SILENT HORIZON - [Part 2: Facing the Faceless/Escape] [modplot]

[letsgolegion]

Who| Everyone in Silent Horizon plot
What| Fighting the Faceless, a perilous escape, and a chance to have a breather
Where| In the In-Between, the Silent Horizon, and then the Legion Cruiser
When| Chronologically, only hours have passed in the outside world from when the team disappeared, but it's up to players whether their characters perceived it as being hours or days
Warnings/Notes| Gore, blood, body horror, all the usual


They hear the voice again, calling out to them. Not the Faceless, not the dark whispers of this world. It's the same tinny voice that warned them, that told them not to give into the Faceless' offer. It's the voice that told them their Phalanxed teammates can still be saved if the Faceless is killed in time before they die.

It calls out again. Wherever they are, whatever the landscape is doing, they can hear it.

"I know you have no reason to trust me. I know you've been probably hearing lots of voices in this place, telling you all kinds of things. But I'm trying to help you. There's a way to end this, to stop the Faceless. Just follow my voice. My language synthesizer is broadcasting in the telepathic range like telepathic earplugs and I've managed to reconfigure it to broadcast through the entire In-Between. You should be hearing it wherever you are and you should be able to use its broadcast strength to navigate. I think I've managed to secure it from the Faceless and his Phalanx but there's no way to be sure."

How loud the voice is changes as they get closer or farther away. They can use it to navigate, albeit very crudely. And now that it's clearer, it's far more recognizable: it's the voice of the Robotican in the horrible footage that played before they were taken -- the one that had his head knocked off.

"My name is N-45LEN/Keth Series. My organic crewmates call --" He pauses, and sounds distraught. "--called me Lenny. I was a crew member of the Silent Horizon. This entire dimension is called the In-Between. It's made up of the body of the Faceless and I'm currently trapped at its core. I can see you Legionnaires from here through...what appears to be some kind structure for processing what equates to ocular stimuli for the Faceless. If any of you get lost, I can see enough to guide you here."

If they need it, they'll find that he can give them individualized directions, no matter what the landscape does, and he can give them to multiple people simultaneously. Having a complex processor for a brain has its perks.

"My organic teammate and I managed to discover the core of the Faceless and its nature, but I'm currently incapacitated and Bob...he just lost it. He nearly destroyed what was left of me and ran off before we could stop the Faceless. I saw him eventually accept the Faceless' offer and turn. If you make it here where I am, you may be able to destroy the Faceless' body enough to kill him, save your teammates, and destroy this dimension once and for all."

A pause.

"And if you could maybe take me with you when you leave, uh, I would appreciate that. Like, a lot."

[ooc post here]

Comments

FACING THE FACELESS

[letsgolegion]

Finding the core of the Faceless is a lot easier when they have guidance. Some way or another, they find a massive, twisted fortress at the center of it all, converging where many of the organ-like structures meet up. It's clear that dimensional space around the fortress is shifting and changing, as if this is the central engine of this strange, shifting, sprawling dimension.

Inside, there's a cavernous circular space with a bone throne in the center and oozing walls that undulate, covered in criss-crossed blood vessels. In some places, blood oozes out of the walls, leaving an ankle-deep pool over the entire floor of the cavern. In many places in the walls there are beating hearts, in half-open ribcages, all of them beating in unison, loudly. It's clear from the bloodflow in the walls that these hearts are attached to everything in this little world.

Over the bone throne is a strange shifting window attached to nerves that has some similar structures to the human eye and part of the brain. Its fragmented view shows locations all over the In-Between -- it's this structure that N-45LEN used to guide them here.

This is the center of the Faceless' entire being. The core of his body and the central point of this dimension are one and the same.

Thanks to their own efforts, or Len's guidance, or the strange shifting nature of this place, they all arrive at the same time, through the many entrances that lead in.

N-45LEN -- who is just a robot head -- lays on an outcropping of bone, where he was bashed and thrown by his insane teammate Bob. Despite being damaged, he is still intact enough that his processors are still firing.

