PHASE I [ 10 00 ] The “cleansing" doesn't begin too strangely. No, instead it starts with some minor inconveniences. After Mosley's broadcast, anything running on electricity seems to be… mildly on the fritz. Characters will find their home appliances suddenly rebelling just enough to be troublesome. Anything that uses electricity within the bounds of the colony will start suffering from some small malfunctions. (Do we have any cyborgs in the crowd tonight?) Toasters burning your breakfast and shooting the crispy things at you. Televisions suddenly exploding in a haze of smoke before working perfectly fine a moment later. Hair dryers suddenly running a little too hot and whoops, your hair's on fire… Well, this is all still just a small issue. Probably. Here's hoping the fire extinguisher doesn't run on electricity too?
PHASE II [ 1200 ] It's only glitches for a day or so, but by noon the next day, things get a little weird. We interrupt your regularly scheduled routine to bring you this important message: Welcome to ViViD. … Wait, what? Yeah, sorry about that. Whether you wanted to or not, you've found yourself in the virtual simulator… except it doesn't seem very… virtual anymore, no. The monsters look a bit meaner, and they seem to be after you in particular. You might suddenly be glitched into a dead end, or a level that actually doesn't seem to be beatable at all, with people you've never seen before as your party members. Endless mazes! Boss battles with a wooden sword! Dungeons with no walkthroughs! When you finally make it to the end, you might even find a giant wall blocking your way, or a moat where there was once a path. Now that's troublesome.
And make sure you don't get hurt by any of those monsters. Not like it matters, it's just HP, right? Wrong. Rather, it'll actually hurt quite a bit, just as if you were injured in real life.
If you're lucky, you'll find yourself glitched back out maybe half an hour later -- your wounds still fresh from the experience and still bleeding. Just don't die. You don't want to see what will happen if you die.
PHASE III [ 1800 ] It's the day after, and you've survived your unfortunate ViViD runs (though there's no promise that you won't end up there yet again). But for now, you've finished your work day without too many electrical object malfunctions, and you're on your way home. Normally the transit system is so very reliable. From district to district, the metro is your only way of travel and today? Today it's stopping with an ugly screech. Hopefully you don't need to be anywhere because it's safe to say that you're not getting off this ride any time soon. The lights aren't only flickering anymore, they're completely out. The darkness settles in uncomfortably as you're only left with the other people who were making the same trip. A second later, things start to get weird. Cold breath down your neck. The scratch of something sharp and angry against the outside of the cabin. Seconds pass in silence, the presence of something outside growing more and more frightening. If you hold your breath and stay very still, you might make it out just fine. That is until a forceful SLAM sounds behind you and there's something against your window. At least you know what's been making all that noise.
Of course, should you pry open the doors, there's nobody there, but… you couldn't have been imagining that, right?
Looks like the entire city's blacked out… and without the hum of technology and warmth of the advanced lighting system, some ghosts have come out to play. But they can only be seen from the corner of your eye, a glimpse, a breath, a nondescript whisper on the air and then they're gone. Who knows what they want from you…? Either way, they're not saying, staying just out of reach and mostly out of sight… but always there, watching and waiting.
PHASE IV [ 0000 ] Here you are, finally: day 4. You made your way through the dark, avoided the things that go bump in the night and found your apartment. Your pants are gone, your door is locked, and you've managed to stumble right into your bed/nest/cocoon/what-have-you. Your unbearably long day is finally, finally about to come to a close but then something glitches, worse than before. Suddenly you're not all cozy in your bed, but rather suspended in an unidentifiable space. In this darkness, there is screaming and only screaming. You try to move your limbs, use your voice -- and there is nothing. Rather, you can only look on as the space shifts and you see two figures appearing in the darkness, glowing in the same digital blue that lights up the rest of the colony. As you get closer, the screaming grows louder -- a woman's screams, you can hear now. It sounds garbled, like broken pieces of sound bytes. She's being strangled, you can see now. The other figure strangling her is a robot, metallic and ruthless. He turns to see you and his eyes glow with the same blue shine. As the woman -- LILITH, for those who have seen her or heard her voice may recognize -- finally begins to lose her strength to scream, the robot's mouth slowly spreads into a smile as he maintains eye contact, cold and yet somehow pleased.
