capeandcowllogs | of those blackholes & revelations

of those blackholes & revelations

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.

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The gratitude was plain on his face. It was really good to have a friend close – especially one as strong and capable as Danger herself was. He truly admired her: What may have truly been reluctance in playing with the nuances of being human he perceived as enormous self-control and purpose. Different computer, different programming.

He nodded, eager to hand her the reins for a while.

"Yes, yes please. I'd be glad for the company and the help!" But mostly the company.

In all honesty, she too was appreciative of having a companion. Her birth as a sentient being had been drowned in loneliness and darkness-- so, at a time like this, despite her unreadable face, a part of her was a little comforted by the familiarity of Steve's company. She had only positive, even fond memories of their friendship.

Absently adjusting the straps on her backpack a little, Danger glanced at him as she began to walk again, expecting him to follow.

"Have you consumed any food or water recently, Steve?"

"Ah–" He cut himself sort, so eager to offer more positivity, but...but the truth was he hadn't thought on it at all. "Actually...actually, no. No, not that I think of it. Very little! What with all these horrible and odd happenings..." He breathed out a laugh. "Oh, goodness! That would explain the hallucinations!"

She stopped walking, turning to fix Steve with a bit of a frown at his response.

"Steve," she said his name rather seriously, her expression disapproving over a layer of much more subtle concern, "You must take better care of yourself."

Danger set her backpack down on the ground, opening it to rifle through its few contents. She didn't have much by the way of supplies, but it was enough. Physically, she was strong enough. She would manage until she could find more water and food. For now, Steve needed it more than she did.

She pulled out a bottle of water and a granola bar, holding them out to her companion.

Danger was more and more impressive every time they met. Steve's eyebrows shot up with surprise as he found his hands full of both things he'd been lacking.

"Oh, my!" he declared, starting to smile again. "Thank you very much, Danger! This is quite efficient of you!" But of course it was; Danger was nothing if not efficient, right? He was more sure of that than ever.

The favorite thing came first: Steve tucked the bottle under one arm to allow himself to get at unwrapping the granola bar and taking nearly half down in a single bite, happily savoring. It may have been quite bland and dry compared to some of the wonderful things he'd had before, but in that moment it was heavenly.

"Dish ish bery goodh, dangh you!"

There was something oddly reassuring in Steve's simple happiness. Danger herself was unsure if she had ever really experienced such uncomplicated joy-- even in this expressive human-like body, she had never smiled. But here, even with the world falling to pieces, Steve was pleased by such a small gift. It was something to contemplate.

"You're welcome," she answered quietly, pausing before going on, perhaps a bit more insistently, "Steve, you cannot neglect to tend to your own needs. You will be unable to assist anyone else if you fail to maintain yourself."

"Mwohh–" Steve started, the second half of the bar already in his mouth. He chewed it up, grunting a little to try and be quick about it, before swallowing it all down in a loud gulp, wincing at the feeling of less-chewed chunks scraping down his throat. "Gluh–! Hah...Right. No, I understand perfectly, Danger! I can only attribute my personal neglect to a great deal of shock to the circumstances we're all faced with...But, thanks to your concern, I'll be quite aware of my physical status from here on out!"

He finally turned his attention to the water – a terribly enticing thing to him in that moment. It soothed a lot of the scratching the granola had caused on the way down, and so Steve happily chugged a fair amount...spitting out a portion on the downswing (sorry about your face, Danger) and sputtering, holding the bottle away from him.

"Ghuhckk! Oh! Oh, dear!" He waggled his pinky – a pinky he hadn't had for a good year, and certainly not one that was mechanical. Yet there it was, twitching as he wished, clicking a little at the joints. "How peculiar!"

Danger's face, now dripping a mixture of Steve's saliva and water, had become decidedly unamused. Perhaps she was wondering if there was a reason he had spit out a mouthful of precious water more or less into her eyes. But whatever budding annoyance she felt took backseat to the fact that he seemed to now suddenly possess a mechanical pinky.

She squinted at it, tilting her head.

"Steve," she spoke his name in that slow, careful way again. "What is happening to you?"

