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  And now the recollections start to get disturbing. Mako wasn't moving an inch. Kaede earned a tighter embrace from talking about her burns, but the kid didn't interrupt. "At least mine didn't hurt. Me and Momoka were taken somewhere else. I don't think she's at the center of all this, because mine could have only happened to me. Ueno-san was just...also there." "Did you all see monsters, too?"  Mako is sitting again, legs dangling over the side of the shelf, slurping a slush the size of their head. Green is the best flavor. Even in a really bad situation, sugary sweets are a good way to escape. They always wipe the tears away and put a smile on Mako's face. Mom and Dad are gone. The cool smoky nun from Kongou Temple is locked in battle. Ueno-san doesn't understand what's happening, because people never do. But at least she's calling the manager. Ikeda-san is smart and nice, he'll figure something out. The ahoge forelock finally curls back down. Maybe this is all easier than it looks. Maybe Mako did just get lost and confused and see something shadowy in a closet. Maybe this was a vision from choosing the wrong card, and it will all be over soon, back to the checkpoint. Sluuurrrrpppp  YOU IDIOT. (forelock lightning rod shoots back up.) T͏Ó̷O͜ ̛LATȨ̸ Ķ͢ID.҉ ͝d͞a̡ḑ̕'҉̴̀s̢ ̷͜ḩ̸͠o҉͜me͝!͏̛ ̸̕NƠ̢͘ ҉DE̶S̶͢Ś̴̴ER̴̷͘T͢͜ ̴B̶͝E̡F̴O̡R͜É ̢D̡́I̢̛Ń҉ŃER̡͝!͢ ̶́ (hosed up monster hand clamps down on smiling mouth before anyone can scream. this is really happening. the keyhole yawns and howls. green syrupy garbage spreads on the tile.)   ... ... Spat out into grimy darkness. Drowning in this river of bonemeal tastes...really, really good. A maddening, but cheery jingle echoes endlessly in the kid's mind: sweet bone dust is what we make/we don't bake pie and we don't bake cake! Tumbling and gasping, over and over. This is a deep and haunting Otherspace, but at least it has sensory input. The kid is aware that living people don't come down here. That means... Oh, no. Stuck! The kid always loved spiders, but it's different when you're stuck in a net. That spider-woman is as sweet and cloying as the river of bone. "I- I don't remember- my dad- it was so hungry- and dark-" Their body sags in the web. "I didn't have time to suffer...you're right, Spider-sama. I guess I should be happy. But...thinking about it now...maybe pain isn't the worst thing there is? I didn't even get to do anything up there. And now the ride's over." The full hopelessness of the situation hits. The kid starts sniffling as the web wraps tighter. No parents. Nothing to go home to. Dad rejected his child in the most horrifying way. Mom couldn't even show up. What's a kid without parents? Food for spiders, apparently. Should've gotten home on time. Should've acted right and not been a freak. Should've never been born, so Dad and Mom never had to twist their lives in the first place... "But- but that's not fair!" The web quivers. The kid gulps and blinks away hot tears. "I'm just a kid! I'm not my parents' property! I don't have to pay for their sins! Screw that! I'm a real person! I have my whole life ahead of me! My own life! As weird and shiny and scary as I can make it!" The kid's eyes glow purple as their body twists in the spiderweb. Arcs of lightning crackle along the spectral threads. They're straining to get free under their own power, shimmering in the dead starlight. "I'm not stopping because my parents don't want me. I don't need them to have a life! There's a whole universe of mystery out there! I'm just getting started!" Kellsterik fucked around with this message at 05:50 on May 9, 2017 |
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May 7, 2017 04:04
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   Scene: Creeping in Twilight, Seven-to-Seven (Kokoro) Incidental Music: Sound World Style note: Italics below are Alien Rope Burn's contribution over IRC.Alien Rope Burn posted:Maybe the answer to her dilemma resides not in the material, but the immaterial. Maybe she can somehow- she reaches out to a electronic screen that should be serving up ads, trying to see if she can interfere... or feel anything... or at least get a shock. Anything. Anything What happens when she puts her hand through a light? Shouts at a cell phone? Every question gets an answer, as you quickly find that with a little focus, and a lot of effort, you can make progress. When you reach out to the electronic screen, you finds its surface ripples. These electronic screens are far more vibrant than anything else in the store, as if television and displays are somehow a window into the very world that she is in as well. Even your own pale body begins to gain color just by the touch. In reality, it simple flickers, with a little bit of static. But as you press, you see your hand appear, on the screen, as if it were a mirror, or reflection. If you focused... Almost without meaning to, you see your form come into focus on the screen, though everything but your face, which is itself blurry and indistinct, becomes a mash of broken pixels and color against the screen, before it flickers back to the regular display. Push through a light, and it flickers as well, though to a less impressive degree to that feat. When you shout at a cell phone, in this case, Momoka's, it begins to buzz, and thus she checks, and then stitches her brow, looking at it in confusion. An opportunity arises. You remember what your phone looks like, and as if charged by that cognition, it takes shape from the plasm in your hands, though with a certainly changed aesthetic. Could it really be that easy... Ghost texts? This might be an opportunity to connect, as well as anything, but that just leaves more questions. As you examine it further, when you are using this to conceive, you see that it provides you almost with an interface with a whole purview of options, a veritable bag of tricks, developed from your own detective's mind and conception of what a ghost really is. In a way, it'd be charming, just like that game, if it wasn't also chilling that you have no idea what even got you to this point.  Trick Acquired! You gain the ghost Trick of Sign. You can spend Plasm to create messages or images in any media in the same way that media could be used by a mortal — it can write in the condensation on cold glass, produce images on computer screens, and send audible messages via phone lines, for the remainder of the scene.Kokoro isn't noticed by Momoka. It's not important right now, but <Kokoro will remember this.> Well. Still, she could communicate with people. But with who? Who does she think would have the least freakout? Well, it's a start. But how could she puzzle out more? The next step is to just explore how people react to her... it's kind of rude, sure. But it's a lot easier to ask forgiveness than permission in her state, literally speaking. It's not just a matter of likely unsettling for the targets, but also unsettling to you to even touch or press against them. The people that are static and silhouetted, without clear form or identity. When you touch them, you get a chill and pass through them, and they seem to likewise react with unease, but it does not help you see them. It is as if they are background characters, without any sense of purpose or Fate, but that leads you to a conclusion: You can only perceive people that you remembered in life. Some people you can even half-recognize, maybe having passed through. The suspicion is confirmed when you see Nakamura-san, the old widower who you were looking for the missing dog of. His features are clear to you, even if he's not as colorful or bright as Ikki or Momoka. And when you touch him... It's more like water, than smoke. Which begs the question, do you push further? The idea of "pushing" an older man seems dangerous, less to her and more to him. But it's because there was a tie there. So it couldn't be too harmful, could it? But... no. It'd be better to start with somebody who could handle a little stress. So time for the same experiment, only with Ikeda this time. Well, this for making her mop up Momoko's mess last week... not that she has any real malice in her heart, but the excuse helps at least psyche her up for whatever's to come next. She finds that Ikeda is much more solid than she anticipated, as if they were both flesh and blood. Likewise, much like the television screen, his very presence seems to bring her a little more color, so when she pushes, he gives a bit of a start, shuddering and leaning forward, looking behind him, blinking and unseeing. And yet, even though he was mostly solid, she was able to pus through just a little. It was like pushing against those objects when she focused really hard, where no amount of leverage could move it, but she did feel it, and it gave way just a little, as if she could enter inside him... Straightening his tie, Ikeda looks over to Momoka. "Strange, I thought... Nevermind. I hope I can rely on you Ueno-san, since we have lost an employee." Shaking his head. "I hope Ootori-san is fine. I know she can run off sometimes but it isn't like her to disappear like that." Momoka was more skeptical. "I think Ootori considers her detective work more than working at the store, Ikeda-san." And while that might be true, it made your ears burn to hear them talk about you while you were and weren't there. Though... it almost seemed as if your presence was a reminder, in a strange way. It provoked thoughts of you simply by being around. Further, if you can perceive and effect those that you remember strongest, then that means that if you learn more about people, using your detective skills, you can do the same with others, given a little time. Which may mean there's a way out... A way out. You haven't tried leaving the store you. You float over to the window and look outside. The sky is a sea of white noise, like a snowy screen on a old CRT television, to the point where it even seems distorted and behind glass. People and palces here are half-remembered, but this place is perfectly shaped and shining to you, vibrant in color. As is the stairs leading up to CIVIC-TV, where you and the Panic Club used to hang out. That's right, the Panic Club! You push through, and manage to slip through the walls of the store, even remembered as it is, with just a little focus. However, you are not prepared for what you feel on the other side. While within the store, it is a bit chilly, outside it feels as if you have entered a blizzard, complete with invisible, howling winds that move over your immaterial form, your long hair spreading out with it as it washes over you, and does not easily abate. The world is a vortex, and the winds carry awful things, shouts and whispers and aggression, negative emotions that immediately fill your head. Without even realizing it, the shock drives you back to the safety inside the store. The effort has drained you, but not in a sense that you seem to want for sleep. If anything you feel... thirsty, but you get the impression that you don't need water. What do you need? You hear a voice, and it's clearly directed at you. "Psst." You look around at all the people around you, but no one seems to recognize you. "Pssssst." The voice is a bit more urgent now. You still look and don't find anything, except... a glint, a light that reflects off your eyes and causes you to glint, like a flashlight, being turned on and off, coming from the storeroom that you came from. It turns off, and you see two glowing eyes there in the shadowed crack o the door, as you drift forward for a better look. Music Change: This is Hee-HoweenThe high pitched and ethereal, of an indeterminate nature, though its diction leaves something to be desired. "Hey, that's right, I'm talking to you gorgeous. Hee-ho!" The silhouette of the being comes now into fully focus, and it's as if the darkness illuminates it better than the light, as if light and shadow are reversed when it touches its form: a floating being that is almost all entirely head, and that head being a burning-eyed jack o'lantern and witch's costume, while its holding a lantern that is currently doused to just a little candlelight flicker of a light.  "My name's Jack. Want to make a deal?"       "Maaaan, it takes you guys so long to get to the good parts, hee-ho!" And just like that, the being described is there amid all of you, hanging in the air just above where Kokoro has been sitting, seeming to materialize from where it had been hidden this entire time. This might create a small ripple of shock and consternation, especially as very little about it and its place has actually been discussed, and also, the instinctive fact that all of the Bound present can recognize that this... Shadow, is the same kind of demon they themselves felt in their jaunt after death. And while it didn't exactly look all that dangerous, neither did it look harmless, and these beings were creatures of deceit as proven. "Hee-hey, why all the scary looks? You don't have to worry about me, I made a deal with Master, and promised to be on my best behavior!" Which was true, to a point, for Kokoro. Except he was leaving out the part where he almost got you killed (again) and devoured, but all in due time. "Just like when you all made a Bargain, right?" The position of its eyes seem to tell a story in its gaze as it looks out all over you, as they hadn't really admitted this to each other yet. And it's a hell of a thing to admit, that you've made a deal with a horror movie death god bound to your soul and personality. But this thing, this Jack, seems to know a thing or two about a thing or two. "Clownshoes like you all need someone who can tell you what's going on, right? Teacher is in, hee-ho!" Things are not going to get less weird from here, everyone realizes.
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May 7, 2017 06:25
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The World After "No! I refuse! I...I have so much more to give to the world! I can't rest until I've become a true hero! So please...GIVE ME ANOTHER CHANCE!" Kaito nearly grabs the Valkyrie as he pleads for his life, quite literally. Meanwhile, in the present, Kaito falls right on his rear end as the spirit appears. "What the hell are you?!"
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May 7, 2017 06:31
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Chiyoko is startled as the pumpkin spirit appears over Kokoro's shoulder, though she doesn't show it. Instead her eyes - slightly jaundiced, narrow and she stands and faces the cackling Shadow, her skin pale, almost transluscent seeming in the light. "If you are what you say you are, who you say you are, then talk. Your laughter is already grating on me." Her voice was a little scratchy, now that she spoke up. "Teach us if you're going to or else shut up and let us puzzle this out. As it stands you're just distracting us from figuring things out." Luckily those deathmarks only lasted a moment, right? Because that buzzing in her throat was incredibly uncomfortable.  Everything fading to black was expected, almost welcoming. But still, she got one hand - well, a few fingers probably - out of the door. And that was enough, right? Despite the door decided to open and close on her over and over. She showed Kaede to be strong right up until the end, didn't she? No simply falling asleep in a hospital bed, giving up. "There's your last lesson...my precious...girl..." She manages to breathe her last before everything stopped. And then... And Then... Then they didn't. She tumbled. She landed with a splash, she was tossed from river to river until finally, finally, she managed to grasp onto some driftwood and was caught up in brackish water, tangled in weeds. Sputtering, she clung to her little raft, which took all of her strength. She couldn't even stay conscious. She still felt sick, still felt like she was dying, but... ...but hadn't she already? Died, that was. It was difficult to think. Difficult to keep her eyes open. So she slept. Until her friends woke her up. Three of them. Kinuye, Amika, and Yukina. She heard their voices. And she was pretty sure they were talking about how best to eat her. Her eyes snapped open at that, and she realized these weren't her friends. Not really. These were...monsters! Harpies! Well...moreso than her friends were, actual harpies! One of them, the one with Yukina's voice, was leaning in close, telling her to give up, and her body wanted to listen. She was so tired, in so much pain, covered in her own sick and the filth of this disgusting bog she was trapped in. It would be easy to just give up. But she was Chiyoko Satou. Marriage couldn't tame her. Motherhood couldn't tame her. The Illness couldn't tame her. Why would Hell? Glaring, she grabbed the bird-woman with her friend's voice by the throat and squeezed. "Shut. Up. Yukina!" She hoarsely growled, and perhaps surprising the harpies, laughed. "I have wanted to say that for...years! And now it doesn't matter, does it? So I'll just say it." She shakes the harpy, finding strength in her stubbornness. Staring down the other two, daring them to approach. "This is...hell. I have to put up with the three of you even in Hell!?" Somehow, somewhere, she finds the strength to pull herself up a bit with her other hand. "Well. This is unacceptable. I refuse. I want...I want to speak to WHOEVER IS IN CHARGE HERE! I WILL NOT be TREATED THIS WAY!" LifeGetsWorser fucked around with this message at 07:01 on May 7, 2017 |
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May 7, 2017 06:57
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 Scene: The River Phlegethon, Lower Mysteries Theme Music: Forever Dilating Eye (You should probably listen to this)TheFireMagi posted:“Sorry, Skeleton-san, but I can’t join your dance just yet. Not when I died like this. Accidental. Pointless. My death, out of my hands? I can’t accept that.” That was it. That was all. Because on the road, in the car, behind the wheel- It was as if she flipped a switch, and felt a surge through her body, a rumbling sensation, like the purr of a new engine. The pain of the burns melted away, and her body seemed suffused with, something. Her left eye, which was really just an empty socket from the burns, a thin ghostly vapor began to arise, and she could feel a powerful pressure emanating from around her. She could feel the world darken around her, though the fiend before her does not seem to flinch, only changing its tune to a screeching, terrifying melody as it grinned its rictus smile. "So we do a different dance then, very well." The ground all around her began to crack and fissure, and bony fingers clawed their way to the surface, as spectral skeletons began to arise, and the dead were called by their joined song. Some even grasped at her ankles, but it was David who struck the first blow. Speaking in an ancient language of magic, it stroked with the bow across the Stradivarius cruelly. "Agidyne." A spell? Magic? Erupting from beneath Kaede's feet came a pillar of flame that sought to immolate her again, bathing her in it. Even the power she had awakened, of her refined psyche could not protect her completely from this foul magic. It burned deep, to the very soul, leaving her falling down onto her knees, smoking once more. All that strength sapped away. But it did not finish there. "Garudyne." The chill and cutting winds rise up with a tornadic vortex, searing through and tearing through your exposed and vulnerable flesh, chilling you down to the bone just as much as you were scorched, your mind swimming with pain. You struggled through to stare through it, looking over your forearm. As the dancing dead advanced on you, and those at your legs looking to drag you underneath, you saw something glimmering in the dark. It looked like the stars in the cave ceiling, twinkling with light, two red stars in a dark shape, a silhouette the reminded you of an owl. You met with its gaze, and felt an intense pain through your head as it made a connection, a pain that continued through as a voice rose, not from without, but within. You need to do more than put your hands on the wheel. You have to put everything into it. Returning to life is impossible, and only obsession can overcome the impossible. Every word dripped with sex, power, drunk on a sort of overwhelming pride. It was... It was your voice. But it was also not. It was heady and sensual where yours was mellow and meek. It spoke in a very odd way. In Japanese, it might be seen as a seductress's take on the Kansai dialect, with an archaic touch from another era, like a bordello madame around the turn of the century. In English, it might be better to characterize as a film noir femme fatale with a full Mid-Atlantic accent. Behind you, two headlights flipped on, seemingly disembodied, causing the dead to recoil, and even the fiddler to give pause, his ditty rudely interrupted. Your eye turns a golden shade, as your body wracks with psychic pain as the process begins, searching for an opening within your heart. The only thing keeping you from having everything you wanted was always you. So if you want this, I will ask of you everything. Give me to all that you are, complete me, live within me. Let us ride into the night as demons, and break the chains that bind you, babydoll. That black bird flutters, against the light, twisting and slowly evaporating, changing into a new form. Landing in the ground in front of you is a keychain, with a Plymouth tag on it. There is the roar of an engine heard, and the temperature begins to rise around you. It is beckoning to you, to take those keys, and seal the contract. Put the keys in the ignition. Turn me on. Let me hear it from your heart, I ache for it. I am thou, thou art I... Say my name, scream it, promise me everything!" Music Changes: Run Program: Sentionauts (also listen to this)
