Starfall

She is born as Lapis Vaughn, the only child of her parents. At around age eight, she is orphaned when a car crash claims both of her parents lives; her grandfather, a member of the Global Occult Coalition, becomes her legal guardian as next of kin. The two of them are very close, and he prioritizes raising his granddaughter over his own work. Thanks to his accomplishments for the GOC as agent “Broken Clock”, the man is freely given the opportunity to focus on Lapis instead of being pulled back into active duty. By the standards of the SCP universe, Lapis leads a relatively normal life, but she’s forever changed by the deaths of her parents and the terror of her budding reality bender powers (which she represses hard). Both her school and social lives suffer thanks to trauma, and even with her grandfather’s help, Lapis never ends up feeling like a “normal” person. She is forever to the side, a weird and unlikable person who can never be close with anyone-someone who isn’t even human. They learn, by necessity, to find comfort in solitude.

Lapis goes to university not long before their 21st birthday, and moves out of their grandfather’s home to live in the dorms. He becomes more involved in the Coalition again after they reach adulthood, but always tries to be there for his granddaughter as much as possible regardless. At some point in time, the man ends up KIA after being sent to neutralize a dangerous anomaly with his squad; while Lapis has yet to learn the full truth of his death, it still devastates her. He was her only family, the only one left who cared about her, and she mourns him deeply. Their grandfather is buried in the same lot as their parents, and they break down badly at the funeral, to their shame and guilt. Left with the weight of even more trauma on their shoulders, Lapis flounders in university, struggling to maintain a hold on their own life…until the Coalition shows up at her metaphorical front door. Being the only grandchild of the respected “Broken Clock”, Lapis is seen as a promising recruit for the GOC’s cause, and this expectation is what earns her the truth of her grandfather’s work. They end up accepting it without much of a struggle, surprisingly enough. He always had a mysterious side, and the strange powers they shoved down for so long…this would explain it. If their guardian did so much good for the world, then maybe they could do the same. Lapis had no purpose after all, no meaning and no hope in the wake of her loss. Perhaps the Coalition is what she needs. Maybe this is her future.

Lapis takes to basic and further trials like a fish to water; no matter how brutal the physical conditioning, how mentally exhausted she is left feeling by it all, it only drives her forward. However, the burdens also turn them cynical and jaded. Her emotions shut down frequently, and she often treats herself as a mere tool rather than a person. Being given the nickname ‘Moving Target’ only adds to her self-dehumanization, and it grows worse once she digs deeper into the full picture of her grandfather’s time in the Coalition. They always saw him as their hero, and wanted to believe he was one in his work as well, but…the things he did were not always benevolent. Some of it was nothing short of horrific, especially the Ichabod campaign, and she realized how much blood was on his hands. The pedestal Lapis placed her grandfather on broke-the last vestiges of childhood innocence drained away-and she was left deeply wounded by it all. They would not be the same as him, Lapis decided. They wanted to be different, to not be as he was all those decades ago, and to truly protect people. But even so, whatever passion Lapis had left in their heart was ruined by these revelations. Not only had they lost their family, they’d felt the love of their guardian turn to poison in their heart.

There is one bright spot in the midst of her despair, however. At this point in time, her group within the GOC had been experimenting with a sort of ‘buddy’ system, wherein people who worked out in the field would be partnered with a specific techie (as Lapis called them) for communications and other forms of support. Hers was “Night Shift”, an outgoing and good-humored individual who was in many ways her exact opposite. Lapis was uncertain of them at first, but it took only a few missions working together for the two to form a close rapport. Night is the first person outside of her grandfather to ever really see her, and they draw her out of her shell with an ease that surprises Lapis; she isn’t used to the company of others outside professional settings. Sure, the two of them work together, but even when they’re not on duty, Night is still the person they want to be around. She cares for them more than anything, and in time, Lapis realizes her feelings for them go deeper than she imagined. It takes time for her to admit it, for fear of being punished over fraternization, and afterwards the two agree to keep their relationship strictly private. Night’s natural teasing nature makes this easier-their flirting in public comes off as two coworkers messing around rather than anything serious-and for the first time since Lapis’ grandfather died, she feels truly happy. They dare to feel vulnerable, and to open up to another person. Maybe love made them blind. Maybe stepping outside of their isolation was a mistake from the very start.

