Anya Lehnsherr | Earth 97400

074 ☣ Snicker-snack

2015-06-29T01:18:07Z

[Public video]

[The post comes thirty, maybe forty-five minutes after Kara's. Even with the major broken bones and butchery repaired, from just the shoulders up, Anya looks an absolute wreck. She has a swollen, mottled lump at her temple, ugly purple dripping under her skin like a watercolor stormcloud. Her throat is bruised too, the wide brumous darkness there slashed through with line of red lightning, gleaming and raw rather than simple rusting scab, where she thrashed against the rough iron wire binding her neck. Her mouth has a dab of blood that wasn't all washed away, her lip ragged where she chomped partway through it. Her hair is a sweat-matted mess. Most of all, though, is the look in her eye, an unhinged lurching snarl.]

This. Is done. Now. This thing, with Dean, it's me and him, and we are square. Whatever private wars you've got to settle, I don't care, but any one of you touches him in my name - no vengeance. None.

Or I will take it out of your fucking hide.

[She is not entirely sane right now. And she is not even remotely fucking around. The feed cuts out. And then, fifteen seconds later, still broadcast to everyone.]

Including you.

[Private to Ricki]

[Slumped, quieter]

...except you, I guess. Sorry.

But please don't.

[Private to Stiles]

[Also quiet, eyes downcast, exhausted.]

If he can't be bothered to tell you, I think he thought I was the admiral. That he could get free, save the people here. I know you have to do something, I know you'll do. Whatever you decide is best.

But I'd like to be. Informed.

[Private to Iris]

Thank you.

[Infirmary spam]

[She stays there about thirty-six hours, too worn out to do very much, letting the minor surface wounds that didn't get mended with magic stay cleaned and bandaged and iced. She'll see visitors if they come, will be wan and weary but lucid, without the vicious freneticism of the immediate aftermath. After that, she can't stand it any longer despite the advantages, retreats to the sanctuary of her cabin.]

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073 ☣ Gyre and Gimbel

2015-06-26T01:15:50Z

( Lots of private messages. )

[OOC Note: feel free to have one of the messages (except Pietro's or Cassel's) above misfired to your character if you want a thread with Stoned Anya but they're not on the list.]

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072 ☣ Last night I was a cypress tree

2015-05-18T03:07:22Z

[Video, public]

[Anya looks very tired, but a great deal more put together than last time - except for the crumbling remnants of bone spikes, like the bases of marble columns in Roman ruins, like terrible broken teeth, now almost entirely covered by the admiral's cap.]

Some of you remember the mirror barge, and some of you don't. You can ask your neighbor for the gory details if you want. The point is, the ship was in bad shape. Worse than now. And the other barge was - feeding on it, as far as we could tell, parasitically. The walls were rotting, and the Admiral needed to conserve power to chase the other ship before we were eroded entirely.

There was a warden, then, who'd been on the ship for - four years? Five? Longer than anyone but Arthas, I think. And when I asked her, she said she'd never seen everyone on the barge manage to work together to do anything.

But we did. People volunteered, and wardens agreed to certain unanimous incentives for inmates, and the whole ship, more or less, helped me keep the place in one piece until we could reverse the drain. I....

[She trails off for a moment, then blinks, comes back to herself, scrubs a hand down her face, pops a bottle of advil out of her desk drawer and swallows two dry.]

We all assume we can't work together, that we'll squabble and go our own ways because most of the time, that's what works. But we can. When we have to.

It - takes it out of me, when I dare try to will us to sail straight. When I try to get lost inmates back, there's no exhaustion, no headaches, nothing. So this is something we can affect. We should try to do it together, instead of haphazard and maybe hitting each other with our metaphorical oars.

Everyone who's gotten some of this, if you're willing - and I know there's a lot we don't know, and nobody has to, but if you're willing to try with me - I think we should pick a common goal. Somewhere on early twenty-first century earth would be best, I think, since that seems to be...common, in whatever neighborhood or transdimensional archipelago we're usually traveling through. But the direction doesn't matter so much as long as we can agree on one. And then take it in shifts, to keep ourselves stable and the pressure steady, too.

Thoughts?

[Spam for Pietro]

[A few days after his arrival, she goes to slip a pamphlet under his door, just in case.]

