Shadows of the Empire | Avarice and Tone
"Unsafe." she mumbled. A woman in her apartment screamed, a wooden timber falling upon her. She looked up into the sky and a smoking flare spat from her chest, seeking the uppermost floor of a building. it consumed it from the top down, glass panes and metal walkways dissolving like candle wax under wicker heat. Those within were carried, deposited within the boundaries of safety. "They're... not safe." a tanker erupted into flames, thermal charges igniting a pressurised payload; turning the container into an improvised thermobaric. Invisible hands tied space in to a self-completing knot, the eruption coiling within an isolated pocket of reality, burning over and over until she released the loop high in the sky, a fireball momentarily overtaking her view. "I'm safe." she planted one foot on the ground and tore at something in the air, hands pressing upon either side of a door. The street elongated, twisted and ruptured. Concrete skeletons and sheets of metal curled up into singularities and expanded into vast planes, a billion billion segments coming alive. She shoved one palm forward, and suddenly the other end of the road seemed to stretch on. She clenched her fist and the earth began to shift. The pavement was warped into structures; roofs and shells, forming a gargantuan floating canopy over the street, a sheath of endlessly stretched existence folding over it as protection. She swept her hand over a segment of the city and a block of buildings washed away like water, smudging and ripping as if smeared across an invisible canvas. People flew out of whatever openings existed. Vents enlarged to accommodate men. Slivers of window turned to gaping holes. She deposited a dozen, a hundred, a thousand in one place, and then watched in silence as a shockwave washed over another part of the city, a skyscraper folding inward as every window, every support shattered and snapped: a cataclysmic act of murder, accommodated by the mortality of men. She felt something brewing in her heart. Something warm, fuzzy and not at all altruistic. Press it down. Don't let it spill over.
A blast. A cascade of hatred. A battle, fought between two parties. "Keep them safe". it was a request, not a command. It was directed at this lone soldier, his name... unknown to her. She cared enough to believe in him, nonetheless. She had to. If the common mind were not decent, then... what was she striving for? What was this? The result of logical men and women; kind people looking to embetter their families, creating such apocalyptic scenarios, it was... dissonant. A note played, clashing with the chord that she'd been hearing. If it was melody or discord, she could not yet tell. Bang. Boom. A laser punched through her arm. She hadn't noticed the movement. Or was it the world that moved underneath her? A group of men, energy weapons in hand, fired upon her. A dropship deposited its payload around them, a dozen invisible men encroaching. The emperor's acolytes did not see them. AEGIS' reavers fired all at once, each shot made with lethal intent. The space between them and their targets went from a metre to a mile. She put her hand down, body shaking. "Why?" it was a demand, not a question. "Why are you..." a man spoke up, dressed in red and black. "The First Order must bring unity to the galaxy. Xenos, must be... removed! They are filthy, and- and- my family was taken advantage of because of them. They are- disgusting. I must... I must kill them!" a soldier breathed an answer, trembling as their mind tried to resist the temptation to speak. "AEGIS must stand tall in the face of oblivion. We must secure our diplomatic channels. We must prioritise our world. These terrorists' lives are... forfeit, in the face of what our world could gain with their deaths. We must protect. we must... serve." her grip tightened, though she did not understand what was compelling them to speak. "How do I stop this?!" they spoke in unison. "You must destroy the enemy. We must find them wherever they are, and tear out their roots. We must... survive. We must... protect what is ours." a woman mumbled; "my daughter". A man spat; "my wife". Avarice stood as they mentally declared their allegiances and their desires, their every thought. And, above it all, their desire to see this conflict through.
"I think I understand. I think I know. You all chose to be here. You're all choosing to fight." she reached out and let rebar rip itself loose from its holdings, breaking free of concrete vices and iron ropes. "You don't have the choice anymore. I won't let you kill one another." their limbs and bodies were encased in metal, transported to the street she'd formed earlier. Their weapons turned to slag, their minds blanked. Avarice's intent, her decision, so monumental a force - and so monumental a consequence of what she'd seen - that it broke loose of her intended effect. All around the city fighters fell down, paralysed with eyes gleaming red. One in a million, perhaps, but enough for the few who were affected to understand. Agency had become a progenitor of sin. And so, Avarice would take it wherever she saw it being abused. A whirling maelstrom rose into the sky, a spinning funnel of black gas and detritus. There was no wind, only the absence of it. Everything was pulled toward a woman draped in voided fabrics, a young and newly learned consciousness brewing inside a mortal body. The endangered, the sick, the bereaved, the fighting; they were swept away on winds of time, placed in a reservoir of life. Those under Avarice's canopy were her responsibility, and she would not let them come to harm; nor allow them to cause it to each other. That feeling returned, a burning sensation in the pit of her stomach.
