redmarsshit | redshift: tdm #1.

redshift: tdm #1.

Redshift: Welcome to the v͖͕̺̲̘̱̜͎o̴̦̣̠̦̘̹͞i̯̖d̛̪̬͈̱̦̝͍̕.

Click here to read what characters will experience when arriving in Anchor.

a. virtual reality.

You’ve been in too long and you know it. You’ve been in too long and you know it. You’ve been in too long--

The day is bright, the air is clear, and Anchor is in the middle of a festival.

"Isn’t this wonderful?" A passerby beams at you, and you have to admit, it is. You're not tired or in pain. Your clothes are clean and you feel refreshed, maybe for the first time in a long time.

In the plaza at the bottom of the city, spilling over into the park it surrounds, are people celebrating the new arrivals. Fireworks crackle to life above the park’s trees, sending little thunderclaps of sound echoing upward along with the cheerful music being played by a band on the plaza.

On the upper levels, in the entertainment district, the shops and restaurants are all operating in full swing, offering free samples, free drinks, and free merchandise. There are coupons galore being handed out, everything from a discounted 45-minute session at one of Anchor's three spas to a solo hour in the VR environmental simulation chamber.

The agricultural centers have contests for the biggest and best quality plants, baked goods, wines, and animals. On every level there are exhibitions of that district's specialties.

"Isn’t this wonderful?" A passerby beams at you, and you stop a moment to watch them pass. You could swear you've seen them somewhere before.

Trying to talk to the people around you only seems to get limited, cheerful responses. If you watch, they don't go far, walking back and forth to the same points along the breezeway or turning into businesses and out of sight before they walk by you again with a friendly greeting and some bit of rote dialog. The songs start to repeat. The food and drinks all taste the same. The fireworks never stop.

By the time you've noticed all of this, you've noticed something else, too. There are others like you here. People, god let them be real. They stick out once you look for them, because like you, they’re the only ones not constantly smiling.

b. lockdown.

You've finally escaped VR hell, and maybe you’re exploring the agricultural levels of the colony. Maybe you're preparing to explore the surface, or you're trying to program different songs into the music bots in one of the empty restaurants, or you're poking around one of the nonfunctional spas. Wherever you are and whatever you’re doing, it’s interrupted.

The lights blink out, then turn on again, the bright red emergency bulbs washing everything with eerie light as the bulkhead doors come slamming down all across the colony. Something or someone has triggered the lockdown procedure. Wherever you were exploring, you're now sealed in. For an unknown length of time. With whoever or whatever else is in there with you. Welcome to Anchor.

c. the red shift.

You've had it, or you just want to know what's out there. Either way, you're geared up (or not) and ready to get the hell out of Anchor. Unfortunately, the planet is far less hospitable than the abandoned colony behind you. In Anchor there are systems in place to keep out the dust, the toxins, and the radiation. Out here there's nothing but rough terrain and red-orange sand.

A drive in any direction will reveal nothing but mounds of red dirt and crumbling hills - and the occasional broken down vehicles and cracked helmets.

On the way back, you get your first taste of what the Anchored call the red shift.

Named for the colors that envelope individuals caught in the phenomenon, it surges up around you like a rising tide.

The world becomes distorted, warped, impossible to navigate. Hallucinations overpower you, both visual and auditory. Disorientation follows. We hope you went out in protective gear after all, because we'd hate to see you cooked alive by radiation so soon after arrival.

Even those wearing full protective gear aren't safe, however. The red shifts carry pieces of other universes, places and objects familiar or strange. Monsters you thought you'd never see again, or never wanted to see in the first place. If you're lucky, these bits of other places will disappear before they can hurt you (one way or another). If you're not, they might just stick around.

d. home away from home.

You've had a long, miserable day. Time to unwind at one of the few functioning entertainment facilities — the creatively named "Rusty Chain" bar. Its (unfriendly) robot bartender can only make you a tequila sunrise, and might get testy if you climb behind the bar, but it's worth getting a few synthesized Maraschino cherries thrown at you to try some of the other synthetic booze back there. There's a lot of it. Maybe you want to play bartender yourself for a while. Why not?

