[MISSION: A KNOCK AT THE DOOR] - An xxx Years Later Meme

[onemind]

CHARACTERS: EVERYONE
WHERE: Station 72
WHEN: DAY :001
SUMMARY: The Hosts return from Research Vessel "Whaligoe".
WARNINGS: Disturbing imagery. Y'all know the drill. Please include any applicable warnings in your subjects lines as this one won't be maintained.

MISSION: A KNOCK AT THE DOOR

STATION 72
DAY :001

HOME SWEET HOME
AND JUST LIKE THAT, YOU'RE BACK. The tingling, half nauseated sensation of punching through the multiverse fades as the windowless stealth ship passes into the Station's landing channel. With a slow-motion jerk, forward motion ceases completely. After a few minutes - harnesses being unbuckled, kits roused from their racks -, the rear of the ship unfolds and there is the hangar deck. Everything is exactly as you left it days ago.

A voice bloom in your head. It says:

( You'll have to tell us everything soon. )
Not that there's much to tell. In the last - it's hard to say, but years? Surely it can't have been a decade - span of your life, you've been to a dozen worlds in a dozen universes. You've seen stars collapsing, you've watched empires crumble; you've seen peoples at war, the end of a dynasty, and the beginnings of new settlements in far flung places. The Whaligoe, a sprawling deep space research ship at the edge of a now distance universe from which you've just returned, is hardly the most exciting place you've ever come back from.

But maybe Cathaway's curiosity has something to do with your (easily won) cargo: sixteen large, heavy canisters carrying what the Whaligoe's crew had nicknamed 'Datafuel.' What they're needed for is a mystery. Why handling the canisters triggers some low sense of revulsion doesn't make much sense either.

( For now, rest. ) says that achingly familiar sensation of Cathaway - of warmth, of pleasure, of belonging somewhere that you never expected to but do. ( And welcome home. )


ALL GOOD THINGS...
THIS IS HOW IT IS: There are more Hosts on the Station now then there have been in a long time. It'll be years yet before until anyone could call Station 72 crowded (would that even be possible, with the way the Station adapts for its occupants?), but it's no longer the strange half-breathing entity it once was. There is life here. Sometimes it doesn't feel like being divided from everything that ever was or will be. Sometimes it feels like this matters. Sometimes it feels like this is the right thing. Sometimes it even feels like the moment before opening a door and that the things waiting on the other side are better. It feels like maybe this is ending. Maybe that's what hope is.

The Gardens have grown dense and beautiful. Life Support sprawls through a half dozen corridors. The hum of the Station is a cat's pleased purring. Sometimes, that feels good.





THE STATION
12 HOURS LATER

...MUST COME TO AN END
SOMETHING ARRIVES in the space between spaces. It's as a needle piercing flesh. It's the snap of a finger breaking. It's an animal scream.

It's a scream.

The Station screams.

Gravity twists. Sleeping hosts are dumped from their beds. Ships in the hangar slide against their moorings, tethers snapping. Corridors writhe. Walls become ceilings, ceilings floors. And then it all snaps back. A panic stricken moment of stillness is pursued by the rancid melting tang of go, go, GO--! in your bones.

The first strikes from Enemy ships against Station 72 feel like being set on fire. You know this more intimately than anything else you've known in your entire life: You need to escape the Station.

THE CAGE - Getting to the Hangar deck to the ships should be as easy as wanting to be there and turning a corner. But if the mental link alarm burning Hosts up isn't indication enough of something being wrong, the Station's interior makes that impossibly clear. Once recognizable corridors melt and twist into bizarre shapes; open doorways become collapsing tunnels; vast cavernous spaces appear with splintering pathways leading across them. Garden plants meld with walls to create unexpected jungles, gravity shifts, a swimming pool stands upright without emptying. Hosts will never find themselves faced with a dead end, but they will discover a veritable labyrinth before them. They are pursued by a constant certainty: move quickly, because all around them Station 72 is coming unravelled.

THE MENAGERIE - ...which is made more complicated by fact that as the Station falls to pieces, the shared mental link of the Hosts begins to go haywire. Symbiote abilities merge and mutate. Memories and feelings and shared hallucinations disgorge themselves across the station. The texture and intensity is so extreme that it would be easy for a Host to get lost in them. Maybe they're familiar memories; maybe they're completely alien; maybe they're a dangerous distraction or maybe - just maybe - they're the Station's last desperate bid to pass something important along before it's too late.

Only a handful of Hosts converge on the Hangar Deck, but it's clear from the straining sensation of every air molecule that there's no time to wait around. As the Hosts board back onto the stealth ship, portions of the very surroundings begin to melt as quicksilver: the floor, the exterior walls, neighboring ships. Through these pools pass a cacophony of shapes both strange and familiar. The Enemy comes in many forms.

--Which are rocked by an explosion, a host evaporating in a shocked impact that seems to destabilize one of the primary quicksilver portals. Standing in the doorway leading to the armory, The Prince reloads the Albark rocket thrower. "Leave!" he barks, aims again.

Three things happen at once: ( Open it! ), says a voice you know and the Prince fires; the quicksilver portal bursts around the second explosion like a wound and the void it opens to isn't the dark of the In Between at all and from it the Dark looks back like a wolf in the dark with eyes like rasping scissors snapping wide which with every star in the universe says

I SEE YOU.

and the Hangar Deck collapses beneath the shuttle as the boarding ramp screams closed. The ship falls like a stone. It falls forever.





A PLACE WITH NO NAME
DAY :003

SYMBIOSIS
THERE'S NOTHING on the stealth ship's long range sensors. The universe you've fallen into is as empty as-- twin narratives exist in the mental link. One is bone still, the outline of a place that used to be. The other is the too loud mish-mash of information that leaked through the symbotic link during Station 72's collapse. It's confused and unfiltered. It's how to fly a ship; and it's a girl's face that isn't your species and you've never seen her, but you miss her anyway; and it's an ocean you know; and it's exactly how many dry rations are packed into the shuttle's cargo; and it's the echo of an animal screaming and it's--

Quiet. It's mostly very, very quiet. There's no dread, no fear, no burning ache of the world ending. It's empty.

Open it, someone said. So someone does: a canister of Datafuel is cracked open and from it spills something wet and horrible. It's run through with ropy white filament threads.

