airlockedmods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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theairlock2017-11-24 04:29 pm
airlockedmods) wrote in theairlock2017-11-24 04:29 pm
final trial
[With the announcement, the Champions can crowd together onto the teleporter with no issues. Once that's done the process of teleporting is automatic and happens in the blink of an eye. Once second they're in the center of the cafeteria before a soft blue light surrounds them and then they're standing in the middle of a circle of podiums. It's so much emptier than it was just a few weeks ago that their voices echo when they try to speak up.
The room itself it the same shiny, chrome-covered atrocity as most of the rest of the ship save for the sections of floor that aren't the teleporter: those are thick clear glass that show nothing but empty space and stars beneath the Champions' feet. As for the podiums they're the same sort of garish chrome with a digital screen facing toward the center of the circle. More portraits and names in blaring red have been added this week. Thomas MacLaine, the Champion Accomplice, Manaka Sajyou, the Champion Mother and finally Roxy Lalonde, the Champion of ████████.
The Overseers are waiting when they all arrive, standing on a floating platform just high enough to be out of reach and back far enough toward a far wall to have a full view of the courtroom. Both are dressed well, Rox in a pressed grey dress jacket and skirt and Blaze in a black suit with the sleeves rolled up to expose his numerous tattoos. He still has the eye patch and Rox watches them with keen interest as they enter.]
Welcome back, Champions. There are six of you here but, if things go correctly, only five of you will leave. I don't think I have to explain at this point what will happen if you choose wrong.
This shouldn't take long though. We all know what happened. Anticlimactic but not everything can be a good mystery I suppose. [She folds her arms across her chest, looking down on the Champions.] Let the trial begin.
The room itself it the same shiny, chrome-covered atrocity as most of the rest of the ship save for the sections of floor that aren't the teleporter: those are thick clear glass that show nothing but empty space and stars beneath the Champions' feet. As for the podiums they're the same sort of garish chrome with a digital screen facing toward the center of the circle. More portraits and names in blaring red have been added this week. Thomas MacLaine, the Champion Accomplice, Manaka Sajyou, the Champion Mother and finally Roxy Lalonde, the Champion of ████████.
The Overseers are waiting when they all arrive, standing on a floating platform just high enough to be out of reach and back far enough toward a far wall to have a full view of the courtroom. Both are dressed well, Rox in a pressed grey dress jacket and skirt and Blaze in a black suit with the sleeves rolled up to expose his numerous tattoos. He still has the eye patch and Rox watches them with keen interest as they enter.]
Welcome back, Champions. There are six of you here but, if things go correctly, only five of you will leave. I don't think I have to explain at this point what will happen if you choose wrong.
This shouldn't take long though. We all know what happened. Anticlimactic but not everything can be a good mystery I suppose. [She folds her arms across her chest, looking down on the Champions.] Let the trial begin.
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[Leading Seto and Akira, she's making a mad dash for Chloe's podium.]
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Deny it. Challenge fate. Will something new into existence.] Bolton--! [Heads up, apparently they're coming your way!]
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Hurry!
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[She can't really dive while dragging Akira and Kaiba, but she tries putting on a burst of speed, closing the distance as much as possible, grabbing at the outstretched hand-]
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We got you, Pumpkin!
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It's gonna be okay, it's gonna be okay! Kaiba, Akira, get in here!
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He hisses when she pulls him forward, but he tries to reach for the two adults]
Come on...!
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There's a whoosh as the air gets sucked out of the room, followed by heat and weightlessness that nonetheless pulls at them.]
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We've got you guys, just hold on!
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No one else has been able to hold on for long against the yawning void. He hopes to be an exception.]
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But already he can feel this growing pressure... His brain already trying to black out and just... Let go. But not yet. Not yet-]
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Hold...on!
[The floor can't stay open forever, right? They've never noticed anyone having to press a button to close it before, surely it's just timed...]
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[But it's just a matter of time, right? They can still do this. Please.]
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--but the impossible has never been space dragging him away with all its might. It's hard to breathe, even with all that precious air whipping and whirling by him, and he's slipping, can't readjust his grip, can't let go or he won't be able to hold back on, but he can't keep this up. He's not Penny. Akira is not a bolted down hunk of metal to grip on tightly to. If he can hold on, if he can stay right here, for a few more seconds, it has to be seconds, it has to just be a few more sec--
Kaiba's ripped forcefully away from the chain, taking with him one of Akira's gloves still gripped in a hand. He'd scream, he thinks he's screaming, but the sound is lost to the cacophony of rushing air, and then no air at all, tumbling into space.]
cw: space death
The floor stays open.]
Cw: suffocation
Still, he has to hold on, for Penny. For Bolton and Jamie. And for awhile, he does. But as grief and terror run rampant in his lungs he finds himself gasping like a fish, trying to get more in, and when not finding nearly enough his mind goes white with panic.
The hands gripping Penny scramble, thrashing about like gut fish, like a choking man clawing at his own throat. And eventually go blessedly still in her iron grip]
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It's the way his palm is warm and slick with sweat, and the way that his own head is spinning from the thin air inside the bubble, and he realizes that his grip is slipping only when Penny's palm brushes his.]
NO!
[He tries to grab for her again, to re-anchor his hold, but it was taking all that he and Jamie had to hold onto her in the first place.]
1/2
[Tries to keep desperately clinging, even as screams at Kaiba's fall get whipped away into the vacuum. She grasps, briefly, at the end of Jamie's sleeve, getting purchase for just a second before the fabric tears away under her fingers. She slips, shooting back-]
2/2 cw; hand/finger damage?
[But time isn't on her side; she feels it before she actually sees it, before she can actually register and process what her eyes are telling her. The bubble, the thing keeping them all from shooting out the floor into space, is starting to crack.]
[Her mind plays out the possible scenarios in clinical coldness in her head. Maybe the pod is fine, and she just has to hold on a little longer. The pod cracks, and she and Akira fly into space, and if the floor doesn't close quickly enough Bolton and Jamie suffocate. Maybe there is no limit on how long the airlock stays open.]
[Maybe, maybe, maybe.]
[Maybe at least some of them can still make it out of this.]
[Penny squeezes her eyes shut. Bolton and Jamie can't hear her, not anymore, but if they're conscious enough they might be able to see two quick syllables -a name- leave her mouth before she lets go of the rim.]
[There's a brief second of resistance as the bubble keeps trying to close, tearing at the soft, fake skin covering her fingers, and then she's free, they're both free, flying backwards into space-]
cw: space death
Penny, on the other hand... Her synthetic skin starts to char from the radiation.
Rox and Blaze have been sheltered within a force field, since the bombs had caused a malfunction with the glass on the Overseers' deck. Penny is still alive when the floor closes. But Rox, with a couple quick, clinical taps, puts an end to that. Electricity races through Penny's PIP and all of her circuits fry with one great, final seizure.
And just like that... The bubbles recede again, leaving only two Champions alive.]
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The rip of his sleeve is deafening. The flimsy fabric tears away from his arm and she's gone. As everything goes suddenly still so does Jamie, still reaching out while the bubbles recede and oxygen replenishes in the court room.]
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