You're probably woken up by the explosion first. A loud, deafening boom comes from behind the walls of the residential district. When you look outside your window towards the darker, more secretive area of the city, you might see the structure around it... crumbling, the land falling in on itself slowly but surely. That might be what wakes you up first. If it doesn't, you may be awoken instead by the sudden jerking feeling behind your navel pulling you from where you are to somewhere... else.
It's dark. The first thing you notice is that it's dark -- and then come the scrabbling sounds of creatures in the dark, like metal being dragged across metal, a chilling, sharp sound. The first thing that becomes clear, as your vision adjusts, is that you're on a rickety pathway, metal and rusting and frail, above what appears to be yawning blackness. Far, far below, there's the faint sound of rushing water, a ways away.
The second thing that becomes clear is that you are very much not alone. Something is out there with you, and from the screeching metallic noises that come ever closer, it seems to be stalking you.
Thankfully, you're not alone -- right?  ...
...........
................
:)
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PHASE I [ ??? ] It’s drafty here. You’re below ground, that’s for certain from the echoes of the wind in the darkness. If you continue on forwards along the rickety, metal railing that serves as a walkway, the skittering noises of creatures in the dark follow -- but they don’t appear.
It seems everyone has been dumped along this pathway at random; you may be with friends, with enemies or with someone you’ve never met before, but either way, it soon becomes clear. There are only two ways to go along this path: up or down.
If you choose to take the path that follows a gradual slope down, the sounds of water lapping against a surface increase bit by bit, the air growing heavier and danker, until finally, the metallic platform gives way very suddenly (watch your step!) to a muddy bank. Down here, everything is darker, and not far away there’s the water. It’s cold and frigid and there are unfriendly creatures that await if you choose to delve into it. However, if you brave those creatures, and dive deeply enough, there is a mask. It rests half-buried by silt and rocks, but it’s there, and can be found by any intrepid explorers.
Somehow, it feels a little familiar.
And if you carry on in the cave system underground, eventually you will come across what appears to be an altar. There is blood on it -- not fresh, but not more than a month old -- and pieces of trinkets. Old bits of cloth, locks of hair, and some of them may even be familiar. Any dropped character who has a reasonably large amount of spiritual or magical power may have left scraps, such as pieces of clothing, trinkets, hair, or the sort behind at the altar.
Maybe that's why they weren't in the Nexus Code.
PHASE II [ ??? ] If you go up, you will eventually make your way above ground. It takes some time, and some luck -- you’ll have to avoid rusty railing and pathways, the path crumbling under you and that creeping sensation that something is following and watching you -- and then you’ll suddenly be in fresh air.
Well. It’s not so fresh, really.
The landscape is broken down and crumbled. It may have once been part of the city of Cerealia, but now it is in utter disrepair and decay. Buildings have crumbled, and debris is everywhere. There are signs of the same level of technology that Cerealia has -- but it is all broken down and utterly inaccessible.
And you’re not alone.
It seems the technology and metal and broken down destruction has gained sentience over its time sitting alone, waiting. And it is not happy to be disturbed. The creatures are made of pieces of everything around them, and when cut down, they’ll just slowly rebuild themselves from the debris.
It might be time to run.
They aren't happy about being disturbed, and you're in their way.
PHASE III [ ??? ] Above ground, there are a lot of broken down buildings.
Some can’t be accessed at all; some are too broken, too reduced to rubble. For those looking for shelter, they'll be able to find buildings where the doors can be forced open and they can camp out on the inside to various degrees of stability. Though the ceiling may cave in or the floor fall out from under you at a moment's notice, it's better than being out there. Be careful, because none of the architecture here can be trusted anymore.
And other buildings... are even less trustworthy than that.
There is a series of buildings in the midst of the wasteland, somehow still standing. They stand there silently, towering over the rest of the rubble in their two-story glory, and if the doors are forced open, it soon becomes clear that the building itself is full of mirrors.
