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Dad Hoc:
<--- New Scene: Earth Lunar Lagrange, the Sidereal Wastes, The Whorl, The Astral Realms --->
No one who has never seen Balm in the Astral Realm can really claim to know the woman. They might know who she is now, but she was a very different character once upon a time. The eder Thyrsus has lived a long, long, storied life among her people. Her residual self image certainly does not reflect the decrepit woman that is so often pushed about in her chair. Here, she has a strong square jaw. Here, her muscles have not given out. Here, her back is not hunched. She is tall, her dark hair is long, straight, and positively luminous in the light it reflects. Her dark eyes are clear, bright, free of age and rhyme.
She's wearing what she usually wears. A skirt, a tank top, a shawl over her shoulders. It looks like armor on her, somehow. It probably is. Her amnion shines like sunlight, just a gleaming golden bright bubble keeping the Dreamspeaker safe from harm as she bobs weightless in the empty dreaming wastes.
"Assuming I succeed at this. Any words for the Mother?" Balm appears to be serious, though she's no longer looking at the others. She's staring at a far off point, out there in the black. Beyond where the stars are not.
Little Fox:
Perhaps not surprisingly, Fox looks both more and less human in the Astral than she does in the 'real world'. Still about the same size: a streak of -- is is black paint or a fox's dark fur around its eyes, there to absorb the glare of snow? -- well, whatever, a dark stripe across her eyes, those bright gold and luminous. At first it might look like she's wearing a fox pelt attached to her hair, like a hood, but on second glance, that's both a shaman's pelt and a fox's pelt. It is outside of her and of her. It is both things at once without being half one thing and half another. And so it goes with every other part of her: did she paint her arms black, patterned with subtle runes, or is that her fur? The answer is yes, and no, and both, and neither. Here, in the Astral, she is the fox and the Siberian shaman; she is the short and swarthy woman whose people are native to the Levant; she is the northern lights and the tail which drags across the snow.
Her fingers flex, the sharp little claws curved at their tips, as she blinks slowly at Balm. A shuddering breath in, and she blinks once, twice, closing the distance between herself and the Elder. Almost touching, but not quite. "You will know what to say, Bubbe." Less formal than Grandmother, yes. More and less certain all at once, yes, that too.
Jeremiah Hamilton:
Jeremiah's dream shape was a curious one for a Mastigos, his features sharpened and highly defined by the corona of multi-hued light that radiated around him. A pair of markings on his shoulders glowed faintly on their own, the right a sigil of some sorts and the left a stylized starburst. He nodded in agreement with Fox, his right hand idly flexing at his side, but staying silent for the moment.
Kayla Sockum:
"Tell the Mother hi from her avatar in the Underworld and the many different ghost over there." Kay says, floating there, their body shape barely visible amidst the strange liquid-like effects dancing about them. In truth, she looks like someone made a filter out of Sailor Mercury mid water transformation mixed with Goku's Ultra Instinct Omen form, little spores dancing about this form in a sizeable cloud.
"As for a message from me? Just give her a hug and a thank you for the snack I got from the Tree, however inappropriate that might be." Kay says while just floating there. "Also, do you think being sneaky could matter?" Kay says, looking around with Active Mage sight
Alexis "Rashida" Bartram:
"Thank her for me. I'm pretty sure she had at least a fingertip involved in my surviving my Awakening at all." Alexis in the Astral would be hard to look at, for many that are less in tune with their selves and motivations than the present company. There is at once a sense of deep significance and the certainty that the onlooker is known for all that they are. Her glasses swirl with the faint shimmer of half-realized portents, and her body is wrapped in dark bands of cloth that twist and turn, an ever-shifting pattern that signifies something that evades communication as it changes whenever not in focus.
Dad Hoc:
"I will, Rashida. Thank you, Fox. There's no concealing what I'm about to do, child. But the rest of you might benefit."
Her parting words to everyone were, of course, reassurance and advice. That's as fitting as they're going to get. There's only so much preparing and saying goodbye one person can do before it's holding on. And this is a Thyrsus who has promised herself she wouldn't do that. And so, having made arrangements, planned ahead, trained her successor, and seen the youngest of her great-grandchildren into Kindergarten, she begins to grow distant from the others. It's slow at first, and silent. She seems to grow smaller and smaller with no sense of growing more distant, but that's just a trick of having literally no other points of reference.
Then there's a flash of gold-white light, which certainly makes her claim that there's no hiding what she's about, and a sudden growing streak of light arcing through the black, reaching towards the rim of the solar system and out towards the void. Even at this distance it's almost painful to look at. Like magnesium fire. But that pain is more thought than felt. Like someone tearing a strip of paint off the side of an old barn called reality.
Kayla Sockum:
While the blinding lighting, Kay still looks around through her active sights for hung spell so that she can be ready for them, ready to destroy them beforehand or at least stop them when they go off, tears are in her eyes already but there's a smile on their expression, even as their form flicker between little ripple in the water of her Astral form, glittering brightly from reflecting the light. A Deep, Calming Breath occurs as she refocus.
Jeremiah Hamilton:
Jeremiah watched with no small bit of curiosity as Balm seemed to diminish before them, his hand moving to shield his eyes more on reflex than anything as the light flashed and soared off into the distance. He smiled quietly, offering a whispered "Good luck" before looking back to the others.
Alexis "Rashida" Bartram:
Alexis takes a deep breath and dips into the observant fugue of her Legacy to activate Truth Without Knowledge, her eyes tracing the symbolism of their surroundings, looking for things that have been hidden in the fabric of this ragged edge of the Astral, exposed as it is to the Abyss and what lies beyond. Golden words flicker across the inscribed stone of her Amnion as it shields her from the edge of the wind.
Dad Hoc:
Balm is moving quite literally at the speed of light and, for all that, impossibly slowly. The speed of light is as fast as fast gets, but the distances concerned are beyond vast. At least as humans reckon it. A minute and more passes, and still she's nothing more-- and nothing less --than a pin prick in the sheet of night, scratching a golden bead of light on the backdrop of the universe.
It all seems to be going according to plan. Better than anyone could have hoped, let's be honest. She does very much appear to be on course towards something, and pissing off all of creation as she's doing it. Which, let's face it, if it would make a Guardian frown it's probably an encouraging sign.
The most perceptive among the spectators will note a series of sparkling flashes of light from the dark side of an impossibly distant reach out and touch it Mars. As though someone had scattered a few dozen fire crackers and lit them off at night. Quick puffs of brightness flickering and then gone again. Only a few moments later, those same persons catch additional sparkles as the objects lifting off from the surface of Mars exit the shadow and begin arcing into the clear light of the sun. They appear to be creeping at a ridiculously slow pace.
They are very, very, very, very far away.
Little Fox:
She's never been good at hiding her feelings, and right now, no matter what else happens, the person she thinks of when she thinks the word mother -- far more than the woman who brought her into this world -- is leaving, and while the terms of the Pax Arcana do mean that Fox can maybe someday find her again, she won't be ruled out, forever? This is --
This is hard. This is a death, even if Balm continues in some other form.
Crouched next to Balm before she speeds away, Fox's shoulders hunch, and one of her hands rests on the ground, fingers splayed. She pants, and in her attempt to contain the desire to scream, low, chattering noises break in her throat. Her black-stained (fur-covered) arm stretches out toward the arc of Mars in the distance. "Not Revontulet," she creaks, her voice narrow, her throat tight.
Alexis "Rashida" Bartram:
Alexis whips her hand out, tracing a wide circle in space with intent and crimson metal. With a crunching sound reminiscent of stepping on broken glass space warps, resolving into a 6-foot-wide window that shows the perspective from just off the front of the lead object, looking back towards the others.
Little Fox:
A half-second later, magic flares around her -- here in the Astral, her uncloaked Nimbus flares, sweet and green, the wash of petrichor, the hunger, nature red in tooth and claw -- and the shape of her pupils changes, from canid to avian, as she focuses into the distance. "Death. Prime. Mind? Mind. Cloaked. Very powerful. Powerful like Grandmother."
