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Entry tags:
- !event; countdown; day 14,
- !open post,
- alucard,
- chikusa kakimoto,
- elizabeth bathory,
- featherine augustus aurora,
- gladion,
- jaune arc,
- jirou sakuma,
- koujirou genda,
- lenka utsugi,
- louis,
- mako,
- makoto fukami,
- mitsuru kirijo,
- nakigitsune,
- nobunaga oda,
- okuyasu nijimura,
- pharos,
- raidou kuzunoha xiv,
- yuuri katsuki
COUNTDOWN: FUTURE & PAST
It's been a week since the first network post. Upon waking up early Saturday morning, you notice that the app is not responding. Is it finally over, as strangely as it began?
Which makes explaining what happened impossible. Others have already tried to figure out more about it, but nothing has been working. Bringing it to a repair shop to get it looked at? No programs found. Even getting the phone completely wiped did nothing, as the icon just showed up a few minutes after they walked out of the store. Showed it to a family member? The minute you blinked or turned it around to show them, it simply wasn't there.
It's taunting you. Whoever programmed this is really good. Frighteningly so.
Saturday night rolls and still nothing from the application. The news this Saturday is nothing special. There's been another fire at night that was put out by the firemen and an instance of someone being outside. According to both departments, neither of the incidents are connected. It's just a case of someone who wasn't back home in time and unfortunate damage to a building that occurred with some of the habitats still sleeping inside. It is a tragedy, but no city can survive without any loss of life. It's simply mathematically impossible. It's notable enough that it gets second page billing and a blurb in the morning news, but nothing too huge.
At least you had assumed.
The warning bells of the Nightly Curfew ring across the city as a few people finish locking their doors for the night. As the last bits of light fade from the city, the night lights take over. Civilians are settling in for a late supper and preparations for school or work tomorrow.
Not you, however. There's been a damn headache building for the past hour and by now your ears are ringing. Food doesn't look appetizing and you feel an urge to go to bed early. Maybe you caught the flu or maybe it's just pre-Monday blues a day early, which makes it all the more frustrating. The flower festival is tomorrow!
Either way, a little shut-eye would be welcome at this point. You don't even think too hard about it, and the headache fades into blissful sleep.
2AM and you snap awake. The strange foreboding voice of...something echos in your head. It's the only thing you can hear, with your headache gone, and the quietness of the city is fast asleep. You're not sure why, but the voice makes you get up and grab your phone.
It's humming softly. The icon is glowing again. Before you do, you take a look around and suddenly notice...nothing's moving. Nothing but you. Almost as if time was frozen.
Is that even possible?
You can't back down now. Pressing the button reveals another terms of agreement, but it looks quite different. It's almost...gentle?
It may take a while or near instantly, but you eventually take your finger and trace your name over the signature area to continue. You've gotten this far in any case and this one isn't trying to kill you...at least you think. Yet as your hand moves to write your name, it gets replaced into other letters. Another name that tells you nothing. Somehow you feel like you should, but it's...it's...
It stays there for a few more seconds, leaving you with your thoughts before the contract disappears.
You're back into that chatroom again. Questions pop up in rapid succession before you're even permitted to type anything else. Once more, it seems that you find yourself typing things that aren't matching up with what you really want to say.
At least...you think...
What is your name?
Write it here.
Do you think the future is unavoidable?
Yes | No
Do you consider yourself a bad person?
Yes | No
Have you ever killed someone/something?
Yes | No | Yes, but (insert your reason here)
Did you enjoy it?
Yes | No | It's complicated (but yes) | It's complicated (but no) | It's just complicated
Now share one or two of your darkest secrets with the rest of the group! It's like team bonding, we promise!
Write it down here.
With questions like that and nothing around you moving, you feel like it's going to be a very, very, very long night.
[OOC: Starting from now on, the network posts will allow users to post their names, but they will show up as their CANON ones. The user's persona can be added at the end, or not show up at all. Additionally, the occupations will still be censored.
MEMORY REGAIN: Right before their answers are posted, they will also get a longer flash of someone calling them by this name. The memory HAS to be someone calling them by their name. It could be both a good or a bad memory, that is up to you.]
