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.
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PHASE I [ 6 00 ] 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. ] |
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Phase I
And take this! And take that too! Why are you being such a meanie right now? Whatever happened to the cute little bed I use to love?!
[Seriously, she spend all that time decorating her bed with lots of stickers on it! Why must the master destroy such a beautiful creation?!]
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Sometimes you just have to put it down, though. Sometimes beds (apparently) turn against you. Sometimes the world doesn't make sense. Yosuke thinks he'd accepted that much by now, but clearly he just wasn't ready for this level of WTFery that CERES has thrown on them.
But he hears Mabel at the other end of the hall. ]
M-Mabel-chan!? Your bed too!?
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Although, as Mabel continued to throw whatever she could find against the monsterous bed, that's when she quickly heard a voice behind a door]
Whoa, Yosuke? You too? [She said before leaning her against said door] What is this, attack your bed day or something? Whatever happened to a good old fashion pillow fight anyway?
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I don't know!
[ He knows that Mabel can be a little "out there" herself, but for once he's thinking she might be better equipped to handle this weirdness because of it. ]
Wait, are you okay?
[ She is the kid, after all. He needs to look after her as her elder. ]
Don't try to--gah!
[ His bed lunges. It freakin' lunges at him and Yosuke is forced to jump out of the way, scrambling up onto his desk. ]
This is ridiculous!
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Whoa, are you okay in there? Don't tell me your bed is attacking you too!
[Realizing that he was in trouble, she kicked the entrance in hopes that it would open somehow! In the middle of it all, that's when a lamp nearly hit her right in the head!]
Ugh, seriously?! Hey, Yosuke, how are you holding up? We need to find a way to get you out of there and fast! I don't think you would want to end up being stuffing for your bed!
[....Yes, Mabel just said that]
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What was that??
[ Is everything going crazy? When his bed turns, somehow, in his room, Yosuke starts to pick up random stuff to ward it off--which in this instance includes his shoe. That doesn't do much. ]
...Don't put it like that...
[ Mabel, please. ]
Of course I'd get the one room without the window... [ HE CAN'T ESCAPE. ] Wait, did yours fit through your door??
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[She shouted right back before attempting to break open Yosuke's door with her feet. Try as she might, it definitely wasn't going anywhere! Although, with the bed being a distraction, she needed to find someway to take it down and fast!
Suddenly, with an idea, that's when she leaned her head against the door]
Hey, Yosuke, you don't have any hangers in your room, do you? You think you can jam the eletric thingies behind that door?
[That or use water but she highly doubts Yosuke wants to be shocked!]
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Hangers?
[ He glances towards the small closet. ]
...I can try!
[ Not that he's an expert lockpick, but the doors here really don't work that way. He jumps from his desk to the closet, narrowly missing one of those bed sheet tentacles on the way. Grabbing a couple hangers, he rushes back over to the door. ]
You've gotta stand back in case this goes south! Don't get shocked, okay?
[ Senpais gotta senpai. ]
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But as Mabel slowly tried to back away from the door (which proved to be just a tiiiinnnyyy bit difficult when said Octobed was throwing everything it could at her!), she quickly looked around to see what else she could do.
Well, if things didn't work, she could always bust open the door with their chair.
That always works too.i]
You got it! Just tell me whenever you're ready and I'll totally back away...! But seriously though, you be careful too! Definitely don't want to have a shocking new friend there!
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...Y-yeah, I'll be careful!
[ SIGH. ]
Well, here goes nothing!
[ At least Yosuke does a smarter(ish) thing and holds onto the wire with part of his shirt, if that's somehow enough to stop the conductivity from his body to the rod. (It isn't, but let a guy dream.)
The first hanger...does nothing. But the second, he is able to get in there pretty good. It does shock him and he let's go with a yelp. Yosuke is, unfortunately, very weak to electricity. But at the very least the door slides open...about four inches. ]
Shit!
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But the moment that she heard a yell from her friend, she couldn't resist the urge to wave hi to him!]
Well, look who finally decided to show up! It's about time you got here, Yosuke!
[Should he looked through the hole, he'll happen to see a room right across from him. With the bed's sheets flinging everything it could at the girl, he might want to avoid the pieces of glass coming toward them!]
Watch out...! [She shouted before ducking once more at something thrown her way!]
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Huh?
[ Wait, what? ]
...Gah!
[ Okay, he actually ducks back behind the door just in time to hear the crashing. Shit. These beds are hardcore. Which is a weird thing to think. He's having a lot of weird thoughts. ]
Mabel!
[ With another grunt, he shoves the door open just enough for him to slip through--and then promptly pulls it shut behind him. Whew! But, first, is she okay? ]
What the hell was that--are you okay?
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Okay, that was it! While she attempted to push him to the side, Mabel just gave the bed a huge glare!]
Hey, you can't just do that! If you want to keep on being mean, then you're going to have to go through me!
[It was a good thing that Mabel was use to all the bizarre weirdness in Gravity Falls or else she wouldn't know what to do! Using whatever else she could find, he could see that she was using table leg to shove the bed back into the room!]
Shoo, shoo! Who said that you could leave that room anyway? Superhero Mabel is going to make sure you stay put!
[But no matter how hard she tried, it felt like the bed was attempting to grab the stick away from her!]
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Wait, is the bed--yes, it's there. And it's trying to take her weapon. ]
Shit!
[ And there is Yosuke, coming right up behind her to help her pull on the table leg. Two against...one bed should be enough, right? ]
I'm so done with this!
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[Granted, most of her nightmares involved a demonic evil triangle but that's for another time.
Right now, with her pulling on the table leg, she wanted to find a way to get the bed off their back!]
I'd say we still splash some water and tell that bed who's boss! Or maybe if we just tie them up, it'll probably stop!
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[ He's definitely done with his bed as well, if he ever figures out how to subdue it. He's thankful, at least, that his probably wouldn't be able to fit through the door if it was able to open it...unless it got really crafty. ]
I've got a feeling that's not going to intimidate it!
[ What can they do, though? ]
...I've got an idea!
[ It's probably not super safe to do it in the apartment, but really, the apartment isn't safe to begin with right then. ]
Can you hold on for a little longer?
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Well, of course! Just tell me whenever you're ready or something!
[When she tried to look around for whatever items were lying around, that's when she started throwing them right back at the bedmonster!
Although, the longer she was trying to distract it, the more she grew a little bit more worried.
Exactly what Yosuke had planned? She wasn't sure but she sure hoped it was something good!]
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Alright!
[ On cue, the room dims just a bit as a glowing tarot card materializes from the ceiling and floats down. Pulling a move from Yu, Yosuke reaches out and grabs it, summoning his super cool persona with super cool flaming hair. It's super cool, okay? He doesn't miss Jiraiya at all. Nope. Susano-o is awesome.
(And dumb looking.) ]
Hold onto something! Go, Susano-o!
[ If you're thinking he's going to send a Garudyne spell right at the monster bed, then you're right! ]
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Yea, but wh-
[Before she even knew it, she felt a huge coming from the strange creature before her! This wasn't what she thought it was, was it? While she was vaguely familiar that Yu and Rise had powers, she never seen them in person. Was this...?]
That's so cool, Yosukeee!
[She shouted but with the wind, it was difficult for her to fully form sentences!] It’s almost like you’re some kind of superherooo!
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