estoria | « 011 ⇢ event011.exe

Who: CERES & you
When: ooc: 03/22-03/25; ic: 12/09-12/10
Where: Cerealia's Entertainment District
What: OVERFLOW OF THE INTRO LOG
Rating/Warning: PG-13 | possibly nsfw (please let us know if you need this rating changed, or you are welcome to continue any naughty shenanigans in a private log)

//event011.EXE

The Gifts that Keeps on Giving ((You)) Nightmares

It's been a whole month without any new arrivals. Who knows why? If you ask CERES, they won't bother with any in-depth explanations. They will simply claim that none of the code out there has been responding to their recovery methods, so they had to rework a lot of their technology. However, after several weeks of grueling work, they have finally experienced success! A fresh new batch of faces is coming in, and to celebrate their arrival and the real upcoming holidays, CEO Julius Vincere has arranged for a Christmas-themed carnival for all to enjoy.

Those who arrive will wake up in Cerealia and be given a long, boring explanation and powerpoint as per usual before being ushered onto a bus (there is no escape. The robots will force you onto the bus one way or another). You will be unwillingly carted to the theme park where you will be immediately assaulted by a giant array of lights followed by several rides that you can enjoy. After you disembark from the bus, one of the snowman robots will be waiting to give you tickets to the rides and show you around as part of the Grand Opening. The amusement park will remain open for the rest of the month of December so anyone can visit as they please. The first couple tickets will also be on the house for new arrivals, but the rest will have to be bought with credits, so choose wisely! (Or try and sneak into the rides -- then face the wrath of the snowman robots and their snowman firearms :D)

"☃ WELCOME NEW ARRIVALS ❅
YOU HAVE ARRIVED AT THE SANTASTICAL FOREST OF CHRISTMAS WONDERS ❅
PLEASE ENJOY ALL THE RIDES CEO JULIUS VINCERE HAS HAND-PICKED FOR YOUR ENJOYMENT ❅
WE WISH TO BRING YOU MERRY FEELINGS FOR THE HOLIDAY ❅
COME GIVE SNOWTRON 5000 A HUG ❅
WHAT? YOU DON'T WANT ONE ❅
BUT I WAS PROGRAMMED TO CONVEY HUGGING AS LOVE THROUGH AFFECTION ❅
PLEASE DON'T RUN ❅
COME BAAAAACK, VISITOR ❅"

//SCENARIOS.EXE

PHASE I

[ xxxx ] Do you like ferris wheels? This is an enchanting one where you get to ride around in a giant snowflake at a very limited speed. The wheel will turn excruciatingly slow before stopping abruptly, leaving you trapped at the very top. We hope you're not afraid of heights because you're going to be in there for a while! The windows on the snowflake will rapidly darken leaving you and your fellow riders trapped in the darkness. At that moment, you will feel something warm breathing down your neck and along the back of your ear. As you reach over, you'll feel like the chair underneath you is made of snakeskin, and a hissing sound will intensify as the "chair" squirms and as the breathing gets louder and hotter. Scrabble at the doors, fight your way out! Will you escape or not? Probably not, but the experience will last only a good five minutes before the lights come back on and before the ferris wheel starts moving again. The chair will appear as normal, and there will be no one else inside except any fellow riders who came with you.

PHASE II

[ xxxx ] If the ferris wheel didn't "do it" for you, then perhaps a fun house will? If you're a fan, that is! This Christmas-themed funhouse features a wonderful walk through a snowy forest convered in singing reindeer. The more you walk through, the more you will notice things like within the distorted mirrors, there will briefly appear strange specters. You will also hear a bunch of howling in the background, and while you may think that you're safe since they're trapped behind a mirror, you are very wrong. The lights will go out once more, and you will hear the mirrors shatter all around and feel yourself being grabbed and hurled to the ground. Whatever is coming for you is something you can't see, but it's advancing fast with impressive strength to hurl you back once more. You will feel pain erupt through your body before an engineer will appear to get the lights back on. Once they're back on, the reindeer will be happily singing, and all the mirrors will appear as they were before -unbroken.

