Into a Rising Wind

[handsofwinter]

Winter holds the Nexus in its jaws, and its teeth sink ever deeper.

A month into the storm, the snow has yet to stop falling. The number of mouths to be fed has stopped dwindling, almost. Occasionally people go missing, and those who notice hope they’ve found a way back through their portals. It’s not enough to change the maths on their food supplies - all their supplies. Nobody is getting a full meal at a time, not any more. Isidor and Lyall have begun to enforce the rationing with iron hands. Both ignore the look that crosses Captain Kirk’s face when they upbraid a volunteer cook for being too generous – the look that lingers on Runa’s face if she’s close enough to hear. They’re doing what they must. They need a tight hold on their supplies if they want to get people through this. They need supplies even to send expeditions after more.

And expeditions are a difficult prospect now. Those who ventured into the storm and returned have brought stories that spread faster than Isidor hoped. The Crossroads Cafe has become a semi-official hub for those travelling outside or keeping watch on the bounds, a safe resting place kept warm by the combined power of Pokemon and Persona. In the long dark nights, people sit around the tables and share what they've seen, what they've heard from this scout or that refugee. Whispered tales of the creatures out there hunting in packs, hounding people from rooftops, even tearing open walls to reach them…

No-one goes out alone, now. Those brave enough to take the risk go in groups and arm themselves with the best weapons they can find. Sometimes they’re a risk to themselves. Not everyone knows how to handle that black market plasma pistol they picked up two days past. Not all of their team-mates keep their nerve when a figure looms out of the snows beside them. Sometimes it’s hard to tell who’s run afoul of monsters, and who of their own folly. Safer, but little less brave, are the people recruited to keep watch on that shifting line of torches. Just a precaution. The creatures don’t come past it, everyone says. But quietly, everyone doubts.

There've been bright moments, too. A strange alchemist comforting a lost child. An expedition team fighting their way home, back to back. Families brought safely through the snow by soldiers and wizards, by heroes young and old and sometimes surprising. A volunteer cook stepping up to prepare, if not quite a hundred thousand meals, then something that feels close. A young man saving the life of a stranger who'd threatened him. The past weeks have seen people who may never have known one another before come together to offer a blanket, or guiding words, or a helping hand in a search. Small moments, glowing reminders of how much good the people of the Nexus have on their side. But the Winter goes on, and the winds never get less bitter, and the smiles get more strained with every day.

Slowly the line of torches close on the Plaza, a noose no-one can afford to flee. Sheltered space is at a premium. Most of those who remain are settled as close to the centre as they can be. Whether in the big public bunker or the Cafe, people find themselves crammed all together, and tempers regularly fray among residents not too cold and exhausted for fighting. The more responsible Nexus-goers find themselves trying to duck out of (or break up) fights, or spending hours stuffing drafty accommodation with any insulation they can find. There’s snow to be shoveled from doors, pipes to be defrosted, bandages to be changed. Anything’s better than dealing with the problem of working bathrooms.

At one end of the Plaza headquarters, a makeshift screen has been dragged into place to give a semblance of privacy to Isidor’s desk. It’s painfully early in the morning, though the nights are so long and the days so dim beneath the storm clouds there’s little sense of time any more. There’s no-one around yet to wonder about the meeting going on. The only people present are Isidor, Lyall and a handful of senior volunteers – those who remain. Blaze-37 crouches by a makeshift fireplace, stacking the salvaged wood just right before she punches it lightly, setting it alight with the flames that ripple over her fist. The other robot, Ghost, is hovering over the desk playing flashlight for them, shining a pale beam over the maps and reports laid out there. Light, too, is a precious resource, as batteries die and outlets are lost to encroaching Winter. It’s the only reason those here have gotten sleep. They work until they have no light to work by.

“Shouldn’t we wait for Suou?” the Guardian asks when Isidor says they can begin.

“Officer Suou won’t be coming.”

That’s part of why they’re here, Isidor explains. The torches’ march has taken them past the Grand Library. The Crossroads Café is now on the very edge of the safe zone, along with all the people sheltering there. Katsuya’s magic is the only thing that will protect it. He can’t leave. It’s a turning point that only drives home the larger problem: they’re running out of time. They’re running out of everything. Most refugees are in some kind of shelter by now; what they lack is food to keep them alive and fuel to keep them warm. Isidor’s volunteers have counted heads and counted tins and counted everything backwards and forwards and the numbers never get better. Either they do something now, while they have the strength, or the meals will run dry in two weeks. Less, if anything goes wrong.

She lets that sink in. Nobody looks surprised: she’s confirming their worst suspicions and that gets a few flinches, but they understand. They talk, instead. By the time there’s a hint of daylight outside and someone knocks on the door for the first shot at rations, they have a plan. They need an expedition, bigger than any before. They need enough arms to discourage attack, the skills to get them to any buried supplies and the numbers to haul them back in quantity. Each of them walks away from the table with a mission in mind and an air of grim determination.

They have a job to do, and they’re going to need help.

((As before, so below: the main missions/subquests for the expedition prep are listed below. Tag any of them, threadhop, or post with your own character. I suggest putting your character’s name in the subject to help keep things clear. The OOC Post can be found here! If you have any questions, feel free to message me or one of the mods!))

