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?  ...
...........
................
:)
|
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. ] |
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
!!! yes!
Sometimes I still wonder that but...he had a lot of things wrong, too. [Which isn't an excuse and it's clear that no matter how sympathetic he can be, he's absolutely not forgiving Callaghan for what happened.] Thing is, would I have been any better than him if I followed through with it?
he's a horrible
Maybe, but maybe not. It's hard to say without the rest of the story.
[ There's just one tiny little thing that could make all the difference, though. ]
Who was Tadashi?
no he's perfect (and not entirely wrong lbr)
So instead, he focuses on the question he can answer.]
He's my older brother. [He gestures back to the mirror with his head.] That guy was his mentor.
just don't ever take his advice, okay hiro?
Oh. Oh. Okay, that changes everything. For that, revenge is justified. No amount of bloodshed will ever make things right again, but it's still justified, no matter what excuses are made for it. ]
Then he deserves whatever happens to him.
[ His own situation was a little different in that Danzo hadn't directly caused Itachi's death, but he did cause the death of everybody else in the clan, which caused Itachi's death later down the line, so in a roundabout way, he was responsible for everything, even if he was just a product of the world they lived in. ]
I'm not gonna say 'if I were you', because I'm not you. [ Ah, but there had been a question asked, and now that he knows a little more, there's an answer to be given. ] Would going through with it have made you any better than him? If you have to ask yourself that question, then no, because it means that if you had, you'd be constantly asking yourself if you did the right thing. If you've resolved yourself to killing someone, there can't be any doubt because you have to live with it. It doesn't change anything, and it won't bring anybody back, but it helps a little to know you're the last person they'll ever screw over.
ehhhh no promises
It's true. There can't be doubts in his mind if he would go through with something like that. It wouldn't change anything, it wouldn't bring Tadashi back. Still, it takes him a moment to really formulate the sentence he wants to say.]
After all of that, we fought him. He was set on killing somebody else in revenge and we had to stop him. ...I might not have been able to save Tadashi, but I could save someone else. We stopped him and he's been arrested since then. [He's not sure the next piece is necessary, but it might be. It's not like Tadashi's locked away in an attic somewhere as a secret from the world.]
Doing all of that might not have brought Tadashi back in my world, but it didn't stop CERES from bringing him here.
i'd say don't do anything he wouldn't do, but that doesn't leave a whole lot
You're much kinder than I am, because I would've killed him, but are you satisfied with that? He gets to live another day, but you can only see your brother in this mess of a world. If something happens and one of you vanishes, you might never see each other again.
[ Truth be told, though, he's a little jealous. But only a little. After all, he did get to see Itachi one last time, and they did get to say their goodbyes... still, it'd be nice to have him around (or, well, more of him than just his eyes). ]
listen, its just that sasuke lives a little on the dangerous side. yolo and etc
Yeah. Maybe. [To being kinder than he should have been. Still, he tilts his head up and his next sentence is said with confidence.] And I know. I know that every day there's the risk of losing him all over again...but it'd be better than living back home without him and thinking he'd be disappointed if I'd killed him. It's not what he would have wanted and...I don't know. Maybe I just want to preserve his memory that way.
So am I satisfied? I'm still deciding, but I know I made the better choice.
either that or he's slightly crazy
What's he like?
[ Sasuke may not know him, and to be honest, it's not that he even really cares, but he's actually rather curious as to what else -if anything- the mirrors would show, so a question is probably the best way to keep him there. ]
no subject
Who, Tadashi or Callaghan? [So far, it seems, the mirrors are just having fun relooping Baymax in destruction mode and Hiro's left delivering sarcastic answers to questions.]
no subject
...not that Hiro is probably all that much younger than he is. ]
Tadashi.
[ Okay, maybe he does care. Somewhat. Sort of. And he's immensely grateful that the mirrors are relooping, because it means that the place is more interested in harassing Hiro than him. There's a lot that can be seen in what's reflected, though, and it's because of that that he's maybe kinda sort of taking an interest in Hiro's relationship with his brother. ]
no subject
You know those guys that people are always saying they're saintly? The kind of guys who hold doors open for strangers and help old ladies cross the street or rescue cats from trees? That's it. That's Tadashi. He's the type of person who wants to help the whole world and make it a better place. Really smart, too. We were both going to the same college for robotics and technology.
[He makes a face.] I mean he sorta tricked me into applying, but that's because he's not always as nice as he appears. Sometimes he can be really sneaky. ...but he's a good guy. Eager to place, self-sacrificing to a fault...["The complete opposite of me on occasion?"] He's always been the really responsible one, too, to help take some of the weight off Aunt Cass after she took us in. He always believes in the best in people...he doesn't give up that easily on anything.
