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AFTERMATH
AFTERMATH
The memorial itself is a massive glowing crystal, under a positively cavernous ceiling. It's meant to do something but hasn't done it yet. There are many tables around it, covered in food, since it's a common tradition for many. In fact, things have been turned into an impromptu potluck, with far more food than just what's provided at the Pole having been shared.
The room is new, magically created. They've been told Vasilisa, who helped give information to Elle and Loki to save Jack from Baba Yaga, is responsible, having charmed the building to grow something special. It is a place that is not a place, one that will be magically dis-attached from the Pole and moved later.
Security in the Pole needs to stay tight thanks to Kuk's machinations. Right now, Vasilisa has charmed things to only allow the Guardians to go to the workshop side of things. In the future, the memorial will be moved to a more neutral location so visiting myths can go freely without intruding on the Guardians' base.
For now, though, it's at the Pole. Where the myths feel safe. Right now, the Memorial is neutral ground, a no-fight zone even between myths with rivalries. Right now, everyone is united in one purpose: grieving. Somehow, many have been called here to do it, whether through magical messengers, enchanted objects, summoning rituals, or simple word of mouth. The myths have ensured that everyone who was wondering where family or friends went, if they were taken by Kuk or killed or faded, has gotten their answer if possible.
The records stolen from the facility allowed for that. For the truth to finally be known.
The mourners all mourn different ways, in accordance to their cultures, whether those practices are distinct and disconnected from mortal life, like those of the Fae, or borne of the human culture a myth evolved from. There are grave goods and flowers. There is a fire for sacrifices of paper facsimiles of items meant to be provided in the afterlife. There are some mourners playing music and dancing. Other mourners are dressed in black, sing dirges, beat at their breasts, and pull at their hair.
They are given a space to do all these things around each other and leave the others to their own ways.
Meanwhile, those with less specific forms of grieving try to comfort each other. Two unicorns nuzzle each other as they whinny and cry rainbow tears. A brownie child clings to her father who holds her tight as tears stream down their faces. Others check in with each other, hug old friends or distant family, place arms around shoulder, incline heads in sympathy.
"- so sorry about Pixabelle -"
"- please accept my condolences -"
"- world hasn't been the same without the rainbows she made -"
"- wish you didn't have to know what I feel in losing a child -"
Jack hangs back from most of it, leaning against a wall, hunched against his staff, struggling to even make himself stay there. It's hard because he absolutely is getting a bit of a bombardment of other myths, but as far as bombardments go, it at least could be worse. It is myths from the facility, thanking him for rescue, and asking him to pass around more thanks to the other Guardians. Others thanking the Guardians for returning loved ones. And yet others, thanking the Guardians for at least making it so they had to stop wondering and could finally grieve.
"- thank you for making it so I finally knew what -"
"- came when we needed you -"
"- brought Marigold back to us -"
They at least say the right things, although it's clearly hard for him to hear some of what the others are saying about their hurt.
Frosty the Snowman is talking to some pixies near Jack. His magic top hat has magically turned into a long ski cap, since he mostly hits the pow-pow in the off-season outside of Christmas.
"Sorry guys. I see Biggie. I'm gonna go over, okay? He took, uh, he took the news about A.S. hard."
Jack winces. These are people he knows, the unsaved and the people that are devastated.
Frosty sloshes off. Jack looks like he's trying to muster the strength to start whatever it is that needs to be said...but he doesn't have to. Two women appear, from the floor. One bursts up in an explosion of stone and seems made of stone herself, her skin a dark red clay, her body crisscrossing lines of granite and sandstone. Her brown-red face is smeared with chalk. Her face is angular, with a strong profile.
The other springs up from vines that crack through the ground. She looks younger, her face softer. She is entirely green, her body made of vines, clothed in mosses, her hair scattered with flowers.
Everyone in mourning quiets. Many bow, curtsy, or incline their heads. The women don't introduce themselves. No myths ask them to.
"I wish we were all gathered for a better purpose," says Mother Nature, her vine hair writhing as it eternally grows. "It would normally do my heart glad to see so many of our kind that still walk the Earth, gathering in peace." She looks to Mother Earth. "My mother feels the same. But we are all here for something far more painful."
"An injustice that will not remain unanswered," says Mother Earth more sharply. "I have been assured by Jack Frost that if this 'Project Prometheus' continues to be a threat, it will be pursued. It is the will of the pursuers what they do with those they capture." A look makes it clear that she's perhaps judging that choice but also finds it fair for them to make it if they're the ones doing the work. "But we have been it will be pursued until the organization's eventual end."
Her voice softening, Mother Earth says, "For these efforts against such a vile group, we thank the Guardians. And we thank them for bringing us what we did not have: our loved ones or knowledge of what happened to them."
"And now we should attend to what must be attended to," says Mother Nature, "and do something we never should've had to do, at least at this scale, and especially for the reason we must."
