Arc II Final Log A: Therapy

[savmods]

Who: Everyone who goes to the Mediation Center
When: September 24
Where: Underneath Region 5
What: Rescues, bossfights, and decisions
Warnings: Manipulation, mindfuck, brainwashing, violence, and any trauma you might bring. Label your headers!

Running. Fighting. However you've spent the last few weeks, it's been a busy time. The overwhelming force brought to bear against the reclamation depot was successful in re-arming most combatants, and those targeting the network hub managed to safeguard your communications, disrupt the Savrii's, and download no small amount of data on the side. Soldiers and noncombatants alike have built defenses and helped each other stay safe against the killers that tried to intrude. A few individuals have even tried to sway the public.

Still, there are those who haven't been successful. And whether in death or in captivity, a select few of your number are no longer by your side.

Both before and after the disappearance of their friends, a subset of those fighting the Savrii have made it their mission to track down a certain lair. Streets were scoured. Mediation centers searched. Some turned their focus to interrogation, others to following traces left by those who disappeared. Analysis of the communication data turned up a secured relay in Region Five, and as the pieces start to come together, those who promised Mother aid will hear from her again. Two minds that she formed bonds with have filtered back to her awareness. Shadowed—changed—but... not so far. Under the ground.

As convenient as the sudden re-emergence is, you have little choice but to pursue it. And with the added vector, a way beneath can be turned up. Past Region Five's sewers, in a transfer point linked to the EN-line, lies a set of tunnels wide enough to hold a single car that end in a plain, unassuming door. A chokepoint? Kill zone? The assumption wouldn't be unreasonable, but no matter how long you prepare outside, no one will come. It's even unlocked.

The path to understanding is one everyone must choose to take.

explore

One goal of this trip will be met at its beginning. A few adjoining passages off the entrance lead to a control room with a unique console: one capable of shutting down the Artifixx device locking the Ingress Complex off. Once this is done, the team waiting aboveground can embark on their own mission. Those exploring the center will find their own uses for the room; a map of the complex can be turned up, and the console also offers control over the doors. No monitoring devices appear to be included, though. Apparently, those in charge saw no need.

Saw being the operative phrase. The entry passages give ways to halls and rooms, styled similarly to the temporary residences placed in Region 6. This complex is far more extensive, however—even if now, as then, you seem to be the only persons present.

A small infirmary with soft blankets and warm lights. A set of classrooms and meeting spaces, with circular tables designed to foster unity among a group. The library, full of books and datafiles about the Savrii's history, ready and waiting to educate those in need. There's even a small garden. It's all solid and real. All comforting and kind. A place of learning. Of rest. Just waiting to be filled.

And, perhaps, not recently abandoned. Those who search the rooms in depth will turn up recent indentations on the beds. A hair or two, from restless sleepers, or a residual scent. Your friends were here. They weren't alone. And if you search enough halls and passages, you can find the way down.

reflect

At the bottom of the complex lies a stair. At the bottom of the stair lies a passage, and it's around here that communications to the world above cut out completely. Shaped stone progresses to an unshaped cave, and while the stairs down were illuminated, this chamber glows only with a dim silver light—produced, it seems, by something on the ground. Water?

A pool.

Its light illuminates robed figures, standing in the space ahead. All wear the silver cloth that marks the intermediaries. All regard you silently, features muted and distorted in the dark. For once, at last, the intermediaries of Thisavrou have no words for you and yours. But as you step forward, as your weapons raise, the light from the pool flares up.

Reality mirrors, and then melts away.

The Protected:

While all parties present will be affected by the pool's reflections, those who took the link with Mother will be shielded to a degree. For you, perceptions blur and shadow, replacing the sight of those around you with a myriad of ghost-forms. Some turn on you. Some move away. Some wear the robes of the intermediaries, while others look more like those you know—as allies in this place, or enemies back home. While characters who fall within this group will have trouble discerning illusion from reality, it is clear to them illusions are in play. It will also be clear, however, that some attacks are very real. Are the attackers your friends, distorted and confused by simulations? Or your enemies, using them as cover to strike out? You're in the best position to sort one from the next, but it still won't be easy.

The Affected:

Those without safeguards will find the simulations much more solid and complete. Is there an enemy you failed to defeat? A friend you wronged, or lost, or were betrayed by? Or perhaps your focus truly is single-minded, your greatest enemy the intermediaries you came to stand against. Whoever you fear most; whatever you failed or want to confront, you'll find it here beside you, by the pool. This vision threatens your life, your friends, and your purpose. Fight, be killed, or run out into the darkness, but your nightmares—and your enemies—won't stand idle.

