What their Eyes See: Finale

[voidtreckermods]

It’s been a weird mission. The Voidtreckers have been busy investigating, making headway in mapping and saving citizens from the video games and strange illusionary creatures. Those in the fourth tier have made contacts, followed leads and gotten close to the high and mighty of the criminal underworld.

Yet what exactly is happening here is still unknown. Their new found ally Anan is as stumped as the rest of them, but even so, the hackers and technological knowledgeable voidtreckers have been successful in isolating the virus to study and make an anti-virus. A netpoint network has been set up across the city, and enough access data stolen that they can start throwing everything into the systems and networks across the city.

While the illusions remain a mystery and how they got there, finally the world is purged of the strange virus as the anomalies begin to clear up by noon of day ten. Spectura victims wake up in hospital beds, dazed and confused, while no more sightings of the impossible plague those on the other tiers.


On the morning of day eleven, the once housebound and terrified citizens leave their shelters with the first tendrils of light reaching through the fog surrounding the enclosed city. An exodus of people, from fighters of tier four to elites of tier one, are making their way into the streets...and heading down into lifts and outside, out into the smog-filled wasteland.

“It’s so beautiful,” is heard, a rumbling through the crowd as people smile, laugh or wave into the fog.

”I won.” Fighters from tier four look around in wonderment. Other exclamations, about a blue sky, a greeting to a friend fill the air.

There is a pull. The voidtreckers will feel it too, though to them the world looks and feels no different. This pull is easy to resist, or they can follow and investigate it, attempt to lead citizens back inside the city. It’s not safe in the smog, no one has canisters, but none will heed the warnings.

Nor is there time for better efforts when a crackling sounds in the air, light and colours flashing in the smog, everywhere at once and too quick to get a hold on.

“STOP THWARTING ME!” booms out, and a great force pushes them back while pulling the citizens farther into the wasteland, sand and dirt kicked up in a frenzied storm. The voidtreckers can hear the civilians in the smog, but getting to them will prove harder than they may like.

Grabbing an air canister is highly recommended for those who prefer life.



CIRCLE ONE: THE MAZE
No matter where one leaves the city from, they will find themselves in a maze of walls, of metal sheets, each blending into each other. It feels surreal, as if nothing is quite real, nothing quite solid.

But it is solid. For those voidtreckers who cannot see illusions it will look like they are merely stood in the wasteland of the world. But when they begin to move they will learn those walls are tangible, and those that look close enough will see the same almost-light as the creatures that purple team have been fighting as the source.

For those who are not immune to illusions it is a strange place indeed. No smog to be seen, just high unyielding barriers. The pathways are different colours giving off hues of brightest pink, red, purple, neon green, glowing white, darkest black. Sometimes there are symbols on the walls, Capsule Corp, royal insignia, ravager flames, HYDRA, marks of royalty. They are emblazoned on the walls, the floor, sometimes even in the sky. And the deeper in they get...

➤ WINDING ROADS
It's noisy as they move around. As well as the distant noise of the citizens in the distance they can hear an acoustic guitar, erratic piano playing, the sound of bamboo on stone. Or perhaps an eagles cry, a lullaby or a song is heard as they move their way through the maze.

Objects stand in their way, blocking paths and needing to be moved or destroyed. Larger than life playing cards, red apples, flowers. Spears and daggers hang in the air as does the moon and the sun. Water often cascades through routes, making it difficult to move through or fire creeps up walls, nonthreatening but ever present. There are clouds of butterflies and ravens perched on walls, watching their every move, and the smell of sugar often hangs in the air.

But it’s better to navigate these turbulent passages with perseverance than violence. Daggers and apples will shatter and slice apart to attacks, creating a way through to begin with - but those that try the method of destruction to solve their problems will find these walls crowding them tighter, rising higher, becoming all the harder to destroy than they were before. They will become trapped, and will need assistance from the outside to untangle them from webs or jails made from crystal.
➤ STALKING THE STREETS
It isn’t just the Voidtreckers or locals who wander the maze. Wolves, dogs, zombie sheep and ghost animals mostly mind their own business, sometimes inclined to growl or bahh, but easy to pass. But other times, you may sense that you’re being followed, a presence hovering over you...while another companion will see as well the large shadow shrouding you before a decaying hand grabs at you from above, threatening to send its victim to some other part of the maze if not stopped.

