//EVENT032.EXE

[reparator]

Who: CERES and associated intellectual property
When: OOC: 8/01 - 8/08, IC: 8/16 - 8/19
Where: Cerealia™
What: PR really was important. Who'd have thought?
Rating/Warning: Currently none! Please let us know if the log heads into R-related territory so we can lock it!

---

//event032.EXE

Everything is normal today during the early hours of the morning. There's really no hint, no way of knowing, no anything that could indicate that CERES -- and thus Cerealia -- is about to irrevocably change. There would be birds chirping, if there were birds, but since there aren't any, there's just the constant sounds of a city in motion, humming with technology even that early in the morning. And then, regardless of where you are or what you're doing or how early it is, everyone's CereVices flicker on to show a perhaps-familiar, perhaps-unfamiliar face. Bellona Recreare, the business owner of Cerealia and CEO of CERES, stares at everyone with a flat, cold look. She doesn't seem happy. (When is she ever?) It has come to my attention that there has been industrial espionage and corporate sabotage in CERES' personnel. Such a thing will not be tolerated. Due to this, Mosley's employment with CERES has been terminated. Please now direct any public relations questions to 1-800-7322934844444. Good day.

//SCENARIOS.EXE

PHASE I [ 600 ] Bright and early, not long after that sudden announcement by Bellona, you may decide to go back to sleep, or you may decide to get up and go about your day (or you may not have woken up at all). Either way, it doesn't matter. Because your apartment is broken. The entire apartment. The door is locked shut (and that sucker is solid metal so it might be time to try a window), the HOLO(gm) is flickering wildly between settings, and the blender is out for your blood. Anything technological in any way (that is CERES-brand or has been tampered with by CERES) will be malfunctioning in a way that comes across as... oddly malicious. Now's a bad time for the late sleepers to realize that the beds, too, have auto-control tech functionality. Hope you enjoy that electroshock wake up call, or the fact that the bed could fling you totally across the room. PHASE II [ 1000 ] The rest of the city isn't faring so well either. The trains are completely out of commission; even if the doors do open, it's probably not a good idea to get on. If you do, it looks like the doors will slam shut behind you, and the train will go hurtling forward at dangerous speeds with sudden stops. Many of the shops can't be accessed at all, automated doors refusing to open, and worst of all, every single last piece of tech in Cerealia now seems to have the sole goal of Making Your Life Hard. The Pleasure District is flooded now that the spas are broken, but hey -- at least the perfume ensures that water smells good, and it's pretty warm. That's good, right? Maybe go for a nice swim. The CERES police bots are out of control, chasing people down to arrest them for imagined crimes (What do you mean you aren't a closet voyeur?), and heaven forbid you're around any of the auto shops when everything goes totally wrong. The auto-drive feature in many of CERES's cars seem to be a little... finicky today. It doesn't seem like anywhere in the city is exempt from this. Good luck. And towards the end of the second day of this insanity, the train, with whatever unfortunate passengers are on it, will derail. It crashes into part of the shopping district, leveling buildings and leaving the wrecked overturn husk of a train resting there uselessly. Suddenly, things don't seem so harmless anymore. PHASE III [ 1100 ] Of course... you're CERES-owned too. Your code, rather, is made and owned by CERES, and it's inevitable with the craziness going on that it would soon affect everyone's code as well. So as the hour approaches noon, a few unlucky souls may start to notice that things are just Not Quite Right with them. Their powers may be on the fritz, functioning entirely wrong or not at all, or even stranger -- fire powers turning into water, ice into flame, electricity brings mud. Your clothing might suddenly change when your coding glitches, or it might be gone entirely. You may suddenly have an uncontrollable urge to start singing, or frolicking. You may suddenly be wildly in love with the first person (or robot or mirror) that you see, unable to stop it until the odd glitching wears off. And then, just like that, you're back to normal, if a bit more tired than before. How troublesome. There are also moments where what appears to be an ID number appears on the back of your neck in glowing light blue numbers. Each of these codes is a 7 digit number, with an E at the front of the number. It appears that the longer you've been in Cerealia, the lower the number is -- like a brand of some sort. You may not be able to see it yourself with it on the back of your neck like that, but everyone else sure can. PHASE IV [ 1645 ] And, just like that, on the last day of this madness, the city goes dark. The lights cut out. The technology shuts off. Every last robot in Cerealia is completely and totally down, and can no longer be booted up. Even when the lights come back on in a few hours... the robots remain dead. Cerealia's a lot harder to function in without those handy dandy robots running the place. It's also a lot more desolate, and rather quiet. Slowly but surely, the rest of the technology will boot itself back up towards the end of the last day. But the robots remain broken, and cannot be fixed. In fact, opening them up will reveal that nothing's wrong with them at all... they just won't wake up. As time ticks by, it doesn't look like Bellona will address anything on the network about the events and all people are left to do now is... learn how to function again. Without any help. BONUS [ ???? ] If you were a stupid brave enough soul to log into ViViD during this time (or were unfortunately glitched there, which could happen), you will find that ViViD is in... safe mode. It's struggling to boot up, and even when you finally enter, you'll find yourself wandering through skeleton levels of half-completed scenery and incomplete quests. There are readings in the corner of each level that can be seen now, one about Energy Gain and one about Energy Loss, and just as the gain goes up the longer you are there, the loss, too, rises. At first, it's fascinating, and it isn't particularly dangerous... but then it becomes clear that you can't actually log out. You can't exit Safe Mode at all. Slowly, it feels as though you can breathe less and less, that the empty walls of the level are closing in on you... and there's nothing you can do. Unless you are or find a particularly genius hacker and they can access the source code and find the exit buried inside that code within the next few minutes... there's nothing to be done. And then everything goes dark. You'll wake up the next IC day, with those same energy readings marked on your wrist like some sort of bright blue digital tattoo. When you wake in the mornings, it will read at 100% and slowly go down during the course of the day until you sleep. It will fade after three IC days. And from now on, ViViD always has those energy levels in the corner, even when it's fixed. They always seem to be recording you, every time you're in ViViD. 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. ]

