alterimaige

[alterimaige]

❝ alright team, excellent work today. it’s time to wrap up and get some rest for the night. over and out. ❞

welcome to fireflieshq’s first ask meme! to participate, please REBLOG THIS POST and make sure to send comms to everyone who’s participating too! as per the guidelines, answering TWO ASK MEMES will also get you through the next activity check.

[EYES ON TARGET] HONESTY HOUR  send questions on or off anon for an honest answer! [AMMO CHECK] HEADCANONS  write 3 headcanons about your muse and theirs – this can be about anything from what’s happening in the present, what they might have been like pre-apocalypse together, or even what-ifs of a world without the infected!

[alterimaige]

MAYBE NOT @swordxhearted dec 2022

sometimes, she lets the ghosts roam. 

a gate opens, the memories flow. thin then wide, rivers weaving into the widening maw of the ocean. the ache never really leaves—the stinging at skin, salt burn of a gaping wound. as she breathes through the ache of it in-out, out-in, one-two-three, wren considers it a small mercy. it ought to feel worse than this.

(she deserves that much.)

it's only ever at night she thinks of them. it's easier that way. each and every face, solemn and unblemished by time in spite of its long passing. they all share that seeking stare, as if they're searching for something. answers she doesn't have, to questions that she does.

relief only ever comes at sunrise. at the first sign of daylight, they break apart and dissolve into nothingness.

the mornings after are no different, for better or worse. she seeks her shoes, the lock of the door, and open air. at this time, there's no one else. there shouldn't be.

so when she sees the silhouette in the distance, it has her take pause. each step closer breaks the haze of the figure's outline. the back of their head, span of the shoulders—every detail falling into place so startingly clear in a way it near knocks the wind out of her.

it should be impossible. there's no reason for it to be otherwise.

and yet—

"...doseok?"

[alterimaige]

POINT BLANK @4thsabbath

protractors, dotted lines, and a compass rose—they're back to the basics here. sprawled out on the table is a map of the southern bit of the peninsula, blown up for ease of view. circled in red is ground base. starting here, you follow the penciled in path from zero, it trails up north before it snakes to the east. X marks the spot, dead center of the landmass: muju. duration? a mere three minutes if you're microdosing travel through cartography; hours if you're thinking to make the trip in real time. throw in the post-apoc factor, and suddenly you're looking at days to get from point A to Z.

wren's eyes trail the line north-south to south-north, fingers tapping out a lazy 3/4 as she contemplates the journey ahead of them. if there's anything her past life has taught her, a map tells you only as much as you want it to—beyond the legend and symbols, the marked elevation points. which is to say: yeah, why wouldn't they annotate the shit out of this?

her gaze flits up from the table to wontaek. "you think that's all there is to it?" the question isn't accusatory in the least, words laced with pure, genuine curiosity. after all, her job here is to only take the wheel and steer.

[alterimaige]

*akira bike slides in* 😎 hello!! been wanting something action-y so i'm super excited to be joining this lovely group!! i bring you wren who like everyone else here was at the wrong place at the wrong time w this outbreak. her bullets from the app are here with more bullets below!! i dont mind either dms or discord for plotting, just lmk which you would prefer!! lets write together and have some fun <3

pre-outbreak: a vagabond work and enviro-obsessed photojournalist! loved loooooved her job and would not have changed it for anything else in the world. is used to constantly being on the move, and credits that to her upbringing

outbreak: shedoesntevengohere.gif but a girl needs a vacation alright!! nobody gave her the memo that the price to pay for going to a fun little conference and wanting to eat sugar encrusted garlic bread is a zombie attack. her and her small group of colleagues/work friends scram over to the seoul qz asap

post-outbreak: slowly getting a grasp of the language here, doesn't need it to know that these kdrt people are totalitarian-esque assholes. time 2 bounce. over to busan we go with another small group. there's a couple of grueling incidences of beloved friends that get infected, some reflection on humanity and how futile all of this seems, and depleting rations. they make it—though not all in one piece—but they make it! figures her experiences n knowledge are enough of a bartering chip just in case it's needed to join the fireflies, but there's not a whole lot of it

pre-division 4: working as an instructor to help finetune survival skills and the like. gets bored and starts itching for some adventure again because apparently one near-death experience isn't enough a girl needs 5. thus here she is as a scout!

looks like horoscopes are in rn so here's hers: sag sun, aqua moon, aries rising

literally just the human vers of the 😎 emoji for better or worse. this either makes her very approachable or she feels like A Lot. understandable regardless!!

it's not that she doesn't think it's just that she feels too much time shouldn't be wasted on sitting idle. very much all about trusting the process and following instinct

also truthfully when you're in a foreign country with no idea how your immediate friends and family are even doing right now she doesn't have much to lose. carpe diem baby

i rewatched NOPE like 2 nights ago and she's loosely based off of the guy who tried to take a video of jean jacket + em (if you squint) so take that as u will

thank you for reading!!

[alterimaige]

tw blood, gore, body horror

you think you'd act differently. 

horror of any degree is comfortably scrutinized when caught in 4K. the commentary is uninventive when it's wholly based in fiction, the million dollar rhetorical question moreso. distantly, mockingly: why, how, could you be so fucking stupid?

fight or flight is easy to pick apart, too. when broken down into an innate act of biology, it feels matter of fact. with enough of those cylinders firing overtime—there's a suggestion that this, too, can be tamed. weaponized even.

but here's the thing though: this is nothing like the movies.

it's so, so much fucking worse.

because as wren runs like she means it through the double doors of the building and out into the spill of the streets, she's not thinking about how all this looks from a bird's eye view or up close. she surges forward with the escaping crowd, sight caught through the view of horse blinders, tunnel vision narrowing with the blinding course of adrenaline.

the memory loops on in flashbulb bursts: the blow of the door, the flood of bodies, the howling screams, one wave after another in a tsunami of mutilation. 

the worst hadn't been the spray of blood, or the popped rupture of skin into the tear of muscle. it'd been seeing the teeth as it chewed: pearl white. blunted. terribly, undeniably human. 

she wants to be sick. wants the throttle of nausea. wants something—anything—to expel it all out of her. but the vision continues to stick, sinks right below the skin like a parasite.

and of course, this isn't the end of it simply because she wants it to be. it never works out that way. instead,  she cuts a corner, stumbles headfirst onto ground zero: in the midst of the rubble, a wiry woman shoves off a hulking man-shaped weight off of her.

wren's presence is registered in an instant. no spoken language is needed to know what the woman wants. it's in the dilation of her eyes, the hoarseness of her voice as she drags herself towards her—sheer mercy. there's an unmistakable flow of crimson that drips over her knuckles. a whimper sounds behind her, the face by her back small and solemn. 

ditch the mom, save the kid. ditch them both, save yourself. any armchair spectator is already debating the odds and the ethics like this is just another run of the mill trolley problem. no matter the conclusion, the tagline is the same:

it couldn't be more obvious.

but how obvious could it be? when there's a flash of a microsecond to think, to choose? the thing moves and wren can only think to move faster. her hand shoots up at the sleeve and pulls—hard.

RUN.

[alterimaige]

Stills from the upcoming drama West out of the Yu Men starring Ni Ni