The day Night dies, something breaks in Lapis permanently. Her branch in the GOC had been hunting down a powerful and lethal anomaly for months, following the trail of victims and working around the clock to uncover how this thing worked, to no avail. Lapis is present when it chooses to attack Coalition members directly; she’s trying to get through to her techie when suddenly, her connection back to command dies. They keep repeating Night’s name over and over again, desperately trying to find out what the hell is going on, but there is no answer, and there never will be one again. The entity claims several lives in this incident before making its escape, and her partner is among them. Lapis is told that Night and several others in their sector had figured out the entity’s way of movement-the thing could jump between ‘connections’, wires plugged into phones, calls made, anything that bridged people to each other. Upon realizing they were compromised, Night had severed their communication with her to save Lapis’ life. It was brave, downright heroic considering they’d had only moments to live, and none of that meant anything compared to the end result. Night is dead. When the entity killed them, their body went berserk, and it was shot down. Just like that, they are gone. The other half of her heart is brutally torn away, and Lapis is left with nothing. Is this her curse, is everyone she loves doomed to die? They can’t feel anything. Emotions are a million miles away, and they seem to sleepwalk through the aftermath. If people speak to her at the memorial for their fallen comrades-Night with them-she can’t hear it past the unending static of her mind.

To those on the outside, her recovery from this would be nothing short of a miracle. Lapis seems to return from bereavement leave with a renewed fervor, and her contributions to the GOC aren’t held back by her partner’s death. Internally, however, they are coping only by burying everything as deep down as is possible: guilt, pain, attachment, nothing is spared. Only on the thin line of life and death does she feel anything at all, and thus, she often volunteers for dangerous missions. Her new partner-strictly professional this time-is the only one who is ever able to see past the façade. The older man, codename General Winters, is a long-time agent, and assigned to Lapis in the hopes his experience with loss will help her psychologically. To the higher ups’ credit, it DOES work. Winters reminds Lapis of her grandfather, despite being significantly more grumpy than the other man’s once sunny disposition had been, and she finds it easy to speak with him. It’s not the same as Night-nobody can ever be the same as Night-but they appreciate his presence all the same. The two are very similar in nature, something they find comfort in after a lifetime of never feeling any sense of belonging. The old General may be blunt, but he is never unkind, and he always looks out for them.

The operations Lapis is involved in blur together for the most part, which probably helps preserve her sanity, but it is impossible to forget precisely two of them. The first is the one that truly changed her life’s course permanently. They had faced many threats to humanity over the years, and this newest arrival proved to be among the worst of them: a small anomalous faction, only recently identified, had managed to complete a summoning ritual of their own strange creation. The people were worshippers of distant stars, splinters of a benign sect in Europe who deemed them too fanatical and dangerous, and they dragged into existence what was quite literally a living constellation. The entity is Canis Major, one of Orion’s hunting dogs given an awe-inspiring and deadly form on earth. Its power is so great, it disrupts the very equilibrium of the planet; asteroids called by the presence of the constellation begin to rain upon Earth, killing countless people and causing rampant destruction. The Coalition knows it has to deal with this threat immediately. To that end, a joint operation between multiple GOC sects is formed, designation Starfall. Lapis is among the ones chosen to join the mission, noted for her ability to work seamlessly with others and her resilient nature (illusionary as it was).

The second she lays eyes on Canis Major, Lapis is changed forever. It is beyond any beauty or horror she has ever witnessed before-a creature of a million suns, a life manifested from the primal energies of the universe, something within it calls to her. The operation is a terrible one, with countless casualties; they witness multiple people melt when, in some hypnotic trance, they remove their protective gear to look upon Canis Major directly. Others burn alive when the constellation’s ethereal claws and fangs tear into them. Many are crushed beneath falling meteors. All of this, Lapis withesses. She is the only one of her sect’s squadron who survives. In a moment of pure stupidity, utter recklessness that the General’s voice in her ear warns them against, they charge Canis Major alone-as if one person could somehow kill a Type Black. Even being near it burns with a white-hot pain so excruciating, Lapis feels as if her skin boils away over and over again, but she does not falter. As if guided by a force beyond their own will, they throw themself at the otherworldly creature that has caused so much death, and with an unyielding finality rip out its very heart. Her flesh melts and warps; her eyes are burnt with the afterimage of the stars. The two of them scream in unison, a chorus of agony and destruction, before the entire world goes bright white.

And then…she wakes up.

