estoria | //EVENT033.EXE

//EVENT033.EXE

//event033.EXE

What new and wonderful and exciting ViViD level awaits you today? What fun time will you have in ViViD this time? Surely it will be a work of art that CERES has been working on for months and months --

Actually, wait, CERES isn't even around, are they?

Uh oh.

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzt.

Error: Files Not Found

//SCENARIOS.EXE

PHASE I

[ ???? ] This time, ViViD is a deathtrap.

There is random magma everywhere, monsters will spawn at random, and at some points, the game is entirely unplayable. It’s like the dev team totally disappeared mid-constructing the level.

Oh wait, that’s exactly what happened.

Monsters may spawn on top of you, you may suddenly be standing in a poisonous bog, you may suddenly lose your powers, or your senses, or so many different things --

It’s time to get out of here, ASAP.

Thankfully, the exit is obvious. Like. Blindingly obvious. It’s got a big sign over it that says EXIT

And just like that, you’ll be out of ViViD and --

PHASE II

[ 0830 ] When you wake up (and it’s strange, because you were sure that you were logging out just a second ago), it’s in a pile of bodies.

They’re cold, but not in the same sense that a dead body would be cold. While they are lifeless and look incredibly real, they don’t feel real. They feel like dolls, mannequins, empty models and nothing more. Their code doesn’t seem to be functioning right.

And what some characters may realize upon looking at this pile of bodies is that they are all of the characters who were sacrifices before. Any character that was dropped who had a high magical or spiritual affinity is there in that pile of bodies, lifeless and eyes blank and vacant. Even you might be there, staring at your own dead body -- but it isn’t real It can be touched, but it’s really nothing more than a lifeless body.

You’ll have to crawl out of that pile of bodies to get anywhere, and then you’ll realize -- you’re in the Sanctuary, a building built by the characters as a safe place from CERES. And it’s looking pretty run-down at this point. The technology in it no longer functions, there is no security on it whatsoever…

Oh, and now there’s a pile of bodies. Great.

PHASE III

[ 1000 ] There’s also a robot.

It’s wandering from place to place, though it’s impossible to follow. One second it’s there, the next it’s just gone.

Also, it’s wearing this. Weird.

But even with that on its face, the robot seems focused on one thing in particular. In fact, it has a sign, and it says:

Down with CERES. Up with Robots.

That’s a happy, cheerful message. If you try to go up to it to talk to it, it will look at you before...bonking you on the head with the sign and running off. That’s incredibly rude.

Alternatively, you may be safe and sound in your home, but then the doorbell rings, and there’s the robot again. The duck mask is gone, but now instead it has a pin on his fake lapel, and then he’s shoving a pamphlet at you.

He tips his hat, and then he’s gone. Weird.

(Also, if you hold onto the pamphlet, it will lead you directly to the person whose picture is on it, and you’ll feel like you’ve known them and have loved them for years.)

PHASE IV

[ 1245 ] But not all is fun and games and shenanigans. There is something...well, strange happening, and the first real realization of that will be when it starts to rain. More than just the localized rain that a few unfortunates have dealt with -- no, it’s raining completely and totally, and that’s when it might hit you.

For the first time in Cerealia, there’s weather.

It’ll rain for a few hours, and then it’ll stop and become hot and sunny. It may get humid, considering it’s a jungle planet. At night, it’ll get rather cold.

Seems like whatever was keeping Cerealia’s atmosphere stable is now gone -- which also means that characters may start to occasionally experience headaches, nausea and dizziness if they go too close to the walls. It seems safer in the center of the city, and the Residential District is still okay, but… there’s no doubt that the planet’s atmosphere is starting to encroach on the city.

BONUS

[ why o'clock ] But who cares about all of that? More importantly, you are here in this… totally not shoddy city to have fun, and it’s still being advertised as a pleasure colony. Or, well, it would be if, you know, CERES was still around.

But close enough.

