#return to the blink

[neramontagueofficial]

I expected to greet the Dark like an old friend.

No, that's not quite right. I expected to never see it again. Shuffled to desk work, envelope to my uncle, I thought that any scrape I might have with it would be a thing I could brace for.

I had spent a year in les Fulgurites without having seen it once and would hopefully spend years without ever seeing it again. Not every fight requires a blinkspace jump, and each one has an "acceptably low" rate of failure, somewhere near 2%. Yet over time it becomes an outcome that approaches an inevitability. For the common members of les Fulgurites its never a question of if, but when.

I thought I had avoided that. I thought that I could walk into every situation where it was a possibility and expect to greet the Dark.

But there I was, full ball gown, shoved unceremoniously into the cockpit by the automated mounting procedure and sent into the blink without Postlimniae ever having been turned on.

She's so good. My experimentation with intents inertia paid off, I guess, though none of what I had read would suggest that she's capable of this.

I walked in to find someone, a stranger, elbow deep in her guts and I had felt a rage I had never felt before. I've never had siblings but I think that I would feel for them like this.

I didn't have time to think before acting. I saw his hands in her and my vision was red and the next thing I knew I had been on him with my saber. His blood stained my dress, (what a tragedy, to need to clean all that silk, I thought,) I was yelling, (the bladed edge hitting his side was satisfaction, his cries brought me joy,) and when his blade deflected off my bodice and into my thigh I felt her open up above me and take me into her cockpit (my prison, my home, my Sister, my sword)

I can't tell you what happened next. I didn't see what he did. Even in the silence of vacuum I am used to the hiss of the slipstream module when it winds up. It's a distinctive sound, a clear ramping scream that culminates in either the clean transmission to another point or the dive into the bare blink. Postlimniae's reactor was not active, it had been on standby. There was no hiss, just the sound of me at the controls desperate to get her active, and then:

Dark.

The shutoff protocol didn't even have time to trigger. The safety mechanisms didn't work without power. I was there, filthy and bleeding and forced into the awareness of my own insignificance.

Let the record reflect that I acted as quickly as I could. Let the record reflect that no protocol had been invented that would account for this.

I have known the void twice and am beginning to think it familiar. It enveloped me entire and erased slowly my edges. Nera-Montag bled into the cockpit.

It was when the pain began to overwhelm the despair that I came to my senses that first time. I finished the boot sequence, connected my neural port to the chassis bare, and let Postlimniae rush into me unprotected. It was so much that her sheer breadth of sensation dwarfed the pain, the strain in her muscles and the sheer (ERROR) wrongness of what had been done to her EX Slipstream module. I felt the full awareness of the nothing around me in all her sensors, the flutter of the FADE cloak in the nothing, the clack of her servos and the scarred ache of her nerves that run parallel to the mechanical mechanisms of her frame.

Outside of that was Nothing, unfiltered, no air or dust or gravity wells pulling off of her body overlaid on top of mine. A body placed in nothing, not the warmth of a star or the pull of a station or the soft pressure of the air.

All at once it was too-much and too-little simultaneously. It was a rush of self-reflection borne of the unfiltered neural input of something else entirely. My pain became nothing, unintelligable, weighed down by the absent sensation of someone so much longer, and yet I felt her computers reach back into me and I felt her concern.

Warning messages flooded the view screen and caressed my brain. A chorus of worry:

WARNING: HARDSUIT LIMITERS NOT DETECTED WARNING: AUTOMATED MEDICAL PROTOCOLS NONRESPONSIVE WARNING: EX SLIPSTREAM MODULE DAMAGED WARNING: NEURAL FEEDBACK ABOVE ACCEPTABLE LEVELS, CEASING LINK...

I had felt it arcing into a thundercrack of pain in my skull, then the soft pressure of the plug removed itself from the back of my neck. The euphoria of the bare connection was gone; I let myself scream. Only the pain remained.

You thought to protect me, my gentle sword. You saw me throw myself into danger for you and sought to bring me refuge. But you took me from a danger I could handle into one endlessly beyond me.