In the next second, you have been returned to your body, echoes of screaming your only lullaby. Sleep doesn't seem as likely anymore, does it?
BONUS [ whyo'clock ] If at all possible, the darkness just got darker. How, you might ask? Well, it seems like someone just put a bag over your head! That's a little inconvenient, but it looks like you're suffering from an old school kidnapping at some point through these couple of days, complete with your assailants pushing you around asking, “Where the hell is the money?!" As they shove you into their shady kidnapper van, you can hear a certain song playing which is… a bit too on the nose for this situation. As the wheels of the vehicle stop and you're pushed out, the bag comes off and you're facing down your friendly neighborhood debt collector. He's slow to get his words out but they are very menacing indeed, something about threatening your family and sleeping with the alien fishes in the park. When you protest, insisting that you don't owe them any money, they pull out a CereVice and show your bank account, which does indeed seem to be approximately 50 million credits in debt.
They'll do this even if you're not in debt at all, and, in fact, it is impossible for you to be in debt, as CERES doesn't loan money to you people. Looks like the glitching did a number on your bank account though, and the numbers don't lie.
Looks like you're out of luck, friend. Why not have a friendly chat with the other half a dozen people who have been bagged and kidnapped as well? There's even a small table with snacks as you wait. Wait for what, they haven't exactly said yet. Maybe you should just leave through the window.
PENALTY [ xxxx ] Should you be unlucky enough to die in ViViD while it is glitching and injuries are being sustained, you will find yourself in a penalty game. Even more than usual penalty games, this one is increasingly unnerving. There is nothing but a dark room, a single light hovering over two masks on a table. One might recognize them as the masks of comedy and tragedy. In front of the player, red words slowly illuminate the room. Pick one. Well, that's an easy penalty game, isn't it?
Yet as you reach for one, the masks will suddenly turn into the faces of the two most important people to you. Their voices whisper, growing distressed as time goes on, “Pick me, pick me, pick me." The red words turn into a countdown if you take too long -- your hand forcibly moved to pick one mask or the other if the timer runs out. Yet once you put on the mask, you will see the person who was not picked, suddenly and brutally murdered right before your eyes by a shadowy figure, wearing the mask you chose.
With that, you will return to the colony, good as new. Though on occasion, you may see the person whose mask was not picked in the corner of your eye, dressed in black and wearing the very same mask of tragedy.
[ 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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OTA;
he's already had his microwave all but explode in a blaze of glory, and the ice cube maker on his fridge almost took an eye out with the way it was shooting those frozen cubes with such velocity. getting stuck in ViViD after that didn't seem so bad. but now there's this. he's more interested in getting home than sitting on a halted train, so he's got a few plans of his own.]
Whaddya say, Repede? Think it's time for a great escape? [he's talking to the dog that's sitting at his feet, who replies with an affirmative bark—it's almost uncanny how conversational it seems. but that lightheartedness is short lived as the darkness further seems to creep into the car; if that wasn't unsettling enough, repede is taking a defensive position and growling. it's following by the angry scratching....
which doesn't seem to deter yuri, who is looking around at the other passengers with the intent of offering them a hand in getting out before this gets worse. that however, is met with the scratching being louder and angrier. okay, time for plan b... cautiously look to the window and see what it is.
bad idea, of course. the figure slams against the window while his face is close to the glass, causing yuri to actually startle and jump back.]
Damn... [deep breath.] Looks like we may really have to fight our way out of this after all.
[clearly, this is no time to let himself get freaked out, though any other passengers who startle will be quick to grab his attention just to make sure they're okay and it's nothing more serious.]
