GOLDSTONE OCTOBER MINGLE

[spacebro]

Who: Goldstoners and visitors and lurkers, oh my!
Broadcast: In prompts maybe
Action: Goldstone
When: October

[There have been some mysterious energy drains registering not only on the sensors but in the way the lights seem to dim for a few moments before returning to their normal strength. Maybe a non-essential computer terminal goes dark and needs to be rebooted. It's not causing any damage, but it is mysterious, no?

If you investigate through some special ability or using the ship's diagnostic tools you'll probably come to the conclusion that the energy is funneling into sleeping crewmate, Mon-El's, room and actually right into Mon-El himself. Alien cells are weird, guys.

It only lasts a day or two before he's awake and leaving the ship's energy where it belongs!

And enough about Mon-El, we have a new crewmate (Alphy) and a dead crewmate (Okita). These are exciting times!]

Comments

[aetherflows]

[He glances at the table, considering, and then decides it'd be rude to turn down her invitation. It's not likely that he'll sleep, anyway.]

If you are sure.

[He sits on the other bench and sets his journal in front of him, though he keeps his hands on it for now.]

... I've never been able to sleep well after a mission. No matter how exhausted I feel, or how much of my own aether I've drained, my eyes always stay open.

[stormfist]

[ She nods, sympathetic. ]

Back home, every day is a mission. Or several. Depending. Had trouble sleeping at first too, but just because I had to, I got used to finding ways to sleep. This, though... [ She lets the sentence trail off, sighs heavily as she rests her coffee mug on the table. Should go without saying, after all. ]

[aetherflows]

I am part of an organization that handles certain... disturbances, usually of the world-shattering variety. Long breaks are rare as something is always in need of our attention. But this?

[He shakes his head slowly.]

It's... beyond the pale. We gave all we had and it was not enough. Given that a fallen 'moon' nearly destroyed my world five years ago, I cannot help but recoil.

[He lets out a breath.]

Then and now, I was woefully unprepared to see what came upon us.

[stormfist]

So you've... been through something like that before. [ She shakes her head, voice lower, sympathetic. ] I'm sorry.

[ She's seriously beginning to think she has, too. What, with all the vague flashes she swears are memories, the sickening feeling of familiarity in the destruction, the way her mind feels like it's scrambling to make connections if she thinks about it too long... but she continues trying to ignore it. That's healthy, right? Right. Sure. ]

[aetherflows]

It's all right, [he says, knowing it's not really all right.] The Calamity will not be repeated. We've seen to that, and laid those ghosts to rest. But the reminder... the-- the helplessness...

[He shakes his head.]

It brings it all back.

[stormfist]

[ Yeah, it's not really all right. Even if he says they "laid those ghosts to rest"... there's a part of it that lingers in the mind, always. Helplessness... yeah. It's a hell of a thing. ... But maybe talking about it, getting it out in the open, would help him. ]

How did you do it? Stop a falling moon. ... If you don't mind the question.

[aetherflows]

[He seems to get a grasp of himself, at least for the moment. His fingers clutch at the edges of his journal.]

To be frank: we could not. The moon was no moon at all, though it had fooled us for a thousand and more years; t'was a weapon from a dead dynasty, a prison that held a great dragon and all his followers in stasis to be brought against any who dared oppose the Allagan Empire.

[At least when he's telling a story, he doesn't have to think about how terrible things are. He can focus on the story.]

My grandfather gave his life so that the primal could be suppressed. And he did wound Bahamut—quite gravely, in fact. But the price was so much more than we knew. The contraption imprisoned Bahamut as well as my grandfather, preventing him from moving on, and healing the wyrm so that it could terrorize the world again in an endless cycle.

[He swore not to tell anyone, they all did, but this is not Eorzea. There is no harm in sharing the truth.]

It was not long ago that we set him free. But some shades are difficult to shake, even months later.

[stormfist]

[ A weapon disguised as a moon doesn't actually sound all that crazy to her - a dragon, though... She'd barely believed the fabled dragons back home were real, and now she's here, where God only knows what's possible - let alone in other worlds. Regardless, it's intriguing. Too bad the story itself is such a sad one.

While she's listening, she stands - she refills her coffee cup, but that's actually just an excuse to move and sit on the same side of the table as him. ]

Your grandfather must be a hero, then. Of some sort. [ Not that heroism stops the pain for those left behind. At all. She realizes. ] And it's good that he's free. But, that you had to go through all of that... Jesus.

[aetherflows]

He was the light for many, many people. My sister and I held him in such regard that we were blind to our own weaknesses. [Alisaie was not the only one who held herself to an impossible standard. She did so with more grace and humility than Alphinaud, however.

He looks up at Jayden with a frown.]

It was not what I expected when I decided to aid the Scions in his absence, but we were the only ones who could do it. And... I suppose it gave us closure we otherwise lacked.