[This is not the Erik anyone of this Barge has come to know. Something has shattered in him. He's graduated. The camera floats in front of him, held in the air by his mutation: the angle makes the cause of this change obvious. To one side, Charles' body lays, broken, bleeding; on the other lies Ben's, impaled by a dozen make shift spears. The area around them has been torn up by Erik's ripping panels and light fixtures and anything not metaphorically nailed down from their proper places.]

Charles is dead.

[There is weight in his voice, a heaviness laying on his head, but it doesn't break. He stays steady, out of necessity. Erik is not a defeatist: he is not giving up. He is making a choice.]

So is Ben.

[The camera floats ahead, and behind him, Charles' body rises in his wake, following. Ben is left in a pool of his own blood, abandoned. Erik heads for the stairs, brow furrowed - silent, but not done with the broadcast, not yet.

Along the way, bits of metal come to him, hovering on the peripheries.]

You're all so intent on killing each other. That's what it takes to graduate. [He's heading up, taking the stairs two at a time.] To have a second chance at life. All you have to do is destroy everything you hold dear.

[His throat tightens, compromising his calmness: everyone on board will feel the ship ripple just slightly.]

So be it, then. But I've had enough of this cock fighting.

[More metal is coming to him, faster, melding together around him.]

No more murder. No more pointless infighting. You're done.

[Ahead of him, the door to the deck slams open as he steps through; the angle changes, and he stops walking, but his forward momentum hasn't halted. He's floating. The bits of metal close behind and above him, forming a dome as he floats above the nightmare Arthas has made of the deck. It's open enough for him to be seen, but it's closing fast.

Another tremor runs through the Barge.]

When that door opens, there will be a new Admiral. And it's not going to be someone who doles out death like handshakes. We've all endured enough.

[He remembers Cuba, and he remembers the choices he made there. He knows the choices he's made here, and the one he's making now.] This will never happen again.

[The sphere closes, perfectly enclosed, and hangs above the deck. It will stay there, guarding or waiting, until the door opens.]

( spam for Charles )

( Content warning for Holocaust discussion and imagery. )

[Spam for Megamind]

[He needs to clear his head, desperately. The post helped, but the anger is still there, will always be there, he thinks, because he hadn't told everything. He hadn't said a word about Shaw, about the experiments. He hadn't mentioned the Vanquish, though it might have driven the point home; those were things he didn't want to face, publicly. Not yet. So he's walking, avoiding people and eye contact, though his posture is probably enough to put most off.

But he sees a flash of blue as he passed the lab, and Erik's gait slows and pauses for a breath. Megamind, who he wanted little than to punch yesterday. He doesn't know what it is that turns him around, that makes him lengthen his stride.]

Stop.

[When the video clicks on, Erik stares into the camera for a silent second, his posture relaxed, his expression thoughtful. The helmet still sits on the edge of his desk, just out of site; he hasn't been wearing it. His fingers tap idly on the pages of an open book, da da da da, over and over until they go still, and he sits a little straighter.]

The Admiral enjoys putting us through hell. That much is obvious to anyone who has been here more than a month. Keep your arguments - if he doesn't enjoy it, it at least happens often. We have no control of it, only the certainty that when it ends, we will be back here to pick up the pieces. Sometimes we don't even have that, when our identities are robbed.

[His fingers drum against the pages again, and he glances down, eyes moving left to right, reading silently. After a moment, he lifts the book, showing the title: The Thirtieth Year, by Ingeborg Bachmann.]

This was published only a few years ago, in 1961. Ms. Bachmann grew up in Austria, during the war.

[His mouth pinches at the corners, painfully aware just how much everyone can discern of his childhood, thanks to the regression flood. But he goes on anyway.]

Despite that, there is a distinctly joyful tone in her writing. She philosophizes about language in many of these stories, about the invention of a pure language unfettered by desire, or imagination, or will. A language of truth. [Da da da da go his fingers, and he cups his jaw in his free hand, brows creased in thought.]

