« 009 ⇢ event009.exe | OVERFLOW »

[reparator]

Who: CERES & you
When: ooc: 01/15-01/22; ic: 11/03-11/06
Where: Cerealia's Research & Technology District and Beyond!!!
What: Intro and Event log
Rating/Warning: PG-13 | possibly nsfw (please let us know if you need this rating changed, or you are welcome to continue any naughty shenanigans in a private log)
Original Post: HERE.

//event009.EXE Always Believe in the Heart of the Cards Except When They Tell You to Kill People Welcome to CERES Research Tower’s latest event! For all you new folk queuing outside of the conference room where you were just made to sit through a lovely power point presentation, you will be asked to stay a bit longer and test out some games in their Game Testing Center. It’s a giant space located in the basement level filled to the brim with cubicles for everyone to sit in and enjoy their newest array of pop-up games. The games themselves will be in holo(gm) form and will feature suggestions from CEO’s post, including a simplified, 8-bit version of Tetris, Baseball, Soda Smash, etc. Characters can control the game through moving their fingers and tapping them against the holo(gm) screens. Surrounding the cubicles will be tables of food and more food for characters to partake in. It’s all safe this time. No mind-altering candy corn or gut-exploding Knight Burgers. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy the party. For those who have been in Cerealia for a while, they should have received an invitation to the event and an offer of 1,000 credits just for participating. So come on down and bring a friend or ten! Meanwhile, CEO has a small welcome for everyone- “Good Morning and thank you all for coming! We have been expecting you. We hope you will enjoy what we’ve put together today. Ever since we got your feedback on << RAINBOW NARWHAL MELEE >>, we’ve been developing new games for all of you to enjoy. We’ve also tried to draw in some things from your worlds. We hope to hear more feedback from you in the future. In the meantime, feel free to sample our food, generously provided to us by TGICERES, a moderately-priced family restaurant located in the Shopping District."

//SCENARIOS.EXE PHASE I [ xxxx ] Music lightly wafts from the speakers as the showroom opens. Julius Vincere, CERES’ CEO, delivers the opening announcement before leaving the room. He’ll be watching through all the video cameras placed around the room, so be on your best behavior! You will be guided to one of the many cubicles where you will sit and wait for a screen to pop up with a game. Once that game is defeated, another will pop up and another and another until your character gets hungry/has to pee/is so done with this shit. PHASE II [ xxxx ] Among the game rotations is a simple 8-bit fortune telling game starring Aria, the fortune teller. Come be enchanted by her mysterious wiles as she reads your future. She will do some 8-bit arm motions before summoning a ring of cards that will float around her. Characters will be encouraged to pick a card -any card. Once one has been selected, it will turn around slowly and unveil a card from the major arcana. Aria will then give your character their fortune, and that will be that. End of game. Onto the next! PHASE III [ xxxx ] You’ve left the testing center, and the evening has passed. As you wake up to perform your normal daily tasks, a niggling urge emerges at the back of your mind. It’s faint at first, just a whisper of a suggestion that pokes at your brain like a mosquito bite. However, that bite starts to grow bigger and become infectious. As the day wears on, you find that one little suggestion escalating. The next day is even worse. It starts to dominate your every thought, making you carry out actions you never thought yourself capable of. Who is this person in the mirror? Who have you become? PHASE IV [ xxxx ] By day three, the impulse is now a full-blown addiction. It’s set into your psyche completely. You’ve become something else entirely –the embodiment of the card. You will be acting out everything without anymore resistance, and it won’t stop until the clock strikes midnight. That’s when you’ll reel back to your senses, and when it’ll all have felt like the worst dream ever. Or a nightmare really. BONUS [ whyo'clock ] Among all the games present, there is also an 8-bit version of CERESLearn. Yes, you remember the magical game that won your hearts over not too long ago. It will come complete with the same rules. You choose a subject, you choose an 8-bit teacher among the three (Astor), (Hilda), or (UN-Zippy), and you watch them as they try to erotically teach you what you want to learn. Is that an 8-bit boob or her arm? Who knows? But beware… as you may remember, these teachers house a very terrible secret. They will transform into an 8-bit giant bug that will chase around your protag as you guide them to run away with your finger, but you can also flick the bug on the holo(gm) screen to send them away for good. Those who figure out that little cheat code will immediately receive a special real-time shoulder rub as a reward from a robot that looks eerily like a carbon copy of their teacher of choice. [ Remember to apply proper warnings on threads with trigger-y or inappropriate material and do let a mod know if your thread careens off into maiming or canoodling so we can lock the log. ]

//RUN.EXE Welcome to CEREALIA's latest event and intro post AND OUR VERY FIRST OVERFLOW. For your convenience, we have compiled a post detailing what's going on right here and feel free to consult the FAQ if needed. Please leave any lingering questions in the OOC post, and we'll answer them as soon as we can. If this post goes into overflow, we will make a new one to deal with the ever-hated captcha! Worry not!