"You made it! We can still save your teammates. The Faceless bragged about how Phalanxing works to Bob. If your teammates haven't bled to death from their transformations you can still save them if you kill the Faceless first."

Maybe he couldn't save most of his own crew but after everything he's been through, Lenny wants to save theirs, especially since he's watched them struggle.

"You have to act quickly, before he finds you here! Destroy his hearts! He can't be hurt physically -- he just regenerates his body out of the flesh and blood of the In-Between. But I can see on more spectrums than organics -- the hearts only look like hearts on the visual spectrum; my scans show they're attached to the quantum fabric of this dimension. If you destroy them you'll be destroying the equivalent of his brain. It should destroy the In-Between or at least weaken him enough for an exit to open up. And please, take me with you. I'm not alone in here -- some of my fellow Robotican crewmates managed an upload to my datacore before their physical forms were completely destroyed."

You heard it right, Legionnaires. The Roboticans are alive.

"There are 55 of us in all."

Even for those without functioning powers, there are plenty of sharp bones to destroy the hearts with. There sure are a lot of them, though. Enough that the entire team will have their hands full. And those hands are about to get even fuller.

"Too late," says a voice and the Faceless himself swoops out of the shadows. "Naughty, naughty little robot. I overlooked you. I always do have trouble with sensing and transforming inorganics. But I did sense the entire Legion showing up on my metaphorical doorstep. And I brought friends."

Their Phalanxed teammates heard their master's call and they're here now, along with many other nightmare creatures.

He holds a long-fingered hand to his chest.

"I offer you a gift, something that will spare you from It. Maybe if you see, you'll understand."

All of a sudden, they all see it, hear it, smell it, feel it, slamming into them like a wrecking ball. A memory. They see a vision of a world made of flesh, but it's not as ugly as this place. There are plants and trees and machines and homes that are all organic, that blend in and out of each other symbiotically, and maybe it's not beautiful by the standards of many species, but it's clearly considered beautiful to the people that live there -- the Faceless is only one of many. And those many can warp dimensional fabric -- a gift they use to shape their world and view other dimensions. And just like their flesh blends, so too do their minds, through a form of telepathy.

They lived and died, and loved and hated, and built and destroyed, like any other species. But mostly they loved, and mostly they built, and mostly they cared for each other. But then It came.

In the memory, strange crystalline eye-creatures float in the orbit of every inhabited world in their universe and all their powers and technology can do nothing to banish them. Its Heralds come and sow chaos. The Legionnaires can see two of them, their bodies glowing like living photo-negatives, destroying a city. One is dressed like a clown, cackling maniacally, the other is a long-haired woman armed with a sword, cutting down everyone she sees. The Faceless' fellow flesh-people scream and cry telepathically and try to destroy the Heralds with their reality-warping powers, but they come back again and again somehow.

In orbit around The Faceless' world is where Chronoblivion breaches like a whale, breaking through reality. The sky rips open and they see the Bleed, the nothing-space between dimensions, lacking in light or color -- not dark, not bright, not anything. They can't see Chronoblivion Itself because the Faceless' mind could not comprehend him, but light radiates out from the breech, and...

It deletes the world.

The rays are like the white-nothing blast of an atomic bomb, in colors that don't even exist outside of nuclear fire and the strange isotopes within it that only briefly flash in and out of existence. The rays cut through everything, but destroy it piecemeal instead of all at once. The Faceless' people scream their telepathic screams as they're made into nothing.

The nightmare-vision fades and while their heads are still ringing, Faceless speaks to them.

"Chronoblivion chose me to be one of Its Heralds but the reality-altering nature of my peoples' powers were...incompatible. It twisted me. This is what I am now, always hungry like It is. I managed to slip away, into the Bleed, the nothing-space between worlds, and whenever I can latch onto something drifting into a material universe, I add to my biomass. Whether it's by soul or flesh, you'll be mine. Trust me, it's much better than being destroyed by It -- at least you'll still be a part of something bigger than yourselves. Isn't that what you heroes are all about?"

And then the monsters attack. Time to get with the stabbin'.

