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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.
Joseph Kavinsky ⧒ White Tower
closed to david; (death train repair)
but the porter facility is groaning; the ground seems to tremble. no sooner had the chaos of the resistance saboteurs subsided that they have to deal with this shit as a direct consequence.
kavinsky comes barrelling into the train station. he's wearing a modified iron man suit, white with copper and black accents piped and plated along his frame. he's merely traveling on foot, which makes sense; it'd be bad to accidentally knock people around with the repulsors on his boots.]
Alleyne.
[stopping by the technopath, kavinsky's digitized voice sounds slightly different from his usual, but it's nothing like stark's-- not that alleyne would have made that mistake anyway, considering tony's current state, semi-publically known. and david's seen this armor before, or at least a set like it.] How are we looking?
CW: Character injury (burns)
Well, I'm thinking this would be the perfect place to rebuild the Epcot Center. I want to put a shave us stand, two inches to my left, over that way.
[He chooses left because his right arm is still a mess of burns. But hey, at least the bleeding in his side has stopped.]
We're looking forward. Fate tech still sucks, it tastes like blood and wool and steel in my mouth when I touch it, but things are flowing. We're on a good schedule to get people out of here, provided teleporters and portal makers keep up their end of the quota. And I need more stabilization specialists who are willing to risk riding the train back and forth to keep it running smooth while spelling each other. But...
[God he's tired, and nearly swooning because this has all been so much and he's drained.]
I'm not leaving until I have every last person out of here. Now, where's my mojito?
no subject
And here I was thinking you're boring. Good one, Alleyne.
[crack. it's a sound from overhead, concrete trembling. kavinsky sticks out one robot arm over david's head, in time to spare him from the worst of dust. just a heavy cloud of fat speckles, showering down, undignified. somewhere in the distant reaches of the building there's a groan of structures battered by the cosmic radiation outside.]
But I gotta say, son. I'm a little worried you're treating this like it's a sprint. It sure as fuck isn't a marathon, but ETA from the other techs is we still got hours to go, and you're barely standing. [kavinsky scans david's face. his arm.] I know our biokinetic is busy triaging, but such thing as liquid bandages, man. And water.
When was the last time you drank some water?
no subject
[The dust from above really would have been an annoyance. Being concussed would have been horrible. But David doesn’t argue the point that he’s tired. Wasted with fatigue. And in the end, he can’t stop the fact that he’s like this. He can’t get away from it.]
I’m barely standing because I nearly died protecting the Porter. Unlike you, I haven’t seen our biokinetic because I’ve been sitting here the whole time since then, right against this one particular access point, directing everything I can. There have been no supplies, no water brought to me.
[Everyone that knew him assumed he, David Alleyne, was put together enough to have already planned for that. The rest didn’t seem like they quite knew what to do with the strange man that almost snarled when people tried to take him from the access point.]
no subject
the only distraction that gets him is another rumble of the ground, the station overhead. his head jerks back; he looks up. the structural integrity of this place is going to shit; he's thinking fast. david is-- awhile from cracking the code.]
'Our biokinetic,' [he repeats.] That what we calling him now?
no subject
[They're doing this now? Fine. He needs just a bit of meat-space focus anyway.]
You're the one whose bed he was in more frequently by the time your boss, my former friend, decided to take him to task for decisions he didn't make. For holding up our stated purpose of having open doors to all youths in need.
[He feels something in the programming click into place. Good. One more barrier down.]
I may be one of those that got the man that we care for hurt, but it was because you refused to join us on Krakoa that he was off the island and put in danger.
no subject
So defensive. It's like you know you're more accountable than I am. I hear there's a lot of shit Krakoans will do for each other, but apparently, you'd never stop a colleague from paving the road to Hell with good intentions. Or rolling children down the slope. You can't really think that if I'd come to live in your shit town, it would've stopped or changed your crusade. Or made Josh any safer.
He was always going to pay for it. And you people were never going to stop.
[overhead, the ceiling rumbles again. kavinsky's armored head ticks back a fraction of a degree.]
We should find you a different port. The structure's getting more unstable right here.
no subject
[He’d had a really hard fight, and everything on the way back. Man he was tired.]
