August Event Log: Part I

[savmods]

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.

Comments

[vata]

Haven't seen it. [His nudging only adds to her attempt at stalling him, but after the first shove, she's moving— albeit slowly. Sombra might be vicious, after all, but she's not like Amélie or the rest of Talon proper: her vitriol's reserved for whoever was hiding behind the conspiracy back home.

There's a limit to how much she'll put up with for the sake of a cruel joke.]

Then again, I haven't seen much of anything lately.

[Get it, Morrison?]

[mylawn]

Funny.

[He gets it, but that doesn't mean he has to indulge her. They're walking now--Jack doesn't have a particular destination in mind, but disorienting her might be enough. Let her sweat at the thought of him taking her somewhere unfamiliar and leaving her alone.]

I don't really want to do this the hard way.

[He's not sure he can do it the hard way--slapping around a blind opponent seems low. Jack tries to focus on the thought of Tracer untethered from the present time, in an attempt to seize on the anger he's going to need. Nobody does this to his people and gets away with it.]

What did you do with it?

[vata]

[If not for their first meeting, she might have actually believed he had it in him to do things the hard way. But he'd never once pulled the trigger— not then, and not the time after that. Whatever grim figure he cuts, Sombra's starting to suspect he's more like Gabriel than he realizes.

Which at a time like this, isn't a point in his favor.]

Took it apart. [Slowly, she drops her hands. Now that they're walking (trying not to think too hard about where they might be headed), she doesn't feel like pretending to be well-behaved. Her SMG, though, she hooks at her hip.] Scattered the pieces.

[There's a pause where she tilts her head just slightly, glancing back over her shoulder at him— ignoring the fact that it won't do her any good.] You don't miss her, do you?

[mylawn]

[If Sombra is telling the truth--and Jack reminds himself that she might not be--that means Lena is as good as dead. Mei is brilliant, that's for certain, but she's a climatologist, and Jack isn't very useful, either. They'd need someone like Winston, because muddling through this on their own isn't going to get anywhere. If the chronal accelerator is really gone, then Jack has even fewer options than he started with. They're not going to be able to build a new one from scratch, and they still don't know where Lena is or how to find her.

The burst of anger has him giving Sombra a real shove, not caring whether or not it makes her lose her balance.]

You don't touch my people.

[Except she already did, and the only thing Jack can do in this situation is push Sombra around, hoping for a real confession and pretending he has some control. None of it's going to bring Lena back, and the more rational part of him knows this won't even be satisfying in the end, but the more rational part of him wins out less and less these days.

Especially when he knows that this is all his fault.]

I don't care what you think you know about me or how slick you think you are. You've made a big mistake.

[vata]

[That shove gets a hiss through cinched teeth, balance tentatively held for a step— and then lost, caught roughly with her hands and the brunt of a knee before she hits the ground. And if he's angry now, so is she: expression going darker by degrees. She doesn't get up, stubbornly shifting to turn around and sit, comfortably, right where she is.]

Last time I checked, soldado...[He'd be behind her still, relatively high — which is exactly where she levels her stare.] you were the one making a mistake.

[There's a slight pause before she adds, her eyes habitually narrowing:] Did you even know where she was going?

I'll give you a hint: I didn't have to go hunting her down.

[mylawn]

I was a little incapacitated at the time. I'm sure you knew.

[He still doesn't know the circumstances that led up to Lena's disappearance--did she find out what had happened to him and go after Sombra as revenge? Jack can picture the chain of events clearly, but doesn't particularly care whether or not Sombra did it in self-defense. She gave up those grounds when she aligned herself with Talon, as far as Jack is concerned, and he finds it hard to believe that Lena sought her out unprovoked.

Either way, the timing is suspect enough that Jack is more than content to lay the blame squarely at the feet of the woman in front of him. He takes a few steps forward, closing the distance between them and driving the toe of his boot into her side.]

Do me a favor and spare us both the bullshit.

[vata]

[She hits the ground harder than she means to: being only remotely aware of where it sits beneath her has her own recoil adding to the impact, violet claws flexing briefly in midair. An easy focus to dull the ache in her side. Morrison fights with a different arsenal than she does; he should realize that the more stubbornly he presses her, the more vulnerable he leaves himself. All those little pressure points she knows so well to look for, even without her eyesight.]

Distracted. [Sombra corrects, chuckling under her breath despite any and all current circumstances.] Doesn't take much.

[One hand presses against the dead center of her chest, her face a pained grimace reflecting some deep, internal turmoil— voice rough with feigned age.]

I'm tired of this, Reyes.

[mylawn]

[He knows that she's baiting him--that the worst thing he can do in this situation is buy into it. A lifetime ago, he might have been able to take a moment and breathe, realizing that lashing out is the reaction she wants, and choose not to buy into it.