Monsters also stalk these paths from various realities. The dead will be met in robes of white while others in armours from medieval times. All are fast, unrelenting in their attacks, unconcerned with pain or stopping without being properly slain. Ghouls of all shapes and sizes search for prey, and many more seek victims.

How they act and how to defeat them may be known to some, but not all. Is it worth the effort to stay and fight illusions, however? Sometimes those illusions don’t give a choice, but in other instances, a person from the city may be found on the ground unconscious, the smog air getting to them. They’ll need help, and fast.

CIRCLE TWO: IS THIS HOME?
Voidtreckers will realise they’ve left the maze when they find themselves in an open field. It spreads out far with vineyards in the distance, a campsite, all of this leading into a forest of childrens board games. While the campsite is not a true campsite as many will realise, it is the first moment everyone will have to come together, to perhaps plan ahead. Air canisters are essential in this environment, and locals have been found needing, unconscious. Backtracking through the maze is a death wish for many, but with the talents of the voidtreckers, setting up a checkpoint here may not be that impossible before going on ahead.

And then, when they finally do…

➤ FAMILIAR
It is almost dream-like as they walk, areas changing without them fully crossing the distance needed. One moment they are in a shopping malls food court, the next the interior of a spaceship; streets of palaces, temples, and mansions line up as a mish-mash of glamour, while others offer more humble abodes, taverns, family homes, bakeries. Medieval structures blend into tech bases, maintenance bays and dark rooms. Beautiful gardens, beaches and dusty souks all share space. But as they move through it, they will be tempted towards what is theirs.

And these can be anything. Ships, palaces, home, and even singular rooms: all of these are seen, doors providing access, doors that draw your character towards it, as if they know what’s on the other side. Spaces personal to the viewer, and with the constant pressure of these illusions, somehow draining to be around, they will find it harder to doubt what they see. Even if their bedroom leads towards a volcano, a blacksmith housing hospital beds right beside it, it will not seem so bizarre to find these natural.
➤ DEARLY BELOVEDS
But it’s not only structures that exist in this labyrinth of streets: there are people, animals - family, friends and pets. Beloved mentors, a smiling loved one. The night sky will wash over, the ocean within view; your favourite plush rabbit, a worn jumper. Your favourite song playing, losing you inside this new reality.

Even people from the Voidtrecker Express are around, whether or not they’re still passengers. Feanor, Zetta, Noctis, Cassie Cage, Jin Ling; Elfnein, Link, Mami, Gyousou, Duo; Senku, Jiang Yanli, Olivia, Bucky Barnes. They walk this plane, friends and lovers of the voidtreckers, coaxing them further into the illusions. Assuring them everything is alright, offering reasons to give in.

Over all this though, they can still hear the citizens in the distance; their voices sounding more confused, frightened even. To push on the voidtreckers must walk away, ignore these temptations and push on to the third ring.

CIRCLE THREE: TWISTED HEART
For those who manage to get through the second circle, pushing away the temptations of home, they will find themselves back in the smog filled wasteland. But through the smog they will see more, always more. Once again the scenery blurs into impossibilities, from testing labs with padded beds, to other imagery associated with asylums of old, to dark cramped spaces, to hallways raging on fire. They sense fear itself, and even the most stoic will find apprehension digging into them as they make their way forward. Is this their fear? Or is it your own?

It may be hard to discern in this twisted reality.

➤ MISERY LOVES COMPANY
This time, as the scenery shifts around them, so does their own sense of self try to match what these places mean. The despair of being lost in darkness, the belief that they can’t be seen by others, all sound fading from their ears. They are on the moon, trapped there for years; at the edge of the vast ocean, on the bank of a river of lava, despair in their hearts. In a wrecked city, their own city destroyed almost beyond recognition. By opposing forces, by weapons of mass destruction.

They have lost everything. There’s no fixing this.

