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f20202020-09-23 03:48 pm
FINALE: Synod & Conclusion
The Synod should have ended on the 21st, but a blackout traps all the attendees in the facility. The train won't move. The Gates won't reverse. The anomaly outside would eradicate anything attempting to cross the stygian wasteland. All anyone can do is wait.
A hastily-assembled team of various faction members rushes to the Porter's defense. When they arrive, they find that their extremist opponents are imPorts themselves. Some of them might have once been called friends. Others have remained in the shadows, sleeper forces of the Resistance. While the saboteurs continue their work, fighters leap into battle against all those who've arrived to defend the Porter.
[OOC: Please tag the above top-level if you'd like some mod-run NPC combat! We'll be able to back/tag several PCs for at least 2 weeks from today.]
Not only must enemy combatants be defeated, but a complex series of timed explosive devices threatens to destroy the Porter controls, forcing a desperate call for technical experts and finesse powers.
Only partway into the showdown, a minor explosion rips through the crowd and takes out combatants on both sides. An alarm begins to scream. Total annihilation has been averted, but the Porter's shields are crumbling.
ESCAPE THE SYNOD
Though the terrorists are now in custody, there's a bigger problem. The facility is no longer safe. The Gates, echoing the damaged Porter, still haven't reversed polarity. Everyone will have to escape via the Death Train, which isn't equipped for so many imPorts in high concentration. It'll need additional shielding and the reprogramming for multiple trips, which means tech-minded imPorts will have to cooperate to overcome its automated settings.
ImPorts must divide into smaller groups because the destination station at the White City may overload too. Batches of ImPorts pile together for the ride in much more cramped quarters than they're used to. Several are injured from the attack, others are dying, and it'll be a long and harrowing journey before they can reach a hospital for treatment. ImPorts steal moments for hurt and comfort, as well as moments of revelation and intimacy.
Even for those left unscathed, they must swiftly transfer through the White City and travel back to their home factions via conventional means, or risk causing dimensional chaos as more ImPorts arrive behind them.
Once the Death Train arrives at the White City with the last of the Synod attendees on board, it seems like the worst is over. While anyone wanting to leave the city is free to use conventional means to do so, some choose to remain in Florida to recuperate, strategize or tend to the wounded.
For three days, everything looks like it might be returning to normal.
ImPorts are likely to resume life as usual, continuing with politicking and personal lives alike. After all, there's a year to go until the next Synod-- and despite everything, new ImPorts still arrive through the battered Porter facility.
DEATH DOME EXPANDS
On September 26th, sensors indicate a wave of cosmic radiation moving toward the White City. The reason is obvious enough: damage to the Porter has destabilized the Death Dome and now it's rapidly expanding. If it isn't stopped, it'll swallow the city within days. After that, scientists fear it may tear through the entire planet.
The White Tower immediately puts out a call for aid. Citizens of the city will have to be evacuated en masse. They plead for every imPort who is able to come forward and work to halt the growth of the Dome using whatever means necessary. If they don't work together, no one's getting out of this alive.
Most terrifying of all, the Death Dome's "cosmic radiation" causes permanent death, shredding and scattering energy and matter across the multiverse. Unshielded contact means no resurrection within this world ever again. To those who dream of someday returning to home dimensions, the mysteries of these physics is steeped with terrifying unknowns.
[OOC: Per this OOC plotting question, contact with the Death Dome destroys the AU version of a character permanently, but not their MoM counterpart. See the thread for more details.]
Anyone Porting in during the Death Dome expansion, whether for the first time or resurrecting, finds the Porter facility is horrifically unstable. Heavy strands of permanently lethal entropic energy weave through visible cracks in the walls. They must escape through a Gate as quickly as possible, or risk an untimely death!
Under pressure, it might be harrowing to choose an ImPort city and faction. No sooner than they do, and step through the Gate, that they find that the world is in uproar, though their new home may well be in denial, strategically or otherwise.
Faced with a cosmic anomaly, ImPorts take heroic measures in the ground and air in Florida and beyond to save natives and perhaps even their kind alike.
[OOC: The above character 'sub-rosters' reflect the IC involvement based on this plotting form. We'll attempt to link top-levels here, and further incorporate your RP into a conclusion post on or by October 1. Feel free to top-level, and of course backtag/sandbox indefinitely!]
At the nth hour, on September 30, two ImPorts, Shouta and Tomura of Equality Before Law make it into the Porter and manage, incredibly, to stabilize the damaged Fate technology with use of reality-warping abilities.
