f2020 | SEPTEMBER 14TH, 2020: THE SYNOD IS CONVENING.

SEPTEMBER 14TH, 2020: THE SYNOD IS CONVENING.

All fourteen Gates simultaneously reverse polarity. For the next seven days, and only these seven days, any imPort stepping through a Gate will arrive safely in the Porter building: the only place on this fractured planet that can safely contain the energy of the imPort community in its entirety.

SO IT BEGINS
THE SYNOD

THE

DEATH

TRAIN

While the Gates are the simplest form of transportation, those making the journey to the Synod from the White Tower have the option of travelling by train, if they wish. Despite the playfully grim moniker, there haven't been any recorded fatalities on board the Death Train in many years. Or ever, really. Raw, untamed entropy doesn't do anything as simple as kill.

For that delightful reason, passengers will be reminded at frequent intervals not to attempt to leave the train once it enters the active zone of the Porter's defenses, or to do anything that could jeopardise the integrity of its shielding.

The journey is relatively comfortable and takes approximately two and a half hours. A limited menu of pastries and alcohol is available from the buffet car. The smallest tables seat two.

As the train passes through the entropy-saturated wasteland of the Deathdome, the view from the heavily tinted windows of each of the train's four-person cars is impossible to comprehend: every atom of the landscape is in a constant state of flux, scattered in endless possibilities across the multiverse.

WELCOME CARPET

Inside, you get the impression of three towers; no view from outside is possible. You're totally sealed inside for the week, by the same Fate-built tech that shields this place from the ravages of cosmic radiation— the train station is built into the structure, entrance tunnel hermetically sealed.

You're greeted by welcome robots, primitive little things full endless enthusiasm and covered in dents. What they lack in intelligence they make up for in persistence and durability. Each and every ImPort is assigned their own personal robutler.

Though they tend to hinder more than help.

Boop boop boop boop. They provide you with a complimentary swag bag. Inside is one (1) t-shirt, one (1) top of the line tablet (pre-loaded with this year's Agenda and a simple game app that looks suspiciously like 2048), a stress ball, personalised souvenir pen and eraser (but no pencil), and of course, a lanyard keycard for accessing the comfortably adequate accommodations provided for all attendees.

Given the week-long Synod, your room itself is a decent suite, furnished with dark colors, redolent with a smell you can't quite place. You may find yourself assigned an unexpected roommate, which may feel awkward considering you'll find arrayed on the beds, a half-dozen complimentary tickets to the spa, restaurants and the power gym, with its preternaturally durable equipment.

Robutlers constantly remind: do not attempt to leave the Porter facility or do anything to jeopardise the integrity of its shielding.

CONVENTION

Talks and panels take place in the convention area, which feels like a miniature city within the Porter's defenses, a hive with padded audience seats, wide stages, and complete with holographic audiovisual equipment that's curiously compatible with presentation software from every city.

Here, ImPorts will present and debate various topics regarded as major concerns for all. [OOCly, players are invited to suggest topics! Scroll down; they will be added below.]

This is also something of an expo, where cities practically demonstrate— or show off their good works. From the latest hovertechnology models to demonstrations of healing powers, playful duels in the forcefield-enclosed stages to magical books that temporarily transfer skills on touch, this is the place to pretend you're showing off your cards... while playing the most important ones close to your chest.

PANELS AND DEBATES

PRESENTERS

TOPIC

Joseph Kavinsky vs [N/PC]

White Tower ImPort Overpopulation and Dimensional Instability

Tony Stark and other technopaths

How Technology Will Save Us

Joshua Foley

The Mysteries and Intricacies of ImPort Physiology

Count Dooku and volunteers

ImPort Factions Must Align Against the Shared 'Resistance' Threat

Jin Bubaigawara (x3)

The Twin Cities are NOT Dimensionally Unstable No Matter What You Heard

Kang

Bridging Old and New: Maintaining Infrastructure with Limited Modern Resources

EVENING

EVENTS

Every night of the Synod, ImPorts gather to dine in a grand hall with a ballroom party. Each dinner is hosted by one ImPort city, gruntwork complete with robutlers-- which guarantees food safety, and complete with multiple cuisine options, cultural decor, and entertainment.

