COUNTDOWN: FACES OF FUTURE & PAST 2.0

[cordibus]

It's been 7 days since the first network post, and predictably for those who where here the first time, a second one makes it's appearance a week afterwards.

Some have tried to best the program, others have already tried to figure out more about it, but nothing has been working. Others might have warned the Unawakened, but ow they're finding out for themselves. Bringing the phone 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. Showing 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. Also possibly an asshole, from the way Luci has been taunting and abusing his posting privileges.

Saturday night rolls around and still nothing from the application. The news this Saturday is nothing special. The festival of the longest day went off without a hitch, although the population had trouble getting into nightly shelters due to too much partying. A higher amount of robberies during daylight hours than last year, but nothing to raise cause for alarm. The peace continues at night.

The warning bells of the nightly curfew ring across the city as a few people finish locking their doors for the night. Civilians are settling in for a late supper and preparing for work tomorrow.

Not you, however. The Unawakened have been victim to a damn headache building for the past hour and by now their ears are ringing. Food doesn't look appetizing and they feel an urge to go to bed early. Didn't the other people in the channel warn them it might happen?

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.

...I am thou...thou art I...your chains will soon break away....
2AM and you snap awake. The strange foreboding voice of...something echos in your head. It's the only thing you can hear now that your headache is gone andthe 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 it may happen in an instant, 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 it isn't. Yet as your hand moves to write your name, it gets replaced with other letters. Another name that tells you nothing. Somehow you feel like you should know it, 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! Two makes it more fun!
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: The network posts will now 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.

FOR THE AWAKENED: Awakened will be able to answer the questions again if they want. They'll also find themselves in their fancy new outfits and will able to summon their weapons during this time. Sweet indeed. ]

Comments

Taro Watanabe ☸ Dantalion

[hachitaro]

[It's dark, and the van is moving. All of their furniture is packed up - there's not much, but the boxes of books, the clothes, the videos... the little comforts of modern life that they've both grown to enjoy. He's been resting in the back, but scrambles up to sit between the two front seats, looking up at the young woman who's driving.]

['It'd be easier if you drove.' "Yeah, but I can't stay in that form all the time." 'I know. Maybe switch off at the next stop?' "Sure. Just give me a head's up." He stretches, and turns to head back into the mess of boxes.]

['Hey. Taro?' He looks up again, and she's smiling a little, despite not looking down at him. "Huh?" 'The next place will be better.' "Yeah. We'll be fine. I'm gonna get some more sleep, okay?" 'Yeah.']

[He smiles, and jumps back down to curl up on a pillow again.]

What is your name?
Taro Watanabe

Do you think the future is unavoidable?
No

Do you consider yourself a bad person?
Yes

Have you ever killed someone/something?
No

Did you enjoy it?
It's just complicated

Now share one or two of your darkest secrets with the rest of the group! Two makes it more fun!
I'm dead.
I've eaten the soul of a human child.




... EXCUSE ME WHAT THE FUCK

Nakigitsune ⚔ Camio

[foxhands]

did it taste good

Taro Watanabe ☸ Dantalion

[hachitaro]

HOW IS THAT THE FIRST THING YOU ASK

Kiriya Kujo ⚔ Baalberith

[truthkills]

hey good to see another dead person roped into this crazy ride

but you should probably rethink your diet I'm just saying that can't be good for your cholesterol

Taro Watanabe ☸ Dantalion

[hachitaro]

i am neither dead nor have i eaten someones soul what the fuck

the fuck is this why is this happening what was that thing i saw what the fuck

Chikusa Kakimoto ☸ Astaroth

[kokuyoyo]

Oh that's interesting.

Taro Watanabe ☸ Dantalion

[hachitaro]

INTERESTING IS NOT THE WORD I WOULD USE
FUCKED UP IS A WORD I WOUDL USE

WHO THE FUCK THINKS THIS IS EVEN FUNNY

[kokuyoyo]

It's not about what's funny.

