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

[Morrowlark]

Spoiler: Squad Assets

Your Squad has assets that can be lost or expended, just like named characters do. Your current Squad consists of 9 Sentries, 3 Former Asset Protection Members, and 15 Spider-Women; Jill and Sasha expend their assets separately, as do you, as does Doctor Hillborough, the young surgeon you're bringing with you and one of your three overall available doctors. These assets are as follows:

Health: Excellent (boosted by the spiders)
Morale: Good
Ammunition: Solid (recent expense of ammo)
Stealth: Abandoned
Extranormal Awareness: Limited

Some distant part of you understands that what is about to happen is sad. Not emotionally sad, but professionally sad; the high ground you'd been so worried about on the way here, not without reason, has turned into your dominion. Those police pickets are coming here to die.

So you take cover with the hostages who didn't flee the field (no time to chase the runners, you'll just need to trust that they can survive somehow), and get on the walkie-talkie again, peering down the street with binoculars. Sure enough, there come the bubblegum lights, sirens wailing as they approach the still-screaming bodies of their companions. Those squadcars are dead, they just don't know it yet.

When the first of the ethanol tanks starts leaking into the fire, it flares with a heartwarming brightness. You might be losing the battle with your nascent pyrophilia. Do you care?

Well, right now you don't, at least. You depress the button on the walkie-talkie: "Sasha, you see those squadcars?"

"Confirmed, Elector," comes the playful answer. You're gonna have to have a talk with that little nerdlet that gave you a title.

Button down: "I don't want to."

"Understood."

Nine rifles make a particular kind of sound when they're all raised and set at the same time. You hear Sasha calling out: "Lances forward! Hold! Hold!" Where have you heard - she's copying that fucking strategy game she plays - "Loose!"

The three squadcars in the front experience what it's like to have their engine blocks pierced by the same virtue by which they themselves move; physics currently being out to buy cigarettes and having not come back yet. They go careening, smashing into half-eaten parked cars, slamming into lights, clogging up the street -

Sasha's voice has a deep, malicious joy in it as she gives her next order: "Grease the fucking pigs!"

Your team aren't soldiers. But they don't need to be. When the last of the dying squadcars loses its grotesque 'leg', rendering it unable to escape, you stop watching and start working on calming down the former hostages.

"You're gonna be okay," you tell them, and you try on a smile. "We're here to help."

* * * *

Getting in touch with Nattie and letting her know to let you in is something you're glad you did early, because getting everyone down from those roofs takes forever. No one, wisely, wants to try and go floor-by-floor down through the inside of the buildings (and the spiders wouldn't fit anyway), but there is an awful lot of undignified yelping and shaking from some of your team.

And then there's Sasha. "M-m-ma'am are you single -"

Without turning around, you call back: "Sasha, they're not people again yet."

"You've got to be fucking KIDDING ME -"

The person who runs up from behind the gate is in body armor that has seen better days; slashed up, helmet cracked, dark circles around its eyes. Its brown hair is plastered to its forehead with sweat. But just above its heart is a tag that says:

BRIAN HEMP
CIVILIAN RESCUE
​

It unbars the gate from its side and everyone helps push it open so all of you can rush in. Well, no. The spiders just go up over the wall, waving happily at the distant University; you can hear someone from out there bellowing at the top of its lungs to HOLD YOUR FIRE, and that's a relief, honestly. Once the gates are pushed shut again and barred, all of you follow 'Brian' up the road that goes to the parking areas. Here the cars are all but untouched; ones where you can see (and hear...) the glass statues have been marked with bright pink spraypaint, but the rest are entirely undisturbed. You hear someone ahead call out that friendlies are coming in, and the imposing but ultimately fragile wooden gates of IU-SBC are opened to admit your motley crew.

Someone in a uniform a lot like Brian's shrieks and faints when the spiders come in, and you mutter something under your breath that might be 'weakling'.

The person at the end of this atrium who's standing on crutches must be Nattie, though the nametag on its own fucked-to-shit armor reads:

NATALIE SORROW
CIVILIAN RESCUE
​

You jog up, absently barking orders for your troops to take ten and hydrate, though you see that the doctor is already moving, asking to be shown to the wounded. That's excellent. Getting closer to Nattie, you see other patches have been sewn onto her armor, many now-shredded by gunfire or blades, though one depicting a cartoon cat in a bright yellow dress punching its way through a dragon gets your attention (the 'caption' reads PACI-FIST!!!). It - wait, no, she, Nattie's she - turns her head when you get closer, and limps over to meet you, offering a hand out for a firm shake. Gods above, she's so young -

...

Excuse you, did this 'Captain' pick her up when she'd just turned eighteen or something? Are you gonna have to kick your own ass?

"We owe you one," Nattie says, in a pained voice. "We weren't expecting the squadcars...we'd just cleared this place of a staggering number of slashers and refracted beasts, lost men and ammo and time. And then the cops."

You nod. "And then the cops," you echo. "How many can't walk?"

A shrug. "Thirteen, maybe as much as sixteen if you wanna be real careful. Your doctor might get a few on their feet, but the thing about slashers is they don't really leave a lot of wounded if they can help it. Why?"

You gesture at the gate. "If this position is lost, maybe we get a new one. On foot, we might be able to get out ahead of SWAT and lure them into a killing ground where the rest of the guns are -"

"Are you insane?" Nattie asks. "We can't - what're you gonna do if one of those APCs gets us because you fucking mistimed it? We've got to hold out until Hoch and his boys get here."

"Four days," you remind Nattie, plaintively. "Can we hold for four days?"

She bites her lip, unsure, and glances at the spiders. The one with the graduation caps on her arachnid body looks like she's on the verge of happy tears; she hugs herself and just gazes everywhere, a look of longing on her face...

"They can't have endless reinforcements," Nattie reasons. "If we could set up an ambush..."

You shake your head. "You saw how they make those puppets. For all we know, the precinct is the actual cop and the rest of these are just drones. They could have endless reinforcements."

The two of you resolve to call the Captain for advice, but whatever the voice that is yours is doing, it doesn't pick up. A call to Hoch confirms that he and his 'boys' are still en route, on the ETA he gave before. Which, good, but also, fuck. You chew a pencil, and look to Nattie: "You got food in here to spare?"

"...It's a university, yeah, we've got food," Nattie answers, deadpan. "Why?"

"Need it for webs if we stay..."

Spoiler: The Wounded & The Routes

The Wounded: The situation here is somewhat ambiguous. A lot of people have defensive wounds or took bullets to their limbs; a few are unconscious. The doctor is working on them now, and that puts them in a much better position than if there was no doctor, but any attempt to move the wounded does carry risk. Further, a number of the walking wounded are on crutches or otherwise limited in mobility; they're going to slow you down.

Doubling Back: This route goes through something that is like, but not quite, a 'downtown'. Most of the cars are parked at the sides of the road, enabling movement in a tight formation and the possibility of people riding the spider-women on overwatch from above, greatly enhanced by Nattie's troops having fully automatic rifles and actual training to go with them. However, this also means that the APCs that Nattie is worried about just need to pancake a few statues to catch up, should they catch your trail.