And as a pleasure colony, it would figure that the first robots to really get fixed are...well, the Pleasure District robots. Unfortunately, the Pleasure District is still a nice big mess, so now they’re wandering the entire colony, looking for people they can hug, massage or...try to drag into more explicit activities.

Welcome to 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. ]

//RUN.EXE

Welcome to Cerealia's September 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!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ Right. After they check out, which the clerk makes rather easy by being so aloof as Izumi is given his bag of purchases – most of which consists of the stuff Chihiro had shoved onto him before fleeing. He'd thought about changing in the dressing room, but the nearest room is now a retired swimming pool, and he won't abandon Chihiro to break the news on her own. ]

I'll change at the laundry. There should be one nearby, right?

[ Now to break the news and see if the clerk even cares . . . Who knows; maybe their priorities will be that screwed up. ]

[ Chihiro has been subtly fidgeting waiting for Izumi's purchases to be processed. ]

Mm, not in this part of the city, so much? Closer to the Residential District there is. You can probably use one of the public restrooms, though.

[ Those are still fairly clean. Automatic cleaning systems staying online can help with those little details. Regardless, Chihiro lifts her chin and squares her shoulders, looking properly at the clerk. ]

The dressing room's flooded. I'm sorry, it was kind of...

[ She trails off before saying the my fault, as the clerk has given a longsuffering sigh and stared dully between the both of them. ]

I'd really appreciate if you'd both just leave now.

[ ... she nods, quiet, and with a glance over at Izumi, turns and heads for the doors, leaving damp footprints behind her. She's not quite sure what to make of that reaction, considering she hadn't even gotten to the part where she admitted it was her fault.

... Nor does she know what to make of things when, after they leave the store, the lights go out and the OPEN sign flashes over to CLOSED: RETURN AFTER BRINNER. ]

I think they took that well?

[ Her face says she's absolutely unsure of this. ]

[ Oh . . . they got kicked out. ]

Well, they're not charging us for the damages, so I'd say that's mission accomplished.

[ Is that a sign of professionalism on the clerk's part? Izumi, however, doesn't dwell on the question for long, as he feels the sweltering heat of the humidity hitting him like a sledgehammer. He wishes he can run back inside where it's cool. ]

Now that we've got what we came here for, let's go find a public restroom.

[ Bring on the humidity. It's uncomfortable, but it's so much more like home during the summer that she's just going to accept and roll with this. It's probably obscene how apparently cheerful she is in spite of sweating, near skipping ahead and flashing him a smile. ]

Mm! There's one over this way.

[ She pulls her ponytail out of her hood and heads down the street, turning left instead of crossing the road once she gets there. The signs of destruction from weeks earlier are still readily apparent, including having a vehicle halfway through a wall, but Chihiro barely blinks. This is just how it is anymore. Even more strange, when it's still so bereft of any signs of life that weren't humanoid or alien in appearance. No animals, no insects, just... urban decay. ]

It's that round building down the way. The signs look a little funny, but that whole one's for everyone to share.

[ She shrugs. She's not used them often, but they're clean and act like... a public restroom? ]

[ With all that energy, Chihiro rejuvenates Izumi. Her apathy to half the stuff in the colony doesn't transfer all the way, though, and he boggles at the vehicle in the wall. What a mess.

Nodding, Izumi stops once they're at the entrance of said "public restroom" and looks over his shoulder at Chihiro. ]

I'll be out in a sec.

[ Because he's so eager to feel less gross, he's going to move fast. It's difficult to do so, however, when his current clothes are sticking to him like nobody's business. After managing to peel various articles of wet clothing off, he pulls on the new, topped by the seafoam green shirt that Chihiro had shoved onto him earlier. It's humid right now, so he doesn't put on outer wear.

New clothes don't do anything for the clammy feeling of his skin, but it's a start. He packs what he's taken off and comes back out. ]

Much better! Okay, are we ready to go?

[ She turns, trotting on up and leaving off on watching the sky to see if rain seems to be imminent from that direction once more. So far, it seems sunny enough. It doesn't mean much when the jungle weather is predisposed to whimsical changes at the drop of a hat.

