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

heheheh

[velveteened]

( it's very simple to b. rabbit.

thoughts when the chain predominate are chaotic, a blur of the call to destroy and things hardly remembered, but it's not the same as unruly, sticky, confused human emotions. if there's fear, if there's sadness, if there's grief - and there is, there really is, enough to feel like his heart could burst from it - then he just

needs to destroy

until it all goes away.

(it's what b. rabbit was born to do.)

he looks up when he hears his name, eyes like the color of his blade and on his clothes - some his, perhaps most not - and he recognizes her. lenalee, flitting about like a bird in the sky with a freedom that's enviable, is someone he likes. )

I didn't know you were here, Lenalee.

( cants his head a little to get a good look at her, voice like still water. )

claws at face

[anklets]

[Thinks too quickly of cruel girl with golden eyes and Lavi dead-voice and heavy-handed, devoid of what had made him him. There had been less blood then there is now; on Oz it's more upsetting than on her.

Cuts the air to him, landing opposite the swollen shadow in his wake. She doesn't want to look at it, so puts her eyes to better use scanning the empty buildings for unnatural movement.]

Oz, what- happened?

delicious misery

[velveteened]

( he's bleeding power as well as red (there had been a baskerville once who'd said, your blood smells delicious), but unaware of either, seems baffled at her question or that she'd even ask it. he considers it with wide eyes, freeing one hand from the scythe and raising it to his hair.

what happened? )

Oh, that's right, ( he concludes a beat later, satisfied and matter-of-fact ) we're here to stop the United Earth, aren't we? So, I'll help destroy them!

( the same, some part of him deeper thinks, nothing alice would ever approve of, and is this really what he wants? but all it takes is a flash of memory, of break falling like a marionette with its strings cut, for that part to be buried. just don't worry about the grief, because surely surely surely this will make it go away. )

tastes like the tears of orphans (and holy typos in that last reply, batman)

[anklets]

[It smells foul, everything here smells foul. She ducks into the guard of a felled building, and tries to bring him with her. The words slipping from his mouth are-

he is-]

It's time we leave.

yum 8D (klsdjfe god mine too)

[velveteened]

( the chains part for her, and he follows quietly for now, momentarily compliant. the push to destroy isn't the same as that to kill, though even he conflates them sometimes; and lenalee is a friend, not an enemy. he doesn't move much like he's been hurt, but closer it might be easier to see where ripped fabric lines up with some of the blood, the way exposed skin's gone red amidst the fires. )

Leave?

( bemused. it isn't immediately that he remembers - this is a world belonging to someone else, that even the ue will leave soon enough.

that's no good. )

[anklets]

[It is like talking a cat down from a tree, she thinks; she is sure of one wrong move which will turn him on her, because this is not Oz as she has grown to know Oz, there is charcoal in his eyes, smudging out all things recognizable.

She wants to pluck it from them and smear it over those cuts so they don't bleed so red.]

Leave. Now.

[velveteened]

No.

( there's something turbulent stirring beneath the inhuman surety, struggling. even before, he hadn't wanted to leave until he'd seen with his own eyes that the people he cares about had. still can't leave without being sure, can't leave because it still hurts and that's not right, and there's maybe something young in how he sounds beneath everything. )

I can't leave yet.

[anklets]

[ wants to run as much as he does— giving up leaves a bitter taste in her mouth like ash, and that's all that's around them, ash in the air and bodies reduced to it, like being back home where humans turned to stars turned to dust and she hadn't wanted to leave them behind then, so why now—?

(she knows why now) ]

It's- too late, Oz.

[velveteened]

( it's not even that he doesn't want to leave, if it was up to him; he hates this place and everything it reminds him of, all the smoke and fire and blood, both on his hands and otherwise, the oppressive feeling of being trapped anyway, as if his life is just going from one ruin to another -

(there's a memory, or just a flicker of one, of someone dear saying his name with a smile so why does it fill him with dread?)

- and maybe it is.

pulling away from her. )

You should go. I can cover you.

( would too, b. rabbit or no, because he doesn't want to see any more casualties in people he knows. this is true of human and chain. )

[anklets]

[No such luck, for Lenalee is dogged and pursues. She had always thought of it as "even if the real world were saved", but what she is living, with the fire all around them— her throat is all sealed up with the fear that she may just lose both this time.

Even if this real world is not necessarily hers to claim.]

I'm not going alone!

[Her words are distorted by gunfire, engines, ruin. Half a block away, a tank crushes the remains of a— car?— beneath its tread, and Lenalee swallows her heart.]

Oz, please-

[velveteened]

( it's both surprising and not, her stubbornness - reminiscent of gilbert and alice in particular but hardly anyone else, since most people scarcely see oz for b. rabbit once it's like this. he wouldn't have expected it of this girl from another world, a friend but also with a life so far removed.

turns briefly at the sound of the violence, eyes narrowing as though in contemplation. there's a part of him that's distantly aware of how much power he's been using - at least enough to recognize that much more is going to have worse adverse effects than just the inevitable exhaustion. the shadow of the rabbit's receding down to nothing but smoke, something a little less alien surfacing in his face and voice. )

You don't have to be so worried -

1/2

[anklets]

[A tiny shudder of a breath leaves her as the shadow leaves him, though the tight band of anxiety remains where it has tied itself 'round her chest.

Oz is still in there. Oz can still be pulled out.

These are the words she chooses to believe when he speaks, because Lenalee finds them more sensible than those which Oz gives her.]

Oz...

[anklets]

[ hauls back and socks him one ]

AS IF I DON'T!

1/2

[velveteened]

( WHY THIS )

[velveteened]

( scythe and chains and eerie presence all vanish as he hits the ground, unbalanced both by the force of her hit and his own sudden shakiness. it's while raising a hand to his face with an expression of utter bewilderment that he looks back up at her. )

Lenalee? ( eyes check out as green. ) Don't you think that was kind of -

( EXCESSIVE????? reminiscent of having alice around. maybe entirely deserved. )

- sorry.

[anklets]

[Would prefer to yell and berate- in fact, the return of green eyes and emotive voice pinch her into agitation far more effectively than the lack of either had, and she has to bite her tongue to keep from raising her voice (to keep from pulling all military attention back to them).

Her tone is instead a hoarse croak, delivered as she snatches that cradling hand and yanks.] Get up.

[ they cannot stay in the open for long ]

[velveteened]

( he does get up, partly by virtue of that pull, and finds his way to his feet with some effort to look more steady than he feels. her agitation confuses him more than anything else, something he opens his mouth to comment on and then puts on the back-burner at the sound of more destruction getting all the closer. there's a mix of guilt and shame and horror all vying to get to the surface, so instead he states the obvious: )

We can't stay here.

[anklets]

[As he stands, she finds herself caught by the stir of dust in the air around him— this place is crumbling. Already liken to ash. Unceremonious, she yanks him into the shadows of a broken alley, where it is not necessarily any quieter than the open (quite the opposite), but it feels safer having a wall to her back and to her front than empty air which could be easily sliced.

The UE wields firearms too familiar to her.]

We need to find the others, first. [ Allen, Caesar. In that order. ]