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

[ The mask is broken.

Shirasu feels a sharp, awful pain in his chest as this ghost, this trick, this person who can't be here, crosses to stand before him. He should be more suspicious; he's left himself wide open to be stabbed in the heart, or attacked from behind...

"Are you me?"

... but it's all he can do to simply... not completely fall apart. Keep his expression still as possible. Stand firm.

As it is, his hand is shaking badly enough that he fumbles with the lacing on the broken mask. The half of his twin's face that is a reflection of his own is whole and unharmed. The scarred and bandaged side comes into view as Shirasu pulls the mask away.

The silence stretches out between them for another heartbeat, then two, three... ]

I am you. [ His own voice is quiet, too, and rough. ] Are you me?

[ If this is a trick, he's fallen for it. He should be ashamed. ]

[ a traitorous thought: no, you can't be me, because you can't be dead.

but koutarou has never been one to reject the reality before his eyes. it's not a thing that fuuma ninja tended to do, being the objects that they are. he's wary, yes. suspicious, yes. but never once has he ever been suspicious of anyone bearing his own face, and no matter how traitorous this hell is, he is no traitor to 'fuuma koutarou' and everything that name stands for.

so he stands still as his other half pulls his half-mask off so that his bandaged half is naked to the world-- the half of him that doesn't look like his twin, the half of him that needed the mask. but he's never needed his mask around his twin, ironically enough, and even now, in what he believes is hell, that isn't going to change. he notes the tremble in his other half's hands, the roughness of his voice, and doesn't think them odd so much as yet another sign that tenka kumou's claws in his twin have left marks that even hell couldn't erase. another pang in his chest, but he ignores it just as he always has.

in contrast, his own voice is steady, monotone and calm. ]

I am you.

[ without hesitation, he raises his arm so that his twin can clasp it, the way they always do. but it's with unexpected fierceness that his next words come out: ]

Who killed you?

[ the thing about the end of their world couldn't have been true, right? but that could be the only possible explanation as to why his other half would be here. nobody else could have fallen him. tenka kumou and the yamainu captain are supposed to have been dead. but-- he can't accept it. that 'fumma koutarou' is dead. and if it wasn't the end of the world, then the culprit would eventually come to this hell, and koutarou would gladly exact vengeance. ]

[ Could be be going mad? Or, rather, could the darkness he submitted to more than twenty years ago be rising and looking to destroy him from within? In the very, very limited amount of time he's allowed himself to imagine how things could have been different -- a sentiment that betrays everything they worked for -- he always imagined his brother being alive and at his side. Always scarred, always as unique and special despite no longer looking just like him. He had shattered the mirror first, in any case.

But no, his twin believes him to be dead. Dead as well. Shirasu suppresses a wild laugh -- what would his twin say if he replied "I did"?

Shirasu clasps his brother's arm tightly, desperate as the day he yanked him back from over the cliff. That grip is steady, solid. Steadier now that they're together. ]

We're not dead. [ His tone mixes a similar fierceness with what seems almost like a plea. He never dreams, this can't be one. ] We're alive.

[ the desperation in his other half's grip on his arm surprises even him, though it doesn't show in his expression beyond the slight widening of his eyes and the straightening of his back. amongst the two of them, even after tenka kumou sowed the seeds of dissent in his brother, he had still always been the more controlled one. the more stoic one, the one who didn't need the mask to become the mask. these slight differences prickle at the edges of his consciousness, even though he doesn't entire know why, until his other half's words register and what little of the emotional variation in his face freezes.

taken literally, his other half's words make no sense. koutarou is no fool. he knows that he's dead. he died for a reason -- to take two of his brother's enemies into the maws of death so that he could continue to live on. therefore, he knows that he's dead. taken at a face value, those words don't make sense, don't resonate with him, and the plea in his brother's tone as jarring as it is terrible to hear.

if he were any other person, living under any other circumstances, he would've been able to hear the pain in shirasu's voice. to understand the meaning behind the plea, the insanity behind it, the desperation and the solidarity. but fuuma koutarou never lived in a world where he could experience any of those things. at this moment in time, he cannot but take his other half's words literally, because he knows no other way of looking at the world, and no other way of understanding emotion.

therefore, a slight frown passes his face as his own grip on his brother's arm tightens as well, a slight shake of his head. ]

I am dead. [ he says this clinically, because life and death has never meant much to him. ] I died for the clan.

[ "for you", because koutarou is nothing if honest, straight-forward, blunt. he tries again, this time with a hint of confusion: ]

Why do you not live?

[ this is hell... is it not? ]

[ Shirasu hears the unspoken words, and that feeling in his chest spikes again, wrenching and painful. He never asked his twin to make that sacrifice, and yet he had done nothing to stop him. Done nothing to keep him from trying to take Tenka along with him.

Everything had been for Orochi-sama, for the clan.

None of it had worked.

And it led to him looking at the faint, uncertain expression on his brother's face, asking a question that makes his heart feel like it's breaking.

"You and your brother could've come to live with us - both of you. We could've worked to figure out a better fate for your clan. We could've--"

Shut up, Tenka. ]

This place... [ No. Shirasu glances around and shakes his head. He lets his hand slide from his brother's arm to his hand, and he turns, beginning to walk. ]

Come with me. I'll explain.

[ it's not as though he doesn't understand the need for secrecy-- back when they're alive. after all, what they did back then required secrecy. a single slip could've jeopardized their mission, their calling, their lives, so secrecy made sense. years of sitting behind bars and clandestine midnight meetings, slinking before dawn so that the light of day could not touch them. but here, they're dead. their enemies are dead. only the dead surround them in a dead afterlife, so why would they need to hide away?

but you know that koutarou would never question it.

he may have reservations. he may be confused. he may have a seed of suspicion within his heart, almost disbelieving that any of this could even happen-- that this isn't a trial from hell, showing him what he could never swallow just to see if they could see him break. but despite everything, he would never question his other half, his better half, the half of him who leads and tugs him along, who saved him from the cliff that day and with whom he was finally able to stand before the fuuma clan as one of them. his loyalty is not so cheap, not so flimsy. without a word, he follows his other half. without hesitation, he steps in behind him, their footsteps passing without mark yet fitted so perfectly within each other.

behind them, the whispers of the wind mark their passing. ]

« 011 ⇢ event011.exe » OVERFLOW

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject