exsiliumlogs | Zagreus

Entry tags:

Zagreus

Date & Time: Late in the timescrew
Location: 2nd & Main, The Singularity Timeknot
Characters: Gordon Freeman, The Doctor, AND YOU.
Summary: Time may be endless, but we're gonna kick anti-time's ass.
Warnings: Weird science, timeline-eating megamonsters, violence, graphic imagery.

The singularity sat and silently twisted in unnatural knots as the combatants start to amass around it in the early light. The spheroid on Main Street is large enough to take up the entire intersection. Clearly showing day, night, snow, summer in some parts and smokey with filth in others, like blood-spattered crystal, it constantly shifts in chaotic patterns from smooth to gnarled and faceted, shredding the feeble light of the sun into component colors better left undescribed. Gordon set down the tech box he'd carried from the Hold and looked over the numbers.

They're more than he'd expected, but fewer than he'd hoped.

"There are the temporal stability devices I mentioned last night." Gordon begins without prelude, reaching into the box and retrieving a strange, LED-studded thing about the size and shape of an old audio disc player, with a strap to secure it. "Everyone gets one. Turn them on before you jump in and be sure to keep it on you at all times. If you stray out of a six-foot radius of these things you're subject to the ravages of the singularity's dilation field."

He waves back to the singularity, which pulses eerily behind him. "The Doctor is in there. I found this out last night; he's still not completely disassociated from Zagreus. That makes this a rescue mission as well as a full-on assault."

"First objective: find the singularity and throw this stuff into it." He retrieves a large vial of something black and churning. "This is Zero Matter. Whoever's fastest, take it. But if you hold onto it for too long, it might start to... alter you, so don't hold onto it for too long. Second objective is to find the Doctor, and get him the hell out of there. Third: Take out Zagreus, any way we can."

"This isn't going to be an easy fight. The temporal potential of billions of ruined timelines is behind that thing. Pay attention to your surroundings and use them to your advantage; no matter how insane it gets in there remember that if something is a hazard to you, it might be a hazard to him."

"When everyone's ready, we head in together. Good luck everyone."

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Behind him the singularity cracks and buzzes and flashes, blue-white light throwing their features into sharp contrast even with the early morning light above them. Shadows twitch and jump around them and occasionally tendrils of this light would snap outward at them, instantly turning to dust any object they hit.

Walking past the raindrops stopped in midair, one could smell the bizarre ozone scent of concentrated anti-time even before stepping into the singularity itself.

The sheer force of the antitime itself pulls at every atom, tugs at one’s very being, and grabs one’s mind. It twists the senses, and one can see sounds—a terrible flashing cacophony; hear smells—a dreadful acrid tone; feel light—a loathesome grating brightness…

Then it resolves. Antilight is rhodopsin-bruise sky, black buildings edged round with painful coronas of octarine and ultraviolet, and before them spins the nucleus of the anomaly—acetyline-hot, whirling too fast to see, snapping and writhing.

Swann has arrived, and he's brought what he thinks will help out with the fight. Two flintlock pistols, stuck in his belt, and his banjo, hanging from it's shoulder strap on his back. Perhaps a bit laden, but he won't give anything up. He takes the LED thing--hopefully he'll remember what to do with it.

He's also very, very sober.

"What's he look like, then, the Doctor?" Because honestly, Swann's never set eyes on the man in his life. He's only going by what the TARDIS has told him.

Wavy brown hair, wears a suit and waistcoat. Don't worry, you'll know him when you see him.

"Oh, aye? Good." Swann turns the LED thing on, following Gordon's instructions. He's more alert and focused; it's very obvious.

And then he walks into the Singularity, having no idea what he's up against. But that's ok. He does his best when he's walking calmly into possible, horrible death. He tests his own elixirs himself. You don't want to know what's in some of them.

"Let's see what's to be seen, eh?"

Walking into the thing, he can feel the stabiliser fighting the effect of the anomaly, holding his atoms together when the anomaly would rip them apart. It's almost like... walking into a gale-force wind--it's a struggle to put one foot in front of the other while body and senses and mind are buffeted...

And then it stops.

It's much warmer where he's standing, now. Drier. Feels like a sunny day, if it weren't for the anti-light sucking at the eyeballs.

Swann forces himself through what he told himself was wind, from somewhere in the pit of Hell. His head feels scrambled, but his head feels that way a great deal of the time, though not at all like this. He steadies himself, and in a loud, melodic voice, begins to sing.