Roland Deschain - phalanxed

[ka_sera_sera]

Been a long time since he worked with a team. In a team, he remembers, each member serves its own small purpose. His purpose is to protect the two hearts he feels beating behind him. One is about twelve feet up and a couple feet to his right, the other three feet off the ground, directly behind his legs. With every beat of them the vines curled around the remains of his face, the leaves sitting in the cavity of his chest, seem to beat, too, color shining a little more wetly on the petals of the rose growing there. The color overflows every now and then and splats down onto the toes of his boots.

Pale blue eyes peer around from about the vicinity of what was once his chin, picking out a target. The hand he raises to that target looks, from a distance, like it's wearing fingerless gloves - blood pumps sluggishly out from the place the flesh sits sagging around his knuckles. With that hand, he pulls. The ability the Legion gave to him seems the most appropriate way to save them, pull their power out from them and their energy out from them and from his other hand pour that stolen energy into the Faceless.

Perhaps Roland can steal a little, weaken whatever Legionnaire stands before him, before they find a way to break the concentration it takes for him to do this. Or perhaps he won't be quick enough. Or perhaps they'll want to talk, instead. If they seem distractable, hesitant in any way, the mouth set low in Roland's throat will open and he will speak to them, in whatever words come to him first.

"Stop this foolishness. You know as well as I do we both took an oath."

Kubo and Sariatu - defending

[bachido]

"I'm sorry for you," Kubo said, when he'd understood the Faceless' story.

But he still strummed a powerful chord on his shamisen, his paper floating around him at the ready. He'd timidly journeyed through the Faceless' land of horror, seen what the Chronoblivion had made of it, and the story would never leave his mind. No matter how much he'd wish that it would.

"But you are doing to my friends what the Chronoblivion did to you, and I can't let them die like this."

And more than that - he'd fought and snuck and labored his way through the Faceless's mass, and somewhere in that horrible pit of suffering, he'd found his mother again.

Now she was ready, with the Sword Unbreakable to kill the creature that had separated them, and Kubo was ready with everything he had to protect her while she did.

"Stop this now, and let them go. They don't belong here any more than I do."

With his mother alive, nothing could convince him he belonged anywhere but at her side.

He didn't want to regret this story, and he would regret if it ended with the Faceless' death, instead of its healing. But if the choice was between it and his friends - and especially, between it and his mother - Kubo knew which ending he would rather live with.

Still - he held out a spark of hope that the Faceless could choose right.

He held his bachi, ready to defend his mother at her work, just as hard.

Locus (and zombie!Felix) - phalanxed

[agnominal]

Locus is there, but barely seems present at all. He's retreated and let something else take command, a ragged figure in broken scout armor perched atop his back, and using the chains winding about his limbs and throat to puppet him forward to attack.

Massive hands swipe to knock down anyone who stands in their way as he barrels forward, something dark oozing from the jagged, teeth-filled gash of his mouth. There's none of his usual fighter's grace, just brutal movement and the intent to tear apart anything he can lay hands on.

Just make it end. Bring it all to an end.

When these desperate tactics seem to fail him he retreats into shadow, vanishing. Waiting for one of the other monsters to lure the Legionnaire's in, to capture their attention, to allow him to bear in from behind. Best to keep an ear out during any of the fights for the tick-tick-tick of that gear embedded in his back, or the raking of chains as the corpse on his back reins him into action all over again.

Sombra — not a spooky

[vata]

She isn't sorry.

This? This is what she saved her ammunition for. Her anger for. The last few depleted pools of energy left in burned-out circuitry and her muscles alike: no pretense, no innocuous habits played up to make her seem like less of a threat. Sombra hardly glows as she flits around the battlefield, translocator teleporting her to safety each time her digital camouflage fails. It works to her advantage, that lack of brightness— even the fluorescent streaks of white in her hair are so matted with blood and dull from lacking energy— that she can make for the shadows any time something (or someone) wanders too close.

Her primary target? The hearts. Only the hearts.

Her still-living teammates can fend for themselves, as far as she's concerned. A neglible loss, an appropriate distraction, she's already spent every bought resource in her arsenal except for one— Cortana— who's housed inside her own cybernetics. If someone else falls in the process of taking this thing down, it's not her problem anymore.

