The thing about Cerealia is, there really isn't any nature to be found here. Sure, you can go outside the walls of the city and explore the land beyond but who wants to risk a terrible, horrible death just to sniff the flowers? Not you, that's who! CERES understands that, CERES sympathizes, and sometimes CERES decides to take action when such problems arise. As part of the company's current "Healthier and Happier YOU" initiative, they've decided to let everyone get back in touch with nature a little.
Via ViViD.
Of course, this being CERES, the nature they've sent everyone to is more of a swamp. The place is disgusting, a real marvel of ViViD ingenuity and it smells like the dead. There's strange rustling among the leaves from creatures that may or may not want to eat you, and random pits that open up right under your feet with the goal of sending you straight into the marsh. It's not really that fun. There's no welcome sign either, no nothing except for swamplands as far as the eye can see.
Welcome to ViViD!  This is Mosley. One of our programmers forgot to include a welcome greeting for the level this time. How incompetent can you get? He's been fired now, it's fine. Instead, I will greet you today. Lucky you! You've been invited today to participate in CERES's "Healthier and Happier YOU" level where we've combined both physical exercise and relaxing meditation into the ultimate ViViD experience. Isn't that fun? You can... go camping and stuff. Or whatever. I don't... know...
Honestly, I don't even care. Have fun.
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PHASE I [ 6 00 ] Welcome to your new healthy living training ground! What does a swamp have to do with healthy living, you may ask? Absolutely nothing! To make up for it, CERES has outfitted all players with the proper equipment for their new healthy living lifestyle. They also may or may not have let you keep your shoes based on how benevolent the ViViD gods were being at the time. (Not very.)
Oh, and all newcomers will have something additional on their fancy new yoga shirt. It will be displayed loudly and proudly all over the front and back of it. And if you're one of the few not wearing a shirt, it will be on the back of your pants. As in, your butt. It will be on your butt.
What’s ViViD trying to say, anyway?
Regardless, it probably doesn’t matter as much as finding your way through the swamp. Some sort of dry land would be really nice right now, wouldn't it? You'll have to watch out for the mud that will suck you right down under the marsh, and the creatures with lots of teeth that will never surface from the mud but won't hesitate to snap up an unwary foot or two.
CERES is sure you'll be fine. Totally and completely fine.
PHASE II [ 800 ] Eventually, if you try really, really hard, you’ll make it to a house. Actually, it’s more of a shack, really. If you clamber your way out of the mud and the gunk and the marsh into said shack, you will find it to be empty aside from a table. A table hosting a huge pile of... well, health drinks. See, there's totally a health theme in this level. CERES would never make a ViViD level that wasn't thematically appropriate. Never! Health drinks of all sorts and types and sizes can be found here and there’s even a sign too; it simply says:
Take one.
Well, that seems safe.
Unfortunately, you won’t be able to leave said shack until you do take one. And drink it. The door will lock shut and cover itself in more swamp until you do. Yay. Depending on your luck, the drink may do the following to you: ➟ Cause your ViViD experience to glitch. This may involve phasing through walls, seeing everything in 8-bit, or hearing really annoying old video game music everywhere you go.
➟ Cause status effects. This can include suddenly moving incredibly slowly, being turned to stone for a period of time, suddenly being on fire, suddenly being poisoned, etc etc.
➟ Be healthier. Mmm, kale and hummus smoothie. Taste those veggies. If you try to take more than one, that’s fine too, nobody will stop you, but you probably won’t get lucky more than once.
PHASE III [ 900 ] And back you go, out into the swampy wilderness. Don’t give up! Keep going! Eventually, you’ll find the end of this level. Probably.
Eventually, though, you may stumble across something in the mud and the muck. It’s... a little doll?
In fact, it’s a little doll of one of your most important people (or, alternatively, of someone you absolutely hate). It might be someone in Cerealia currently, or someone who isn’t, but either way, the doll is there and it’s clearly them (covered in mud and all). Be careful, though. If you toss it aside, you’ll suddenly see that important person being tossed aside. If you cut the doll, you'll suddenly see that person bleeding. Even if they aren’t present in Cerealia, whatever happens to that doll, you'll see it happening to them. Is it a hallucination or are they actually there? That's a little more up in the air.
And if they are present in Cerealia, well... doing things to that doll might very well hurt them too -- for real, this time, though.
Be careful! Or don't. You do you, as CERES would say.
PHASE IV [ 1200 ] And then, eventually you reach a quiet, swampy area. Not that the rest of the swamp isn't swampy, this area is just extra swampy.
There’s very little happening here in this swampy place; even the birds are no longer squawking. And for a long moment, everything will remain quiet and peaceful, a place of reprieve... until the swamp begins to bubble. Then suddenly, a new friend will burst out of the swamp, showering mud and gunk everywhere.