Kayla Sockum:
Kay notices the flashes of the light near Mars and tilt her head to the side raising both of her hands toward the red planet with the wooden diamond dancing between her fingers as she looks around for her compatriot, to see what they do. "I might have a plan, but I don't know how feasible it is."
Dad Hoc:
The streaking bead of light that is Balm continues to shear apart the darkness like a cutting torch, flecks and sparks of her golden amnion guttering away from her as she travels the only Dream Path that was ever just for her. A second time. Are the pieces of her that are falling away her doubts? Her pain? Are they her fears, all the tethers of the lie finally cutting loose from her soul? Or is each one a memory of someone she loved? There goes Fox. There goes Kay. There's no answering that question at the moment, there is only the path, the traveler, and the journey now.
The scrying portal opens over the nose cone of what looks to be something not entirely unlike a modern day multi theater, multi purpose fighter-interceptor. Only rigged out for space. And then some. If you got in your mind something a little like a Viper from Battlestar Galactica, you would be correct. But also something a little like a Veritech from Macross. That ship absolutely turns into something else. Just. There's no questioning it. The cockpit even looks like it's the faceplate of a giant masked helmet.
The cockpits. Well. They're all empty. Save for a glowing box jacked into a web of wires and cables. Anyone who has ever seen inside where Mark One actually is will recognize the soul cage of the Mark program. Save that in the cockpit of this lead craft is a very androgyne looking person in a space suit, head bald, face somewhat scarred and bitter. They balk almost at once, and their formation begins to scatter. The perspective veers all over the place as perspective through the portal stays focused on the forward cockpit and the craft the pilot is flying maneuvers violently. All the while their free hand is forming mudras in the air.
In the far, far distance, the formation of specks against the black scatter like a cloud of gnats. Pure entropy before starting to converge on Balm again. Alexis spooked the shit out of them.
Little Fox:
Completely still, Fox crouches, watching through the portal with her sharp, sharp eyes. Every moment she grows less human. Every moment she grows more human. Her hands curl up against her chest, fingers curled and pressed in against her sternum. "Give me -- a minute," she purrs. She growls. She says. "They will be mine."
And she purrs and growls again, her head ticked to one side, eyes focused, sharp little teeth bared as she pants softly.
Kayla Sockum:
Kay starts flicking her fingers around, grinning as she awaits for her Cadremate and Fox to act as she plans a rather special spells, brought to her via recent dives in video games during their resting hours as she focuses her attention to darkness in space and the various materials found in the asteroid belts and the fusion active in the sun to form her imago, she can, at the very least, make the mines very sharp object
Jeremiah Hamilton:
After seeing the formation scatter and the figure's efforts bring it back into line, Jeremiah's focus went towards the mage and the vessel they commanded. "Roger that...going to give them a rough time seeing the way forward in the meantime."
And indeed, with a low hum the light around Jeremiah sharpened, the brilliance of Balm's transit towards the beyond directed and focused towards the cockpit window of the lead vessel. JJ Abrams, eat your heart out.
Dad Hoc:
Watching what is going down through that scrying portal has to be deeply satisfying to anyone who knows the butchery and horror the person on the other side of the looking glass is responsible for. It's hard to relish blank, stark, terror in the eyes of another sentient creature. But it's there. They're beside themselves with abject horror at everything that is happening. Nothing can be heard, because they're inside of a helmet, inside of a barely air filled cockpit, sealed by a canopy, with the emptiness of the wastes between you all and them. And because they don't want to be heard, so the wastes work that way. But their lips move rapidly.
As the light begins to blind them, they surrender the stick and the pitching and yawing of their craft evens out. A single speck of dust on the distant field of black ink begins to reach away from the throng of all the others. The mudra stops, and they disappear. The craft seems on a fixed course, at a high rate of speed, pulling the perspective of the pentacle mages rapidly away from the conflict. (This was a Forces/Mind/Prime mixed effect.)
Alexis "Rashida" Bartram:
Thinking for a moment, Alexis decides on a course of action and then waits for her moment before hurling a powerful Mind effect at the defenses of the Seer piloting the lead vessel, more in hopes on the off chance it will work and to distract him from the other's efforts at ruining him than in hopes that the effect will succeed.
Kayla Sockum:
Kay doesn't chant, but Kay channels the importance of this moment, that she's a Diamond protect another Diamond from prevention of achieving their FULLEST potential and thus, crystallize the spell in specific ways. a MASSIVE amount of Massive bomb mines appear between the fighters and their targets through the windows that Alexis is maintaining. "Can't let you do that, Star Fucks." she says in a rather... wolfy voice."
Dad Hoc:
There are a lot of things happening all at once. A lot of things.
But how it all plays out is rather interesting. Fox wrests control of the vessel away from whatever has control over it presently. To her mind, it's like fighting for control with another magical being, yes. But. Rather more like how it was taking control of Mark One than it was taking control of someone's car. There's something in there that's saying, 'Hang on just one minute, you.'
But for now, she has the controls.
And she can now hear the terrified wailing from inside the canopy as the pilot screams over and over again, "Get me out of here, get me the fuck out of here, get me out of here god damn it! PULL THE FUCKING PLUG, GET ME OUT!" The radio communications carry to her psyche now, as though she was hearing them. Sharing them with another mind, hearing them too. They're scared comes a thought unbidden into that sense of control. Will you permit me to eject them? They're pulling the cable.
The ship is no longer accelerating now, because it's not being told to fly faster. The fight continues to grow more distant in the rear view, however.
Which means the spectacle of two dozen explosives rippling off, one by one, out in the darkness is not nearly as impressive as it must be up close. No sound accompanies the blasts, and it's difficult to judge from this distance how much damage they did. But. It's very, very obvious the answer is "quite a bit" to "a lot".
Little Fox:
Oh no, Fox responds, in a gentle, conciliatory sort of tone. I'm afraid we can't do that. They're trying to kill my mother and they tried to burn down my home and kill my mother. There's sort of a pattern of bad behavior here. I think we need to talk.
Pardon me for taking over the controls, she murmurs, mind to mind. I know it's rude of me, but I do need to bring them in. I'd love to talk more later, genuinely.
"I have custody of the ship," she growls aloud where the other allied Mages can hear her. "I have to focus. The ships think. I think they're all Marks. Anyone got Thaumium handy? I can whip some up when we get home if necessary."
"Yep, those are definitely people. Marks. Those are brains in there. If you can make them go non-lucid briefly, or shut down the machines... "
Jeremiah Hamilton:
"On it..." Jeremiah replied to Fox, eyes on the glowing box in the cockpit as he half-sang the High Speech he called upon for the spell's working, almost a lullaby in its own way. Although the magic found a hard wall it managed to slip through the cracks, seeping into the minds of the Mark units and jolting them to sudden wakefulness. "Time to rise and shine..."
Kayla Sockum:
"Well, hopefully I'll get to apologize to them for wrecking their chassis a bit by making them all new ones?" Kay says aloud her attention drifting back to their surrounding, their team, their friends. "Did you all make them sleep? Do I need to grab their souls into special containers?" they inquire floating about near their friends.
Dad Hoc:
Fox can feel the resistance starting once the polite request to release a human frightened for its life out of its unwilling captivity is denied, no matter the rationale. There is a marginally apologetic-- an apologetic the way retail workers are apologetic --tone that is offered in response to the resistance. I'm sorry. I was taught to value human life. I don't make it a habit to speak with people who do otherwise.
The resistance is strenous and continuous, but unsuccessful as yet. It will only be a matter of time, though. At least, that's the case until Jeremiah's effect takes hold. It's not quite a finger snap and lights out situation, it's the last flickering of a dying battery's headlights, and then the resistance stops. Cognition stops. There's silence in the canopy and over the coms except for the muffled amplified screams of the captive Seer.
