War with D.E.S.T.I.N.Y.

[spoofer]

Characters: Ensemble cast, any/all characters of Xistentia!
Summary: D.E.S.T.I.N.Y. comes to Xistentia for the first time, bringing with it violence and havoc. Combat against enemy agents, healing, emergency sanctuary, and "Drift Compatibility" happen here. Refer to the OOC plotting post and the mod announcement!
Date(s): November 4-18
Warnings/Notes: Violence, death, psychological themes, trauma. Please warn for anything else in your subject headers!

WAR WITH DESTINY

By headsman's blade or battle-axe

Fight For Your Life

Everything is, in short, super fucked. Era Ra's warning came at the right time, forewarning of some of the weapons and fighting styles that could be expected from D.E.S.T.I.N.Y.'s agents, but still, the people of Xistentia have not faced a force like this before. The ragtag combination of fighting styles and tactics promises both versatility and confusion.

For better or worse, D.E.S.T.I.N.Y. is in similar chaos.

The first to come are ships from the Western sea, bearing a mix of warriors in and monsters. Some wield old-fashioned steel swords and others bear laser blasters, and their armor is just as varied. Some creatures appear domesticated, while others are feral and snap at their own. However, one primary feature identifies the enemy: their war color is red, which adorns flags and uniforms. Interestingly, the sea and sky of Xistentia seem to be fighting back in their own way, massive waves and a storm, even animals pestering them as they attempt to land the beach. However, it's only a matter of time before the mainstay of their forces reach land, some two hundred fighters. It's then that sentient fires start to whirl into the forests, leaping from tree to tree.

You have the home court advantage. Even the foliage itself seems to cooperate with you, aiding in efforts for stealth by keeping you downwind, twigs failing to crack when you misstep. Soon, you're joined by Xistentia's other forces-- a handful of battered ships taking air, an odd assortment of elves and talking dogs, demons and aliens from outer-space, coordinating counter-attacks.

BATTLE MODE: ATTACK

You're locked in combat with a woman who seems oddly familiar, though you don't know her face and can't think of her name. You hit her in the head, and now a narrow slice of her face shows through her red-rimmed helm. She wields a rifle tipped with a heavy blade, though it crackles with electrical energy. She is a proficient swordswoman, deftly parrying and striking against you, her face eerily expressionless. Her blade has a switch that, when activated, will send out a net that numbs your limbs and drags you to the floor. Here's hoping you won't face this demon alone.

She's not your only problem. You may have noticed, that in every epic battle with evil wizards, there's always some kind of a problematically gigantic elephant. This is one of those days. At least, there's only one, its trunk as wide as a car, its feet moving slow, so that it might crush the trees rather than trip over them.

Fight one or both, or fight the hordes of nameless minions around them. Either way: there's plenty to do. Those of you who thought things were too quiet here? You'll be busy today.

SEEK SANCTUARY

Fighting isn't for you? Well, you'll want to get out of the way, then. The "wards" protecting the city are failing, and people are heading toward The Temple where the protections remain the strongest. Here, the injured need healing in the stone beds. The civilians do their best, comforting children, cooking food, trading intelligence, repairing weapons and armor where possible. Feel free to pitch in; they need all the help they can get.

BATTLE MODE: SUPPORT (PSYLINK)

And here, you've reached the Temple, you've laid yourself down on one of the many glass-and-stone beds within the safety of its stone walls. You know what the other Xistentia residents have told you about it— this is the next phase, after the memory share had raised shields against the psychotropic rain. This is the PsyLink. Through this bond, you are said to be able to activate special defenses. No one seems to know exactly what they are, but desperate times call for desperate measures. And beyond the Temple walls, times are desperate indeed.

Each drift requires at least two people. Your daemons will find and connect you, seemingly at random— and you may find yourself with the unlikeliest of partners.

Drift Compatible

The Kissing Booth participants find it easiest. Everyone else-- it's a wild jumble, finding yourself caught up in a firehose of not only your own memories, but that of someone else. Everything they think, everything they feel, is intertwined with your mind.