The Freeway: This route is longer, and the clogging situation is fucking dire; any march through here will be in a long formation, picking its way through cars, semi trucks, and other such obstacles. Frequent exits provide the theoretical opportunity to abandon this route for an even more convoluted one, should you want to take the risk of unknown territory. Nothing on wheels is getting through here easily, not even if it's using the bony legs the squadcars evidenced.

Choose 1 approach
[ ] Evacuate
[ ] Hold this position

If you choose to evacuate...
[ ] Who transports the wounded (Nattie's men/the spiders/your team)
[ ] What route (double back/take the longer route through the clogged freeway)
[ ] What do you do with the explosives (take them/leave them as a trap/use them as a distraction)

There will be a separate planning vote if you choose to hold this position, so I can appraise you of your assets and liabilities

You are forty-four days old.​

 

[Morrowlark]

You hold your tongue between your teeth for a long moment, and then you shake your head. "We need to pull out. I've got some ideas...fuck, the chain of command." You give Nattie what you believe is an imploring look, and whether or not you're successful in this, it seems persuasive. She sighs, and rubs her left thigh, wincing.

"...Walk me through your plan. If it seems viable, you're in charge of the evacuation. Most of the people who'd be upset about that idea are currently getting glared at by your surgeon anyway."

As you start outlining the idea, others gather. During the first stage, the wounded will be loaded into vans and so, for that matter, will anyone else that can fit in some, with the combatants mounted up. Is this safe? No. Good gods no. If anything happens to those vans the people on top of them are fucking dead, but speed is of the essence.

"To this end," you tell Nattie, "my team will help move the wounded. Sorry to say it but yours seems mildly more trained than 'not at all'."

"...Would you believe we did 'cling to a moving vehicle' training?"

"For the purposes of this conversation? Yes."

Once the formation reaches the freeway, the vanguard will move ahead with the wounded and abandon the healthy entirely while the noncombatants and the remaining forces plug the gap with the hijacked vehicles. It won't stop the APCs if they're real intent on getting through ("They'll chew their way through if they have to," Nattie says glumly), but it'll slow them down, and that's all you really need. With enough of a head start, you might be able to use your explosives as traps, or even to blow the freeway entirely, though that's a last resort; it will definitely kill any statues still in their cars wherever you do it. You don't like that, and it shows on your face.

"...The Captain would just kill 'em all," Nattie says, quietly. "Easy choice, for her. Three, seven lives for a couple hundred? She'd laugh it off."

"Well," you sigh. "I'm not laughing."

The formation may need to adapt as you move through, so spider-women will carry Nattie's riflemen as outriders, scouting out potential exits from the freeway. However, in an ideal world, everyone makes it back to Jillian's Farm and Fleet, where rooftop snipers and soil-bag barricades can give a nice entrenched position, to say nothing of your plentiful supplies of glass and metal with which to use your new-found power.

You're only about halfway through the plan when Nattie starts giving orders to feed the spiders full, and after some prompting, you too; you're gonna burn a lot of calories(? Evidently?) on getting these vans started. She's transferring command to you as the wounded are loaded up into vans; the University itself is a frenzy of activity as students, professors, family members, guests, and one person fused into its fursuit during Impact ("It's pretty cool actually but I'd like to have pants again") pack up books, lab equipment, research papers, personal belongings, snacks, drinks, more books, even more books, dear gods the books do they not know how heavy books are -

Nattie puts a hand on your shoulder. "From the look on your face you're thinking what I'm thinking, but the thing is...if we never come back here? The books might be more valuable than their lives."

You give her a long look. A long, confused look, and you ask her, honestly: "Is there a point in saving the books if all the people are dead?"

And she has no answer for you.

* * * *

The first mile is as smooth as you can ask for. You're riding the blonde spider-woman so you can keep an eye on the battlefield and trying not to think of the excited and soft look on her face when she'd passed you 'reins' of webbing that are lashed to her 'waist'. There is an automatic rifle slung across your back, given to you by Nattie from one of her troops too wounded to fight, and it feels distressingly familiar. This is not the first time someone has handed a rifle to this body, and asked it to kill strangers.

It might not be the last.

Then the bubblegum lights start up from behind. They're heading towards the university, and they will be disappointed. Will they start looking for all of you? You get on the walkie-talkie and order the formation to move as fast as they reasonably can, which, while still fast, is not much faster, and you put your binoculars to your eyes. SWAT is taking up positions at the gates...

The 'APCs' are seemingly normal vehicles. No melding with flesh, no strange refractions; if anything they seem stronger, more solid, as if this image was so seared into the mind of whatever culture preceded you that it could only become more itself. But they're disgorging an endless supply of near-identical cops in body armor, whose eyes are on the outside of their visors, moving about on stalks of glass. You shudder...and then one of them makes eye contact with you through the binoculars, and starts shouting and gesturing in the direction of your formation.

"WE HAVE INCOMING!" you bellow over the walkie. You look ahead and see the front of the formation is already disembarking, getting the wounded onto the clogged freeway, which is good, but are the noncombatants going to make it? Fuck. FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK -

Choose 1
[ ] Stick with the plan
[ ] Hack together a trap as fast as you possibly can

Lose 1
[ ] Your revulsion for this rifle
[ ] The battle with your burgeoning pyrophilia

 

[Morrowlark]

Spoiler: Losses

You have accepted another tie to a past that may not belong to you. One which another has spoken its - her - claim to. Is it yours to have?

Can you accept that it will take the place of something else you could have had?

This world has too many mysteries for you. Too much history that is not yours to have. Even the flashes of memory you've gotten, unwholesome as they've been, are just that; mere flashes. But ever since them, things have been trickling in. The vaguely militaristic way you've taken control of this operation. Concerns about a 'chain of command'. The all-too-familiar feeling of this rifle in your hands...

The nagging suspicion that something is wrong here. You exhale slowly, and do not give the order to change the plan. For a moment you consider reaching out with your newfound power, attempting to contact the essence of SWAT, to understand what this thing is, but do you really want that contaminating your mind? No, something is wrong and you already know what it is on some level. That's what this nagging feeling is. You've felt it before, just before you figured something out that your subconscious mind was way ahead of you on.

You lower you binoculars and raise the rifle, and view the battlefield with the sights as your aid. What is it that's wrong here? The numbers that SWAT fields are absurd, a parody of themselves. Surely this is possible in the new world...

...Surely? You chew your lip, finger resting on the trigger as you sweep over the onrushing tide of SWAT, making ground but with so much distance to cover. How many police officers were there, in the old world? You remember, surely a fragment of some school lesson or other, that less than five percent of the Empire's citizens used to be retained under arms, and its army was considered vast and well-equipped. Was it some kind of police state? But that wouldn't make sense either, because police officers do not directly contribute to the wealth of the society. They aren't soldiers, no, but like soldiers they don't produce food, or materials, or manufacture goods, or extract resources, or create cultural exports...

Clever fucking Jossil, is that a Social Studies course half-buried in your mind? From high school? High school?

You shake it off. Where are the bodies coming from? If they had been manifested directly that would be one thing, but the APC is almost creating them. You took yourself out for awhile growing some fucking trees, so how is it just shitting out SWAT? It's almost like it's summoning them out of the collective nightmare, but basic oneiromancy - again, the high school version - dictates that with so many people dead and many more worried about anything but a law they understand is now fallen, there should be no collective nightmare to draw from.