She came here to finish this.

And with a burst of fired rounds from her SMG, puncturing another heart with a wet, agonizing burst of blood, she likes to think she is. Even as the distressed shouting of her peers echoes not-so-distantly in the background.

Pidge - On Offense

[isthisapidge]

So the Chronoblivion is another Galra. Another Zarkon. Another megalomaniac trying to claim a universe that didn't belong to it just because it could, and because it could, who cared about how many lives it ruined in the process. Whatever sympathy she had for the unfortunate absorbed into the mass of flesh had to wait, not with her teammates lives on the line.

Pidge was already ignoring it before it finished it's thought, aiming her attention and bayard at the hearts. But a bayard is not an efficient weapon for destroying targets one at a time. It's slow firing. It sticks. It takes time to retract.

And that leaves her vulnerable.

LENNY'S HEAD

[whyarewehere]

[OOC: Plum did get the RNG for this, but she suggested Grif starting with Lenny on plurk so that's what we're doing!]

Grif is on his last legs. He supposes that's lucky, because it looks like some of the people on this ship have come out of the experience with entirely too many of those. He's limping by the time he reaches the Faceless's apparent throne room. He's been running almost the entire time they've been aboard, he's exhausted and the only thing propelling him now is adrenaline.

He doesn't want to deal with seeing reality bent and broken by transdimensional horrors right now. He doesn't want to deal with anything at all. Fuck this.

Grif comes out of the Faceless's memory with ears ringing and head pounding, and his eyes settle on two points of light in the murky chamber.

To his right, lying suspended on a pair of bony prongs sticking out of the wall, is Lenny's head.

"...Please tell me you're going to pick me up?"

Shit, he has a job to do, doesn't he? Fuck jobs. But Grif still grabs Lenny with a sweaty, blood-grimed hand.

Oaths really are bullshit.

"C'mon dudes," he says. There are fifty-five of them in there and they are all "dude" to him. He tucks it under his arm like a football.

As soon as he does, something moves.

The prongs that were holding Lenny jut forward as a phalanx creature peels itself out of the wall, leaving what looks like a bloody internal mess in its wake as Grif staggers back. Its sightless head remains trained on Lenny, and it opens its maw to screech.

Fuck.

Grif takes off in a circuit around the room, nearly bouncing off Legionnaires phalanxed and non as the beaked creature tries to close with him. Grif's fast, but he's tired. His nerves are basically shot. And as a bonus, Lenny's apparent guardian is after him on seven legs because honestly, why wouldn't it be?

He wants to say something biting to Lenny, something like "your buddy needs to fuck off!" but he's already panting and can't afford to.

Then he trips.

Lenny sails through the air and the beaked creature comes to a hault over Grif, watching it with an almost curious tilt of its eyeless head.

Someone has to grab that. Someone. Anyone. Grif sees a figure in brown armor.

"MONTANA! CATCH!"

The creature's four front claws are on either side of Grif's head. If this gets its attention back and it kills him, they can say he died saving fifty-five people. At least there are worse eulogies.

Victor & Miku - Screaming and Colliding With Monsters

[the_real_sir_prize]

After the day he's had, Victor would really have preferred not to have another vision that leave him trying to vomit up the contents of an empty stomach while kneeling in a puddle of blood. He's exhausted and terrified and covered in substances better not even thought about much less discussed.

But he doesn't want to die here and he's not alone anymore. Specifically, he's not alone with someone with whom he could do more than scream out warnings. He staggers to his feet and then kneels down so that a certain someone can climb onto his back.

"Let's keep the monsters off of everyone else!" he says, shooting a quick glance over his shoulder to make sure nothing's coming from behind.

spooky ghost appearing as himself but spookier

[fantasmaniac]

Even when his mind is easily controlled, summoned, he knows that deep inside the sticky pit of miasma and smoke that he still resists being ordered around. Things are done his way, even if the outcome of it ultimately remains the same. Even as he oozes out from the pores of the closest wall, he's slow and seems to be purposely taking his time.

