Friday Meme Light: Cause It's A Bittersweet Victory (Ten Years Later Thread)

[thewunderkind]

The clock continues to turn on the ship.

The last years have been of turbulence, surprises and great fights, but eventually, five years ago, the Ohm were defeated and slowly, peace was restored to the entire multiverse. The crisis was averted! Congratulations!

...However rebuilding universes takes time. Energy. Power. It still might be years off before you'll get to go home, and Stacy is truly saddened about that. Call it catch 22 if you will, but at least the life on the ship is a lot more peaceful now. The farms have grown, and now there's enough in-house grown food to feed everyone who doesn't feel like eating slop or eating slop in the sensoriums every day. That's a small comfort, right? Oh sure, there's still the surprise or two on it, but now there's slowly more places to stop, and Stacy has been a lot more lenient about people getting their shots...

As they sometimes say, life will find a way to flourish, anywhere it can. My, there's a lot more bellies around the ship than before...

And maybe. One day. Far off future. You'll get to go home. But that's not now.

Ten years is a lot of time for people to grow, personalities to change and emotions to emerge. How have your characters turned out of it?

Comments

[facepunching.livejournal.com]

Soren could grow contempt anywhere he was like a contempt farmer hahaha no

"Hmph. I suppose it's inevitable we'll blunder into another conflict soon. The last one was a while ago." He hesitated, frowning; Sofia was one of the few who knew his little secret, so it wasn't as though he didn't have some small, understated, miniscule stake in her continued well-being.

"I heard you were injured during that last fight."

[wakkasball.livejournal.com]

Hey look what's on the table.

[wakkasball.livejournal.com]

Wakka's ball turned out to be female and married Wheatley in a pretty awesome ceremony.

[notamoron]

DAMN WOMAN YOU'RE SUFFOCATING ME.

[wakkasball.livejournal.com]

WELL AT LEAST THAT WEIRD DETECTIVE GUY CAN NEVER FIND ME.

[daemonomicon.livejournal.com]

Time had not been kind to Grandmaster Cargn Thane.

Now a good 802 years old, he was quite ancient. But it was not old age that crippled the aging Grey Knight. Rather, it was the ravages of war that took its toll on Cargn. Even centuries of experience cannot prevent the eventuality of battle scars, and in a war as fierce as this one had been, Cargn's scars had eventually piled up too high.

In addition to the cybernetic arm he sported since that early battle on Zokez II, the aging Grandmaster now sported a number of other prosthetics to repair the damage of battles now long past. He refused the more advanced cybernetics the Engineering department was capable of creating, instead preferring the relatively primitive bionics of his own world that were found in storage, built and blessed by techpriests of the Adeptus Mechanicus. His leg was replaced with a simple looking bionic one, and though it was combat-grade, damage to his genetic structure from an Ohm bio-weapon led his body to eventually start rejecting the bionic, giving him a severe limp and forcing him out of combat. His jaw had been destroyed when he was caught in an explosion, forcing him him to replace it with a bulky vox-unit. It gave him a truly horrifying visage now, his face just two empty eye-sockets and a crude looking vox-speaker. The replacement gave him a droning, monotonous voice.

Cargn was currently hobbling through the streets of the City, returning to the Shrine he still maintained after all these years. There was a now-familiar clank-tap sound as he walked, the sound of his metal foot followed by his cane as he moved onward. He wore a black robe these days, representative of the fact that he now considers himself ready to join the Seekers, those Grey Knights too old and wounded to fight who instead spent their days guiding their Chapter with their ages of wisdom.

Time was not kind to Cargn Thane, but still he continued on.

[fattynoparents]

BITCH YOU HOMEWRECKER

[jesus_is_gundam]

Setsuna ducked under the rpg, and it continued down the hall past him. It collided with a wall not far behind him, sending another shower of smoke, dust, and debris everywhere.

Using the smoke as cover, Setsuna sprang forward, charging right at Sousuke.

[sit-shake.livejournal.com]

You crafty bastard.

Sousuke sidestepped Setsuna's sudden charge, raising his handgun even as he managed to slip past and disappear into the smoke. He fired twice quickly, aiming for what he estimated to be Setsuna's location.

"Surrender, Setsuna F. Seiei, and you won't be harmed."

Assuming of course, that those shots hadn't hit him already. Because then he would kind of be lying.

[zenithianhero.livejournal.com]

Oh wow Soren it was like you almost cared for someone who didn't have blue hair.

"I'm fine," she affirmed, touching her foot. "The healing facilities here have added tremendously and I was able to cast magic to save most of the tissue." She smiled like she meant it too. Granted back then it had been pretty gruesome.

