A Spacemas Carol: December's Mod Event Log

[savmods]

Who: Anyone and Everyone
When: December 19 onwards
Where: Avagi... and beyond?
What: Your past, someone's present, and potential futures.
Warnings: Body horror and an associated image in the second part. Otherwise, label your content.

While the Ingress may have been destroyed, the energy powering it remains alive and well. The residents of Avagi know this intimately: from their own arrivals, from the portals that have appeared, and the short-lived changes (as well as longer-lived possessions) that have cluttered the station over the last few months. Recently, whatever force is manipulating this has even gone so far as to revive the dead—demonstrating, perhaps, an unwillingness to relinquish those it has brought to this place. To say this entity is seasonal would probably be a mistake. In the heart of Avagi's storms, there are no stars to mark the seasons, much less connect them to a certain planet's holidays—or the literature thereon. Still, from luck or from intention, the current fluctuations comes with a certain theme...

Past

It starts at the turn of the station clock's midnight. Flickers at the edge of one's vision. Indistinct whispers, ghosting through walls and down corridors. Those who are sleeping will be untroubled, but the wakeful and wary can watch the light build: from flickers to pulses, from pulses to pools. Over several hours, silver mist fills rooms and corridors, varying from a thin veil to dense, obscuring fog. If you step into the mist, you'll feel a sense of displacement; of sound and color, energy and a shift of life. Ingress travel. Except... not quite. Shortly after entering the mist, you'll find yourself free of disorientation and apparently free of physical form, unable to interact with your surroundings. As a quasi-ghost, you've been transported to somewhere and somewhen—a location from the past, back on a world of someone’s origin or from any place you've been since first arriving through the Ingress. While these experiences can vary wildly, some things remain consistent: The past matters: These visits to the past are not repeats of idle afternoons—each has emotional significance to someone currently on Avagi. The past cannot be changed: As real as any given scenario seems, you're fundamentally incapable of altering it. The past event will play out as it did in real life and dissipate when it reaches an ending. Trying has consequences: Attempting too hard to interfere increases the emotional significance, and will consequently draw onlookers further into the scene. You may find yourself anchored to any participant in the scene: first physically (experiencing the scene through their eyes) and then emotionally (experiencing their emotions and thoughts). If drawn in too deeply, you may lose track of your own nature during the experience, drowning in the sense of being someone else.. You are not alone: While immersed in a scene, you'll see nothing but the history playing out. However, at the its conclusion, the fog will once again displace the world around. As it melts away, you'll find themselves back in Avagi's halls—and face to face with whoever else was also viewing that piece of the past.

Present

Whether through one memory or several, eventually, the fog disperses. Only a faint mist remains, gathered in corners of the station's halls. It's simple enough to avoid, and nothing obstructs efforts to return to your rooms, your friends, or any other destination. Nothing, that is, except finding them. The layout of the halls has shifted. The clutter you so painstakingly cleared is back. The GPS on your ACE mistakenly reports that you are floating off in space far outside the station, and any efforts to locate or call your companions results in glitchy static. Something is interfering with your calls—more effectively than the distance between worlds. Inference and intuition are all you have to put together the pieces. The layout has changed, but the construction stayed the same. You're still on the former Ingress station. But not the same area that you called home. This is a different section of Avagi. An inhabited one. Dank, warm air pulses in and out of the vents in odd rhythms. Water damage stains the walls, and some seep dark liquid. There's an odd symphony in the distance: four notes, hummed to a pattern that buzzes in the back of your head. It's possible to wait it out. But if you do explore, you might come across your friends. And together, you might find the source. Further in, a wall of flesh fills the pathways, rising and falling with intermittent, massive draws of air. A fluid wash of features glues it to the bulkheads. Claws and eyes, hands and faces: half-made bodies shifting in and out of recognition with each pulse of breath. And always with the same gold glow beneath the skin. It's a familiar shade, to those who witnessed Thisavrou's destruction. It's the being who destroyed it. Those who flee will escape her notice. Those who wait may watch in secret for a time. Mother's focus seems to be elsewhere...or, perhaps, something else is hiding your presence here from her. Any attack on Mother's flesh shape, or any overt effort to draw her attention, will meet violent, immediate reprisal. You'll experience an immobilizing psychic force before the flesh consumes you. But whether you hide or fight or run, your time on this section of the station will end in the same way: a burst of brilliant, clear light providing transport back home.

