Logs:Through the Cracks

Through the Cracks
cn: shooting, violence/gore, death
Dramatis Personae Not Dusk?, Egg, Ion, Isra, Mystique
In Absentia Erik	2024-08-24 It's something you make, every fucking day. Something you plant, something you water with your goddamn blood.
Location <???> Genosha?
This is not exactly how things were supposed to go, but then again, when is it. There's hella blood streaked down Ion's bearded (when did he get a beard?) face, his side, bright crackling energy shivering in unsteady-unstable shivers off his hook (did he always have a hook, when did he get a hook) to crackle jittery in the humid air. The air is alive not just with his curses and the hum of his electric zing but with the thick drone of the Sentinels that they're drawing away with them. It's -- very abruptly not quite as many Sentinels as it was before, and though the air is still buzzing, it's very noticeable, now, and he's veering around sharp and worried on his ancient motorbike to zap one of the spiderbots out of the air. "{Fuck, Isra, we lose some? Shit, they handler was right --}" But now he's frowning, not just at their abruptly dwindled pack of foes but at the suddenly thicker, lusher forest around them in stark perplexion. A Sentinel had latched onto Isra and stalled her flight, though she tore off two of its legs in time to avert a completely uncontrolled crash. She finally tears the Sentinel loose and hurls it to the ground just in time to land on it, crushing it beneath her taloned feet. It's not dead, but will probably be out of commission for a while. Isra herself looks like she should be out of commission, at least by baseline human standards, but even by her standards she is not doing great. Like Ion she is liberally coated with blood from many cuts, some quite deep and while none of them look immediately life-threatening the freshest tear in her wing will definitely hinder any further flight. "{Teleporter?}" Her voice is harsh and the growl beneath it continues unabated. "{Resistance. I hope.}" She backs toward Ion, wings mantled and ready to leap into the air as the remaining Sentinels descend on them. There's another thrum in the air, powerful new sets of wings adding to the noises. Ryan is knocking one of the last Sentinels out of the air easily with a powerful beat of wing, tearing another into small pieces seemingly effortlessly with his hands as he lands. He's stepping lightly with a booted foot on the one he's knocked to the ground, not bothering to dismantle it but gesturing with a clawed wingtip to it as he glances to his child -- 'you got this' he's signing, encouraging as if he's cheering them on in some kind of sporting competition rather than offering them a deadly genocidal robot to destroy. One huge soft wing, bold crimson on its inside and night-black on the out stretches out reflexive towards Isra and then pulls back, cautious. There's something considerably more conflicted in his expression when he looks to Isra and Ion -- heartbreak and love and confusion and wariness and it takes him a long wrestling moment over what to say. His voice is controlled when he speaks, but there's a low growl soft beneath his words. "-- what's going on here, exactly. You really want to explain, quick and clear." Not only does Eridani--Egg--got this but they do so with feral alacrity: the wide shadow of the airborne adolescent vampoyle casts ill portent on a remaining Sentinel. Wings hammer the air to gather momentum before membranes fold and retract tight against their body for aerodynamic efficiency as they dive with ferocious aplomb, a deadly grey organic missile with horns and outstretched talons that rip through a metallic hull and emerges from the robot's backside, shrapnel and circuitry raining debris around them. Fangs bared in a gleeful smattering of teeth, they crane their neck to peer behind them towards their father, the universal thumbs-up signaled as their wings snap outward, bearing them aloft again. By then, however, timing is in effect: the overriding gloom and actuality of their situation registers with the added waking turmoil assessed in Ryan's face, emerald eyes tracking his expression to the person inciting it. Neurons fire and synapses unearth a memory perhaps long and painfully buried, duller than Ryan's although now made poignant through a lense of tweenage angst as they begin to circle back around to Isra and Ion, subsonic clicks of echolocating assurance that they are, in fact, there are not mere illusions cast by the cruetly of the artificial intelligence of their enemies. "What the fuck?" Heedless of his bleeding, his sparking, Ion has frozen in place. He's staring, breath caught as Dusk Ryan thumps down for a landing, his bright eyes riveting on the vampire. "What the fuck --" and like Ryan, he's reaching an arm out, halfway, then dropping it back uncertain. "{You shitting me, this for real -- fuck.