middleofsomewhere | So Familiar a Gleam: Ongoing

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So Familiar a Gleam: Ongoing

JUST Ā̸̛͇̹̈́͌͐͛̐̋͝Ǹ̵̠͍̲̘͈̮͈̺͔̤͙̳̓̔͑͌̒̓̃́̄̚͘Ớ̶̻̱̄̓͆͂̈́̄̔͋͌̽̀̕͘T̵͙͍͓̻̩͙̻͙̹͎̫̘͇̱̈́̌̓͝ͅH̶̭̻͇̰͈̯̦̹̦̗͐̒́Ẽ̵̡̡̘̳͉͇͚̼̗̣̩͎̞̏͒̈́̏͂̈͝Ř̴̠͋̐͘ NORMAL DAY

"Jinnjar citizens. Unfortunately, all train travel will be closed due to issues on the lines. Members of the Voidtrecker Express have been located around the city, and are deploying trickery to agitate and confuse us. We ask any volunteers at this time to help us locate any suspicious objects and people, and to restrain them.

For the f̴̘̯̰̦̺͖̔͌̋̃ũ̴̢̖̦͙̩̼̺̪͚͍̥͈̜̝͋̌̒̊̚ẗ̶̪̺͕̤̯̞̤͓̝́̑̄̎̊̕future of our city!"

A TL;DR notes version of days/prompts: (click to show)

EVENT BASICS:

DAYS 5 & 6:

By now, some people have broken out of their fake lives while some haven't. Tension is rising in the city as people are led to believe this is by the Voidtreckers, which some will believe due to illusions and messing with one's heads is believed to be one of their many tactics.
Some oddities are occurring with travel, and glimpses of how the city is made beginning to show. The streams of colour - the void - are getting brighter. Electronics are not working well. Some monster sightings are seen, but not to a large degree.
The prompts here are light to give characters and players time to ICly coordinate, as Voidtreckers are being more actively hunted. Some faces are known. You know who you are, troublemakers.

DAYS 7 & 8:

The world is really starting to go a bit wild now, with more things disappearing, animals on the loose and more monster sightings.
By the end of day eight most people have realised the truth though those who are very susceptible to mind control or very stubbornly wanting to believe in this world will still be trapped, believing this is the Voidtreckers doing.
There are monsters to fight, people to keep calm and a plan to make.

[ HOME SWEET...HOME? ] By day 5, the people of Jinnjar are in a state of anxiety more than before. There's those who realise they're not a part of this world, never were, while there's those who still cling onto this life. Health services say that the source of confusion comes from the colour trails that are brighter than ever in the sky, while the D-Force/Heroes have it confirmed - internally and publicly - that there are Voidtreckers amongst them.

The media shows pictures of potential suspects, some Voidtreckers, some not; a man with the same face as two others, one who made a show by creating ice in the middle of the street. Your face may be shown, but don't worry - they're asking people not to play vigilante.

That'll surely keep people behaved.

[ TRAVEL REVIEW. ] As if it couldn't get more frustrating, most of the trains are down. Air taxis are still available for short journeys, yet some people have the bizarre occurrence where they end up in the wrong spot, and even remember going in this wrong direction...but never say anything about it. Those using the tele-pads will also find themselves not always arriving where they should, or worse, suffering intense headaches, swirling colours behind their eyes, their thoughts jumbled for as long as ten minutes before it passes.

You might want to walk.

[ MAKING DO. ] Still, with all the chaos, many are trying to live. You have a life here, no matter what some other force is trying to make you believe,

For our HEROES: The cinema has rethought its showings due to the worrying happenings of the last few days. Clearly a boost in morale is needed and so they have pulled out some of the great films of the past. Action films that show heroes beating the bad guys, disaster films where the good guys beat the aliens, stop the natural disaster or thwart the secret agency looking to take down civilisation from the inside, at the last minute. Even the childrens films have taken on a pro-hero and triumphant air.

It's not quite distraction though, how could it be when every film has a warning before and after. REMEMBER TO REPORT ALL SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY TO DFORCE and WE HOPE YOU ENJOYED THE SHOW. REMEMBER TO WATCH YOUR SURROUNDINGS AS CAREFULLY AS YOU DID THE SCREEN.
Fun Park: It's for the kids, but one of the largest arcade parks has a special discount on everything to anyone who come visit. It's even advertised across the news: For half the price, get amazing fun and even better food! Kids younger than eight or from the orphanages get free access everywhere!

It's time not to think too hard, and to ignore the trouble! Play laser tag, racing cars or get a high score on the dance mat!
Encroaching Dangers: Something new is beginning to happen, as the city continues to shift. It starts at night, those that stay out past when the streets go quiet might see a shadow, might hear a growl.