Without warning, that creature is going to try to grab for the nearest person (it might be you!) and let out a mighty roar when they have them. Then, they'll hold them up to... read the nutrition facts on their shirt? What?
Of course, it will try to gobble you or whoever else it grabs if it finds, say, the salt content to be acceptable (the monster is watching their carbs). If it's not, then they'll just fling you away and move onto the next snack. For those without a handy nutrition facts label on your shirt, well, it might just take a gamble and try to eat you anyway.
Great. A health-conscious monster. That's just what this level needed.
BONUS [ xxxx ] Finally, you’re free of the game. Without warning, you’re dumped into Cerealia properly and you’re able to scrub the mud and gunk from your clothing (wait why did that come back with you and where are your normal clothes?). You're able to then make your way to your new place of residence (or old) and...
There is a tiny tree there waiting for you. Isn’t it cute? And if you take care of this tiny tree, it will eventually bear fruit! Tiny fruit. Itty bitty fruit.
Depending on which tiny tree you get, it will be one of the following: a tiny dildo tree, a tiny bacon tree, a tiny kazoo tree, a tiny carolina reaper tree, or a (dumb) tiny hats tree.
Everything will, naturally, be tiny. Enjoy your new healthy CERES gift!
[ Remember to apply proper warnings on threads with sensitive or inappropriate material and do let a mod know if your thread careens off into maiming or canoodling so we can lock the log. ] |
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chara (undertale) || ota.
♡ phase i ♡
♡ phase iii ♡
♡ wildcard ♡
i!
In fact, he scrambles to a nearby log, snapping off a pointy-enough tree branch to defend himself with if he must.
He's totally got this. ] Stay back! I-I'm warning you! I've...got a stick?
[ A stick, really Dipper... ]
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The voice is what gets them to stop and back off a bit, putting enough space between them to start wiping mud off their face-- ]
How scary, a stick. [ --oh, a human. That shouldn't come as a surprise, but it does, because really, Chara hasn't seen another human in probably years and so they just kind of... stare at Dipper, frozen mid-wipe.
Then back to shoving gunk off their face and stepping back--okay, stumbling, whoops there they go right back into the disgusting swamp mess. This is why they stopped cleaning themselves up, man. This shit. ] Augh!
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This is embarrassing. He drops his defensive stance, stick hanging limply in his hand at his side. He'll hold onto it in the event of an actual monster, but let's be honest, he's probably not going to fare that well against one either way. ]
Uhh...sorry about that. But, you gotta admit, you...kind of look like a monster. [ Smooth. At least he reaches out a hand to help them up when they fall back into the muck. It's not hard to figure out how they got that dirty in the first place. ]
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Good. I wouldn't want to look like you. [ They can stand up on their own, thanks. Wiping off their new muck, too. ] Do you even know how to use that stick? Were you just gonna wave it around in my face and hope I didn't eat you or something?
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His mouth sours in a frown as they get up. ] It's a stick. It's not like there's a lot to using one. [ Then, he adds, in a small attempt to save SOME face: ] I know how to use a sword. So, yeah, I can totally handle a stick.
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Sticks don't cut and they break easily if you hit something the wrong way. [ So now, they're nothing like swords. ] They're practically useless, outside of being kindling and...
[ Give them a moment. What else are sticks even used for? Roasting marshmallows, poking books off of shelves taller than you... Ah right. Said as if it's an obvious fact: ] Poking people's eyes out. You'd have to be pretty precise to get in such a small hole though, and I doubt you have the coordination for that.
[ .....they shouldn't be giving a human any bright eyedeas regardless of his coordination skills. This occurs to them a moment too late, and they cross their arms over their chest when it does. ]
Whatever. Shouldn't you be running along to Small>[ what did that guy say? ] build a "Happier and Healthier YOU" or whatever this thing's about?
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But he's not one to start fights - not physical ones, anyway. And as much as he might as he might want to walk away from them after how well this conversation is going so far, Dipper just has a little too much of a conscious to follow through with the idea.
...Though it does sound pretty satisfying.
Crossing his arms himself: ] Whatever Mosley tells you to do is basically the opposite of what you should do. Look - you're new, aren't you?
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phase i!
As it is, though, Frisk is a little too distracted with poking the mud with a stick to notice Chara blindly approaching. There's something biting their feet down there and they're kind of hoping one of them latches onto the stick so they can take a look at it. Also, kind of hoping it has a lot of cool teeth and stuff, but. You know. Irrelevant.