Given the range of cities represented, food options vary from greasy burgers to six courses of seafood and blue venison, and rarefied vegan fare.

When ImPorts aren't here eating, they're most often talking. Ergo, it's not uncommon for low-key drama to break out, but this year, the majority of Synod days seem to be passing uneventfully.

Fortunately, speeches are reserved for daytime. After dinner, it's time to dance.

The last song of the night is always obscure music no one can quite remember the words or melody to afterward. It's a slow dance song meant for two or more partners; the ballroom grows dark and the world seems to fade away. Or rather, it just fades back into one's hotel room.

THE BLACKOUT

On Monday, September 21st, shortly before the Gates are due to resume ordinary function and allow attendees to leave, the Porter building suffers a power cut.

Abruptly, all the lights cut out. Music stops. Your faithful robutler freezes in place, unresponsive— though its internal systems appear to be running, the centralised command hub that it relies on has fallen silent.

Though the robutlers are out of comission, technology-minded ImPorts and their tech drones hasten to reassure that systems analyses are underway. Within a few hours, repairs begin, the estimated time being two days.

In the meantime, thanks to the diversity of powers on hand, there is enough food and water. Candles start to circulate. It might even be a little romantic, if it weren't for the chaos outside. Characters might find themselves trapped in an elevator for a few hours, or compelled to seek comfort from one another.

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ARRIVAL

Allison arrives with the rest of the Krakoan contingent. For all that her appearance looks much as it did the year before this one and the one before that, there's a certain sort of alertness that seems to be going into the way she looks over every room she comes into. Like she's looking for someone very specific, rather than taking in those who've chosen to make fashion statements even upon arrival.

Krakoa, always stylish, but usually not aggressively so, doesn't even attempt not to fall into that category this year. All of them arrayed around Josh, in sharper cuts and focused shades. Gone are the earlier years' exuberant shades and softer, freer, playful fashion forrays. If they linger closer to him, and if discussions are quieter, but seemed more intense among them, perhaps, Krakoa has something on its mind. Especially after those obviously false reports about their missing founder, who can be found right in the thick of them, smiling a warm, if sometimes tight, smile.

Allison does step away from the group to greet friends and allies, new and old, both those made during her time living in White Tower and those built during her years on the Council of Five for Krakoa. After all, there are those she has missed and partnerships to see taken care of.

PANELS/EXPO

Allison is remorseless and regretless in the fact she harmlessly encourages one or two underlings and a robobutler into moving her panel into the first morning of the first day of the Synod. Her panel, titled ”Peace, at What Price: The Story of our Children,” starts with a broad overview of the rising tide of strife and violence among the factions over the last decade, focusing heaviest on the well-known clashes of the last two-three years.

It focuses mostly on how this chaos and violence is affecting the youngest among them, for children being born now all the way up those just in the burgeoning glow right before adulthood. Clearly and directly pulled from those who have come to Krakoa in the last few years, just how much and what they’ve needed to help them adjust, heal, acclimate to a less turbulent civilian life in neutral territory. How they’ve responded to the ample health services, training, freedom.

At the end, there is the reminder that Krakoa’s doors are open to all ages, children through the oldest of adults. That all of the amenities and health services they’ve been speaking of are available to anyone who joins them. Then, she opens the floor for questions if you have them.

Outside of that, she can be found often in the presence of Josh, and the other Council Members, as well and always as Luther, and one of her many other Hargreeves family members, when she doesn't step away to attend panels that have interested her, demonstrations on the EXPO floor, and to make meetings, here and there, with those friends and allies that she saw earlier and has not yet been able to catch up with. The Synod always serves so many purposes.

For all the Allison has always loved fashion, a fact that hadn't changed in her move from White Tower to Krakoa, Allison's wardrobe makes a statement in Synod 2020. While she can be found is several cuts and styles, one thing never changes this year: it's all based in solid blacks and accenting golds. Seeming to slide almost purposely from the stately black into bolder golds as the Synod week wears on.

