acatalepsy_logs | ( world #2

( world #2 - the storm. )

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a storm approaches.This log is for everyone who signed up for The Storm investigation. Feel free to use the here to plot further on how you plan on approaching The Storm, and the issue. The mod questions thread is also open, if you have anything you would like to run by us.

the investigation.

It takes a day of preparation, and a day of discussion, before you are led further down into the tunnels. It's pitch black, but one of the BGs who you have become familiar enough with turns on a low light and continues further. You walk for ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, and then turn a corner into a large, open cavern. The BG explains that at one time, this had been an underground transportation system - old and unused for centuries, now, but still in working order.

They file each of you onto a single car - it seems to be large enough to fit nearly a hundred, possibly more, bodies - so everyone has a space. The BG explains that they have already input the coordinates into the system, and that once they close the door, you will be transported to the last known location. The car will be programmed to wait for 72 hours, and then will return to this location. There is food and water supplied, and already packed, in the car. If you are not back in the car by that time, it will leave you behind. They then give their farewells, thank you for your help and readiness, and step away from the door - letting it close behind them. The car travels down a pitch black tunnel, and while the inside is dimly lit enough for the Circle Members to see each other and move around without hinderance, you can see nothing through the windows. It continues for a few hours at this rate - nothing to see, no idea where you are going. That is, until it seems to break through the surface, the track running through buildings and another, unknown area of the city.

The streets and buildings are abandoned, the tech old and outdated, windows broken out and dust filling the street. The sky, like back in the city you knew before, is cloudy and grey. But these clouds are different - these clouds are dark in a way you haven't seen before. You travel for another half hour above ground before the cart comes to a stop, and during this time it happens twice. A low rumble, seeming to come from everywhere at once, and then a few heartbeats after, a disasterous flash of lighting - miles away, yes, but threatening and gigantic, brighter and more violent than you've ever seen lightning before. The crash shakes the ground under you, and the damage is immense.

But the buildings are abandoned, the streets empty save for crates, old mechanical bits, dusty remnants of a society long forgotten by the Struxta you came from just a couple of days prior.

This is The Storm you've been warned about.

the storm.

You have been asked to find out information that will help the BG's, and Struxta, to stop The Storm.

From what you can gather, it does seem to be a naturally occurring weather phenomenon, as far as weather systems seem to work on this planet. However, rather than scattered thunder and lightning strikes, it seems to almost recharge and strike with epic proportions. It can damage, or destroy, buildings. It shorts out any and all items (and people) who depend on electricity in any form to function (Sorry Daylight and Conner, sorry to anyone who brought along technology) within a three mile radius.

The 'darkness' the BGs were talking about does follow this storm, but they seem to have been referring to this electrical shortage that comes from the storm and it's strikes. If this storm does reach any of the still-occupied areas of the city, it will shut down the entire grid, as well as any of the robots, androids, or electrically based figures that exist there - essentially ending the life of every Struxta citizen that is effected.

Plot, plan, theorize, and see if you can find a way to stop The Storm. If not, be back on the train car in 72 hours time, to return to the BGs and report what you have found.
PROMPT IDEAS
1.) Discussions on the train - do you have any ideas for what to prepare? Any discussions you may want to have? You and your fellow Circle Members are caught here together for a few hours, driving into a situation you know very little about. What do you want to make sure you're prepared to handle?

2.) Scouting missions - the heart of The Storm is very much in the distance, and it is not moving quickly, giving Circle Members plenty of time to set out and check out the surrounding city. What you will find won't be much - this is a robotic ghost town in every turn of the phrase. Buildings have been abandoned for hundreds of years, covered in dust and left entirely undisturbed, except for the breeze that now seems to flit through this entire area. There are stores, warehouses, apartments, and buildings you can't even tell what they were used for, cleared out. Whenever, or whoever, lived in this part of Struxta had evacuated, quickly but efficiently.

3.) The Storm - The Storm is still a distance away from where the cart has dropped you off, enough that when your 72 hours are up, the heart of the storm and the lightning strikes shouldn't reach the car, or the track. This does mean that to do any closer investigation, you will need to go to The Storm itself. But be careful - the electrical output from these lightning strikes are dangerous, and can have all sorts of effects on both natural and mechanical beings. The wind, the closer you get to The Storm, will also pick up - making any kind of flying or air travel impossible.

