THE AMAZING BASE.

[agogemod]

WHO? Everybody!
WHAT? Welcome home, nerds.
WHEN? Outside time and space, in the aether between dimensions.
ANYTHING ELSE? There is also a fish. Please warn in subject lines for anything beyond physical violence and move to a personal journal if things go beyond PG-13.

MYSTERY FISH;

question the mystery fish

DEPARTING GALLIPOLI

The order comes the day after the Marie Antoinette sets sail:

PACK UP AND GET READY TO MOVE OUT. WE'VE DONE ALL WE CAN HERE.

DEPLOYMENT: BASE.

WE NEED TO RESTOCK. BE PREPARED FOR MORE TRANSFERS ON ARRIVAL.

STAY SAFE. TIME-STEP EXPECTED TO BEGIN WITHIN THE HOUR.

FOR THOSE OF YOU NEW TO COST: FIND A SECLUDED SPOT AND TRY NOT TO EAT ANYTHING BEFORE THE JUMP.

The Time-Step

The transfer begins like a vibrating heat on the collar bone, just a hum of sensation.

But the vibration spreads. Veteran COST soldiers often refer to this phenomenon as "the buzz". The feeling builds, not unlike standing near a great engine or the wind-rattled branches of a massive tree. There is a long moment of motion sickness and you can't be sure if the world is shaking you from the inside out or the outside in. It may be better to close your eyes against the growing nausea, as the world blurs out of focus.

A star shines in the distance. You may hear the faint rustling of leaves. Some swear they hear voices in this moment, indistinct words echoing off nothingness. Others say they feel a touch of the divine, that the eyes of the eternal look down upon you. Ancient bones rattle just out of earshot, cold and brittle and nothing more than the suggestion of sound. Or maybe it's only an illusion, brought on by the powerful technology grafted into your skin.

One thing is for sure: One moment you are here and the next you are not.

The shift takes you from whatever solitude you could find aboard the Marie Antoinette to the temperature-regulated hallway of what looks like a very poorly put together space station. Droids rush up and down the long hallway, fixing broken bits of machinery or just chattering with each other. A few crows sit on high ledges, looking down and watching. Someone mutters something about a centaur around the corner.

And you might just notice, provided you were in Gallipoli long enough to acquire stowaways, that the parasites lurking on your skin are mercifully gone.

For new arrivals who didn't experience Gallipoli: You, too, will appear in this long hallway, filled with droids and crows and humans (still filthy and clad in ANZAC uniforms, carrying battered equipment from the first World War). And you'll be wearing the minimal COST-issued athletic underwear and holding whatever one item you were allowed to bring. Surprise!

READ THE BASE INFOPAGE.

home away from home

Those who have been to BASE before may find a strangeness to it all: BASE seems...still. The windows show a verdant world instead of the usual aether (though with the typical paranoia), and the halls are bereft of all but a few crows. A man stands at the end of the long hallway you arrived in, waiting for you to get your bearings before he speaks.

Except, you know, he's not a man. He's a centaur.

"It's been barely a week since you left, by my reckoning. But for you, I'm sure, it's been much longer. Still, much has changed. You may have noticed we are...becalmed. This is due, it seems, to an error in our ways. We kept something that does not belong to us, several wild creatures that are meant to be free. They seem to have psychically called out to their home, and their home responded; we are now somewhat stranded.

"But let me explain—the Aether is the nexus between worlds and times, but it is not a dead thing. Creatures live in it. We have crashed onto the back of one such creature, a mighty beast, as large as a small country and entirely undiscovered. We have found why the creature has intercepted us: we have accidentally taken captive some of its children. Shapers, the wild creatures I mentioned, it seems they form a symbiotic bond with the creature, and live happily within its stomach."

He frowns, considering this.

"Shapers, I should mention, are creatures that briefly infested our fair BASE. The issue was dealt with, though we kept some for experimentation. The coelacanth took issue with this, it seems. It can speak, of course; we are stranded very near its head, and if you wish to ask it a question, I implore you to do so. The creature is older than creation—older than me—and only speaks once to any creature it encounters. It's said its wisdom brings kings to their knees."

His eyes crinkle in humor.