Or at a drop of water into the countless puddles that slowly drain out on the roads. ]

You look nice!

[ She says, partly polite, but more because she means it. She's biased to the seafoam green. Plus, people who aren't miserably dressed tend to look better than those who are when she hasn't developed a healthy sense of schadenfreude. ]

Ready! Though which place did you want to hit up first?

[ Laundry facilities, apartments, food, anything but the CERES tower or the god shrines... unless he wanted to visit those. She rolls up onto the balls of her feet, tucking her hands behind her waiting for his answer. She's been modifying behaviours to be more people pleasing over her time here, lacking too many steadying forces to mitigate the tendency. (If anything, most her friends respond well to it, and so she perpetuates the cycle; not an altogether bad thing.) ]

Thanks!

[ Both for the compliment and the shirt selection, since it's probably better than anything he could have picked for color coordination (which he evidently doesn't believe in). Izumi glances down at the shopping bag in his possession. ]

You know, now that I think about it . . . It'd be better to do the laundry when I have more clothes to wash, right? So I just need to find a place to stay. How do I get one?

[ And with any luck, the residential district as a whole won't look as terrible as this side of the colony? ]

If you're lucky, you'll be in one of the apartments with their own laundry. It's way easier, though you can use a bath and shower okay too.

[ She makes this announcement with the absolute certainty of having done her laundry exactly like that when she'd first arrived. It'd just been easier than trying to figure other kinds of laundry out... or how not to use the wrong proportion of laundry soap that led to suds consuming the general vicinity. ]

Um, okay, so there's still someone working in the main office... you don't have to worry about your seal here, 'cause no one has one, and your cerevice and that card works for kind of everything.

[ Family and personal seals: of no presence or value in Cerealia. Still felt weird, like she was forgetting part of adulthood, but she shrugged it off a while back. ]

We can stop by the rental office and ask for available rooms, mostly to get a key. They don't check all that closely, and the apartments aren't so full anymore. Some are in better shape than others after recent events. I'll show you one of the better places! They won't charge you rent for three months, so please don't worry about the cost right now.

[ If he was ever worried in the first place. Honestly, she'll end up leading him to a friend's building... it seems more structurally sound than the one she used to live in, anyway. Plus then he'd theoretically have reliable neighbors of the kind that aren't, you know, stealing Trion people for nefarious small world survivor purposes. ]

[ Thank you, based Chihiro, for taking him away from any apartments with potential Neighbors to a place with actual neighbors. But he hopes this is an apartment with laundry, because he would rather . . . not use the bath and shower to wash his clothes . . . ]

Three months, huh? That's a long time.

[ It's about as long as he'll be here, unbeknownst to him, so he's getting the deal of the century. ]

When you say the apartments aren't as full as before, does that mean people moved out?

[ To where, though? Somewhere else in the colony? ]

[ She hesitates to respond, trying to figure out the most meaningful answer as they walk on. ]

Some do. Other's leave the colony, I guess, but if they're like us, um... I don't know. They disappear back into some kind of code database. Like they'd never been pulled out of it in the first place, I guess.

[ She doesn't know for sure, but it's one of the explanations she's been given. It's also the one that follows how she believes things to be, but in all fairness she should offer the alternative answers. ]

Some people believe those of us who go missing go back home. Before, some of us who had spiritual powers and stuff were sacrificed, but um, that's from before I got here. It's probably not still happening.

[ "Sacrifice" – he mulls over the word as they begin moving. Why were those people singled out? And going back further, what really happens to people who disappear? Without a concrete answer, the possibilities seem eerie at best. ]

Either way, it sounds like suddenly vanishing isn't good news, unless we actually do go back. The guys in charge are fond of keeping us in the dark, aren't they?

I don't think they feel there's any reason for them to be honest with us. We're not really people in their eyes.

[ Is more or less her conclusion after having heard so many stories, and living through some of her own. ]

Not that they're in charge of much of anything anymore. Other than keeping us here.