As the Death Dome begins to shrink back to its original circumference, it leaves behind a bizarre, scarred landscape, and a fine dusting of eerie crystalline particles of inscrutable chemical makeup. It may take years before the land is arable again, but the day is saved. For now.
OOC Links
- Plotting Post
- Volunteer signup: Resistance Extremists
- Volunteer signup: Porter Defenders
- Plotting form: Finale Roles
- Reminder: 'Hacking the Death Train' does not require signups (unlimited slots), and sharing your finale role is not mandatory.
no subject
Communication and coordination needs to be handled from a number of hubs. Ones that are secure, that won't have to jump back every quarter hour. Given his technopathy, Krakoa becomes a prime choice for David's work. It just hurts.
"Was what he told me true, or was Kavinsky prettying up things when he said that if it came down to it, you'd..."
Choose David over Kavinsky. That David's life mattered more. No, it was a stupid question. Of course Josh wouldn't do that. It was likely a misquoting to make David do what he wanted. To feel like the one who won. Which he hadn't done in a very long time.
"Never mind. It's not important. Just don't die, okay?"
no subject
He can't say it. Can't give David the answer he knows he wants, the answer that Kavinsky probably twisted his words into. There was a time for them once, and maybe there would be again.
But as of right now, this is evidence enough that it isn't now.
"I'll be fine."
no subject
"I know you will," David agrees. "I wish I could be there to be certain of it. But the last thing we need is... me fucking things up again."
Not something he's admitted out loud yet. No one wanted to admit when they were a bit too responsible for an explosion.
no subject
"Okay," he says finally, his voice even. "That's going to stop. Right now."
no subject
"Not Krakoa, Josh. Not the kids. The explosion. I... misjudged a throw. Badly. Turns out bombs aren't really friendly to psychic weapons. Sure, a lot of factors contributed to it, but..."
But he'd make a mistake, and it hadn't helped, and he'd nearly paid a final price for it.
"Strangely enough, I am aware that not everything is about Krakoa, or us, or my decisions related to either of those two items."
no subject
His hand balls to a fist. Were he a few years younger, he might even swing it.
"This has dick-all to do with our relationship and everything to do with you as a leader, right here, right now. Because if I go out there and I get killed trying to do what's right, I need to know you aren't going to fuck it all up because you're too afraid of fucking it all up to make a move."
no subject
"If you go out there and get killed, provided the world isn't destroyed, I'm commissioning an embarrassingly moving statue of you. Bronze I think. But like hell I'm not doing what's right. After this, I'm not asking anymore. The..."
David sighs.
"There is a sickness in his world, Foley. The Resistance only underlined that. The one that attacked me called us a virus in the code of this world. He came there intending to die. He thought it was the right way to save this planet, for all of us to day. I intend to find something better."
Even if he has to tender his resignation to the Five so that he can focus wholly on the unsolved problem of stabilizing this world. Passive and protective was done. It got them no where.
no subject
The anger is building. Bubbling up in all the worst ways.
"Mutants are a plague, ImPorts are a virus. Things were messy but no messier than they were in our world, or any other world, until some dickheads with a bone to pick decided it was their call whether we all live or die. This isn't the time for jokes about statues, or stupid sideplans, this is..."
Kavinsky's last words to him that night bubble up every now and again. That's how people like Stark win wars... or lose them. He feels it. That they're on a slippery slope here, that neither Xavier nor Magneto ever actually won the wars they waged.
He closes his eyes, lets out an exhausted sigh and reopens them.
"Krakoa needs you more than it ever needed me."
no subject
"Krakoa may need administration, but what what it needs more than that is a heart. You're that heart, Foley. You're what the people believe in. Not me, not Rim, not Jane or Allison. These people need you. I just push the paper."
Besides, he needs balance, and Josh has always been the balance that was willing to call him an idiot, an asshole, an entitled prick even. Okay, maybe that last one wasn't very common. But Josh knew David's concerns, that he would be just as bad as Stark, or worse, without someone like Josh as a foil.
And there isn't anyone else like Josh.
no subject
Josh shakes his head. He's a follower. No one knows that better than David, no one watched how poorly he handled pressure time and time again.
"But you are. If you just start living in the moment, David, you'd be unstoppable."
no subject
And Josh dying would likely kill it too. Of course now he has no choice but to scoff at what Josh suggests.
"I can't live in the moment, Josh. It's not who I am. Even my powers aren't about the damn moment!"
Computers and technology have to be programmed for future possible occurrences. His psychic weapons require careful thought to manifest, maintain, and direct because there isn't really NORMAL physics applied to them. And psychometry? Literally not about the second. It's about the past.