"My name is Chiron and I am the caretaker of this place, for those of you whom I have not had the pleasure of meeting. More importantly, I am a trainer and a teacher of some experience; if you wish training or schooling of any sort, do summon me. I will be happy to assist."

He's easy to contact, often found in the library, the training area, his capsule, or elsewhere in the station, attempting to fix what he understands and arguing with crows.

"We intended to spend this time exploring, for this is a rare opportunity to discover more of an entirely uncharted world. I hasten you to see if anything on the coelacanth can be of use, but be careful. Take only what you need, not what you may want. I intend to learn my lessons well; these creatures are not pets. Takes food, water, and any materials of use to us for our survival and perseverance, but no more. We task you with this: explore the coelacanth, and see what of it can be understood. Bring us back samples, but do try to interrupt the natural habitat as little as possible. We are guests here."

He bows and the action shows a slight limp in one of his back legs.

"I would join you, but I am far too old for such activities. Still, do pepper me with any questions you should encounter. I am always available on the network, or in person, within this hulking mass we call home."

And then he leaves you to find your capsules and rest.

CAPSULE ASSIGNMENTS

Once you've found your room and settled in—perhaps taken a shower, collected clothes, and eaten—a droid will approach you with camping equipment and give you a brief explanation of how to access and use the database. It's time to get your gear and go.

Of course, you can decline. You can stay and tend to the fort, maybe try and clean up this patchwork jumble of metal and machinery. But seeing the sights on the back of a giant fish flying through non-space? Who can say no to that?


the undiscovered country.

BASE's airlocks open into a lush valley, vibrant with color and rustling with life that has thrived on the coelacanth's back for millennia. It's a striking shift from the rot and gunfire of Gallipoli, unmarked by shrapnel, bombshells, and never-fresh air.

No, the air here is clean in a way that can leave you breathless, untouched by pollutants and stirred into a gentle breeze. It's a marked departure for anyone used to a more modern Earth or rough equivalent; letting the air sit on your tongue leaves a crisp, unsullied taste behind. And the whole forest feels alive, in a way that reminds you of how small you really are.

A white crow perches in a tree near BASE's exit, too high up to properly engage but a stark contrast to the bright leaves around her. She merely watches recruits come and go with a shrewd eye, feathers fluffed against the light chill. There are other crows scattered throughout the wilderness, some easier to find than others as they flit through the trees, sit on camping equipment, or hitch rides on the hoverbikes.

Besides those brief flashes of black feathers, however, you're left unsupervised.

Try not to fuck up anything too badly.

EXPLORE:INFOPAGE|DATABASE
talk to a fish | destruction report

NAV. NETWORK LOGS OOC MEMES PLURK

Comments

[reillumination]

[ There's a moment of uncertainty. From the deer, from the situation – from Ryo, who tenses at the suggestion to lead instead of follow. While Ryo had never had trouble leading back home, he'd never led others beyond his friend and those he laid upon the altar of the greater good since the knowledge of the world that is instead of the world that was settled upon his shoulders as though a heavy mantle.

He'd known blood. He'd known terror. He'd known the stage of the Earth — his Earth — had been altered, the cast thrown into disarray. Humanity as he knew it could cease to be human in mere moments — their roles shed like the swapping of costumes beyond the curtain. And so, it is not even the deer that concerns him. It is not the deer, who hesitates before drunkenly stumbling into the darkness that alarms him. It is the glimmer of a knife in the dark and the presence of the person beside him. Even if he can tell himself that the knife is for the deer, that the knife is not for him — there's the spill of trepidation and paranoia down the notches of his spine, trickling slow and steady like the spider webbing of ice under tentative feet.

Fight or flight is human instinct. The surge of adrenaline, the inevitable high one gets from a flood of unrestricted energy – Ryo's come to know the vicious rise and fall. He's come to know when to ride it, to take advantage of it — he's known when to fight and when to flee, but now he tamps it down like he would tamp down a lit cigarette. He looks to the man beside him and shakes his head once. ]

I'll be fine, [ he whispers, once the deer has gone far enough for him to feel comfortable speaking again. There is no sign of uncertainty in what he says, though his mouth quirks up a touch too sharp at one corner for it to be strictly natural. It gives the impression where he anywhere else he might have laughed it off. ] You go first. I've kept alive for this long.