Lenka Utsugi ⚔ Eligor
He manages to get through the day without really thinking about it, busying himself with his delivery shifts and last-minute arrangements and checkups at the greenhouse, doublechecking tomorrow's schedule and booths, and generally watching out for anything that could go wrong with an event as big as a centennial. The gardening club isn't one of the largest clubs on campus, and they'll be dwarfed by the scale of the event itself, but he still wants to make sure things go as smoothly as possible.
His parents have succeeded in dodging any work emergencies or overtime this weekend, somehow, although Haruka is the one coming home a little late; they try to get the whole family at the dinner table a few times a week, and it's a cozy evening. It's just too bad it's hard to enjoy it through the migraine.
It affects him enough that his parents notice despite his best attempts at a poker face, and he's prodded off to bed early amid token protests. He does need to be at his best tomorrow. However... it's not just the headache, but the deja vu: when he snaps awake in the early morning with a knot in his throat and all his hairs stood on end he isn't even all that surprised.
Writing his name (Lenka Utsugi, not his name, but somehow his finger keeps moving), and then his answers down feels strangely familiar and strangely final. It's not a muscle memory, it's...
... the slow, bone-deep knowledge that death dogs his heels no matter what he chooses. Someday, he'll fall on the battlefield, just like all those around him and those who came before him -- but it won't be today. He's taking the first steps towards one of several bittersweet endings, but that doesn't matter for the moment, because they can finally create hope. Tangible, immense, safety that very few of them have ever known: Aegis.
Responsibility is heavy and strangely familiar, like the cape he sometimes wears on his shoulders. He doesn't think he knows how to lead, but at the very least he knows how to get there, and he can show that to his Unit -- to the people who are now family, in a strange and tentative way.
"Lenka, come have dinner at my house later," a boy in a bright and impractical outfit calls out to him. In a way, it's a last meal, but he knows an open door when he sees one. This one has always been there for him, warm and inviting.
He smiles gratefully back. They'll be okay. They're going to change the world.]
What is your name?
Lenka Utsugi
Do you think the future is unavoidable?
No.
Do you consider yourself a bad person?
No.
Have you ever killed someone/something?
Yes. Kill or be killed. I intend to eradicate Aragami from the surface of this Earth.
Did you enjoy it?
Yes.
Now share one or two of your darkest secrets with the rest of the group! It's like team bonding, we promise!
I'll die in about 3 years. I chose it.
[... For a long time afterwards, he just stares at his phone. He doesn't even bother sending any other messages, because he's really not sure what to make of what he typed, or what came before that. Maybe he's been working and studying too hard. Too much reading about the ephemeral life of flowers or something. At least that would explain all the death in his hallucinations. He's never been particularly morbid.
He should have known today was the calm before the storm.]
Nakigitsune ⚔ Camio
aragami sounds dangerous
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they don't sound real. or from earth. i guess that's a good thing.
[He doesn't recall ever killing anything, unless you count bugs. He does try to keep the use of pesticides to a minimum.]
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or your least favorite vegetable
[He's been getting jabs about his vegetable answer, he couldn't help it.]
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they could be aliens... from a video game or a tv show. [though the former better explains how he'd be killing them] do they really sound like a vegetable though.
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arugula
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[Why are you turning him into a fictional character, he's having enough identity crises without having to translate himself from 2D to 3D!!]
arugula is arugula...
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[Too serious to be about playing a video game, unless Lenka's just that serious of a gamer....not that he knows where any of these answers are coming from, himself. His own answers confuse him too, considering he doesn't remember ever killing anything.]
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[At least with the last one he could kind of relate and rationalize in a way that didn't require mental acrobatics. With this set, he's having trouble even connecting himself to the answers, which is probably why he's being relatively flippant about it.
He's not sure if he's ready for the rabbithole that's going to be taking them seriously.]
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Jaune Arc ⚔ Eligor
...
That was a dumb question...sorry.
At least we don't have to worry about typing number distinctions any more...?
And...I'm apparently not the only one talking about killing someone or something and enjoying it...
