longestnight | Entries tagged with stacia novik

[Sam had literally only just gotten back to the Pole when more things happened. Which is why, when the comm comes up, there's a large red-tailed hawk on the back of the chair behind him. The hawk turns her head, rearranging Sam's hair slightly.]

[Those that have met Eileen will probably know that it's a nervous gesture.]

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Miguel beat me at rock, paper, scissors.

[And, really, it was probably going to be one of them that brought it.]

Dan, Miguel, and I went on a mission to Quebec. Chasing rumors of a demonic horse that was kidnapping kids. Supposedly to eat them, but it never got that far.

It's dealt with, now, but not before leaving a disturbing message.

[The comm switches over to a video, obviously taken of the creature's last moments, though he does cut off the end where it melts away.]

I also got Dan to translate, to the best of what I could pronounce, of what it had said before I thought to record it.

[The hawk's preening gets a little more aggressive for a moment as Sam starts flipping through the pages of his ever present notebook and starts reading.]

"You all should run. I'm the nicest thing that crossed through the cracks. They're coming." [A pause, glancing over the next bit.] "Too many cracks. Everything falling apart. Universes like...big ships on the ocean...crash together. Kuk enlists what comes over. He's recruiting the smartest ones. Smarter than me."

[Another pause, then a light bat at the hawk as she catches his ear. Which turns into petting her chest feathers for a moment before continuing.]

This last bit was in the recording, but I'll repeat Dan's translation for those of us who, like me, aren't Francophones. "Those coming through. You've already fought them in the Wilderlands. It's possible they'll remember you. Memory...funny thing, that. And they're not the only ones crossing."

[He sits back, picking up a pen to toy with it.]

We knew a bit of this. I think, though, that we didn't know the scope of it before now. I know some of you were in the Wilderlands. What sorts of things did you have to deal with?

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letskicksomeice

We're gonna fix this!

[That's the first thing Jack says when he's on the screen. Behind him a fox is jumping around with a playful energy. One might think he'd have an Arctic Fox, but no, instead his daemon is a a red fox, an animal he'd seen in his youth, peeking out between the trees he used to play in with his sister, outside the colony.]

So, uh, apparently, they're our souls, now on the outside. Vasilisa thinks one of the artifacts we brought in from Project Prometheus is responsible. We used a few methods to check if they were cursed or dangerous and I guess technically since this isn't hurting us, it didn't read as dangerous.

[Behind him, there's a crash, and angry yeti noises, as the fox drags a tablecloth off a table, knocking toys to the floor. She laughs. Jack winces.]

We're going. To fix it.

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letskicksomeice

[cw: mild gore, death.]

Okay, guys, I think we're almost done here. Everyone's reported in that all the cell blocks are just about cleared. I'm checking one of the last sections.

[He flits towards one of the secure doors, casually tapping his staff against the security panel housing the ID reader and lock, freezing it until it fritzes out. He pushes through the doors and lands, anticipating that he might have to duck low behind something for cover.]

We've already overstayed our welcome and we shouldn't risk them bringing in backup from outside, so start snowglobing to the Po -

[What he sees on the other side of the door makes him freeze and stagger back as if shot to the chest. Most of the science labs had been emptied in the ruckus; the myths within were quickly dragged back to their cells. But with the base overrun, it looks like this lab was one of the ones quickly abandoned, without the scientists cleaning up after themselves.]

[It is a macabre tableau. On one giant examination table there is a vivisected unicorn, clearly dead, rainbow blood flowing over the sides of the table. It is an ugly sight, something so pure and beautiful, its white coat glossy like pearl, paired with such brutality.]

[But that's not what gives Jack pause and makes it look like he's been punched in the heart. What gives him pause is the other myth, strapped to a table, lots of painful-looking devices and tubes attached to her. The nymph is still an otherworldly beauty. Her skin is still a brilliant mix of blue and green and gray like the ocean meeting a stormy sky. Her face is delicate and her hair is a curly tangle of flowing vines. When she opens her eyes they look like blue marble, blended with cloudy white.]

[But she is dried out, skin cracking like tree bark in places, the leaves and flowers in her viney hair wilted and brown.]

[She is not meant to be dried out. Her skin is meant to glisten like it is perpetually sprinkled with drizzle. Every one of her movements is meant to scatter droplets over the woods like morning dew. She was one of the ones to bring gentle storms to the slopes of Mount Nysa, after all.]

[Seeing slight movement, Jack flies forward, placing his staff against the side of the bed. He starts pulling devices and straps off of her, careful to not yank anything that looks like it'll hurt if he pulls suddenly.]

Aesyle, Aesyle, it's gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay.