[prizeneck]

Then why [he whispers back] do you sound unsure you'll "be fine"?

[He doesn't really look at the kid beside him as he dismisses so plainly the way he gave him a direction - more than a request but less than an order. If Mamoru had his sight, if he wasn't used to searching for every inflection and curve on the way the sound waves travel from chord to drum, the way someone swallows the saliva in their mouth and how their breath slides in and out before a word is uttered.

Maybe if he hadn't been used to feeling fear around him, if he hadn't been surrounded by people shrouded in their own lifestyle of persecution, guilt weighing their shoulders, he wouldn't recognize how that air feels and how it just seems to intensify on the back of the hand around the handle of the knife.

He looks up.]

I'll live longer than you if you don't do what I'm telling you to do. [With a very practiced motion, he throws the knife at a branch high, high up, far, far away. Slices it neatly.

Like breaking the lens of a security camera.

The branch falls, attracts the deer further away, ambling towards foliage and wood clacking and rustling with the drop.] Get goin'.

[reillumination]

[ It doesn't matter what the intention is.

The knife arching its way through the darkness, the way he pushes him to heed his direction — the tension in Ryo only escalates as his shoulders jump at the sound of the weapon hitting its mark, the resounding crash through the forest.

It's familiar. And then, it isn't.

There's an indiscernible mess that writhes in his gut, cuts through his breathing like breaking of glass. It's humiliating, to be underestimated in any extent. It's humiliating, to feel the amount of fear he does — even if he knows it is natural, necessary. Even if he knows he cannot trust any single person on this fucking fish, his hackles always raised in defense of what could swipe out to attack. He doesn't want to listen, he doesn't want to show his back — only idiots did that. Only those who have not seen what Ryo has seen in the past. Once one became privy to the fact that there was a way that all of humanity might be exterminated — wiped clean from the slate of creation — Ryo grits his teeth, anxiety and fury mingling along his spine, about his shoulders with equal measure.

Fine, he wants to spit. You don't need to fucking tell me what to do, he wants to bite back. But, instead, fight or flight tells him to bend its back, like a stubborn rock shoved into the shore — pried loose.

He doesn't trust. Ryo can't trust. He won't. He might take a step forward, two — three and more, but there's no way he isn't glancing back and no way he's staying even with the front of Mamoru's body. He's alert at every nerve, skin prickling and ears catching the barest brush of anything in the wilderness about them.

More than once, his thoughts scrape toward the desire for the familiar, but he can't be distracted now. Not with this at this behind him. ]

[prizeneck]

[When someone bites their tongue, they tend to swallow whatever amount of saliva pooled under their tongue and presses their lips together.

When Ryo does that, but moves anyway, Mamoru realizes he has stopped questioning about COST's recruitment policies altogether. No use crying over spilled milk, he supposes.

Still.

Hackles raised, the fur rising at the base of an animal's tail, ears pinned back, the tension in muscles and the grit of teeth. Mamoru knows the signals of trauma well, went to bed with them since he's ten years old, learned the way they feed on moments of frailty and distraction, strived on those moments between dream and awake.

He coaxed and coached them to linger at the bottom of his mind, only allowing them to give him the needed fuel to drive him to wherever he needs to go. It wasn't easy. It made his hands fill with rough skin, and then ground those calluses back to smoothness again.

It's in the way Ryo's feet fall behind him, then in front of him as he turns. He's known that tension before. He is aware that he's not exactly the most approachable kind of guy - it suits him, his job, his purpose. He knows he cuts an intimidating figure, one that he can shape into something even scarier with less than a roll of his shoulders. But even if Ryo has no reason to be nervous, not here anyway, even if he can tell there are symptoms that Mamoru could placate.

He will not.

Even in the relative safeness of their ship, he doubts he will. But for the time being, there's that variant of a deer still behind them, there are unknown fauna and flora considering them the new show in town. He's not focusing on that, as he follows, points, quietly, at a large tree in front of them.

There's a mark on the bark.] Follow the marks, always to your left. That's the way out.