thisavrou_log | ( april event log )

Entry tags:

( april event log )

Who: Everyone
When: April 14th and on
Where: The Moira + Del Pascia
What: The prison isn't all that contained after all.
Warnings: For the (sort of) undead, possible violence, and nudity. Please label your content!

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revive the risk
"Big things have small beginnings."

Things have been going relatively well for the crew of the Moira thus far despite their current circumstances. With D-E-L’s help, many supplies have already been gathered, and those with the necessary components have begun making much needed repairs. Yet, things aren’t as peaceful on Del Pascia as they might have seemed.

The resident facility AI has slowly started growing more and more unresponsive to questions, often answering in rather irritated tones and short, snippy answers. Still, no system glitches appear across the prison except for one minor detail: random doors and hallways suddenly lock and close for no reason and don’t open again for varying amounts of time—ranging from minutes to hours. Does this have anything to do with the unsettling feeling some crew members have experienced since stepping foot onto Del Pascia? Or is there a simple explanation that can be easily chalked up to as an accident?

☄ DECONTAMINATION #2 ( 04.14 - 04.17 )

On the Moira, crew come and go without much hassle. They take a transporter to planets and moons and back again without any fuss... Until today. All crew that try to reboard the Moira coming back from Del Pascia will be denied access, a warning flashing on their MID - Decontamination Required for Entry. It’s a protocol that hasn’t been enacted before, and the MID offers no explanation as to why it is now. The transporter will seal and then be permitted to dock in the Cargo Bay, where the procedure will begin. All crew on the transporter have to dispose of their clothing by placing it inside hazardous waste bags located in a compartment near the front of the craft. After all clothing is stored, a gas-like substance will fill the transporter, breathable yet tasteless, and once it dissipates, crew will be free to go.

Other crew members will be waiting in the cargo bay with clothing and blankets, per the captain’s instruction, but no clear explanation will be given for this sudden new protocol aside from “potential health risks”.

☄ D.ON'T E.VER L.EAVE ( 04.18 - 04.23 )

After the decontamination procedures for the Moira go off, the captains issue a ship-wide alert to let the crew know that the ship is picking up on something inside each person that boarded the space station. It is speculated that the crew came in contact with an unknown biological contaminant either during the station’s decontamination procedure or sometime after. At this point, they aren’t aware of what will happen to those that are carrying the contaminant, and the captains ask for anybody with experience to head to the Medbay to begin testing. Crew don’t appear to be in any danger, so they are allowed to continue gathering materials and supplies on board the space station at their discretion. (Every time they come and go, they will be made to go through the procedure described above).

Any crew remaining on Del Pascia will find that D-E-L is more vocal than ever before. It is answering questions, as well as trying to convince crew members to abandon the Moira and take up permanent residence aboard the space station.

☄ FEAR ME, LOVE ME, DO AS I SAY ( 04.24 - 04.28 )

Like most unfortunate things, it seems everything happens all at once.The noises you heard, a step falling moments after yours or a rattle coming from the vents, become louder. You can’t place where they are coming from at first. You turn, you follow, but the search yields no results. And then, without any warning, it’s crystal clear as “they” begin to creep and move from within the shadows and ruined sections of Del Pascia: the prisoners and workers said to have been relocated by D-E-L. Their voice is one, regardless of how many gather, and they tell you, “You can be happy here” and “I can make you better” shortly after.

Worse than the way they speak in unison is the way they look. Mutated and deformed, their prison uniforms are in tatters and covered in various levels of the same blood that the crew has experienced during their time on Del Pascia while visiting the prison blocks. They don’t attack to kill; they only try to detain, to drag crew members further into the station and are methodical and precise in how they do this as if they’re being controlled by something greater and much smarter than them.

