crossmyheartandhope | Recent Entries

St. Agnes Cathedral is old-school, all done up in heavy, dark brick.

It looks out of place in Kyoto, crammed in next to a Shinto shrine and a middle school, like one tiny slice of history straight out of a newspaper clipping of Boston in the 1920s. There's one solid, square tower with a circular stained glass window that's somehow still intact, and a cross at the peak of the shorter, sloped section of roof, down below the tower. Angels stand watch over the walkway out front, all in a row.

The angels look like they've been hauled in from somewhere else. They're all different styles: one brightly painted, one stately marble, one gilded and ornate. Their wings are spread; their hands are clasped in prayer.

They make Hurricane want to run the hell away.

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The apartment's dark when Hurricane gets home.

That's not surprising; it's past nine by now, the sun long since set, but usually there's a light from the hallway at least, creeping out from under the door to his mother's room.

Hurricane kicks off his shoes there in the entryway, a gangly boy of eleven in a too-big t-shirt and a battered hoodie. He drops his backpack on the floor and locks the door behind him.

"Ma?" she says. "You around?"

He wanders barefoot into the main room – gropes for the light switch on the wall and flicks it, already turning toward the fridge to see about making himself some dinner.

As soon as light floods the room, he flinches at the sight it puts on display.

The schematics that have taken up permanent residence on the table are gone now; they've been swept off onto the floor, stretching all the way from the kitchen counter to the living room couch, a space of perhaps five feet. Three of them have been ripped in two; half a dozen more are crumpled into balls.

On the table, all that remains is a bottle of gin, mostly empty; a tumbler, half full; and a small orange bottle with a childproof cap.

Hurricane's mother is sitting at the table. She's slumped over like her strings have been cut, and for a single heart-stopping second, Hurricane thinks that she's not breathing.

Then she takes a slow, shaky breath in, and he remembers to breathe again, too.

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The fog blankets the city, still and soft in the cool of the morning.

It would be pretty, except for the sky.

In the air overhead, everything is the startling red of fresh blood and the deep purple of old bruises; the clouds are thick clots of color, strange and shifting, like someone’s managed to project a freeze frame of a nightmare into the real world.

Hurricane’s barely paying attention to any of that.

He’s focused on the black thing hovering mid air in front of him – on the banks of eyes and disjointed wings, and the inky cavern of its mouth. That mouth is clamped down on the metal plating of Nemesis’ massive arm, and the HUD overlay shows Nemesis’ vitals going crazy.

She makes a sound, audible over the comms – alarmed but pissed off – and a burst of rapid gunfire explodes from the weapon mounted in her gauntlet, punching through the creature’s back. It trembles, as though in pain.

Then the exit wounds just slide closed again, like someone's pressed putty into the holes in a wall.

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Axed by Gladio

Dropped off the balcony by Emet Selch

Double-teamed in the kitchen by Ordine and Sashay

Killed Doodles with a scalpel

Date round with Nem

Night shift

Handing out deadzone mud

Boss fights

Plurk writeup

Event summary

Black Whisper’s only two blocks over, and that’s the saving grace.

Hurricane catches sight of her suit right before it flickers into cloaking mode again, and he taps the wrist control to lock on just as it slips from view.

Target: acquired, his HUD reads, white crosshairs on what looks like empty space, but Hurricane knows better. When the crosshairs lift up into the air to relocate, Hurricane angles up to follow – and when a flash of light splashes his way, and then another, he darts first to the left and then to the right. The shots miss him by a hand’s breadth, no more, and he just has time to think how hard it is to dodge something you can’t see when he slams right into her.

Black Whisper’s cloaking flickers and goes, and for about a second Hurricane has vague recollections of pudgy, bespectacled Dr. Yoshioka nursing a cup of tea and talking about how they really needed to move the circuitry farther away from the surface.

Then Black Whisper tips head over feet in probably the least graceful thing Hurricane’s ever seen, and he’s got the presence of mind to wheel past her and circle back. He gets his arms around her suit as she tries to right herself; those lasers are mounted in the hands, so as long as he can keep them neutralized, everything’s going to be just fine.

