[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

SYMBIOSIS.

[incinerates]

[ He neglects to use his words, be they verbal or filtered through the connection.

There's just hands, broader than they were when he'd first arrived ( he filled himself out; all angles and width, broad chest, strong arms -- a canvas upon which he'd accepted countless scars ). They press against Nureyev's shoulderblades for a moment, before whisking away the shreads of silk, the weight of a spare jacket dropped haphazardly over his shoulders instead. On his left, Bakugo steps forward into Nureyev's peripheral vision. Blonde, tall, battered to all hell and back.

Only then does he talk: ] I hated that shirt anyways. 'Sup, you shitty thief? You made it, it's fine now.

[ The bluster helps him hide the tremble in his own hands, shaking at the same rate his broodmate's do. ]

[stilettoes]

[ bakugo has grown - peter has felt the aches and pains of it all crumpled up at night, soothing them like a thumb worrying a scar with arguments, with stories, with memories of what a sunrise on mars can look like. he remembers when bakugo threatened to clear his height, nose to nose. now he's pulling away the old shreds of maroon fabric off his back, soothing the ache in his shoulders, covering him and there's gratefulness there that nureyev curtails from a mental feeling into a soft tilt of his head, a smooth upward quirk of the lips.

he's learned over the years that bakugo prefers the fleeting sensations of the present, of now. the sharp snap of tangibility.

lipstick is blood, smeared over his lips, staining them and he raises a hand to wipe at his mouth with a muffled "mmhm." he turns his head a bit, mouth visible to bakugo now. ]

That shirt was a gift, I'll have you know.

[ it was very soft, thank you, but in truth he ruins more shirts like this. ]

And I know. I know it's fine

[ he reaches up another hand to grab the jacket dropped over his shoulders, clutching it closer with knuckles that have seen better days, home to worn, sheath-like punctures in his flesh that beget bone. ]

You hardly need to tell me - we're a mostly competent crew.

[incinerates]

It's a pretty shitty gift.

[ all of the gifts that peter gets end up ruined, if they're clothes. ergo, all of them are shitty gifts. he thinks about u.a. sparingly these days, remembering his old classmates like they're a far-off dream. his world had made costumes specifically as assistive, embracing the nuances and difficulties of the vast variety of quirks - he knows they would have made a spectacular set of equipment for peter, too. his own outfit has been taken piecemeal, improved and reworked to suit the second layer of power he has --

it's a little like his shitty broodmate's, when it comes down to it. things end up in his pockets, too many things and he drops them all. suddenly, violently and all over the place. maybe that's why he understands to pack some extra shirts, a jacket to cover up the tattered remains of cloth with. it's that jacket he drops over peter's shoulders now, scowling all the while.

once his shitty broodmate is facing him, they can talk: ] Come on. Let's make this place summon us up a medical room already. Bullshit stations and their bullshit mumbo-jumbo.

[stilettoes]

A good plan.

[ call him shitty all you want but you love your new-found appreciation for pockets of all kinds. peter smirks just a little bit, a soft glimpse of too-sharp canine. he leaves the jacket open over his shoulders as he doesn't even bother to ask to place a hand on bakugo's arm - as if the newly-found station 144 is a stroll in the park. there are other motivations to the hand on his arm, the other situated in the crook of his elbow where the plating of his suit splits a little bit, just enough that he can feel when peter pokes him with a now, unfortunately, broken nail.

when he prods him, it's to speak. ]

So we meander along these halls until it gives us what we want, just like the old Station. I suppose we're expected to make some kind of home of this place as well?

[ what a sour word.

still, a medical bay sounds good. maybe a bed.

oh a bed sounds really good, actually. ]

Charming... [ i hate it. ]