A Pandora box of fears have been unleashed, with seemingly no hope. Your worst enemy has been granted a second chance, family stumbling towards you on the verge of death before your eyes; forces that you were meant to be dealing with back home have found you, surely leaving your own world in ruins, from titans to ayakashis.

Or they might stumble upon a graveyard, stretched out as far as they can see where every name is someone they care about.

There are even voidtreckers of now and old opposing you: Danny Fenton, Lan Xichen, Darth Vader, Vegeta, Xue Yang. Kerry stands pointing a gun straight at a fellow passenger while shadowy ravens and terrifying dragons swirl in the sky.

All this emotional turmoil will do a number on the voidtreckers, but there is strength in numbers. More civilians have fallen unconscious at this point, and those willing to aid them can take them back to the city. But no matter how the voidtreckers move, they must keep their nerve and hold onto hope as they cross the final hurdles.

Comments

[its_dad_sanzo]

He definitely has. And always will.

Koumyou offers Devero a slightly shaky smile at that, and consciously pushes at the illusion to just... believe that. It is true, after all.

And Kouryuu has always been very good at telling when people are full of shit. And when they're not.

Kouryuu squints suspiciously at Devero for a few more moments, and then proclaims, "You better not do anything creepy to my Master, or I'll kick your ass."

Koumyou laughs, even though his heart hurts too. "You really would, too. Maaah, I'm so glad you two are getting along!"

Because this basically is that, for a first meeting with the violet-eyed boy. Koumyou reaches down to take one of Kouryuu's hands, though the boy fusses a bit at that. Master, I'm thirteen-- is what the look he gives his father broadcasts as plain as day.

But he doesn't pull his hand free, either.

"Have you noticed Devero's giant robot?" Koumyou prompts the illusion of his son, nodding at Babysitter over Dev's shoulder. "Maybe you can show us some of what it can do?" he adds to Devero.

[subcircuits]

Devero laughs softly as well, charmed. "If I do anything creepy to your master, I deserve to have my ass kicked," he says.

He's not sure he would call this 'getting along'-- he's reasonably certain Kouryuu wants to kick his ass anyway-- but he's not going to be the one to contest Koumyou's assertion. After all, who's the boy's father here? Certainly not him; he's not father material. (Oh, Devero.)

He's also-- not as clear-eyed about the illusory nature of all of this as Koumyou. If he stops and he focuses, yes, it's easy to remember that this is all a fantasy, but as soon as that focus slips, the glamour winds back around him again. And it's a seductive magic, this warmth of home, this thrill of getting to meet Koumyou's son and letting Koumyou meet the rest of himself.

He smiles widely at the two of them. "Gladly," he says, with feeling, and returns to his machine's side. More seductive glamour: Babysitter shifts a little in the cradle as Devero approaches it, systems reaching as if in explicit invitation to connect, as if it's missed him as much as he's missed it. He swings up and aboard and this time he straps himself into the control cradle, slipping his feet into the sockets and wrapping his fingers around the control joysts. The cockpit closes around him and

(initializing...
identity verification:: user 771-Prosp0202-00745 detected
propriotactile interface:: functional
implant detection:: online
jockey interface:: connecting...

primary user authorized
welcome back:: devero)

their systems enmesh.

Devero disengages the maintenance clamps and drops Babysitter to the floor with a thump. The barest twitches of nerve and muscle send it striding forward, one step to cross the distance to father and son. The machine goes to one knee, a smooth and efficient motion, though not particularly graceful.

Devero's voice, a little distorted, issues from concealed speakers. "What do you think?"

[its_dad_sanzo]

"Waah! That's so cool!" Koumyou is, as ever, enthusiastic! And he reaches out with his free hand to lay his palm on the machine's hull, fascinated. Can Devero feel through it? Probably not, or it wouldn't be as useful for things like catching skyscrapers across the shoulders.

His son has unconsciously ducked a little behind the Sanzo as the robot approached, and peers at it from around Koumyou's arm. At a squeeze from Koumyou's hand around his, Kouryuu feels prompted to give an opinion.

