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

[chronologistics]

He feels her freeze, and so he freezes, the only movement coming from his eyes as they flick upward behind his shades to follow the sound. There's a brief (almost hysterical) moment where the only thought that passes through his mind is just how much he wants whoever it is sobbing like that gone, and yet when it finally does fade it makes his stomach turn uncomfortably.

Gone or not, the rest of the din is still churning, oppressive and suffocating, and he finds himself having to swallow thickly.

I died today.

He makes a very quiet sound in the back of his throat -- Mm -- and turns his head in her direction just enough so that he can watch a group of people work frantically over a guy who looked like he had seen more than a few better days.

"Someone forgot to incapacitate you with a ball of yarn to the head?"

[flightybookshrew]

Rose makes a soft noise that might be a laugh, but it's hollow. "Something like that." Her attention shifts to the wands still laying on the floor nearby, staring at them beneath the curve of her hood. She had almost left them behind in the other world, not even certain what would happen if she had.

Would they have stayed there? Would they have turned up in her drawer the next day like some twisted monkeys paw?

"I was using the Thorns," she continued finally. "If you need to destroy an army, I really can't think of a more viable weapon of mass destruction."

And then she made a stood mistake and got shot. Whoops.

[chronologistics]

The group of people fussing over the dying guy -- at least, it sounds like he's dying -- begin to get agitated; someone is hissing increasingly-frantic commands for gauze and needles.

"Troll scremo," it comes out automatically, but lacking the usual comical deadpan.

[flightybookshrew]

Rose makes another soft laughing sound at that, though it fades into a sigh and then silence at the shouting nearby, her gaze flicking towards where people were trying desperately to keep someone alive. Rose's ability to destroy seems rather silly in the face of a situation that only needs healers.

"Did you fight?"

[chronologistics]

He's about to answer when someone starts screaming about a rapid loss of blood, and so his lips fall into a thin line instead. A few moments into the group's last-ditch effort to save a life, Dave reaches behind Rose's shoulders to rest his palm against her ear that isn't pressed to his shoulder.

And he waits, breath steady, until the screams and desperation become quiet.

It sounds like the patient didn't make it.

He takes his hand back and rests it on his leg.

"Yeah. Pretty much helped to uproot half of downtown Manhattan. At least I think it was downtown Manhattan, it all looks the same to me."

[flightybookshrew]

"Mm," she didn't attempt to speak again until his hand had been moved away, sitting up a bit straighter suddenly as she pictured the war. "It was strange seeing New York like that." Or at all. She hadn't really expected to ever see New York City again in any capacity, since it had been destroyed.

A little pause, frowning at her hands. "I had not expected any of it."

[chronologistics]

He's still rambling.

"Have you ever been there? And why did they even call it the Big Apple? I mean, it sure as fuck didn't look like an apple, just big. If you ask me, it should have been called the Big Pile of Horseshit."

The air leaves him in a quick rush, at the sight of her frown, and he swallows.

"At least it wasn't Houston," the name of the city comes out in a twangy drawl, "Then we would have had to worry about frying like goddamn eggs."

[flightybookshrew]

"Yes. Of course. My mother would go to the city sometimes, and I would go with her. It wasn't that far."

She liked New York, sometimes. Other times it was too loud, too busy.

"I think we all would have had other things to worry about than the heat. Although you're right, anything to make the moment not seem as terrible as it was..."

[chronologistics]

He's quiet for a moment as someone rushes by, a healer, covered in blood. The smell is distinct, and his nose wrinkles slightly.

"At least we got out of the fucking rain."