} Fuck, we don't got time for -- god damn --" and now he's looking to Egg with a confused squint, scrubbing a bloodied hand to leave a smear of red like war paint across his tired eyes. "Shit, If them enforcers ain't here they gon be on our crew, this some new trick -- the fuck is this {fucked-up ass game}." He's dropping his hook to the handle of his motorbike, though he's not going anywhere, peering off the way they came with a sudden misgiving. "Oh, shit. I dead again?" Isra's growling eases only briefly before hitching and intensifying as her eyes lock onto--Dusk?! Her wing twitches toward his, too, then shrinks back. Her ears swivel to track the smallest pair of wings in the clearing. Her tail lashes the air, flicking long arcs of blooddrops with each sweep. The rest of her has gone preternaturally still. "Not dead." It's unclear who she's talking to, and it might not help matters when she adds, without any further indication of the subject, "You are dead." Her growl takes on a soft, keening undertone. "Tian-shin said. At Lassiter, you--you--" Her hands move now, bloodied talons signing quick and agitated, 'You explain.' Ryan stretches out his wing again, but this time it's to curl around Egg, mantling there -- perhaps out of comfort and perhaps out of protection. He doesn't seem entirely to think these strangers are a threat, exactly; at least his stance isn't (yet) defensive, his other wing draped casual at his back and his hand dropped lax to his side. He's casual, too, as he grinds his boot against the remnants of a Sentinel in the dirt, rolls one bare (tattooed) shoulder in a languid kind of shrug. "Lassiter?" His brows pinch together with no sign of recognition. The growl beneath his voice is deepening, harsher, even as his actual spoken words get steadily more even. "I feel like I would remember being dead. Look, you're really freaking Egg out and you're honestly really freaking me out. If someone's sent Sentinels out here we should finish this sweep and if someone's impersonating their dead mom that's -- really pretty cruel and I wish you wouldn't. If this is some kind of kink thing you know I'm not gonna judge but keep it the hell away from my kid, okay? You know King Magnus executed all the Enforcers after the war ended." With the immediate threat of danger dispersed, shock and trauma permeate through the hindbrain, a rote mechanics instinctually inclining Egg for the parental comfort of sinking back into the drape of his father's wing. Their eyes remain fixated on Isra most prominently, with flickering glances towards this DifferentIon as their taloned fingers sign furiously, 'the fuck is this' with an accompanying series of guttural clicks to convey utter disbelief. They then retreat further into and behind Ryan, deciding its best to pry their gaze away and thow hands over their face in confusion while the adults exchange words, battling internally with their own distress over this turn of events. 'King Magnus', Ion is mouthing, shooting an absolutely incredulous look to Isra. "You shitting me, right?" He kills his bike engine and dismounts, teeth grinding hard when Egg hides behind the !Dusk's wing. "{Fuck, look, I'm sorry, what the fuck going on. I'm sorry I upset your gremlin-kid, shit. You telling me some crazy-ass shit, boy. Fly down here, look hella like my boy Dusk, best damn bloodsucker I ever know, lost him saving a lot of people last year. Big loss. Hit us hard.} Now we out here with some mad Enforcers on our asses, okay, we supposed to be pulling they heat so the refugess can get to safety but if the heat not here, our friends not safe.}" He scrunches his hand into his hair, eyes turning up into the thick canopy. "Lose my damn mind. Wasting time talking to some fucking ghost, make some poor kid cry in the middle of King-fucking-Coward's damn jungle you tell me. Craziest damn part is, fuck." His eyes cut sideways to Ryan, his voice dropping. "... still just so damn good to see you." Isra's wings pull inward with the tightening of her shoulders and her tail whips the air faster. But she relaxes by a few degrees as Ion gives voice to what would have probably taken her considerably more pains to verbalize. "We are not impersonating." The helpless shift of her wings and hands is not a sign, per se, but it communicates her confusion well enough even without much change in her facial expression when she adds, 'I don't think you are, either.' She's slow enough repeating this aloud that it really doesn't qualify as simultaneous communication. "Maybe. We can go the way we came." She finally manages to tear her eyes from father and son to scan the forest floor, where the still-fresh tracks of Ion's bike