His favorite tactic is element of surprise. Flank the target, keep quiet as possible, then rush them when they least expect it. He stalks his prey, and tirelessly pursues them until their energy gives out and succumb to his attack. At least, that's the idea.

THE ESCAPE

[letsgolegion]

After the Faceless dies a screaming death and dissolves like flesh in acid, the Phalanxed Legionnaires drop like puppets with their strings cut. The transformation back is a gruesome one -- they suddenly lose the pacifying voice in their heads telling them everything that happened to them is alright and natural. The blood and horror around them stops looking normal and beautiful. For a single horrific moment they are themselves again, realizing how twisted and malformed their bodies are and how twisted and malformed their thoughts just were to match. The Faceless' black blood either seeps out of their bodies like an oil slick or they cough it up. Others vomit black sludge so much that it's hard to tell where they kept it all.

The more extreme the mutation, the more extreme the transformation back. Some will find it quick and uncomfortable, but not as bad as it could be. Others will spend several minutes in absolute agony as bones shift and reconfigure and unnecessary appendages snap and fall off.

When they finally change back, all of them will be dizzy from blood loss. Some might need help escaping. Others might even pass out and need to be carried.

The In-Between starts to shake and fall apart. They can all feel the tug of the exit calling out to them, as if the Faceless' dying body is trying to expel them as some kind of irritant.

Reality shifts and starts to break down, halls and walls crumble, bridges snap, and blood vessels burst open. The more they run, the more this place looks like the inside of a body. Even the final corridor leading out of the In-Between and onto the bridge of the Silent Horizon looks like the interior of a throat. The closer they get to the final corridor -- and the Silent Horizon -- the more reliably their powers will work again.

At the end of it lies salvation -- at least until the Silent Horizon starts to blow apart, too. Without the Faceless holding the derelict together, it starts to fall apart, doomed to eventually fall into the nearby sun. Even when the group is free of the In-Between, they'll have to hightail it to the Legion Cruiser in its docking bay, and have to do that thing where they run down exploding hallways looking cool in slow motion, helping each other as the ship blows to smithereens around them.

Though there are many different shifting paths to get out, if they work together to escape the crumbling pocket universe and the monsters, and then the exploding Silent Horizon -- they might have a chance.

Roland Deschain

[ka_sera_sera]

He's up and walking before it's finished. Stumbling. Whether or not the mouth traveling up his throat and climbing his jaw is screaming is an unimportant question. What is important is getting out. He tightens his grip on the shattered end of some bone sticking out from the wall, can't help but notice the noise as the tip of his trigger finger grinds against it, bone on bone.

Nevermind.

Nevermind what's happening to his body, nevermind the whimpering moans coming out his mouth now, nevermind that inane curiosity about just where that mouth is located now, exactly. It's especially important not to pay any mind to that. What matters is making his body, whatever it's doing just now, work, and he does. Doesn't focus well enough to see reality twisting around in front of him, though, the first he notices his path is blocked is when he stumbles on a bunched up ring of muscle and looks down and sees a Legionnnaire below him.

Focus. What matters is that he can't get through the archway, or whatever it is, from this angle. The opening is low to the ground and he, for reasons he can not afford to examine too closely, is standing on the ceiling. He reaches out, leftover blood pooled around the flesh bunched up around his knuckles raining all a sudden down toward the other Legionnaire's head and shoulders.

"Help me," is what comes out of him first, a rasping, pointless sentence. "Pull me down." There's the more useful one, simple, direct. Focusing only on what needs to be done.

Locus

[agnominal]

The corpse version of Felix that had been perched on his back? Simply vanishes, as if he never was at all. Locus doesn't have that luxury.

Instead he collapses forward, gripping at the ground as his body reshapes and retreats, the bony gear and chains falling away and slipping out from under his skin, and the organic growths over his armor peeling away. The undersuit beneath is a black-slick ruin, and he's lost his helmet somewhere along the way, but he barely seems aware of that fact.

Or anything, really.

