3268/The Farthest Shore

The Farthest Shore
Date of Scene:	07 September 2020
Location:	OMAHGERDWHOKNOWS
Synopsis:	The missing Titans wake up aboard the trashed wreck of the Warzoon dreadnought and find themselves VERY far from home.
Cast of Characters:	Donna Troy, Caitlin Fairchild, Terry O'Neil, Victor Stone

---

Donna Troy has posed:
    Donna walks through Titans Tower, going from room to room, but the tower is empty. Finally she makes her way to the room she was keeping until last, her heart heavy with dread, already knowing what she's going to see. She steps into the memorial room, and all the niches but one are all filled with bronze statues.

    A sob escapes her lips as her eyes pass the ranks of lifeless metal, lingering for a few extra moments on the hooded bronze figure deep in the shadows of one. She steps towards the final niche, where a copy of her own armor is mounted, battered beyond repair by the ravages of fighting Brainiac Drones and Warzoon. She lifts it gently out and puts it on the ground, then steps into the niche herself, and slumps down on the floor, too beaten to even cry.

    All the others have died. She has failed them. She hadn't been with them when they needed her, and they all died, every single one.

    It's her fault. She looks out over the empty stone halls of the tower, echoing in silence.

    The tower doesn't have stone halls. Why would she think that Titans Tower would have stone halls?

    It's a dream. She's had the dream before, more than once. She remembers that, and decides to wake up. The Titans are alive. Raven is alive. Her friends... no, her /family/ need her. The new Titans, so full of life and promise, need her. Her mother, her sister, her beloved Themyscira needs her. Wake up! Wake up Troia! Duty calls!

    Caitlin sits in the clearing, the light of a warming fire dancing across her face. A rabbit sizzles in the fire, the smell of cooking flesh and fragrant herbs making her mouth water. Part of her wishes she had a proper kitchen here, but another part of her embraces the peace of the wilderness, and she is at rest here. She misses her friends, but somehow she is happy in her solitude.

    Behind her an ancient temple sits atop a mound of stone, choked with weeds. She pays it no heed. How long has she been here, in this clearing? Days, weeks? Years? Perhaps one day she'll take a look inside the temple -- just to satisfy her curiosity. Perhaps not. Maybe it would be presumptive to poke her nose in other people's business, anyway. And why should she, when she is so content here? Still, there are things she might learn inside.

    An owl hoots in the darkness. A female voice calls out from the trees. " You have many miles to walk before that choice will be yours to make, Caitlin Fairchild. Wake up, Daughter of Adam. Your friends need you."

    The lab is on fire. An acrid smoke assaults Vic's nostrils, but for some reason the flames that wreathe his body don't burn him. He feels cold, so very cold.

    "I miss you so much Victor," Elinore says, standing untouched in the fire.

    Victor stone tries to blink back tears, but the tears he expects aren't coming. He can't cry. "Mom... I miss you too. I'll be there soon, mom. I'm going to die too, in a minute."

    "Sweet child. No, you're not dying. Not yet. Not really. Your life is still ahead of you."

    "Without you? I can't... why don't the flames burn? I don't understand." He raises his hands to look at them, but they are made of metal. That's not right. Too soon. He looks down at his silvered body, and reaches his hands up to touch the flesh of his face, but that is metal too. There is no flesh left, no warmth. No wonder he feels so cold, even in the flames.

    "The fire is inside you, Victor, in your heart and in your mind. Neither of those will ever be cold metal. Your fire will burn long, and warm so many around you. It will burn bright and lead so many through the darkness, before you join me."

    "But..."

    "No buts, Victor Stone! Be yourself, 'cos whatever you think, whatever doubts you may have, you do that real well. Those who love you and still live have need of you. Wake up!"

    A light blinks in the corner of his vision. Words appear in front of him. "System rebooting. Stand by."

Donna Troy has posed:
    Terry's alarm is going off. He reaches a hand sleepily out from under the covers of his bed, fumbling with his phone to silence it, but the alarm doesn't seem to stop ringing. He looks at the screen through bleary eyes. It's 6 minutes past 10. He's late! Why didn't the alarm go off earlier? His mom's going to be mad. But then everyone is mad, here.

    He sits up, throwing the sheets aside and frantically reaching for clean clothes. The alarm still rings. As he grabs a pair of socks, he's surprised to see a human-sized white rabbit in a finely tailored waist-coat standing in his doorway.

    "You're late!" the rabbit says, speaking loudly to be heard over the alarm that refuses to be switched off. "Oh my fur and whiskers, you're late! You slept through it all. Why are you sleeping, Vorpal?"

