EVENT ★ BACK TO THE FUTURE

[futurologists]

BENDED TIME As outlined in the OOC post, things start to slow down and grow quiet in Oska for a few days as the bugs crawl away and slowly disappear. But then the cocoons hatch. Fully grown temporal insects claw their way out of them, each about the size and temperament of raging bulls. They come out far more aggressive and eager to fight, are are willing to take on anything that moves with jaws and claws alike. Except, of course, another insect — when two of them encounter each other, they enter into a mating dance and then slip away into another dimension, leaving behind only the temporary ghosts of years gone by. If you can’t find a way to pierce that thick shell to take one down, better find another one to pair it off with instead. Just try not to get bit while leading them around and find yourself suddenly 5 years old again. The insects aren’t the only thing going on in Oska, though. As it turns out, unicorns really hate this adult form of the temporal insects, and will start kicking their way out of their stalls in the stables to get at the insects in an attempt to impale or trample them. According to Uruz they’re gallant warriors, but not always quite cut out to take on a bug, and can easily get themselves hurt or killed. She would really appreciate recruits taking a moment to recapture any stray unicorns they may come across and leading them back to the stables. Try to avoid any insects on the way, or you’ll find yourself suddenly fighting insect and irate unicorn, which is no one’s idea of a good time. The lake is getting more active, too. All the fighting has woken up something in the depths of it. Dark red tentacles sometimes creep up onto shore — and don’t worry, this time they don’t belong to a sea goddess. The tentacles don’t attack unless attacked, and can in fact be quite agreeable. Nodes along the length of them act as primitive eyes, which see well enough to interact with anyone nearby. They’re also all a little peckish. Toss a tentacle a bit of food and watch it curl around and ingest it using tiny mouths on the underside. It might even be willing to play a few rounds of fetch or slap a bug into the sky for you if you put it in a good mood with a morsel of food. The senior ALASTAIR members can be seen out and about and doing their part, too. Uruz and Dagny fight as a team, centaur and elf, sometimes fighting back to back and sometimes as mount and rider. They’ll stop and lend a hand, but the cats are a little less generous. Cherenkov and Crowley fight inseparably and use magic and science in deadly combination to ward off and destroy the bugs, but can usually only be seen darting on their way from one place to another. They have a lot of magitek to repair in the destructive wake of the insects. Pomarr, neither as senior nor as invested in actively picking off the bugs, offers shelter near a tentacle-free portion of the lake, calling down storms to toss away bugs for her and anyone in the vicinity. OOC NOTES This log spans a week ICly. Characters will find themselves beginning to understand each other again as the bugs first vanish, as the effects of the cats’ work on the magitek pays off. The translation problem will be completely fixed by the time the cocoons hatch. All of the bugs will have been killed or shipped off by the sixth day, leaving the last day before their departure to the next mission blissfully relaxing. Any temporally misplaced recruits will be back to normal by the last day, as well. A reminder to anyone still texting: the texting feature of magitek jewelry operates based on thought! There are no physical keyboards, recruits merely think the message that they’d like to send to another recruit.

Comments

[secondnature]

[It's not that Keith has a whole lot of good plans in his head, but this definitely didn't go the way he expected. Most of his plans on the fly are either easily carried out or unsuccessful. The long-term actions can be a bit more complicated, but that's because he puts his nose to the grindstone. Being among the Galra involves a lot of unsuccessful plans and a lot of successful ones. He's had to do things, things that he's not proud of.

But they haven't asked him to prove himself this way. Not yet. His fights with the other paladins seemed aggressive enough for one lion versus four other ones that they never questioned it.

His instincts tell him that this time, it won't be the same. It's just him versus Lance, and Lance should be the one he dislikes the most. Held up like he is, he does have some genuine anger at Lance's challenge. At the same time, he doesn't actually want to hurt him. Fighting a lion isn't fighting someone face to face.

He figures he can either fight him or tell him he's not worth it, but neither is appealing to Keith. Why the heck did he have to do this to him? One involves hurting someone he cares about. The other involves Lance calling him on his bluff.

