Number Five (
forasecond) wrote in
metaverses2022-08-17 10:43 am
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{Fever inside the storm
Who: Number Five
forasecond & OTA
What: Crisis On Infinite Dreamwidths catch-all
When: Aug 12-18, 2022
Where: MetaHumans universe + A Nexus (details inside)
Content Warnings: Five comes with a bucket of warnings, including:
• Mental-physical age discrepancy (he looks 13, he's mentally 58)
• Well-hidden trauma and PTSD symptoms, potential depression/anxiety descriptions, some obsessive behaviors being exhibited at times
• Alcohol-as-a-coping-mechanism which technically presents as underage drinking
• Casual/flippant references to child abuse/neglect
• Violence, liberal use of violent threats, potentially flippant talk about murder and references to his time as an assassin
• In general, he can be aggressive, incredibly reactive, and generally come off as an asshole. These are risks in tagging with him that aren't feasibly curved without being untrue to the character.
Other Notes: HMU on Five's HMD / @loyalwolf[#3540] on plurk[/discord] for something specific!

![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
What: Crisis On Infinite Dreamwidths catch-all
When: Aug 12-18, 2022
Where: MetaHumans universe + A Nexus (details inside)
Content Warnings: Five comes with a bucket of warnings, including:
• Mental-physical age discrepancy (he looks 13, he's mentally 58)
• Well-hidden trauma and PTSD symptoms, potential depression/anxiety descriptions, some obsessive behaviors being exhibited at times
• Alcohol-as-a-coping-mechanism which technically presents as underage drinking
• Casual/flippant references to child abuse/neglect
• Violence, liberal use of violent threats, potentially flippant talk about murder and references to his time as an assassin
• In general, he can be aggressive, incredibly reactive, and generally come off as an asshole. These are risks in tagging with him that aren't feasibly curved without being untrue to the character.
Other Notes: HMU on Five's HMD / @loyalwolf[#3540] on plurk[/discord] for something specific!
these golden ashes turn to dust.

The Nexus
ARRIVAL
You show up in a desolate, dilapidated city that has seen better days. The buildings that remain intact are futuristic in their architecture, with sweeping lines, sharp angles, and geometric shapes that seem impossible but some have even withstood whatever ravaged this place so thoroughly.
EXPLORATION
Care needs to be taken as you explore the broken, inhospitable city. Electricity is spotty at best in the few places it seems to still work at all, but powerlines might have enough juice left to harm. Buildings and homes are in various states of disrepair with weak floors. Edible food is hard, though not impossible, to come by. Best to stick with anything you might find in a can.
SURVIVAL
When night falls, it becomes eerie, the lines made by the architechture seem sinister, and there's something humming or clicking in the distance- or is that just your imagnation? You might find yourself faced with a semi-sentient machine, twisted and changed by some magic or other means long-past. You better find an escape route or dismantle it and quickly, because it's coming for you.
ESCAPE
At some point, you see it: a small, shimmering break in the ground you were about to step on, in the wall of the building you're next to or the relfective glass of a broken down car. You see it, and somehow, instinctively, you just instinctley know it will lead you somewhere safe and warm. You're going home.
{Those Who Remain » August 12-14 » MetaHeroes Universe, Excelsior, WA
The feeling of it is driven deep down into his bones, straight to the marrow, burning through every nook and crany when he sees the message from The Society claiming that whatever sharp-snap-pulse had woken him up earlier that morning was a good thing. A net-positive. They’re gathering everyone to be sure it’s stable and they’re going home.
He stares at the chalkboard-walls of his room, too many thoughts trying to take up space in his head at once––
It’s all worth it, though. Bare bones, brass tacks, the only thing that has ever truly mattered since he ended up here has been getting home. And now? It’s in reach.
For all of about half an hour.
It’s everywhere- text alerts of missing children, news reports of wrecks caused by disappearing drivers, surgeons that were gone between the space of a blink during surgery, the emergency lines are going insane because people. Just. Keep. Disappearing.
The panic that's spreading like wildfire through the rest of the city- country- world, is much the same as what Five himself is experiencing as the realization crashes down on him. The rug yanked from under his feet.
Disappointed. Again.
Failed. Again.
