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fakecrfan · 3 years

Note

Since you very nicely offered to write me a fic:

Your prompt is: A story about a background character or characters dealing with life after the TMA apocalypse.

It can be set in the OG TMA universe in the post-post-apocalypse, or it can also be set in a different universe that was affected by the events of MAG 200.

Both OCs and characters established in-show are allowed.

This one aligned so well with my interests that I am actually tempted to open my inbox, briefly, in case anyone else has questions like “what is X bavjground character doing after the apocalypse?” so I can make a series out of it and expand on my post-post-apocalypse headcanons.

For now, you can read your fic here, on over here on AO3

---

Sarah doesn't know where she is.

England, she has to still be in England, she thinks. But it's not an England she recognizes. Not the cobblestone streets of London, and not the moors she used to visit on her vacations. The ground is barren, as though all blades of grass but a few have shriveled up and died. There are no trees, houses, or landmarks for miles--just scorched remnants of where they might have been before.

For a moment, the emptiness of it all is a relief after the hotel. But everything is the same on all sides, and she doesn't know where she is or where to go. She's starting to get hungry, too. She never got hungry in the hotel, nightmarish as it was.

She has to sit down for a moment, take a few deep breaths, and think.

Get food. Find shelter. Survive.

Find Alex.

(God, why had she left her child in a hotel room? Little twelve year old Alex who was still afraid to sleep without a night light. He'd begged her to stay, she should have--)

With that in mind she gets up. Doesn't know what direction to walk in, so she doesn't concern herself with trying to pick one. There's nothing to do but walk, keep her eyes open, and hope.

So she hopes.

---

None of our old maps match the landscape, anymore.

The world these days it's... not like in the before times, as I suppose we're calling it. Despite our hopes, ending the apocalypse wasn’t like everyone waking up from a nightmare. The land is...

It's scrambled, I guess. There are patches of the world that--well. They're not the same, but still have infrastructure intact. Electricity, running water, air conditioning. No scorched earth or rubble in these areas. Just a bunch of traumatized people living in an intact town, or city.

When I talk to them, they tell me it's not the city they remember, though. Everything has been switched around, houses and stores not where they remember them. Their neighbors aren't the neighbors their remember.

Those are the lucky ones. And then there's, well... the outside.

Some places have rubble everywhere, jagged steel ripped apart and waiting for someone to cut themselves on it. Some are frozen over, still waiting for the ice they were frozen over with in the apocalypse to melt. Some are scorched to dust. No phones out there, or anything that lets you connect back with home base.

I'm going out there. We need to map it out. We need to figure out our new world, understand it--and we need to get as many people out of the wastes as possible.

Melanie, Georgie--I’ll see you soon.

---

Sarah does find water. That's something. She's hungry still, so hungry, but she knows that the water is more important.

She wonders if she should stay there. She doesn't know if there will be more watering holes in the future, after all, and she has no way to carry it with her. She decides to keep moving on, and hope for the best.

She starts to see blades of grass poking up, along with some sort of metal crap strewn about the landscape. She looks at them a moment--it seems to be bits of an old carousel? Eventually, a giant sit in their shade, for a while. There she takes a moment to look at the horizon, and goes cold.

She recognizes the tower on the horizon.

A scaffolded tower with two legs beneath it. A sight she'd last seen on a postcard from her brother. The Eiffel Tower.

Is she in Paris? No, that can't be it. It's just the tower out here in the wastes. There are none of the buildings that would normally surround it. It's almost as though its been ripped out of the city and transported here.

Does Paris even exist anymore? Does London?

If she even finds Alex, will there be a home for them to go back to?

---

I have a theory, Melanie. I think lots of people got transported to different places in the world based on what fear they belonged to. Like, a bunch of lonely people were put in the same place, a bunch of claustrophobic people were put in the same place, and so on. All away from the people they knew.

I’m in one of the suburban safe areas now. No one here knows each other. I talked to them all, and all of them remember living in the same house before, but none of them recognized the houses near them or the people in them. When I went from house to house, everyone had a different native language. I talked to a German guy and a French guy who spoke English, but a lot of them… couldn’t talk to me at all.

There was a woman who--she saw me and she lit up. She grabbed me and started talking a mile a minute in Arabic, I think. But I couldn’t understand her, and she--when I tried to talk back to her in English, her face just. Fell. And then she started to cry.

My dad refused to speak it at home, you know. He-- Actually, never mind. It’s not important.

She ended up shoving me away.

---

Sarah makes it to the ruins of a forest.

There’s nothing but stumps left of it, along with litter everywhere. She finds water again, filthy brackish water, and she drinks it anyway because she’s so thirsty. She starts sifting through all of the garbage strewn about for something edible. She finds stale bread crusts crawling with ant and eats them anyway.

She finds a can of beans, and almost cries. When she can’t find a can opener, she screams instead.

---

The death count has gotten to me, honestly.

I’ve found dead bodies even in the towns and cities. Some looked like heart attacks. Some suicides. People who woke up but couldn’t bear the agony they’d just gone through. That’s still not… the worst of it.

I passed a whole field of dead bodies today.