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May 7, 2017 07:59
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 Scene: The River Phlegethon, Lower Mysteries Theme Music: Forever Dilating Eye (You should probably listen to this)A gasp. Not from pain. From… pleasure. Her chest began to heave, her heart began to beat, her body began to heat. Burns and scars faded away into the dark, as if they were nothing more than an evening dream, a late night fling forgotten by the dawn. Feeling and sight returned to the left half of her form, though the latter not for long as the world around her began to grow black. Even as the earth split open, as the violinist changed his tune, she barely recognized it all. Something was stirring within her, something alien, something powerful. She liked it. Skeletal hands and pillars of flame took her to her knees, and she felt that newfound strength begin to slip away. Out of her grasp, out of her reach. Out of her control. No. Not again. Never again. Even as wind sliced at flesh, at bone, she forced herself to concentrate. She could not let herself be stopped here. She would not. Even if flame and wind tore at her body, even if song and melody tore at her mind, she would march forward. Until her very last breath, if she must. To die on her own terms. No one else’s. And then, her eyes reached the stars. “Ah, aaaaaaah!” Hurt. It hurt it hurt it hurtithurtithurt- quote:You need to do more than put your hands on the wheel. You have to put everything into it. Returning to life is impossible, and only obsession can overcome the impossible. -she bit down. Hard. Blood spilled from her lip onto the fissured earth, another source of pain. But it centered her. Her mind still ached, still cried out, but it was focused. Focused on the voice that called to her. The voice that was hers, yet was not. Alluring, teasing, bold. Dangerous. Everything around her was nothing compared to what the voice had to offer. Everything in the world was worthless compared to what the voice had to offer. Because what the voice had to offer, was her everything. Headlights flare. Another flaring of pain. “Gh, gaaaaaaah!” quote:The only thing keeping you from having everything you wanted was always you. So if you want this, I will ask of you everything. Give me to all that you are, complete me, live within me. Let us ride into the night as demons, and break the chains that bind you, babydoll. Right. The voice, she, was right. All along, she had known. What it was she wanted. What she had to do to grasp it. But she was afraid. Afraid to take the reins, the wheel. Afraid to take control. It was all so much easier, so much simpler, to follow along with what others said. Nobody would complain if you were doing a good job. Nobody would hate you if you were doing what they wanted. Nobody would leave you, so long as you danced along to their strings. “...I’m sick of it. Sick, and tired, of putting up with everyone’s bullshit! What about what I want!? What about what I desire!? What about my future!? How long am I supposed to wait, to let others steer me towards the right path!?” No more. No more waiting for the guidance of others. No more playing for the whims of others. No more hiding from what she had known all along, what she had denied for so long. Her hand slams down, grasps the key appearing before her. Slowly, with the dead already recoiled back, she rises to her feet. Slowly, with the violinist already driven back, she steps into the driver’s seat of the car behind her. Slowly, with her heart long set, she almost gently slides the key into the ignition- quote:Put the keys in the ignition. Turn me on. Let me hear it from your heart, I ache for it. I am thou, thou art I... Say my name, scream it, promise me everything! “I hear you. Just like you hear me. So, I’m letting you know now. When I’m driving, the only speed I go is full throttle. If you think you can handle me, then let’s ride until we die…” -and she turns the key. Music Changes: Run Program: Sentionauts (also listen to this)“...Christine!” An engine purrs. A power pours into her. Flames roar from the exhaust, flickering into the air before they paint themselves across the sides and hood of the cherry red 1958 Plymouth Fury. Electricity runs throughout the radio, static fills the air, before a familiar, ominous melody of her own sounds throughout the Underworld. The ivory top comes down, revealing the car to be a convertible. Almost mockingly, she adjusts the rearview mirror, staring at the river of fire behind her. To think, she had crawled out of there half-dead not so long ago. And on the bumper, a sticker whose words reform and rewrite themselves as Christine comes to life, words that Kaede felt herself speaking as she smirked wildly at the skeletal violinist. “Watch out. I am the Devil. I am Kaede Yakumo.” She shifted into high gear. Her own words now. “And you’re the only thing standing between me and home. So move!” TheFireMagi fucked around with this message at 10:02 on May 7, 2017 |
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May 7, 2017 09:07
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 Scene: The River Id-Kura, Lower Mysteries Incidental Music: Upside DownWHen the creature presses its paw against Jiro's back, for a few godawful moments, he thinks he's somehow back in the rubble. Scrabbling ineffectually at the ground, he makes a desperate keening noise as he tries to escape the pressure. "Stop panicking and calm the hell down, Jiro buddy! This is just like working a code in the back of the bus. Take a moment to think. You can get yourself out of this situation, just think of a plan. Slowly Jiro frantic motions begin to slow as his rational higher functions begin to take over, even as the creature keeps pressing down harder and taunting him. Ha! Jiro had to learn the hard way, but he;s gotten skilled at giving bullies a good tounge lashing. He readies a few cutting remarks involving bacon and 'keeping things royal; and is about to speak, when that...thing mentions Ichiro. All the wit and repartees are washed out of his head by an icy wave of cold calculating rage. The words flow out of you like chunks of ice being washed down a spring-engorged river. "How...dare you mention my brother! In this place! With your filthy tongue. I know I have more to do in the world of the living. Do you know why?" Jiro takes a moment to adjust his glasses. "A, Ichi is not here to greet me, and knowing what a kind soul he was, he'd never let me go into the afterlife alone; and B, I still have promises to keep, and people I care about. Images of Suzuki, Ueno, Kaede, Hikaru, and Ichiro flood your mind. "Ichi was the kind and brave twin, but I was punctual and honest. I have never ever broken a promise in my life, and I'm not about to start now simply on account of being in the underworld. Now," and it this any bystanders would have sworn Jiro's eyes started glowing golden at that moment. ", would you kindly remove your diseased misshapen claw from my back, and let me go about my business. I have things to deal with that are infinitely more important than you."
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May 7, 2017 13:43
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Scene: Awakening, the River Acheron (Kaito) Theme Music: Forever Dilating EyeWaffleman_ posted:"No! I refuse! I...I have so much more to give to the world! I can't rest until I've become a true hero! So please...GIVE ME ANOTHER CHANCE!" Kaito nearly grabs the Valkyrie as he pleads for his life, quite literally. As if to punctuate that shouting remark, Kaito feels a grimly familiar feeling in his gut, as with a wrenching of his free hand, the Valkyrie rears its spear back and plunges it through the body, piercing from the left side. It looks on stoic as it does, impassively at this declaration and decision made. It rejects it outright. The pain is searing, though it is not the same as before. This is already Hell, and so Kaito cannot die. All the same, he feels strength draining from him, finding nothing left in his own reserves to keep on after all this, for all his heroic determination. "If thou dost not come willingly, then as my prize we shall make our feast." Hoisting upon the pole of the spear, Kaito is lifted from his feet, beginning to raise up and held suspended there, his body weight pulling him down the head of the spear and onto his weight. It's more than the pain. It's the powerlessness, even as he grips on and tries to wrench himself free. It watches him in the attempt, and coldly remarks on its futility. "All shall submit to the will of our Lord. What is but one soul to the rest of the world? There is no place for you in the greater plan." There it is, the summation of everything he feared that others would say, and what he always knew in part. There wasn't really a place for him before, and there certainly wasn't after, here in the world of the dead. It's not about fitting in. It's about feeling like he was going to be discarded at any minute. This wasn't a passage to Valhalla, just another little fantasy that got him into trouble. Yet hearing it served its purpose, of flipping that switch. It did one thing that it really shouldn't have. It pissed you off. The switch was flipped, and with a rush of power the Valkyrie was knocked clear of its horse, as there was a searing flash of light. The red steed whinnied and came around, but Kaito was left to fall back to the ground, spear still sticking out awkwardly, weighing him down as a ghostly vapor seemed to rise from Kaito's wounds. As he struggled to hold himself steady, a shadowy black bird arrived, landing at the end o the spear where it had been held by the Valkyrie, which picked herself up and drew a sword. Kaito felt a most intense pain, but it wasn't coming from the wound, which seemed like nothing now. Rather it chilled as it ran up his spine, into the back of his head, moving through his skull. Finally, a voice boomed, but it was not the derision of the Valkyrie, something from without, but rather, a voice from within, beckoning him. Are you finished with such childish things? The voice... It was Kaito's own, though deeper, mocking, and yet with a flamboyance in its language. It was like him putting on airs for an anime, but not as a hero... It was more like a villain's monologue. You can struggle all you like against the current, but know that you defy the natural order. There is an eternal war, and to fight it will only mean suffering, and make total destroy. Are you really ready to know what it means to be a soldier of hell? There is a biting laugh at that, as Kaito's eyes turn golden with the surge of power within him growing stronger. His shadow lengthens, growing horns, and with two great wings that stretch out from it. The Valkyrie pauses, looking down at the ground which quakes. A fissure erupts with great hellish gases of brimstone and sulfur as a geyser, and then another, and another. Do you want justice, or vengeance? I can give you both, if you only but say my name. I crave as you do to return to the fight, but I will not suffer your weakness any longer. Bind yourself to me, and you shall have all the powers to be a great warrior, enough to save all that you cherish, and destroy what has wronged you! Another laugh, again mocking. Kaito, still weighed down by the spear within him, now has the strength to finally stand with ease, as the black bird that was perched on the spear dissolves into something hanging there on the end. A mask, like any good tokusatsu, though this one is diabolic indeed. The choice was there for him in the Bargain to realize what he always wanted, but tinged with a certain cost that it made no illusions about. Cry havoc, and let us loose the devils of war. I am thou, thou art I. Wear the mask, and declare yourself a champion of hellish rebuke. Say my name, declare who you really are! Music Changes: Run Program: Sentionauts
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May 7, 2017 16:04
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Scene: Awakening, the River Eresh-ki-gala (Chiyoko) Theme Music: Forever Dilating EyeLifeGetsWorser posted:Somehow, somewhere, she finds the strength to pull herself up a bit with her other hand. "Well. This is unacceptable. I refuse. I want...I want to speak to WHOEVER IS IN CHARGE HERE! I WILL NOT be TREATED THIS WAY!" As the air was squeezed out of the birdwoman's throat, the suffering bestowed upon another seemed to give wings to Chiyoko's spirit. She felt herself buoyed up, and from her mouth as she spoke, out of her sickly body, came a silvery, thin mist that stung at the harpy's eyes as its eyes bulged from the strangulation, twisting and struggling like some kind of game bird caught in a trap. The other twos shrieked and flapped at their wings as well, causing all sorts of a commotion, losing all semblance of trickery or falsehood in that act of defiant violence, though unfortunately for Chiyoko, they responded in kind. Even as Chiyoko held tight and fast against the harpy's throat, the other two grasped at her back and legs, talons digging in deep and then with a great gust, hoisting her boggy water sodden body with great effort up, as the one she held in her hand was dragged along with as well. She could see the ground leaving her, along with the river below, as they made up higher into the howling, chill winds of the sky. Yet she did not let go, even as the others started talking. "Soften it!" "Beat it!" "Drop it on the ground!" "Open its scarlet insides!" Chiyoko was a hard nut to crack, so they planned on dropping her like one, even if it meant the third of their flock dropping with her. Circling like a vulture overhead, a black shadowy owl with glowing eyes gazed down, catching Chiyoko's vision as she started to realize the situation she was in, and her grip had begun to loosen from its originally iron vice, allowing "Yukina" to squak out. "You witch! You're not any better than us!" The word... It resonated, with a pounding pain in Chiyoko's head that caused her grip to only loosen more, though she could not let go completely. Instead, a pain pounded through her head, even as she began to cough up blood again, and then something else... A black, semi-solid thing, that landed on the chest of the harpy she held. A manifestation of her sickness, like a lost organ, that once she finally coughed up, seemed to clear her for a while. At that, the harpies release her, save the one she drags down with her, suspended and falling once more through the sky. But in its absence, came a terrible, psychic pain, as a feeling crept up her spine into her head, and she began to hear a voice. This was not the voice of her friends, but rather something that came from within, a creaky old thing like the wind through an abandoned house at night. The only ruler of this Hell that you have created is yourself, my dear. That voice... No, that was definitely Chiyoko's own. She felt it in her bones, but it was... Venerable. Like an old woman's, exaggerated in that way that made her blood run cold, even as the pain shot through her body. They say no one stays young and beautiful forever. But God has taken from you even what most get. And who is higher than he to call on? If you want it, you're going to have to take it. Chiyoko's eyes turn golden as the pain throbs and her body twirls, locked in a death spiral with the Harpy. Yet her strength returns to squeezing at the neck of the harpy. She realizes suddenly that the harpy is asphyxiating now completely, and she can feel the thrum of this facsimile of life slipping through the fingers. That is what true power feels like, my dear. Inhale, deeply, and feel your old self return once more. Taste immortality, and claim your place as the mistress of your own fate! The harpy begins to dissolve, becoming that same kind of ghostly vapor, though colored a dark violet, that had leaked from Chiyoko's mouth before. Perhaps without even knowing it, in those moments twisting through the howling air, Chiyoko breathed in deep, and it felt like a rush of ecstasy, her eyes aglow as she took it in, consumed the spirit of the being. Yes, good, ohohohoho. We are so very alike. A witch? So be it. Feast on the young, take from the Devil, build yourself a mansion on their corpses. Let maggots and rot consume any that get in your way! Chiyoko's body turned, facing down towards the rapidly approaching ground, reaching out and finding that the black bird had been descending with her in a spiral, transforming into a music box with a winding key in front of her to grasp, falling just within reach. Play it again for me, dear, and our reign shall be everlasting. Join with me in coven. I am thou, thou art I. Utter the name you already know, and my black magics shall be at your command! Music Changes: Run Program: Sentionauts
Tricky Dick Nixon fucked around with this message at 16:43 on May 7, 2017 |
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May 7, 2017 16:35
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Scene: Awakening, the River Eresh-ki-gala As she was wrenched out of the muck by the bird-demon versions of her friends, she laughed again. Well, she was getting what she wanted, after all. Out of that muddy, insufferable river. Of course they intended to drop her on the banks and break her - but one thing at a time, dear. Whatever it was she was coughing up on the other harpy was clearly causing it discomfort, and so she wanted to continue with that, by the waiting shadow above gave her pause and allowed the other one the momentary reprieve from strangulation. The word Witch brought her back to her prey as it bounced around her mind. "That...is where you're wrong Yukina. I...I have NO EQUAL." She growled. An empty taunt maybe, especially since it invited another round of wracking coughs - and she coughed up something...something solid which landed with a dull thud on 'Yukina's' chest and, for a moment she thought, squirmed. And then she...they were in free-fall, released by the other two, tumbling. Could she die twice? She wondered only for a moment until a new, and blinding pain flashed through her, along with a voice...her voice. Decrepit and yet powerful beyond measure, patronizing and yet assuring, talking to herself as if she was a stranger. Encouraging her to take control of her own fate. She inhaled, almost without realizing it, she inhaled and...drew in the harpy, ate her essence, and felt renewed. This was madness, but she was dead and yet still struggling, and as the music box appeared in front of her, she snatched it up and almost unbidden, wound it up and let it play. "Yes..." she growled, the ground fast approaching, not noticing the quickly oncoming storm on the horizon, the heavy snow suddenly falling from nowhere, her breath coming out in puffs. "Yes...deliver me, deliver us....SUSPIRIA!" The hellscape was blanketed in white - a gaudy red mansion in the center of it all, and her tumbling descent slowed and she landed - on her feet, at the entrance - to her home. She opened the door without a pause and stepped inside. Better to rule in hell, as they say... Turning, she grasped the door with a wicked smile and shouted, her voice buoyed by the cold winds she felt in her heart up to the other two surviving harpies. "Beware - I am the Empress Chiyoko Satou! This is MY Realm! Submit now, or invite your destruction!" And with that, she slammed the door shut. LifeGetsWorser fucked around with this message at 04:43 on May 11, 2017 |