He sinks onto the edge of his bed, head in his hands for a brief second before a sharp, ragged, loud,
Peace and God be with whoever might find him collapsed in a heap on the floor in the living room, surrounded by glass from the broken coffee table. He might have some blood on him. It's okay. It's his. He's fine.
ii. mending the wounds of a shattered world
Chaos. That's all there is across these next days winding impossibly on, out in front of him, coming on like neverending waves of destruction. Tensions between metas and non-meta natives are at an all-time high in Excelsior. Five doesn't have time for it, not at all, and it might not be unusual to catch him snapping sharp words at someone for it all.
Being a central, tech conglomerate is pretty great. Until the technology starts to literally attack people. When Technology Attacks, one article declares. He’s tired just thinking about it. But what else is there to do? He pays attention to the news, finds the high-trafficked areas and does what he can to help people out of precarious situations with newly sentient technology that has decided you're a target.
When he isn't doing that, he can be found at The Daily Grind coffee shop with his dog, Artemis, perched at his feet at one of the tables outside. He seems to be doing a perfectly stellar job of ignoring whatever chaotic nonsense is going on around him at the moment, somehow.
iii. wildcard
Hit me with anything that feels right in your heart! And I will be accepting 1 response to be the unlucky person that Five disappears on, mid-thread (to the Nexus described in the top-level of the post). Let me know if you'd like to be that person!
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All she'd tried to do was toast herself a bagel, before the toaster tried to burn her hand. Then grab a juice from a fridge, only to have the fridge try to slam its door on top of her fingers, and hop menacingly away from the wall as of it was thinking about toppling itself on top of her.
Okay, so no breakfast.
She hops onto a city bus, aiming to go back downtown to where it might be safer, or to where she can teleport to one of the other cities, but quickly it becomes clear that the driver has lost control of this bus. It speeds down the street, ignoring all stoplights and bus stops, careening into parked cars left, right, and center. Everyone in the bus is losing their minds, Robin included, but thankfully she's a quick enough thinker to bust open the emergency exit window and start carefully shepherding passengers off of the runaway bus, instructing them to tuck and roll when they land.
Finally, just as Robin gets the last of the other passengers free, the bus takes a sharp left and hits the brakes hard, knocking Robin ass over teakettle, tumbling forwards down the aisle, knocking her head on the arm rail as she goes. Bruised, dizzy, and a little pissed off, Robin's eyes go wide as the bus takes off again, careening straight for an intersection, where it looks like they're about to run down a lone teenage boy!
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"Shit!" he shouts, blinking from where he's standing onto the bus. He looks around wildly for anyone the bus. "Hey- are you okay?" he asks the girl that looks like she's barely on her feet. "Is there anyone else on this bus?"
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"No, it's just me. I got everyone else out." It's like the bus has it in for her, specifically...
She should have fucking stayed in Central City.
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He does a quick, cursory glance himself just to be sure she’s right before he turns to her again. “I’m gonna get us outta here— can you trust that?” He doesn’t expect her to trust him, just the fact that he’s going to get them off this bus before it crashes.
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The teenager seems so confident that he can save their asses. Robin feels like she's still ten steps behind... How did he go from being in front of the bus one second, to right by her side the next?
But... What options does she have? She takes a deep breath, looks him in the eye, and nods.
"Whatever you're going to do... Do it."
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i.
Harry is upstairs, drying his hair after a shower, when he hears a commotion coming from downstairs— stuff falling, dishes breaking, the airy zap! of Five's power, flitting this way and that. Harry drops the hair dryer, rushing downstairs and stopping short at the sight of Five prone on the floor. ]
Jesus Chri— dude, what the hell?
[ He hurries to Five's side, kneeling and trying to turn him over, make sure he's okay. ]
Five...? Five? Talk to me.
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He pushes himself to his feet, shards of glass falling off of him onto the ground and disappears into the kitchen to grab the broom to start cleaning his mess without so much as another word about any of it.
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He enters the room, leaning against the doorframe as he watches Five busy himself cleaning.
"You're clearly not fine. Will you just fucking talk to me?"
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He sets the broom and dustpan against the counter, folding his arms as he leans against it himself. "The only thing that gets results is action." Which he hasn't been doing nearly enough of lately if he's honest with himself about it. Well, that's going to need to change sooner rather than later.
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"What.. fucking... happened? You just flipped the fuck out, out of nowhere? What's going on man?"
They can settle on an action to take when he gets all the fucking details of what they're dealing with.
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ii
He slips into the coffee shop just for a caffeine jolt, not intending to hang out. But he spots Five on his way outside again just...apparently doing fine here. It's noisy outside, car alarms going off and things like that, the sentient computers just exploring what that means. Loudly.