terminate only a few yards back from his smartly executed turn. Ryan's wing rubs gently against Egg's back, and he's turning his head, too, looking at the tracks that appear abruptly from absolutely nowhere. His head cocks, listening to the others' words in silence for a time, and eventually it's his child that he addresses first, his wing pulling back just slightly so that his hands are visible: 'Don't know what the fuck, but I think these people are in trouble.' His growling is tapering off, though slowly. He's pulling his wing slowly away from Egg, too, so that he can trace the abruptly-truncated path of Ion's bike tracks to their ending, looking from them to the (bearded) (hook-handed) man who looks so like-and-unlike the Ion that he knows. "Before the war ended I was in this hellhole of a jail. Bunch of kids got chucked in there with me from some -- whole-ass other fucking world. Hell of a thing. Think they got home eventually but --" He's turning his head slowly and probably Ion cannot quite here the ultrasound vocalizations he's making, now, one way and then the other, but maybe Isra and Egg can. The very -- very faint distortion that he's looking for is hard to catch if you don't know what you're looking for but he winces when he hears it, gestures with a wing. "Sorry. Let's get you home." A glint of green reflects the light from under the shadow of Ryan's wings as Egg peers out from their protective cover, the wildness in their eyes replaced by overt curiosity. Their noseleaf twitches, and brow bone shifts, as they sign back to Dusk in a quick succession of hand maneuvers, "Pirate Ion called me a gremlin." A chuffed exhalation through their nostrils emphasises the offense taken. Like yes, they are, but how dare Ion display the audacity waving a hook for a hand so ridiculously around in the air. There is pause given, before the more pressing, genuine and nagging inquiry seeds itself, a pained, "Mom?" with more click and an inclination of their head towards Isra. While their dad is already volunteering them for a rescue mission they are still navigating this abrupt surprise. "What you want I call you, then, murcielagito?" Ion is frowning at the reminder of the whole-ass-other-fucking-world, looking around this one with no small sense of offense. He's following after this Wrong Dusk readily enough, though, a growing sense of unease in his expression -- "-- you know how do that? This happen a lot here?" as sparks start once more to shiver off the metal prongs at the end of his arm. Then, suddenly, catching up with a sudden broad-bright smile that displaces -- if only for a brief second -- the worries about wrong-universe, the worries about the refugees he needs to save in his own: "... wait. Hey. This your kid, damn. Good on you. Sup, kid." "They got home." Isra's ears prick up at Dusk's echolocation, something flickering across her face that isn't easily parsed into human expressions. "I understand this. In theory only." Her growl has long since faded, but the lower vocal chords that had been producing them clicks quiet and repetitive now, well below the range of human hearing. At Egg's question she freezes, and her green eyes track unblinkingly over their physical features, widening when she comes to the same conclusion that Ion has. 'I am not your mother, but I am someone like her,' she tells the child, her signs coming far more fluidly than her words. 'A kind of twin, from a different world. I'm sorry that she died, in this one.' She also trails after Ryan, still listening hard, perhaps keen to expand her strictly theoretical knowledge of interdimensional rifts. "We win, in this world? Our freedom." "Yeah," Ryan replies, with a clear pride, wing stretching out to touch a wingtip lightly to Egg's. "S'fierce, like their ma. Ion --" A soft growl, here. "Our Ion, looked after 'em, while I was locked up." He's quiet, then, or at least quiet to Ion's ears, though the ultrasound echolocation continues pinging. "... not a lot but yeah. Every now and then. You can kinda... feel it, if you..." He switches back to signing so he can continue his vocalization without disruption, footfalls soft on the thick soil. 'What's win," he answers Isra. 'World fucking hates us. Plenty of countries still want us dead. This little island's ours, though, and we're fighting to keep it that way. Freedom's not a thing you win, it's something you make, every fucking day. Something you plant, something you water with your goddamn blood. We've been growing it here and it's thriving. We gonna have a crop next year, well --' He glances to Isra's wounds, sharp teeth flashing in a sharp grin. 