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071 ☣ a book of myths in which our names do not appear

2015-04-26T22:32:15Z

[Public video]

[Anya doesn't look markedly better than she has in the last two months. She still has her crown of bony protrusions (a few of them now snapped by the recent invaders), messy hair, fading bruises and scrapes, and wan, exhausted features. But her gaze is clear and direct, her expression tight-lipped.]

...normal maintenance services will resume shortly. If there's anything you've been waiting to have fixed, please report it for triage.

[Private to Jean]

I don't know if they're still there after the latest debacle, but Arthas had zombies packed into his cabin like sardines when last I checked. Cleanup, aisle seven, etc.

[Private to Stephen]

Thank you.

[Spam for Morgana]

[She skulks, trembles, hides in a nearby empty cabin, like a mouse at a mousehole, until Morgana comes to her own door. She darts out, left hand closing on Morgana's wrist, nails digging in. Her other hand is full of partly-scrunched pages, torn from wherever they come from, a scribbled bestiary and neat pentacle diagrams and a few leaves that are slightly scorched, that look like ordinary paper but smell like burnt hair at the edges.]

Every key has teeth.

[Spam for Ben]

[She comes to find him, after his shift. It's not the first time she's done it in the last few weeks, but it's the first time without a distinct air of aimless hopelessness or frenetic desperation. She still feels weak, drained, and her hands shake a little when she holds out her arms for him, but her gaze is free and clear.]

Ben.

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070 ☣ the spoon which was melted scrapes against

2015-04-10T02:11:05Z

[It's been over two weeks since Anya abruptly lost regular - or at least straightforward - contact with reality. She hasn't been violent, or even especially obtrusive. Ben is her constant shadow, makes sure she eats, and carries her back to her own room if she falls asleep in an unoccupied doorway or curled up under her desk in the office.

For people who pay attention, though, it's obvious something is awry. She's normally a fixture at mealtimes, leaves the maintenance office door open during daytime hours for people to drop in if they need anything fixed, can be seen keeping the barge in order. Now - Stephen and Peter have been working on the shattered greenhouse, but it's slow going, and there are other places ripped up or dented or bloodstained after the sha eradication that haven't been cleaned up, furniture that hasn't been repaired or reupholstered. Splashes of paint from Mickey's April Fool's escapades dry and flake and curl. The barge accumulates little scars, looks a tiny bit more like the battlefield it is.

Anya herself haunts the barge like a ghost, like Mad Bertha in the attic, like she is haunting herself. She doesn't scream and rarely approaches people. But she lingers, skulks, perches and coils. She stalks after people she knows, or thinks she knows. She hunches down sometimes, covers her ears, makes jerky, distressed animal noises, or whispers a word over and over, or grips doorknobs so tight it hurts her hand, rigid with fear, stares like a cat at corners and nothing. She tries to scratch her skin slowly off, until Ben catches her hands, and she shakes and whimpers and collapses against him, and then is distracted by some other elusive mystery for a little while.

There are periods, thanks to Jean, where she is, if not coherent, at least mostly stable. But they do not last. It's possible she's getting worse.]

[OOC: some location/starters in comments, feel free to make up your own. Anya wandering might conceivably go almost anywhere.]

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069 ☣ hair dissipating like smoke

2015-03-28T18:29:19Z

[Voice]

[Anya is singing, a silly french folksong for children, meant to teach words for parts of the body. But her voice is wavering, sometimes fast and insistent, sometimes tentative and quiet, all of it transposed into an eerie minor key.

[Open spam]

[She sits on deck, still singing, going through the expanding verses over and over. She has acquired - and killed, with one hard snap of the neck, although her ripped and stained sleeves show she was made to bleed for it - one of the part-velociraptor chickens that have colonized the otherwise changeable world of the enclosure. She has, as per the song, plucked off all its feathers, pulled off its beak, put out its eyes. She is scraping away the scaly skin beneath the down with one of her little black knives, seems totally absorbed in the task.]

[OOC Note: Anya has, for various reasons, but mostly immediately due to one exorcism that went badly awry, lost her grip on sanity. Anyone with psychic or magical senses should definitely pick up that this is not a purely psychological break - she has a lot of bad, bad mojo that has broken loose in her skull.]

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068 ☣ cindery, nonexistent, radiant

2015-03-24T04:24:15Z

[Video]

[She's posting from the floor of the maintenance office, where she is on a tarp in the middle of a mess, boxes and sponges and bits of felt and ash and mutilated pens scattered all around her. She has smears of blue and black ink on her face and hands and bathrobe she's wearing - which, when she turns, is open in a deep V-wedge to keep her mostly decent without touching the red, fist-sized external heart now clutching steadily in the center of her chest. She tries to brush her hair out of her face, and adds to the ink smudges.]

