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Entry tags:
- !event,
- attack on titan: erwin smith,
- attack on titan: falco grice,
- attack on titan: levi ackerman,
- ddlc: monika,
- ddlc: sayori,
- fate/grand order: kiara sessyoin,
- gundam: angelo sauper,
- kipo: kipo oak,
- the gifted: lorna dane,
- undertale: papyrus,
- undertale: sans,
- world of warcraft: anduin wrynn,
- world of warcraft: wrathion
FEBRUARY 2021 EVENT: PART TWO
CHAPTER TWO, PART 2: THE LIVING ISLAND
Everything you never wanted to see.
YOU CAN’T DO A LITTLE BECAUSE YOU CAN’T DO ENOUGH | JUST A DREAM FROM YESTERDAY | DARKNESS HELD ITS BREATH | YOUR FRIENDS WHEN THINGS GET ROUGH | COME AND PLAY WITH ME
YOU CAN'T DO A LITTLE BECAUSE YOU CAN'T DO ENOUGH
Perhaps you’ve been on tenterhooks since you woke up to find that your friends, your family, your neighbors somehow went missing in the night. Perhaps you’ve been hitting the pavement and knocking on doors trying to find them. So far, your efforts have been for naught. There’s been neither hide nor hair of the missing, and every attempt to find them has met with a dead end.Until February 13.
In the afternoon, a strange, unsigned message goes live on the network. What is the meaning of “Living Island”? Does it have anything to do with what’s going on? There’s no elaboration… until midnight, when every neighbor’s television set turns on at full volume, hissing static and garbled noise as the dials turn and adjust. Several disjointed clips follow, ending on a mural that depicts the same words from the post.
“Living Island.”
The following morning, you’ll find that stranger things are beginning to happen. Some of you will be woken up to the blankets and sheets being yanked off your sleeping bodies by a powerful force. Others will find that when they step out of their morning shower, a message has been written in the steam on their medicine cabinet's mirror. Depending on how quickly you shower, you may only be able to see part of the message — but running the hot water longer and allowing the steam to fill the room will reveal it in its entirety:
“LIVING ISLAND.”
As time passes, you’ll find that the same message shows up every time the bathroom steams up, whether you’re in the shower or not. The same force that turned your TV on seems to insist that you pay attention to what it’s trying to show you, and its behavior escalates the longer you refuse. Characters will find that books go flying off of bookshelves, drawers are yanked out of dressers and desks, and breakable objects are smashed. Trying to prevent the spirit from destruction won’t go your way: If you try to catch or grab something that’s about to be thrown, you’ll find it ripped out of your hands anew and smashed anyways. If you tried to take all of your chairs down from where they’ve been stacked on top of the dining room table, you’ll find they’re back atop it the instant you look away.
All that’s to say nothing of the rumbling. It doesn’t start until the end of the first day, but from time to time you’ll feel the house beginning to shake on its foundations, a dull groan as it struggles to keep itself from collapsing in under its own weight. As time goes on, this will get louder and louder until the house seems to roar of its own accord, an unyielding shriek that can’t be stopped until the force causing it backs down.
Attempts to make contact with the spirit will never go well. It does not seem to be able or willing to communicate with you beyond its own tantrums, and characters who try may find that the attempt rapidly goes out of control. Candles flare up and burn wildly, Ouija boards are ripped into pieces and planchettes go flying, offerings of food are knocked over or thrown, and the lights flicker manically in turns. While you may be able to get some sleep at night if you’re lucky, the only thing that will reduce the poltergeist activity is to pay attention to the message it’s sending you and figure out what it means.
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JUST A DREAM FROM YESTERDAY
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Living Island. If ever there were a first step to stopping this madness, it’s figuring out what those words mean. But starting is always the hardest part, and with nothing else to go by than two seemingly unrelated, nonsensical words left behind by a force you can’t see much less communicate with, an already arduous task seems even more impossible. This is furthered by the reactions you get when you hit the street and start asking people if they know anything about Living Island. Most of them can only look back at you blankly, as if waiting for a punchline that never comes. Others actually take you seriously enough to consider the question, and to their credit, they do take their time racking their brains to remember where they’ve heard that name before, why it sounds so familiar. But the most you’ll get back from them is a sheepish shrug of the shoulders and a reply that it sounds like something from TV. It gets to the point where their answers blend together, each one more unremarkable than the last. Save for the one you get from the last person you haven’t asked. Living Island.