To those that fight, D-E-L’s voice will call out, telling the Moiran not to struggle, to stay here and be safe, be better. The AI explains that life there on Del Pascia is easy, peaceful, and nobody will cause you pain. Suffering is a thing of the past and loneliness is something you’ll never know again. The prisoners follow the command of the AI, its voice falling from their lips. D-E-L claims they feel no pain, no hunger. They are united in one purpose and are therefore free of all strife. Wouldn’t it be nice to be free like that?

As always, fearing for the safety of the crew (and despite the disrepair of the Moira from events prior), the captains ask for all those capable to assist with extracting those aboard Del Pascia as quickly as possible before D-E-L tries to lock them inside. Running, after all, is better than dying, and it’s certainly something everyone aboard the Moira has gotten quite good at.

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Despite the arm being ripped from his grasp, he again latched onto his sleeve.

"He's not here, no. But I didn't expect you, I didn't expect Big Boss, or Ocelot. There's no reason he wouldn't come. And what, you would rather be here? Than there for him?"

Whatever was that way Miller wanted no part of. He wondered, vaguely, if his stun weapon could actually take down Liquid too. He'd found it in the guard's office. It was possible. He didn't want to risk a worse reaction than he'd already met with. Not yet.

But he thought it might be necessary.

"Come back to the ship. Come back. Come back. Come back." He repeated, over and over, as if the words would somehow sink in. He lost his grip on his arm and grabbed Eli's hand with both of his instead, one clamped around his wrist and the wrapped around the middle in the way one would grip someone slipping from a cliff face.

Another sneer, another move to pull away. Trying to use his best friend against him, really.

"No! I have to... I have to..."

No he didn't. He had to go back. It wasn't so much that he belonged there, but he didn't belong here either. He knew that. But he kept being drawn to staying here.

Was it the contaminant? Was the AI just that good? Was he just that easily convinced? He couldn't even think on it too hard.

"I want to... go back. I want to stay. No! It... won't bloody let me..." He made a noise of frustration. He knew. Knew he shouldn't be keeping this up. But he couldn't stop.

But, hey, progress, right?

"N-no. Come with me." He said this, but with little conviction, and while he attempted to wiggle out of Kaz's grip, it seemed to be with much less effort.

Take that, D-E-L.

He didn't want to shoot him. No. But maybe he could keep chipping away at him. Maybe it was working.

"And you want a dog too, right? A chance at a real life, for as long as you can have it? Can't have that here. There's a big universe out there. Away from your father, from Cipher. But it's not in here. Think about it. You still want to see it, don't you?"

He was pulling less hard, but he still had a hold on his hand in the same way. With one side, fingers knit around his wrist, the other holding onto his hand in hard grasp.

"I don't want to go into there. I don't want it to know that much about me. Do you want to know that much about me? ...No. No I wouldn't think you'd want to."

Or his brother's, or his father's, but it was Miller that was at risk of being dragged in. And he knew very well that if Liquid put more mind to it, he would be able to.

Again, Miller had a point. There was so much for him back on the ship he'd never be able to do here. Hadn't this been his big second chance? Or, well, third chance, anyway. He was going to get a puppy, and he was sort of making friends, and when he got back home if he didn't die of that whole aging issue he could maybe start right back where he left off.

But with a puppy.

"I don't... I don't want to. Don't want to bloody do this. But I can't..." Another frustrated noise, another halfhearted attempt to shake himself away. "You understand, don't you? It won't..."

He couldn't stand times like these, times when he felt vulnerable, at another's mercy. He was supposed to be strong, dammit. He was the flaw, the garbage copy, always trying to find his own place in the world, and he couldn't afford to be weak. And here he was, doing things not of his own free will but of that of that AI.

He let out a sort of strangled noise like he was trying to say two different things at once.

As much as he appreciated Miller's help, he wished no one else could be here to see him like this.

"Get me out of here." It seemed to take all his strength to say that so firmly, and the second he did, his expression blanked again. "Let go. We have to keep going."