Someone else's favorite mediocre songs from another universe play from the broken music bots on repeat. There's a pool table with holographic balls that flash different colors after being hit by a laser-tipped cue, and a bizarre, violent interpretation of foosball that's closer to foos-battle. Each player controls their team via old-style arcade controls, attacking and defending each other. The goal is to get a holographic bomb into the other players base.

There are also darts. Which are just regular darts. Sometimes you don’t mess with tradition.

Navigation.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

! | ARRIVAL

[ Arriving at the Anchor is, undoubtedly, a jarring and upsetting experience for just about anyone. But as he hastily dresses after decontamination, Ben feels entitled to a special level of disorientation. For one thing, this is the first time that's ever happened to him - not the norm based on the sample size of the four other guys in the showers, all exchanging information about the dimensions and space stations and colonies they'd been warped and portaled and shifted to before this one.

For another thing, none of them seemed particularly surprised to be alive, in a body with a beating heart, which is honestly what's tripping up Ben more than any of the rest of it, considering he's been dead for the last thirteen years.

He hadn't participated in the conversations, much. Just gave his name, and a few monosyllabic answers to any inquiries sent his way. They'd quickly stopped asking, though a few darted concerned (and maybe even wary) looks his way now and then. Ben was so beyond caring what impression he must be giving, though. Because he was feeling things for the first time in a decade and a half and he'd forgotten how overwhelming it was to be in a body. To live.

Which explains why, once he is out of the arrival zone, Ben doesn't even try to come up with a plan or do a whole lot to process this new place and the people in it. He just wanders from level to level, making his way downward, feeling strangely calm and numb. The only real sign that he's not just out for a pleasant stroll is the way he keeps touching everything, as if he's never had hands before and he's skeptical they'll still be there from moment to moment. ]

B | LOCKDOWN

[ It's been a week since Ben was brought here; enough time for him to adjust, somewhat, to the fact that he's alive again, and start to be curious about this vast, abandoned place. He is doing a circuit of the entire Anchor, a little pad of paper in hand, making note of which doors open and which don't, and the general state of the place. He's in a small antechamber just off the bio-lab; a lounge, judging from the hangers with coats and bags, the coffee pot, and the whiteboard full of passive-aggressive notes and reminders.

An innocuous enough room, until the lights flicker, shutting off and coming on again in a horror-movie red. When the bulkhead slams shut, Ben spins around, heart in his throat. He'd been told stories about this place - including lockdowns - but this is the first one he's experienced. His surprise shifts to alarm when he remembers, with a faint twinge of nausea, that he's actually is alive again; that's mostly been a cause for joy in this last week, but there are drawbacks. Like the fact that things can hurt him again.

Ben swallows back the bitter taste of sudden terror and mutters: ]

Shit.

D | HOME AWAY FROM HOME

[ Ben has, indeed, had a long, miserable day.

He screwed up his courage that morning finally to go outside, to the surface. There was something he's been meaning to do, dreading to do, that he couldn't do in this place. He didn't wander far; just far enough away from the Anchor that he was relatively sure that if anything went wrong, the only one he would be endangering was himself. And then he confirmed what he had expected since he first arrived; not only is he alive again, but his powers are intact. Standing on the blasted surface of the planet, he braced himself, opened that portal in his stomach, and the things that lived on the other side of it had risen up, reached out of him, vicious and mindless and writhing. He'd forced them back, but now he knows he hadn't been imagining it, feeling them shifting underneath his skin. All the time he'd been dead, he had forgotten what that whole process felt like.

So, there's that.

And now he's settled down to do a little bit of unhealthy coping, in the form of getting completely wasted. Or, at least, that is the plan. But once he's in the bar, with a tequila sunrise, he only sips it, pulling faces at the taste. It is disgusting, and it's not making him feel any less crappy. He'd known all along this wouldn't solve anything, but he'd hoped he could at least be happy for a little while. Klaus at least seemed happy when he was out of his mind on some substance or another. Even once he forces himself to drink enough of the stuff that his head is a little buzzy, Ben just feels more morose than ever. Which is just really unfair.