Avarice learned anger, and her eyes looked upward to the skies.
Dead Man's Party | Avenoir and Mnemosyne
"No problems here." "I'm good, whatever happens." The man and his imaginary friend took their maps, the manager's generally cooperative tone rather surprising the more male of the two. He was awfully quiet about the ongoings. Hadn't moved from his spot, hadn't tried to make his own way out. The guests were all caught up in their neuroses, that Marcus'd forgotten that there were those who might stay behind to try to control the situation. And right now, that man sitting at the front desk was trying to get them all out. He appreciated it, and he smiled at him in gratitude. Mnemosyne gave him a thumbs up. Both gestures were stipends for his stress, perhaps, but each of the deliverers considered it an acknowledgement of his assistance nonetheless.
Oh wow. That's pretty poetic. What was I talking about again? Nem cleared her head of errant thoughts. She found it hard to focus upon anything, with all these new sensations coming back to her. Sure, she'd existed as a mental abstraction for only a few days - she'd spent more time in realspace than without, in fact - but everything still felt unnatural. Every movement, every feeling was wrong, somehow. Her reflection seemed to be different each time she looked, and for some reason, she always believed her arms to be longer than they really were. Perhaps it was body dimorphism. Perhaps it was just her being an absolutely senile bastard. Oh, and there she went again; thinking about trivial nonsense. The corridors they traversed were largely barren, sans a few stains and guests. Most of the hotel's clientele were level headed (read: concerned about their posh appearances) enough to have stayed within their rooms or found places to sit down and be quiet, but a few others had decided upon conducting a clandestine war of chaos upon the staff. Every now and then they stumbled upon articles of clothing, ripped up wallpaper, knocked over ornaments and broken lights. She swore that a man streaked through the hallway in the corner of her eye, but dismissed it as soon as the thought came. She did not want to spend any of her physical existence looking at dongs.
"So Katya; does this sort of thing happen often? I mean, pardon my line of questioning, but it seems kind of strange that you'd take us all out for a stay like this. You only know us through Miria, after all. What's your job, if I may ask?"
"Pardon my partner. If the phrasing of that question offends you (wink wink nudge nudge), I have another thing I need to ask. Are you an interdimensional traveller, like Polly? You're pretty familiar with non-humans, and you mentioned your familiarity with danger just now. Seems like you've got a pretty prolific travel portfolio."
Polly, in the bowels of the establishment, was having a much better time despite her dimmer surroundings. Down here on the lower levels, there really wasn't much to disrupt her walk. It was decorated, yes, but not made for habitation. All the suites were upstairs, along with all the customers whilst the staff ran around trying to contain the situation. Though, to be honest, there didn't seem to be much of a situation to begin with - unless smoking indoors was cause for alarm. Actually, it might be, she supposed. It could be a fire hazard. she took the scanner from Miria's hands, careful not to damage or stain the device. She held up the fluorescent screen, letting its back glide against the walls as the smell of gas grew ever more noxious. "Thanks, Miri. And yes, I can hold it. I'm not sure if this building uses iron pipes, but the rivets and instruments surrounding them should give us a reading anyway."
Eventually, after many shenanigans and wonderful adventures through space and time, the two girls found what they were looking for. A short, stout wooden door stood in the middle of a corridor wall, a brass plate upon its simply reading "maintenance". A short, if not very descriptive name. They pushed through, revealing a dimly lit sublevel. The smell here was overpowering; the walls were grungy and marred by years of wear, the stone covered in little pockmarks where bubbles of air had been trapped in the concrete's casting. They stepped out of the warm lights of the hotel, its lush and wonderful aesthetic merely its outward appearance, and emerged into a world of dull greys and white LEDs. The power was working, at least. Polly held up her tablet, grimacing at the odour, even as a series of telltale readings came through. "That's what we're looking for." she clutched a sleeve to her nose, imagining that it made things a little more bearable. In all honesty she had to admit that it did nothing - not even a hint of placebo - yet she continued to do it anyway out of reflex. A dense cluster of pipes lay in the corner of the room, a roughly donut shaped chamber many dozens of metres long, with offshoots leading into the darker, more labyrinthine parts of the building. "There you are, baby." she knelt in front of the complex mechanism, putting a hand to each joint; trying to feel for a disconnect. The aroma of natural gas was most pungent here, as was the dizzying effect that such gasses produced at these concentrations. "I don't really know what's wrong with it, so, if you could help me look for a broken part that'd be a big help. Maybe we can activate the ventilation, try to get rid of the gas that's already out. That's probably a more urgent issue than fixing the source, honestly."
