middleofsomewhere | Fissures of Time: Ongoing

Fissures of Time: Ongoing

FISSURES OF TIME: ONGOING

... POI 10-12

FOR SOME, THE MISSION HAS BEEN MORE MENTALLY EXHAUSTING THAN PHYSICALLY. Distortions sprout around the domain without rhyme or reason, and the camps must be moved every new day to meet them, as well as stopping a distortion from deciding to form under them from their presence.

While there's bare-bones vegetation, at least they have their own resources to help one another, as well as what can be retrieved from the Ministry base during return trips to take misplaced civilians to safety. It's straight-forward so far...

...but that wouldn't be standard for the Voidtreckers, and some in their ranks don't want straight-forward. Starting during the early hours of Poi 10, there will be occasional rumblings throughout the land. They last for a few seconds and then stop, seemingly for hours; but then they return, and as the days go on, so do the tremors increase.

It seems the distortions too have become affected...

THE UNQUIET CITY. (CW: People unable to die/rising from the dead, body horror)

A city of rubble and ruin stretches far out around them, where once there were hills and vegetation. Much of the rubble is still smoking as fires smoulder. The fighting isn't over, heard before it's seen.

It must be connected to the same skirmishes seen in other distortions, and so most of you are prepared to meet warriors on foot and mount. But what awaits isn't only the horror of bloodshed. No: the reason that the fighting still continues even as the city lies in ruin is because fighters fall and rise again, as if death were nothing but a short rest.

Puncture marks litter skin and armour, holes from weaponry and blessed-magic visible in torsos, even the spaces of where portions of one's skull and brain should be.

Yet they cannot stop fighting. They cannot fall to the ground, rest. Whatever drove them to fight this war still inspires them to continue, screaming as much in pain as in some sort of twisted ecstasy. Perhaps they are too shocked to do anything else. A city locked in eternal war, distorted in time, doomed to repeat itself.

It's hard to set the equalisers here. Not much is stable and fights are likely to break out wherever there are people. The people of this city have their factions, but they will not hesitate to band together to fight intruders.

EYE OF THE STORM.

They might feel this distortion before they enter it. A spine-chilling thrill, the feeling one might get at the edge of a storm.

—For a storm it is. The moment they enter it their vision will be obstructed, winds howl around them and rain lashes down furiously making a swamp of the ground below them. It's freezing cold and as they walk they will feel something in the storm. Almost as if there are icy hands, reaching out to grab at them, to pull them further into the worst of the weather.

It's hard to know where to place the equalisers, hard to see where the edges of this distortion are. Easier, not by much, to move further in, to find the epicentre and try and take it down from there.

It's a treacherous journey, but the centre truly is calm, water frozen like crystals. Yet temperatures are dangerously low, so it's in everyone's best interests to set the equalisers quick and get out.

MEAN AND GREEN. As the rumbling continues, there comes a strange and worrying distortion. Worrying, as this distortion can be seen from the outside. A hazy blur that seems to move across the countryside, along the left side of the camp you're stationed at. It gets dangerously close at times, and when it does...

Green tendrils of plant life burst out, entangling people to pull them into the distortion. Or chains of flowers spread from the distortion out across the countryside. Beautiful and colourful in the otherwise sparse environment, but those flowers work as anchors, spreading the distortion, expanding it.

To get rid of it they will need to enter, and inside is a thick jungle of vines and bright colourful flowers awaiting them. The foliage is thick and the air musky and sweet. It's easy to get separated, and getting lost is only a matter of getting turned around. The leaves are sticky and vines move seemingly on their own, curling around unsuspecting limbs, trying to trap people in this colourful paradise forever.

And up in the sky above, a woman's laughter can be heard, the heat of the sun bearing down that becomes uncomfortable quick. But don't look up - you may find a large yellow eye - yellow iris, yellow pupil, golden yellow everything - peering back at you, and find yourself being pulled in by the very ground itself by a powerful force.

NO SANCTUARY. Protecting the camps hasn't been difficult, despite it being a Purple task. Other than rowdy refugees breaking out into fights, little else has appeared to disturb them.

'Eiiiiliiifii.... Siiiiliiifiii...
Merios? Herios?
Don't hide... don't hide...
Everything will be so perfect soon...'

