OPEN MUSEBOX POST (SINGULARITY SETTING)

[just_desserts]

[ HEY KIDS so whatever you were doing before, you're now on Sacrosanct. Maybe you've been here for a week and have settled into one of the empty buildings, scouting for other life or activity over the network. Maybe you've just crashlanded in the Junkyard and are still reeling from Hypatia's explanations and a lovely chemical shower. Maybe you've been here for a while now and know what's up and enjoy giving fresh meat a hard time.

Have at. ]

Comments

GABRIEL (AU) | SUPERNATURAL | 1 month on station

[just_desserts]

[ What's Gabriel doing? Practicing transfiguration in the Junkyard, because caring about radiation poisoning is for other people. That pile of junk over there shimmers like a heat mirage but it might be your imagination, too, if you happen to sneak up on him, because the junk pile isn't turning into anything despite the way he's staring intently at it, and Gabe looks altogether frustrated and irritable.

The fact that he keeps stopping to check the network on his wrist communicator is probably not helping, but there's always new news on the internet, and an archangel has to keep on top of his game around here. Someone might have put a cat on a roomba and posted the video. ]





((ACTION (in-person) or NETWORK (video or audio), choose your poison))

[toomuchheart]

[You don't need to find Cas, Gabriel. Cas just finds you.

TA DA.

Have an angel in your room, giving you a very confused look.]

Hello, Gabriel.

[just_desserts]

[ NOT AS KEIKAKU

Excuse him while Gabriel spooks like a stung horse, aka freezes in place and pulls every tattered bit of Grace back to himself and locks it down in half a second. Whatever hint of angelic energy he was radiating before there's nothing there now, and Gabe might as well be an ordinary human standing there. It wouldn't do to advertise just how much power he's lost.

Then he smiles, because what else can you do in the face of the unexpected and potentially disastrous. ]

Cassie! No one told me you were in town.

CROWLEY | GOOD OMENS | brand spanking new arrival

[downwards]

[ So chemical showers are things that happen to other people, as is freaking out, because demons do not freak out over being miraculously relocated to space stations, even if they were driving through London just moments ago and are now staring balefully at the vintage Bentley half-buried under scrap in the Junkyard. A body in motion remains in motion, and Crowley had not quite been obeying the speed limit when the road in front of him disappeared and reformed itself into a towering pile of garbage metal.

He can unbury the Bentley and fix the damage with a snap of his fingers, of course, but that's hardly the point. It's the principle of the thing to get angry when unknown forces spirit you away to a space station and also, more relevantly, cause you to crash your car.

Also there is a thing on his wrist that keeps beeping in order to draw his attention to it, but he is steadfastly ignoring it because Bentley, crashed, irritation.

Do bother him, his eyebrow is twitching. ]




((ACTION (in-person) or NETWORK (video or audio), pick your poison))

[ilove_atallman]

[Ruby? Bored.

What should Ruby never be? Bored.

Ruby being bored is what brings her to the junkyard, and when she finds the beat up wreck of a Bentley.]

You're not going to cry, are you?

[You think that she would have enough experience with people who love their cars to know better, but apparently not.]

[downwards]

[ Crowley doesn't even glance up at the voice, still making faces, just what he needs, random heckling huma--

Oh.

Oh.

Not a human, then. Not with that aura, and then he does look over, sliding his sunglasses down a fraction to squint at her. She hardly looks like an executioner, and this all seems a bit elaborate and creative for any kind of Hell-based punishment, but Crowley hadn't lived to be a very, very old snake without learning paranoia. ]

Do I look the crying type?

BEN (AU) | DARK ANGEL | 2 weeks on station

[shadowpuppet]

[ Ben's had two weeks to adjust to no longer being dead and also somehow getting zapped aboard a futuristic space station, which isn't very much time in the grand scheme of things. But he is a soldier, and moreover a believer, and it seems only pragmatic to accept that he's been placed here by a higher power (perhaps his goddess, perhaps She wishes him to atone for the things he'd done in the last year of his life) and deal with the circumstances that surround him.