I don’t want to fight with you, Joseph. Not right now. But we know that Josh always saw you as the one that got away.
no subject
and of course, they have to be talking about josh. with whom david's romance was doomed. is doomed? how can two extraordinarily like-minded and attractive boys be fucking around in their little do-gooder haven and not figure out how to bone it out into a proper functioning relationship? kavinsky doesn't understand. or maybe he doesn't want to understand.
and he's never been strong enough to give josh up.
more dust wafts down. pebbles. an armored limb goes up, blocking david's head again.
david needs to move.]
It's not what you think, with him and me, [he says, suddenly.] I talked to him the other night. We talked about everything. The beginning of Krakoa. We talked about him and me, and him and you. You know how he is, he tried to make it like the choice was mine-- the Tower or Krakoa. Him or Stark. But Stark's never wanted me that way. [there's no bitterness in his voice. his armored face is close; he wills david to believe it, as much because it's true as because it's necessary.]
I asked him who he'd choose. Push comes to shove. Assassination to assassination. Loyalty for loyalty. You or me.
no subject
[Josh would kill himself trying to save them both. He doesn't need to talk about it. And he absolutely doesn't want to talk about this more. He doesn't want to grieve what was left over of his relationship.]
Find him and protect him. I'm doing my best.
death train (for josh & ota);
rather, he's not the kavinsky that belongs to this world anymore. he awakened to find himself in the belching, damaged porter and couldn't remember what the fuck he did to die this time-- last he remembered, he was hanging out at the limbic system house in de chima. only to realize, suddenly, that he had far larger problems than what if a piece of ceiling fell off during renovations and murdered him.
and people here keep asking him for orders. instructions. logistical information. a couple even asked if he was all right, and mentioned david alleyne is wearing his 'armor?' (what the fuck is 'white tower?')
an hour in and he's managed to get away from the followers, onto the death train. people have cut him a break at this point, giving him a wide berth: they know he's just resurrected because apparently he died in a fairly public very gross mess? hella uncool. with those fifteen minutes of breathing room, he's put one and one together; after all, the dimensional rift to the city taught him a thing or two about parallel worlds.
one and one. that only leaves a million unanswered questions.
he's sitting aboard the death train as it clicks and clacks along, his head plugged into earphones and his comms device. dual purpose: first, earphones universally signal 'don't fucking talk to me right now;' second, he's voraciously catching up on as many of 'this kavinsky's life experiences as he can find. after all, his first instinct is always to lie.]
no subject
they didn't play the same games growing up. he knows that. josh grew up with the super nintendo, the nintendo 64, and the games he played the ones where there's only a finite amount of lives. eventually the counter hits zero and its a game over. no continues. kavinsky's more modern, born later in a different world, where checkpoints and infinite lives were features instead of cheats tucked away in the magazines.
and so when josh hears those words, he never finds solace in them. he only thinks that sometimes death is forever. eventually you run out of men.
and so when david turns up and tells him what happened, tells him he's gone in this mess. reality shattering around them, the porter probably to blame, he thinks that's it. game over. kavinsky's out of continues and the words he should have said that night (i love you, just come with me this time) were left as implications. he'd gone to the spot - the body - stubborn and refusing to listen to the danger when there was a chance, even the smallest of possibilities, that he could lay hands on what remains of him and bring him back.
but there wasn't anything. just the glasses, miraculously in one piece despite the gore splattered across them. he's been sitting in the car krakoa has overtaken - one turned into a medbay more than anything else - trying to get his head on straight. and its only when someone tells him to go take a break and get some air that he actually listens, glasses still tucked away in his pocket as he gets up and goes.
the cars are pure sensory overload. stressed out imports of all shapes and sizes, with their wildly different origins and genetic makeup. it's no more relaxing than where he was before, and he feels useless out here. useless.
at least until something familiar catches his attention. there he is. the little fuck. scared him half to fucking death, couldn't even be assed to send a message letting him know everything is fine, just immediately thrown back into work. ]
Jesus. [ his voice wavers. he's rushing over before he can stop himself. secrecy be damned. his hands come up, cupping kavinsky's pale face in the gentlest of touches. almost reverent. he looks like he might start crying. ] Holy shit, Joseph. Are you trying to give me a heart attack?