People are woken abruptly in the early hours of Poi 11. If by some special sense, or by a grab at their throat, by a body falling on top of where they sleep, someone else stopping the refugee who was about to take a knife to them.

The refugees have become uncontrollable, raving about wanting 'their Gods back'. The ground rumbles as the woman's voice from the hazy jungle - ethereal, so divine - speaks from below. Grass rises and the sky above burns with a brightness like an approaching sun.

Setting an equaliser will calm the refugees, but only those in the camps. Starting from lunchtime, more warriors and civilians will be found appearing from the distance and from thin air, seemingly knowing where to find the Voidtreckers' camps - and after some very specific people.

Those with divinity, control over weather, nature, and death will be especially targeted, along with anyone who received blessings from the Gods.

OOC NOTES

OOC post. Ask questions here. Let us know about shenanigans here. NPC requests here, set up a thread here. Rewards go here.

TL;DR: Starting on Poi 10, there will be odd tremors around the domain, and more aggressive time distortions. From Poi 11 refugees will lose control of themselves and start attacking Voidtreckers, in and out of the camp.

It will happen abruptly to begin with, but some keen to reading energy will find that it is shifting; like something is breaking in from somewhere else (similar to the time distortions).

Extra equalisers can be picked up from the Ministry base and they will be there to help, but there are also more distortions happening around the domain, so they'll be dealing with those. The Ministry will advise that any non-combatants should stick to the base, and even use the scouting drones to help from afar, if they really need to help.

Undead warriors can be found outside of time distortions, and not all of the people outside of distortions will be 'permanent' people. Equalisers can be kept going for a few hours to keep these people away, but will also need go into recharge/cooling mode.

Don't worry if you're still busy with the Starting log! Or if you've been meaning to tag, jump in here!

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Ah, this was probably a bad idea. But she'd been curious. Curious about how bad Kolo had gotten among other things. She reaches out with her power to push back the leaves, the bushes, the vines. Back back back, no one gave them permission to touch. It makes her fumble with the equalizer as she tries to concentrate on two things at once.

"I don't suppose you heard that, did you?" Persephone hasn't realized that she's pressed even closer to Zetta as they are surrounded.

Devero is fast and prepared, and Ryo blinks for a moment as he's handed an already threaded needle - with a shorter thread, even, so he's not dragging twelve inches of string repeatedly through skin. He wasn't expecting it, but it's a nice surprise and very much appreciated.

Which is something he'll tell Devero later.

For now, he sets to work, stitching torn skin back together. Luckily - for both Ryo and his patient - it's more incision than laceration, without the jagged edges that would make this much more difficult. He works as quickly as he can without sacrificing efficiency, and when the thread hits its end, he ties it off and holds his hand out for another, already prepared and ready thanks to Devero.

He goes through four needles before he reaches the end of the wound, tying it off and depositing the bloodied needle, along with the three others he'd used, into a small towel and folding it over. He'll sanitize those later; for now, he cleans around the wound again, careful to keep the stitches dry, not looking up. "Tape and gauze, please, and I could use an extra hand."

The noise on Guri's end of the battle does draw Alice's attention though. It's very momentary, since they don't exactly have much time to spend looking at anything but the enemies constantly approaching them.

But Alice can't help it. That last bout Guri had just now did produce quite a bit of sound, and Alice wants to at least make sure Guri is alright..

.. only to quickly realise she doesn't even have the time to do that much before Alice is already getting attacked again. And that only annoys her further. What's the use of this dumb fight if she can't even make sure the one person most important to her in this distortion is alright in the middle of the fight?

Alice strikes the enemies once more, but she can feel the anger over it building in her gut. And it's like the anger is feeding on itself, breeding more and more anger, and her skin starts to slowly grow into a deep red.

But that's not the only thing. Slowly something starts to grow out of both sides of her head, the beginning of horns starting to form as Alice snarls while smashing another undead warrior's head to pulp on the ground.

"Let's try."

Apparently it's something Inigo doesn't have to think deeply about right now. The situation is wild and chaotic - which means they need to contain it as soon as possible, and it's not like Inigo has a better idea to try out to do exactly that right now. These people do come from the distortions, after all, so even if there is no distortion over the camp, it might still have an effect on them.