"Over hillways up and down
Myrtle green and bracken brown,
Past the shieling through the town
All for sake of Mhàiri!

Step me gaily, off we go
Heel for heel and toe for toe,
Arm in arm and off we go--"

The change is abrupt, and he nearly tumbles forward when the wind stops. So does his singing.

"... all for Mhàiri's wedding."

He squints his eyes against the OH MY GOD WHAT IS THAT sensation, and rests his hand on one of the grips of a pistol.

"Oi, Doctor? You in 'ere?" He's going to walk farther into what he's named the 'Glade of Perpetual Horrible Light'. He has the LED thing. It should protect him from whatever is in here, right?

"Dinnae hide, I know yer in here somewhere. I hope."

Something stirs in that crackling nucleus.

As Swann walks forward, time pulls and swirls like a powerful eddying current, slowing him down and speeding him up, but his knowledge of this is... detached, at best, as the stabiliser flashes its lights and does its job keeping him cogent and in the same place. The warmth is almost heartening, isn't it?

Only now it's accompanied by rain once he gets a little further in; big, fat raindrops, undeniably wet but not cold.

Ahead, the nucleus wavers. Then, quicker than thought, a tendril snaps out from it and grazes against Swann. He doesn't feel anything from it but he can hear something: a voice, barely more than a whisper, eching in the mind.

~~i'm here...~~

Swann stops, listening, rain going ppt ppt ppt on his hat. It's a nice sound, and he tips his head back for a moment, letting the rain hit his face and run in rivulets over his chin and through his beard.

"Ooyah!" The tendril startles him and he steps backward, hand not going to his gun but to his banjo. It gave him more comfort than weapons could. He's surprised the whip of light doesn't come with pain; it looks like it should have. But something--

He squints into the weird light. "There ye are." His grip tightens on the neck of his banjo. His head feels almost like it's being pulled in six different directions at once.

"Ye couldae found a better place tae go on holiday, Doctor!" He wipes the rain from his eyes. "Right. What do I do, now?"

The spinning light wobbles dangerously. Images flicker into Swann's mind. He can see an image of himself playing the banjo he has with him. Sound accompanies it, fragmented, only just recognisable as a heartening tune, something you could sing words about life and nature and happiness to.

As Swann listens, watches, feels, a smile spreads over his face.

"I can do tha'," he says, and his fingers find the notes. It's nothing he's played before, and if he's heard it, he doesn't remember, but it feels right. The starts quietly, building in volume and pace as he begins to walk again.

He's humming, not quite yet to any words yet. Can you hear it, Doctor?

The Doctor can hear it.

The nucleus appears to slow in its spinning, and time almost seems to reach some kind of an equilibrium, at least in the nucleus' vicinity.

It's distracted, its hold weakening.

Reality holds its breath for an instant. But only for an instant. The nucleus suddenly shrinks, accompanied by a psychic scream, and then expands again, twice as bright. And then it takes a form.

((OOC: *points down to next thread* ^,^ ))

Edited 2013-02-02 09:07 (UTC)

[Meliantha checks her pistol, then her sword. A brief moment to make sure everything is properly in place, and then she swings a satchel over her shoulder.]

Some smoke bombs and gas bombs and a few other toys. With a little luck it's help us tell real from illusion.

[After that potion, he's not going to doubt her. Not now.]

We might need it.

[She attaches the stabilizer to her belt, turns it on, nods to Gordon and walks in. No weapon in her hands, but very confidently, she enters the vortex.]

You can't get screwed now, Doctor, you still have to yell at me five years ago.

Edited 2013-01-26 22:18 (UTC)

...Yell at you? Why would I--no wait, nevermind, I'll find out eventually.

[In a way, the knowledge that he's going to be supremely pissed at her later gives him hope that they'll make it through this.]

If any answer was made, it might be drowned out in the sudden snowstorm. A snowstorm about... ten feet wide. On the other side of it is thick, smelly fog. And on the other side of that is what feels like a crisp autumn day. The light continues to be barely enough of anything to even see by, save for the spinning, crackling nucleus.

It wobbles dangerously, and tendrils snap from it, carrying telepathic sound with them.

~~...--careful, he's--...--quickly!--...~~

Whatever happened to Meliantha in the time between where she came from and now, one thing it did was make her already strong will even more indominable. She sets herself and walks through the snow as if she doesn't feel it. (And perhaps she doesn't.)

And she pushes through the fog, grimacing at the stench, but still, pushing on.

