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Shimmer, Glimmer, & Gleam - A Quest of Loss & Gain

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I'm a little late but so be it
Scheduled vote count started by Morrowlark on Dec 22, 2024 at 9:25 PM, finished with 20 posts and 8 votes.
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Threshold 2: Foundations (The Storm) New
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    • Well. You would have had good health. Would being the key word.

    The Captain cuts the call pretty quickly, clearly confident that Nattie will follow her advice. You, in turn, look to Nattie for some: "How bad is it going to get?"

    "Bad," is the one-word answer; Nattie stands up and starts bellowing for her troops, nearly tripping over her own foot in the process. You help steady her and start calling for your own people, quickly explaining what is to come. Several people comment that the weather seems fine at the moment, but you're not so sure. The sky is odd, like...like staring at a screen that's trying not to freeze, and there's a greenish tint to it. Some old, nameless instinct recognizes that green tint, and it recoils, tells you to burrow underground, to get away from windows, to hide from the eyes of the gods and say prayers of penitence.

    Maybe this will be bad.

    Your first attempts to grab the glass you need to work with and shape something helpful run up against your complete lack of useful knowledge, but here the engineering students and the person fused to their fursuit come in clutch, quickly sketching out detailed plans that make it so much easier for you to work. Raiding parties sprint out into the freeway drag to smash in whatever windows are intact and sweep up whichever ones aren't, moving double, triple time, coming back huffing and red in the face and dehydrated to get grabbed by doctors and cooks and forced to sit down. Bags of soil used as defenses are repurposed quickly to help stem the tide of what will be inevitable flooding, and you shape glass around them, creating barriers that will hopefully slick the water away and to the sides, to drown what is even lower to the ground than your own home.

    There is brief talk of smashing the freeway exits, reasoning that you might be able to create glass bridges after the fact, but this is held to be a last resort.

    The argument with the doctors is less sanguine.

    "I'm not letting everyone starve," you tell Wheelwright, sharply.

    "You won't do them any good dead," comes the objection, again. It has been coming. It seems to be the Doctor's favorite one. And yet frenzied kids and students continue to make space indoors for new gardens, nothing fancy, but quite voluminous; gourds, tomatoes, yet more strawberries, coffee, potatoes, carrots, and off in one lonely little corner, what you desperately hope will both grow into something like tobacco and also be usable like tobacco. "Orchid, our stores will -"

    "Tell it to the cooks," you snap back at her. "If we eat today, we starve tomorrow, especially if there's any more delays."

    When you reach for the reflection, and cast the object, you know it's going to hurt. And it does. Your last sensation is being caught by the doctor's strong arms, and her swearing in a language you almost remember speaking, once.

    * * * *

    When the storm comes in the deep pits of the night, it's like watching the world shatter all over again. When you woke up, you'd noticed how bad the wind was getting, seen everyone dragging in tents, moving the Eternal Soup, stapling sheets of thick plastic over the windows as others poke just enough holes in them to keep the wind from ripping them inside. The clouds that roll in are...bad. Flat, iron-grey things, looking to your eye more like two-dimensional sprites than something real.

    Somewhere near you - no, next to you, she's holding you up - Andrea murmurs, "Tornado weather. That's not supposed to happen on the coast, not for years and years..."

    And then it breaks. Water falls in what sounds and feels like a solid wall, though if you unfocus your eyes you can see the raindrops. The pounding on the roof is surreal, and it's only moments before you hear the tinkle and crash of glass leaves being ripped from the orchard up there. It'll need the touch of your power again...fuck. Lightning strikes split the skies, lancing into a city skyline you can only see from their own brightness, hammering into lightning rods again and again and again until the metal of them starts to slag and drip, glowing bright against the water that drowns them. A few people are nervously murmuring prayers, a sentiment your racing heart understands entirely; it feels like it's trying to shatter its way from the window in your breast.

    A bolt hits entirely too close, and all at once the lights go out. Several people shriek. One of them might be you.

    Choose 1
    [ ] Seek comfort
    [ ] Offer comfort as best you can

    I will be choosing the NPCs for either option. This is because I feel like it.
     
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    • This update brought to you by tornado weather coming in off the Great Lakes. Great Lakes tornadoes: proof that God is wrathful.
     