There's so many holes in your mind. You can feel yourself gently tiptoeing around them, scared to fall in.

So you close your eyes, and you turn your power inward, and you -

* * * *

- Can see the blood raining down from Jacqueline's - no, no, this is the wrong memory, you need something helpful. Come on. Come on come on come on COME ON -

* * * *

The man from Threshold is there, at a desk you know is his. Even like this, you can't read the name on the desk's little nameplate, though mercifully it does not hurt you. And you are there. You are tired, and you are worn, and you are frightened in that way where you've been scared so long that it's almost not even fear any more. He is mixing something in a glass, which he then offers you; a cream-and-liquor drink, an old joke.

"I'm a little late to grow my bones, [XXXX]," you tell him, because it is part of the joke.

And he finishes: "Never give up on your dreams." The two of you chuckle, quietly, a distance between you, a gulf born of pain and then widened by grief and now you're here trying to close it a little. Trying to be brave. "...I am not a therapist," he warns. "Only a scientist. I can help you understand what happened to you, but...[XXXX], you need help I can't give you."

"Tell me about slashers," you murmur, ignoring his warning. The drink burns despite the cream; you like it strong. "The full version. Like I'm a little girl asking about your papers again."

He sighs, but he can't help a wistful smile. "...Slashers are fish."

"Come again?"

"There is no such thing as a slasher. It is an inaccurate label born of inertia as oneiromancers and later, oneirphysicists seek to understand phenomena we may never fully understand. 'Fish' describes a specific set of superficial traits to many people, but it is useless for actually understanding any given species that the label applies to; so too with slashers. Ergo, slashers are fish. So, too, is this concept of a 'collective nightmare', a poetic name attached to a set of concepts that are ultimately the same as any other long-lasting meme. There is no difference between the mental construct we call 'money' and the mental construct from which one might summon a 'slasher', and the manifestation of such a slasher is merely rather intensive oneiromancy...or a very strong dreamer in an unusually sensitive environment."

You swirl your glass, and then scoff softly. "Your bedside manner is fucking terrible. So I killed something that doesn't exist?"

"And it was very heroic," the man from Threshold reproaches. "Let me put it another way - in some senses your victory was like if you had slain a dragon being maintained by many oneiromancers, rather than the oneiromancers that manifested it."

That gets you to sit up straight. "Excuse me?"

The man from Threshold blinks, and then he, too, sits up. "I suppose they wouldn't have bothered instructing infantry," he muses. "The chances that you, rather than a pilot, would ever be close enough to do it the easy way...yes, slashers, like any manifestation, require a link to the people that manifested it. Kill the dreamer, or the oneiromancers, and the so-called slasher dies with them. This, along with their general tendency to be useless and counter-productive, is why serious attempts to gin up armies of manifestations have never really borne fruit. Certainly it's hypothetically possible to call forth a thousand of the world's worst soldiers, but if a slip in the shower can kill all of them in one fell swoop...well, one rather doesn't have them in the first place, no?"

You lean back in your chair, processing this. "...And this job you're offering. Containment. You believe un-anchored manifestations will soon be appearing. Slashers the way people think slashers are instead of how they actually are."

"My girl, I have a few in cells already. They are fascinating, and quite worrying." He closes his eyes. "...I know it's an odd gesture. But it's paying work, and an old man's selfish excuse to keep you a bit closer. I'm sorry, you know. That I was not there for you when your mother passed."

"...It's alright," you lie. "She was your wife long before she was ever my mother."

* * * *

On instinct, you turn your rifle on the APC, this conspicuously invulnerable thing, and squeeze off a three-round burst. Your eyes tell you that the bullets ricochet from reinforced metal, and do nothing, but the part of you that can hear the voices from glass statues hears a strangled gurgle, and then your eyes are showing you that SWAT is flickering, fuzzing, stuttering, trying to travel the way a person can in dreams where one is simply in another place and finding that the living world is not tolerant of such bold assertions. A corpse, lashed to the front of the APC, fades into view, leaking blood from its torso and actively dying.

Your next burst pops its head like a grape. Some distant part of you knows that this person might have been innocent, might be blameless, that you have played the part of the executioner, but the part in control of your hands is saying what was wrong that you didn't realize earlier:

Police are civilians. They are always outnumbered. They cannot be an occupying force. So there is only one cop, in all the world.

The cop in your mind.

"Get us onto the freeway," you order the spider who's carrying you, even as you're lining up for a longer burst, raking it across the front of the APC. More sounds of pain, a scream; someone got winged enough to suffer, but not enough to die. Unfortunate, but the mass of SWAT is retreating, trying to consolidate its manifested mass. Impact...it let in a lot of the medium, of the Dreaming Sea, didn't it? Everywhere is a dream-rich environment right now. But whatever intelligence is behind these changed police can't just gin up something from nothing, and now you've hurt it.

Good. You have plenty of ammo.

You have severely slowed pursuit. There will be 3 legs to this chase, including this one right now. Choose 1
[ ] Flee for all your lives are worth
[ ] Turn off a new exit in an effort to shake pursuit
[ ] Slow long enough to rig the explosives

 

[Morrowlark]

You dismount at speed, right where the impromptu barriers are being erected, calling out for the liquor bottles that have been destined for some time now to blow the hell up. The person fused to its lupine fursuit is lingering, helping other non-combatants onto the freeway by lifting them over a rather inconvenient car hood. It waves at you between two of them and calls out: "I'm a firefighter!"

Oh! "Neat! I'm gonna do the opposite of that now!"

There is a conspicuous speeding of the lift-and-move process while you start popping open hoods; you nestle bottles into the engines, snip wires and push them into the alcohol, not stopping to look at what SWAT is doing. You haven't had contact with the intelligence behind the cops, but you know their secret now; they're fielding these temporary manifestations using survivors as the anchor. No wonder the squadcars had "hostage negotiators". Those people must be terrified of the police, or obsessed with them, or...well, no time right now. The point being, they were the things letting the cop-puppets manifest, and now the APC seems to be the source of this, well, army.

"What is this?" 'Brian' calls out as you start running down the line of vans, slapping your creations one at a time, expending your power and feeling your stomach growl and your body get hit by waves of lethargy. Big changes.

"TIME BOMBS LET'S GO LET'S GO -"

You let the blonde spider pick you up and place you on her back, nestling tightly into her human torso while she skitters away. Whether she still knows what a time bomb is or is reacting to your stress (or her own) is irrelevant; she's booking it down this freeway while you search through your pockets for the last of anything that might give you energy.

You have lost your energy. Physical actions may be riskier.

There's something you're not hearing or seeing that's bothering you. SWAT, SWAT...like, the nightmare of SWAT is not an army, it's that it could happen any time, any where, for no reason at all, right? People don't think SWAT is going to lay siege to their house from the outside, they think SWAT is going to kick in their bedroom door. But the thing is, SWAT did lay siege from outside, especially in hostage situations, it shows up all the time in crime dramas and police procedurals...

And when they did they would have helicopters. Immediately. Faster than the APCs even. You raise your binoculars and scan the skyline, the building roofs, but nothing, absolutely nothing. Well, no, scratch that, not nothing, IS THAT A FUCKING DRAGON WRAPPED AROUND HARROW TOWERS -

MYSTERY SOLVED YOU GUESS!