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Finding Santa Rosita Elementary is as easy as a fifteen minute drive from North Santa Rosita to Shadyside. Getting in is a different story. By day, the school is open for business and humming with activity, so you can’t very well go barging in and not expect to be reprimanded for disrupting class. This leaves you with three options: go before it opens, wait until school is over, or come in the middle of the night. Each have their own pros and cons, but all of them will get you the same result.After hours, the school is desolate and still. The wind, the occasional slap of a naked branch against a window, and the squeak of your footsteps on the shiny, clean floors are the only sounds you’ll hear as you navigate the empty hallways. Most of the classrooms are locked, and the ones that aren’t don’t have anything any more unique or worthwhile to them than the occasional lunchbox left behind by a student or the classroom frog croaking in its tank. In a way, this is a good thing — it doesn’t leave that many places to investigate and makes your path that much more linear as you finally, inevitably and silently make your way downstairs into the bowels of the school.
The long corridor that awaits you in the basement is, in theory, not very different from the hallways upstairs. There are lockers lining both sides, dented and darkened with age and dust. The tiles are cracked, dirt and pieces of stone kicked up from exposed areas of the floor. Seemingly, this appears to lead to a dead end. But look closely at the wall and you’ll see the impression of a door, painted to match the walls. The lock is flimsy — in fact, depending on when you find it, someone may have already broken it. All that’s left is to enter and descend down the tiny room’s only feature: a ladder under a rusty steel hatch door, stretching down into darkness.
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DARKNESS HELD ITS BREATH
CW: gore, surgery
Stepping into the old shelter, the first thing that hits you is the stale, uncomfortably moist air. This first room is cavernous and dark, and your footsteps and whispers echo in spite of how quiet you might try to be. There’s a faint smell in the air, a trace of copper and rubbing alcohol that might make your eyes water, making your mouth feel unpleasant as it hits your tongue. As you get your bearings and begin to pick your way through the dark, you’ll notice traces of another smell — something simultaneously spicy and cloyingly sweet, a scent that seems to assault your senses and leaves you with a headache pounding at the base of your skull. Thankfully, there isn’t enough to do more than make you nauseous, but the smells warn of what’s still yet to be found.As you continue through the labyrinthine warren, you’ll begin to find signs of human presence — some of the trashed rooms may be fitted with tables and supplies one might expect to find in a laboratory, meticulously labeled with typewritten strips. Several of these boxes appear to be old, covered in grimy layers of dust, while others are fresh and clean. All of them contain medical supplies. Eagle-eyed investigators might note that the untouched supplies tend to be the type contained in first-aid kits — acetaminophen, antibiotic ointment, simple adhesive bandages — while the ones that have been opened are for heavy duty surgical work — coiled IV lines and tubing, empty syringes, surgical gloves. One room in particular seems to have been fitted out for someone’s personal use, boasting a stripped-down bed, a chair and desk, and a comfortable recliner.
The trickle of water can be heard in the depths of the shelter, and as you emerge from one corridor that filters into a large chamber, it becomes immediately obvious where you are: This is an operating theater, with a table stationed beneath all manner of lights that can be adjusted and moved. A faucet drips monotonously in the back of the room, over a sink stained with blood with bits of grey, pulpy matter stuck in the drain. A bucket filled with blood and viscera ferments on the ground beside it. There are smears of blood, both dried and fresh, on the cloudy tiles, and a cabinet full of surgical instruments is slightly ajar. Looking at the instruments, characters will find that a couple of scalpels and a pair of tongs have dotted blotches where the metal was cleaned with water; whoever used these tools last didn’t dry them before putting them away. A small table near the operating area has a turntable sitting atop it, with a record already set under the needle: a single of Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel.” There are a few other records sitting in the cabinet beneath it, including Big Mama Thornton’s “Hound Dog,” Frank Sinatra’s “Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely,” and James Brown and the Famous Flames’ “Think!”