Hundreds of people, I think, all of them lying dead in the soil. But there were... trails. They had been walking, before they collapsed. All walking in the same direction, to where you can still see London on the horizon.

They were alive. They were trying to get help. And they just... starved, it looks like. The walk was just too long.

How many people are going to die from it all, Melanie? How many already have, out where we can't see them?

I left as many jugs of clean water and rations along the roads as I could. I put up signs pointing to London, saying how many miles out they were, where I had stashed food. I gave them your number, so they know who to call to get to the shelter.

I hope it means the next group that passes by won't die.

I hope there is a next group.

---

Sarah can see what looks like a city in the distance before she collapses.

She tries to get up, but can’t. She’s been walking for days now, it feels like, only sporadically drinking and almost never eating. There just isn’t enough energy left in her to stand.

She tries to think about little Alex again, running around in his Batman cape, hoping some kind of love or maternal instinct will kick in and give her the last burst of adrenaline she needs to get up. It doesn’t work. Maybe she doesn’t love her own son anymore, really. Maybe it’s just been fear and guilt driving her this far, and that source has already been wrung dry.

She manages to crawl a few feet, before she can’t even do that. With nothing else left to do, she starts to cry out. “Help! Water, please!”

She doesn’t think anyone will hear, or show up. But against all odds, in her dimming vision she sees a figure come into view. Backpacked, clutching a water bottle.

“Help,” she croaks out again.

The figure gets closer, and she starts to be able to make out the details of his face. He’s her age, or older, with worry lines carved into his forehead and wide eyes. His nose looks eerily like her brother’s nose, and the shape of his jaw reminds her of her old boyfriend, the one who left her with--

She blinks. Maybe she’s hallucinating, or maybe she’s somehow run into a long lost cousin. But then, the man’s eye’s widen and his mouth opens.

“Mum?”

No, no it can’t…

“A-alex?”

No, Alex was a little round cheeked boy. This is a thirty year old man, at least, taller than her. It hasn’t been that long. It can’t be, it’s not--

“Mum?” He’s doing a frown that looks so, so familiar. This has to be a dream. “Mum, it’s--no.”

He sniffles. He steps forward, and steps back. He paces, uncertain.

“No, no,” she hears him mutter. “It’s all fake, all fake. It’s a trap. That’s what they want, the monsters and the face stealers. No one is real. Don’t give them what they want--’’

“Please.” she begs.

But she hears him walk away, sniffling, and shortly thereafter everything goes dark.

---

I have a confession to make, Melanie. I was going to side with Jon, back then. I could have lived with keeping everyone here suffering to prevent more of it. But when he said he was going to kill the whole world, not just leave it--that’s what made me snap.

I couldn’t let the whole world die. Genocide of the entire human species? Anything but that. Surely passing along the suffering would be better, as long as it didn’t lead to the extinction of whole worlds. But…

I keep finding more dead bodies.

I went back to that suburb I talked about, to restock on all my food. It was a lonely domain before, I think. I’d thought everyone there would be fine, you know. They didn’t have any deadly sicknesses, or twisted flesh injuries. They had food and water and shelter. But when I went back… more of them had died.

Lots of suicides. Some of them snapped, and started to self injure.

The German guy I talked to had started to starve. He had a pantry full of food and he just wouldn’t eat it. I tried to get him to eat, to move in with someone else, but he said talking to people “made him sick.”

I gave up, and left. I had to. There were too many people, and too much to do, so I left him. He’s probably dead now, or going to die soon. Because he can’t find the will to live, and I don’t know how to help someone with that.

The Lonely is probably one of the least directly harmful entities, right? This domain was just a suburb, probably the most comfortable you could get during the apocalypse. And yet the victims are still all dying.

How much worse is it in places without food and water? In the corruption domains that still probably have deadly diseases spreading? In war zones, in flesh factories?

I think about that nursing home we found. All of the patients who'd died of heart attacks a few minutes after they'd woken up. The ones left alive screaming for help where no one could hear them, for days after the fact. All of the ones that died in their beds before we found them.

I think about that field of bodies I found the other day. I think about the ruins of that Circus I found, people refusing to talk to me or each other--refusing to help because they didn’t believe it was over and thought everyone else was a mannequin.

I think… I think it doesn’t matter that we saved the world. If people can’t find the will to live, ro rebuild, to trust and help each other again… I think we’re going through a mass extinction event anyway.

---

Sarah’s in a car, she thinks. Not a moving one. She’s propped up against a seat,There’s something plastic pressed to her lips.

“Come on,” says a woman’s deep, level voice. “Come on. I got you. We’re getting to London. All you have to do is drink.”

Sarah opens her eyes. She sees a dark-skinned woman trying to coax her to drink, holding up a water bottle.

“Just a sip,” the woman says. “Just enough to make it.”

Sarah closes her eyes, and takes a long moment to consider whether she wants to.

#my writing #tma fic #post post apocalypse #cw: suicide mention #cw: familial separation #cw: mass death #Basira Hussain

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flyover-babbleon · 3 years

Text

TMA AU

Just a funky little weird horror AU for me, my friends, and our OCs.

