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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[Flight comes in handy. She ascends up to survey the situation...]
Oh, dear. This is worse than I realized. The transportation is running wild, sections of the city are submerging, the orderlies are in disorder...
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So the entire city is going straight to hell. Where do we start?
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I say we start with the police bots! We're far less likely to get flattened by those than by a train!
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If we're gonna be trashing these machines, we should do it on our way to wherever people need us most!
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[As she said this, down the road, a mob of people is forcefully removed from a restaurant and are being pulled towards a paddy wagon. They are screaming for help.]
... ... ...
We could go that way.
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No one's getting arrested today! You want to try?! Come on then!!
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[Because, you know.
It takes a whole squad to arrest a restaurant.
Did you take a moment to count them before you decided to attack their wagon?]
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Oh!]
Say, Darin. Are you familiar with Linked Artes? [Because THIS is the time to make casual conversation.]
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And I'm a little busy at the moment!
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It's like a combination technique! I would lend you some of my artes power, and you would be able to use it in an attack!
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[Because reinforcements are coming. Lots and lots of reinforcements.]
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Let's see what happens when you have elemental power at your disposal!
[Let's see. What would be a good element to try this out with... Fire? Yes, fire seems like a good one to start with. He's a blacksmith, after all.
All right, Darin, you're getting a nice big charge of fire elemental energy at your disposal. How shall you wield it?]
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[His fists take on the shape of finely tempered gauntlets, completely with spikes on the knuckles that crackle with fire. Whatever Muzet did, it just woke something up in him. He starts punching, each strike like a meteor burst; first the punch, followed by a barrage of fire exploding from each spiked knuckle. It's like fireworks each time he punches.]
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Now this is what I'm talking about! Darin, how did you do that?! Your weapons, it's like they transformed!
[She's squealing.]
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[He bangs his fists together and sparks fly, like striking superheated metal with a hammer. The police robots seem to hesitate a little before Darin launches into another assault. The heat appears to be rising in the area to the point where the robots are starting to melt.]
[Let's hope Muzet doesn't mind the heat.]
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Seriously, though, where were you hiding this power? The mana I was tethered with wasn't like this! You're far more controlled than before!
[And since he appears to be raging out of control right now, that says something about the first time.]
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Darin, what are you doing?! I didn't give you that much elemental power! Snap out of it!
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[He almost looks like he's in pain]
[He huffs as sweat pours down his face. Muzet might not have given him that much elemental power, but Darin's own power, with an outlet to flow out, is having some trouble being bottlenecked. In fact, he looks like he might overload any second.]
It's...gonna get out...!
You need to...run...!
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[She flies up, briefly, getting a survey of the area as if she's considering bailing from the scene. It shouldn't be much of a problem if they get hurt, after all -- should it?
... oh, darn it, that's right. She's supposed to be better than that now. Gaius would be ashamed.
Well. With an exasperated huff, she swoops back down to get a closer look.]
Darin, you can't simply let your power run wild! You have to temper it -- are you a blacksmith, or not?! Because if you can't manage to control such a paltry power as that--
[A number of portals open up around him, and a number of hair-tentacles surround him. Muzét's attacking with her hair again -- but this time, it looks like she's preparing to attack him.]
Then I'll have to contain you!
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Do it...!
DO IT NOW!!
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[Congratulations, Darin. You are getting attacked by a swarm of tentacles. Luckily, we are not in that sort of game.
Nonetheless, the hair lashes all lunge forward and bind him from head to toe. Around the wrists, around the ankles, around the midsection and chest, and even his neck. Not attempting to crush him, naturally, but certainly to constrain him. And yes, it is far stronger than rope, strong enough that she could have beaten most of those men at arm wrestling using this sort of technique... if arm wrestling allowed for hair, that is.
It's not a full-on tether, but she's able to siphon the mana as directly as if he was channeling it. It's not to feed or draw mana out of him, but a method of dampening the excess power. Once it starts bleeding off, she starts shouting at him--]
Darin, attempt to visualize it! As -- oh, I don't know -- as a gate! And then shut it, and lock it!
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[The heat starts to subside...but it's still hot enough the Darin's own clothes are smoking.]
[He grits his teeth and tries to contain it all within himself.]
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If you could just play nice for ONE SECOND, I'd be able to set up the biggest, greatest tether a spirit could ever ask for! I'd have more energy than I'd know what to do with! But NOOOOOO! Every time you get a little taste of power, you go COMPLETELY OFF THE WALL and have to get sealed up again and you WONDER why we don't let you have any more often! This is YOUR FAULT!! There is no one here to blame but YOU!!!
Since the smart method didn't work, let's try to fix it the old fashioned way -- hit it until it does what you want it to.
Muzét's hair seems to be unending. As he pries it off, even more lashes out from the portal to take its place, like the heads of a hydra. And then, suddenly, it all retracts and Darin is dragged swiftly through the tear in space. It pulls him out to the other side, up in the air with Muzét -- complete with a sudden, disorienting flip in gravity. And then...
Then whips her hair and slams him against the ground. Twice. Three times? Three times should work, let's see how he's doing then.]
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