"Alright, alright. I'm going to do like you tell me." That first one. Quickly he jammed the stun weapon against his torso and fired, blindly at the first spot that presented itself. He hoped it worked quick. He did feel a little guilty, though. For all his efforts to talk him out of it, now he was just left with the one option.

"Good. Isn't this easy? It's--"

He hadn't noticed the weapon, too busy doing what he was supposed to do to actually pay attention. If he'd been in his right mind long enough, he'd have noticed.

But he hadn't been, had only returned to reason in short bursts, and he quickly slumped against Miller, out cold.

Well, that was one way to do it.

He was heavy, all sturdy muscle, and when he caught his body he felt a lot like his father, too. He crouched, pulled Liquid's arm, hauled him over his shoulders in a fireman carry.

God he was heavy, and Kaz was so much lighter than he used to be. It would have to be slow going. The crutch? He'd have to come back for it. It was left abandoned in the hallway as he made his way back to the ship. It would have been easier to use the wormhole fulton, but decontamination was still necessary.

His muscles were burning and his artificial limbs were stinging by the time the trip was done, but he felt accomplished. He was exhausted, and he sat Liquid up in a seat on the transport, buckled him in for the moment.

When Liquid started coming to, it took him a moment to realize he was restrained, and another moment to remember what had happened.

Clearly, he wasn't happy about it.

"You bloody--" he started, awash in his anger, then he stopped and the blank look returned briefly to his face. "...Wait. We're going the wrong way." Then he shook his head as if to clear it, then again for good measure.

They were going away from the station. Wouldn't the AI's influence let up? Would he be able to stop trying to convince people to stay?

Could he go back and punch that stupid AI in its stupid whatever it was kept in?

"My head's killing me," he reported after a few moments. "I... We're... we're heading back, right?" He fell silent again, as if trying to listen to something.

"Yeah, we're going to be heading back. No. No don't listen to it." Again he reached up, made Liquid look at him.

"You pretended to be me when I was older. Can you tell me about myself?"

It was just a way to distract him. And out of curiosity. "Come on. Do an impression of my voice. I want to hear it."

Yes, this was creepy. He knew it was. Listening to the man that ordered your death, or does one day, and impersonated you to get to someone close. He hated the notion, hated that his image was used that way. But he had to clamp down on the hatred, and bury it in a place that made his chest hurt.

He would at least stay here until just before the transport was due to leave, though.

"I have to listen. I have to. I don't want to. I have to." His voice was halting, like he was arguing with himself. He was arguing with himself. This entire time, that's what he'd been doing.

"You... what?" Even if he wasn't in a somewhat dazed state, that would have surprised him. He stared at him blankly before speaking once more. "I'll need... your sunglasses." It made the impersonation so much easier. "This was supposed to be Octopus's job." Like that made it any better.

But a part of him wondered if, maybe, if Miller'd heard his own voice, would it help convince him? Looking down at the floor in front of him, he focused a bit, dug up the old voice, the old accent.

"Snake. We have to get back to the station."

Looked like the turmoil in his mind wasn't over just yet. At least he wasn't fighting to escape his restraints. His subconscious could offer himself that much.

"Wait!" he said, accent almost slipping but he recovered it quickly. He stared at Miller like he wasn't actually seeing him. "No. No. Don't listen to it. It's lying, Snake. It's trying to get into your mind."

Liquid was still fighting.

Note to self. Watch out for some guy named Decoy Octopus. Keep tabs on that name whenever he made it home.

Reluctantly Miller took off his glasses, and held them out to Liquid, squinting hard in the light. It wasn't a perfect impersonation, but Miller was aware that, as a man that learned to speak English with as little accent as possible so that he wouldn't be judged (Japan, Korea, and Vietnam hostilities had all bore down on America for decades) that he achieved a carefully maintained level of US generic.

Guess it probably didn't help in this case.

He looked a little more Japanese without the glasses, otherwise he didn't wear much of the ethnicity outwardly. That, and he looked remarkably young for his age (probably had helped Liquid out there too). He puts the glasses on Liquid, looking up at him with an odd, quizzical expression.