( BONUS; )
[there he is,
miss americamr. zaphias, and clearly unperturbed by the situation. even with the kidnapping and being told he owes that many credits, this is on them, and yet still somehow less terrible than some of the other things he's seen.. really, he could sit here and try to negotiate, but his bad luck dictates that it's not going to help.he's always got a plan b on the fly. today? well, yuri lowell is planning to fight his way through the debt collector and whatever goons he's got. a bad idea, probably, but he's drawing his sword and half-expecting the other people around him to either balk, call him an idiot, or join in the fight. their choice, really. but one thing's for sure, he's not sticking around to listen to this any longer.]
Sorry, boys. I've got dinner plans and I don't really feel like breaking them.
bonus.
[Sorry, she's interrupting your patented Badass Protag One Liner, but...well, she's sitting there on a chair, swinging her legs, having been brought in as well. So in the midst of stuffing her face, she figures she can, you know, say hello to her friends.]
You're here too! That's pretty funny, don't you think?
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he won't get huffy about his snarky commentary being interrupted, though. instead, he rests a hand on his hip and shoots her a glance with an eyebrow raised.]
You're making yourself pretty comfortable here, huh?
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[She's pretty unbothered by this entire situation.]
Besiiiiiides, I wanted to try one of each of the tiny sandwiches here. Aren't they cute?
[look Yuri! Tiny sandwiches!!!]
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[they are cute, but ruby... that's kind of not the point here. like, not even a little bit.]
Doesn't take much to please you at all, does it?
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[at least she's self-aware.]
I don't really see what's not to like about cute, tiny free sandwiches though.
Besides. [She takes a bite and continues with her mouth full--] I don't think they locked the door.
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iii!
I'm certain that there will be people among us who can't fight. Do you know if there are any safe exits? Some of us could guide the others out...
[In the case of those things outside actually breaking in, anyway. It would be ideal if they just... stay outside.]
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No idea. Even if any of them are usually safe, we don't know what we're dealing with out there. [which is the problem here. yuri's not even worried that others won't be able to fight, since he's set on handling as much of that as is possible. he's got repede to help, and that'll go a long way.]
What about you? What do you wanna do? [which is his way of asking if kaoru wants to fight or help lead people to safety. or something else, whatever else.]
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But Kaoru's eyes dart briefly to the window and to the blackness beyond, which is difficult to see through even with vision that isn't quite as limited as a human. What would be better, in the end?]
—I'm unable to fight well, but if it became a necessity, I would be able to guide out those who might need help.
[At the very least, they wouldn't go tripping into a ditch...]
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I can work with that. [it's cooperative enough and regardless of what kaoru may actually do, the farce is good enough for yuri to not have much reason to believe that he's full of shit.]
Let's hope it doesn't come to that. Whatever's out there is still out there, so we may not need to jump the gun here.
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...Is there someone here who knows about the technology that runs these trains? Perhaps we could get it moving again ourselves, without having to wait for CERES.
[Especially since Kaoru's faith in CERES is approximately 0% when it comes to anything related to safety.]
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iii! i'm so sorry
but she's also going to be an ass too. ]
Do you think he realizes what he's doing, Garrett?
[ yes, hawke leans down to her dog a little, eyes still on the two over there and holds up a hand to her mouth as if she's... gossiping. ]
Talking to his dog like that, who does he think he is? [ garrett just lets out a low woof and shakes his head. ] Exactly, all this chaos and he's looking for a fight. What priorities on that one.
[ again garrett just woofs and looks away from yuri and repede as if offended. both of them ignore the ghost slamming into the window behind them. ]
What is that dog even wearing? A pipe, Garrett? Do you see this? Why would you give a dog a pipe? [ garrett just covers his face with a paw after. ] You have the right idea, old boy.
