{Fever inside the storm

[forasecond]

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!

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.

Comments

{Those Who Remain » August 12-14 » MetaHeroes Universe, Excelsior, WA

[forasecond]

i. Upstream is forward in a backwards world

Limit: 1 Resonse - Close CR ONLY

Home.

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––

The whole idea of home.

His siblings.

Getting back to their timeline.

The people he’ll never see again– and may not even remember.

The weird semblance of a life he’s made here.

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.

And.

Then.

It crashes.

And burns.

Hard.

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,

"FUCK!" rips its way from his throat and he becomes a blurr of blue-and-white light and the scent of ozone as he blinks around the room, and the rest of the house, and trashes whatever he can get his hands on– plates broken, art work and nicknacks on the floor, lamps shattered, printed articles ripped up.

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

OTA

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

OTA

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!

[grivences]

Excelsior sucks. Robin's never been a big city kind of girl, but even if she had loved cities before now, the past four hours she's spent in Excelsior would have rid her of that dumb idea.

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!

[forasecond]

Five is, frankly, exhausted already. Apparently, saving people from machines is a lot of work in a city as technologically focused as Excelsior, who knew! He's reminded of Dr. Terminal and his Terminauts, except in a lot of ways, the tech of Excelsior's sudden animation is much worse.

"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?"

[grivences]

"Jeeeesus Christ!" is about all Robin is able to get out at first as the teenager fucking teleports straight onto the bus with her. She knew, vaguely, that people here have superpowers, but it's another thing to see one up close and personal when you're hurtling 50 miles per hour down a city street. She blinks, and shakes her head vigorously, trying to clear the ringing in her ears from when she fell.

"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.

[forasecond]

“No driver?” Why is he surprised? It’s Tech Attack Time out there, of course the homicidal bus is driving itself.

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.

[grivences]

"The sign said it was cutting edge technology!" Robin is really regretting being impressed by the driverless bus right now.

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."

[forasecond]

"Normally, it is," although after this experience, he's not sure t hat's reassuring at all.

He nods a little and says, "Hold onto your guts," with little else for warning, he grabs her wrist seconds before he moves them through space from the bus to the sidewalk outside an ice cream shop.

"You okay?" It's always rough the first time, all that sensation coming from every direction at once. It's dizzying at best and nauseating at worst. Hopefully she's not about to puke.

[grivences]

"My wh—" Before she can even finish her question, he's grabbing her wrist and then everything is happening all at once, too fast for her to understand what she's seeing, hearing, feeling. She blinks, and when her eyes open, they're somewhere else.

"—at the fu-u-u-uck!?"

She reels, yanking her wrist out of his grasp and backing away until she knocks back into the window of the ice cream shop.

"What the hell was that?"

[forasecond]

"Sorry," he says it dismissively, like a reflex more than something he really means, though surprisingly enough he does mean it. "It sucks the first time." It sucks every time, he's just used to it, and his body is more calibrated for it than everyone else's.

He glances over at her and lets his eyes sweep across her, making sure she seemed okay physically, at least. No injuries that couldn't be explained by the bus being out of control, all her limbs in the right place. Good.

"Spatial travel is a bitch," he says in way of an answer. "This world makes comics look tame."

A beat.

He scrunches his face up a bit, "Welcome to Excelsior."

i.

[nepotis]

[ Five has been good to Harry. Peter may not have been around much, in the months since Harry got to this universe, but now that Harry knows the truth, he's been avoiding not only his own Peter, but the other Peters as well. Which means the people Harry has to rely on are getting fewer and farther between. So when Five offered to let Harry crash with him for a while, well. They both needed the company.

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.

[forasecond]

"I'm. Fine." he growls, shoving Harry's concern away as he sits up, despite all of the evidence to the contrary sitting around him, and in shambles in the rest of the house. Whatever. It's his house now, isn't it? So he can destroy it however he likes. He's the one that has to deal with it, anyway.

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.

[nepotis]

Harry lets himself be pushed back, rolling his eyes when Five disappears again. He stands, trying to follow the sound of someone moving to figure out where the hell Five went to this time. Luckily, the house is empty aside from them and the dog, so it isn't hard to find him in the kitchen.

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?"

[forasecond]

"What good will it do?" He snaps back almost instantly as he dumps the dustpan into the trash bit. "Talking doesn't fix anything." It never has, and it never will.

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.