GALA

The Gala affair is no different, when Allison arrives stately in more gold-than-black, but she isn't alone this time. The whole of Krakoa's Council of Five appears in the same arraignment, a sea of black and gold, around an island in the middle: Josh, clad in black alone, gleaming gold just by being.

They move as a unit, dividing at times, peeling off to talk, to dance, to eat, but never once leaving Josh alone to the maelstrom of the crowds. Never. Allison does find the time to do those things, too, even if her attention seems divided at times. Still, she takes her dinner; enjoys flitting around the room, carrying a glass of champagne; complimenting the night's affair, the best parts of which new faction is displaying itself, talking to anyone she (figuratively) bumps into; accepting requests for a conversation to the side as well as those for a dance.

But if she happens to always make sure the last dance (and several in between) belong to Luther, perhaps, this surprises no one either all these years later.

Edited 2020-09-17 03:37 (UTC)

"Dance with me."

Frankly, on the first night, at the first Gala, David's wrapped up in too much nervous energy to stand around for long. Clearly Jane and more importantly Rimuru have Josh covered for now, and he needs a few moments with a friendly ear.

So there he was, just holding his hand out to Allison like had happened at Synods before, looking for a momentary escape from the stress of being 'Krakoa United in Gold'.

There's a kind of pattern to it, and even with the hand extended there's a relief that comes with it (that slots out having to be on her perfect p's & q's about her partner and their every second Synod agenda). Which makes it easier to put her hand in David's and let him lead her out on to the floor.

Ballroom is something Allison studied into a precision from twelve, same as all her languages and subjects and ways break a human body. Which maybe makes it easy to have an effortless to where her hands go and how to start; the calm, quiet, not quite a joke, and not quite not, of saying, quietly, "Business, pleasure, or distraction?"

It's both the easiest way to steal four or five uninterrupted minutes to talk,
and to simply steal four or five minutes to not have to be at the mercy of the rest of the them.

Edited 2020-09-18 02:17 (UTC)

Where Allison had studied with precision, David had acquired everything he knew from others. But always the best others. So at least she always had a match for her skills in him, even if she could also expect the same of her brothers.

He smiles.

"Are you suggesting you'd be a distraction to me, Allison?"

Not business then, not with the playful tone and that smile.

"And if it was distraction, I think Luther might have hard words for me."

"Or he might take your head off."

Woefully unadultlike, Allison makes a pop noise with her lips.

There's a growing smile left after. It's not business -- and dear god, some of her is deeply relieved, given how much they do have to stay on point, and things will keep ramping all week, but -- some part of her relaxes a little more into it. Smoother lines and easier movements. A brief pause in the maelstrom to act like it isn't there.

"So, I suppose we'll have to remove that whole dip-and-kiss part off of the dance card, as I am very attached to your head remaining on your shoulders."

"Listen, so long as he doesn't rip my heart out, we'll be fine. Josh will be mad if he has to grow me one again."

Not something he references very much at all, but pain and suffering and torture are so much closer to his thoughts these days. So he brushes it off with an even wider smile. He refuses to be dark. Or darker. Nope. Moving on. Excuse him while he moves her into a spin just to get himself back into the dance.

"I'm rather attached to my head too. Most of my body parts come to think of it. If he wants to rip my shirt off, I may allow it. Wouldn't that make a lovely scene for the gossips to titter over. David Alleyne, trying to charm a fellow in public, ends up catching the public eye in more ways than one."

Allison doesn't quite like the reference herself, and if the pressure of her fingers tightens a little, it's not something that shifts in her expression. As much as she leans black irreverence easily, the way she and her family often can be when Claire is bopping around their knees, the idea of David hurt that badly -- even if it was somehow miraculously fixable with Josh's help -- wasn't one she liked that much either.

His next words startled a laugh out of her. Unexpectedly bright and loud enough to make a few couples nearby actually turn and look at them, making her try to duck her head, but her smile was something wholly uncontrollable.