Even once the transformation is complete and it's definitely Locus sitting there, he doesn't move. Doesn't respond. He'd thought it was over, and the things he'd seen...things he'd done...

They were better off without him. The Faceless hadn't been lying on that count.

He belonged here. Even as the In-Between started to collapse and fall apart, there was no sign that Locus was voluntarily going anywhere.

York & Delta

[goddamngrenades]

It'd been agonizing, the turning, but it'd been gradual. Cocooned as he is in wires and pulsing veins York hasn't so much as moved since Cortana locked Delta away in his own little corner of his brain, distant enough to give York peace of mind, close enough to keep him from feeling entirely abandoned. But changing back? Within the confines of his digital prison Delta coils and curls and shrieks in fragments of code-

York is left to feel every wire retract, every vein burning as it peels it's way back through his body to the implant site. After a few gargling moments when he thinks he can move- needs to shove himself over enough to hack up buckets of black bile- he clears his throat and screams. No morphine, no healing unit, no deeply wound code to divert the pain and he must feel every inch for every moment it takes for him to become, well, him again. For the thing that had been Delta to be banished from their systems and leave him a collapsed, shuddering mess on the meaty floor.

Running- running isn't happening. He doesn't think he could stand.

Stephen Strange TW: Body horror

[strangebargains]

And then it hits.

Suddenly his mind snaps back to reality, and it is Not. Good.

Stephen is suddenly and viscerially aware of how wrong everything is and feels. He's not...in a human shape at all, he's made of bones and there's far too many legs and WHERE ARE HIS HANDS--

--the gore around him doesn't bother him as much as the fact that he'd let himself succumb to this beastly place. He let it in, he'd failed. Despaired.

And right now, he was choking back horror and--and--black stuff--

--it gushes out of his beak and between the bone plates and everywhere and then the pain hit--

--he hit the ground as his body twisted and reformed, cracking noises as he yelled in pain--it felt like he was being torn in half, being pulled apart, his muscles on fire, his bones breaking--extra legs snapping off, his scythe-hands splitting back into soft, damaged human ones, the beak on his face just falling off and clattering to the ground like a mask. Black stuff was leaking from his now-human mouth and nose, just gushing, but that was secondary to the pain.

--passing out was a thankful welcome. He could only hope for someone to drag him out of there before it was too late.

THE AFTERMATH

[letsgolegion]

After the crew gets on board, the huge Legion Cruiser disengages just in time to fly away. Through the windows, they can see the Silent Horizon fall into the nearby star, compacting down to an insanely small size because of the gravity and then exploding.

(Good riddance.)

The Legion support staffers waiting on the Cruiser take care of them, buzzing Legion World to let them know injured team members are incoming and offering first aid or setting up the more severely injured team members on advanced medical beds with automated emergency care robotics.

On the Legion Cruiser, the Legionnaires can finally take a breather, get patched up or use the automated beds for their more threatening injuries, get cleaned up in the showers, and check on each other. Though they're far out on the fringes of UP space, it's only a few threshold gate jumps back to Legion World and that gives them a little time to get their shit together before they get there.

Locus

[agnominal]

There are a lot of injuries to tend to. Places where his body split open to make room for that monstrosity, oozing blood and black until he barely knew where it stopped and he started. It's obvious enough that he needs tending to that there's little time lost in getting him onto one of those beds.

He doesn't fight it. Doesn't do much but letting the robotics do their work, patch him up, seal his wounds and give him leave to go clean himself off. After that...

What comes after that?

What comes after seeing the sins of your life laid out behind you in a bloody trail? What follows having mind and body invaded by some malevolent, devouring force and still feeling like you were probably in better hands with it than on your own?

You thought you got to just up and leave that all behind? Shit. Thought you knew better than that.

Oh yes. Can't forget that he's still hearing that voice, despite the monstrosity that had attached itself to him technically being gone.

He does what he can to avoid the rest of the Legionnaires on the way back to Legion World. And if he can help it, he'll be able to avoid the rest of them on the way to his biome before locking himself in.

