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And In the Junkyard...

From far beneath their feet came the sound of a heavy explosion, large enough to shake the ground. Sounded like the strike team had done...something? At least? And the trembling didn't stop just because the explosion did; instead it kept going long enough to cause most of toys who were still upright to fall over. The remaining constructed minions crumbled apart as the last of the Toymaker's hold over the island came unraveled.

With a deep, shuddering groan, the very earth beneath the Junkyard tore itself apart as a huge outcropping of machinery, like a spire made from metal and circuitry, dragged itself up into the sky. Then it became apparent this wasn't a spire but a stalk as a large cybernetic flower bloomed.

"Please input destination parameters." The voice that issued forth was warm and maternal, the kind of voice that could wrap you up in a hug. "Please input destination parameters. Do not be alarmed. Please input destination parameters so we may go home."

...At least it wasn't telling people to smile and have fun?

[AND WE'RE DONE! Much later than I'd intended to, but Sunday had always been planned to be a wrapup day. Thanks to everyone for playing! <3 <3]

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For all that it was kind of terrifying looking, the flower didn't feel particularly menacing, even to the odd telepath in the group. It felt like it was waiting for something and prepared to wait all day if it had to.

There was also a sense of longing. Homesickness. A readiness to be done.

And underneath it all? It sorta felt like...home.

[Time to go home! Share with the computer one of your fondest memories of the island]

Kanan gave a soft hum as he regarded the flower. The flower and the warm feelings that were coming off of it, that parental sort of fondness that he'd only begun to start thinking of himself in the past few years. He thought of the times the island had given him children, of Jacen and Anan, of time spent playing with two kids in as close to a proper family as he had ever known.

He smiled a little, and then walked up and placed a hand on the flower.

That. That was what he wanted, again.

Fjord's genuinely happy moments in life were few and far between, even here, where so much of his life was clouded by the concern that he'd never be able to get home, that he'd never know what had become of Vandran and why that nightmare entity with the many eyes was so intent on tormenting him.

But there had been moments, here and there. There had been an afternoon spent in the park with Amaya, testing the new shuriken she'd created to see if they could make that thing fly.

The tree that he'd thrown it into was probably still scarred from it, a weird point of pride for a man who had very, very little that he actually took pride in. It had been a good afternoon. A simple afternoon, where he and Amaya had been, as she would say, bold.

It had felt good. It had, if only for that afternoon, felt a little bit as though maybe he could belong here. And for that reason, he cherished it.

"Hello, terrifying flower," Shuri said, nudging at it with her nose. "It has been a very, very long week, and I really, really like having thumbs." She closed her eyes, thinking of the weekly shenanigans and the camaraderie she had built with the other people in this crazy, hilarious, wonderful place that had somehow become a little like a home to her. "Please bring that back," she murmured. "With slightly fewer things trying to kill us, neh?"

Verity didn't trust those petals for a minute, but at this point, she was ready to try damn near anything to stop being porcelain again.

She closed her eyes, laid her hand down on the machine and thought of...Liam.

Their first kiss, brought about by a piece of mistletoe with an attitude. Meeting each other as children for the first time and her immediately 'adopting' him. The children they'd met these past two years: Hayley and Tyrus and William.

So many memories that made her heart swell and make her feel like she belonged.

She wasn't alone. Some of the mice who had accompanied her pressed plastic noses to the machine as well. They had memories, too. Creating the doctrine of the God of Distant Stars. The Great Battle with one of the Green Carnivores that had attempted to gain access to the apartment. The joy of a new litter, now old enough to learn the rites and liturgies. Befriending the squirrels, who were like Aeslin in their own way.

Fandom was home for more than just its humans.

Tip stared up at the flower, feeling very confused.

Home? They were already home, weren't they? She blinked slowly, images flashing through her mind. Fighting statues with a bowling ball. Getting into arguments with books. Showing a deeply unfashionable and very fleshy little squished frog creature around the town proudly.

She let her eyes fall shut and picked out one memory in particular: sitting in the park on a rainy day with Kanan, her practice sword set aside in favor of meditating and people watching and making up stories.

Home.

She set one tiny plastic hand on the flower and concentrated on that memory for all she was worth.

Home.

Mae swayed slightly as she stared up at the flower and wondered if it was real.

That was nothing new. She always wondered if everything was real.

She toddled up to the flower and stuck her paw on it, and closed her eyes into those damned little happy crescents.

