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.

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[ 'Irritating'. Sometimes Venom wonders if this is how his silent sniper would have phrased things if she had the words to voice her opinions, because she'd sometimes look at him with the most blithely unimpressed flatlines after braving life-threatening injuries. 'You know me by now, why do you think pain is novel to me anymore?'

He toes the outline of the nearest corpse, watches as the prone form rolls in a cocktail of its own viscera and blood. ]

She didn't need to eat. [ If she were here, she'd likely tip her chin up and angle her jaw. Smug. ] But I know enough about wilderness survival on my own.

[ He's sunk his teeth in scorpions, lizards, desert insects; nothing was beneath him. ]

Kaz never told you what I used to do?

He didn't put a name to it, no. I figured it was something like what he does, but meaner - I mean, you lost an eye and he didn't. Anyway, I didn't ask, and you both didn't tell me.

[ It's a verbal shrug-off; they could be whatever they were, sure. Tetora doesn't care, he has no room to throw stones at anyone for their chosen occupations. It's not a big deal. He's been a serial killer, a detective, a doctor, a young boy, a young girl, a band frontman, a saleslady. He's been many people, and no one at all.

He doesn't get to judge. ]

It must be nice, not having to eat. [ He pokes at the carcass with the tip of the sword sheath, prods it this way and that. Not a lot of fat that he can tell, but lean meat's still something to chew on. ] So you're a mercenary who has a cover team. Paramilitary? Former military?

We could play twenty questions while stripping this cat.

[ Here's where his indoctrination kicks in: espionage 101, "always redact when you're prompted to talk about yourself". There are 50 different ways to lie by omission even under duress of torture, and Venom knows each and every one of them like the scars that map his face.

He kneels back down to carcass-level, reaching under its prone form to flip the bulk so that its smooth underbelly is showing. The universal pose of submission.

Tetora probably doesn't need a content warning for what happens next, but it's not pretty. Suffice it to say that Venom's going to be smelling like shit for the next few days. ]

Private military force. [ He says, as he rifles through a forest of gore. His expression never changes, not even when the sound of sinew ripping threatens to drown out the even cadence of his voice. ] I run solo ops unless the mission calls for a partner.

[ An unidentifiable body part gets tossed into the bushes. Venom is terrifyingly efficient. ]

It's not glamorous. [ Obviously. ] Anything else you want to know?

Edited 2017-09-05 08:17 (UTC)

How'd you lose your eye?

[ He pretty much retches the question; the smell of a gutted corpse will always be so foul. It has none of the sweetness of days-old rot, right at that window right before bloating and desiccating. It's just the smell of bile and shit and whatever's been going through digestion prior to death, and the rancid-sourness that spills into the air is plain disgusting.

But about the eye. It's the most pressing curiosity-fuelled question that he has. It's maddening, every time he sees the eyepatch, and Tetora always wants to rip it off just to look under the leather, as if the scars will tell him the full story on their own. In answer to his own question - in trade for a proper story, hopefully - Tetora taps his right eye. ]

We see each other. The other clones. We can see through each other's eyes - but just the one. Whenever one of us goes off the grid, it's usually because they cut it out, or someone else cut it for them.

[ Tetora, as always an anomaly, managed to figure out how to get the sight on both. (Miwa. It's always Miwa. Living on in him when her own body had given up.) ]

All of our memories are stored in that eye, too. They're important to us. That's why I wanna know.

[ Venom's already learned to compartmentalize the discomfort that comes with being knuckles-deep in something's vitals, so it's not the process of digging into a corpse until it's hollow that stops his hands for a half a beat. It's the question and the mental record-scratch that follows, the invisible hand that worms its way into his skull to press 'play' on pre-recorded information.

("you lost vision in your right eye at Tselinoyarsk. you were strung up by your wrists in a concrete room, bloody and bruised after torture. you—")

—No, that's not right. He listens to Tetora's reasoning to buy himself time, to swallow back the unease that starts to well up from the back of his throat.

(he'd had his hands in someone's guts back then, too. she was so thin, and the bomb that he'd removed from the cavern of her stomach was so sizable that he didn't think— there couldn't have been room for more than one. he'd saved her, he'd thought. he'd saved her, he'd—)

Severed skin peels back from the lines he's drawn in the panther's hide. His grip is just a little too tight around blood-soaked skin. ]

...We didn't have a system like that in our world. [ Implication: "my answer's gonna disappoint you." ] My eye was just an eye.

It was damaged in a blast— nothing special about it.

[ Huh.

He's yanking back the pelt, helping however he can, though it seems more like a small cat helping a giant dog if Tetora's being honest. The momentary stop-start tickles his interest more than the answer, because there's a story there, he can taste the colors of it in the minute shift in body language.

But it's none of his business. So it's peeling off alien panther skins and digging his heels in the dirt instead. ]

Don't shield your body with face next time. [ Next time. If they make it back to wherever they're supposed to get back to. Snake rips through the meat with enough force that Tetora skids on his feet just a little, dragged along with the cat. A small reminder of their physical differences - an unwieldy note tacked onto an otherwise serious conversation.