Someone opened a Host's head once, you know (you do know, even if you weren't there). It looked something like that.

Anyone who touches the 'Datafuel' falls immediately into a comatose state. It lasts for twenty hours. When they wake up, they know where to go.


IN A MIRROR, DARKLY
THERE ARE NO WINDOWS in the stealth ship, so when it jumps to the logged coordinates it's impossible to tell where or what it's jumped to. It's quiet. With a slow-motion jerk, forward motion ceases completely. After a few agonizing minutes - does anyone move? does anyone do anything? -, the rear of the ship unfolds and there is a hangar deck.

It isn't the one you left. It isn't attached to corridors you know. This place is quiet like a shed insect skin.

In the cold low standby light of the shuttle's interior, one of the previously comatose Hosts (maybe it's you) says:

"Welcome to Station 144."

---

((OOC Notes: Welcome back! For one night only however long you yahoos want to keep a meme alive for, your sybmiotic home away from home is...well, some version of it is around anyway. Did you play in the game, but don't want to play the same character? Go for it. Want to play the same character, but say they're a different version than the one you played in game? Have a party! Didn't ever play in S72 but want to noodle around? Have at it! Just want to pick up more or less right where you left off? I ain't gonna stop you (although I might gently recommend that Some Time Has Passed since we left Hyrypia).

For anyone who needs a reminder on how the game works, info links are in the navigation below. No, this isn't any kind of game canon. It's a meme, Jan. Don't overthink it.

Have fun. :)))

NAVIGATION • PREMISE • SETTING • FAQ

( CODE BY WHAMBAM )

Comments

Asuka Langley Soryu

[redheadcarrier]

Welcome Home

It's been years, now. Years she didn't think she would have, years of trying to figure out what she is and who she is and where she is and a dozen different universes, each as varied as the last. She's older now, too, grown into her gangly limbs and no longer feeling like she doesn't belong in her body. It's better, in a way. And it's worse, in a way. She doesn't like becoming used to things, even if this is the best she can hope for.

Maybe she just doesn't like settling.

She's a little tired, though, and that leaks through the link as she comes down the boarding ramp, shoulders slumped a little, but head up. It's still strange, it will always be strange, to think of this place as home.

But it's been more of a home to her than her house in Germany ever was. Even if there are still empty spots in her head where people should be.

"I want a shower," she comments to no one in particular, "That stupid place was getting cramped. And dull."

She allows that to sink in before shooting her conversation partner a look, "What do you think was in those stupid things anyway?"

Run, Run, Run

This isn't how it's supposed to be. This isn't what's meant to happen. This place is safe, as safe as any other place Asuka has spent in her life, but now every cell in her body is screaming at her to go. To run. Because there's nothing left here, it's all falling apart and she has to go.

She doesn't stop to grab much of anything. She just goes, letting her legs carry her, letting the panic direct her, because as much as she'd like to stop and think and plan, there's no way she can. Not when she can feel and hear a thousand thoughts a minute pounding away inside of her skull and not when she can feel the ones that aren't hers leaking through.

Or maybe they are hers. She doesn't remember. Can't remember. Everything is going insane and nothing looks like it should.

There's a sense of relief that's almost palpable when she finds another Host. She's holding it together, managing that tough exterior, but it's cracking. She grabs an arm, knuckles white, "Which way to the shuttle at? Everything's different!"

Maybe she should follow her feet. Maybe stopping is a terrible idea.


Arrival

She doesn't feel rested when they finally come down the ramp again. She feel tired and drained and sick to her stomach, but she can't express that on her face. It's just a scowl, set and thin-lipped. A sullen silence that permeates the air around her as she tries to sort the memories in her head. Did she always have all of these?

She doesn't know.

She just knows that she doesn't know this place. An unfamiliar ceiling.

"This is bullshit."

She's a sense of barely restrained anger and frustration and despair and she's on edge. Different from a day ago, all of her control shot to hell. She screams the words at the empty bay as if it will bring someone out to start giving them answers.

"This is bullshit!"

Then she drops her head and wraps her arms around herself while she takes a few deep, shuddering breaths. She just needs to get a grip. That's it. That's all.

This is fine.

Except it isn't and never will be and maybe she's destined to be chased from one spot to another by loss and disaster.

"Why are we here?"

She knows why.

Arrival

[earthborn]

"Because we fight or we die."

Shepard's voice is flat, uncompromising, but then that's not as ominous a sign as it used to be; it's hard to intimidate people who can tell what you're about to do before you do it. She's not about to actually make good on any of the threat implied in the terseness of her tone.

"Focus, Asuka," A softer command, but more meaningful. On your feet, N7, the echo of old brotherhood. Shepard stopped being selfconscious about it a long time ago, "The Station's dead."

Long live The Station.

"Time to move on. What'd you say this was, one-fourteen?"

vax'ildan.

[duskmeadow]

( HOME SWEET HOME )

[ Is this home?

It is by now. Or it's as close to a home as Vax has, and returning to it is a pale shade of the relief he'd once felt upon entering Greyskull Keep or Whitestone or Scanlan's Mansion. He is safe here. (Is he?) He can put down his daggers for a few moments without something alien and angry leaping out at him.

The voice in his head arrives like the tripping of cool fingers at the nape of his neck. Something bristles (feathers) at the arrival. Across space and time, something older and possessive still pulls at the thread of Vax's life. Maybe someday she'll reel him back to Tal'Dorei, but not this day. For now, Cathaway's voice beckons and Vax sighs, one hand pulling at the well-worn buckles of the Deathwalker's Ward. ]

Time for a drink?

[ More like time for a scalding bath. Vax had helped lift the barrels of their hard-won cargo from the shuttle. The lingering sense of disgust and the urge to recoil still crawls along the surface of his mind, unchecked. ]

( THE END )

[ Vax's mind blares a single statement like an alarm bell: Where is my sister?

It blasts outward like a siren as he runs. The Station is folding in on itself. It's dying, Vax knows. He hears the death knell passing like a scream through his mind, knocking down all defenses, forcibly imprinting—

Everything. Anything. Vax can't make sense of it. He steps through a shadow and hits a wall, doubles over, vomits. Nothing works as it should. ]

Run. [ did he shout that or did he scream it? Vax can't tell. ] Don't just stand there, we have to run!

