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ANTARCTIC CIRCLE - JUNE EVENT
ANTARCTIC CIRCLE
Monsters are nothing new to this world. While they were thought to be nothing more than legend in the pre-confluence days, the first modern kaijuu attack was recorded in 1954.
Everything people knew to be true was challanged time and time again, but it has been decades since a threat showed itself. The Guild System has kept things manageable, peaceful even. It has afforded metahumans a sense of peace and a place of belonging in a world that once viewed them as disruptive and dangerous.
And so when the reports begin trickling in about a threat manifesting at the South Pole, the senior most members of both guilds head out under cover of night. They're certain they can deal with this quickly and quietly, without placing the burden on the new metas who never asked to be brought to this world.
But when they return at dawn, battered, broken and near dead - the decision is pulled from their hands. The usual theatrics of the guilds are pulled aside as the government officials muscle their way in, taking control of the Alliance command center. Within less than an hour the message is splashed across every screen, interrupting whatever people may have been doing prior.
EMERGENCY GODFALL PROTOCOLS ARE ACTIVE.
ALL ABLE BODIED METAHUMANS ARE EXPECTED TO REPORT INAT ALLIANCE HQ REGARDLESS OF ALLEGIANCE. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. THIS IS A COSMIC LEVEL THREAT.
WITHOUT INTERVENTION IT WILL BEGIN AT T-MINUS 72 HOURS.
Everything people knew to be true was challanged time and time again, but it has been decades since a threat showed itself. The Guild System has kept things manageable, peaceful even. It has afforded metahumans a sense of peace and a place of belonging in a world that once viewed them as disruptive and dangerous.
And so when the reports begin trickling in about a threat manifesting at the South Pole, the senior most members of both guilds head out under cover of night. They're certain they can deal with this quickly and quietly, without placing the burden on the new metas who never asked to be brought to this world.
But when they return at dawn, battered, broken and near dead - the decision is pulled from their hands. The usual theatrics of the guilds are pulled aside as the government officials muscle their way in, taking control of the Alliance command center. Within less than an hour the message is splashed across every screen, interrupting whatever people may have been doing prior.
ALL ABLE BODIED METAHUMANS ARE EXPECTED TO REPORT INAT ALLIANCE HQ REGARDLESS OF ALLEGIANCE. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. THIS IS A COSMIC LEVEL THREAT.
WITHOUT INTERVENTION IT WILL BEGIN AT T-MINUS 72 HOURS.
STRATEGY MEETING—
You’ll find no one is forcing you to attend this strategy meeting… but most of the metahumans gathered here don’t appear to have any real power to speak of. Many of them are scared civilians. One can levitate rocks, another sneezes fire. All the major guild members are in critical condition, but most are expected to pull through.
They won’t say who isn’t.
The only person left in any kind of condition to help is Chaos Gate, who holds out her arm to display the reason why: one of the Sunset Falls blossoms has bonded to her. And though she’s singed and had been exposed to risky levels of cosmic radiation, the flower itself is fine. The intel the guild leaders brought back is enough to form a plan.
The entity is from another dimension, as is the flower. And so it stands to reason that people from other dimensions would be likewise immune. Even if they aren’t, upgrading existing anti-kaijuu weaponry is their best shot at stopping the threat in its tracks.
Any metahuman who is technologically inclined is called in to lend their skills to adapting the existing anti-kaijuu technology. This is your chance to shine if you’re not much of a fighter. You have twenty-four hours to get these machines ready for combat.
They give you the rundown of the technology that powers the robots. Multiple minds working in sync, meta-energies syncing up to replicate your existing power set on a massive scale. However, as they're powered by metahuman energy, doing this for an extended period of time will be incredibly draining, so it’s recommended for each robot to have a dedicated team of pilots to trade duties. At minimum, two people are required to operate each robot.
Additionally, memory-sharing is a known side-effect of this technology. It’s strongly recommended that no two pilots during active combat be from the same world - better still if you’re complete strangers - as its possible to completely lose yourself in these memories.
