Dr. Gordon Freeman (
trustycrowbar) wrote in
exsiliumlogs2013-01-26 12:05 am
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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."
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."
ENTERING THE SINGULARITY
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.
Re: ENTERING THE SINGULARITY
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.
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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?"
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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.
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"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."
The only time I'll ever use smalltext....
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...~~
Re: The only time I'll ever use smalltext....
"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?"
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"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?
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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* ^,^ ))
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Some smoke bombs and gas bombs and a few other toys. With a little luck it's help us tell real from illusion.
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We might need it.
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You can't get screwed now, Doctor, you still have to yell at me five years ago.
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[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.]
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It wobbles dangerously, and tendrils snap from it, carrying telepathic sound with them.
~~...--careful, he's--...--quickly!--...~~
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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.
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...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.
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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.)
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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.
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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.
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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.))
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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.
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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....
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The thing's sturdier than that, however, and continues to function. What that means for the rest of Priad, however, remains to be seen.
CONFRONTING ZAGREUS
The sphere resolves, gains something of a humanoid shape.
~~…aaaaai-ai-ai-ai-AItry and take him….~~
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[Go on, you bastard. Take your best shot.]
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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.
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It drops something that looks like a humanoid.
And then charges full-tilt at Gordon.
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"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.
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The past and the future follow him like light-trails.
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"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.
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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.
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That instant may be all they need, because it is all they're going to get.
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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!"
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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."
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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!))
WHUPS. HE WAS A LOAD-BEARING VILLAIN, WASN'T HE?
That's OK, it's kind of how that thing works.
She is also slightly transparent, and steaming a bit more than before.
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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.
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"'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.
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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.
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"Wh... Gordon... is he....?"
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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."
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"I... can't feel him... his presence... in my mind."
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