"...I guess it is," begrudgingly, he'll give you that, big guy. Even bigger guy, right now.

[subcircuits]

Devero can't feel it, though Babysitter's proximity sensors keep him aware of the exact locations of both Koumyou and his son in relation to the machine. His boyfriend's enthusiasm makes him feel a little giddy.

He doesn't take Kouryuu's reticence personally. "Wait 'til you see us in action," he says instead, grinning unseen in the cockpit. He stands back up and strides out of the maintenance bay. The maintenance bay opens directly on one of the training fields (since when?), concrete transitioning abruptly to hard-packed dirt. (Wasn't there a wall with doors here just a few minutes before? It seems unimportant, that the surroundings have changed.) He pilots Babysitter out; despite how big it is, the machine moves lightly and with precision.

The training field is an immense obstacle course, with raised observation booths on both ends. Devero turns back to Koumyou and Kouryuu, crouching and offering out a hand. "Can I give you a lft? The view down here's going to be sh-- terrible."

[its_dad_sanzo]

Koumyou laughs, having trailed after the big robot, his son in tow. He steps up to the machine's offered hand, and then smiles down at Kouryuu, nudging him toward it. "You first!"

Kouryuu... hesitates for a second, and then sets his jaw stubbornly and steps up onto the hand. His balance is almost as ridiculously good as his father's.

[subcircuits]

Which is good, because the platform offered by the hand is neither flat nor steady. If it hadn't been Koumyou and his son, Devero probably wouldn't even have offered this as an option, but he trusts in how ridiculously athletic they are.

The smooth, steady motion as he lifts the boy and hands him up to the open booth is testament to Devero's skill and control over his exo. Actuators lock in place to hold the hand perfectly still while Kouryuu steps off.

[its_dad_sanzo]

Kouryuu steps off gingerly, without so much as a wobble, and turns to eyeball the machine -- the guy in it, let's be honest, those eyes are piercing -- critically.

Koumyou, meanwhile, could absolutely get up there under his own power, but he's fascinated, and definitely wants a turn on the palm-express. "So do you just think about what you want it to do, or is it more of what the little wires are for?"

[subcircuits]

Those eyes are piercing enough that Devero can feel them through the cockpit, pausing fractionally to regard the kid back with Babysitter's sensors before crouching again to get Koumyou.

"It's the wires," he says. "They read the signals in my nerves and transmit that data to Babysitter." Once Koumyou's up on the platform, Devero steps back far enough to pop open the cockpit hatch. He clears his visor so he can look up at the priest directly. "That's what the processor core does," he continues gravely. "Turns my body's signals into Babysitter's actions."

[its_dad_sanzo]

"So when you said it's the part that knows you..."

Devero had been quite literal! It's the part that translates 'Devero' into 'Babysitter', which is a comparison Koumyou also realizes: "It's a translator."

[subcircuits]

"Yes," Devero says with a nod. "Exactly. It's a translator that's worked with me long enough to know all my slang and idioms and how to understand me even if I whisper or slur." To continue the metaphor.

To whit: Devero barely has to twitch his eyes and fingers to trigger the cockpit to reseal. Abrupt? Absolutely, but talking about how the machine knows him is making him impatient to get reacquainted.

He rolls Babysitter's shoulders and shakes out its hands like an athlete limbering up for a competition as he says, "Shall I put us through our paces for you?"

[its_dad_sanzo]

"Absolutely," Koumyou is as cheerfully enthused as ever, even as he reclaims his son's hand. Settling in to spectate, and all. Kouryuu forgets to even fuss this time, finally good and distracted by the giant sci-fi story robot.

"Show us what you've got!"

[subcircuits]

Devero salutes the two of them, and turns without further ado to the obstacle course.

This is a natural disaster training course, built to resemble a shaken, fractured city. Slabs of concrete lay in unsteady heaps; metal hulls are meant to be crumpled and fallen public trams. The ground is pocked and uneven. Twisted girders and building facades lean overhead. It's all simulated, of course, but it's a chaotic and challenging course despite that.