[ and then hawke covers her own face. ]
never be sorry it's hideous and beautiful
but repede doesn't take well to the insult about that pipe. he's quick to growl, and he thinks he's got every reason to.
b. another dog
c. insulting his pipe
Take it easy, Repede. [he warns, almost flatly. really, he's not interested in getting into the finer details of that situation, not unless repede indicates that he should. but it doesn't mean he'll keep his mouth shut completely. two can play at this game, right? after all, there's not much fun in doing that sort of thing alone.
so he shifts his attention for the moment. his eyes still shift at points to keep an eye on the situation, but as long as nothing from the outside is getting in, it may be better this way.]
That's pretty rich, coming from someone who seems to have a lot to say to their own dog. [he doesn't need to say much else, an eyebrow raising. the pipe is what he's focused on, but the real (and maybe more questionable) thing is the fact that he's got a sheathed dagger.
the dog fights.
with a dagger. while wearing a pipe.
granted, at least repede isn't wearing the santa costume now, or this could be a lot worse. yuri doesn't care much if people insult him endlessly, but is that any reason to take it out on the dog? suddenly, he gets why dogs get so territorial.]
:'|
He was looking for a fight and now he's talking of things that don't matter? If he really wanted to play the hero, don't you think he would just... oh, I don't know, check if any other passengers needed help? Garrett, always think of others first if you ever end up in a situation like this.
[ the dog lets out a woof and his tongue lolls as they both sit there, peanut gallerying yuri and repede. after a moment, garrett nudges hawke's knee with his nose and her eyes widen a bit. ]
Nooo, really! Who gives a dog a dagger? That's an accident waiting to happen. [ another woof ] Yes, a real wardog uses his own paws, you're right.
[ hawke just nods and continues to just... sit there, doing nothing. really sorry about this, yuri. ]
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yuri, on the other hand, is interested in handling things his own way.]
Anything else the passive aggressive peanut gallery has to add? Or maybe I can actually start trying to help people without being interrupted. [it's not even about playing the hero to him, it's just about doing what's right. all the same, he can't go just helping other people while ignoring someone's slights towards repede. it seems like she's got a lot to comment on, so he figures maybe he should just have her let it all out so she's not more of a distraction later.
he manages to still sound cool about it, even if his tone is laced with sarcasm.]
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seriously now, get to work. she'll just watch from here. ]
bonus;
#priorities]
That sounds pretty corny, if you ask me.
[You. Have no room to talk, Mr. "Cars are meant for driving".]
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it's annoying and he's separated from his dog. that's just rude.]
You got a better line, then? [he'll turn his attention to nice, arching a brow. there's a smirk on his lips, so he's obviously not too bothered by it. come on, nice, show him up here.]
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Well, for one it's a little too early for dinner. Wouldn't it be breakfast? Or brunch. Or even lunch.
Dinner would assume that we'd be here all day, which I don't really want to do either. Unless you're one of those old people who eat dinner at three o'clock or whatever.
[Nice.]
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[because clearly, hair and long and silky as yuri's doesn't come without a little bit of maintenance. mostly, he's joking because it sounds better than just conceding to the fact that it's too early for dinner.
which is is, but that's the line and it sounds better than way.]
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[...Says the person who just more than likely rolls out of bed and does nothing with it.
Also Nice is just a contrary person tbh.]
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Bonus
Which meant stuffing her mouth with food! But now that Yuri got her attention?]
Something tells me that you might need a better plan than that! How are you going to take on all those guys by yourself?
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[yuri nods towards the totally threatening sloth man and his goons before looking back to anna with something of a mischievous smirk.]
Eh, that's nothin'. I could probably take those guys down in my sleep if I had to. [yuri, don't be cocky about things...]
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[She said as she stared at them before looking back at Yuri]
And besides, I think it would be better to just make a bunch giant thing that can take them all out in one go! Like an explosion or something!
[Anna, you're not any better!]
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[this is a guy that takes part in a 200-man melee because he just enjoys it and finds it thrilling.]
Even if there's a bunch of them, it doesn't look like they'll put up much of a fight. I've fought more than this before. [yuri, no.]
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