    [X] Offer comfort as best you can

    As much as I want to choose the other option... we gotta be a leader, unfortunately.
     
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    [X] Seek comfort

    Orchid doesn't have to be the leader everyone looks up to all the time. It's allowed to be vulnerable.
     
    [X] Seek comfort

    Got to take care of yourself too, and this is the first big storm orchid would have ever experienced
     
    [X] Offer comfort as best you can

    Morrowlark said:
    but here the engineering students and the person fused to their fursuit come in clutch, quickly sketching out detailed plans that make it so much easier for you to work.
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    It seems that Orchid doesn't know of the STEM-Furry connection. Or at the very least, not yet.
     
    Well this is cute... in a post apocalypse sort of way. Excellent writing Morrowlark. Watched and read.
    [X] Offer comfort as best you can
     
    Threshold 2: Foundations (Weathering the Storm) New
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    • The QM's nails from biting them watching how unexpectedly close this vote was.

    I do not normally do soundtracks, especially here given the horror theming, but to be frank: this update brought to you by Good Girls by CHRVCHES

    Another bolt, so close, larger-than-life, taking up your entire field of view. You can feel the thunder in your bones more than in your ears, ripping through your body, and you scream, pull away from Andrea, curl into a little ball and try to shut it out. But there is no shutting it out, is there? It's everywhere, it's everywhere the sky is falling the sky is falling the sky is falling you're going to die -

    Someone is sobbing, "Help," in a voice a lot like yours.

    You are dimly aware of being scooped up by strong arms. You feel so small. You are so small. Matches are striking, barely audible over the sound of the rain. Firelight dances through your eyelids, and you squeeze them shut tighter, trying to block out the world, nestling into the warm body that stands between you and the falling sky. Distantly, you can hear Marie coo, "Wicked," just before another crash of thunder wrings a shriek from your raspy throat.

    A door opens. A match, more flickering lights, fire inside where no fire should be but the power is gone the power's gone how are you all going to survive it's gone it's gone -

    - The door closes -

    It's gone and you're being set down on some cushions and there's a warm lap to cry on and you sob into it, curl up against the comfort, feel a hand on your shoulder.

    Eventually, impossibly, you fall asleep.

    * * * *

    You jolt awake to the crash of thunder, and the person holding your shoulder stirs. You look up, blinking away tears and the crust of sleep, and see Jack doing his sleepy best to give you a comforting smile. Where'd he come from? Your throat is sore, and you're so tired, and you feel like you haven't drank anything in -

    - Oh, he's holding out a water bottle. You roll, slowly, onto your back so your shoulders are on his lap, and sit up just enough to take shaky sips. Your hands won't stop trembling...

    "Take it slow," Jack advises. "You cried a lot."

    You shakily hand him back the bottle, and try dumbly to wipe at your eyes. He offers a tissue from a suspiciously familiar package, and you blink against the candle-light only to realize, oh, you're in the HR office. The closest anywhere in this building has to being soundproofed. You take it gratefully and bury your face against the softness of his stomach, some distant part of your mind that never shuts the fuck up saying he's built like a worker and how'd you never notice before, why'd you never -

    "'m sorry," you mumble.

    "I'm not," Jack murmurs back. "...You know, most of us have our first storms when we're really small. Really, really small. By the time we have any conscious memories we've had storms for ages and they're less scary."

    No, that's not it. That doesn't sound right. You whine, and flop your hand blindly until it makes contact with a wrist; you grip, and move Jack's hand firmly to your hair. He stiffens, for a moment, and then gently strokes your head. That's better. That's...right. He starts to slow down after a second and you actually fucking growl at him. Not your proudest moment, but the petting continues.

    It's so relaxing you almost fall asleep again, but you're figuring out what you were trying to say, and you've got to say it, it's important. You nudge your head against Jack to make sure he's paying attention and he gets the wrong message as evidenced by petting you harder but you're not about to tell him to stop. "Everyone saw, didn't they?" you mutter. "Everyone saw me being scared when they...they needed...everyone saw."

    The noise he makes isn't a sigh. It's too kind and too pained for that. "Orchid, don't do that to yourself. Take it from a lifelong guy, having to be tough all the time and never be scared and never cry sucks. Sasha's been on my ass about that for years and you didn't even buy the ticket for the boy train. Don't take on the downsides just for fun."