If you're fighting the parasites, or demons, or whatever they are, come by the office. I made stamps with the anti-possession sigil on them. They're a little haphazard, but they'll work. Once you clear someone, stamp them. I don't want anyone getting reinfected.

[Open Spam, wibbly time through through the general throwdown arc]

[Anya is also running around exorcising people herself, knocking on doors, poking anyone she finds to see if they'll snarl or flinch. She's weary and bloody and bruised, after the first one or two, and she could probably use some backup to help fight the monsters once she forces them to manifest with the rituals Dean taught her.]

[Spam for Ben, backdated a wee bit to before the sha throwdown kicked into high gear]

[With Dean shuffled off to the kitchens, Andrew gone, and Stephen and Tig in comas, no is left in maintenance to notice Anya not turning up to work but Peter, and he won't hassle her about it. So when she wakes up to find a fresh heart tucked between and a little below her breasts, arteries and veins sliding back under the skin, the raw muscle wet and twitch, rabbit-fast with her shock, she decides that today is a good day to hide in her room and eat jerky and crackers and do nothing and see no one.

Until, of course, he comes to check on her, and her door opens for him, just like it always does.]

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067 ☣ a place to break his fall

2015-03-13T02:48:47Z

[Public]

[Anya's only shown her face on the network briefly since Karazhan, when most people were still reeling, when she figured her new additions would fade in a day or two. They haven't. Anya has white spikes of errant bone growing out of her head in a rough organic crown. The camera view is mostly close enough that it crops them out, but occasionally glimpses of the bases - especially the ones near her temples - show through her hair, or when she moves.]

Andrew's gone.

[Clipped. Almost stern, with fate or the ship or herself. She looks down at her tightly clasped hands, which tilts the horns a bit more into view, then back up again.]

I. I've been wanting to make a memorial for the vanished since Esther. How many of you even remember-? Nevermind. I don't think I want to know.

[Speaking a bit more quickly than she usually does; as though she's being harried on, as though there's some reason for tension. Then again, they've few enough reasons for calm.]

It's been quiet, in maintenance. Now that the ship isn't falling apart anymore. So we could build something. I don't want to ask the admiral for a separate room for it, though. Auxiliary rooms are always the first to go. Maybe in one of the common rooms? Tell me if you want it on your floor. Or if you really don't. I kind of want - something with alcoves, you know? Where people could leave tokens and letters and things. I don't want to lock it up, it - it'd belong to all of us. Because the losses do.

I suppose some people would probably vandalize it. I don't know.

[I don't know what to do. I don't know how to solve this problem.]

How would you build it? What would you want from something like that?

[Private to Barbara]

I saw Letty asked you about the engine. I think, given the ship's history, it would be good to have more people trained on it. Not just a second warden, but an inmate or two - some ports affect us differently, like the one where you died, and there was another I saw in Arthas's memories where the wardens were all kidnapped - and maybe a series of, like, On-Call wardens, like the kitchen has. People who know enough of what's what to patch us up after a crash if the keyholders are comaed or what have you.

[Private to Chris]

You owe me eighty dollars for Touko, by the way. Jean and Iris too, I believe?

[Private to Omar]

[Warmly,]

Did the admiral bring your stuff back along with you, or do I have to knit your Christmas hat again?

[The one with the crown on it.]

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066 ☣ rubbing together white sticks of your own ribs

2015-03-04T05:25:32Z

[Open spam, library, first couple of days]

[She is easily ensnared. Not because she is weak-minded, but because she is too comfortable with darkness. Not because her resistance would be easy to shatter, but because she does not really try to resist. She slides along shelves like a shadow, fingers hovering over spines. She avoids the ones that sing to her most sweetly, that try to reel her in with threads as strong as spidersilk and slender as razorwire. Partly because she knows the ones who need prey will have the brightest lures - but mostly, mostly because it is the ones with no breadcrumb trails that will have been seen by the fewest eyes, contain the rarest secrets.

Sometimes, she is utterly mad. Sometimes she races between the stacks, hissing, whimpering, eyes darting like a rabbit's, sometimes she barrels into you, claws at you, or circles you like a feral dog, fearful and hungry. Sometimes she knows the names of the ghosts that are following you.

