agogelogs | all this energy calling me

all this energy calling me

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

TOUCH BASE;

backfill armed services echelon
COST re-appropriated vehicle 854A-5.2

read the base setting infopage

DEPARTING FRANCE

The order comes out the second day after the Tuileries is sacked:

PACK UP, 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, and it starts like a vibrating heat on the collar bone, not painful, not to start with. Just a hum of sensation. But the vibration spreads. Veteran COST soldiers often refer to this phenomena as 'the buzz'. The sensation builds, feeling not unlike standing near a great engine, or the wind rattling the branches of a great tree. There is long a moment of motion sickness, and one cannot always be sure if it is you that is shaking from the inside out, or the world that is shaking you from the outside in. It may just 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. Some swear they feel a touch of the divine; the eyes of the eternal look down upon you. Ancient bones rattle just out of earshot, cold and brittle. Or maybe it's an illusion brought on by powerful technology grafted into your skin.

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

Nausea is commonly accompanied by this shift. One moment, you're in the cold of France. The next, you're in a temperature regulated hallway, looking not unlike 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. Crows sit on high ledges, looking down, watching.

(For those of you who just apped in and didn't participate in the TDM, you'll appear alongside your comrades now, standing in this long hallway filled with droids and crows and men and women in clothing from 18th century France. Of course, you'll be wearing the minimal COST athletic issued underwear, and holding whatever one item you were allowed to bring. Surprise!)

At the end of the hall is a long table with heaps of used clothing on it. The sizes and styles vary, along with color and detail (AKA none look exactly like the linked pics, they're just a baseline, use your ~imagination~). One thing's for certain, all the clothing has been used before, with holes darned and worn edges. They're all clean, though, and each bears a single patch with the words 'KNOW YOUR RIGHTS, THE FUTURE IS UNWRITTEN' and 'COST sewn into the side.

They're not exactly high fashion, but they might be more comfortable than the late 18th century digs you're still wearing, if you showed up in France. Or, you know, the underwear.

Meet the Drill Sergeant

There is the echoing sound of hooves, and a strange creature emerges from a nearby room: a centaur. He smiles kindly, happy to see you've arrived. He has a significant limp in his back left leg, causing his hoof-beats to pitch an irregular rhythm as he walks slowly through the hall.

"Hello, all!" His voice is kind, but it's pitched to carry. "You may know me as Sergeant-- I am in technicality a drill sergeant. You may call me Chiron, if you wish, though I'm to understand some may know others with the same name." He laughs, amused. "In any case, welcome home. It is not much, but we have tried to make it hospitable for you in your time here. Your room assignments have been uploaded onto your BCEs, along with some technological upgrades we've been testing out. There are a few prototypes and experiments you may find in your rooms as well. Our agents are..." He looks up at the crows. "We are a curious people."

He looks over to the table stacked with clothing. "Please pick out what suits you, and make adjustments as needed. If you have any complaints, and wish to change your rooming situation, your username, anything of that nature, please send me a request. I am also known in some capacity as a trainer-"

One of the crows caws, and it sounds almost sarcastic.

Sergeant Chiron ignores it. "Hm. If you wish for me to make a training regiment for you, to better your skill in this organization, please let me know. But for now: I am to understand your last mission was... tumultuous. Please, rest and acclimate yourself to BASE."

He turns to leave, before stopping-- "And please be kind to the crows. They remember slights."

The crows' cawing sounds like laughter.

HOTSPOTS

There's been some technical difficulty since the prognosticators had their little meltdown. Coolant is in short supply, and some of the corridors of BASE are a little warmer than others. Pleasantly warm. Comfortably so, like walking through a sunbeam. In these hotspots, it feels comfortable and snug.

Characters walking through them will feel the urge to lie down and rest, maybe take a quick little nap.

Sleeping in these spots will cause unsettling or confusing dreams, but not nightmares. Dreams in these hotspots-- and sleeping in these hotspots will never be dreamless-- will be hard to remember upon waking, but they seemed very... strange. Almost as though you were intruding on something important but private.

Yet you can't quite remember it when you wake.

If you're clever and watchful, you'll notice the crows avoid these areas, so you can avoid them as well before you're seized by the urge to lie down and nap.

Particularly watchful characters may notice the hotspots are growing in size and number as the days wear on.

(More information about these and the forthcoming December plot will be coming in an infopost on the 12th, but if you have any questions now, feel free to ask here!)

read the base setting infopage

NAV. NETWORK LOGS OOC PLURK DISCORD

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[The sharp, jagged delineation between their reality in revolutionary Paris to this vessel adrift in the vast undulating sea of twisted spacetime was something Ashitaka could only respond to with an order of operations. To think on it was something he knew he would do, but it seemed too much at first; he swallows the nausea, focusing it until it faded to a manageable level, and then finds more clothing than the tattered remains of the guard uniform that he had worn for over a month on their previous mission.

Time passes, and he returns to the place they had first arrived after having visited his room and changed into the clothing he had picked out. It's only then that he notices the man pressed up close to one of the portholes in the adjacent corridor. Had he been there before? Ashitaka realizes he doesn't know; he had been so focused on the task at hand he hadn't paid attention.