[ghost-bait.livejournal.com]

Miku didn't mind her sensei's new visage. Well, not now, anyway. It had been difficult for her to accept the injuries at first. But, Cargn was stubborn, just as stubborn as Steve could be. So, she simply accepted it.

Now, as she waits for him to at the steps to the shine, she shifts on her feet. "Good evening, Cargn-sensei."

[a_mere_human]

Setsuna assumed Sousuke was lying anyway. After all, why violently break him out of jail if all he were going to do was throw him back into jail?

"Never!"

Today, they finish this.

The shots had narrowly missed, and Setsuna reversed direction, following Sousuke back into the smoke. He pulled out his shank, and fully intended to make this man bleed if he could get close enough,

[daemonomicon.livejournal.com]

Despite being somewhat hunched over from his old injuries, Cargn still towered over Miku. It would be a rather odd sight to anyone else.

++Ah, greetings, my dear,++ he replied in his buzzing, monotonous new voice. The vox-unit couldn't convey emotion or tone, so it sounded far more deadpan than Cargn had wished it would be. It made him sound much like Sigmund, his servo-skull familiar.

++I hope you were not waiting very long.++

River Song

[hullo-sweetie.livejournal.com]

Ten years.

How time flies when you're fighting a never ending war.

Very little had changed for River Song. If anything, her life had settled back on the track it she should have had in the first place. A linear relationship with the Doctor. It hadn't taken very long for her secrets to be revealed. Her status as a human equivalent of a Time Lady. Her sacrifice of all her regenerations to save the Doctor's life. Everything came out in the end.

Like most people who had been on Stacy for the long haul, River had settled down again and had a family. One curly haired little girl who had her mother's penchant for getting into trouble and drove her grandfather up a wall just keeping her from wasting away her regenerations with her crazy stunts. The apple of her father's eye and River Song's darling little girl.

[ghost-bait.livejournal.com]

"Not at all, sensei. It's given me plenty of time to reflect," she answered blithely. She adjusted the way her skirt laid, and smiled at him. "I'm ready for my lesson, if you don't mind giving it to me." She knew his leg pained him a lot more these days, and was more than willing to put off lessons if he was sore.

"If not, I did just find a very nice tea the last stop, and I have come to share it with you."

[magicgunworks.livejournal.com]

Ten years... the passing time had been both good and bad for Mami.

After ten years, she's a bit more open. She has friends, people outside of those from her home world she trusts and enjoys the company of. Her emotional barriers are (willingly) weak now, though they're not completely gone. She never quite grew out of her Big Sis attitude, though at the age of twenty-five, it's become more of a motherly attitude; she still takes care of the younger kids on board, whether they be from the pods or the children of her fellow crewmates. She's a kind, caring woman, her genuine personality much like the one she used to hide behind.

But all is not well with the puella magi. She's had an ongoing on-again-off-again relationship with Homura, ever since that first time Madoka was podded... she cares for the other woman, she really does, but the fact that she's not the most important person in Mami's heart - and the feeling is mutual - has lead to much depression. It was almost certain that they'd break apart when the ship returned Madoka to them, only to steal her away not long after and leaving them to pick up the pieces yet again. It would be much healthier for the both of them to just call it off for good, but Mami at least is still unable to go long without needing that emotional bond.

Other than that, not much has changed. Aside from the physical changes that normally occur over the span of such a long time, the only change to Mami's appearance was her hair: instead of her signature corkscrew curls, she now wears her hair in a long braid down her back.

[futureisclear.livejournal.com]

Ildraniath, being a virtually ageless Eldar, looks very much the same as the first day she ever set slime-covered foot on Stacy. However, there are new scars. One of her eyes has been replaced by a cloned copy after she lost it in a particularly vicious fight. The scar remains and the eye i slightly off-color when compared with the other. She still walks with grace and moves with the same easy motion as ever.

She's a bit warmer, these days, but not by much. But going from "ice water in her veins" to merely "frigid" means a lot when it comes to her.

[daemonomicon.livejournal.com]

++I would be happy to,++ he replied. ++Though perhaps after tea. These old bones need a bit of rest first.++

Over the past ten years, Miku had long since moved past the point where Cargn would feel she still needed lessons, but there was always something he could still teach her, given his centuries of experience with his own psychic abilities.

Besides, he tended to scare most people, so these moments of socialization were something for him to look forward to.

[hadabrother.livejournal.com]

Jake is still very much a brooding, quiet, intelligent young man - although now he's almost in his thirties. The wonderful powers of morphing mean he doesn't have any scars to show. Physical ones, anyway. Another five years of war have taken their psychological toll on him and despite the fact that he's mostly succeeded in his self-appointed penance - saving the ones he couldn't save before - he's still haunted by war and conflict.