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May 7, 2017 17:32
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Scene: Awakening, the River Hun Hunahpu (Mako) Theme Music: Forever Dilating EyeKellsterik posted:"I'm just a kid! I'm not my parents' property! I don't have to pay for their sins! Screw that! I'm a real person! I have my whole life ahead of me! My own life! As weird and shiny and scary as I can make it!" There's a pulse, that comes within, that power that moves through the web indeed and arcs with her own psychokinetic power, but there's something else as well. Around Mako's aura, which was muted and tattered by the psychic consumption she faced, it seemed to return, as an ethereal and silver flame about her form. It burned at the web, expelling it and helping unbind herself somewhat, though she had to still hold on less the grimy waters of Hun Hunahpu carry her away. The spider demon seemed less than pleased at this, sneering with her fangs exposed as she began to move closer, testingly, undeterred by the sparks of electricity that came her way. "You certainly look real enough to eat, but you are but a memory now, little girl, and soon enough, you will not be even that, as there's no one left to remember you." The spider hangs over Mako, and she can feel the trickle of poison down, numbing against the skin. Mako attempts to repel or send some kind of telekinetic force, but it is merely stopped with a word of power, of ancient magics that helped shape the word. "Makarakarn." The telekinetic power twists back, and Mako finds hserlf bound by her own power, straightening up her body, as the spider demon laughs in her haggish way, using this opportunity to wrap her up in that woven straightjacket. All the [determination] in the world wasn't enough in that moment. She needed something else, her eyes seeking with their PSI power for something else. The web vibrated again, but not from her own struggles, which were muted by the restraints, but by something that perched there at the top of it, looking down. A black bird with glowing eyes, that looked like an owl, that stared down and met her own gaze for a few moments, before a vicious pain surged through her body. It wasn't from the spider though, which only promised her a numbing, painless death. This pain came from within, crawling up the spine into her mind. Mako's glowing eyes subsided with the pain, dilating as the body began to lock up, becoming completely numb and paralyzed from the dripping poison of the spider, the straight-jacket she was bound into almost more symbolic than anything else. Amid all this, a voice bubbled in her head. Beep beep, Mako! That voice... It was familiar to you. So terribly familiar. It wasn't your own voice, but it was one you knew almost as well, one going back to as far as you can remember, and tied so closely with your death. Well, this is certainly a pickle you've gotten yourself into, kiddo. It was a scratchy, exaggerated version of your own father's voice, with the same manic energy and put-on candor of a comedy show. Won't do any good to try and run, here in your own little nightmare. Whatever you can imagine can take you down here. Though I gotta say, a spider is a little boring after what we both saw earlier, don't you think? If you gotta kick a bucket, you can do a lot better. Like me! Your eyes turn a golden color, and you can feel something squirming underneath you, wanting to get out. Something terrible, something filled with an emptiness that craved and hungered. Oh, wontcha let me out, kiddo? Show them our lights, they'll never be the same. I can make your dreams come true. Your worst ones. I am everything you were every afraid of, and then some, girlie. Life just ain't fair. But death is a lot more fun. There's all kinds of colors, rides and candies down here. You want a balloon? And like a balloon, we all float down here. Just out of reach, but within the grasp of her mental power, that black bird transforms into a single brightly colored purple balloon, tied to the web for her to take. The sinister nature of the bargain is only further punctuated by its almost desperate nature, but Mako is in a desperate situation. She only needs to agree, and bring it back in. Ain't you even gonna say hi? You know you ain't supposed to talk to strangers, so we should get to know each other. I am thou, thou art I. Come on bucko, say my name. You know you wanna. Music Changes: Run Program: Sentionauts
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May 7, 2017 17:34
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Scene: Awakening, the River Id-Kura (Jiro) Theme Music: Forever Dilating EyeFewtureMD posted:"How...dare you mention my brother! In this place! With your filthy tongue. I know I have more to do in the world of the living. Do you know why?" Jiro takes a moment to adjust his glasses. "A, Ichi is not here to greet me, and knowing what a kind soul he was, he'd never let me go into the afterlife alone; and B, I still have promises to keep, and people I care about. Images of Suzuki, Ueno, Kaede, Hikaru, and Ichiro flood your mind. At first the porcine demon is taken aback by this display, though by the end of it its ire has been stirred enough that it pushes the full weight of its front body forward, leaning in close and snorting back at him, as Jiro's hand outstretched clenches. There's a pulse of power, that cracks the very firmament of the ground, but that does not seem to deter the creature that has a mind to crush and suffocate the very life out of Jiro in this instance. "Insufferable fool! What secrets have you in that head of yours to give you such confidence?" It drools and spits with its words filled with rage. "I am the punisher of broken promises, and there is one you have never fulfilled in that life of yours, so for that you shall be punished eternal, stuffed in my gullet!" A promise... A vengeance unseen. If Jiro died here, he would never be able to keep the promise he made to Ichi, to find that thing which originally killed him, and see it to justice. "Magdala!" The word of power intoned by the demon send a crashing power down, like a meteor, cratering the earth around where Jiro and he stood with a meteoric punch. And yet, through the body was broken and bruised, Jiro could feel himself clinging to consciousness. An ethereal mist drifted from his nostrils as he struggled under the creature, but he alone did not have the strength to overcome it. "Give in! You will only face eternal suffering, better to give up now and dissolve like the rest!" Jiro's eyes unfocused and resettled, still in that golden hue, and seeing at the edge of the crate some kind of owl-like, black bird with glowing eyes, meeting its gaze as his hand was outstretched. At that moment, a unique and new pain shot through Jiro's body, coursing through his veins and stiffening his nerves, dancing up the spine and into his cortex, burning behind his eyes. He could feel the sudden jolt like an electric chair through him, galvanizing his body to life, and bestowing upon it an unusual, unnatural strength for the time being, enough to lift the being atop him, only just so. "What is this?!" It roared in defiance, but you could barely hear it, as another voice came in your ears. I must admit I am very disappointed in you. That voice... It was your very own voice, stripped of any inflection and warmth, and instead with a cold, clinical precision. You are allowing this slug to distract you when the world of possibility between life and death is open to you. You are quite a second-rate scientist, but I have worked with sub-par materials before... As have you. It analyzed the situation and seemed completely detached, instead consumed by some other objective, and not feeling at all urgent to this as compared to you. I am in need of an assistant. My work is not done. It is never done, and neither, I suspect, is yours. Do you really have a choice? It was standoffish in its bargain, filled with a supreme arrogance that one might agree to it. We must work ourselves to the bone, a thousand lifetimes worth of work. I cannot have you collapsing again, not until we have unlocked the secrets of life and death. Why, within you right now is pure potentiality in plasmic form, the primordial ooze within life originates! The words take on an increasingly manic quality to them, a fervor that is stoked by the very suggestion of what is before them. The bird flapped its wings, lifting and then descending down next to your outstretched hand, twisting and transforming into a flask filled with a glowing green liquid. A sample in a test tube. Don't you want to be able to keep people from dying? If you had this, perhaps you could have saved him. Perhaps you could have saved yourself. But let us not delude ourselves with what was passed, but look forward fearless into a bright future! The maniacal tone added a sinister cast to what was otherwise a determined and optimistic speech, as the voice become more and more enamored of it. Do you think it blasphemy? Before what? God? A God repulsed by the miserable humanity He created in His own image? We will not be shackled by the failures of God. The only blasphemy is to wallow in insignificance. To give in. Taking the flask in hand, a new power surges and awakens through Jiro, if he did but want it. I have taken refuse of your God's failures and I have triumphed. What of you? There! Take this, and become my finest creation! I am thou, thou art I. Speak the name of your new creator, and awaken to the blasphemy of returned life! Music Changes: Run Program: Sentionauts
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May 7, 2017 18:25
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Scene: CIVIC-TV, 7 May 20xx Incidental Music: This is Hee-Hoween Sayuri wasn't really phased by the sudden appearance of their new guest. If she was surprised, she's doing a really good job in hiding it. "I hope your lessons are less annoying than your voice." Scene: The River Qiq-ol-Mal, Lower Mysteries Incidental Music: Upside DownFragments of a memory that were thought to be forgotten start to play in her head. There is a man in a business suit, a woman in a simple dress, and a young child. Their faces are blurred, and yet, you can tell they are smiling. They're a family. A happy one. There's sounds of laughter, and joy, but those sounds do not last long. Screams. Fire. Pain. Blood. So much blood. Where did all this blood come from? It hurts. Why won't the pain stop? "It's all your fault!" She pulls herself out from the river of blood, and, almost as if it was by habit, lifts a hand up adjust her glasses. Except they weren't there. That's when she noticed the tears running down her bloodied face. She was crying. How long has it been since she cried like this? How long has it been since she felt anything more than numbness? "Why couldn't it have been you!?" What is this place? Is this hell? Am I... dead? No. Can't worry about that now. Moving. She needs to keep moving, and ignore all the pain, like she always has. "You're nothing but trash! No, you're worse than trash!" She walks, for almost what felt like an eternity, through the abandoned city, hoping to find another living, or unliving, soul. She eventually finds someone else. A figure, looking at her from over the distance. No matter where she went, the figure would follow her, and watch her. She could hide, but what's the point? She's been hiding all her life, trying not to stick out, and look where it got her. She's dead. D-e-a-d. Dead. "...Heh." It's funny, isn't it? She tried so hard to play nice with everybody, even though she hated every.single.minute of it, and what was her great reward for dealing with everybody's bullshit? A violent death, by the hands of a man who thought of her as nothing but a worthless fly. "...Hehehehe..." It's so funny, it makes you want to laugh. And that is what she did. "HehehehehehehahahahaHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!" She laughs. She laughs and laughs and laughs, as if she has heard the funniest joke in her life. She laughs so hard, tears started running down her eyes. It hurts to laugh this much, but for once, she doesn't mind the pain. This is a good pain. It reminds her that she's still alive. "Do you- hehe- think I'd actually let it end like this!?" She snorts, "Hahahahahahaha! No! Nonononononononono! You gotta be the biggest loving idiot in the world if you think I'd accept this crap! Hahahahahaha!!! Don't you see!? I can't die! I can't die until I've gotten my revenge on every single bastard who's made me suffer!!!" Sayuri is consumed by her lust for revenge. Tardzilla fucked around with this message at 18:47 on May 7, 2017 |
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May 7, 2017 18:35
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Kaito regards the mask for a few seconds, then recognizing this chance, grabs the mask and plants it on his face. He screams as tendrils of shadow shoot from the sides of the mask and envelop his entire body, forming an almost demonic costume around him as he hovers in the air. Incidental Music: A Hero Has Arrived"This is who I am! A hero who will save the lives of the entire world! I am DEVILMAN!"
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May 7, 2017 19:45
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 Sitting up, Kokoro says softly, "Rudeness rarely gets you to the best answers.", and then looks over to Chiyoko meaningfully with a shrug. "So, Jack, what undid their deaths?", she simply says up to the shadow. "Why don't their stories match up with..." She pauses as if considering the proper term. "... the present?" Looking up to the lantern, Kokoro mumbles in a panic, "I- I can't spend eternity in a Seven-Seven!" She pauses, starting a sentence with, "My name is-", and halts. No point in volunteering unnecessary information with an unknown entity. Could be all sorts of rules she's not aware of, after all. Or, rather, there are, that much she can surmise. "Nevermind that. Good to meet you, Jack. But... what are you offering? What do you want?" The essential two sides of any deal to weigh, after all. Alien Rope Burn fucked around with this message at 02:48 on May 9, 2017 |
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May 7, 2017 23:51
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 Scene: The River Sinaan, Lower MysteriesAt first, all Takeshi can do is just stared weakly in the vague direction of the thing in front of him. What else can he do? Not only has he just drowned. but he's also broken nearly every bone in his body, and been stung by a nearly uncountable number of venomous creatures And on top of that, he's also very much stuck in this great water-dragon's grasp. If he was good for something before, he surely must not be now. Would it really be wrong to just call him a piece of prey? It's not like he ever amounted to anything more. Even before the world itself broke his body and snuffed out his life. Even in the confines and comforts of modern civilization. Society has always been been about predators and prey, hasn't it? There are those who are in control, and those who have been at their mercy. Society has always been nothing more than the powerful versus the weak. And how could he be pretend to be anything but weak? "Grhh..." Takeshi lets out a disdainful grunt as the truth of the world weighs him down at his core. There's not anything he can do right now to deny these thoughts, but he still couldn't accept them. What, was he really supposed to lie down and take it? Was he really supposed to sit there and die? To just let himself be devoured?! ... Maybe. Maybe he was. It's always been the easier path to just lie back and accept things as they are. "There's nothing you can do." "That's just the way things are." You can always just tell yourself that. "It's not like I could change things." Takeshi wouldn't even be the first person to do that, if he did. Not by a long shot. The world is like it is today because people do. It's pretty much the foundation of society -- acceptance is the thread which all of our modern expectations are woven out of. People accept the laws of the land, people accept the order that wrote them, people accept the hierarchies that are made, and people accept the obligations that are set. And you know what it's like to accept things as they are, Takeshi. You did that for most of your life. You did everything that the world expected. You followed their rules. You were one of them. And maybe you were better off then. You used to have a future. You had the chance to be an acceptable member of society. And now you're just... You're just trash. A nobody. No aspirations, no hope, no future. You had your one chance to make a difference and then you loving died. What's the point of challenging that, anyway? What do you even have to live for? What do you even hope to achieve if you could somehow crawl out of this? Continuing to work at Seven-to-Seven? Maybe becoming an assistant manager? Not with your work ethic. And who cares about that place, anyway? If you cared about a career, you'd have stayed in school. You could be working in some boring accounting office right now, living the salaryman dream. Maybe you could watch some more horror movies. Or drink some more cheap alcohol. Or go to some more lovely concerts and weird nightlife events. But are those cheap thrills really valuable enough that they'd be worth enduring all the pain that is coursing through your body right now? Maybe it'd be better to just let it all go. This pain doesn't have to continue. Not the broken bones, not the burning lungs, not the aching venom, and not even the more abstract pains that bear down upon you every day of your life. You don't have to face them anymore. You can just drop out. Like you did before. You can just let it all end. "F..." Another sound escapes Takeshi as he starts to regain his focus. "gently caress... That..." Something like adrenaline courses through his veins, giving him energy to power through the intense pain and logical hopelessness of the situation. It's a somewhat familiar feeling, a more concentrated and extreme version of an important emotion that had gotten him through the lowest, and even highest, points of his life: Resentment. Why should he just accept the hosed-up rules of the world? Why should he just give up and let it be? Just because it's easy? Just because life's daily struggles aren't fun? The world preys upon the weak. It does it because it knows it can. There's monsters and tsunamis out there which destroy people's lives every single day. They'll continue to do so until somebody fights back. There used to be a time when they did. The prey of the world had the predators all on their toes. They fought and struggled, until- until they all gave up. And now look at how the world is. "If you want my eyes..." Takeshi stares at the dragon with those very eyes and starts to laugh. He has the grin of a man who has nothing left to lose. "Come and loving get them. And if you want my heart, you can try and get that too. But-" Takeshi starts to twist his body, trying to get out of the thing's grasp somehow. A pain that would normally be unbearable courses through his broken body. "Do not think for a loving second that I will just sit back and let you do it. I don't care what the gently caress you are." A rapid series of images flashes through his mind. Memories of events, people, and mundane pleasures. The time he saw a cop kicking someone on the ground. Witnessing a cop kicking someone on the ground. Hanging out with Kiyoko in all kinds of strange places. Holding on to Momoka right before she got ripped away. Eating a good bowl of instant noodles after a long day. Reading through some long internet discourse instead of paying attention at work. All of these things were like cords, which together seemed to hold him back from falling into the abyss. "I might be trash, I might be prey... but I am not going out without a loving fight!"