Getting off the now thoroughly tied up person, Inigo moves to stand next to Ryo, pulling out his sword.

(Don't worry, don't worry, it's mostly for defense only - he doesn't plan to stab an innocent person if he can help it.)

"I'll help you get to them." You know, since Inigo is a bit better at the fighting defense thing than Ryo is. "Do you know where they're being kept here?"

"But there'd be even more trouble if I'd break one, right..?"

It's been the main reason she's been more busy trying to take care of the people in camp than doing that - especially since that was a task that would keep anyone busy enough during the last few days.

But with the people who are supposed to be taken care of now rebelling against them, there's not as much work to do there that hasn't also become rapidly more dangerous. So the idea of turning towards the drones is a good one, but there's just that one problem.

"I'm sure they must have been really expensive for the Ministry." They don't have these things yet where Madoka comes from, but she imagines they'd be super expensive if they were sold back home.

To be fair, softening the blow from this height does nothing to delay the inevitable; death softened is still death, and the revenant does not get up after impacting the ground.

(Yet.)

He holds on as Thanatos flies higher, a little breathless. Flying with Jingyi takes his breath away every time, and while flying with Thanatos isn't the same, he would still be thrilled if they weren't doing it in an attempt to escape death. He wrenches his focus back to the matter at hand. Thanatos is right - something needs to change. "Maybe we can set up our own equalizer. Can you get to one of the camps?" They never did have that conversation about what Thanatos is capable of, for good reasons, so for now Ryo is flying a bit blind.

She made a slight hmmph at his response, though whether he was affirming it or not, she'd let him judge for himself. She certainly wasn't too crazy about the idea of storing corpses on the train; that close quarters with dead tissue might just indeed poison someone-and not just the enemy.

"I'm just as open to unconventional warfare as the next soldier." Hell, that was part of the reason Special Forces was created in the first place, back in the '70s. "But now you really have me concerned about containment. Enemies are one thing, but getting your own allies sick or worse is counter productive-just how do you plan on storing this poison when you make it, anyway?"

There was a reason they had an entire department for this sort of thing, and why modern uniforms were made resistant to gas attacks.

"Okay." It's something to focus on - it's better than nothing - and something in him settles knowing that Inigo is with him on this. They have a goal.

He retrieves his knife from where he'd dropped it on the ground in favor of the rope and straightens up. He's not worried by Inigo's sword; if someone is trying to kill you, survival comes first and all other bets are off. It's the reason he's carrying a knife himself. "Probably in the supply tents. There's one this way." He nods to his right and starts walking, making sure Inigo is coming with him before picking up speed.

That was progress atleast. Red was doing a job of providing cover for them to be set, but between Defense and getting civilians to safety, she hadn't felt this run through since the first Nether realm war.

And considering how many missions they've been through, that was saying a lot.

"What's it you're sensing?" Her daughter was sensitive enough to pick up on these things, her answers were also always straight to the point-something Sonya could appreciate.

"I can, but I've kept a distance from the camps to draw them towards me and away from the others. If they're after you as well, then will we even be able to get to one to set up?" That doesn't even put into consideration that Thanatos has no idea how to do that. He's gotten better at technology, but he's not proficient enough for that.

Mort squeaks something, trying to help the two people who have drawn the wretches focus. "I've seen how heavy those are. I don't think you could move it alone," Thanatos says. Mort gives a resigned squeak and readjusts his hold on his pointy object. "And when did you get that?"

Mort doesn't give a helpful answer. Just "earlier."

"I saw someone setting up their tent upside down, if that counts," he says, leaning in as if this is indeed gossip worth sharing. They continued forward, eventually stopping at a small fire near the cooking tents. Several iron pots meant for small amounts of substances, most water, some other beverages.

Wuxian peers into a few of them after exchanging greetings with the man watching the fire, who waves them on with a, "Fill it up after, please."

"Here we are! Looks like the water's ready," he says, grasping the handle with his folded over hoodie sleeve. "There's tea in the packages right there."

That earns a crinkle in the corners of his eyes; Lan Xichen doesn't laugh aloud but this fact leads to a near chuckle that borders on rude. "Did you assist?"

