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« 015 ⇢ EVENT015.EXE »

Who: CERES, you, and your little ~~dog~~ CYbuddy too!
When: OOC: 6/11 to 6/17th | IC: 1/18 to 1/21
Where: The Greater Cerealia Area/ViViD Shenanigans
What: Event log
Rating/Warning: PG-13/R for possible violence! Let us know if the log needs to be locked or if any issues pop up, thanks!

//event014.EXE

Perhaps it's easy to take the accommodations of Cerealia for granted, even for those who come from worlds that are considerably less technological in nature. Aside from that one nasty hiccup on Halloween, everything moves smoothly in terms of everyday appliances. One can come to take the soft glow of LED lights and hum of machines for granted if you've been in the colony long enough. The metro runs on a regular schedule and you'll very rarely find yourself late for appointments. Schedules run on a universal clock and appliances for your every need and desire can be conveniently supplied by CERES. Life is good. Really.

Yet with the rocky transition to the new CEO, it would appear as though the colony is experiencing some minor… glitches? Well, surely it's nothing to worry about. Nothing can be as bad as the fiascos that residents found themselves dealing with under the old management. Continue on with your day, it's fine. An announcement made by Mosley, who you may recognize as the secretary of the new CEO, will echo the same sentiments with a broadcast from your CereVice:

“Good day, residents. This is Mosley. Please pardon any minor hiccups in your commute or quaint mundane activities today. In accordance with the transition, we are also doing some pre-emptive spring cleaning, I suppose you could say. A few bugs were found crawling where they shouldn't in the city's infrastructure. Isn't that positively horrific? They really let this place fall apart. You needn't worry, in a few days everything will be as pristine as it should be. Think of this as a cleansing for all of us.

Goodbye."

//SCENARIOS.EXE

PHASE I

[ 1000 ] 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. ]

//RUN.EXE

Welcome to Cerealia's June event! Please visit the OOC information here, and should you have any questions, feel free to ask them here! You can also check the FAQ for more general inquiries. This event will last from June 11th to June 17th, or IC 1/18 to 1/21. Should this event log hit Captcha, there is an all-purpose overflow here. Thank you!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ Nanoha's able to deal some damage to the Malboro, but its HP bar is still full. ]

Nothing- Nothing's happening!

[ She may as well try to move to the monster's side and hit it with her staff. Nothing happens, though. . . instead, it opens its mouth and breathes on Athena, poisoning her. ]

Eh? Is its defence too high, is there a trick to this, or is the game just bugged? Let's try something else...

[ Nanoha had finally figured out how to check her skills, and was looking through her various Iaido when she finally came upon something different. ]

Hmm, how does it go? "Summon All Ghosts of the Sword! Attack, Muramasa!"

[ The red katana flashed out of its sheath and returned in an instant, but again, nothing seemed to happen for a moment before ghostly apparitions appeared and struck the monster.

It was supposed to do damage and cause Doom and/or Confuse but who knew what the heck was going on in this game? ]

Athena, stay behind me. I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to be the tough one between the two of us in this game.

R- Right!

[ She moves to stay behind Nanoha, though she starts coughing from inhaling the fumes the Malboro released earlier. Her HP decreases when she moves, but it doesn't look like she's going to go down yet. She takes out an antidote from her inventory and drinks it (it tastes bitter), getting rid of the poison immediately. That's a lot better...

Now that Athena's finished her turn, the enemy attacks Nanoha once more with its tentacles. It seems it's resistant to any status effects, too. ]

Ordinary damage doesn't work, statuses don't work, this is quite a pickle, isn't it?

[ Nanoha's hands were probably going to smell terrible for a week after all the tentacle grasping she was doing. It was rather unpleasant. ]

What's left? It doesn't look like we can just leave the stage either... Can we just time the stage out?

[ She sighs and uses Iaido with the Masamune, causing a healing rain to fall all around her. ]

[ Athena closes her eyes to try and understand what's going on. Seeing as the others can't move until she takes action, she doesn't have to worry about being attacked.

Mosley mentioned minor hiccups, and most of the appliances at Simon's apartment stopped working. So did her necklace. . . could it be that most electronics in Cerealia have been bugged?

If so, ViViD is probably the same way.

It's another glitch in the system! ]

This is bad, Miss Nanoha. I think we'll just have to wait until the people of CERES fix the problem.

I've been able to break out by winning the games so far, but... It wouldn't surprise me if one of the games we got thrown into bugged out to be impossible.

[ Nanoha sighs, sitting down in her square. ]

At least this game is turn-based, so we don't need to worry about randomly getting ambushed as long as we keep things on our turn, right?

[ She nods in response. ]

It doesn't seem like the enemy will be able to attack until both of us make our moves.

[ Speaking of, it's her turn! ]

I think it might be best to stay away from the monster, then.

[ And she moves a few steps back.

The Malboro doesn't seem to like Athena's idea. It opens its mouth and roars, eventually summoning four more monsters into the map. ]

If the monsters are just going to attack with claws and tentacles, I could probably hold them off forever with my Shirahadori, but we already saw that it can use poison, so that's out of the question.

[ Nanoha ponders. If they were waiting for CERES to fix the issue, the best course of action was probably to just stall the game on her turn forever. That was... incredibly boring though, and this bug could last for the rest of the day! Besides, they hadn't nearly tried everything. ]

I'm going to go through all the katanas I have, see if one of them can get damage to stick! Let's go with our full power at full throttle and use the strongest technique! "Flame-eating sword! Swipe away evil, Chirijiraden!"