    "Who are you?" Terry asks blearily. It occurs to him that of all the things he could say when he sees a talking rabbit, that's probably the least inspired. He's not sure why he isn't questioning it more. "I'm not sleeping. Tell mom I'll be down..."

    "Tell her yourself! It's long past time! WAKE UP!

    "I'm awake! I'm up!"

    "You're not awake, you're still asleep! Can't you hear the alarm? Wake up, Vorpal. Wake up! Your friends have fallen down the rabbit hole, and who better than you to help them find the way out?"

    Vorpal's alarm is going off. He reaches a hand sleepily out from... there are no covers. He's slumped against... a bulkhead.

    Sirens are blaring. Red lights flash all across the bridge, angrily demanding attention. Damage control screens flicker nightmare displays of the terrible wounds the dreadnought has suffered - large chunks of it are simply /missing/. The Titans are waking up.

    Across the great viewscreen is a vision of fire. A tornado of red and orange plasma frozen in a single moment fills the view, curving in and on itself in an impossible arch across heavens that are empty of stars. Great nebulae of dust float in the sky in a gorgeous spray of greens, yellows and vivid purples.

    Seven worlds hang in the bizarre sky, each a visible orb, far too close together to be remotely natural. The closest - so close the ship must be in orbit - fills much of the lower part of the screen in a vision of blue. A single small island visible amid the world-encircling ocean.

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
Caitlin snorts awake. There is nothing dainty or graceful about her repose; she's tossed up against a bulkhead, neck twisted at an odd angle and one leg corkscrewed under her. "Owww," Caitlin wheezes.

The redhead unconstricts herself and half slithers, half-crawls towards one of the control panels. Clumsy fingers dance around and then she punches a flashing light. Oxygen flows more readily and C02 is drained from the air by creaky, damaged fans.

"All's shipshfape, Cap'n," Caitlin slurs. "More power to the... dilithium crystals."

The stalwart redhead's fairly tough to keep down, but bad pennies don't much care for hyperspace translocation either. "Does anyone else smell toast?" she calls out, woozily.

Terry O'Neil has posed:
Coming out of that bizarre dream onto this nightmare causes Vorpal's heart to race. Fight or flight response kicks in and he stumbles to his feet in a nervous burst of energy, pushing away from the bulkhead.

The memory of the last seconds before everything went dark... hazy. The viewscreen ahead fills him with greater dread than the alarms could, because it confirms that they failed the evac. And those worlds... he looks away. More important things right now: finding his friends.

"Cait!" Vorpal calls out when he hears the fellow redhead's voice. He holds on to one of the consoles when his knees want to fail him, so he ends up half-draped across one. He might hit one or two buttons. Hopefully none that matter. "cait... you okay? Donna? Vic?"

It's hard to be heard over those alarms. His brain is still not quite there yet, he can only process so much, with that angry, throbbing pain. He must have gotten thrown pretty bad.

Victor Stone has posed:
Mom was a dream. The lab fire was a dream. That dead, frozen chill all over him, the loss of his final vestiges of humanity, was a dream, as well.

The tears? Those were real.

Vic comes back to consciousness a second before his internal power core reignites, and takes in a ragged breath while his limbs are still dead weight. He blinks against the blur: more fire? No: a flame-colored nebula, somehow filled with planets. He can't move except to turn his head; he does so, toward the sound of Caitlin's voice. Then with a rising mechanical tone, his whole chassis reboots. Once enough memory is available, it plays an abstract Brian Eno fanfare that seemed a lot funnier when he installed it. His metal hands, freed of their power-down paralysis, come to his face and brush away the tears the dream brought forth.

"I'm alive," he announces, before amending: "I think."

Donna Troy has posed:
    At the point defense console, where in the last moments before the dreadnought had been caught up in the collapsing wormhole she had been frantically targeting the incoming fire attempting to stop the dreadnought on its collision course, Donna stirs, and a pained moan escapes her lips.

    She hadn't been with the rest of the team during the assualt on War World itself - a team of Warzoon special forces in personal maneuvering gear had launched an attempt to retake the dreadnought, and Donna had elected to meet them in space while Cyborg worked frantically to keep the crippled dreadnought under control while putting the final touches to the neutralized Brainiac virus that had taken down War World's systems. She had not come out of that battle well.

    Donna lifts her head from the console and looks around. "We're alive," she agrees. "Somehow." The last thing she remembers, Vorpal was trying to get them back to the T-Jet and his Rabbit Hole had opened up onto vacuum. She vaguely remembers Caitlin yelling at him to close it again, and then... four seconds. That was right. Four seconds to collision. And then... what?"