[ He's grown so powerful. Before this, he'd been able to step through shadow and draw another person along with him. He doesn't trust that now. ]

We need to leave.

[ Vex'ahlia, Vex'ahlia, where is Vex'ahlia? ]

( SYMBIOSIS )

[ Vax is thinking of dragons.

The quiet reminds him of the aftermath, huddled in Greyskull Keep, expecting the worst. Something terrible has happened. His mind is still a jumble, and he feels like he's been hit by a truck. There won't be bruises, but Vax feels the ache of them anyway as he sits up in the dark and quiet. ]

What now?

[ His mind stretches out, grasping, even as Vax tries to steady himself. What do they have? Who do they have?

In the back of his head, feathers, the unspooling of red thread, the prickling of disembodied anger. He is farther from Her now, somehow. The Raven Queen is the only sense he has of distance. The coordinates tell him nothing except that he's far from home. His deity is the only true measuring stick, growing warmer and colder by degrees as he travels, doing someone else's bidding. ]

You're bleeding.

[ Pot, kettle. As usual, with Vax'ildan. ]

( WILDCARD )

[ do whatever, i'm down to clown. ]

the end / aka the first of MANY tags im gonna give u.

[faenthras]

[ It's screaming in her head. A piercing, unending death knell assaulting her mind. It's dying, the Station is dying. Vex'ahlia can barely breathe under the pressure. Information, feelings, everything, anything. Too much.

Vax.

A cry, a plea. She reaches out desperately for her twin, the familiar, the soothing presence of his mind. They have to go, they have to get out of here. He should be near, but she struggles to feel him. On shaky legs Vex'ahlia manages to stand, choking back a sob she is certain wasn't her own.

Vax'ildan, Percival, where are you?

The Station shakes, sends out a surge of run that reverberates through her bones. Vex runs, blindly, reaching for the distant thread of her brother. ]

SYMBIOSIS ey more shit 4 u i'll wc u later

[decisions]

[ red thread finds him, and percy grabs at it weakly. he's tired, half slumped into a corner and pressing his cheek against the coolness of something. his mind still feels aflame, throbbing, and there's blood staining his shirt sleeves, his throat, his upper lip, nose. he's winding a fist around that thread, pulling him closer in the dark until he can fist his hand in something real. ]

When aren't we?

[ a laugh, tired. one hand clutches, the other pushes when it finds purchase on vax's chest, like he doesn't know what to do, like he only wants to touch.

his glasses are gone, lost in the fuss, so he squints just a little until he pulls vax close enough to make out the lines of his face. ]

caleb widogast.

[potential]

( HOME? )

[ Time doesn't pass as it should. It starts and stops, runs together, slows to a crawl. Caleb feels the moment it clicks over to a reset as he steps off the shuttle.

So we begin again.

How many lifetimes has it been now? Caleb remembers them all, but the edges are blurring. One mission slides into the next. There is always something else and something else and he has not yet found his escape. But he tries. The ship hums beneath his feet in a more pleasing welcome than the ping of words, begrudgingly, carefully, accepted into his mind. Caleb looks back at his disembarking team and the barrels, contemplating, before he stoops to lift Frumpkin into his arms. (Frumpkin is a cat, except for when he is other things, many other things, because Caleb has seen so many alien creatures and Frumpkin always obliges him, always.) ]

Where are you?

[ The words are spoken aloud, into the air, but they echo and echo, amplified by the outpouring of projected thought. He means Cathaway, but an assessment of anyone and everyone is not amiss. The surface of Caleb's mind is smooth as glass; it's a shield fired and scorched into place by necessity. All these years have only taught Caleb how best to keep his secrets. He projects out. He doesn't welcome in. ]

( AFTER? )

[ He survived.

Nothing but mild surprise and starbursts of pain follow that observation. He is alive. The attack had...succeeded? The only thing keeping Caleb from panic is the immediate perception of the buckle on the strap of his spell book holster digging into his ribs. He has the most important thing. Everything else—

Well.

The only thing that's kept Caleb alive this long is the laser focused belief that he can slip the binds of this world and reappear where he came from. Nothing about the attack on their station has dislodged that hope. This is just a new dimension to reckon with. (He feels something torn asunder in his chest. A sense of loss, another home destroyed; grief stirs every time he takes a breath.) He gets to his feet. The cat dances around his ankles as he slowly stretches his limbs, looks around the room. ]

How many of us survived?

[ There must have been casualties. Caleb finds it hard to believe everyone made it out, even if he can't exactly perceive just what has been lost along the way. His head is overstuffed with unfamiliar knowledge. In better times, he'd be horrified at the implication that his defenses were even momentarily breached. In better times, he'd sit down to puzzle through it all.

But this is not anywhere near ideal. Right now, they have to start planning. (It's the only thing that keeps the grief at bay. Move forward, focus on the plan, find something to do and do it.) ]

( WILDCARD )

[ do whatever!! let's get weird. ]

home.

[mauks]

Over here.

[ Mollymauk knows the question isn't for him, still he reaches out to Caleb's mind. To that familiar surface of smooth glass he finds so much comfort in. It's been so many lifetimes, so many he can no longer count, and Molly never really got used to others being able to reach out and touch his mind. But Caleb's was familiar, a rock in a sea of constant panic. A guard rock, hiding secrets upon secrets but Molly never minded that. He just liked the company.

His mind brushes up against Caleb's, a small tug towards the right back towards the stealth ship. It's impossible to miss Mollymauk in that outlandish multicolored coat, he gives Caleb a little wave before pushing off. Outwardly there is confident, casual ease of movement that would be convincing to anyone who has been in contact with Mollymauk's mind. On the surface of there is a familiar panic, the uneasiness often accompanied by the thought of welcoming someone in. He never quite got used to it.

Too much of a liar. The past twisted into sharp barbs hidden somewhere dark, somewhere no one should ever find or drag out into the light. It scares him, frankly, the possibility of someone dragging up the very thing he wants to ignore. Spent his two years of remembered life running from.

Enough of that.

Feet carry him across the space until Molly is standing beside Caleb, one arm quick to drape across the wizard's shoulders. Breathe in, out. There is that cool/warm presence. He shifts, angling his hand so his fingertips lightly brush against Frumpkin's fur. ]

Up on her throne, most likely. Doubt you'll get an answer.

eliot waugh.

