metaverses | {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!

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

This isn't the first nexus world that Sephiroth has been to, and maybe it won't be the last during all this chaos, but it's easily the emptiest. He can get by longer than the average person without food or rest, so in that sense it doesn't concern him. The ruins aren't especially familiar either; this isn't the demise of anything he cares about. And yet it's... uncomfortable, somehow, walking this place alone.

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."

Number Five also isn't sure what normal children are like, he wasn't one even when he was, genuinely, child. Despite what people see when they look at him, he's not the child he used to be. Or a child at all. But it's a hard thing to get people to wrap their minds around, and no one can truly be faulted for what their eyes tell them. Not that Five will accept it graciously as that, ever.

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."

Alert is good. Alert is the appropriate state of being in a place like this, and that makes it something he can understand. Sephiroth moves a few steps closer, looking the boy over. No, he'd probably be in worse shape if this were his world.

"I take it you've been displaced here as well."

Five keeps his eyes on the stranger, muscles could tight, ready to spring into action at the first mild provocation. But he can stay his hand. He has an absolute well of patience from which to draw from.

“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?

There's nothing overtly threatening about Sephiroth's movements, and he isn't visibly armed, but he does have a somewhat military bearing.

He nods at the reply. "I was in Sunset Falls myself, and then, another world before this one." His gaze leaves Five to sweep over their surroundings; he hasn't spent enough time in Excelsior to recognize the ruins as anything more than that. "Do you recognize it?"

“Oh, thank fuck,” he mutters off a sigh. “I really didn’t want to have to explain everything.” It gets old after awhile, and without the Guild to sweep the new kids up and give them the rundown? Well— Five certainty wasn’t looking forward to having to be some kind of welcome committee, so at least that bullet is successfully dodged.

He shrugs and glances around the broken city streets they’re standing on before dropping his gaze back to the magazines along the debris. “Tech Zone is one of the publications in Excelsior. Which could be coincidence, if I believed in them, but the architecture,” he gestures with a sweep of his hand. “what you can still make out of it? Looks likely to me.”

He stares off in the middle distance, somewhere far beyond Sephiroth as he says, “But it begs the question- what the fuck happened?”

Another Apocalypse, that’s what, he doesn’t say. Maybe Loki’s right, maybe they’re following me, he doesn’t add.

Sephiroth meanwhile is privately relieved by how non-childlike this boy seems. He did not want to do any handholding, figuratively or literally.

He follows Five's gesture, considering the ruined buildings again. It could be Excelsior.

"A bombing, perhaps. In another version of Earth." There seem to be an infinity of them, and he knows well enough how little pretext humans require for destroying each other. Why not a version where war came to Excelsior? "Does it matter? I have no intention of remaining here."

"And do you have some idea of how the hell you're gonna get out of here?" he says, tone both exasperated and challenging, almost like a dare. Find a way out he hasn't, guy.

He folds his arms across his chest and glances around again. "And it might matter," he mutters. "If this is Excelsior... maybe it's the future." A future he really doesn't want to exist in. The same sort of future he keeps finding himself walking toward, no matter how hard he tries to avoid it.

"We locate another rift," he says, matter-of-factly. Okay, so it wasn't obvious to him either the first time, but he's not above responding to a challenge with arrogance.

But the future? Perhaps he has no real reason to be skeptical; if they're moving through dimensions, perhaps it's possible to move through time. But it's only a possibility. "...then you want to ensure this could be prevente."

He lifts his arms in a showcase of the destroyed city around them, "You see one lyin' around somewhere that I don't?" Haughty. Tired.

"It's pretty much my entire life's work," he snorts derisively, shaking his head. Somehow, it keeps being the thing he ends up with in his lap, and he doesn't like the idea that maybe, maybe it's going to happen here soon, too.

"Not yet. I encountered you first."

Yeah, Sephiroth doubts this kid is actually as young as he looks, but it's hard to say whether he's just a snarky 20-something who's seen some things or one of those centuries-old god types.

"You've spent your entire life preventing the destruction of cities?"

He corrects, “Preventing the Apocalypse,” or more specifically, keeping the timeline in tact to make sure it happened when it was supposed to. But you know. After he got disillusioned with The Commission. Then is was all about stopping it. Twice over now, and he’s fucking tired.

"Do you have any indication that it extends beyond this city alone?" Sephiroth wonders. Even then, surely it's simply an apocalypse.

This isn't his world, and there are plenty of others.

“Not so far,” But in his experience, Apocalypses don’t stay contained like that. “But I wouldn’t rule anything out at this stage.”

Sephiroth regards him for a long moment. He has no particular investment in Excelsior, but that Earth is the place he's chosen, for the time being. He has no intention of allowing himself or what little he cares about to perish along with it. He may be skeptical that the ruins they stand in now are proof of any impending disaster-- but it's true, there is nothing here to rule it out either.

"I suppose we might look, a while," he concedes. "But should we come across a rift, I'm not waiting." He doesn't know how long they last.

He considers the debris. "...if it was sudden, then it won't be in print. Perhaps some of the technology might have salvageable data."

{Fever inside the storm

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