You get on the walkie-talkie and contact Jill. "My compliments to the vanguard; alert the folks at home and let them know we're coming in hot. They are to aim for the vehicles; tell Asset Protection to try and aim for where drivers would logically be."

Bless her, Jill doesn't even question it. "Confirmed, Elector."

...

And we're gonna repress that set of feelings for the moment, we are busy.

You're just about thinking that maybe the bombs didn't work when the sound of, as a random, nonspecific example, about eight vans exploding at the same time announces to anything hungry in Salt Bay City that the shit is going down. So much for that freeway exit; y'all will need to go around if you want to finish pillaging IU-SBC at any point. At least someone else is gonna fight the pi-

Oh.

Right.

THE DRAGON.

You raise your binoculars and see vast wings of red, orange, gold, and silver-colored glass, like a winter sunset, spread wide and cast shadows of color over vast swathes of the city.

Choose 1
[ ] Keep running
[ ] Go to ground until you stop hearing sounds that could reasonably be interpreted as draconic

 

[Morrowlark]

Orders are issued quickly; everyone but the vanguard takes the nearest exit and shelters beneath an overpass, where you stay high with this spider-woman, watching through binoculars. The dragon moves with a shocking grace but, then, should you be shocked? Something like this shouldn't be able to fly and for that matter, neither should you, but dollars to doughnuts these wings will work when they finish growing in. You witness it dive and come back up with the APC in its talons; you watch it drop the vehicle, and while you don't see the impact, you can all-too-easily imagine who or whatever is driving it suddenly learning why cars are supposed to have crumple zones. The beast's roar of triumph is interrupted by gunfire from nearby buildings, SWAT snipers that must be manifesting in the range of reinforcements...

Another APC is snatched up, and then frozen by a titanic spew of molten glass from the sunset-colored wyrm's mouth. A third is flung over the skyline, vanishing somewhere in the suburbs.

There is not a fourth.

You can feel everyone holding their breath as the dragon flies directly along the freeway towards your position. Your mount-slash-new-friend scrambles beneath the overpass, clinging high and only not being upside-down because you can't be. With a deliberateness that cannot be the product of chance, the dragon lands atop the overpass; you can hear the titanic splashing of blood from its wounds, the sizzle as they meet asphalt and begin to melt it.

And you, you alone, hear something else, in a voice so laced with confidence that you find yourself absently trying to salute after it speaks.

COGITO ERGO SUM.​

Its piece, seemingly, spoken, the wyrm takes off, causing the overpass to bend, and groan, and buckle, but it remains intact. By unspoken agreement, all of you make double-time back towards Jillian's Farm & Fleet. The vanguard has already made it by the time all of you arrive, and anyone not holding a gun ushers everyone inside where sleeping bags are being rolled out, food is being brought, and many hands are looking to make light work.

After five hours pass, it is concluded that the pursuit is over. You're safe, for now. Praise be.

In the end, three of the wounded died on-route. Nothing that could have been done, but the young surgeon is still torn up about it. Charles is seeing to him, as best he can, while the other two doctors at home take over triage. Nattie is going to lose her leg from the knee down. It is what it is; she won't be the only amputation.

There are slightly less than four days before Hoch arrives at this position. Choose 1
[ ] Pressure Nattie into joining your community
[ ] Wait for Hoch before doing or saying fucking anything
[ ] Float the idea of Threshold Innovations assistance with Doctor Heller's request rather than a formal alliance/brain drain

Orchid has been torn between several conflicting impulses and lessons during this mission. Prioritize 1
[ ] Perfect can't be the enemy of good
[ ] The man from Threshold was right; the new alien life of Domus is beautiful and worth loving
[ ] For the new world to be born, the old one has to die
[ ] Write-in?

 

[Morrowlark]

There's very little rest even for the rescue team you took out, for a little bit. Nattie's troops had their asses run through the fucking metaphorical taffy machine, and between their medics and your doctors you're pretty sure if any of them tried to man a post in the first couple of days they'd get shot by their physician. Or something. A doctor shooting you for failing to get well seems a bit extreme, but also they're very scary when they get like that. You get the fucking business from 'em too, and content yourself with light duties. For the moment.

There are a lot more people than supplies at first, and that means double, triple time for the cooks and very cautious raids in the opposite direction from IU-SBC. No one leaves in teams smaller than six, and they're gone for hours at a time, having to move past the initial freeway drag to smash-and-grab other locations. Blessedly, it appears that most smaller fast food locations don't manifest a Corporate, or if they do it's pretty easy to spot from outside (one is reported in the window of a drive-thru, waving a sign that says MAY I TAKE YOUR ORDER? with what the team describes as 'desperate depression' in its body language), and the resulting bounty of frozen meats and various frozen potato products helps tank what would otherwise be the complete decimation of your accumulated food stores. You also get reports of a hydroponics store, the sort of place that sells supplies for growing plants indoors, which has - against all odds - not become some strange glass jungle of various kinds of cannabis, but instead has grown into a self-sustaining glass garden similar to your roof garden, and from this are fresh vegetables and strawberries taken. Why strawberries? No grapes, no berry-berries, no watermelons or anything. Do people just really like strawberries that much? Are they somehow easier to grow indoors? Does your body have useful skills that are not killing (which you have mixed feelings about) or forklifts (which are amazing)?

Hrm.

Morning of the third day, you're informed that Nattie is asking after you. She's being prepped for surgery (to wit, they gotta take her fucking leg off), and is looking to talk before she gets the good shit looted from the University infirmary, and by 'the good shit' we evidently mean 'the very bad shit but for the gap between what we have and what we need did the gods invent alcohol'. Note to fucking self, find some morphine.

"Hey," Nattie murmurs when you slip into the breakroom that has been converted into your fledgling community's impromptu infirmary, Jill along with you to help translate the things other people say to you that don't make sense. "I never did thank you properly. For saving my ass. Captain's still out of contact, but I know she's gonna make sure we don't get caught out like that again."

Mm. You try to keep a little frown off your face, so you shrug instead, a little helplessly. "You needed help," you answer, which should settle the matter but from the look on Nattie's face it sure doesn't.

"...Miss -" she begins.

Jill clears her throat. "We didn't get the chance to get inta that earlier but Orchid's living that it/its life. Everyone gets it wrong the first time."

"No idea why," you mutter, an exasperated edge on the words. Jill and Nattie are giving you identical Looks, and you throw your hands up in surrender. "Look, whatever - Nattie, while you're still sober I wanted to ask your help in something that I'm hoping isn't a brutal march all the way to the bay. There's some kinda science team stuck down below Salt Bay, they need help."

Nattie frowns, then blinks, then - "Oh son of a bitch, Station 104. Of course they didn't get the chance to evacuate - they're still alive down there?"

You open your mouth to ask how Nattie knows them when Jill(???) interrupts: "Oh gods, I'd forgotten about those guys! I saw a documentary about them - how'd they even get in touch with you, flower?"

You close your mouth.

You open your mouth very carefully: "Doctor Heller can sort of, but not really, possess the spiders. We got in touch when I did the thing I do." Which is not narrowing it down at all, but nameless instinct suggests to you that perhaps explaining your abilities to Natalie Bellman, Civilian Rescue, is not amongst your top 10 plans of all time. "In any event they can't seem to get back out? I assume they had a submersible at one point and uh, don't. Doctor Heller's unconscious so whatever she coulda done about this needs to be translated into what she can do with like...glass dogs and whatever spiders haven't regained their free will."