Future

You flash back to reality amidst a burst of light—but this time, you recognize your surroundings. You have returned to the Avagi you know, and the silver mist that filled the halls has cleared. Over the next few days, most of Avagi will settle back into a state of normalcy. The ACEs are working properly, and station residents will have all the time they need to compare notes on their experiences—and, perhaps, on any plans to act on what they've learned. Avagi is not as empty as it seemed. And one place in particular will remain changed in the wake of the event. The Ingress Memorial, once inactive, has come to life, emitting a swirl of silver light that shifts and flickers, like the light of the portal it once contained. For the next five days, it will offer a vision to anyone approaching it: a single, brief scene from their potential future. Players have the following options: Canon future: Your character catches a glimpse of their future if they were to return from Avagi to their own world. This consists of a canon event. Avagi future: Your character catches a glimpse of their own future on Avagi. This can be a short-term future (i.e. an actual vision of a future scene you plan to play out), or a potential longer-term one in which they stayed on Avagi for months or years. Storm future: Your character catches a glimpse of themselves as a Mirtos—a desiccated husk and incarnation of the storm's hunger. As seen in Thisavrou's destruction, these creatures are carried by the storms and destroy all they come across. The visions can observed by any present when the Memorial is approached. And while the past is fixed, the future is always capable of being altered. What will you do regarding yours?

---

[OOC: Check out the OOC post for more information!]

Comments

Agent Washington | OTA

[notyourrookie]

[Putting prompts in the comments.]

Past

[notyourrookie]

Shattered into Ash
[There's the beep of medical equipment, the sharp odor of disinfectant.

And the screaming.

There's a crash, and the medical table jolts with the impact of the person on it falling to the ground. He's screaming, agonised shrieks. Something about Allison? Begging, begging for it to stop, please stop Epsilon, Alpha, just make it stop more time he just needs more time.

The closer you get, the more it hurts, the world flickering and glitching around you, like a broken screen, code flashing through your mind, tinged electric blue, twisting and falling apart, collapsing around you and you just want it to stop stop make it stop can't save them never good enough and it hurts so much. Tearing at your neck until your fingers become bloody and they drag them away and there are needles and then...

oblivion.



Tenderly they turned to dust all I adored
[There's blood leaking into his suit. The wound burns and he can feel it seeping beneath the kevlar bodysuit. But it can't dim the feeling of triumph as he faces them down. He can hear the flicker of concern in the Counsellor's voice, the anger in the Director's as they talk over the speakers, alternately cajoling and demanding.

He keeps his back to the control panel, and his eyes on the Meta; the white armoured monster that used to be his friend, and the AIs hovering around it, their voices raised.

There's a buzzing in his head that is almost comforting, filling in the hollow circuit-grooves of his mind. It doesn't quite fit, but close enough, close enough for this.

And then it's gone and there's a moment of exhilaration and rage and relief that finally it's going to end and the world turns white.]

shattered

[notglitching]

[It's not the first time Rinzler's seen this user crashing. It's not the first time he's tried to help, either. But this time, there's no one else to call. No chance to even stabilize the damage.

Rinzler tries anyway. And Rinzler feels his (his) mind splitting apart.

Failure. Pain. The bright/dark flicker of awareness, inputs reduced to a hash of terms with far too many modifiers. Names and voices, useless thrashing and the screams that loop and lock and drown under the dark. It's too much, and it's much (much) (much) too familiar. It's easier, almost, in the moment he forgets his name.

When the dream dissolves, (Rinzler) jerks back to himself, lights flickering amidst a snarl of pure static.]

shattered

[notyourrookie]

[There's too much. Too many. A stream of data shoved into a mind that was never designed to function that way. Names and numbers and feelings; betrayal, pain, confusion, and the endless string of EpsilonAlpha, Church, Wash ALLISON until the names blur into each other and he can't breathe, can't think, can't function for the errors running through him... them...

Finally the memory ends, dissolving around them and Wash is left curled up by the wall, hands clawing at the back of his neck while he breathes and breathes and tries not to scream.]

[notglitching]

[Wash is broken. Rinzler is too, but he isn't Wash, and he clings to the distinction. Clu isn't here. He isn't Tron. A litany of little truths, interrupted by faint pressure as he staggers back, disk clipping the hall's edge. His disk is docked, and a hand jerks back in desperate reflex before Rinzler makes himself lower it. The backup isn't reinforcing anything he hasn't already become.

Blue lights gutter slowly, replaced by the enforcer's orange-red. Rinzler's noise is still too loud, too harsh, but his helmet lifts to the user. He doesn't know how to fix this. He never has, and it had never worked. It's exhaustion, more than anything, that provokes the short, clipped syllables.]

Over.

[notyourrookie]

[Some distant part of him hears the word and Rinzler is right in front of him, but that doesn't mean that Wash (Alpha?) can focus on him. He's a blue or blue-black-orange where Wash's mind is still far away and a long time ago.

His fingers dig in, blood welling beneath his nails and the pain from that helps. A little. Enough for him to start pulling back the peeling edges of the memory.

He takes a deep breath and squeezes his eyes shut for a moment before opening them. Everything's grey around them. Metal and some kind of ship? That doesn't help. It doesn't... doesn't-

No, just fucking breathe.]

