him.

It's strange, being able to reply regardless. Being able to be heard without waiting for anyone to charitably glance to his small screen. The communicators had meant so much when he first got one, but this is better. This is his.

"Didn't say they missed you."

They do, no doubt. Rinzler knows it. Chara knows it. Whether the reasons are as they describe... Rinzler doubts it, but that isn't his evaluation to make. It's not what he'd spoken (and can speak again, as many times as he chooses).

"I—" I, don't forget— "said they're worse."

I.

They can't recall the significance of him employing use of a personal pronoun before. It impacts with the soft ping of struck glass in the heart of their chest, the kind of swooping realization that embraces the glow of * It's me, Chara.

It's me.

In their isolation, it appears they've missed something important. So self-absorbed and wrapped up in their own stupid, inconsequential problems that they've failed to notice all else. Sounds like our Chara!

"A temporary sacrifice," says Chara, denying the tremor to the words, "for a long-term gain."

"Wrong."

That word comes immediately. Rough and short, blending with the electronic flanging and the soft rattle of errors just behind. But fixed. Immovable. Whatever Chara's assessment of their faults, he knows that much.

He was there, when Chara wasn't and the others were.

It wasn't any kind of gain.

"And how would you know that, pray?" Far too hostile. Do not let that composure crack and fracture like so much else has. "How nuanced do you imagine your perception of your precious users is, Rinzler? Because I think it's fair to say that it is fair from objective."

A low blow.

Very low.

But they always did play dirty. Two children playing in a muddy garden, eating pie with their bare hands -

Of course they play dirty.

Asriel isn't a user. Frisk has done everything they can—and several things they shouldn't—to similarly discount themselves. Chara is the only remainder. The only one with even a query listed on the file.

This argument hasn't made that case much stronger.

If they want to scorn him as a user, they shouldn't have used his name. If they wanted to exclude his data, they shouldn't have asked how. Rinzler is used to dirty, and this is one of the poorer efforts he's seen. Easy to return face value.

"I was there."

Rinzler's speech is all sharp edges, but that one surfaces more strongly than the rest. Bitterness, hostility, a wealth of buried loathing... but not toward Chara. Someone else.

"Asriel was captured. Used. Frisk tried to recode themselves. Both reformatted. Both rectified."

He's glaring now, noise seething out in ragged intervals. And there's something to the oscillations in his voice, something to the faint fluctuation of the enforcer's glow. Bright and dark. Bright and dark. They've seen it before.

"Didn't happen on your watch."

"You do not need to remind me, Rinzler, of what this world is capable of exacting upon unsuspecting children when they dare to lower their guard," Chara hisses. Their eyes flesh, burned red, teeth bared. They were not there to protect them - but who was?

"Is it my fault that the world is cruel, and that children will be hurt, and killed?" They're starting to speak, louder, now. "Is it my fault that I was not there, to pat Frisk's ass and mend their wounds and validate their existence? Is it my fault that Asriel admitted, at last, that I was not the greatest person, and that I was better off dead and rotting in the dirt?"

Is it their fault?

Of course it is.

Of course it is.

"Remind me, Rinzler, of what happened the last time I spoke to either of them. Jog my memory."

Because it seems to them that one of them ended up dead, and the other -

The other willing to die.

"Didn't say that, either."

And he strongly doubts that Asriel did. The first line, maybe. But the rest? He'd die for Chara. And Chara knows, because he tried to.

More than once.

That's not the question. Not the point—except, maybe, it is. But not the way Chara's saying. They were rejected, and return the favor out of spite, or they are rejecting Asriel and Frisk for those two's sake. One or the other.

The black helmet jerks to the side: not refusal, but negation. Invalid query. "I don't know." He doesn't. He couldn't find them, and he hates that, frustration thick enough to cut. It's enough to call the query to the fore, enough to disregard the metrics of debt and expectation.

Quietly:

"Where were you?"

"Ensuring that Asriel never makes the error of assuming I am the best friend he wishes he had," says Chara, clipped and low. They will assume that responsibility, for the actions of their darker twin - how can they not? Who else is to blame for that which stormed beneath the surface of their dreams?

"Ensuring that no one makes that error, ever again."

So draw your conclusions, Rinzler.

Are they a threat?

It's not an answer. It isn't, because the only action it could map to wasn't Chara's to commit. It couldn't have been. Chara wouldn't have tortured Asriel.

Rinzler knows that. So he knows it wasn't them.

No answer. He stares for a long moment, noise settling to its usual low rumble. Then he shakes his head.

"Still worse."

"Then you take care of them; that is undoubtedly your priority, is it not?"

They are nothing if not familiar with the art of scalding commentary - layering harsh words over a cold underbelly that betrays nothing, reveals nothing, admits nothing.

Why can they not be free of this? They are not the greatest person. They were to be let go, wisped into nothingness and no longer have to worry about the concerns of the Underground, about their life. Can they not, at long last, simply say that it is too much? Can they not simply choose to give up? Is it so criminal, so unforgivable, to say that something is too difficult, too insurmountable, and no amount of determination will lead them over its peak?

Can't they just give up?
(* i did.)

His priority. Fingers curl and voice locks, a different sort of stall than the impossibility of stripped permissions. His priority.

[Serve Clu.] [Protect the system.] A fractured whisper of (fightfor), wrenched from all its associated claims. Rinzler was never meant to be anything more than a weapon. But Rinzler is, and Rinzler has been, and 'the you that exists outside of Clu.' The prickle of potential, coiling so strangely in his throat.

'Rinzler doesn't belong to anybody.'

They'd been wrong. They still aren't right. But Chara said that much for him. Chara fought, and Chara safeguarded his code. His choice. Even when they couldn't have agreed.

"Can try."

It's not much of a return. It's nothing he hasn't already promised and already failed, more than once. He wouldn't have stopped regardless. They know this. But Chara is a user, and maybe they can. Maybe they've chosen that.

If that's what they ask of him... he'll keep trying for them.

It was not a request.

He misinterprets it for something it is not, because of course he does - because he considers himself some sort of tool, reliant on instruction to function on any consistent or fundamental programming. They should roll their eyes at that. It should not matter, because they - because he is a far better guardian for the two than Chara ever was. Ever will be.

Because he has not made any attempts on either of their lives, and he has never succeeded.

"A wound always hurts most when exposed to the open air," says Chara. "But given time, it will mend."

That is all that it requires. Time.

Noise rolls out softly, filtered gaze lingering on the small frame. Is Chara referring to the betas' feelings? To their own? To the fact of their intended distance, or to its effects? He's not sure he agrees with any of it. Except, perhaps, in wishing that things mend.

He doesn't know Chara as long. He hasn't seen them in the absence of the rest. But he doubts very much that Frisk and Asriel will be the only ones worse off.

He's pushed enough. He's made his own assessments clear, and repetition would overstep the bounds of his own promise. Rinzler twitches his head, a small shake, before shoulders draw in: receding to his usual close hunch.

"Request. Maintain contact."

hitting the road

storm front

wild life

old familiar places

Closed to Chara

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