Once again, her life is a flurry of things happening out of her control. She barely gets to see Winters, but even his rare presence is like a port in the storm. Despite the large number of casualties, the operation to neutralize Canis Major is declared a success; in honor of her role in the mission, she is entitled with its name-Starfall. They are treated like a wounded hero by many people, but there are still, to put it as gently as possible, complications. They’re told that subduing Canis Major the way they did had consequences, the mildest of them being the loss of her right arm and the greatest being that she had, somehow, ‘merged’ with the very essence of the entity. She is not nearly as powerful as it had been in its prime, but it has still changed her greatly. Their eyes have been set alight with the images of stars, their blood glows like a galaxy, hell, their entire body glows when looked at by those inoculated with the anomalous. Starfall is, by every measure, an anomaly herself now. More of one, really, even though her Type Green nature is so repressed it hardly manifests in any way. She can hear in her mind a distant howling, and it terrifies her. But they do not show it. She is an arm of the Coalition’s will, and despite their reputation among other factions, it is not uncommon to work with anomalies. This should be merely a temporary setback-no, she would MAKE it one, at any cost. It did not matter that the ghost of the being she killed called to her.

Without a complaint, Starfall complies with both the endless amount of tests she is run through to gauge her new power, and the physical therapy that helps her adjust to the loss of a limb. The GOC is no slouch with providing her a prosthesis that looks and functions like a flesh arm, and in time, it is a seamless extension of her own body. As for the anomaly, it becomes clear that they have capabilities beyond human abilities: they are frighteningly durable, highly resistant to anomalous effects, and their reflexes are vastly improved, to name the most obvious changes. But nothing good comes without cost. She is warned countless times of the psychological toll, and the distinct possibility that Canis Major may one day overtake her identity. Starfall knows it is true. She is kept awake by the howling, haunted by the foggy images of a starry hound in her peripherals, and the phantom pain of her missing arm feels like being burned alive. Even when she manages to sleep, she can feel the fires of that day, and see the eyes that melted. Even so, they are of the Coalition. They have given it everything, and will continue to do so. She cannot look back. The nightmares grow worse over time, reinforced by the terrors of the world her anomaly allows her to face directly, but what else can they do? They are Agent Starfall, a living weapon.

The second time Starfall’s life changes for good is, of all things, during a joint mission alongside the Foundation. She has only once before worked with them-the two factions are not so fond of each other-but her squadron still helps them prevent a containment breach from spiraling out of control. It’s bad, and a lot of lives are lost, but there is relief to be found in how it didn’t go completely FUBAR. During this attempted breach, she helps a group of Foundation staff find safety: in their number is one Junior Researcher Francis Grey, though Starfall didn’t ask for names at the time. What makes him different is that, long after this happens, he still recognizes her when he sees her again. Worse, he wants to meet with them once more, and is still grateful for what they did. She doesn’t think it was anything impressive, but then again, she wasn’t the one being saved. Against her better instinct, Starfall agrees to talk with him. And the time after that, when he asks. And again and again until, against all logic, she has a friend who works with the Foundation. It didn’t make sense. Why did they keep coming back to this man? Starfall knows, but refuses to look at the fact Grey reminds her so much of Night. He has a good nature, and though he’s not nearly as silly as their old partner could be, he has his moments. Truthfully, they like his company. They like his honesty, the interests he talks about, the fact he will listen to them despite how boring they are. They haven’t had someone like this in their life in a long time, and that isn’t an insult to Winters either-but he’s more like a father figure, and Grey is close to their age. Starfall takes every opportunity she can to be with him, though their schedules often diverge for long periods of time, and with painful clarity she understands what is happening. This is the same as it was with Night all those years ago. She’d lost them, though. Would Grey not end up the exact same way? Didn’t he deserve better than to have someone who is still haunted by the specter of their dead lover? Shaken from her usual caution by the re-emergence of this trauma, Starfall somehow finds the guts to tell General Winters of her predicament. It’s stupid, impulsive, and could have had major consequences, but he is firmly on her side. Maybe they’re both idiots, but he trusts her judgment, even though the one Starfall loves is with the Foundation. It’s enough to make her cry for the first time in a long time, enough to embolden her to share her feelings with Grey himself. There is both elation and fear mixed inside her heart when the feelings are mutual.

