KABOOM!

[aphelion_mod]

09:02, 6/24. As suddenly as the others, a large meteorite collides with Icelus Station. The initial point of impact is over rooms 5 and 6, creating a hole roughly the same size as one of the shower rooms. It continues onward, ripping through the dining room and processing room just below, as well as the livestock pens, and on through the set of

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[boy_wondering]

Robin had been in the dining room when the meteor had struck, grabbing a mid-morning snack. He instinctively ducked and dodged when he felt and heard the impact, but there was no time for his evasive manoevers to do any good. He hadn't had time to feel the pain from the shrapnel that had hit him; in seconds he was sucked out into vacuum, the immense air pressure overcoming even the 'downward' acceleration of the artificial gravity... temporarily. He'd fallen to the ice, cold beyond imagining, in unimaginable pain from the lack of pressure, his lungs starving for oxygen. The end had come quickly, but painfully.

And then he had found himself the dining area again. He had stumbled and fallen over, reflexively gasping for a breath that he didn't actually need, his mind reeling as he tried to make sense of what had just happened.

That had been hours ago. The intervening time had been a troubling and disturbing one for the Boy Wonder. He'd never really been afraid of dying; he'd been putting himself in harm's way since he was a small child, and he'd long-since come to terms with the fact that his chosen path in life would probably kill him sooner or later, and probably sooner rather than later. He'd seen people die, or newly dead, and while that was something he never quite got used to, it was something he'd learned how to handle. But he'd never experienced his own death before.

It was not an experience he wished to have again.

In an attempt to escape the troubling memories, Robin had gone to the ballroom and thrown himself into a series of forms and strikes, driving his body to exhaustion and letting his mind go blank. He'd been at it for over an hour when he heard a voice from a nearby room.

...Church. Robin stopped abruptly, his eyes widening. Church was back. Grabbing his water bottle in passing, he ran in the direction he'd heard Church's voice, careening into the Rec Room. "Church!! Where have you been?!"

[ghost_bullets]

"Whoa, slow down you little freak, I've only been gone for like-" he checked the clock in his suit, which he'd set to match station time not long after arriving, and stopped. "...Five hours? What the fuck?"

[boy_wondering]

"Yeah, five hours! ...Why, how long did you think you'd been gone?" he asked.

[ghost_bullets]

"Actually, I didn't think I'd been gone at all. But, uh, hey, did a really big meteorite, like, come down and blow everything up and kill all you guys, or did I fall asleep while playing Asteroids? ... I realize that might be kind of a weird question."

[boy_wondering]

Robin grimaced a little. "...Yeah, actually, a really big meteorite did come down and blow everything up and kill all of us. It was kind of horrendously horrible. I got sucked into space. But then I was back in the dining room, alive." Robin took a swig from his water bottle, gasping a little. "Same kind of thing happened to everyone. Only you and Tex and Delirium were missing... I wonder if they're back too...." Robin blinked and frowned at the armored soldier. "So what happened from your perspective? I take it you didn't die."

[ghost_bullets]

"Delirium, huh? I knew there was something up with that chick. Makes sense that if I'm gone, Tex'd be gone, though, too." He shook his head. "From my perspective, yeah, you guys probably all died but I didn't see it. I just felt the impact and all the air rushing out and all that, and I went to go see what had happened. I saw something, or someone, moving around for a second, I think, but maybe it was just debris. And, uh, then I was sitting here again."

[boy_wondering]

"Yeah, she's definitely not human, whatever she is..." Robin snapped his fingers. "Oh, and Shadow. I haven't been able to find him either. So that gives us a pattern at least. You and Tex... can't be killed, obviously, Shadow's impervious to vacuum... assuming Delirium has similar qualities... why would you guys disappear for five hours, though?"

As little as Robin liked thinking about his recent death, it helped somewhat to get his mind working on solving a puzzle. "...It sounds like what happened to you is similar to what happened to the rest of us, only without the, uh, dying part. Everything resets, and you're put back to wherever you were just before the meteor hit. Only with significant lag, on your part."

[ghost_bullets]

"So you seriously ran around looking for everyone afterward? Man, if you'd just hallucinated all of that and went sprinting through the colony making sure everyone was okay, you'd look like a goddamn lunatic," Church replied with a sarcastic chuckle. "Okay, well, whatever caused everyone to be alive again obviously had a hard time with those of us who weren't killed. What could do something like that, though, resurrect everyone? I've seen aliens do it, but that was just one person at a time, and we'da seen them around by now if they wanted something from us."