4.) Planning - the car leaves everyone off at an old train station, which a large room attached. This room can be used as a kind of home base, as well as a meeting location. What do you plan on doing? Simply taking down information, or trying to take the storm head on? How do you plan on doing that? Will your abilities help? This room attached onto the train station is a safe location - no effects of The Storm will make it inside. Use as you would like!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

2) ruins

[ This is more like it.

It’s not good, but the existence of remnants of humanity that the locals couldn’t spackle over with chrome or force underground is practically a relief at this point.

Simon steps over the debris, the flashlight in his helmet increasing visibility but not really making the whole place any less eerie. ]

Not my first choice for places to kill time before the end of the world.

[ despite the dryness of that statement, he’s wringing his hands anxiously as he approaches an abandoned apartment building.

And after he gets the door open he heads inside, glancing back at the Circle member he’s with to see if they’re inclined to follow. He’s not really... optimistic at all about Apocalypse 2: Electric Boogaloo..... ]

3) i can’t believe half the cast is fucking dead

[ Simon has the dubious distinction of being the most shoddily put-together robot/robot-adjacent individual here, so by the time he feels like he’s in the presence of a hundred of the WAU’s monsters at once and turns back from the EMP zone, it’s too little too late. He only stops when half his body is a structure gel signal dead zone with no limbs that will support his weight, on his knees and collapsed onto one shoulder, other hand against the ground in a balled fist. He kind of looks like a dog that just got hit by a car, if dogs were futuristic diving suits that made staticky fizzling noises. Everything that isn’t in searing pain is totally numb.

His voice is scrambled and distorted, sluggish despite his rising ‘definitely about to die’ panic, when he sees a (probably) teammate-shaped field of pixels and clashing colors in his periphery, head clanking against the metal ground. He’s understandable, but it vacillates between being nearly drowned out by glitchy crackling and just sounding like a dude who’s Skyping from Antarctica via a potato. ] Hey... can you... ghhhkk-

[ listen

before you put him in idiot robot jail

three miles is a very wide radius ]

[ also open to any and all other ideas you may have!!! honchkrow or pm or put a prompt here or whatever your heart desires ]

[If Zari were the type to swear, this is where she'd probably be swearing. Why did all the robots volunteer to go to the giant electrical storm.

She is 100% going to put him in idiot robot jail, but first she needs to get him out of the line of fire, and that's going to take some doing. She takes a breath, stumbling a bit forward to reach under his shoulders to try and heft him up as much as she can and drag the rest of the way.]

C'mon. I'll get you back to the train.

[ He’s heavy, but not as heavy as the entirely-metal Circle members. Within the draggable weight class.

...having pride requires that thoughts be coming through with any clarity, rather than a fragmented mishmash of not wanting to die and who even is this? a woman, right, and what if this is permanent, so Simon is entirely unable to be embarrassed by this. He’s equally unable to think through why he maybe shouldn’t put her on the spot with questions like, ]

What are we gonna do? [ It’s intelligible, but undercut with static and takes three times longer to say than normal, like a sonic Venn diagram of ‘broken robot’ and ‘incredibly intoxicated human’. ]

We are gonna get you in a safe distance and I'm going to try and get you functioning again.

[It'll likely take her a minute to get familiar with his circuitry, but it's apparently her goal in life now to keep all the androids working.]

I brought tools with me, so hopefully you won't need any new parts.

If we can stop it, then it won't be the end. [Shiro reminds them as he moves to follow. He glances at the storm in the distance and heads inside, the light of the lightning reflecting off his helmet's visor.

He checks his own flashlight. The old apartment building couldn't hold his shifted shape. He picks his way with care as he glances around.]

...but I wonder why it began in the first place.