[dependently]

( WELCOME HOME )

When is that going to stop feeling ominous?

[ Except it doesn't feel ominous. That's only a problem some of the time, when Eliot tries very hard to remember feeling at home anywhere other than here. He'd had a whole kingdom once, and yet— ]

Feels like the whole place missed us. Maybe we should skip the unloading thing and go straight to the Garden Party phase of this evening?

[ Evening? Morning? Afternoon? Eliot's just guessing wildly. He's gotten used to that too. It's not as disorienting as it used to be. He extricates his ever-present flask from his pocket, head tipping as he turns a full circle on one foot, settling back with very clear intentions to flee the scene. ]

No? No takers?

[ The unspoken but clearly broadcast undercurrent: your loss. ]

( I SEE YOU )

[ Once upon a time, a cluster of young magicians sat in a circle and cast a probability spell. Eliot remembers that. He remembers the monster that had been hunting them, and the whistling, the way it had played hide and seek and laughed before it ripped them apart.

Eliot hears that in his head as they fall, fall, fall.

But it's not the Beast. Truthfully, Eliot's lived through worse than the Beast. (Whether he'd wanted to or not.) And the thing hunting them, the thing that just killed their home? It was bigger and badder than anything else they'd encountered. He still remembers how that fucking thing had chased him directly into Cathaway's waiting arms.

He isn't sure Cathway made it. He's stretched out for her but reaching beyond their little ship makes him feel like he's suffocating. So he doesn't. ]

What're the odds the Destroyer back there catches up with us? [ A beat of silence. ] Anybody?

[ Eliot's well aware he's asking something no one knows the answer to. He isn't even hiding that fact in his. But he's asking because he can't be alone with that fear. It needs to be spoken aloud, and then they need to—

What?

That's the problem. What do they do now? ]

( WILDCARD )

[ y'all know the drill. ]

steven grant rogers

[fossils]

HOME SWEET HOME

[ He's not the first Steve Rogers to have found himself on the Station, though maybe one of the longer surviving ones (somewhere between two and three years, hard to keep track). There are two that he knows about in the bowels of the Station. He sees them, sometimes, when he sleeps. Can't tell if it's actually them or the memories of another Host, reaching out for someone that's nearly him.

God, he hates sleeping.

While other Hosts head to their bunks after the mission, he quietly slips into the Training Wing. (a) You can catch him there trying to torture a poor treadmill to death. Or you can find him afterward, (b) when he's drenched in sweat and poking through the kitchen in Life Support, frowning at a cardboard box with alien text and what looks to be a cartoon of a pink tapir with too many eyes.

Pours crumbs into a bowel. ]

Guys, I put my name on this - [ Look, he doesn't mind sharing but... ]

SOMETHING ARRIVES (THE MENAGERIE)

[ It's hard to look at him for too long. Sometimes he's three people at once - one tall and blonde, another darker and bearded, the last short and slender. Sometimes his skin is covered in sleek metal, clanking down the twisting hallways like he's decked in armor. He's easy to spot even in the chaos of the Station's demise, easy to hear, though you might wish that you hadn't. ]

Move! [ Every version of him shouts at once in the same voice, and he only realizes his mistake in reaching for your arm at the last second. Too late.

Metal moves like liquid from his fingers, binding you together. Pulling away doesn't help, the metal will pull at first, like hot cheese, before settling into a slightly more solid state. ]

CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE

( OOC: Previously here as decommission, pick a Steve any Steve, I'm happy to roll with whatever! )

Shepard

[earthborn]

i. _ home _
Coming home was the way it had always been. It's been a long time since home meant a shadowed corner or a barracks bunk or the ionizing beams of decontamination and a VI intoning XO Pressley stands relieved. The Station itself holds the stronger impression now, a path worn to dirt by time and familiarity's attrition.

Now home means, the settling in of Station's gravity, the looming purr of the Nest, and the shape, shadow-like in the many-minds reflected, of the hangar door. It has a particular proportion that has formed a symbol in their minds. This is the word that means: home.

Shepard cracks her neck around her armor as she watches the barrels being shifted. It's noisy and disgusting and satisfying as hell; she does it to annoy, but absentmindedly, thinking about hot meals and cold water, little fish behind the glass. It's good to be back.

"C'mon, people, let's get these secured!" She can't leave the hangar until the job's done. No one is stopping her, of course, but she's not hiding her sense of duty any more than she's hiding anything, "I don't know about you, but I need a drink and a steak. Not necessarily in that order."



ii. _ good things _
( For now, rest. And welcome home. )

Cathaway had said that, warmth and love ringing through the symbiote network like the peal of a bell. It resonated, true enough, and Shepard took it to heart. Her version of a rest? The shooting range.

There's just something... oddly soothing, about the rhythm of it. Fire, adjust, kickback, and the smell. She fell into it like a mantra, punctuated by the harsh, familiar hiss-chunk of the reload, thermal clips in a glowing, cherry-red pile to her left, haphazard and dangerous. The targets healed themselves, but she didn't mind. The point wasn't to shred paper, the point was to achieve that humming zen, half-divorced from herself, where nothing mattered much and she could simply be.

That is, until she gets hungry. It's only a matter of time.



iii. _ an end _
It's times like this that you really appreciate preparedness drills. Not that they help, in any specific way, but for Shepard it's all she can do to flare her biotics, and cling as gravity cuts and wavers, reverses and snaps back. She can anticipate the changes, only barely, but hasn't the mental wherewithal to do so. The world swims, mad Prothean screams, a cry of pain, for help, a warning, a desperate plea. She knows this horror, but that doesn't make coping with it any easier. It's good enough to just recognize it, and know she won't die.

Well. Not from the screaming, at least.

Shepard's one of the last to stumble into the hangar, helmet loose in one hand. When she sees the wolf, the thing in the dark, it's with Harbinger's voice that it speaks and it really is only the repeated commands to leave, get out of here that keep her from launching a fruitless suicidal attack. Still, the last thought, as the shuttle-hatch seals, and the Station is lost isn't even anything so sanguine as not again.

