You've seen the flyer. Or maybe you haven't. Whatever your reasons may be, you've decided to log onto ViViD today at around 6 PM. At first, all seems normal as the game loads, and you prepare to start on what should be an average adventure. Maybe you'll do a little fighting, or some exploring, or even a little platforming. Either way, there shouldn't be anything unusual about this.
Right?
You couldn't have been more wrong. The moment you log in, something goes strange. The game glitches around you, whatever world that started to load seizing up and freezing with static, warping with strange colors. And then a different setting loads smoothly like nothing ever happened. The first thing you notice is that it's sprawling and beautiful, if not a little ostentatious. Should your curiosity draw you from the courtyard you've arrived in through the great double doors, you'll arrive in...
... a ballroom. Welcome to prom. |
PHASE I [ 6 00 ] There are tables scattered around the periphery of the room, and a DJ, somewhat out of place in this beautiful setting, is stationed at the back, spinning out tunes to help you get settled into the start of the night. On the scattered tables are... punch bowls? They look tantalizing, and they come in quite a rainbow of colors. Should you be brave enough to take a sip, you'll find interesting things will happen. Drink the red punch, and you'll end up in rococo fashion. Drink the pale champagne-colored punch, and you'll find yourself sporting elegant regency attire. How about that cool blue punch? You'll step right into the roaring 20's. What about that dayglo orange punch over there? How about some far out 80's, man? That futuristic purple punch will suit you up in Tron style. And then there's one last punch bowl on a lonely table in the corner. No one can quite identify that color. Is that ... brown? Brave this punch bowl and you'll be, uh ... richly rewarded with modern-day fashions. Will you step up and test these refreshments, for science? Or will you be the first onto the dance floor, or to make an insane request of the DJ?
Last but not least, certain Cerealians who glitch into the level may find they have a specific corsage attached that they cannot remove! If they stick around long enough, they'll find one other lucky soul with a matching corsage. This is your ViViD assigned date! No one is going to force you two to dance... but you might find that the longer you put off dancing, the tighter that corsage gets around your wrist, or the more it begins to prick your chest, depending on its location. Might want to rethink your position...
Dates: - Shijima Kurookano & Himeko Inaba
- Trucy Wright & Enomoto "Ene" Takane
- Adelina & Rock Lee
- Byakuya Togami & Lailah
- Archer & Touka Kirishima
- Sakuya Le Bel Shirogane & Maya Fey
- Leon Kuwata & Alisha Diphda
PHASE II [ 730 ] So you're here. Whether out of curiosity or you've resigned yourself to the strange festivities, you're in. Maybe you've been wallflowering it up for a while, even with the cool kickin music playing. Whatever the case may be, the DJ announces themselves (DJ Slim Shaydee, not to be confused with that knock off from Earth). You're welcomed in an enthusiastic manner. Also hey, if you're near a table, see those cute placards? Yeah the ones in the center pieces mixed in with the bowl of candy and flowers. You'll notice they have a neatly typed out list— DJ Slim Shaydee says whoever fulfills the criteria on the list will be crowned Prom Royalty. Who doesn't want that???
- Successfully complete a slow dance
- Do the cha cha slide OR do the electric slide without messing up the turn
- Make out in the rose garden out back
- Have a dramatic fight with a close friend and storm out (you may come back after)
- Comfort a crying friend in the bathroom
- If you're a minor, accidentally get drunk
- Successfully spike every punch bowl within a 20 minute time limit
- Confess romantic feelings to the object of your affections
To truly kick it off or maybe give those ambitious types a head start, DJ Slim is gonna play you (yes all of you) a group dance! Hope you know the moves to the Cha Cha Slide. If not, don't worry, the song will tell you every step.
Oh and one more thing — anyone who fulfills an item on the list will get a confetti surprise. What does this mean? It means a golden, multi-faceted little ball will spontaneously appear over your head out of nowhere soon after you fulfill a condition, hovering for a moment before it explodes into a shower of confetti. Enjoy!