In fairer circumstances, Steve's attention would've been entirely on Danger and the horrible realization he'd just spat all over her (he knew that to be rude in a good number of cultures, human or otherwise)!

But as it were, his eyes were glued on the mechanical pinky now glued on his hand.

"I...Oh, I, I wish I knew!" he declared, a note of dismay in his voice. "This is all highly irregular as it is, and now...!"

She wiped her hand with her sleeve (thoroughly) before leaning closer to him, as if to get a better look at that suddenly mechanized digit.

"Have you never reverted to your robotic form in this universe before?" Her eyes scrutinized as her mind turned over various explanations for this phenomenon. "Are you in pain?"

"I," he floundered, having to stop himself and hold his breath. Did it hurt? It was certainly a shock, but...

"Auh, no...No, I don't believe so. No burning, or...or aching...And this...certainly has never occurred before, I can honestly say!"

At least he wasn't in pain. She had never experienced being half-way before, with parts both organic and mechanical at the same time. She had no idea what could have caused it-- or rather, multiple ideas and no real way of deciding which one was more plausible than another. She continued to scrutinize him.

"Did you do something that I am unaware of? Immediately prior, I only witnessed you drinking the water." Danger glanced up from his hand to his face as she spoke. "Do you feel as though you are malfunctioning? If you are not, perhaps it is ultimately irrelevant."

Steve's face was a series of baffled and worried gawks and grimaces. "Why, no, I...Well, is there some kind of side-effect to the particular food you offered me? Some, some extreme allergic reaction to, to ah–" He fumbled to find the wrapper, to smooth it out and squint at the label. "To...oat, peanut, lentil..."

"There was nothing unusual about the item I gave you. I thoroughly inspected the packaging to make certain it was still properly--" She stopped herself, reconsidering what he'd said to her. "Steve, are you aware of any allergies you possess? It is possible that your body is responding to an otherwise harmless ingredient."

"But, Danger," cried Steve, dismayed. "Have you ever heard of an incident where a human would spontaneously develop artificial limbs–?!"

"No," her voice was tense with a growing frustration, faced with a problem she didn't understand-- and couldn't properly compute in this organic body. "I have not. But Steve, you must remain calm. If there is something wrong, it will not help us for you to exacerbate the situation. I require your assistance to understand this."

His mouth twitched at calm; the act of calming himself wasn't a clear-cut process, and it left him feeling more distressed in attempting.

But if Steve was anything, he was a trooper, organic or not...or both.

"I, I understand," he stammered, frowning harder as he watched his pinky flex with his other finger. The more he did that, the less real it seemed; he couldn't feel pain or the sense of the joint bending. "I...think..."

Danger exhaled, still annoyed with what she felt to be her own incompetence. Approaching Steve, she reached for his affected hand, taking it carefully but firmly in her own. She turned his hand over, back and forth a few time as if inspecting it, lightly pinching his mechanical finger and moving it herself, eying the place where metal melded with flesh.

At length, she spoke again, her voice low.

"I apologize, Steve. I may have inadvertently caused you to be put in this predicament."

The remark came as quite a surprise. Steve, who'd been watching her inspection with a great deal of care, straightened as he startled, his fingers twitching. It took a minute to wholly grasp what she meant.

"Oh, Danger..." His other hand reached out, patting the top of hers. "Please, don't apologize! You got me out of quite a tight spot without me even knowing it! Whether this mystery digit is at all correlated isn't something within your control."

"Nevertheless, I feel somewhat responsible. My intention was to take care of you," she responded with a certain briskness, as if to brush off any reassurance.

Finally satisfied with her inspection-- or at least certain that there was no more she could ascertain by pure observation-- she carefully withdrew, releasing his hand before going on, "Do you feel that you would be able to continue onward? Given that we are unable to determine the cause of your altered condition, we will monitor the situation, of course."

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of those blackholes & revelations

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er wiped...her FaCE...

NW I READ IT AS FACE even if the word is hand. maddiesynch

we are one ;w;

lion king 2 songs softly play

we ARE on e YOU ANd i

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