"You're my living in the moment, Josh."
no subject
"Do you know how much pressure that is?!" He snaps. "Get on my level here! You couldn't do it when we were together, that's why we didn't work. And now you -"
Come here. Bring up Kavinsky. Ask some question that scrapes the barely healed wound raw again.
He doesn't do these conversations well. Just aggression and stress bleeding out of his every pore.
"You couldn't let go of work. And here you are making sad-eyes at me, thinking about regrets and mooning after me, when you aren't willing to work on why we failed to begin with."
no subject
"You asked me to give my life to this idea. I did what you asked. And you were never satisfied with that. This takes work and you can't handle that. So I did what you couldn't. I fought for this place when you shied away from the weight of it. You've had one foot out the door for a while."
He's angry too. Angry and hurting. He knows he has no right to Josh anymore. No claim beyond this island's claim on him.
"I'm not the only one on the wrong level. That is why we didn't work. Because both of us are too broken to work together. You can't handle stress, I can't handle not stressing. And for a while we found balance like that. We managed. And now I'm asking you, as the one that takes the damn stress, come back. Go and be the big damn hero, but don't do the stupid fucking Jean Grey bullshit and die for this! Be smarter. Fight and win and live!"
no subject
There's a terrible rush of white hot fury.
"I exhausted myself running around putting out the fires you were causing because you didn't have the fucking foresight to think about what you were doing. I came back, every fucking time, when I knew I could run away and be set and be happy, even for a little while, until your idiocy got me fucking kidnapped and tortured! The first goddamn thing I did was go straight back into hell to keep up appearances."
He closes the gap, grabbing fistfuls of his shirt and hauling him in - just to let go, taking an angry step back. There's a short, angry laugh. He holds his hands up.
"And you want to talk to me about how I handle stress? Fuck you."
no subject
He waits for the finally words before he sighs and answers. There had been so much hate in Josh since his return. So much anger he never got to voice. Maybe this helped. He doesn't know. It wasn't deliberate of course. It just... was. It just was.
"Firstly, you could have run away. Maybe you should have. That's something we will never know. But it was your obsession with trying to redeem Kavinsky, to get him to love you and come away with you that led you back to him time and time again and got you kidnapped. And tortured. It wasn't just the kids, Josh. You played with his toy. Stark doesn't share."
David was still pretty certain that played a role in what happened as well, but he'll never know, now will he.
They never worked, he's starting to realized. David kept letting himself get caught up in the intoxication that was Josh Foley, and it hadn't worked. Because at the end of the day he was still David Alleyne and that was a truth he could never escape from. Josh lived life. David... organized it. And thought, and prepared, and in the process, failed.
"You're right. In the end, though, you're absolutely right. I fucked up. I fucked up with Krakoa. I fucked up with you. I fucked up with Stark. And I hate myself. And that's why I have to stay here. Because here keeps me away from doing something supremely stupid because I feel I fucking owe us all that."
He'd offered Josh a way to deal with Stark when they'd gotten Josh back. David's head on a platter. A culprit. Someone giving orders who could be dealt with. Frankly, he doesn't trust himself not to do the same thing again.
no subject
And he did. Love him, that is. Definitely didn't save him.
"You were wrong. You did fuck up. Stop feeling sorry for yourself and get over it. We don't have the luxury of wallowing in self-hate or regret, and we never have. You admit you fucked up, you pick yourself up, and you keep moving or you're just going to die where you fall."
no subject
For the man he loves and knows he's lost. But fuck if he's not going to be the best friend he can. Right down to suggesting Josh go on a fucking vacation. Maybe the Vale. Maybe she'd let it happen. Or just somewhere, anywhere. Run away. Leave Krakoa so others can care for it, but just still live.
no subject
"That isn't what I meant. You don't get it - and I can't be your morality pet." Those impossibly pale blue eyes meet David's. "Moving forward is about accepting you've made mistakes. Waking up every day just trying to be better than the person you were the day before. Not working yourself to death because you feel guilty."
no subject
No, he's tired to being tired. He's fucking tired of the council. He just wants to live.
"First I've gotta get through this. So just get your ass back home when you're done, just so you can see that I'm taking a fucking break."
no subject
"You just told me - you know what, nevermind." He draws himself upright. "Nevermind. Just - dude, nevermind. I'll see you when I'm back."
no subject
"I came here to say I want you back here. That I get why you're doing it and I don't want you to go because I love you. But... Yeah."
He should get out of here, he thinks. Before Josh lashes out ot him even more.