Comments

athena

[dereban]

( continued from here )

Hearing the discord is someone's heart...?

[Inaba's voice is slightly in disbelief, but she realizes that it's something similar to what she's experienced before, but in a different way.

Okay, time to get a little serious. She needs more information.]

Does that also apply even if the person believes it's the truth, when it actually isn't?

[psycholawgy]

[ She shakes her head. Somehow, she feels like she's going to be in trouble if she continued on with this topic. It was a strange negative thought—that she was going to be ridiculed—but she decides to push through with it. ]

If they believe it's the truth, then they aren't lying. As long as they aren't conscious that they're lying, then I'll be able to hear it.

[ Her ability can go much deeper than that and actually determine if someone is lying unconsciously due to repressed memories and emotions, but it might have been better to keep that to herself. It's not a common thing, anyway. ]

[dereban]

[She furrows her brow ever so slightly, folding her arms over her chest as she listens carefully to her words; nodding in response.]

I see. So if they believe in it so deeply, then it won't come up as a lie. [She's actually taking this rather seriously.] That's pretty interesting. Looks like I'll have to delve more deeply into this.

[She smiles wide, planting her hands on her hips.]

If they're really not lying, then I need to know the 'why'. Just because I know the 'what' doesn't mean I'm going to stand around and do nothing. Usually I'd say that I don't believe in an ability like that, but— [Does she say it? She was told that if she revealed him, they would all get in trouble. Well, she supposes just talking about the phenomena itself without delving too deeply is fine.] I was able to hear people's thoughts and emotions just before I showed up here. Can't do it anymore, though.

[psycholawgy]

[ That didn't seem so weird. Maybe Inaba's ability needs a specific item to use, and she just doesn't have it with her here. Athena's met some people who are the same.

Although, hearing people's thoughts and emotions was different. Not even a medium could do something like that. Was she a telepath? ]

I've never heard of anyone with an ability like that. [ A beat. ] Not in real life, anyway.

[ She has Widget, who's an AI that can read her feelings and thoughts. Widget was a robot, though, and not human. It would be really freaky if a human could do what Widget does. ]

[dereban]

Well, I could only hear the thoughts and emotions of the people within my circle, and the timing of it was always random. It's not something I could control, and it isn't an ability that I have. You could say that it was more of something that was given and then taken away from me because someone thought it was amusing.

[She shrugs her shoulders. Though it's clear that she's telling the truth; there doesn't seem to be a lie in her words, regardless of how slightly uncomfortable she feels talking about the subject.

But it's better to get it out now than later.]

[psycholawgy]

[ As interesting as a skill that was, that was not pleasing to hear. ]

What the- that's- [ Messed up, and outright wrong. She doesn't even know the whole situation, but she's slightly offended by the idea of playing with people's emotions. ]

That's not amusing at all!

[ Okay, maybe saying "slightly" was an understatement... ]

[dereban]

[Inaba is definitely taken aback by Athena's words, flinching ever so slightly, scratching the back of her head sheepishly.]

Maybe not, but it's something I had to go through. [There's a light shrug of her shoulders; it's all over now though, so she doesn't have to worry about that, specifically...

Even if she's still worried in general.] It wasn't all bad, at least.

[psycholawgy]

[ Inaba had a point, but Athena didn't consider her reaction to have been over the top.

She was either for something, or against it; there were no in betweens with her. And an issue or a situation that had something to do with people's emotions in the literal aspect was just something she took far too seriously.

She does realise that she may have been a bit too loud, to which she immediately relaxes her shoulders as she frowns. ]

I guess it's different for other people. [ She laughs, embarrassed. ] I don't take kindly to people playing with other people's emotions, that's all.

[ She didn't know Inaba that well that she wanted to say more about it. Maybe another time. It seemed Inaba was curious about her special hearing, and if they got the chance to talk again, Athena wouldn't mind telling her more about it. But for now... ]

[dereban]

Ah... it's not as if I enjoyed it, but it helped me during a pinch. [If her friends couldn't hear her thoughts during that time, bad things would have probably happened.]

But I don't like having people being toyed with, either. It's not a good feeling.

[psycholawgy]

In a pinch, yeah... [ She just repeats it once and then trails off. ]

Maybe we can talk about this some other time? [ Because it is interesting, and while it doesn't seem like it's related to psychology... well, she could still learn something out of it. But, Athena felt like it was a bit too much a conversation to have when they've just met. ] Maybe over some cake or coffee.

[dereban]

...

[She's silent at first, but only because it's a little awkward. Inaba doesn't expect to be talking to people too much while she's here, mostly for investigative purposes.]

Ah, sure. Just contact me anytime and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. And we can have both cake and coffee then.

[psycholawgy]

I can do that. And you can send me a message any time, too. It helps to have someone to talk to.

[ About anything, really. Whether it was being lost in the city, or if it was about how many minutes you need to microwave a bowl of soup. Athena liked conversing with people, and she loved listening to people. Now that she's gotten over her fear of being around people, she wants to get out and have as many relations as she can. ]