["Jack Frost," she breathes it out in a relieved sigh. "I should have known the Guardians would come. We - we lost hope, many of us. That we would be found. But...but I am found." The relief and peace she feels at this flows from her expression and water pours from her eyes an unnatural flow, like exuding water is in her very nature.]

[Some of the devices give him trouble and has to dismantle them carefully, freezing components that need to be weakened and broken.]

You are. I found you. Are your sisters here?

["My sisters were here," she says, eyes closed. "But they walk with our brother Hyas now."]

[Agony falls over Jack's face. Devastation. In the space of a sentence, he has lost fifteen friends at once. His eyes temporarily squeeze shut but the tears stream out anyway, freezing on his cheeks in a fine smattering of ice dust.]

I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry we didn't get here sooner.

[He manages to fight past it and gets the last device undone. He quickly has a globe out, and whips out a portal to the Pole, all business despite the heartbreak. He hefts her up, staff grasped awkwardly in one hand.]

I've got you, though. [His voice cracks.] I'm taking you to the Pole, we can call Epione and her daughters -

[She suddenly reaches a hand up to his face holding it gently but tightly, commanding his attention. He stops flying, knowing, knowing with a sinking feeling, that it's too late. Knowing that she needs to be seen right now. She wanted to be found and she is; he can give her that at least, more of being found. He kneels with her on the floor as if the weight of her and what's about to happen are suddenly dragging him down.]

["You always made our rain so beautiful, turning it into snow, spreading your frost over the trees of Mt. Nysa." She locks eyes, expression filled with long-held longing, unspoken. "I wish...I wish we could've danced one last time, but my sisters...Hyas..." Her eyes gently drift shut. "Hyas waits for me."]

[He hand drops in a last caress, she breathes out a last breath that sounds like a breeze through the trees and finally fades from the world, her body suddenly melting into a gentle flow of water that passes uselessly through Jack's violently shaking hands. His body is so cold that some of it freezes there in a glaze over his fingers and palms. He holds his hands to his chin, bunched up, as if the touch of her essence there will somehow be taken inside himself, preserved.]

[Where his knees touch the puddle frost spreads out on the floor and there could be uglier things left in her place but at the very least the frost lines are beautiful, spiraling outward in an elegant pattern, vaguely shaped like a humanoid form, with spiraling lines where the vines of her hair had been. This brief memorial is ephemeral. It will be gone soon, melted and evaporated into the air. But for now, the place of her death is marked with something that's at least a fraction of how beautiful she'd been in life.]

[The tears on Jack's face will be there for longer, frozen in streaks. Shaking uncontrollably, his watery expression changes from agony to one of barely contained rage. The wind picks up in the room and ice starts to crystallize on every surface.]

[His voice is as hollow as an empty tomb when he finally speaks to the team.]

Get the last of the myths out and get to the Pole. [The myths, not the staff of the Project, but they've already had plenty of time to run. Anyone left - anyone being sent in to try to retake the facility - has made a very serious mistake in not getting out while they could.] Tell me when you're done.

[The plan had just been to run after everyone was out. Jack could never be described as "prudent" in the past, but that was when he didn't have a whole team he was trying to keep alive while in deeply over his head. Many of them were powerful, but blowing that huge a facility on their own would've been a stretch and while there were some hefty power sources within in it, none of them were fully centralized, and some were on closed circuits. No easy way to just hack a bunch of power cells to overload.]

[But...the plan has now changed. Circumstances have changed. The wind briefly shrieks like its being murdered, and the doors Jack flew in through slam off their hinges so hard they embed themselves into the opposite wall.]

[The steel wall.]

[Around him, the metal hallway walls start to frost over, groan, and then crack. The irises of his eyes seem paler and almost lit from within.]

I'm bringing this entire place down.

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rallieshearts

( reminds me you're gone )

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50millions1pint

So, I was thinking...

[Jake swallows a mouthful of apple, then does a gesture to his head that's like "Oh, I almost forgot".]

Jake, by the way. I was in the Wilderlands for a solid three minutes, I am sure we've been missing each other a lot. I was also about to punch the Jersey Devil in the jaw, but then some girl did...Ah, forget it, let's get back on topic.

I was thinking: since this place is very high stakes and we gotta defend it otherwise our own worlds are going to explode or something, if it's got this much power then maybe we can create a whole new world? Fetch some of our loved ones if we need to, [he's thinking about Sherry but he won't say it, of course.] take them there, then nuke the shit out of whatever we came from and make some fat stacks with our tragic backstory. It's fiction, after all.

Any fellow business minded genius wanna join in? 'Cause that's what I'm gonna do.

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ninjavampire

All right, people. I’m going through the archives of this place to convert all the parchment confetti into indexable data sheets.

You can thank me later for saving you all the headache.