He seems transfixed by something, or at least he thinks so as he approaches. It's then that the spell seems broken, causing the man to break his gaze from beyond - something Ashitaka sees for the first time. A swirl of stars and space, as if they had been placed on a plane and spun at a high speed. It is unsettling for him to see, remembering so clearly the span of stars from home; he blinks, shaking his head and focusing on the man.

After the strange scene from outside, the statement is chilling.]

From outside?

(and startled he is, even by ashitaka's very open presence. his curiosity seems to make it an innocent approach, however, and despite being on edge from what he's just felt it's easy to rely on someone else to keep calm. the simple question helps him ground himself and gives him a reply to think about instead of the acute paranoia that has its claws in his spine.)

Yeah. (a bit breathless, but hei's quick to steady it with a deeper inhale.) Yeah, I don't know... how long I've been standing here, but something from outside.

(an empty motion at the porthole, the swirl of stars and space and time and everything and nothing. it makes him sicker to stare at it — even still, he has a responsibility to look.)

I felt a stare.

[He had simply thought the stranger transfixed by the strange arrangement of space outside the narrow porthole in the side of the vessel. Should he had picked up upon his state easier, perhaps his approach would have been a little more concerned, but as it was he could only feel the mingling of awe, curiosity, and fear towards something completely unknown. (That feeling was becoming a very close confidant to him, lately.)

He affirms what Ashitaka had thought before, and he continues to look outside. He isn't sure what he expects, but he doesn't get the same feeling of imminent paranoia, just a slight feeling of nausea from the swirling lights.

The time might be a factor, though. Had he been there since they arrived? It's been quite a while, if that was the case.]

We might not be meant to look. [Something about this place felt taboo, a curtain pushed back revealing something men were never supposed to see. The connecting tissue between the threads of spacetime, something they would never acknowledge living their own linear lives.

He believes him, though. He has no reason not to.]

We might not be meant to be here at all, and for that we are being watched.

[All they can do is trust in their commanding officers, though. There was no getting out of here now.]

(they're simple suggestions, appreciated in the absence of one. they signed on against all odds and ashitaka may be right — they're interlopers now, pulled from their own timelines to interfere with others. by their very absence, they've changed the future however fractionally. by the deeds they've done in france, the butterfly effect is in full swing and things already shift with the new tide. it's existentially terrifying and the idea of it all intimidates the hell out of him, but...

hei prefers a straightforward discussion.)

Could it be Regency eyes? (a question followed by an immediate shake of his head, low-lidded eyes finding ashitaka.) There's no answer you could have for that. I don't expect one.

[He would not understand a lot of the reaching, rippling effects that their actions had — his was a time that had been far before even Paris, and with his limited scope of the world (as the world outside of the village of his birth seemed already to be so great, to suddenly know that there was so much more) he would not know how things were meant to be. There was only what COST told him to preserve, and what few things he could find to improve upon his own efforts that would be enough to incite some small positive changes but none so great it would set the course of history towards a more dangerous outcome.

Ashitaka knew better than to reach too far beyond his own ken, focusing his attention on what he could actually change and affect. So it would be up to COST to light the path that they would blaze, and they would just have to do their best to make sure it matched that image they presented.

Hei might not expect an answer, but Ashitaka gives one regardless.] The Regency is very powerful. It is a possibility, at least. [One he hopes isn't true. The only thing that protected them — and their families — from being culled from the past was anonymity. Having the Regency's eyes so close on them in their retreat from history was an unnerving thought.

Ashitaka sends another mistrustful look to the window.] Perhaps we should step away from it.

[Mostly because Hei looks like hell (no offense).]

Ah. It's a possibility. (repeating him on a glance back to the porthole, in a bit of a daze.

ashitaka's suggestion is one of the best he's heard. he doesn't know how long he's going to last cooped up in this place for so long, though, without sparing glimpses into what's outdoors. he's going to miss it, he thinks. the planet breathing around him, the solitude he found in nature, the lonely nights spent in the rainforest and the snow, in sheltered parks and under frost-covered bridges.

now they're in a malfunctioning tin can, jettisoned into the unknown. with an unsteady breath, he steps back.)

Why... why did you sign up?

[That Hei's attention was once again pulled back to the porthole despite the nagging feeling of anxiety and paranoia only solidified Ashitaka's instinct that they move elsewhere.

He takes a few steps away, keeping an eye on the other man to make sure he followed. He did, lifting some percentage of the weight from his shoulders.

He could understand the feeling of — not so much claustrophobia from where they were, but the strangeness of it sitting poorly with him, the strong yearning to return somewhere familiar. Ashitaka had felt that way since Jerusalem, through France, and now here. It didn't seem to ease with time. He tried to keep the memories of the endless forests and fields and mountains with him as a salve for what he experienced rather than a knife to dig at pains for something he had left behind.

He was only moderately successful in that.

