Logs:Escape

Escape
Dramatis Personae Blink, Damien, Joshua, Jax, Ion, Scott, Lucien, B, Shane, Tian-shin, Amo, Mystique, Heather, Akihiro, Budi, Rocket, Scramble, Egg, Kyinha, Tony, Destiny, Kiri, Mojo
In Absentia	2024-10-12 "Kia kaha! Let's get everyone home yeah?!"
Location mojo world, and beyond
Blink had come to anxiously listen in on the Very Serious Plans being assembled by the more technologically inclined weirdos with their Earthside support team, but the conversation has since devolved into impenetrable jargon and now she's just curled up in her bouncy hammock chair cycling through the box of improvised stim toys someone (Jax) has thoughtfully provided for the meeting. "...it's basically like changing something's relative down-ness as it falls," she's telling the also currently nonessential person on the other side of the interdimensional video call, "if that makes any sense?" She puts the faintly glowing ball she's been squooshing back into the box and picks up Jax's very pretty rock, gleaming rainbowy metallic like a bismuth crystal. She rolls it restlessly from one hand into the other and back as she sinks back down into her chair. "Anyway, just like with the teleporting in general, it's really useful! Just not the kind of useful that's going to get us out of here." Damien has been nodding along quite earnestly with this explanation, his eyes very wide and very serious. "It does sound useful. In times when these slugs are not holding you so very captive and hobbling your gifts." He peers a little bit closer when Blink swaps out one of the stim toys for another, and now there's just a brighter curiosity in his lilting voice: "Oh! You've got a protean crystal, why don't you all just leave in that? It does look a very fine one, I can well understand if you would rather keep it a wearable size. A full spectrum like that is so very hard to come by -- but then," he is adding, pensively, "that does mean it should have plenty enough space for all of you and then some, if you transform it." --- Joshua's rocking chair is creaking quietly on the patio flagstones. His eyes have been turned up toward the fake stars for a while, but eventually he glances up towards the bright bedroom light where he'd not so very long past left Shane to rest and finish recovering. He's barely touched the supper that's been brought out here for him, though with some amount of prompting he does make occasional desultory efforts to pick at it. "Feels dumb," he finally admits. "Should suck it up. Seen one fratricide, seen 'em all." There's a but weighing heavily at the end of the sentence, though. His spoon scrapes at the plastic bowl he's halfheartedly eating from. He shoots a quick look to his companion, and then lowers his eyes again. Lowers his voice, too. "Don't love feeling you all die. Not half as bad as some of your despair when you come back. Like, who the fuck am I to keep choosing --" His words break off here with an unsteady crack, and he shoves a spoonful of noodles almost angrily into his mouth. Jax has been silent, watching Joshua with a quiet steadiness that isn't trying to paper over the small flickers of horror stamped in the silhouette-ghosts wisping up around them, the aborted twitches of motion as he restrains himself from reaching for the other man. "You been reliving all of..." His head shakes, and though this soft echo is laced with a deep concern he chokes it back down. His eye is wider, his hand clenched tight at the arm of his chair. "I'm --" sorry, starts to form on his lips, but instead he shakes his head firm. "Ain't none of us can tell you what you should be doing, sugar, you been carrying well more'n too much. If you're done --" He swallows. "Whatever you decide, I'll have your back." --- Ion is no more an X-Man than Scott is a Brother, but he's appeared in their house's living room not so very long after the morning's roster was announced. He's not looking at it, hasn't looked at it even once, though it's staring down accusatorily at them from so very many screens all at once -- the names up in bold under the day's game, by now, just totals the remainder of both teams in their entirety. "Maybe "Battle Royale" just gonna be a chill game of cornhole but --" He's shaking his head, sucking his tongue hard against his teeth. "Shit, your Jesus-boy earned him a damn break, though." He claps a hand to Scott's shoulder with a fierce brief shock, a fierce brief shake. "How good you feeling about the pretty rock, huh? We got plenty time before the bell," this is probably a gross exaggeration, "round everyone up and -- how long you think it take to learn to fly a spaceship?" "Have you seen --" it only takes these three words for Scott's apparently frazzled brain to realize that perhaps this is what the kids call a 'joke'. He's sitting in the very straight-backed chair pulled up beside Jean, face impassive under red glasses, uncharacteristically slumped with his fingers steepled in front of his mouth; even with the opaque lenses it's obvious he is staring at today's roster, the tremble of one finger only really