[hachitaro]

then what the fuck is this

who the fuck wants to make me look like some kind of monster

[kokuyoyo]

What did you see?

[hachitaro]

i dunno a moving van and some girl

i mean what the fuck showed up in text

[kokuyoyo]

You can talk about it in detail if you want. The app won't block that.

What about last time?

[Don't mind him, just casually ignoring Taro's questions about the questions.]

[hachitaro]

i dunno she called me taro? said something about switching drivers at the next stop there was a lot of random shit in there

and last time uhhhh it looked like some kind of theft? there was a gunshot and i climbed up the fucking wall and then out the window and i glided or something

glid?

what the fuck is the past tense of glide whatever

Shirou Fubuki ⚔ Marchosias

[touketsu]

[As he arrives back at Hakuren, Araya informs him that they have guests. Excitedly, she beckons him into a room not far from the front entrance. He follows, fingers adjusting to the temperature inside the building, the tips gently tingling as they warm up from having been too cold, but he feels a different sort of warmth when he finally glimpses the people who have been waiting for him. "Oh? It's you guys!"

A short boy with wide, honest eyes, wearing a bandanna and standing at the front of the small crowd is just as surprised as him. "You're from earlier! Fubuki Shirou...was you?" They'd given him a ride on their bus earlier that day without ever having asked his name, and he'd sat in front of this boy. It's a little funny that their paths should cross again so soon, but not everyone is so amused.

Next to him, someone raises their voice in objection. "You're the bear-killer?!" This boy is much taller, with fierce eyes, a hard-set jaw, and so much bravado that Shirou is completely unapologetic when he replies...

"Oh, are you disappointed after seeing the real thing?"]


What is your name?
Shirou Fubuki

Do you think the future is unavoidable?
No

Do you consider yourself a bad person?
No

Have you ever killed someone/something?
Yes, but only in self-defense or to protect my friends.

Did you enjoy it?
No

Now share one or two of your darkest secrets with the rest of the group! Two makes it more fun!
I'm afraid of how far I'll go to be perfect.
It hurts more than I'll admit that they came looking for 'him' and don't really need me.


Shirou Fubuki ⚔ Marchosias: Bear-killer? The real thing?
Shirou Fubuki ⚔ Marchosias: ...
Shirou Fubuki ⚔ Marchosias: lol

[That's it. That's all that he has to say. Because clearly if he laughs it off he won't be uncomfortable anymore.



Yeah...that'll totally work.]

Yuuto Kidou ☸ Eligor

[kouteipenguin]

[Shirou Fubuki. He stares at this for a long time. Fubuki is here? For a moment he tries to say it can't be the same one, but he immediately knows the truth. With those secrets, it can be no one else. With that moniker, it has to be. That is Fubuki Shirou, from home.

And with that demon... it can be no one other than 9, can it? He's sure of it. The mysterious new wolf, revealed...

While Kidou's glad to see a familiar name, there's also an icy thread of anxiousness winding around that feeling, twisting it into something he doesn't have a name for. How could Fubuki have been here without him noticing? Was anyone else here, too, and he's somehow missed them?? It's a good thing that no one's here to see his expression now. That he has his goggles, too; a way to hide his true self just that extra bit more from the world's eyes. Because honestly, Kidou has no idea how to feel about this right now.

So, like Fubuki, he shrugs off having any emotional attachment or knowledge about this at all.

It's simplest for now.]

Bear killer, eh? That's quite the title.

Yuuto Kidou ☸ Eligor

[kouteipenguin]

[With the goggles back, it feels just that bit easier to not react to this the way he wants to. How can someone have not killed someone and yet eaten a soul? While Kidou feels he ought to point out that inconsistency, he's not sure that even he wants to know what that's about. He has to, probably, but he just can't ask.

Not that he could get an answer yet.

Maybe, some dark part of him says, he never will get an answer. Not everyone made it before. But he quells that thought harshly.]

I would never have imagined we'd get answers like this.

[Alright, so it's a useless comment. He needs something to contribute. But after his brain short-circuited on reading that, it's the best he can do on short notice.]