You can use this time to find partners or teams - and maybe stake a claim on the coolest-looking robot, if you feel like it.
They won’t say who isn’t.
The only person left in any kind of condition to help is Chaos Gate, who holds out her arm to display the reason why: one of the Sunset Falls blossoms has bonded to her. And though she’s singed and had been exposed to risky levels of cosmic radiation, the flower itself is fine. The intel the guild leaders brought back is enough to form a plan.
The entity is from another dimension, as is the flower. And so it stands to reason that people from other dimensions would be likewise immune. Even if they aren’t, upgrading existing anti-kaijuu weaponry is their best shot at stopping the threat in its tracks.
Any metahuman who is technologically inclined is called in to lend their skills to adapting the existing anti-kaijuu technology. This is your chance to shine if you’re not much of a fighter. You have twenty-four hours to get these machines ready for combat.
They give you the rundown of the technology that powers the robots. Multiple minds working in sync, meta-energies syncing up to replicate your existing power set on a massive scale. However, as they're powered by metahuman energy, doing this for an extended period of time will be incredibly draining, so it’s recommended for each robot to have a dedicated team of pilots to trade duties. At minimum, two people are required to operate each robot.
Additionally, memory-sharing is a known side-effect of this technology. It’s strongly recommended that no two pilots during active combat be from the same world - better still if you’re complete strangers - as its possible to completely lose yourself in these memories.
You can use this time to find partners or teams - and maybe stake a claim on the coolest-looking robot, if you feel like it.
MOVE OUT —
At dawn the following day, you’re sent off. Though the atmosphere is one of hope, Chaos Gate drops her usually flippant smile to lay down the facts: you may not come back alive.
But if you don’t go? Then everyone dies. The seers couldn’t say for sure whether you’ll succeed, but those that glimpsed futures where you never left at all made it clear what that led to.
Sync up with your fellow pilots and deploy yourselves, or jump into the med bot following behind. Feel the brush of another mind against yours and the power that comes from controlling an enormous steel giant. Take this time to experiment with the powers and abilities in the real robot, not the simulation you only had a few hours to train in.
But if you don’t go? Then everyone dies. The seers couldn’t say for sure whether you’ll succeed, but those that glimpsed futures where you never left at all made it clear what that led to.
Sync up with your fellow pilots and deploy yourselves, or jump into the med bot following behind. Feel the brush of another mind against yours and the power that comes from controlling an enormous steel giant. Take this time to experiment with the powers and abilities in the real robot, not the simulation you only had a few hours to train in.
ENGAGE —
There are five kaijuu in total. Their bodies roughly shaped like a tortoise, a dragon, a phoenix, and a tiger - with the final one an unknowable mass of flesh and tentacle, protected behind a barrier. Each of them measure roughly eight hundred feet, and are leaving massive damage in their wake. Scattered across the corners of the globe, they’re moving towards the South Pole where the largest beast lays in wait. The closer they are to this destination when you engage them, the more reality seems to be break and bend around them. Space and time are fragile here; there may be some odd effects, things like gravity and time rolling backwards. These creatures bleed cosmic radiation, so it’s recommended that you try to kill them as quickly and bloodlessly as possible. This may be difficult as while they’re in possession of breath attacks, they’re more keen to engage in hand-to-had combat.
Each of them is also spawning smaller copies of themselves, which seem to be moving towards the coastlines - towards major cities, specifically.
Those who believe themselves to be better suited to battling the monster directly can engage the kaijuu outside of their jaegers. But anyone exposed to their irradiated blood will catch a doubtless disorienting glimpse of infinity, and anyone who gets wounded is likely to fall into the ocean and be lost in the chaos. Do this at your own risk.
Those who aren’t piloting can also join medical or maintenance crews, which will be teleported out to any robot crews that require assistance.
