PHASE I [ 10 00 ] The “cleansing" doesn't begin too strangely. No, instead it starts with some minor inconveniences. After Mosley's broadcast, anything running on electricity seems to be… mildly on the fritz. Characters will find their home appliances suddenly rebelling just enough to be troublesome. Anything that uses electricity within the bounds of the colony will start suffering from some small malfunctions. (Do we have any cyborgs in the crowd tonight?) Toasters burning your breakfast and shooting the crispy things at you. Televisions suddenly exploding in a haze of smoke before working perfectly fine a moment later. Hair dryers suddenly running a little too hot and whoops, your hair's on fire… Well, this is all still just a small issue. Probably. Here's hoping the fire extinguisher doesn't run on electricity too?
PHASE II [ 1200 ] It's only glitches for a day or so, but by noon the next day, things get a little weird. We interrupt your regularly scheduled routine to bring you this important message: Welcome to ViViD. … Wait, what? Yeah, sorry about that. Whether you wanted to or not, you've found yourself in the virtual simulator… except it doesn't seem very… virtual anymore, no. The monsters look a bit meaner, and they seem to be after you in particular. You might suddenly be glitched into a dead end, or a level that actually doesn't seem to be beatable at all, with people you've never seen before as your party members. Endless mazes! Boss battles with a wooden sword! Dungeons with no walkthroughs! When you finally make it to the end, you might even find a giant wall blocking your way, or a moat where there was once a path. Now that's troublesome.
And make sure you don't get hurt by any of those monsters. Not like it matters, it's just HP, right? Wrong. Rather, it'll actually hurt quite a bit, just as if you were injured in real life.
If you're lucky, you'll find yourself glitched back out maybe half an hour later -- your wounds still fresh from the experience and still bleeding. Just don't die. You don't want to see what will happen if you die.
PHASE III [ 1800 ] It's the day after, and you've survived your unfortunate ViViD runs (though there's no promise that you won't end up there yet again). But for now, you've finished your work day without too many electrical object malfunctions, and you're on your way home. Normally the transit system is so very reliable. From district to district, the metro is your only way of travel and today? Today it's stopping with an ugly screech. Hopefully you don't need to be anywhere because it's safe to say that you're not getting off this ride any time soon. The lights aren't only flickering anymore, they're completely out. The darkness settles in uncomfortably as you're only left with the other people who were making the same trip. A second later, things start to get weird. Cold breath down your neck. The scratch of something sharp and angry against the outside of the cabin. Seconds pass in silence, the presence of something outside growing more and more frightening. If you hold your breath and stay very still, you might make it out just fine. That is until a forceful SLAM sounds behind you and there's something against your window. At least you know what's been making all that noise.
Of course, should you pry open the doors, there's nobody there, but… you couldn't have been imagining that, right?
Looks like the entire city's blacked out… and without the hum of technology and warmth of the advanced lighting system, some ghosts have come out to play. But they can only be seen from the corner of your eye, a glimpse, a breath, a nondescript whisper on the air and then they're gone. Who knows what they want from you…? Either way, they're not saying, staying just out of reach and mostly out of sight… but always there, watching and waiting.
PHASE IV [ 0000 ] Here you are, finally: day 4. You made your way through the dark, avoided the things that go bump in the night and found your apartment. Your pants are gone, your door is locked, and you've managed to stumble right into your bed/nest/cocoon/what-have-you. Your unbearably long day is finally, finally about to come to a close but then something glitches, worse than before. Suddenly you're not all cozy in your bed, but rather suspended in an unidentifiable space. In this darkness, there is screaming and only screaming. You try to move your limbs, use your voice -- and there is nothing. Rather, you can only look on as the space shifts and you see two figures appearing in the darkness, glowing in the same digital blue that lights up the rest of the colony. As you get closer, the screaming grows louder -- a woman's screams, you can hear now. It sounds garbled, like broken pieces of sound bytes. She's being strangled, you can see now. The other figure strangling her is a robot, metallic and ruthless. He turns to see you and his eyes glow with the same blue shine. As the woman -- LILITH, for those who have seen her or heard her voice may recognize -- finally begins to lose her strength to scream, the robot's mouth slowly spreads into a smile as he maintains eye contact, cold and yet somehow pleased.
In the next second, you have been returned to your body, echoes of screaming your only lullaby. Sleep doesn't seem as likely anymore, does it?
BONUS [ whyo'clock ] If at all possible, the darkness just got darker. How, you might ask? Well, it seems like someone just put a bag over your head! That's a little inconvenient, but it looks like you're suffering from an old school kidnapping at some point through these couple of days, complete with your assailants pushing you around asking, “Where the hell is the money?!" As they shove you into their shady kidnapper van, you can hear a certain song playing which is… a bit too on the nose for this situation. As the wheels of the vehicle stop and you're pushed out, the bag comes off and you're facing down your friendly neighborhood debt collector. He's slow to get his words out but they are very menacing indeed, something about threatening your family and sleeping with the alien fishes in the park. When you protest, insisting that you don't owe them any money, they pull out a CereVice and show your bank account, which does indeed seem to be approximately 50 million credits in debt.
They'll do this even if you're not in debt at all, and, in fact, it is impossible for you to be in debt, as CERES doesn't loan money to you people. Looks like the glitching did a number on your bank account though, and the numbers don't lie.
Looks like you're out of luck, friend. Why not have a friendly chat with the other half a dozen people who have been bagged and kidnapped as well? There's even a small table with snacks as you wait. Wait for what, they haven't exactly said yet. Maybe you should just leave through the window.