With the war mostly over, he's gone back to solitude and quiet reflection, sitting on his own most of the time. He'll spend hours simply staring into space, lost in thought and his own memories. He rarely, if ever, morphs. He rarely talks to anyone outside of his small circle of friends.

It's like part of him never truly came back from some of the combat they'd been in.

[quick_strike]

Ten years? Ten years is nothing to an Eldar. You can say not much has changed about her. There's probably a few spots where scars remain unseen and her armor has been patched up a multitude of times but she still moves and reacts unimpeded.

The memory of what humans were doing to her Craftworld haven't been lost but she has moved past that, already having previous centuries dealing with humans in her past. She still rarely smiles at anyone who isn't the same race as her and her tongue is as sharp as ever.

[clockworkrepeat.livejournal.com]

Ten years is a long time.

Homura is world weary. She is tired of life; the endless resetting of timelines in her past and the endless combat she engages in on behalf of the ship, against the Ohm. It's tiring. The girl she fights for appearing intermittently, like flashes of lightning or wisps of smoke, never helped her weariness.

There was very little besides fighting for such a very long time. Fighting witches on board the ship and fighting the Ohm off board; it was nonstop. Just as they return from a mission the color of her soul gem darkens and with the other girls she had to fight again. It's a fate of combat she was willing to take on for Madoka's sake, but she never expected it to drag like this. She had hoped for a resolution while she was still in her teens.

It came, but not how she expected. It came, but with time.

Waiting, and waiting, and waiting. Five years passes in the blink of an eye, and so it's been five years since she saw Madoka's face last. Homura has given up on ever seeing her again. All things came to an end eventually, and the same can be said of Homura's hope.

In these ten years, her personality has darkened in places and softened in others. Homura is coarse and sarcastic, far more blunt than she ever was as a girl. She allows very few people to see her inner, more gentle self and Mami remains the only one who knows what she's done for Madoka.

Recovery might have been possible had she been dumped somewhere with the girl she loved most, somewhere calm and peaceful, but in a place full of strife, of stress... It did nothing but make things worse for Homura.

But while Homura waits for the end, there are things that give her joy.

They are calm moments in the morning, in the city of Stacy's belly; they are times like now, spent with Mami in silence and warmth, their hands entwined and their bodies close. She cares about this woman, even if her love for Madoka is greater. Sitting up, she tucks her hair behind her own ears and smiles down at Mami. It's all one length now, and her hair dips just below her knees. She usually keeps it in a low ponytail, but it's loose right now.

"Wake up," she murmurs. "It's morning."

[letmelive]

Leon not being as busy was something that Claire actually had to get used to, because she'd grown so accustomed to barging into his office after it had been too long since she'd last seen him and dragging him off.

It was nice having him around more, though. Especially considering what a handful their children were, naturally.

In fact it was relatively normal for her to come to him with a squirming toddler in her arms, looking a little harassed.

"Leon, can you take your monster child for two seconds?" She doesn't wait for him to answer, passing the little boy off to her father and giving him a slightly strained smile. "We have a new game, it's called pull Mommy's hair until the hair tie falls out because someone thinks it's funny." Obviously that someone is not Claire, as she tries to get her hair back into control.

[magicgunworks.livejournal.com]

The war has made Mami quite the light sleeper. When things started nearing their end, when they were alerted at all hours of the day (or whatever passed for day on the ship), she was pulled from sleep frequently on emergency deploys. Even after it ended, she couldn't go back to a normal sleep schedule; the long stretches of peace, interrupted only by the released witches, made her restless, and it still effected her sleep to this day.

But just because it was easy to wake her up doesn't mean she liked it. She rolled over, burying her face in her pillow. "And it was a late night, so please give me a few more minutes..."

Apparently, Stacy didn't feel like cutting them a break whenever she released a witch. Even though they weren't that tough, she seemed to enjoy releasing them at the worst times. Like right in the dead of night.

[bonnypiperlad]

Speaking of cooking, here's Jamie now. Hope you like haggis. While he's still not the most gifted engineer the ship has, ten years has been a long time to learn, and he's managed to get enough training that he was able to build them a tiny, but functional cook-stove that's been designed to work with a minimum of resources.

He makes his way into the kitchen quietly, sneaking up behind Victoria where she's working and slipping his arms around her waist before giving her a kiss on her cheek. "Mm. Something smells good. What are ye making?"

[thewunderkind]

As a figure walked in, the sheep servants pretty much either shrank away or moved out of her way. Whatever leash Ruffnut had on them, they happened to be mortified once Lash was involved. Had one or two disappeared a while ago for her experiments? Probably.

"I swear if you keep drinking and eating and not doing much you'll end up with a pretty hefty gut!" Because teasing never got old even if she did.