cw past drug use
there is so much footage. both private and public. apparently, the ai and software in his phone are totally unable to differentiate between him, the imposter, and the original owner of this device. he's seen flirty texts to a dozen people, a haphazard dream log of encounters with unimaginable people. he's seen how much work this kavinsky used to get done in a day, his responsibilities.
honestly, it makes him feel like a fucking child.
then suddenly: josh. and the look at the biokinetic gives him, the touch on his face, feels anything but childlike. it's a wild rush, both nostalgic and totally unfamiliar. he's been in love before; more than once. he was even loved back. but that was two years and one heart ago. and literally in another lifetime.
anyway cue a look that's sort of deer in headlights. but kavinsky's 'deer in headlights' look is considerably less obvious than most people's; he's a trained liar. even without cocaine in his system anymore, he's peculiarly 'apart' from himself. he just fails to blink, looking at josh's face in complete and utter confusion.
quick. think.]
You can't get a heart attack, dude.
[sure. that works.]
no subject
suddenly self conscious he pulls back, pulling his nearly trademarked glasses from his front pocket and offering them out like they're something truly precious. ]
You're really testing the limits of that theory.
no subject
i wear glasses?
lying 101. win them back, don't over-explain.
lying 102, the best lies have a grain of truth.]
I'm sorry. I'm sorry, [this kavinsky seems like the kind of person who'd actually say sorry if he was. the words taste foreign in his mouth, but it's not as difficult as it is when he actually feels defensive. slowly, he reaches over to take the glasses.] I just-- it was a weird Port-in. I mean the banged station was one thing, but the machine was really screwed up too and that was... you know.
[it's been a lot to process, in so short a time. but he's given to understand that was the extremists' plan in the first place, to wipe out all imports by destroying the porter itself.]
Are you okay?
[he isn't sure why josh pulled away. clumsily, he reaches over to grab the other boy's hand. to be fair, it's not the first time they've done that; not even to him. (grain of truth.)]
no subject
they've got relative privacy here. he sits across from him, letting his other hand fall to cover kavinsky's. ]
I'm good. I was just...
[ scared shitless. ]
I didn't know if people were still coming back or not... and with what happened to Stark...
no subject
he wonders if he'll have to get used to it before he gets the fuck out of here.
stalling, or something, kavinsky makes the mistake of putting on the glasses. words immediately surge into his periphery. it ought to give him a headache, but instead, it's merely distracting. it tells him that josh is relieved. confused, but beyond relieved; elated. and somehow that there's still margin enough for worry.]
They got him out. Stark, I mean.
[the minute after he says it, he suspects that's stupid. it was the first piece of footage saved to his phone, the terse communication between him and dr. strange.]
no subject
worse still is the way his gaze shifts. jealousy might flicker across the screen as his eyes flick away, his lips pressing together as he tries to think of the right words to say. kavinsky's in shock, he tells himself, and...
and often thoughtless, even now, when it comes to stark. ]
Great. Good. You must be thrilled.
[ don't be that way. his brows tick down, quietly admonishing himself. ]
What I mean is if people are coming back all fucked up then we all need to be a hell of a lot more careful with our lives.
no subject
josh cares about him, he decides. again. more than he should, plainly. and a lot of this has nothing to do with him at all. bigger forces moving through the water. and here he is, just a little fish.]
You think I'm not careful? [he asks.] You be careful. [this kavinsky swears less, he's noticed; he doesn't drop an f-bomb on it, choosing instead to knock josh's shoulder with his own.]
no subject
Uh, I know you're not careful.
[ there's meaning there. a clear reference to something other than his ugly death, a history there's no way this poor kavinsky can understand. he bumps his shoulder back. ]
Seriously, though... are you okay? David told me what happened.
no subject
kavinsky thinks he knows what that means. after all, rumors of his untimely demise were...
...graphic. but somehow, as he looks at josh's pretty golden face, he wonders what it is that the other boy is thinking, exactly. he's always been greedy for validation, for evidence of love, even as he'd throw it away, find it inadequate to his needs.]
What did David say?