(More interlude shorts will come soon but I wanted to get this under way)
Samus
You were sitting on a beach watching three suns set in sync. The passage of day into night and the end of another day. You were dreaming, you were generally very aware of when what you experienced was real or not. The sand didn't feel quite real, Earth didn't have three suns, and you were pretty sure no seagull ever did a rap number in this point in time. It was peaceful though, and Arne looked nice in swim clothes, lying down with you as you felt the saltwater on your toes and hummed to yourself, Agata and Sevrin playing volleyball with some of the others of your group of twelve. Another sign you were dreaming, the other eight weren't here.
But Arne was also dreaming. In fact, he was in the same dream with you. The boy you were holding tight around you was indeed, the dream form of the actual Arne; and since you learned how to have shared dreams you insisted on them to have a little more time every day with people you liked. The soft piano music in the distance was another nice touch, with some gentle harps and flutes as well to add to a gentle, carefree sensation as the sky slowly went from orange to purple.
All your other friends and family were there, one big happy party for no occasion in particular. But even in dreams you didn't really like being the centre of attention in parties. Too much noise, not enough space to focus and clear your overly busy head with a million and one ideas dancing around at all times. It was nice to have friends, especially attractive ones in swimsuits...but it was also nice to have moments to yourself. And well, Arne was your first...the very first other human being you ever saw since...
The sky started to take on a more frightful hue, and heat distortion waves mingled with clouds like smoke as your breath started to quicken and your heart began to drum in your chest before Arne squeezed your hands and held you tight. And as you found yourself enjoying the company of your lucky rabbit boy; named for his white hair and red eyes reminding you of an albino bunny; the transformation in dream vistas stopped and reversed, and the stars started twinkling in like normal.
"Something scare you?" He asked, though you shook your head.
"Just stray thoughts." You said, not wanting him to worry about you, patting his hair and getting a little laugh out of him.
"Remember when it was just the two of us...when we hadn't really seen any other humans besides each other?" You said, trying to change the conversational track, getting a nod out of him as he slowly propped himself up and snuggled you a bit more, rubbing his cheek against your long, blonde hair.
"Yeah...it was simple back then I guess. Simple wasn't always bad but well, you know how much I always enjoyed getting to see you." He said, smiling faintly and blushing.
"Yeah and we used to be so close in height too..." You giggled as he rolled his eyes and tweaked your nose.
"Boys just do puberty a bit differently you know? It's how humans work." He said, pulling himself up as you sat straight and hugged your knees and him.
"Mmmh, I still remember getting all of our robot and droid friends to meet you know?" You said, drawing the faces of the innumerable robotic companions of varying degrees of life emulation the two of you; like most inheritors; made to feel less lonely. Some you'd even call siblings of a sort.
"Oh yeah well...glad they're keeping each other company since we can't really be around for them all the time." He smiled, twirling some of your hair around a finger.
"What about the one you called like a brother to you? Ivar?" You asked as his mind seemed to draw a bit of a blank for a bit.
"Is he still...away?" You asked, his face seeming to briefly fail to make any expression before blinking a few times as he looked at the sky and the constellations once more.
"Well, Sentus Primaris is a big place..." You said.
"It's...yeah I just..." He said trying to just shake it off like. "I don't know." He sighed. Seeming to be almost shaken a bit and looking towards the stars before quickly peeling his eyes away. Stressed while you hugged him a bit more.
"You having fun there?" Agata asked, sliding in next to you while Sevrin sat on his knees and ruffled her hair, getting a brief blush from her before she rested her head on your shoulder and made you blush yourself.
"Oh! Yeah...just...talking about things. And stuff." You said, trying to play it cool.
"Mmmh, trying to get space for some more of the sand action yes?" She said, drawing a blank stare from you until the right neurons fired in your head and you rolled your eyes and pushed Sokolova's head away from you while she cackled until Sevrin laid a finger on her lip and made her hush.
Arne looked over and just made a hard, neutral expression. "Are you done with that yet?" He asked.
"Yes, she is." Agard responded.