In a separate area of this room, an oversized desk is piled with books and empty food containers that look as though they’ve been repurposed for one reason or another. These books are chiefly on anatomy and the medical sciences, though there are a number of books on psychology and how the brain functions. Though some of these books are water-spotted and dog-eared, there aren’t any notes written in the margins, nor are there any papers to be found. You can turn this area as much as you'd like, but all you’ll find is a couple empty cigarette boxes and some broken and bitten pens; the trash can next to the desk, filled with soggy ashes, seems to suggest that any papers that might have given you a lead were destroyed before you got here.
But the lab, with all its instruments, isn’t what you came here to find. There’s still at least one more room to be found…
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YOUR FRIENDS WHEN THINGS GET ROUGH
CW: gore, surgical trauma, amputation, lobotomy, brainwashing and interrogation, mouth trauma, eye trauma, ear trauma, body horror
The missing are being held in small, sturdy cages in a single room connected to the back of the operating room, dim and dank. The cages are placed equidistant around the room, ensuring that even if you try, you can’t reach out and make contact with your neighbors. The missing will find that they wake at approximately the same time, curled up on the ground in uncomfortable positions. Unlike your rescuers, your nightmare began far earlier than when you first awoke in this room, sore and disoriented. In fact, you could argue it started the moment you went to sleep on February 9th, leaving empty beds and concerned family members behind.With no clocks or watches available to tell the time, you may not be able to tell how long you’ve been here. You sleep and wake, sometimes to a bowl of what looks like sticky rice lying in your cage that wasn’t there before. Sometimes, an overpowering smell will fill the room, faint at first; by the time you register it, it’s already overwhelmed you and sent you into a deep sleep. And when you wake, one cage will be empty. The inhabitant will be returned the next time you go to sleep and wake up, but not quite the same as they were before. They seem heavily drugged, discombobulated — or perhaps there's something visibly different about them. Whoever has taken you is doing a lot of work in their lab — and from the smell of things, meat work — and before long almost all of you will be sporting dressings of some type or other, fresh red seeping through the sterile cloth within a matter of hours.
Maybe you should try to keep each others’ spirits up. You don’t know how long you’ll be here, after all.
All of this goes on for a while — days, although it won’t be easy to count them given that there are no windows in the room. But nearly a week later… you wake to find that the front of your cage is unlocked. Unlatched. Open just an inch. Looking around the room, you’ll find that yours is not the only cage to have been opened — all of your cages have been unlocked.
Is it a mistake? Or are you really free?
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COME AND PLAY WITH ME
CW: blood and violence
Whether you’ve released yourself from your cage, or were discovered by a well-meaning friend before you could, or you’ve simply had your fill of exploring the shelter-turned-laboratory, the time has finally come to leave. Unfortunately, if things were that easy, you wouldn’t even be around by the time the scuttling sounds begin — somewhere down the hall, in the room behind you, fleeting and sly. It’s not an animal sound, a creature picking its way through the garbage and debris littered around the shelter. No, with the way it stops and starts every time you start and stop walking, this is a very deliberate, human sound. And if you don’t believe that, you’ll see soon enough when you see the naked, bone-white figure walk into view at the end of the hallway as casual as you please, their body smooth and sexless like a department store mannequin. They turn (your) their head and stare directly at you with (your) their wide, glassy eyes crinkled in thousand-yard delight. You hear your voice echoed back at you, airy and chirpy and so indescribably wrong it makes your blood run cold.
"Hi!"
Much like the Doppelgangers you encountered in January, these ones look and move like dolls, their limbs connected with ball-joints. However, whereas those ones were near perfect imitations of you and your friends, these ones look like they just fell off the assembly line. Their faces are unnaturally flat and plastic, like all the imperfections have been ironed out of them, but they are unmistakably yours. And when they open their mouths to squeal at you before running with all the unnatural speed not having a pair of lungs affords them, you’ll find that even their voices are perfect imitations — and not necessarily of your own either.
There’s no way to tell how many of these Doppelgangers are down here with you, hiding in the dark. They’re stealthy and sneaky, only coming out to attack when they’re sure you’re alone. Even if you’re not, they’re intelligent enough to come up with ways to separate you from your group, calling to you from another part of the shelter, mimicking a voice from someone they know you’ll listen to. Even if there’s no possible way they could be in Santa Rosita.