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May 8, 2017 03:56
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 Scene: Awakening, Qiq-ol-Mal (Sayuri) Theme Music: Forever Dilating EyeTardzilla posted:"Do you- hehe- think I'd actually let it end like this!?" She snorts, "Hahahahahahaha! No! Nonononononononono! You gotta be the biggest loving idiot in the world if you think I'd accept this crap! Hahahahahaha!!! Don't you see!? I can't die! I can't die until I've gotten my revenge on every single bastard who's made me suffer!!!" The wretched face approaches, seemingly slipping between blinks, and freezes in place once the young girl's gaze becomes fixed, wide and manic, flashing almost red to match his. Yet the fixed smile expression of the Night Stalker does not change, it merely shifts in recognition, sensing that it is a predator, a wounded one but a predator nonetheless, that lays underneath that facade. So it is that there is a chilling howl of the wind that rattles down the abandoned alleyway and all the shuttered windows and doorways, knocking around in their frames, and summoning forth from the cracks and shards of windows little blinking, yellow eyes glittering in the darkness. Blinking, and then coming closer, faces move in from out of the darkness, shuffling in pale imitations of forms, stalking along their way. Indistinct shapes and faces of people she didn't even know, all locked with that same leer and smile. They opened the doors, looking out the windows, crawled out from under the boards, locked in silence as her laughter echoed and filled the fullness of the alleyway, with nothing else in there to occupy it. They were all indifferent to the call of usffering, even as she felt her head's pain fade away, a sinuous silver mist raising up from the trauma and wound that still trickled blood there above her left temple. It was an impossible number, filling out every side and leaving not even the faintest remark of escape. With a motion that seemed distorted, traveling with images behind him, the original Stalker makes a rapid advance, with flashing metal from that unearthly glow like moonlight from a sky that was not there. A hidden blade now revealed, to strike out and hit, but not before there was a flapping of wings, black shadowy feathers dissipating as it was repelled, and something heavy and cold landed upon Sayuri's shoulder. A black bird that looked like an owl with no discernible features save its glowing eyes, and its presence bought with it an intense pain, causing her to keel over once more and life her hand up to that wound. Her irises turned golden, as the surge rose up through her body, trailing up the spine into the back of her bludgeoned head, bringing with it something soft, so inoffensive and quiet, that it could barely be heard to squeeze out, and yet somehow heard perfectly loud and clear for all of that, since it came from within and not without. Why am I here? Why am I here with you? A painful timidity, like that of a naive child, but there was something else about this, that voice... It was yours, you know it was. It did not speak as you, tremulous with emotion, a deep empathy, and pain that was worn on its sleeve. It was everything that you did not pretend to be, and yet even then an explicit denial of your violence. Just hearing it pissed you off, a fire that was stoked mightily. It was every way you saw yourself as weak, given form. Why couldn't they just leave us alone? We were born just the same way as everyone else. We aren't freaks, it wasn't our fault what happened. All that life could do was take, take, take away from us! Just one moment of happiness, only to take it away in the cruelest amount possible. It would have been better to die and have stayed dead before then! Slowly, one by one, spreading out from where you stand, there is a ripple, and every hanging lamp post and lightbulb begins to shatter, popping into shards that land on the ground, and beginning to blanket the area around you into darkness. All I've done is hurt, and hurt, and hurt some more. I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired. It gets a bit darker, ominous though never changing from the childlike timidity that defined it from the beginning. They're all going to laugh at you. That's all they have ever done. They only wanted you ever to give them what they want, or to enjoy watching everything you cared about taken from you. They won't stop until they're dead. So you know what to do. There is this complete detachment of what is being said, and the actual words, that actually makes it all the more blood-curdling. They are all going to die. Die, die, die. We are going to make them suffer. Burn, cut, twist! She finds as her body straightens and the power moves through it, the bird is gone, leaving only a long red thread tied up with a sewing needle in her hand. If you want the evil within me, take it! I don't want it anymore! I just want them all to die and be quiet FOREVER!!! A literal scream in her ear, filled with a terrible urgency. Filling and suffusing through every inch in every moment, never stopping and never letting up. It felt like the congealing and washing of blood all through you, a shock and an anger you could not deny. DO IT. KILL THEM ALL. DONT STOP UNTIL THEY DROWN IN IT KILL THEM I AM THOU THOU ART I DO IT KILL KILL KILL SAY IT SAY MY NAME DO IT NOW KILL KILL KILL-- Music Changes: Run Program: Sentionauts
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May 9, 2017 02:33
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Scene: Awakening, Sinaan (Takeshi) Theme Music: Forever Dilating EyeTakanago posted:Takeshi starts to twist his body, trying to get out of the thing's grasp somehow. A pain that would normally be unbearable courses through his broken body. "Do not think for a loving second that I will just sit back and let you do it. I don't care what the gently caress you are." "Bufula." It intones, calling upon an eldritch power that brings up surging like a geyser from the ground a powerful torrent, smashing from below as it raises its tail, and swipes in the air, knocking into Takeshi's side after he was set and teed off, struck like a fly ball up into the air hurtling, and then crashing into the ground a little bit away, the waters receding. If his body ached before, it now screamed in agony, his left arm dislocated and certainly facing the wrong direction, his jaw cracked and his right leg seeming to just be straight up dead and uselessly, hanging like so much useless weight. Coming down with a flutter to the ground is some kind of bird, like a seagull examining a washed up piece of caracass come up from the shore. You hear the waters surging to grasp you once again like a wave, as it examines you, your heavy-lidded eyes raising up to examine and meet it, hold its gaze for a few moments. It was like no bird you've seen, some kind of black, shadowy owl with nothing but two glowing eyes like headlights staring right through you, causing a ripple up from your toes to your neck, swimming around the course of your spinal fluid and crashing into the front of your skull with a violent force, ramming full speed. Your eyes turn gold, and you feel something. It's moving just beneath the surface, of yourself, of the ground. An ominous rumble, and a tell-tale call. As the waves begin to finally surge forward, as the dragon seeks to scoop you back and draw you into the infinite vortex of pain that it represents. You see the sand split and break, the trailing of a dark, massive creature just beneath it, trimming around at the waters, attracted by the scent of blood. It thrashes. Ripples call me. It doesn't want to die. This voice is... bizarre, but at the core, familiar to you, because it is your own, but as if it is spoken underwater, and with other voices joined to it, like a chorus, with a accompaniment of something far more primeval. Toothless, it has no teeth. I have Teeth. I grab and never let go. Everything stops when I Bite it. This is enough. I need no Reason. Why should you? The water crashes back, and submerges you in it fully, as well as the ground, you feel that shape almost take form, a darkness beneath you as you are buoyed up in the churn, your eyes a flashing gold as the pain brings a clear and utter focus to everything you hear, everything you feel, like never before. You gasp unexpectedly, and find the water fill your lungs... and yet you do not drown. You stopped, stagnated, looking for a Reason. You need to Swim, and never stop. If you stop, you will Die. You break the surface of the water, pupils beginning to expand. Turning black and glossy surrounded by the golden iris, dead eyes, like a doll's eyes. Without your Society, there would be only one Rule. Eat, or be Eaten. We Hunger, but I eat. You starve. I will give you Teeth, and you will Bite the world. Tear the veil asunder. There is this utterly terrifying feeling where you feel something rising up beneath you, like that torrent of water previously, but you know it's something different, far far worse, such that you even forget the looming dragon of water looming over you. Do you think it will bleed when we Bite it? It's bubbling there, right behind your head, slowly unhinging, opening its gaping maw around you, threatening to consume you utterly. I want to know how you Taste. As one, we will smash the sides of the ship of Society. The voice a chilling deadpan the whole way, completely alien, inhuman even though it is your voice, and yet... It's not just your voice. It's you, the resentment of society, the desire for strength, the untamed urges and beast that wants to say "gently caress society" and return everything to natural law. Break open and snap the bone, and Taste the blood. I am thou, thou art I. We are nothing but our weapons, say the name and start the Feast. Music Changes: Run Program: Sentionauts
Tricky Dick Nixon fucked around with this message at 03:27 on May 9, 2017 |
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May 9, 2017 03:18
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Scene: A Shadow Appears, the Seven-to-Seven (Kokoro) Incidental Music: This is Hee-HoweenAlien Rope Burn posted:Looking up to the lantern, Kokoro mumbles in a panic, "I- I can't spend eternity in a Seven-Seven!" She pauses, starting a sentence with, "My name is-", and halts. No point in volunteering unnecessary information with an unknown entity. Could be all sorts of rules she's not aware of, after all. Or, rather, there are, that much she can surmise. "Nevermind that. Good to meet you, Jack. But... what are you offering? What do you want?" The essential two sides of any deal to weigh, after all. There was this energy, a driving fervor that was behind this strange spirit. Was it a ghost like you? It hadn't really explained that yet. "Things are getting really out of place, Down Below, so I figured out it has to do something with this place! I'm pretty smart, if I do say hee-ho myself." He raised his lantern up near his face, as the light began to swell a bit against his face. "There's going to be a lot of death here. I can feel it in my gourds! We've got to stop it!" A beat as if being heroic, and then with a complaining voice and sweat-drop. "The neighborhood's crowded enough as it is, and you wouldn't believe the types this has brought in, hee-ho." "Besides, you don't want to stick around here forever, right? I'll show you a way you can get around without the Stygian winds getting ya. Just follow me, hee-ho!" It raised its lantern and then faded back, rippling through the wall that it was floating in front of. That left you a bit dazed as you considered, but you realized you weren't thinking as a ghost. Was there something there on the other side of the wall? You reached out, about to push your way through, when his head reappeared with a bit of a start. "What's taking you so long! Come on!" And he reached out and... touched you. It was a bit of a strange experience, not the least bit being it was the disembodied gloved hand of some kind of living jack-o-lantern, but also the fact that this being was on the same frequency as you, living in the same twilight world. But it definitely wasn't like you. When you're on the other side, it's a little cramped, and it's not longer pulling, just floating in the strange wide wall-space, as if the wall was built up in this area. Already Jack descends, floating down into the mouth of the thing, his lantern lighting the way. "Down here! This way!" He was a beacon, showing down through the twisting pipes down, deep underneath where the store stood, and eventually opening up into something that was sealed off. It looked strange, but you began to recognize quickly with your astuteness that it appeared to be some kind of shelter, or bunker, maybe from before the war, that was filled in and around and then promptly forgotten under the store and development in this part of the city. It's here that there's some kind of markings on the wall, that you really can't make out all that much, because here away from the store everything is a little less distinct, except when you turn to the wall where Jack is. Music Changes: Black Rainbow A set of black doors are set into unhewn stone, a gouge in the wall that shouldn't exist. You sense instinctively that this is something that occupies the Twilight like you, because of its fullness and richness of texture and even color, even if they are neutral tones. "This is one of the low places, an Avernian Gate. This is how i got here, hee-ho!" That verbal tic was probably starting to wear a little thin, but he seemed ready to press on, raising up his lantern. "But uh, it turns out I can't exactly go back. I don't have the proverbial change for it, and really, don't you want to see what's on the other side? It's the world as it really is, underneath everyone's feet, hee-ho! From there, maybe you can find another place to pop up, there's gates all around if you learn! I can show you, being that I know a thing or two about a thing or two..." You find yourself approaching in a hover, looking up for this. It's a pretty big decision, to just blindly follow where this veritable demon is leading you, looking on with its glowing red eyes. You may want some time to think about it. What do you do? ... Oh come on, we both know better than that. You put your hand on the black gate, and it ripples, just like that television screen, and there's a crackling sound. Jack's eyes light up, and it hovers, looking over your shoulder. You feel, weirdly, very hungry all of a sudden, feeling some of your breath leave you, and you feel as if a price has been paid. Which is a strangely familiar feeling. A price has been paid. What exactly does that mean? While you are lost in though, you don't even really begin to notice the air pick up, and as it opens, it's like that of a hull breach, with a sudden rush and change of pressure sucking you in. You manage to hold onto the frame, and Jack seems to hover near you in orbit, "holding" on for dear life as he begins to panic. "Wait, wait, wait! This isn't how it's supposed to go! No wonder, someone must really hee-hate you!" As it yawns further and further open, revealing nothing but darkness, you find your grip slipping away. You kind of wonder if all your mysteries are going to involve this kind of thing in the future, just before you lose grip and slip away with a scraping sound, and it slams back shut, slowly disappearing and becoming nothing more than a cracked wall with some etched scribbling on in it a buried underground bunker forgotten by the world. Scene: Dark Passages, the Autochthonous DepthsYou are swept through darkness and tunnels that you can barely conceive or hear, but eventually the wind dies and you feel yourself come upright and get a hold of yourself, in this place deep beneath the earth, away from life. The passages are strange, somewhere between earthen and man-made, like the subways but also like a sewer with waters running long in little rivulets, occasionally meeting in churning drains, and a grime and industrial rust over everything. They feel completely empty to you, and you feel they could stretch on forever. Strangely, you find yourself wishing for at least the light of the jack-o-lantern that got you into this mess, because at least it would be passingly familiar. Do you manage to hold yourself together? Is it here in the dark passages that you finally let go, and no longer even have the anchor of familiar faces in order to bring you back from the break? Is this where it finally happens, and you give up? Or do you press on, take it one step at a time, as you always have? Is it by chance, or your own perceptiveness, that you see a glimpse of a blue butterfly, dancing through the air, clear and colorful in contrast to this ugly, dead world, trailing down a side-access tunnel.  It was only a glimpse, and does not appear to you again in these tunnels, just providing you the inkling that you needed to step a little outwards, and begin to hear something familiar, like the bustling of a city. Tires against the sidewalks, footsteps, sirens. It was distant, but you could hear it get louder and louder as you began to rush towards it, and see a light at the end of the tunnel, perhaps that something could be your way out of here, another gate like Jack promised you. And indeed, there is something waiting for you at the end of the tunnel, but not an escape. Merely another layer, another ward to the prison of the dead. The City of Stygia. Music Starts: Tilt WorldCan you imagine the claustrophobia of Kowloon Walled City with the artifice and color of the Dia de Los Muertos? Crowds shuffling here and there, hidden from a constant and cutting wind, all looking in various stages of death, intangible in parts and brightly colored in others, dressed in various rags marked with colors, most prized of which being their masks, of every cultural make and kind you can think of: the porcelain masks of Noh, wooden tribal masks, vivid neon face-paint, masquerade ballroom masks, and even just plain paper bags over one's face with color painted on them. Tight streets made new labyrinths and tunnels, and it expanded upwards and forwards as far as the eye could see. Beings floated without much consideration for gravity and focused on verticality, and things did not care for reality or perspective, arranged like some form of surrealist artwork before you eyes. Stalls were filled with peculiar and colorful wares, and were bargained for with bits of memory, spiritual power, and charms from an old life. And the smell of food and drink was rich and rampant and pungent and occasionally spoiled and rotted, with gutters that were full of trash and occasionally choked with flies. Amid all the crowds too, you saw demons, the Shadows of human consciousness, naturally bright and colorful and bizarre even compared to the ghosts that shuffled around them, serving in various roles here and there, often menacing those around them but quite a bit outnumbered and, in some way, integrated. You could hardly believe you eyes, but you had to note down and remember some things. What did you see that you had jot down to investigate later, even amid all this? But in the end, it's a familiar lantern light that catches your eye, and both out of a burning desire to figure out why you were taken here in the first place, and maybe find a way to get back, you pursue down the alley, perhaps foolishly, where you see that floating lantern light go to, moving and huddling your way down. You find that Jack has wheeled around to face you, holding up his lantern. "Now that I got you, you're going to tell me everything, hee-ho! You are entirely within my power now!" You don't really have time for this, and just stuff your hand and push down on his cap and pin him down on top of a dumpster. "Heeey-oh! What's the big idea!?" He uselessly shifts here and there, and you realize that while not harmless when unchecked, this guy's small fry indeed. But you have no idea what he was talking about, and after some pressing, he explains. "You've got to be the reason the Nightmare showed up! I just know it! You were there and a ghost and everything. You gotta be the one that's responsible who unleashed it, uh, arentcha? I'm right when I'm right, right?" None of this was making any sense at all. But he didn't get much time to explain it, not now, when you heard a different voice, that sounded like some kind of street thug through the filter of a thousand flies. "Oy, Jackie boy. Is this succulent little peach your payment for what you owe me?" Staggering down the alleyway amid the trash is a completely grotesque creature with long eyestalks and an entire body that's a greedy, grasping mouth. Jack's lantern went out completely, his pumpkin smile finding a way to reverse itself. "Hee-oh noooo..." Music Changes: 347 Midnight Demons The creature looms over and examines the pair there, shifting around on its stance. "That's all a Jack's good for, after all. Drawing in little innocents with their little lights. We make a great team, kind of a symbio-whatcha callit." The casual manner of speech and thuggish mannerisms, matched with the alien appearance, adds to the bizarre terror it evokes. "Feeding's feast or famine around here, and I'mma get fat before the Nightmare gobbles up all the good stuff." Its teeth moved like a centipede's legs in a wave-like fashion, as it made to approach. You are unarmed, under-prepared, out of your element, and in tight quarters against a veritable monster that is just advancing on you. Also, you're dead. A ghost... A ghost! You try and escape by going through the wall, and are surprised to feel a numb pain as it remains completely solid to you. One more thing to learn about this wretched place, now with a completely set of rules different than what you were learning previously! You need to act fast, but you have it in your head, the tools you need to forge a clever solution. Maybe even a Trick or two. That's the difference. You don't have the power of some kind of alien death-god attached to you, a second mocking voice that guided you and you wanted to be rid of, you gave that up as part of your toll. But you've got your wits, your heart, and maybe a little supernatural magic. This game is unfair, and rigged. You drew the short straw. But you're gonna have to make do, and fast. Escape, negotiate, or defeat it. What do you do? Tricky Dick Nixon fucked around with this message at 05:04 on May 9, 2017 |
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May 9, 2017 05:01
