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

Eat first.

[ Tetora tosses something haphazardly wrapped in a strip of cloth at Miller's back, as he drops down from a vent he's been checking for... anything, really. Signs of life. Energy. Additional food. Some person's body parts.

It's panther meat that he's thrown over, though, dried and smoked and tasteless on top of that, but he's picked up enough skills that aren't outright murder. Basic food preservation methods are among them. Stealing from other people's kills is another.

As well, he probably should learn to listen better, but his hearing in one ear is either going or something's interfering with his perceptions. Being nice and playing nice is starting to look like the pragmatic option, now that they've been marooned for what feels like days with no immediate relief in sight. ]

Think they left us here to die?

[He gets to see the unique image of Kaz turning around and looking at the ground around him, before stooping and picking up the item.]

I don't think I need to.

[He's not eaten for days, but he's long noticed that he's subsisting just fine. To gratify Tetora, though, he picks it up and starts to gnaw on the tasteless meat with all the grace of a dog.]

Reminds me of what Big Boss cooked.

[Which is an oddly fond thought.]

Have you ever met one of those people that seem capable of doing everything in the world but at the same time they can barely do anything at all? That's him.

I can imagine someone like it, yeah.

[ He doesn't actually know anyone like that. The cast of his life's drama has always been comprised of uniquely self-capable men and women - probably should've tipped him off early on that something was amiss. Or should've tipped Amamiya off, anyway. "Yosuke" survived by immersing himself in civilian life, meeting the likes of Sasayama and other goofy characters along the way.

Even if it had all been under Shinji's maneuvering, it had worked in protecting them for as long as it did.

Tetora snorts, gracelessly and loudly. ]

Are we scavenging for supplies? Anything I can help with? And what the fuck kinda name is Big Boss? All your friends are weird.

[Someone here. But not someone that Kaz can name as being here. They're still holding their identities a secret, Ishmael and Ahab. As if it matters in this place.]

Someone I used to work for a long time ago.

I guess it is a stupid name.

[He doesn't state the reason he got it. The man was forced by the government to kill his mentor. It haunted him, followed him, and Kaz helped drag him through that hell. Or at least he thought that he did.]

I like having weird friends. I didn't really have any when I was growing up. I'll take the the weird ones. [Which is about the best reassurance he can give Tetora right there.]

You're a sad guy. Not that it's a bad thing to be, but you know. Sad.

[ He shouldn't be throwing these things out of his mouth, honestly, but something about Miller keeps him feeling... easy. Not fluid, like the way he gets when he's stalking a target. Not soft, like that one time with Miwa. Not agile, either. Thinking about himself in terms reserved for people with actual lives is a comedy of trials and errors. He's not a good choice to be friends with, after all.

Tetora roams nearby, kicks a few panels loose. Loose metals are always in demand, but cables and magnets are also highly useful in situations without traditional means of weaponry. Food might be good too, but he doesn't have high hopes for the current location. ]

Did you find anything interesting?

It's not so bad.

I'd rather have them than the assholes that would make fun of kids for their hair color.

[He's not insulted, despite the fact that he's sad does sometimes shame him. Because it's a stroke of normalcy that he hates. He gets sad, he hurts, he can't shrug things off.]

[But he's okay with strange friends.]

Yeah. I found a few things that got me thinking. Like the fact there's nothing of ours left. Not even garbage.

Huh.

[ He'd noticed the lack of debris, too, though he hadn't ascribed any meaning to it other than a possible timeskip, or another group of people having replaced them after the crash. And the hallways have been weirdly cleared of anything clearly fatal. ]

Could just be that someone's taken up residence here, cleared out before we got here.

[ He swings the wakizashi forward, moving the holster from behind him to his side - ready to draw. ]

When did you notice it?

I went into the storage areas.

They looked mostly average. Generic. The wear and tear of actual storage units wasn't there.

So I started looking harder. Rinzler had noticed some areas where the damage was off. There were repairs to the ship from before that didn't seem to have been harmed in the first place.

[Kaz shrugs.]

So I'm not sure we even need to eat.

[That this might be something the Savrii are doing to them.]

So, what. Like a dream? Virtual reality?

[ It'd make sense, though Tetora hopes it won't be the case at all. A virtual reality would mean someone's taken control of his body again - he didn't kill so many people over the course of a fucking decade just to fall right back into loss of agency this easily.

The hypothesis sets his teeth on edge. ]

It could be an alternate reality, too. [ He searches Miller for the visible bulk of a holstered gun. ] Do you have a gun on you?

When I ran the simulation room on board the Moira, nothing had taste or smell.

I hope it's not the case, but everything here has me wondering.

[It's all very suspicious. And for the moment, he keeps hoping.] This ship almost feels like they took the model of the one we were on from a museum and planted it here, complete with manufactured damage.

Could be they didn't wire into your brain stem. Not that I'd blame them - the risk would be too great if you don't know what you're doing.

[ He's aware of the theory; he has to be, if he wanted to fully outwit the medical thugs that Mimegumi had employed. Still, the fact that they're discussing the identifiable flaws of a virtual space is unsettling. ]

Everybody's got different memories.

If you're remembering this part differently, and if this is virtual reality, then we're seeing someone else's memory of this same place. There's an overlap. [ It would mean a network. Tetora's discomfort over this topic is starting to show through in the quality of his voice. He's been part of a virtual-memory network before. He hadn't been able to tell it apart from reality the first time around either. ] If there's an overlap, then the one place that everyone sees the same way should be the entry point, in theory.

We're not even sure this isn't real.

That's actually what I'm thinking. Right now I can't smell anything. I can't taste most of this food, either. But I've not eaten in a while and I'm still going.

There's no reason a damaged Ingress should cause us to do this.

But I'm hoping that's it.

[He doesn't want to think that it's in their heads. That makes him feel helpless.]

Then what's the fucking motive? [ When distressed, turn to expletives. It never fails. ] They're the ones who dragged us here in the first place, they're the ones dragging us along too, and I know we've been losing people randomly.

[ Names go missing from the directory. Addresses ping back as errors. Tetora's had his own suspicions for that and he's never bought into the official line of "just" being sent back home. ]

If they were gonna wipe us all out there's a lot easier ways than setting up a goddamn VR that might kill us.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

August Event Log: Part I

hitting the road

storm front

wild life

old familiar places

the moira - open to all.

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