Who: Anyone and Everyone
When: February 10-19
Where: Avagi
What: Life support fails, and a team sets out. Check out
this ooc post for more.
Warnings: Label your content.
Synce their arrival, Avagi's residents have been plagued by minor system failures. Faulty taskbots and infested crawlspaces, supply shortages and the floods last month. For the most part, they've coped admirably, and quality of life aboard the station is substantially improved from what it was. But even as the damage in the lived-in space is scrubbed away, more dangerous poisons have been building underneath.
On February 10, the groaning from the walls will escalate to a harsh scraping, audible station-wide. Then silence falls as the filtration systems die completely: leaving all vents to begin spewing thick, black smoke.
|
| System Failures | |
| (February 10-19) | |
Acrid and hazardous, the cocktail of gases emerging from the vents are the result of three centuries' toxin storage spilling over. A shallow breath can cause a coughing fit, but individuals who draw in too much of the toxic air will find themselves becoming dizzy, passing out, or worse. While effects may vary based on individual biology, all beings who require breath will find their lungs burning and their vision blurred. An hour after the initial failure, the lighting goes out too. With it, all station power: to computers, doors, and any system not hooked up to its own supply.
Investigation:
The electrical failures can be sourced to an automated safety shutoff, override-able from Life Support's main controls. But the mechanism isn't in place without a reason. Generating station power produces more of the dark fumes, and without working filters, they will pump straight into the air.
Wait in the dark (and growing cold), or suffocate more quickly? Either way, your air troubles won't be resolved quickly. Over the next couple days, groups searching Sanitation can track down the vapors to their source. A small mob of taskbots run sad circles in the filtration hub: between the air processing units and a row of shelves along one wall. The label reads Purification Crystals, and a single empty container remains. Survival (Home Team):
Without the crystals, there is no effective way of restoring the entire living space. It may, however, be possible to section off small areas. Able bodies will be required to seal off the fumes and guide those suffering from their effects to safety. Many may need medical assistance, and technical skills will be in even more desperate need: to equip these regions with oxygen and power, and insulate them against the cold that leeches in from the outside.
Some amount of work has already been done, and a few safe rooms are prepped across the station. As days progress toward weeks, however, their air and power reserves will run thin, and some larger sectors may warrant securing regardless. The Greenery contains young plants that are susceptible to the fumes, and those invested in the library's book collection may also want to take measures. The gas has acidic qualities in higher concentrations, enough to eat through paper... for a start.
Contain it? Remove it? Or just try to protect yourselves? One way or another, you'll need to hold out for a while.
|
| Travel (Away Team) | |
| (February 12-19) | |
When Avagi's current population first got here, it was clear that others had inhabited the space before. Recent developments have even proven that these others—or, perhaps, their descendants—might still exist elsewhere on the station now. With the crystals that might repair your home missing, diplomacy is no longer an optional consideration. It's time to meet the neighbors, and hope they come in peace.Navigation:
Those volunteering to undertake this mission will be provided with a patchwork set of maps. However, these contain little to no information on the current state of the station—including which parts still exist. The explosion that tore apart the former Ingress Complex left wide gaps in the structure, many of which have been invaded by the storms outside.
Scanning tech will be required to assess what lies behind the sealed walls, and physical labor to cut through them. As no contiguous paths across the station remain, this process will need to be repeated numerous times. Where no adjoining regions can be verified intact, smaller scouting tools (or group members!) may be required to traverse crawlspaces for a view of nearby rooms. Survival:
Behind the first wall lies a pressurized room with normal gravity—and contaminated air. This will not persist as the travelers continue. Some regions have power, but no gravity. Others contain pockets of unaffected, still-clean air. Few spaces will be fully online before the travelers get there, but local generators can be found that might allow for a night or two of "comfortable" camping. At least one juncture can only be crossed by floating through an empty docking bay. The area contains no power, air, or gravity, but spacesuits can be procured... inside the sealed vacuum of the bay. Creative thinking may be required.