At least it's quiet, here. The flashbacks and night terrors are muted, the headaches are not so debilitating. The goddess and her angels don't speak to him in voices like knives anymore. He hears humming instead, electricity and mechanical motion all around him, even in the parts of the station that designed to look like jungles, forests, grasslands, and it's comforting. It reminds him of Manticore in the dead of winter, the generators running full-time, and his squadmates huddled together comfortably for warmth, listening to his stories.

He prowls the forest Garden Zone out of habit, half-hoping to run into a monster or a drone. There are nomalies here, of all places, which means he's still obliged to play the hunting game with things that might be dinosaurs or other twisted genetic experiments gone wrong. Nothing human shaped thought, not yet, although he's sure there are just as many evil men here if he were to look, but in his madness he'd offered up unworthy tribute to the Blue Lady, and he still feels the cut of shame over it. He'd been rabid, before, helplessly in thrall to his own disease, but that was not much of an excuse for the super predator he'd declared himself to be. Now he was recovered, now he would abide by the proper rules of the ritual, and he would eventually earn the Lady's forgiveness.

And perhaps his sister's, someday. ]





((ACTION or NETWORK))

[im_apimp]

[Max had not told Alec about Ben.

Whether or not she knows, it's a smart move to make.

He understands that Max loves him. That he's her brother, and her unit mate, and there are a thousand underlying feelings that come with the complication that is Ben, but Alec doesn't care. There's what Ben did to her, and then what Ben did to HIM, and he has his grievances to air.

Six months of psy-ops for the first time that Ben ran. Six months again, when he started killing to make sure the psychosis wasn't genetic. Each time, there's the tests, the probing, the brainwashing and the drugs, and even just trying to conjure the memory makes him want to be sick to his stomach. The blame lies with Ben.

It's not logical, or right, but it's the way Alec was programmed, and it's not something he can escape -- even here, on this station.

He's in one of the Garden Zones looking for Wanda. He knows that she lives out here, and he had said he would drop by.

He finds Ben first.

Alec knows that there are possibilities. That this could be Dean, but scent never lies, and he had seen his twin's body. He KNOWS within an instant, and he doesn't stop to think, or plan.

He just attacks.]

[shadowpuppet]

[ Ben had never known about their twins. It should come as more of a surprise to hear the telltale noises in his surroundings, throw himself smoothly to the side and roll back to his feet and find himself staring at his own face.

He does freeze, just for a second, because he thought he was done with the visions, he's been two weeks free of madness after the medical drones at the station hospital had cut his straps loose and pronounced the surgery a success. Turns out carrying around a bullet in your brain for the better part of a year had some very specific side-effects that even an X5 couldn't shake off, but once removed the damage started to heal as rapidly as Ben could have hoped, and the delusions and the voices simply stopped. The nightmare simply stopped.

On the other hand, if this is real, then it's a sign from the Lady, just like Max discovering him at that particular church had been a sign. He stays crouched and wary, not going for his gun, and tilts his head. ]

Are you a test?

EMMANUEL | SUPERNATURAL | just arrived

[wouldbeking]

[ Emmanuel has no idea what's going on here help :(

This is like Star Trek except with garbage and piles of junk everywhere

And also except Star Trek doesn't happen in real life, even to faith healers and why is this thing on his wrist beeping at him ]




((ACTION or NETWORK))

froooooom when they were on the road together, pre-Meg?

[hasperkynipples]

[Fortunately, he didn't show up alone. Dean's right behind him, just as equally confused. This was so not how he wanted to spend his day.

He nods towards what looks like a door in the distance.]

C'mon. Looks like civilization.

ROADTRIP TO SPACE just what dean needs in his life

[wouldbeking]

[ This is clearly a test from God. Accompany the man who killed demons, politely ignore the way he kept glancing sideways as though he was looking at a ghost, end up in space.

Emmanuel hadn't realized God paid such attention to speculative fiction as a metaphor for spiritual journeys.

In any case, there's nothing to do but pretend this isn't more frightening than waking up naked and without memory on an unfamiliar shore, certain that he'd escaped something that still waited for him in the blackest depths of the water, nod his agreement and follow Dean. This must be the part he's supposed to play. To follow. ]

Are you sure?