Nothing’s ever fine. But if you neutralized her for good, she’d stay down.

He doesn’t want to fight her. But he also definitely doesn’t want to let her go, so that she can fix her cloaking device and slip away again.

So, door number three: he holds on tight while she thrashes, and he angles them down toward the ground.

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“Gates,” says Hurricane.

The image on the paper before him doesn’t look quite like gates, if he’s honest. There’s a swoop that suggests a high arch and what might be bars, but it’s all in the sloppy black of splattered ink.

“Interesting,” says the woman sitting across from him. She has black hair that’s cut short, around the length of her ears. She’s wearing a long, white coat and sports a name tag that reads ITO. Although there’s a desk nearby, she’s not seated behind it. She’s next to Hurricane, on the other side, in the chair beside his. “What kind of gates, do you think?”

“I dunno,” says Hurricane.

He knows, all right; if they really were gates, they’d be the kind you see in a cartoon cemetery, all jagged and grey, with ghosts behind them. He knows better than to say that, though. “The big kind? Like something out front of someone’s mansion or something.”

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First run: Paloma, Emet, Requiem

Second run: Yugi, K, C, Talon, King, Mori

Third run: Cobalt, Hiryuu, Sabre, Levi, Wednesday

Fourth run: Nem, D.Va, Intensity, Angel, Kaguya, Griffin

Fifth run: Sekhmet, Prim, L

Write-up

NPC icons

Heart map

Post-mortem on plurk

( Heart Changes )

Cinderella’s castle stands like something out of a fairy tale, all elegant towers and tapering spires. It’s an improbable shade of pastel, and up above it, in the sky, the clouds have begin to tinge the same impossible cotton candy pink.

All around them, the ground is littered with harbingers, dying or dead.

Hurricane isn’t looking at the clouds. He’s looking at the rest of his team, gathered on the ground beneath a storybook castle. They’re battered and worn; Mayu’s Wildfire looks like it’s listing to one side every time she moves, and acid has eaten straight through the boot of Ryota’s Sentinel. Hurricane can see his foot in there, encased in the plugsuit, but that’s no protection at all.

“We clear?” says Iyawa. She lifts her head; Nova cuts an impressive figure, all hard lines and sharp angles. The face of the suit, indigo and purple, has a scratch straight down the visor.

“Got it, captain,” says Hurricane, and the voices of his team echo the assent over the comms.

“HQ says we’ve got two minutes before the next wave’s incoming, and we’re looking at twice as many. Get in your places, people, and let's be ready for them when they get here.”

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The living room is minimal and modern, the black couch a study in sleek lines. There’s a glass end table and a tv mounted on the wall, and in the middle of the available floor space, a man is kneeling over a case of tools laid out like surgical implements, immaculate and gleaming.

He’s tall and lanky, a little disheveled in a wrinkled button-up and and slacks. Whatever he’s been doing, he’s done with it; he’s wiping the tools down, one at a time, and tucking them away again in a sturdy briefcase of hard, black plastic.

“That should be the last one, kid.” The man glances up and smiles. “Next time I bring it by, it’s yours to keep.”

“Thanks, Mr. Allen,” says Hurricane. He's all of ten years old, and the leg stretched out in front of him as he sits on the floor is thin and gangly. The other leg, the missing one, is capped with an empty metal port, and the scars above it on the thigh are thick and ugly — still new.

The man sets a metal leg into the box beside the tools, in the indent in the foam meant to hold it.

“You okay on the crutches another week?” says Mr. Allen. “Last couple of adjustments shouldn’t take too long, but you know Dr. Scultz. She wants everything perfect.”

“Yeah,” says Hurricane. “I know. One more week’s no big.” He picks at the bottom of his t-shirt with his fingernail while Mr. Allen closes the briefcase. “Tell her thanks for me? And like, you too.”