"Though...where is Ivar? It has been some time since I've seen him. Is he alright after that accident Zurvduat told us about?" Sevrin asked, a gentle smile on his face though Arne pulled away from locking eyes with him and just stared at the sand below while the sun slipped away entirely.
"I...I don't know."
"Hey, I mean...he's an android right? They're tough." Agafya said, getting a slow nod out of Skjoldr.
"It's just...I feel like I'm missing...I don't know, I don't think I want to talk about this." He said, his good mood disappearing pretty quickly and his next move being to try and bury himself into your hair.
"Yeah, it's best to not dwell on the people who aren't here..." You said, sighing as you patted him and blinked, then seeing the sand had turned black as ash. Because well, it was ash. The intrusion of unpleasant thoughts had already started to work its effects on the dreamscape, and the waters were going from calmly reflecting moonlight to grey and malignant, shapes moving in them. Dreams were always so quick to shift to nightmares with stray thoughts; often prophetic, never pleasant.
Dead shapes, washed onto the shore, first ashes. Black heaps of black lapping onto your legs as you took a look at the soot dirtying your cream coloured skin and tried to rub it off only to find it clinging to your hands. The smell reminding you what it was, the pig stink of ash. You gasped and tried to wipe it away, but the water was full of ash. The others saw it too, and were starting to show alarm.
You felt something on your foot as you backed up and saw a cylindrical jointed object, blackened and thin. A finger, severed, half-eaten, burnt like overdone bacon. You hissed with alarm, standing you and trying to pull your friends up as Agata went silent, Sevrin started cursing, and Arne started keening with dread. But you almost tripped over something else, larger, as big as you a charred body with vacant eyesockets, blackened flesh barely clinging to bones. The sky's ugly purple glare starting to return, heat and smoke. The heavy beat of leathery wings in the distance, high, distant sounds, hard to place, hard to locate.
Ash was raining from the sky, and you saw nothing of your dreamscape friends; just those of you sharing this dream. No...not nothing...ash skeletons, charred flesh clinging to wisp bones and mummified exoskeletons or strips of slag around motors and actuators. The dead, the haunted, moaning in piteous agony. Marching was close. Heavy marching.
Boots and the click of gas masks, the ash ladened smoke conjured of both your own trauma and a far older hurt common to all of your ancestries. An old terror and a deep ancestral trauma that had stayed with your people for thousands of years.
Steel wings bore an iron cross and the sirens of Jericho began to roar as they dove towards the beach to harvest the dead. You wanted to throw something back, to hit back, but your eyes locked onto where Arne was staring. Directly ahead. Something white and grey and scratchy all over, with it had arms, legs, but just a giant mouth between its shoulders with no head, always open, always sparking, looking right ahead with not-eyes of flicker-fire above the always open jaws between its shoulders that sunk to its belly.
"N-no...that's...that's not..."
A plane behind it, diving low, diving fast, screaming, an old terror your lineage had felt long ago approaching. Arne saw a cannon flash, and it moved without moving, right at you when you briefly saw that cannon flash too. Not of autocannons, but of something more...advanced. But before you could be caught by the jaws, the apparition of Sylux was already there. An eyeless helm with a middle dividing vertical line, blue and green armour and blade-pauldrons. Tall, so very tall.
Interposing between you and the jaw thing, and then reaching towards all four of you at once somehow; everything going white as soon as he touched you. A sensation similar to but not quite Arne filling you as Sylux dispelled the dream, and you felt your eyes rocket open as you flung your self out of bed with a startled scream.
Arne, Agata, and Sevrin followed; the four of you in your shared room all seeming to react in their own ways. You manifested your arm cannon from nowhere and prepared to shoot before you realised you weren't in danger, looking at the closet you were about to vaporise and then looking at the cannon around the forward half of your otherwise bare right arm. Tears were in your eyes, teeth were bared sharp and furious, a curse already forming in your throat to confront fear with white hot rage and red tooth and claw. You were ready to fight, but there was nothing to hit.
Arne tried to back into the pillows and hide, face a mess of terror, Agata looked around frantically, trying to ascertain her position, where the threats were, what was going on. And Sevrin just seemed almost catatonic, staring ahead and murmuring to himself. Sevrin recovered first, shaking his head and groaning.