//RUN.EXE

Welcome to Cerealia's August event! Please visit the OOC information here, and should you have any questions, feel free to ask them here! You can also check the FAQ for more general inquiries. This event will last from 8/01 to 8/08, or IC 8/16 to 8/19. Should this event log hit Captcha, there is an all-purpose overflow here. Thank you!

Comments

[thatdamnknight]

phase ii.

[what happens when the law goes haywire? some lawful idiot needs to step in to try to make it go back to normal. flynn falls under that lawful idiot category perfectly.

as soon as he catches wind of the police bot nusiance, he steps right in and with limited amounts of success. some bots run away, some end up destroyed. either way, this tale can only have one ending: around half a dozen police bots attempting to arrest flynn. one might be easy to take down but not when two already have a hold on his arms and the others are approaching.

ugh, no he is good and lawful!! he does not need to be arrested!! this is not how things work!!!]

No, as I keep saying, your accusa--

FLYNN SCIFO, FOR PERFORMING LEWD MAGIC TRICKS AT A CHILDREN'S PARTY, YOU ARE UNDER ARREST.

[...wow, what a crime. those bots also look ready to beat the lewd magician up. help a guy out?]

phase iii.

[police bots end up minor in comparison to other haywire technology. the electronic terrors coupled with glitching mean that innocent civilians are in danger. sadly, not even flynn himself is immune from the glitching. it happens without warning while heading from one spot to another in search of more people to help. his outfit changes. is the change into something sensible and suitable for the situation at hand??

not exactly. well, it is very easy to move around in, heeled sandals aside.

leave it to flynn to not notice, either. did it suddenly get a little chillier? did he grow a couple inches? nah, now that's just silly.

maybe you need help fending something off, maybe you're injured and need healing. either way, one bikini babe is heading your way to help!]

Phase III

[meowbel]

[Whatever was going on, it sure was creating quite the stir around Cerealia! As far as she knew, maybe CERES was playing a mean trick on them again! And it was up to her to figure out just what was going on! Although, before she could do anything else, that's when she saw her crush friend in....quite the outfit.

Well. That's not something she got to see everyday.]

Uh...Flynn? You need some help there? I don't know about you but if you wanted to go to the beach, all you had to do was ask!

[thatdamnknight]

[ah, thank goodness that mabel seems unharmed! it makes flynn relax a little, but asking still can't hu--

wait. wanted to go to a beach? the most confused expression crosses his face, one even coupled with a teeny headtilt. maybe mabel isn't nearly as alright as she appears since... what???]

I'm afraid I don't understand. What about a beach?

[meowbel]

[Oh man, out of all the ways she had to see her crush! Why did it have to be like this? She couldn't even stand to look at him any further than she has to! She needed to cover her poor Disney XD eyes!

With maybe a hole or two in between her fingers]

You might want to look down, CERES gotten some rather interesting clothes for you!

[....And between her giggles too]

I

[maidhem]

[And Felicia was somehow in a tree, observing the whole thing from above. She couldn't quite tell anyone exactly how she ended up in said tree, but it involved a mess of a rabid electric mixer and her ice powers going haywire-- and, for now, it seemed safe.

Ish.