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 ... But this isn't a game, is it? It's real. And in real life, kids die too. Mako is aware, but can't move a muscle. Even that sweet bone dust taste dies on their numb tongue. Three monsters in one night, and the last one wins. Or, maybe this isn't the last one? Maybe this is Mako's fate now. An eternity of being consumed by one nightmare after another, a deeper hell every time, each more horrible than the last. Is that spinal pain from poison, or just bad posture? Of course Mako's gonna be punished for bad posture. Forever and ever. That voice. Mako's lips are too numb to ask: Dad? That's right. The world is too big to contain anything less than every nightmare Mako's ever had. Of course it is. And if Mako doesn't get free, they're gonna tumble deeper and deeper inside their own rich esper mind, feeding off their own terrors in a cannibalizing fractal of endless suffering and inevitable insanity- (man, being paralyzed by spider poison is one hell of a fear accelerant.) No no no, don't cry yet- I can let it out instead. All the psychic power of my nightmares, mingling with the power of Death itself in this dark place- I could drown in it, or I could puke it back up into the world! No one's gonna stop me. Not Dad. Not Mom. Not even the sea monster. I was never gonna be normal. But I don't have to die. I don't even have to grow up. I'll turn the whole world into an amusement park! Still can't move. Can't even blink. The purple balloon floats gaily past the spider's reach. c'mon, bucko. don't you want to live again? you want it, don'tcha? don't you want it? don't you want it? don'tcha want it? don'tcha want it? don'tcha WANT IT? don'tcha WANT IT? Mako's lips, drooling, numb, tongue like raw meat, dark purple, desperately spit out: "pennywise." Their mind reaches out of their chest, catches the balloon, and reeeeels it back inside. The poison is fading fast. Clawed hands caked in white makeup spread the webs apart easily, like wiping off a pie in the face. One of them takes the balloon and offers it to Mako, who takes it in their own hand. Both of them laugh. Mako floats all the way up. Kellsterik fucked around with this message at 08:28 on May 9, 2017 |
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May 9, 2017 08:24
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(OOC: There's some talk about suicide in this post. Feel free to skip the first few paragraphs if that makes you uncomfortable.) Scene: Awakening, Qiq-ol-Mal Theme Music: Forever Dilating Eye For the longest time, Sayuri had wished that death would come to her. She had been suffering in silence for her entire life, and anytime she thinks she's found a tiny moment of happiness, it gets cruelly taken away from her, and she is reminded about how worthless she is. Every waking moment was spent hoping that this day would be the day she would meet her end. Maybe a car will run her over. Maybe she'll get shot. Maybe she'll slip and fall, and break her neck. Anything to take her away from this constant suffering. Oh, she tried to take her own life, many times, but she could never go through with it, and it always frustrated her. She has no reason to live, so why is she always hesitating? Life is nothing but constant pain, so why? What reason does she have to keep on living? The answer doesn't come to her until now, as she is being surrounded by the countless horde of smiling men. Her reason for living, the reason why she continues to wake up every morning, the reason that keeps her moving on, is revenge. She will make all those who made her suffer pay. The people who abandoned her, the girls at her school who bully her and call her a freak, her parents who never support her, Nakao-san, the man who killed her, and... Emiko. Emiko, the one who she despises most of all. Emiko, the one she loves, more than anything in this world. Emiko, the object of her desire. Emiko, the target of all her hate. She will not rest until every single one of them experience the same amount of despair as she did. Pain. So much intense pain. But this pain is nothing compared to the pain she went through every, single, day, of her life. quote:Why am I here? Why am I here with you? She heard a voice in her head. It was like hers, but it was also not. Listening to the voice filled her with an almost overwhelming sense of anger. It reminded her about how weak she was. It makes her want to scream at it. gently caress off! You're really pissing me off!!! quote:Why couldn't they just leave us alone? We were born just the same way as everyone else. We aren't freaks, it wasn't our fault what happened. All that life could do was take, take, take away from us! Just one moment of happiness, only to take it away in the cruelest amount possible. It would have been better to die and have stayed dead before then! Her anger intensified, but it is not directed at the voice this time. Why? Why is this all happening to me? What did I do to deserve this? Any of this? Why are other people allowed to be happy, but I'm not? Why do I have to suffer!? I just want one moment of relief! One moment where I don't feel numb! Is that too much to ask for!? How many times do I have to tell you that IT'S NOT MY loving FAULT!? quote:All I've done is hurt, and hurt, and hurt some more. I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired. "I'm so loving sick of hurting all the time." quote:They're all going to laugh at you. That's all they have ever done. They only wanted you ever to give them what they want, or to enjoy watching everything you cared about taken from you. They won't stop until they're dead. So you know what to do. "...Yes." quote:They are all going to die. Die, die, die. We are going to make them suffer. Burn, cut, twist! "Yes!" quote:If you want the evil within me, take it! I don't want it anymore! I just want them all to die and be quiet FOREVER!!! "YES!!!!" Those words trigger something in her, unleashing the side of her that she's kept hidden for so long. Sayuri, who is finally able to show her true self, launches herself at the nearest smiling man, like a predator going after it's prey, and jabs the needle straight into it's throat. The thing struggles, but the girl, in all her fury, quickly overpowers it. She drives the needle in even deeper, twisting it back and forth, to make it suffer even longer, smiling the whole time. It's the first real smile she's ever had. quote:DO IT. KILL THEM ALL. DONT STOP UNTIL THEY DROWN IN IT KILL THEM I AM THOU THOU ART I DO IT KILL KILL KILL SAY IT SAY MY NAME DO IT NOW KILL KILL KILL-- She cuts it's throat with the needle, causing a geyser of blood to spray out of it's neck. There is an almost serene look on her face as the blood splashes all over her. After the body collapses, she turns to face the other smiling men. "Come, Carrie," she grins a wide, predatory grin, her eyes filled with an intense amount of bloodlust, "Let us seal this contract in blood!" Tardzilla fucked around with this message at 22:31 on May 9, 2017 |
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May 9, 2017 22:19
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"I accept your offer, though I object to your calling me second rate. We can talk more about this once we extricate ourselves from this situation. Now, let us begin this most interesting experiment!" With that, Jiro pops the cap off the vial and chugs it down, trying not to gag at the coppery, salty tang. As the liquid goes down, he feels a searing electric energy flow through his entire body from toe to tip. With a mad tone of voice, Jiro cries out from beneath the pig thing's paw " Lend me your power to tear the barrier between life and death asunder! Let us unlock the greatest of secrets that humanity has ever pondered! Come forth, Re-Animator! He clenches the earth beneath him with a fist and concentrates. Jiro's eyes glow golden once more, as the earth begins to rumble. Hundreds of arms sprout out of the ground and reach down to pull the rest of the bodies out of the earth. Where there was once a barren riverside, now there is a veritable army of human-shaped figures sculpted from the dirt and stone. Before the pig demon can make a single utterance, the earthen army charges towards him totally silent save for the pounding of feet and Jiro's maniacal laughter. Each successive rank of the homunculi leaps into the air and crashes down onto the demon, dissolving into shapeless earth and adding a bit more weight. Before long there is nothing visible of the human and the demon, save for a huge mound of earth. A minor disturbance at the edge reveals itself to be Jiro, crawling out of the earth with nary a scratch on him. He stands up, dusts off his clothes, and makes one final clench . The mounds flattens out, with no sign of either the homunculi or the demon. "Let's go, Doctor." FewtureMD fucked around with this message at 03:41 on May 10, 2017 |
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May 9, 2017 23:45
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Scene: The River Sinaan, Lower Mysteries As Takeshi floats at the top of the water, he looks just like a helpless piece of Prey. Looking at the scene, with him barely moving around the water's surface, and with the great and looming water dragon about to descend upon him, any reasonable observer would declare there is only one way for this scene to end. And yet, below the surface, an even more menacing force lies in wait... As Takeshi lies there, he feels a terror so great it drives any hint of pain from his nerves. It's a fundamental, instinctual terror -- one that resonates with his body more thoroughly than any learned thought. It wholly overwhelms him, so much that his eyes do not even see the great dragon hanging above him in the abyss. It thrashes. Ripples call me. It doesn't want to die. The words spoken to him before resonate in his mind. They were in his voice, and practically felt like his own words. Toothless, it has no teeth. I have Teeth. I grab and never let go. Everything stops when I Bite it. This is enough. I need no Reason. Why should you? But these words carried a different message than he was used to feeling. They were not wrapped up in layers of political discourse, nor were they entangled in cycles of reasoning and argument. They were simple. They were direct. You stopped, stagnated, looking for a Reason. You need to Swim, and never stop. If you stop, you will Die. It was as simple as it could be. It was a call to action, and one he could not argue with. The words felt like a razor-sharp blade cutting through a thick fog of introspective doubt. Without your Society, there would be only one Rule. Eat, or be Eaten. We Hunger, but I eat. You starve. I will give you Teeth, and you will Bite the world. Tear the veil asunder. As the voice--his voice--continued, its words felt like they were growing closer and becoming more and more grounded. They became more real, more relevant, and more menacing. In a way, it was terrifying. But Takeshi could not deny anything that was said. The voice's words weren't like anything he had heard, but that just made them felt more liberating. It's not like any of those words were wrong. Hasn't the world always been about predators and prey? The Strong prey upon the Weak. But society has changed that, it's inserted new definitions of Strong and Weak that only exist to serve the needs of the so-called strong. They use the power of laws, order, and conformity to shape this thing we call Society into this machine that keeps those at the bottom Weak and Docile. But is that how we really are? Of course not. Tear away the artifice of society and suddenly the rules completely change. Suddenly the Weak become the Strong, and the Strong become the Weak. All we have to do is learn to use our Teeth. Do you think it will bleed when we Bite it? Takeshi looks upward at the water dragon. "Yeah." It doesn't matter if it's made of water. It doesn't matter how big it is. Takeshi can feel the Teeth threatening to consume him from below, and the presence threatening to envelope him. They're stronger than anything he can imagine. I want to know how you Taste. As one, we will smash the sides of the ship of Society. "Heh heh heh heh..." Takeshi lets out a low chuckle. As strange as it was, the voice didn't feel any different from himself. It didn't just sound like him, it felt like him. Smash the ship of Society? Sure, why not. Break open and snap the bone, and Taste the blood. I am thou, thou art I. We are nothing but our weapons, say the name and start the Feast. "Alright..." Takeshi grins menacingly, baring his teeth for the underworld to see. They look sharper than they did before. "JAWS! Let's tear this loving thing apart!"
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May 10, 2017 03:42
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LifeGetsWorser posted:She opened the door without a pause and stepped inside. Better to rule in hell, as they say... Scene: Within Suspiria's Mansion, Eresh-ki-gala (Chiyoko) Incidental Music: HorizonThe two remaining Shadows looked on in a dismayed sense of horror as the Demon Queen truly took on that mantle, trembling before the power and looking on in horror as that great red door slammed shut behind Chiyoko without the newly minted Bound given so much as a second glance back. She shut out the world and made her own, rejecting one reality for her own, and now she had a resplendent, twisting mansion of bright contrast and colors around her, time to think and gather her strength. She could do it at her own pace, her own time, while the world outside seemed to be so very distant. Time to contemplate on her condition, and refine as to what her power truly was going to be. Though she had such time, surely her thoughts were draw about how to return to life, as she could recognize her body was unoccupied, and this merely a spirit, a fragment of herself kept alive by that Bargain she made. Feeling that cool draft every time she thought of Suspiria, the being she was now tied to, she found herself in a long attic, filled with many different things and memories that were her own. This, somehow, she knew might be her way to draw the connection, and find her way back home. It was memory that was at the root of everything, and that kept her from being torn apart by the winds of this place. She passed a tall, twisting mirror, and truly managed to take a look at herself, seeing for the first sight her own ghostly scars through the deathsight granted by her condition, but perhaps alarming was catching a full, true glimpse at the being that was bound to her manifest, limned with an unearthly blue ethereal light that reminded her of somewhere, like a half-remembered dream. The rest of what she viewed could have been more fitting for a nightmare, yet she recognized it as a realized form of herself, in all its alien terror, looking back through at her gaze between the reflection of that mirror. Each leg ended in a raptor's talons, but wrapped delicately with satin in dancing slippers and tied up as if to mask the monstrous nature of it all, with a gown a sallow shade of pale that was voluminous and flowing in all directions. On the fabric were impressions, shapes that looked like the agonized faces of those trapped and looking on with eyeless stares and silent sighs of her miserable mouths. Each arm extended and from it feathers cascading as wings, fingers long and wicked and bony while the feathers were tall and thin and sharp, like razors. The pale translucent material over the emaciated body was pulled up over a mane of white, ragged hair, all the bit an imagining of what an ancient witch might look like, and the exposed parts of the arms and legs reveal wrinkles of a venerable age. Yet where the veil exposes the bottom part of her face is that of an extremely beautiful and young woman with full, black lips curled in a wicked smile, her gaze otherwise unseen. This was the form of Suspiria that had taken root in Chiyoko's soul. Emboldened or shaken by (or both in some sense) this vision, Chiyoko looked through and found many mirrors, showing the stages of her life up until that point, the diversions and wastes that had led to this points, the state of her decay towards that final end, feeling a chill breeze carry her forward towards the end of this makeshift hallways, to arrive and see herself reflected, but this time as if a window, her body weak and near death, held onto life by a simple string, upon a hospital bed. Everything she promised she would not become, tied up to machines and simply counting off time, but still holding on. Refusing to die, that contradiction of acceptance and refusal that she lived by. It waited for her to return, and as she touched the mirror's surface, it rippled. Through it, she would return, and awaken back to life. Through time and recovery, bringing her back here, to the day it all comes back together. Fright Night. Tardzilla posted:Those words trigger something in her, unleashing the side of her that she's kept hidden for so long. Sayuri, who is finally able to show her true self, launches herself at the nearest smiling man, like a predator going after it's prey, and jabs the needle straight into it's throat. The thing struggles, but the girl, in all her fury, quickly overpowers it. She drives the needle in even deeper, twisting it back and forth, to make it suffer even longer, smiling the whole time. Scene: Faster Sayuri-chan, Kill, Kill!, Qiq-ol-Mal (Sayuri) Incidental Music: 347 Midnight DemonsAs you stab the needle deeper, repeatedly into the neck of the nearest ghostly specter, this spectral predator seeking your essence, you turn the tables almost immediately as it coalesces and turns into a gleaming kitchen knife, allowing you to cut deeper as an arterial spray coats the side of the alleyway, everything in silhouette as you tackle it down to the ground and down beneath you. Slowly, you feel the power suffusing around you, as you unlock the seal that was waiting inside your soul this entire time. Your own blood begins to bowl, and the crack in your head splits further and further open, your eyes widening as a new Sayuri tears herself out from your body, covered in blood, leaving the other behind, as you are completely rejuvenated and swirling with a hateful power, a Shroud around you. You feel rising up behind you with the power an ethereal blue glow, contrasting with your golden hued eyes, the summoned horror movie goddess now that is tied to your soul, rising up behind you from the swirling chains and a portal to another dimension. As you speak her name, the contract is sealed, and the bodies in the dark of the approaching beings begin to twist and convulse, and explode bloodily all around, as you leap and take down those exposed to tear apart. A new river is created in this desert, a river of blood that runs down the alleyway in rivulets. All the while, Carrie watching on as Sayuri revels in the newfound freedom of ultraviolence. Soaked in congealed crimson, the figure is tall and floating, as if hung from their waist and suspended. Instead of a pink dress their appears more crushed red velvet, that pools and drags across the ground between their hanging legs and exposed thights, which twitch as if hung. Floating all around are objects, kitchen utensils, objects to create death with, pointed at wherever her gaze goes. And what a gaze it is, exaggerated, empty dead eyes staring with a sort of translucent blue, filling much of their face compared to their small, closed and unmoving mouth, between the strands of blood-soaked hair. The hair itself has a life of its own, whipping about in bloody tendrils as if representative of the mind-bending and body-crushing power unlocked within, and thought it can always be understood, when it actually opens its mouth, and even then only to scream, it is a deafening roar. This was the form of Carrie that took root in Sayuri's soul. Between newfound eagerness in Sayuri's soul once she had the taste of blood, and the eldritch power of her new backer, she carved like a hot knife through so much butter a path through the alleyways, but the flowing of blood gushing now in rivulets across the ground and spilling from the alleyway seemed to be filtering down to a lower, deeper place, and not back to the river. Instinctively following this path, leading one, she could see it go down a drain. With merely a scream the manhole cover snapped in two, clanging down the whole way as she was allowed to float down, embraced by the blood-soaked partner of her bargain. Deep down there, dripping as the blood moved towards it, was a great black doorway set into the depths, somewhere that appeared and led the way back home. A gate created by the Bargain, an escape from this place, a one time deal. The toll was paid by the blood of so many, being messily slurped down like so much ramen at the base of the gate as it greedily drank of it, opening up into another place. A cold, dangerous place like this one, but one in which she would live again. Awaken back to life, and face a second chance at it with this new power. And after one more trial, and reconnecting with the living, she might join the others like her on that special night. Fright Night. Kellsterik posted:Mako's lips, drooling, numb, tongue like raw meat, dark purple, desperately spit out: "pennywise." Scene: Floating Away, Hun Hunahpu (Mako) Incidental Music: InvaderAs if a ghost slipping free of all bonds, suffused with an ethereal light limned with blue in contrast with her now golden eyes, Mako simply floated away from the web, free of all strings and grasp of Jorogumo. There was nothing that hold her down, trap her, define her. She was something else, something alien even to this reality, and all others, in that liminal state of death and life where all things, all nightmares are possible. Her laughter called forth the form of the being that she had bound herself to to manifest behind her, as her eyes pierced through everything that Jorogumo represented, laid bare to her Oracular sight. Including their weaknesses. The form of her Geist behind her was pleased, though a part of her wondered if she'd dare look at it, and yet it was all too visible on a reflection of the surface of her baloon somehow, as if it were polished to a sheen, but she knew better. It wanted her to know what it looked like. It could almost be harmless, now overstated in its sinister nature as a clown, but the exposed joints and lines indicated it was something more, a hanging marionette puppet caked in greasy makeup and bright red hair and nose, and multi-colored clothing and a wide white ruffle around its neck like a flying saucer. It rattled as it moved, its hands clawed and the wooden teeth inside its mouth pointed, but it was not really the true form, just a proxy of the nightmare it represented, something that can shift and transform. Beneath the cracks, and behind its eyes, was a blinding "dead lights" that seemed to pour out from it, as it stared forward, absorbing all it surveyed hungrily. From each limb came spectral little threads that were manipulated by translucent limbs of some unseen, alien entity that existed only in the shadow of the light, but all the same operated to the beats of Mako's soul, like a matryoshka doll of horrors. That