My name is- [Out loud helps when he's safe enough to do it, or too crazy to care. His voice sounds like him at least, although there's a significant pause while he drags the right name to his lips.]

Wash. My name is Washington.

Not Alpha. Not Ep-epsilon.

[notglitching]

[It's over, but it's not. The user is still cringing. Still bleeding, and Rinzler stares at the red smudges. Should make the user still? Restraint won't help, and the last forced shutdown had produced a very different user when Wash woke. Rinzler likes this one. But Wash flinches in, eyes closing, and...

Oh.

That's... better. Closer to aware. Rinzler shifts forward a half-step, into the user's line of sight. Can Wash see him?]

Accurate.

Location?

[notyourrookie]

[The voice. It's familiar, but not one that's burned into his brain and tied up with the Project in ways that hurt. It's enough to catch his attention, and drag him a little closer back to reality here, rather than what's in his head.

He takes a breath that shudders through his lungs and looks around. Still metal grey but... not medical. Not quite right for the Mother of Invention and he thinks it's a place that's wrong in so many ways, but also not a threat. Not always.]

This is... the station. The storm is outside.

[notglitching]

[No visual fix... but he's looking around. The data might be incomplete, but it's not wrong, and that's more than Rinzler had expected. The program holds position for now, though his noise rumbles out a little quicker than usual.]

Avagi.

To Dust

[beautifulspaceraptor]

[ The glowing pain of injury isn't unfamiliar, but the body wasn't his. Too-many fingered hands, soft skin, flat teeth, flat feet and the weight of strange armor that he knows and doesn't all at once.

Nihlus has ended up in too many people's memories by now not to catch on, but it didn't make the proceedings any less disorienting. Especially not when he'd been expecting the mists to part and reveal the hallway into Life Support and Sanitation.

Voices, faces, two men and-

- Maine?

No.

But then-

The buzzing is suddenly noticeable, a background noise rising out of the din. It's familiar, too familiar and he recoils, tries desperately to pull away from the too-close connection, too close association.

What-

The light swallows up his vision, their vision, Wash's vision, and he doesn't have time to take a breath as it all just-

Shatters.

It's dark again.

Staring into the gray nothing in front of him, Nihlus quietly tries to quell the urge to retch, hand coming up to grasp at the wound that didn't exist. His breathing, frantic and sharp, cuts through the mist, scattered and panicked thoughts slowly resettling.

What... what did he just see? ]

Wash? [ he calls out, soft and unsure, not quite able to raise his voice. ] Washington?

Re: To Dust

[notyourrookie]

[It was easier when he was subsumed in the memory, living it again. It had hurt, but it had been flecked with a sort of fierce triumph. This was what he had worked for for so long, what he had lied and killed and bled for. Stop the Meta, bring down the Project. He'd felt like it was an ending, finally, one that he'd been waiting for for so long and he'd finally be able to rest.

But now that it's fading and he's back here and now, he feels sick.

Maybe it's because Maine had been here so recently. What if he'd seen this? Seen it and realised what happens, the monsters that they'd both become?

He looks up sharply when Nihlus speaks, an uncomfortable feeling clawing through him at the realisation that he must have seen. Must have witnessed what- whatever it was.]

Yeah. [It comes out shakier than he'd like.]

[beautifulspaceraptor]

[ Swiveling his head around in the direction of the human's voice, Nihlus opens his mouth to say something upon spotting the familiar face through the gloomy haze.

The look on his face stops him, however.

What can he say? He can't exactly ask what that was, not without plunging straight into some supremely personal and deeply uncomfortable territory. It wasn't worth the cost of Wash's already meager trust. Just from the tone of the man's voice, he could tell it wasn't something Wash would have ever wanted to share intentionally.

Should he pretend it hadn't happened? It was already a little late for that, too late the moment he'd unthinkingly called out Wash's name.

So what does that leave?

Realizing he was still clutching at the ghost sensation of a wound, Nihlus quietly lets his hand drop, his mandibles working against his jaw. Eventually, he sucks in a quick little breath of air before tentatively speaking up. ]

You alright over there?

[notyourrookie]

[His skull feels empty without Alpha there. he hadn't had any time to process it when it had happened. He hadn't wanted Alpha there in the first place, but now he just feels bereft. He doesn't like the feeling.

There's a phantom pain where he'd been shot then too, even though the wound is long healed.

He drags his attention back to the here and now. It's hard, but he's had practice. Has to remind himself of his surroundings, his own skin, blood pumping and every ache and pain which remind him that's he's human and not a machine.]

I've had better days but I'll survive. Not the first time I've lived through it.

[beautifulspaceraptor]

You... want to talk about it?

