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far from nowhere
"the trees rustle in the evening when we stand uneasy before our own thoughts."
With the events of Del Pascia behind the Moira, things are only now beginning to settle—and not very well. Through the combined efforts of some of the crew, D-E-L and her permanent residents were incinerated into the dust of space. While it’s not the most peaceful end, it is one, and not many are going to be thinking back on how nice Del Pascia’s facilities were for quite some time. Repairing what they could of the ship’s interior and putting as much distance between the Moira and the prison as possible, those aboard are informed by Navigation that they are approaching another planet. This means, of course, the potential for better supplies, as some things are beginning to dwindle, and the Captains elect to dock so long as the crew follows protocol. WELCOME TO AMISSIS-RE
Amissis-Re is an unregistered planet with no documented histories or signs of life. The Moira’s Navigation crew have scanned the planet for any usable resources and have discovered a faint signal emitting from beneath the surface of Amissi-Re. Using the transporters and any other crafts located in the Cargo Bay, the crew are able to travel to the source of the signal. Upon arriving in its exact location, they’ll find a small series of lakes that lead to a tower-like structure that appears to be in use. Crew must cross a poorly assembled bridge system that sways and dips when weight is applied to it in order to gain access to the entrance. Once there, a woman comes out to greet them and explains, excitedly, that she is so very happy that they have come to Amissis-Re.
Everyone can go home.
Their host insists that she has done the impossible and has somewhat fixed the Ingress that’s been built on Amissis-Re a long time ago, and what’s more, she can send crew home for short bursts of time. Upon following this woman inside, crew will find that the planet is not, in fact, barren at all. Diving deep into the underbelly of Amissis-Re, it’s like an eternal factory of machines, and while vast, for whatever reason, it also seems incredibly welcoming...
☄ LEAP OF FAITH ( 05.01 and on ) The barren planet of Amissis-Re is devoid of vegetation and organic life except for a lone woman, and the planet itself is an intricate honeycomb of machines that go for miles below the surface. Yet, that seems insignificant and unimportant in comparison to the news that the crew has just received. After Thán has looked at the Ingress, he tells the crew that he cannot say for certain that it is properly functioning, but Emiri native, Ben Link, will volunteer to test it out.
An elevator takes crew down to a glass platform that overlooks an inverted Ingress portal. In order to return home, the Moirans will have to take a leap of faith and jump in. Ben, in order to show his commitment to the crew and willingness to help get them home, takes that jump with Captain Thán seconds behind him. Jumping feels like dropping through wind; lights swirl, it’s warm, and a soft buzzing encompasses you as you fall. You don’t feel the landing. One moment you’re falling, and the next, you’re in a new world.
A few hours pass before a similar elevator rises from below and to the left of the Ingress, stopping beside the platform. Ben and Thán step out unharmed.
It works, and everyone can temporarily go home. Will you jump? ☄ COMBINE THE EXTREMES ( 05.01 and on ) The woman that greeted the crew and led them to the platform will allow anyone that wants to go home the opportunity to go. There’s only one catch: it’s not permanent. She’s worked for years to fix the Ingress so that she can return to her own home but hasn’t been able to make the trip an everlasting one. Everyone always comes back. Always. They go for a few hours, at first, but that amount of time increases with each visit.
The one guideline, she says, is that you can’t go alone. Each trip requires a partner, or it becomes too much for the mind to bear. These rules are simple: the world takes shape depending on who jumps first, but if crew go hand-in-hand and leap at the same time, the worlds combine. This new world will be populated with people that existed in both and may appear to be a jarring combination of both worlds. It may seem unusual, but if the woman is asked, she’ll explain that the combined world does exist as there are more universes than can be imagined. The Ingress tries to take the person to their own home, their original home, but when jumping together, it finds the closest possible match and deposits them there instead.
From that point on, you can travel the world together or split up, but remember, this world is a living, functioning world. It doesn’t matter if it’s the home of one crew member or a combination. You meet other people. You can get hurt. You influence and are influenced by others.