[nepotis]

Once Five stops moving and settles in against the counter, Harry stalks over to stand in front of him, looking less concerned now and more annoyed.

"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.

[forasecond]

It's fine because Five can deal with annoyance a hell of a lot better than that worry he'd seen etched into Harry's features a minute or two ago.

"Home," is the only word he growls out for a moment. His jaw is set tight, as he stares at the younger man. "They said we could go home and now-" he gestures vaguely and pops over to the small monitor set up on the other end of the counter. The news report filters in and fills up the room,

"...authorities are looking into these world-wide disappearances, no word yet on the cause of..."

He's just.
So.
Tired, Harry.

[nepotis]

Harry turns to watch the news report, a knot forming in his stomach. They never make breaking news reports about good things happening. The last time he saw something like this was when those giant monsters attacked, and he and Peter were conscripted into piloting a giant robot...

"Disappearances..." He glances towards Five. "Do you... Is this related to your sister disappearing?"

[forasecond]

“I don’t know,” he admits on a sigh. “Probably not, it happened at random the same way it happened with Luther— this,” he gestures vaguely, “they’re talking about people all over the fucking planet gone in a blink.”

He shakes his head a little and mutters an emphatic, “Fuck!” under his breath.

ii

[tinglesense]

Peter's only been back in Excelsior for a couple chaotic days. An unfortunate side-effect of the whole technomancy thing is that sentient AIs realise they can mess with him. Some of them are fine and curious and even friendly, but some of them are outright hostile. And computers are everywhere so it's pretty constant.

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.

[forasecond]

Amazing what you can block out and ignore with enough sheer willpower. He glances up when he hears a familiar voice. "She's remarkably calm, all the time, honestly. I thought Jack Russels were supposed to be ADHD in dog form," he snorts softly at his own bad joke.

[tinglesense]

Peter manages a smile at that. He's trying!

"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?"

[forasecond]

"Sure," he gestures for the boy to take an available seat at the table.

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.

[tinglesense]

Peter slides into the seat across from Five, making sure to offer pets to his dog. That's just polite, okay! And maybe a little self-serving because dogs are great, whatever.

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."

[forasecond]

Artemis is appropriately enamored by Peter’s polite petting offers and might occasionally nudge him for more at random during the course of the conversation.

“Literal hell?” He perks an eyebrow at that. “At least you made it back in tact.” Peter doesn’t seem to be sporting any obvious injuries, at least.

He lied before. The easy-as-breathing way he does it is sometimes concerning, but he just isn’t up to talking about what he’d seen in that other place. Not yet. Maybe soon. Eventually. He’s still trying to work out whether it was a real glimpse of a potential future or not. It’s much easier to focus on Peter’s experiences. “Did you turn into some Lovecraftian thing in the other one?”

[tinglesense]

"No, not literally hell, but a literal nightmare. Like some creepy monster girl dreamed it up? I don't know, I was mostly trying not to die or get covered in blood," he says with a shudder. It was pretty horrific.

"In that same place, we were also in, like, some underwater city? Which sounds super cool! Only it was super messed up instead!"

He raises an eyebrow at the Lovecraftian comment.

"Lovecraft? Jesus, no, thankfully. It was more…mythological than that? I was like this…big winged thing. I forget what they called it. Mostly I thought of it as an angel, but that's kinda dumb. I could fly there, though, and that was really neat. There was a Loki there, because of course there was, but she wasn't exactly like the ones here."

Peter has no reason to guess that Five wasn't telling the truth, so he can't call him on it.

"What the hell happened here?"

[forasecond]

"Both good goals," He nods and considers that for a moment and tilts his head. "What- like... some approximation of Atlantis?"

"Well, at least there's that," because- well. Lovecraft. It might have been even more traumatizing than it already was. "As weird transformations go, I guess wings aren't the worst thing to get suddenly saddled with," he muses with a slight not. "A female Loki?" He hums an intrigued sort of sound that comes with a slight facial shrug. Makes as much sense as anything else, right? Plus. Trickster God, etcetera.

He spreads his arms as if to display the city as a whole. "You're pretty much lookin' at it. Chaos everywhere. I think- whatever was dragging people to weird corners of the multiverse," because, yes, he's wholly accepted that as a thing at this point, "was also pulling people here the same way, if that makes sense? So we had a lot of new people getting fluxed into the madness on top of everything else." He's not sure if any of them- or how many- stayed in the aftermath.