was the form that Pennywise took in the root of Mako's soul. Mako could watch as Jorogumo's eyes were caught in those dead-lights, its body slowly freezing and transfixed just as Mako's had been, not even having the ability to tremble as it began to be suffused, passed over with the intense nad blinding alien light. Slowly from within the light began to spill within it, passing over and melting it completely with the explusive energy, letting what is left of it trail as dust as the rest was consumed messily and hungrily, with even a vulgar burping sound resounding through Mako's mind at the last of it. But she was "safe" in a way that going to a safe place was not right. She became a monster herself, so dangerous that it didn't matter where she went, or whether she was in a "safe place" again. She had already the worst monster imaginable bound to her, so the idea of fear itself seemed rather silly. Just like the entire idea of being bound by space and gravity was silly, as she continued to float higher and higher into the sky. Towards the starry sky of the cavern, finding it a yawning void that she was able to enter against all reason, further and further... She could see the approach of a star, its light touching against her skin. Was she ready to go home? On the other side of this was a place that was equally if not more cruel than this hellish nightmare, but it would mean breathing again. Would she see her parents, or would the world even recognize her as the same? Only one way to find out. Wake up back in the land of the living, and return from the ranks of the disappeared. Soon, you will have to gather the others, who may also be touched by this curse, your new family at that one event that ties you all together. Fright Night. TheFireMagi posted:"...Christine!" Scene: Hightailing it Outta There, Phlegethon (Kaede) Incidental Music: WayfarerThe skeletal fiddler does not drop the bow from the string of the Stradivarius, instead bowing and shifting upon his feet as the faceless hordes of the dead converge slowly around the car, placing their hands on its exterior and finding it burning to the touch, but blind to pain or fear they swarm all around. With the gear shifted, Kaede turns and feeds on the gas, doing a spin and knocking back the crowd in a wave like dominoes, bumping and smashing against their brittle bodies as she does and tearing them underneath the burn of her tires, before settling back down and facing the fiddler once more, as he calls more to the field and the bones and flesh of those she tore down begins to stitch back together. As Kaede settles into the seat of this manifested psychopomp, a vessel for her infernal power, she catches a glimpse of an echo, an afterimage of her vessel behind her in the rear-view mirror, a promise in itself that more than steel and ephemera powered this, but a true demon and death god possessing it, an idealized for that was rooted in her soul. The scarlet sports car is twisted slightly in an animalistic curve of its back, as if its hackles were raised, along an almost feline profile. Its blindingly bright headlights gain a slightly feral cast as well, its grill stained with blood and looking more and more like teeth to match its "eyes." It lets out a gutteral sort of sound like a puma's growl when the engine is revved up, and not only do flames spew out from its exhaust, but trail along its tires as well. The way its aluminum frame is shaped looks almost more like interlocked bone than metal, though it still gleams with a loving polish, and its interior is seductive black leather. Everything is exaggerated from the colors to the shapes to the roar of the engine to a point where it becomes iconic, an emblem of an engine of obsession that drives men and women to its grasp. It has an inhuman beauty to it all the same, like a macabre piece of art. This is the form that Christine takes in the root of Kaede's soul. Gunning straight now for the ringmaster of this deadly carnival, Kaede tries to run the fiddler down, but he deftly dodged to the side like a matador, yet in doing so as the streaks of fire follow in her trail, more or less allowing her passage, roaring down the streets and away. Twisting the tune of his fiddle, his eyes glow red for a few moments. "Until again, ma chère." Kaede can almost hear it under the howling of the engine and winds but only just, leaving him in her wake. He never mattered really, in the end, just an obstacle that she made step aside, and he wouldn't be the last as Kaede turned and banked onto a concrete on-ramp leading to a serpentine freeway constructed over the ruins of this city. There was no limit or numbers on the speed dial. It simply crept slowly up as she went faster and faster, burning rubber and pushing everything finally to the limits, completely free to do so. Kaede knew that there was some threshold, some barrier that she would need to cross. You could almost see on the horizon of the streets a burning sort of one, a sign that passed you by like lightning that you might swear would say: Next Stop, the Hell of the Living. As she began to approach this barrier, reaching near the end of Christine's speed dial, she could feel the blood coursing once again her in her skin. What was approaching fast appeared to be a concrete wall, with a police barricade and ghost cop cars waiting. Spotlights flashed on to blind her. There was no way but straight, straight through the concrete. She knew she couldn't hesitate, even as the tires rolled and screeched when they hit a spike strip, sparks flying but continuing to roll forward by massive momentum. The cars are surrounded with zombie cops training their pistols forward, but even they begin to scatter as Kaede's vehicle was coming in at terminal velocity for the wall, the boundary before her. With all due violence and force, it crashed, with an explosion of fire and steel, into the concrete. Jarring the soul and sending it careening through a tunnel of fire, Kaede felt herself suddenly awake and returned with force to the land of the living. Given time to recollect and uinderstand what had just transpired, and recover before the coming time where she'll see her friends, now all sharing the same accursed night. Fright Night.
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May 10, 2017 22:33
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Takanago posted:"Heh heh heh heh..." Takeshi lets out a low chuckle. As strange as it was, the voice didn't feel any different from himself. It didn't just sound like him, it felt like him. Smash the ship of Society? Sure, why not. Scene: Rip-tide and Tear, Sinaan (Takeshi) Incidental Music: 347 Midnight DemonsThe power suffused through his body, parting the waters before him and letting him take on that bestial aspect once he held the tooth in hand, and it began to extend, transform into a long, barbed harpoon with a line in his other hand. He felt gills appear on his throat while maintaining his lungs, his eyes still glossy black and now his mouth filled with rows of horrific, sharp teeth. The power primeval had been given to him, everything he needed to tear this being limb from limb. And of course, that lurking presence beneath the surface, finally broke the surface and came forward, flanking his form as it pulsed with power, limned with ethereal blue. He could feel its shadow looming over him, and feel it take its manifest shape. All that appears is the head bursting from the ground below, and yet that is enough, facing upwards with its massive maw exposed forward with a seemingly infinite vortex of teeth and a cavernous gullet. The gills are flared and two black eyes sit on each side of the exposed head, rolled back and black so as to protect from the exposed world above the surface. Its skin is scarred and torn here and there with pink marks against the gray and white of its coat otherwise, and its dorsal fin in particlar is nicked and marred. Hooks, bulletholes, and even whole harpoons stick out of it, looking like toothpicks against its majesty, and its unstoppable power. With its two front fins pressing down it rears and snaps at anything that comes by, seeming to have burst through a net that clings to it and keeps it half-tamed, half born down and within the grasp of its Bound's power. That is the form that Jaws takes in the root of Takeshi's soul. Swinging the spear beside him against the small of his back, Takeshi began to move forward with a startling lunge of speed across the ground, as Illuyanka swings with its tale and sends crashing waves to try and stop him. However, the Bound's body twist and flows around every attempted strike, and in one case crashes straight through it with that toothed grin, driving up the harpoon into the body of the serpent as it twisted, its watery body turning crimson as if from blood from the strike as the weaponized psychopomp strikes there through to its heart. But that wasn't enough to finish it off. Leaping up and climbing from that, Takeshi sunk his teeth, his jaws down onto the thrashing serpent, breaking through the watery surface and causing geysers of crimson water to shoot forth each time he was torn off before lunging again and thrashing, as they twisted and it began to melt, the pool itself turning from sea green and crystalline blue to a muddle shade of red. The thrashing died slowly, as all the life went away with it, and something seem to surge into Takeshi, a vapor that rose like steam from the bloody pool that he inhaled, bringing even more strength to his spiritual body. After the ripples of the water completely still, leaving him return to an almost human state, the power seems to trickle all around, giving a chance for reflection, even literal against the crimson surface of the pool. After a while, the reflection began to shift, showing in the reflection a body in the flooded refuse the dim morning light of cloudy Shimokita, the body still torn and broken. A life to return to, the promise that was made, paid for in blood by the sacrifice and primal rebirth. One simply had to drink deep and one might be able to travel through. Awaken once more to life with a second chance. Plunging through blood and water, to thrash and swim as hard and fast as one can forward towards the other side, feeling as if one is swimming through the barrier of reality, reaching out to try and touch the torpid body. And make one's way shuddering, to find one is not alone on a very certain night. Fright Night. FewtureMD posted:"I accept your offer, though I object to your calling me second rate. We can talk more about this once we extricate ourselves from this situation. Now, let us begin this most interesting experiment!" With that, Jiro pops the cap off the vial and chugs it down, trying not to gag at the coppery, salty tang. As the liquid goes down, he feels a searing electric energy flow through his entire body from toe to tip. With a mad tone of voice, Jiro cries out from beneath the pig thing's paw " Lend me your power to tear the barrier between life and death asunder! Let us unlock the greatest of secrets that humanity has ever pondered! Come forth, Re-Animator! Scene: Dusting Off One's Hands, Id-Kura (Jiro) Incidental Music: The AccidentAs Horkos is buried and no sign remains of the barrier, there is a sense of accomplishment that swells within Jiro's breast, much like the deep breath and life that has returned to his form with the uncomfortable taste of the serum that clings even still to the tip of the tongue. All around him, Jiro can see the dessicated graveyard of a city that reminds you of Tokyo, but also with strange gothic affectations, cathedrals and otherwise in black shapes and looming gargoyles, and so much deep sand and dust sweeping through with howling winds. A place deep within the realm of the dead that her has been called to, and no easy direction as to how to leave this place. Jiro turns, as if to try and find some answer, and see the Doctor's spectral form floating just above where he stands, in a twisted form that you did not expect, in part like the flesh one had in mind but just a glimpse of something more twisted before he lets out a cold laugh and disappears back to the house that is Jiro's soul. An image that will not leave the mind in any hurry. A blood-stained lab-coat and pale-tinged scarf with stains at the end, and rubber gloves of a soft tone. Where the flesh is exposed different shades can be seen stitched together, as if re-animated and reconstructed like an artificial being, a messy mop of black hair atop a face that can be barely perceived behind what appear to be some kind of strange goggles. No, not goggles, but bright glowing green syringes that stick out from the eyes in needle points where it faces, and lips that are stitched together as if to seal the blasphemous secrets the being might share. Strapped like a bandoleer are many needles filled with the serum to administer, and other tools for hacking, sawing, and opening the flesh together hidden underneath the fluttering and flowing coat, with the wretched smell of formaldehyde following every time it manifests in its wake. This is the form that Re-Animator takes in the root of Jiro's soul. When it disappears, it leaves nothing but a shovel, laying down with little flecks of rust-like speckles of blood at the end of it, sitting there sticking out of the ground with the spade-head sticking into it. It's certainly a message, a possibility, and without much better options other than wandering in the ruins of Asphodel, Jiro takes the handle and begins to dig. Breaking through earth, and uncovering what lies within, as if an undertaker for the damned. The only way out is through. Hours pass of exertion and digging, with the black dust and dirt staining the hands and face, but eventually it breaks into clay and then gravel, until finally, striking something solid. Down on hands and knees, slowly Jiro begins to uncover it, the hidden gate of black stone hewn into the ground, buried and hidden away. Burying the defeated porcine king of the dead fed the ground, creating something there waiting into the darkness sustained by his connection with the Geist, and with a rumble and shift the door begins to open, what dirt remains on it falling into the yawning passage, and Jiro is ready to fall into it, spiraling back down into the darkness. A darkness that is familiar, like the unconsciousness he slipped into, buried once more in the complete darkness. Back and awake in the land of the living, buried once more but uncovered. Breathing in again, after a slumber in darkness. Through that, and a return to life, and the birth of a new mystery. One that will come to a head soon enough, on the very next night. Fright Night. Waffleman_ posted:Kaito regards the mask for a few seconds, then recognizing this chance, grabs the mask and plants it on his face. He screams as tendrils of shadow shoot from the sides of the mask and envelop his entire body, forming an almost demonic costume around him as he hovers in the air. Scene: Time for Transformation, Acheron (Kaito) Incidental Music: InvaderThe mask clings to Kaito's face, like a second skin as it seemed to coil and tighten, as if living and breathing all its own, and there is a surge of plasmic power that spreads out across his body. Unfolding outwards and in a transformation, the body shifts, becoming in full a costume of a unseemly teal color, with wing'like mask guards and two curled horns. Bladed gauntlets appear at his hands and an almost black fur appears at his legs and upward, a whipping and prehensile tail wrapped around the waist of the transforming "hero." But he does not look much like a hero at all. Valkyrie, grabbing onto the reins of its steed, hoists itself up and rears back with the spear pointed down. "Die, monster, for thou hast no place in this world. Hama!" Ghostly prayer strips swirl through the air and cling to the skin of the transforming Kaito, slowly charging and then with a pillar of light appearing around him, exploding like grenades of holy energy. The light subsumes with burning, as he feels his now hellish, demonic essence being expelled bit by bit, layer by layer, from this world. Yet for all this exposed weakness, the pain and doubt, it somehow only feeds something else, something outside of him. When the light dies down, and the smoke clears, Kaito finds that he is wrapped with a cloak of dark red, shifting and metallic wings that shielded him, his own eyes glowing yellow-gold as he realizes the black chains and swirling blue energy around him. His Geist takes now its manifest form, having interposed itself in a moment of heroism for its hero, denying its demon nature. With a wrenching sound of steel against steel, its wings fold back and it reveals itself in full terror. It is massive, the mecha avatar to Kaito's tokusatsu, towering over most other things with wide dark reed wings that are in fact metallic extensions with pulsing nuclear energy spouting down each. Its head wings and horns are more like antenna around an armored face that does not show a mouth, instead resembling again more a giant robot, with a certainly hellish cast and surrounded by ripples of heat and steam. Its colors and designs match with Kaito's new costume, but it has four rather than two wings, and they are adjusted and shaped as if extra pairs of arms along its ribs and spine. What would be bladed wristgauntlets are equipped with cannons, with giant steam pistons around its body pumping like a great generator, expelling great gouts of hot air and charging it, giving off the roar of a giant train as it takes a pose. This is the form that Devilman takes at the root of Kaito's soul. Raising his hand and mirrored by the motion of his Geist, Kaito creates psychokinetic vectors like reaching claws and demons sprouting from the ground half-visible, tearing apart the steed beneath the Valkyrie into a bloody mess, pieces here and there and reaching to try and restrain the semi-angelic Shadow as it looks on with terror at his approach. It was time for a real finishing move. It could hear the grinding, roaring voice of Devilman speaking its name to him. Send them to Hell! DA-GO-KU---HOU! With a horrific burning flash of nuclear energy, the Valkyrie screams and evaporates in the blast, leaving only a burned in lined atomic shadow on the ground in her shape, finishing it off weith the fullness of Kaito's Rage. Erupting upwards from that is a hellish geyster of smoke, steam, and gas, a portal to a deeper hell even further sanctified by the destruction rough, carved through the earth by Devilman's, Kaito's power. Opening as a fissure beneath him, he looks down at the abyss and understands that to return, he must leap forth into it, as he leaped into death before. It beckons him forth, and without much other direction in the hellish wasteland of Asphodel to guide him, especially after the unlocking of his power is sending the black, macabre skyscrapers to begin to collapse and sink down all around, he dives down, rushing with his wings further and further down. Rushing further and further, until he crashes back into his own body, as violently and painfully as he left the world, shocked back into awakening on a very special night, filled with the thoughts of another world to pick it all back together again. Fright Night. Scene: Getting it Together, CIVIC-TV (Everyone) Incidental Music: Black MagicLifeGetsWorser posted:"If you are what you say you are, who you say you are, then talk. Your laughter is already grating on me." Her voice was a little scratchy, now that she spoke up. "Teach us if you're going to or else shut up and let us puzzle this out. As it stands you're just distracting us from figuring things out." Luckily those deathmarks only lasted a moment, right? Because that buzzing in her throat was incredibly uncomfortable. Tardzilla posted:Sayuri wasn't really phased by the sudden appearance of their new guest. If she was surprised, she's doing a really good job in hiding it. Alien Rope Burn posted:Sitting up, Kokoro says softly, "Rudeness rarely gets you to the best answers.", and then looks over to Chiyoko meaningfully with a shrug. "So, Jack, what undid their deaths?", she simply says up to the shadow. "Why don't their stories match up with..." She pauses as if considering the proper term. "... the present?" "Geez, you should be nicer to me, like Master was, if you want my help, hee-ho!" Jack seems a little offended, but Kokoro's words mollify it a fair bit, and it seems just a bit unsure for at least a moment. "I mean, I kind of owe them for what I put them through, so since you're her friends, I'm gonna overlook it, but just this once!!!" Instead of being beaten down a bit by the doubt, the jack-o-lantern was only emboldened, its lantern burning just a bit brighter, using one disembodied hand to adjust its hat in what it thought must have been a really cool way. "You have all fallen under a terrible curse, a Nightmare that's trying to push into this world. Back in the Great Below, when a ghost really, really, really doesn't want to get dragged any deeper, all of their bad memories and their hatred gets fed by the rivers, boiling over like a bubble ready to burst. It gets so big it presses against the edges between this world and the next one, and tries to drag in souls to help make others suffer like it does." Its eyes flash for a moment. "But all of you escaped somehow because you made a Bargain with something as equally powerful as whatever is in control of that Nightmare. We Shadows, we are parts of you, all of humanity. Master helped me realize that, and because of that, I want to help humanity, hee-ho! But sometimes they get twisted, in these Nightmares. They become like... gods, of death. They trap other Shadows in the Nightmares too, and with the cycle of suffering create new ones, that are always hungry and eat up all the plasm that is naturally created, like a buncha hungry locusts! Eventually, they will reach even this world. They may already have, hee-ho!" It lowers its lantern for a beat. "Thing is, we're part of the other world, like a dream. Whenever people go to bed and wake up, they forget what has happened, hee-ho. They make excuses about things, or see it in a different way. Maybe that's why they don't remember the earthquakes, but they were very real! Though I have no idea why that magical murder store of yours is still standing, that's actually pretty weird-ho." It seems to turn pensive for a moment, squaring its "jaw" with its disembodied hand in a sort of mock thoughtful look. But the idea it gave more or less brought some insight: Whatever the curse did to this world as the Nightmare tried to bubble it, the world would intentionally try and forget, or create excuses as to why the things happened. People don't come back from the dead, after all. But there's still so much unanswered, and it was on the eight of you to figure it out, or at least put the elements together.