The Controlled:

There are those you came to rescue. There are others, who lived in this place before you came. The intermediaries do not fight, not with fists or weaponry, but they have followers still ready to risk their lives on their behalf. And they have captives who have been given no choice at all. Mixed in among the ghosts and nightmares are the Savrii loyalists and the player characters they have taken. Each has their own reasons, but they will attack you, and the harm they do is very, very real.

As is yours.

For all individuals, in all categories of effect, the light from the pool remains the one fixed focus. Silvery and warm, clear and vibrant: a glimmering center where all reflections coalesce. To break the illusion, its power needs to be blocked—through literal obstruction, or destruction at its source. Contact with the water holds great risk, and can bring you further into the simulations, but once the pool is dealt with, all effect will disappear.

choices

You stand in a natural cave of unshaped stone. Without the pool, the only lights are what you brought, but all of them at least show you the truth. The companions who came with you, and the ones you came to save. The handful or so of other bodies mixed into the fight—barely a dozen individuals in total. And at the back of the chamber, a group twice that in number, arrayed in robes and silver cloth.

The intermediaries do not repent.

With the focus broken, their powers are too weak to alter your minds here. Still, if you allow it, they will speak. They insist their actions were for the betterment of Thisavrou. They insist they saved it from the harm dealt out by you and yours. Converse as long as you would like to—or as long as your allies will wait.

But in the end, it comes to your decision.

---

[For more information, and to participate in the vote regarding the intermediaries' fate, check out the OOC post linked above. The setting transition will occur immediately after this log; you're welcome to thread smaller-scale aftermath things, but please avoid dating anything more than an hour or so forward.]

Comments

[lavelly]

[He can't help but glance at Shepard's injury, even as she's squarely going on around it.]

I'm not a healer. I'm sorry. [Well, no shit. Otherwise he wouldn't have a major injury problem of his own. But he follows it down to the jacket, which he eyes dubiously.]

What do you need me to do?

[It rushes out; he can feel the spell coming to an end, and he doesn't have the energy to renew it.]

[squadgoals]

[The healing comment is waved away like so much noise, and she tucks the hoodie under her arm, gesturing Lavellan forward, jaw squared, expression ashen.]

This isn't going to be pretty, but it's going to work.

Get around behind them. As soon as you see me disarm them, I need you to bring their attention towards you in any way possible. I'll take it from there.

[inconsequence]

[The conversation elapses quickly, in their eyes - they hardly see it at all. One moment, everything is in relative order, if a poor one. One of them holds them down, the other cries out - and the next, everything's skidded several steps ahead. There are lost seconds, precious seconds, of disorientation - a firm blink and a shake of their head as they stumble.]

[Whatever just happened, whatever points in time slid past...it matters little.]

[Perhaps another test. Perhaps reality coming apart again, at the seams. They've always favored blatant dissociation as opposed to actual reality itself - why should this have changed?]

[Ha ha.]

[They've never been on this side of a RESET.]

[lavelly]

[Lavellan almost protests--maybe he should be the one to disarm them, in that case--but he doesn't, because they're out of time. It's this plan or nothing.

It takes all his concentration to keep the field together as he gets in place, it's lasted for far longer than normal as it is, and no sooner does he get in position than is Chara released.

Better move fast, Shepard.]

[squadgoals]

[It's smooth, slick—a hand-to-hand combat technique passed through various special forces. As soon as Chara's time reasserts itself, she's on them, wrists slamming down, around their knife hand in a double cross-block, then, twisting.

The move itself is not necessarily painful—until, as the twist turns, it suddenly is. With luck, enough to loosen the knife from their hand for Shepard to remove it completely.]

[inconsequence]

[It's faster than they have time to register in the moments allotted. Their recovery is startled and their balance is off, and there are hands on them working deftly to disarm them and drop the Knife, clattering, from between nerveless fingers. A muted cry worms up from underneath their tongue.]

[No, no, no, no, no, no, no - ]

[They're wrenching in her grip, desperate. Trying to claw, kick, bite any inch of her they can.]

[At their feet, the Knife's scarlet gleam abruptly fades to a worn silvered-gray. A Worn Dagger once more, now that it is parted from them.]

[lavelly]

[His turn. Distract Chara. Right. Easier said than done, with the way they're struggling against Shepard with all their might. He doesn't have the energy for another spell, not one that will only hit Chara and not Shepard.

So instead he does the only thing he can think of, even as he hates himself for it.

He picks up the Dagger.]

Chara. Do you want this back?

[He flips it around, careful of the blade, and offers it back to them handle-first--just out of their reach.]

[inconsequence]

[They're not stupid enough to fall for the ploy. But the Knife - ]

[They will never let that go. The first time they misbehaved they took him away; took him away for days, long days in which they had nothing but a Locket to cling to and a Knife to turn over and over in their hands and the low, quiet murmurs they tried to utter to Frisk's ear, as they cried.]