York

[goddamngrenades]

His first salient thought is that Cortana is a beast. The little cell she'd sequestered Delta in holds true even after the turning, keeping York viscerally aware of his own aches, pains, and mental isolation and just as relieved to be able to think without an audience. Little of it's kind. Less is coherent. All lizard brain aches and agreement so long as relief is offered, the robotic surgery suite an odd point of familiarity in the middle of a fucking hellish experience.

Moving feels like a shit idea but- as soon as he can? He reaches back to rest a hand on his implant, eyes in the middle distance. No wires. No veins.

Just the usual hard patch of the chip and nothing else out of the ordinary. If it weren't for the bone deep ache and new bitching scars he'd think it'd never happened. Just a very real, very weird, very bloody hallucination. For the moment he's...alright. If. Rattled. He is by turns attempting humor with a rough rasp of voice or dozing, trying to put it all behind him and focus on other people from where he's laid out prone on the bed. At least until Delta attempts some manner of conversation through his cage- his reaction is immediate and uncharacteristic as it is instinctive-

He rips Delta's chip from its housing, slams it into a storage slot on his bracer, and throws that across the room to the nearest empty bed.

Pissed- yes. Betrayed? Incredibly. So callous as to want to destroy Delta? Never.

But he's done with the voice in his head and that formerly soothing wash of green.

Conneticut

[short_changed]

There's a feeling of deja vu as Connie stands by one of the windows in the ship, watching the wreckage of the Silent Horizon explode, bringing with it a bitter echo of old memories. With a soft growl she turns away, shoving the memories to the back of her mind as she looks for a way to be useful. This mission was bullshit from start to finish, and she's had more than her fill of mind games and fuckery for one lifetime already; but here in their charter away, among the wounded and the healing there's no place for her anger. Which just leaves her with the exhaustion heavy in her bones as the adrenaline leaks out of her, but sleep wouldn't be kind with the restless thoughts running through her head.

So she makes herself useful. Dressed in her undersuit Connie has taken up one of the tables in a corner of the ship to lay out the mess of her armour and weapons and starts to clean. It would be a bad idea to return home looking like the bloody mess she felt like, and the familiar routine of the maintenance was comforting. Requiring focus more than thought, it's easy to ignore everything while she works. There wouldn't be any horrors here in the familiar parts and pieces by the time she's done with them.

Sombra | Azúcar

[vata]

By the time they're back aboard the Cruiser, it's caught up with her. The exhaustion, the pain gripping her nerves— right down to the implants under her skin that've gone pitch-dark with overuse. Once everyone's alive and safely boarded, she finds a bed near the aft of the ship, sits down, and stares out into the vast expanse of space. Stains the sheets with dried blood, tacky. A ruddy, disgusting color. Nothing more than physical evidence of the memories still clinging to her skin.

She doesn't care.

For once, Sombra doesn't have anything to say. Not even to the AI still inside her head.

now just a tired old ghost man

[fantasmaniac]

Reaper hadn't bothered to linger within the crumbling mass of the ship, seeing himself out of there as fast as his wraith form could carry him. A lot of things he'd seen and done are burned into his memory, but he doesn't let the weight of it cripple him. In some ways, his actions were none too different from what he'd truly wanted to do. It's not as if killing Jack is something he'd refrained from doing out of the goodness of his heart.

Some of it, however, forces him to feel remorse. He can still remember the face she made, the bare-bone hints of anguish hidden beneath the forcibly practiced ignorance of their affiliation. It's such a bizarrely small detail, something that should've been lost within the haze of his monster brain, addled with the instincts to just devour. And yet, there it is, rising to the surface like a pesky reminder of how he'd tried to kill his only ally.

He has all the time to just sit and rest, the regeneration of his wounds already taking effect as he strips off the ruins of his clothing. The equipment managed to stay in tact, but the leather will need to be replaced. Even his mask is removed, content to let what shows of his face completely dissolve into black nothingness, as he covers most of head and face with a t-shirt that one of the support staffers had tentatively handed it to him. His hands turn over, and the shine of the glowing blue glove is the brightest thing in this room.

"...fuck."