Hei's question seemed to be a keen insight into what he was thinking, though it was perhaps just dumb luck.

Ashitaka is silent a moment before he shakes his head.] I cannot remember. There was a... malfunction with the BCE. They told me I lost some of my memories.

[He sighs.] They must have made a very convincing argument. There is much I left behind me.

[He looks to Hei.] Do you remember yours?

I see... another person I met said something similar. He isn't as understanding as you seem to be.

(his own excuse for joining is much less convoluted, far more pitiable and it makes him shy away from telling it. not that he's humiliated by it, but it's a weakness he'd rather not be known.

so he nods as amenably as he can.) I remember mine.

(then a shake of his head, addressing ashitaka directly.) I didn't have any reason to refuse.

[Ashitaka is silent for a moment.]

There is nothing that can be changed now.

[So he doesn't dwell upon it. It seems as if COST only recruits those willing, and so he would have to trust in them and also in his past self that the agreement was mutual and understanding. Regardless, even if it wasn't the case, there was nothing they could do about it now.

He can sense the faintest barrier around the words, the minute aversion to details that allowed him to pick up on that it wasn't a subject he would want prodded further. He respects that wish, nodding.] I see.

[He's thoughtful for a moment before continuing along a conversational whim:]

I have begun to think, if they have such control over both where and when you are able to go, there is a chance that wrongs in our past might be able to be righted if we accomplish COST's goal [He thinks a moment longer.] But, in the same breath, it seems as though what we are doing warns against that very thing.

[He sighs.] We might never come to a point where it would matter.

There is nothing I wish to right.

(despite all of the wrong he's done to others and despite all of the wrong others have done to him, he wouldn't choose a different life and he wouldn't change the past. wonders how people can think so differently about the opinion-heavy topic, but that's exactly why it's so important to protect the chaos COST believes in.)

Chaos is formative. Without it, we wouldn't be here at all.

...

I suppose that's what we're protecting.

[He's thought about this subject quite a lot lately.

Was there anything he would have done differently? Would he not have struck Nago down? Would he have refused Jigo's company? Would he have failed to save those injured men he found in the stream? Would he have failed to restrain himself when he nearly drew his sword upon Lady Eboshi? Would he have turned his back on San and tried to forget her? Would he have finally broken down and railed against the stupid, cruel fate that had been thrust upon him?

The answer he always came up with was no. He found it difficult to regret the decisions he had made. They had seemed best at the time, and they still feel best to him now.

His opinions upon it were different than Hei's. Ashitaka is no agent of chaos. There is an element of it in nature, the sort of randomness that allowed anything to be possible. But sometimes even that chaos seemed ordained, part of a much larger network of interconnected things. It seemed almost purposeful in its lack of purpose, lack of plan, lack of goal.

He's quiet a moment as he considers this, weighing the sagacity of Hei's words.]

Yes. You're right. [He nods.] COST has been trying to show this to us, I believe. We have this ability to go back, but we do not change what has already happened. To do this would remove the purpose of things happening the way they did in the first place.

[To do so was to have the arrogance of the Regency.]

So it is best that you are at peace with your decisions. With the circumstances of your past.

[However difficult they may be.]

Whatever your belief is, don't let it be so easily swayed by the opinions of others. This is a very small group with a very big mission we've been hired to lend our services to. The least we can do is give it the thought and skepticism it deserves.

(ashitaka seems level-headed. he knows he doesn't need to hear this, but it's far easier to lapse into instructing others than to leave everything in their hands.

it's nice of him to take the time to speak with him. talk him down from the ledge his mind was sizing up and ready to jump off. that's already happening once today with midnighter and he'd be embarrassed to have it happen again. everyone else is so calm about the majority of these issues — it's easy to feel like he's losing grip.)

I have choices now. That's all I need to come to terms with. My first will be to avoid this window.

(points.)

[Hei raises a good point. Ashitaka is not mistrustful by nature, but he had certainly taken the points that San and Eboshi had raised with a grain of salt, seeing also the lens with which they formed their opinions and how narrow they could be in the grand scheme of the larger conflict. It would be valuable to treat COST and its directives the same, but... he did not have the same power here. In his own place and time, he had power as an individual agent, but here they dictated the when and the where that he was, promising consequences for mistakes in judgment.

He gives a solemn nod.] You are right. We should have caution, or as much as we might be allowed.

[Because they would still need to succeed, regardless of what they believed. Or, if COST was correct in what they told them, things could get very bad.

Ashitaka gives the man a small smile as he continues.] That sounds like a good one.

My name is Ashitaka. What do I call you?

Hei.

(a pause, wondering what exactly to do next, before dipping his head in a surprisingly polite gesture. it's been a decent conversation, one that's calmed him down — and that deserves some thanks.)

I'll be off, now. Perhaps I'll see you around the ship.

[He had stopped by to make sure that the man was well, and he had accomplished that goal. If he had his own business to attend to, Ashitaka would not keep him.]

I shall see you then, Hei. Fare well.

[And that, kids, is what you call dramatic irony.

Regardless, Ashitaka departs along on his own way.]

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