Let's start with the setting. The Magnus Institute isn't the only institution for studying the supernatural and strange. So let's say it has some affiliates, and this one is in America. LA or New York or something.

Let's call it the Chandra Foundation.

And let's start by talking about the Archival Assistants.

(The Archivist herself is an NPC, though some of the assistants may or may not have been friends with her for years. They call her Lady.)

Lady is a lucky one. She gets five whole assistants. Tiernan, Tobias, and Sera to start with; Máire and Charlie come in later.

I don't know the details yet, but BOY HOWDY do they Go Through It.

It's a horror-tragedy setting filled with Dread Powers that feed on fear. Our intrepid crew actively investigates these Dread Powers. It's amazing that they last as long as they do without any casualties.

At first, anyway.

They start to get picked off, one by one. They don't die, no that would be too easy. They just get tempted and taken in by the Entities.

(There are Fourteen, but also only One. It is ancient, eldritch, and it is Fear.)

(They can reach into our world and act on their own, but they sometimes they call out to human minds, and make those humans their servants. Their Avatars.)

Sera

I'm actually drawing a big huge blank on her?

I would base Fear Avatar!Sera on VesVes, but if I read any of her threads while SF was still around, then I don't remember them.

What is her MO? How did she choose to terrorize her former friends? Deception? Manipulation? Just taking all their shit and burning it?

So let's skip her and come back later.

Máire

They don't see it coming. They don't see her staring out into empty space. They don't notice her going off to stand on tops of tall buildings or on the ends of long, lonely piers, more and more and more.

They don't notice until the group is out on the open ocean for an investigation.

She laughs, free and bright and terrible as she steps off the boat and into the water.

And then she is gone and the sea is wide and empty.

And they don't find shore for days.

(They could have sworn they were only a few miles out.)

Máire becomes an avatar of The Vast - fear of wide open spaces, fear of falling, fear of being tiny and insignificant in a great vast universe. Often manifests as a wide open sky or a vast sea -- both with no ground in sight. Vertigo is also a big thing with them. Of course it is, you are falling falling falling and everything is too big. Sometimes a great beast is seen; you are smaller than the pupil of its eye.

Charlie

She as well, could be an avatar of the Vast. Charlie and Máire would love the freedom of it, the openness of it.

Perhaps, in true Uranus and Neptune fashion, they go together. Máire disappears into the sea and Charlie disappears into the sky.

It'd be a hard and heartbreaking blow, two in one shot.

But at least they're together, falling or floating forever and sending unsuspecting mortals to do the same.

Tobias

I actually have two options for him. One is more realistic (though of course still fun and horrifying). The other is just pure self-indulgence. For the sake of this storyline, I'll talk about the former, though I'll probably talk about the latter in another post.

So it's down to just Tiernan and Tobias. Sera, Charlie, and Máire are gone. Lady has become even more isolated and withdrawn. And the Foundation director just doesn't seem to care.

So Tobias

Just

Snaps

(He had been angry lately, so mind-numbingly angry. It was only a matter of time.)

Anyway, trying to stab your boss's boss to death is very much a surefire way to get fired. And he does not leave quietly, still raging as he is escorted out.

Tobias becomes an avatar of The Slaughter - fear of pure violence and fear of war. You don't know when the violence is coming, or how. If it'll be soon or later, if it'll be wild and frenzied or cold and calm. (You don't know when you will snap.) Sometimes manifests as music.

Toby is angry all the time, but sometimes when he's calmer, he'll hum to himself... and send everyone around who hears into a violent frenzy.

Tiernan

So that leaves Tiernan alone. By now he's likely feeling pretty disillusioned with the Chandra Foundation and their supposed mission.

But there are still so many monsters, and his friends might have all left, but they're still out there. And they're spreading terror with the rest.

While he wasn't the Archivist herself, he was still sort of the Lead Assistant. I'm sure he felt a bit of responsibility for the others.

And by now? He's feeling almost as angry at the situation as Tobias was. And even more desperate.

So he hands in his resignation letter, and the Hunt begins.

Tiernan becomes an avatar of The Hunt - feeds on fear of being hunted, fear of becoming prey. Its avatars often become monster hunters, hunting down servants of the other Dread Powers. But you know what they say about those who hunt monsters.

Out of all of the Powers mentioned so far, avatars of the Hunt are the most likely to experience more physical changes. They tend to get a bit... bestial. Yeah, I'm talking something vaguely werewolfy. They are the predators now.

Tiernan probably doesn't even realize that he has become an avatar of anything, at first. The Hunt keeps his mind focused on the pursuit, and not on the way his teeth grow sharp and his senses grow keen.

The others are easy to track. The girls and Charlie aren't exactly subtle. And as for Tobias...

Tobias is waiting for Tiernan when he leaves the Foundation for the last time. Despite everything, Tobias thinks they're still friends.

And maybe they are.

So they could continue this thing together. They could hunt down their old friends. They could bring the violence to the monsters.

(Though it should be mentioned that any argument the two of them have is 100% more likely to turn violent. They'd both survive, but still, yikes.)

So off they go, becoming the very thing they used to investigate and record, and spreading some terror of their own.

Maybe Sera, Máire, and Charlie will join them, when they find them.

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