Sometimes she is scavenging the dead, nibbling crackers and nudging the open books that devoured them with someone else's bare-boned finger. Sometimes, after her water runs out, she scribbles an incantation on the floor, the pops the resulting ice chips into her mouth. If she sees you, she'll hold them out, a glassy dripping handful. Whispers, as one should in a library -]

Thirsty?

[Open video, laterish, the chess board behind her]

After this you only have to push through some vertigo and you'll be back to the ship. If you can get this far, I'll get you across. I promise.

[OOC: you can also spam her in the gamesman's hall if you want to ICly confirm someone getting across. I will not be calling out actual chess moves but they can talk while narratively dramatic chess is vaguely happening. ]

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065 ☣ fish for fallen light

2015-02-07T03:32:31Z

If you know me, I probably miss you. And maybe even if you don't.

[She repeats this Romani, and then Russian, and then German. And then ASL.]

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064 ☣ this is totally dream bubbles

2015-01-28T17:06:46Z

You know, Admiral, I realize it's casual and we play fast and loose with rules sometimes, but Death Bingo is not a team sport.

[Grumpy Anya is grumpy. Mussed hair, big mug of tea.]

I'm thinking of starting a nap room in one of the common rooms. Bean bags and cushions and comforters, nice music. If the effect is still working during the day, we can wake each other up. If we can't stop the flood at least we can get some damn rest.

You have to disclose if you're likely to choke anyone who wakes you up, though. I might invest in a water gun.

[She holds something up to the camera. It looks sort of like a syringe, except for the odd, opaque, organic shape of it.]

Is anyone else getting odd souvenirs?

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063 ☣ a fire that feeds itself

2015-01-22T05:16:10Z

( Self-indulgent Introspection )

[Private to Dean, backdated to right after Chris's post]

I really need to hit someone who's going to hit me back right now.

You, me, the enclosure, ten minutes. Yay or nay?

[Open Enclosure Spam]

[The day after 'sparring' with Dean, Anya is in the Enclosure again. She has a shepherd's sling, tough old cord and worn leather cradle for whatever stones she finds. She hunts birds, strikes them in flight. It's the concentration she needs.]

[6th Floor Spam]

[When she does maintenance tasks, she's got the mask mostly on, moves smoothly, face professionally rather than disconcertingly blank. She works on T'Pol's door, reinforces the frame, adds a biometric lock she can program when she wakes up. She's got half a dozen manuals out on the floor, working through the particulars of Federation - no, Imperial - technology. She gets her meals quickly and eats them off a crate while browsing over the project.]

[Private separately to Zane, Riddick, and Cass]

I'm not good company right now. But if you don't want to be angry alone, you can come hold me.

[Thoughtcall to Jean]

What do you do when you're this mad?

[A flicker of a projection, because she doesn't have words. Like it's eating her from the inside out, like it's eating everything else she tries. It's like being on fire again, the way it consumes her attention, the horror and the helplessness, and she can't even go hazy from smoke.]

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062 ☣ cymbeline is like will's demo track you guys

2015-01-11T08:41:53Z

[Enter Anya, dressed as a boy in dressed as a simple carpenter, with a crown of oak leaves set slightly jaunty around her temples. Thanks to Shakespearian magic, she looks very much like a boy, although she is not actually transformed. ]

In stranger lands I never thought to dwell,
Among strange folk with many tales to tell.
Will you not share a story and your name?
I wouldst be friends, though recent here I came.

[Totally not Anya who has been here for two years. TOTALLY A DIFFERENT PERSON. So inconspicuous. Much disguise. Many earnest. Frand wow.]

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061 ☣ and the fog rolls in

2015-01-02T05:08:02Z

[Hallway spam]

[Ben appears first, in full black cape, domino mask, and bandito hat with silly ball fringe, carrying a billowing, humming fog machine. As the mist starts to fill the corridor, Anya, Cassel, and Cass sneak around the corner, similarly decked out. Anya and Cassel are clearly tipsy, in full dramatic pantomime, first holding their capes in front of them and then flaring them out dramatically, almost losing their balance and revealing large baskets of baked goods. Cass is actually sneaking, despite the glaringly obvious costume, and quite innocuous in contrast to the others. Between them, they are picking locks, nibbling cookies, drinking champange from the bottle, and humming their own theme songs.]

[Your room!]