The Mothers both raise their hands. The moon appears through a small hole in the ceiling below and shines down on the crystal. Between the three of them, it springs to life, projecting a massive moving illusion of many different myths. Over a hundred were killed in the facility over the years, either in front of the eyes of those freed from it, or found in their records.
Magical writing appears as an illusion of a myth flies into prominence. Even those who can't normally read will somehow have the knowledge of what the letters say passed into their minds. Even those who don't know each myth will read along.
"Now for the reading of the names." Mother Nature's tears start to drip down her face, as she looks at the illusion faces of many she's lived long enough to know. Where the tears hit the ground, plants spring up. "I wish it were not so, but this will be a longer ritual than any of our kinds have ever done."
Many of the myths hold hands or hold each other. Others throw themselves to the ground and weep, especially those listening to the names of the nymphs read off. A whole sisterhood is gone, but they left beloved friends and relatives in other sisterhoods behind. (When her illusion form comes up, Jack himself can't say her name, he can only whisper the name "Aesyle.")
Biggie (aka Bigfoot) held tightly by his bestie, Frosty, breaks down at "Abominable Snowman."
"You're my boy, AS!" he sobs out to his lost buddy, the one that rounded our their duo to a trio. "You're my boy!"
And through it all, the little Elves gather around, and in their infinite sweetness, they offer a soundtrack to the reading, something solemn enough to match the mood, bright enough to also be in celebration of those lost. They slowly move their heads forward and back, rhythmically jingling the bells on their little hats.
When it's over, when the far-too-long list has been read, the illusion over the crystal disappears. In its eventual final resting place, chosen and warded by the the Mothers, it will allow people to view all the lost myths or just specific ones.
The Mothers don't stay beyond the reading, disappearing into the Earth once more.
Their work is arduous and eternal. They must stoke the furnace of the Earth's core and move the tectonic plates, they must make the green things grow and maintain the brutal cycles of nature. And yet try to walk the balance of not allowing it to come to destruction: there are also fault lines to try to soothe into quiet, and storms to temper. The Earth is its own system that they simply try to maintain. They are its embodiments but not its makers. It has forces they must try to wrest in their place, created in its making. Equilibrium is difficult, now more than ever.
But others myths mill around, talking. Slowly winding down and leaving.
Jack himself walks off towards the workshop side of the Pole for a breather.
There are a lot of facility employees that are being burned right now. Cut off, forced to deal with the consequences of appearing in secure facilities they don't have security access to. Their lives will be difficult but they'll still have them, they just will never have a place at Prometheus again. It's more expedient that way.
Others, those who evacuated unseen, or managed to talk their way out of more serious scrutiny when shoved through a portal somewhere secure, are waiting to be debriefed. Word is some people might even still keep their jobs. And their lives. But to be fair, there is a lot of word going around at the moment so who knows?
There are so many of them they're piled in an empty vehicle hangar at another PP base, seated in groups on the floor. Two analysts are pressed against the wall, away from all the others so they can speak unheard.
"I'm telling you -" hisses Jerry Garrigan to his friend. They're both keeping their voices down so this doesn't get to management.
"I don't believe you," whispers his friend Seth Hartley.
They're analysts. Jerry cannot help but analyze the situation. Seth cannot help but analyze how insane his work bestie sounds.
"I'm. Telling. You. Vikash says Smithson got saved by a Spider-Man. Not...the. Just a. But still. Now maybe they're just tulpas but -"
"It was probably just - I don't know. There was probably something in it for them."
"Okay, but there was the guy on a horse, the giant wolf that didn't actually do more than bruise people despite being a giant wolf, the bug chick and the other striped wolf... Plus, the guy on the intercom apparently wasn't lying about people not being harmed if they surrendered. Most of them got chucked through portals and arrested for trespass but they weren't hurt." He adds, "And you said the little cat kid let you go."
"Yeah, after shooting how many of our guys from security??" Seth points out.
"But he still let you go. Because the weird, nebbish, English gentleman -"
"'Foppish.' I said 'foppish.'"
"- convinced him to. One of the security guys in Omega Squad said Spider-Man also chucked the cat kid away from them through a portal. Saved their lives."
"Look, there's a lot that went down, a lot of reasons they could be manipulating us, things that might have done more to benefit each other, and a bunch of them still killed people. I heard Hellboy helped kill at least one security team when he could've just run and he's supposed to be a good guy."
A raised eyebrow. "First name basis instead of prisoner number, huh?"
It's new for Seth.
"...I make no apologies, they were very good movies and I was a fan. Del Toro is a visionary and so is Mignola. It doesn't change anything."
"Hard to be a hero if a bunch of people shove you in a cage. And you know the security guys on that cellblock? Completely unprofessional."
"With talk like this, I should report you to HR," says Seth.
Garrigan raises both eyebrows, half in concern, half in challenge.
"...I'm not going to," Seth acknowledges, "Beth would kill me, especially since Pam's her best friend. But I should."
"I just think we need to maybe...think about some things. Maybe investigate further? The whole fictional character angle is new. Tulpas have never been like this before."
