insertmeathere | And once again the day is saved...or is it?

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And once again the day is saved...or is it?

GRATS MEATSHIP!

You saved the day! Yes you! The Worlds have been put back right and all is well with the universe! You're the big damn hero!

...except you're the only one who remembers any of it happening.

Did it really happen? Have you gone insane? Will people believe you?

And after your experiences will they noticed how much you've changed?

More importantly when the world was put back, was it put back correctly?

Step 1: Post with a short description of your characters world now that it's been brought back/reborn/ect as well as your character interacting with it. Maybe they just woke up in their own bed for the first time, maybe they've been back for a couple weeks and are still adjusting? Also how long were you gone from your world? Seconds? Days? Years?

Step B: RANDOMLY, someone from the meatship appears in your world instead of their own. What a crazy freak accident!!! Well they may be stuck there, hope you can help them adjust.

Step C3 : Maybe things aren't exactly how you remember? Maybe things just seem a little...unsettling ~~AHHH you're in the matrix!!!~~ Maybe the OHM come back, ~~Or maybe it's all inside the snowglobe of an autistic child~~ ~~Insert Tommy Westphall reference here?~~I dunno if you enjoy this idea make some drama for yourself my amount of investment in this silly meme is already running out.

Step ?: ???

Step$: Cake

Note: Back in step B the "Someone" can also be more then a couple someone's if you're that organized.

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Howard would believe that he'd just lost his mind and hallucinated the whole thing. He wouldn't be the first kid to completely flip his lid in the FAYZ, what with the fear and the starving and the Everything Out to Kill You. Mary cracked, plenty of kids stepped out, and out of the hundred and sixty left at the Lake, probably eighty have some serious screws loose. Talking to Toto on any given day is a surreal experience.

Howard would believe it if not for the bite scars on his right foot that could only be from a dinosaur.

He's tried to convince himself it was the coyotes, but even mutated, they don't have teeth that big. So he's accepting that he's back at the FAYZ. Back to barely enough food. Back to no electricity. Back to real, founded fear. Back to hopelessness.

Back to Orc, whose souled clothing Howard is currently busy washing in a bucket of water.

A bright yellow chromed sphere comes POP! into existence, hovering over the dusty ground at about shoulder height. It hums with a deep note that sounds vaguely threatening as it swivels, seeming to 'look' in one direction and then another, before finally drifting a little closer to the young man and his bucket.

"Excuse me," it says with a dry male voice. "Are you Howard Bassem?"

Howard startles so much he almost knocks over the bucket and takes a step back. He figures he shouldn't be surprised by things popping in and out of existence - it is the FAYZ, after all, and logic need not apply - but this thing sounds vaguely threatening. "No, but I know where he is. Why?"

The sphere hummed and spoke. "My name is Horanckk, and I am - a friend of a friend of Howard Bassem. My friend would like me to deliver a message to him."

Horanckk turned on his deep-radar and examined the bone structure of the young man. Definitely Howard Bassem - unless his mind had been damaged, and he no longer knew who he was? That would be a pity. Rebuilding minds from scratch was more of an art than a science.

Oh, has he heard about Horanckk.

"Maw sent you? Is she here?" He's not sure if the FAYZ can take one more slice of bizarre. Although Anwei must be at least a little happier, if she's capable of contacting Horanckk at all. "I don't tend to give random strange floating Snitches my name, sorry."

Good, he did remember who he was - and more importantly, who Anwei was.

"She is not here, but she is - accessible. Allow me..." Horanckk blurs through the air, tracing out a yard-wide circle that seems to glow. The air inside the circle darkens, then lightens.

Anwei appeared inside the circle, life-sized; behind her was a glossy-white room that practically screamed Cool Futuristic Spaceship. She was dressed in a crisp gray uniform and she'd grown her hair out; it was tight against her skull in a wreath of elaborate braids.

"Hello, Howard," she said with her familiar, ear-to-ear smile. "Sorry I didn't find you sooner, but your Little Pete is more powerful than I had imagined a human could be, especially since he is currently without a body." A slightly chiding tone in her voice. "You might have warned me."

"Just tell me you're not going to talk about how awesome your life's turning out when I'm literally up to my elbows in shit," he says, sitting back down at the bucket and continuing to scrub the clothes with sand. "Wait, Little Pete's not dead? News to me. What's going on outside the bubble, anyway?"

Howard's more than a little jealous of Anwei. She appears content enough - by contrast, he's even skinnier, mostly unwashed and covered in untreated scrapes and bruises from day to day work in the FAYZ that weren't worth calling the Healer for.

But it's nice to know he's not totally crazy.

"We haven't been able to gather much information about what's going on outside the bubble, actually. This probe is very expensive, energy-wise; but there does still seem to be some sort of civilization out there. Little Pete's effects are tightly localized, and, well, I sent the probe here looking for you."

She cleared her throat. "So, Howard, how would you like to get out of there? Leave the FAYZ?"

He pauses and stares for a minute. She has to be joking. Of course he wants to leave. The FAYZ is as close to hell as you can get without actual brimstone.

Did he really make such an impression on Anwei that she wanted to rescue him?

"Can I bring Orc?" he asks, afraid of the answer and throat dry.

"If Orc wants to come."

"Ahem!" grumped Horanckk, hovering beside the window that he had somehow cut in the world. "Choices, please?"

"Yes, yes, all right - here. I can push through atmosphere-powered generators and food reppers - you'd have food and power for the rest of your lives, and weapons if you wanted them.

"Or I can scoop you up, and take you outside the walls. But - I don't know what exactly is out there. I mean, maybe you'll find your family, and you can go hide, but if there's anyone still in power who knows what happened here, they will probably come looking for you.