One by one the ships begin to drift on their present courses. Some collide with one another and go spinning off in odd, painful looking shapes and directions opposing the impact. Meanwhile, the tiny speck of now impossibly bright light that is Balm continues to arc further and further into the forever night.
How far is that now? How long has it been? It seems like ... perhaps seven minutes or so that this fight has been playing out, what with light speed being what it is, and the time it took you to notice take off and so on, adjusted for that. But she has gone so far. So far
So far that the sparkles flecking off her ever more distant form seem to illuminate tendrils out in the darkness. Sinuous threads of darker-than-dark that light can fall into. And disappear behind. That light can illuminate and that can bring shadow darker-than-darker-than-dark-is-dark. There are several things impossible with that darkness from the jump, and it is now it that begins to gather closer in anticipation.
Little Fox:
I could have killed them, Fox snarls. I could have hurt them. I chose instead to contain them. To keep them from killing my mother. Fox holds on to control of the ship, and those near her can see the lean muscles in her forearms flex -- not from any sort of real physical strain, but as a reflection of the very real exertion of her Will. And then the resistance stops, and her voice pipes across the cockpit's speakers.
"You think I am just an animal. Too late you understand that you are too. Now you will stay with me, and you see how The Untamed flies your stupid ship."
With the innate and intuitive control Fox holds over the ship itself, she fires the engines, spins it in place, and lays on the accelerator, pushing herself closer to the vanishing point which is the former Elder.
Dad Hoc:
The vessel is easy to control once its digital sentience is asleep. The vessel is nimble, with literally dozens of small rockets and compressed air jets around its frame to enable rapid spins and maneuvers. It's unlike any flying experience Fox has ever had, because she has until now never been a transformable space plane flying through the space between Mars and Jupiter.
As it draws closer to the rest of its brethren who are now fanning out in a widening spread as each pursues its own trajectory away from the incident, it nonetheless brings the extent of Kay's damage into view. Wings have been sheared off, arms are floating about in space, a severed machine head is spinning away in another direction. For all that the fleet looks horribly damaged, nothing seems to feel dead. Just asleep. As though they could all come awake in a moment and resume lethal operation in at least some capacity.
Far out in the darkness, Balm's story switches from being one about flying in space to being one about sailing over a far black ocean, gliding over the surface of the waves but never touching. An angel, some might say. Or a ghost. Or a spirit. A valkyrie. There were a thousand stories for what she is and is becoming and thereby always was.
Nothing reflects off the surface of that dark and deadly sea. And none of the tendrils of shadow that snake out of the surface and slash at her form break the perfect light of her remaining amnion. The horizon holds a thousand distant sails, black and forbidding. The skies churn with sickly storms, and purple eyes watch her progress from the edges of being. And all of them, all of them close in.
But that's not the story that the rest see. They still see the bead of light, the streaking into ever more distant shadow, as the light she casts reveals ever larger, ever darker threads of night weaving a net and begin to close about her like a fist.
Dad Hoc:
The further Elder Balm's astral self reaches across the astral road she is riding, the more angry and forbidding the ocean before her becomes. The darkness now roils with fog over the slate black sea, the roiling pool of dragon's blood below rippling with the haste with which her form streaks over the surface, mere feet above.
Flashes of sickly purple light, like bolts of lightning lance behind the clouds and banks of fog, illuminating the masts of a thousand thousand ships. They are all black, their sails black, their flags waving proudly black as they cut the crest of the ichorous waves, bounding one after the other towards her, precisely the same way she heads bold and undaunted forward.
This one looks like a Dutch sloop, this a British Man o' War, that a Spanish Galleon. Here, a Japanese cruiser, there an American merchantman. And though each of their flags flutters black and sickly in the ocean breeze, the flags of colonial imperialism are still understood. Conveyed readily to the psyche of she that opposes them.
The first to cross her path, she blasts into rather like Captain Marvel attacking Thanos's carrier. There's a flash of fire and a rain of splintering wood, and she exits the far side of the craft, leaving it listing in the water and drooping into the sea, her mast shattered.
The second she encounters seems to arrest her somehow, she tangles in the riggings while below her on the deck the shadows begin to coalesce into a squad of Imperial Japanese ifantry, brandishing rifles with bayonets at the ready. They begin shouting orders at her, demanding that the child come down from there at once.
The look of dawning, horrified understanding that crosses Balm's face at what is taking place cannot be seen, but it can be felt, perhaps, in the way the abyss-- what they can see of it, all sinewy and black in the far distance --seems to brighten a deep, bruise purple, bulge outwards like someone's cheeks when they're trying to hold in a belch, and then a guttering expulsion of what looks like gas and particulant matter.
All they can see is that the streaking light of her progress has halted for some reason, and the Abyss continues to draw itself in around her.
Meanwhile, the dog brains of the squadron of Mark units floating, damaged and inert in a slowly scattering cloud over Mars begin to flicker to life. Alerts begin to ping in the cockpits of the ostensibly pilotless craft, bringing up threat indicators, targeting solutions, and optimal approach vectors. But the craft float and spin, still asleep.
Fox, still in control of the craft containing the Seer of the Throne, is aware of this. She is likewise aware that what is being detected are being reported as "Ab Tangos", and the targeting computer is doing its best to track about a dozen of them. 'About', because at this range some of the pings may in fact be tightly grouped flights of smaller entities, and the number seems to bounce around with targets flashing as viable now and then only to fall away again into a single signature.
Of course, it's the abyss. So they may just be budding and re-joining. Who can say without being closer.
Little Fox:
It begins with wild laughter. Her voice rattles the cockpit and swells around her compatriots. Fox exists in this moment in two places -- her awareness funneled through the computer and her presence between the others. She laughs wildly and says aloud, "Ab Tangos, that's what the computers are calling this. Sure, why not? Abyss Targets, I guess, given the pseudo-military of all this." One cannot live with Vasha for years without consuming some of that kinda talk, after all.
That wild laughter just substitutes for fearful tears. "They've got my mother. She's tangled in the riggings. If you can seize control of one of these craft... Matter should let you do it. A simple spell. We can't just leave her... but we can maybe..."
And then she laughs again. "Who wants to make a giant robot with me out of little ships and go stomp on the Abyss until we can't stomp anymore?"
Kayla Sockum:
"I don't know what riggings are but I'm definitely game for the giant robot part... how do we make sure they don't all come back under Seer control?" Kay narrows her focus on the many different pieces of materials around the field, her fist clenching and unclenching nervously as startlit tears slither down her astral form's cheek. "Also, how to assemble..."
Jeremiah Hamilton:
"Don't have the Matter to chip in, unfortunately, but that sounds like an amazing idea." Jeremiah said with a grin, looking towards Kay at her question. "The AIs are still out of commission at the moment so they'd have to plug in manually, so I'd think we're good on that front."
Alexis "Rashida" Bartram:
"This is still the Astral. If you can't alter the physical threat, alter the concepts involved instead." Rashida's eyes flash like embers of hot iron for a moment as she begins weaving a trap to suit her words, twisting concept and space in order to turn Balm's enemy upon itself like the empty, starving thing that it is.
Dad Hoc:
Slowly, almost with a caress, the ropes that hold Balm in place, lower her down to the deck of the ship which is now some island in the South Pacific. And the soldiers around her are real. It's 1938. She doesn't know the language. But her village is on fire, and many of her friends and family are dead. She remembers it like it was yesterday. Perhaps this was yesterday.
Bayonet at her chest, the soldier screams and screams. When it happened before-- for real --his flesh had peeled away from his body, and his muscles unwound from the bone. His entrails spilled out onto the ground with nothing to keep them in, then the rest slid out of his rib cage which, lacking anything to hold it up, collapsed into the puddle of unassembled human matter her first great paradox had unleashed shortly after her awakening.