When she steps through into the autumn, she starts to talk, a bit more audible now.

"...Sure, you'll yell at me, especially for what I said to Pidonus, but then you'll also take a bunch of us to, what was it, Halloween in Manhattan, and no one stares at us. And you'll be the one to slap some sense into me when I lose my eye and point out what it could have been. So you're going to get through this. If you can hear me, you are going to get through this. Because, Doctor, you never stop fighting against the dark. You picked a few of us up from after this, because you needed help, and you did the one thing almost no one ever did when they needed my help."

She reaches over her shoulder, drawing her sword, and the gem on the eyepatch glows, redly.

"You said please. You showed me respect. And when it was over you said thank you."

The sword crackles with lightning, and with fire, and there is rime on it, and it hums.

"But that hasn't happened yet. From what you told me, it might not ever, because of how time travel works."

She draws herself up into one of her battle stances, and moves forwards, prepared.

"And if I have anything to say about it, it's going to have the chance." Then she clears her throat.

"I am Meliantha of Helm, and the Doctor is under my protection."

And then her voice thunders:

"LET. HIM. GO.

Edited 2013-02-01 02:49 (UTC)

His suit beeps a warning as he passes through the chill of the snowstorm, eddies of supercold gas kicking up flakes of frozen water and methane swirling around him. He almost feels he should leave this to Meliantha, but that would be stupid. Only dolts in old movies do that. No, instead he unholsters his pulse rifle from the selection system hatch on his back, sighting it and taking aim at the dim, faint ball of light as the flakes begin to clear.

...He's had to do longer shots. Now if only the damn snowflakes wouldn't stick to his glasses--

The dull, thudding pulses of energy blast out of the snowstorm, hurtling his way.

The blade is huge - two-thirds Meliantha's height. It shouldn't be possible.

But she moves it like a giant holding a butter-knife, and manages to block some of the pulses - not all, that's not possible without the reflexes of Barry Allen (which she lacks) - but enough to make it easier for Gordon to keep focusing.

And she smiles. Anyone who can see her can see her teeth, jagged fangs instead of teeth, and she yells at the ball of light, "Is that all you have, Zaggy? C'mon, give me a challenge!"

Because taunting it is so smart... (unless your goal is to give other people a chance to get through.)

Zagreus grabs reality. Yanks it. Twists it. Meliantha's stabiliser flashes wildly and manages to keep her grounded but that doesn't mean it isn't painful.

However, all that energy-ball firing leaves the centre of the light nucleus open. One can see it, right where the swirls of energy fail to come together.

Meliantha grits her teeth until her gum bleed, because she will not scream. She will not. It hurts, oh, it hurts, but she's not going to scream and give Zagreus the satisfaction of hearing it.

She reaches into her satchel and pulls out one of the grenades, a blue one that shimmers, gently. Then with her considerable might, she throws it like a Major League pitcher right at the shimmering center.

Her job, as she sees it, is as distraction. And she figures ANYTHING, even a being of anti-time, is going to be distracted and very, very disturbed in its working as fifty cubic feet of water springs into being when the grenade explodes.

And then she follows the grenade in, activating another trinket. If she's not out in three minutes, the loss of the water breathing spell will be the least of her worries.

Edited 2013-02-02 10:40 (UTC)

The water definitely throws Zagreus off his stride. The nucleus tightens again, then changes. Gains a form. Something more easily defended than a swirling ball of light. That form looks like the Doctor, if the Doctor were a being made entirely of energy.

And as soon as he notices her charging him, he grabs reality again, reversing gravity and sending the water thundering back at her as though out of a fire hose.

((Whups, he's got a form, now, time to drag everyone kicking and screaming to the next thread.))

Priad stand with stoicism in this painful swirl of confusing sensory inputs his Astartes organs amping all the already unpleasant and painful sensations up even further, his body compensating with a rush of combat hormones and stabilizing drugs from his armor.

He bears his bolter in one hand, lighting claw crackling in the other, with a shield strapped to the bolter hand, a short, heavy sword that would make a broadsword for a normal human strapped to his waist, and several grenade-like objects also belted on. He says nothing, only waiting for instruction. The more thoughtful and scientific types generally have something to say before the bolt-storm begins, after all.

Apparently not this time. Priad is shrouded in thick, smelly fog for maybe seven feet, then baking summer heat, then a familiar freezing rain. It'll be difficult keeping the rhythm of one's thoughts and actions paced as time slows and speeds, the stabiliser flickering madly.

