2023-06-23: Cascading Consequences

• Cutscene: Cascading Consequences
• Cast: Cascade Wattana
• Where: A Secure G-Hound Hangar... and a Secure Shuffle Facility
• Date: 2023-06-23
• Summary: Permanence's death echoes to the people who connected most with her. Some are lost; one is not.

---

Deep within a secretive G-Hound hangar, the maintenance crew gathers, nervously. "Did you activate it?" One asks, looking up at the horrifically monstrous Gundam raised above them. The Ypotryll Gundam has four faces, all forced into each other; a great spiked hump across its back on which rests a Particle Beam Cannon, and a tail lashing behind it, all lined with Fin Funnels. It is wrong, as Gundams go, and all the more right now.

"No -- it hasn't been initialised at all," another reports, tinkering at a console.

"Then, why...?"

It's singing.

No -- don't call it a song. That ragged noise could scarcely be called human, nails down the chalkboards of their inner ears, a scream and a scream and a scream and a scream, each voice reaching, rising, yearning, crying. It pours from every gap in its bony armour, bleached to death and cast in a horrific shade of green where colour intrudes upon it, discordant and disconcerting.

"There must be some psychic resonance," a technician frowns, as he tries to manipulate some sliders.

"Just shut it up!" Another snaps, all her tension wrapped around her heart, tendrils snaking down her ears.

And in time it does, though he doesn't.

---

"MOM!" Cascade screams, and a lash of their hand crashes their canvas to the ground, the easel snapping in the force of the gesture. Warhorse-sharp their breath heaves through their sides, panting, fists white-knuckle clenched. They look in the direction of the art therapist, Kamberly Cross -- but they aren't looking at her.

They're looking THROUGH her.

"Your mother?" Kamberly asks, and doesn't make the way she's inventorying the space between herself and the door obvious. "Are you remembering your mother? Didn't she die when you were young, Cascade...?"

"Not her, you idiot!" Cascade orients to her enough to glare, before they charge for the window. They jerk the window up, but there are bars, over the windows. "Fucking--!! Shit-ass secure facility FUCK!" The fact that they agreed to be treated here is the furthest thing from their mind. They're not a flight danger because their conditioning's been activated, right now, either.

"Hey, I see it's hard for you," Kamberly starts, softly, now she's identified the target of Cascade's violence. (She is not expected to put /herself/ in danger to treat anyone; neither is she going to abandon the people she's treating.) "I just need you to take a breath --"

"NO!" Cascade slams their fists into the bars, and they bend, precariously. "That's Bailuo's mother, out there! And, she's --" Their fingers tighten to grasping, around the bars. "It doesn't matter if it gets better!" They scream, into the sky. "IT DOESN'T MATTER! You don't get to pull that veteran crap when you're biting it! Are you looking down on me, too?! You followed me to hell, and then--!!"

Cascade sinks down, and sobs, and scarcely notices Kamberly putting an arm around their shoulders. It's only when she pulls them in to a hug that they latch to her, nakedly piteous, grieving.

Permanence really did leave behind a lot of broken hearts.