[ Not. If Dean is sure that it's civilization, but if he's certain he wants to move. It's the least inane thing he can think of to say, the others running the gamut of 'so we were just teleported or translocated and it felt very familiar for some reason' to 'I didn't know demons had space stations' to 'Daphne will be irritated I didn't think to pack another cardigan for space.' ]

SAM WINCHESTER (season 2) | SUPERNATURAL | 2 weeks on station

[hatesthisplan]

[ YOU'D THINK PSYCHIC PREMONITIONS WOULD COVER SHIT LIKE THIS BUT NOPE, one day you just wake up on a space station without your brother and feverishly spend two weeks trying to find a way back even though everyone tells you it's a lost cause but hell with that, because lost causes are the family business.

Also this is like the 28934237th time Sam's been kidnapped, goddammit, and he's pouring over the network the same way he does every day, looking for Dean, looking for anything familiar in the Junkyard, trying not to go mad.

It's nice that the TK works on command sometimes now, though, even if it's still weak as shit and gives him horrible blinding headaches. ]





((ACTION or NETWORK))

idk if this is going to be her actual canon point, but i'm testing it out

[braveandstupid]

[[Elena doesn't go to the Junkyard that often. It's ... sorta dangerous, with things flying through all the time, but today she's making an exception.

Esther had just taken her blood. Just TAKEN it. She said no, and Esther used magic to take it, to turn Alaric into a monster, and now she and Jeremy were alone.

Again.

She can't remember what she originally came to the Junkyard for, but right now she's getting her feelings out on an old Camry with a Crowbar. There will be a point where she breaks down and just will sink down against the front wheel of the car to sob into her knees.

Sorry, Sam. You are getting a teenage girl that's a barrel of emotions. Have fun with that.]

/o/

[hatesthisplan]

[ And Sam, of course, can no more walk away from the sound of someone in distress than he can fly. She doesn't look like she's in trouble, though, just upset, and Sam hesitates, not sure if he ought to intrude on a stranger's grief.

Dean would have walked right over. Dean would have punched him in the shoulder and shoved him forward, dragged him along to see if the damsel in distress needed any Winchester help, so Sam takes a breath and squares his shoulders. ]

Um, hey.

[ He can almost hear Dean saying 'smooth, Sammy' and suppresses a wince at the awkward. ]

Are you all right?

FUTURE!CAS | SUPERNATURAL | 2 weeks on station

[shotgunangel]

[ Dude he's so high right now. Space station hospitals have the best shit, and no Croats, and running water, and no ending worlds.

It's almost, almost enough to erase the memory of that shitshow back in Detroit, and finding Dean's body afterwards, and knowing that he'd failed in every way possible. Apparently when ex-angels try to eat their guns they end up on space stations instead. Who knew.

Anyway trawling the garbage heaps for useful supplies is just automatic pilot now, so he's reeling through the Junkyard, smiling widely at nothing, rifle resting comfortably on his shoulder and high out of his mind on chemicals he's never even heard of. ]




((ACTION or NETWORK))

[imnot_likeyou]

[Here, Cas. Have a moose.

Sam comes flying out of nowhere, and hits the ground with a groan. It takes him a minute to compose himself -- he was supposed to be getting in a car with his brother after Cas helped him out with his ... Lucifer issue, but for some reason he's ... in the middle of a junkyard and ... is this outer space?

... Damnit.]

Son of a bitch.

TOM HANNIGER (AU) | MY BLOODY VALENTINE | just arrived

[tenyearsafter]

[ Someone is lost. Someone is so fucking lost and this is the worst hallucination he's ever had, even right after the Incident when he was seeing things all the time. The pills he has left aren't helping. He's in some kind of abandoned city and there are no people and (and at least it's nothing like the mine, at least nothing here reminds him of What Happened) maybe that's for the best.

He keeps finding the pickaxe next to him when he wakes up, no matter where he throws it or buries it. The blood on it has dried, is flaking off, but he swears he can still smell it.

The thing on his wrist is like something out of a sci fi movie and it beeps at him every now and then, but he ignores it in favor of trying to find something, anything, familiar. He's never had a hallucination or nightmare or whatever this is exactly like this one, not so vivid, not one that lasted longer than two hours of the five minute game.