Ahead, the nucleus is pulsating, now, like an artist's conception of a pulsar. Telepathic noise pours off of it.

The ground becomes springy--whups, might have stepped in someone's flower garden from three hundred years ago....

Priad just shoulders his bolter, scanning with his visored helm for targets. The changing realities is distracting to him, but he concentrates on the mission, more than anything else. He's got a foe to engage, at least until the boffins fix it.

And as soon as Zagreus sees him, the fight is definitely on. He pulls in energy from his surroundings, dropping the temperature by several degrees, and looses a lightning-blast of antitime energy at Priad, aiming for his stabiliser.

The thing's sturdier than that, however, and continues to function. What that means for the rest of Priad, however, remains to be seen.

~~…yyyoouuu. YOU. …ooomecome to rescue the Time Lord?...~~

The sphere resolves, gains something of a humanoid shape.

~~…aaaaai-ai-ai-ai-AItry and take him….~~

Edited 2013-01-26 22:07 (UTC)

[Gordon doesn't say anything to the taunt. Instead he smirks, and slings from around his shoulder a stocky large-barreled thing wrapped in twine and duct tape that glows with a strange amber color from its side vents. There's a fine hum as he charges the odd gun up.]

[Go on, you bastard. Take your best shot.]

~~...oh-oh-oh-so-so-so-SO BE IT!...~~

The form gains a little more corporeality, becoming... well... Doctor-shaped. All resemblance to the normally very easygoing Time Lord cease there, however, as the being throws its hands out, light and energy swirling around it. This swirling speedily coalesces into bright, hot balls of energy, which are then...

...of course...

...hurled at Gordon with frightening force and accuracy.

Typical, really.

[The first energy ball grazes past him as he lurches backward, a crackle of black singing his suit. The second, however, is caught in a purposeful arc by the gravity gun, and as he reels back it's swung in a cyclotronic sling and launched with just as much energy as it had been initially thrown with, maybe more.]

The redirected anti-time hits its mark like a cannonball thrown back by an innerly peaceful Panda and with nearly as spectacular of results. It hits the energy being whose form disrupts, wavering jaggedly, emitting painful blasts of psychic static. The wavering nearly obliterates it entirely before the energy being splits.

It drops something that looks like a humanoid.

And then charges full-tilt at Gordon.

He stumbles and staggers, the psychic wave hitting him hard and flaying chunks of memory like shrapnel:

"Gordon, thank god for that hazard suit..."
"I Killed twelve dumbass scientists and not a one fought back..."
"they're trying to kill everyone associated with the project..."
"through an immense portal, created by the intense concentration of a single powerful being."
"if you don't wipe it out, there won't be much for you to come home to..."

He snarls and throws himself out of the way as Zagreus gets close, speed augmentations kicking in in his suit. Aiming the zero-point-energy manipulator at point blank before he can even think, and fires a concussive blast of continuum-wrenching gravitational potential at the being.

Zagreus attempts to change course when Gordon dodges and they end up circling momentarily before the gravity gun's blast hits. He takes the hit, fragments, pulls together, and lunges again. But this time he's distinctly de-rezzing around the edges.

The past and the future follow him like light-trails.

"FREEEEEEEAMANNNN..."
"The right man in the wrong place can make all the diff-er-ence in the wor-ld..."
"Gordon, HELP ME!"

Gordon grits his teeth against the regurgitating memories and lowers to the side, ducking the lunge and firing again.

Meliantha comes (apparently) flickering into existence, throwing another grenade at the entity of antitime, this one a gentle green color. When it explodes, Zagreus now will be dealing with a swarm of flies and other insects moving around him.

As that goes on, Meliantha takes a second to gasp to Gordon, "Charge?" As if asking, do you want me to run at it, so you can do science at it or something.

She also appears to be smoking, or steaming, a little.

Edited 2013-02-03 06:49 (UTC)

An enraged roaring makes itself heard in their minds as Zagreus flails at the insects and reels, de-rezzing further, from the impact of another gravity blast. His mind was born out of the mind of a corporeal being, after all, and for instant, he betrays a corporeal being's reaction to a swarm.

That instant may be all they need, because it is all they're going to get.

"Meliantha!"

He reaches into his storage pack and extracts the jar of zero matter, tossing it to her as he fires the gravity gun at an odd angle. If she has an arm like that with the water and bug grenades, then...

"It's all up to you!"