Enveloping the station's outside, the roiling shadows of Avagi's storms have crept invasively into all unsealed regions of the interior. While the Observation Station may have accustomed some Avagians to the view, there's something much more immediate about the shadows pressing at the other side of these windows. The faint patterns of light that ripple through the clouds prompt a sense of malice and exhaustion, one that lingers even when you've turned away. Those who attempt more intense scrutiny may suffer more severe effects.
Certainly, it feels like something is watching back. Discoveries:
As harrowing as the journey may be, it's not entirely without its gains. A few tools can be salvaged from some of the decks visited along the way, and while food is in much shorter supply, there are a few signs that it might not have been, long ago. Wrappers and empty cans turn up in strange places. A few glyphs can be found scratched into one wall: ones that your ACE's translators roughly interpret as prayers.
One sealed room has a large "X" scrawled across the walls despite the detectable presence of power, air, and gravity. Opening it produces a strange sight: two skeletal corpses pressed up against the still-active force field that cuts this room off from the storms. Both bodies show extensive burns to hands and faces, but don't appear to have died from that effect. |
[For questions, signups, or plotting, check out the ooc post. For the duration of this log, characters may travel between teams to whatever extent they are capable. The event will escalate with a second log on February 20.] ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
savmods) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
thisavrou_log2018-02-10 04:46 pm
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[Harsh words?]
[Well, no one can claim they aren't accurate. A real friend would have doubtless forgiven him for that. A real friend would have smoothed it all away with a smile and a genuine apology, trying to soothe away all those agonies that plagued him through his next several dozen, hundred, thousand lifetimes.]
[Harsh words, maybe.]
[But they're his words.]
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You can't miss him?
[He really doesn't understand. But he's trying to. Maybe that will help them. Maybe that will help work things out.]
[Chara was his family. But for some reason, they think Asriel preferred Frisk?]
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[Now that, that one is a lie, at least going by his own word. He claimed to have missed them. But they - ha. They know better, do they not? They know better than to let that slip under their skin again. They know better than to allow that sliver to pierce their SOUL.]
[They know better than to allow him in.]
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I saw how much he cared about you. Back in the jungle. You can't say that and expect me to buy it.
[So there.]
[Let him help you. Somehow.]
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[Oh, yes. Perhaps that never came up. Perhaps he never saw fit to share. Perhaps they ought to have more respect for his secrets, for his sins.]
[But, as Shiro keeps saying: he's gone, now.]
[And apparently, this means they're allowed to be upset. How nice for them, to have his permission!]
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I'm not following you.
[Because... Chara's the one who always talks about their "sins". Whatever that meant. This is the first he's heard of anything like that involving Asriel.]
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[Assuming they can manage to get the words out in full, perhaps they can allow him a better understanding of the context surrounding them - the three of them, and the Determination that sustained them far, far past their respective expiration dates.]
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[If they're sure, he'll let it go. For now. He won't push. Because they're hurting, they're a child who just lost their family.]
[He blows out a breath, and pushes his hand through his hair.]
You're not going to believe me. But... I'm still glad you're around.
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[Note the phraseology, if you will: yet.]
[It is, after all, inevitable, as far as they're concerned. As far as anyone is. Their story is long over, long past, and their sins lay the playing field into position, for other children to traverse and fail and die upon.]
[For other children to suffer.]
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[The calm snaps. For a minute. For two words, there's something sharper. Not anger, no -- urgency. Of course he's glad they're alive. They should know that, by now.]
[Haven't their conversations up to now proved as much?]
I'm glad you're alive. That you're here. Of course I am.
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[Perhaps he ought to prepare himself to be allowed to be upset, when that comes to pass - as it inevitably will, because that seems to be the only fate with any permanence, here. Returning home; in their case, to the grave.]
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I'm going to do everything I can. So you don't have to go back.
[He doesn't know if there's anything he could actually do. Doesn't know if there's a way to help. A way to stop either of them from losing anyone else.]
[But he's going to try.]
[He has to try.]
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[They'd commend him for that, if they thought it was worth commending. Truly.]