He greets the man as well and then follows along. "I will see what they have." Which is, when he comes back with a small container of tea leaves, only one option. "It seems our option is black tea leaves or no tea." Which means a dark tea it is!

Xichen is not so helpless that he needs Wei Wuxian to gather everything, he can at least gather cups for tea for them to share.

Jingyi watches the whole process while surreptitiously swiping a paw across his mouth: drool, be banished. It's not unusual to see magics here which work by touch, and he knows some himself, but he's still interested. Enough so his massive head hovers over Tidus by about a metre so he can better watch.

"I might be able to do a sort of net technique, if you can follow up with making them slumber." For a large bodied creature, handling the deft tasks was less efficient than the slightly more forgiving ones.

" Wouldn't hurt anyone."

"It's intuitive," comes the answer, which to a man who invents in his sleep isn't a helpful observation. Still, he doesn't offer guidance or correction as Tidus gets the drone to lift off from where it was nestled amongst it's brethren.

He laughs, clapping his hands around the bottle of alcohol, once Tidus has it dipping and dancing with his wiggling of the controls.

"See? You're getting the hang of it! Bet you'll crash before long, and that's how you know you're really understanding how it works!"

He's even serious. Messing up is incredibly informative of limits to movement and reaction times.

He listens to her, having pressed acupoints while she called over the SCA, the refugee now quietly passed out, visibly breathing. His brow furrows, but he's moved, and he comes next to her, patting her shoulder... then giving her a one armed hug across them.

"That's better news than it sounds. If all these people started acting strange at the same time, they've been destabilised by something at the same time. If it's linked to the distortions... Miss Madoka."

He partially crouches to her level, meeting her eye to eye.

"If it is, the equalisers may bring them back to themselves. Will you try to set one up with me?" A task, and not violence. A solution, and it requires them giving it their all.

In what he hopes is a way easier for her, and away from this violence around them.

"Flowers, sweat, and your scent," he says automatically, tail twitching but not flicking. He does move it when Inigo asks, bringing his head down and watching to the sides, trusting Inigo to handle the hog tying. He's seen the man's rope skills.

He's stopped making strange motions with his tongue against his teeth, resigned to the lingering taste of his friend, shifting his mind forward.

"If i knock people down gently, do you think we have the rope to tie them all or... wait! I can make a sort of holding net, if we drag people to it, we can keep them in there! If they're only being violent to those of us from the Voidtrecker and the ministry?"

Inigo earns a questioning look. Does it sound feasible?

Jiu doesn't respond to the warning - not aloud, at least; it should be a given that he'll ensure the civilians remain safe and unharmed.

But the dulled storm is still a storm nonetheless, the roars and blinding flashes of light enough to make him squint, frowning in grim determination as he tries to focus his attention on the other passengers over the elements.

By the time they finally break into safety, Jiu's ears and tail have popped out again, a fact he chooses to ignore. Does he get off the dragon though?....No. No, he's still sitting there watching the others go, legs casually hanging over one side like he might disembark at any moment. "...It all seems somewhat pointless, this."

The comment is a quiet one, casual - he honestly doesn't care if Jingyi hears or not.

Jingyi waits for everyone to dismount before giving himself a bodily shake, then settling down to expand his area of heat influence. It's a bothersome level of concentration, but good too, in that the cold is slightly less bone chilling as the ministry workers set up the equaliser.

"Ugh, it's tiring, but I'm skilled at this much, aren't I? Flying and carrying way too many passengers... they mostly said thanks, at least. Polite," he says with a grumble.

Reminded, however, he tilts his head to look towards Xie Lian with one large eye.

"Thanks for keeping them on. Trying to catch them would be terrible in those winds."

"Can you keep them off of me long enough for me to try?" It's about all he can think of right now. He's not the best with technology either, but he did pay attention to the tutorial, enough that he thinks he has a reasonable shot at success (namely because failure would only make things worse and is therefore not an option).

...the half of the conversation he can hear is certainly interesting. "Mort, do you remember how to set one up? Maybe you can help me." Mort can't move an equalizer by himself, but he can probably push buttons.