Mercifully, once the four celestial beasts are slain - their ringleader seems to lose its power. The barrier that has been protecting it has fallen. And with no defenses of its own, it goes down easily. Reality returns to normal. And exhausted but victorious, you give the signal to be teleported back home.
You can sign up to strike a final blow here.
Each of them is also spawning smaller copies of themselves, which seem to be moving towards the coastlines - towards major cities, specifically.
Those who believe themselves to be better suited to battling the monster directly can engage the kaijuu outside of their jaegers. But anyone exposed to their irradiated blood will catch a doubtless disorienting glimpse of infinity, and anyone who gets wounded is likely to fall into the ocean and be lost in the chaos. Do this at your own risk.
Those who aren’t piloting can also join medical or maintenance crews, which will be teleported out to any robot crews that require assistance.
Mercifully, once the four celestial beasts are slain - their ringleader seems to lose its power. The barrier that has been protecting it has fallen. And with no defenses of its own, it goes down easily. Reality returns to normal. And exhausted but victorious, you give the signal to be teleported back home.
You can sign up to strike a final blow here.
AFTERMATH—
It’s a brutal fight. Maybe not all of you made it back. Once the threat is clear, recovery teams are deployed to try to reclaim and revive any bodies lost in the surf.
Back at guild HQ, you’re welcomed back as heroes. The civilians are eager to know their new saviors - identifying yourself as such is sure to thrust you into the spotlight. Much of the fight has been live-streamed and so your great bravery or cowardice is public knowledge.
Deeper inside headquarters, blue-skinned representatives from the underwater nation of ATLANTIS are shouting at suited lawyers. The kaijuu blood in the water has made their home largely uninhabitable, and the combat has destroyed much of it. Are they going to get the same rescue that the surface world did? You’re welcome to volunteer to visit the rubble that was once their Antarctic settlement and rescue the seal-like selkies from the bloodied water.
Back at guild HQ, you’re welcomed back as heroes. The civilians are eager to know their new saviors - identifying yourself as such is sure to thrust you into the spotlight. Much of the fight has been live-streamed and so your great bravery or cowardice is public knowledge.
Deeper inside headquarters, blue-skinned representatives from the underwater nation of ATLANTIS are shouting at suited lawyers. The kaijuu blood in the water has made their home largely uninhabitable, and the combat has destroyed much of it. Are they going to get the same rescue that the surface world did? You’re welcome to volunteer to visit the rubble that was once their Antarctic settlement and rescue the seal-like selkies from the bloodied water.
IN SUMMARY...
- Giant monsters have appeared. Their mere presence is warping reality. Smaller clones of them are heading towards coastal cities.
- The heroes of this world are no match for it. The government has chosen to enact the Godfall Protocols Act, meaning all metahumans are expected to report in to stop a potential apocalypse. Not everyone has to go and pilot the robot, others can stay to defend the cities from any potential dangers.
- Player characters will be hopping in giant robots designed for two or more pilots. They can read each other's minds to operate in perfect sync. An unintended side-effect is memory sharing. You can get lost in these memories. Any action taken in memory will be replicated by the giant robot.
- After the defeat of these monsters, everyone is brought back to Guild HQ for a heroes welcome. You can sign up for your character delivering a final blow here.
- If you want your character to protest the Godfall Protocols and/or to try to disrupt anything going on, please report your actions here.
- The Atlantean people are begging for help as the robots have destroyed their Arctic cities and the blood in the water has harmed their selkie civilians. Player characters can go search for these selkies. Please report selkie rescues here.
josh foley | marvel 616 | OTA
[ for the most part, josh foley is a healer. he hangs back in the medbot and teleports in to haul anyone out when wounded. when not actively pulling injured from wreckage, he's doing his best to maintain an enormous healing field. ]
KAIJUU BATTLES. open to crosscanon cr.
