I've been chillin' out on a star with my 5 star view

[lucetimods]

Who: All draftees
What: The space battle commences
When: After 3PM on the 19th to the 23rd
Where: In Space! On the Moon!
Summary: The battle finally begins! First there's asteroids to take down, then we finally arrive!
Rating: SPACE

MORE SPACE

All the details you need are here, so read up on it. This didn't get mentioned before, but you can tag the cultists instead of killing them. Details on this are on a previous draft post. Using the scanners are optional!

There will be a thread for interacting with NPCs, but they may not all go up at once, so keep an eye out for them.

Note: A log for the events in the village will go up on the 21st, in time for the hurricane and droid incursion.

Comments

[apirateslife]

The bullet left Jack's gun an instant later, striking true between Hank's eyes. A quick kill, if he'd only die. It, Jack reminded himself. It. Not he.

1/2

[herotypical]

Hank's scream turned feminine. Once again, everything flickered. Buffy watched her father change from what he was supposed to be into what he really was. A Cultist, winged and dangerous. But her brain wasn't catching up to events -- was this real? Was this another hallucination?

Like Jack. Jack who just shot her..."I trusted you."

2/2

[herotypical]

And when the Shifter collapsed, so did Buffy. The dream dissolved. The enemy was dead and the Slayer was unconscious. So very drained.

[all7seas]

The bubble around them faded, revealing the rubble of the invaded base rather than the crisp whiteness of a hospital. Jack tucked his gun away and stooped to lift the exhausted, beaten woman. The General had clearly not been open to negotiations, and that fact alone seemed sad enough to drown in. Her hopes had been so high.....so high.

He brushed his lips against her forehead --

I trusted you.

-- the woman who might have just realized that he would never be the one she wanted. Maybe, by shooting her "father" and freeing her, he'd gone that one step too far. Maybe she would never forgive him. It would be like Angelica all over again. A girl never thanked you for killing her dad, no matter how much it was in her best interests.

No -- what was important now was bringing her to healers; he had to focus on that and not the dread surrounding her half-voiced accusation.

"Leonard McCoy, he romanced 'em;
Leonard McCoy cured their ills.
He knew how to dine 'em and dance 'em
And hypowhatsit 'em right in the gills," he sang softly as he carried her tucked close against his chest like a precious, fragile treasure.

[herotypical]

Home had been so close. Close enough to taste. Sweet and green and occasionally like that last smudge of suntan lotion left on your wrist. The one you accidentally smear on your mouth after a long game of frisbee at at the beach. With friends. Normality probably tasted like that. Normal afternoons followed by normal evenings with a hint of gasoline in the air when the guy you're seeing fires his old beater motorcycle to life, down in the street. Pike. Even as deep down as this, Buffy knew that the Los Angeles bad boy shouldn't have been on her mind. There was someone else she should be thinking about. Someone who had also left but someone who had also come back.

But if she thought too hard about this someone else, she began to think about Hank Summers with a bullet in his brain and Buffy quickly took refuge in a more total oblivion. Far away from Jack and the General and Luceti and Slayerdom and even her dreams. None of these corners existed without pain.

Bloodied and bruised and doubtless boasting a few broken bones, she eventually found a splinter of peace in one of the infirmary beds back on the Liberator.

Hope you're there when she wakes up, Sparrow. She won't have such a fine time coming to in yet another hospital setting.

[all7seas]

Where else would he be right now? Oh, he'd stepped away once or twice to deal with very pressing issues, but otherwise Jack stayed. Stayed and stuck and hovered and slept and stayed some more.

He tried to get comfortable in the ergonomic chair beside her bed. Eventually, Jack found it more suitable to stretch out on the floor beside the bed when he needed to rest, and pacing that floor when he didn't.

Mostly? It was pacing.

