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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It's difficult to put it all into words when it feels, suddenly, like his mouth is filled with cotton. Somehow, in some way, both of his nephews look painfully like the sister they'd lost - the idea of that seems unfathomable when he thinks about the way he was raised and what little he had of their sister to work with.

He glances over at Wei Wuxian, somehow resisting the urge to say something sour, some commentary on his own raising of his nephews - with a-Ling more like his son than anything else.

Jin Ling is still technically the heir to Lotus Pier, until Jiang Cheng has his own child. That's something that isn't necessarily coming in their future. He has no prospects on that front, which leaves him all the more sour.

"She was with him, in his heart," he says finally. "I... Did not tell him enough stories, but..." It was too painful. How could he ever put those sorts of things into words?

"Then it's time to have a sit down and some lunch, and cool off," Soldat says firmly. And, looking around at the others since it's not just Inigo they're responsible for here, they add, "All of us. C'mon. Back to camp. We have to pick up more supplies, anyhow." That was the last of their equalizers, and they need to consult the maps back at camp for where to head to next, so they might as well take the chance to rest for a little bit.

"You've been here longer than me-- more than six months," Soldat muses. "Do you think things will have changed, back home, for you? When you go back?"

"Oh, from the Void Ministry," Soldat explains, though clearly they're not running the Void Ministry now, given they're helping out on this mission. "That's who set the trap. They had her classified as a rogue train-- illegal, because the records for her don't exist anymore. I guess she kind of still is. But they're not trying to decommission her anymore, trying to work with us, so that's better than nothing."

"Considering the only way we figured out how to get rid of them was with grenades," Soldat says, "I wouldn't. I don't have any grenades right now, and I'd rather not blow myself up again." It was quick and painless, and coming back on the train is even easier than coming back from the labs in Beacon, but they'd still really rather not do it.

"Anyway. Don't apologize. Everybody gets tired of this shit. There's no shame in that."

Soldat stops short for a moment, staring even more, with some actual horror. They have... issues with children being given chips in their heads. Or being experimented on in general.

This is really not the time to be stymied by it, though, as another of the refugees charges them from behind.

"I don't know," Cassie says. "And whatever happens, I can't predict it, prepare for it, or change it from here.

"So there's really no sense in worrying about it, is there?"

"Y-yeah." Idia got out, a little caught up in the idea of some sort of unknown, alien, disease that could happen at any moment. Then again, there's lot of fighters on the train, right? That meant lot of injuries. And none of them have seemed to have problems with illness in the time Idia's been here. So maybe the train is protecting them well after all.

Or they are just really good at looking after themselves after a fight.

"I'm sure you'll do a good job." Idia encourages after he breaks out of his stunned silence.

He took a breath, easy to obey, to try and calm down. Naoya was right he didn't belong here, not when all this was going on. He let the touch ground him as he looked up at him.

"I... I hope everyone is alright."

It's terrible to think on, what might be happening back there.

"Yes... I wanted something easy, for people to just heat up. Everyone is working so hard and I know preparing food can be difficult at the end of a long day."

And it's not like he can really help in any other way. Not even with the distortions, the random nature of them meant leaving the camp was a risk.

"I hope you like it..."

"You prayed to them?" Taiki hadn't even thought of doing so. He had not been brought up religious on earth and though he was the creature of the gods he had never spoken to them, never met them. Not whilst he was conscious anyways.

He's pretty sure they hate him. But Inigo was different, he had his dragon god and that had led him to... feel the presence of another god.

"Do you think that's what they were drawn towards? That presence?"

It was to do with the gods, he looked at Tidus, worried. "Did they attack you as well Tidus? Have you prayed to the gods?"

"I'll do my best!" He grinned at him and began to clean the wound, pressing the cloth over it carefully. He is trying not to hurt him but also he knows he has to be thorough in order to make it all clean.

He doesn't want Idia to hurt any more after all!

After a moment Idia will realise his cut no longer hurts, indeed on Romeo's hands where he is holding the cloth a cut appears, sending a trickle of blood down the cloth.

"Yes." The Diagad place that maybe wasn't actually Diagad? He's a little confused. But he's not thinking too much about that right now because this amazing thing has just happened.

Was it dangerous? Maybe. But he could help his friends! He could make them not get hurt!