The excited celebrity-worship(???? QUESTION MARK??????) becomes a sorta 'oof, fuck' frowning and Jill and Nattie looking at each other. The Threshold soldier speaks up first: "Throwback...might be able to help with that. It's not as if we'd get nothing for hitting the warehouses and shipyards either..." She closes her eyes and hisses; her injured leg twitches. "Heh. Maybe I can get a fucking peg leg while I'm there."

"Hey," Jill reproaches.

"Fuck off, I'm not giving you shit," Nattie snaps back. "I'd kick ass and take names with prosthetics like yours, but you know what I did in the time before Impact? Looked up everything it takes to make things like that. If Corporate and the pigs dropped dead right now and we could hire the dragon to fly cross-country for us I'd still be fucked for at least five years, twenty if we can't find a convenient prosthetic surgeon who's not dead. Goddamn squadcar..."

Jill's frown intensifies. You step up, try to put a hand on her shoulder, and she shakes you off, eyes locked on Nattie. "Yeah? That what you think? You're such a badass that you could get a new leg, learn it instantly, and go back to killing slashers?"

Hey...

What's that smell? Your eyes flick around the room, afraid of an electrical fire at first, but no, the scent's not quite right for - it's Jill's legs. The blades are starting to glow, smoking faintly against the floor.

"Come off it," Nattie says in exhaustion. "I can talk mad shit about how long my dick is but I can't fuckin' prove it, can I?"

You're not entirely certain why Jill looks so fuckin' mad but she claps her hand to Nattie's and pulls the soldier half-upright, staring her down. Her body is shaking, and you're not sure if it's violence or outrage or what. The tile is blackening beneath Jill's blades, and you should probably -

"Congratulations," Jill whispers. "Welcome to the dick-measuring contest."

Nattie's injured leg shatters, falls away like the glass from a mirror's frame (sharp chunks of it slide over each other, crashing to the floor, splintering into shards), but rather than nothing on the other side there's a leg remarkably like Jill's. You can see blood flowing through it in little glass veins, rushing in to the pace of Nattie's heartbeat. You're about to ask Jill how she did that when she, and Nattie, both fall unconscious.

You fret.

You dither.

And ultimately you just sorta turn Jill's head aside so she's not pressing her mouth and nose into the cot, and tiptoe backwards out of the room.

Project Throwback will assist with Station 104
​

* * * *

Your theory that hanging out with the spiders will help persuade people to be normal about them is proven correct fairly quickly. There are some things to smooth over, though, among them correcting the spider-women's assumption that they need to take their shirts off to get requests fulfilled if someone can't understand their attempts to communicate. In this you have both Sasha and Charles as firm allies, and Charles proves remarkably talented at reading Barbarian Pantomime(tm), which gets the two of you called on a lot to help mediate difficulties.

Can you imagine if you'd just avoided that area? Or come in guns blazing? The man from Threshold had welcomed you to this world, and apologized that it would be 'a fixer-upper'. You should pay that forward.

...You will pay that forward.

Trait Gained: Valet of the Alien World
You will receive more information when examining the new alien life of Domus. When attempting to give peace a chance, you can mitigate one level of damage that may result.
​

* * * *

The Threshold Internal app rings the morning that Hoch should be arriving at this position; you, Nattie, Sasha, and Jill sit down around your phone as you answer, which instantly produces the voice of the Captain. "Sound off if you're not dead."

Nattie presses the button. "Sorry Captain, I'm afraid I died like six times."

Karl's voice: "More like sixty-nine times, ayyyy."

Sasha and Nattie start laughing, and you blink at them both. Hoch's voice, full of relief, cuts in: "You need an escort?"

Nattie gives you a look, makes sure no one's finger is on the button, and says, "Well...do I? We could stick around while preparations are made, but we're gonna have to move in force to get to the Bay."

Choose 1
[ ] Keep Project Throwback around for a couple weeks while you recover and make preparations
[ ] Send them on ahead to help scavenge for solutions and resources while you rest and prepare for a couple weeks.

 

[Morrowlark]

You shake your head without a word. Nattie puts her finger on the button: "Negative, Hoch. We're gonna stay, get patched up, and help these folks sock away some supplies. Gods only know the city's still got plenty of to pillage, and they did kinda save our lives. I'll pass the books along to you to be taken to HQ, maybe borrow your medics, and that'll be that."

Silence, for a long moment.

The voice that is yours: "Hoch, text me your position. Out."

When the voice that is yours leaves the call, it ends instantly. Everyone looks around at each other, and then Nattie makes the mistake of trying to be the first to leave. Her blade slips out from under her, and the only reason she doesn't eat a face full of concrete is Jill catching the back of her collar and hauling her up.

"I told you to get a crutch," Jill says, wearily.

"And I told you that I'm the god-queen of big dick mountain," Nattie grumbles. She rests her head against Jill, and grumbles as she's led away.

Hrm.

You don't have to repress the emotions that causes in you, but you're not sure you understand them either. So we're gonna move on.

* * * *

Hoch calls ahead when his 'boys' are ten minutes out or so, and you inform the sentries in turn. You, Jill, Sasha, Nattie, and Chef Nettleson all form the current greeting party; the doctors are too busy, Charles is riding herd on the spiders at the moment, and Andrea's out on a raid of all things. You haven't really had time to meet-and-greet with the noncombatants of IU-SBC yet, but they're just inside your home, conspicuously watching the road into your home's parking lot.

It's not Hoch that you see first, not that you'd know if you did. No. This can't be anyone but her. Same height as you, long auburn hair pulled back into a ponytail, an eyepatch over her right eye. She wears a long coat over the Threshold-issued body armor, with the left sleeve pinned up to her shoulder. She's...gorgeous, you think to yourself; cute like a little doll, with a slightly upturned nose and stunning blue eyes that remind you of the Bay on a clear day. Scars criss-cross her face, mementos of battle, and you gently touch your own face. That's one mystery solved; you'd wondered why some parts of your face feel different from others.

She doesn't come directly to you. When she notices some cars left in the lot, she smoothly changes direction, and looks inside. She makes a 'huh' kinda face before opening the car and slowly running her finger down the statue inside; it peels open, like a cocoon, and releases a shaking and terrified person. You can't hear what she says to it, but eventually she points it in the direction of your store, and it starts limping towards your home while people from inside rush out to meet it.

One car at a time, in no particular hurry, she releases the eight statues you hadn't known what to do about, with only minimal lacerations to show for their trouble. Up on the freeway exit, what can only be Hoch's forces gather and stay some distance away, leaning on cars and keeping their weapons away from their hands. At last, at long last, she walks directly towards you. Sasha bristles, and you put a hand on her shoulder, watching the woman with your face and your voice tuck her only hand into a pocket.

She ignores you completely, turning her head to Nattie. "That thing good on its word?"

Nattie nods. "Yes ma'am. Lost three of the wounded, but I'm not sure they coulda been saved. The wyrm's been stirred up -"

"Thanks, I hadn't noticed," this 'Captain' drawls, sarcastically. Her eyes slide to you, and she sighs. Doesn't seem to know what to say.