"Lightmaker's sword Arne...what do you keep in your head?" He said, rubbing at his head and looking slightly cross at him before sighing.
"Is that the Sylux figure? The, bad future?" He asked, Arne backing away into the head of the bed and shivering, armour manifesting around him and his body collapsing into the psychomorph alternate form as you realised he was in a state of panic just as you were in a state of fight or...well not flight, just more fight. The details were sharp, the wingbeats of the fly in the room imperceptible because they were far too slow. The tiny noises of the components of the nearby digital clock loud as gunshots in your ears, your breaths short and efficient. You could feel so much of the rug beneath your feet you could ascertain its exact elemental and chemical composition.
The edges of your vision had purple and orange in them, the colours of the beast and the flames. The scent of ash still in your nose. Pig stink. You had to breathe, you had to...you looked at the cannon at the end of your sleeveless arm and willed it away, chanting to yourself that there was nothing in front of you. You were going to be fine. In orange light, the cannon disappeared, and your arm was bare again. You gulped and exhaled, standing straighter, looking behind you.
Agafya was still in a state of hyperparanoia, looking for flanking and escape routes, her pistol already out, Sevrin was already in nanny mode, Arne was reacting like a turtle in its shell Arne needed your attention first, though you moved gently to not get Agafya's attentions, sliding in between the two and laying a hand on Arne's shoulder and some fingers through her hair while Sevrin cleared his throat to get her attention, her gun dropping from her hand as she breathed.
"Arne...Arne..." You said gently into his ear as he murmured nonsense.
"We're at the starsetter base Arne. They can't hurt you." You said, paying at his alternate mode gently.
"S-sorry, I'm s-" He murmured before you shushed him and he stopped, shaking his alt-mode up and down in acknowledgement as he uncurled and dismissed his suit once more, still shaking a little.
"Noughtmother what was...Arne what the fuck?" Agata hissed at him, clearly upset. "Was that you? Was that me? What is...grrnnnggghhhh..." Agafya pulled at her hair and seethed, grinding her teeth.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry please I'm just sorry." Arne said, a wounded look to his eye as he avoided everyone else's gaze.
"Look, we know that Sylux is...something subconscious to him. But we can deal with it yes? I've never heard of that, creep though. Was that you, Arne?" Sevrin said, trying to make peace in the group as Arne still shook a bit.
"I don't know. I sometimes see it when we have shared dreams. And the dream seems to...crash if it ever touches him, just like Sylux." You said.
"Can we please...not talk about it?" Arne asked, never comfortable with the thought of the potential alter lurking in his head. Still afraid to confront it, still fearful of what it meant, what it could mean. Mindful of how often destiny was the road taken to avoid it.
"What was the other stuff? Ash...corpses...it felt...familiar?" Agafya said, groaning.
"The sirens the aircraft made were stuka sirens." You tapped at your chin with a finger. Your dreams had, since your augmentations, very often been prophetic or clairvoyant. Flashes of your latent abilities reacting subconsciously. Your control over them was shaky at best, but they tended to reveal something important. Even if sometimes they were far more symbolic or abstract than you'd like and rarely as pleasant as you'd please.
"There are Nazis at large on these planets and. Well, all of us are of the people." Sevrin figured, running his hands through his hair and trying his best to look confident.
"Ancestral trauma? But...what could they be up to? They're...there's already a lot of much bigger stuff to worry about. Why now?" Arne managed, trying to bury his anxieties under the comfort of putting his brain to the task of analysis and theorycrafting.
"Well, I'm not sure, but whatever it is. I'm sure we'll stop it." You said, hands on your hips, smile on your face, confident as ever. But you could hear footsteps outside the door, and all four of your heads snapped to attention as you determined that based on the gait; the person walking was probably Aeldari, especially with the thrum of their warp presence. You relaxed slightly, before realising something and quickly getting to the closet to toss some clothes over to look more decent. Everyone getting dressed in a hurry shortly before the door was opened by Ormothin, the redheaded Eldar youth's rosy cheeks scintilating a bit from the liquid crystal like compounds in Eldar blood beneath his skin.