It's about the fucking fish. They hadn't done a damn thing to deserve it and... and the corpse of the Station is falling behind them, still living, still screaming, and somewhere aboard there's ten gallons cubed of saline live, and soon there won't be anything left at all.

"Son of a bitch," Shepard snarls. It's probably a bad thing, to punch the wall of the shuttle that hard. Maybe someone should stop her from doing it.



iv. _ symbiote _
The world is an open wound. And everything is falling out. Shepard curls in around herself, tightly-tightly-tightly, and this would be a misery even if everyone around her weren't wearing the same empty, shell-shocked expressions. There's nothing here but inventory and bodies, someone is piloting but at the moment she isn't sure who— could be any of them. Nobody knows where they're going.

Well, there is the one thing: the little cannisters, ugly and squat. Datafuel, they'd called it.

"Open it," She says, loud in the empty air. Something has to have come of this; it has to mean something, "Open it."



v. _ mirror _
The ship comes to rest like an elevator. There's a pregnant, expectant pause before the doors open, and everyone is staring at them in that same way. The long, pensive wait, certain only that there is a future and not what it's form will be...

The door opens and the light is. Painful. Familiar.

It's the hangar bay. At first it seems perfect mirror of The Station's. And Shepard stares at it for a long, ugly moment before the small differences register. Someone is standing too close behind her but she doesn't shrug them off, only turns her helmet in her hands and puts it on, seals hissing as they lock into place. Everything about the silence around them is death to her Spacer's sensibilities, and she's not the only one who's projecting that terrible unease.

"Alright, let's spread out. See what we've got— buddy system, people. Don't get stupid."

The Station is dead. Long live The Station.



vi. _ wildcard _

good things

[sizeofyourbaggage]

He doesn't always stay on the Station. Most of the time, yes, enough that he calls himself retired when he greats each new round of Hatchlings and he means it. But sometimes he goes on missions, when his particular skillset would be valuable and he's getting itchy from staying still for too long.

Sometimes he goes because Shepard asks him to, and he needs no other reason than that.

This mission hadn't been one of those. He'd stayed in touch, of course, a distant but steady hum, and feeling her step onto the Station again is simultaneously a sigh of relief and a rush of adrenaline.

Sam echoes Cathaway's welcome home, but not in words, not even mental ones - in the churn of the sea and the spark of electricity, the flow of wind and brush of feathers. A feeling too deep to call love, though they've said it before and they will again.

Sometimes he joins her physically on the shooting range, but tonight it's only his mental presence. It's no longer something he has to focus on stay with her, no concentrated attempted to keep part of his mind with her - it just is, always, because she has a piece of him in a way he's stopped trying to quantify.

Tonight he's cooking, because he knows he'll feel her hunger soon - and there's a flare of warmth when he does, a tug for her attention.

h o m e

[theycalledmeacurse]

It's good to be home.

How many years has it been? It has been years, hasn't it? Decades, perhaps. Time passes so strangely out here in the in-between, when they are more part of the whole than individual. Tied together with strings she hopes will never break, even though she knows it's inevitable. Loss is felt forever in the Nest, pockets of emptiness where family once filled, but there is still so much to live for. So much to come home to.

Stepping up behind the fiery woman who has changed her entire being, Rogue rolls her eyes at the familiar gross sound. That's her Shepard.

"I absolutely need a drink," she agrees with am amused smile. "And a nap. This mission was boring."

THOR!!!!

[gildr]

( HOMECOMING )

[ The Station hums beneath his feet, sings beneath the press of his palm against the wall. Thor has been here for only a fraction of his life, but he has spent much of that time considering the places where this machine reminds him of Asgard. This is science, as Banner would have explained, but it feels like magic. It warms to the touch and flourishes in his presence as Asgard once had.

It has been a long time since Thor has set foot on Asgard.

The indignity of his capture (this is still capture, regardless of his participation) has cooled. Patience is a hard-won lesson, and Thor reminds himself of it every time he feels a swell of frustrated fatigue upon returning to this place. He will return home someday. This is not forever. (Sometimes he does not believe that. Sometimes he feels the same comfort and relief when he arrives here as he once did upon setting foot on the bridge in Asgard.) He will dwell in this purgatory until it is no more. He reminds himself of all of this as he makes his way through the halls, allowing the Station to deposit him once again the Garden.

He needs a shower. He is streaked still with soot and scorched with ozone, but Thor still prefers over all the one place on this vessel that appears not to belong in this vessel at all. ]

Is anyone at home? [ He calls out, voice booming into the dense expanse. ] Anyone there?

[ On the Station, Thor has come to understand that there's always someone there. It just depends whether the answer is going to come from the trees or from within his own head. ]

( BATTLE ROYALE )

[ Booming from Thor's head, two conflicting thoughts scream out of his mind, cutting through the cacophony:

We must stand and fight.

We must save who we can and run.

Thor has ceded to the latter, recognized their home dies around them. There is nothing to save this place. He has seen his people into space once before. The terror of the flight from Asgard is playing in his mind as he breaks through to the hanger. Several people run past him. He does not stop, but moves past them, towards the armory he does not need. (He still has lightening in his blood. He still has a reforged and alien-built hammer at his belt. He is not afraid to step into space.) It's hard to tell if the Station is screaming or if his nestmates are screaming. The noise is almost crippling. ]

I'm going to stay, [ he announces, shaking off the single hand that reaches to draw him back. ] They should not fight alone.

[ And Thor is harder to kill than most people here. That counts for something. There is some responsibility for him here. ]

( WILDCARD )

[ come at me ]

OPEN.

[unsea]

( WELCOME HOME )

What a bounty.

[ says the man who did not attend the mission; an ancient thing even before he had arrived on the station, busy more and more with scientific endeavors and the matters of the station and its deeper roots than entering the field and the fray. he turns out so rarely, blossoming into rolling darkness and hungry beasts when he does, his patience an infinite thing -- his mercy shriveled up and decayed.

the white of the station does not suit him, in layers of black and gold - pale scars lining one side of his face, the sharp grey of his eyes sweeping over the canisters. slicing them apart, cataloging and categorizing. in his hands, the worn edges of a datapad that has seen better days and kinder treatment is filled with his collection. his notes. it's where his examination of the canisters goes now, as he walks around it in circles, laying the back of his hand to the surface to test temperature. ]

She says one thing, I want the opposite. Tell me now, while it's still fresh on your mind -- did you retrieve their research notes for me? I understand personal requests get... mixed up, especially in the heat of the moment. But this is -- we could use this for something quite unique.