Ah, Postlimniae, do you not know that this blood is a burden I would bear for you? Let me be as Dulcinea to you:

"Daca trebuie sa iubesc, te voi iubi, sabia mea. Daca trebuie sa sanger, voi sangera pentru tine, sabia mea. Nicio Pasiune sa nu se interpuna intre noi, ambitia mea sa nu ne desparta, sabia mea, sabia mea,"

I closed the sensory feeds and made myself take account. I was still bleeding from the thigh. The blow missed the femoral artery, thankfully, but with how long I spent here last time I knew I needed to handle that as soon as possible, lest I return dead in the cockpit.

This is not something that les Fulgurites trained me for. The hardsuit would normally provide automatic stabilization of wounds of this sort. Nor did I keep correctives in the cockpit, for their authorization had been primarily the domain of my comrades. Instead I waded through my mess of skirts into the crawlspace behind the pilot seat, where the rations and emergency supplies lay, and got to work dismantling my dress into something more salvageable.

This was not a garment designed for this purpose. While flexible enough, the bodice was not built for lots of bending and moving through cramped spaces. The skirts felt my blade as I cut away the excess material, leaving only the barest slip of the inner layer for decency.

First aid was an early lesson, and an easy one. A stim to dull the pain and ensure precision, tweezers and antiseptic to clear all fabric and debris from the wound, fingers to hold it shut while I applied an instant patch and let the medical nanites get to work. Then another pill for the pain.

Part of me found it a comedy that I would find myself in a situation where I had to ensure that I changed my wound dressing within the next six hours in a place where the clocks don't work. Surely I would be there for so long, I had thought, although I had never known someone to get trapped like this outside of a combat deployment.

What I felt was altogether too much, then. The pain had still throbbed in my skull, the overwhelming separation from the momentary connection with her, the spiraling feedback of love and isolated nothing.

Guilt. I had left Ashlyn and Cal'yaa behind.

Betrayal of self, thinking of my uncle reading the contents of that envelope.

The cast off remainder of my skirts made good bedding at least. I shed the hard layer of my silver bodice for the light slip beneath and let myself curl up in the soft endless silk. The warmth of Postlimniae cradled me. How unfair, that she would be born to protect me and hold me inside her like this while I could not protect her in return. That I could know myself safe while she remains injured.

I did not let myself think of the nature of that injury. That the thing that sent us here was the thing that was broken. The only hope at all was to pretend that return was a certainty and this only a temporary vacation.

I lay there and let the soft pulse of her reactor trace warm sunlight streaks on my skin. With the viewscreen off it was night-dark in here, but with my eyes closed it was like I lay on a pillow of soft sweetgrass, thoughts entwined with her's as she greeted me as the sun peeking out from behind the clouds.

I don't know when I fell asleep. The line between dream and waking was invisible to me, but I know that at some point this vision faded for the sweet oblivion of unconsciousness.

I was not in the blink when I woke up. My bandages had been changed, my ruined dress shed, and Postlimniae had been nowhere in sight.

My reaction was unfitting of me. I had already been restrained (common procedure for biofeedback injury, I was later told, as its a necessity to keep absolutely still for nerve repair) so the damage I was capable of doing was very little, but I still had to apologize to the medical staff after the fact.

I have seen her since returning. Commandant Asteria assured me that she has been repaired properly, but the infiltrator that did this to her was let into the hangar using an access code she issued, and so I will be making sure it gets checked again. Postlimniae will not be allowed to be harmed in this way while I stand.

[chatlote]

ive been rewatching voltron....

[anbaisai]

Love languages

Happy Valentine's Day! ❤

[fisheito]

before mirage of scales: I NEED YAKUYA EVENT

after mirage of scales: ah. um. i . i don't need yakuya event so much, anymo.re... hah..a...

[leclercskiesahead]

HELLOOOOOOOOOOO

[thatoneandlonelyemo2005]

When Sarah says shes hanging with the boys she really means hanging with the boys

[yeonban]

Now that it's the 7th, I'm officially 24!! 🙏🙏🙏

[proustianrevelry]

"oh goodie we're back to the trump nightmare times"

HEY

GUESS

WHAT

YOU

COMPLACENT

SHIT

Go take a look at the tip of the iceberg you've been ignoring for four years.