The poor tree branch, battered as it was and tangled up with the cord of the offending mixer, was starting to give out under her weight.]

That's a funny--eep!-- crime! I didn't even know you could do magic tricks, Mister Flynn.

[....she's just going to ignore the fact that she's stuck in a tree.]

[thatdamnknight]

[the tree suddenly speaking surprises both knight and his robot fan club. flynn looks up and... felicia, what even happened to that poor tree branch...

you know what? questions later, beating up robots first. not missing his chance, flynn manages to pull one arm free from the distracted bot before grabbing the robotic arm of the other one holding him. one judo flip later and the bot's getting slammed into the dirt hard enough to render it useless. one down, a bunch left to go.]

I'm afraid it's a false accusation entirely. [neither magician nor lewd is he.] That aside, are you alright, Miss Felicia?

[maidhem]

[She wanted to clap at that display. She really wanted to clap, but she wasn't airheaded enough to risk falling on her face in the pavement.

Instead, she's just gonna giggle in embarrassment.]

I'm fine! The mixer was a tougher opponent than I realized, but it wasn't as bad as your friends!

ii!

[adornmental]

[HE'S PREPARED FOR THIS MOMENT. So many instances of running away from the law, and finally all of his knowledge can be put to good use...!

But first they probably have to deal with the robot circle, right, right. So in Kashuu steps, not hesitating to draw his blade and just sort of gently slice through the arms of the bot nearest to him. Desperate times or something, okay.]

I thought Yuri was the one who attracted trouble, but it's both of you, huh?

[thatdamnknight]

[EVEN CRIMINAL KNOWLEDGE HAS ITS USES!! much to flynn's lawful good dismay, but eh, desperate times really are desperate.

slicing through the arm of one effectively startles the rest enough to a. focus attention on kashuu entirely and b. allow flynn to slip out from their grasp. rather than draw his own sword immediately, he'll further use the distraction to his advantage and cast off a quick holy lance. although fast and not the best on accuracy, the spell still ends up destroying a bot nicely enough.

ugh, not only fighting law enforcement but actively destroying it... necessary, but still so wrong.]

It's an unfortunate consequence of associating with him for too long. Trouble begins to follow you wherever you go.

[the yuri curse is contagious as hell. run before it gets you, too, kashuu.]

[adornmental]

[Don't have a moral breakdown on him, Flynn!! He needs the extra firepower! ...Actually, give him a second to just admire that blast first, complete with a little "ooh".

He's refocusing his attention soon enough, though - mostly because the remaining bots are definitely hellbent on catching these destructive hooligans. He bats the nearest one away with his sheath, blocking another strike with the flat of his blade.]

Eh, seriously? I don't wanna end up being followed by trouble! That's no good!

[TROUBLE ALREADY FOLLOWS HIM it was too late from the start.]

phase iii.

[psycholawgy]

[ athena definitely needs help. normally, this wouldn't even cause a lot of panic, but with her code glitching and turning her into part-cat (ears and tail and all), she's left to be frightened. by what?

a fire hydrant that exploded. now there's water everywhere, and the only place safe is atop a statue of some famous idol!

she's even hissing loudly at the hydrant. it doesn't do anything, but... well, it's the only thing she can do at the moment aside from call for help. ]

[thatdamnknight]

[bikini babe man to the rescue!! he rushes over toward the statue immediately after hearing the cries for help.]

Miss Athena!

[his brows furrow a little upon noticing something off with her behavior. is she... hissing? and at a fire hydrant?? and are those cat ears on he-- OH. oh, could it really be as simple as: cat + water = one unhappy lawyer? only one way to find out and that's to ask.]

What's wrong?

[psycholawgy]

[ bikini babe man... i never thought i'd see those words near each other. ]

The water's a hazard to my health!

[ not really, but still!! WATER!!! ]

ii

[masakados]

Actually, that was me who did that.

[A falsely cheerful voice from behind Flynn...

And then a leg comes out of nowhere. It slams right through the metal of one of the police bot's midsection, and then Naoki's hand is coming out too. Let him take care of one of the ones holding on to you, Flynn, by calmly ripping off it's arm... It's only right. Some seem to be paying attention to him now anyway.

Lewd magician's apprentice, that's what they'll call him.]

[thatdamnknight]

[what a kind gesture, young apprentice!

it's a gesture that doesn't go to waste, either. the bots end up confused enough about who to arrest that it allows for flynn to draw his sword with the freed hand without any hassle. a little maneuvering and speedy movement leads to the other bot holding him effectively becoming a head shorter. what a magic trick!]

Your timing is certainly magical.

[a little pun to brighten up the mood never hurts!]

Although I do hope you were kidding about being the true culprit.