"But you're not hurt anymore!" He grinned at her. "So that's the important bit! I made it go away!"

Even if it hurt him. That doesn't matter.

"I already did be yelling at him." She shrugged. And then turned to take down some others, aiming for their legs.

Maybe they should just kill them? It might be easier. But people might get mad. She's a bit lost without instructions.

"Uh-- no?" It takes Tidus a second to answer, to even think back to everything. Brain trying to figure out which question to answer first. "I didn't pray-" he didn't even see where to pray, wouldn't know there was a place if not for Inigo, "but I mean... they started attacking me once me and Inigo went around trying to stop everyone. But..."

But. Now that he's thinking, looking at Inigo, he is wondering, trying to figure out - did they go for him first? A silent question in the way he keeps his eyes on Inigo, if he could remember better than him.

"Inigo grabbed them so I could use a sleeping spell. But, it was kinda hard to tell what everyone was doing."

This was, for sure, turning into more than a two-person fight.

Not that Tidus immediately has attentions on that, but the hand thrusting at him, its aim deflected only by how Tidus grabs and pushes it up, grips it tight and uses his own weight as a means to drag the man off-balance, to throw him to the side. He doesn't have quite the body-weight to regularly outmatch someone, his own moves clumsy; but Tidus has the upper hand in experience, in converting energy into strength. An action with a cost, but Tidus blots out the exhaustion it'll put upon him with the adrenaline offered by a fight. A battle.

A battle being what this is promising to become, with everyone else that gathers. Tidus has a split second, a "Gibs!" that he shouts with it - and a light bursts from his chest, a sparkling thing that at least gives the woman a reason to see, a blindness. For here appears a being of water and hope usually nestled inside Tidus's heart, now a small ball of water to knock the woman down, and to make it difficult for the teen to have a direct line to Tidus.

Not that it'll stop the youth, just as Tidus himself knows he can't hang around. They grab for Tidus, pulling at an arm, and Tidus doesn't have a great angle to yank them back like he did the other man. And the woman seems undeterred by the appearance of the small being; probably because, for all his power and gifts, it's easy to thwap at a higgledy and knock them over, and then to grab at the leg of the young man it protects.

--might need some help here, Esteban!

She's not human either?? Well, this has got awfully awkward.

A quick look down at her, Faux isn't sure what kind of state his crew mate is in under that hood. Somethings up, but just like the user back there, he's not sure what it could be yet. He does note the term 'somebody' she used for the user. Guess he's not the only one bringing local terms around here.

"Xion, was it?" hoping the pronunciation is right, "You're not wrong, however, we had instructions to make sure the time refugees are okay, even if they are violent. If at all possible." This isn't really his thing, but Faux doesn't want any users to derez because of himself, even if he honestly agrees with Xion here in principle. "These users- humans have been through a lot, taken from everything they know and love. They deserve another chance. We should at least try."

"But I agree that our safety should be considered." He gives her a nod. "If you can source something to bind the user with, I can go fetch a medkit." a nervous smile slips out, "Perhaps between us, we can figure out how to treat them?" Surely the not-human user must have more knowledge than he does about medical matters.

He could make people invisible?

"Nah, keep it for yourself, 'f we get into serious trouble." He hadn't really thought about Romeo as a mage, but knowing it now-- he breathed a soft sigh of relief, glad to know the child wasn't entirely defenseless as he had first assumed. If there was trouble, Esteban would cause a diversion. He was good at that.

"Just keep an eye out an' try to take empty pathways. 'F there's anythin' coming at us, I'm still here, okay?" He was careful when he went to give the child's shoulder a reassuring pat, a quick smile lifting the corners of his mouth. He would make sure they all got there, everything was going to be fine!

The light didn't take him by surprise this time, but the call to it shivers a warning down the half-dragon's spine. His snarl is careless, and rips at his throat, shoving his opponent off with entirely too much fury.

His friend is in danger-- he's been placing his friends in danger, and fire thunders down his veins, roars in his ears.

He darts on quick feet through the few steps between them. Launches himself in the battle without care or wonder, wings and talons and tail snapping with whip-sharp quickness. The teen takes the brunt of his rage, a sharp punch snapped at his lower ribs. It's off-centered, but his lungs struggle to fill, and in the gasp that follows, Esteban shoves him, throwing him further still with his wing. The opposite limb settles to gently nudge Tidus' frame back into some semblance of balance, warmth spreading against his side and around his back.