[They are breaking into any room they can, including several doors previously secure against them, thanks to Cassel's new far-future electronic skeleton key. They have every intention of sneaking in, rearranging any ugly knickknacks you may possess, and hiding delicious cookies, brownies, and cupcakes in strange places. They may or may not contain weed, depending on how uptight the united Mystery Baking Companions think you are. If you're already in your room when they tumble into it, pastry-laden and giggling, they will probably toss their capes and pose heroically.]

Special delivery!!!

[If you catch them as they're 'sneaking' away, they will toss confetti in your face and attempt to make a daring escape.]

[OOC: if you would like to find your offerings later and make a silly stoned post, go for it!! They are very generous.]

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060 ☣ when we were gone astray

2014-12-26T03:32:10Z

[Filtered Away from Dean]

...so, I seem to have gotten a few presents I distinctly remember sending to someone else. Anybody else have return-to-sender troubles?

[Because if Dean did what she suspects he did, she's not the only one.]

The real question is, do we gather all his presents together and bring them to his door at once in an enthusiastically festive parade, or do we all go one at a time so he doesn't go more than an hour or two without visitors bearing gifts for the next few days?

[Spam, for Dean]

[The barge being busy and disorganized as it is, I assume everyone will settle on option two.]

Knock, knock.

[Performed and then also spoken. At least she isn't caroling. Yet.]

( Gift List )

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059 ☣ i was so much older then

2014-12-09T01:27:44Z

[Spam, throughout]

[After checking in to find that Riddick and Ben were both unaffected and generally able to provide pizzas and sandwiches, she spends most of the flood in a few places: with Peter, minding the little ones who turn up for blanket forts and movies, doing the rounds in the hallways and making sure no one is dancing on the deck railing who can't pull it off, and lastly installed in the Art Room with the door open, supplies set up and the smell of cookies wafting from one table.]

[Video, nowwish/near the end]

I know this has been really strange for a lot of you, but I hope so far you've mostly had a good time, maybe made a friend or seen something new.

Can you believe it's been a couple days already? If there's anyone who might be worried about you, or just someone you want to talk to, now might be a good time to write them a letter.

[She doesn't say parents or family. She doesn't say to talk about their grand adventures, or their fears, or to profess who they miss and love. She figures the kids will know what they need to say most; she just wants to make sure as many of their older selves are stuck with the proof of it as possible. Memories are easier to discount, sometimes.]

If you need any help with writing your messages, or just pens and paper and colors to write with, you can come down to the art room, which is on the second-lowest floor with regular rooms, and the door is open.

[Private to the adults-turned-adolescents she knows of - Dean, Arthas, Aslan, and Sylvanas, and your character too if you think they need the extra push]

You too. I know you can take care of yourselves, but it might mean a lot to someone.

[Even if that someone is not who she is implying.]

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058 ☣ fear to tread

2014-11-24T17:44:47Z

[Private to Riddick and Abigail]

The bad news is, I didn't find him. The good news is, he's definitely not where he came from. How are you guys holding up?

[Public]

[Anya looks tired. Not frazzled or grimly frantic the way she did last month, just - tired. Particularly observant folk may notice her hair is an inch or two longer than it was four day ago.]

I'm back. Any dramatic murders in the last few days?

[Private to Iris and Cambridge]

Speaking of which, do either of you have some biohazard-safe cryogenic storage type devices I could use?

( All backdated to the 21st )

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057 ☣ But now am found

2014-11-11T03:30:46Z

[She feels brittle and stretched, like an old rubber band, achy and shocky. The world isn't quite steady. She blinks open tacky eyelids, sees blue sky instead of read cape, then closes them again, takes carefully counted breaths, tries to center herself in her body until the static clears. She sits up, and realizes dimly that the world really isn't steady. She's in a little motorboat on a charming neighborhood canal of some sort, rocking lightly with the shallow waves. The position of the sun suggests it's afternoon. She doesn't have a hangover but she still feels strange, unreal and full of echoes. Her back aches where she was laying on something - her communicator. Her breath whooshes out as memory rushes in, and she swallows several times, picks it up with hands that shake only slightly.]

[Public, video]

[Anya has messy hair and a drawn expression, carefully tamping down on hope and fear alike.]

...hello, this is Anya, can anyone hear this?

[Private to the Admiral, a little later]

Give me an expanded storage room off the maintenance office and I'll be able to stock up better.

