Lightning flashes. Thunder booms and rain patters on the roof. It’s all about ambience here in ViViD, of course. You gotta set the mood!
Welcome to the Pleasurable Super Youthful Caring Hospital Stage, PSYCHward for short. It works, shut up. It’s a stage created for your well-being, health and happiness. Be careful, though. The first step you take in the dilapidated asylum carries you right into a puddle.
Look down, and the puddle is red.
Ah.
Of course it’s blood.
It’s only going to get even more fun from here.
 Good Day. I Am The New Introducer For ViViD Levels. Mosley? Who's That?
Anyway, Please Have Fun And Remember To Be Safe. Safety Is Our First Priority At CERES.
Thank you. Enjoy.
|
PHASE I [ 4 00 ] The first room any people familiar with the ViViD song and dance routine will find is one that is...wonderfully full of body bags. Body bags everywhere -- on the floor, on the shelves, uncomfortably tossed over the back of a chair...and each body bag has a helpful tag.
Handy.
Of course, within each bag is a newcomer; they won’t be able to escape the body bags until someone else unzips them. They’re dressed in little more than hospital gowns, toe tags still attached to bare feet.
Welcome to ViViD! Enjoy your stay.
Of course, there has to be an element of surprise to it. Some body bags contain living, breathing newcomers, yes. But the others?
These contain corpses. The toe tag on them indicates a loved one or someone important to you -- or someone you hate beyond all else. You open the bag, and there is their face, achingly familiar and frozen in death...but blink and suddenly they’re the corpse of a nondescript stranger.
PHASE II [ 600 ] Step out of that room and now it’s the asylum proper. Lights flicker. It’s dark, but it’s still more than clear to anyone with ears -- something’s stalking everyone in this place.
The shadow flickers on the wall, the lights go out -- you turn a corner and there it is, jumping out at you with an unearthly cackle --
A puppet.
It hangs there limply, utterly harmless.
All around the facility, these harmless puppets lurk. In lockers, behind doors, in dark halls…
But they’re all literally inanimate and harmless. Whose dumb idea was that?
PHASE III [ 1000 ] But slowly, the atmosphere changes. Go in deeper, and the sounds around deaden until there’s nothing left but the dark all around and the sound of your own breathing. And yet, irrevocably you know, whether as an aspect of the level or something else entirely --
Something is actually hunting you now.
It makes no noise. It can’t be seen. But it’s stalking, and it’s on the hunt.
To make matters worse, now the asylum seems to have become a proper maze, with dead ends everywhere, and practically no light to see them by.
And the only other souls you’ll see are the other people stuck in the maze -- but there’s something not quite right about them either. You can see...bits of their code, lurking under the surface of their skin, and as you watch, it’s being corrupted, bit by bit, the longer they’re in the dark.
If you look down, it’s happening to you too.
Better hurry.
There’s only one way out.
PHASE IV [ 1400 ] And then you step through a doorway into light.
You escaped the maze, but this is an asylum, and you’re about to see why. There are rows upon rows of cages of aliens. They cry out and reach out through the bars with webbed or clawed hands or tentacles, begging for release.
Let them out, or don’t -- the exit to Cerealia proper is right there at the end of this room, inviting and safe.
But if you do elect to let them out, the entire room suddenly goes silent.
And there, in that cage you opened, there is no longer an alien, but instead a doll. And it’s watching you. Stay any longer, and the doll with start to move, reaching -- and if it touched you, suddenly you’re the one locked away behind bars.
On the plus side, when you take the exit to Cerealia, it’ll deposit you in the Pleasure District, where massagebots will reach for you to try to drag you in for a sensual massage.
Welcome!
PENALTY [ ???? ] You were caught in the maze.
It’s hard to say even now what it was that caught you, but now you’re strapped down to an operating table, and there’s a flat-faced doctor standing above you.
The restraints can’t be broken.
There’s a prick of a needle, and you fall unconscious -- and that’s probably a mercy. When you wake up, you’ll be back in the asylum somewhere, but missing a sense -- the one from your character’s application will be gone. A character who is sight will have been blinded, for instance, and a character who is touch will feel nothing. This will last until they log out of ViViD and get into Cerealia.
[ 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. ] |
Welcome to Cerealia's July intro log! For your convenience, we have compiled the characters' arrival experience here, and should you have any questions, feel free to ask them here! You can also check the FAQ for more general inquiries. Should this event log hit Captcha, there is an all-purpose overflow here. Thank you! |
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Do you know the way out?
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Nope! I'm as lost as you are . . . eventually we'll just get kicked out, but that could be hours from now, and it ain't like I wanna just stand around here waiting either! But at least we're not stuck forever or anything. And they don't tell us before they shove us in here, but they definitely pull this crap on all the newbies! You're new, right?