Be cautious, and enjoy your visit “home”. ☄ LINGER ON ( 05.05 and on ) The more times the Amissis-Re Ingress is visited, the more it seems that your trips last longer and the experience becomes even more vivid. More real and harder to distinguish from the current reality that you know. It’s difficult to explain why, but you get the feeling that maybe if you went without the aid of the host, that perhaps you’d be able to stay. Forever. It takes some subterfuge, but in time, you see your chance: she’s nowhere in sight, and you take it.
The world you are in now is completely your own, whether another crew member accompanied you or not. The people you know are there, everything around you is exactly as you remember. A few hours pass, and you don’t feel that familiar tug, that invisible hook at the base of your spine that signals that your visit is over. Even more time goes by, and you’re still in that world, your home. When the first day has passed, you begin to question if you’ll ever go back, or if life on the Moira was all a dream. The person with you won’t be able to convince you otherwise, and they’ll start to feel less real, a stranger that you used to know.
There’s only one way to go back to the Moira. Someone from the other side has to come in and retrieve you both. Once in, contact with a third will jump-start a link through the Ingress, and it will pull all crew back to the platform.
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thisavrou_log2016-05-01 09:04 pm
no subject
[This is the first anyone's said anything of the sort to her, and it startles her enough that she pauses in putting his shirts into her bag. She stares up at him with wide eyes, a little alarmed that something's trapped and she's too dense to realize.
Eventually though, she does stuff the clothes into the bag, and her mouth draws into a tight line. ]
Is it something we need to focus on freeing?
no subject
Absolutely not. I don't know much about it, but it's something that should stay trapped. It eats energy. There used to be four captains... it killed one of them.
[He shrugs, then adds,]
I'll try to find out more, but people don't really discuss this sort of thing as much as I'd like.
What have I told you about the last ship I was on?
no subject
If it's shittier than where we are now, I can't blame you for not talking about it.
[She's much more concerned about the fact that one of the captains was killed by something that eats energy and no one's ever mentioned that to the new arrivals.]
Why? Was there something that ate energy on that ship? There's people on the Moira with powers, ones I don't understand. But I know they must take a lot of energy to have and use. It's like a buffet for something that killed one of the captains.
no subject
I don't know if it ate energy. I've never had that impression... although people on that ship also had powers.
[He heads towards the door, back to the hall, then sighs.]
It... he... had free run of the ship, and he was very concerned with isolating people and then getting them to do things for him... I don't think he could act on his own. Probably irrelevant to our current situation, except with regard to my happiness.
[That word comes out rueful this time. There's another door a little down the hall.]
Do we want some sweatpants?
no subject
[She lamely responds, shrugging. She won't turn down sweatpants, because the ship can be chilly. And sweatpants are warm. She likes being warm, so the logic says to allow him to grab them some. Besides, she wants to focus on what he's just talked about rather than clothes.]
What did that thing on the other ship do to you?
[She sounds a little protective, even if it's already over and done with and she can't do shit to help him.]
no subject
As he and Cassandra continue to talk, he clears each room, and they hit the drawers, finding men's casual wear in smaller sizes in one room and larger sizes in the other, along with some business wear.]
Well. Among other things, he trapped me in a dark maze for what I thought was about a year and attempted to brainwash me into helping him. Long on promises, short on answers. [All of that comes out flatly. His tone only livens a little as he continues.] I'm fairly sure that he was originally the captain of the ship, but he was human... I was never able to fully establish what caused the change in him, or how he was able to do these things.
no subject
[She suggests it softly, trying not to feel anger toward a situation she can't control. It's already passed, and he's safe on the Moira. They may not be fully safe here, but that doesn't mean it's not anything that can't be easily handled.]
He could've been there a long time, long enough to create some kind of change. Maybe he was grooming you to take his place. Or be his second in command.
[Because nothing says avoiding feelings of horror by awkward attempts at humor.]
no subject
I don't think so. I wasn't the only person he trapped, and --
[Tucked under some folded sweatpants in Matsuda's drawer is a gravure idol book: a pretty, smiling woman in very little clothing peers up at them. L snorts and rolls his eyes.]
This might be worth something on the Moira.
[But the humorous digression is gone as soon as he picks up his conversational thread.]
In any case, his ex-wife was on the ship, and he'd previously prompted someone to severely injure her. The impression I had was that he wanted foot soldiers. It wasn't very long ago, so I....