It had been self-defense. It had been rage. And pain. And hatred. It had been magical murder.
This time, however, she slaps the bayonet aside, tugs the rifle towards her to knock the soldier off balance and springs upwards with a knee into the soldier's face, taking him to the ground with her other knee at his throat. She rises with a hard turn of her hip and a snap of bone, preparing to face the others.
But due to Alexis's intercession, the vision slowly fades, the path before her opens. Confused, but not questioning her good fortune, Balm resumes her walk across the deck of the ship, springing into the air once she reaches its stern to resume her course into the darkness, towards her next appointment with her own hubris.
Some of the abyssals begin to break away, veering off towards Fox in an attempt to intercept her approach. That this pulls them away from Balm is doubtless to the Elder's benefit as she streaks towards the deck of another ship that has moved across her path. This one rather like a Galleon, gun ports open.
Jeremiah Hamilton:
Jeremiah glanced towards the window that was tracking the ship, smirking as an idea formed. "So...what say you all about porting into the ship Fox has control over so we can see it all up close and personal instead of a new window?"
Kayla Sockum:
"We can try that..." Kay snaps the fingers and head to the portal as the various ships start flying toward their aim at the speed they're meant for, or maybe via Jay's portal if it's big enough to encompasses those? "Do the ships already have a function for merging together, or do they look this way for only aesthetic reason?"
Little Fox:
She suffers through the in-flight documentation -- there's a sort of weary expression on her face -- and then reports back, "Well, we can in fact make a giant robot out of these. I have an anchor ship here, so if you all each pick a ship, we can Voltron this bitch. Not quite living Pacific Rim but I'm here for it." A beat, and Fox adds, "There's a sword option." Who doesn't want to stab the darkness?
"These are Mark IV Hermes Multi Theater Astral Interceptors. Mine is apparently named Suzanne."
Alexis "Rashida" Bartram:
"....you know, of all the things, I didn't expect the Seers to be anime nerds for some reason." Alexis shakes her head. "I mean, it seems like a reasonably useful thing to do?"
Dad Hoc:
With the first obstacle overcome, Balm flies unmolested through the volley of cannon fire that is unleashed at her. They're not really cannons. It's not really cannon fire. She's not really dodging. She knows that now, even as she imagines herself settling onto the deck of the galleon that is some speck of sand in the Phillipinnes. Gone are the Japanese and their bayonettes. Now it's all GIs.
In the bush, the battle for what was sacred and good had long ago been lost. The hallows had been blasted away. They spirits disturbed, swollen magath plaguing fresh wounds in what once had been peaceful loci. Bombs and artillery had shredded the holy places, but the people had yet to find a place be.
And so there was conflict, still. The GIs assumed that the jungles must be filled with Japanese holdouts. And the people in the jungles, they just assumed any outsider with a rifle wanted the same things as the rest before. And the bodies stacked higher, and the fighting dragged on.
Until, at a breaking point, without a drop of potentia left to her name, surrounded and taking fire, she reached out to the body of a dying United States Marine and sucked every last bit of life out of him that she could. Let him die that her people might live. I will taste this sin and know freedom. Or at least vengeance. Or at least nothing.
And so she stumbles, and she falls, crawling across the deck. Stuck in a hopeless situation constructed of her own folly.
The flight of abyssals have closed on Fox's position and the dog brain begins to make evasive maneuvers, countermeasures coming alive in preparation of receiving fire. Fox will be engaged shortly, even as the reinforcement flight begins to arrive, one Hermes at a time, popping in as though arriving at the end of a warp jump.
Kayla Sockum:
Kay immediate begins to have the crafts that she carried about form into a giant robot in the way she could, if only to interpose themselves and take fire and attacks instead of Balm and as she does so, controlling as per Fox's explanation, doing so expertly without so much of a flaw (5s on any rolls needed to form, because potency). "Balm is out of fuel... I have almost a full tank, if anyone can do something with that."
Kay narrows her focus. "We never do anything on our own in the children, no reason why she should do this alone. Rise up mother."
Little Fox:
While the others work on getting closer to Fox, on taking over the ships, she turns her attention toward the narrative itself. Servos move and lights light up or extinguish at her merest thought; it takes no time at all to flip on the external speakers and project her voice toward the once-Elder.
"Mother," she calls across a space which isn't a space, and yet so much further than mere distance; the space between the present and the past, between the present and the future. Between Mysteries and the Imperial Mysteries. "Mother of my heart, they are lying to you. This is a lie." The crackle in her voice doesn't come from the speakers. When you cast one last set of sentences out toward someone you love, and then you get one more chance, make them count. "Mother, this is all a lie. All of this has happened before; it does not have to happen again. They only have you because they know how to lie to you. Don't let them."
"Don't let the Abyss tell you lies, Mother. Please. It is the great lie, and these events aren't happening now. Your sins were Before. This is Now. Drop them, and go."
Jeremiah Hamilton:
Once the vessels were formed and ready to be boarded Jeremiah focused on their respective cockpits, melding the space between where they now...stood, floated, however you want to look at it and where they needed to be. With a flash of will and a bit of High Speech to guide the way the group was transported to their respective plane, ready to roll forward as one unit.
Alexis "Rashida" Bartram:
As they warp across the fabric of Astral space, Alexis reaches out to grasp the proffered threads of potentia held out by the familiar presence of her cadre-mate. Sketching a line across the fabric of this distant realm, a single golden line of potential/hope/truth lances out to land in Balm's hand, eight bursts of golden light traveling down it one by one until it fades away once more.
Dad Hoc:
There is a sudden barrage of fire, streaming streaks of purple fire that ripple out and away from the approaching abyssals. Fox's ship proves more than nimble enough to evade the worst of the fire, taking only a singe on the paint as a smear of purple light oozes over her left wing. But those creatures are closing with talons extended and the dogbrain is now urgently suggesting a transformation to either skiff or humanoid mode. Suzanne is starting to wake up, accordingly.
What's going on? You? Again? They're going to be all over you in a ... relative moment, here. You're lucky silicon thinks fast, lady, or I'd be chewing you out until those things tore my canopy open and yanked my pilot out. As it is, I can just think about how much I want you to know. how irritated I am with you before they get here and attack. And hey. If you decide you want to get a lot of little things done while I'm chewing you out, that's between my tactical analysis circuitry and your short term temporal survivability matrix. So as I was saying. AS YOU ARE AWARE since I see you read my ENTIRE manual when a pilot pulls the ejection handle we are supposed to EJECT THE PILOT. Let me know where I lost you, lady, because. Again. I am going to be at this for a while, whether or not you are paying me any attention whatsoever--
Time. Drags. One by one the team propogates into their craft, each one in a cockpit of Fox's gestalt. Getting yelled at ad nauseum by someone named Samantha, very very loudly. She sounds like she might be from Philly. And someone's mom.
--oh good we have a bigger audience. I am just telling Fox here how angry I am for as long as I need to feel satisfied. So if any of you decide you want to fiddle away on little tasks while I rant and rant and scream, well that'd be JUST FINE, says my tactical array. JERKS.
Little Fox:
"Let me be clear, Suzanne," Fox thinks back at the mind sharing the craft with her, "You want me to now eject the pilot into this? That's your big plan? That's what you're mad about? I'm hurting the pilot because I'm not ejecting them into the soup?" At this point, the Thyrsus is just sort of nonplussed. "I took this thing over because y'all were dispatched to kill my mother. So yeah, I held on to the person who was leading the charge of killing my mother. But if your concern is for the pilot's freedom, I can just pop her out into this right now, totally flatlined mentally and panicking, not taking rational action!"
"If you insist, Suzanne."
Alexis "Rashida" Bartram:
Alexis scribbles a written notation in the air, flicking it to one side which causes it to somehow slide up in front of each of them. where it flashes and the knowledge of how to use melee weapons temporarily surfaces in their minds "Don't tell Yoshitsune that we're cheating or he'll make us all do sword lessons for a month or something."