    Donna stands from her seat, painfully. She glances down at her armor - the almost iconic black cuirass with silver stars, the armor she had worn as Troia for eight years - is half-melted. "Vic? Where... what's War World's status? Is it... did it jump?"

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
Caitlin half-staggers, half-crawls towards Victor. Donna's on her feet, already thinking two moves ahead; Victor's distraught, injured, and some sisterly instinct brings her over to him. Helping hands offer Victor support in sitting upright, and then an engineer's fingers check him quickly for damage.

And wipe a little damp from his cheeks once he's situated.

To Terry, next, even as the feline's helping himself to his feet. Palms check for blood, check for broken bones, and then Caitlin stagers over to Donna. It's hard to keep a good GenActive down, and Caitlin pushes, pokes, and prods at Donna until she's sure the Amazon isn't broken or bleeding.

"Can't... can't say for sure where we're at," she says, and examines a readout. "Engines totalled, weapons and shields offline... I can't even access astrogation," she says, and shoots Vic a look of mute appeal for aid.

Terry O'Neil has posed:
Terry, remarkably, isn't broken, but he has a sprained ankle and one heck of a nasty bump, as well as all of the cuts and injuries he incurred in the fight for the fourth tower. His uniform is in tatters from the waist up, but most of the blood has dried up by now. On his fur. He gives Cait's shoulder a squeeze when she comes to check him over. They're alive, at least. That's something. Right?

"I.. I'm sorry." Memories are starting to come back now. The vacuum. "I don't know what happened I- I fucked up... this is my fault..."

He tries to make it over to the others, coughing some. "I... can try to open another hole..." he offers, sounding not terribly confident about it.

Victor Stone has posed:
Vic was flat on his back; with Caitlin's help, he levers himself up to a sitting position, but his limbs aren't responding all that well. An incomplete reboot, battle damage, or some kind of magnetic interference, maybe: they'll figure it out later. If they're going to get a later. "Thanks, Cait," he murmurs quietly.

It's a more laborious process than he might hope to get back to his feet, and his mind is dragged back to the early months of physical therapy, to the awkward adjustment to his first set of metal limbs. He's unsteady and clumsy once he's standing, but he staggers over to the tactical console to try to get a bead on the ship's surroundings. It takes him a couple of tries to find the right buttons with his fingers.

"We're on battery power," he announces, once he has bypassed some failing segments of the computer systems. "Looks like we lost engines, so let's keep our power use to a minimum until we can find a reactor and get it reignited. As for Warworld..." He makes a few deliberate taps on the controls, pulling up a readout. "No sign of it. But, uh... wherever we are? Nothing makes sense. A planetary system in a nebula, orbiting a black hole. Neil DeGrasse Tyson is going to subtweet the hell out of me for even describing it."

Donna Troy has posed:
    Donna is indeed broken and bleeding, and also somewhat burned. Caitlin's seen her take worse though. Caitlin has /given/ her worse. The Amazon will manage.

    She may be thinking two steps ahead, but she's still working from assumptions two steps behind. Donna wheels it back and tries to reasses. "Is everyone okay?" She asks, as she starts undoing the straps on her cuirass. Only half of them still even exist. "I thought we hit War World. I'm /sure/ we hit War World. The ship was shaking itself apart. What happened? How are we alive?"

    She peels the armor away painfully, revealing a charred and blood-soaked tunic beneath, and places the armor carefully onto the console in front of her to inspect it. She gives out a deep sigh, and shakes her head. She's going to need new armor.

    She steps over to join the others, giving Vorpal's shoulder a squeeze. Tangled memories are starting to come together. "Something... at the last moment, something happened. We were moving... something shoved the ship. We hit side-on. Something must have... that's probably what went wrong with the Rabbit Hole. It's not your fault, Terry."

    Donna joins Cyborg at the console as he starts going over the readings, resting her hands on his shoulders, because he seems kind of... disturbed. When the prognosis is given, she looks again at the main view screen, taking in properly the bizarre scene outside.

    "Wut?"

Terry O'Neil has posed:
Terry appreciates the reassurance, but in a situation like this... they're still /somewhere/. And the more he looks, the more that somewhere doesn't make sense. Vic's description and Donna's reaction are eloquent enough. But when the Cheshire Cat speaks up, it shows just how bad the situation is.

"For the record... this wouldn't even make sense in /Wonderland./"

Glancing at whatever functioning screens, he adds "The ship looks like swiss cheese, guys. That's not good either..." he squints. He blinks. He squints again. He checks twice just in case his corneas are being naughty and not nice. And then he says:

"Where did the stars go?"