"Is everything alright? I felt a great deal of distress coming from he-" He said before Agata threw a pillow at his face so she could throw a shirt over her head. Less because he'd seen her in a bra and more because he had breached the privacy of what she considered her lair.
"...Now that was uncalled for." He harrumphed.
"Knock first." Agata scowled.
"Fair but...are you all alright? I thought you might have seen the Santa Claus infiltrator that Vista spoke of." He said, trying to brush off what happened as nothing.
Realisation struck you as you flicked your eyes to the nearest digital clock in the shared bedroom. 04:13, 24th of December, 2021. RIght, this was Primal Earth, Earth Bet was still in March of 2011. Inter-universal time is tricky business. Western rite Christmas Eve.
You were born to a Jewish woman and a man whose response to questions about his spirituality was a vague mishmash of interest in Buddhism and the Irukalt faith spread to him by an Ystray missionary while he was in the marines. Christmas was not really in your spiritual background, especially after being raised in the animistic and polytheistic Ak-Ekmat tradition of the Kah-Sahmat Chozo of Zebes.
But you understood that it was a fun time, even if you had very little experience with it. And you did your best to push back the nightmare just experienced to smile, beam even.
"We must be on guard for his presence, the humans describe this rotund jolly man as being capable of incredible speed and stealth." The Eldar whispered, looking around while Agata looked like she was about to die from choking back a laugh, her face changing colours as she snickered while Sevrin managed an "I'm not sure how to tell you this" confused smile and Arne quirked a brow.
"But doesn't he come at night? This is morning?" You said, tilting your head.
"...Samus are you humouring him?" Agafya asked, eyes shooting towards you with impeccable marksmanship.
"...No? The information on Santa says very clearly that he comes at the night of Christmas eve. Ormothin is being vigilant at the wrong time!" You said, hands on your hips.
"Do you...do you believe in..." She narrowed her eyes at you in a way that made you very confused before she started to crack and doubled over. "Oh by the nought-mother.....HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" She said, pointing closing her eyes as she cackled like a hyena.
Arne though seemed to just be confused.
"Who's Santa?" He asked innocently.
"Oh well...I suppose I'm quite the fool then. Please accept my humble apologies for intruding, four of twelve." He said with a humble genuflection. Cute, charming, and always polite. You couldn't help but smile at him as he scratched a bit behind his pointed ears and tugged at his pyjama top slightly.
"Some of us are awake early if you'd like to join us for some attempts to "kill the time" as some of the people here say, practice drills with Dawnmaker and Arcee to build teamwork. Or you could go with Vista, Elerya, Alyrsero, and Bumblebee on an early morning patrol. Would be a bit hard to squeeze four extras in that small car form of his but I think you can manage. I believe they mentioned something about dealing with a winter horde? Likely the frost elementals that like to make mischief at this time of year. And from what I know, Taylor, Nightcaster, the Slayer, and Kaeliyae are out in Oranbega. Something about cultists I believe?" Ormothin rambled, his gesticulations catching your eyes as he made rather elaborate body language gestures with his every word.
"Boltdancer is attempting to demonstrate "among us" to the group so that we who are not in the know may finally understand what they mean when they call things "sus" or why they laugh at every round shape with a bright shape inside. And last I checked, Chris is up early with Maven and Clarioli to work on something mechanical. But well, I'm trying to garden, I know it's not the most interesting thing in the world, but you can learn a lot about the flow of the warp on a planet based on how certain plants grow." He said, trying to make himself look like the more appealing option through carefully timed self-deprecation.
Actions:
[]: Practice drills with Dawnmaker and Arcee (Gets some extra training in)
[]: Early morning patrol with Vista, Elerya, Alyrsero, and Bumblebee (starts a small mission, get more of a feel for paragon proper)
[]: Oranbega expedition (Small mission, learn more about magic)
[]: Amogus (Have some fun with some of the less prominent characters)
[]: Tech-junkies (Some tech rewards, hang out with the nerds)
[]: Stick around with Ormothin and the other hippies (Learn more about the warp and your shifting biologies)
[]: Write in