[ A serpent of blue flame snaked out of the katana and charged around Nanoha, striking all the enemies in range. Hopefully something would stick. ]

[ Athena stays where she is, behind Nanoha.

The Malboros, on the other hand, move to surround the two of them. There's nowhere else to go now, unless they manage to beat one of the monsters. But from the looks of it, that seems impossible. ]

Crap. This is going to be game over soon, isn't it?

Ugh. It looks like it. What a crappy game!

[ Nanoha was kind of slightly incredibly salty. She didn't enjoy losing at the best of times, she really hated losing to rigged games.

Still, she didn't quite want to give up yet! Another katana, this time the Osafune, which attacked the MP rather than HP of targets. Maybe they could at least be drained and left with only tentacle attacks, which Nanoha could handle forever? ]

Edited 2015-06-15 16:24 (UTC)

[ Nanoha's target's MP decreases, but that leaves four more monsters with full MP.

That's a good idea, though! And it could work! Unfortunately, Athena doesn't have anything like it. She whacks one of the newer monsters on the map with her staff—just in case they were different— ] Take this! [ . . . To no effect. It looks like all of them are invincible... At least she'll be able to cast some healing magic on her next turn if something bad happens to them.

What's coming to the both of them are a flurry of bad breath attacks, though. Hello random status ailments. ]

[ Nanoha was now both silenced and a toad, meaning there wasn't anything she could do except hop helplessly in place.

She couldn't even complain now. How horrifying.

At least she could attack! Which meant headbutting the nearest Marlboro as a small amphibian. If her katana attacks didn't do anything, this probably wasn't going to hurt. ]

[ Miss Nanoha!

... is what she would be yelling, but no sound comes out of her mouth when she speaks. Athena immediately puts both hands on her throat, absolutely surprised and horrified at what's happening. She understands that it's just a status effect, but it feels so... real. . . ]

[ As a toad, Nanoha couldn't even deflect the tentacles with her bare hands any more. This was definitely troublesome.

More painful than troublesome, actually, because she was getting whipped by tentacles, and she couldn't even scream.

Being a toad was suffering. Wasn't ViViD supposed to reduce pain? Nanoha rarely got hit at all because of her barriers, but she's pretty sure ViViD's supposed to reduce pain. It didn't feel like it.

It felt like she was a small lake creature getting beaten up by alpha predators. The pain was horrible, the fact that she couldn't actually do anything horrifying. ]

[ Thankfully, getting hit by gooey tentacles isn't too painful... though it does decrease HP.

Athena throws a potion at Nanoha's direction. Maybe that could help her a bit?!?!?!

That just means more tentacle attacks and bad breath magic now that Athena's turn is done. ]

[ Still silenced, still a toad. But at least she could drink a potion!

The mechanics of which are as mysterious as they are ridiculous.

Hop, hop, hop, headbutt. It was about all Nanoha could do now, that and be at blinking red HP because of tentacle whippings. ]

[ Athena throws another potion at Nanoha's direction... that should at least get her HP back to 50%! It doesn't help her, though, since her own HP is also really low, too. Receiving more whippings would get her HP to 0...

And just as a nearby Malboro is about to hit Athena, the field around them starts to get fuzzy. The monsters disappear and... it looks like they're back in the colony???

The status effects are gone, although any damage received seems to still be there. Which is unusual for ViViD. ]

We're... back on Cerealia?

[ Nanoha was confused, but mostly bruised. That had been one hell of a battering. Stumbling to the nearest vertical surface, she leaned against it for support and touched her wounds gingerly. ]

Were wounds supposed to transfer over from the game?

I can talk...? I can talk again!

[ Athena looks at her hands... no, the staff isn't there anymore. She isn't wearing the white hooded cloak anymore, either. That was to be expected, but still, it just so real. ]

Are you okay?

I've been through worse, but it definitely wasn't pleasant. How about you? You got hit a lot too, and you're not a fighter.

[ Nanoha straightened herself out with a heave and just a bit of struggle. There was no time to lie around being in pain when there were civilians who were just as troubled. ]

The damage wasn't that bad, the scary part was being turned into a toad and being unable to do anything about it. I'm never going through that again.

[ Athena's sides hurt from the attacks, but she wasn't cut, nor was there any blood loss on her part. She's rather fortunate on that end!

She offers her arm to Nanoha. ]

I'll be fine after a warm bath. Hold onto me, and I'll take you home.

Sorry, and thanks.

[ She grabs onto Athena, totally sore and rather exhausted. Being beaten up had definitely not been in her plans for today, but life rarely went as planned. Still, everyone was alive, and that's what mattered, right? ]

Tell me the truth, Athena. Do I smell like tentacle monster goo?

[ She winces every time she walks. She's going to have so many bruises the following morning... but it's not enough to stop her from moving. ]

I'd really rather not smell you, Miss Nanoha.

Yeah... I wouldn't want to smell me either. Those things did on a number on us with their breath. First thing I do when I get back home is shower, assuming our electronics haven't started trying to murder us again.

[ A few steps in, Nanoha stopped, and realised she had her magic again. Silly her. Flying within city limits was banned back home, so she rarely thought about it, but every so often she had to remind herself that there were no such rules here. ]

Hey Athena, let's just stop walking and fly home, alright?

[ Pink wings sprouted from her heels as she slowly lifted off, still holding on to Athena. ]

Woah! You can do that?!

[ Of course she can, she's a magical girl! It took a while for it to register in Athena's head... that's actually really cool. Athena laughs, trying to brush her shock away. ]

What I mean to say is-- will you be okay? You might be tired.

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