PHASE III

[ xxxx ] After those interesting adventures, another option would be to simply visit the rocking santacoaster, a large, sprawling roller coaster that reaches 150 mph. You will be strapped into a sled and be shot through the tracks where you can scream and cry all you want except once you reach the tunnel, everything will come to a sudden stop (whiplash pending). You and the other riders will be in there for a few minutes, surrounded by a dozen santas as they start to fly out from the tunnel walls, carrying swords and swooping down to take a swipe at you. You better duck or be prepared to be cut up by their blades. The rollercoaster will abruptly resume, and when you reach the end, you might notice some bleeding, a little bit of hair missing, or some clothes shred up. If you ask the snowman robots about it, they will just shrug and claim they don't know what you're talking about. Please go enjoy a snowcone on the house!

PHASE IV

[ xxxx ] The Christmas whirl will be your last stop for the evening! This is a ride that goes round and round and round while tilting. Everyone will be strapped into it while standing up and forced to hold on as it spins, and somewhere in the midst of the spinning, the ride will suddenly malfunction. Yes, big surprise there! But it won't stop spinning. It will just be a rockier ride, and you will seemingly enter a new space where you will be among the stars and seeing planets all around you. Your own home planet will be amongst them before it breaks open like an egg and out crawls a friendly visitor. If you get bit by it, you will spend the rest of the day and night experiencing an array of possible symptoms, including: a voracious appetite, a fear of light, the urge to 'mate' with anyone who smells especially good, heightened senses, the ability to climb on all kinds of surfaces, irritability and crankiness... (( you don't have to experience them all. you can pick and choose which one you like. ))

BONUS

[ whyo'clock ] What's that jingling you hear in the background? Why, it's Santa Clause! Coming here all the way from the North Pole. The park will stop, and all the snowman robots will gather in the square, ushering along as many people as possible. Santa-Bot X-3 will be seated on his chair to welcome all visitors to sit on his metaphorical lap and tell him what they want for Christmas. He will then give them a nicely wrapped present and tell them that it's exactly what they asked for, but they can't open it until they get home. For those who can't wait and choose to open it quickly, they will get some nice treats from Mundus Caelestis. But beware! Those who do take this gift home will experience a weird after-effect as the lovely red and white toy will come to life on its own and hop out of the box that evening to try and violently electrocute the owner. The other one is completely harmless.

[ Remember to apply proper warnings on threads with trigger-y 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 latest intro post For your convenience, we have compiled a post detailing what's going on right here and feel free to consult the FAQ if needed. Please leave any lingering questions in the OOC post, and we'll answer them as soon as we can. If this post goes into overflow, we will make a new one to deal with the ever-hated captcha! Worry not!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From here

[The way he's speaking, the sense of him...he's not really comfortable talking about the West. Could he be from that long ago? She's certainly not intending to pry, but it's hard to restrain her curiosity.]

I hope not either. I didn't see very many people here who were really children though.

[She looks around the area as well, her attention everywhere and nowhere, like she's looking for the aforementioned children. After a brief moment of uncomfortable silence, she decides to ask.]

My name is Hino Rei. May I ask your name?

[It only feels polite.]

Edited 2015-03-26 22:14 (UTC)

I did come across a couple of people I sort of would call children earlier, but... you're right, most people here seem to be older than that.

[Which is a relief in a lot of ways, since it does not sit right with him that children should have to be alone in this place regardless. He feels a pang of longing for the neighborhood kids he used to play with back home, but... well, even there it had been a while since he'd met them. It was probably for everyone's best that it stayed that way.

But, here and now he has more pressing matters to attend to.]

Of course! I'm sorry for not introducing myself sooner, I guess that's really a bit rude. [A bright, pleasant smile followed by a graceful bow.] My name is Okita Souji. It's a pleasure to meet you, Hino-san.

Edited 2015-03-26 22:29 (UTC)

It's quite alright, it's not rude at...

[She starts to reply, at least, with a courteous bow and a polite waving off of any impropriety. It is what it is...

At least, until she hears that name. A name that immediately clicks for anyone familiar with Japanese history and traditionalism. Her eyes probably go just a bit wide...]

Okita-san. It's...you...wouldn't happen to be named after the Shinsengumi captain, would you?

[Is that recognition, perhaps? Or disbelief that a historical figure is standing in front of her, holding a pig.]