[there's a small smile while saying that so he's joking. ...mostly. he just believes naoki to not be the type to do something so inappropriate. lewd magic is an art not meant for small children!]

[masakados]

[Naoki laughs, apparently tickled by the pun-- not so much by the mock-implication that he might be the true culprit!!]

C'mon now. Do I seem like the type?

[He makes a mock-offended face, before glancing at the remaining bots.]

Though I do have one foggy magic trick, remember? I'm thinking I should show it off. [This time it's more easily destroyed police bots instead of endlessly reforming trash monsters, but Naoki thinks scarpering before they attract more might be a good plan.]

Phase III

[fishyoldman]

[Raven can fend off a handful of unruly police bots just fine on his own, even he hasn't been at his best for a few weeks now, but any extra help is welcome from Flynn. Or normally it would be, but Raven finishes off a police bot in time to see him running towards him in a very familiar swimsuit. He gawps for a few seconds, then--]

Nooooooooo!!

[Raven lets out a cry of devastation at the sight! Although to Flynn it probably sounds like he's wounded or something.]

[thatdamnknight]

[darth vader would be proud of such a scream. flynn, however, does take it to mean that something horrible just transpired!! panic grips him as he picks up the pace and immediately is ready to deal out healing artes once by raven's side.

and the closeness also gives raven a close-up view of flynn defiling a perfectly good two-piece. whoops.]

Sir Raven! Are you hurt!?

[show flynn this invisible wound that's pouring invisible blood by the invisible gallons!!]

[fishyoldman]

[Oh no, he's getting closer. It only makes Raven's torture worse, and he clutches at his head accordingly.]

Of course I'm hurt! It's a blow that cuts deeper than any blade! My memories of lovely Judith in that two piece... destroyed forever...

[He might just cry. This is all your fault, you villainous knight.]

phase iii;

[fatalstriker]

Whoa, wasn't expecting Judy to make such a daring return.

[yuri whistles from behind—and then proceeds to immediately start laughing, because.

well, look at him.

it's nothing he hasn't already seen, both in the existence of the attire and, well, flynn himself. but yuri's getting a hilarious show admit the chaos, and it's fine. yuri himself, on the other hand, is looking quite cozy in his tank top lover getup, sheathed sword in hand.

does he need help? not at all, but what kind of best friend would he be if he didn't take advantage of this situation?]

[thatdamnknight]

[only yuri can get such an instantaneous flush coupled with a desire to want to punch him instead of wanting to hide under a rock. ugh and that damn whistling, too. what an asshole.

needless to say, flynn looks less than pleased upon turning around.]

Hah hah, very funny.

[the laughing can stop anytime now, thanks. huh wait... why in the name of all that is good and holy is he wearing that out in public? couldn't ceres have glitched him into something more appropriate? or even just nude?? nude is at least nice to look at. this? isn't.]

Although I'm honestly not sure whether to be irked at my present attire or thankful I'm not stuck in your current one.

[fatalstriker]

Well, I don't mind the show, but I don't know if anyone else is going to appreciate how little you're leaving to the imagination right now.

[considering he can see just about everything.

yeah, he's still laughing.

(he's not sorry at all, either.)]

I wouldn't want to trade places—I'm pretty comfortable right now. [he's already thinking about just working this into his regular wardrobe, honestly. it's comfy!]

phase ii.

[metalist]

[ Pyrrha isn't quite sure what she happens upon but the amount of robocops concentrated in a single spot, bearing down on this man in a compromising manner - this is definitely a job for an unarmed ex-Huntress!

Her heels click loudly on the pavement as she makes her way over, walking with determination. Basically, this. ]

Okay, everyone just calm down.

[ She's talking to the police bots, as her stern expression indicates. When she gives Flynn a quick, concerned look, the lines of her brow soften. ]

Are you alright?

[thatdamnknight]

[what determination! both (supposed) criminal and bots turn all attention toward the heel-clicking mystery lady. flynn nods at the question. aside from his hair being a little disheveled, he looks like a million bucks.]

I am.

[the bots consider pyrrha momentarily. a non-violent approach normally could've gotten through to them. when everything's going to hell? nah, not so much.]

YOU ARE UNDERARREST FOR EXCEEDING THE PERMITTED LEVEL OF NOISE EMITTED BY HEELED SHOES.

[they're just jealous of the heels. still though, some of flynn's fanclub sets their sights on her and start approaching.]

[metalist]

[ Yeah, that definitely catches her off guard, diminishing the winds in her sails. Pyrrha starts visibly, blinking at the robot officers and then looking down at her shoes.

She likes her heels, okay. :( ]

-- permitted level?