"Or, you can come with me. The Vizsnunishne. Live on a spaceship, or another planet if you like. Clean food and water, a safe place to sleep, plenty of work to keep you busy if that's what you want. And all three choices would be open to everyone here."

"Third," Howard says. He doesn't even have to think hard on it. Food and power are major problems in the FAYZ, but not the only ones. There are still the mutant animals. Still the sociopathic superpowered kids in charge. Still the Gaiaphage. Still only the barest definition of order. Adding weapons to the mix would make it even worse anyway.

And back in the real world? He may find his parents, but more likely than not, they're dead and he'll end up picked up by child services or the police and bounced between foster homes or institutionalized for all his paranoia. Even more likely, if he's with Orc.

Living with Anwei and the mercenaries, or whomever the Vizsnunishne are, isn't what Howard dreamed his life would be, but it's a far stretch better than any of the other options.

"Third option," he repeats again, trying not to get choked up.

"Hey." She reached out, but didn't actually put her hand through the Horanckk-window. "Hey, I'm sorry it took me so long to find you. I had to do some - cleaning up on this side. Get things ready. But I want to make it up to you."

"So, when you're ready. Just close your eyes, and say 'I want to wake up now.' Open your eyes, and we'll go from there."

He nods and closes his eyes. It doesn't take much, if any, time to feel ready to leave.

Even if he knows by now you never really leave the FAYZ. You never really leave fear behind you.

"I want to wake up now," he says, "I want to wake up now."

He opens his eyes to the same dirt, same bucket of stained clothes and foul-smelling water, same recycled air, same cramping in his stomach, same tiredness in his bones.

He should have known it was too good to be true. His hands are shaking. Tears aren't unfamiliar to anyone in the FAYZ, so he doesn't even bother to try hiding the fact that he's crying from anyone who might stumble onto this pathetic scene.

And then he hears engines.

The sky bursts. Great blue-tinted petals seems to blow away as wind, real wind, suddenly moves around the buildings. The sun splinters, shatters, into gleaming shards that soar into the night.

Because that's what is up above now: night. Stars, real stars, blazing in the darkness. And moving among the stars are tiny clusters of lights: aircraft. A sudden flash of light is followed by the fluttering boom of an unfurling parachute, then more booms: and giant white boxes suddenly appear, floating down from the sky, blinking lights on their sides and bottom making them appear and disappear. They're dropping slowly, but definitely aimed to land in the FAYZ.

"Well, that's that," says Anwei's voice from the darkness. There are no lights, she can't be seen. "I think you made the right choice, Howard."

Even though Howard knows it must be impossible, he can't help but feel like, for the first time, he's breathing fresh air instead of the cramped staleness of the FAYZ.

"What did you do?" he asks, half incredulous and half angry to be jerked around. Just figures Anwei would skirt around with him. "What are you doing?"

"We put everyone in the FAYZ asleep, just for a few minutes, and we asked them what I asked you: we gave them their options. For the ones who decided to stay, well, we gave them food, water condensers, generators - but no weapons. And they can pull electricity from the bubble now, and even cut through it, if they choose..."

"The ones that said they wanted to leave, well, they're outside the bubble now. And the third group? Children so hurt that they're willing to turn their backs on their planet and any hope of finding their families - do you really want to drop them on an alien spacecraft with no warning? They'd go off like rockets, and I'm aware that there are people with powers in here."

The boxes were drifting in to land, and small figures were converging on them, prying them open with their bare hands. They could hear the shout as the first box was opened and water bottles started spilling out in an endless stream.

"So we're going to ease them into it. There's no deadly animals here now, no disease. There will be plenty of food and water, and we'll keep them from fighting. Television, maybe, to show then the spaceships? And eventually they'll leave here."

A cough out of the darkness. "This is a simulation, like the Sensoriums. You're out of the FAYZ, right here and now. You're safe."

A fine line of yellow neon light appeared beside him, in the shape of a door. "You can step out whenever you like."

He takes a step for the door and stops.

Why is she doing this? Not just for him, but for all these scraggly, worn-out, desperate, broken children? Children so brutalized by their circumstances that they are, as Anwei put it, willing to turn their backs on their own planet? Children who, just like him, took the third option without hesitation.

Does she really think he's that damaged? Who's she to judge, the self-absorbed basketcase who carries all her sins like a hairshirt and a badge of sick honor?

And despite his desperation, despite knowing that this is his only chance, despite this being a gift, he has to know.

"Why, Anwei? What is it that you're getting out of this?"

She laughed in the darkness; you could almost imagine that huge trap-door mouth opening and closing with her mirth. "Afraid of being another number in my formulas, Howard? I gave those up; no point in keeping score after you've saved the Multiverse."

"I'm doing this because I didn't want to leave you here; because you deserve better. And because I was hurt once - perhaps not as much as you, but enough to leave my parents and my planet behind. I joined the Vizsnunishne because one person was kind to me; I don't know who he was, or why he did it. I could never find him again. I can never pay him back. So I'm going to pay it forward, if I can."

A buzzing noise in the darkness, probably Horanckk.

"Right, and it occurred to me that finding out how to trace people between dimension could be very useful. Some members of the crew sounded like they were going back to bad situations - Alex Furest, Zouichi, and others. It would be nice to drop in and see how they're doing, don't you think?"

Oh, believe it, Anwei, he's imagining your giant bear-trap mouth. "I guess the multiverse counts for a pretty big positive."

He listens closely as she explains. It makes sense - somehow, more than just on a logical level, it really makes sense. Maybe the similar pain in their backgrounds has informed their view of the universes in a similar way.

"Yeah. That sounds like a plan," he says, stepping through the door.

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And once again the day is saved...or is it?

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