[ Which is apparently something they can make un-happen, and not necessarily to happy endings. Still, Chihiro keeps a determinedly upbeat outlook on it all. No point in depressing herself... or anyone else. ]

. . . Are you really ten?

[ Why does stuff like "we're not people in their eyes" come out of her mouth? He practically gawks at those brutal words. ]

With the way things are, maybe even that won't last.

[ She gives him a funny look. ]

For another five months at least. Or maybe it's seven...

[ She's quiet on that point at first, though. IZUMI. THAT ACTUALLY IS WORSE? Talking about things such as being kept here not lasting is... problematic if a solution isn't found first. ]

If they don't keep us here, then we're code. I don't want to think that's all we can be. Just memories.

[ On servers that can be shut down but that's kind of what they are right now in her muddled understanding. ALAS. DETERMINEDLY skipping forward and shooting a look at the sky. No apparent impending rainstorm — ah, but... ]

A rainbow!

[ Are they really just code, though? Izumi feels so alive and real, he remains skeptical. That thought doesn't last as he spies the rainbow Chihiro has spotted. ]

Oh, you're right! It looks pretty big.

[ Finally, something that's nice to look at in this rundown colony. It does something to his sweltering soul. ]

Just looking at it makes me feel cooler.

[ Bless distractable children and teenagers. Chihiro smiles, then laughs; she's never heard of someone say they felt cooler looking at a rainbow before. ]

Does it? I'm glad. It's nice to see something pretty like that!

[ She's actually admired the tiny rainbows her perpetual raincloud has been producing when it's hanging around. Besides, they're getting close to the better buildings! As in the ones with minimal damages. ]

Hey, do you like watermelon?

[ They're coming ever closer to proper civilization, which also means more blessed shade. Izumi tears his gaze from the rainbow to Chihiro. ]

Yeah. Are you planning to get one? I'll pay for it.

[ She blinks, then shoots him a grin. ]

It means more walking. The stores don't have perish... um, fresh food. It's all at the warehouses now.

[ Here I think she can't say anything else to point out how terrible things are, and then... IS THAT REALLY AN ICON OF HIM IN SITES ]

[ THANK JAN FOR THAT. ]

Well, I'm in dry clothes now and the humidity's still killing me, so a watermelon sounds good – even if it means more walking. Let's go to this warehouse.

[ SAY THANK YOU TO HER FOR ME FOR... THAT............ it is a blessing of why ]

You mean it?

[ talk about perking right on up. she switches direction, very familiar with exactly where they're going now. ]

Then we've got to head this way. Usually I use the tracks as a short-cut. You have to avoid the electric rail, but it's marked well, so it's pretty easy when you can see. But! I probably shouldn't do that today.

[ due to the rain. not that she said that. mostly it sounds like she decided not to take izumi traintrack walking. ]

[ SHE HAS HEARD and had forgotten she'd even made such an icon. Wow.

As he follows suit, Izumi blinks. He's a genius on the battlefield; however, the same can't be said for any critical thinking required outside of it. ]

Why not?

[ What if he wants to go traintrack walking!! ]

[ That's so in character... she's too good

She looks up at him, canting her head to the side like she has to consider her question before asking. ]

Is it safe when there's this much water on the ground?

[ Why no, she doesn't actually understand how electrical conductivity precisely works, so... ]

[ That's fine . . . It proves that she's actually ten years old. ]

Everything's offline, right? It should be fine.

But if you're worried, we can take the detour.

No, the trains just don't run. The train that derailed wasn't fixed.

[ No one cleared the tracks from the derailed train, so the electric rail remains on. Which is where more of her caution comes... but she looks at Izumi and trusts that if he's not concerned, it'll be okay. ]

If you think it's okay, we can go that way. I don't mind. It is faster.

[ Trains are known to continue running in the rain – at least, that's the logic Izumi applies here, in addition to the fact that if the trains aren't running, the rail is as good as dead on its own. He's not a mechanical wiz, though, with even less credibility with regards to foreign technology. ]

Let's try it, then. It could be fun.

[ And hopefully they don't lose one of Chihiro's thousand lives. ]

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