noticeable for how absolutely statue-still the rest of him is. Despite this, he sways as easily in Ion's shake as if he had no bones at all. "Mmgh," he says finally, very roughly. "Well. How hard can it be?" --- It's not unusual for Blink to suddenly appear, but this time she materializes without her signature purple glow and with the other half of the Dynamic Duo instead. Maybe Joshua has been rubbing off on her, because her expression only droops in a kind of understated dismay when she sees two Weirdos trying and failing to communicate with their fluffy alien allies on this minimally sticky plinth beside a portal to one of the adjoining dimensions. Well, Pyro is trying, anyway; Beast is just speaking slowly and overenuciating. Blink's gesture game isn't much stronger than Pyro's charades, but she supplements her best translation of "we're leaving, meet up at the Portal Nexus door" with a portal of her own -- conveniently see-through in a frame of swirling purple light -- back to said door. While it's definitely not unusual for Joshua to suddenly appear, either, it's pretty unusual for him to suddenly appear out here, far away from the village. His expression is dour, his hands shoved into his pockets. He's shooting a flat look to the Weirdos and their friends; as the others hasten back through Blink's portal his brow pinches. "... weren't those crazy lesbians supposed to be here, too?" For a moment he's looking at the portal, too, like he is also thinking of going through it. But then he sighs. Shakes his head like he will regret this decision later. Claps a hand to Blink's shoulder, and they're gone. --- The small hovering robot has a slightly jittery view of the landscape, the strange inward curving height and glowing flickers of pillars and the streams of craft that are closing in rapid from many directions, now that the Weirdos have all missed their set call. There's not much, currently, to distinguish the twin blue sharks in front of the screen -- matching shirts that seem to read 'I❤️I❤️NY' beneath matching set expressions -- save that one of them is holding the intricately colored protean rock and one is keeping a wary eye on the approaching Danger as their teammates gear up for a battle. "If you've got instructions --" one shark is saying, the other continuing fluidly, "-- clear and fast, please." The other taps light at the rock with their claws. "How do we turn this thing on?" "Evidently the slugs have been gathering their energy via a steady river of blood. You may have bodies in plenty soon enough but it takes a high volume of energy to fuel such a large --" Lucien cuts himself off with a touch of self-consciousness, his eyes shifting minutely on the feed as he glances past the twins and to their incoming trouble. His lips compress, and, for a moment, he is leaning to the side, conferring brief and low with his father. "Gifts offered willingly are far more potent than those stolen. You needn't murder anyone at all," he's reassuring the twins shortly. "And it ought respond to your clear intention." "Make it sound like this thing is alive," grumbles the one twin, slightly-irritated, slightly-amused, very skeptical. "You're really saying I just hold the rock and --" The other has plucked the rock away, looking not at all amused and far less skeptical. "... make a wish?" Their gills flutter slow against the side of their neck. "Didn't exactly bring much. Don't have much to give." They're looking with a slow pinch of brows at their twin, and then out at the slugs descending on their comrades. Their webbed fingers start to close -- though not fast enough, because their twin's hand is reaching out, snatching the rock with a quickness. "Don't be stupid, who's -- you need to get them --" This doesn't finish. Their fist clenches, eyes squeezing tight. The noise around them swallows whatever wish is being whispered, but as a million pinpoint pricks of light crack and glow through dry blue skin, the crystal begins to grow. --- Tian-shin closes the hood of the bright red Nissan GT-R with a decisive slam. "Alright, now let's bring her around to where they're setting up the--" She straightens as Jean's voice slips into their minds, soft yet unmistakable: << Everyone out of the village right now and clear a path to the ship. >> "--ship? Now?!" Tian-shin looks to Amo, wide-eyed. "Get in!" She flings herself behind the wheel and starts the engine with a roar, but she does not bring the car around. She's slamming it into gear and double-clutching as she guns it up the ramp. "Hold on!" Does she need to shout? Maybe it seems like the kind of situation that warrants shouting--or is about to be. She grits her teeth and brings her fist down on the unnecessarily big blue NOS button next to the gear stick. The surge of acceleration kicks them back into their seats and propels the car up over the edge of the ramp. It's almost peaceful for a moment. Almost. And then they're sailing down through the portal and out the other side, touching down on the weird rubbery ground and blazing toward a squadron of Mojo hovercraft. "I