"Oh, so now you're charming Luther, instead? That's a whole other story. You're going to need like three notebooks and a whole lot of good notetaking skills and highlighters for any pointers on how to get Luther to notice and then accidentally get you half-naked."

Edited 2020-09-18 04:25 (UTC)

It's simple, Allison. Don't die. David really doesn't recommend it from personal experience.

"I'll have you know I'm capable of, and experienced in, charming multiple people at the same time. And you forget. I'm technopathic. I could LITERALLY 'accidentally' upload half-naked pics to his phone with literally a thought and take them back just as quickly."

As much as she can't ever forget that fact -- David has absolutely charmed and kept multiple people at once -- sometimes it slips to the side, too. That's less him, though, and more them. The singular settle island of decades; the prevailing truth of even all the years neither of them knew. That it was just them. Had always been just them. Only them. The whole time. There's just something absolutely ludicrous about anyone attempting to romance, seduce, and edge-wise other words that fits the joke both her and Luther.

The mental gymnastics are amusing alone in how very different that would look for both of them. The way they've never been very alike in how and what they did, but still been interlocking puzzle pieces with the keys to understanding each other. Also, just a bit unabashedly arrogant about how impossible it would be.

"Oh, that's terrible." And yet she's smiling widely, after giving a snort. "I shouldn't actually want to see that, right? Can you picture it? I'm pretty sure he'd be redder than a tomato and you'd have to replace his entire device just out of shocked impulse."

They were small, the phones. Fragile glass and tissue paper next to his strength.

"And now it's even more tempting to do, just for the laughter," David laughs.

Good thing he's against unsolicited dick pics. Those are just rude and more likely to make the other man uncomfortable in ways that even David isn't cool with.

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numberthree - 2020-09-27 03:52 (UTC) - Expand

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helpdesk_hero - 2020-09-27 14:34 (UTC) - Expand

Diego kept his golden unity with the rest simple, subtle, but it's there, it's not invisible, and it makes the same statement as any of the more solidly pronounced ones being worn by the others across the week, too.

It's a tense affair, perhaps more so for Krakoa than anyone else this year, and Diego hasn't been able to turn off the old trainings from the Academy off tonight. A silent surveyor of everyone in the room, a constant check on pathways to exits, a consideration of anyone who came toward his Council. He hovered, frequently through the night, around Josh. They only just got him back, Diego won't see a single ounce more of harm come down on their leader if he can prevent it.

By one of the tables laden with finger-foods, Diego finds his sister in a rare instance of branching away from the rest of the Council, the ever-present barrier between Josh and the rest of the world. "I wish we didn't have to be here," he mutters it, low and quiet and unconcerned about anyone but Allison hearing him.

He hates these gatherings anyway, they've always made his skin crawl, but considering everything else? It just feels bad, wrong, to be here, instead of back home. No matter how much necessity he knows there is in them being here. Not backing down. Not showing even one sliver or glance of weakness.

There's a want to make it into a joke. Number Three who could always take his words and twist this sharp in return. But. She knows it's not him she's nursing a cold, biting, longing to snap free, anger at. It's under everything. With everyone. She's supposed to be good. But. She has a lot more history of breaking those rules than keeping them.

"Does it seem tenser than normal to you?"
More than just them. There's something more to it.

It's not just Krakoa that seems on edge, more furtive, more pulled back.

Diego is still looking out across the span of people across the room. Everyone has somewhere to be, someone to talk to, political moves to make under public scrutiny. Not many are particularly idle tonight.

In a practiced way, meant far more to blend into a scene than to actually bother with the act of what he's doing, that will be all too familiar to The Rumor that still firmly holds a place in Allison's head and heart, Diego momentarily busies himself with grabbing a few treats onto a plate from the table.

He's nodding at her question before the words even have a chance to find purchase in his mouth. "Yeah, I don't know what it is, but-- it's there." No amount of false smiles and silky voiced remarks can hide the feel of a room from an empath, after all.