He doesn't have a good angle to deal with the older woman, can't do much more to help, but a sharp smack of his tail still provides a distraction, stinging at her calf. Only; of course, they are careless to this, these puppets without minds, and Esteban has to pull his wing back, before the man struggling back to his feet can think of taking it in hand.

His back to Tidus' side, he takes a deep breath and tries to temper down his strength, struggling not to make lasting damage. Across from them, the opponent Esteban had been struggling with is also rushing, her eyes completely devoid of reason. He has to swallow back the thoughts that want to crawl all over him-- there's no time to be gentle right now.

With a tug, the older woman tries her best to disbalance Tidus again, and the shift has Esteban cursing, bracing the wing still supporting him. It breaks his concentration from the fight, and movement is too swift for him to follow through.

The man uses it to dash into the half-dragon, scrambling at a wing. Behind him, the women team up to overtake Tidus and throw him down, hardly caring about anything else. One tries to pull his legs from underneath him while the other rushes blindly, elbow held up before her and aiming at his neck as she throws her entire weight at him.

"I'm sure everything will be fine." He runs his fingers through Taiki's hair, trying to ease him towards calm. "Things will turn out okay."

He starts humming a tune, soft and gentle - a lullaby from long ago. He's not sure if it'll help, but he might as well try.

It's surprising, isn't it. A little while back she was surprised over him wanting to do as much as give her a pat on the shoulder, the most mundane of actions - and yet here he's summoning some sort of water jet out of the blue, and Alice doesn't even do as much as blink.

It's pretty odd - what a person can or can't be used to.

Though perhaps it's for the better that she doesn't focus on the water. It means she can instead focus on what he's saying, though the words make her frown in thought.

"My plan is usually just smashing things until they give up." .. look, she's well aware that it sounds like a little simple, but it has usually worked out for her so far. And she has fought a lot of things at this point. "But these things do not seem to reach that point."

Hence the problem. And Alice is struggling more and more now, as she thinks about it. Because the logical thing does seem to be to leave, just as he's saying, and yet she can't bring herself to. Alice hates abandoning things. Hence why the young woman's facial expression seems to grow more complex by the moment as she's staring at him.

The upside is that there is one thing she can always, almost without doubt, do: and that's outrun people. She pounds across the ground, arms pumping, sliding to a stop in front of Alice, holding out her hands.

"Alice! Alice, stop."

He's not sure it would be fine, one person is already dead that he knew of and how many more would be before this day was through? It didn't bare thinking about.

He started slightly as Naoya began to hum, he wasn't expecting that. He blinked at him a couple of times and then closed his eyes, he's worried and scared but Naoya is kind, even if had killed...

Tears prick his eyes and he blinks them away, letting himself listen to the tune, reminding himself that he is safe.

"I'll keep both my eyes out!" He nodded, looking determined. He was going to do his very best to get everyone there safely!

He nodded at Esteban and reached out to grasp his hand. "Good luck! You just got to yell if you need me to slow down. We'll get everyone to safety."

And with that he set off, encouraging the people around them to follow.

Good... Good.

Esteban takes the last spot on the line, keeping an eye out for any problems or stragglers. The earth sings and heaves in turns, like the lungs of a gargantuan beast that they have foolishly disturbed. It makes for an uneven footing, and even without the refugees spotting them, progress is slow.

But Romeo is smart, has shown Esteban how alert he is both to the situation at hand, and considerate enough to catch on how rattled his companion was. The half-elf is kind of proud of him for that. His gut reaction is still to try and protect the child, but it gets just a tiny bit easier to breathe. Everything is going to be fine.

Get to the supply tents. That's step one. Contact anyone from outside if they can. Step two. Okay, this can work. Step three would be... to try and setup a defensible area? But then, there's nothing defensible in the tents that Esteban can think of. He can only hope someone else is going to have a better idea when he asks.

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Fissures of Time: Ongoing

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How much action would you like in this thread?

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up to you! We can get them there relatively safely unless you want to play a fight?

Would rather not. Turns out I suck at action shots P= I just don't have much of a plot for this >__<