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May 11, 2017 00:35
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  Mako pipes up: "Pumpkin Boy is right. Scary, impossible stuff happens every day, and people make themselves forget. That's why grownups don't worry too much about my magic tricks. It's easier when everything is fine." She fumbles through her pocket for some string. "But this seems bigger. Maybe each of us got our destiny knots tied together with some Nightmare from the death world. And the powers of those Nightmares, or just their gravity, are what made us die. But we came back, and that wasn't part of the plan, so the world had to change the details. Like Danny Darko! I think. I didn't understand that movie." The kid deadlights up: "Woah! I just realized! If the world forgets impossible stuff, and we're all supposed to be dead anyway, but we don't really die...we can do whatever we want! We can nab cakes from bakery windows, pull funny pranks on people we don't like, play in traffic no problem! No more school! No more church! No more rules! A party that never ends, with guests that never die!" She gets all starry-eyed at Kaede. "It'll be fun!" Kellsterik fucked around with this message at 12:32 on May 11, 2017 |
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May 11, 2017 12:12
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“Doing whatever we want, huh? I have to admit, that does have a nice ring to it.” Not that Kaede was certain what’d she do in a situation like that. Stealing cakes and pulling pranks sounded fun and all, and she meant that in all honesty, but there had to be something… bigger, surely? It wasn’t every day you came back to life, so spending their newly acquired time on such small matters felt like a waste. As she’s thinking and distractedly playing with Mako’s hair, a thought suddenly occurs to Kaede. “Hm? Hold on, ‘guests that never die?’ Sure, we came back from the dead once already, but that doesn’t mean we’re immortal. Does it, um, Jack, was it?” Because if it did, well, that changed a lot. If you only lived once, obviously you would be less willing to take chances, risks, even opportunities. But if you could die, die, and try again… that was an entirely different situation, wasn’t it? Yet surely, there was no way that could be true? It was a miracle they returned from the dead once, but to do so more than once was… ...impossible? My, but are you questioning yourself already? That. Just. Won’t. Do. Four simple words, drawn out and spoken by that voice within her. Four simple words, that carried such power in their half-teasing and half-mocking tone. You said it yourself when you claimed me, did you not? ‘The only speed I go is full throttle.’ So why so hesitant at the starting line, babydoll? Kaede frowned, but she listened. To the others. To herself. To her Self.
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May 11, 2017 19:28
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TheFireMagi posted:“Hm? Hold on, ‘guests that never die?’ Sure, we came back from the dead once already, but that doesn’t mean we’re immortal. Does it, um, Jack, was it?” Scene: Dead Man's Party, CIVIC-TV (Everyone) Incidental Music: Black MagicJack seems to be knocked out of his false pensiveness at all that, tilting his pumpkin head a bit at the question and floating closer, raising up his lantern as if examining Kaede for a few moments, and then spinning and turning the rest as he gives an answer.  "A Bargain like you made won't be broken easily. Everybody wants something, and whatever's bound to you wants to live just as much, if not more, than you do. What doesn't kill you will make you stranger, hee-ho!"There's a cackling sort of sound coming from within it, that would be almost sinister if it came from anything but a fairy pumpkin, but then again, maybe that adds to it. "But you're all here because there's something you cared about, righty-ho? The Nightmare is only going to fester more, and when it pops, it's going to be a huge mess." Jack turns and looks over its cloaked shoulder at Kaede. "Anyone around you might get caught up in it, and that would be on you, hee-ho!"Maybe the world forgot exactly what happened those nights. But Kagura-san was actually dead. The consequences of your actions were likely to be equally real.
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May 11, 2017 19:45
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Sitting up straight, Kokoro tried to clear her hair away from her face, but the few locks that pulled away were replaced by others. Working with her hair in this state felt like the Little Dutch Boy's dam, sometimes. "Where is this Nightmare? I mean... maybe if they stop the Shadows it's gathering, then..." She looks to the assembled club. "... then they can keep the worst from occurring, can't they?" It seems like the most obvious solution, at least, if a blunt one. As she's going through, she sees... is that... no, it couldn't be... not her. Is that the woman that dad... She remembers taking the pictures with her camera before getting them developed. She should feel angry. Furious. But mostly, it just felt like her world was falling out from under her. Father had gave her the old thing, and now it had revealed him betraying her mother. It was so far beyond the world she built it was like living in a box only to have all the whole thing fall open at once. It seemed silly to carry around the old thing, but the pictures it took were real, physical artifacts. She never knew her name. Mother didn't even ever see the photos. She didn't need to. ... she's dead? Hollow, like a peel around an invisible form, like her interior is gone. But in the crowd, she vanishes back in, and charging in or shouting seems too dangerous. She doesn't know the rules here. Technically, she may have forever to find out. It's this line of thought that keeps her distracted until Jack pipes up, and they're joined by company. Under normal circumstances, her body should be going into an alert response, probably even a panic. But Kokoro doesn’t feel that. Granted, the fear is still there, even if her sense of mortality is… muddled, it’s still enough for her to freeze up for a moment psychologically. “Symbiosis.”, she corrects instinctively, but she can't but add, "This is more like extortion than anything in nature." It's not likely to get fat with just Jack alone, though, if it's not fat already. Well, offering her services is left as a desperate backup, she's not going to do this to somebody else even if she promises otherwise. She continues to look around, her gaze drifting across an alleyway with a raised nest of rusted, mildewed pipes that raise the question of what might actually still flow through them in a place like this. Could just be a symbolic. "It's too bad the Nightmare won't offer you a seat at the table.", she adds, spotting a broken pipe nearby. She wasn't exactly out of shape, but she didn't know how fast it was. Given it was a predator, she was willing to bet on faster than she was, though. "You seem clever... enough. But..." She then puts the mental puzzle together, grabbing out to grab Jack. Pulling him after, she starts to run, ducking down to pick up the busted pipe as she heads for the narrow alley of rusty fittings. If Jack resists, she'll just let go. It wouldn't be fair to leave him behind, but she's not going to die for him. Die more. Die extra. Bonus death. Whatever. Ducking into a space her slender form can slip through, she comes out the other side of the pipes, waiting for the creature to make chase under the pipes as she hooks the broken pipe into the maze, and then jumps to try and bring her foot and weight down onto the sagging, broken pipeworks to try and bring the whole mess down on the creature, or at least block it off. "But I am not a fruit!", she shouts as her anger bubbles to the surface, before turning to try and continue her flight. She immediately feels embarrassed at the line, but it quickly gets put aside. She doesn't have time to wait and see how well it worked, instead taking off at a sprint to wherever that turn- or that turn- or that turn led-
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May 11, 2017 23:42
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Scene: Creeping in Twilight, Seven-to-Seven (Kokoro) Action Music: 347 Midnight Demons Your mind was first occupied not by desire for escape, but this memory that stuck with you. The first time you glimpsed at the truth was through the shutter and lens of this camera, a flashback that came forward to the front of your mind right now, even amid everything else. Was there any meaning to it? Some part of a puzzle you can half remember, and the sound of a man's voice, but not your father's: Younger, filled with a sad sort of song to it. This is how the world ends. Almost as soon as you regain your senes, there is a click, and whirring of moving parts, as the camera has almost of its own accord taken a shot of the environment from where it hangs from your shoulder, and on the view screen on its back you see the picture it has taken of the approaching demon, or Shadow, or whatever it was. Trick Acquired! You gain the ghost Trick of Fate Sense, using your camera's Twilight echo as a medium. By taking a picture and rolling Power + Finesse, you can determine characteristics about a being, most importantly its Fate, which can give clues to a narrative role of a NPC, the cause of death for a ghost, and general temperament of a Shadow. An exceptional success will give you the Informed Condition or some other clue about knowing how to deal with them.Shining in a symbol on its "head" between those two eyestalks was some kind of roman numeral. XIII. Some kind of skull icons seem to flank where it is, and with it a strange flash of insight. A being that feeds on death, that can be banished by light and fire...? A Pisaca. Her wors kept it held for a few moments as she processed this, its long eyes coming up close even as its body hesitated. While the semi-material state of this urban hell had been somewhat inconvenient for you in making a spectral getaway, it meant that at least in this place, there were some rules to be obeyed. There was still such a thing as gravity, and the collapsing infrastructure buried Pisaca where it stood, giving a revolting sort of cry out as it did, trying to shake it off. "Whoa-HO!" Jack is dragged along with, bewildered as you dash for it, and find yourself even making use of the natural verticality of the winding, subterranean streets to move up higher above the alleyway, running up the wall as various ghosts in their little dramas and afterlives look on, few if any particularly surprised or roused, looking on with dead eyes as you break over and dash into a hopefully crowded bazaar of the bizarre, to try and escape from the creature. Jack, on the other hand, is still trying to get a hold of his senses, his lantern still just a flickering candle of a light. "Hey! What gives!" He pulls a bit on the hand he was carried away with, seeming confused. "Why... Why did you help me!? You could have just left me behind, I would have been pumpkin pie!" Jack seems if anything suspicious. "You didn't have any reason. You aren't me, hee, and I'm not you, ho! Unless..." Its eyes actually seem to widen a moment but its more an optical illusion with the brightening of the lights inside of them. You realize though that it is looking past you, and turn to see from the crowd around you, one of the shuffling shades begins to twist, and melt down, reforming back into the Pisaca you left behind, roaring in a mixture of pain and annoyance. "I'm gonna spend WEEKS picking you out of my teeth after this. It better be worth it, sweetheart." Turning both eyes forward, and raising its hands, it seemed to glower and blister with a dark energy. Jack rattled like ghostly chains, shaking next to you. "I don't get it. The only reason you'd help me is... If you're me, and I'm you." A rudimentary understanding of empathy, to put yourself in someone else's shoes. Something like that... had power in this world. Kokoro could see something that almost caused her vision to dim slightly, a fluttering of blue wings flitting in and out of her vision. A voice, one very different than the one earlier, as if it were almost diametrically opposed, a man old and a bit haggard and yet filled with an almost righteous anger. This game is a cruel and unjust one. One such as you should not have to face it alone. You have already paid your life, is it worth it to pay more to see it to the very end? Jack charges forward, interposing itself between you and the Pisaca and raising its flashing lantern. "Let's hee-do it, ghost girl! Let's make a Bargain! I am thou, thou art I. Invoke my name, and leash my power, hee-ho!" Without thinking, comes out the name.   Awaken to your power, Kokoro Ootori, the power of the Wildcard! You feel something change, as if your Fate itself has been molded, a card had been flipped, and yet it all seems to come down to a choice, one that you had made another time, another place. But now that you have spoken the words, you see as Jack is bound in chains before you, those of your making, and overlain with the power of your heart. The Pisaca is unmoved. "Your little magic trick won't help you girlie. You can talk to your little fairy friend all you like in the darkness that awaits you inside here!" Its mouth opens and a devouring darkness spills forth to consume the two of you. Slowly, Jack seems to be pulled into you, forming what appears to be a burning key just above your heart, one that twists and unlocks something, a word of power that awakens in your mind, one that you can speak aloud. "Agi." A burst of flame like that of the lantern at its highest illumination bursts within and pierces the darkness, reeling through the body of Pisaca as it twists and howls, its body transforming and reforming but burning a bit at the explosion of its bane, empowered by the rush and emotional power that Kokoro helped connect with the Key and spell, the Numen, that Jack provided. It curls back, twisting around in its heat as the ghostly flames die out, and now the positions are reversed with you, Kokoro Ootori, standing tall over this demon. Music Changes: Invader"W-wait! Wait! You made a deal with that little weakling! Make a deal with me too!" It pleaded, desperate and thinking of nothing but its own life. "I can give you power, money, whatever you want, baby! Just don't burn me away! I'll... I'll show you the ins and outs of this place! I'll give a great word for you to Yomotsugami-sama! P-p-p-pleeeease-a-bloo-bloo..." It is all but weeping, putting on an act surely, but even in this trick it had a bizarre sincerity, no limit on its emotions as like a cartoon character it prostrated to you. You had the touch, the power to burn it away for harming you and your new friend, that power was in your grasp. Or you could deal. And bind this thing to you as well. What do you do?
