[Mostly Open] So we'll press, and press 'til you can't take it anymore!

[groupiedrifter]

CHARACTERS: Precursors and you. And Eventually Newton. Hopefully!
LOCATION: A holding room in Ximilia Station.
DATE: Est. two days post-mission, after the kaiju is defeated and the orb is retrieved.
CONTENT: The precursors are revealed — and are finally removed from Newt's mind.
WARNINGS: Possession and the bodily autonomy issues that come with that. More will be added if necessary!

Closed and opened starters will be added as I go, which will be announced on plurk! But if you don't use plurk or would rather keep an eye out by email/tracking, feel free to use the tracking option and mark to receive notifs any new top level comments posted to this log! The log will involve an open starter to visit the precursors where they're cuffed/contained in the room, so stay tuned.

Also no rush once the open starters are posted!

Feel free to focus on the player plot log first and come back to this later.

CLOSED STARTER | THE DOCTOR
DARKLING'S TOP LEVEL | WHILE NEWT WAS SLEEPING...
OPEN STARTER | THE PRECURSORS, REVEALED
CLOSED FINAL CONCLUSION | THE PRECURSORS, REMOVED
OPEN PROMPTS | NEWTON GEISZLER'S RETURN

Comments

[groupiedrifter]

[In all honesty, they're not particularly effected by the physical harm. Whatever happens to the vessel is something they can easily shut out — that's the problem with humans when they drift, you know? They haven't figured out how to shut out the pain of the person they're drifting with. Imagine how nightmarish it would be, if they allowed Newton's anguish to trickle into their thoughts. Gross.

Anyway. They don't really care that much about the bumps and bruises and scrapes. It's nothing that serious. Mr. Noble Peace-loving Doctor, though? Not a shocker there. Rolling their eyes, they sag back in the chair they're confined in.]

Oh, we wouldn't want that. Another seizure? That'd be a real shame.

[Disinterest paints their words, but they seem critical as they watch McCoy work.]

... All this devotion to fixing people. And for what? This creature you're trying to mend right now will only live another sixty years. At most. Such a waste of your own short time alive, to expend energy on them.

[homeostatic]

( It is truly unsettling. The turn from the brilliant Dr. Geiszler, the man who once threw a blanket over the storm-tossed Leonard and bellied up to him with a broad grin, into this cruel dickhead.

Out comes the tricorder first, checking him for anything not visible, the soft hum a background to Not!Newt's caustic assertions. McCoy hesitates near his temple, eyeing the results with a small frown. A small alarm pings, and he silences it with the tap of his thumb, squinting down at the other man.

Nothing's broken, shockingly, but whatever's going on in his head needs a closer look. )

All the more reason to expend the energy, ( McCoy replies tartly, closing the cover of the device and trading it out for gloves. ) Life isn't less precious 'cause it's fleeting. Quite the opposite, in fact.

How old are you, anyway? ( Loading a hypo, he gestures with it, ) Couple hundred? A thousand?

[groupiedrifter]

[They bob their head side to side, thoughtful, almost as if they're just a typical customer getting their hair cut in a barber's chair. And not... well. Like they'd just attempted to murder the entire crew; succeeded in killing a number of civilians to boot. They're sorely disappointed they didn't have a chance to get rid of everyone at once, but what can you do in a body this little?

They'll have to strategize better when they make their way back to Earth to destroy it.]

Mmm. Lost count. But we've had our eye on Earth since its Triassic Period back in the day. We'd wiped out plenty of civilizations and planets before that, so... that's probably a good enough estimation for someone as small as you.

[A snort.]

... That's how we know, by the way. How worthless it is to value these individual, insignificant little lives.

Do you think anyone remembers or cares anymore? About all those societies we've wiped out, so long ago that suns have burned out? Do you think those worlds are remembered by anyone but us, when we take the time to recall their final days?

Life is a resource, McCoy. We feed on it, just like humans enjoy feeding on a good steak.

[homeostatic]

Oh, millions, ( he dryly retorts, turning the hypo around in his steady hands. Somewhere, deep down, the part of him that isn't disconnecting himself from this, compartmentalizing all of it with a surgeon's expertise, is horrified.

No one would blame him for turning around and walking away. The Hell you are, McCoy.

He wets his lips, and tugs aside Not!Newt's stained shirt collar. )

When you say 'We', you mean like, the Royal We, or are there many in there? This might sting, ( he adds, administering the hypo of anti-convulsants and pulling his hands out of potential bite range. ) You got a name for yourselves? Because Not!Newt doesn't feel quite right.

[groupiedrifter]

[They cast a displeased side-glance to the hypo; he's wise to be as quick as possible about it, because they do seem to heavily consider lashing out with their teeth. Still... the doctor's not about to do anything that puts this body in jeopardy, not like they're sure other people on this crew are chomping at the bit to do.]

Oh. [A soft, almost disarming noise. As if they're not murderous, genocidal aliens.] Oh, we're all here. There's no 'me' — just 'us'. It's so much easier to be a functioning community when you're all one and one all, isn't it? Cuts down on the... 'in-fighting'.

[They scoff, in a way that is very Newton, despite how much they're not like him.

As if, perhaps, they've absorbed some of him. Into them.

A frightening concept.]

We don't have a name. Not really. Too easy to try to follow our trail that way... but Newton's Earth called us Precursors, so we guess it's as good a name as any. And hey! Once Newton's been absorbed into our collective conscious, he can be as nameless as we are, too.

[homeostatic]

Doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, does it? Pre-cur-sor. So you're a genocidal hive mind.

