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

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

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 )

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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. ]

[ 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.

[ That is all life is, as far as Misato has known. A rise, a fall, a scampering out of the ashes to question why she again survived and not the rest. The odds are becoming unbalanced, and someone has been taking one too many chances. One day the other shoe will drop.

Fragile isn't how she would term the link between them. She would rather call it sparse, sufficient and no more. It is in the management of the distance between them that this conversation becomes possible. ]

The truth?

[ Yes, there was a time when she believed even Prince cryptic. When she thought they answered questions with more questions to avoid saying the truth, only to discover that they have been trying to tell her what took years to understand. ]

You can't describe the ocean to someone who's never seen it.

[ A part of her still regrets that she can't bridge that gap, that part of her that still remembers when adult approval was all she craved. It leaves a bitter taste and she's never really been able to overcome her own hurt and pride to offer any sort of real olive branch. Instead, they just have a relationship based on being "professional". On being able to work together without spitting venom.

At least from her side. Misato's never really given her the benefit of emotion. ]

You can still try and prepare them.

[ She would've liked something like that. A preview of what was coming. Maybe it would've helped or maybe it wouldn't have; she doesn't know. ]

We can tell them how hard it's going to be.

[ There's something a little bitter in that; no one ever told her that, no one ever tried to prepare her, at least until Shepard. ]

[ There's no use spitting into a dry well. It should be clear by now that her lurid cloak of feigned sentimentality hides an altogether different person. Misato has never given anyone the benefit of emotion, no one but the shadows of herself contained in other people. ]

Hard? No. The danger is how easy it's been.

[ The path of least resistance is the most treacherous of all. ]

Look around you. We just left the old Station and here we are in a new one. Someone had to do all the thinking for us. Someone had to prepare the way. All we've done is stroll right in.

Huh.

[ Asuka's nose wrinkles and her brow furrows as she considers that. She hadn't thought about it that way; she's growing, still. And her point of view tends toward the immediate and the tactical, not the over-arching. ]

...that is weird.

[ She hisses, blowing out a breath. ]

Did they- [ Cathaway, Prince. ] -know this was going to happen? Is that why we're here?

[ She doesn't expect an answer. She's thinking out loud. ]

I'm tired of being jerked around...

[ 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.

Edited 2019-02-09 20:56 (UTC)

[ She is the one in armor. All thick jacket over a vest that makes her seem bigger than she is, gloves to conceal human skin and match the weighted boots that echo when she steps away from the puddle of what was once somebody's mind. It comes to her unbidden: a four-armed man who called himself Sixes and hoarded rations up his sleeves, who died terrified, ambushed in a store room. Part of her wanted to spit onto what remained of the coward's brain, but part of her grieved for him like a brother.

And it does get easier. These thoughts and images pass through like a breeze and are gone. The difficult part is knowing which ones to hold on to, which ones are theirs to own even if unpleasant. ]

You used to find it charming.

[ A thought comes to her (them): a captain goes down with his ship. She thinks it would make him angrier still. ]

I didn't think we would make it out. That -- [ The drop, the long fall. ] -- wasn't me.

It’s charming when everyone knows you’ll make it out alive. You said it yourself.

[ the more time he spends on the station the more tethered he grows to the idea of life. they’d an argument in the very beginning. they’d been trying to suss out exactly what the symbiote would have one do if allowed to roost in the brain. she had suggested that the symbiote would orient a host more closely to death, bring any latent wishes to bear. he’d said that instead, the symbiote is selfish, just like any animal in fact, and would encourage the host to survivor forever to the extent that it had sway. if only he knew how right he was. besides, isn’t she exhausted by now? (of course; she just said it herself.) doesn’t she tire of these games? doesn’t she wish that between a rock and a hard place, she could just squeeze herself through the space in between and stroll away down the path of least resistance? he hasn’t elected to join her on the last few missions. instead, he had stayed on the station, and tended to his garden. and now it’s too late for her to take his lead.

maybe that’s what really chafes. he doesn’t even relate to the sixes man anymore. ] You should find a way to thank the person who saved you.

Edited 2019-02-10 15:02 (UTC)

[ How to tell him that in the corner of her eyes now exists another possibility, one where none of them survive the ambush and all her heroics are for naught. And there, in the other corner, lies their old Station still, calm and unfurled like a sleeping animal. Both of them are true. Both of them are just beyond her grasp. So how could exhaustion take root in so much hope?

The weight of her boots anchor her to the here and now, and she chooses to walk toward him, arms loosely crossed over her chest. ]

I will. When I find her again.

[ She means Cathaway. An impression of a curtain of silvery hair, the tinkling of soft metals. No Host is ever truly dead. Remember? If I ever see you again, then I-- These are dreams they have shared and molded together into something altogether different. ]

It reminded me of my last hours on Earth, before all this. [ The frantic escape, the certainty of death and the wild hope that engenders. This isn't quite an apology. ] I guess it brought me back.

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