can't slow down!" Now she does have to shout over the screech of tires unevenly gaining and losing traction, the engine screaming its complaint as she downshifts, and a very ominous rattle under the hood where they've transplanted nitrous bottles from every single car in the Champion's Circle lot. "Don't slow down!" Amo shouts over the roar of the engine, the sonorous hum of the crystalline space ship that's risen into view, the beginnings of the alien slaves bursting through the surrounding portals. "I got you!" One hand firmly locked on Tian-shin's shoulder has armor blooming and rapidly spreading between the two of them, and she punches an arm up through the windowed roof of the streaking car. "We gotta jump!" The car's collision with the first hovercraft is instantaneously swallowed in a blue-purple-orange-nitrous explosion, and the subsequent flashes that alight within the cloud of heat are punctuated by the remains of the hovercraft squadron scattering outward and upward in a streaking display of glowing superheated alien robot alloy. For a moment, only the falling silhouettes of the car's passengers can be seen against the blazing sun they've created, and the wave of the explosion pushes them further out to skid, then roll across the rubbery ground—both unharmed due to their armor—or at least what remains of it, with jagged edges now a little crispier than moments before. Amo coughs, picking up a stray piece of burning robot arm that's landed beside the two of them, and swinging it experimentally as she drags herself to her feet. Her eyes track to the portals, and her face pulls into a harsh frown, eyes wide and focus visibly snapping into place, as the first new wave of slug reinforcements arrive. She nods to Tian-shin, "Kia kaha! Let's get everyone home yeah?!" --- The giant crystal structure behind them still does not look very much like a spaceship but it does look striking, and elegant, and well big enough to hold the alien slaves fleeing to a questionable chance of safety through the many glowing portals. Mystique has commandeered a slug hovercraft and several strange bits of weaponry and is darting swift through the incoming rush to isolate the slugs and attendant guards and robots -- she's grown several new arms, each wielding its own energy prod or alien gun. As a bolt sizzles through the head of one slug another is exploding her craft; this does not seem to phase her long, rolling nimble from the blast to land directly on the creature that hit her and drive a newly-grown claw through its blobby head. "If they don't get back soon --" Speak of the devil, maybe. There's a bright series of flashes through a nearby portal, cheerily arrayed in a rainbow of neon. A number of slender-glowing aliens on slender-glowing hovercraft are streaking rapid through the crowd that Mystique is fending off, liberally adding their own sharp stunning blows to the defense efforts en route to the ship. Behind them, Ion is a crackle of blue-white energy, fierce bright lightning flickers jolting to down several straggling bots and behind him an odd eclectic mishmash of new faces. "The fuck we gonna do, just leave people --" he's starting to say, but then just glances at Mystique. Snorting. "The fuck I gonna do." --- Having long been a slave to Mojo-world, the alien called Borvus tries to shepherd their loves ones to a ship said to be their chance for exodus. Despite their long, delicate and numerous chitinous legs, the other two in their party need help to move along. Their appendage rests on both of their companions. One rubs a 'shoulder' of a small puffball with tiny weak legs, that only seems to communicate in a series of whistles with no visible sense organs (the puff's name is unpronounceable, but affectionately called 'Toots' by this strange found family). The other wraps around the center of winged, angular, scaled creature (Em, short for nothing that any of the three could remember). The rumbling of the ground underneath them as the chasing security force approaches grows fiercer and fiercer, until Borvus knew that it was upon them. The insectoid could only do one last thing: pull their family close, so that at least they could be together in the end. But the end does not come. A shocked whistle from Toots causes Borvus to swivel their head backwards. A blur of motion, a silhouette that refuses to resolve, and what almost looks like a rainbow ribbon of alien blood and viscera almost seems to hang in the air in a moment where time has slowed down. The dancing line moves through the bodies of the pursuants, knocks over machines, and cuts off the enemy approach. And then, it all plops to the ground, sick and wet. The silhouette of the competitor, Speed Demon, resolves itself, black against the lights of the would-be recaptors' vehicles, a makeshift sword tilted downwards in her hand. This is the tool that allowed her to paint so vivid and deadly a picture. Her face turns in profile, her mouth does not move, but the multilingual tape on her hip with alien languages that she had assistance recording repeats a message on loop: We will catch up. Safety is near. Akihiro doesn't say a word as he walks through the crowd, just gesturing over his shoulder with a thumb towards the ship and putting himself between the advancing security and the refugees. Any former hint of compassion or hesitation the other Brothers might have recognized on his face on prior missions is gone, this is the Akihiro Erik recruited personally. His eyes quickly dart between the remaining securit taking note of their locations before centering himself and shaking his muscles out. One of the more chitinous guards makes the mistake of advancing first and before it can react Akihiro is on top of it, his fists a blur of movement as he smashes its carapace to bits. A long limbed horror of an alien attempts to slash his undefended back but with practiced ease Hand-Knives ducks and captures the alien's arm, snapping it over his shoulder with a sick crunch that leaves him covered in a spray of blue-grey blood and the alien writhing on the ground. There's a subdued snikt as his claws slide out and he begins his own dance of death through the remaining forces, arms, legs, heads, and whatever their analogous limbs may be quickly finding themselves on the ground. In a matter of moments for the onlookers the Brothers' gruesome work is done and a score or more of the security force lays dead or dying beneath him. Akihiro lets out a shaky breath and in a small voice says, "Corpses… and converts." --- There's a large dome bubble, now, around the spaceship, and it's been keeping the massively increased assault mostly away though ordnance is raining down bright and heavy at the glimmering shield wall. The small opening in front of Jax has just let through a line of refugees, just closed again to shut out the guards closing in behind them. Jax glances back over his shoulder at one more telltale purple-glow portal behind him and then he's racing for the ship himself, exhaling sharp and relieved when the door has closed behind him. His eye is sweeping the motley crowd in reflexive roll call and it's only as the ship starts to rumble upward and the dome overhead vanishes that he's looking around with a sharper-spiking dread: "-- wait, where's Shane?" --- With so many of the ship's so many passengers still situating themselves, there is not too much elbow room to be found, even less so for Budi's unnaturally long arms, but everybody has been giving a slightly wider berth to the Frankensteined contraption dragged up to the console, several open panels on both gizmo and spaceship dashboard for the collection of wires and filaments and fizzling arcs of unearthly energy that connect them. Budi is picking deftly through the ribbonlike connectors spilling out of the console, skimming his fingertips over a gleaming array of tubes, the multicolored liquids within them glittering in a sweep of pinprick light where he's touched them. "Got a lot here," he reports over his shoulder, large ears angling themselves away from the hubbub behind him. "I bet I can fit it all but maybe --" he's digging one hand into the fabric sling across his chest, heavy with just-in-case extra components, "-- maybe maybe I need to wire in another pembuang panas or four or five. How big you want your boom?" B has been crouched atop a chair hunched low over another section of the complex dashboard. One of the several new robots that have hatched around her in the past few weeks is beside her, tipping up its repurposed-cellphone-face to let her check the status of one running program while she adds new code to a second. She glances up sharply when Budi speaks, her somewhat hollow gaze drifting across the various components before stopping on the heat sinks with a click of recognition. Her eyes narrow, first on the jury-rigged appliance and then on the viewscreen of the ship itself, the fleet of pursuing Mojo ships and the endless curved arc of the self-contained world around them. Her lips pull back, sharp teeth baring in a vicious slice of smile. "Big enough they won't forget us a long while." --- Rocket seems tense as he transmits instructions through the comms, seeming like his voice is coming from every surface of the cockpit, if it can be called that. "What you're gonna want to do is wiggle the left-hand egg. Keep at it until the light lattice in your acceleration cylinder is at seventy-five to eighty percent coverage on the surface then only wiggle enough to keep it stable." There's a pause for a few moments, and the sound of shuffling from Rocket's end, "That should get you fast enough for what comes next. Now, Summers, listen close: they're gonna try and pinch off your route, so when you hear the warning proximity whoosh (it'll sound like an Earth toilet flushing inside your head) gently caress the fleshy feeling blob on your right. Be gentle 'til it ripples and sounds like it's giggling, then... SLAP IT! You'll feel a lurch, that's how you'll break out of their maneuver." "Yessir," Scott is all professionalism behind the wheel -- or what passes for a wheel, at least, his mouth set in a firm line -- "seventy-five to eighty percent coverage, keep it stable." He's following these directions to the letter, with swift, purposeful movements, unfazed until, "Oh," he says, "that is fleshy." It's only a momentary blip in demeanor -- a moment later he shakes his head, then another moment later he nods curtly. "Understood," he says, "-- vividly understood." Even as he begins to fondle the spaceship he maintains a serious sternness -- perhaps this is more the fault of the many pursuers swarming up behind them, visible as urgently-bright blips on the console display. As the odd sound of giggling -- ephemeral and bell-like and very clearly not the raccoon on the other end of the line -- Scott sets his teeth. "Punch it," he says, maybe just to himself, before he slams on the blob. --- Scramble slips onto the bridge and perches herself in one of several mysterious stations(?). Her hand brushes a cluster of glowing crystals on the console(?) in front of her, which projects a 3D holographic representation of the space outside, crisp and majestic and swarming with Mojo ships approaching fast. "Oh hey, I can see behind us with this one," she informs the rest of what passes for the crew. "It's real helpful showing us how fucked we are." The glowing controls have multiplied, cubic lattice crystals building up and out to suit the shape of her long-fingered hands, startlingly comfortable when she settles her hands gingerly upon them. Several crystals light up at her touch, and square marks in corresponding colors and positions appear in the projection. She frowns, and taps the same crystals again. Streaks of colorful light curve out from the edges of the screen toward the squares. Or, rather, toward the Mojo ships those squares are highlighting. A split second later three bright explosions light up the darkness outside. "Holy shit," she blurts. "Yo Egg!" She waves the teenager over and signs, 'Match the colors up on those slug ships.' She doesn't seem very concerned Egg will have any trouble picking up this "game" as she vacates the console for them to activate the matching one on the other side of the bridge. 'Let's light them up!' Ill-inclined to idle pursuits, the summons from Scramble arrives as the adolescent vampoyle retracts a clawed hand from their own mischievous investigation of a glowing wall console. Large, pointed ears twitch hither first, illumined face and attention following, as Egg marshals grace-saving candor and a cheeky talon-tipped salute doubtless veiling a haggard, tiresome apprehension for the finality of this alternate-squared dimensional sojourn. Digitigrade legs mobilize them forward, feet click-clacking in a scurry across the crystalline floor of their vessel. 'Gunslinger-Egg at your service,' they sign, now familiar with Scramble's own fluency. Like a true digital native, their adoption curve and technological curiosity kick-in to high gear as they receive direction. 'I got you,' they signal, before a continuous, deft maneuver applies color coordination and manipulation of alien technology. If a mouthful of teeming canines bear a manic grin as they do so--well, surely it is a trick of the light as their craft responds and an array of ammunition deploys in the 3D model, targets locked, acquired, and--'Boom!' punctuates the real carnage outside. --- The viewport and attending tracking screen aren't quite as cluttered with incoming ships as it was earlier, but there are still far too many for comfort and far too close. Jax is staring somewhat listlessly out the window, eye fixed and blank. He hasn't been particularly responsive to the occasional shots that rock the ship around them, but on the latest one he shifts. Leans a little bit forward, expression a little more focused. Nothing happens. For a moment, for another shuddering shot. And then -- more nothing, which perhaps makes it all the more startling when one and then another and then another of the ships explodes somewhat spectacularly outside. Jax exhales, sinking lower in his seat and fixing his gaze on the next wave. Kyinha is leaning against the wall, trying to keep himself out of the way in the crowded ship. Flush with energy from days of "sun"bathing, he's unpleasantly warm to even stand near. He turns to look out the window, startled, at the exploding ships. Then down at his arm, at the halo of light around him pulling toward Jax. Then finally at Jax himself, wreathed in his own halo of darkness. He reaches out and settles one hand gently on the photokinetic's shoulder. The light streaming between them isn't quite visible to most human eyes, but the crystalline interior of the ship around them catches and refracts it into a thousand little rainbows that shift and dance when Kyinha sits down beside Jax. "Not doing me any good. It's all from their fake sun, anyway. Might as well give some back." --- The pursuit is still coming, a thick and angry tail of them, the explosions rocking the crystalline ship at regular intervals. Off comfortable and safe in another dimension, Tony is peering intent between his many screens and the video feed as if