of those blackholes & revelations

[capemods]

WHO: All imPorts.
WHERE: Atropos.
WHEN: January 7th to January 14th.
WARNINGS: Death and destruction.
SUMMARY: Atropos has risen in the night, and the inevitable has come: with her jaws she shears away the City from Earth and swallows it whole.

But the City is not yet dead.
FORMAT: Whatever you please.



The formless mass of metal haunting above, hovering like a lunar tombstone, begins to take shape. Asteroids plummet into the cheeks, the eyes, carving out bone structure. Her features howl with fury, with triumph, as she stares down below, savoring her conquest. A cavity opens. Metal swoops to form jagged, angry shears. Her teeth are born.

She waits as the world rotates, its spin more wobbly than it used to be.

And then she leans down to feast, her bite vampiric. She takes the City and then some, and all that it encompasses, so that every single imPort is captured. She takes the time to drink in any stragglers, any imPorts elusive to the City's thrall.

She holds the City on her tongue as she draws back her fist to punch the world.

And then teeth close to the shuddering, glass shattering vibration of a cosmic laugh. The jaws close, and there is no light for about an hour -- until Atropos begins to siphon solar energy from the sun into her veins. She is dissatisfied with its dying tint, or perhaps she cannot stand the redness of color, so once she injects this energy into her her body (her most intimate domain), she turns it bright yellow again. The universe within her is illuminated.

The City is a floating chunk of broken skyscrapers and puckered asphalt streets. The trauma of consumption has wrecked the usual infrastructure: buildings are half collapses, or skeletal, vehicles are flipped and strewn across the layout. Whatever vegetation that is still clinging onto life has rejoiced under the return of normal sunlight.

You can breathe. It isn't too hot, or too cold -- it's unusually pleasant, in fact. The sunshine veins that light your world are not overwhelming. There is no blue sky to complement the atmosphere, and whatever water still in the City will be constrained to the bottled kind found in shops.

But there are other floating pieces of worlds, and they might have water. Or food.

If you live in the City, your possessions should still be in the City. While about 76% of the natives have fled the City (which had gotten the brunt of focus over the past week), there are still some natives who were too sick, too sentimental or too stubborn to leave.

You'll find that your powers work normally, though you can't teleport within Atropos. You probably wouldn't want to teleport outside of her, anyway.

She swallows, and the City gentle glides down a slick throat. Dust and particles create stunning visuals, like the aurora borealis, except in warmer colors. Light reflects so easily from solar veins and starstrewn flesh.

While you can breathe easily, gravity is fickle. Physics is often defied. Atropos was never one to play by the rules.

Comments

b. hey remember how i said we should get cr a month ago /cough

[smarterthandad]

[In the aftermath of the asteroid strikes, Valeria's taken it upon herself to look for survivors, and even find a few, all of whom had been too rattled by the last few weeks to concern themselves with how they had been saved by a three year old. "Saved for what?" is a question she's not asking herself; as long as anyone's still alive, it's worth fighting.

She finds it much easier and faster to float on an invisible disc of force than to walk on her short legs and spend all her energy clambering over obstacles, so she's gliding along, sitting cross-legged in the air like some kind of tiny yogi in a superhero outfit when she sees Karkat and drifts to a halt.]

You look awful. Are you all right?

[At least Val's customary lack of tact ought to be something less of a problem for a troll than it usually is for members of her own species.

Unlike Karkat, she's clean and put-together, uninjured by the earthquake (her force fields can deflect much worse than falling buildings), her white Future Foundation uniform still gleaming and spotless (unstable molecules don't stain), and her expression calm, shading into concern for him (she's been through nastier things than a few asteroid strikes).]

yes i recall lets do this

[crab]

[ After everything he's seen, a floating toddler with proper articulation only gives Karkat a few moments of pause, before he collects himself. He intends to answer her with some barbed quip about not having had time to do his hair and makeup what with the apocalypse and all, but what comes out of his mouth instead is: ]

I am awful. In every sense of the word.

[ Which results in his previously irritated expression morphing into something closer to confused and vaguely alarmed. ]

[smarterthandad]

[Well, that seems...off. Val's reclusive beyond her small circle of co-conspiratorsfriends, but she does monitor the network closely, albeit with a computer program that compiles profiles for her, and Karkat is usually...not like this. He does have a head injury, she supposes.]

...Okay, sure. I'll help you anyway. [It's what superheroes do, and she is totally a superhero just like her family, okay.] Is your species susceptible to concussions?

[crab]

Yeah, we are. We're susceptible to most of the same injuries your species is. [ The head injury may explain the bizarre word vomit. He frowns, and reaches up to feel his head. Bad idea -- he winces at the pain, and again when his hand comes away wet, smears of bright candy red on his fingers. Ordinarily he'd try not to draw attention to it, but... ]

This is disgusting. [ Scathing, furious. ] I can't believe this. I can't believe people don't instantly begin to projectile vomit like a collection of puke fountains the instant anyone sees it.

[smarterthandad]

Scalp wounds do bleed a lot, but that's because the area's heavily vascularized. It's not a good indication of severity by itself.

[Because that's clearly what Karkat's worried about, not the filthy mutant red color--which of course looks like perfectly normal oxygenated blood to Val.

She's looking around for a store to raid; even an overpriced I ♥ NY t-shirt will do as a bandage, since Karkat's clothes are filthy and her wouldn't absorb blood even if either of them were strong enough to tear a strip out in the first place.]

[crab]

It's not the wound. [ He tells her, and though his tone is impatient, the look on his face is one of dawning horror. ] It's the color.

[smarterthandad]

It looks adequately oxygenated to me. Let's find you something to bandage that up.

[Cranky alien kids being weird at her is actually a fairly normal day for Val, and she certainly doesn't know how much Karkat hates his blood, so she's just going to keep assuming he's lightly concussed as she starts to float off towards a less-wrecked part of the street.]

Are you dizzy? Do you need me to carry you?

[crab]

I have never been more grateful for someone's chronic ability to miss the point than I am right now.

[ Is what he has to say about that, following her with an only slightly unsteady pace. ]

I take back everything I ever said about stupid people. I welcome all stupidity with open arms, particularly yours. Thank every almighty fuck you don't understand what I'm talking about.

[smarterthandad]

[Val is sufficiently secure in her intelligence that she just gives Karkat an amused look. Doesn't matter what you think of her, bro, she's the smartest person in the universe.]

Why don't you explain it to me?

[Also she's horrible enough to take advantage of someone in an altered mental state, even if she's not quite sure what that mental state is.]

[crab]

This -- [ He seems to struggle with himself for a moment, before holding up a hand, still smeared with his blood. ] -- is a mutation. No one in my species bleeds this color. This is an aberration. A great big genetic mistake, one I should have been culled for before I even emerged from the brooding caverns.

[smarterthandad]

[She's intellectual enough to divorce Karkat's opinions on mutants from the state of things in her own universe.

But he's still a jerk.]

My brother's a mutant, you know.