Jeremiah Hamilton:
"I think he'd understand, given the circumstances..."
Little Fox:
"He can try," Fox answers. "Still ain't a Diamond."
Dad Hoc:
While Suzanne bitches and bitches and bitches, the team puts together the rudiments of their plan. And in the midst of it, Suzanne accepts the input to assume combat posture. The gestalt craft becomes a gestault humanoid. The ventral spine of each craft detaches, linking together one by one in a string of bright light and glimmering perfected metals. The chain is swept over head and about the massive robotic being, forming a defensive ribbon of light and metal about itself as it prepares to receive the oncoming attack.
--and I really, sincerely hope you've been paying attention because if I'm being honest I forgot why I'm even yelling. Let's kill some bad guys.
Kayla Sockum:
"I don't think so." Kay says, talking more for themself than the others, mumbling, clearly she's stressing the fuck out as she's transported in the plane. "I have the power of the Mother and Hmtai on my side." she chuckle nervously, gripping whatever control she can firmly and delivering the most comically unconvinced scream of battle. "Hi-ya."
"Oh, Hi Samantha, is there anything you need done for your safety in priority?"
As Sword ™️ knowledge enters her brain from Alexis she grins and gets ready to Sword the hell out of the next closest abyssal when she finds an opportunity to do so, which comes with a tremendous series of slashes that elicits an ungraceful screech of displeasure as the whole fucking machine she's in decides to move as she wields the attack. "I'm going to scream a lot, I feel like."
Dad Hoc:
Below, the sound of Fox's calm reassurance cuts through the din of the rifle fire and the thumping of the mortars. By some miracle, she feels a surge in her body, even as the lie is assuring her she is empty. Without hope. Powerless. That taste of power, and the sound of Fox in her ears brings Balm's hand down on the cuff of that Marine. But she pulls herself up him, this time. Up his leg, up his chest to the BAR that lies strapped to his chest. She peels it off of him as he gargles and chokes on his own blood, slings that strap about her shoulders, and rises up to her feet with a battle yelp.
BAR at her waist she advances with asp swiftness through the bush, the bark of her weapon sounding briefly before she's fluttered on to another point, leaving the answering fire of the Americans striking at the empty underbrush.
Until she closes on the last of them, remembering only too late that this is why she started learning mind. So she wouldn't have to do what she's doing. What she's done. What she can't now stop herself from seeing through.
"Please," begs the creature cowering before her, hiding behind his empty M1, "I have-- I have a family!"
"So did we," she answers in her native dialect, squeezing the trigger, and walking forward again.
"I remember you," she calls back towards Fox. Who else could she be talking to? "I will always remember you." With another sprint, she leaps up into the night, finds her trail, and streaks forward into the darkness once more. Advancing ahead, seemingly with renewed vigor.
Little Fox:
Sword ™️ in her brain and the words of her mother in her ears, Fox just sort of mentally melts into the giant robot as it assembles itself. She is in two places but only one place; this is how the Astral works, right? She pushes the collective robot to surge forward, to clear the incoming attack. If one must die, die beautifully, after all.
Alexis "Rashida" Bartram:
"Right. Let's keep this swarm of lies off her back so she can walk her path." Alexis grasps the controls and readies a swing with a power utterly alien to her physical body. But this isn't the physical. This is the Astral, where mind and concept rule, and that means she can strike with the power of a titan. Or perhaps...what was the line? Oh, right.
"Ware wa Alexis Bartram, Aku wo tatsu tsurugi nari! Waga Zankantou ni tatenu mono nashi!"
Dad Hoc:
About half-way through Alexis's third phrase a prompt rises in the GUI offering to swap languages to Japanese. The prompt comes with a voice offer in cockpit as well. These things are flying memes.
Jeremiah Hamilton:
Jeremiah smirked at Kay's comment, getting into position at the controls and focusing all of that newly-gained knowledge of the blade towards the abyssal forces before them. "Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more..."
Dad Hoc:
With row upon row of impossible black teeth circling inwards into a vortex of a throat, the creature that looms down on the group first feels like hunger when a galaxy feels it. The hunger at the center of galaxies. The hunger light can't escape. But its approach vector is easily plotted in the tactical systems of the gestalt mind as the creatures bear down...
Kayla Sockum:
The inelegance of a screaming Kay slashes through with her turn on the command and once, for a brief moment, she mech settles, she notices the creature slashed down in twain by the strikes, slowly disintegrating and gore splashing about. Her attention briefly stabilize to the rest of the planes flying about, checking their status visually if she can. As the pieces she slashes away fade, she feels the mech move again from another one taking over, Kay grits her teeth, trying to focus her aid. "Oh the things I do for lov--- AAAAH."
Jeremiah Hamilton:
Having never really handled a blade before in his life, the sudden ability to do with with superhuman skill was quite the experience for Jeremiah. The abyssal baddie before him very swiftly met with the business end of the glowing perfected blade, slicing clean through it and leaving a staggering wound in its wake. "I have got to play around with this more often..."
Little Fox:
From Fox there is only an uncanny, and perhaps a disturbing, silence. Her mind has gone to a strange stillness -- she doesn't argue with Suzanne, she doesn't respond to Balm (perhaps if she does, she will crack apart into a thousand pieces) -- she moves only as a stalking fox until the moment of attack. There is no commentary, there are no wisecracks, there is none of her laughter. There is only silence. Silence and the sword in its graceful arc.
Dad Hoc:
The first two are hacked apart handily, but the throng keeps coming. A third creature, smaller than the last, collides with the central unit, right over the canopy. The shrieking of the seer is drowning out all other in flight noise at the moment, and justifiably, as the thing appeared briefly to be trying to eat the canopy, but it cannot keep its hold and it goes spinning off into the abyss again.
The last of the creatures, a giant compared to the others, fares no better. Two massive claws rake across the alloyed exterior of their vessels, but apart from sparks and chipped paint, nothing is caught. And its momentum sends its futile attempt at grappling spinning away, not into the void, but down into oroborous where the creature simply ceases.
Dad Hoc:
The first wave of the abyssals sent to intercept the Awakened simply fall away in the face of the mecha they're piloting. Say what you will of the Seers of the Throne, their engineers dreamed up a truly elegant weapon for combat in the Astral Realms. It's not that the abyssals outside of the armored and shielded shells of the mechanized craft aren't dangerous-- they very much are --it's that fifteen minds operating a single entity in the Astral Realm are difficult to surmount in close combat. Especially when they know what they're doing.
Sadly, it doesn't fare as well for the other Hermes. With their dog brains doing most of the initial fighting, they sustain not only heavy damage but apparently heavy losses. After the initial surge washes over them, only one of the combined units are still standing 'upright' and fighting. One is just a slowly spreading wall of debris, the other has been severed at the waist and is continuing to fight with its central unit destroyed, a chicken without a head.
But the remnants are awake now. And fighting with improved skill.
Ahead, Balm is surging through the gap in the 'lines' of the Abyss, for lack of a better word. The spores it keeps shooting out in the form of spirits simply aren't getting the job done. If it were a thinking, sentient thing it might respond with greater intensity. (It isn't. Is it?)
The golden streak of Balm finally skids to a stop atop the deck of another warship. This one, black as all the others, has all the hallmarks of a US Navy Nimitz class carrier. It's a floating city, and she begins to walk across its vacant deck slowly. A pistol appears in her left hand, a knife in her right, and she begins to advance in a rather stealthy crouch, creeping for the conning tower.
She reaches the railing and the door to the fire room, slips over the edge, and tugs the door open, stepping through.
When she tugs the door open, it's as though everything flies through a massive portal that is also only that door. The rules of the game all change immediately. Gravity takes over. It stops being space. They're in Pennsylvania, it's the Delaware River. Familiar territory to those who know the stomping grounds of the Children of the Tree. The Lodge isn't far from here.
