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« 009 ⇢ event009.exe »

Who: CERES & you
When: ooc: 01/15-01/22; ic: 11/03-11/06
Where: Cerealia's Research & Technology District and Beyond!!!
What: Intro and Event log
Rating/Warning: PG-13 | possibly nsfw (please let us know if you need this rating changed, or you are welcome to continue any naughty shenanigans in a private log)

//event009.EXE

Always Believe in the Heart of the Cards Except When They Tell You to Kill People

Welcome to CERES Research Tower’s latest event! For all you new folk queuing outside of the conference room where you were just made to sit through a lovely power point presentation, you will be asked to stay a bit longer and test out some games in their Game Testing Center. It’s a giant space located in the basement level filled to the brim with cubicles for everyone to sit in and enjoy their newest array of pop-up games. The games themselves will be in holo(gm) form and will feature suggestions from CEO’s post, including a simplified, 8-bit version of Tetris, Baseball, Soda Smash, etc. Characters can control the game through moving their fingers and tapping them against the holo(gm) screens.

Surrounding the cubicles will be tables of food and more food for characters to partake in. It’s all safe this time. No mind-altering candy corn or gut-exploding Knight Burgers. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy the party. For those who have been in Cerealia for a while, they should have received an invitation to the event and an offer of 1,000 credits just for participating. So come on down and bring a friend or ten! Meanwhile, CEO has a small welcome for everyone-

“Good Morning and thank you all for coming!

We have been expecting you. We hope you will enjoy what we’ve put together today. Ever since we got your feedback on << RAINBOW NARWHAL MELEE >>, we’ve been developing new games for all of you to enjoy. We’ve also tried to draw in some things from your worlds. We hope to hear more feedback from you in the future.

In the meantime, feel free to sample our food, generously provided to us by TGICERES, a moderately-priced family restaurant located in the Shopping District."

//SCENARIOS.EXE

PHASE I

[ xxxx ] Music lightly wafts from the speakers as the showroom opens. Julius Vincere, CERES’ CEO, delivers the opening announcement before leaving the room. He’ll be watching through all the video cameras placed around the room, so be on your best behavior! You will be guided to one of the many cubicles where you will sit and wait for a screen to pop up with a game. Once that game is defeated, another will pop up and another and another until your character gets hungry/has to pee/is so done with this shit.

PHASE II

[ xxxx ] Among the game rotations is a simple 8-bit fortune telling game starring Aria, the fortune teller. Come be enchanted by her mysterious wiles as she reads your future. She will do some 8-bit arm motions before summoning a ring of cards that will float around her. Characters will be encouraged to pick a card -any card. Once one has been selected, it will turn around slowly and unveil a card from the major arcana. Aria will then give your character their fortune, and that will be that. End of game. Onto the next!

PHASE III

[ xxxx ] You’ve left the testing center, and the evening has passed. As you wake up to perform your normal daily tasks, a niggling urge emerges at the back of your mind. It’s faint at first, just a whisper of a suggestion that pokes at your brain like a mosquito bite. However, that bite starts to grow bigger and become infectious. As the day wears on, you find that one little suggestion escalating. The next day is even worse. It starts to dominate your every thought, making you carry out actions you never thought yourself capable of. Who is this person in the mirror? Who have you become?

PHASE IV

[ xxxx ] By day three, the impulse is now a full-blown addiction. It’s set into your psyche completely. You’ve become something else entirely –the embodiment of the card. You will be acting out everything without anymore resistance, and it won’t stop until the clock strikes midnight. That’s when you’ll reel back to your senses, and when it’ll all have felt like the worst dream ever. Or a nightmare really.

BONUS

[ whyo'clock ] Among all the games present, there is also an 8-bit version of CERESLearn. Yes, you remember the magical game that won your hearts over not too long ago. It will come complete with the same rules. You choose a subject, you choose an 8-bit teacher among the three (Astor), (Hilda), or (UN-Zippy), and you watch them as they try to erotically teach you what you want to learn. Is that an 8-bit boob or her arm? Who knows? But beware… as you may remember, these teachers house a very terrible secret.

They will transform into an 8-bit giant bug that will chase around your protag as you guide them to run away with your finger, but you can also flick the bug on the holo(gm) screen to send them away for good. Those who figure out that little cheat code will immediately receive a special real-time shoulder rub as a reward from a robot that looks eerily like a carbon copy of their teacher of choice.

[ Remember to apply proper warnings on threads with trigger-y or inappropriate material and do let a mod know if your thread careens off into maiming or canoodling so we can lock the log. ]

//RUN.EXE

Welcome to CEREALIA's latest event and intro post. For your convenience, we have compiled a post detailing what's going on right here and feel free to consult the FAQ if needed. Please leave any lingering questions in the OOC post, and we'll answer them as soon as we can. If this post goes into overflow, we will make a new one to deal with the ever-hated captcha! Worry not!

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[Hinata holds her gaze, hoping that he can somehow transmit some kind of calm to her. He shifts forward slightly, glancing at her arms and the way she's digging her fingers in.] I... don't. I don't remember having contact with many other people when I was like that, besides Enoshima. [He hadn't cared enough to, he thinks. He wouldn't have cared at all about the other Super High School Level Despair.]

I don't think Kuzuryuu remembered anything, either. But it's possible that he might. When we left the program...we had to make a choice, and we all decided that we'd go back to how we'd been, even if that meant being Super High School Level Despair.

[He stops.]

Pekoyama, [quietly.] You're going to hurt yourself like that.

Go back?

[If anything, the grip on her arms only tightens as she stares up at him, slowly shaking her head. That must have been the only real choice presented, if they were to go back. And Hinata... looks, if not the same, than similiar enough that it's not frighteningly different.

Go back, to where she and almost their entire class are in comas. She breathes again, a short exhale, and almost gives a start at Hinata's observation that she's going to hurt herself, releasing her own arms and letting her hands dangle uselessly at her sides.]

You... you said fifteen. Not sixteen.

[She surmises it has something to do with the "traitor," but which person? And what happened to them?]

Aa. Go back... we all decided together, even though we were afraid of what might happen.

[But they did decide to face everything... Kuzuryuu included, he's trying to say. Whatever Pekoyama might be thinking about, whatever might be going through her head, he hopes that might help a little. Kuzuryuu was prepared to face it alongside the rest of them.

But oh, right...]

...Nanami is a little different from the rest of us. [Though that doesn't make her not one of them all, no, she did too much for him, for all of them. Maybe that's why he can't talk about her in the past tense, either; if she'd really died, would she have been able to help him?] She's an AI. She and Usami were created and put in the program to oversee us through our time on the island. [Nanami... he misses her even now (not as though he doesn't miss a lot of them but Nanami), and that never really goes away.]

[Peko shakes her head, not exactly disagreeing with Hinata, but more from a kind of stunned disbelief. None of this makes sense to her. Each concept she understands by itself, but everything put together -- AIs, virtual realities, Super High School Level Despair -- is so far outside the scope of her experience that she doesn't even know how to react aside from that numb disbelief.]

I don't... remember anything. Even with you telling me all this. [She's giving him another hard stare, though past the almost hostile intensity, there's an almost fear.] If I am to believe that I have gone from one virtual reality to another... how am I supposed to know what is real?

[Hinata shifts, leaning back against a wall opposite her, looking back at her even with that intensity. It still makes him want to fidget and squirm uncomfortably, maybe like the fluffy animals she has a hard time with, but he tells his fidgeting feet to still.]

Yeah... I know. Komaeda still doesn't remember things either. [...] Sorry that I'm asking this of you, all of a sudden. Even I realise it's a lot of stuff to take in. [His hand swipes down the side of his neck before he curls fingers just behind it.] But...

Isn't it all real? No matter if it's a virtual reality or world or anything, it doesn't change that all of the things that we went through were real.

[Again, silence. This time it extends a little further than before, but if the way she finally closes her eyes is any indication, she's trying to think about it instead of rejecting it outright. She can't think of any reason why Hinata would lie to her about this -- a sick joke, a prank, someone pretending to be him, she doesn't know. But that doesn't make sense, either; she'd be expecting to hear more about how ~Ceres can help~ if he weren't real.

She exhales through her nose and nods once, as if confirming something silently to herself, then looks back to Hinata.]

If all of that was real, and nothing has changed, [she says finally, quietly, avoiding his gaze as quickly as she'd tried to meet it,] Do you resent me...?

Edited 2015-01-17 01:02 (UTC)

Eh?

[Hinata doesn't expect it-- but maybe he should have. He's quiet for a moment or two in his surprise but then he shakes his head slightly. She's not looking his way, so he puts it into words:] No. I don't resent you at all, Pekoyama.