    "It's not a - how is that a gender thing, I'm their leader -"

    "And right now the other leaders are helping the people who need help," Jack interrupts, gently, yet firmly. "So you can just be Orchid. You don't gotta be Elector Orchid or the Liege of the Axe or anything but a flower in its first storm who needs help. 's not like I was doing anything more important than being there for a friend."

    "...I haven't been a good friend to you," you admit, in a small voice. "We barely hang out."

    You feel him shrug. "I think maybe my trouble maintaining eye contact has at least a little to do with that."

    "...Pffft. I was almost jumping up and down on purpose that one time, y'know." You crack a weak, ghostly grin against Jack. "It's interesting, to be...interesting, like that. You're cute sometimes. Are you sure it's okay though? Really, really okay?"

    Softly, Jack tilts your head so he can look you in the eyes. He's getting one of those beards in, hasn't wanted to take up razors that other people 'need more', people who've Switched and the like that can't stand the feeling of hair on their bodies. "Sasha'd have to wait to kick the ass of anyone who gives you shit for this, Orchid, 'cause I'd finally get to it first. Go on back to sleep. I'll make sure someone brings you soup."

    * * * *

    Two days and nights without leaving HR. Jack is there for most of it, though his siblings drop by as they can, and try to get you interested in entertainment. It doesn't work. Jill comes by too, and in your dreamy haze of comfort you catch snatches of conversation that seems to be all business; that's one of the times Jack leaves, and he comes back smelling like the fuel tanks that make the forklifts go. That's a good scent. Comforting. Wholesome.

    Jack encourages you out after the third day, pointing out among other things that you both stink and also saying he has something to show you. Someone else with a good head on their shoulders got as much water out of the pipes as possible before the lack of electricity made that a non-option, which in turn means Jack's able to fast-talk Wheelwright into signing off on a carefully-rationed bath for the both of you, separated by thick curtains of plastic. It's only enough water to get wet, lather up, and then rinse off, not even enough to really wash your hair, but you still feel much better after, even if you flinch at every crash of thunder. Some part of you is tempted to ambush Jack outside the curtain, put your money where your mouth was, but as you're toweling off you reconsider; he seemed genuinely uncomfortable before, like he'd...failed to do something and wronged you thereby. So you rub your hair dry and get dressed again, and you go join Jack where people have set up some telescopes near the hole in the window-plastic.

    "This is gonna look scary," he tells you. "But I promise you, it's not coming anywhere near us." He looks into the telescope, adjusts it, and then steps aside with a small gesture for you.

    When you press your eye to the telescope, you see them: vast, whirling funnels of cloud and water over the Bay, sucking the ocean into the sky, shedding vast torrents of it where the instability of their own force proves too strong. Your breath catches in your throat, but even as you watch the two you're observing curve around the city, and when they hit land they quickly vanish, as if unraveling from the bottom up, shedding salt and water and likely a great deal of unlucky fish everywhere.

    "I was going to study meteorology," Jack murmurs. "Until...well, Dad didn't approve. Not a manly career, to him. Salt Bay City's in this weird natural depression, and the hills between us and the farms are full of flint an' such. It does something to the magnetosphere near here. Shatters the twisters before they could ever touch us."

    "...I feel so small," you admit, in a whisper.

    "We're all small, Orchid. But we've made it so far."

    * * * *

    Six days after the sky started falling, the storm finally begins to break. Shards of clouds continue to infest the sky, and there's still no fucking power anywhere. The spare battery packs mean that when signal is established again, you and Nattie hear from the Captain nearly immediately; she advises that y'all bust out the fuel and get your generators running, "as there's some shots to be called about this fucking grid." Not ideal, but it'll do. For now.

    For now.

    That said, you can wait no longer. Project Throwback has waited as long as they can, and you have a promise to keep. It's time to take a deep breath and be a leader again. Was it nice, not being one for a little while? Maybe...

    You'll need some officers. Who?
    [ ] Pick up to 2, formatted X & Y

    Asset Protection is definitely sending someone, and the spiders are a must-have, but your combat team is...
    [ ] Mostly Asset Protection
    [ ] Mostly people with guns
    [ ] Mostly the sports people from the IU-SBC
     
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    • Seconded. Thanks a lot Jack.

    [X] Mostly people with guns
    [X] Jack & Jill
     
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