All in all he's in a pretty lousy mood, but maybe something or someone will come along to turn that around... ]

[Here's the thing about not seeing your brother for forty-five years, and then as an adult only seeing him alternately as a poorly rendered statue or a monstrous ghost for five seconds: you don't recognize him when he's flesh and blood right in front of you.

And that's the tragedy of it. Five has no context for encountering Ben in the middle of an abandoned lounge, as he wanders in searching for coffee. He just sees another stranger, and thus thinks very little of Ben's reaction when the bulkhead closes. He just shrugs with incongruous calm, and moves right to investigating the kitchenette, gathering what supplies look relevant.]

Don't worry too much. There's nothing out there, and with the size of this place, it'll be a while before we suffocate.

[Cheerful.]

[ Ben, meanwhile, recognizes Five at once; the brief surge of apprehension he felt when he heard approaching footsteps vanishes and he relaxes. Whatever bullshit might be going on, no matter how bad it might be, there are two of them here now. Much better odds. Hadn't that been drilled into their heads over and over again, back in the Academy days? Move in pairs, watch each other's backs?

So he breathes a brief, obviously relieved sigh, watching as Five starts opening cupboards and taking things from them. It's good, to see another one of his siblings in this place. But after a moment, Five's complete nonreaction to his presence strikes Ben as odd. Even for Five. He might underreact to some wild shit, but this seems less like nonchalance and more like obliviousness.

A second later, he gets it, and folds his arms over his chest, a little offended. ]

Dude, do you seriously not recognize me?

[ Which is maybe a little unfair. From Ben's point of view, he'd seen Five running around and taking out the Commission's armed goons only a week ago - and besides, Five looks exactly the same as he did all those years ago when he left. Ben doesn't look like the sixteen year old he was when he had died, and Five had never gotten the chance to see him at that age anyway.

But is any of that going to stop him from teasing his brother about it? Hell no.

(And besides, giving Five a hard time is an awful lot easier than bursting into tears and hugging him or anything melodramatic like that...) ]

[Five looks at him blankly for a moment, because that is... a strange thing for someone he's just met to say.

Then it's like something slides into place and he freezes, the blood draining from his face.

The other thing about Ben being the dead one is that Five had come to terms with the fact that he couldn't be saved years ago. It had taken him much longer than he'd like to admit, having always prided himself on rationality, but even he's only human, apparently. And Five had extrapolated a multitude of scenarios before he'd had to simply accept it as impossible--the fact is, manipulating the timestream is more art than science, and if you wanted to keep your butterfly effect to a minimum, you had to land as close to the event that you wanted to change as possible. Ben had simply died too long before the apocalypse to risk.

It fucking sucked. But life wasn't fair most of the time.

So Five had never expected to see Ben again. Ben had died, irreparably, when Five was thirteen and Five had never seen the body. Five had never gotten to see Ben at this age, either in his imaginings or his hallucinations. Ben had become an abstract sense of loss, gone from Five's life for even longer than he'd been from the others'.

Five has absolutely no idea how to articulate any of this to the man in front of him.

So he doesn't. He smooths the shock from his face and closes his mouth, lounging against the counter like his brothers come back from the dead every day.

Despite it, his voice sounds shaky and foreign even to him.]

Hope the old man didn't pay too much for that statue. Terrible likeness.

Finally, somebody says it!

[ Ben is going to do Five the solid of pretending he didn't see how hard that little revelation just hit him. It's the only polite thing to do. They'd always been alike in this way, the two of them. All about retreating, concealing, putting on a mask of one kind or another. It might've been many years since they last spoke, but he knows that Five needs to pretend this is no big deal, and so he lets him.

But he uncrosses his arms, and his voice is just a little softer as he explains: ]

Well, anyway, no need to explain the whole teenage old man situation. I was around pretty much any time you ran into Klaus since you came back, just, y'know, you couldn't see me. So there's no need to catch me up to speed.

[ And that's another thing they have in common, now - Five lived nearly 60 years but his body looks 13, Ben only lived 16 years, but his body looks 30. Neither of them quite fit.