Taro Watanabe ☸ Dantalion

[hachitaro]

im glad to have provided your entertainment tonight

wait no

for once

im not

Shirou Fubuki ⚔ Marchosias

[touketsu]

It's silly, right? It sounds like a wrestling name or something from a low budget movie.

[Except that, coupled with those answers, that flash of memory feels too vivid and real to completely ignore. It's not right. It can't be. That name, that life, none of it is his.

His name is Kouyuki Jin.

...a name that is similar in theme to Shirou Fubuki, and a name with a meaning that makes him double-take at this memory, recoiling so hard away from his chat room and this app and everything associated with it that he quite literally throws his phone across his bedroom.

It doesn't break, hitting a carpeted floor where it lies face up, interface glowing brightly in the still blackness, the only other lights filtering in from the street outside his window.

And that's how it stays and he'll stay for a while. One curled up with his sheets dragged over his knees and up to his chin, desperate to be ignored. The other taunting from its resting place, occasionally flickering in the dark as if to say I'm not done with you...]

Augustine Sycamore ⚔ Foras

[megacurious]

"Hello..."

[A young boy wearing a red cap and black sunglasses approaching a man in the lab coat, who was frowning for some reason.]

'P-Professor Sycamore...'

[The boy also frowned upon seeing the professor's face.]

"I have to apologize to you about Lysandre... I'm very sorry for the trouble he caused..."

"And I'd also like to thank you! I'm sincerely grateful for what you did for all of the Pokémon and people of this world. And by stopping Team Flare, you also saved Lysandre. I always knew that he desired a beautiful world..."

[The man then looks at the town they were in as he stared at the buildings around them.]

"And maybe someday the population of people and Pokémon will actually increase to where resources become very scarce. If someone acts out of greed in such a world, surely some will go without. If all living things keep acting that way, there will be nothing left at all in the end. Why, there won't even be anything left to steal, will there?"

[But as he said this, he then frowned again upon thinking about the said person.]

"But what I really wanted was for him to put his ego aside and lead everything to greater heights. I never had this discussion with him, though. So I'm partially responsible for this."

[If only he could talk to him once more, then maybe everything would be different.]

What is your name?
Augustine Sycamore

Do you think the future is unavoidable?
No

Do you consider yourself a bad person?
No

Have you ever killed someone/something?
No

Did you enjoy it?
No

Now share one or two of your darkest secrets with the rest of the group! Two makes it more fun!
I was partly responsible for Lysandre's descent into darkness because I'm not confident that my words will let him put his ego aside.
And despite I also want to stop his plans, I ended up on the sidelines and let my aides and Calem and his friends stop him instead.

['Sycamore'? If it wasn't mistaken, he guesses that that's the same name that he heard in his strange memory. Yet who was that young boy in his latest one?]

I don't know why, but I'm guessing my late night headache, these questions, and the name I never heard before is part of the countdown, correct?

Jaune Arc ⚔ Eligor

[sociallyarcward]

Bear-killer? That's pretty hard to do.

[Ursa weren't exactly bears...they were worse. He wonders who this person is that's killed bears though. He can't help but admire them a little though...]

Jaune Arc ⚔ Eligor

[sociallyarcward]

Well that's...new.

[kokuyoyo]

Look at how the app identifies you now.

Jaune Arc ⚔ Eligor

[sociallyarcward]

So it really is following some of the same patterns as last time...I'm not sure if that's good or not.

Well...there are SOME new things. Did anyone else get an upgrade just now?


[He's referring, of course, to the fact that he's sitting on his bed wearing armor. He really hopes that, like last time, his mother will be frozen so he doesn't have to explain all of this. He isn't sure how to phrase it on the app though so he figures those that it HAS happened to will know what he's talking about.]

Chikusa Kakimoto ☸ Astaroth

[kokuyoyo]

Sounds interesting.

Chikusa Kakimoto ☸ Astaroth

[kokuyoyo]

That's right.