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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"Oh. Just the background music. Ain't it bugging the crap out of you too?"
Or maybe she was an NPC. He doubted she could even hear of it.
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Not that Taichi played very often. He was too busy with his soccer, spending every possible minute he could outside practicing. When they weren't busy trying to save the fate of two worlds from evil digimon, that was.
"They told me this was a game too. I wonder if they all play music."
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He liked retro games. He really did. He also liked that you could turn on your own jams to drown them out.
"But uh... what are you doing out here anyway? This ain't exactly kid-friendly territory."
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Oh, sure, there was the Power Point. The explanation she half-remembered, combined with talks she'd had with others around her. But it was still difficult for her to wrap her mind around the idea of being brought to an entirely different world just to play a game.
Especially when she had already been in a different world from home at the time for something so much more important.
"But don't worry. I'm not scared. I've been in much more dangerous places than this before." She said that with a strangely calm smile on her face, like it was no big deal to her. "Besides, Tailmon here will protect me."
A gentle nod indicated to the feline creature at her feet.
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He kept his cool anyway. He was a seasoned superhero after all.
"Great. So you brought your cat. That's great."
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"I've protected Hikari across two worlds, and I will protect her in this one."
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"I mean, hey, that's cool. Who doesn't want a talking cat?"
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"Tailmon's not a cat," Hikari corrected sheepishly, looking slightly embarrassed to have tried to deliberately mislead him. "She's a digimon. A Digital Monster from the Digital World. We've been fighting together to help save our words from the bad digimon almost since we met."
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"Well. I know she's a digimon, but she does look like a cat. Just sayin'."
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"I'm sure he didn't mean anything by it, Tailmon," Hikari tried to explain gently. "You do look like a cat. Plenty of people back home were fooled, even, remember?"
The lightest of scoffs was her reply. "...he's making it sound like it means I can't protect you."
"But I know you can, which is what matters." Although, speaking of...she glanced back up at the robot-man. "How did you know she was a digimon? Are you one too?"
(From a glance, he did look a little like Andromon....)
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This was getting nowhere. Cyborg stopped a moment and pinched the bridge of his nose, exhaled, and decided to start over. There was no reason to make this into a whole thing.
"Look, I'm one of the titans. My name is Cyborg. So your digicat can probably protect you, but it ain't ever been a bad idea to have extra firepower. And I got firepower."
Heck, he was firepower.
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Hikari, meanwhile, tilted her head slightly to one side in confusion: "What's a titan?"
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An expectant pause. "... we're uh. Superheroes. From Jump City. It's a whole, ya know... thing."
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What she did recognize, was the word superheroes, at which her whole face brightened.
"Ah! You mean like the superheroes on tv? That's so cool!"
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Well. It was something. And besides, she was just as a kid. It made perfect sense she'd never heard of him or his team.
"Anyway. Stick with me, we'll find the end of this game."
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It wasn't safe and it was far from sound, but Cyborg had years of gaming experience to know how this kind of deal worked.
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"...but...there are monsters. We fought them..."
Then she realized what he probably meant: that they would have to trudge along anyway, if it meant getting out of here.
"There are other ways. For a while, we tried walking through the trees. It takes longer. But there are no monsters in there."
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Casuals, though.
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"You keep calling this a game, but I'm not going to risk Hikari's safety just because you want to show off how tough you think you are."
"Tailmon..." Hikari began.
"The forest was proven safer. We're going that way. Follow if you want, or not. It makes no difference to me."
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"... you're not really gonna take the catmon's advice are ya? It ain't about being tough. It's about beating the game and getting out."
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