"Like that you could almost pass for my son instead." Or at least someone one of his sons would grow up to look like.

Liquid stared at Miller from behind the glasses, expression still blank. Still, he remained silent for a while, apparently thinking, rather than trying to convince Miller to bring him back, to stay back. For now.

The glasses were a good, tangible reminder of what he'd been fighting for, what he'd been doing before he died. He didn't want to throw all that away. Didn't want to, but couldn't help following what that voice in his mind was telling him.

The AI was still so convincing, even if its influence was slipping. Liquid was fighting back, but it took a lot out of him. With Miller's help, though, maybe he could beat it. He just had to focus on everything else.

Focus on the memories. Focus on the present. Focus on what he wanted to do, really wanted to do. Focus on anything but how much he wanted to get back to the station.

"Yeah?" His accent was back, no longer trying to mimic Miller's voice. One word at a time. Less likely to go off on another tangent about staying on the station. "It was... last minute. This. Our... The man for the job died. But. I did well."

It was eerie, watching the other man return to himself from behind his glasses. Sorta made him want to jerk them off his face, retreat for his own good. Sort of. He stuck by his scruples. Saving a man's child (if an unwanted one), saving a fellow crew member, saving someone he saw as a homeless little boy. Hell. Tretij was probably the only home he ever knew.

"I don't think I could do your voice. Not even on my best day. Funny how it doesn't work two ways."

Besides, he liked to wear shirts with his trenchcoats.

"How did that man die?" Now he was curious. He doubted that he did it, not if he was dead for a few days. But... well... when else would you have the chance to find out what happened after you died.

Edited (homophones AND ALSO AN EXTRA QUOTE GODDAMN why can't I proofread right) 2016-04-20 07:12 (UTC)

For a second, Liquid almost smiled. "You could try. Wasn't like I'd... spent years perfecting your accent. Not... not bad for something I figured out on the fly, right?"

You know, if they skipped the whole had Miller killed thing.

He stiffened up a bit at the question. "It doesn't matter. If we stay--" No. Stop that. Think about anything else. Think about a way out of this, not having to explain the virus. Not giving information up to anyone who asked, even if it didn't really matter in the long run.

"A virus. Created to target my team. Carried by... my brother." Or... he could just tell the truth, apparently. Still, it was better to talk about that than trying to convince Miller to stay on the station. If he was talking about something else, D-E-L and its ideals could just wait their damn turn.

He took a deep breath. Well, memories of death were one thing to fight an AI's influence, right? A hand curled into a fist at his chest. "Gave you a heart attack's what it did. We tried to get a vaccine, but we were unable, and... we died. All but Ocelot. If it wasn't the virus, it was my brother. Killing us all off. Killed Mantis."

The severance of their connection had hurt more than his own death.

Another deep breath, and...

"There won't be anything like that on the station." Damn, and he was doing so well.

"Carried by your brother?" Willingly? No, he can't imagine that. Miller is sure he wouldn't have tolerated that in any student, not after watching his men die like they did. Not with his hard resentment of plague as a weapon. He can logically guess that whatever these men were doing, they needed to be stopped at all costs.

He'd get back to that, though. Or ask David himself. "Alright, well," he'd sounded so exhausted, so tired for so long, that Liquid's boisterous tone and near prissy manner of speech was a little harder to achieve. Ten years ago, he would have been all over the attempt. "My brother had-," he cleared his throat, thumped his chest. No, no here he would try again. "My brother had fifty huskies and probably tried to walk them all at once and called it dog sledding."

It was a little closer. Not enough to pass as Liquid. But enough to show an attempt and claw at what was left of his humor. (Despite everything else about the conversation making every hair he had stand on end.)

"See? I'm no good at it."

Distract him from the disease. From the death. From the loss brought on from a naked mind left alone. Keep him there.