[Okay, so maybe they wouldn't. It's not as if seeing them as something worth saving is in any way commendable. Only saviors and martyrs with hero complexes presume them to be something salvageable, and even then, not for very long.]
[Not for very long at all.]
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[He knows it's futile. It really is. If there was no way to keep Lance and Keith from vanishing, or Lucio, Angela... North or Maine... then... how could he keep Chara from following.]
Maybe it won't help.
But I have to try. I can't do nothing, Chara.
[They'd know that.]
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[For all the determination infused in a scarlet-tinted SOUL, for all the resolve to spin the world back to its starting point, it could never ERASE the sins of the past, nor could it reclaim the lives of those who perished long before the story even began.]
Learn to accept it now, before you tear yourself apart over that which is already set in stone.
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I won't.
[They can be absolutely right. Their every word can be correct. But he'll still fight against it. He'll still try. Because he has to. He can't accept just giving in.]
[Just accepting things are useless.]
If I just accepted nothing could change, I wouldn't be talking to you.
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[Leave those who will die to die, and fight on the behalf of the living.]
[Ghosts cannot appreciate all you do for them, and the sooner one recognizes that, the better it will be for everyone - himself included.]
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No one knows it for sure.
[And he will fight this fight. He'll fight this, and any other he has to, in order to keep someone safe.]
[Even if they don't think they're worth saving.]
So I have to try.
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[They fold their arms patiently behind their back, and step away.]
I see.
[It doesn't matter. Respect for the living, respect for the wishes of the dead - clearly that's secondary to his desire to feel useful, to feel like he can effect some sort of change in a world that does not concern him.]
I suppose I ought to thank you, Shiro.
For proving what I should never have allowed myself to forget, where humans are concerned. That their desires must always come first. That the wishes of a child should never be respected.
That the word "no" never really means "no".
[That they really are all the same.]
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[That's abruptly all over his face. Speechless. Staring at them like they've pulled the floor out from under him, shut off the lights and air all in one go.]
... did you want me to leave you alone, Chara?
[It's all he can think to say. To ask. He's asked them that before, and they didn't answer. They turned it around and away and never... told him what they wanted.]
[He'd just kept on.]
[He'd just thought it was the right thing to do.]
I can't -- I can't read your mind. I don't know these things, unless you tell me what you want.
[I can't change anything unless I know what I'm doing wrong.]
I'll ask you again. Do you want me to leave you alone?
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[It bites out, hard and intent, unlike the drape of calm they'd been aspiring, aspiring, to cast over their expression like a pall, like a sheet of ice.]
It does not matter how truly you believe it or how badly you wish it or how much you might fight for it.
Creatures like me cannot be saved, Shiro.
And maybe they would simply prefer not to be.
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[He can't honestly believe it. Or maybe, he doesn't really want to. They're a child. They're... someone he's come to care about, for reasons he can't really explain.]
[Or maybe it's that echo in the back of his head. The voice whispering of how much of a monster he was. Faded, after so long. But holding on and waiting to dig its claws back in again.]
[... monster and creature are awfully close. Aren't they?]
Chara, I can't... I'm not pretending anything. It's what I really believe.
But if you tell me -- if you tell me that's what you want... [And he hates these words. He hates every syllable of them. But if it's what they want...] I won't. Bring it up.
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[They glimpsed an awful lot, in December. And others saw plenty else.]
That was mine. Nothing, nothing but complete and utter destruction of all that everyone has ever loved.
Because it was my last chance. Do you understand that?
It was my last chance to let it finally, finally be over.
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[Yes, he did. But it was nothing like Chara described. Not for him. There was hope, there. For himself, and for Pidge. Not something as dire as they're talking about.]
[He lets them talk. Ask their questions and say what they need to say. There isn't much else he really can do, here. Is there?]
Then.
You do want that. That's what you're telling me.
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I have given up on attempting to force my death to mean something.
Do you know how many years I have spent, lingering? How many times I felt myself die?
[They're so tired.]
[They are so. incredibly. tired.]
[And it never seems to stop.]
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