Once, the mirrors had perhaps covered the walls and ceiling. Once, this building might have been akin to something of a ballet studio, somewhere to express yourself creatively. But now the mirrors are shattered and broken into pieces and the building lacks the joy it might have once held. Shards of mirror cover the floor, some big, some not so big, but they still hang from the walls as well and everywhere you look, you can see yourself.
And then, the reflection changes. From one blink to the next, you see a memory playing in the mirrors. Your memory. You’ll see a glimpse of one of your most traumatic or life-changing moments, broken up but clear in the shards. Blink and look away, and it’s gone, only to show up again in the next mirror a few moments later. Surely it’s just a trick of the light, right?
Except if someone else is with you, they’ll see it too -- and you might end up seeing a bit of their own past as well. Hope you're fond of sharing.
PHASE IV [ ??? ] If you survive the monsters, the crumbling landscape and the untrustworthy buildings, you may eventually find a terminal. It is buried deep among the rubble. One turn around a corner, one stumble into a hole, and you will find it. It sits there, out in the middle of nowhere; the building in which it used to be housed is apparently long gone, reduced to nothing but rubble.
And if you turn it on, there is a brief message.
Transmission Broadcasting.
Transmission Connected.
And then, there is a face.
BONUS [ ??? ] For those who have been wearing their masks a little too much, they might also start to notice that there are some strange effects attached, which worsen the more they’ve been wearing said masks. How badly they worsen is up to your discretion.
➝ Broken Mask: An intense feeling of paranoia, focused on whoever your character is with. They might also begin to remember fabricated memories of being betrayed by those people.
➝ Barcode Mask: Everything will begin to have value to them. There will be whispers in the back of their mind of the worth of their friends, the worth of a monster, the worth of everything around them. An intense need to own and consume as much as possible and as quickly as possible.
➝ Dripping Blood Mask: An intense lack of self-worth, a hollow feeling and thoughts of being weak and empty. Feeling as disposable as possible and an intense listless along with it.
➝ :( Mask: A need to prove yourself, to show everyone how strong you are as quickly as possible. You can do things, you can be of worth to everyone around you. Why won't they see that? Why?
➝ Ivy Mask: A choking sort of terror from all things metal and technology based, and a need to lash out against it. An intense distrust for anything that they feel is against the laws of nature.
➝ Grey Mask: More personable than normal, more emotional, more empathetic. An intense feeling of kindness and gratitude to those around you and a renewed love of life.
➝ Feather Mask: A dulled, lack of emotion. A detached feeling to everything around you. A sort of bland curiosity towards things without any empathetic reaction.
➝ Bloody Fingerprints Mask: They'll feel absolutely fine. No change.
The effects of the broken mask can stack on top of the others, if they chose to break their mask after the other effects began to appear. No other effects can be stacked, as no other changes can be stacked.
PENALTY [ ??? ] For characters who die while in the dark parts of the city, things will get... a little strange. They will die as normal, but they will wake up almost immediately after their death -- in the Nexus Code. They will have a few surreal moments to be there, to see their friends who have left Cerealia hanging lifelessly from odd, glimmering strands (though there are some faces, of course, that are missing, anyone who was spiritual, or magical, seems strangely absent) and then --
They’re back to being dead.
When characters revive in Cerealia, anywhere from one IC day to three or four IC days later, they will find that things are… not quite right with their code. They’re glitching, for a lack of a better word. Sometimes, their fingers will phase right through an object, their own limbs registering as cold and lifeless. Sometimes, they will see a face watching them -- but when they turn around to try to see who it is, the face will be gone.
These effects will last an IC week, before slowly things go back to normal.
That was strange.
[ 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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UGH IT TOOK ME 1000 YEARS TO DECIDE iii!!
So it's scary, seeing Tsurumaru anchoring himself to something so firmly, to see him rip his palms over the shadow of so many people as they run and run and fracture into twenty pieces but keep running, still. It's not the first time he's seen blood on this sword's hands, but the meaning is different here, and it unnerves Kashuu to the bone.