Rumours and reports start to spread about monsters on the street.

DAY SIX: HELP FROM INSIDE

[ AID. ] DIAGNET is full of videos but one that has started doing the rounds is of a small droid and a cat. It's not hard to see why it has gone viral, the cat and cleaning droid are chasing each other around an apartment, caught on a home security footage. The cat tries to catch the droid but every time it gets close the droid turns to chase it and the cat runs away. It has been uploaded with stirring orchestral music, which adds to the madness.

But... For those Voidtreckers who have already regained their memories that little droid seems familiar indeed. As do the sounds that punctuate the music.

beep beep beep boop | boop

boop boop beep | boop boop boop

boop boop | boop boop boop | boop boop boop | boop beep | boop beep beep | beep beep boop | beep beep beep | boop

boop beep boop beep | beep boop | beep beep boop beep | beep

boop boop boop | beep boop beep | boop beep beepp | beep | beep boop beep

boop beep | beep beep boop | boop | beep boop beep | beep beep | boop | beep | beep boop

Of course it might not be anything, just weird droid sounds that haven't been fully edited out of the video.

[ MOONDUST CAFÉ. ] It might be that they figured out the message or, it might be that a friend is dragging them to the cafe. But for those that make their way there, they will find the Moondust Cafe is a bustling cafe on the edge of a park, near local transport links.

For those that say the right words, a slightly bored looking teenager manning the counter waves them to a side door. "Best sit downstairs, service will be quicker."

Downstairs has a fair number of tables and booths and is lit by coloured lighting making everything look a little obscure. There's soft music playing, not loud enough to make it impossible to hear each other but enough to make it a little harder for evesdroppers.

Mingle, discuss. This is probably the closest to a safe space there is.

[ LOST & LOST. ] You may have spotted it already - that is, spotted what's missing. There's been the pets, the birds in the sky, a pen or apple or wrench from the garage. But now, with every single bad thing going on, more is starting to disappear. Machines stop working, from air conditioning, freezers, your Jinnjar MP3 player, to TVs and more.

And in some business buildings, even entire rooms are gone, their floors empty of more than the door you opened to find this out. Even the heroes seem worried and they quickly clear any affected areas, chasing away bystanders and sealing off whole wings of office blocks.

None of them have answers though, except that this must be the Voidtreckers doing. After all who else but that group could have power enough to do such damage?

DAY SEVEN & EIGHT: UNRAVELLING

[ OVEREXPOSURE. ] Everything is starting to escalate. The headaches are getting regular the more you're outside, buildings are starting to go missing around the outskirts. People see parts of the city flickering, and when they reach certain sections of the city, they find they can't go beyond it.

Life tries to go on, but as more areas of the city begin to be sealed off and considered dangerous, even those who are most stubborn about pretending everything is normal can see that is is not.

[ LET LOOSE. ] The breaking down of the city has caused a lot of chaos, but one of the biggest problems are that parts of the zoo have vanished. Walls, fences, enclosure roofs. Meaning that the animals inside are no longer confined and are now prowling the city streets. Real birds now fill the sky that the fakes left empty.

And they aren't all that's there. Twisted creatures are becoming more common on the streets of Diagad. Creatures that look almost like animals but warp and twist between them, one moment a bear the next it has horns and then it is a wolf. But no matter how they look those claws and teeth are bad news for everyone.

[ CRUMBLING, CRUMBLING. ] By day eight whole streets are disappearing. homes, houses. people need to be moved in closer around the congress sector. Colours crackle through the sky like lightning and the world shakes often.

It's not just the infrastructure but the memories of those in the city. Dreams have come realities and all but the most stubborn have begun to realise that this world is not their own. They are from another place. What is going on? Why are they in this city? Who are these people who are their 'family'?

Confusion and anger are growing in the streets and it is perhaps time for the Voidtreckers to come out of the shadows.

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[ A slow, nearly numb nod. ]

Pizza night. Movie night. Hug night, I don't care, anything would be better than this.

You've got it. All of it. [ Hug night, movie night, pizza night- ] We'll get this over with. Let's talk with Anan and see what we can do. Right? If she hasn't got a plan, we'll make one.

"I remember things that don't make sense." Maglor smiles at him wryly. "I'm sure, for example, that we'd never met, until several days ago, and yet I have a mortal lifetime of memories that tell me that we're family, although they get suspiciously blurry after a point. So yes, I suppose I do."

"I worked as part of a team." Raven replied. "I'm....definitely still seen as creepy. But it helps. My team-mates, if no one else, don't find me creepy either." They'd made that clear to her. As had her friends on the train.

Considering there had always been the faint undercurrent of worry among most of the monks on Azarath, no wonder Raven felt she was creepy.