[ It's sudden and awkward, and Nihlus stops himself after the fact, stumbling internally over how to fix the offer. ]

Or, hell, I can grab you something stiff to drink. I've still got some human-friendly alcohol stuffed away in the pacdisk.

[ Sure, it was meant as an emergency antiseptic as he hadn't had time to grab a proper supply of pure alcohol, but, well. Dulling the traumatizing aftermath of a memory recall seemed like a sufficient emergency too. Albeit, a significantly less healthy solution. ]

[notyourrookie]

No.

[He says it quickly, because he never wants to talk about it. He'd rather forget it, but it always feels like the things he wants to forget most, are the things that are stuck in his head, unfading.]

I- If you do have a drink I'm not gonna object. I am well overdue a drink.

[beautifulspaceraptor]

I'm pretty overdue for one too, I think.

[ Running his hand over the scales on the back of his neck, Nihlus breathes a soft sigh, eyes turning ceilingwards for a moment before falling back to Wash. ]

Come on, [ nodding his head towards the other end of the hallway, he gestures for the human to follow. ] Let's get you out of this fog, huh?

Future

[notyourrookie]

The future's in our hands
[There's a hundred of the Tex robots, it looks like, all around them. Overwhelming odds for their ragtag bunch of sim troopers and ex-Freelancers. They cluster tightly together, back to back, watching the robots as they move.

Carolina is on the ground and Wash holds out a hand to her.

"What are you doing here?" she asks.

"I told you, they're not so bad once you get to know 'em."

He pulls her to her feet and together they join the fight.]


And we will never be the same again
[The night sky is spattered with stars and a bonfire glows brightly on a hill near a small cluster of buildings. A group of figures sit around it, idly passing around cans of beer and bottles of whatever other drinks they can find. Wash sits on a small bench, carefully roasting a marshmallow on a stick over the flames. Someone says something, a dumb joke, and Wash laughs at it, a bright, honest sound, and takes another drink before he crumples the can and throws it at one of the others just to see them start bitching about it.

the future's in our hands

[a_shadow]

[ Tex had approached the memorial out of curiosity; she hadn't intended to be here at the same time as Washington. She looks around at the sight of all of the...copies of herself? She watches as Washington helps up Carolina—a woman who she knows had survived after Tex witnessed her 'death'.

They're not so bad. She can tell right away who Washington means. It's the Reds and Blues—her Reds and Blues. They're standing there, ready to fight. Fight a hundred copies of her, apparently.

She steps up, the only one armored in black who's not facing off against them. ]

You want another hand?

Re: the future's in our hands

[notyourrookie]

[He doesn't know what's going on, not really, entranced by the vision. He recognised most of the people there; those idiots who'd got him locked up, and Carolina of course. But why so many versions of Tex? But at the same time, it's easy to lose himself in the memory, get sucked into it.

It takes a moment when Tex speaks, and not the crackling distorted sound of the others that surround them. He stares at her and finally tolts his head and nods.]

Can always use another hand.

[a_shadow]

[ She doesn't know how they know she's on their side considering the sight of all the black-armored robots around them, but none of them attack her or try to face off against her. She helps, and they fight, and the robots keep on coming.

And then Epsilon sends himself out among the Tex robots, and she herself is left out. Whatever this vision is, she's considered something different from these other Texes. They stop fighting the Reds and Blues and remaining Freelancers; they collapse on the floor.

And then Epsilon and Carolina move on ahead, into the room beyond. The Reds and Blues seem to hang back as Tex approaches Washington. ]

I haven't fought by your side before. [ She looks at the collapsed Tex robots. ] Not like this, anyway.

[notyourrookie]

[It's all sort of a blur and part of him knows this isn't real. But it's easy to lose himself in it for now. There's a calm that comes from it and that's enouygh right now.]

Guess the Project didn't give us much time to work together.

[a_shadow]

There was more to it than that.

[ Something they both well know. ]

You know, last time you were in Thisavrou's universe, you acted like an asshole toward me. More than once.

[notyourrookie]

That would be because I'm an asshole. To everyone.

[He says it flippantly, because he really doesn't like thinking about another version of himself being here. That just leads to bad places.]

the future's in our hands

[startpoint]

[ Carolina watches the vision of Wash's future, her past, play out and doesn't interfere with the path of things. How can she? This moment, the moment where Wash came for her after all the terrible things she had said and done... He had come for her. They all had. When the memory fades, Carolina meets Wash's eyes with a slight smile. ]

You saved my life, you know. If you didn't come for me I... I probably wouldn't have been able to make it.

Re: the future's in our hands

[notyourrookie]

[It's a confusing sight. He recognises the people there of course, but he isn't sure how everything fits together. Isn't sure he wants to. It sets him on edge because he just doesn't understand how it can happen.]

You would have been fine. You always are.