At the same time, both of you take out cigarettes, and light up, and if either of you comment on this you're both going to lose your dignity, so nothing is said about it. Nothing at all.

"This gonna be a problem?" you ask, in your softest voice.

And she takes a drag on her cigarette, burns halfway through it in one long pull, and exhales slowly. "You really have no idea what you did to me, do you?" When you shake your head, she chuckles and shakes hers. "Ain't that just the luck. You sleepin' with Nattie?"

"CAPTAIN!"

"No," you answer. "...Not with anyone yet. I still have things to figure - why?"

"Just wanted to figure out why the hell you're borrowing my men. But I'm not sure how much I care." A smaller puff on her cigarette. "...You just might be the only family I have left, which is pretty fucked. The old man would come back to life just to shit a brick if I killed you. Guess I owe him that much."

This conversation is going strange places. You're missing so much context. You keep trying to remember doing to her what she said you did to her but there's just nothing there. Not a damn thing from before that bathroom.

What do you want out of this conversation? Pick 2
[ ] Whatever this Captain thinks she knows about what you are
[ ] A promise to live and let live
[ ] Information on your shared(?) past
[ ] Information on the Captain's goals and plans
[ ] A promise to share resources as necessary
[ ] An explicit agreement that you can keep some of these college students to fill in your skill gaps in the community

 

[Morrowlark]

The Captain finishes her cigarette well before you do, in the awkward silence that follows. She takes out another one, and leans in close to you, making unbroken eye contact, while she lights up off your cherry. You stay very still, studying her scarred, beautiful face, and it hits you: she's afraid of you. She's scared, and she's acting tough because she wants you to be scared too. If you're scared too, maybe she's safe.

After an age that is somehow only scant seconds, she pulls back, smoke trickling from her nose. So you seize the initiative: "You said we could leave each other alone. Well...Nattie's alive. And...I don't know what happened, but I've got no hard feelings about you. I don't really wanna fight." Your voice gets small. "I'm already so sick of fighting."

"Get used to it," the Captain advises. "But. I'm willing to keep my word there. Nattie's special." You resist the urge to look at the Threshold soldier, certain - from your glimpse at her - that she's red-faced and doesn't want anyone looking at her. "Where the hell are you taking her, anyway?"

Nattie steps forward and salutes smartly, one fist over her heart. "Captain, ma'am, Project Throwback will be assisting with civilian rescue of Station 104 and the Bay area."

The Captain frowns, but this is a thinking frown, you just know it. "104, 104 - oh. Those guys. Oh! There's an oneirophysicist down there!"

"There are innocent people in danger down there," Nattie reproaches.

The Captain waves it off. "Obviously, whatever, but do you have any idea of how much easier your work would be with a dedicated oneirophysicist on deck? It might be worth changing the plan, starting the new settlement at the bayside...wouldn't be the worst location, and you'd have access to seafood, tidal power. We can't keep the nuclear plant going forever, not even if we can hold it. There's no godsdamned uranium near here."

...

......

"I forgot we're powered by a nuclear plant," you admit, in a very small voice. "That sounds. Bad."

"Yeah, that's why I didn't ditch it to go rescue my ex," the Captain replies, almost apologetically. "...We're looking to make contact with the farms here soon, see what we can save, how we can help, but in the meantime it'd be a blessing if we could maybe buy food off y'all."

Oh. There's an in there too. You flash a small smile. "I'm sure there's things we need too. Have your people talk to my people?"

Sasha and the Captain both bark a laugh, and Sasha tries her hardest to pretend she didn't, returning to glaring at the woman who wears your face, and has your voice. Said Captain looks over the home you've built, and nods once, to herself. "We'll be in touch. To be frank, we owe you one for this. The old man and his fuckin' supervillain disease were pretty good for teaching basic ethics. Bastard was obsessed with 'em. Caught 'em off mom like a disease..." She sighs a cloud of smoke, and quotes, distantly: "Good science is rigorous. Great science helps people. And he never did want to be anything less than great."

"...I'm sorry for your loss," you murmur. "I. If he's the man I think he is, we only met briefly. Look, I...I woke up at T-Minus fifteen, bleeding in a bathroom, I barely got out alive. I don't remember you at all, except when I do."

"You wouldn't. You caught personhood off me. Humanity's diseased like that." She stubs her cigarette out on her body armor and just turns, leaving, without another word. Part of you considers running after her, compelled by the sorrow in her one last eye, but...

...But she's scared of you. So that will have to be that. For now, anyway.

"Jill," Sasha drawls, "you alive? You gonna survive that cigarette lighting?"

"No," Jill answers, in an anguished voice, and when you blink at her everyone, even the Chef, is laughing at you.

End Part 2: Waking Nightmares
"...My ancestors understood the Law differently. To them the Law was a cloak, something that restricts you, but also warms and protects you. You must don the Law on purpose, and if you find that bargain too restrictive, well, there's an offer there too. You shed the cloak, and become outside of the Law; a resident of chaos."​

- The Celt, personal communication
​

The doctors might actually kill you if you try to work. Propose 2-5 activities for the upcoming 2 weeks.
[ ] Write-in
[ ] Write-in
[ ] Write-in
[ ] Write-in
[ ] Write-in

You have gained one Gift

 

[Morrowlark]

Two weeks to recover, to prep, to see how Project Throwback gets its work done. It turns out that when she's not in an emergency, Nattie seems to be quite a caring officer. You're not entirely certain what her rank actually is, but your ravaged mind keeps producing the word sergeant, which can't be right. A proper military operation wouldn't trust anything less than an eltee with this sort of thing, and honestly probably wants a major, but, then, is this a proper military operation? None of the Threshold fighters call themselves soldiers. They say things like, "I was paying my way through college," or "I wanted to be closer to the sciences," or "I'm a mom, the kids are back at HQ," and that sort of thing.

About two days in, Nattie hobbles up to you, having finally broken down and accepted crutches, with one of her 'boys' (its nametag says RACHAEL UNDERHILL and it introduces itself with a 'she/her' so how in the gods' eternal names she's a 'boy' is going on the fucking List) cradling one of their rifles and some ammunition. This Rachael presents to you, and you take it carefully, checking the weapon over before slinging it over your shoulder.

"What's this about?" you ask, trying and mostly succeeding in keeping the confusion out of your voice.

Nattie shrugs, and steals a chair near you, which is all the excuse you need to sit. "You're dismissed," she says to Rachael, who salutes and makes a beeline suspiciously in the direction of the HR office. "I saw you handle that thing before. Real professional-like, if a bit tactically sloppy, so...it's yours. Not like the dead guy'll need it, and he'd want it to keep doing good."

You open your mouth, and then frown. "Shouldn't it go back to your armory?"

"Find a dyke that gives a shit and outranks me." Note to self, another new word. New-ish word. You're pretty sure you don't mean she holds back floodwaters, though if she does you really need to see that, the mental image is very satisfying. "You lifting that siege saved a lot of lives, and a lot of knowledge. Our projections for the failure of Project Throwback are pretty bad...there's a reason it's the one that got installed first everywhere we could afford to. I really don't think you appreciate how many people you helped."

This gets a little frown from you. You touch the cigarettes in your breast pocket, remember that you're inside, and get out a bag of chew instead. You kinda shake it, and Nattie rolls her eyes but reaches her hand out anyway. She nearly chokes on it at first, and you laugh. "It's the cheap stuff," you admit. "Gotta make it last...tell me about Project Throwback? If it's so important..."