[ There’s what looks like an elevator straight ahead of them, which it goes without saying will probably kill them if they try it, so Simon opts instead for the half-collapsed stairway to the east of it, looking over the metal debris littering the ground, like a cat trying to gauge a jump. ]

They never even figured out what started their first apocalypse. Or what the Storm even is. [ If complaining about the futility of this endeavor while pushing makeshift steps together to scale a broken staircase for this exact endeavor is a weird way to multitask, Simon doesn’t notice. For one thing, these ruins are the only available distraction from being able to literally see Armageddon approaching, even if not knowing what they’re even looking for makes it a delicate denial balancing act. ]

They might not have had the technology to even study it properly. Electrical storms would be hell on a civilization unprepared for it. [He points out. But he can definitely say a few things about the storm itself. He'd been close enough for a really rude awakening about his effectiveness here.]

But, I can tell you that there isn't a trace of magic in the storm. [It was a near thing that he almost didn't get back to offer that information. Shiro joins them near the staircase and lends his hand to pushing the makeshift staircase together. He kneels down to hold them togeher for Simon's ascension.]

It doesn't mean the reason it exists is non-magical. And let me know when you're clear of the stairs. I'll come up.

[ Simon turns back to glance at him. ]

How can you tell? I mean, it’s not normal.

[ For now, that’s his question, more curious than skeptical, because the information itself has only had a few seconds to settle and it already sounds like it might actually not be good news if this thing isn’t magical. Also, he’s had too much interdimensional experience for that to be his objection, but, welp, there it is.

He climbs the makeshift staircase, warily at first, on high alert for more areas of structural weakness when he reaches the part that appears intact, but it works well enough. ] I’m up.

[ ...and there are doors. Which is heartening, but he hangs back waiting for Shiro to catch up. Everything is eerily dusty and still, devoid of the markers of panic you’d expect to have been left in the wake of a bunch of people trying futilely to escape the end of the world. ]

[It takes a moment to check the makeshift stairs are sturdy enough to hold him. Shiro climbs them carefully, picking his way up based on where he saw his companion step.]

You're right, it isn't normal. But the storm itself isn't magic. I flew too close to it as a living machine and it...it didn't disrupt the magic of my body.

Only my systems. It felt like I was constantly shorting out. [He pauses once he joins them and glances at the doors. It feels like they're talking within a tomb. There are no signs of any sort of activity. It could be the passage of time but...he's not sure.]

A magic interference is different. But, that's only my experience.

You flew? [ Almost every word of that statement begs for clarification, and it earns Shiro a stare. Magic and technology coexisting Simon gets, in theory, at least, but in a body? A partially robotic one, judging from the arm? Without somebody like Astoria making it that way, injecting magic into an existence that functioned on science before? ]

What are you- [ If he’d thought that inquiry through better, he would’ve phrased it differently. ‘What are you’ is one of his least favorite questions, and while he usually manages to avoid it, pre-Armageddon stress and the sheer foreignness of Shiro’s explanation have botched his filter.

So he gets it out, but backtracks, ] I mean, a ‘living machine’- like a cyborg?

No. Only my arm is mechanical. [He checks the floor. He's fairly sure it could hold the weight of his shifted form but the hall is too narrow. He lifts up his left arm and purple light races over it, engulfing it from shoulder to finger tips. It expands into a metal limb ending in a paw with wicked blade-like claws. The shoulder is thick black metal plating.]

The magic Astoria gives us manifested as shapeshifting for me. I only take one shape. [His arm flashes back to normal as he steps forward, moving carefully across the hallway floor.] Sorry. I should have explained that first.

[Shiro sets one hand against a shut door and pressing lightly on it. Will it give or will it hold?] My shifted shape is a living machine. ...lion shaped with wings like a plane. And this hallway definitely isn't big enough for it.

Check the door right across from this one?

[ ...the way Shiro’s arm changes is the first bit of actual shapeshifting Simon’s seen, and it’s fascinating. In the middle of fulfilling Shiro’s request, hand on the door, he watches this transformation and then looks back up to his face, deadpan somehow despite his lack of a mostly everything. ]

You turn into a giant robot lion airplane?

[ His tone is less an actual question and more something between ‘let me get this straight’ and envy. No, Simon isn’t particularly attached to the powers idea and it certainly wouldn’t have occurred to him to want one- other than the robot mainstays that he’s conspicuously missing, which would be nice to have if he has to do the robot thing- but shapeshifting into a flying lion mech is an actually useful and cool power.