[neramontagueofficial]

[whatthefuck.omvf]

[A video, seemingly pulled from security footage. It depicts a fight in the spot opposite it in a massive hangar. Nera-Montag, in a massive armored silver and purple ballgown, assails a strange man in formalwear standing next to an open panel on her mech. There is an exchange of blows, Nera catching a dagger to the thigh. She is forced to fall back to use her mech as support, during which the automated mounting procedure pulls her up into the cockpit. All seems to quiet, and then the man, in a rage, buries his sword in the machinery exposed by the open panel.

For a moment nothing happens. Then, a bright blinding black fills the screen. All at once there is nothing in the alcove. Both Nera and her mech are just gone.]

Hey this is Calix-Farnese etc. etc. (Nera calls me Strel)

Just wanted to post this here so everyone knows whats happening in case you try to contact her and she doesn't reply, although i'll be around i guess

I think she'll be okay??? I'm writing this while calling someone to figure out who to call to fix this but this has to have happened before right?????

[sluckythewizard]

TABLET WENT DOWN FORA MINUTE SO I WAS REDUCED TO USING PAPER AND PEN. so anyway ive been watchign this show thats kinda neat u guys prolly never heard o it its called wondey luts

[galaxywrites]

ㅤㅤ ㅤ incorrect quotes from my freed revenants au!

ㅤㅤ ㅤsome may be nsfw! just a warning!! color-coded.

──────────────────────────────

Kabal: What if the person who named Walkie Talkies named everything?

Kabal: Pregnancy tests are Maybe Babies.

Jade: Socks are Feetie Heaties.

Liu Kang: Defibrillators are Heartie Starties.

Stryker: Nightmares are Dreamy Screamies.

Kitana: Stamps are Lickie Stickies.

Tomàš: I hate you guys so much.

-

Jade: You know, there’s something weird going on with your face?

Tomàš: What?

Jade: You’re smiling! I didn’t know you could do that

-

Tomàš: Be careful, I thrive on negative attention.

-

Tomàš: Well, has Jade been wrong before?

Kitana: How wide are we willing to open this up?

-

Stryker: Liu Kang, can I ask you a question?

Liu Kang: You just did.

Stryker: Okay, can I ask you two questions?

Liu Kang: You just did.

Stryker, frustrated: OKAY, CAN I ASK YOU FOUR QUESTIONS?!

Liu Kang: You just did.

Stryker: When?!

Liu Kang: Just now.

-

Kabal: I have a bad feeling about this...

Tomàš: What do you mean?

Kabal: Don't you ever get that little voice in your head that tells you if you're going to get into trouble?

Tomàš: No?

Liu Kang: That actually explains so much.

-

Kabal: I couldn't do this without you, Tomàš.

Tomàš: Sure you could. Not as stylishly, of course.

-

Tomàš: The path to inner peace begins with four words… not my fucking problem.

-

Kabal: Get in, loser, we’re committing vehicular manslaughter!

-

Liu Kang: Might I make a suggestion you possibly won’t like?

Tomàš: Do you make any other kind?

-

Kitana: What are you two arguing about this time?

Stryker: He's always using common phrases incorrectly!

Tomàš: Cry me a table, Kurtis.

-

Tomàš: We wouldn’t last two minutes without Nightwolf.

Tomàš:

Tomàš: Don't tell him I said that.

-

Tomàš: I love saying 'fuck me' because it can either be sexual or self-loathing and those are two things that describe me perfectly.

-

Tomàš: Fight me!

Kitana, standing behind him and holding her fans: *mouths* Do not.

-

Kabal: Yesterday, I overheard Nightwolf saying “Are you sure this is a good idea?” and Tomàš replying “Trust me,” and I have never moved from one room to another so quickly in my life.

-

Stryker: *falls down the stairs*

Kitana: Are you okay?

Liu Kang: Stop falling down the stairs!

Tomàš: How’d the ground taste?