He hums, tonelessly. ]

You brought your music with you?

[ Add cognitive dissonance to past trauma, mix in a healthy amount of guilt, and shake vigorously: the Venom Snake martini. Look closely and Tetora'd see the flicker of dissociation that comes and goes, that dull nothing that settles like silt on someone's conscience.

A dirtied hand moves up to slide his eyepatch away from his face, just a centimeter. The eye under the obstruction is milky-white from blindness, unfocused.

That's all he lets Tetora see before he gets back to work on skinning this dead animal. Careful, he mouths, when worn soles skid over dirt. ]

Mm. [ That's a 'yes'. ] You want to listen to something?

[ SD tells him to mind his feet, and Tetora bares his teeth at the man in response. Bite me, he insinuates. Better to just stick his tongue out, but he's trying not to show too much of his actual age just yet. ]

Bowie's a good band, you said. You have them on your player?

[ What fortune did he roll that he finds people just as, if not more, complicated than himself? Miller had been the first in a long line of firsts, nothing too foreign that he's jarred out of his senses, but there's also this guy with his blinded eye and metal arm. That thousand-yard glare of someone who hasn't stopped fighting. There's the treasure hunting Panama hater, the self-proclaimed child-god, the bone-weary space doctor, the redhead with the clone and their weird simpatico love-hate relationship.

It's a bunch of disparate characters thrown together in an unlikely mix of who the fuck knows, and Tetora wants to find the thread that unravels them all. Figure out what ticks. What sticks.

Flesh tears a little harder now. They're getting close to bone and connective tissue, though SD's doing most of the work. ]

There's enough here for a few people. [ Unsaid: What's your plan for this? ]

[ He's already peeling his soiled glove from his hand by the time Tetora asks for some music, reaching for the permanent fixture at his hip to fumble with the setup. By and large, the consideration he's just shown for his battered cassette player is useless (it's already slick with panther guts and who-the-fuck-knows-what-else), but it's the thought that matters. For Venom, his music is a tether and an anchor.

Tetora is tasked with the last few inches of their adventures in mutilating a corpse, while Venom goes through the comfortable click-hum routine of rewinding his tape. The song is the same one he'd had on-deck when he'd found Tetora crouched over the innards of a music console; are we seeing a pattern here, or what?

Click.

Venom reaches to help Tetora out for the final stretch, and then hefts the stripped body so that the fluids slowly drain onto the grass. His voice sweeps over the funereal grind of the music. ]

I've got a few mouths I'm looking to feed. Including yours. [ He'd only meant to kill one panther, though, so the other one's just going to have to rot. Sorry, dude. ] If this hasn't put you off your appetite.

[ He wouldn't hold it against Tetora, really. ]

It's not human meat, I'll take it.

[ It's like backwash. The old memories of someone else's tastes, like a photocopy of a photocopy of a photo, grey on grey washing out the details. The clone network is like a basin, and every mind is a single bead left in the water. Sometimes they come into contact, sometimes not, but the flecks of paint that wash off over time still swirls around the same pan.

Human meat, apparently, has the texture of pork, with a little bit of goat.

The tape starts rolling with a click, distorted vocals filtering through low percussion and guitars in a swaying beat. Something to dance to. Or work to. Tetora bops his head along to the bass line. We must've died alone, a long long time ago.

Hah. ]

I guess it is pretty good. Kinda sad, though. [ It's nothing like Lucy's music, thankfully. ] Is all your music like that?

[ Here's another bombshell. Implications stacked on implications. Sometimes Venom doesn't know if Tetora wants him to rise to the challenge, to stop and curl his fingers into Tetora's lapel and tell him, flatly, that what he's saying isn't normal.

But isn't that the common thread that binds them all together? Here, they're all freaks. Aliens and clones and body doubles.

In the background, Midge Ure sings a modified version of a song about half-assumed identities, written by a man before his own time. The irony isn't lost on Venom. ]

Not all of them. [ The response comes at a delay, the kind of tangible pause that betrays everything that Venom doesn't address. "What you just said before the innocuous question was vaguely unnerving." ] Took most of my tapes from enemy camps, so I can't say that they're a matter of taste.

[ The river of blood's faded into a trickle, and the smell of it all is starting to solidify around them like a cloud; best to vacate the area with their kill in tow, before they attract more monsters. ]

Nasty, stealing from the dead. [ It's nothing he hasn't done. ] I kinda like it.

[ He's just going to barrel right on over that significant pause. Tetora's a spiteful little gremlin on most days, his good behavior days generally countable on one hand, maybe two. If SD doesn't ask, he's not going to add to it - what he says is what it is, take it or dig deeper.

Tetora stares at the neat strips of meat lying across the beast's ribs as a makeshift rack. His shirt and trousers are tacky with blood, sticking to his skin. SD is thankfully not exempt from this minor embarrassment. ]

Any ideas how we're gonna carry these?

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August Event Log: Part I

hitting the road

storm front

wild life

old familiar places

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i finally get to use this icon properly

i cant believe im tagging you when you're talkin about boners in another thread

if it's any consolation that thread went south really quickly

save tetora 2k17

how kind of you

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