Raven took her notebook back, scribbling some notes--mostly about how the entity recognized his magic, and what it had done (or not done) so far with that knowledge. She was thinking while she made the notes, before stuffing that back in her bag, and tucking that under her cloak so it now concealed her fully.

"You have knowledge though, that I don't have." A hint of smile on one corner of her mouth. "You're also the God of Magic, after all. And you've been on the other side of this city's forces." A plan was forming in Raven's head, especially since a few feelers had been put out about her idea for a safe house already. "Firstly, provided I can get these set up--they'd be open to allies as well. But secondly, and more importantly, you can help misdirect the forces from our safe-houses if need be."

Edited 2021-07-19 13:19 (UTC)

"I let Tidus know I'm worried for her." Raven replied, before sliding her arms around Yondu in a rare hug. A full one. "Thank you. For being my 'father' in the illusion. And my friend."

I've had a very intense last few months and its been murder for my ability to be polite.

"Mami," Sunset said, looking relieved. She may know the truth, but it didn't mean she didn't care. And she felt an oddly intense fondness despite the truth.

"....I do." She held out her hand to Mami. "Are you okay?"

[ There's a slight pause.

Should he risk it? It's dangerous to do that around Della, but what else is he supposed to say in this situation? Just accept someone's affection for him? Please. ]

Or.. .. Or else..?

[ Will he end up like that crocodile. ]

Horses....

Are really weird. There is definitely a different structure in their body that makes them look off in a way that was wholly difficult to describe. Seeing a unicorn version of that just throws her off more.

At least he can talk. It helps.

"I thought so. Extremely cute to be disarming, but weird for this place to maybe shock them out of it."

"Yes. People based on who I know are 'out of town.' But I've seen people from school and home and actively talked to. I know I wouldn't fantasize about a sister who envies me nor a dead father. The kind mother and uncle are the only things that would track, but not like that. So I think that was just smashing people together rather then pacify me. I may havr just been a balancer for the family to work," Sunset said, looking over the park before pulling out her phone. "Well....good thing I was a pony."

Listen....

That was a lot. A lot Sunset registered and would consider, but there are priorities of issues.

She doesn't set her down. She is a powerful magic user and telekinesis was something any unicorn can do. She can hold roiling dark energy and she wasn't frightened so easily.

But it is concerning.

"What's the cause of that darkness?" She asked. "Is that you?"

Crowley takes a deep breath before starting. Alice is the first step, then her father, and then the three of them will be equipped to handle everything they need to do, together.

"Do me a favor and look at your wrist... what do you see?" she asks, because for Crowley it had just been a watch, but once she really focused she saw something else. A trick Yondu taught her. "I went to see some old friends last night, " she starts carefully. "I had thought they were old friends. Turns out nothing is really as it seems."

Alice does look at her wrist.

But all that manages to do is cause her to frown as she holds her arm up, as if to show him. "Am I supposed to see something?" After all, she just sees her watch, but she figures that Crowley can't be talking about that. Her watch has always just been there. Is there something else she's supposed to see? A mole, a bruise?

"Are you sure you didn't read any odd fake conspiracy posts, mom?"

This isn't just some dumb Diagnet-Facebook thing, is it?

"The watch," she responds, "Focus on it while I talk."

Crowley had never been one for conspiracies and she wasn't going to start now. What she's experiencing is real, after all. "No, no. Listen. I want you to try to remember you and I spending time together on a train."

Maybe that'll help. She hopes, anyway. But the Crowley on the train isn't the same as Crowley, her mother, who feels more like him as every day passes.

You would not expect to see someone like Lan Wangji in the cinema, not for the kind of movies they're showing now. He's a tweed jacket with elbow patches kind of guy, watching movies where people are shooting things and patriotism and something doesn't seem to add up.

When Rui is watching a movie, she will hear a sigh from a couple seats down from her;
"Tasteless." while the protagonist sacrifices the love interest to save the city. If she looks she will see him with a full bucket of untouched popcorn, frowning at the screen.
"Does it not feel a little one sided in these movies? The Voidtreckers never get an exposition."

Although she does seem to mumble something about this being ridiculous, Alice listens. There's very few people she'd go to these extents for, especially since she feels like she's just embarrassing herself, but she knows that her mother of all people would have absolutely no reason to lie to her.

So she tries. Even though she feels so dumb, she stares at the watch the best she can while listening to her speak.

".. but we've never been on a train before," she says. Her voice isn't sharp though. It's no real protest. It's more her just saying it because she's really, really trying to understand where the other is going with this.

"The train, Alice." she says again, a little more firm in voice, "You and I, your father, and many others."

She's worried, of course, that Alice won't remember and that she'll lose her in some way. That absolutely cannot happen.

"Think hard, you need to remember."