PENALTY [ xxxx ] Should you be unlucky enough to die in ViViD while it is glitching and injuries are being sustained, you will find yourself in a penalty game. Even more than usual penalty games, this one is increasingly unnerving. There is nothing but a dark room, a single light hovering over two masks on a table. One might recognize them as the masks of comedy and tragedy. In front of the player, red words slowly illuminate the room. Pick one. Well, that's an easy penalty game, isn't it?
Yet as you reach for one, the masks will suddenly turn into the faces of the two most important people to you. Their voices whisper, growing distressed as time goes on, “Pick me, pick me, pick me." The red words turn into a countdown if you take too long -- your hand forcibly moved to pick one mask or the other if the timer runs out. Yet once you put on the mask, you will see the person who was not picked, suddenly and brutally murdered right before your eyes by a shadowy figure, wearing the mask you chose.
With that, you will return to the colony, good as new. Though on occasion, you may see the person whose mask was not picked in the corner of your eye, dressed in black and wearing the very same mask of tragedy.
[ 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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[ WHAT A BEAUTIFUL MORNING, THE SUN IS OUT, THE BIRDS ARE CHIRPING, AND THERE'S A SHRILL SCREAM COMING FROM NEXT DOOR. Yuyuko tends to leave her porch door open in the mornings for some reason or another (it's the eccentricity, don't think about it too hard, definitely nothing to do with murdercastle!!), so the sound may reach the apartment over much more easily.
It's a short, barking scream, thankfully nothing like the one she unleashed all those months ago before her untimely demise via tower rescue, and there seems to be scrambling going on in her apartment, so she's probably fine...? ]
Not again, not again! [ ...???? ]
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[ Yuyuko doesn't jump when the slamming begins, her face only neutral and a bit irritated. The lights go out, and she summons a circle of glowing butterfly bullets to hover around her, creating an effect not dissimilar to mood lights. Better than nothing, just don't touch them or get a concussive gutpunch.
Once she's certain these unwanted visitors are what she thinks they are, she leaves her seat, wandering the aisles and seemingly talking to no one in particular. ]
My, my, no one ever taught you proper manners, did they? It's rude to interrupt a trip like that. But you're not listening to me very well, either. Perhaps it is time that you...moved on?
[ A pair of translucent, white, blob-like creatures circle around her with increasing frequency, unnerved at the sheer level of tension in the air. ]
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I'll have you know, I'm working on minimum wage in this atrocious city! I barely have the money to feed myself, let alone rack up such a charge...! [ As if she's ever worked a day in her life before coming here, though.
Eventually, she settles for eating the snacks and bobbing her head in time with that charming song. ]
I've had a limited experience with this sort of music... [ turning to the closest person and asking. man she listed purely to denpa crap and jpop in murdercamp, what's this american music ] What is this genre called? And why is the speaker so furious about being owed money?
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But that doesn't mean that this punk isn't curious. Kaoru keeps an eye on her as she wanders, since she's pretty easy to follow, being her own soft lightshow and all. Once she gets close enough for him to speak to without drawing too much attention over, she'll likely be able to hear a soft:]
...Miss?
[Over in the corner - Kaoru waits there patiently, expression somewhat guarded. They're in public, after all; even though Kaoru knows that Yuyuko knows a lot about him, he can't risk showing that.]
Who are you speaking to?
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[ said as if discussing the weather ]
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...Is that where those awful noises are coming from?
[Go away lost children, don't be rude...]
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Yes. They are restless. Agitated.
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Are we meant to do something about it? ...Is there anything that we can do?
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like giving her free food](no subject)
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Although, her cuts were quickly cut short as she saw someone familiar stood up. While she shouldn't be surprised that it was Yuyuko out of all people to do this, it didn't stop her from raising an eyebrow]
...Uh...first killer plants and now this? Just what are you afraid of...?
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Like I said...there is not much for a ghost to be afraid of. [ A murderous tree is just about it, at this point. ]
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[Although, at this point, Anna felt like it would be useless to keep on arguing about that. There were more important things at stake!]
Ahhh, nevermind! I'll ask about that later! Do you know a way out of here? Just what's going on here?
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I can't imagine the doors would be terribly hard to open. They are just machines, after all.
[ the slamming starts up again and Yuyuko sighs, producing one of her fans to tap on the window with ] I was talking about vengeful spirits, wasn't I?
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But isn't that even worse? I mean, I know you deal with ghosts all the time but still!
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1/2
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And beats me. I personally don't care.
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Computers, mostly.
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Oh, you're also a very chatty one, aren't you?
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Well, there's not much point in me saying anything unnecessary unless I'm horribly bored.
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[ getting shoved in a van, sure, but there's not much to do while sitting around here ]
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phase i
[Within a few minutes of said screaming, someone has jumped across and rolled in through the porch door, screeching loudly:]
Ms. Yuyuuuuuuko! I'm here!!
[She's actually super concerned, despite the stupid entrance]
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There's smoking going on but the fire alarms aren't going off, for some reason. Just distressed whining from the bathroom, wherein Yuyuko is in her pajamas and sticking her head into the sink. ]
It happened again...!
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No! It's going to unhappen! Whoever's in there with her, get your dirty mitts off Ms. Yuyuko---!
[That would be the hairdryer.]
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Bakura-kun isn't even heeeeeere.....!
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[But first: turning on the tap]
What is, Ms. Yuyuko? What happened? Don't go towards the light! Speak to me!!
[#helping]
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