'I'd say stick around, but looks like you got your own garden to tend.' The distortion from his echolocation is warping far more noticeably, now, and then it's not necessary to have superhearing to feel it, or to see the shift where the forest is thinner or hear now where the crowd of Sentinels is at once distant and Very Present through the thin tear in space. There are cries -- close and then far and then close and then far, dopplering oddly and hard to pin down where the instability in spacetime is wavering invisible in flux between the trees. He turns his head with a frown, sounding his call a little louder. '... you sure you want to go back there, fuck. Whole ass mess on that side.' Egg hesitates as Pirate!Ion intercepts their signing with comprehension, surprised but not too astonished this version understands them as well. Drooping ears flick, nostrils flare again, and a series of chirps and clicks escape in human audible registry before a confident assertion of, 'E-g-g', followed by a sharp jab against their puffed up chest. No longer do they hide, stepping out forthright with an unfurling of wings in concerted tip-tapping and peacocking. When Isra addresses them their head jerks towards her, rapt and honing in as she communicates verbally and non-verbally back to them. Her words penetrate, earning a slow, 'I'm sorry too' that functions to motivate them as well: a new rapid series of sonar issues from the back of their throat. Although a threat looms, they demonstrate a fierce determination of bravery and solidarity, asserting to Ryan, 'We have to help them. Now. Quickly.' Their brow crinkles in thought, eyes bouncing in a triangulation between the three adults. 'Maybe they still have a chance to all be together.' "Your pa not wrong, little dragon-egg," Ion is saying, low and impressed, if a little rueful, "you brave as fuck." He's rolling his shoulders, head tipping towards the noise. "{Mess what we fucking live for, eh, brother? No blood, how you lot stay fed?}" His eyes are bright as his fist curls, bops with a hard zap to Ryan's wingspar, and with a cracklepop he is disappearing into the tumult on the other side. The tumult on the other side is a lot more tumult than they had left behind. The Sentinels that had doubled back have tripled in number, and with them three of Genosha's massive genetically engineered Enforcers accompanying have come along to collect the terrified young would-be escapees. Though Mystique is here, too, valiantly attempting to do what she can it's a bit of a losing battle -- a half-dozen of youths they came to collect are in the Sentinels' shackles and though she's only just managed to get one back free there are three more Sentinels swarming her already. Her teeth are bared in a snarl and the explosives she's just hurled at the Enforcers seem like a mosquito bite for all the good it's done to the massive brutes. "Glad you could join us," she's gritting through her teeth, "care to lend a hand?" Though the curl of her lip is more a sharp-fanged snarl than anything a human would recognize as a smile, something in Isra's carriage brightens fierce and joyful at Egg's reaction. That, she signs, 'is winning. And that.' Her ears press back as she turns to the rift more clear to her senses for Ryan's clicking than the sights and sounds and smells echoing their own confused way through, 'is our mess to win. Keep fighting, little one.' Her eyes tick to Ryan. 'Thank you.' Then she crouches as her wings flare out and snap down--not hard enough to take off, but it propels her leap through the breach after Ion. She lands on the other side, on one of the Sentinels menacing Mystique and her charge--this is all the answer she gives--and immediately springs into the air again leaving it misshapen if not properly disabled. This time she does take flight, and though it's uneven for the ripped open wingsail she uses the unpredictable sidelong slide to dodge an airborne Sentinel and crash into the head of an Enforcer. Her talons tear at his face in a bid to blind him and move on before he has a chance to get hold of her. As the others return through the portal, the masses of Sentinels are rearming themselves swiftly -- readying a barrage of both deadly and depowering ammunition to take aim at the rescuers again. The brute Enforcer who had so easily shrugged off Mystique's explosive seems only lightly scratched, too, by Isra's claws; he does wince, but he's laughing in a loud roar, batting her away as he stomps towards the bound captives. "Fucking Americans wanna come here and play heroes," he's sneering. "Like you try to steal these sheep we can't just breed some more." Ryan has just nodded, quick, to Egg's assertion. 'I'll be quick,' he signs, indicating -- just there-and-back, and it's somewhere in this speech that he's barrelling through the divide, wings splayed wide-wide between the Enforcer and the refugees and his hand coming up to meet the man's and then twist hard backward with an audible snap. "You had really better pray your people never get free. Not a lot of love for kapos when the tides change." Perked ears quiver like radar antennae, attuned to the stimuli of oncoming Sentinels and Enforcers now visible through the bridge between their worlds. Egg clicks and chirps, assessing their hostile environment, and emboldened by the praise of these displaced heroes, ignores the direction to standby idly while their father assists them. Digitigrade legs clench, bracing aggainst the ground to launch them airborne again, wings thrust outwards and beating to send them careening into the fray after the others, instincts once more in effect with snarls and talons as if to convey: I am the apex predator here. A bullet tears through Ion's already bloodied shoulder and for a moment he is gone, reappearing solid but paler beside the captives. "{Took small bit detour but found us some extra muscle, huh?}" He's zipping himself -- a little erratically -- through one Sentinel and then another and then another to de-shackle them from the captives they're locking up, and as injured as he is it isn't quite as lightningfast a task as it normally would be. "Shit, two extra muscle --" as he deshackles a fourth captive, winces as another bullet grazes him, he's casting a look -- worried and appreciative both -- to Egg. "How --" For a moment, Mystique has stopped dead at the sight of Dusk(?) and his unlikely progeny, swooping to their rescue. Her yellow eyes go wide and she hardly seems to notice the bullet that carves a rut through her side. Or the second that's gone through her leg. And then, as if nothing had happened, she's springing fluid back into motion, hurling one of the Sentinels that Ion has just detached into another, flinging a grenade atop them both -- the bots are already starting to reorient themselves, though. An buzzing swarm of them are leaping into the air after Isra; another swarm is sending a hail of fire after Egg, aiming to perforate the sails of the vampireling's wings and stymie their flight. Below, one of the massive Enforcers is waiting, almost pruriently hopeful of snatching the young monster out of the air. Mystique is still knocking down the Sentinels furiously, in plenty, but as many as she's taking out, they're rapidly putting themselves back together from the spare parts of the fallen. "Ion," for all the blood she's lost she seems very calm. "Get. Us. Out." Isra was already stalling out when the Enforcer swipes at her, and she rolls mid-air to absorb the blow. She's barely righted herself to dive at him when Dusk intercepts him. She roars--triumph? encouragement? glee?--and reroutes to the next Enforcer, but the Sentinels intercept her first. The depowering rounds will likely make her sick for days, but have little effect on her right now. The bullets catch her along the flank and stitch a series of new tears through her less-damaged wing. Ironically this makes her flight a touch more stable until the Sentinels physically bear her down. No stranger to barely-controlled crashes, she uses the force of it to dislodge one Sentinel and break the hold of two others, one of which she hurls unceremoniously at the third Enforcer with one blood-covered wing while she rips the other one apart with main force. For all that, she is slower to rise this time and not excessively steady as she rids herself of another bot, then another. Before they can fully re-orient or reassemble themselves, she plants herself between them and the young Genoshans--now at least nominally guarded on all sides, like foals shielded by a herd in a defensive formation. Ryan's own roar is deep, throaty, a furious rage when the machines aim at his child. Still holding the Enforcer's arm he's bounding, high, wings spread wide as a shield between the barrage and Egg; it cuts his own leap short, dropping back down with one wingsail peppered in a bit of a bloody tatter, but that's fine. He's now wielding the arm he's still holding -- now fully disconnected from the howling man it had once belonged to -- like a cudgel, bringing it down in hard solid blow to clear a swath through a swarm of the bots, his bloodied wing swiping out to widen it. "Go," he's growling at the others, boots planting heavy on the ground as the third Enforcer turns their attention from Egg to him, "I got your back -- Egg, go --" but he's kind of faltering on home, his attention very briefly distracted as he tries to find a pathway that is -- much smaller, now, than it had been when they came through. A very solid fist crunches hard into his chest, and he bares his teeth, driving the man back. Egg maneuvers with deft aerial precision, battle tactics not a foreign concept to them, in theory or practice. Rapid clicks and darting eyes assess the fray they