After a beat, his eyes narrow as his shield appears in his opposite hand, and he swings it back between them to drive Lance away from him. In the process, he kicks low at Lance's knee, the same one he seemed to pull before, all to pull himself away from his hold. He hopes it's enough, but he stumbles back, holding up the sword and shield, ready to keep fighting.]

You weren't a challenge back then. I don't know why you're so eager to see how little that's changed.

[competing]

[ it's as much shock as it is the pain that has him staggering back and frozen. he had never been very good at masking his own emotions, and so his surprise is written clear across his face, and finally — finally, a faint tinge of that betrayal there that keith is so desperate to provoke. it hadn't been much, that kick. sure, had keith kicked a little harder, just a couple of inches higher, he would have easily broken that leg. but he didn't. did lance dare to hope it was on purpose?

he isn't so sure anymore. he didn't actually think keith would strike him, didn't think he'd ever see the day he would ever seriously raise that sword at him. in the back of his mind, his survival instinct kicks in, screaming at him to summon his bayard, to fight back. a sword had no chance against a high-powered rifle. if he raised his weapon at keith, there would be no question.

which is why he can't let himself do it, no matter the small prickle of fear at his neck. no, at this point, there's really only one thing left to do— ]

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

[ which is clearly to bullrush the guy and try to take him down by throwing all his weight against keith's waist. ]

[secondnature]

[So, here's the thing: Lance weighs more than Keith. It's not that Keith hasn't gained some muscle and height thanks to his Galra reveal sequence, but he's still a skinny guy compared to someone like Lance, even armored in stupid purple armor like what he's wearing right now. It isn't hard to sweep him off his feet when he isn't expecting it, and that's ... exactly what happens.

In the process, he tries to drag a leg back to stop his fall and ends up bending it back strangely and getting a matching strained leg in the process. It hurts, which is apparent in the sound of pain, and he regrets even trying to stop what happened.

Grinding his teeth through the pain—as much as Galra teeth can ... grind, anyway—he drops his bayard and plants his hands firmly on Lance's shoulders to push him off.]

I don't know what you're doing, but I. Don't. Want. To hug! [Very purposeful. This is not a hug, but it feels like it might be the thing to get Lance to let go ...

So, he hopes it works!]

[competing]

[ i mean. it almost does.

at the accusation, lance feels a familiar, incredulous flare in the pit of his gut, and a knee-jerk reflex nearly has him pushing off the other boy with a ready excuse on the tip of his tongue.

fortunately he has enough sense left in him to realize that this is probably the only chance he's ever going to get to catch the other boy this off-guard, and he'd be a fool if he let it slip away. and so when he feels the push on his shoulders, he only tightens his arms even more around keith's waist, digging his toes into the ground to try and keep most of his wait on his uninjured shoulder, and that he presses into keith's chest to keep him down. it's just wrestling, it's just grappling. he's done it plenty of times with his rowdier older siblings, and even hunk when they were younger, and it was easier for him to get a one-up on the guy ok dON'T MAKE IT WEIRD GOD. ]

Quiznak all those Galra genes and you're still dim! Do you even know what a hug is??

[ he grits his teeth, squeezes his eyes, and just tries to ignore the instinct to jump far, far away. ]

And who the heck would even wanna hug you in the first place?!

[ they sure are arguing about hugs. ]

[secondnature]

The Galra are superior to shows of affection like hugs. Didn't you get that from Sendak? I thought he made it pretty obvious. [To him, this is definitely wrestling, and he can't help but be disappointed that his trick of calling it something else hadn't worked. Of course Keith knows what a hug is! He's not that stupid. He's probably just ... pretty ignorant to what a hug feels like most of the time. He's not had a lot of them.

Which is another long paragraph of angst for another day.

For now, he struggles underneath Lance, doing his best to try to bend his good leg back to bump his knee into Lance's behind. If nothing else, it might hurt to do that, but he's not successful in getting a lot of force behind the action. While his legs are definitely the strongest part of his not-that-large alien body, they aren't able to get much ground here.]