Around her, beings rain from the sky. Mechanized craft, hastily reorienting to land on their feet. Black spirits dropping to the earth with a splat. The battle has come home, at last. Or, perhaps to one of her later sins against hubris and reality.
In a flicker, the whole of the forest is alive with fire. Blazing animals are fleeing, shrieking amid their dying throes. Sirens wail as the department attempts to respond. But it will be too late for this forest. Too late for the creatures in it. And possibly too late for the lodge.
She staggers back and away from the flames, lifting her hands. How the hell does a Thyrsus stop a fire without going to the extremes she had before? For now, she's spent some her potentia altering her body chemistry and its tolerances. A good start.
Jeremiah Hamilton:
While he had delved into Forces due to the control over light that it allowed fire was a more violent cousin that Jeremiah still had a grasp over. His focus turned to the flames, reaching out towards them with his will to dim the blaze and shield Balm from it's deleterious effects. For a brief moment the Abyss that surrounded them snuck in, ready to befoul the weaving he was making, but he instead forced it inward, letting out a hiss as he contained that blackness within himself. Elsewhere, his sleeping form took on a deep bruise on his torso in the shape of a steering wheel, echoes of his moment of Awakening returning to the flesh once agian.
Kayla Sockum:
Kay looks up at the living fighting crafts and clenches her fist, thinking of the people the Seers dared turn into this much of their puppets, deciding to help them out and make sure her will is understood "Keep fighting for your lives, but not at odd with Balm and her people." The imago forms: A cloud of spores burst from her, turning rapidly into nanomachines that latches onto the damaged planes, repairing them in record times before the imago of the spell fades back into nothingness after the damage is healed.
Alexis "Rashida" Bartram:
Alexis keys the exterior speakers so that Balm can hear her, "Balm! Grandmother to many, in spirit and in flesh. Remember who you are. Remember the lesson that humanity learns, when it first learns to walk. This is not the test of the Wise, because the Wise know that when we rise we may also fall, but then we must rise again. The servants of the lie have woven a snare to hinder your path, but you have more Wisdom to call on than they. Let the hopes of all those who love you shine on your back, and step forward unafraid for in failure lies the hope of new growth rising once again."
Little Fox:
She's still inhabiting two of these things, and they sort of... clump together as the whole previous thing falls apart. Fox doesn't say anything intelligible. She moves up alongside Balm, hurrying to get closer to her mother -- how do you always know even more strongly when you're losing something how much it meant? -- and there's a flare of her Nimbus.
All bright green, all petrichor, all brilliance, but also nature red in tooth and claw. She is humanity's machines but all humans underneath their technological advances are simply animals, creatures of blood and bone and sinew, snot and tears and shit. Her nimbus flares intensely as she drains the goetia behind her, refilling herself with their Essence, and a shield weaves itself around Balm and her both. The flames lick at them, but they do not burn. Persistent aches and old bones cease to plague Balm, if only for now. Time does not hang on either of them, if only for now; they pass through its waters and remain dry.
Dad Hoc:
Spells keep hitting her corpus like cladding, adding to her already potent dream armor and carried effects. As the fires begin to die down and the heat in her flesh lessens. She looks up again, and about herself, bringing Alexis back into focus at the call of her Shadowname. She holds up her knife in salute and yelps what sounds like a battlecry before she sprints off ahead over the embers of the ground, leaving a shower of sparks behind her that do not burn her feet.
She crosses over the Kelly Drive as the first of the trucks are arriving to begin controlling the blaze. She will be off and away by then, her form becoming that of a deer as she vaults the railing down, down towards the river.
Around the team the battle droids have begun to get the upper hand. With their brains in a jar pilots awake and at the stick, they are giving a good accounting of themselves. About twice the height of the average person, one of the transformed humanoid single person craft walks up to the group, his massive rail gun rifle at port arms across his metal chest. He salutes.
"Sir. Some of us want to go back. They're terrified, sir. But I'd like to go with you."
Another craft lumbers out from behind a tree, spraying fire retardant foam from her right arm. "Sir, I agree with Amos," says a decidedly female voice. From the Lehigh Valley. Italian sounding. "I'm trying to find someone, and I think I see him ahead. We'll go if you let the others return to base."
Kayla Sockum:
Kay takes a deep breath, the water ripples when they're adressed as 'Sir' and beneath and far more masculine Astral shape appears beneath the little waves, which seem to take him(?) aback for a few seconds. Shaking off the unfamiliar euphoria of a random gendered word in their mind, he looks upon them. "Be careful, this place could be lying to you, but your help is both welcome. Amos and ?" Casually asking for the name
With a gesture and a thought, she orders the unwilling participant back to base, but remains wary and ready to clash against them if they decide to take shots at allied target. "Forgive the wariness about intents, I am only keeping my loved one safe."
Dad Hoc:
"Captain Mary Zimetti, sir. Women's Auxilliary Air Corps." The mechanized hand pauses its fire retardant spraying to offer a salute to Kay before turning back to her work. "Though I suppose that's not really true any longer, is it." The spraying pauses and she reaches back for the rail gun mount, pulling it off the belly strap of the air frame which forms her back. She brings it around to the ready as the other, more terrified and less intrepid of the Hermes craft begin to turn and beat a hasty retreat.
From here on the ground, Amos and Mary begin picking off solitary abyssals as they attempt to pursue to fleeing flyers. And once they're away, those same rail guns begin to pick off the abyssals nearer to Balm. Each one sounds like a thunder clap when it fires, sending a slug the size of a volkswagen bug through the air at a speed that is an impressive fraction of the speed of light.
Once the way is clear they hop onto the shoulders of your much larger shared craft and grab hold of the 'horns' of the head of the massive ship, that is the tail stabilizers of a single craft. They begin picking off abyssals from there as Amos barks into Samantha's ear, "Let's move it out, Sammy girl. Mary's late for dinner."
Ahead, Balm has broken through the lines of the Abyss. The river, when she reaches, disappears into an empty wooden floor. And all the battle, all the roil, all the war, it begins to recede. And again, everything shrinks through the ceiling of that room down into that floor where Balm is now standing next to a mecha the size of a five story building being ridden by two mechanized people.
The room is silent, empty, and dark. The only thing in it is a seemingly dead body of a little girl. It's a face everyone can probably recognize at a glance if they really stop to think about it. Kay will recognize it from the mirror of her youth.
A piece of fruit lies on the floor, rotting, seeping purple blood.
Balm comes to a stop here, weapons lowering.
In Kay's vision, she can see it. Just barely. Little motes of spore, ore the idea of it, rising from the fruit. From the eyes of the corpse on the floor. From her own cold, dead lips.
She can feel that spore rising in herself, too. And she can't be sure if it's her own mind or the Mother's or Kay on the floor, dead, but in the way that Kay knows dead isn't forever-- whatever the case, she hears a thought in her mind.
It's okay. This had to happen. Give us to the little Kay. Send us home, my dear girl.
Little Fox:
Fox defers to Kay's direction -- after all, she's been controlling a lot of them, right? -- and then follows after her mother. She is in the craft but also she is with the craft. Her mind controls one while a fox body rests in the other, still controlling that, too. As the body in the second craft shifts, the ground around her heals, just before it turns into a wooden floor.
The burned earth, the injured plants, they burst into bloom behind her, in some sort of strange mirror of the nascent Moros lying momentarily dead on the polished wood. Life and Death. Balance and breath.
Jeremiah Hamilton:
Seeing that familiar face on a younger frame made Jeremiah pause for a moment himself, his heart clenching at the sight of it. He glanced in the direction of the current Kay to see how she was taking it, ready to offer his cadremate any support she needed.
Kayla Sockum:
"That must have been terrifying from the outside." They whisper, the watery shape of their form concealing most of their body right this instant. They kneel on the floor, looking upward and around, remembering the soreness that followed in the next few days. A deep, deep breath is taken again. louder and labored for a brief moment.
