{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

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.

[tinglesense]

Peter shakes his head.

"I mean, if Atlantis was, like, steampunk and rotting, kinda. There weren't mermaids or anything cool, though. It was just these creepy people who were all on some weird drug that made them extra stabby. Sounds like it can't even be real, huh? I mean…that place said it was someone's nightmare, but…it was pretty damn real."

Peter had been lucky not to die in Deerington or in Rapture, whatever that place had actually been. People did die there, though they…didn't seem to stay dead? He can't dwell on that for too long or he'll lose his shit about it.

"Oh, I mean, sometimes the Lokis here are girls too. I mean…two of them are. I haven't seen the third one enough to know. I think they can just do whatever they want." Loki doesn't have to make sense, being Loki. Peter is new to dealing with Lokis firsthand but he's learned a few things about the ones here.

"Wait, so people from these crazy worlds were coming here too…even more new people than in regular Confluences?"