Other Worlds: V 2.0

[initiates]

Date & Time: May 21st, beginning at 0900.
Location: The Initiative Hold and all throughout Elmer's world
Characters: Anyone participating in the fighting, anyone staying behind.
Summary: Elmer's world is fought for and lost.
Warnings: Violence, death.

They reopen the portal at 0900, May 21st. The first scientist who stepped through was killed within thirty seconds; the rest who followed made it back through to Exsilium, albeit not unscathed. The portal was shut again by a panicked operator, although a second operator knew to keep the coordinates locked.

Within ten minutes, the alert had been sent out. There's no time to wait for the Transports to gather en masse; as soon as they have a sizable enough force to stand a chance at fighting through and clearing their gateway's location, the door is opened again.

Immediately inside the door is a desolate, grim scene. What had previously been the coast of Japan is now scorched earth, blasted sand, and little else. As the first point of contact for this world, it has undoubtedly suffered the worst. Here, the UE didn't stop at governments, financial centers, and capitols — the UE destroyed everything in sight. There are enough UE soldiers remaining in the broken country to give the Transports a difficult battle, although by now the bulk of their forces have moved on.

The Initiative will soon realize the necessity of opening more gateways, just as the UE had done. Transports will be deployed to London, Berlin, Paris, DC Washington, Moscow, Beijing, New York City, Hong Kong, Madrid. Through each of these windows, the destruction is staggering. Buildings are more husks than structures, everything that can burn is alight, and the death toll is off the charts. Blackened bodies seem to line every street, while pieces litter the ground among the rubble. There's no doubt that the UE has no need of the people of this world. They're after resources only, and anything and anyone already here is to be removed.

You can find UE soldiers everywhere. They move in coordinated squadrons of 20, and each of them carries a small arsenal. Even without their incredibly advanced and destructive weaponry, they're fearfully formidable. Each soldier, while still only human, is a genetically perfect clone, further enhanced by technological implants. They're all highly trained in physical combat. Even if you can disarm one of them, don't count on close-range attacks being any easier to handle. They've brought along cannons, small flying craft, and lightweight tanks. Each of these is the top of the line in terms of technology, geared toward destroying as much as it can, as quickly as it can. The United Earth is here to destroy, and they won't stop to wonder why their targets go from being civilians and scrambling, off-guard, comparatively primitive militaries, to trained and powered Transports.

For anyone staying at home, they'll find that any Initiative presence has withdrawn fully to the Hold. All Initiative employees are needed, and most of them in the med bays. The majority of the Initiative focus is on recalling and resurrecting fallen Transports, but attention is still needed for the living-but-wounded. Any Transports who stay in Exsilium and offer their help will have it immediately accepted; they'll be put to work in the medical wings, runnings supplies, or simply set at a machine and told to keep an eye on the numbers: Transport vitals, UE movements, and maps upon maps of changing statistics and colors.

At 1500, the Initiative will recall all Transport soldiers back to Exsilium and seal shut the gateway. The UE numbers are too great, their soldiers too powerful, and Elmer's world is lost.

Comments

[curatesecrets]

As the tank fired, Artie ducked as best he could, covering his head with his free arm and holding on to the ladder for dear life with the other. The blast took out what remained of the cluster of UE soldiers - some permanently, others not so permanently by the look of things, as the smoke started to clear. He didn't want to take too much time to confirm, though, and was already starting to try and twist free again.

Besides, the sooner he could help keep Claudia in the moment, the less likely she'd probably be to go into shock about what she'd just had to do. "Good. Good. Now come get me down."

[acts_of_claudia]

She hit a command as soon as the tank fired, switching off the view screens. She might have done it but she didn't want to look at it. If she didn't look at it it didn't feel as real as the fact that she just...

No. No. More important things to do.

She shook her head, shaking herself back into reality. "Yeah. On it." Her voice sounded hollow as she pushed herself out of the seat and stepped back up to the ladder to help Artie.

She took hold of the bag, "I'm gonna try to pull the bag down further to give you room."

[curatesecrets]

"Ought to work." He heard the shift in her tone, and his heart broke. Squeezing his eyes shut, he took as deep a breath as he could, both to give her a little more room to work with, and to pull himself together. Neither of them had had a choice. He had to convince himself of that, and he only had a few moments for it to work, so that he'd be able to convince her, too.

[acts_of_claudia]

"Alright. Breathe in, Papa Bear. Let's see if we can get this thing from 'too small' to 'just right'"

She started wriggling the bag back and forth, trying both to loosen it and to shake the contents further down to make it thinner. What the hell did he have in this thing, anyway? It took some maneuvering but with a soft pop it slipped through the hole.

[curatesecrets]

"Oh would you just stop with the bear comments already?!"

As soon as he felt the bag shift out of the way, however, the argument was forgotten, and he clambered the rest of the way down the ladder. Claudia only had maybe half a second to see the mixture of worry and relief on Artie's face, before he dropped her MiniTesla on the floor of the tank and wrapped his arms around her.

He could say something to her, maybe. Say he was proud. Say she did well, that it was good. But he wasn't proud, and it wasn't good, it was all ugly and awful because it was war.

After a moment's silence, he finally managed to dredge up two words that would be true, and not horrible.

"Thank you."

[acts_of_claudia]

As soon as she'd pulled the bag free Claudia hopped off of the ladder to give him room to climb down. She stood there numbly, watching him descend into the safer confines of the vehicle. She'd barely registered the look on his face and the sound of her weapon hitting the floor when suddenly his arms were around her.

Whoa. Hugs. Artie didn't do hugs. Well, except for extreme circumstances and this certainly fit the bill. She froze, stiff in his arms for half a second while her brain caught up to what was happening. Her own arms felt like lead as she lifted them up to wrap them around Artie's waist. She buried her face in his shoulder and tried to swallow down the lump in her throat. No. She couldn't cry. Not yet. Not here in the belly of a fracking tank. Once they got home safely she could melt down. For now all she could let herself do was take comfort in the fact that buried deep below all the scents of the battle - the smoke and dirt and other foreign scents - was the familiar smell of the Warehouse. She didn't know if it was his clothes or if Artie, himself, had somehow absorbed the smells of the place but she didn't care. It was enough to remind her of where she felt the happiest and tear her thoughts away from what was going on right outside.

After a moment she loosened her grip, pulling back from Artie with a shrug and a soft sniffle. "Yeah, well, sitting duck isn't a good look for you." The joke fell flat and she knew it but she couldn't voice what she was really thinking. Not and keep it together, at least.

[curatesecrets]

"No." He shook his head, bending to retrieve his things. "I don't quack under pressure, for one."

The pun was bad, he knew - it was Pete Lattimer bad - but they had to move past this, or they'd never even get back. And the further he could distract her from what they'd just gone through, the better.

[acts_of_claudia]

She snorted, lightly shoving Artie in the shoulder, "Oh that was baaaad. Why don't you leave the wisequacks to the professionals, huh?"

She knew he'd done it on purpose but she wasn't going to argue. Anything to get them away from... recent events. She shook her head, moving back towards the controls. "Where to, Miss. Daisy?"