( Continue )

The room’s awash in color, all LED glare and bright neon. The tube lights that rim the ceiling are hot pink and mellow teal, and the screen flashes and shifts with hues designed to catch the eye. Everything smells like old cigarette smoke, and the karage on the table in the center, and the fries that were devoured an hour and a half ago.

Nemesis’s to his left on the padded bench, close enough that their shoulders bump. Sasha's to his right, belting some maudlin song in Russian into the microphone. He can sing, kind of. You'd never think he could – he's like 6 foot whatever and looks like a bruiser in a gangster flick - but he's mostly on tune, and his voice is low and mild and full of feeling.

Across the way, Ryota's passed out on Iyawa's shoulder. Next to them, Mayu's twisting in her seat to answer the phone on the wall. The music's so loud Hurricane didn't even realize it was ringing.

"Last call!" says Mayu, shouting to be heard. "Everyone's getting another drink, so finish your drinks!"

"What?" yells Nemesis.

"DRINKS," says Mayu, and mimes chugging. She says something into the phone and hangs it up again. Then she reaches for her drink, still half-full, and swallows it down.

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“How’s that?” says Yoshioka.

Hurricane blinks, peering through the unfamiliar faceplate.

“The fit’s okay,” he says.

And it is; it’s snug and comfortable, made for his measurements, though the HUD takes its time starting up – flickers to life a full ten seconds after he’s synced and suited.

“HUD’s got a delay,” says Hurricane. “Just kicked in.”

He peers around the room, taking in the details – checks for visibility and accuracy, the way he’s supposed to. He watches the readout begin to do its thing, the glowing letters pulling up names and vital signs as he regards Yoshioka and the techs all in turn.

Then he actually reads the labels, and he starts to laugh. He laughs until he’s gasping for air – until he has to pop the faceplate because he’s kind of dizzy.

“Might wanna check the connection to the main database,” says Hurricane, when he can breathe again. “Everyone’s got your name, dude.”

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The apartment’s a tiny kitchen-living room combo, the only furniture a sleek metal table with two chairs and a cookplate on the kitchen counter. There are schematics spread out over the table, and a pen beside them; a tablet, with the screen dark, rests on the counter.

Hurricane’s standing in the doorway, a plastic bag in one hand. He toes his shoes off and nudges the door closed behind him with a foot.

“Hey, Ma?” he says. He pads into the hallway, passing a cramped closet of a bathroom on the left. In the bathroom mirror, the boy looking back is perhaps eleven years old, in a worn t-shirt, hair disheveled. He passes without stopping – sticks his head into the first room on the right, revealing a cramped bedroom lit only by the flickering of a computer screen.

His mother is elbows-deep in a hollow chest-plate that looks about on par to fit a person. Her hair is longer now, the bun pulled back from her face with a meticulousness that nears severity. She’s wearing a labcoat and has a nametag, but the dim lighting obscures what it says.

“Ma?” says Hurricane. “You eat yet?”

She doesn’t glance up at him – continues tinkering, head bowed and brows furrowed.

He waits in silence for thirty seconds or so, then clears his throat. “I, uh. I swung by distribution. Want me to make dinner?”

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The park is tiny below them, formed in a perfect oval.

Hurricane can make out a castle in elegant miniature, and the Mark Twain Riverboat, dead in the water. The hedges aren’t trimmed into fancy shapes anymore, but he thinks he sees one that used to be Mickey’s face.

It would be a great view, any other time.

It’s a great view now, but Hurricane has other things to worry about.

Worry one: the sonic boom splitting through the air, signifying the arrival of a metric ton more eldritch horrors. There were plenty already – black and sinuous and crawling with eyes and teeth – but all at once, the number’s just about doubled.

Worry two: the things haven’t found the shielding equipment yet, but they sure are looking. They took out the university hospital, now a smoking ruin in the distance, and the nearest train station’s a blackened crater.

Iyawa’s been having them steer the battle back to neutral ground, out toward the sea and away from potential targets, but Christ, there are a lot of them.