They're both quiet for a while, Seth sitting against the wall with his arms crossed.
Finally, Seth says, "Smithson really said he was saved by Spider-Man?"
"A Spider-Man." A pause. "I didn't know there was more than one, maybe I'm too old."
"There are a bunch of them now. It's, like, a new thing. My kid loves those movies."
"Someone said they saw Superman, too," adds Garrigan.
Seth rapidly turns his head, skeptical. "No way."
"Big Blue Boy Scout's honor."
Seth sits for a long time, very quiet, and then shakes his head, slightly distraught that doubt is now creeping in, and says, "Son of a bitch."
The pictures are spread out across a table, printed out. (The Director liked physical copies of things.) Devastation. The building destroyed by ice. The empty pit after.
Two other analysts are analyzing.
"It was a nightmare blocking off the public and keeping the news away from the truth. We had to use class 10 hypnotropics, work our connections with the police to keep the air space clear."
"What's the cover?"
"Gas main explosion. Fortunately, no one saw the ice. It crushed the inside of the fake building front top-level but didn't breach much of the external walls. And it collapsed quickly enough."
"Did anything survive? Anything?"
"So far, nothing but remnants. The ice pulverized every inch of the facility, broke every wall and internal support. There's now way to properly recover the bodies of personnel, computer harddrives, or lab samples. We'd have to sift it through a sieve."
"We'll have to push Frost up the most wanted list, I think."
"He's already in the top ten."
"Still, we haven't seen any other proof of the major players recently, for unknown reasons. And children have been claiming it was Frost and some others that brought the presents this year. Some have seen him leave the tooth money." The analyst slaps down a few blurry pictures of some of the displaced myths. Most of the footage was erased or damaged due to the team's efforts but not all. "And he appears to have help. More help than we ever imagined. We knew some of the more powerful myths, especially the Big Six, worked in cooperation but this was unprecedented. The staff debriefs coming in so far..."
"We should ask around and then update the Unofficial Top Asshole List, too. And get it over to the Head of Security Forces. They love when they get new chewtoys. Makes them even stop eating crayons for a while. And they're pissed their guys got hit so hard."
"...that, too. That fucker over the intercom was obnoxious."
"Let's get this batch of reports up to the Director. And the most recent casualty list. Hostile myths really tore into personnel, not just Security. I can tell he's close to flipping his shit from the last casualty report and it's worse now."
The two analysts gather up their reports and head towards the Director's office.
"How can you even tell? He always seems cool as ice."
"You know how he wanted to quit smoking? Saw him puffing like a chimney last time I went up there."
Note: This is meant to cap off the plot with consequences of the actions people took within it. The group has made an impression on both the leadership and the rank and file Project Prometheus employees that will have future consequences.
Interaction: For the part that takes place in the Pole, you can choose to interact in any way you please. If you want to put up an open post to talk to others in the aftermath, during and after the ceremony you may. Or you can post an open locked to someone, or even noted as completely closed to comments if you want to just establish the way your character would pay their respects or contemplate the memorial.
NPCING: The only npcing will be in the open post I'm putting up for Jack, since some characters wanted post-plot interaction.
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When Dick quietly leaves, Tim follows out of concern. He would've thought Dick would stay until the crowd began to drift apart. Maybe he feels like he's intruding. Maybe he's upset. (Maybe he's just looking for a convenient excuse to flee the emotional scene as well.)
Or maybe he's toughing through an injury. (Again.) "We could ask if they can turn the lights down in the meantime."
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It's too much. It's too many. He just feels inadequate.
"I should be fine. It's just taking time for the effects to fully go away." At least it's not a concussion this time. He's mostly been good about not getting hit in the head lately. "Flashblindness," he finally tells Tim. "Magical flashblindness, which is why the effects are lasting longer."
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(Funny thing, about reasons to worry. They only compound, never seem to go away.)
"You shouldn't be fine. We heal faster here. If you're not fine, you'd be a whole lot worse back home," Tim's checking his pockets for a penlight to check Dick's eyes. It won't do any good, but it might make Tim feel better. It would give him something to do, when he can't do anything here for Dick - or there, for everyone else. "I wish Zatanna was here. It's been long enough that minor magic should've faded."
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He is, after all, still recovering from a brain injury. That's not the kind of thing that entirely goes away, after all. "I'll be fine, Tim. Just...need to be a bit more careful right now."
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"I'm sorry," he says quietly, but the apology isn't for what he's done as much as what he's about to say. "I kinda want more than your word on that."
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He just... really would prefer to keep ignoring the disease. He has comparatively less right to be upset than the real myths, who knew the victims, and explaining that old memories are bothering him feels like he's cheapening their grief. Most of the people he's lost came back. "I hate funerals."
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Instead, he slings his arm across Tim's shoulders, pulling him in. It's a one-armed hug that can be played off as something else, if Tim needs to. "I know," he says lowly, just loud enough to be heard by his brother. "Come on. Let's go rescue the food from the elves."