Half-joking: ] That’s just unfair.

[He looks up at the distant boom of thunder. The question follows it and he glances back.]

I'm massive but not giant. Are you familiar with old Earth pick-up trucks? [He opens the door. Beyond the doorway the room is littered with old furniture. Some of it broken, parts of it turned to dust from the passage of time. He can't turn on his arm to light up the room. His new arm is temporary and not built for war.

He steps into the room as he reaches for his belt pouch and produces a small flashlight. He flicks it on and casts the light about. He takes a step and tests the floor. It holds.] ...Is everything okay over there?

[There's an awful lot of robots being brought back to the main camp in less than stellar shape...

And Konoha doesn't really know how to take care of them. Do they need... food and water... ? To be kept warm? Just in case, she curls up next to the most recent returnee, tucking up her hooves and anxiously rearranging a few supplies while she waits, but.

When he stirs, she twists about to look down at him, concern on her face.]

- Simon? Are you awake?

[ Passed out on the ground is a pretty appropriate way to wake up from this, because it feels like a historically unprecedented hangover. Awake might, however, be the less-unnerving state to a robot-illiterate observer who expects people to lose consciousness with their eyes closed. The only visual difference between the two is that he stops moving, mostly.

Simon’s awareness trickles back slowly; his vision is almost normal, dissolving into discolored pixels only intermittently in floating blotches, but everything else is slower to catch up, like he’s defragging.

He tries to grind the heel of his hand into his eye and it clanks against his faceplate instead, and croaks out in what would be a remarkably normal groggy voice were it not for the persisting static: ] Hayame?

[He moves.

Konoha had considered propping him up against her side, thinking then at least he could have a pillow, but... she also didn't want to move him too much while he was... unconscious, maybe? So she'd settled for curling about him as best she can, somewhat protectively, adding a bit of warmth. Honestly, it kind of looks like... Well, she's stiffer spined than a dog, but... kind of... like a dog might curl around a person.

Except that's definitely a horse rib he elbows a bit as he starts moving, but that's okay! She's just glad he is moving!]

Simon? It's me, Konoha-

[Her more human half comes into view as she twists at the waist and leans over slightly, waving her hand slowly to try and give him something to focus on.]

Who's Hayame? Should I get them for you?

Edited (Whoops typo) 2018-08-06 06:33 (UTC)

[ Oh. Wait, shit. Simon interrupts her hastily: ] No- no, don’t worry about it. Konoha. Sorry.

[ Not that he’s against telling her who Hayame is— well, he kind of is right now because he can barely string a sentence together, so explaining Hathaway to Konoha would be an exercise in pain. But mostly he feels guilty that she just stayed here waiting for him to wake up and he immediately mistook her for somebody else. ]

I remember you, it’s just the uh- the electricity stuff.

[ It’s probably not necessary to clarify that he remembers her; if Konoha really thought he didn’t, she wouldn’t be expecting her name alone to clear things up, but his system of defending memory lapses persists. Partly to himself, partly because brain damage freaks people out.

Simon’s eyes dart from her raised hand to her face to a sweep of the train station, and (with one last dig into her ribs before she is freed) pushes himself upright, meeting her eyes. Mercifully, the position doesn’t exacerbate the headache any. ]

Thanks for being here.

[Don't worry about it? She kind of wants to, the name sounds like something she could hear in her own world and if there's someone from one even remotely like her own she'd love to meet them, but-

He's the patient.]

I heard you got shocked by the Storm... does it still hurt?

[That... sort of made sense to her as an explanation for his condition, so. She'll take it. She tries not to... think any deeper than that. It hasn't been working out for her very well.

So she lets him sit up without hovering overly, pulling up a foreleg and resting her hands on her knee in order to not fret about with supplies.]

Do you need... water? I have water.

[She's... never seen him eat, but. She's trying to be helpful, okay?]

[ listen... she’s doing a great job ]

Thanks, but-

[ At her offer, Simon is just... coming to the slow realization that he has no idea what Konoha thinks he is, and it sidetracks him from answering the first thing she asked.