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055 ☣ all for one and more or less

2014-10-07T01:41:20Z

[Public video]

You may have noticed the ship disintegrating. Yes, I've heard the complaints. I've spoken to all of the wardens on this ship, and we've agreed to implement a new policy.

Until I decide it is no longer necessary, all the upper-deck, warden-access areas - the pub, the firing range, the CES, and the CTS - are now restricted to inmates who complete fourteen hours of maintenance work a week, to my satisfaction or that of a supervising warden I've deputized. If you want to play with guns or holograms or take scenic picnics or drink free booze, you're going to have to work for it.

That's an if. If you don't care, if you are outraged at the very suggestion, if it's beneath your dignity, whatever. Don't help. I'm not interested in wasting my time hanging over you trying to induce productivity. You forfeit those privileges. You'll live.

If you're already working a critical job - kitchens or infirmary - then the requirement is only four hours. If you join and dawdle, or try to steal tools or sabotage the work, you'll go to zero and you won't be allowed back when your time is up. Yes, I realize zero isn't intimidating to most of you. It's not about punishment. It's just about getting you out of my hair.

None of this is about punishment. Most of the wardens are pitching in too. It's about making sure the only place we have to live right now doesn't fall apart around us.

So if you want to keep your pub time or anything else, let me know here or at the maintenance office, level 7, and let me know if you have any construction experience or not. I'll have the first training and work schedules roughed out by tomorrow.

[Private to Arthas]

I know you need the CES to hunt. I also know you want to catch those bastards before we all turn into them. I've got some ideas you can help with besides mortar and paint.

[So please don't shank anyone for their item.]

[Spam for Riddick]

[After fielding as many of the responses as she can manage for a night, she finds his room and knocks.]

[Spam for Ben]

[A little before making the announcement, she goes down to see him. She owes that much. To whom precisely, she isn't sure. She brings her own chair.]

[OOC: I am gonna let 99% of the actual maintenance work go handwaved. Please just assume she is terrifyingly efficient and finds work for everyone and keeps the schedules running smooth. If you want to set up a spam with your character working in a team with someone random for CR purposes, please assume they are competently supervised and knock yourselves out. Fingers crossed no more Anya spamming for the rest of the month after this, she is too busy working and managing the shifts and stuff.]

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054 ☣ save our ship

2014-10-03T05:22:27Z

[Warden Filter]

I have a proposal I'd like everyone to listen to.

I know the Admiral is being an unbearably condescending inscrutable prick about this. But I honestly believe him when he says he doesn't have the strength to fix our ship and chase down that other one. He's too proud to claim that kind of incompetence if it weren't true, and you can hear how aggravated he is. It's why he's being extra dickish at the moment.

So we need to hold it together, if we ever want to see our friends again, if we want not to be siphoned away until the floors start going dark and airless like they were over there a few months ago. I need to hold it together. And I need help.

Volunteers are welcome, of course, and anyone who has any experience in carpentry or plastering to help with training others would be even more appreciated. But frankly we also need you all doing your own jobs and watching out for the inmates, and they could stand to have a little less free time to cause mischief in.

So. I'd like to formally request that upper-deck privileges be restricted. No pub, no CES, no CTS, and no firing range access for any inmates who don't complete, let's say, fourteen hours of maintenance service a week, to my satisfaction, or that of a deputy, with no sabotage or dawdling. Fewer hours for inmates already performing other work details, I'm open to numerical suggestions.

All of those locations are privileges, and always have been despite how casual we are about them, and the chapel and greenhouse are still available to inmates who are unwilling or unable to work but who need some mental respite. I'll make an announcement to the inmates soon and maintain a list of everyone in good standing if you all agree.

I realize this is probably hopeless. I need unanimous cooperation. Even one of you with an item can scuttle it. If you have doubts about whether we should do this, or how, or why, please talk to me.

For those of you who were inmates on the other ship, who are wardens here, listening to this - I know it sounds like I'm asking you to help us take you back to hell, but I swear I'm not. Iris - you don't know her, but she's a version of Bianca who never went cruel or possessive. She's exuberant and dauntless and compassionate and amazing, and she's over there right now suborning that ship with nanites that can affect the barge substance on a fundamental level, that transformed this one almost completely. There's hope for unmaking that place, without abandoning the innocents there, yours or ours. But not if we disintegrate and give that place all our strength to fight her assault.