It could look like normal. If you were looking at it in passing. People are eating, people are drinking, people are talking, and people are dancing. If you stopped there, it seems like every Synod they've ever been to, both while being White Tower and while being Krakoan.

Allison picks up a few more things. Most of hers are small desserts. A treat she can given herself when she doesn't have to keep something to a one-piece minimum so as not to hear Claire whine about wanting to have more if mommy or daddy gets to. Claire isn't here, so if she wants to eat two-to-three of every flavor of the petite squares, she's going too. Once a year.

"I wish we knew for sure what it was." She wishes she know if it was them.
Or if it's something else breeding and breathing and growing stronger.

“Nothing’s ever been that cut-and-dry for us, why start now?” He lifts one of the candy-coated sweets and takes a bite from it. Actually, it’s incredible. The food might really be the best and his favorite part of the Synods. But even the best food in the world does nothing to ease the tight ball of anxious energy settled low in his gut since they got here.

“I’m guessing you haven’t heard anything particularly of interest so far?” Because he certain hadn’t, and he hates it because it makes it harder to ignore the buzz of everything that emotion-based power of his picks up on.

Situated in the back of the room, propped up against the farthest wall with his arms crossed, stands Judd. His face, as always, shows no emotion, though he seems to listen intently for the entire presentation. Once the panel was over, and the crowd had thinned, does he finally approach.

"It was an interesting panel."

It's too thin a comment for her truth detection to lean either way on his voice and so few words. Not an outright lie, or it would go off like a five-star alarm, but she's not focused on that either. Her brows knitted, considering the last of the stragglers as they walked out of the room, and her warring feelings between this half-ruse, half-necessary step, and the more of her that honestly would rather just wish Tony straight out of existence straight to his god damn face as her retort instead.

"Do you think so?" It's honest, curious, but there's a touch of worry there she lets hover only for a second. It needed doing. It has to be enough. (It doesn't feel like enough. There's so much more she's capable of, and a fire under it that longs to burn.)

He nods.

"More people need to know what Krakoa is capable of. Away from..." he waves his arm. No time to "knock" and see if she was open to the idea of carrying on the conversation telepathically.

"I'm a soldier first, but even I know war isn't the first option, despite that being my role to play. Diplomacy is just as important."

"I'm rarely the diplomatic one," Allison says, but most of the world rarely need telling that. Allison was still mostly made of sharp edges. Except for Luther. And Claire. And whoever being one of The Five was continuing to make her into, slowly kept wearing the venom out of her veins, but not taking out her teeth or their sharp willingness.

She owed this to Josh. (She owed so much more.
Especially when she still wasn't going to stop.)

"Jane would have had them all smiling by the end somehow."

Not that this topic was something people should be smiling about. But there was a point to it all the same. Allison knew what her strengths were, and even if she could do this well, with enough preparation, it didn't fit her like a glove. It wrinkled, and she wore it as she was assigned to it, and did the very best to create a serious-prep-spin for the potential reveal from Stark, but it wasn't her. This wasn't.

"I definitely think I've earned a drink."
Even before ten. "You in?"

Judd understood the sentiment well. He was the clean-up crew, not the welcoming committee. But still, if there's one thing his brief tenure as SnowDancer lieutenant taught him, it's that shaking up the norm is sometimes important.

"They would expect Jane. They weren't expecting you."

Because here, sometimes there needed to be more sharp edges. You never knew who was concealing a knife in their perfectly tailored sleeve.

He shakes his head slightly.

"I do not drink.... But I wouldn't mind the company."

This is par for the course for Judd. He'll hang out, but he'll never partake.

That is one of the things she likes best about Judd, and she can have that thought even when she's still prickly inside her mind. Restless and a little too sharp edges for specifically having blunted them for the whole last hour. That he's incredible to the point, and he has a keen eye for things.

In the way, Klaus does in rarer bursts. But all the time.

"Wonderful." Allison doesn't even pretend anything away from relief. She could harry Luther away from whatever he's doing, but knowing him, he's probably somewhere in the Expo Hall in a long talk without whoever brought the newest space and space ship data this year.