Hurricane twists and dodges, and he tells himself not to think. It isn’t hard; exhaustion is a constant, sluggish pull at the back of his mind, a low-level hum of white noise. It’s easy to let go of everything and just let his body move – slice, slice, thrust, and then he swoops down and comes up again, twice as fast, sending his blades spinning in a wide arc.

( Continue )

HSS's warroom

Talking with Mars post-game

SotU on Plurk

36524 days in a kitchen unskippable

Mirror time, a corpse-filled kitchen, and a church

Destroyed San Francisco fades out to mirror time

The docks are gone.

Most of them, anyway. There are scraps and blackened husks sticking up out of the water, a skeleton of what used to be here. Out beyond them, a couple of platforms still float, waiting for sea lions that don’t come anymore – dead, probably, like the whole rest of the city.

One of the signs remains, blue on white: PIER 39, it says, in all caps, but only the top left corner is still attached. The sign hangs crooked, the letters mostly obscured by caked-on ash.

The only sound is the seagulls that still cluster in flocks by the waterfront; it's reassuring, somehow, that even the apocalypse couldn't get rid of them.

In the distance, across the bay, a single strut of the Golden Gate Bridge still stands. It’s half hidden in the fog that still hasn’t burned off for the day, but Hurricane keeps glancing up at it. He has pictures of this view, from back when the bridge was still standing. Somewhere, on a phone that won’t turn on anymore, there’s a shot of his sister on this street, holding an ice cream cone and wearing a letterman jacket.

It sweeps over him all at once, the way it does sometimes, still. Hurricane presses his hand to his mouth and closes his eyes for what he means to only be a few seconds – but it stretches longer, and then longer still.

“Jesus Christ,” he mutters under his breath, and scrubs at his eyes, hard, with the back of his hand. “Get it together.”

He takes one final breath in and starts to move, slow at first, but gradually more confident. He's steady on the rubble, mostly, despite the new leg; he was clumsy the first couple of weeks, but he picks his way through the wreckage just fine, now.

He's used to it.

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The whole world’s like something out of a high-budget haunted house designed by H.P. Lovecraft.

Up above, the air is filled with them: the narrow ones with claws and whiplike tails, and the slick black ones covered in eyes, and the ones that look like vanilla pudding, gelatinous and milky, the internal structures visible through the skin.

The sky’s a nightmare vision, deep red and bruise purple, the colors radiating out from a central point like a spreading infection. The clouds crowd out any hint of the sun, so thick they seem solid, and they churn and shift and pulse in ways that have nothing to do with the breeze.

The creatures pour out of them like some endless open faucet of alien life, spilling down toward the city below, and Jacob rushes to meet them as quickly as they come.

The suit he’s encased in, sea glass green and brushed chrome, is sleek and slender, built more for speed than strength. It hugs his body, all clean lines; there’s no bulk to it, no heavy armor plating. It hovers him in midair, effortlessly; when he twists and propels himself sideways into a diagonal roll, the twin blades mounted on his wrists slice through the abdomen of the creature nearest him.

The harbingers fall before him, dozens upon dozens of them. When they circle around behind him, he spins, blades out, to clear a path for retreat. Those grasping claws can’t catch him; the whiplike tails can’t slow him down. He’s faster than any person has a right to be, and the creatures tumble to the ground, dying, to splatter onto the asphalt of city streets and crash through the distant glass of skyscraper windows.

“Mother of god,” says Sasha, voice clear in your earpiece despite the rattle of gunfire nearby. “Will these things never end?”

“Guess they got tired of us taking out their guys in half an hour,” says Jacob. He grabs hold of the creature to your right – twists sideways and bashes its head in against a handy rooftop.

“Pulling out all the stops for us, huh?” says Nemesis, over the comms. “Well, lucky them – we’re ready to return the favor.”

Jacob twists and ducks – misses the stinger aimed for the visor that covers his face by maybe two inches.

“If they don’t know that by now,” says Mayu, “they haven’t been paying attention.”

Jacob opens his mouth to reply – some quip about not falling asleep in class – but Ryota’s voice comes next. “Eyes up, everyone,” he says. “We have incoming.”

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