[herotypical]

At first, she tried to cough. Big, violent coughs. But she soon learned that those hurt a lot and so she instead curled up under the standard-issue infirmary blanket and groaned. Buffy felt like she was coming apart at her seams. Losing her stitches and all her stuffing was tumbling out. Floating into space. The mental image wasn't pretty and she banished it as quickly as it arrived.

She croaked a word or two but her throat was so bruised -- dark finger-shaped smudges were spread across her neck. Fearing the lights above, she hadn't yet opened her eyes.

[all7seas]

"Buffy?" Jack touched her back, very close to her wings. He was afraid to touch those; he didn't know what the General had done to them. "You alright? Should I call someone? 'M calling someone. Katara. Anyone."

[herotypical]

A rough sound in the back of her mouth might have almost been something close to his name. And Buffy found that she didn't want to be touched, so she shuffled painfully away from his hand. She didn't want anyone to be called, either. She just wanted to sleep some more but it was hard to sleep when everything hurt.

A pause. A hard swallow. "W-water?"

[all7seas]

The pirate snatched his hand away as though she'd burned him. "Aye. Water for you, love."

There was a pitcher close by the bed; Jack poured her as much as he dared and offered to help her sit up to drink it.

[herotypical]

She offered him a wary glance -- wary for so many reasons and likely for a few that he didn't expect -- and begrudgingly accepted the assistance. Her wings seemed to have been one of the most fortunate parts of her, and so sitting up wasn't too impossible. But it absolutely came with hardship. Her troubled expression as she eased into a sitting position was proof enough of that.

She didn't say another word. Not yet. She only nodded.

[all7seas]

Very well; let her be wary. It might mean nothing, the wariness -- just the wariness of an injured woman. Just...normal.

"What else, love?"

[herotypical]

She took her time drinking small, manageable sips of water. She had absolutely been thirsty -- being defeated in a gruelling battle and then having what was left of her energy forcibly sucked out through her insecurities was a very parching process. Even still, she managed about half the glass before she was waving it away.

What else, indeed? She licked her split lip and found that even frowning hurt. That was okay; her eyes did a perfect job of conveying her unhappiness all on their own.

"Is this...real?" And those same eyes glanced right. Another ward.

[all7seas]

"You're real. I'm real." Jack perched on the side of her bed and took back the water. "This is the real bit. Not...not that other. Not that other bit. That were a shifter, love."

[herotypical]

Clearly, she still felt suspicious. How could she be sure and certain that this wasn't another Shifter?

"Where am I?"

[all7seas]

"Infirmary, darling. You're....you got......the General. And all." He cleared his throat. "You're safe. I'm here."

[herotypical]

"I didn't get him," she misunderstood his pauses -- perhaps wilfully. Buffy would welcome the guilt. It was a more familiar pain than the physical kind.

[all7seas]

"I know, love.




Did he take it?"

[herotypical]

She didn't answer. Not that question. Instead, she asked another of her own: "Is he still out there?"

[all7seas]

"I don't know. I haven't left you. I haven't asked." Part of him didn't care. She was alive; that was enough.

"Buffy? I'm sorry."

The apology was meant to cover the shooting of her father; to Jack it felt flimsy and inadequate.

[herotypical]

Her laughter was angry. Bitter.

"You're sorry?"

[all7seas]

"Aye. For what I had to do." He still could not get her agonized scream out of his head. "So sorry."

[herotypical]

He was smarter than her -- the first time around, at least. The first time, she'd believed the dream entirely. Buffy's brows knit and she blinked rather furiously. Looking anywhere but at him. If the doctor had eventually asked her to get rid of the Jack-shaped delusion, would she have done it? Like she tried to do to her sister and her friends, once?

"You took out the enemy." And then, less reasonably: "That's more than I managed to do."

[all7seas]

"That's not reasonable, woman!" Jack called her on it. "Oi. Look at me. NOT reasonable."

[herotypical]

The woman who used to be the Lucetian who'd brought down the General slowly swung her head back in his direction.

"You barely even hesitated," she said with admiration -- albeit cool and distant admiration.