Nattie finishes slapping her chest and takes a couple deep breaths. "So, the thing is...the thing is, a lot of infrastructure is gonna go down soon if it's not down already. To be honest we hadn't expected the satellites to stay up, so we're ahead a bit there. But give it five, ten years, those birds will stop chirping. Twenty and the nuclear plant is out of fuel. And that's just the future problems - you got those maps on you?" You have a map on you, one of the labeled travel ones with all the marketing, which you fish out of a pocket and spread on the little coffee table between all of you. Nattie smiles, almost fondly. "I hate these things," she murmurs, and the sound is wistful. "And we can't make them right now, because Salt Bay City has zero paper mills. The closest logging operation is eighty miles north at Red Mountain, grinding up redwoods, and that isn't for paper. We order paper in, and now none of those trucks are moving. Ships? If they're still moving, I've got a fear in me. Cargo planes? Good luck with the fucking dragon. We don't produce our own sugar, we don't produce our own salt any more -"

"We used to produce salt?" you ask. "Isn't the ocean full of salt?"

"Sure is, that's how we produced it. But it's way cheaper to mine salt and ship it, so we just stopped." Oh. The full scope of this is starting to hit you. "The farms were mostly cash crops, praise be to Clever Jossil and the farmers both that they're fixing their shit on their own. There was a scenario where we had to go all bandit warlord about it and no one liked that idea. We don't mine our own metal around here either, though that part's easy for a little while. The cars alone are full of the shit. One of the college boys was showing me his plans for leaf-spring blades, tougher and more flexible than anything human hands alone could make..." She shakes her head. "The point is, if the Salt Bay region is going to survive with any element of our culture intact, we need to 'gear down', return to a technological base we can create with the resources at hand, become self-sustaining as a community."

"...What if someone doesn't want to be part of that community?" you ask, mostly out of the spirit of intellectual curiosity.

"Hopefully the obvious benefits are persuasive, but if not..." Nattie sighs and makes a 'gun' with her fingers, with a little 'kshewww' sound. "Captain isn't about to tolerate rival cultures turning bandit on us. Organized resistance to a new Salt Bay ends in blood."

"That's. Horrible."

"Yeah," Nattie agrees, and she can't meet your eyes. "...Yeah, it is. 's why the Captain lets me mouth off so much, I think. She put her conscience on paid leave awhile back, so I'm doin' the job."

You have gained an automatic rifle with ammunition.

* * * *

Marie's feathers are starting to grow in.

"Back in," she corrects, a little gingerly; the teenager lightly touches the fledgling stained glass, hisses when it cuts the tip of her fingers. "Me and Jack and Sasha, we all had proper wings, until we broke 'em trying to run from those dogs. Stupid. Coulda just flown..."

On nameless instinct, you ruffle her hair. "So what's this party you've invited me to?"

"You'll see. It's a secret."

It is not, you surmise, a very good secret. Privacy is at a minimum in your new community, something about which everyone has grumbled but what is there to do? However, when the kids (and you, evidently), go up onto the roof where the garden has been enhanced by patio furniture, no one follows. When objective privacy is at a minimum, you grant people privacy. It's a lesson in living amongst other people you managed to pick up on without being told. In short order, the council of children (and you) are gathered around a picnic table, and each of you places a stuffed animal in front of you.

"So," Marie says haughtily, opening the meeting. "We can't just keep doing odd jobs. We need to do something helpful."

There is a general chorus of agreement, though you're confused as to why, exactly, you are here.

"And," Marie continues, "I've been noticing that a lot of people have trouble fitting into normal clothes. So I thought we'd all learn how to sew, help Andrea out." And here she shoots you a look and does that same eyebrow waggle thing her sister does. "There's lot of scrap cloth, so the way I figure it, we'll start by getting out little friends dressed." Here she strokes her plush snake, which rejoices in the name Scaley, which you cannot give shit to because yours is fucking Barkley. "Any objections?"

One boy, maybe seven, holds a hand up: "Mom says needles are sharp."

"Your mom doesn't have to know," Marie says simply, as if that settles the matter. You raise Barkley's little hand, and Marie graciously gestures at you to cede the floor.

"Why am I here?" you ask, blinking.

"'cause you get it," Marie answers. "You're the only grown-up who has a little friend, and since you're in charge you make this official. That way people can't complain that we're 'slacking off' or whatever." Your smallest (and yet still taller than you) friend sniffs with Exaggerated Dignity. "That's why."

"...Are...grownups...not supposed to have little friends?" you ask, worry in your voice, hugging Barkley closer to your chest in case someone notices and takes him away.

This produces a babble of reassurances and objections to the idea that you should ever give up Barkley, and when you admit that you just kinda keep him around and don't know what to do with him the babble changes tone and tenor, becoming a bubbling froth of suggestions. Marie is quick to point out that dressing him up is a way to play with him and it's useful learning, while a short little thing sagely proposes regular tea parties. After a few minutes of this you get your notebook out and start taking suggestions formally, writing out detailed notes on the care and feeding of your Barkley, including some very detailed laundering advice from a tiny thing in a dress that says it's "eight and a half". When everyone is staring at it, the child proudly explains that "Mommy says I'm autistic. I think it means smart."

It is generally agreed that this must be the case.

By the end of this meeting it is agreed that Marie and yourself will secure the instruction books on sewing along with whatever scraps can be spared ("The doctors might need them," you warn, and everyone eventually agrees that the doctors come first), and meet again next week to practice and play board games. The tea party is being shelved until after the rescue mission, so everyone can celebrate.

"Barkley will need it," you muse, gravely. "He's gotta go with me."

An hour later, one of the kids hands you a tiny toy gun for your wolf, which you nestle into his lil' paws.

* * * *

"...So this is music," you say dubiously, at a mix of college students and Actual Children on their breaks attempting to play recorders.

"No, dearie, that will one day be music," Andrea corrects with a bit of a chuckle. She's been wearing the new perfume she mentioned, which gives her a distracting lilac scent; any time the wind shifts you turn your head to look at her, and she gives you that indulgent smile that is Doing Things to you. "You may be a bit young to remember, but the record labels got exclusive rights to sell in their partner stores, oh...goodness, was it forty years ago? No matter. The point being, I am rather looking forward to your trip to the Bay. I would love to have something more...professional, around."

"You have very polite insults," you observe. Andrea laughs and links her arm with yours as you two continue to listen. It's bad. It's really bad. Somehow that only makes it more endearing.

"It's among many skills I've cultivated with experience, my Elector," Andrea demurs. "Though I will reach the limits of my patience if Charles keeps leaving me sports drinks. The youth have gotten so disrespectful - 'thirsty', I tell you."

You run that through your mental translator, come to the correct conclusion, and turn a little red.

"Think nothing of it, dear," Andrea assures you; the 'song' comes to a 'close', terms and conditions apply. "You will be eminently aware when my patience with you has ended."

* * * *

Your second attempt at 'music' is joining some manner of drum circle. You're not certain why the drums have to be in a circle, but here you find that you, evidently, have rhythm, so all you really have to do is keep pace and watch what everyone else is doing. The point of this activity eludes you, the spoken-word poetry some members recite is full of metaphors you have no context for, and yet, when it's done, you feel strangely better.