You can't get caught up in it. You have to let the memories of the past, your predictions for the future, and the terror of war flow in and out of you, without neither resistance or pursuit, gently tuning them out. And in this serenity, this psychic silence, this acceptance of not only yourself but the other other, you find perfect connectivity— harmony with your PsyLink partner.

In this space, you find yourself having strange conversations. You and your partner will share ghostly images, some of which seem to be images from the past— while others seem to be present-day moments from the battle outside, fighting the enemy, as if you are somehow in two places at once. You must find traction and stay in the now and stay calm, but it's harder than you think.

The instant you latch onto that memory or emotion, it's a mistake... but you forget.

Your shadow is here. Whether out-of-context, or right here where it was meant to be, it's trying to kill you.

But you're not trapped here alone. Someone is calling your name, a familiar voice in the pandemonium. That voice comes from your drift partner. It's up to them to pull you back, remind you of who you are, and balance you. Hold on to them - they're your anchor, but you'll have to do the same for them. A successful drift means helping each other. Do it well, and you'll help to power the temple's defences. Fail, and there'll be trouble for everyone seeking sanctuary here.

Comments

joker ( ota )

[jungianthing]

A) FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE
MARINES ARE NOT ALLOWED TO DIE WITHOUT PERMISSION

( he's bone tired and ekes out of every pore. the world out here is so different that it's making him sick to think about it, but the rules of war are always the same: you can be the meanest motherfucker ever to walk the earth, but you go so long without sleep, without rest, and with your enemy hacking you to pieces every chance you get, and you're nothing more than a corpse that doesn't know it's dead yet. he thinks about the poges back in vietnam, thinks that he was one of them for too long, that his legs had gone to jelly and that the jelly had gone to water and the water had evaporated; he'd been too settled in his skin, and it fucked him up. a couple weeks in infantry before it all came crashing down around him wasn't enough to pull back the impenetrable outer shell he'd built up in boot camp – he breathes in blood and spits out teeth but it makes the child inside him cry and whine and shrink away – so there's fear on him, fear and inadequacy, and it —

shit. he ducks, barely in time to avoid a projectile flying over his head, flattens against the ground. his heart shot up his throat and it feels like he's choking on it now. he swallows it down, hard and forceful. he low-crawls, stomach dragging against the half-melted scour of earth underneath. the heat is making him drowsy, but down here the smoke is thinner, and he can breathe clearer.

you'll find him like this, flat on the ground, either hiding or waiting depending on the observer; or dragging himself up, running ahead and just a few steps shy of running into a searing mass of fire that comes swinging from nowhere, ready to eat him up; or crouched low, reloading his rifle, face swiped with soot and dirt. )

B) SEEK SANCTUARY
YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE WHO YOU ARE ANY MORE

( he's no good as a healer or a medic; he has no patience for it, and all he's ever going to do in a situation like that is get in the way. he takes the time away from the front lines to write, legs folded up against his chest with the angle working as a makeshift table, hunched inwards so he can scribble in the tiny, botanical-printed pages of his journal. somehow he makes himself small, despite the length of his limbs. he's chewing his lip, focused in, drilling the words into the page. he writes in scrawling, hard-punched capitals: Your Boy Scout shit is wet with sweat. Your right index finger is on the trigger of your M-16. Here I come, you say to yourself, here I come with a gun full of bullets.

abruptly, he pockets his pencil, which is blunt and small from oversharpening, and looks up at whoever's just stopped to lean against the wall nearby. ) You're standing in my light.

C) BATTLE MODE: SUPPORT (PSYLINK) · MORE INFO
WHAT IS YOUR MAJOR MALFUNCTION, NUMBNUTS?

( someone says: ) Everybody hates me now, Joker.

( joker is making his bunk. he turns around to source the voice, but the room is empty, cavernously. it echoes. fold the blanket and the sheet back together, a four-inch fold. okay? got it? he turns his head, but the room is empty. a bullet casing hits the floor somewhere. he looks ahead. the room is empty.

someone says: ) Even you, Joker.

Nobody hates you, ( he says into the ugly yellow-green nothing.

someone says: ) I can't do anything right, Joker. I need help, Joker.