I don't resent anybody for what happened there. [He pauses, a slightly embarrassed pause, for what comes into his head but here it comes he's going to say it anyway:] I'm glad to see you again.

[Just telling her that he didn't resent her would have been enough, but wow, okay. She goes still with genuine surprise when he says he's glad to see her, just kind of blinking at him in an absurd moment of pure confusion. She'd never thought anyone would be glad to see her for anything. Especially not after what happened.

There's another one of those rare Peko smiles. Two in one conversation. Holy shit.]

Yes... I am glad to see you, too.

[Quick Hinata, it's up to you to make sure it doesn't get awkward.]

[Give him a second first he's not used to having a very rare Peko smile aimed at him so he kind of ends up blushing like a dweeb and grinning a bit too. Dammit.

No it's already going to get awkward why did you leave this up to him but he's pretty happy.] Th... [What do you say to that do you say thanks whatever he's saying it:] Thanks.

But, uh. Do you have anything else you want to know about? [He still has ground he hasn't covered yet... though he thinks a break from it so she can sort her thoughts out wouldn't be bad either.]

[What a loser. Peko appreciates it, tilting her head a little with the warm feeling accompanying said smile.

Which promptly vanishes as soon as the warm feeling does when he speaks again. Ah yes. All of that. Her face falls back into its habitual frown as she thinks about it. There's certainly things she's missing, things she'd meant to ask for clarification on or just simply hadn't caught the answer to, but for the moment...]

No. Not right now.

[She lifts a hand, twining a bit of hair around her fingers as her brows knit together. She has a lot to take in, here, but one thing needs to be established before they part ways.]

Do you have any advice...? Regarding this place.

[Yes... He is an enormous loser. Your protagonist, Peko.

He tucks away those warm fuzzy feelings for remembering fondly later, folding his arms over his chest and nodding his head slightly. Later, then. He thinks that'd be a good idea, too. There's no sense in heaping everything there at once.

After all, she's... not going to disappear right away, is she? That's always a fear in the back of Hinata's head whenever someone he knows arrives.]

Yeah, I can do that. A while ago, the power went out in the whole place... so if you can, stockpile some stuff in case of that. I'm in the habit of doing that anyway, so contact me if you need anything. [Hoarder. That's what you are, Hinata. A paranoid hoarder. You're a just-in-case type which is the worst tbh because there are so many just in case scenarios.] We... also need jobs here. [He sounds as though this is weird and it is.] Unless you wanted to play ViViD for money.

[She listens carefully, nodding again. Practical advice. This place isn't all but deserted like the island was (which now, in retrospect, makes so much more sense), so something like that makes sense. Monokuma may not be here, but that doesn't mean she's expecting everything to just magically go well.]

Food and necessities. Understood. [And in a way, something like that is so much easier for her to understand. Prepare for any kind of potential threat. Watch out for her classmates. She can do this.]

I have apparently been given the job of being a dealer at a casino. [She didn't just pick that because it seemed like the most yakuza of all the offered jobs.] Is it safe, to use... ViViD? [What with having been in a VR before and LOOK AT WHAT HAPPENED...]

[A dealer in a casino... Hinata looks at her again. Thinks I feel like she might somehow scare away any players but in a strange way he can picture her in the type of outfit. Oddly fitting... Or not so oddly, considering that it's a yakuza-esque job.]

I-- I see. Well, if you ever want to change jobs afterward, it's not too hard.

[Hinata's done that once already. Because he must investigate all the places!] I don't really know if I can call ViViD perfectly safe. It glitches a lot. But I think it's good to investigate it now and again when there're new things.

Edited 2015-01-17 05:30 (UTC)

Is that so? That is good to know.

[There are so many other jobs she would be more suited for. And several that she wouldn't be suited for at all but would be more than happy to do. Maybe she can work in a zoo... are there zoos here...]

As long as none of its glitches only allow us to escape by killing one another... [That's kind of a turn-off for ViViD right there, but she'll give it a try.]

...Thank you, again, Hinata. I... appreciate it.

[There might not be zoos but there're cybuddy shops... those things are sorta fluffy except they're little robots... They might be less afraid than your regular animals, but then would it have the same satisfaction...!!]

N-- No. Nothing like that. There've been ones where the NPCs looked like people from back home, or the teachers turned into bug monster things, but...

[Nothing forcing them to do anything. Too much. Yet.]

You're welcome, Pekoyama. But... you know, this is just something any friend would do. [He hesitates before he adds,] I'd still like to think of us like that.