( What was it he'd told Jim at home, only a couple months ago? Exactly what they were bound to run into, out in uncharted Deep Space? ) 'Alien despots hell-bent on killing us', ( McCoy mutters to himself, and pulls the dirtied cuff of their shirt taut, quickly cutting up the sleeve to their shoulder with trauma shears. )

Y'know, I heard Newt's people succeeded at pushin' y'all back. The Jaeger Program? Stroke of genius.

( Courtesy of his talks with Raleigh over treatment. May he have returned home to a kinder world, McCoy hopes, but knows that isn't the guarantee. Not if these things possessing Newt were what awaited him.

Another device hums close to Newt's- their arm, as he works slow passes over the mottled skin, always keeping one eye on Pre-Newt for any sudden movement as the bruises begin to fade. )

Some alien races have a bad habit of underestimating just how damn stubborn humans are. How long did it take for you to subsume poor Newt?

[groupiedrifter]

Genocidal's a harsh word, but... yeah. Pretty much. [Newt's way of talking has apparently been adopted well. They blend, become whatever they need to trick people. Easy peasy. They throw him an aside — a petulant little comment:] Hey! That's an expensive suit.

[They're very much about hoarding precious materials, you know. Well, they don't actually care that much about clothes, but they do love to take and take and take of a planet's valuable natural resources until it's a dead world.

As Bones' device crawls along Newton's arm, bruises along the colorful swaths of tattoo ink begin to fade away, leaving nothing but a kaiju's stylized face frozen in time. Meanwhile, their lips twitch at the mention of the Jaeger Program.]

Mmyeah. The one decent thing humanity dredged up. Big walking heaps of scrap. We'll make sure they pay for that indiscretion. [Their eyes flick up at the question of Newton's mind.] It took a bit of work. I'm sure you noticed he put up a little bit of... a mental struggle. The seizure wasn't planned, but we were getting a little impatient with the process.

... If you're asking when we took complete control? Mmmm... Around the time we shoved our fingers down his throat and expelled that bottle of pills you supplied him with.

You're welcome for saving his life, by the way.

He was in terribly dire straits, then.

[homeostatic]

( It's a combination of strenuously held restraint and long experience that he doesn't drop those shears in shock, taking the Precursors' sneering barrage like so much water rolling off a duck's back. The lump rising in his throat goes swallowed down.

There's a kind of relish he takes in cutting off the filthy shirt, all schadenfreude and icy anger– that these things care more for an article of clothing than another's life, for any life. He doesn't respond for a while, just pulls away the tattered remnants of cloth and trades the shears again for a regenerator, for Newt, wherever he is in there. )

Newt did that all on his own?

( McCoy asks quietly, finally. He's since passed a sterile-field wand over them, and draped them right back up in a hospital gown, pressing fasteners over their shoulders, and tugging it gently closed over their back to keep them warm.

Taking a knee beside their chair, he sets out to find a vein under the sleeve of colorful kaiju, Yamarashi's tight snarl bouncing lightly beneath his fingertips. McCoy continues in his slow drawl, while he places the IV cath, )

That one little guy, one single, fragile, beautiful human outlasted a battering from all of your multitudes, for months.

( Satisfied with his work, he sticks the dressing into place, following up with a saline flush as he finally looks back up at them. )

What do you think the other fifty-nine of us are gonna do?

[groupiedrifter]

[Their smile slips slightly, when they realize what McCoy had taken from that exchange — Newt did that all on his own? he says, and it genuinely annoys them. The idea of Newton being credited with anything that involves fighting them? Standing firm? Oh, that is a thorn wedged uncomfortably under their nail. Newton's absorbed vernacular, his cadence, it completely melts from their voice as they talk, something eerily inhuman reverberating in their tone:]

Do not give credit where it is undue.

Newton flailed around uselessly in his own mind like a helpless fool.

[Because there's no credit to be allowed for Newton Geiszler. He had helped destroy a very unpleasant amount of them, had assisted in the plan that decimated half their planet and destroyed their breach. No, he gets nothing, just like the rest of these awful little creatures. They grip Newton's hands into tight, unhappy fists at first, quietly.]

... You will all do just the same: you will fail to stop us from taking what we want. Do you see him sitting in front of you, victorious? He knows it's his fault that those civilians are dead... that his crew has been hurt by what he's made — and by his own hand. Even if you miraculously pushed us out, he'll be a shell who is scared of his own shadow, knowing that everyone in this station will look at him and see us in his eyes.

He'll know that he's worthless as anything but a tool to harm others.

If you think he will outlast that, you're sorely mistaken.

[homeostatic]

( It's grotesquely satisfying to see them as they are, unveiled at last, shedding the mask of humanity to spit virulence at him.

Fucking good.

They aren't human, and they shouldn't wear Newt's soft eyes and floppy hair, the victories and journeys inked across his skin. They don't deserve him.

If anything, they've given Leonard hope. Newt's still in there, and if he's still in there, he's salvageable. McCoy's not a miracle worker, but he's done more with less, and he's alone besides. Newt has more than a few other stubborn assholes in his corner, who would do so much to see him through whatever struggle lies ahead for him. )

Mm, alright.

( Capping off the line, McCoy stands, dusting off his knees. He spends a moment bagging all the detritus he's collected, peeling off his gloves, before he leans a hip against the cart, arms folded across his chest. )

I'm gonna give you some good advice, somethin' my grandma told my mama, and my mama told me.

( Bones leans that fraction forward: )

Worry about yourself.

( His gaze flicks over them again, a last assessment as he straightens and gives the cart a short tug. )

I'll be back in a bit to get you some fluids. Don't go nowhere, alright?

( And off he goes, taking the cart with him. )