You can hear this because you're all good people, whatever you've done, however you've struggled. Please help me.

...and if you could all respond, at least in acknowledgement, that will let us know if we have anyone posing as a warden now who isn't one.

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053 ☣ never meant to lie

2014-10-01T00:28:44Z

[Spam for Ben]

[They were together in the arena, and they end up together on the barge too, in between their cabins, sprawled a few steps apart on staircase by the fourth floor. As the depthless darkness recedes from her vision and her counterpart's sharp, bright, selfish mind gingerly extracts itself from her own, she glimpses him, and thinks for a dazed moment, with relief and quiet love, and when you wake up, I will still be here. Except - except - he is looking at her, and his expression is all wrong.]

[Public Video (actual immediate response reserved for Peter)]

[She switches to video, with an awkward view of her chin and collarbone as she holds it close to her mouth and speaks as clearly as she can, teeth gritted.]

Help. Stairs, fourth deck, high powered. Fast, please. Ben's mirrored.

[Then she just holds it, turns the view to face Ben and Riddick's fight.]

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052 ☣ humming Joni Mitchell

2014-09-23T18:05:12Z

[Public, video]

[Anya's in the chapel, curled into a ball in the corner of a pew. She's not crying, but she has been, eyes red-rimmed, cheeks tear-stained, sniffling a little, hair a bit mussed. But she faces the communicator squarely.]

I just saw my sister for the first time in almost three years.

I killed her, for those of you who don't know. I basically raised her - our parents certainly didn't help - and she was one of the only people who was ever kind to me. And then I killed her.

I've been waiting to make that right almost since I came to the barge. And now -

[A shaky breath, but she gets it under control, doesn't start crying again.]

She doesn't hate me. She will, I think, when she can really process how I betrayed her. But right now she's just - scared, and hopeful, and alive. She has good people taking care of her now.

And I just - I want to talk about forgiveness, I guess. Because it's never, ever required. If you forgive someone, it should be for you, because you don't want to carry the anger anymore. Nobody deserves to be punished forever, but that doesn't mean you have to be support to people who've hurt you. It doesn't mean you have to accept them in your life, even if they've reformed.

If Wanda never wants to see me - if she never wants to be my sister, if she can't trust me after I broke her trust, then that's - fair. That's her right. Just like it's my right never to forgive our father, which I haven't. Which I won't. I hope she forgives me. But I hope more that she's happy, that she has the tools to build a life she wants, with the people she wants in it.

The thing about the other barge - I know some people are scared or confused and some people are jaded and just hunkering down, and we'll get through it, and it will end, and our wounds will be healed and our tolls paid but the thing about the other barge, the actually terrible thing, is that sometimes it gives us no opportunity to choose against our own monstrosity. And sometimes we do unforgivable things there, and it isn't us - it isn't our choices - but it is us, too. Sometimes trust is broken in ways that can't be fixed with a week or two of suffering.

[She thinks of Cassel and Iris, of herself and Abigail, of herself and Beatrix, herself and Dean.]

But that doesn't mean it's impossible, either. When we're back. When the tide goes out and our wrecks are bare on the sand. Just. Remember to be kind to each other, as much as you can, whatever side of it you were on. And be kind to yourselves. I think that's the most important thing we can do.

[Private to everyone who was around for the Tosh fiasco]

Is anyone still here who fell into the abyss during Tosh's takeover?

[Private to Peter, backdated a few days]

So it's me with four inmates to watch, now.

[And to think maintenance used to be a warden's club.]

And the ship's going to pieces no matter what I do.

Mal volunteered to pitch in awhile ago, so if you still feel - tired, I'll bring her in. But the ceiling's always yours if you want it.

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051 ☣ the Victorious Return

2014-08-27T21:01:10Z

[Public, Video, forward-dated slightly to after the flood]

[Anya's hair is braided, a bit awkwardly given that she was unable to hold her own head up at the time, and a bit mussed, although she's changed into an unwrinkled shirt.]

It seems like there haven't been any major disasters while I was unconscious.

Were the comms all broken? Did I miss the signs or something?

[She sounds bemused, half-joking, half not at all. Seriously, is the admiral punking her, did the boat actually not crash.]

[General friends filter; if you think you're on it, etc.]

I'll need to catch up on the minor disasters, though. Let me know how you're doing, all of you.