[People from back home...? Now that's just cruel. She's stuck there for a moment just thinking about what she would do if that happened -- as much as she'd like to think she'd immediately shut it down, she can't be certain.

Peko looks taken aback for a moment at what he says next, though, looking to him with something that's not exactly shock, but more a kind of unexpectedly pleased surprise.]

That's--

[Hinata, you precious protag. She kind of stares at him for another moment, not... really expecting to receive forgiveness this easily, if that's what it was. Considering she hasn't even really apologized for everything she'd done (and probably won't).

So she just dips her head into a bow -- but that's not enough, so she bends at the waist, hands at her sides.]

...Yes. I... would like that very much. To still be your friend.

[He can't expect to move toward the future if he doesn't accept what's happened in the past, right? He has faith that, if the situation had been different, it never would have come to what it did. Hinata had understood her reasons in as much as a way he could. He tried to understand it all, still tries even now.

So that's why... It's hard to say it's forgiveness so much as acceptance and determination to walk together toward the future even with it. He's done his own share of terrible things, is to blame for so, so many things, and yet those guys hadn't gotten mad at him, they'd still believed in him and wanted to keep walking with him.

Y-- you don't need to bow, though. That really makes this feel formal. Hinata scratches his cheek with a sheepish smile.]

Then we are. Y-you can lift your head, you know. [As easy as that...?!] I look forward to it, Pekoyama. We'll figure things out together here.

[No one (Saionji) is running their mouth, so it doesn't even seem like she'll have to cut herself open. Not that it's really occurred to her at this point, but it's not out of the realm of possibility.

Peko is so formal, though. There's no getting around it. You decided to become friends with this swordswoman nerd, Hinata. You chose this life.

Her voice is quiet as she lifts her head, meeting his eyes with a firm nod. She needs some time to try to process everything before she can move forward, but this... is a good first step.]

We will.

[This seems like a good point to part ways, though. Enough of a basic understanding to try to form her own opinions, and discover information. The first step to understanding your surroundings is to explore them yourself, right?]

I should... take some time to familiarize myself with this place. You will contact me if you need me?

[And, unspoken, but she's allowed to contact you if she needs anything herself, right?]

[No, please don't ever cut yourself open, Peko... Kuzuryuu doing that gave him near enough of a panic, he doesn't want to see that ever again. He watches her anxiously until she lifts her head, and then nods back at her.]

Aa. Contact me if you need anything, too.

Oh right. [He rummages in a pocket, pulling out a little notepad (you know what's awesome? being able to write shit down without consequences it's so awesome) and scribbling something before tearing off the paper.] Here, this is where my apartment is; Komaeda stays with me, too.

[Look he drew a little map and scribbled the number down... Just in case she needs to know where it is. They aren't all in cottages next door to each other anymore with their faces on the mailboxes.]

[Oh, that's useful. She watches him scribble, then takes the offered map, noting the number with another nod. She really should have assumed that they wouldn't be in cottages anymore, meaning she'll have to find a place for herself. Fortunately the power point had covered all of that, so all that's left is for her to actually get one.]

With Komaeda...?

[Wait, wait. You can't just say that. She gives him a long stare, but doesn't bother to vocalize, "I hope you know what you're doing." Komaeda did live longer than she did, it seems, and surely the SHSL Harmless Face can't be making a mistake.]

I see. I will inform you of my own living situation once I have one.

[The stare gets a wry smile from Hinata. He knows... he really does, Peko... He fully understands her reasons for doubt and she doesn't even know about the 'well he tried to kill us all' thing. Yet.] It's okay, [is like the most insufficient explanation/reassurance ever. But he adds,] A lot of things have changed. Even him.

I'll tell you more about it later.

[If he doesn't mention it first, Hinata adds in his head. Which he very well might, and also other things.]

Then... talk to you later?

Mm. [Be sure that you do, if Komaeda doesn't. Probably once all the craziness has passed, because come tomorrow, Komaeda being Komaeda isn't going to be one of her primary concerns.]

Yes. I will see you later.

[He's getting another quick head-dip before she's turning again and -- okay. She's off, though since she's starting to think over everything they'd been discussing, her steps aren't quite as sure as they normally are. She really does need time to piece all of this together, to really decide how she's going to handle this.

Or, well. First things first. She's going to slowly make her way back to the game center, in a kind of vain hope that maybe Kuzuryuu will show up there.]

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