"Help me!"
"Is that you...? Oh thank God, I've been looking everywhere for you!"
"Please, don't leave me!"
Other times, they’ll take a more aggressive approach, allowing their limbs to pop out of place so they can sprawl on the ground, imitating a heap of discarded doll parts. Once you get close enough or turn your back on them, they’ll pull themselves together and attack, speeding towards you on fours like a crab.
There are two ways out of the shelter. The first one is the hardest: go back the way you came. With the low visibility, the number of Doppelgangers, and the confusing layout of the area, you’re more likely to get turned around and go in circles than you are to find your way back to the ladder — a location made even more difficult to discern since the hatch door has been lowered, blotting out all light from the room above.
The second way is the longest but also the easiest: head deeper into the shelter, past the operating room, through the rooms filled with broken furniture and ruined floors that are very easy to trip on — especially when you’re in the middle of running away. Eventually, you’ll come to another ladder, this one leading to an open hatch that deposits you into a dark passageway. The air up here is more fresh, but not necessarily pleasant smelling. There’s only one way to go — forward.
After what feels like an hour of walking, you’ll see a light at the end of the passage. Follow it and you’ll find yourself exiting a storm drain that drops you into the heart of Old Growth, just outside of West Santa Rosita.
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OOC INFO
Welcome to the second part of February’s event! You can use this entry to top-level for the event, but feel free to utilize the log and network communities as well.
There will be a top-level posted for NPC interaction tied to the second prompt below, wherein you can request to play out your character’s interaction with Harding or Rosemary. If you would like to have your character interact with either one of them, comment to the top-level with the name of the NPC you would like to thread with. You may only thread with one NPC. The mods will respond to NPC tags until February 28th.
Any questions can go in our FAQ thread below. Try to check and see if your question has already been answered on the plotting thread first here.
There will be a top-level posted for NPC interaction tied to the second prompt below, wherein you can request to play out your character’s interaction with Harding or Rosemary. If you would like to have your character interact with either one of them, comment to the top-level with the name of the NPC you would like to thread with. You may only thread with one NPC. The mods will respond to NPC tags until February 28th.
Any questions can go in our FAQ thread below. Try to check and see if your question has already been answered on the plotting thread first here.
Reunion; closed to Papyrus but Monika and/or Sayori can pop in if they want
He had a run-in with a Papyrus that wasn't, already. He doesn't know what he's going to do if this is another one with some other piece of him. Regardless, he turns the corner with a fatal sense of inevitability, because he was never going to make another choice once he saw that magic. Still, he guards his trembling soul by being quiet about the approach. His left arm, hastily-bandaged, is raised; magic being thrown around means a fight, regardless of what he sees.]
given the face situation, gonna see a lot of skulls and lost soul sprites
Well. Not as alone as he'd like. Just a moment ago he'd thought he heard Undyne's voice of all voices, calling for help in a way that was so unlike her. He'd hesitated, torn between investigating and not falling for another obvious trap, only for the mannequin to ambush him from above anyway.
The flailing limbs tearing at his set his ribcage and face to stabbing pains again, and shoving it off him only gets it so far before it's leaping at him again. There's nothing for it - even though his bone magic's limited, he has to pin it down. The first volley is an unintended warning shot, veering wide from lack of practice and the lingering soreness of his everything, and Papyrus has to dodge out of the way of its lunge himself.]
Nnnn, stop attacking already.
[Even as he complains he wants to grumble even more - his voice is off, and not just from being winded. The stiffness of his face is distorting something about how his lips shape sound. But the mannequin's almost helpful for a moment, tilting its head and chirping back in an even more distorted version of his voice, Have a nice day!
At least he doesn't sound like that, he thinks, and flings another set of three as quickly as he can. One of the bones crashes with a crunch into the mannequin's arm, plastic cracking as the bone goes through.]
surgery is just a roundabout way to use the rest of your icons
For now. Sans has seen too much in this lab already, and it's more than enough to get an idea as to why Papyrus would be hurt and that, though Sans can't yet see what's been done to Papyrus, would easily be enough to throw him off in a fight. If Sans makes any noise at all, he might distract Papyrus from that thing. Instead, he does the job of pinning the doppelganger down, flinging his arm down toward the ground hard enough his arm throbs faintly and the mannequin falls to the ground under the increased weight.