As for hugging me—[What if he tries to grip his fingers into the sides of Lance's neck? Would that help? Would it hurt enough? He has a long enough neck, he can probably do with some pain there, so he shifts his hands over to each side of it to pinch into the skin.]

I think you're the one who's all too eager to do it. But it isn't gonna make me your friend again. Stop trying!

[competing]

[ gdi keith you're making it weird ]

Oh yeah? I wasn't the one — [ and here he has to pause because is keith trying to knee his butt??? ]

— wasn't the one crying about some bonding moment!

[ he grunts, attempting to shift away from the leg, but it only causes him to bump against keith's other leg. he falls to his knees as he grits his teeth, reaching fully around keith's back so that he's got him locked in a bear-hug-except-it's-not-a-hug, and now he's just attempting to... hoist the other boy up using just his upper body strength.

which. okay. may well be more than keith's at this point but it still ain't all that much, lbr.

he flinches when keith starts pinch his neck, and his shoulders hunch up out of reflex, trying to knock those hands away. ]

Quit it!!

[ "quit it????" are they five?????????//?? ]

[secondnature]

[Suggesting that Keith was crying definitely makes the two of them five. He does quit it, but only so he can press the palm of his furry hand against Lance's face to try to push him off. Maybe when he's meeting his Galra "skin," he has to want to get off.]

I wasn't crying—you were just being an idiot about it! But maybe—[shove, shove right into his mouth to get him to shut up too]—maybe we weren't friends at any point. Yeah, that sounds right. [He tries to wriggle up out of the bear hug that is definitely a hug, but isn't really able to do anything but keep his palm pressed against Lance's face thanks to the current hold.

It's probably a good thing that the bugs are dead here.

It's probably also really obvious that Keith is making no real effort to kill Lance.]

[competing]

[ the hand to his face has the desired effect, shoving his head far back enough that the angle puts an immediate strain on his neck. his arms loosen out of reflex, and it's all the leverage keith needs to effectively push lance back, despite his earlier advantage.

the younger boy falls back with a grunt, managing to catch himself from falling completely over with hands the ground, though his legs remain mildly tangled with the other's. there is a scowl on his face, lips already twisted around something disdainful. ]

Is that supposed to mean something to me, Keith?

[ he scoffs, even as he does feel a bit of a pang at those words. they aren't friends, not really... certainly not the best of friends... but he'd been hoping — he'd been certain for sure they were nearly there.

his lips twist into something of a sneer, one hand coming up to brush the back of it against his chin, as if to rub away the strange feeling of fur there. ]

You know — for some happy Galra lackey, you sure suck at being bad.

[secondnature]

[Keith lets out a derisive snort as he scrambles to his feet, carefully putting some space between him and Lance. He could hurt him more, but he's decided it isn't worth it. Plus, he doesn't want to do it, even if there have been a few times when he felt like giving him a black eye might do ... something ...

Maybe increase his face care routine.

Yeah, the worst kind of something.]

Heh, you think I'm a lackey? Zarkon's recognized me himself. I don't have to bother with someone like you. Besides, it'll be much better when we capture all you paladins and put you in our arena to fight. No need to get the job done here. [His bayard disappears and he begins to turn away, raising a hand up to dismiss him.]

See you later, Lance. [Said in as much of a maniacal tone as he can muster, so he mostly sounds angry.

And he is, for what it's worth: he hopes he can stop Zarkon sooner rather than later so that he doesn't have to do this anymore.]

[competing]

[ and that's it. that's all.

it happens so quickly that lance isn't even sure it happens at all until all he's left with is the sight of keith's turned back, a hand raised as if to wave him away.

stupid. what an idiot.

what kind of zarkon-acknowledged lackey — because that's all any of them are to a guy like zarkon! lackeys doing the grunt work for him! — exposes his back to his supposed enemy? an enemy who can summon a rifle at his fingertips within seconds? and who can let out a high-powered laser beam in even less that time??

he grits his teeth, and slams a fist against the ground. what the heck was even going on???? nothing made sense!! what is he supposed to do with all this? when their team is already fractured enough—

oh. ]

—oh crap.

[ he has to find pidge—! ]