Post-Moebius Liminal

[ayiyiyi]

In the sky above, a patchwork of papel picado. Below, a pit full of sugar skulls, surrounding a massive circular altar, each 'step' four feet tall and decorated with pictures. And at the very top of the altar, there were no more pictures but rather a table filled with foods Xena has never seen before. But those of another time, and another place, would know them as pan de meurto, mole chicken, and sopa azteca. All around, floating gracefully in the air despite the lack of a breeze, are orange marigolds.

She remembers nothing of how she came to this place. Her sword is drawn, and the sugar skulls crunch beneath her feet as she steps slowly through the landscape, always circling, always looking for the threat. She doesn't know how she got here, and yet she knows deep within her soul that there has been death. There has been pain.

And she hasn't seen Gabrielle in some time.

Xena steps towards the altar, her sword still raised. She looks at the pictures, and frowns. She recognises no faces, but there's something familiar...and over there, there's a picture of her. Should she know these people?

And how in Zeus's name did the artist make these pictures so...real?

[[ooc: the setting of this is the Liminal Space immediate after Moebius - so please let me know if your character is in fact a pre-Moebius vet! They don't have to be to tag in, but I'd just like to know just in case we decide to make any threads game canon]]

Comments

Pre-Moebius vet here! obviously, haha

[itsananimalthing]

Riddick has enough memory to know who the woman in the short skirt and the breastplate is, at least. He also remembers bits and pieces of the last Jaunt... but only that. Bits and pieces. There'd been a lot of blood.

"Xena," he says, almost growls. "Guess you made it through."

[ayiyiyi]

Xena spins, and there's a sword pointed in Riddick's direction. There's a long, tense moment, and she looks at him with narrowed eyes and pursed lips.

Then she straightens, and lowers the sword. "You know me," she says. "But I'm afraid I don't recall your name."

And yet, there was something familiar about him. Something that told her that he was a friend, not an enemy.

[itsananimalthing]

"It's Riddick. Richard B. Riddick. Think we might've killed each other in there," Riddick suggests, squinting at her sword a little and jerking his thumb... well, at the ceiling. Because where else do you indicate "during a fucked up Jaunt where we all killed each other"? Honestly.

Not that he's even entirely sure where he got the word "Jaunt" to apply to... whatever that was. But it came to his brain automatically.

"And you gonna put that away," he adds, looking down at the sword, "or do I gotta expect it to come back up and threaten me again? Cuz I ain't gonna like that much."

[ayiyiyi]

"Well as long as we're being civilised," she says, and there's something of a smile on her face. He is a friend. She can feel it, even if she can't remember it. "I think I can manage that, just for you."

She sheathes her sword, sliding it into place on her back. That ghost of a smile disappears.

"We did kill each other, didn't we," she says. She was no stranger to blood, and death. But to not just be the cause of it, but to not even remember...

[itsananimalthing]

"Both of us killed a lot of people," Riddick shrugs, looking back over his shoulder, as if he might see one of the places the flashes of memory give him. "Kinda what we do, I think." That much he does know. He knows who he is, where he comes from... just not how he got here, to be put through that.

"Weren't the first time," he mutters. He doesn't know how he knows, but he knows he's been to more places than that since whatever... this is... started.

[ayiyiyi]

"Yes. We do." She's a warrior, and she lives by the sword. And she doesn't even need that faint sense of a memory to tell that Riddick is one too. It's all in his bearing, the square of his shoulders, the look in his eyes. Like regocnises like.

Xena starts pacing around the alter.

"And we just died. We should be in Hades's realm,, but..." She stops, and looks down when a sugar skull crunches under her feet. "...well, despite the decor, this isn't Tartarus. No, this is something else, someplace that we've been to before."

[itsananimalthing]

"Some kinda inbetween space," Riddick agrees. "I tried punchin' a wall before, when I first came back here. It fixed itself." He was pissed off, okay, and the wall was handy. He's still pissed off, he's just keeping it tightly under wraps at the moment because he has vague "I trust this person" feelings. That, and blindly raging at everything and everyone won't help him figure out what the fuck is going on.

[ayiyiyi]

"Fixed itself, huh?" she says, a thoughtful look on her face. Then, quick as a flash, she grabs her chakram and sends it flying towards the altar, the air screeching as it goes. It bounces off of one picture, smashing it - and then another, and another, and another, before it finally flies back to Xena.

She reaches up and catches it, holding it in the air as she stares at the picture. The pictures are a tattered mess of paper and glass, and with Xena's eyes on them, they don't change one bit.

"Well they don't look fixed to me," she says dryly.

[itsananimalthing]

"Give it a few minutes, and stop lookin' at it, and it'll get there," Riddick instructs, having watched that weapon sailing around-- and taken a judicious step back, one arm half up in defense, just in case. "I take it you're about as pissed off as I am-- or you just like breakin' stuff." Because that's even more destruction than he'd taken part in. And he kind of wants one of those weapons.