Lagos, on the other hand, is more interested in the latter part of the conversation. Wait, what does Mort have?

A quick glance gives Ryo the answer. "A knife?"

There's a beat, and then Lagos explodes into raucous warbling. That's so cool he wants one!!

She hears that snarl - and that is unlike Alice. She spares a look back and sees her entangled and...changing. Were she the sort, she would have sworn, quite loudly, at her inability for the moment to do anything about it.

Three bear down on her, clutching at her, trying to pull her down. The biggest simply screams incoherently while trying to hit her in the head. She simply moves her aim, dragging her arm across despite their best efforts. Inexorably, her blaster comes into line with the man's open mouth, and she pulls the trigger. Every hole in his head emits blue light as the stun blast goes off inside his skull, where it is never meant to be used.

But he'll certainly take a lot longer to rise without an intact head. She flings off another, holstering one blaster to grab the last by the shoulder and bodily fling him away.

She makes it two steps towards Alice before another one closes the range, forcing her to turn, grab him, and fling him to the ground.

"Alice!"

Jingyi can't help that by sheer bulk, he hovers as Esteban ties her up, answering his question swiftly, fur bristling down his long spine.

"No, I'm hearing too many. We can drop them by the medical tents, they might need it after. We will," he says, blunt and factual, smelling blood in the air, but no urine, no voided bowels, as of yet no death.

"Here, step back." Jingyi hops his front legs up, catching himself on air as he lifts his chest and paws so he can form a particular seal. It's crude, coming from talons, but after he forms it, the refugee gasps, coughs, then sighs out, wheezing an exhalation into abrupt slumber.

One paw returns to the ground, talons thudding against dirt in a quiet tempo.

"That won't last long, but it'll let her rest while we move her." Living deadweight, that he reaches for with such gentle, deliberate care, as if to scoop her into a hold with his claws. He's of a size to manage it, at the least. "Then we must join the rest in disarming them. Or interrupting this compulsion."

"Teamwork is sometimes the best way to accomplish a goal." Even if he has gotten used to doing things on his own for a good number of years, the help of a friend always makes smoother work.

"You had the harder job so it is the least I could do to make sure everyone being transported stayed safe while you did that." They are all working together to fix this world as best they can. Xie Lian fears that even though this part of things has been difficult, it is only a sign of what is going to be coming later. He hasn't been on many missions but he has learned that much.

The ministry worker frowns, but is already moving, gesturing for Ryo to follow as the muffled outrage of the refugee speaks in the same rhetoric they'd been using the whole time.

"If it's linked to the distortions, then yes, it should. Here, take this, I need to get the other camps on the line to verify the situation there. If this doesn't work," they say, giving Ryo a firm, familiar sort of determination borne of experience, " We move to the next plan, and get the medical staff up and moving."

A glance to where Jingyi continues carefully holding his sporadically struggling person bundle.

"And a therapist," is likewise muttered, not really meant for commentary.

"No, but you visit often enough!"

They're arguing across realities, and right now, Jingyi doesn't have the energy to spare piecing together just how this Jin Rulan's experiences may be different.

To be fair, no one asks Jingyi beyond the obvious dragon thing.

"This is what I mean," he says, rearing up just enough to catch himself floating his front legs, performing the necessary seal. A blue qi net, reminiscent of a fishers net with larger gaps "woven" in, springs up from the ground encircling the injured refugee, then caps off as a dome overhead, out of their reach. He tightens it, preventing the refugee from moving too much, but loosens it again when the refugee tries climbing the qi netting, making it harder for them to get any hold.

"They need treating... they need to be out or freed from this compulsion. Rulan, can you reach any of their pressure points?"

Knock them out the kindest, most controlled way, sect heir.

A nod of his head in acknowledgment, and then he tunes out the cries as they approach the marked location, which is... unhelpfully within a building. Or no, I'm it's partially collapsed rear courtyard.

Wei Wuxian leaps and scrambles over the broken wall, while two of the factions fighting down the way catch sight of them both. That's going to be Lan Zhan's problem, one Wei Wuxian trusts him to handle as he finds the location marked and sets down the equaliser, beginning to anchor it before the start up process can be initiated.

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Fissures of Time: Ongoing

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cw: violence

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