With Winters’ help, Starfall builds up a double life-one foot serving the Coalition, the other living with her Grey. They have to burn the candle at both ends, but it’s worth it to be at his side. The two of them have an apartment together, and though it sometimes has to be empty, Starfall looks forward to spending time there. It’s here that Grey informs her of a new development in his Foundation life. He’d been assigned to Safe-class anomalies for a long time after a mental breakdown several years back, when he worked with D-Class and couldn’t handle the fucked up nature of that job, but now he was being moved to a temporary facility. Apparently, it not only had D-Class, it also held Euclid and Keter anomalies. Starfall understood standard Foundation classifications, but even if she didn’t, the fear and anxiety in Grey’s voice would have told her this was bad news. He himself wondered if this was some kind of punishment. Starfall can’t convince him to push back against the assignment-he was psychologically dependent on the Foundation, though she had no right to judge-but she is still desperate to protect him. So strong is her desire, that for the first time in her entire life, she finally uses her reality bending. The power is so vestigial, they imagine only their starlit anomaly is what allows this to work, but beggars can't be choosers. The trick is simple; they take one of the spare radios they keep around the apartment, and utilize their meager power over reality to morph it into what appears to be an innocent, normal necklace. Were something to go terribly wrong, Grey would only have to speak to it for her to hear. She would then go through hell to reach and rescue him. He’s so grateful to her for the gift, but some part of her is a little afraid. With only a tiny bit of power, she managed to create something that defied every universal law. They were no stranger to Type Greens, both enemies and allies, but to be one yourself…it was irrational, but it set off every wary instinct in her body. At least it would protect Grey, if nothing else.

Her creation turns out to be the correct choice. Starfall is off-duty, thank god, when Grey’s voice echoes in her head, begging her for help; the temporary facility had been overrun by a mass containment breach, and he couldn’t hide forever. They don’t think twice before rushing to his rescue. With the help of their spare equipment, they break into the place’s maintenance tunnels and start to make their way topside. The underground is swarming with an escaped anomaly, some horrific mimic beasts that cry out with the voices of their victims, but Starfall is no rookie. It’s a good thing she’s not, or else she would be dead for certain. Grey was not exaggerating the containment breach-the facility was swarming with entities, why the hell had the Foundation crammed so many of them together? It made no sense, but Starfall had no time to dwell on such things. They had to find Grey before something else did, even if it meant crawling through a nightmare. The stars are on their side in this; he’s blessedly unharmed when the two reunite, physically at least-the psychological damage is clear as day in his shaking body and thousand yard stare, but he is alive. For now, that is all Starfall can allow herself. Not only is he alive, he’s not alone either.

She admits that, if it were to come down to it, she would’ve prioritized Grey over anyone else, but he refuses to leave his companions behind. Or rather, companion singular. The other man is a D-Class judging by his orange jumpsuit, the mark of a Foundation prisoner, but the person above him…some kind of ghost, an entity? When she points him out, both Grey and the man are shocked, unaware he was there. But they are in no place to have a debate about it. Despite her reservations towards the ethereal tagalong, Starfall is more interested in getting the fuck out of here, and she knows Grey would have to be dragged kicking and screaming if she tried to leave the others behind. It’s something they don’t want to do to him, and so they bring everyone along. The escape happens without further incident, and Starfall pushes further thoughts of an aftermath out of her head. She has to get them to the apartment, set up protections, contact Winters-keep Grey safe at all costs. As long as he is okay, they can figure everything else out. They hadn’t expected extra company, but that too would become an issue for another day. For now, everyone just needs to go into the apartment.

Starfall goes into overdrive for some time in the aftermath of the breach; they work tirelessly to keep the apartment safe, they fetch food for everyone, they make sure Grey sleeps even though rest never seems to find its way to them. It’s exhausting, and psychologically draining, but they keep this all to themself. It’s easy to keep herself preoccupied when two strangers are living in her home, anyway. Their names are Damian and Tobias, and according to the latter, he’s stuck inside the necklace his companion carries. One nobody except Damian with his ring should touch, unless they want to quite literally become him. As for the other man, he’s an amnesiac D-Class, and timid as a rabbit to boot. Grey is better at talking to him, but Starfall…well, she thinks he sees her as an emotionless predator animal. She’s not sure what to make of her new charges, especially when Grey is mentally scarred from his experiences, and is struggling to figure out a long-term plan.

(Outline for still-developing plot points)

•The incident where Tobias unintentionally triggers her trauma with Night, she nearly shoots Damian, and she loses herself to Canis Major for three days

•Breaking the SCP-designated kids out of Foundation facilities alongside Damian and Tobias

•The manifesting of puppy Canis Major, a physical version of Starfall having accepted their presence within her and melded their identities

•Starfall destroying the entity that killed Night, but becoming comatose in the process

•Last conversation with Night