[WELP. Souji blinks in surprise, and then he shakes his head slowly, looking for all the world like he doesn't know what expression he ought to be making. On one hand, again, it's not that he's not somewhat used to having his name recognized by people - he's usually pretty careful about who he tells it to at home, for exactly that reason. But the meeting with Kaoru earlier had alerted him to the fact that it's not only his contemporaries who might recognize the name, and considering how knowledgable Rei has seemed about things which he has absolutely no grasp on... well, the dots aren't hard to connect.

He allows himself a small sigh, but tries to stay chipper about things.]

Actually, I'm not - being named after myself would be a bit silly. I'm Okita Souji, first unit captain of the Shinsengumi. [He lets out a short, amused little sound, nodding down at his pig.] And he's Saizō, though I'm guessing pigs don't often go down in history.

Edited (this is probably like the 4th edit hnnnnggghhh) 2015-03-27 14:25 (UTC)

[WELP indeed. There’s that sense of cautious amusement that she’d expected. And that sense of resignation too. That’s enough to confirm to her that he’s not lying to her about his identity. And it fits, at least, with the unfamiliarity with his gift, his general attitude, his attire, and the general sense of this place. She leans to one side, her weight shifting to one foot, and she studies him up and down. Not…quite the expectation she’d had, but then again one rarely got what one thought one would, in her experience. Life had ways of surprising you, and historical figures looking so…pretty…was probably one of those things.]

An honor, then, Okita-san. And, you too, Saizo-san.

[She deliberately doesn’t offer a more formal honorific on a hunch. He didn’t seem to care to be treated like anyone different just because of his name and rank. If the way he’d reacted to her knowing his name had been any indication.]

Sadly, no text I’ve ever read really mentions a pig, but that doesn’t make him any less important.

[Because he is, in a way.]

He arrived with you, then?

[He laughs softly, because really, he can't imagine what kind of picture history must paint of him. He has very little intellectual ambition himself, and therefore knows only the barest bones of the history that came before him. But what he can recall was full of imposing figures, more like ideas or myths than actual people, and it's hard to reconcile himself with that sort of image. Not to mention imagining young people being taught... what exactly? He really doesn't want to know that, does he?]

Yes, he did. The last I remeber before that... that strange dream, was sitting outside in the temple garden back home with Saizō in my lap, and I woke up here.

[He shakes his head slightly, not quite able to grasp the enormity of what has happened yet.]

I'm glad he's here with me. It would be very... lonely without him. I haven't actually been on my own like this since I was nine.

[Honestly, he probably doesn't want to know, but Rei would give him an honest and fairly flattering picture all the same. That's just her thoughts on the matter of traditionalism and westernization.]

That's fortunate then.

[She thinks back to Phobos and Deimos, her constant companions since she was very, very young. The two crows, who she'd later learned were her own guardians. She does understand that now, when they'd revealed themselves, and that only makes being alone harder.]

I haven't...been alone very much myself, honestly. My crows did not arrive with me.

[A flattering picture is all very well, but Souji would personally like to stay well away from any spoilers concerning what happens to him and his friends. It's not exactly that he's expecting things to go as badly as they do for all of them, but he still fears hearing the worst. So the fact that she appears to keep away from the subject is appreciated.

There is genuine sympathy in his eyes as he listen and nods, because he can honestly understand how it must feel, to be taken away from your home and not even have the most basic of comfort to find.]

I'm sorry to hear that. I guess a lot of people who are taken here end up pretty lonely, huh? [Honestly, he'd be an absolute wreck if he didn't at least have his pet to comfort himself with, and if he'd only let himself.] But until the ones we care about come here, I suppose we'll all just have to rely on each other instead.

[That, dear Souji, is why she's keeping that bit to herself. It'd be wrong of her to spoil him, and when things are set to right, it could potentially cause drastic alterations to her own timeline. And that...that won't stand.]

I suppose that's probably true. [She smiles now, a rather genuine one, though it is muted by apparent loneliness. She misses her friends. The other 9 girls, the cats, the crows, Helios, all the others. But she's stoic. And she feels fortunate, at least, to have made a friend in him. It's rare for her to feel that way, but his name alone engenders a lot of trust.]

We probably will, Okita-san. It's only natural, at least, for Japanese people to stick together. [Ware Ware Nihonjin...]

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