Now, he's a very different man, and more often than not his anger wins out.

It shouldn't be surprising that she's privy to his conversations with Gabriel, but it enrages him all the same. He kicks her over and he's immediately bending down to grab her collar with his good hand. Even with one arm, lifting her is effortless.

His voice is low, dangerous. An outright snarl.]

You don't know anything about him and me.

[vata]

I know everything about you and Reyes.

[All the research she's done, all the bitterness she's seen in Gabriel himself— a hungry obsession that's nearly impossible to miss. The conversations, the lingering fixations between them, the fact that Jack still senselessly clings to the idea of somehow salvaging everything he'd already lost.]

After all these years and everything that happened to Overwatch, you still haven't learned to keep an eye on your team.

[Her hands are cinched around his wrist, lip curled into a sneer over the collar of her coat. He's brought her close— good. She wants him to hear this. ]

Maybe if you did, Lena would still be around.

[mylawn]

[She's unparalleled when it comes to digging for the information she wants--Jack has seen that firsthand in her dealings with LumériCo, but he doesn't much care how knowledgeable she thinks she is. There are some things you can't understand from the outside, no matter how many dossiers you dig up or files you read. The fact that she thinks that isn't the case is a weakness to exploit. Turn her own self-confidence against her.

Of course, he's already a little far gone. Salvaging a coherent plan out of this may have been possible before she brought Lena back into it, but now his rage is palpable.]

You still haven't learned to shut up.

[He jostles her in his hold as if trying to shake her off before deciding that slamming her into the ground is a much better option.]

You think Talon's the answer? You think they're not gonna chew you up and spit you out the minute you stop being useful to them?

[Jack stoops to one knee, reaching out again with his good hand, this time to grab at her collar and close it around her throat, no matter how much progress she's made in righting herself, if she even decides to try.]

I should kill you for what you did to her.

[vata]

[He says it like she doesn't already know. Like the idea that Talon thinks of her as an expendable means to an end is a wounding revelation; she'd be laughing if the impact hadn't effectively knocked the wind out of her, breath pinned down and heavy between her ribs for a few dazed seconds.

By the time she's recovered from it enough to respond, his fingers are already at her throat— and the possibility that he might fall victim to his own fury comes to life with the heavy pang of a skipped heartbeat. Fine. She'll admit it.

She's worried.

Because there's no guarantee whatever brought Jack back would do the same for her out here, like this. It could have been a fluke. Could have been his own genetic modification. So when he bears down, her hand rushes to the snag the gun at her side, shoving it forward until she feels resistance. His chest, his jaw— doesn't matter.

Right now, she needs leverage. And she likes to think she has it.]

You kill me, you lose her for good—

[mylawn]

That's funny. I thought you tore up the accelerator. Scattered the pieces.

[Because that's the only thing that will bring Lena back.

Pinning Sombra is enough for now, especially because his own strength vastly exceeds that of an ordinary human. Even the gun pressed against his chest doesn't deter him--it'll hurt, sure, but his body armor will take the worst of it, and Jack is beyond the point of caring. Everything shrinks down to a pinpoint, just him and Sombra and the promise of finding the accelerator, however unlikely that is.]

Unless there's something you're not telling me.

[vata]

I did. [Sombra growls, heels digging angrily into the dirt.] It wasn't at random, pendejo.

[Valuable tech is valuable tech: if she needed it to bargain with or utilize— or even sell, she wanted to make sure she could retrieve it later. Back up plans, secondary strategies, tools of the trade she relies so heavily on. Her weight is shoved against his own, ineffective or not, the muzzle of her SMG digging in as a final warning.]

Now get. Off.

[mylawn]

[He seems to consider this for a long moment, of course not sure whether or not she's telling the truth and not entirely committed to actually murdering her. He could take a few rounds from that gun in his body armor, but he probably doesn't want to. His grip around her throat looses, and his weight leaves her body.

There's one thing he can do, and that's take a step backward so that she can't see or feel him.]

Maybe you need some time alone to jog your memory.

[He doesn't doubt she'll figure out a way back, but for now there's the slightest bit of satisfaction in leaving her out in the wasteland, unable to see.]

Sound good?

[vata]

[It could be worse. She wanted this, after all.

Still, there's a twitch of reluctance and uncertainty when it comes to losing all contact— like cutting a line, she won't be dragged along with it, but without her sight? If whatever this sickess is that's blinded her doesn't leave soon, she might be trading off a certain bad scenario for a gambled one.

But she'll take her chances.

Finger still hovering over the trigger despite not knowing whether or not he's still there, Sombra snorts.]

Works for me.

[mylawn]

goodbye you little shit

[vata]

bye daddy