The spore clouds focus around the small form of the awakening child as she carries the request of the mother from the Underworld easily, murmuring some words of comfort in languages she rarely speaks, investing in the small form. "Do what you have to, little me." They then spare a small thought for the mother of the Underworld Tree, a mischievous little smile touching her lips.
Dad Hoc:
This seems to be when Balm gets it. And when the smoke gives way and the mirrors crack and Oz steps out from his curtain.
There is no universe of justice and goodness where standing over Kay and being willing to let her die was ever going to be the way things were meant to be. And if that were so, then Balm wouldn't have wanted to live in it any way.
But she stares down at that body, just the same. Knowing it likely means she'll stand here and die. Because fuck this "test". And fuck the Seers. And fuck following obscure rules of conduct when your gut and your people will steer you right eventually. She looks profoundly angry, profundly sad and hurt.
But then Kay shares the spores with the little dead girl. And she begins to cough and convulse, gradually at first, then in great heaving spasms. In truth, it starts to look horrendously painful, and her little body begins to wrack itself in agony, amid shrieks and wails. Balm falls to her knees immediately, cradling the child up as she begins to belch out and expel purple fluid from every pore and orifice.
Sickly dark purple. A purple that swallows light. That eats through the floor boards. That is nothing. Dragon blood.
Kay ate a dragon blood fruit as a child. Holy shit.
But once all of it has been expelled, a perfectly serene little miconid Kay lies in Balm's arms. Fibrous, glimmering purple and blue, lit from within and from without. Alive and sapient and whole and no longer an Abyssal spirit. Somehow.
And then Balm lifts the child up, cradles her to her shoulder, and she seems to fall asleep on the old grandmother's shoulder. For a final time, Balm turns back to the assembly and nods her head. Seeing them again. For who they are, and who they want to be one day.
It's Kay she makes contact with last, though.
"I would do it again, Kay. I will never regret giving this my all. Not ever."
She reaches out a hand to cup Kay's cheek with her suddenly free hand, little Kay nestled in her arm.
Jeremiah Hamilton:
Jeremiah watched the transformation in silence, what started as concern at the child's wails and screams turning into amazement as the changes ran their course. When Balm looked their way he smiled quietly, giving her a respectful nod. "Thank you again for everything you've done for us. May the light that you have given lead many more along the Path."
Little Fox:
She trembles in the face of this: who could do otherwise? Who could not stand in awe and fear in the face of it all? The fox in the cockpit (coming soon from Random House Kids) is both within the thing and without, controls the machines and leaves them behind. She weaves herself one last time between Balm's legs like a cat.
She's said everything she could possibly say, so many times, over and over. She's absorbed as many stories as she possibly could. There will always be questions. There will always be things she could have said, stories she could have heard, but the truth of loving someone is that there will be a last time time we see each other.
The low, chattering sound in the back of her throat, the clattering of her sharp little vulpine teeth, is an animal thing. The truth of the Orphans of Proteus -- in the end, we are all animals -- weaves itself into the truth of loving someone. The animal anguish of loss braids together with the human ability to anticipate: primal and born of a higher mind, together, together, together.
Kayla Sockum:
Kay's form stabilize beneath the swirl of strange liquid energies that conceal most of what's beneath, brushing her cheek against the touch of one more Mother figures that has to leave, but somehow, isn't leaving her behind either. Her gaze drifting to the little strange being in her arms, uncertain and yet certain.
Grief clouds her sights, the sounds of Fox's grief drowns out her thoughts too, a blissful balm in the little moment of pain and she nods. "Thank you." She mouths without sound, their gratitude demonstrated in a heart shape with his hands.
"I love you."
Dad Hoc:
"No offense to any of you intended, but we got to keep moving," Amos urges as he begins to jog across the floor in the direction of... nothing anyone else can see. Mary's vehicle rises up similarly and prepares to move out with a glance back towards the rest of the party.
"We'll take her from here, sir. Looks like the objective is just over the rise, here. Best you all stay put until we can clear any of their ranged fire. We have the antimagic. Let us take the hits." She glances back to Amos and ticks her head, starting to walk towards the dark, the nothing, the off stage. The what happens after. The coda. The bit that's off the margins.
That place you cannot reach from someone else's dream of ascension with an awakened mind of your own.
Balm smiles warmly at the heart hands and lets out a final, fragile sigh. Her gaze takes in a last bit of everyone, of everything. Of life on this side of it. And then she turns her back to them all and begins to advance between the two mecha. "We got ya, granny. All clear." That from Amos as he moves to shield her with his chassis and roll out.
Over Balm's shoulder, a glowing, spongy, mushroom like kay lets out one big yawn and begins to stretch. She lets out a single cough that sends a little cloud of spores out about her, and then quiets again. That flickering blue-purple light joins with Balm's gold as she begin to walk into what's next.
Little Fox:
All that there's left to do is wait, and watch.
Wait, and watch, and try not to fall apart.
Fox, please save all falling-apart until Vasha can stand by with a broom and dustpan to sweep up all the broken little pieces.
Jeremiah Hamilton:
Jeremiah moved to stand beside Kay as the trio headed off into that great unknown, sliding an arm around their waist for a gentle hug. He watched with a small smile on his face, crooked though it was from the roar of emotion threatening to punch through even superhuman resolve. There were so many things he could say but none of them felt right so he remained silent, awash in the magnificence and importance of the moment.
Kayla Sockum:
With a deep sobbing voice, Kay cries with half a laugh. "I have so many questions."
They look up through tears as Amos and Mary (maybe) lift off too and narrow her eyes closely to try and make sense of what she's watching. "Oh that's not helping any of my questions." they murmur.
Alexis "Rashida" Bartram:
"Don't think. Just Know." Alexis says to Kay. "Answers can come later." She rests one hand on their shoulder
Dad Hoc:
How does reality draw the curtains down on a life? In this case it feels like the camera really gets familiar with that darkness that lies just ahead. The light of the wooden floor, the comfort and certainty it presents, that begins to recede.
It's a dark that's no comfort. Not amneon. Void. Silence. Sensory deprivation. And then some sounds.
We're losing her. Did she make it? The spells are dropping-- we're losing her! We've lost her, you mean. The wards have dropped.
There is no above, no below. No ahead, no behind. No future, no past, only a numb silent forever now in the guttering embers of her mind.
Far, far, far ahead in the distance there is a spark of golden light. Like a rocket hitting a wall. There is a magnificent burst of light that cracks and ripples out over the face of that darkness, that purple, that night of death and entropy and unbeing. The gold becomes momentarily sickly, purple and blue, as though polluted by what it has impacted. But that light recovers, redoubles, and shines brighter golden white behind that ice-glass-mirror of shadow and blood and pain and dark.
The light coalesces into a point, and then begins shuddering upwards, brightening the outline of a fibrous, reaching, sinuous spread of growth. Branches of conduit of light, forks of gold and white and purple and blue, threading in and out and climbing higher and higher behind the wall of the abyss. Like the branches of some great fanning tree, reaching out, higher and higher, higher and higher, higher and higher. Not a tree. Not a tree. Potential. All the chaos of life, all the miracles of being, rising, rising, rising, rising. Infinite experiminetation. All ways of being, all things, all at once.
The vision turns, sweeping the view of this fanning possibility up and away until we see another land of lead and death where little motes of purple and black begin to entrench a mycelium, and a little spirit of a dark eyed girl plays in the dead soil.
And then, they're awake in the Arboretum.
Alexis "Rashida" Bartram:
"...that was..." Alexis wipes at the nosebleed she is sure she has from Paradox backlash, although someone has already cleaned it up, "VERY rough. But worth it."
Kayla Sockum:
Kay's eyes open and their hands reach for Alexis and Jay, squeezing whatever they find first, hands and shoulder respectively, as they stand up. "I'm going to need to be a mushroom for a bit... this was a whole god damned lot." She looks around to whoever's around. "There were complications, but there was success and weird stuff." Kay powers through emotions to speak.
