#ark solo

[ilum-dreams]

Time to head back to swtor. 

Still, I’ll miss you game and all your glorious bugs.

[immanisetinanis]

The old menorah was the last thing Sephiroth expected to find in the sterile Lampadias room he’d been occupying. At first he didn’t believe it, frowning as he ran bare fingers over the soft, polished wood. It smelled of old wax and...yes, the scratch at the base was there. This was definitely his, from his old SOLDIER barracks.

Was this a duplication, or the original? Where had it come from? How? Why?

It sent a chill up his spine. 

Sephiroth set the menorah back down on the desk where he had found it, eyeing it suspiciously. “Infinite in mystery is the gift of the goddess, hm?” His voice was hollow as he said it. He spared a glance at Jenova’s head on his bedside table. It would be his first Hanukkah with his mother. Somehow, he felt very little joy in the thought. Why?

Sephiroth collapsed into his desk chair, burying his face in shaking hands. Images of celebrating with his old friends in past years surfaced in his mind. 

His first Hanukkah...he had been seventeen years old. Genesis had playfully asked Sephiroth what he planned to do for their time off for the holidays and was appalled when Sephiroth had told him that he planned to do nothing, that he didn’t celebrate holidays, that he was frustrated about not being allowed to get back to work. The mage, emboldened by their burgeoning friendship, had pestered him relentlessly about it, even soliciting the assistance (however reluctant) of the other First Class, Angeal Hewley. 

“Not even as a child?”  The expression Angeal had been wearing was one Sephiroth had come to be quite familiar with at this point. He always wore this expression when Sephiroth spoke about his personal life. “But...then what did you do with your family? The holidays are supposed to be for spending time with loved ones!”

Sephiroth hadn’t missed the glances exchanged between Genesis and Angeal when he’d laughed too forcefully at that. It was then that he explained to them he had no loved ones, that his mother had died during his birth, that he didn’t have a father. That when he spoke of labs during his childhood, he was speaking of his home life. The scientist in charge of his growth and development was a man who was very clear about his disdain for all things religious and spiritual. Hojo had known that Sephiroth’s birth mother was Jewish, but had elected to never share that information or to make it part of his life.

Genesis had called it cruel. Inhumane, even. Sephiroth hadn’t ever considered that. It was merely another sacrifice which he had made to get where he was now. Even if it was a sacrifice that had been made for him. Against his knowledge and will.

It was from then on that Sephiroth had made a point of learning what he could. Practicing what he could. Genesis and Angeal had been behind him every step of the way, and it made him feel a way he hadn’t felt before. 

He never could identify that feeling.

And now... Angeal was dead. Genesis was missing, and their last interaction had been a slew of insults among horrifying revelations.

That feeling was gone, replaced by something aching and hollow.

[concordantknight-blog]

There is no dawn in the Commerce Hub.

Unlike the Seas, which rotate to create their own day and night, the Hub is small enough that the whole of it can be pointed towards the sun at all times. Aldebaran burns directly overhead, a fixed point, unmoving and eternal.

82 White Chain Born In Emptiness Returns To Subdue Evil finds it comfortingly familiar.

Throne may be a rotten and accursed city, but it is her home. And Throne’s sun has not moved in thousands of years. Like the city (like the whole of creation), the sun was broken in the Universal War, and she has grown used to unmoving shadows and unchanging light. The other worlds of the Ark and their moving sun give her a subtle vertigo, an irritant unnoticed until it was gone. It was just one more thing to put her on edge.

And so, as the morning of her protest does not dawn, she finds herself sitting in the middle of the hub’s train station, eyes closed and legs crossed, trying to relax.

Anger, red and raw, swirls in her chest. She has been trying her best to ignore it, to distract herself from it, to keep moving forward. But whenever she stops, the red hunger floods back in to fill the gap, whispering sweet nothings in her ear. Hopefully today’s coordinated destruction will let her put it to good use. Hopefully.

The train pulls into the station with a screech, and a few of her fellow captives trickle out onto the platform. White Chain opens her eyes, and smiles.

It’s time.

[prankcalls-blog1]

He isn’t angry.

He isn’t sure why he has to assure himself of that. Maybe it’s because of the fear that had twisted in his chest when he woke up in an unfamiliar bed, reaching out for each emotion to pick through, something to associate with the shock. He had kicked the sheets down the bed and the blanket to the floor, suspicion and moments of terror flashing in his blood. For a moment, Biker was angry. A kidnapping? The afterlife? A rat scurries in the walls. He took a deep breath. Curled his knees (he’s still dressed, still stinks like a sewer) to his chest and held his chin between the tears in his jeans.

