spoofer: (piano)
Xistentia: Mod ([personal profile] spoofer) wrote in [community profile] xistentia2017-11-04 03:08 pm

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

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.
pillz: (scream)

[personal profile] pillz 2017-12-06 08:52 am (UTC)(link)
[kavinsky wasn't expecting that. she'd always seemed so strong— to kavinsky, even though part of him knew that plenty of those who grow up to be kind experienced plenty of weakness too. it's just that— death, the urge to it, the self-immolating urge to hurt and mark and end himself, has always been his domain. and she'd always been the one who persisted despite.]

Fucking bullshit cunting liar.

[later, he'll know that she wasn't. but right now, disgust hits him like a crowbar in the middle of his spirit, smashing his heart against his ribs. he feels his face contort into a sneer before he even thinks to make a threat. they'd fallen on the hospital floor, him and the spectral nurse, and suddenly he's as mad as a toddler. it's without technique, without strategy, that he lashes out at the evil creature then, kicking out his feet, knocking her a couple of feet.

kavinsky doesn't have his vampire strength here, in amanda's world. maybe at some point, he'll wonder why that is; why it is that amanda perry brings out the human in him.

whamp. that's the sound of his naked hand slapping shut on the railing of amanda's bed. his tattooed knuckles sharpen, and he pulls himself up off the ground, tottering slightly. (he doesn't have his cocaine strength here, either.)]
Amanda! [he says, abruptly and absurdly brightening.] About time you got your skinny ass up. Listen to the shit coming out of this fuck's face.
miss_brilliant: (bar smile)

[personal profile] miss_brilliant 2017-12-10 03:13 am (UTC)(link)
[Amanda isn't sure why she wants to laugh a little at Kavinsky fighting against the embodiment of everything she's been fighting since she was a child--it's not just hysterics, maybe it's because no one else really did this, not in the same way. Her parents had fought to get her the education she wanted and Nick and a few others had stood at her side to make the point that she was as good if not better than her colleagues, but it wasn't the same thing as saying that her life was worth something, shouting down the belief that it wouldn't have been worth something if she hadn't been able to reconfigure alien technology.

She tries to hold the hysterical giggle back, but the jarring sight of him smiling in this place breaks the dam a little so she has to put a hand to her mouth to muffle the sound that is something between laughter and sobbing]


Yeah. It's crap. [it's not, and maybe when this is done she'll give in and have a drink or three and tell him the story behind that, which isn't much of a story besides 'high school is awful especially when you're a crip'.

She shakes her head a bit, stepping around to him with legs that are getting a little steadier with each small step]
She makes you sound like a gentleman. [it tempers it a little, takes the sting out of the condensed version of things so many people said, things her own mind said. And probably will keep saying, she knows that.

There's an urge to wipe at the blood on her face, but she knows it's not really there, so she just lets out a long breath as she glances at the body of every bit of self-hatred and doubt she's held in herself for too long]
It might have had a point or two a long time ago. But she's forgetting I grew up. [and that is as close as she can get to really admitting she's thought these things, that this really is how she saw herself, that it's both the scared child and the adults that child had taken all the wrong things from spitting out this poison] Good thing I've got someone around to call me all kinds of things that are definitely not child appropriate to prove her wrong.

[she never thought she'd be thanking Kavnisky for his foul language, especially not like that, but then again she's never thought she'd be doing just about anything she's done around him]
pillz: (sly)

[personal profile] pillz 2017-12-13 04:22 am (UTC)(link)
[for better or worse, kavinsky is definitely here for foul language and pushing people to do things that may or may not be good for them, but are definitely not things that they would have done by themselves. he's good for that, if you take a rather flexible perspective on that term, good. other times, he's just good at being bad.]

'Child appropriate?' That's ageist, bitch!

[or stupid. but he's trying to help and keep her upright, holding her arm, then letting it go so that she knows he has total confidence in her (not true) (but more than he would most people who have been disabled), his hand hovering at the small of her back. he takes a step forward, putting himself beside her instead of in front of her. sometimes, it's hard to tell whether kavinsky is being supportive or just shoving a buddy out of a nest and down a sheer cliffside.]

Listen. I know you're having some kind of deep psychic shame, [he moves his hands further from her waist, and angles a look down the hallway. then at the nurse laying prone where he'd punted her. she looks disoriented, but not dead.] But I think if we want to get our asses out of here, you may have to smite a fellow woman. I know the misogyny don't come easy to you, but like.

You could think of it as symbolic. I dunno. A lot of my other 'Drift' type thangs has come down to people beating the shit out of they worst fears. [he wipes his nose with the heel of his hand, attractively, and jerks his head at the fake medical professional on the floor.] Maybe if you hang her, that'll be some extra poetic justice. Hahaha.

Just kidding.

[(sort of.)