She's gotten pretty good at it, yeah.

She catches the bottle, hefts it a couple times to get the balance, and then turns to look at the form of Zagreus, flailying for a moment at the insects.

"He canna hit battah," she says, smiling, and then the bottle is thrown, with everything she has, straight at the chest. (Head might not be so good, but center of mass, yeah.) Along with it goes a prayer, although not a traditional one. Well, from her world.

"Helm, please do not let me fuck this one up."

Edited 2013-02-03 07:15 (UTC)

The Zero Matter hits squarely.

It hovers in midair, spinning, and what little form Zagreus has, now, grows larger, encompassing it. For a moment he glows brighter.

Then he flickers. Wavers. Shrinks into something barely larger than the Zero Matter container itself. A horrible scream echoes through the minds of everyone there--a soul-raking sound in every kind of voice imaginable, a wall of sound that thrums in subsonic and whistles round the edges of perception and howls and howls and howls in pain and in rage and in dissolution. Zagreus is dying.

He explodes.

Time and antitime and Zero matter roar over them all in a gale-force shockwave, light washing over them several beats before a deafening, horrific sound follows. It thunders against the barrier of the singularity and pops it like a soap bubble.

The singularity collapses.

((OOC And down to the next thread, again!))

The entire antitime bubble collapses in on itself, shedding light and noise into its interior. The outside haemorrhages, now, letting in natural light, showing their final objective in a dazed heap on the ground.

Meliantha hits the ground, lying there for a moment.

She is also slightly transparent, and steaming a bit more than before.

"C'mon, we've got to get out of here!" He calls back, waving a hand ahead and squinting at the rays of light streaming in from the buckling nonreality around them.

He halts when he sees the girl collapse in his peripheral vision and doubles back. The smoke had gone mostly unnoticed in the heat of everything, but now he doubles back and kneels next to her. What's going on? She's...

...fading.

She pulls herself to her knees, and looks over at Gordon. She gets less and less visible as moments pass, and her voice becomes softer.

"'s ok, Doc," she replies to his unasked question. "I'm from the future, remember? Now that this stuff is resolved, or close enough, I think I'm going back then. Get the Doctor and have a good time, and don't be too mad when it happens, okay?" She gives him a smile. "Don't sweat the small stuff, and try not to tell me too much once they get me alive again."

She starts to say something else, but fades away entirely before she can even be audible.... and is gone.

His brow furrows, but he doesn't say anything. She's right, even though he didn't realize it, changing the cause changes the effect. Maybe in some aspect of potentia she'll be better off. When she vanishes completely, he gets to his feet slowly and heads to the other figure, slumped on the ground.

The sky roils, cracks, recombines, shatters, melts and reforms.

"Let's go, Doc. C'mon--" Transferring Meliantha's honorific to the Doctor, he attempts to wake the other man and get him to his feet.

The Doctor manages to shove his way into consciousness if the incoherent sounds are anything to go by. His eyes flicker open and he attempts to push himself up off the ground.

"Wh... Gordon... is he....?"

"Dead. Let's go." He helps the Doctor up and heads to the nearest glowing wound in the dimensional membrane. The terseness is from necessity; they'll have plenty of time to talk once they're out of the collasping singularity.

SO YES. Swann has been here the entire time, but he's not quite a combatant, so he was simply um... standing over here and singing a bit, giving everyone a good lift. Nothing to do with his writer's brain taking a powder.

Everyone should feel comforted by the fact he didn't try firing off the flintlock pistols still jammed into his belt.

"You ok there, boyo? So that's what ye look like. Nice hair, I like that sorta thing. Um." He looks over at Melantha and Gordon and clears his throat. "You're sure the bloody thing is gone, aye? I mean. It was a sleekit bastard, might just be playing dead or sommat."

The Doctor has one arm draped over Gordon and the other over Swann and is only just keeping up with them as they leg it out of the decaying singularity.

"I... can't feel him... his presence... in my mind."

"Best confirmation I could hope for." He says past the Doctor to Swann. The oppressive energy density around them is starting to lighten--don't ask him how he could tell, somehow he just can.

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Zagreus

ENTERING THE SINGULARITY

Re: ENTERING THE SINGULARITY

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The only time I'll ever use smalltext....

Re: The only time I'll ever use smalltext....

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CONFRONTING ZAGREUS

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WHUPS. HE WAS A LOAD-BEARING VILLAIN, WASN'T HE?

That's OK, it's kind of how that thing works.

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