[They'll never let it go again.]

[They'll FIGHT all the harder to keep it. To keep him.]
[For I'm forever missing him.]
[Despite their best interests. Despite their common sense.]
[Despite everything.]

[They lunge for it.]

[squadgoals]

[Chara is no giant, but size is hardly an issue when someone is fighting to win, or die. Without the top half of the hardsuit, every flailing kick, scratch, punch and claw poses new threats. One arm pulls free—but a rake of fingers and a snarling bite is a low price to pay for staying mostly in command.

It's only once Lavellan is speaking that she lets her grip loosen minutely. With both hands free, they lunge--

--And the jacket comes down, over their head, a sea of muffled darkness, the roaring stench of iron. Outreached hands are pulled back, restrained with tied sleeves, and they're on the ground. In the blackness, there's only the sensation of the pressure, tight and secure, and the weight of the hands performing it.

For all their professionalism, they shake, slightly.]

[inconsequence]

[They're plunged into dark.]

[Something snaps over their head, something yanks their hands back, something pins them to the ground with callous, taut efficiency. The tremble almost doesn't reach at all - doesn't penetrate the sick flood of panic that clenches in their gut, that thrashes them underneath, that has their breath emerging thready and frantic from between clenched teeth.]

[They know what happens. They know what happens. They know what happens.]

[They're being punished. They can FIGHT it all they like, but they're being punished.]
[Big kids don't cry. Don't let the sob leak out from behind their teeth.]
[You struggle, but nothing happened.]

[lavelly]

[Lavellan waits until it seems Shepard has this largely under conrol; Chara is not the type to ever stop struggling, but Shepard is also not the type to simply let go of a problem. And so it sorts itself out.

He holds the blade out to her handle-first as soon as things seem to settle, eyes downcast, face ashen.]

You'll... better know what to do with this, I think.

[He'd hoped he could solve this by talking. By getting through to Chara, convincing them of the truth, somehow. He should have known it wouldn't be so easy.]

[squadgoals]

[It's a cold fist wrapped around her heart, her lungs, squeezing the space out, breath in a 2-4 beat as she firmly, not quite gently, holds them down, finishes tying it off. They weigh close to nothing at all when she scoops them into her arms, cradling their struggling form them in her shuddering arms, the tang of iron tapering off as the blood clots and dries on her forearm. A gruesome reproduction of an ancient image.

And you caused this.

It's not until Lavellan speaks that she snaps back to focus, staring at the blade in his hand. Shifting Chara to one arm, pressed against her own body, Shepard takes it, gingerly, wordlessly, turning it this way and that, before pocketing it just as carefully.]

I'll hold on to it. For now, at least.

[inconsequence]

[Once things get this far, you know what happens next. You know what happens next. And the only thing you can do is not struggle, is not FIGHT, and just hold as still as possible until it's all over. Go limp. Deadweight. Bite into the scored walls of your cheeks, holding away the bright spring of something hot and wet so it doesn't pool out and overflow.]

[As still as possible. If you don't struggle, it won't hurt as much. If you're cuter, monsters won't hit you as hard.]

[But that doesn't slow the trembling.]

[lavelly]

[He doesn't miss that Chara soon stops fighting.

He doesn't know what that means. He doesn't want to think about what that means. When it comes to... what the intermediaries do to people, it could mean any number of things, and none of them good. Mental conditioning, maybe. Fear of what will happen to them now that they've failed.

He feels sick.

No--he feels actually dizzy. He busies himself by bracing himself against the nearest wall and slowly sliding down into a sitting position, all his strength gone, and waits for it to pass before he can regain his voice.]

What now?

[squadgoals]

[The bundle of Chara in her arms is shaking, not struggling. There's no fight, now: only fear.

Holding them with two arms, as if cradling a glass statue, she stands, eyes focused straight ahead into the inky black. Turning to focus her omni-tool's flashlight at another corner of the rock-hewn room, where she knew they'd be standing still. Motionless. Unrepentant.


"What now", indeed.]

We've done what we can with the victims. Now we deal with the instigators.

[inconsequence]

[Everything's dark, and they can't move. Afr - ]

[No.]

[Not that. Never that. They're going to come back any minute now. Any minute it's going to start turning around. If it doesn't, they'll make it. They'll FIGHT with every inch of determination available to them, every scrap, biting and clawing and scratching until something relents and they can get out, and away, and free.]

[The arms holding them, pinioning them, are disturbingly gentle.]

[It doesn't mean anything.]

[It just means they're going to be all the more fierce, when the inevitable strike whips back and around to greet them.]