[ but as the battles wear on, it becomes clear that these things aren't going down easily. josh's biokinesis can do a lot - but the cosmic radiation rolling off of those things mean that he can't just flick his fingers and kill it dead.
he stands in the control center of the command bot, chewing on his fingernail. ]
Hey. [ he turns to the person nearest to him. ] You're not from 616, right? [ his eyes cut to the monster outside. ] ... I think, if I can get out there in one of the bots, I can weaken that thing enough for somebody to get a lethal shot in.
AFTERMATH.
[ clean-up is a little harder. the selkies are in a bad way and they're gonna need some healing, but joshua foley knows better than to expose his mind to anything potentially fucking with it.
so he ends up setting up a little clinic inside the Alliance HQ. Hero, villain, unaligned - it doesn't matter who you are, Dr. Foley is going to give you a thorough check-up to make sure that you're not feeling any weird side-effects... or about to sprout a weird mutation. ]
Okay... That should do it. How's it feel now?
wildcard.
[ come at him anytime and anywhere. ]
Re: Kaiju battles
[Spider-Ham stretches himself out a bit.]
Kinda neat to be getting to do this. The Spidey from 51778 never let me borrow his.
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Okay, if you're a Spider... Piiiig? [ IS THAT RUDE HE DOESNT KNOW he doesn't want to get in a robot with someone from any world that could result in him losing his ever-loving shit ] Uh... wait, okay, is everyone a pig where you're from or, uh, just you?
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[Why always with the Spider-Pig thing? He'd gone to the trouble of introducing himself online. This was not his fault.]
And no and also no. There's a bunch of different animals where I'm from and a bunch of different pigs. I am the only pig who used to be a spider, though, so I got that goin' for me.
So what's the plan here? Force 'em to watch all the Best Picture nominees in one sitting?
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If I can get my hands on one of them I should be able to kill it.
Kaiju battles
[ Tim has been holding back from immediately volunteering for pilot duty. He thinks he's put to better use here, where he can see more of the battle and readouts and offer strategic advice to the pilots. He wouldn't be able to focus on the whole picture, from the sound of it, if he was actively piloting one of the robots.
But the supply of metahuman volunteers is dwindling as more and more are called out to the other bots... and as some come back injured. He is, at least, in a pilot's suit with his own domino mask. ]
What makes you think you're going to be anymore effective than the others? And if you would be - why didn't you go in the first place?
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[ but that's an excuse. josh rubs the back of his neck, fiddling with the charm on his wrist that keeps his appearance bland, blonde and human. ]
But my powers can go the other way. So if I can get my hands on that thing in the robot and it can duplicate my powers, I can turn its body against itself.
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It strikes him that the metahumans, despite the guilds, are terribly organized if not badly run. ]
I understand the concept of holding the medical corps behind the front lines, but, if you can actually do that, you shouldn't be strictly medical personnel. We should try to get you out there. You might be able to save yourself a few people to heal.
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It's risky.
[ is the best he can say. ]
I don't like using it, but... we're getting our asses kicked here.
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[ He's not asking for the whys, really, because they're not going to be something that they can debate or work through right now. Tim's aware that the call went out to all metahumans, and that doesn't mean that they're all capable of fighting. ]
It's your power, and you're the best one to make the assessment. We're having a rough go, yes, but I don't know enough to know what's the right call. So talk me through what you're considering. Teleport to one of the combat mecha. What's next? How do we get you to the kaiju and back?
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sorry it's so late - drop if you want
But perhaps unlike Josh, he's much more willing to consider it an option. ]
We should still make prep Plan B as you projecting your power after we evacuate as much crew as possible from the mech. Don't rule it out entirely.
aftermath-ish
[ It's not all over. The ripples are going to keep rippling, for sure, but... The physical struggle against giant beasts is over. Laurie's out of her insane pilot suit, back in her superhero threads. She's lost her jacket somewhere along the way, and she'll either find it later or she won't.