Devero in Babysitter glide into it like he/they grew up there. Part of that is familiarity with the course but part of it is just being attuned with his machine. As he climbs into the wreckage, each step lands where he's placed it, each reach of a hand finds its intended grip. Deftly, he starts making his way into the heart of the course.

He's in the process of scaling the tilted side of a building, using broken out windows as handholds, when a carefully engineered pressure plate triggers a piece of the facade to 'collapse' out from under Babysitter's feet. The machine lists to one side as its feet go out from under it.

[its_dad_sanzo]

Koumyou and Kouryuu watch, the priest lighting up his pipe as they spectate. They talk quietly, but brown eyes and purple eyes stay fixed on Babysitter as Devero navigates the early part of the course.

"...He's taking care of me," Koumyou tells his son gently, "now that I'm gone."

There's no way the illusion, drawing from his expectations and memories and subconscious as it clearly is, doesn't know he's dead.

"He's very dear to me. If we had more time, I would try to let you see why. But you've always had that knack of knowing what's in someone's heart."

"Yes, Master. I don't trust him, but I can see that you do."

"Unconditionally."

This is right around when Devero starts climbing a crooked ruin of a building, and when a piece seems to collapse, it's Kouryuu who gasps, "Oh no!"

[subcircuits]

Beetle-class search-and-rescue units do possess pretty good listening capabilities-- the better to follow calling voices to trapped or ailing citizens-- but Devero would have to stop and prioritize that function if he wanted to hear what Koumyou and his son were talking about on the platform. It doesn't even occur to him to do so, really; not as wrapped up as he is in the pleasure of putting Babysitter through its paces.

For a moment, it looks like Dev and his machine are going to take a tumble. A more novice jockey probably would have. But Devero's good at this: he twists and catches the edge of that gap, arresting his fall. The machine dangles there for an instant before Devero kicks around and swings Babysitter up, catching the other edge with a foot. With a mechanical roar audible on the platform, he heaves Babysitter up and out of the hole.

He climbs the rest of the way to the 'peak' of this particular obstacle, turning to face his observers and spreading the machine's arms in a little flourish. Ta-da!

[its_dad_sanzo]

Kouryuu had actually almost lunged forward, instinctively, but for the adult's grip on his hand. He settles down once Devero's got a foot on the edge, but doesn't join in when Koumyou starts to applaud enthusiastically.

No, thirteen year old Kouryuu has already mastered being a moody little shit. He's eyeing the obstacle course, and looks up at his keeper. "What's that robot even for?"

"It makes him feel tall," Koumyou returns cheerfully, still clapping.

"Master, he's already tall."

"Is he? I hadn't noticed."

Kouryuu just sighs.

[subcircuits]

From the peak of the simulated fallen building, Devero leaps lithely down to the hull of an ersatz crashed tram, metal squealing as he slides from there down to the ground. The last part of the course is a tangle of steel beams like a massive game of pick up sticks. Here Devero's expertise in his machine shows again as he clambers around and through the haphazard forest, rather than taking the easier route around or the more-time consuming route of moving the beams one by one.

The effect is, admittedly, probably lost on his audience, since they have no baseline to compare his performance to. But he knows he's doing great, almost buoyant with exhilaration as he trots back around the outside lane of the course to the booth.

He's panting and flushed when he pops open the cockpit. "What did you think?" he asks, eyes shining as he looks up at Koumyou and Kouryuu.

[its_dad_sanzo]

Koumyou... jumps down off the platform, but not to the ground. Oh, no. No, he lands with one foot just barely into the cockpit, holding onto the edges with both hands so he can lean in and give Devero a cheek-smooch.

His son holds his head in his hands. Why.

"You're brilliant," Koumyou tells Devero happily, "all of you."

[subcircuits]

As Koumyou leaps down, the whole exo rocks back a step, just the way Devero does when he's startled. Absolutely delighted to have his favorite person framed in the open hatch of his favorite machine, he laughs-- and again when Koumyou leans in to smooch him.

"I love you," he says, unable to help himself. "So goddamn much."

In the stream from one of his exterior cams he can see the boy, still on the platform, and he grins up at the man. "I think you're embarrassing Kouryuu."