Caitlin Fairchild has posed:
"God preserve," Caitlin whispers, and it's a prayer rather than blasphemy. She's looking at Donna's injuries, the burns and scarring, and casts around for a medical solution. None are at hand; Warworld was not designed for first-line trauma in mind.

"Donna, you've got second-and-third-degree burns," Caitlin says, worried. "We don't have any burn gel or medical gear here. We need to get this... treated, and disinfected, before you get sepsis. Or worse," she tells Donna.

"And we need to land this ship *somewhere* because if I'm reading this right, we're down to two sub-critical powercells and one working thruster."

Victor Stone has posed:
"Carroll was more of a math guy than an astrophysics guy, wasn't he?" Vic asks Vorpal, trying to inject some levity into the situation. He, too, looks out toward the viewscreen, then down at his console. "No visible stars, which figures. They might actually help us figure out where we are."

He glances over at Donna and Cait with a grimace, running a quick mental inventory: but it's not like he carried medical supplies with him onto the dreadnought. Anything like that would be back in the T-Jet. "If you have specific chemicals you need, I can try to look for them," he offers, tapping his temple next to his artifical eye. "If we get really desperate, we can try scanning one of these impossible planets, although again, gotta preserve power until we can start generating it again."

Donna Troy has posed:
    "I'll be fine," Donna insists to Caitlin, distracted as she stares out the window and barely paying attention to her own words. "Honestly Cait, there's nothing to worry about."

    It's typical Donna. So typical she probably doesn't realize they are the exact words she said to Caitlin once before, when she was not fine. At least this time there is no signs of heavy bleeding.

    "We're... is that a black hole?" Donna asks. For the scientists it's a dream come true. Black holes have been imaged before, faintly visible and demonstrating the characteristic patterns of frozen light falling into the singularity under relativistic time distortion that predictions had implied, but here's one, visible at impossibly short range, demonstrating the theories were at least, broadly correct.

    The gravity is all wrong though. They are far too close - and planets, orbiting it? Impossible. The fact that the planets appear to be orbiting in a string in a shared orbital path? Even more impossible. Nothing makes sense. Nor do any of the readings - if the ship's damaged computer is correct, the entire universe is no more than a few AU across.

    "Did we jump? We must have jumped. We have to go back." Donna rushes over to the engine console, staring down at the controls as if she can figure out how to pilot an alien spaceship through hyperspace just by staring hard enough. "Vic, set in a course of Earth, we need to get back! We don't know... don't know what happened back there. We've got to make sure the Warzoon are... how does this..." her voice breaks a little. "How does this even work?" She starts pressing buttons, pretty much at random. "Vic, c'mon, you know this stuff! How do we get back? What's the... what's the..."

    It might be more worrying having her pressing random buttons if the dreadnought even /had/ a drive any more.

Terry O'Neil has posed:
Terry chuckles at Victor's comment, "He was indeed. He was also exceedingly boring /and/ interesting at the same time. I remember meeting him." But he doesn't get to elaborate on that, as Donna rushes to the console

"Donna..." Terry limps over to the Amazon, reaching over to touch her shoulder gently, "Breathe... we'll find a way out, but we can't panic. The others are counting on us..."

Fine words for someone whose own voice is shaking. "Let Vic run a diagnostic or whatever it is tech geniuses do, and we'll have a better idea on what we can do... how about..." he thinks. "How about we look to see if there are any visual records? Ships like these probably keep those for battles. Maybe we can see what happened before we got... whatever it is that we got. Then we'll know what we need to do."

This is something to give them a purpose while the only person with the technical know-how could come up with something, unperturbed by their emotional break downs. Terry was feeling in need of a tub of ice cream right about now...

Victor Stone has posed:
It's still pretty worrying to be pressing random buttons when they have so little power! Like Vorpal, Vic lurches over to Donna, but in an awkward sort of Frankenstein gait. He stops across from her, his hands descending over hers with his fingers splayed, only gently touching in a calming gesture.

"Donna. You'll be fine?" he echoes her, his voice firm and steady in a way that his body just isn't, right now. "You're not fine. None of us are fine. And there's plenty to be worried about. But take a second -- breathe. We're going to figure this out like we always do."

"For now, though?" he continues. "We can't set a course. We don't even know where we are. We need to resupply to keep ourselves alive, then figure out what we can salvage from this situation. We're not going to be able to just leap back home. Not for a while."

He glances around the bridge, at all three of the others. "This situation is insane, but we've been through insane situations before. We can figure this out, we can get though it. We just have to stay calm and hang together. Right? Don't make me catchphrase you, because I will." He offers them each, in turn, an encouraging grin.