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May 12, 2017 00:43
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Kaito reaches into his jacket and pulls out a cigarette. He tried not to make a habit of smoking, especially since people usually didn't like him doing it in the store, but he could make an exception this time. He pulled out his lighter and attempted to get a flame going. No go, drat thing was out of fluid. Looking over to the spirit briefing them on all this, Kaito walked up to it and bummed a light off of its lantern, taking a drag and letting it rush through his teeth. "Thanks for the light. So, we're supposed to use these Shadows that we've made bargains with to help control the Nightmare?"
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May 12, 2017 00:48
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Sitting up straight, Kokoro tried to clear her hair away from her face, but the few locks that pulled away were replaced by others. Working with her hair in this state felt like the Little Dutch Boy's dam, sometimes. "Where is this Nightmare? I mean... maybe if they stop the Shadows it's gathering, then..." She looks to the assembled club. "... then they can keep the worst from occurring, can't they?" It seems like the most obvious solution, at least, if a blunt one. Waffleman_ posted:"Thanks for the light. So, we're supposed to use these Shadows that we've made bargains with to help control the Nightmare?" Scene: Nightmare Talk, CIVIC-TV (Everyone) Incidental Music: Black MagicIn front of kids or not, Jack was all too willing to be helpful with a light, looking at Kaito like he was the coolest motherfucker ever, which is probably not a feeling that Kaito was used to in the slightest, especially not from a fairy pumpkin with a wizard's hat that is probably a demon. Then again, he's had some very recent, very intimate run-ins with demons after all. "The Nightmares are deep in the Lower Depths, across the Rivers. In a place called a Dread Domain if you want to get fancy-like, hee-ho! Normally it's really hard to cross those, and even harder to get back, but everyone here has done it. It can't be a coincidence, it's the best shot we have!" "So Kaito-dono is right! If you all came back after crossing a river down in the Great Below... That's not something most ghosts can do, and it's probably because of those beings you made a Bargain with!" He then takes Kaito's cigarette and sticks it in his carve mouth, and somehow against any sense of logic it remains there as if he had it clenched down. "I can lead you there, even! But... You need to find out who caused the curse on this side and figure out how to lift it, I think. One of you had to have caused the curse in the first place!" Is that where it all started, with that bunch of old videotapes? Nobody watched the tape though, and nobody here had admitted to being aware of any curse. Nobody here. There was one person that wasn't here that was a common element in all their stories. Further, at the thought that Kaito put forward about being bound to Shadows, Jack looked a bit worried. "But uh don't get it twisted, hee-ho, I ain't anything like those scary things you've got lurking in. Those aren't Shadows! At least... I don't think they are..." He seems very unsure for a few moments, and then tries to figure it out. "They're like Shadows, but also like ghosts, but really neither. They're a lot like what lives inside those Nightmares, but... They're different." That was extremely unhelpful, but what was there to call them? "Some prefer the term Geists." That voice was one everyone recognized, but nobody likely expected to hear at just that moment, for the second interruption of the meeting thus far. Standing in the doorframe with the heavy curtains overlaying it, Midori-san glanced a bit around, and then yawned, stretching a bit. "It's getting a bit late, but I was thinking of some kind of take-out. It just turned nine, after all, so you might want to let people know you're gonna be out late, not that I mind though I usually close at ten. You can let them know you're caught up with the occult, I'm sure they'll understand." He adjusts his glasses, while Jack just kind of stares back, and then shakes a bit when the man looks straight at the pumpkin-head, the cigarette falling out of its mouth. Midori-san even looks over to Kokoro, quite obviously seeing both the beings in there. "I couldn't help but overhear. Iwasaki-kun isn't the quietest you know."
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May 12, 2017 01:19
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Sayuri looks up from her shougi board, slightly surprised at Midori-san's appearance. This was the first thing that's happened this night that actually got a reaction out of her. She's talked to Midori-san plenty of times before, but it was mostly about film. "Hello, Midori-san. You seem to know a lot about our current situation," there is a slight hint of respect when she is speaking to him, "Would you care to explain what these "Geists" are?"
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May 12, 2017 02:09
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"Hmph." Chiyoko finally intones. It had been debatable up to that point whether or not she had even been paying attention. They all are beneath OUR notice, after all. a voice that sounded like the wind passing through a dead tree ran through her head, but she continued unphased. "First of all, it is unlikely that we are truly immortal. We did die the one time, after all. While I have no reason to think our...partners wish to see us dead, what happens if we do die again? Do we go through those...places...those rivers another time? Isn't that something we should be trying to avoid?" While she was fine there, at least ostensibly, due to what she had discovered about her new capabilities and given that manifestation of the mansion, in theory it'd be best to stay living. "So I think we should remain careful - just because we are something more than before is no reason to test our limits immediately. I have the feeling they'll be tested soon enough." Of course, she was talking to (in at least a few cases) literal children, so jumping to the most obvious conclusion was to be expected of them. "Secondly, it's obvious the 7-7 is of major consequence. We're all associated with it, and Ueno-chan, at least to some extent. So...either we confront her or we determine what it is about that place that makes it..." The word special doesn't cross her lips because something occurs to her just then. Something about the connection between Momoka and the 7-7. Almost like her connection to Suspiria or the others' connection to their... But she was interrupted by the appearance of Midori. Who seemed to have information of his own. So she kept quiet. Geists? Eh, is that what I should call you? she thinks to herself, and not herself. I am thou, thou art I. Not herself and herself responds. Suspiria has a much nicer ring to it. Geist is too hard a syllable.
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May 12, 2017 05:03
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"Before you go on, Midori, let me flip to a fresh page here." Jiro turns to a fresh sheet in his Voleskine notebook. "I thought it would be best if I took some notes and tried to find some points of commonality between our experiences. Ms. Chiyoko was quite astute in her observation that the 7-7 must be important somehow. " He looks quite odd sprawled on the beanbag, reading off his shorthand notes. "We all died there on consecutive nights in the past week, in ways that should have attracted the media's attention or at the very least meant the store was closed the next day. It takes a bit to properly clean up bodily fluids after all." The Doctor giggles in the back of Jiro's mind at that last phrase. "And after we listen to what Midori has to say, I propose we go and investigate the 7-7 ourselves. Maybe these...Geists and the abilities they have conferred will come in handy." If anyone was to look at Jiro's writing hand, they'd notice that his pen is shaped like a syringe.
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May 12, 2017 06:24
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Looking to the new arrival, Kokoro blinks, and then smiles for the first time in a little while. "Oh! You can see me.", she says. It was always a small relief when that happened. Turning to Chiyoko, she adds, "Heh, that's so like you. 'Confront'. We can just ask first or... I guess you people will have to ask..." Her cheer fades as she realizes she'd probably just go unseen again. Back to Midori-san, she looks puzzled. "Do you have one of them in you, too?" She looks thoughtful, reaching for her camera, but hesitates. No need to be blunt about it before he even answers, after all. Kokoro blinked at Jack, not comprehending for a moment. "You seemed scared. Maybe you meant this, maybe you didn't, but it didn't seem fair just to leave..." She doesn't have time to finish her sentence as the Pisaca returns. Well, maybe it was just a symbolic gesture in the end. But she wanted to be a detective, not a judge. Locking people up wasn't to punish them like most people thought. It was to help them, wasn't it? Still, even benevolence has its limits. As she's dragged towards the creature's maw, her feet skidding, she joins with Jack to burn the creature. She looks down at herself for a moment, surprised, and then looks up to the smoking creature. "I had to. You didn't give me any choice." If she was alive, her sentence would be punctuated with exclamation marks, but her fear was down at her core, not floating up to the surface. To a child, parents are the ultimate authority. Seeing that crumble... seeing her parents at her weakest, well. It had taught her one thing. "Everybody's weak. Maybe one day, you'll understand that." Her gaze might seem like arrogance to one looking up, but the reality is that it's mostly was impassive. She didn't feel sorry for the predator, but... "I don't want anything from you. But I don't want you to die, either." She puts her hand forward. "So bargain." There's the fear of regret, here. That she's making a mistake. Maybe it was cruel. But it was hungry, too. She knew what that felt like right now, in her strange way. It seemed she had to play the judge after all. It wasn't what she wanted, but there was no point denying it.
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May 12, 2017 23:34
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"Yeah, let's not confront Momoka, okay?" Takeshi adds, sounding pretty annoyed. "The last thing she needs after this whole fuckin' week is an interrogation." He lets out a sigh and scratches the back of his head. Even after hearing all the other stories about how she died, it still looks like he feels kind of guilty about it. "Anyway," he looks at Midori-san and raises a finger in the air. "If we're getting food, get me a beef bowl." Suddenly, his stomach rumbles loudly. The noise has a strange, almost otherworldly tinge to it. "Actually, make that two- no, three. Three beef bowls."
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May 13, 2017 01:07
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"Make it four. I want one too. And you're buying. You never paid for those pistachios you took earlier tonight, after all!"
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May 13, 2017 01:21
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Pisaca's eyes seemed to turn in and focus at that outstretched hand, and considered it for a few moments, and then the little slits pulsed and narrowed, the teeth fluttering as it wrenched forward in its burned, weakened stated to grasp with the upper part of its mouth onto that hand, piercing through it. This was a new experience, perhaps unwelcome, but not lacking in educational value, as Kokoro realized she did not bleed, though she did feel a certain kind of pain. Instead a sort of mist, an ectoplasm that shimmered in this immaterial state was extracted from her painfully from the corpus that remained of her, as it gnawed on it for a few moments, but came to a similar realization as Jack did, in a very roundabout way. "This ain't right. You can't just give yourself! You need to fight, scream, and scrap the whole way." The Pisaca twisted a bit there, recoiling back, having taken a small point in the bargain and fed of its hunger, but left feeling strange for it. "Nobody gives anything unless it's for themselves. So does that mean you're me? That must be what Jack was blathering on about. Maybe I'm in the wrong racket, if you've got that kind of power, I want in. Screw the Yomotsugami! I don't wanna die. I am thou, thou art I. Show me where the feeding's good, and I'll be your eyes and fingers." It began to twist, taking on a material form, again in the form of a lock or key, a fetter just as Jack did. The pain and cost, and now complete exhaustion (and great hunger) didn't just go away, but it was one more trick in her bag to call on, though considering the kind of creature it was, that wasn't too comforting. Yet fettered like this, the Shadows didn't need to feed constantly, having lost their hunger for purpose instead, and thus Jack could materialize there, looking completely shocked. "I don't know who you were, hee-ho, but I would be honored to call you Master!" She just wanted to be a detective, not a judge, but something told her that the idea of truth just got a lot more... subject to interpretation, so she was going to have to pick up the slack. There was of course, the question of how she was going to get back home... Without even needing to be asked, Jack seemed to sense the question, and answer it. "You gotta get a ticket back, there's no free lunch, hee-ho! But we'll help you, and I bet Pisaca might know of a few people..." This was more like it. A little detective's mystery then, but the story was growing long already. To cut the story short, several days seemed to pass within this world as she ran one errand to the next, before she was able to get her way out, and find Mako and make it here. Along the way, she began to learn the names of the place: The City of Stygia. The different ward bosses that controlled little neighborhoods and islands of power, powerful ghosts and Shadows of different predilections. The one in particular "closest" to Tokyo being Katatsukuni-jaya, a neighborhood that was filled with cursed houses and shuffling shrines, and apparently an almost yakuza-like organization of Shadows like Pisaca that extorted and kept the ghosts "protected" ruled by a being called the Yomotsugami. You evaded her notice well enough, but you know that your story of the "detective negotiator" already caused a ripple. The others might be eager to go back, if to find the Nightmare, but you know that there might be trouble, but also opportunity... But will it get you any closer to finding out how you died? You found one thing, one Clue that lead you to think it might. What was it?
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May 13, 2017 04:32
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Tardzilla posted:"Hello, Midori-san. You seem to know a lot about our current situation," there is a slight hint of respect when she is speaking to him, "Would you care to explain what these "Geists" are?" FewtureMD posted:"We all died there on consecutive nights in the past week, in ways that should have attracted the media's attention or at the very least meant the store was closed the next day. It takes a bit to properly clean up bodily fluids after all." The Doctor giggles in the back of Jiro's mind at that last phrase. "And after we listen to what Midori has to say, I propose we go and investigate the 7-7 ourselves. Maybe these...Geists and the abilities they have conferred will come in handy." If anyone was to look at Jiro's writing hand, they'd notice that his pen is shaped like a syringe. Alien Rope Burn posted:Back to Midori-san, she looks puzzled. "Do you have one of them in you, too?" She looks thoughtful, reaching for her camera, but hesitates. No need to be blunt about it before he even answers, after all. Takanago posted:"Anyway," he looks at Midori-san and raises a finger in the air. "If we're getting food, get me a beef bowl." Waffleman_ posted:"Make it four. I want one too. And you're buying. You never paid for those pistachios you took earlier tonight, after all!" Scene: Enter the Magician, CIVIC-TV (Everyone) Incidental Music: KatzIt's a little bit of a commotion, and well-earned considering the way he had just dropped the piece of information, though he was in no hurry to answer the concerns, instead glancing down as from behind the curtain came the store's cat, Bubastis, a sphinx with dark coloration and spots and bright green eyes like its master, that twists and purrs as it rubs between his legs. He leans over to pick it up, petting at it as he finally sighs at both Takeshi and Kaito's declaration. "Yare yare. All this over a bag of tree nuts? As you like it, I'll leave the money on the counter. I think I spotted Ueno-san coming to the Seven-to-Seven earlier," pointedly looking at Kaito at that point, from their conversation earlier. "Isn't she part of your group as well? I remember her here once or twice." That didn't sound like Momoka, considering how weird she found the Panic Club to be." She might be there if you hurry. It's getting a little late, and you might pick something to eat while you're there, the kitchen is still open. Consider it my sacrifice for the dead." His eyes turn to the ghost then, and he shakes his head. "It would be obvious to you all if I had come back from the dead as you. No, I'm something a little more pedestrian really, but I'm thinking a little insider knowledge might help all of you. The Underworld has been around for a long time, and there's many out there that have thought to harness it. You've probably heard of mediums, psychics, ESP and all that." Glancing a bit at Mako and then tutting at his cat, raising it up and looking at it in the eyes. "I'm not all that special, but there are others like you out there. I've met a few because as it happens I've a skillset that helps them out with their work." He lowers the cat and looks to them. "You all are Bound to this, Geist, yes? With the exception of Ootori-san, though I do not doubt she has some talents of her own. If anything, her place here is helpful, because of what you all are: Psychopomps, those who walk between the land of the dead and dreaming, and the living and waking. One foot in the grave, one foot here. You've probably already realized that you've had some attention already from the restless. I don't envy the headache that might lead you to, it took me many years to learn to tune it out." He sets the cat down, which wanders around to some of the others, looking for attention elsewhere, having had enough of Midori for now. Music Changes: Are You Sure"If Jack here is a Shadow, consider a Geist something between that and Ootori-san. It was a ghost, once, but has become something more, reshaped into an icon of horror, and in that, a pathway for people to understand the cognitive world, and bridge the gap of the living and dead." Rubbing his chin and then pushing up his glasses. "Without it, one can learn a few tricks, some ceremonies perhaps, but it's a very different power. That's why necromancers like me cannot do anything in the face of a Nightmare like one of you woke up." His brow raising. "The term is a little, loaded, I know, but there's no real other way to describe it, especially as I mean it in its proper use. But enough of that." "A tape of mine has gone missing, from a collection I lent you lot." The box of tapes they had watched was still in the screening room, sitting aside, and indeed, a thorough search would reveal that unmarked tape having been taken. "I'm not sure how it got in there, but the forces of Fate are cruel. I do know it was well labeled and there was a warning. So, I owe you lot more than for a bag of pistachios. In a way, I am responsible, as the caretaker of that cursed tape, for what has happened." He seems rather casual about it, but he at least admits that. "For that reason I don't mind paying for a beef bowl or four. And maybe offering a little more help, but if none of you can answer Jack's question as to who first contracted the curse," spoken as if it were a virus, "then you might want to consider who else could have." What do you do? Tricky Dick Nixon fucked around with this message at 05:08 on May 13, 2017 |
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May 13, 2017 04:55
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