he might stop the intermittent shaking by sheer willpower. His grimace only grows when he sees whose face is on the other end, his brief but very clear "is this a joke" expression showing transparent across the screen. "We have, ah, limited time here, if you wanna get someone who actually --" There's another shudder from another blow, and he just shakes his head. "Okay, old-timer. Sending you over a diagram. Please tell me you know your way around a terminal and, ideally, an optical add-drop multiplexer --" He pauses here and then, with only the faintest sigh, adds: "Can you find a box with a lot of wires? I'll walk you through this." Akihiro seems largely unfazed by the explosions rocking the ship and more with scrubbing some of the various colored viscera off of himself while Tony speaks. The billionaire's concerns seem to be largely ignored and he only looks up when offered a walk through, his eyes boring into the other man's through the screen. "I'm not much older than you Anthony, remember that. Now can you kindly tell me which wavelengths I need to adjust so we can get out of this combat zone?" --- A few tired cheers went up when Earth had appeared on the big view screen, but as that pale blue sphere grows with their approach its beauty has taken on a certain menace. Atmospheric re-entry is turning out to be kind of tricky, especially when your ship is low on fuel, or intention, or whatever keeps the protean crystal moving. They've tried everything but "get out and push", but what's moving it now is largely gravity. Earth has swallowed up almost the entire screen, with only the slender blue curve against the shrinking darkness at the top of the screen. Weirdos and friends are scrambling to prepare for their inevitable crash, but Destiny seems unconcerned. "Under the sapphire arc," she tells those at the controls very seriously as the curve of the Earth vanishes and the planet fills the entire screen, "we must go under the sapphire arc." This is answered by an exasperated chorus of "roger that", "yes we can see", and "do we have a choice?!" Kiri was in the "yes we can see" section, though soon enough there's nothing to see through the viewports but fire. When that starts to clear, there's nothing to see but ocean. No, wait. They are hurtling toward an island. Kiri's eyes narrow as the coastline approaches. Then go wide. "Lower lower lower!" she's yelling into Scott's ear and pointing frantically ahead. "Under the --" She spares a glance back at Destiny. "Under Skyreach Bridge! We get below the anti-air." Skyreach Bridge is beautiful and surreal, sparkling blue like an extension of the ocean itself joining the two headlands of an equally beautiful and surreal city. They only just barely thread its sapphire arc before splashing down in the bay beyond, tumbling end over end, and plowing into a white sandy beach. The ship is coming apart around them before they have completely stopped moving. Its crystalline facets fold back into themselves from abaft but much slower underfoot than overhead, as if it were trying to hold together the parts most crucial to shielding its passengers. But it does finally shrink back down into a palm-sized rainbow oilslick rock, which drops not very far down to the sand along with everyone who had been aboard. There's a hum of repulsors from upland, sleek hover vehicles led by Sentinels descending on them from up past the dunes and from across the bay still churning from their passage. "Ey friends, not the way I wanted to do this, but." Kiri levers herself up from the scorching sand. "Welcome to Genosha." --- It's a bright-bright day, though the red and fluctuating glare isn't exactly sunny so much as an angry glare. The shivering illumination from one explosion and then another is not getting in the way of the Regularly Scheduled Programming, though. Mojo's face is taking up a disproportionate amount of the camera, like he's leaning in a little too close, and his grating rasp of voice is a bit more hushed and a bit more rapidfire than usual. Still. Despite the occasional whiz of an invading ship passing by overhead he's still projecting a forceful energy to whatever might remain of his audience. "Mojo World. What a season finale, I hope you've been tuning in. I promised you fighters and did I ever bring you fighters? Real edge-of-your-seats programming. This is a first -- for our channel and for this planet, we have not seen an escape in ages and that last-minute trick with the dimensional vortex --" As a brightly glowing trio of ships swoop in from above and close in on him his words cut off, the screen going dark. It's several long moments of dead air before the transmission picks back up -- no image, this time, and the sounds are heavy with firefight and background yelling. Mojo is still doggedly talking over these background noises, breathless and eager: "-- more excitement than any other show can bring you! Just wait until next season, because we're going to be better than --" There's another 'boom, and this time when the broadcast goes dark it does not come back on. For now.