[ his voice oozes something warm and paternal, but the warmth never reaches his eyes. the sensation of something old, something eldritch perched opposite of you rolls in dark, frigid waves from him. this is the darkling, aleksander morozova, a general and a scientist and a monster that doesn't bother trying to hide himself ( or his use ) all these years later. difficult to love, more difficult to avoid. ]

( IN A MIRROR, DARKL(LING) )

Cathaway and the Prince are dead. They live on within us, mourn them however your heart needs.

[ In the chill of the dark hangar deck, bedraggled and bloodied across the face ( his hands bleed, he blinks blood from the corners of his eyes and coughs wetly into the dark sleeve of his attire -- ), he appears as though he's been through as much hell as the others. Don't worry about the unease that you feel, the prickling of your thumbs, the sensation of dread that crawls down your back. Though he may not be the first to step into that gloom, he is at the forefront of the endeavor. Raising his hand to the Station, reaching into it thoughtfully, the frozen waste he has for a heart opening like a rift hidden under snow. It is horrific, the way he reaches into the guts of the Station, into the echoes of the symbiotic link and wrenches.

The lights begin to come on. ]

And do not fear for our future.

[ Says the fearful thing. ]

In her last moments, Cathaway appointed me. I will lead you now -- any questions?

( WILDCARD(S) )

In the panic that probably ensues while the station is being assaulted and MURDERED, the Darkling is conspicuously missing... Right towards the end, he'll turn up. Come the hell at him at any point before or after. Even pre-meme, if you like. I LOVE THIS GAME.

IT'S FUCKING TIME ABBY.

[unsea]

[ The station rumbles underfoot, dying screams and the constant decay of sleeping hosts as they perish in their sleep pummeling them all like bullets, like needles; piercing, shooting pains that leave yawning chasms in their wake. While they die, while the others scramble -- he steps deeper into the station. Following the paths that are laid out for him with unrelenting focus, he recognizes the folly of this place: it allows him to traverse where he needs to go, even if that need will result in one more death. One more death at the hands of something other than the Enemy.

He finds her, right where he expects her to be. ( Right where the station leads him, right to the doorless frame. ) ]

Cathaway.

[ He calls her name and wears no disguise; the darkness that pools at his feet festers with eyes and mouths and claws. ]

I'd like to thank you, for all that you've done for us.

[ The station rumbles again, costing him precious moments as he orients his center of balance before he enters the command room. She does not look frail to him, does not look like an old woman just past her prime; silver-shot, beautiful in her age, powerful because she is a many-splendored thing with roots as white and deeply-set as the symbiotic influence within them all. Gratitude seems like a waste of time, in this moment.

But he's not truly here to be thankful, in the end. ]

And I want to reassure you: I'll take very, very good care of them all in your stead.

In a Mirror

[redheadcarrier]

Yeah, right.

[ Asuka doesn't really "know" him. Not in the sense that one might know a friend or an acquaintance. She's never tried to get close to him and she's never enjoyed the feelings that come dropping down their link. But he's always there; a presence in the web that makes up their crew. That doesn't mean she enjoys it. ]

I'm not following you. You don't just get to put yourself in charge!

[ Her good eye burns bright and hateful and suspicious. ]

Who do you think you are?

[ She's too tired for this. She does it anyway. ]

[invasif]

[ She is unruffled within the crowd, calm and cold. ]

( Don't lie to me. )

opeeen :)))))

[wille]

I. THEN SHALL I KNOW FULLY.

[ It is known that time, as with all things, is just a suggestion. It might have well been five minutes since she awoke aboard Station 72 with a thrumming in her head. It might have well been a millennium or two. And still, none could accuse Misato of ever being bloodless.

Instead of filing into one of the stealth ships, she has boarded another vessel not quite meant for hiding. Neither was her ship made for fighting, but when has that ever stopped her? The cold steel of her mind is the sharp end of the aircraft whizzing past the claws, hands, hooks, wires and tentacles of the many-formed enemies to send their ranks into disarray. There seems to be no method to her madness, at least until part of the hangar somehow knots into itself and the ship she steers becomes caught like a metal pin between two strings, the one bridge between where you are and where the stealth ships are parked.

Her voice in your head slices like arctic wind against your cheek. ]

( Come on. )

[ The question now is how the heck she would get out of her own self-wound trap. ]

II. CLOSED TO KAJI.

[ Datafuel. It sounds as new as it is old, something that harks to another lifetime filled with massive blinking screens and the inorganic whirr of machines and the click-clack of keyboards hidden by the blonde-dyed head of a woman in white. The immediacy of the scene strikes her like one awakening from deep sleep to find that what was wasn't real, that it is this now that is real.

It confuses her, enough that the knots on her brow nearly resemble the noodle-like strands of white splayed on the floor before them. The word -- datafuel -- might as well belong to that other reality. She has learned by now that if it is possible, imaginable, then it is real.

She turns to her companion now (what is he to her then? a man? a vessel? or just a shift in perspective?), and at the sight of his face she remembers the dampness from a full night's sleep congealed inside a tent, the humidity mixing with the iron scent of blood. The contents of his skull splayed over her lap. It could have been a dream. This could be the dream. ]

How come we've never fallen asleep? [ As if to say, remember the promise we made? What happened to us? ] Or have we already.

III. EVEN AS ALSO I WAS FULLY KNOWN.

[ Given time, we all become our fathers, even her. It is true that the lines on her face have deepened, and together they form the visage of a woman in constant consternation, thin-cheeked and severe, long past the age of nubile sensuality. Fukai, as they call the mask of an older woman. Deep well. What useless euphemism to account for the vagaries of age and bitterness.

She repeats the words of another host. ]

Station 144.

[ Like so, it manifests. She steps onto the hangar to feel the weight of her feet upon the floor, raises her hand to caress the walls, exhales to feel how her breath is received within this new shell.