A bonfire party in the woods, surrounded by people who almost actually felt like real friends. Wayne and his country reticence. Nina, and her sketchbook full of butterflies. The feeling of unabashed wonder when those butterflies became real. . . .

Yeah. That. She wanted way more of that, please.

There were a lot of things Keyleth could have thought of in this moment: the week she'd spent stuck as a tiger, running around the preserve with Jules and Camden, was even one of them. It had actually been kind of fun, now that she could look back on it with a little bit of distance. Doing the radio, weird as it might be to consider spending time every week in a small booth with Beauregard and her perpetual crankiness a fond memory. Giving Trevor a playful hard time about being so broody. All the peaceful, soothing hours she spent at work at the flower shop, or on the rooftop garden, working with the plants. Turning into a cat to try and cheer Norman up, and feeling like she finally got to be useful.

But no, the memory she settled on sharing was from just a few weeks ago at the Fandom Pride festival, when she'd been working at the flower booth. It wasn't even anything specific, just the sense of warmth and community she'd gotten out of the whole event. That had been the first time since she'd arrived that Fandom had really reminded her of Zephrah, and if this flower -- oddly mechanical as it was -- wanted to help them get home, well. The memory of when this island had most vividly reminded her of home seemed like the best one to go by.

Liam didn't have a hand to place on the flower so much as a sawn-off stump (oh god, he really hoped that when everything got un-fucked he'd get his hands back). But up to the flower he went, ~~Sharing~~ sharing with it memories of experiencing a taste of childhood for the first time. His and Verity's first kiss. Meeting those kids that he hoped would someday be real. Finding a kindred spirit in Octavia. Teaching Beau how to fence.

Fandom was his home, his first real experience with just getting to live, and he wanted that back.

And once the last person had come up to share a memory of the island - the real island, home, not this crazy progression of nightmares the summer had become - the petals folded back on themselves to form a bud. At the tip of that bud came a vast swirling of light.

"Nooooo!" The Celestial Toymaker cried out one more time, but it was too late. That swirl became a beam that shot up into the sky, breaking through a shell of yet more Lego pieces and decoupage clouds. A moment later, the whole island shifted--

The Toymaker vanished. So did several other toys, phased back into their home dimensions. Everyone else?

Was standing right where they'd been a second ago, but this time made of flesh and blood..or whatever their normal equivalent was. The Junkyard was once again Syndulla Scrap. The Causeway returned, linking the island back to Baltimore. And the cybernetic flower was once more a series of computer banks, humming quietly beneath the surface of the island.

They were home.

Liam closed his eyes as he felt that shift begin, and he kept them closed for a long moment, sucking in a deep breath as he suddenly had lungs again, feeling the energy course through him from his core all the way through to his...

He opened his eyes.

Looked down at his hands. Pressed a thumb into first one palm, then the other, feeling the familiar tingle of the shaqarava just under the surface.

Real, he thought to himself. They were real, he was real. Everything was fine.

Verity flung herself at Liam, no longer feeling particularly breakable, small, furry mice tucked away in her pockets. She wrapped her arms around him, hugging him tightly, and pulled his face to hers.

No. Now everything was fine.

And Liam practically melted against her (not literally, no longer being made of plastic and all), kissing her back until he absolutely had to pull back to breathe, and even then, only going so far as to rest his forehead against hers. “Knew you’d come,” he murmured, tucking a stray lock of her hair back behind her ear.

"Had to rescue you for once," Verity said, while the mice squirmed out of her pockets to run over and cuddle Liam's neck, perching on his shoulders. "Way to get kidnapped, Kincaid."

“Figured it was only fair,” Liam replied, smiling a little as he felt the mice nestle into place.

"Well, stop stepping on my schtick," Verity murmured, pressing her forehead to his. "I don't like it."

"Can't say I'm much of a fan either," Liam huffed out a laugh, hands moving up and down her sides restlessly.

Real, real, real, this is all real.

"Let's get home and see the rest of the mice," Verity murmured. "And then go to bed."

While she obsessively checked over him everywhere to make sure his hands were okay and also that he was okay and oh god he was never allowed to get almost executed again.

Mae looked down at herself. She patted her round little tummy, hearing the proper, slightly hollow thump of actual organs instead of fluff. Her hands didn't squeak at all as she made her way up to her face and felt at her ears and nose and her beautiful, amazing, flesh-and-blood mouth.