PHASE III [ 900 ] Whew. All these fast paced songs sure have you tired out, right? Maybe take a sip from the many punch bowls around the room if you haven't tested them out yet. Or try your hand at fulfilling another portion of that list from earlier—by spiking the punch. Better work fast though, the bowls themselves refresh fairly quickly once they sense contamination. See how many you can get in one go! Or if you're not a dirty prankster, see how many people you can catch spiking those dang bowls.
While you're doing that, the DJ seems to want to wind down the energy in the room. That means, you guessed it: time for that coveted slow dance. As the first chords of the song play, the doors to the garden veranda and hedge maze open. How romantic.
PHASE IV [ 1000 ] It's the end of the night, and maybe you've been trying your best to satisfy all those win conditions. Or maybe you haven't! Either way, it's clear from the mood in the air that the time is drawing near for the announcement of the Prom Royalty. The DJ brings the lights low, and spotlights hit his stand. He brings a mic to his mouth, and announces grimly that there will be no Prom Royalty. Apparently, no one satisfied enough of the win conditions! How can that be? Surely someone tried! Well, whatever happened, the DJ isn't happy, and the lights in the room will come back up. The DJ will mess with some of the equipment at his station, and all across the room, small panels will open up near the ceiling. Pouring out will come ... balloons? And not just any balloons - they're water balloons, and not only are they somehow floating, they're coming straight for you. How are they flying? We just don't know. If they come in contact with you, they'll frizz your perfect prom hair. Worse, if you apply even the mildest force to them, they'll immediately pop and drench you in freezing cold water, leaving you drenched.
The ballroom quickly fills with these angry little balloons, threatening to flood the room completely if too many of them pop. Will you flee and save yourself? Try to save your friends? Try to reason with the DJ and stop the balloon menace? No matter what you do, you'd better work fast. The floor is already getting dangerously wet...
BONUS [ hour ??? ] Remember that garden maze? From a certain point of the evening on, prom guests have been free to wander through as they please. They're beautiful, a rose maze by day that looks even more breathtaking at night with fairy lights glittering and winking in between all the flowers and leaves. Maybe you wandered out there to get away from the craziness in the party. Perhaps you want to be a true wallflower. But should you explore this maze with another at your side, you'll find it a pleasant enough trip, and if you manage to make it all the way to the center of the maze, you'll discover a secluded little gazebo that seems like it was placed there just for you.
Go in alone, though, and the maze seems like a completely different place. The fairy lights will be dimmer, less pleasant. You'll hear a rustling too loud to just be the wind. What was that sound? Turn around, and nothing is there. Too late you'll realize that the maze itself is alive, and has been watching you this entire time. It doesn't like lone wanderers. Better run fast or find a way to get out of the plant's clutches before you really become veggie.
However, if you get caught, you'll be trapped by the sentient vines that shoot out from the walls and bound to the side of the maze until another lone explorer finds you. At this point the vines will reach out and snap up that unlucky soul, too, wrapping you both up in a not-so-tender embrace. You'll both be stuck there until you can do whatever it is the maze wants that will convince it to set you free. What is that? Well, it does seem to be fond of lovers... and public displays of affection.
|
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cannonades) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
estoria2016-01-04 07:52 pm
no subject
[But enough about that.] Video games are always necessary. [Said the small nerd.] Tadashi and I used to play together a lot back home so this is sort of second nature to us. You're not the first person I've met who doesn't know how to conquer things around here. I guess it doesn't help that the games change every single time, too.
no subject
They can still be valuable allies. It's important to have all your bases covered.
[ Yes, there is definitely some approval in her voice. Clearly his age is not a factor in his ability to plan for all scenarios. That's an important quality to have. ]
Yes, I've begun to realize this. Has anyone been able to discern any pattern to the changes?
no subject
[And again, he's pleased. He's grown used to being taken seriously despite his age. Going backwards would hurt. But there's a shake of his head.] No patterns yet though. Even the people who've been here longer than me haven't figured it out, but I don't want to say there is no pattern. It's code. Code always has a pattern so that it can be manipulated. Usually it doesn't glitch unless a new batch of coding's pushed through--you know, when new people show up. [Pause.] Well that's not true. It was pretty messed up after the whole city flooded, too.
no subject
Is there much crime here?
[ She hasn't really seen anything in particular, but she is new. It still certainly feels that way, at least.
No patterns that have been discerned. Well, that is troubling. As he said, there has to be something. Mitsuru has seen too many threads become unraveled that lead to the same origin to believe that so many things can be a coincidence. ]
The city flooded?
no subject
[The longer he's here, the more concerned he becomes with things like these. He nods slowly.] The city flooded. Not even two weeks after I showed up here it rained a bunch and it wasn't stopping...three or four days straight. Turns out the water elemental god dude was pissed off. It took forever to get everything back to normal after that.
no subject
I can't say those suspicions are unfounded.
[ She has a number of her own, but she lacks the experience there to support them. There's still plenty to learn and research to do. ]
Water elemental god...? [ She leaves out the "dude', obviously. ] And nothing like that has happened since?
no subject
no subject
No...they haven't. Would you mind filling in a few of the blanks for me?
[ She'll commit what she can to memory. This is important. ]
no subject
Anyway, a while ago CERES captured a prisoner to hold in their research tower. Someone very, very important. She's called the Bridge and she's kind of really important especially to the natives on the planet. That's why Maris and Caeli came to visit us and why the flood came. They were really pissed that CERES had something of theirs and kinda went back on their deal.
A little while after that, fifteen of us decided to break into their research tower to try and find out everything we could. Fifteen of us divided into three groups of five. One group found a bunch of ghosts. The ones that were in the colony a few days ago…hard to really say what the third group found but my group kinda moved straight through the heart of the tower. We lost a couple of people and at the end it was just me and my friend Korra. We found the Bridge…she was pretty mad, safe to say, but with some…weird outside help, we got her out of the tower and delivered her safely to Maris and Caeli. She's their queen or something.
Not long after that though the Bridge wanted to thank us. Things kinda got a little mixed up and suddenly all of us wound up out in the jungle just outside of the colony. We hadn't been out there before…we were stuck for 10 days. But the last part of those days? We were split into four groups.
[He pauses, waiting to make sure Mitsuru understands.] …the thing you need to know is that there's the Bridge, and there's four elemental spirits. Maris is water-aligned, Caeli is air-aligned, Occidi is earth-aligned and Ardeo's fire. If you look around the colony you'll find their shrines, too. During the last part of our trip we were all split up and went with one of elementals. We were divided up by who we were claimed by. [A beat.] My girlfriend, two of my friends and I went with Caeli up into the mountains. Another couple of friends of mine went with Ardeo into a volcano, Tadashi was pulled with Occidi into a deeper part of the jungle and Minato and some other friends of mine were dropped in the ocean on a beach with Maris.
We all found different information, too. I can send you some of the notes I have if you want. [And he stops there because…that was a lot of information.]
no subject
She listens quietly, attentively. Names that she's unfamiliar with, perhaps some she should be more-so. The fact that he mentions Minato--...hm. This is something she'll have to take up with him later, lest she hound HIro too much for information.
At his offer, she reacts immediately. ]
--Yes, please. That would be very helpful. [ Actual notes that she can review! What's a good concept. ] There's much more going on than I anticipated...I'd been so concentrated on what I could find happening in the colony proper that I didn't consider to look beyond. This is very interesting.
no subject
I'll send you what I have as soon as possible. I need to add some other stuff to it. [His expression is slightly grim.] They designed it that way, I think, with the glitches in ViViD that force us to play once a month and then all the weird stuff that's been happening lately. Gotta wonder if they're just hoping that would distract us long enough not to look further. I've been compiling notes for months. [He frowns again.] It's the only way we can all really be on guard around here. [Knowledge is power, etc etc.]
no subject
It does bring more questions to mind than it answers... [ The game mechanics, though her experience with video games (harhar) is limited to this. ] A distraction in and of itself wouldn't be surprising, although a convoluted one at that. My understanding is limited, but the amount of time in resources put into this makes it unlikely. There must be something else going on.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
Yes. I suppose so.
[ Read: this is someone who is bad at enjoying things while she can. Especially dances. Ah, well...at least Baymax seems to be enjoying himself. ]
I will leave you to your robot. We'll be in contact.