You're not sure this is music either, though.

* * * *

Journaling. Journaling. You already take extensive notes, but there's a voice in your head that might be memory or it might be new experiences, telling you that maybe you should talk to someone about what you're writing down, get some perspectives...

Who double-checks your brain thoughts? If you want more than one person, format it as X & Y
[ ] Jill
[ ] Sasha
[ ] Jack
[ ] Andrea
[ ] Marie
[ ] Write-in?

 

[Morrowlark]

Spoiler: A Snippet of Orchid's Journal

Subgroups
University???
- Sports people. Complain a lot about missing sports. Very physical play activities. High incidence of visits to HR office, in groups of 1-4.
- Oneiromancers/Divinity students. Nattie calls them 'baby oneiromancers'. Very nervous, very solemn. Lead prayer circles. Everyone participates in prayer circles. Jill had to stop me from telling them the Everlasting Lady isn't a god.
- Engineers/"Eggheads". Harassing Jack to do things with the forklifts. Improved the bathing situation. Talk a lot.
- 'Party people'. Low useful skills. Tendency to stare off into space. Kind words make them cry sometimes. One picked a fight once. Dunno what the grandmas said to her but she wouldn't talk to anyone for two days.
- Old people. Like people, but old. Seems to be the smallest group. Absorbed into the broader body of old people.
- Professors. Somehow not old people. Spending a lot of time with Nattie.

Children
- They have accepted me amongst them
- Cuteness factor inexplicable but consistent
- I really keep losing at games with these people
- No really how

Asset Protection
- Smallest coherent group
- Tendency to stare off into space, nightmares, waking screaming
- Volunteer for dangerous jobs at approximately triple the rate of other groups
- Volunteer to escort Me Specifically places
- Pretty sure they're making little felt dolls of me???
- The dolls all have axes

Cooks
- Working well under the leadership of Chef Nettleson
- DARK sense of humor
- No really the shit they say
- Very pro-active with asserting the needs of their section of the community. Sasha says we'd starve if they weren't such 'helicopter parents' about it.
- Chef Nettleson's smile does things to me

Grandmas
- Actually old people in general but the grandpas are severely outnumbered
- Holding up surprisingly well? Comments about 'living through the war'.
- Many useful skills, great confidence, difficulty taking direction balanced by tendency to volunteer usefully
- Fashion sense is oddly appealing. Must try for myself
- Why the fuck do I know what gender a grandma or grandpa is and why is it not giving me other useful information

"Punks"
- Similar fashion sense to Sasha
- High incidence of not being heterosexual
- Rude. Endearing.
- Why do so many of them know their way around the guns?

Misc.
- Various people I cannot easily categorize
- Most of the parents are in here
- Doctors also in here because I can't grasp what it is they have in common other than the scary voice they do
- Would it be so much to ask that I simply understand the diversity of the human experience?

Concerns about population crash alleviated by informal inquiry; large proportion of population theoretically willing to reproduce
Note to self: refine those questions until they don't sound like offers

Or until they sound like better offers
​

Music???
No wind chimes no wind chimes no wind chimes no wind chimes
​

Femme = some kind of combat-specialized female?
Butch = Flannel? Beanie hat?? Self-identified 'men' and 'women' both use the term
Dyke = ???? Wall powers????
Woman = Skirts sort of, breasts sometimes, higher-pitched voices maybe? Switching complicates
Man = No idea except 'if they sit on their own balls it's probably a man'. Jack refused to elaborate.
Child = Genderless??? They appear to use pronouns. Possibly apprenticing as a gender.
​

Films
Greater access to films has widened the non-adult offerings available. So far I sorta like the romances and the mysteries. 'Action movies' have been a miss. General consensus has led to the slasher and monster horror films being smashed with hammers and mixed into the soil for later gardens. Someone tried to put on a documentary about the gold standard? Everyone yelled at it. Then they smashed the documentary too.

Asked Andrea about it. She tried to explain. Doesn't make sense. Gold has no worth without electronics...
​

Condom situation getting dire
Correction: prophylactic situation getting dire. Schedule raids.
​

Spiders are doing well. Some limited sentences. They keep drawing things Brianna is presumably sending them. Jill gets very red when I hug my spider friend.
​

Cogito ergo sum?
"I think, therefore I am." An invitation to talk? An assertion? Mysterious advice? Sasha talks a big game about banging a dragon but I don't think she's volunteering to go talk to it alone.​

​

Jill and Sasha check over your notes with nearly identical and nearly-identically unreadable expressions. You clear your throat and look away. "You think I'm insane again, don't you?"

"...I think we haven't appreciated just how little y'know, flower," Jill says gently. "There's a lot we take for granted 'cause we grew up being taught it all the time. Without ever having to, y'know, really learn it."

Sasha nods, scans the notebook again, frowns. "You uh, were worried about the fuckin' breeding population?"

"Should I not have been?"

Jill and Sasha look at each other, and then they both shrug. So that, for the moment, is that. They take your hands, one each, and the three of you kinda put your heads together. "We're always here," Jill murmurs. "If you're ever gettin' too confused, we'll try our best, alright?"

"I will absolutely bang that dragon," Sasha adds, and the three of you bust up laughing. "Y'know, you're rubbing off on me? Been catching myself using 'it' as the neutral pronoun lately. Kinda a power move."

You blink several times.

Several more times.

Open your mouth -

Jill: "We'd be all month explaining, just go with it."

- Close your mouth.

* * * *

You're supposed to be preparing to leave when the Threshold Internal rings; just the Captain, Nattie, and you. You pick up and hear the voice that is yours immediately: "Hey y'all, you know how you were gettin' ready to leave? You're gonna wanna do not that."

You share a glance with Nattie, and she puts her finger on the button. "Acknowledged, but why?" Finger off the button.

"We got a real shit-kicker comin' in off the coast," explains the Captain. "Like, bad. Wash-you-into-the-sewer bad. The old man's models didn't account for weather...in any event I don't want you doin' anything stupid. Stay put, hunker down, enjoy some R&R, and when the sun comes back out y'all can move on Station 104. We're working on getting into contact with them but the storm's getting us to hole up too, best I've got for you is the address of the holding company that technically owns the facility."

You put your finger on the button: "Corporate?"

"Like you wouldn't believe, doll. Like you wouldn't believe. Preliminary recon suggests three nodes of the hive-mind lording over some ninety employees. Big jackpot in labor if we can avoid fucking killing them all but I seem to have left my fuckoff sniper rifles in my other budget, so it is what it is."

This will be the third week since Doctor Heller said you had a month
[ ] Brave the storm
[ ] Hunker down

Should 'Hunker Down' win, select 2
[ ] Brace for the flooding with Glazier's Dominion
[ ] Mortgage your recovering health to get more gardens up now.
[ ] Relax socially (write-in?)
[ ] Romance Novels II: Revenge of the Euphemisms
[ ] Try to seek advice about the conversation you overheard, between Jill and Sasha (who?)
[ ] Write-in?

The flooding will be braced against by more conventional means if you don't handle it personally

Begin Threshold 2: Foundations
"You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it."​

- Pirkei Avot, Chapter 2 verse 21
​

You are 58 days old.​