[And it's about then he realizes he's rambling and he shuts his mouth.] Anyway. You could probably meet him yourself. He's out there somewhere. We got separated again.
no subject
This is all incredibly weird for him, though, because he doesn't like to be able to relate to others. Understanding people makes it harder to keep a distance. ]
Self-sacrificing isn't always a good trait. Even if the intentions are good, the results only leave others to suffer for it, and if you don't understand why they did it, it just makes things worse.
[ Rambling or not, though, Hiro's chatter is a welcome distraction from the situation at hand, even if it does bring with it some unwelcome memories of Sasuke's own. ]
Again? He left you on your own?
no subject
Truth be told, Hiro still sometimes wonders if he really did let Callaghan off easily. There's also the rest of the story, what Hiro did for Callaghan. A gesture of good faith, an act of heroism…and nothing that would bring Tadashi back. Still, that part he would never change.]
I never said it was. In this case, it's probably one of his worse traits. [Candidly. He can speak so candidly about something like that.] I finally kinda understand why he did it but that doesn't make the whole thing much better.
[Seriously, why is he talking so much. He stops again, giving Sasuke a mildly unreadable look at that.] I wouldn't call it that. This place has a tendency to like to split people up even if they were together beforehand. A few months back when the whole colony was pulled into the jungle people were stuck looking for other people for days. I'll run into him soon. [Just…hopefully not here.]
no subject
[ And then you go off the deep end, but that's beside the point.
The mention of past events makes him pause, though, staring at Hiro in mild confusion. Did he just insinuate that this shit is normal for this place?! ] It did what?
[ Why couldn't he have ended up in a slightly less crazy world instead of this one? ]
no subject
He catches that look though, and there's a wry sort of grin.] You haven't heard about the jungle yet?
no subject
No... [ His tone is laced with caution, and he's pretty sure he isn't going to like this story, but he wants to know. If only so he isn't caught off guard later. ] What about it?
no subject
A couple of months ago, a few colonist set free this entity called The Bridge. She's like the queen of the element spirits here, and because people had set her free, she wanted to return the favor. So one morning out of nowhere, we were all physically teleported straight outside of the colony and into the jungle. Kinda like this, y'know? But we were stuck outside of the walls for ten days. The last half of that "vacation" was spent being split up again into four groups. It was kind of a mess out there.
no subject
So it's basically home.
[ Or well, less "home" and more the enclosed forest that a bunch of children (and a few adults) were tossed into for five days, with a goal of collecting two scrolls and getting to the center alive. ]
And I'm going to assume that by "kind of a mess", you mean more of a mess than now?
no subject
[Maybe he doesn't want to know. But he nods anyway.] Exactly like that. Our CereVices still didn't work out there but at least we can breathe here and there's more in the way of shelters. It's harder to find food since these monsters aren't exactly edible but I'd rather deal with this than whatever's out there. We won't really be able to say until we get out of here.
no subject
[ It's normal for him, at least? But the rest of this sounds kind of crazy to him. ]
I'm perfectly capable of handling whatever is out there. [ He's also willing to help Hiro find Tadashi, because brothers should not be split up like that. ]
no subject
[He's more musing out loud than anything but he can't help but nod in agreement. Right. They should focus on getting out of this crazy house.] I think I'll be the judge of that. [It's a teasing tone, if anything just to dredge up his confidence.] Come on. Let's head this way and get out of here.
no subject
[ The teasing tone isn't lost on him, but at the same time, he's pretty sure he knows what he's capable of, and... ] I wasn't the one running from mirrors. [ There's a hint of sarcasm in his tone, but sorry Hiro, he can be an ass. He'll follow the kid, though, because getting lost in here isn't a thing he wants to do, especially if it's dredging up memories like this. ]
no subject
I wouldn't call it running away, by the way. [Or Hiro can make it worse, that's okay, too.] Consider it more like putting everything behind me now.
no subject
[ Not entirely true, since people marry outside their villages and move to others all the time, but most people also don't run off and end up committing crimes to land themselves on the wanted list.
He understands the idea of putting things behind him, though, so he won't argue that. ] You could've just left the room if you wanted to get away from them that badly. Though, I doubt they could come down from their mountings to chase you.
no subject
And anyway the thing is that there're tons of mirrors in this building. I could have left the room but they wouldn't need to come down to chase me everywhere else. Figured it was worth watching the whole thing just so that maybe it'd leave me alone. The whole idea of accepting the truth or the truth will set you free or whatever you wanna call it. Plus you never know what weird stuff will happen around here.