[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

[potential]

[ There is an imbalance between them. It has stretched further and further as Caleb hoards his secrets and balks at the idea of exposing the disgusting shame of his past. He cannot bear to bare it to Molly. His brood never stood a chance. (Maybe it would be different if Beauregard and Nott were here, if Jester, Fjord and Yasha had appeared with Caduceus in tow. It's impossible to tell.) All those secrets are lashed to his mind like a lead weight, reminding him that they need to get back to the Empire.

He can't stay here. The truth of that is even more impossible to escape in the wake of a mission, when he is faced with the pleasure of returning to the Station. It feels like home, and Caleb is painfully aware of how undeserving he is of such things. ]

It's all in service of this war. But this fight...surely there must be a better way.

[ Molly's flirtation curls in the back of his head like fog. Caleb breathes out as Frumpkin squirms in his arms, claws extended towards Molly's dangling sleeve. ]

Are you tired of this?

[ It's a sharp counterpoint to the soft flicker of Molly's thoughts. His admiration feels like sunlight, like the peace that had stolen over him upon seeing the ocean.

It's undeserved. But it's happening all the same. ]

[mauks]

[ For as long as he has known him, Caleb has always had secrets. Hurt held close to his chest. Molly didn't need to connection they now share to have seen that. But that connection, the way he slips into what little space Caleb allows him, has only made him realize how right he had been. He's curious what lay beyond all those walls of smooth glass and fire, but he knows better than to push and pry where he doesn't belong. Maybe one day Caleb will tell, maybe he won't.

It does make him think of the others; of Beau, Nott, Jester, Fjord, and Yasha. Makes his heart yearn for those he came to care for more than expected. And Caduceus, the soft pastel he's seen briefly while resting in Caleb's mind. He misses them. Misses home.

The Station brings pleasure, bring comfort and belonging, but he longs for more than that. ]

Or an easier way.

[ Absently he dangles his sleeve closer to Frumpkin, wiggling his fingers in that all-too-inciting way one does with cats. ]

Tired of you, Mr. Caleb? Never.

[ It's not what he meant, is it? Molly answers either way, leaning in closer to Caleb. A gilded horn knocks lightly against the other man's head, his grin widening impishly. Caleb believes his attention is undeserved, but nothing could be father from the truth─ at least in Molly's mind.

He deserves every second of it. ]

[potential]

[ The Station bends for them. Caleb's learned it's ways, how the hallways are just as likely to shift to accommodate whims. He's wondered, as they walk from the hanger, whose whims the Station will heed. They'll know soon enough. Molly's desires tend to branch from Caleb's initial thoughts of food and sleep and the books he has piled up in his room. (No magic, but still useful.) Frumpkin's claws extend and Caleb hitches him higher, cradling him like a baby as they walk.

All around them, the Station is radiating welcome. Caleb lets his focus narrow down to simply Molly's pleasure in this conversation to block out the vessel's reaction to them. ]

That is, ah. Not what I meant.

[ Though he senses from the flicker of amusement that Molly is playing his own game. (Caleb misses Beau and Fjord; they had been figuring out how to talk strategy before Caleb was snatched from them.) His hand slips absently beneath the drape of Molly's jacket to cinch around his waist. ]

Nevermind.

[ Is it cruel to ask this of Molly? Ask him if he's tired of being alive here, and if he would prefer to be spirited back to die on a snowy road? Caleb does not speak this aloud, and yet—

Frumpkin rumbles in his grip, breaks that line of thought before something horrific can press up against the glass. ]

What are you thinking of? Drinking?

[ A tendril extends between them, inquisitive, underscoring the question as the hallway curves before them. ]

[mauks]

[ Molly would be lying if he said he didn't enjoy the ways the Station reacts to them, to his whims. His early days were spent experimenting with what the Station would do in order to accommodate him. It's a game of a sort, one he likes to play when he is bored. Now, however, his attention is focused on Caleb, on the gentle warmth radiating from his body, the hand that slips beneath his jacket to cinch around his waist. He preens from the attention, pleasure radiating through their connection, leaning a little more against Caleb's frame.

Not at all, he thinks, absently watching the Station shift and curving for them. Being dead is terribly boring.

That was what Caleb meant, right? It isn't a difficult thing to figure out, nor a difficult thing to answer. He's never looked forward to dying (honestly who does?) though Molly can't deny he wishes he was back with the others, curled in the warmth of his friends. Of his family. ]

I'm thinking about many things.