[He trails off and shrugs, looking sober and helpless. He'd still been having nightmares during his first weeks on the Moira -- walk as far as you want, there's no light, no food, no water, nothing but the tapping and the voice -- and he doesn't know what's happened to anyone else who went into the halls when he did in the time since he was pulled away.]
no subject
Mostly because it's a shitty time to discuss anything but what he's talking about.]
Hey.
[Gently, she gives him a nudge with her hip.]
Whatever he was planning, he can't get you here. If he tries, I'll take him down myself. And if you can't sleep at night? [She understands how that feels, since she has such awful nightmares that she prefers not to sleep if she can help it.]
I can't either, so we can stay up together.
no subject
What makes you think I slept at night before that?
But in all honesty, I'm not worried about anything on the lines of him turning up here. I'm relatively certain that the Moira isn't even in the same universe, and I strongly suspect that he was tied to the other ship. It's only --
[He moves towards the door.]
Guns and food are both downstairs.
You can build a life, yes. I had... I was. I'm not convinced it was a very good one, but it was mine. I'll try here, but... if you can be ripped out at any point, and so can anyone else, how many times do you have to rebuild it? The situation seems terribly unstable.
[He sounds relatively unemotional about all of this, partly by design, partly by nature, partly because investment of that kind is draining in the way he'd always suspected it would be... but even so, a little bit of sadness and exhaustion have both crept into his tone. He's left someone behind, but only in a way that's indicated to him that he'd gotten more attached than he'd realized.]
no subject
[The look she gives him says she's not about to let him do that, no matter how exhausting it is to start all over again on a new ship.]
There's no point in trying to survive if that's all you're going to do.
[Despite the plentiful horrible things that have happened to her, she's a survivalist at heart. She fights to survive because she has hope somewhere inside of her that she can have a decent life. And so far, being on the Moira is the closest she's come in years. She still longs for the people she left behind back on Earth, but is starting to think of the life she's making for herself on the ship as home. That concept is important to her, but she understands that it may not be for everyone else.]
no subject
No. I really don't think doing nothing would be very like me. Although depression is always a risk for anyone in extreme circumstances.
[He says that clinically, as though he doesn't have that kind of response to extreme setbacks, or to chronic bafflement.
Was this his life -- the life he created for himself, where he was most active and effective? The alien feeling might fade if he were able to stay here for days, but with only maybe another two hours or so left, it just feels like he's walking through the accurate set of a film based on his old life. It doesn't have as much to do with him anymore as he'd like.
Maybe he'd get comfortable again on his return... the fact that people on the Tranquility reported not remembering their time there after returning to their original homes for a while makes it seem more likely, although it's hard to say how the Moira might tie into that. Or maybe it will never seem right again.
Still, it's always hard to shake the feeling that circumstances have forced him into a diminished role. He shouldn't be the observed, or the acted-upon: he should be the observer and the actor. Being in a headquarters he'd built for himself at his most active and powerful redoubles that feeling.]
How would you say that you're building a life?
[There's no slyness in that, although he does read more of her network communications than he lets on.]
no subject
[The answer is slightly snapped, and she gives a shrug of her shoulders. She has to remind herself that he has yet to prove that he's out to get her, and that she trusts him just about more than anyone else here. So she can at least give him a half assed answer.]
Meeting people, I guess? I'm working, and finding people who like being around me. It's a hell of a nice change.
[She doesn't want to even begin to touch the depression topic, because it's something she suffered from the entire time she was trapped by Tobias. She refuses to ever get back to that mental point in her life again, so it's best to just not even think about it.
Luckily, the elevator dings and they're on their new floor, and she motions for him to lead the way so she can follow along after him.]
no subject
Food before guns.
[He leads them both to another door set into the wall nearer to the console, which opens to reveal a corridor. As they move down it, they pass a few more doors... a server room, something else. Eventually they reach a largeish industrial kitchen, clean and seemingly empty. As they walk, he asks,]
How do you find the intelligence work?
[This is an environment where he can ask that sort of question, and even if others were around, it might not be out of place. Although it's not something he would ask in front of Light or Misa, for the sake of Cassandra's safety.]