"Let's go, then. I'm..." It searches, but she not home, and letting her tongue be too free isn't a thing she can do at the Synod. Especially not this one. She gestures around her with a careless air and heads herself and them toward the doors everyone else just piled out. "....done with this room."

Judd begins to hear towards the door, seemingly ignoring her discomfort. Instead, there is a semi-familiar noise that can only be described as a knocking sound inside her mind.

Would this be more comfortable? I can shield your mind from anyone who would wish to eavesdrop psychically.

It might eat up a bit of his power, as he'd have to be more subtle than leaving psychic dead space in the middle of a crowded room, but he's managed far worse.

Allison can remember a time very clearly when the Synod wasn't hard. It was just a time to carefully network with people who felt the same way about the world, and White Tower, as she did, and for reckless midnight (and sometimes not midnight, or even after events at all) liaisons with people she'd never think about long in the morning, and wouldn't have to see until another year had passed by.

It's been all work for the last three years, and this year is ilke all the ones before it, but on steroids. It's even more important to shore up all their personal and professional allies, to have even more people on their side, for when the dice all suddenly go rolling on the table and the curtain is fully ripped from Krakoa.

But even Allison needs a break sometimes.
Needs to be human, for all she pushes herself not to be.

Which is why, she drifts back toward Luther on the spur of a moment, after finishing a conversation and spotting him across the room. Always to her, like there was a spotlight over the place he was. Wherever he was. Talking to someone with the solemness that still didn't keep him from the occassional flick of a smile dashing in and out. Making her heart do something she keeps thinking should stop one day, smooth just into warmth, but it trips over itself, like always.

There's a glass in her hand and a small serious frown toying with the corner of her mouth, when she reaches him as his conversational partner turns to leave, and says, "We need to stop this."

It's all lies, but then he's not the one with truth detection. Or the one of them good at lying.

Edited 2020-09-21 15:24 (UTC)

And Luther doesn't catch it at first; he'd been so absorbed in the conversation he's just wrapped up, so focused on that delicate highwire act of saying enough but not too much, maintaining Krakoa's unflinching facade of impenetrability, but also not projecting too much aggression for their faction—

All of which he isn't the best at to begin with. Careful politicking is her bag, not his. Luther's a blunt fist and a wrecking ball, and he's always half-on-edge around their old White Tower colleagues, even moreso now that he's just a few days removed from whisking Josh away from the city. Wondering, still, if security footage caught it anywhere. If anyone knows he was involved with the extraction.

So he doesn't hear that playful edge to Allison's voice yet, and instead he's looking over at her with an eyebrow arched. "Stop what?" he asks, guileless, automatically glancing behind her, as if there's some kind of unfolding emergency that he needs to jump into action to stop, as if her frown presages something genuinely awful.

Luther does precisely what she'd known he would when she picked her words: his gaze shifts everywhere, with the same tactician fast, short, snaps for all details he's used since they were children. To get the whole lay of the land, for how to react, act, tell them what to do only a second letter. But he finds nothing, which isn't the expectation, and Allison's expression is still unapologetically focused (fighting hard to keep the edges of her mouth from curling too fast and giving her away entirely).

"This." It's an easy transition, from serious to seriously put upon, even in all lightness, when she makes a gesture at him with her champagne glass, in a subtly circle motion as though to the whole of him in this current suit. There's a small press to her mouth, still not letting the smile out, like something is wrong with it. "All of this."

You'd think at some point this all would simmer down. Still, as the years rolled by, it seemed like she only sank slowly deeper and deeper into not having any shame or apology about it all: her love for Luther, and the things he did to her both with everything he did by choice and without trying in the slightest, just existing there in the world, room, air space with her.

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SEPTEMBER 14TH, 2020: THE SYNOD IS CONVENING.

Arrival, Panels/Expo, Gala

Gala

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cw: referenced death and torture

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cw: referenced death and tortur

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Gala

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After the panel

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(Also, I'm totally down for telepath things, too!)

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Gala; Luther { hear me; through the sound of all these fires

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