All of a sudden, she feels a strange weight suffusing her limbs, slowing her down, causing her chest to constrict. How grief has a way of converging when least expected, and now the loss of the other Station and of Cathaway and Prince and all the fallen ones wash over her now. And she knows that there is no need to ask whether you feel the same, because you do, because everyone does. So she needs not explain before asking: ]

If you had been them, what would you have said to us when we first woke up?

[ Parents seem so foolish until one becomes one. ]

[redheadcarrier]

[ Asuka's aged as well; she's not a gangly, awkward teenager growing into a strange body and strange emotions. She's a young woman now; not as tall as some, but still an adult instead of a child. She's learned. She's become something more, even if the bitterness and the taste of failure still linger.

Her relationship with Misato IS fragile. She's long since stopped trying to hurt. She's stopped trying to drag a reaction out of her or to try and force her to care, because she knows it's not possible. She's stopped throwing herself at the wall. Now it's more cautious, still tinged with the harsh taste of perceived betrayal and long experience, but there's no more hate.

Asuka can't bring herself to hate anymore. At least not Misato. Becoming older gives one new perspective.

And now here they are. Another place a deposit still together. Another disaster survived and once again they have to pick up the pieces and try to rebuild. Maybe that's all life is - a cycle of rebuilding.

The question stirs her and there's a deep, deep sense of being tired that rollls off of her. She folds her arms, gaze locked forward, trying to stare a hole through the far wall of the hangar. ]

I would've told us that it wasn't going to be easy.

[ Not that her younger self would have listened to that or wanted to hear it. ]

I would've told us the truth.

[ryohji]

[ kaji sits against the slightly curved husk of the ship, knees up, arms supported atop of them. he's found fit to discard his shoes. he looks like a hospital patient.

she is often thinking of his death. this used to offend him. (did it ever?) now time has fathered in him wisdom, and the more they have explored the canals of their minds together, the more he understands that the human brain is a messy, imperfect computer. that the brain is host to all sorts of incoherent thoughts and ideas, some of them unthinkable and contrary to our desires. he has learned to tune out those thoughts of her's that - years ago - would've made him feel insignificant. learned to not take it so seriously, that when every night they dream it seems as though they're dreaming of the same thing.

speaking of computers. datafuel elicits the uncertain memory of a super-colossal spider. no, he remembers this: it was the discharge, thick and vicious and so acidic it could burn through even the toughest of steel. it was this mysterious goop that'd been the subject of intense pursuit (we got its new sample), to him and others, (taking advantage of electricity supply halt), its properties unknown, and computers were somehow involved (i'll send it after the data base out of it.) anyway, the memory comes and goes. he has other things on his mind. ]

That won't work on me. [ see, he is upset with her, because her daring show of pluckiness back at the station was incredibly stupid. (even for her standards.) to the extent she wants to distract him with talk of sleep and whathaveyou, he is a demurring force to be reckoned with. ] Sorry.

cathaway (ota)

[polyphonos]

ALL GOOD THINGS

[She can be found lying like a cat in a warm patch of the garden's somehow-not-quite-artificial sunlight. Cathaway is all glinting and easy comfort: strands of jewlery chain and oddly shaped charmed wound through the layers of her dress, the light reflection of her long sheet of pin-straight greying hair, the clink of jewlery on her fingers as she lies there on her side and plays what can only be some version of solitaire in the grass.

Whisk, whisk, say the cards as she draws and places them.

Cathaway doesn't raise her eyes from the spread, but she does say:]

Would you like to join us?

THE MENAGERIE (solo + group threads encouraged :^) )

( Turn left! )

[--the voice urges out of rancid, shrieking dark in the back of your head. So you do. The branching corridors right themselves like they've been jerked into place. It's a brief flash of joyous correctness - the disorienting comfort of turning and corner in a maze and realizing you know where you are. Maybe you're a little more certain as you make your way forward. Maybe--

There's a doorway. What do you find through it?]

[stilettoes]

[ he's found his way on his slow meander through the station towards the gardens. the artificial sun is like a spotlight, turning cathaway into the center of some small universe shrouded by organic tendrils and curling plants that seem to bend towards to her light. they seem to urge him to the do the same, and he steps forward along a small path to meet her there at that patch of grass.

when he sits near her game, it's all legs and elegance, worn out knuckles against a jaw as he looks down at the cards spread out before her. ]

Show me.

All Good Things

[redheadcarrier]

[ In her own way, Asuka still doesn't really trust Cathaway. Not completely. She still holds a part of herself back, even after all this time. Even after she's become an adult instead of a scared teenager. She still remembers conversations and despair over losing what little she'd gained here. Cathaway is a comfort, despite all of that. Despite everything.

Even if she still holds herself back.

Her feet take her to the garden, because what else is there to do and what else is there to see? She's standing over Cathaway, hands on her hips, eye following the movement of the cards, of her hands, trying to decipher their meaning. ]

What are you playing?

hadrian black / peter nureyev

[stilettoes]

( WELCOME HOME )

[ home.

nureyev hasn't had a home in... decades. when the familiarity of cathaway whispers between his ears, he tips his head into it, the way a cat might to a perfectly placed set of curling fingers. there are always reservations, and there will always be reservations. nonetheless, he murmurs back, tired and walking with a faint limp to his left hip. how he's still walking is perhaps a miracle in and of itself - an accidental snap of bone healed over quickly, badly, but enough to make it through the trip. ]

( Good to be back. )

[ he says, smooth as always, liquid dark silk. he doesn't say the word "home" exactly. it still doesn't fit in his vocabulary. using the opening into the hanger as a grip to jump over the slight lip leading into the hanger that spits him out into the station. there's a breath here of familiarity, the inner workings of knowing precisely where he is and only having to imagine where he wants to go to get there, envisioning the people he wants to see first.

he stretches upwards just a bit, a soft snkt of bone sliding through the skin around his fingertips automatically, the elegant gliding of white bone through permanent seam like a cat stretching after a long nap. he'd dozed off a bit until the last jump forward, so it tracks, really. ]

( . . . ALL GOOD THINGS )

@ AVIOR

( Alright darlings, sound off. Ducks in a row and all that. )

[ when nureyev reaches out, it's ribbons of dark silk. the mirror-like glass down just for them because this is perhaps the closest to a home within a home as he will get. the all know, after all, the one thing he's kept so close to his chest all this time. the syllables of his true name, kept private and just for them. he's a hand reaching out, a soft shoulder brush or thumb to cheek, a weary smile and faint flash of teeth. ]