(why did she pick him again?)

but he's also looking around genuinely wary, lest the nurse not be the 'final boss' in amanda's nightmare at all.]
miss_brilliant: (stoic)

[personal profile] miss_brilliant 2017-12-22 03:14 am (UTC)(link)
[Amanda makes a small, choked noise that might be an attempt at laughter, shaking her head. Right here, in this place that is trying to make her feel like everything people said about her was true--that she wasn't a full person, let alone a woman who had the ability to desire someone--there's something nice in a very screwed up way about Kavinsky's slur-filled speech. Maybe when she gets wasted after this, she'll try to explain that to him too.

Or she'll just suggest they go out for a drive and maybe make some ridiculous and useless tech for the hell of it. That might be better]


Look at it this way, it's one of the few things I can get out of being a woman in her thirties.

[any levity in her expressions fades as she follows his gaze, swallowing hard and nodding. She expected this, once she got herself grounded again. It might have been easier to face if it had been the driver of the car that had changed her life, but somehow he'd never been her personal bogeyman]

Yeah. Well. I know she's not a real woman, and she doesn't even look like anyone I actually knew. She is the reason I don't watch horror movies that take place in hospitals. [because too often there's a woman like her in them made into one of the monsters. Because the places of her nightmares have to be made that little bit worse with the added dose of sexism]

I do sort of wish she'd been a man though. There were a lot of them I would have liked to...[scream at, kick in some very sensitive places, shove face-first into a computer monitor. There's a lot of ways she could take that sentence, so she just lets out a long breath, tentatively stepping away from Kavinsky.

Her steps aren't exactly confidant as she moves towards the thing she wishes looked like someone who had really looked down on her, instead of this twisted amalgamation of all the roles those people had played. But it makes sense, that she's something both violent and caring. Someone using the mask of wanting what was 'best' for Amanda to cover up the fact they didn't see her as a person.

She crouches down, only trembling a little, so she's crouching by the woman-shaped monster. And of course it smiles at her, voice still sickly sweet and surprisingly clear for something with a face that's been rearranged]


You can't do it, can you. You can't let yourself be angry at me, at anyone. You're their pet genius who does anything they ask so they'll tell you you're a good girl. Especially him, his Little Miss-

[It's not surprising that even mildly referencing how Amanda knows she acted around Nick, especially after Gloria died--tattooing 'see how perfect I am, see how nice I am even when you've just yelled at a roomful of people, see how good I can be for you even though I'm broken'--that makes Amanda give in to urges she's suppressed for years and not just because she couldn't actually act on them, reaching to grab the thing by the throat]

I'm not. I was never his pet, or anyone else's. I earned my own goddamn place. [she's not even concoius of swearing, or the fact her grip is tightening, or that she's crying] I wasn't kind to make them like me or give me anything. I'm kind because all of you weren't. You pretended you were, but even a kid's not that naive. You pitied me. [she tries not to be affected by the too-familiar sight of the thing gasping for air, tightening her grip so she doesn't reach for her own throat to grasp at the phantom sensation of her vent being yanked]

He. didn't. [it guts her, to use the past tense for Nick in anyway, but biting off those two words gives her strength. She hadn't always believed them, but she believes he really thought he didn't, unlike all the teachers and doctors and strangers who hadn't even bothered to hide it.

There are sharp fingers clawing at her hands now, gouging deep cuts in an attempt to keep its toxic presence alive, but she ignores the pain until its grip on her spasms and then slacks, and even then she holds like that for a few more moments before pulling away, sitting back on her heels and staring at her bloodied hands]
pillz: (scream)

[personal profile] pillz 2017-12-27 05:10 am (UTC)(link)
[this would be a strange exchange for anyone to be party to. nightmare nurse ratchet, a crippled girl who can walk again. psychic dreamspace, souls laid bare to the self-cannibalizing parts of themselves, so that they might be consumed like some ouroborous shit or every other fucked up analogy in fiction or life where a being destroys itself. it's super fucking weird.

but it's real extra super fucking weird to kavinsky, whose monsters are shaped like dragons and birthed into real life by his own strategic superpowers. strange too, for he who loves her-- you might as well call it love, right?— but cares little for the people like her, who've suffered in countless worlds in countless experiences of disability, insults and injuries from people made anxious, angry, greedy or cruel by that perception of difference. kavinsky's never been good at giving a fuck about justice by itself or the principle of anything.

yet even he can glimpse the current of something deeper, moving through her words as amanda says what she says. as she grabs that human monster by the neck and squeezes. mostly, she's amanda-- his amanda. amanda perry, his roommate who hates his yelling gay drama and loud shitty bulgarian music and tendency to leave socks or sneak up on her with vampire powers. but a little bit too, she's a woman who was wronged by a common and ordinary system, and is angry for it, righteously. and for a moment, he gets that it's-- a problem. a big one. something meaningful that needs to change.

and of course, the next--]


Yeah, bitch is turning blue! [he howls behind her, proud. he gives the dying nurse monster two bony middle fingers, and even as he does, the world around them is beginning to glow and soften. the psychic prison losing its grip on them.] Ding dong, witch is fucking dead. Fuck yeah! Sit on the gimp girl's fist!

[he's kind of supportive? in his own way?]