[ayiyiyi]

She glances at him slidelong for a moment, then, humoring him, turns around so that her back is facing the photos.

"What's a little destruction if it's just going to fix itself?" Xena reasons. "And besides, there's a chance it might attract the attention of whichever gods' in charge of this place. I'd like to have a few words with them."

[itsananimalthing]

"I'm gonna guess that's not gonna happen any time soon," Riddick says, but less skeptically and more thoughtfully-- and with annoyance. "I got the impression I've been here... a while. And never met anybody in charge, not once."

[ayiyiyi]

"I feel the same," Xena admits. "I feel like there's memories, hiding just beneath the surface, but no matter how hard I try I just can't seem to reach them. I've never seen this place before, I don't remember you and yet none of this surprises me."

[itsananimalthing]

"Yeah, it's... pretty fucked up," Riddick has to admit. "Then again, so was what we just did, I think. Maybe the whole thing is fucked up." That sounds about right, and he's pissed off enough to want to apply "fucked up" to pretty much everything, anyway.

[ayiyiyi]

"Perhaps it's best we don't remember," she says grimly. "We might not like it if we did."

[itsananimalthing]

"Maybe not. Can't be worse than shit I've already been through before." Riddick pauses, then comments, "I can still remember my life. Before all this." He jerks his head behind him, at liminal in general. "So whatever happened, they did a pretty selective block."

[ayiyiyi]

"So can I," Xena says. And she's glad for that, more than anything; she can endure many things, has already survived so much. But not remembering Gabrielle, not knowing what she meant to her?

She'd rather die.

"How long do you think we'll be here?" she asks. "I might not remember much, but I know we don't usually stay in this place long."

[itsananimalthing]

He pauses, frowns, and looks around. "That, I don't know. Ain't been all that long yet. I think... I think there's a couple other people I wanna check on. Make sure they made it through."

[ayiyiyi]

Xena nods, understanding.

"I hope you find them," she says.

[itsananimalthing]

"Me, too," he says, more seriously than he'd like. "Oh, and by the way."

He points behind her, where the pictures and decorations she'd smashed have reformed, as if nothing had ever happened.

[ayiyiyi]

She turns, looks behind her, and smiles.

"Well, would you look at that," she says. She grabs her chakram off her belt, and raises it into the air with a wild grin at Riddick.

"Guess I'll just have to break them again, won't I?"

[itsananimalthing]

Even as on edge and grumpy as he is, he has to smirk in response to that grin. Maybe there's a reason he feels like he likes her, after all. "You have fun with that," is what he says, and turns explore liminal space a little in search of... someone.

He'll know them when he sees them.

[brokers]

There is a blue skinned woman - or, at least, something wearing an approximation of a woman's shape, earless and hairless and scaled though she may be - clad in some manner of white armour examining the pictures on the second tier of the altar. Behind her, sugar skulls roll slowly back in to fill a path carved through the middle of them, obscuring the ground beneath once more. Nothing lasts long here.

The woman's lips move as she picks up another picture, as though giving it a name - and then she stiffens suddenly, the crunch of skulls underfoot alerting her to Xena's presence. The fingers of one hand twist as she turns, and a shimmer of blue-violet light surrounds her, accompanied by the scent of the air after a lightning strike. She makes no further move towards violence, however - rather, she blinks rapidly, as though just jolted awake, and says after a moment, "Xena. You're still with us?"

[ayiyiyi]

Xena stills, and raises he sword for a ready defense...but just like with Riddick, this woman - strange as she is - is familiar.

A name comes to mind.

"Liara," she says, lowering her sword slightly. "I'm still here, yes."

[brokers]

"I had thought... I had feared we would not all come back." She lifts a hand to pinch the bridge of her nose, little flashes of static discharge dancing along her arm as she moves. "How is your memory? So far, most of us appear to be missing pieces."

[ayiyiyi]

"I don't remember much," she says, a worried twist to her lips. "I know that I haven't seen Gabrielle in a long time, I know that I've been to travelling to many places - strange places, places that only the gods could dream up - and I know your face. But I don't remember. It's like there's a veil over my memories. I know they're there, but I can't see them."

[brokers]

"Gabrielle?" Liara asks, her slight frown akin to the expression of someone worrying at the gap of a missing tooth. She has the nagging suspicion she's heard the name before, but when and in what context - that's as absent as her memories of anything in between the broken Normandy and the metal-and-fog hell that lies just behind them. "Was she one of us?"

[ayiyiyi]

"No. No she's not a Traveller," Xena says, shaking her head. And as she says it, she realises that's the right word for who they are - Travellers. She doesn't know where they've been, or where they're going. But she knows that they're Travelling. "She's from my world. My home."

[brokers]

"Ah," Liara says quietly. "I am sorry. I know it's...difficult to be separated from your friends and loved ones."

Or, at least, difficult to know there's no returning to them under their own power.

[ayiyiyi]

"Yes," she says, her voice low and quiet. "But whatever it is that we've just been a part of...I'm glad Gabrielle wasn't there to see it."