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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.
lmk if this doesn't work for you
But it's hard to break free of it.
So reality goes sideways instead. This is a memory shared, not a simulation like Starstruck. Peter can't seem to find the edges and extricate himself, but…
But Peter — not Spider-Man — manifests in his regular clothes, what he was wearing in the mech, right next to Balthier, watching the memory play out.
"Whoa, Thanos," he says, and his voice shakes. He means to sound casual, but that's definitely not happening.
Dr. Strange is in this memory, obviously. But he wasn't he only one on that planet. Moon. Whatever it was. The Guardians of the Galaxy are here somewhere in this mess, but Peter gets distracted by Iron Man. Tony Stark. That's the part that hurts first, and rather than managing to talk to Balthier, which was his sort of plan, he falters.
The memory keeps going.
this is great
Peter's voice shakes, and he follows Peter's gaze to a hero in a red metal suit. He knows others come from worlds where all this is more common, but it still hits differently to see it. This has been Peter's life. And from the looks of it -- from what he knows -- this was the worst of it.
Thanos slams Spider-Man Peter down and Balthier for a moment moves to go to him. But the way the ground doesn't shift beneath his feet -- he can't change this.
So he does the only thing he's really been of any use at, and puts an arm around Peter's shoulders.
no subject
This was all bad, though, especially since they'd been holding their own at first. Then…they weren't.
"It gets worse than this," he whispered. "We were trying to stop him from…from getting all the Infinity Stones — the things in his glove — and wiping out half the life in the universe."
It's pretty obvious from Peter's tone that they weren't successful. He had really thought, until this fight, that heroes were the guys who always won. Real life isn't a storybook, though.
He reaches up across himself to find Balthier's hand where it rests on his shoulder and grip it.
"I don't know how to make this stop. I'm trying, but."
no subject
But he hadn't lost. Had felt the fear leading up, but he'd been spared the trauma of actually losing. Not that he hadn't seen what the war had done. Not that he didn't still spill tears over his mother and her city. Two million people.
Peter grips his hand, and Balthier doesn't even think. He sweeps them both around, tugging Peter in the other direction. "Then we don't have to watch," he says.
but why be nice when i could be awful! tw death stuff
Balthier turns and the world shifts around them, but…only a little.
There was a bunch that happened between then and now. Peter Quill losing his cool. Thanos nearly killing Tony (a terrible sort of irony now, in hindsight). Stephen seeing only one future out of millions in which they actually won.
But now they've just turned around and come face to face with the part of this memory Peter didn't want to see.
His hand tightens in Balthier's, probably too tight; Peter is a lot stronger than a regular person, after all, and this isn't exactly physical in the way that it would be without the shared mind space, but it's not not physical. He's cognisant of it on some level and doesn't crush the pirate's hand, at least.
Watching yourself die is a horrible experience. Also it's embarrassing? He was so scared at the time, after all, telling Tony he didn't want to go.
It hadn't hurt, not really. (He was already hurt at the time anyway.) But it was an awful thing, and unexpected, and inescapable. Maybe death always is, what does he know?
"Shit," he says. "No, no, shit."
They've got to pull out of this memory, out of this fight, before other people get hurt because of his own emotional distraction. Damnit, he knew better than to get in one of these jaegers, he just wanted to help, and…
because it hurts so much worse when you try to be nice and it utterly fails >:3
He feels Peter's hand clench around his and tries to pull him in for an embrace, tries to turn his head away from whatever he doesn't want to see.
The scene before them is undeniably terrible, Peter's face contorted; Balthier realizes what's happening a moment before it does. Even then, it makes him feel lighthearted and sick. It was different watching his father die. Truly, he did not want the man to live. But now he's clutching Peter to him, like the one he knows is going to somehow become a mirror of the one he's seeing.
"You're okay, Peter, it's okay."
The jaeger couldn't be farther from his mind. This boy has been through so much; Balthier doesn't want him to pull farther away, to go cloister himself away any more than he already is. Because that's what he'd have done at that age, with this kind of weight, and his was only a fraction of what Peter carried.
no subject
That one hand grab isn't enough. He turns to wrap his arms around Balthier instead. Neither of them are dead. They might not be safe, but they're not dead or dying either. They're together and Jesus that matters to Peter.
"I didn't want you to see this," he says, half-muffled.
bb ;-;
"It's alright," Balthier says gently. "It's not the first I've seen --" Someone he cared about dying? Things going terribly? "I'm sorry you didn't get to choose."
His own gaze floats to the other Peter, and helplessness washes through him. If this happened again, what could he do to stop it? He's nothing but a smart mouth here.
He squeezes Peter against him. "I'm this happened to you."
no subject
But from then to the next fight and then Mysterio and everything with the multiverse and May…it's only been months, maybe just shy of a year. What a shitty year.
The memory fades out and leaves them back in the jaeger.
"It happened to half the universe," he says. "Not just me. No one got to choose. It was all random and all horrible."
no subject
The memory fades, but it's sting doesn't. Peter's carrying that with him, constantly.
"Sometimes that's the way it goes. More often than not, really. War. Genocide. Natural disaster. We're all pawns in meaningless chaos. That's why we reach for stories, I think. Anything to give us meaning, guidance. Hope."
He gives Peter a weak smile. "Friends help. Make the load a little easier to bare."
There's a shallowness to offering near platitudes to someone who died, but isn't there always, trying to offer words against grief? The words themselves don't matter; it's the reminder of wanting the other person's happiness. Or at least it has been for him.