He wanders aimlessly, jacket torn and dusty, picking streets at random. ]





((ACTION or NETWORK))

[letmefeelfire]

[Ellie misses Natalie. She misses her with every inch, every fiber of her being, but she can't dwell on that. She can't worry about what she's doing, if she's okay, because it's not practical.

People keep telling her that there's no way home, and that makes her heart hurt more than anything else. But she keeps going. The world is a lot cleaner here. The droids keep everything so so clean, and on a certain level, she's happy.

If Natalie were here, this would be perfect.

But what she finds is Tom instead, and ... oh no.]

Oh, that won't do at all.

[she reaches out as though she's going to touch his jacket, but jerks her hand back. It's just so filthy. And there are tears ... ]

I can fix that for you.

O'BRIEN | HALO LEGENDS | :( over a year on station

[sniperbitch]

[ :||||||||||||||||||||

Yeah okay so O'Brien's on patrol, aka looting the Junkyard for ammunition as usual. Cal's SPARTAN-size sniper rifle is strapped to his back, as always, and he's cursing up a storm as he rummages through junk.

What is his life, dammit. ]



((ACTION or NETWORK))

TWOSIX-SIX | SINGULARITY NPC | :( 15 years on the station

[bastione]

[ However you found your way into this room, buried in the depths of one of the buildings, there's an awful lot of blue lights and wires and man-sized glass capsules filled with questionable liquid.

The crown jewel is in the center of the room, where the capsule is occupied by a figure in silhouette.

That repeating noise, under the hum of the machinery? That's a heartbeat.

He's awake, beneath the glass, even if his eyes are closed and his arms drift at his sides. The network never sleeps, after all, and he was once System Security. He'll answer if you wish to speak to him. ]




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CLOUD STRIFE | FF7 ADVENT CHILDREN | 2 weeks on station

[secondhand_sky]

[ The first thing Cloud did upon finding himself stranded aboard a space station, as opposed to the ruined city of Purgatorium, was fix his bike.

Well, alright, the first thing he did was automatically destroy a few drones out of sheer reflex, and then argue with a hologram, but the first thing that counted as any sort of accomplishment was repairing Fenrir. He'd gotten over his urge to demand explanations of the locals the first time he'd been whisked away to another dimension or whatever Purgatory counted as, he knew it was just a matter of patience.

He worried that his friends worried, but only briefly. He'd gone home to them before. He would go home to them again, and it was possible that no time would have passed at all.

In the meantime, there were empty cities to explore and parts to salvage, and Cloud carefully skirted any hint of local inhabitants. Leaving Aaron behind was not a fresh wound, but it ached all the same. It might be better, easier, this time, if he simply kept to himself, kept his head down, ghosted through his time here until he was allowed to leave.

Because that strategy had always worked out for him in the past.

Anyway he's in just outside the Junkyard with Fenrir in pieces around him, his swords laid out in a neat row waiting to be reloaded back into their compartments, and engine grease smeared all over his face and arms, too intent on his work to bother wiping it away. ]




((ACTION or NETWORK))

DUKE (THE LEGENDARY TURK) | FF7 BEFORE CRISIS | just arrived

[el_legendaire]

[ So this is new and exciting. Definitely not Midgar, definitely not Purgatorium, definitely not that misty town he's almost certain he dreamed up. Space stations and artificial intelligence, oh my. The green hisses in the back of his mind, murmuring to itself about the last time She had been in space, the last time She had come to a new world, but there is no deliberation or task for him to fulfill. The green whispers of danger but no more or less than he normally found himself in, which said something about his life.

Once upon a time, he thinks, this would have been an emergency situation, being spirited away to places unknown by powers unknown. Now it's just a Saturday, and he strolls with hands in his pockets, fingering the explosives and poisons and razors within easy reach, ever present sunglasses hiding the poison mako green and cat pupils of his eyes. Jenova's mark. He'd traded away his humanity for power, and one of the consequences was unfortunately cosmetic.

Not that Duke made a habit of going around without his trademark shades anyway, but their necessity did make him more conspicuous, which was never a word that sat well with him. A retired spy was still a spy.

On the other hand, he was much harder to kill these days, so it all evened out in the end. Sort of.