Sans can't keep that kind of literal pressure up for very long, of course, but it's the fastest way he can think of to make that thing stay in one place.]
the truth is out
What? You're blue now...?
[He recognizes what has happened if not how - it's the move he'd wanted to make, the move he'd tried to make. But even if it's a good time for it, if the price of regaining more of his magic was losing some of his body, in the form of ribs and maybe his face... He's not sure he would have made that trade.
Still, he shakes off the surprise enough to take advantage of the opening, letting the broken bone fragment and fade before summoning another set of eight and crashing them down on the prone mannequin with more violent intent than he's maybe ever used in a fight. The head, each limb, and two in the torso for good measure. The bones start crumpling and dissolving with the impact, but the doppelganger's thoroughly damaged.]
skeleton icon party
But now--] Papyrus? [Even with Papyrus so obviously right there, Sans's voice is tight with stress and some sense of disbelief. He'd seen something running around with Papyrus's face earlier, and he'd seen the operating room, and so he'd been sure-- But this has to be Papyrus. Papyrus isn't dead. He'd been so sure.]
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It's not his own magic returned after all, unfortunately... but blue magic like that is surely proof that the voice behind is real. Papyrus twists at the sound, eyes wide within the stiff mask, and his voice brightens.]
Sans! You're here? [His eyes dart about, checking Sans for signs of injury or changes, stained dressings or anything of the sort.] I didn't see you down here, were you...
[He trails off with a shake of his head, not even wanting to put the question into words. Was his brother not taken, or was he captive somewhere else...?]
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I'm a little late. [There's that self-deprecating, joking tone, but he really is sorry for it this time.] Some of us figured out where you guys were, from some of the people here. [This is ostensibly a rescue mission. Well, maybe it's going better than Sans had thought it was going until he turned that corner.]
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[A couple days in the dark hasn't been long enough for him to forget how expressive his brother's human face is, but Papyrus is freshly aware of it, seeing that unfamiliar expression. His hand drifts up toward his cheek, as if to wipe away the reason for staring... but there's nothing to be done with it. Not here and now, and without healing magic, maybe... not at all.
He shivers, and immediately takes a bolstering breath to cover the reaction, then shifts his stance to something more confident - the sort of pose he'd come to setting a cape fluttering behind in. The mask doesn't help with the look, though, still in the same bland expression.]
Well! A-as second-best timings go, this was, pretty good!! I needed some help, just now. [Even trying to be confident and reassuring, there's still hints of everything amiss. He's speaking a little more slowly than usual, enunciating more carefully, to make up for the way the mask presses against damaged muscles.]
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It was nothin' you couldn't handle. I just sped things up a little. [Sans offers this tentative sort of almost normal conversation, even though he doesn't think it's going to last long down here. He stops staring at Papyrus's face in favor of trying to get a better look at the rest of him, to see if he can pick out anything else that they did to him.]
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Nyheh heh... heh. Yes, of course I did. Any moment then. [There's a windedness to his forced laugh, and his heart isn't quite into the self-aggrandizing praise. It feels like he's been running around for hours, and he's tired and running low on the little stockpile of bones he's managed to build over the days.
He doesn't dare be as sincere in his relief at seeing Sans as he feels, because if he starts crying again it'll make escape that much harder. And he doesn't even dare hug his brother to make this feel real, because his sides already hurt. But he can let on to his relief a little:]
But, I appreciate it anyway. Especially if, um... you have a way out. You have a way out, right?
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There's probably more'n one way out, but I could get us back the way I came. Through the operating theater, then the part that's mostly not used. [Sans is sure Papyrus would just follow him, if he'd said they were going back that way without specifying the path, but he isn't taking Papyrus into that operating theater without Papyrus being fully aware of it. Does Papyrus remember being there? Did they at least give him anesthetic? Sans doesn't want to think about this.]
Dunno how many of those weirdos are runnin' around. We could try goin' further in, too.
