{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

[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.

[nepotis]

It's a little frightening, to think of all these people disappearing all at once. Harry makes a mental note to check in on the people he knows, his mind stalling slightly on the idea of reaching out to Peter... But he's brought back into the moment when Five swears again.

"Okay, okay, it's not the—" Well. It might be the end of the world, honestly. Harry should probably try a different approach.

"Just... Try to take things one at a time. You clearly want to do something about it. What's one thing you could do?"

[forasecond]

"The what, Harry?" He snaps, tone visceral and brackish. "Not the end of the world? Yeah, actually- maybe it is. Maybe-" he cuts himself short and shakes his head. "Nevermind."

He laughs, something bordering manic and hollow all at once. "I can't- that's the problem. That's always the problem. I can't fix anything. Everything just keeps fucking up worse and worse every time I try."

[nepotis]

Harry stays still, watching Five get more and more unhinged. He can tell that he's really taking this cataclysm personally, which... probably hints at some underlying bullshit that Harry can't even begin to guess at.

"Then you don't. You don't try to fix anything. You sit still and watch the world burn. That's got to be easier than tearing yourself apart trying."

[forasecond]

“Yeah,” he scoffs and shakes his head. “that’ll end well,” he mutters, folding his arms across his chest.

He slowly turns his gaze away, looking somewhere out in the middle distance at nothing and everything all at once. His whole life has basically been dedicated to one, single thing. Get home. Stop the Apocalypse. But it keeps going wrong. Keeps slamming sideways, no matter how much he tries to set the timeline straight.

Maybe Loki’s right and he’s the problem; it feels more and more try all the time.

Maybe Harry’s right and he should jus









It happens between the space of a blink, the in-and-out of a breath.



He’s there—

And then suddenly? He’s not.

[nepotis]

Harry would like to think he and Five are close, by this point. They've each bared their souls to each other, dumped out their respective traumas over glasses of scotch. He knows how Five thinks, what Five does. And he knows what it looks like when Five teleports away in the middle of a conversation.

This isn't that. There's no telltale blue flash of light, no distortion of space around where Five's figure used to be.

He's just there

and then he's not

leaving Harry alone in an empty apartment that was meant to hold a family to which he does not belong.






"...What the fuck!?"