What is relevant, though, is that when Quake Creature Jr. ends up bumping into them, they pretty much end up going down like
a wrecking balla 10-year-old who's standing in a slimy and slippery sea of mud. They then proceed to reach for the nearest solid object they can latch onto before they hit the ground — which is Chara.Will Chara be reunited with their dear friend, the mud? Y/N.]
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Half because of the mud. Half because some snotty ten-year-old thought it'd be a solid idea to try and stop themselves from going down by grabbing onto the thing doing the bumping. SERIOUSLY-- ]
Let go of me--!!
[ It's really hard to like, shove people away in this slippery situation--which isn't to say they're not going to still try, but coupling it with yelling is probably going to help get the point across quicker, right? Right. ]
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Being shoved and yelled at just makes them flail, however, limbs going everywhere as they try to get back up... preferably without swallowing any more mud.]
Stop— Stop shoving me—!
[... On the bright side, at least this isn't the type of mud that sucks you up? HOPEFULLY.]
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Then stop trying to hit me!
[ Even though it's very clear that, well, this kid's not trying to hit them. Just trying to get up back and back off, like Chara told them to.
The older and thus more mature one of this pair will help with that second part at least, getting up without slipping back in (they have gotten very good at that, given the fact they have been FALLING INTO IT EVERY OTHER MINUTE) and even managing to put like, a foot between them!
(They may have just stepped into the sucky swamp, but honestly, what part of this swamp doesn't suck when you're not wearing shoes??? All of it sucks. All of it.) ]
What-- what the hell were you doing anyway? [ And why are you like, the second human they've met face-to-face today. Why do bad things happen to g...ggg.... never mind, let's not finish that. ]
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I'm not trying to!
[Ugh. At least they're done shoving them, which makes it a teeny bit easier to get back up. Not easy, but easier. There is a difference. Don't question it. Simply observe as Frisk more or less flounders around for a couple of seconds longer before pulling themselves into a shaky crouch. Standing up without falling back on their butt is a work in progress. They huff.]
There's something biting my feet under the mud... I was trying to see what it is. [They're gonna tell Mom they used the "h" word...!!! Okay, no. No they're not. They don't even know who dis be yet, and Toriel ain't here.] Why do you look like that?
[Good thing sucky swamp mud is a universal thing, then, because this vague sinking feeling is nooooothing to be worried about. Um. Probably.]
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Look around and take a wild guess. [ Come on, kid, use your head. Ugh... Chara takes this time to wipe their face off, squinting at their unfortunate companion. And definitely not at the fact they might be sinking a little more into the mud than usual. ] My question is, why don't you look like this? Is your head empty enough to keep you floating out of the bog or something?
[ S I C K B U R N.
also, overflow link if you'd rather reply there! ]
III's company
Regardless, Rock Lee is here and he looks shocked by the display unfolding before his very eyes.]
Ah! Wh-what... What are you doing?!
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It's enough to startle Chara into stopping what they were doing (using their oh-so-precious goatdoll as a branch-clearer) and uh... ...a branch they smacked and didn't go past smacks them right back in the face, leading them to yelp and hop back.
OKAY, GREEN FREAK-- ]
Walking through this stupid swampy hell, what the hell does it look like!?
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I- I apologize! Are you alright?!
[He clears his throat.]
I understand that you are enduring a hardship. But... what you have in your hand...!
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It's a doll. [ VERY FLATLY SAID. All it is is a dumb doll. So what.
...also not answering if they're all right or not because yeah, that stung and they probably have a red mark on their face from it, but they're not bleeding so. They're fine. ]
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That... that is not just a doll, is it? Is that not... a precious person?!
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Oh, this? It's [ they grin and hold it up higher; it looks so pitiful, being held by its hand ] my very best friend. He's such a crybaby though, I can't help but be a little mean to him.
[ Among other reasons, but hey. Chara's not here to spoil some sap about their life. ]
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N-no! I do not understand! That is not... no one should treat a best friend in such a way!!
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i!
He certainly won't judge Chara for bumping into him. For a second, he thinks they're one of the monsters from the level--and his hand immediately flies to the sword at his hip. Thankfully, he realizes fairly quickly that they're not out to chomp on his feet. ...Probably. Watchin' you, Chara.]
Sorry, are you alright?
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Yes. [ How many people are they going to bump into today. They hate this. They're getting very tired of this already. Wiping mud out of their face... ] Aside from the whole swamp thing bogging me down, yes.
[ ...eyes widening. They made a pun. Someone would be happy about that, if they were here. That's gross. ]
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Don't worry, it can't be too much longer. These levels tend to have several different areas to them, we should reach the next one soon. [...Hopefully. He hasn't exactly been here for ages either, so he probably shouldn't talk like an expert. But eh.]
Have you just arrived?
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