The red emergency lighting is adding another layer of the surreal to this whole encounter, and Ben startles slightly when there's a distant crash - maybe someone trying to tamper with a bulkhead a few rooms away, maybe something more sinister, who can say? ]

We're not seriously gonna suffocate, are we? 'Cause it would suck to die again so soon.

[ That thought, of how fragile they both are, of how soon this rare window of opportunity might slam shut once again, impels Ben forward. He had never been as easy with touch or as demonstrative as Klaus or Allison or even Diego, but the two of them are together again, and Five can see him and hear him and feel him, and there's no way Ben is not going to seize this moment.

Even though he perfectly understands the situation, intellectually, it feels strange when he steps forward and throws his arms around his brother, that Five is so small. Maybe it isn't that weird; maybe Ben has just become even more unaccustomed to this. But he holds onto Five tightly, his throat suddenly feeling funny. His words come out rough and strained when he speaks next. ]

I know you probably don't wanna hear it, but I really missed you.

[A month and a half is, by no means, the longest that Klaus has gone without seeing Ben. Hell, Klaus has had ongoing benders way longer than that, spans of time where he never even came up for air, spans of time he doesn't even remember or keep track of. But this is definitely the longest he's ever gone sober without Ben. In fact, he usually can't get rid of Ben after he's even vaguely considered being sober. Ben hangs around him like an overgrown Jiminy Cricket, with that calm judgmental face and his arms crossed and his brows furrowed just a little.

So when he sees Ben wandering around a breezeway, his hand trailing along the cement wall next to him, with anything but a judgmental look on his face but one that's kind of blank and emotionless, like he's in shock, Klaus thinks he's imagining things.

Immediately, he breaks into a quick jog fueled by a lurch of relief in his chest and gut that he would never admit to without a shot of tequila or a full joint. Tacky beaded sandals he'd gotten from one of the shops in Hadriel slapping away on his feet, and catches up with his brother. By the time he reaches him, he's panting a little, his forehead is damp with sweat, and he doesn't even bother reaching out to grab at his shoulder because he's so used to Ben being intangible. It doesn't occur to him that Ben's fingertips aren't slipping right through the concrete.]

Oh my god Ben! Ben! Hey man, wait up, where the hell have you been?

[ He hears the slap of sandals as Klaus catches up to him, but it isn't until he speaks that Ben pays any attention. As soon as he hears his brother's voice, Ben turns, sees Klaus there, looking winded. He seems lucid and steady on his feet, but Ben doesn't actually know, can't actually feel how he is, or is not. Which is not a sense he'd really realized he had, until just this second, when it is no longer there.

Ben doesn't bother answering Klaus; he assumes, understandably, that Klaus had showed up here at precisely the same time that he did, directly from their botched attempt at time travel. Where he's been is not the important thing, right now. What's important is confirming that this is real.

Without preamble, Ben reaches out and grabs Klaus's wrist. His hand does not go through. He can feel warmth from Klaus's skin, the faint movement from his pulse. He sees that his fingers are indenting Klaus's flesh slightly; a few seconds late he realizes maybe he's holding on too tight and relaxes his grip. But there it is. The important information, conveyed in a single gesture.

This isn't like when he'd hit Klaus, when he'd managed to pull Diego out of harm's way. He'd been reaching across a great distance, then, in moments of panic and absolute need. And even in those moments, it hadn't felt like being alive.

There's more context he needs to give, and does so, without bothering with extraneous details. ]

At the decontamination, there were people talking to me. They could see me.

[Now that he's up closer and can see Ben's face more clearly, it's really easy to tell that there's something seriously wrong. Or at least off, because Klaus is used to that inscrutable Ben-face, the one with the slightly furrowed brows and contemplative mouth. Up close, he can see the blankness, the way Ben is just a little dead behind the eyes (haha) and his mouth is a little slack. Klaus' eyebrows draw together a little in the center, and he bites his lower lip as Ben looks at him for a second and then reaches out and grabs his wrist.

Klaus has felt contact with Ben before - Ben punched him in the face, Ben helped get Diego out of the rubble, Ben stepped into the real world and saved all their asses through Klaus somehow in that theatre. But this is completely different. Those times, Ben had felt like a solid, cold presence, like something foreign and non-human. It wasn't as bad as it would've been if the ghost touching him was anyone but Ben, but it still wasn't...comfortable or comforting or like, human.