[its_dad_sanzo]

There's that smile again, so much less rare while the priest is with his two favorite people.

"Nothing unusual there," Koumyou says with all his usual cheer, despite his heart pounding in his chest at that word. Even with that word, that smile broke through.

And he leans in to pepper Devero's face with more smooches, because he can.

"Master, please," Kouryuu groans out into his hands. "Can you not?"

[subcircuits]

Oh, that smile. How it makes his heart lift to see it, radiant despite the effect that Devero knows that dangerous word has on his Sanzo. He closes his eyes as if basking in the light of that smile and the rain of smooches that follows it, but when Kouryuu complains he pushes lightly at Koumyou's shoulders.

"What now?" he asks when there's a little space between you. He brings up a map in Babysitter's feed and says, "We're not too far from the residential part of Techstead. Would you like to see where I live?"

As if he's home; as if, somehow, Koumyou and his son have been transmitted to his world. As if there aren't people out there in the smog, suffocating and dying because of the vengeful whim of the being weaving this magic. He's not thinking about that right now, too lost in this enticing fantasy.

[its_dad_sanzo]

"Absolutely!" Koumyou has not forgotten this is all an illusion, but he sort of... forgot what the illusion is here to keep them from.

The illusion, however, has not forgotten anything. And Kouryuu, pulled from Koumyou's memories and expectations and subconscious, might not be the best tool in the enemy's hands, here.

(Not unlike when Zakuro tries to 'drown' Genjo in illusionary water, someday in the future. It really isn't the right imagery to kill the young Sanzo priest, not when the darkness and the water makes him see light. A pair of partially-covered hands reaching into the water to pluck a drowning infant from the river...)

"--Master, you have a job to do," Kouryuu reminds him, if with his face still covered.

"...Ah?" Koumyou twists to look up at his kid on the platform over his shoulder, still hanging onto the front of the cockpit.

The boy drops his hands, meeting Koumyou's gaze steadily with those piercing, almost otherworldly eyes of his.

"...Ah," Koumyou murmurs, "right. You are, as ever, better at all this than I am... Genjo."

To 'actualize', to 'get shit done', he'd named his son.

For a reason.

Koumyou turns back to Devero, "I guess that'll have to be a rain check."

[subcircuits]

"Huh?" Devero blinks up at Koumyou, and then past him to the boy on the platform. "But-- what job, we're--"

Kouryuu, however, is not the only unwisely chosen enticement to stay put. As if triggered by the j-word, Babysitter sounds a sharp tone in the cockpit and fills Devero's visor with pre-mission prompts. Now he blinks at those, brow creasing.

"What mission?" he mumbles, mostly to himself. "I don't do field work any more, we're a training rig." He waves a hand across the thin space between himself and the priest, trying to dismiss the notifications.

[its_dad_sanzo]

"This is all an illusion, Devero."

A very pleasant illusion that he might have been content to remain in, had Kouryuu not showed his spirit. Even this echo of the boy would keep Koumyou on task. Otherwise, would he really be an accurate illusion?

He gives the edges of the hatch a squeeze. Thanks for the backup? Who knows. And then he jumps down to the ground. When he glances up, Kouryuu is gone.

"You know Kouryuu and I have never been to your world."

[subcircuits]

"Of course you haven't," Devero says, leaning Babysitter forward slightly so he can keep visual contact with Koumyou-- well, as much as he can with the insistent notifications in his visor. "This is your first time, I..."

He's having a hard time with this; he's so much more susceptible to this magic than Koumyou is. Despite coming into this knowing that there were illusions in play, this one has pulled him deep, deep enough that it's hard for him to even think about it. All of the dissonant aspects of this situation feel muffled and far away; what's close and seductively comforting is his joy at being his whole self again, and his excitement to share his world with Koumyou and Koumyou's kid.

He looks up at Kouryuu, seeking something from the boy, and startles when he sees the boy gone. "Koumyou, your son!"

[its_dad_sanzo]

"Part of the illusion," Koumyou says gently, holding his hands out and up. "Come here, please?"