@ ROGUE, a private moment

[ where he calls for the brood, he intends to find her specifically, moving through the familiar halls of the station, fingertips passing along where the wall honeycombs white elegantly. he greets the station itself with a fond touch. after all, it's kept him safe where most homes have not, and while yes, the little thing in his skull would shriek with abandon at being so far from the nest without his fellow nestmates, there's... a comfort and sensation of belonging that is enough for him. that's been enough for him over the past few years (years? yes.)

he throws out a line towards her specifically, a curl of dark honey-sweet sensation. he's walked his way towards the gardens, and the implication of such should be all that's needed. meet me here. ]

( AN END )

[ the station is burning with them inside of it, like a feverish storm that has nureyev moving quickly on his feet, running as he always has. maybe it's good that he hasn't given the station the official title of home. but he feels it all the same - panic and grief in equal amounts, quickly kicked over with the loud roar of an engine sparking to life. there will be time to mourn later, time to think about this place that has kept them so well.

he's never felt that he's owed anyone anything. it's sour in the back of his throat

where the hallway begins to suddenly bloom into strange synthetically-created organic-shapes like a jungle meant to trap, nureyev swears under his breath as he tries to push his way through it - the soft clicking of his bones making short work of softer material, clinking against things that remain stubborn and solidly metallic. his body is telling him that the hangar deck is this way, that escape is this way, and he's doing his best to broadcast just that, slithering silk sliding around ankles pulling this way, this way, hurry darling, this way, come, come, this w -

and then it stops. completely.

because something's grabbed him by the ankle and dunked him straight into that aforementioned upright pool, pinning him down with quickly-growing tendrils. if it intends to keep him here, then it's being very presumptuous and peter petulantly thinks so, feeling his bones shift, the dullness in his touch replaced by sharp knives of bone and gristle. a burst of blood in the water as he tries to cut his way free. ]

( SYMBIOSIS )

( memories of hunger, of blood-slick hands, of a car that sings out its rebellion as it speeds across a ruddy red desert. )

-

( Who's here? )

[ soft, velvet carded over and over again, wrapping around, warm and searching for familiar bodies, familiar minds. ]

( Sound off, darlings. )

[ back where we started.

if he's found in the wash of memory and darkness, it's in a corner, shedding an abysmally ruined silk shirt. it's wet and torn to shreds, the culprit of which dots his spine in bloody pinpricks from nape of the neck down. the edges of his shoulder blades prickle painfully as he rolls them a bit, dropping the silk down and settling his hands on his hips, fingertips shaking just a little where they rest. ]

( WILDCARD )

[ come at me. ]

symbiosis

[redheadcarrier]

( I'm here. )

[ It's not quite loud, but it's firm. A push back to announce that she's still an individual; still alive. It's tinged with red and the scent and taste of blood and the faded memory of anger.

She's still finding herself after all of that. ]

( Asuka. )

[ She'll find him, eventually. For right now she's just trying to breathe. ]

angel | borderlands

[circumspector]

I. A HOME AMONGST THE STARS

Angel is not the girl she arrived as, but she is a broken, happier one. No longer scared of her shadow, no longer a body half lived in. She is so many pieces, but she is a whole. Her face is scarred and one eye no longer working, one hand no longer has its fingers and stand replaced now with light woven metal. A leg that has been got off, replaced, the implants that have become more. She is stitched up, broken down, remade, and her mind is - full.

She is whole with the ship, a thing that barely needs to speak. She can interact now with flesh and blood as she does with a machine, and around her, it warps. Come into her power - she is a siren, and she is light, and she doesn't need her legs, no really, for certain, she is not walking like another might. The unfurled wings of energy that scrape her toes on the ground just barely as she walks. Bigger than she has ever been. There is a faint shimmer to the air as she pulses with that air, that reek of unreality, that the air could be something else if she willed it in a moment.

But she doesn't. Rather, with her broken body, she lays about dozing. It's not often she goes out on missions anymore. Been here as long as she has, she knows what she is best at, placing her mind into the ship so it can tell her it's stories, let her relay them to others more clearly.

When someone approaches, she doesn't speak, doesn't need to speak. Her eyes open, one good and one blind, and the sound of welcoming falls from her thoughts. That says I am with you and what do you need? and here is my middle off middles, the space between ribs, come, into here, all at once.

II. DON'T FALL...

Her head is screaming at her.

It isn't the first time. It probably won't be the last. But it feels nothing but cataclysmic in how it builds inside her skin. The ship hurting and ripping her from the inside it becomes impossible to detangle her mind for it and that means -

- it's impossible for anyone else to not hear it either. She stumbles, feeling it's pain like her own, so overwhelming. The last time something felt like this - the last time - the last time.

Have you ever vomited purple? You are, now. Thick, chemical sludge, whether these are your memories or hers, reality or not. It comes up like death, heaving itself out of not stomach or lungs, but out of blood, out of skin. She's being ripped apart from the inside, burning up like a fever, and that's - that's a problem. She hasn't felt like this for years. Not since Parker.

The ball of electricity is building in her fingers. Crackling the air like ozone. Something, someone, needs to get her, this feeling, under control, but the closer to her you get, the worse the pain becomes.

III. ... TO PIECES

Angel had loved the station, she had loved it like she had come after so many years, to love her own skin.

Without it, something feels so irreparably gone. Without it, for the first time in years, she mourns. So many things were gone with it. Memories kept within those walls. She had faith, that despite it all, it would live on in the ship, for it was as living and breathing to her as any other being in the galaxy. An old friend, that held all of the others. That she could always reach for every that had passed, in that cool, warm, safe place, no matter who she lost, the station would be there for her. She would have them still inside of the echoes of the ship that gave her the home she had always wanted, that she bled her mind into, bled her mind out of.

But now? She lays in the new station, listless to where she was, muddled in things that were, trapped once more, dying inside of her own body, and she weeps, she weeps, and weeps, and weeps. She has lost the station, their station, and she has lost the other parts of herself. The duty to reintergrate her mind with this new ship falls away. Her markings dulled back to blue from their white, wings gone, without herself. Worse, her grief is loud, that overwhelming want to cry and cry and cry that doesn't stop.