-

Kabal: Why cant trees give off something important like wifi??

Stryker: So fuck oxygen, I guess.

-

Tomàš: Are you a masochist or a sadist?

Kung Lao, deadpan: I’m a Taurus.

-

Kabal: An apple a day keeps the doctor away!

Tomàš: An apple a day can keep anyone away if you throw it hard enough.

-

*During a game of Hangman*

Tomàš: Nope, there’s no Q. You lose.

Stryker: Are you kidding me?! You can still add something!

Tomàš: I already added a belt, four earrings and an extra arm! YOU LOSE!

-

Jade: Can you pass the salt?

Tomàš: Can you pass away?

Jade: Too much salt.

-

Kung Lao: Am I in trouble?

Liu Kang: Take a guess.

Kung Lao: No?

Liu Kang: Take another guess.

-

Kabal, trying to comfort Tomàš: What's the problem? Anxiety? Low self-esteem? Obsessive thoughts of random arson? I've been there.

-

Stryker: Why would you think any of this was a good idea?!

Tomàš: Probably because I’m a trained assassin with a long history of violence.

Stryker: Oh...

Jade, from across the room: I don’t understand how you keep forgetting that.

-

Tomàš: Can you recommend a book that'll make me cry?

Kabal: General Mathematics 8th Grade Edition.

-

Nightwolf: You three, explain right now.

Tomàš: It was Kabal.

Jade: It was Kabal.

Liu Kang: It was Kabal.

Kabal:

Kabal: …fuck.

-

Tomàš: Wait a minute, how did this happen? We're smarter than this!

Enenra: Apparently, we're not!

-

Kung Lao: Truth or dare?

Tomàš: Truth.

Kung Lao: How many hours have you slept this week?

Tomàš:

Tomàš: Dare.

Kung Lao: Go to sleep.

Tomàš: I don't like this game.

-

Nightwolf: I'm going to ask you to be respectful.

Tomàš: I will politely decline.

-

Liu Kang: Did you buy eggs like I asked?

Tomàš: Even better!

Liu Kang: What the fuck did you-

Tomàš: *holding up a chicken* Her name is Fluffy.

-

Liu Kang: Hey, are you free?

Kung Lao: No, I’m expensive.

-

Stryker: Want to hear a hard riddle?

Kung Lao: Sure.

Stryker: A rooster laid an egg on a roof. Which way did it roll?

Kung Lao: ...down?

Stryker: N-

Tomàš: Who cares about which way it rolled, it would be scrambled eggs by then.

Stryker:

Stryker: No, it's that roosters don't lay eggs... Jesus Christ...

-

Stryker: Do you take constructive criticism?

Kabal: No, only cash or credit.

-

Jade: Just be yourself. Say something nice.

Tomàš: Which one? I can't do both.

-

Nightwolf: One time I went to hand Jade a bowl of soup. I wanted to say “Careful, it’s hot!”, and “Here’s your soup!”, so instead I blurted out “Careful it’s soup.”

-

Tomàš: You're right.

Jade: That's... That's an unusual phrase for you. Did you just learn it?

-

Stryker: Anyone else feel good when their brain releases a bunch of endorphins?

Jade: Can't relate.

Tomàš: Why would my brain release a bunch of dolphins?

-

Tomàš: Liu Kang! Kabal got that thing on the control panel working!

Liu Kang: Wow! That looks pretty impressive.

Tomàš: Yeah!

Liu Kang: Any idea what it does?

Tomàš: Not a clue.

-

Tomàš: Where is my fucking mask?

Kabal: Tomàš, guests are around, can you say it a little nicer?

Tomàš: May I ascertain the whereabouts of my FUCKING MASK?!

-

Liu Kang: I don’t think we can mansplain, manipulate, or malewife our way out of it this time.

Kitana: *cracks knuckles* Manslaughter it is!

-

Tomàš: I wouldn’t wish that upon my worse enemy!

Tomàš: Unless of course. . We’re talking about our enemy, Quan Chi. Fuck you Quan Chi, you know what you did!