Threads of Note

Scouting the Expedition | A Fistful of Torches | Scrapyard Sweep | The Home Front | Medical Attention | Isidor's Expedition Call | Main Expedition: The Raid

Comments

[subjectifying]

There's a guy.

Also, apparently, there are all these empty buildings with lots of space so long as you didn't mind the possibility that the roof will collapse. And maybe it's a bad run of tarot cards, or maybe it's just how the snow keeps falling, snow that's lasted longer than a biblical flood (and even if winter ends eventually, what's going to happen when it all melts, has anyone thought of that?) But Ellen's pretty much convinced that the world is going to end in ice, it's just a matter of time. Given that, why quibble about structural integrity?

There's a guy and an actually private room, and Ellen holds with those who favor fire.



She slips away from a teenage girl who wants to discuss the meaning of the five of cups in excruciating detail, and puts on a coat and boots.

"Where are you going, food waster?"

Ellen feels a sinking feeling. "I've got to go," she says. She opens the door -- cold reaches into the entryway with clawed fingers -- and slides through it while the uncoated guy is flinching.

She hurries on her way, but when she looks back, the guy had put on a thick leather parka and is following her.

Ellen scrambles down an incline of snow and into the nearest building.



The building was once been a movie theatre. Ellen hurries down the hallway, past unlit exit signs and the unpleasant odor from the restrooms, sure that there would be a door at the end. The door is stuck but she forces it -- frantically running at it until it scrapes open in the end -- and steps outside into an unexpected moment of calm, at least until a young voice cries, "There you are!"

Ellen doesn't see anyone. Then she sees a flash of brown -- a face, that had been obscured by a white hood. Someone dressed all in white in the middle distance, waving. It was the teen with the obsession with cups.

Ellen feels sympathetic, and also exasperated. She'd become turned around inside the theatre, and come out near where she'd started.

"Shh," she says, looking around to see if the guy is anywhere in sight. She sees nothing.

"Come on," she says, waving the teen to come into the movie theatre. The white-clad girl looks like an optical illusion as she dashes across the snow and then stares pleadingly at Ellen, breathless.

"I wanted to ask you--"

"I want to show you something," Ellen says. "But we'll have to be quick."



Frostomancy. Oh, to be that young again! Ellen trades her own snow gear and a quick explanation of frostomancy, the art of divination through patterns in frost, for an immediate loan of the all-white snow gear.

She leaves the teen eagerly examining every frosty surface, and exits the movie theatre on the opposite end, and trudges through the snow, feeling the cold dig its claws into her, a frisson of fear at the thought that she might still be followed, gloomily wondering if this assignation is really what she ought to be doing. She feels exhausted and foolish and a little shaky.

She wonders... but as she rehearses her excuses for being late ("You would not believe how popular I am today") she remembers that the number of the day is 202, and there's a guy, and a private room, and a fire. And there's ice enough to go around, but the fire isn't out yet.

[subjectifying]

Ellen stumbles.

She looks back to see what she stumbled over, and she sways.

"I knew I shouldn't have eaten those ... snow ants." She can't remember if that's a joke or not. Just in case it's not, she sits down and tries to remember...

She remembers getting up, checking the number of the day (low, but not this low), mopping a little, getting too tired to mop, going to get her daily ration, exchanging grumbles about the food with ... someone, does it matter who? Putting the mop away with the promise to mop tomorrow, deciding to go back to bed...

And here she is, sitting on the stairs.

"Goodness, you're burning up!"

"You must have me confused with someone else," Ellen says, trying to push the hand away. Today is not a day for burning. Yesterday? Tomorrow? Or maybe the lady's not for burning.

She squeaks when she sees the empty eye sockets under the black hood of the person bending over her, but no, that's as illusory as whatever it was she tripped over. A concerned face, and blue eyes, with a red flame burning in the center of the pupil-- No. She's imagining things. Isn't she?

She blinks and blinks and doesn't dare resist when they take her away. She can feel her pulse under her jaw, too fast, getting faster. However bad she is, she's not dead.



"Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him." She says the words, but they're wrong. She's lying down, that's the problem. Saying the words to a water-stained ceiling.

"She's awake again," someone says from a distance. "Go back to sleep, Suzonne." Sleep, sleep, Suzonne should sleep, but Ellen can't sleep when she's supposed to be sleepwalking. She struggles with the covers, sits up, looks around. A whole row of beds, with her at the far end. A whole row of fretful patients, a range of responses from fearful to annoyed.

"No more o' that, no more o' that: you mar all with this starting," she says to the woman approaching.

"What's done cannot be undone.--To bed, to bed, to bed!" the woman replies, with a patient air, as if she's done this before. Perhaps many times. "So, good night. My mind she has mated, and amazed my sight. I think, but dare not speak."

"Good night, good doctor." Ellen lays back down again, feeling relieved. The scene's over, the part's done. Only one thing remains. "Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes, and flights of angels sing me to my rest," she says.

"Yes, flights of angels, how sweet," the doctor says, relieved.

"Don't encourange her," the patient in the next bed says. "She's not getting any flights of angels."

Ellen snorts, and sighs, and drifts away again, strangely encouraged.