Here, she's tried to be the last holdout, tried to let Josh do his work without distraction, wants the quiet that's possible between them. When she enters the clinic setup, she sits down bonelessly, plainly exhausted but in one piece. ]
I'm going to sleep for a week. Maybe I'll avoid whatever's coming next that way.
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No kidding. [ his smile is tired and lopsided. ] I saw you out there bein' a badass.
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[ She smiles, too, tired but with an increased pull of relaxation. Getting into Josh's aura is almost like sinking into a warm bath. She wouldn't mind that, either.
Still... ] I feel kinda bad. Turtles are cute. It still felt like killing something, you know?
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[ he bends to catch her lips in a quick kiss.
but he knows. construct or not, there's some kind of warped biology in there. or... energy. something animating it and moving it, and something that's gone once they're dead. ]
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They're in a clinic in a superhero base, though, on the downslope of a crisis. Time and place, right? She draws back, looks a little pained for it. ]
Yeah, I guess you're right. Pretty gnarly.
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on the other hand. ]
Stressful as it is... It is kinda cool to have a superhero girlfriend who can pilot a giant robot and beat up a monster.
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[ It's not like they made it particularly specialized, and that's probably a very good thing. ]
Anyway, I was already a superhero, right? I've been extremely cool for years now.
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aftermath
It's the first time he's worn his super suit, and in pain and disoriented and briefly contemplating his mortality, this is the farthest from home he's felt since he got here. Do not like, 0/10, return to sender please.
Whatever Josh does, it helps. Not like a cure spell; not like nothing happened, but maybe he doesn't feel like his body is stabbing him from the inside anymore or that there's absolutely no way his leg is going to take weight. ]
Mildly more human.
[ Terse. He's not gone enough to miss that this is certainly David's Josh, who as far as Balthier knows, is still fighting with him, over something stupid that nearly risked everyone's safety literal weeks ago. ]
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look.
it's david's boyfriend. meeting him when he's too tired to have a filter. great. josh shoves his hands through his hair and manages a smile despite the terse tone. ]
Can't say I know the feeling.
[ mutant and all. he rests a hand on his hip. ]
I'm runnin' pretty low on juice so I'd give it a few days before you start join a marathon.
thank you for enabling him being an ass
never mind Balthier is from a world so different than this that he has no one remotely like him here. or that it completely destroyed his magic. or that he keeps being patient with everyone else's nonsense but they think it's fine to be dismissive with him.
his bones are healed. he has nothing else to lose here. Josh wasn't going to publicly torture him, he'd bet on that much ]
Do you give everyone this treatment, or am I getting the special I'm still angry at my friend and therefore his partner treatment? Or is it personal? I'm aware your kind doesn't particularly care for me.
[ Look, he knows better. And knows he's going to regret this. But he's fucking tired. It's been a horrible few weeks and he hasn't had time to process and he's absolutely lashing out. He's done the math and somehow it balances out for that night he spent with David absolutely sobbing in his arms worrying everyone he loved was going to die. ]
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[ that smile immediately drops off of his face. there's a bewildered flash of confusion before his walls are up.
he misses why balthier is actually angry. his foot and his mouth go together so well that he doesn't often notice when a joke has failed to land. he assumes instead that the pirate is angry that he hasn't fully mended that leg and any other bumps and bruises he has. ]
This is "I just spent 48 hours trying to keep hundreds of people alive" and can't afford to give anything else unless I want to fall into a coma.
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and look, he's extremely happy Josh got him back to functional. He'll gladly be sore and bruised and even bed-bound if it means his bones will heal correctly. ]
Is it a requirement from your world to be emotionally obtuse? You and David have that in common at least. Focusing on the logistical issue when someone you care about is miserable. Do you know how long he wasn't himself?
I'm not wrong you haven't patched things up. He talks about everyone he sees. Your name fell out of conversation weeks ago.
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Two, I texted him an apology before all this shit hit the fan.
And, three, I haven't been seeing anybody because I've been working nonstop you pompous prick!
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