Granted, the inside of his helmet is pretty dark, so... maybe she thinks there’s a normal head in there with spooky eyes? Is this why she seems so unfazed by his appearance (after the first time she saw him, anyway) and explaining it will freak her the fuck out? He tilts his head from where it hangs from his shoulders, like a marionette strung at the top of the spine, to look up at her. ]

I can’t drink it, so you should probably just hang onto that. What about you? Are you doing okay?

[Simon's right. She doesn't know what he is.

And really... she's been trying not to know. Just like with the way robots worked, all of Struxta, really, the trains on the way here... she's tried to just accept it. Just look, understand the bare minimum she needs to... and keep moving. If she didn't she felt like her head would burst, when it's already so stuffed with the unbelievable already. So Simon has been relegated in her mind to... man in a weird suit. Nice man in a weird suit.

A weird suit with glow eyes and a glass face. A weird suit that gave off a hint of an odor she can't quite identify- a bit salty, a bit rank, tickling at the back of her nose occasionally. And a staticky voice, now, he's got that, too.]

... oh.

[Maybe he didn't want to take the helmet off right now. (Or maybe he was a robot, and she'd have to deal again with trying to figure out how beings with no flesh and blood could think and talk and walk and-)]

I'm alright... I can... make food now, apparently, so! I'm totally fine! No problem!

[So many problems.]

Out of... the gray goop? You made that edible?

[ Yeah, that didn’t sound like “totally fine, no problem”, but Simon isn’t about to say so. He’ll follow her lead, and it’ll either provide a distraction she needs, or whatever is bothering her — and there’s a hell of a lot that could be — will come out somewhere.

...Talking to somebody who isn’t chronically emotionally constipated is more of a break from routine than it should be. This is his life now. ]

Not out of it. More like...

[Konoha tries to work up to explaining it, only to remember... there is no explaining it. It's "magic", when she shouldn't even be able to do such a thing in the first place. Sighing a bit in frustration, she bites her bottom lip instead of letting herself sink into another whirlpool of confusion.]

I'll show you. Do you like apples?

[Everyone likes apples!

Konoha puts her hands together in a clap, like she's praying, closing her eyes and frowning as she concentrates. Apple. Crisp, round, ripe apple. No worms!

And then as if it simply blinked into existence... there's an apple between her palms that she promptly holds out to Simon for inspection.]

See?

Yeah...? [ of course everyone likes apples!!!

And while she’s pseudo-praying Simon watches her intently, because- she said she can “make food”; she’s not about to....???

Is she??

Holy shit she did. He laughs when it sinks in, earnest albeit tinny and fizzly. For all his time spent with Hathaway he saw fairly little magic. Like, magic magic. This is definitely that. ]

Wow! Wow. Nice. [ He reaches out with the fingers of one hand to touch it, to ascertain what his eyes are telling him. ]

Well... you’re about to be the whole Circle’s new best friend.

[Apparently she doesn't have to do it that way, praying like, but... it seemed more appropriate to her, so!! Konoha gladly offers up the apple for inspection, dark palms flat. He was laughing, (she thinks), so that was good...]

Haha... or at least their cook.

[But if the prospect of doing such labor for everyone else wasn't pleasing to her, she wouldn't be smiling like that, surely.]

I never wanted a power or anything, but I'm glad it's something so useful.

[ He takes it and turns it over in his hand ~~but it’s probably still edible if you wash it~~; only cursorily, because he was already pretty confident it’s real. Which it is.

Ruefully, ] So much for not missing food.

[ But whatever. From what people have been saying about the food here that they’ll starve if they don’t eat, Simon can’t say it’s not worth losing his Struxta-specific ‘that looks good MAN THIS BLOWS’ immunity. He’ll just have to deal.

He hands it back to her. ] Does it wear you out if you do that a lot, making things exist out of thin air?

[ he only has pop culture to go off of for this and it seems like a sensible enough consequence ??? ]

( world #2 - the storm. )

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i'm so sorry, august turned into a shitstorm, feel free to handwave/drop if you've moved on

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sorry for the slow!!

No prob, was slow myself

4 hope this is ok

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