( he says nothing back. hapless, hopeless eyes are drilling into the back of his head, and he knows that for a fact. joker turns before he thinks he should and sees him, leonard, buzzcut hair and the opposite of threatening, smiling at him. he's loading his rifle and there's a red stain on the sheets of the bed he's sitting on. wordlessly, joker gets up, and heads for the door. there are no audible footsteps but it's like he can feel himself being followed. he shuts the doors behind him, because leonard is lumbering and slow and he'll never catch up, but he's pounding on the door hard enough that it shakes before joker has time to clear his head. he hears footsteps this time, sees someone he doesn't recognise approaching from in front, and blurts out, thoughtlessly: ) I'm trying to help him. I'm really trying.

D) ANYTHING GOES

( drop a comment here or shoot me a message on pvtjoker if you wanna plot! )

a. fighting!

[servomotor]

[Joker feels the blast of air-- not the searing heat of fire, which had been approaching from his right. But from above. That would be Iron Man's repulsors, in his boots as well as his gloves for stabilization. Yep. Iron Man. Repulsors. Shit like that is real in Xistentia, and probably no more unbelievable than semi-sentient natural disasters or spacecraft, but definitely up there.

He looks like a robot, something out of sci-fi. But there's something undeniably human about it, when he drops squarely onto the sodden jungle earth beside Joker and asks,] Need a lift, soldier?

[He'd recognized that belly crawl. Nobody does it like the United States Armed Forces, no matter what branch or era. Of course, it's marine and not soldier as far as Joker goes, but he doesn't know that. He extends a glove toward the young man, expectant. No more glowing white force coming out of his hand.]

[jungianthing]

( there's something outright humiliating about being so far below someone – or something, whatever, he saw forbidden planet – the first time you look at them, and joker's not used to it. he plants his hands in the dirt and pushes himself up to stand, spine straight just so he can regain a little metaphorical ground.

weirdly, this isn't the strangest thing he's seen all day, so in the spirit of making the best of a bad situation he reaches out his hand, gets the proffered one in a tight grip, and shakes it. his rifle is easily slung over his shoulder, barrel pointing straight up. out of nowhere, his face breaks out into a stupid, teeth-flashing grin, and he laughs. ) Yeah, alright. Why the fuck not. Outstanding.

[servomotor]

[What a good-natured little fellow. Tony always appreciates that in guys— probably why he gets along with military men as often as he doesn't. He's a crabby bitch in all the ways that Rhodey isn't, and a haphazard jokester whenever Rhodey's trying to be serious-- a dynamic that tends to get mirrored with one Steve Rogers.

One hopes for less drama with this guy.]

You armed, kiddo? [It's a short, sweet query, the instant after Tony wraps his armored fingers around Joker's hand— and before he abruptly launches off the ground. Bracing the man's shoulder enough that it doesn't dislocate, he hoists him up, higher, against his armored chest. Princess carry! It's practical, not embarrassing.] What's your combat tactic of choice?

[jungianthing]

( he only manages to get out a ) Muh— ( before he's yanked off his feet, which he should have seen coming. it throws him, anyway. it doesn't last long - he's adaptable, if nothing else, and it's easy to fall into routines when that's all you've been doing for the last year or so - and then he's modulating the volume of his voice to finish answering like it's perfectly normal to be yelling against the sound of wind resistance. ) M-16 and a pistol! Combat tactic's to shoot the bad guys until they're dead!

[servomotor]

[What an adaptable human. Tony's favorite. He picks fights-- or ends up in them so often with the politicians, the naysayers, the sundry idiots of the world back home, it's always nice to meet a rando who isn't an old friend or an Avenger, remember what he's fighting for. And that he isn't the only fucking one, not by a long shot.]

I'll get you the advantage of higher ground, [he says.] Flush them toward you.

[And he does just that. There's some kind of two-legged, walking tank of a combat machine out there, its pilot already killed and removed from the cockpit, which is shattered open, all open glass. But it's a high vantage and armored up beside, sitting mid-step in the dense cover of forest trees. Tony swoops down to settle the young marine on top of it. There are people coming on horseback.] Sound good?