That said - he doesn't try to pull Tsurumaru's hands from the glass. Rather than risk hurting him even further, he just - quickly darts over, smacking his palm against the largest piece of glass to block out the images dancing across the surface.]
Hey. Breathe.
UGH HAND ON SHOULDER GOOD WORK
as he whips around, trying to identify who it is, there's something angry and indignant in his gaze; but at this point, it's pretty obvious that he isn't thinking too clearly. it does take him a second or two to identify him as kashuu, though, but once he does, tsurumaru's immediately trying to yank at the other sword's hand, smearing the black fabric of kashuu's glove with blood, but he isn't feeling too considerate in the first place. ]
What are you doing — why are you trying to separate me from them? Kashuu, please, let me see them again. I want to see them again.
[ and then, a bit more softly: ]
I want to be with them.
ugh now im ready 4 paintrain, throws tsuru into space
Today is pretty far from any definition of normal, though. From the shrine and the trinkets there to Tsurumaru here, trying desperately to remove his hand from a piece of lifeless glass, nothing is "as usual" right now. Kashuu's expression twists up into something that's caught between alarm and concern and a bitter twist of fear, a gentle bubble of empathy (but it's not strong enough to have him moving his fingers.
Really, it's not strong enough for anything of note at all.)]
You can't. [See them again? Be with them? Kashuu should have more words to say since it's very near his job to be verbose, but he finds them sticking in his throat now.]
It's just CERES.
ugh im here for paintrain... wtf drags kashuu with?? we're going to the void
But I want to —
[ it's stubborn, yes, but he's always been like this: annoyingly persistent, both in his surprises and in more serious situations like this. he lowers his hand, slowly dropping it against his side like a leaden weight — the weight of all of his suffering — definitely older than kashuu has been alive, and he's quite aware. ]
You don't understand what it's like. You're only what, six hundred? The last time that I saw my clan was centuries before you were forged.
[ his phrasing is a bit odd, opting to skip over the "master's" portion, but this was a group of people that had loved him for him, and not for the inherent monetary value of his blade, so in the end, it's fine. ]
STOP GO TO THE VOID ALONE
...I know. [Age doesn't always equate to experience - there are some longer-lived swords with less turbulent lives and some swords who existed like a spark, a brief flash of intense experiences before fading - but he knows that he doesn't understand what it's like to carry that kind of weight for so long. He doesn't even know what it's like to have a beloved clan, a group of people so important that Tsurumaru still pines to join them hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years after their end. He doesn't understand that at all, and seeing that - hearing this from him is unnerving.
He supposes they all have their albatrosses, though. Tsurumaru just happens to keep his close and covered.]
I don't understand. [But he keeps his palm pressed flat against the glass, even as Tsurumaru's hand drops away.]
...If you wanna see them again- [That much he can begin to grasp, at least, but--] -then don't let it be because CERES says so.
[Don't let it be because CERES has decided to look into the many, many painful things that Tsurumaru harbors and has plucked one out to set on display: a mockery of a centerpiece, as if to say "here are all of the things you can't have, here are the things you can't stop."]
NO?? puts you in my pocket you're coming with
tsurumaru glances back at kashuu, looking on listlessly — with the faintest hint of curiosity, because if that's true, if he shouldn't let it be because CERES said so, then he should definitely be able to answer this question, right? ]
But how will I see them again, without CERES?
[ when it comes to defense mechanisms, tsurumaru's are... almost paradoxical; for a sword that hates being surprised, he spends far too much time around surprises, as if overexposure, induced by himself, will help him somehow. and in this situation, if you replace surprises with CERES, well... ]
what in the fck pocket peanuts
He doesn't want any of these things for Tsurumaru, so he remains tight-lipped for a second longer, but his silence is telling. Not the silence of someone who doesn't know, but of someone who does and doesn't want to say.
Instead, he finally peels his palm away from the glass, but it's only so he can reach for Tsurumaru's hand. The blood is fine. There are still flickers of shadows playing out on its cracked surface.]
