7 DAYS REMAIN

[cordibus]

Seven days remain. As the last day of the festival draws to a close, the only thing of interest to note for the week is how great everything has gone. Not a single attack has been reported...

But things have already been set alight inside the hearts of those chosen few who have received the app on their phones. For some, it's just the first bite of the apple. For others, it's been like shaking down an entire tree. Things are beginning to look...strange. Surely there are more burning questions on their minds by now.

The warning bells of the Nightly Curfew ring across the city. There's a faint hum from the phone this time before the icon appears. This time it displays a time: 1:00AM

The rest of the night is normal. Perhaps you've cuddled up with family, or you've gone to bed early to wait, but sure enough, time tick by right until 1 in the morning when....

You're back into that application again. A single question before you're even permitted to type anything else. And while it seems to be overwritten by something inside of you, it feels a lot more natural than before. Which is, truthfully...troubling.

WELCOME TO THE FINAL QUIZ!
Answer from the heart, the part of you that has been denied for far too long.

Is your life here a lie?
Yes | Definitely | Sure | I've had my doubts before, but yes | Hell Yes | There is no other conclusion | I wish I could deny it and live here peacefully but it's true.

Thank you...that will be all. Let us see what your heart blooms into...

Once you are done, you are tossed once more into the main chatroom. Now your user names are the names that you wrote down in the last survey, but with all those questions it's....hard not to think of them as your own. Maybe you'll be cursing at this device, but it looks like you're already deep down the rabbit hole by now.

[OOC: This is the final network post before Awakening. Users will now be able to speak of who they are in their AU life without the information being blocked by the application.

Additionally, while they will not get any new on their own, speaking with Luci might grant the Awakened more memories...be careful that they don't get more than they bargained for.]

Comments

[probablynoteren]

wouldn't you get the answer by asking anyway?

[Possibly he's a bit too straightforward about this.]

i just think it would help if it's actually a hallucination. or a medical thing.

[probablynoteren]

school age...?

[So anywhere from elementary to college. He keeps seeing Green Valley students...]

Yuuto Kidou ☸ Eligor

[kouteipenguin]

['What are you' lies unfinished on the screen. Michi's fingers stop, hovering over the letters, as something else strikes him.


Firmly holding a seared magazine in one hand, he rolls a soccer ball under his foot experimentally. He's never tried this before. There's no one here to teach him; even if his magazine had instructions, he can't read most of the kanji yet. But there's a warmth filling a hole in his heart at the soft feel of the ball beneath his shoe, and when he kicks it with his foot to chase after, he can almost see his father running just ahead of him. He could almost imagine the yard he's running in was in front of his own house, and not the small park meant for so many more kids than just him. He could almost pretend that things were still okay.

Almost. Just enough that as he kicks the ball around the yard, despite the lingering ache in his chest, his smile is genuine.


Michi lets the phone slide more and more out of his hand, only realizing belatedly when he has to quickly grip it to keep it from slipping free. His teeth grit, staring down at those words, and while he's got so many questions he can't find the words to ask them. That wasn't like the other hallucinations, when he could instantly feel something was off by his vision being narrowed. That time, his vision was completely normal. It felt so real, like a memory he'd half forgotten, but that's patently impossible.

It's going to be a long while before he says anything again, trying to shove down that weird feeling of inexplicable deep pain and certainty that something happened. His dad is alive. He lives in a house. This is all a bunch of lies.

Five or six minutes pass. Michi erases a few words.]

What did you do

[probablynoteren]

no. you don't seem like the type.

[Normally, he isn't one to need lectures to go to bed at a reasonable time and wake up way too early on Sunday mornings. But nothing about the past few weeks has been normal, thanks.]

but you've told me some useful things. the app is here to protect us, you said, from the murders. does it protect us from them, too?

[And does it follow that the two are related? If he's going to lose sleep over it, he'll keep digging.]

[probablynoteren]

you think so?

[Only semi-serious. Most people who only know either of them in passing would have pegged them as polar opposites. But their similarities show where it counts, don't they?]

i wouldn't trust luci. but it's somewhere to start. and i think we need to find out what the visions mean, beyond what the app tells us.

[It really doesn't sit well with him to only have the app for reference, with how crazy the whole thing is.]

[connivingbird]

Hooray for inhuman something? Though I'm not sure what to call a motorcycle person thing.

[probablynoteren]

if there are this many people whose lives are supposed to be lies... we're all real.