"OH MY GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKING GODDDDDDDDD!!!!!!!!!!" Mae screamed at the tops of her lungs. "I HAVE A FUCKING MOUTH AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Sorry everybody, she's been wanting to do this for a week.

Tip blinked. Swallowed.

Felt a bit like throwing up.

Her knees gave out, dropping her flat on her ass in the junkyard as she tried to catch her breath. Her face felt weird.

. . . Oh. She was crying.

Okay, then.

Kanan looked at the lightsaber in his hand.

Shut it off. Clipped it to his belt. And then made his way over to Tip, crouching down beside her.

"Hey," he said, softly. "Welcome back."

Tip looked up, then immediately back down at the ground between her feet.

He was in her happy memory. Like, kinda featured in it. And she'd shown up today to gleefully watch him die.

She let out a sound that was half-gag, half-sob, and shrugged.

"Hi."

Oh, Tip. Break Kanan's heart a little.

"You know," he said softly, "it wasn't you. Not really. No more than it was me with the slug, remember? It sounded like you and it probably even felt like you, but everybody on the island was a puppet, for at least some of this."

Tip gulped in a breath, then another, edging towards hyperventilation in her attempt to keep from sobbing out loud.

“I don’t—“ she started, and gasped. “I didn’t—“

She hadn’t noticed anything was wrong. She’d been a rebel, been fighting off conquerors and evil regimes since she was eleven and she would have let this happen. Plenty of people had shaken off their toy personas, but she hadn’t. She hadn’t even tried.

She couldn’t forgive herself for that.

"Hey," Kanan said softly, reaching a hand for her shoulder. "Hey, no. No, this isn't your fault. Okay? Gratuity. Tip. This is not. Your. Fault. This was something big, bigger than us."

Force, he had no idea how to make this better.

Wasn't so certain he could.

"This got into your head. Got into everyone's head. And it hit some people harder than others. You got hit harder than others. You were violated too."

Tip lost her grip on her sobs and curled into a tight little ball.

Well. At least he'd gotten her past the point of trying to hold it all in?

And that would be Kanan, chewing his bottom lip for a moment, and then reaching to tentatively pull her into a hug, ready to pull back again if she seemed to have even the faintest inclination toward pulling away.

"I'm so sorry, Tip," he murmured. "You didn't deserve this. I'm so sorry."

Tip's sobs went a little extra squeaky at that. He was apologizing to her. He'd been marched in here to be executed for fighting this whole thing.

That was basically his nightmare about his home galaxy, and he was handling it well enough to be over here trying to comfort her.

"Why are you so -- good?"

Kanan gave the small exhale of a man who had no idea how to even answer that. As far as he was concerned, he wasn't. He wasn't necessarily bad, no, but good?

Good with emphasis?

"I'm nothing special," he settled on. "I've spent a long time being anywhere but where I need to be, and that's not something I can do anymore. That's all."

Right now, he needed to be here. And... then he should probably haul Anakin's sorry ass too the clinic. But Anakin could wait a little longer. Tip was hurting.

Edited 2019-08-18 20:35 (UTC)

Tip wrapped her arms around him and clung.

That. That stupid instinct he had to downplay it. That was exactly what she meant. She still wasn't used to this, to adult figures actually wanting to take care of her.

And right now she was pretty sure she didn't deserve it.

She took a deep breath, trying to get her sobbing under control. He had other things he should be focusing on. She had to get herself together.

"You know that's still good, right?" she asked softly. "Plenty of people keep doing nothing."

He let her hold on, let her cling as much as she needed. Gave her a little squeeze. He wasn't going anywhere. He was right here.

It was going to be okay. Maybe not right away, but Tip was strong. He had faith in her.

"Well," he said, after a moment, "there are people worth doing good for."

And we're done!

Thanks everyone for playing, especially as the world kind of burned merrily down around my ears and the ears of my co-runners!

Extra thanks to everyone who participated on one of the teams, who preplayed, or who wrote entire posts to keep this BDE going.

And EPIC, MEGA THANKS to my co-runners, BDE MVP

firstofitskind who guided teams, coded everything, and let me abuse poor Liam to my heart's content, and

rebelseekspizza who was always there with a word of advice or suggestion from her collected knowledge of BDE's run past.

Everything good about this BDE was made better with their help and everything rough or rocky was almost certainly the result of me saying, "NAH I GOT THIS!"

Seriously, many thanks to everyone. I love this whole game!

*goes to collapse*

Everyone here is amazing.

A.

Maz.

Ing.

*glomps*

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And In the Junkyard...

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