He stops by Five's table.
"That dog is so chill for all the craziness happening right now," he says.
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"Mind if I join you guys for a little bit?" He asks. He's not nearly as good at blotting out the noise, of course. Between super senses that already make it difficult and the whole technomancy thing, he's on wild overload. But he's also…kind of used to that part.
"Did you get to see any crazy other universes?"
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He shakes his head at the question, setting his phone aside on the table to focus his attention on Peter and the conversation instead. "No," he shakes his head, "did you?"
Five isn't sure it's over, given the state of... everything in the moment, he could still be snatched away to some other place, he puts absolutely nothing beyond this particular set of chaos, but he's exhausted from the idea of it and hopes he can avoid it this time entirely.
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He sighs and looks down at his coffee. There's a lid in the way, no dark depths (or…tan depths) to stare into.
"Uh. Yeah, a couple places. One of them was kinda cool, except everyone turned into monsters once a month? One of them was…honestly hell. Some people had lived in that place for years and I have no idea how."
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{A Journey to the Lands Between » Aug 15-18 » The Nexus
One minute, he was talking to someone, the next? A sharp pain in his ribs pulls hard like he might be ripped apart. It's somehow familiar and not all at once, similar enough to when he travels in space or time, but harsher, more disorienting because it's not a power he's in control of.
When he lands, it's on hard rubbled roads and he takes a moment on his hands and knees to just catch the breath that had been knocked out of him from the journey. It's only a couple of minutes, though, and he's scrabbling to his feet, looking around to see where he's ended up.
For a brief moment, the image he's greeted with yanks him back to an all-too-familiar memory, the two images of the present and the past almost overlayed in his eyes. Just for moment. Blink and it's over. But he feels like the breath has been stolen from his lungs again. No and Not again beat against the inside of his brain like war drums. He can't. He can't, he can't, he can't keep ending up in places like this!
Five swallows it all down, as he has gotten so used to doing over his long life, and finally steps forward, further into the broken, desolate city, and he wonders what might have brought it to its knees like this.
ii. I'll just make the best of everything I'll never have
Five spends... hours, maybe a whole day, seemingly by himself in this wasteland of a city. He sets about exploring what he can– a lot of the buildings and houses aren't stable enough to investigate, but the ones that are, he's picking his way through in a nearly practiced, methodical way. If someone else was here, maybe they'd end up crossing paths with him while he rifled through debris in the streets or papers that are largely burnt, soaked, or otherwise illegible in a long-abandoned office.
Funnily enough, it's a rack of old magazines and newspapers that gives him the most direction. The year isn't legible, but the titles are, and they're all prints he's seen in Excelsior. "Shit." he mutters sharply under his breath, throwing the magazine down on the ground. Not like there's anyone around to care about litter, anyway.
iii. wildcard
Hit me with anything that feels right in your heart!
ii
In the absence of other sounds, Five's muttered curse is quite clear, even from a fair distance away. Sephiroth approaches near enough to observe. A child?
Probably not a normal child, whether he was brought here from the Confluence Earth or whether this is his world. Not that Sephiroth has a great handle on what normal children are like. Still, just in case he's intimidated by a 6'7" man in black, he'll keep his distance.
"...hello."
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His head snaps up at the voice, but nothing about him seems scared, just... alert. Very, very alert. "Huh. Didn't think anyone else was here."
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"I take it you've been displaced here as well."
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“Yeah- I was. I was in Excelsior and now I’m here.” Which he isn’t convinced isn’t still Excelsior, if the faded magazines nearby are anything to go by. Whether he knows where that is or not might tell Five a lot in a simple response. If he’s wandering some pocket dimension, how far of a stretch is it to think a Confluence might have pulled some new blood right into it?
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But once the owner of that voice is in front of him, it's a damn shame he didn't recognize it faster. "Ben?" This isn't the voice of someone who has been faced with this yet. It's broken open, cracked wide and raw across every inch of him, despite his features staying relatively frozen, only a little of the shock seeping through.
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The concrete direction is good, though, gives him something to latch onto to shake off the residual shock and focus on. “I don’t know— I mean…” his face scrunches up as he looks around at the dilapidated state of the downtown square they’re currently standing in. “I have an idea, but I don’t really know for sure.”
He looks back over at his brother, “Safe to say, we’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.”