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[Like, the second and third questions are the only ones that he can even remotely relate to, the others might as well have come from a body double. Which is probably just the growing confusion talking.]
so you're 1001 and i guess i was 01. i think this would be worse if i had any idea what it was talking about. people can enjoy killing things in video games.
[... he's mostly trying to reassure a member of his team. Reflexively. It's not something he really has to think about.]
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[It was a lame joke...but he was trying to do his best to stay light-hearted, to not give in to his freaking out, and to remain calm. It was proving VERY difficult.]
Yeah, I was using 1001 before. I wonder what 10's name has changed to...I haven't seen him pop in yet...
Maybe. But I don't recognize the term you used from any video game I've ever played.
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[Not the gardening club; but the 'hiding in a janitor's closet from bullies' club probably counts. The memory makes him smile a little, on his end. Of course, he doesn't know it's John on the other side. Coincidences, eh?]
hopefully he'll be okay. the app seems to be a bit more serious this time. [just a little, a tiny bit] my [INFORMATION LOCKED] has a lot of video games. i wouldn't be surprised if it came from there.
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I noticed that...it still seems to be blocking certain things at least, so not everything has changed.
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[Coincidental irony aside, it is kind of soothing to see his fellow Eligors when stuff like this strikes. The sea of responses in the chat is too chaotic, but being able to touch base with those he's spoken with before helps make sense of it. Eligors are just the easiest to identify.]
... yeah, it makes sense that it would block that. it's not too important, i guess. but it's strange that it also made us sign a fancier contract after last week.
[Is it the fanciness that's strange, or just the contract itself on top of the non-TOS? It's hard to say.]
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[He remembers writing his name, like in a dream, the letters wavering... There's somehow no sense of disconnect when others call him Lenka, like he's been responding to this name for years. Even if he's never heard it in his life before today. Something deeper than the truth, right?]
do you remember entering this name? i feel like the app... gave it to us. so that's not it.
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Jun Kurosu ⚔ Shax
...You don't need to answer that, I guess there's a good chance you don't know.
[He's not okay. Lonán has been just...staring, worried, at his phone for too long. Tearing his thoughts away from what the hell he'd typed and seen isn't really possible, but he can try.]
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[Of course he's afraid (who wouldn't be?), but the hallucination this time warms him even if he can't recall who any of the people are or what they were doing. It leaves him uneasy, beneath that, but he's not thinking about that just now.]
Mitsuru Kirijo ⚔ Naberius
But it worries me, and I feel compelled to inquire, because of that.
[She had her own issues with choices, in her own answers but... one thing at a time.]
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[It is a little bit alarming, after all, to see that coming from yourself. Without having it come from yourself. He almost wants the headache back just so he would have something to distract himself with rather than pouring over this.]
you're the naberius i was talking to before? about the police.
[She probably never went to the authorities, given what they've learned about the app and its tendency to vanish and hide.]
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That unfortunately seems to be a common theme; having things happen to us that CAN'T be easily explained. I can only imagine what any police would have to say about something like this; disappearing apps, subliminal and involuntary entries... it's all hard enough for me to grasp, as is.
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[He doesn't really think it's worth the questions they've had to answer even if it's easier to talk to each other now. In a way, he's accepted his answers the same way that he's accepted he may not be rid of this app until the day he has enough money for a new phone -- it's something that occasionally interferes with daily life, but otherwise doesn't intersect.
That, and he has no idea what to do with his answers.]
the police would have to have the app themselves to understand. [not all of them are students, it seems] but even then...
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And... yes, I realize that sounds ridiculous. But given how late it is, my head isn't supplying any better answers. Confusion and lingering memories... or rather, "not memories" I suppose you'd call them, are in ample supply.
[Really, the only upshot to this (along with a VERY frail and flimsy silver lining of better usernames, but frankly she has to grasp her victories where ever she can find them) is that her headache is fading out.]
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[Which seems like a technical quibble in the grand scheme of things, but if someone has technology like that then they likely have much bigger problems on their hands than an app messing with their heads. Granted, considering the state of things, what could they do even then?]
yes. memories or hallucinations, they linger. and the timing is always bad.
[Not that he wants to start hallucinating in the middle of dinner or something, still.]