"... That's correct. You're welcome to be here, to be safe." He looks at Essek and then back at her. "None of us are kicking the others out. We have as much right to be here as any of the others."

There's really no other way to say it - there's no reason for any of them to leave.

[Yugi had only recently been snapped back to his own reality, or at least remembering who he actually was and not what this place put him as. So he was still getting a little bit used to that.

One of the thing he figured to try and do was to get information or at least something that could be useful, but so far that has lead nowhere. The next job was to find his friends, which he had some ideas of where they were, but not exactly.

But instead he found himself looking at a familiar face but at the same time not a familiar face. He just knew this was a very different Kaiba at least.]

Maybe we should find someplace more quiet? I mean with the way things are currently that is probably a good idea.

"I guess this world -- or rather, this illusion -- has droids, so I guess Chiff could have been given a role."

He raised his eyebrows a little, not in skepticism but in acknowledgment of Anan's thoughts. "You think this illusion might be an image of that entity's world? You said the real Diagad is gone, and you know this because you went to look, and Diagad had somehow been destoyed? What's your guess about what happened?"

He nodded. "We Voidtreckers went on one mission that turned out to be an utter disaster. Suddenly there were huge shadowy shapes in the sky, and they descended and devoured that world. The train pulled us out of there just in time, but any inhabitants must have died along with their world -- unless some of them had the abilty to escape. So, do you think that might be what happened to that illusion-creating entity's world? The world-eating shadows ate it? And so now the entity is trying to recreate what it lost?"

[ TBF, if it wasn't for the memory trauma, della would want a copy of her wanted poster so she could hang it in her room. So, that said, it does get a tired smile out of her. ]

I'll see if I can hit him up. I don't have magic myself, but I've dealt with it plenty in my world, couldn't hurt to listen.

... Thanks for checking on me, Yondu.

Soldat has been Soldat again for a full day and change, now, and they're... not doing great. They get to the door pretty quick, though, since they're sleeping on the couch rather than the bed. "Yondu?" A pause, a sleepy blink; their hair is tied back, but messy, half sticking up from sleeping on it, and they're in sweat pants and a hoodie. "Uh. Yondu. Hi. Come in. Misty's still asleep, I think, so--" Try to keep it down, buddy.

Searing pain. Darkness. Alone. Nothingness. Despair.

Senku felt like he was being torn apart.

That darkness, pulling at him, he had a coping mechanism only instead he was being torn apart, screaming...or was he? There was nothing. He didn’t know. He wanted to scream.

One, two, three...

His count was interrupted by blinding pain, he couldn’t even keep track of time like this, he couldn’t do anything to guard against it, he’s completely helpless.

For those looking for him – he has been gone two days, no way to communicate with him at all, while the propaganda is running that he was a terrorist, he has killed a hundred people, he was dangerous.

The entity could’ve been kind, re-illusioned him and dumped him back in, but he’s a troublemaker. Not just a problem, but a ringleader of a problem.

Senku was dumped in the middle of the road in the entertainment district, left to the mercies of the people in Jinnjar and the D-Force.

His exceptional luck had run out.

"I don't--" She starts, but then suddenly cuts herself off. It's so hard to dig through her mind for this, especially when she feels like she doesn't even know what she's looking for. How would she forget being on a train with her parents? What were they doing-- where were they going?

Alice really is trying to turn her mind upside down for this, but something about it feels.. uncomfortable, almost. As if she doesn't want to dig deeper, like something warning her that doing so will bring bad news.

But why? Where is that feeling coming from?

The girl looks up from her watch, over at her mother, and the confusion is still there in her eyes. But it comes with something else now, something more helpless, because Crowley knows something here that she doesn't.

And that's terrifying. Their little family unit has always shared everything, right?

"I don't understand.. Why do you remember something that I don't..?" Her voice grows softer. More vulnerable, even, especially in the way it shakes when she arrives at those last few words. Alice almost sounds like she's about to cry.

[After the Storm]]

The dispelling had been a disaster. That was the only way he could describe it, but...

Right now Caleb can't describe much at all.

He comes to in an alley somewhere in - he doesn't know. He doesn't know and there's no one around he recognizes and he has to run.

He has to run, but he can't move. He can barely breathe, and the pain in his body is still there, his limbs lead and impossible to move. His chest burns as he tries to push himself up - nothing.

Just left here to die, maybe. How long until he gets pulled back in? How long until someone finds him and kills him? He doesn't have the answers to the questions he desperatey wants to ask.

Everything is far away. If he could move he would summon Frumpkin - but no. Instead he just lies against a wall next to a trash can, perilously close to flopping on the ground.

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So Familiar a Gleam: Ongoing

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Re: ex-family

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Re: travel review

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Re: UNICOOOOOOOORN

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II

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Aftermath | OTA

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closed to siebren;