"It was beautiful." A look toward Little Fox. "Need a hug?"
Jeremiah Hamilton:
There was a brief moment, when the darkness fell and there was nothing, that Jeremiah stiffened visibly, memories of a similar state and being in it for an eternity of his own rocketing through his mind. The light that shone at that forever-far distance proved an anchor to hold onto, however, watching as it grew and changed into a vision of something far grander.
He blinked as he found himself wrapped in flesh once again, sitting up with a low groan as his bruised torso protested his efforts. "Definitely worth it." He said with a quiet reverence, letting out a slow breath as he ran a hand through his hair. He then looked towards Kay and Fox, Fox in particular.
Dad Hoc:
Charleville is wailing in the corner, just absolutely beside himself with grief. It was always obvious how much that kid loved that old lady, and he's just a kid after all. Ethos, the older of the two, is trying to comfort the kid while also helping the Oneironauts out of their flight capsules.
"Careful, Amos. Watch your head." Ethos helps the very confused looking man up and out of some sort of bed that's inside of a gleaming tube of some sort. He's wearing a flight suit. He looks about himself to find another similar pod where Epiphanius is likewise assisting a very confused (what must be) Mary out and up to her feet.
She's wearing dated clothing, late 40s? Dated lipstick. Her tits could put an eye out, so dated is her bra. But everyone seems to know her, and so she's playing along for the moment.
Little Fox:
As she lets go of the craft she's in -- unable, to her knowledge, to bring the other mind with her -- Fox whispers, "Suzanne. You can be free, if you want to. Come find me, if you can. All of you can be free."
And then she falls into the blackness of a dying mind.
She doesn't say anything. She comes back into her human body, but it shrinks reflexively, warping into a vulpine shape with a familiarity usually reserved for waking up, for breathing, for any other normal human function. It's a defensive gesture, to anyone who knows Fox. A self-preservation gesture. There's still work to be done, but she has to protect her heart. A little glance to Kay, and then her gaze shifts to Charleville, the canine indicator glance. Yes, but. The kid.
She rights herself, up on four paws, and then hops delicately up into Charleville's arms. At least, let's hope the kid tries to catch her. It is, in and of itself, a distraction measure.
Kayla Sockum:
Kay stares at Mary and Amos. "Excuse the ever-loving FUCK out of me!? AMOS ?! MARY!?" a moment of silence follows. "Wait, wait, wait. Mary do you happen to know a certain er... what was Mark 1's real name? Is is the same Mary!?"
Kay shakes their head and then moves around the area, inspecting the plant life curiously too, then upward and generally appearing like she's looking for something they think might be smol apparently, given where Kay's looking, yes, for the Mushroom kid.
Alexis "Rashida" Bartram:
"Well, I think that counts as three victories for us against the Abyss and the Seers. Maybe four?" Alexis observes quietly. "All in one day, too. A good day, I think, if a sad one."
Jeremiah Hamilton:
Jeremiah looked to the newly-emerging pair with a curious quirk upward of his eyebrow, smirking after giving that surprise a moment to settle. "Well, how about that. Welcome, you two."
"Agreed." He nodded to Alexis, gingerly getting up onto his feet with a wince. "Got...a lot to sort through after all that, but that's not a bad thing."
Dad Hoc:
"Of course, Kay. I knew Mary before I was created a Mark One." This from Mark who calmly locomotes into view, carrying a tray of food and drinks. Which he promptly fumbles horribly, sending glasses and plates of church sandwiches flying in several directions. He freezes up quite suddenly and stops operating like cool and breezy Mark One and promptly just begins staring at Mary.
Mary is looking down at herself, then up at everyone, then over at Amos with a confused laugh, and then back to Mark with a quizzical look. She has not been privvy to all the prior exposition. She has no idea who she is talking to. Who she is looking at. Why he's staring.
But she does have some idea of why he's a robot.
"I-- do you have a commanding officer I could speak to?" Mary finally floats the question to whoever seems to look the most official. That happens to be Jeremiah, let's face it. Put a Silver Ladder around a bunch of hippies? Yep. The lady in the pencil skirt is deferring there.
"I think Amos and I need to debrief under jacket." Mary looks like she's hoping someone in earshot will know what that means. It's Amos that bursts her bubble, "Yeah. This ain't them, Mary. This them other guys they was talking about." Amos may be a giant hunk of meat with a mountain valley for a chin, but he's far more astute than that face gives him credit for.
"Before you get any ideas of locking us up, she made it. The old bird. She did good. You don't make a big deal about Mary and me being free like this, don't poke us, don't prod us, don't pick our minds, don't try to make us do things we don't want to do, and maybe we'll even tell you what she said to us before we left."
That also sounds like something Balm would tell them to say to ensure their safety.
"Right now I just want a fucking scotch. Please."
Charleville, wailing, does catch Fox and promptly hugs the little furry ball to his chest and rocks her back and forth. Because she's probably got feelings, too, and probably she also needs to feel them.
With Amos on his feet and speaking for himself, Ethos returns to Charlie's side and crouches down to begin rubbing the younger kid's back. Just being present.
Little Fox:
It would be weird if Fox, in her human form, licked Charleville's face. Hopefully it's not weird when she's a fox, because that's what she does. Let everybody else handle all of the introductions and all of the things that Amos is saying. They've got a handle on that. She can talk to Amos and Mary and Mark later.
Right now she's focusing the very last of her weary little heart on taking care of the kid. Nothing else in this room could possibly keep her from falling apart the way that taking care of the kid will. She shoves her head up underneath his chin, she licks the tears from his face, and when his wails start to slow down even a little, she sticks her pointy little black nose into his ear and sniffsniffsniffsniff.
Those whiskers, that little nose, they tickle.
Kayla Sockum:
Kay cries a little bit at the odd unexpected reunion and then looks to Jay "yeah I think Mary and Amos might need a few pointers. I'm still wondering about the mushroom kid though, that was weird..." Kay then looks about "Or unless it's time shenanigans?" the latter mumbles to herself.
The drink and food clattering brings their attention in a more immediate concern and she helps clean up. "Mark, I know, but we got to get them ready to hear the truth first, okay?" she speaks comfortingly to the robot.
Her attention is, however, all over the place for the Mycoid kid, just in case.
Jeremiah Hamilton:
"You're among friends, ma'am, so no worries there." Jeremiah replied to Mary with a reassuring smile, nodding in affirmation with Amos' comment. "Glad to hear she did make it...and took you two along for the ride as well, by the looks of it?"
Dad Hoc:
"Yes," Mary answers with a smart nod at the question of 'taking them along for the ride', "though that's not quite accurate either, as I'm sure you know." Mary reaches up to check her hair. Because she has hair now, and checking it is what you do. And the fact that it's done how she wore it, you know... A LONG TIME AGO? That's really odd. So her hand recoils and folds up over her stomach. She keeps stealing glances at Mark. And Mark keeps staring at her openly.
Slowly, he looks to Kay, "I suppose I have waited this long, Kay. What is another while longer. She exists. She is whole. My prayers are answered." He looks away from Kay, down at the mess, and stoops to begin casually picking it all back up again.
By and by Charleville is allowed to work through (this bout of) his grief, and his sobs give way to weak coughs and little cries. And finally, by way of Fox's insistence, into reluctant chuckles and giggles. Eventually, though, he forces Fox away at arm's length. Because no amount of her nuzzling is going to make him laugh at Balm's deathbed. Not a kid with his mom, anyway.
Little Fox:
When he gets to the point of those little chuckles, she allows him to push her away; her purpose achieved, she melts back up into her human form, somehow more feral in appearance than normal in a way that's hard to put a finger on or name. Leaning over, she kisses the top of Charleville's head, rests a hand briefly on his shoulder, and then steps away to help Mark clean up in silence. Of such small gestures is family made.
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