-

Tomàš: Tired of just deserving better. Gonna start taking it by force.

-

Stryker: Wow, Kano really hates us.

Kabal: Yes, perhaps he's homophobic.

Stryker: But we’re not gay, Kabal.

Kabal:

Stryker:

Kabal: We’re not?

-

Tomàš: Is having a penis fun?

Kabal: It has its ups and downs.

Stryker: Sometimes it’s a little hard.

Kung Lao: It’s a pain in the ass.

Jade: Oh, Jesus, fuck, guys, come on.

-

Kitana: What does 'take out' mean?

Liu Kang: Food.

Stryker: Dating

Tomàš: Murder

Kabal: IT CAN MEAN ALL THREE IF YOU'RE NOT A COWARD.

-

Nightwolf: Good responses for being stabbed with a knife?

Stryker: Rude.

Kabal: That’s fair.

Tomàš: Not again.

Jade: Are you going to want this back?

-

Nightwolf: What do you think Kabal will do for a distraction?

Stryker: He’ll probably, like, make a noise or throw a rock. That’s what I would do.

*Building explodes and several car alarms go off*

Stryker: ... or he could do that.

-

Kitana, carefully running a brush through Tomàš' hair: Did no one teach you how to manage your hair properly?

Tomàš, shrugging: The Lin Kuei elders just said brush it with your fingers, it'll be fine.

Tomàš: When Cyrax joined, he used to do it. But I haven't seen him here in the Netherrealm, so I just assumed his soul didn't end up here.

Kitana: ... We need to teach you a proper hair routine.

Tomàš: Say what now?

-

Tomàš: Did you just call me a shrimp, you asshole?! I'm still growing, dammit!

Enenra: You stopped growing when you were fourteen!

-

Enenra: What’s sexting?

Tomàš: I'm not having this conversation with you.

-

Stryker: Are you okay?

Kabal, crying: Yeah, it was just the onions.

Stryker: *Picks up an onion* What the fuck did you say to Kabal?

-

Kitana: There are no friends when playing board games. I am here to win.

-

Kitana: I am going to need you to swear-

Kabal: Fuck.

Kitana:

Kitana: ...swear as in promise.

-

Stryker: The Ocean is a soup.

Tomàš:

Tomàš: Do elaborate.

Stryker: What are needed for something to be a soup?

Tomàš: Erm... Water, salt, some form of vegetation, and personally I prefer some meat in mine.

Stryker: *Tilts head*

Tomàš: The Ocean is a Soup.

Stryker: The Ocean is a Soup.

-

Nightwolf: I swear to god I'm the only one here with a braincell.

Stryker, Liu Kang, Kabal, and Kitana: ALL HAIL the keeper of the sacred braincell!

-

*Everyone is playing a board game together*

Kabal: I will put 'A' down to make 'A'.

Tomàš: I will add onto your 'A' to make 'AT'.

Kung Lao: I will add onto your 'AT' to make 'RAT'.

Kitana: I will add onto your 'RAT' to make 'BIOSTRATAGRAPHIC'.

Kung Lao: *flips the board*

-

Kabal: *banging a pen on the table out of frustration*

Stryker: Stop that. How would YOU feel if I banged you on the table?

Kabal: I—

Kabal: I don’t know the correct answer to that question.

-

Kitana: Don't break someone's heart, they only have one.

Tomàš: Break one of their bones instead, they have 206 of them.

[takeoffyourpantsandjackets]

Tom Delonge in a suit while campaigning for democratic US candidate John Kerry (2004)

[novelconcepts]

While I dig this new theme in books of “why love triangle when you can poly up?”, it is the worst kind of jumpscare to be motoring through what you believe to be a lesbian love story only to get smacked in the face by a man halfway through.

[coconut0ctopus]

[bisexualmultifandommess]

My experience with Yellowjackets shipping so far is loving Teen!TravNat and loving Adult!MistyNat but not particularly caring about Adult!TravNat. I also ship Travis with having one moment of piece like goddamn let the boy rest

[actuallyredrobin]

can i buy you a gift?

as long as it’s not like, a pipe bomb, sure!