No. He isn’t angry. Concerned, maybe nervous. But, he isn’t angry.

It’s too unfamiliar. The carpets aren’t black and the colours have been neutralized, made mute so they can be changed and moved into something easy to redecorate. It’s hideous. He stands off his bed — his boots are on, his feet ache — and looks to the dresser table against the wall. Not his dresser. His is taller, more narrow, and he painted it himself. This is one that belongs to whatever apartment, hotel, house he’s been pushed into. His body is sore from disuse, and he has to roll his shoulder while pushing a palm firmly against it.

His phone. His helmet. Something that looks like a piece of glass. No knives. No keys. The glass lights up when he touches it. Something like a letter opens up, and it starts with a greeting, addressed to him. Tries to call him by name, but it’s just hollow, transparent corruption. Biker.

Suspicion sits inside his throat. He only learns how to use the piece of glass after his thumb accidentally brushes something on the image and it changes what it displays. A few more tentative taps, and soon, a list of names. Alphabetical, surname first. None of them are recognizable. He occasionally lets his eye catch on a name or two that he’s known before, but even he knows they’re different people. Just people with the same name as someone he knew long ago, or maybe just a few days ago. Or however long it’s been. Maybe a week.

A couple names don’t have last names. People who were never anything to begin with. Monikers. He nearly shuts it off after a couple drags of his finger on the glass, but then his tongue twists, his heart stops.

No fucking way.

With a rough push, he shoulders open the door. He only registers that it’s an apartment in the back of his mind, the part of him not clouded by racing thoughts and sudden rage, hot in his face and burning his skin. He slams the bedroom door shut and rips open the front, and wastes little time to reach the stairs, marching up. Right above his fucking head. That’s hilarious. Whoever dragged them here will have a lot to answer for.

[eightfingers-blog1]

Oh, this is funny.

From roaming the halls of Mount Massive like a king surveying his kingdom instantly teleported to somewhere under the fucking sea. This is so goddamn funny. He thinks, blithely, that if he could feel anything other than callous, shrieking humor, he would be terrified. Maybe before he’d stepped foot into his grave, all those-- days? hours? weeks? ago. Whatever. Time is a fucking illusion. Miles yanks his journal from his pocket and writes, with the graceful penmanship of someone with all five fingers: 

Escaped. So I’m free, I guess, but it’s a Pyrrhic victory if I’ve ever fucking seen one. Still got bulletholes in my lungs and nanomachines buzzing in my skull. 

He pauses to wipe slick black oozing from his mouth, and adds:

Bile leaking from every fucking orifice. 

Upshur paces his room, contemplating the expanse of sea before him. He’s been to the beach, sure. Of course. But he’s never been under the water in a way that the fish in front of him are crystal-clear, swimming up to the window curiously peeking in from the outside. He wonders how far down he is. He wonders if it’ll collapse. He wonders how much it would take to make the glass shatter and flood his room and the building and drown everyone inside. 

Hm. 

At least the view is better than Mount Massive.

[waylonsparks]

Waylon wakes, as he has every single morning for the past two weeks, with a start and a scream rising in his throat, hands clawing at the sheets beneath him, above him, tangled around his legs and his hips, holding him down, ropes on his wrists and that sharp grin between his legs, fingers sliding up his leg such soft skin you're going to be beautiful- 

He rips the sheets off of himself, throws himself to the floor, curls up there tight and trembling, eyes squeezed shut. The low voice of the phone therapist sounds in his mind, breathe, waylon, inhale, hold, exhale, count of seven- they’re not real, focus on your body, where are you, what can you tell about your surroundings, and he feels- feels the floor beneath his hands and forehead, the pajama pants brushing his legs, the way his toes prickle with the chill of being out of the covers-

He’ll have to apologize to Lisa and the boys again-

Lisa. Noah. Ethan.

His head jerks up as he realizes he doesn’t hear them, and for a second his gaze is arrested by the tall glass window, the press of water outside of it. More pressing than that, though- Lisa. The boys.

They’re not here.

