What their Eyes See: Optional Ongoing

[voidtreckermods]

By day eight the Voidtreckers have made a good deal of progress in all their tasks but there is still a lot to do to help the people of the city.

It is around mid morning when there is a message on their comms. For those that want to help it is easy to either find Anan herself or ask for netpoints and scanners to be brought to them by Chiff.

Illusions have gotten worse, uncertainty and fear are rising across all tiers and the situation is becoming more chaotic by the day. Indeed especially on the first and second tiers it seems that the voidtreckers themselves are being targeted, with creatures stalking them and attacks on their minds to make them believe that what they are seeing is real.

Same inside the Spectura system, the vines seem to almost be on the offensive against the voidtreckers though things are getting better outside the game system as more of the vicitms are freed and wake up.

Almost opposite to the situation on the lowest tier, which is getting more chaotic by the day. Anger is bubbling over, people are frightened and in a place like this the only real way to express that fear is through anger.

There has been a lot of progress but there is still a lot of work to do, especially as many of the voidtreckers have started to realise, this all seems a little too familiar.

Comments

[helborn]

The sand wolf growls, looking at Tidus like it's about to leap at him. Casper turns the corner, ending up at other side of the monster. ... He'd just been scouting this area, now this. He sighs and suddenly his baseball bat is in his hand.

"Do you recognize this thing?"

[blitzcheer]

And pounce at him it does, meeting the appearance of Tidus's water-blade into its belly, bouncing it off into the street in Casper's direction. But that attack alone doesn't seem to be enough as it rises back onto his feet.

"Ugh, yeah, that and twenty other versions of it! It's nothing but a pain in the ass!"

Which is to say, Tidus sounds more annoyed than worried about it, even as it goes for him again - but maybe Casper would like to get to it first before Tidus. And fortunately, Tidus can't recall any of the special tricks it has under its claws usually, since as he said - there's so many of them in Spira.

They're nothing more than pesky dogs in his memories.

[helborn]

Casper dashes forward to smack the monster in its side, ice crystals forming where it impacts. He kicks i with his prosthetic leg, sending it flying back towards Tidus.

"It doesn't seem all that strong, yeah. Just a speed bump on the way to where you were going?"

[blitzcheer]

Honestly, the slash that Tidus goes in to give it is probably overkill, but that's what the fiend -- fake or not -- receives, its form slumping onto the ground. It's a weird sight to see, Tidus lingering on it with a frown, but then acknowledging Casper as he lets his blade disappear.

"Kinda, if it's a road of them. Fiends get made from all the bad energy people leave when they die. Lots of people die, lots of fiends for the rest of us to have to deal with." It's morbid, really, but the state of reality as he knew it that Tidus shares it as one would the weather. He nods at Casper. "What about you? Just gods and titans you got to deal with back home, or where you first came from?"

If that place is home any to Casper these days.

[helborn]

"... Huh. I'm used to dealing with ghosts for that, and only some of them can be reasoned with. A lot of the stuff in my world I've fought have been trolls or titanspawn - servants of the titans in one way or another. Unfortunately my side of the family tends to get lumped in on the titan side for various reasons both fair and not."

His bat disappears and he tucks his hands into his pockets. "And whatever things the titans are choosing to corrupt and use as troops... ugh." He frowns at the fiend, shaking his head. "Not a good end for a wolf, especially if it's made from the energy of dead people. It'd be worse if it was real." The image flickers a little from his point of view, the hologram nature of the body faintly visible.

[blitzcheer]

"Your world sounds a bigger mess than ours." Trolls, titanspawn? Though the latter isn't entirely unfamiliar as trouble, reminding Tidus briefly of the time they first spoke about titans. Forces of nature...

But there's a lot to think about, the image of the fiend discarded there, not disappearing as it should - would, if it were real, the energy unravelling.