Let's go. ...Don't let them take the things that're yours - they're not giving you anything here.
[And they're not, even if the part of him that he pretends doesn't exist would probably do the exact same thing if he were in Tsurumaru's shoes. If he loved something with all his heart and couldn't ever fill that void again, would he willingly fall into a trap just for the sake of being able to see them again? Probably.
Not that he understands the depth of Tsurumaru's pain here, because he doesn't even know it exists, not really, but- there's something that has him trying to pull Tsurumaru upward a little more fiercely than he perhaps intended. Probably not good for his cuts, ah...]
complimentary pocket peanuts on the airplane to the void
there's a squeeze at his hand; something pulses, jolting him back to the present, and his gaze slowly focuses on his hand, which kashuu seems to be insistently tugging, and ah..... it hurts. it kind of hurts — it kind of hurts a lot. a slight wince crosses his expression, but when he speaks, there's something dull about his words, about his tone, about the way he sounds, as if he's not all there. ]
That hurts — if you're trying to kill me, you shouldn't do it by slowly bleeding me to death. Ah, actually, wait... I suppose that wouldn't be a bad way to die, either. They died that way, too. [ he doesn't budge, though, no matter how much kashuu pulls, and no matter how much his pulling inadvertently yanks at the open wounds on his hands.
and then, he'll laugh, as if he finds his own thoughts amusing. ]
Who am I kidding, right? Talking about death as if I could ever die.
[ and he isn't attributing it to his tsukumogami status, because he knows that they can die, too — kashuu is, sadly, proof of that. what he means is that because he's tsurumaru, a sword that's tried to die more times than he has years under his belt, and has found all of his attempts unsuccessful. ]
ugh when will they get a better snacking experience
I wouldn't kill you like that, if I was trying. [...And then he's pulling strips out of his pocket (strips of his sleeves, though the damage to his shirt can't be seen with his jacket covering it) so he can start to bind the worst of the cuts.] At least hold still.
[With how listless Tsurumaru is, he doesn't imagine that will be a tall order.
If he's allowed to work, he'll do it in silence, because there are a lot of things he wants to say to that and a lot of things that he can't or won't. This is something he also doesn't get, after all, and it's not a matter of unfamiliarity or lack of experience like before. People who pine to join lost loved ones so badly that they actively turn down life as it is... He doesn't understand it at all. He's spent his existence from his forge day to the latest battles surrounded by death - that bruisemark of kegare - and he keeps returning to it, no matter how many pretty flowers he braids into his hair or how immaculate his nail polish is or how strong he gets or how sure the hands that wield him are. To him, that place has nothing good.
Still, he's out of his depth here. He only talks to Tsurumaru in passing; they're comrades, but not close. He doesn't really know his story, and he's feeling that gap more acutely now than ever. ...But he has to ask.]
...What do you think is waiting for you over there?
[On the other shore of death.]
maybe they can also have mismatched swirly pastas :s
still, his answer to that is simple, spoken quietly. ]
The people that love me the most.
[ and when he looks up at kashuu, his gaze is as empty as his words. ]
It's sad, Kashuu. It's sad. It's so sad — they didn't have to die. It's so sad.
[ they're repeated, in a series of soft whispers — to himself, to kashuu, to himself, but he pauses to recompose himself, just a bit. he'll try to fill kashuu in a bit, but the truth is, his story is long and convoluted and probably very difficult to follow........ ]
As swords, we want to protect our masters. But, tell me this — how do you protect your master's clan from being massacred? What can you do, other than to watch everyone die, without being able to do anything? It wasn't just one person, or two people, or even five hundred people. It was more. One by one, they all...
[ he inhales. ] They all died, Kashuu. I held them, until they weren't warm anymore. And even when I was buried with them, and everything was dark and I couldn't see them anymore, I held them. And even when I could feel them coming apart, I still... I wanted all of them to be with me. I didn't want them to be lonely.
just uncooked noodles in with the rest......