[ That longing barely has time to get purchase, replaced quickly with drink and lips against his neck. Molly tugs the tendril towards him, into the want of pleasure, of company. A distraction for what they don't speak about, a want Molly never fails to have. ]

But if you want something specific. [ His gaze moves to Caleb, grin unveiling the whites of his teeth. ] I am dying for strong drink and some pleasurable company. That last mission left me with aches all over.

[potential]

[ Living on the Station means acclimating to the dangerous reality of being so very attuned to what does and doesn't make others happy. And Molly is difficult to block out. Like Frumpkin, Molly is what Caleb has left of home. The pleased glow of his reaction flares between them, encouraging and impossible to ignore.

So Caleb doesn't release him. Molly leans in dramatically and Caleb adjusts his stride to accommodate even as good sense prickles out a warning: Do not get this comfortable.

But it's too late. It has been too late for a very long time. It was too late even before Caleb woke on the Station, perhaps. Now Molly is the only touchstone he has and Caleb is very viscerally aware of what makes him happy. This contact is a small thing. Caleb's own discomfort with the closeness erodes further with each passing moment, and each time it is slower returning. ]

Yes, I know you are.

[ Caleb doesn't share, but Molly does. Even that measure of trust shames Caleb. ]

I do not think I am pleasurable company, but I will drink with you.

[ And seek Cathaway tomorrow, perhaps. He is no closer to puzzling her out than he was before this mission, but Caleb returns to her like moth to flame. He is almost helpless in the face of his own curiosity, wanting more of this particular mystery since the Station itself yields so few secrets and the Prince is both more and less difficult for Caleb to attempt to unlock.

His fingers hook absently into the loops of fabric at Molly's hip, holding on as the hallway before them stretches out and out. ]

I'm going to be doing some reading later as well, if you'd like to join me.

[ There are no doors to their rooms, but he welcomes Molly in anyway. Caleb misses Nott to the point of agony most of the time, but it is worse when he is poring over books and helplessly aware of the absence where she would have seated herself. The pain is less when Molly occupies the space. Perhaps Caleb gets less done, but he has come to shy away from this particular type of pain.

Missing people does not get easier. He'd already learned that lesson before he'd arrived here. ]

[mauks]

You're always pleasurable company.

[ Affection surges through their connection, a sudden rush of warm air, thick and present as Caleb's fingers hook into the loops of fabric at his hip. His thoughts couldn't be further from Cathaway, or the mission, the Station embraces them welcoming them home and Molly is more than eager to indulge in the comforts it offers. And in Caleb's company.

It is the promise of his company that inhabits the forefront of Molly's mind, of drinks and books and well, company. What a better way to spend time after a mission? Especially after one that seemed to have gone on much longer than anyone truly had the stomach for. His gaze flicks from the hallway to Caleb, lips curving into an all-to-pleased grin. ]

I'd love too. We could even drink at the same time. Retire to some dark corner of the Station with something strong, something sweet, something earthy. We deserve a good long rest as I see it.

[ Molly understands, of course, the hollow sort of pain that comes with their friend's absence. He feels it too, often glancing over his shoulder expecting to find Yasha there but she never is. So much of his remembered past involved her, just as it started to involve the rest of them, it isn't pleasant to be this lessened. To be the only two parts of a larger whole.

One day, perhaps, it'll be more complete. For now they only have each other. ]

[potential]

[ It still comes as a shock to Caleb, how freely Molly offers up his affection. It comes washing down their connection and blankets Caleb's thoughts. His breath catches. For a moment, there is nothing else but the soft pulses of Molly's emotion before Caleb's mind finds focus again.

His grip on Molly tightens again. He breathes out. He feels the clarity of Molly's immediate desires: drinks, conversation, the shared benefit of each other's company. After so long away from their friends, they have quietly become each other's touchstones. Caleb draws as much reassurance from Molly's presence as Molly does his. In the wake of this mission, the promise of something familiar, along with alcohol, it's—

It's the closest thing to home he is going to get. ]

Yes. I think you're right.

[ And before Caleb even finishes speaking, the Station has delivered them to a doorway, leading to the common area and the fully stocked liquor cabinet.

Someday, Caleb will be able to fully appreciate the feat without some flicker of dread. ]

After you.

[ It is a shame to slide out from beneath Molly's arm. Caleb knows this. But he knows Molly will like the little flourish that Caleb resorts to as he waves him through the doorway. ]