( Confidential to Morgana, Dean, Stiles, Connor, Harvey, and Stephen )

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050 ☣ All hands on deck

2014-08-04T06:02:55Z

[Public]

[Anya is broadcasting from the maintenance office. Not the desk, but the workshop-like part, where she has been putting together medium-to-large boxes of construction materials.]

Okay. Everyone's had some time to lick their wounds, sleep off the worst part of their tolls or heal from their wounds, and generally flop around after that crazy mess. But here's the deal: those weird rotten spots on the walls left over from the mirror barge? That's where the Joker got first his hooks into the barge structure as a whole.

I've been working on cleaning them up, but it's been slow going. So this is an open call for volunteers. Inmates, wardens, anybody that has an interest in that bullshit or worse not happening again, I want to get all of them totally cleared before the next weird whatever hits.

[She gestures to Stephen, the Zane look-a-like puttering behind her, checking the kits.]

This is Stephen Hart, for those of you who haven't met him yet. He's going to be one of the regular maintenance wardens. If you don't know how to fix a wall, he or I or Mal will be available to teach you. If you do, so much the better.

Jean, Kara, if you guys aren't busy, I'd love you to pitch in. The places where I completely removed the rotted areas and rebuilt from scratch are still whole, but anywhere else the decay has come back again. I'd love you guys on demolition - I can give you a list of trouble spots, think you can disintegrate all the damaged material?

We might have a few holes left unpatched for the next couple of days, but I'd rather that than the alternative. Everyone who's willing to help, let me know so I can put the work groups together.

[Private to Mason]

...look, I'm not going to twist your arm or anything. No pressure. But sometimes helping to fix things helps.

[Private to Tig and Andrew, both of whom have probably patched at least one weak spot in handwavetime before]

You guys too. No excuses, you're practically experts.

[Private to Dean, backdated to a day before the announcement.]

Get on deck, loser, we're going shooting.

[Private to the Admiral]

I'd like a key to the lab and my own space there, please.

[OOC: Feel free to spam work teams if you want! Please assume at least one warden is watching every team and inmates cannot make off with tools or building materials with impunity, but feel free to choose your own teams ICly or OOCly for CR purposes other than that. Also feel free to thread with Stephen, who will also be around/replying.]

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049 ☣ all around the mulberry bush

2014-07-27T22:16:13Z

[Public but filtered away from the Joker; Day 1ish]

[Anya is on the hallway of level five, standing in one of the boats, tethered to the wall by a bungee cord and a hook she apparently hammered in a moment before, bobbing serenely, a dust mask loose around her neck, and a bruise forming at her temple. The rest of the boat is filled with plastic bags labeled Sam's Club. She's got a staple gun in one hand, and threads the bag handles with a zip tie, secures the loop, and then staples the whole thing to the ceiling.]

I'm trying to post bags of supplies on every level. These are from me, not him. They've got food, aspirin, and disposable dust masks, and a few with respirators. Those will be marked R in sharpie. Chemical weapons are a thing for this guy, so if you're not immune try and get one.

Don't be too trusting - anyone can get into these, so please do double-check that stuff is still sealed before you consume it, but if you can't make it up to the dining hall, I'm bring stuff down.

I've heard about several of the floors, but more information is good. What's on 1 and the Deck? What about 8? Zero? Check in.

[spam, various places, various times]

[After scrambling her way into the maintenance office, she loads up on useful tools. A crowbar and a blowtorch serve her well against the bumper cars on the way out, and again when she encounters the robotic animals on four, leaving yowling, twitching slag behind her. Sometime on day 3, she can be found loading presumably poisoned corndogs into a bag from the concessions on Level 1, before hauling them down to Level 3 and chucking them into the water for the piranas.]

[Spam for Horatio, later???ish]

[It's when she's exploring the deck that the Ferris wheel grabs her, and communicator and crow bar spilling to the deck floor as she stumbles, roughly compelled. Inside the little car, she is locked in total darkness, smaller on the inside than the outside. She feels wood. She's in a coffin, again; if she tries to carve her way out with the only tool she has remaining, most likely she will burn. She tastes the air, carefully - only mildew and pine and earth, it even smells like being buried - and then uses her mask to protect the skin of her fist as she pounds on the door, hollers. She hates this, hates it so much. The crowbar is right there.]

Help! Somebody help me! I'm trapped in here!

[Bangbangbang. So they know which one she is. It's not futile. It's tactical. It is.]

[Private to Morgana; Day 1]

Talk to me.

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