He spares a thought for the new alias he'll have to use, when he gets up the energy to pay attention to the network here (there's always a network). The last time he'd given Valentine's name as his own, and he might do so again. Sikander Valentine. It wasn't actually any less him than Iskander Kaplan, or Alex, or even Duke. Just one more mask to wear. Just one more little lie, pretending he still had some connection to Vincent after all this time, pretending it mattered that he'd struck a devil's bargain and willingly given himself over to be made into a monster. Because clearly Vincent needed more of those in his life, when it had been done to him again his will.

In any case, Valentine's name is as good as any, and Duke certainly isn't looking for him specifically in this empty place, because that would be beyond pathetic. He's looking for anyone who happens to be there, and he won't be disappointed in the slightest when they don't turn out to be Vincent Valentine. ]




((ACTION or NETWORK))

[diabolus]

[ Well, guess what, motherfucker. TODAY'S YOUR NOT SO LUCKY DAY.

The memory of Purgatorium feels an eternity away, just out of Vincent's reach, locked so far back into his mind that he's nearly forgotten any of it happened at all. He tries to wipe the heavy cobwebs from his brain, tries to remember anything aside from the pain in his chest and the memory of not remembering anything at all, but all he gets is static and silence, his palms slick with sweat, dark hair pushed from his forehead.

Vincent's propped up against a wall, and all he wants to do is sleep so he can dream those dreams he can't remember once more -- just one last time, he swears -- but then he sees that man.

The man is tall and dark and leaner than he has any right to be, his back turned to Vincent, polished black shoes scraping rhythmically across the concrete as he walks. Vincent's mouth hangs half open before he presses his lips together and squints, and he stares at him as if he expects the man to stop, to turn around, to fucking look at him, goddamnit, but he never does. He keeps walking.

And walking. And walking.

And. ]

You. [ The word falls from his mouth on a raspy whisper as Vincent shoves an elbow to the wall behind him, staggering forward before he catches himself on a nearby bench. ] You.

[ The man doesn't hear him. How could he?

Somehow, Vincent manages to round the bench as he fumbles for his gun at his side, damp fingers grappling awkwardly over the metal before he finds the grip and draws his weapon to the air, points it right at that man's back. ]

Stop walking.

JAKE GRAY | DEVOUR | 2 weeks on station

[devorare]

[ The first week, he screams himself hoarse shouting for her, stuck in a dream that won't end, and even though he knows that he only has the hospital and the court case and probably prison to look forward to back in the real world, it's the world he chose, the one he tried to choose.

The taste of blood at the back of his throat never goes away.

He figures he's being punished. The little flashes he'd always lived with, the five second stretches of time he'd lose, are nothing compared to this. You can't kill the Devil. You can't cheat the Devil of what belonged to her. She'd held his jaw and forced everything in that gold goblet down his throat, and the inhuman noises had started to sound like speech, and all of it was repetition, my son, my child, my own, you belong to me.

By the second week he was resigned to the never ending hallucination. Maybe he was in a coma, back in the real world. Maybe he'd finally given in to one of the red flashes, picked up a knife or a pen or a pair of scissors and driven it calmly through his temple.

He still gets them, but now he understands their how and why, and he knows he has to keep saying 'no.' Each one is a question, a test, asking if he's ready to come home yet, asking if he's ready to be his mother's son. He finds a building that seems to be the Star Trek equivalent of a church, some kind of place for prayer, anyway, and huddles in the doorway, wishing he knew the first fucking thing about how to exorcise demons or ward off the Devil or any of that stuff that Catholics always know how to do in the movies. His parents had stolen him from the actual Devil and hadn't bothered to teach him any freaking Latin.

Also, he can start fires now. And move things by thinking about it. He feels like a traitor to his species every time something happens, every time he does something particularly inhuman, but illusory space stations are dangerous places and he wonders if this is all just another test, trying to push him into accepting fate.

By the end of the second week, he's thinking about it. But he doesn't stray far from the church he's adopted as home, and every time he gets a particularly bad red flash or feels himself starting to consider the consequences of acceptance, he finds the altar, or clenches his hand around the little crucifix he'd made out of pieces of scrap metal lashed into a cross shape until the metal cuts into palm and leaves a mark.

It would all probably be more effective if he believed in God. Funny how one was inescapably real to him and the other as insubstantial as air. ]




((ACTION or NETWORK))