He reaches for the phone on the bedside table, thinking it another burner phone, and he puts it in his pocket without looking before he pushes himself to his feet, stumbling a little as his vision swims, echoes of the Morphogenic Engine’s imagery asserting itself over his surroundings. He pushes through it, squinting against the headache, pushes out the door into the hallway, feet bare and leg aching with- with.

He pauses, kneels again to feel the bare skin of his leg. No cast. No bone sticking out, just... just skin, scarred where bone punctured, but whole. 

“What the fuck,” he breathes, quiet, to himself.

When he pushes himself back up again, his head swims, but he forces himself to keep going, to look around the entire floor- he doesn’t know the names on the doors, and he can’t find Lisa, or the boys, and when he sits down in the living room, leg aching too much to stand on it, he finally pulls out the phone and looks at the message on it, before closing it out, looking for...

Yes. There. A contact list.

It’s... it’s long. Too long. He doesn’t know any of these names, doesn’t know anything except that Lisa isn’t there. Maybe... maybe he’s been moved, for protection, and he’s forgetting things- maybe- He presses his forehead to the phone, then shudders.

He thinks about his leg, about the wall of glass next to him. That. That makes less sense, but... but he’ll figure that out later. For now... for now. Focus on the things that make sense. Lisa and the boys are somewhere else. Probably somewhere safe.

It’s probably for the best.

[rulessetno2-blog]

For the first time in what feels like an eternity, Amanda wakes up. 

It’s not just that, of course. But sleep is a non-issue in the Entity’s realm. Once you arrive your ability to close your eyes and drift away tapers off into nothing; the exhaustion stays, but without a remedy. So much so that, for some, it is used as a weapon.

But it’s not just that she wakes up. It’s that her mind is quiet.

There’s no low grumble hidden behind her ears. No deep gut-wrenching urge to kill and watch the hope fade from the eyes of people who can’t fight back. No terrifying knowledge of what will happen if she tries to fight back. No drive to hook, to mangle, to put everyone through the same hell she experienced. 

There’s a ceiling above her, she sees. She sits up, and realizes she’d been lying on a bed.

She begins to cry.

For hours, it’s all she does. 

When the headache becomes too much and her eyes finally seem to dry, she takes the holophone in her shaky hands, and types out, to anyone who will read:

TO: all

[msg] thank you

[charaselect]

(Somebody’s got to take care of the flowers - )

(Don’t worry about me, Frisk.  It’s okay.  I’ll - we’ll - be just fine.)

(... It’s still you, Frisk.)

Chara realizes three things in very quick succession when they wake up.

First: even through heavy eyelids and sleep-blurred sight, this isn’t the Underground.  This looks nothing like anywhere in the Underground.  Besides, given the whole ‘mostly intangible and mostly unseeable ghost’ thing, nobody would have been moving them anywhere without -- it’s probably best to say nobody would have been able to move them if they didn’t want to be moved.

So this isn’t the Underground,  Where is it.

Second: haha, wow, everything hurts really bad.  They feel so heavy, a different sort of physical than piloting Frisk’s body or the shared body so many years ago, but there’s the taste of fresh iron in their mouth; this is easier to recall.  How much effort it had taken to move their body, before they died, petals tearing between their teeth and burning their mouth.  This doesn’t make any sense.  None of this makes any sense.  Why aren’t they dead?  (Well, double dead?  Do ghosts die.  They’d kind of figured they were going to ghost-die.)

Third, and the most concerning one of them all: they have a Soul.  They can feel it, bright and beating, filled with 𝙳𝚎𝚝𝚎𝚛𝚖𝚒𝚗𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗.

This can’t be Frisk’s Soul.  It can’t.  They’d told Frisk not to even consider it, not to even consider that kind of sacrifice; they’d been around for a very long time, longer than most Monsters, and -- they had Asriel.  It was okay.  They’d probably fade out, eventually, without any Determination to keep them awake and tethered, without a soul to be a fucking parasite on - and that was okay.  They were so, so tired.

So -- this can’t be Frisk’s.  They really, really hope it’s not Frisk’s.

(Focus, focus, look inside themself - 𝙷𝙿 𝟷𝟶/𝟸𝟶.  They can’t see their LV, their ATK, their DEF - this, too, is worrying.  And they can’t feel that leftover power and capability to manifest their Soul even if they wanted to.)

Chara should really get up and look around, perhaps.  But five more minutes won’t hurt.  

(Or another three hours of sleep.  Those won’t hurt, either.)