[It's a little hard to imagine this in the vein of those science-fiction films where everything turned out to be holograms, or everyone was shut up in a made-up town, or whatever. He quite deliberately doesn't think about what that means for those who aren't here with them. It doesn't matter right now.

It is a little awkward, but it's also a bit of a welcome distraction from everything to try to reorient this particular interaction. It helps that Lonán is someone Haruka would consider under his protection. That's the way it works, right?]

i feel like i should check the ventilation in the greenhouse.

[It's unlikely at this point that they've all been inhaling something. But still.]

[truthkills]

have you ever heard of a rhetorical question

and we'd need to measure electrical activity in the brain too

but would need someone who wasn't affected to compare

and basically let me put out some feelers and see if anyone's looking to pawn an MRI machine or something

[truthkills]

awesome

that's what i'm calling a motorcycle person

✪ Luci

[lightmischief]

Luci: Perhaps puppet amusement?

Luci: Oh I'll keep mocking you. That's a promise. The countdown is just a beginning,
after all.

✪ Luci

[lightmischief]

Luci: No

Luci: At least, not yet.

✪ Luci

[lightmischief]

Luci: Hah hah I love the countdown. It makes the mind panic just so nicely...

[lightmischief]

Luci: Well then, allow me...

[A vision will fill him, of a time when he was very sure of himself. A moment of victory.]

✪ Luci

[lightmischief]

Luci: I'm telling the truth, kid.

Luci: I just opened a valve, but everything he saw was his own.

✪ Luci

[lightmischief]

Luci: I simply opened a part of your mind.

Luci: You did the rest.

Makoto Fukami ⚔ Marchosias

[transient_specter]

Stay away from my brother. Last chance.

[foxhands]

what else
mind control
we're trapped in a horror movie
government conspiracy?

[onlythankyou]

Mostly counts.

See, that's more like what I was expecting. A riddle or some crap.

Not at all, then. Next question: are we actually getting answers in a week or is it just going to be more bullshit?

Raidou Kuzunoha XIV ⚔ Paimon

[capital_asset]

"Luci" wouldn't be a nickname, would it?

[Which he supposes could be another accidentally appropriate word, given just who "Nick" is an epithet for...]

I'd ask you what your aim is, but I'm guessing we're a week too early for that.

[lightmischief]

Luci: If you want answers, kid, I can show you something.

Luci: But you did ask for it.

[A traumatic memory will fill Jun's mind. Of a past that he might not know or remember, but feels all-too-real.]

Jaune Arc ⚔ Eligor

[sociallyarcward]

Uh...thanks?

...

Am I supposed to report back to you or something...?

[onlythankyou]

Why76yhn

[That's all that comes out. Two letters and a finger spasm as

--the man standing before him is his father and is not his father at the same time, the father who raised him but who was not the father who cared for him, and he tells him what his heart already knows: everything that happened here, all the city's pain and grief, it's all his fault, he can't even begin to deny it - try as he might, and the man goes on about his hatred for his father and the mother who never loved him, and the long-dead father he'd rejected appears, suspended in space, on a cross; he speaks of how he'd wanted his son's generation to live free of pain and how foolish that dream had been, and the not-father speaks again and he can see into that ruin he left behind, the dying, eternally young and beautiful queen, asking him to be happy, and then she appears there, too, crucified beside his real father - and the not-father again tells him things his heart knows but his mind refuses to believe: that she is his mother, that she'd died to save him, that she knew who he'd been; and the not-father laughs and explains how thoroughly he'd destroyed his own family, and it's all true - but it's not over, even though he's on his knees it isn't over, the crosses are set ablaze and he watches his parents die again, watches them burn alive, and he knows it's his fault, it's all his fault, everything that's happened is his fault--

Lonán feels the scream rip from his throat more than he hears it. He can't move too much, not with Rommy sitting on him, but what can move does so, and wildly. Fingers claw at his head, wracked by blinding headache and memories that don't feel like they aren't his anymore both. He can't think, no longer knows where he is. In this moment, all is torment.]

[probablynoteren]

but it will? so that's part of its purpose.

[probablynoteren]

it's hard to get rhetorical in text.

[Maybe a bit petulant, definitely complaining. He's not that great at reading tone in the first place, why would you do this to him.]

but thanks. let us know, if you find anything.

[He's not expecting too much, but Baalberith is affected by this, same as them, no matter how he acts. There's a non-zero chance that he'd get off his ass to do something about it.]

[sociallyarcward]

Yeah...but how do we go about that? We don't know what the visions mean and I don't think any of us are experiencing similar visions.