[ The vibe of this is an 8 AM Stand-Up Meeting rather than a gathering of guardians. The video's pov is from his lab, which in addition to the completed gigacomputer, was beginning to have half-finished little magitech doohickeys scattered in sparse nooks of free space. The amount of spiderbots seems to have been left at one (1) so far.]

First item: Mission debriefs. If you've fought any dark forces recently and have extra concerning details to share, we should write it down instead of keeping it in our heads.

Second: Current Projects. Anyone who's a friend to reindeer - you ought to talk to Phil and do him a solid for all the holiday prep. For the science nerds lurking around, I’d like to borrow your brains over here.

[ He'd normally have Lyla take care of this, but he's stuck with non-sentient computers. He hates it! ]

Last: Introductions for the new kids. And universe number, if your world has one of those - the chalkboard maps are getting digitized. I'll start.

My name is Miguel O'Hara, Spider-Man of Nueva York. No, they aren't vampire fangs. [ tired hand wave, as if recapping for the millionth time. ] I‘ve been mopping up messes in my neck of the multiverse until getting picked for fairy-tale duty with the rest of you.

credit_not_blame

[Huh, Crowley's a demon? Or an ex-demon, maybe? Well, that's interesting. The sight of him definitely didn't fill Stacia with the nigh-overwhelming Rage she'd felt when she'd encountered demons back in the year following her First Change. And, judging by the fact that no one else had needed to be pinned down at the sight of him, he didn't trigger the Rage in any of the other Garou. Still, she's responsible for them, and that means keeping them from doing stupid shit.]

[So she kicks off a private message thread to the other three:]

I assume no one has somehow managed to hide the results of a murderous Frenzy from me?

I mean, I'm super impressed if you did, but please don't. It's a lot easier to cover our collective butts and make sure we don't get yote into the arctic circle if I know about things.

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branchifer

Okay, did you guys know people in this world make stuff of some of us? Apparently the yetis make toys of us on their own if none exist but also imitate ones that do exist if kids want them.

[Branch is hopping along a table of merch that is meant to mimic exactly the merch of him in stores. A lot of it is actually bigger than he is. He shows off the dolls with his tiny little wrist comm. They look even weirder at that perspective.]

Now that I know they're not ritual effigies, the toy thing is kind of funny. Weird, but funny.

Look at this. Look.

[He holds up his comm so the camera picks up some absolutely hideous toys.]

Like, who is this guy? I wouldn't even know who this was if it wasn't labeled with my name. Like, some random guy from the village maybe. I've never dressed like that in my life.

[He points the camera at another.]

This one is the closest to actually looking like me and it still has the random skull symbol hair thing. What's up with that? [A pause as his face comes back in view. It screws up in thought.] ...Okay, actually I don't hate it.

[Because even though he's a much happier person than he once was, he's still slightly an edgelord. Just slightly.]

[He looks upward and similar skull designs suddenly appear in his own hair, thanks to his ability to change its color. Maybe that explains why some of the dolls have black hair and some have blue (if manufacturing inconsistencies aren't to blame).]

[(It's actually not but he's not about to explain the subtleties of troll coloration when it comes to emotional state.)]

Seriously, you should check it out, and see if the yetis made stuff based on you. It's hilarious.

[ooc: If none exists IRL, people can make up imaginary merch, though all merch at the Pole would be for kids or teens. The stuff made purely by the yetis would largely be decent-looking and accurate, uglier stuff would be based on designs existing in the game world because well, that's what the kid pointed at in the store. Googling themselves would produce other merch for other demographics, as well as let people find out about any internet fandom. People can feel free to thread hop a lot because the point of this is probably going to be a lot of pointing and laughing.]

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thismaskismybadge

[ Now she's out of her suit, Gwen is wearing a sweater that's visibly hanging off her shoulders to show the straps of the tank underneath, and some leggings. She is, however, still wearing her web-shooters and her dud of a multiverse-traversing watch on her wrists alongside the magic watch. ]

Hi, I'm Gwen. Otherwise known as Spider-Woman, but, well, you don't have to call me that. [ beat, visible thought, ] Probably don't, actually, it'd be kind of weird when you already know my real name.

Anyway.

I'm just, you know. [ she shrugs ] Curious. About a couple things. First, how many people here have done the whole multiverse song and dance before? Because there's at least a few of you, I know that.

Second, do like. Any of you that aren't Spider-Man yourself, or Loki who's already kinda answered this one, have a superhero called Spider-something in your world? Spider-Man, Spider-Woman, Spider-Girl, Spider— any noun, really. We get a lot of variety, if I tried to list even the most common ones we'd be here all day.

[ Call it her testing a theory. She's got some thoughts swirling around up in that head of hers. ]

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