"I can't tell you if Spira has real wolves anymore," he says almost as an afterthought, sighing, rolling his shoulders some as he tries focusing more on the present, the here and now. "Anyway, what were you doing? Just patrolling? You hear the message from Anan?"

[helborn]

"I heard." He sighs and glances at his SCA. "I haven't been here long enough to get a whole picture of the situation, but... I don't know. I don't really get why she needs us to set up wireless transmitters... I guess she's trying to set up some kind of way to protect the network but also get into it. ... And I want to know why she wants to get into it."

He looks up at Tidus again. "I try not to be too paranoid, but I know something larger's going on than just us hopping from place to place. And I don't... distrust her, but I don't completely trust her. I've seen a few networks get cracked, or attempts to do so." He taps the side of his head. "Given that the last network i worked with was mental, it wasn't a good time to say the least. I just worry about what she's really up to, but we don't exactly have contact with whoever runs these trains so we can't really verify things..."

[blitzcheer]

"I don't think that's her goal at all," he says with a shake of his head, earnest. "I can't say I get this tech work, but she's trying to figure out what these viruses and illusions are about like we are. Because of what happened on the last planet. She got caught up in the illusions there - and when she came to, she didn't have a clue what was going on either."

There's a pause, a consideration, before Tidus admits over a pinched mouth, "And the way she got into our comms - is because a couple of us helped her. She listened to me when I told her about what was going on with us and the train back on Erda, and now she's trying to help. But she thinks there's something real fishy about what's going on here..."

And his arms cross with that, a frown finding its way onto his face. There was something weird about these similar attacks to the games and the illusions that they met in other systems.

[helborn]

"Hm. Maybe I'm being too paranoid... I've just had some bad experiences." He shakes his head. "Sorry..."

Deep breath. Okay. He's fine.

"But there's definitely something fishy going on. Someone said the vines in the video games are something you ran into before? That's a pattern and I don't like it."

[blitzcheer]

Tidus gets to flash a sympathetic look at least at the apology, understanding to an extent, even if he can't see it for himself. But that expression turns thoughtful, a pull to his brow.

"Right. If it was just going into the videogame and being stuck there, it wouldn't be so strange. But those vines - we got a signal from a space-station being built. No one was even there! But it got straight into the big computer running everything."

That was a weird mission, for all sorts of reasons.

"Maybe someone is targeting these places, but I don't know why. What do you get outta a station without anyone there? Or any of the stuff going on here?"

[helborn]

"And it was here before we got here, so it can't be us transmitting it somehow. Unless there's some time shenaniganery involved, but that makes my head hurt so let's not go down that path." Ugh, this is not the kind of mystery he's best at.

"Anan wasn't at the space station, right?"

[blitzcheer]

"Nope," he confirms. "We met her at Erda. That space station was completely empty, and we didn't see any other crafts where we came in from. We have bumped into other guys," he adds after a beat, "but even their plans made more sense than what's going on here. I mean - what's the goal? Putting a virus inside an empty station, or putting illusions all around a city that's killing people? Promising to make dreams come true?"

Granted, someone still has to be behind this for any of that, but coming up with a reason that makes any sense...

"Even the other guys - we met them on this forgotten reservation planet - they wanted to get access to the place so they could mine it for resources. That doesn't do a lot of good for a space station."

[helborn]

"... Yeah. I don't... know. There's writeups about the previous missions in the library? Thought I saw something like that... I wanna look through those notes. There's got to be something we're all missing..."

[blitzcheer]

"Oh, Lightning's notes? Yeah, short ones. Maybe there's something there... but I don't know what," Tidus admits helplessly, shrugging.

"Better you or someone else look than me. Weird stuff happens all the time, but this is the only time we've had the same weird stuff happening."

[helborn]

"Yeah. I... mm. Not usually the brains behind this stuff, I'm just good at sniffing things out. It's not like trying to figure out how to translate old academic writing-speech into modern language." He tries his best, and he's clever, but when there's nothing to use ass background research...