entered. In perception of the swarm targeting them, the vampgoyle pursues a non-linear, encircling route to break and scatter as Ryan intercepts, a parental buffer between them. Screeching as the fire draws away from them, conflict and panic rush over their inhuman features--to heed warning or remain and help their father is the question. Mystique has adjusted fairly swiftly, from her stark shock at seeing Dusk here back from the apparent dead to being duly impressed at his handy mutilation of the Genoshan Brute Squad. She's carving her way through the seemingly interminable swarm of bots toward Isra -- or what had been a seemingly interminable swarm of bots. More and more of them are turning their attentions toward Ryan as the Enforcers contend with him, unused, apparently, to a threat of quite this strength. As Ryan drives the massive Enforcer back all three of them -- and a large majority of the bots -- are refocusing on the vampire. Mystique is unshackling the last few captives, lips pressed into a hard line. As the Sentinels Isra had been fending off peel away, she rips the last one she'd snatch up apart and backs toward Mystique, Ion, and their once-more liberated charges. When Egg remains against their father's instruction she tries to launch herself into the air again, but her strength is near spent and her wings torn beyond use. Words have not been coming easily since her and Ion's disorienting interdimensional jaunt, but "{Go back! We are leaving!}" comes out in loud, clear Spanish. Ryan's fangs bare hard, his growl harsh with each crunching blow. He's returning them, fierce and bloody, but between the three huge enforcers and the swarm of bots it does not take much to see that his odds are not great. For all that, it isn't the heavy cracking of his bones that tears him -- brief -- away from this fray, but a subaudible clicking that he's sending out that, this time, meets with no distorted echo -- the gate he's looking for is closed. With one desperate effort he's shoving himself down off the battered crumpled body of one of the Enforcers, wings beating unevenly long enough to pull him higher into view -- it's Ion whos eyes he's seeking out, first: "{Take care of them, yeah, Brother?}" before he swipes frantically at the bots trying to pull him back down. Looks at Egg. His fangy smile is fierce and bloodstained. 'The ones who fight for you, that's always gonna be your family.' He's holding up his hand in the I-love-you sign for a moment, but then is yanked back down in a tangle of bots and meaty fists, his snarling still clear somewhere in the mix -- until it isn't. Hope for a better world vanishes with the closing of the rift and onslaught of robots descending on Ryan -- moreover, the world Egg knew fractures and dissolves in innumerable ways. A wail of despair tears from their throat, loud and pealing it cuts through the tumult, guttural and inhuman it nonetheless articulates a grief all too universal. The nictitating membrane flashes over their eyes, unable to halt the flow of tears that blur vision, a helpless, gray taloned hand signing 'I love you, forever' as the trauma response kicks in alongside the adrenaline rush spurring their survival instinct and blinking back of the waterworks. Loss is yet another feeling all too familiar, one that takes backseat in the wake of imminent danger still posed--conditioned by the dystopia from which they herald. Others--still living--need help. Isra, their pseudo-parallel-mother, for one, as Egg catapults into action, their wings succeeding where the elder gargoyle's fail: they are there, uplifting, ferrying them to safety--away, away from so much heartache as they soldier on into a retreat. "-- nnn --" It wants to resolve into a no, not a protest but just a reflexively furious and anguished cry. Ion's eyes lock on the man who is not Dusk, but there's nothing to be done for it but take the window they're given while they actually have it. It's an uncertain enough thing as-is -- the teleporter is pale and shivering already, leaving a whole lot more blood than he wants to be leaving on the forest floor as he vanishes with two of the refugees -- blinks back, vanishes with a third; the gap between isn't long but at his usual lightning-speeds any noticeable gap at all is basically forever, and he's wavering in and out of place before he manages to weave through the bots and claim the others in turn. 'I'm sorry, fierce little egg,' he's signing when he finally flickers back on a lightning-flash beside Egg and Isra, and then in gruff Spanish, "{we got you, now.}" He's reaching out, bloodied and sparking, towards the batwinged duo. Though it's only for the briefest of instants that the world vanishes, when he teleports, the new life on the other side may as well be an eternity away.