I traveled a great deal after escaping Germany. [After escaping Auschwitz; he doesn't say that his travel was, in fact, hunting.] I saw the rubble of cities, bombed out homes and destroyed blocks, as she no doubt did. And there is a choice, when you see those things. [He stops tapping, drops his hand from his jaw.] There can be anger, for those that cause such destruction, rage on behalf of the lives that were ruined, buried beneath stone. Or, there can be hope. Frail, but brave, for though there are ruined towns and millions of bodies to account for, you are still drawing breath.

[He falls silent again; Bachmann experienced the latter, he felt the former. And it's strange to say that their are choices when really he felt like he had none. There is still only one path - but sometimes, maybe, paths can brush before they part again.]

The title story is predictable: a man loses his lust for life, and only discovers it after a brush with death, while trapped in traction in a hospital, amongst the invalided and infirm. It isn't so different here, I think. We are trapped, at the mercy of our invasive and neglectful doctor, left to piece ourselves together after each great accident.

[He lifts the book again, flipping a page and searching for a passage.] And we do it, because to fall apart is to give in. "I say unto thee: Rise up and walk! None of your bones is broken." [He closes the book, and stares into the camera.]

I intend to walk out of here one day.

[But the way he says it doesn't leave it particularly clear - maybe he will graduate. Or maybe he will rip the Barge apart on his way out the proverbial door. Erik leaves the feed for a moment, before reaching forward and ending it.]

[ The video clicks on and you're treated to a puff of smoke, obscuring Erik's face for just a second. When it dissipates, you can tell that - well scruffy is probably the nicest way to put it it. He has some stubble on his chin that can't quite decide if it wants to be a beard yet or not. There are dark circles under his eyes, and his lip was split recently.

The cigarette hangs in his mouth, and he eyes the camera with a bored expression before he let's out another puff of smoke and lifts the cigarette. He has a very faint Irish accent, if you're listening close. ]

Looks like it's speech day, and here I am without one prepared. Y'ever have that dream about showin' up to school bare as the day you was born? Bit like that, I suppose.

But all right. Since we ain't got much else to entertain us, how about a story? Me mam and father and me, we all lived in this town called Limerick, see? Now I was just a boy then, didn't know shit about shit. [ He waves a hand, as if to apologize for his language, but he definitely does not care. ] They sold all sorts of things back then, tchotchkes, we called 'em. Business was good, but never great, you know how it is. I used to sweep the floors, even though the damn broom was taller'n me. Father always laughed t'see it.

Then some piece of shit preacher man got it in his head that we ain't good and godly enough for his town. Musta been pissed we didn't spend Sundays in his church, huh? [ He chuckles, takes another puff off his cigarette. ] Me mam didn't want me helping out after the store got sacked. Scared for me, y'see? But I wasn't scared. [ Still holding the cigarette, he lifts his chin, and trails his finger along a faint scar across the left side of his jaw. ] When you get pushed, you do some pushin' back.

Parents, though, they wasn't the pushin' type. So they packed up and headed out to New York. Soon as I was big enough, I packed up myself, and headed out here, to good old Redemption. Like the name. Good place for fresh starts.

[ He spreads his arms expansively, a smirk pulling at his lips as he inhales, and let's out a quick jet of smoke. ] And here I am, livin' the God damn dream, ain't I? Right here in Mostly-Free-Redemption.

[ The cigarette's down to the butt now, and he stubbs it out. ] Anyone selling cigarette's cheap?


(OOC: BREACH HISTORY: lol this post. :c He seems to be a loyal and ambitious goon working for Prefect, but in actuality he's a fed deep undercover, trying to expose Prefect. He's been under for a couple years now, and it's started eating at him. He walks a very fine line between pretending to be one of them and actually being one of them. He drinks and smokes a lot because it's the best compensation. This is Departed in the 20s. Oh also will be tagging with eachpassingday!)