Lena Oxton | Tracer

[zippity]

There's only so much a woman can do in a firefight full of people ten times her strength. Being faster was a perk, until you couldn't run away anymore. Everyone makes mistakes, right? That's probably what has Lena in a bed, only half-asleep thanks to the tackiness of blood making it hard to sit still.

The robotics had managed to repair most of the tears in her more vital muscles, and she was really due for a shower. Maybe after her mind stopped spinning.

She feels disgusting, and even with the accelerator sitting placidly in low-power mode beside her, its impossible to get comfortable. Or maybe it was just leftover from everything that had been happening -- her sense of time had never been the best, but its even worse now, given how much she had needed to exhaust herself to stay in the game.

Either way, its clear the normally-chipper woman is not feeling very high in spirits, but that doesn't mean she can't spare a small smile whenever someone happens to make eye contact with her. The important thing was that they'd gotten it done, and with minimal casualties.

Pidge

[isthisapidge]

Pidge's priority is to get all the gunk off her. Her second priority is to check the time. Third is to go somewhere with a window to stare out of and try to get her thoughts in order.

She was sure they'd been down there about three days or so, though it felt like a week. Any one of the things that happened down there she could have handled. The crazy shifting ship. Her friends falling victim to the disease. The dreams of her family...

Why did this happen? Who allowed this to happen? Pidge needs answers and she knows she won't get them until she gets back. The tears prick her eyes, but at this point it's more stress and overflowing emotion than any real release. She wipes her eyes, and hope she can make herself small enough not to be noticed...

For Cortana and Sombra

[prettycoolguy]

There's a flurry of activity around the bay when the Cruiser docks, and an imposing figure in a suit of armor carves straight through it. The Chief's suit is a mess, pitted and striped where acid chewed into the plates. A tech trails after him, struggling to keep up with the Spartan's long strides.

"Master Chief, you need to report to-"

John pauses and turns with his whole body, shoulders broad and head high, and looks directly at the man. He's silent. The tech, who's been trying for the last ten minutes, swallows what he was trying to say. (And, possibly, his tongue.)

"Wait," says the Chief.

The tech waits.

No one else tries to stop John as he hunts through the disembarking team, looking for one person in particular.

One person, and the Legionnaire carrying her.

SOUTH DAKOTA

[i_got_this]

For once, she's not spouting off insults and pithy remarks at any given moment. Instead, she's tucked herself in a corner, sitting on the floor with her legs drawn up, elbows resing on her knees. She's covered in blood and gore, and her armor's got some new scoring that wasn't there before.

In addition to the general exhaustion, however, she's feeling the effects of having transformed more than a few times to some pretty heavy hitting animals. What a time to find out some of the extent of the consequences for her power. She's got a raging headache, she's dizzy, may possibly throw up.

Thinking about what happened, about the dark thoughts that stuck with, made everything hurt more.

Strange

[strangebargains]

Stephen wakes up in a medical bed, clearly being tended to for blood loss and exhaustion and whatever it was that happened to him.

Oh.

He groaned, pressing the palms of his trembling hands to his eyes. What...

He was alive, at least.

The memories of the awful things he'd seen...the awful things he'd done...the awful thing he'd been...how dare he succumb to that...that thing!? How could he attack his teammates...a kid, Kubo...he felt sick to his stomach and leaned over the side of the bed, sure he was going to retch. Fortunately they must have had him on some future medication because it didn't come, and he'd already probably emptied his stomach earlier. But the disgust was on a level he'd never experienced before. Disgust at himself.

He'd sworn an oath.

Do no harm.

He looked down at his shaking hands. A flash of those horrible scythe-things they'd been.

Instruments of healing, turned killing.

He felt ill again, the sensation of not-being-in-a-human-shape was starting to weigh on him and he just felt...out of sorts. He quickly threw open the thin blanket covering him just to make sure he had proper legs. Tattered clothes, but they were there. His uniform was shredded, though. He rubbed his face involuntarily, he could still feel like he had a beak though there was nothing there...extra legs...a shudder. He wanted to forget. His failure, his weakness, what he'd done to himself...

...how could he forgive himself?