But this is. Ben's fingers are warm and solid and Klaus isn't expending any energy to keep them that way. Ben's fingers are squeezing his wrist, and he's squeezing too hard, it hurts and Klaus can feel the small bones in his wrist shifting under the grip and oh fuck. He laughs, he can't help it, he just starts laughing softly even as Ben's fingers relax. Klaus just takes the opportunity to turn his hand and pull Ben's over closer to him, holding it in one hand and prodding at the center of his palm with the other, fingers gently poking at Ben's distinctly warm, solid, slightly soft, undeniably alive flesh.

When Ben speaks, his voice hushed and without the calm confidence he usually speaks with, Klaus' head jerks up and he makes eye contact.]

Seriously? Ben...Ben I think...

[Shifting, he slides his fingers down to Ben's wrist and presses his thumb against the spot where blood would pulse under the skin if Ben were alive. And it pulses. There's blood pumping, his heart is working, he's-]

Ben, you're alive.

[ For a while there, in the first year or so after he died, Ben had imagined what he would do if he was somehow brought back. It didn't seem impossible, yet. He could still talk to Klaus, and the impossible happened in their lives every day. They might come across a supervillain's lab with a resurrection machine, or Reginald would pull some new trick from his sleeve. He'd taken a while to realize that his father wasn't all-powerful, couldn't reverse death. He'd taken longer still, to accept that Reginald hadn't even tried.

All that was a long time ago; now, standing here, with Klaus feeling his pulse and looking at him in round-eyed wonder, Ben still can't accept it. Part of his brain recognizes what's happening to him - that he's shocked, disbelieving, a kind of reverse of the denial people experienced at the sudden loss of a loved one. But it doesn't feel real. Not remotely. ]

How...?

[ He puts his free hand up on Klaus's shoulder, partly to confirm (again) that he really is solid, and partly because his knees have gone unsteady without his permission. His mouth is so dry, which is not normal - not that he can really remember what normal felt like just yet.

Ben is too far gone to notice or worry about the rasp coming into his voice, the tense emotion even as he tries to reason his way through this, figure it out. Once he understands it, he thinks, he'll be okay. ]

Is it, um, a simulated reality? Or some kind of illusion?

[ Because it can't be that this is happening. He can't let himself think even for a second that he is actually alive, if that's just going to get taken away again. ]

[Klaus barely remembers those early days - when he'd first seen Ben after he died, it was while he was sobering up from a weeks-long bender following his death. Desperate to not see Ben the way the other ghosts had looked, so angry and hurt and injured and screaming and shouting, he'd just tried to block the world out as much as possible. Losing Five and Ben had been too much, he hadn't been able to hold it together, had just kept throwing himself deeper and deeper into oblivion until there were no pills or pot or powders or needles left to lose himself in.

And then he'd tried to get clean, when Ben hadn't shown up looking like a horrorshow. That hadn't lasted long.

So now, he's feeling more than a little numb, more than a little overwhelmed, and the feeling of it is so unexpected, unprecedented (the Hargreeves kids don't usually get nice things, people just don't come back from the dead, and yet here he is with two lost siblings that both returned) that he can't quite tell if it's a good feeling or a bad one. He just knows his heart is pounding and he keeps forgetting to breathe as he feels that pulse under his thumb and then Ben's hand coming to his shoulder, hanging onto him for balance while he talks in a raspy emotional voice.]

I don't think so. There...there was a weird simulated reality thing earlier...I was there, but it wasn't like this, I'm out of it, so...

[He only realizes when he hears how choppy and broken up his voice is that he has tears running down his face, and then he's lifting both hands, wrapping them firmly around Ben and pulling him in close, pressing his face into Ben's shoulder.]

Ben...Ben Ben Ben, I missed you, man.

ben hargreeves | the umbrella academy | direct from canon

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sorry for the delay!

👻 arrival.

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sorry for the delay!

Arrival~

BROTHER

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Lockdown

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