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If your prior experiences have given you any insight as to which would be the better way to go, by all means. Otherwise, we may as well pick one at random. It's better than standing still.
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Though there's something else bothering him. The more his eyes adjust to the dim light, the more he feels like he's seen this person before. It's hard to tell in the dark, and he can't place it; it's no one he's met here, nor anyone he's met at home, so how could he possibly know them? Where else could he have seen them? And yet he can't shake it. He squints at them in the dark, curious, but unsure of how to ask a thing like that. It sounds crazy.]
I've been here like six months, and there's no way we're gonna know which way's right until we just do it. Sucks, right? But they don't like makin' anything easy for us!
[And then, because he's got to know:]
—This's gonna sound crazy, but I don't know you, do I? What's your name? I'm Kuwata Leon!
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I'm afraid I don't think I've ever seen you before in my life, I'm sorry. Nor do I recognize your name. Mine is Naoto Shirogane.
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But her name does it. Naoto! He wouldn't immediately assume anyone named Naoto was Rise's "Naoto-kun," but hearing the name jogs his memory as to where he'd seen her before, too: it was in Rise's memory of Adachi. He hadn't been paying full attention at the time to all of her friends, but he'd seen them and listened to their voices, and that's the mysterious place where he'd encountered this girl before—not here or at home, but in a vision of the past.
Naoto-kun was the last one. She's my age but she's a well-renowned detective that was working with our police department before she joined us.
It's that girl!
Once he realizes, he perks up again in pleased surprise, grinning over at her.]
Hey, you're Rise-chan's Naoto-kun! Right? Ah, it's kind of a long crazy story how I know that . . . but now I recognize you!
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The first and third logically stem from the second, so that's where she starts. She stops mid-stride, turning to look over her shoulder.] "Rise-chan"? You know Rise Kujikawa?
[Not just know her, but you're familiar enough with her to use the diminutive.]
I imagine she had a photo of her circle of friends, then? [It'd explain how he recognizes her appearance.]
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Yeah, we're friends! She's awesome! And uh . . . like I said, it's a long story. If it was just a photo, I wouldn't say that, y'know? But it's not a secret or anything, so I can explain if you want. It mostly just sounds crazy to say it out loud.
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[WHAT A GOOD SEGUE. He didn't even mean to segue so smoothly! He hopes Naoto is also suitably impressed!!]
Heh, anyway, It's actually—sometimes stuff happens here and you get to see someone's memories, or whatever, and I saw you in a memory. All o' you, actually. And that guy, Adachi. I already knew some stuff just from talkin' to her, but after that, she explained all of it. I didn't recognize you in the dark, but it hit me when you introduced yourself.
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[She's curious.]
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[Even though he's not like he likes creepy VR hospitals, either. He creeps slowly down this hallway, keeping his eye out for anything that might jump out at him—so to speak. Should they be checking in every room? What is there better to do? And yet it's hard to get enthused about exploring a place like this.]
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[Particularly if you were a child.] This is a computer game, correct? I'm not entirely familiar with the conventions of the genre.
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[He grimaces around at their surroundings. Leon would love to think he's totally over CERES mindfuckery by now, but he never quite makes it that far. They always manage to come up with something unpleasant to live through.]
—You found Rise-chan and the others yet? Hanamura? They're probably lookin' for you! They're gonna be real happy you came!
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Given that you're a male of high school age, there's a higher than likely chance that you're a fan of video games. I'm wondering if you're familiar of any tropes or cliches of horror games that might help us find the exit.
If this is a game, it stands to reason we should treat it like one.
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I mean, I'm actually more the outdoors type, even though you totally wouldn't know it to look at me, right? But yeah, I play games too! But . . . CERES kinda sucks at making games that act like normal games, know what I mean? Most of the time you've just gotta kinda stumble through it until you happen upon some random crap that lets you log out, or they just get bored and throw you out anyway. We've probably just gotta explore 'til we find an exit, unless we run into something else suspicious!
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[Beat.] Though you are correct, I wouldn't have pegged you for a naturalist.
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[Naturalist sounds pretty dorky, after all. As much as jock does, which is much closer to the truth.
But he nods, heading along the hallway with her, keeping slightly in front of her even though she's the one who's armed. It just feels right to be a little protective.]
You might be right anyway. Sometimes there actually is some kinda thing you've gotta do! But last time they put us in a hospital, it was mostly wandering around trying to escape from monster nurses and not go crazy.
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What was the method by which they induced insanity?
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Hallucinations . . . ah, guess you can't really call it that if other people can see 'em too, huh? So, visions? Holograms? Just—really annoying crap, like getting followed around, seeing your past self, just dumb horror movie BS—
[Kind of like puppets suddenly flinging themselves out of doorways and into your face on their strings, which is exactly what happens when he pokes his head into the next one.]
Gyaaahhh!
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--I don't think this would drive me to insanity, but it's certainly infuriating!