At first, Liquid just stared at him the way he'd been staring at him before. Blank, unfocused, face still partially hidden behind the sunglasses. Silent, but like he'd start trying to talk about the station again.

And then he laughed.

It was quiet at first, barely noticeable, but soon it turned into a genuine laugh.

"I don't know, it was pretty close," he said, his voice more normal than it had been the whole time. So far so good. "Might not fool anyone, but it wasn't the worst."

He could still feel something clawing at the back of his mind, trying to get him to remain on the station, to fight against Miller, but his focus had already moved on. Maybe this could distract him enough. Maybe.

Even if it didn't, at least it'd distract him from the memories of everything he'd lost.

"Did he really do that? With the huskies?"

Miller finally reclaimed his sunglasses, tired of squinting. There was no way he could have brought himself to genuinely insult David, not when that was where all his hope for a good future lied. His chance to correct the mistakes he helped initiate in the past.

"He did have fifty and he raced in the Iditarod. And knowing his father, it's entirely possible he might have tried to walk fifty dogs at once."

All the Snakes were exasperating in their own way, some more dangerously so than others. He'd not seen the worst of his student's side yet, but he'd already seen him be a heathen and put out his cigarette on his pants leg. It was a trait he assumed he genetically came with.

Liquid let Miller take his sunglasses back without complaint, and when he did, his eyes seemed to be a bit more lively, his stare less blank.

It was working, whatever it was Miller was doing here. Slowly but surely.

"I think I'd just be able to handle the one, really. How do you even feed that many? Your life'd have to be... dog forever."

It was a lot easier to ignore the thoughts of remaining on the station being distracted like this.

"It actually takes almost a tonne of high quality dog food to sustain a full sledding team just through the duration of the race." Miller still coming equipped with more information than someone would expect. Just this storage shed of random facts he'd collected from every place because he was interested.

"So somehow, he had to come up with that much food for at least one competition, to have available in the span of just a few days. And the maximum dogs allowed for a single sled in the race is sixteen." So in a way, Liquid wasn't wrong. If it was something someone did, for the time that they did it, it had to be their livelihood. A full investment.

The talk was helping with the strong feelings of unease that had been striking him, too. Better to think about that. The rest he shoved to the back of his mind to ask David about later. He'd be able to tell him more.

Edited 2016-04-21 01:18 (UTC)

"At that point you'd have to buy the whole bloody pet food shop."

It wasn't anything Liquid'd ever be able to do that, he knew that one. One, he'd be able to handle, like he'd said. Hell, maybe even two (although he'll definitely just start with the one). But sixteen, he couldn't handle, and fifty he couldn't even fathom.

The hell else did his brother do?

It took him a moment to really realize that he hadn't even thought about staying on the station in a good bit of time. And now that he thought about it... he wasn't so compelled to mention it, either. Oh sure, it was still there in his mind, but he could control the thoughts.

He could control the thoughts. His eyes widened. But he couldn't be sure just yet.

"So how much does just one need?"

"You know how much more food an athlete needs than a normal person. Well, working dogs require about twice as much as one that leads a more casual life. A few cups of food a day, preferably mostly meat proteins and low in grains.

"The amount of food varies on the energy the dog would need."

But then he heard the last call for the transport to leave, the sound of the engine, and having no desire to end up publicly nude more than necessary he rose to his feet.

"Alright. I'm going to go. You should be safe once you're away from the station." He hoped, anyway.

"Ah. I see." He could feed one dog easy then, especially since it wasn't going to be doing all that much. Just get some meat from the kitchen or something.

Liquid almost felt compelled to try to convince Miller again, or to get up and leave before the transport headed out, to head back to the station. But he stopped himself. Took a deep breath. He could get through this.

All thanks to Miller. "...Thanks. For everything. But if you tell anybody...." He let the threat hang in the air, as empty as it may have been. He wasn't too keen on dealing with any sort of punishment around here.

"I really appreciate the help."

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( april event log )

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Imagine I left the "Decoy"out of that previous tag.

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