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Further in sounds like, exactly the direction I don't want to go. [He's a little more vehemently earnest in that than anything else he's said this reunion, more than he meant to be. But his face doesn't twist in a grimace, his nostrils don't flare - it's mostly only in a flinch around his eyes and shoulders than give it away.]
Going back sounds fine. Even if... there's a mysterious opera theater, in a bomb shelter...? [He's not clear why there'd be a theater devoted to opera specifically, instead of just some kind of entertainment room for people to distract themselves from the bomb threat, but then he's not used to life in a world where shelters from bombs are needed. Coincidentally, he hazards a guess why Sans bothered to mention it:] I wonder if that's where the music was coming from...
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[If Papyrus remembers the music, does that mean he was awake, or did he just hear it from where he'd been kept? He couldn't have been wandering around this entire time, right?]
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Well! I can handle that, too. I barely remember any of it! [Just a moment, here or there, notable for being moments of bright lights in what was otherwise a very dim and damp few days.] And, I definitely wasn't in any audience. [Purely hypothetical audience, he hopes. The idea of there being one is brand new and unwanted.]
B-Better the path, we know. Than getting lost. [Even more than he already has been.]
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Alright. We'll walk back. [Maybe they'll even make it back before dinner. Have they been giving Papyrus food?] You want a snack? I brought granola bars. [Those are somewhat healthy. He's already fussing with the backpack he borrowed from Sayori. All the bows aren't exactly his style.]
give him a minute to realize
Oh my god, yes please. [He steps closer, voice going eager and a little wry, as he adds:] All we've had is rice, and water. [Which likely hasn't helped his stamina, to have little opportunity for exercise and very minimalist sustenance.]
true tragedy approaches
:pensive skele:
For now, Papyrus gladly accepts the offered granola bar and raises it halfway to his mouth - then hesitates, frozen midway. He'd almost forgotten. The last time he'd had rice to eat was after, and he'd had to eat it slowly, pushing the small bits of rice through his mask while leaning back, to let gravity drop them into his mouth... because the gap's too narrow for his fingertips.
He draws the granola bar up, as if to examine its ingredients skeptically, but the mask doesn't show his attempt to furrow his brows with feigned judgement. Just the moment of trying to subtly measure the bar with his finger tip, and swallowing when he realizes. Maybe if he squeezes it in his hand, flattens it...]
I-I... [He shakes his head, glancing every which way but his brother's face.] I'll eat on the go. No sense standing around here, watching me eat!! You should just, lead the way, Sans.
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But he heard what Papyrus said, and he can give his brother the mercy of Sans not staring at him even more than he has been, so he turns to look back down the hallway.] Yeah, we should get moving. It's kind of a long walk.
[What does he have at home Papyrus could eat? Soup, if he can fit a spoon in there. Oatmeal should work. Pasta, probably, which feels ironic in some vague way.]
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It must have been. You said, you came in by the school...? We haven't, um. seen any children running around. [Though maybe that doctor training would make a little more sense, if this complex is connected through a school. He doesn't want to think about that. Or his face. Or his ribs. Or, he concludes as he starts squeezing the granola bar in his hand, any of the things they can't change this moment.
But he can't focus very well on lighter things, while keeping braced for more doppelgangers. So the next best thing, is giving Sans some info on the generals of what happened.] Or anybody, really... except the mannequins, once we got out.
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[Spooky poltergeists that Sans, honestly, had only been marginally aware of outside of the message they were trying to deliver. He'd been--distracted, since Papyrus got kidnapped.]
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Human ghosts, like dead souls? Rattling chains and saying boo? [Maybe cartoons aren't quite the place to start, but it's easy to bring to mind. He's disbelieving of it, and a little indignant.] Human zombies, human ghosts... Why are all the 'monsters' here, just humans who've gone off somehow.
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[...] Well, I guess I can't prove they're human ghosts. I haven't seen 'em. They just like opening doors and throwin' stuff around and writing "living island" on the mirrors in steam.
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'Living island'...? What does that even mean. [It's somewhat rhetorical, somewhat fishing for continued chatter, as he continues slowly musing aloud.] An island that fits in a basement... That's a big basement, to have a lake.
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