reverielogs | ( 004 » ENSEMBLE ) decay

( 004 » ENSEMBLE ) decay

» WHO? EVERYONE
» WHEN? August 1 - 31
» WHERE? the entire station
» WHAT? Characters begin suffering mysterious and varied symptoms. (More info can be found HERE.)
» WARNINGS? illness, body transformation, loss of limb, general body horror, blood, gore

0 0 1 » STAGE 1

Characters start suffering from a light fever. They’ll feel tired and achy, more inclined to bundle up in a warm sweater (if they have one) and drink tea or have chicken soup in bed than anything else. Unfortunately, the food fabricators still don’t provide the best comfort food.

Admittedly: some people are more affected than others. Some don’t seem to be affected at all.

0 0 2 » STAGE 2

For some characters, the fever will go away and they will feel fine for a brief period. It was probably just a cold, right? And then new symptoms set in: something dark and black spreads from their heart toward their extremities through their veins, making them stand out strongly. It hurts a little, or maybe a lot and no one knows what causes this or what it is that is spreading so darkly through their veins.

For some other characters, the fever will also go away and they will feel fine for a brief period before different symptoms set in: something hard starts spreading beneath their skin, making movements just a little more difficult for affected areas. The pain of this ranges from light discomfort to severe.

For yet other characters, the fever grows worse. They experience hallucinations of their extremities turning to dust, just the way it looks when someone arrives on or disappears from the station. They lose sensation in their extremities during those hallucinatory episodes, so if they reach out to touch something with a hand they think has disappeared, they’ll feel nothing. If they try to walk and then hallucinate their legs disappearing, they’ll stumble and fall to the floor.

0 0 3 » STAGE 3

For some characters, the blackness spreads and brings additional symptoms and worsening conditions with it: their skin starts to rot and fall off, toe or fingernails or entire toes or fingers might rot and fall off, wounds open that ooze a black and foul smelling, thick fluid dripping without looking to stop even if pressure is applied. It’s painful, and the open, infected looking wounds will not close, however much characters try to treat them.

Slowly, these characters’ bodies seem to rot and decay while they still live. For non-organic characters, it’s as if their wires are melting down, metals merging together and seeping through components.

For other characters, the hardness spreads and brings additional symptoms and worsening conditions with it: some of their joints may no longer move at all, their skin turning hard and impenetrable. Characters will also their sensory perception of affected limbs/surfaces, becoming unable to notice when someone touches them on an affected area. They may also lose any other sense if the infection spreads to their eyes, their ears, their mouths. Moving is slow, difficult, painful, until it becomes practically impossible. The noises their joints make seem robotic.

Slowly, these characters seem to turn into something else. Something hard and metallic, something unfeeling and impenetrable. Something inhuman?

For those who were still suffering from the fever, it seems like there is finally some good news: the fever lets up - but then affected characters find first their skin and increasingly the entirety of their body turning translucent and insubstantial. It will start with their skin and spread to the tissue beneath. One moment, they are able to see their own organs working, their heart pumping as their ribcage turns see-through… and a while later, well. Have you ever watched someone’s heart disappear? Now’s your chance.

It might reappear for a moment, as though flickering in and out of existence. It might disappear entirely. Slowly, these characters seem to fade from existence.

0 0 4 » STAGE 4

The tables turn as characters’ bodies gain ground in the fight to return back to normal, but some changes disappear sooner than others and some might even seem to be permanent.

0 0 5 » INVESTIGATION

What is wrong with you? What is wrong with everyone? What caused it and how can these symptoms be treated, halted, reversed?

Is there a cure or is it possible to at least understand what’s going on?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[He has to take a second to work backgrounds and realize that she's talking about the metaphor thing and being a decent enough human being to be a good sibling, since the context of "You probably would" definitely doesn't connect to maybe him getting anything about philosophy. But, he's kind of interested in hearing it out anyway. Even if it might go over his head.]

River.... river...

[Something's pinging him, and he rubs his chin for a second before remember something he heard in an anime once.]

Is this the thing about how you can't step in the same river twice? 'Cause the river is never the same once you go into it again, right?

[A swing and...

Probably a miss?]

[She's thanking every nonexistent benevolent force on this station that he didn't chase the sibling thing tbqh. A great success of caginess.]

That's not the one, but I like that one too. It's...first you imagine a river. Rivers are made up of flowing water, right? But then you take a cup and scoop out some water. It's the same water, but you wouldn't say you have the river in a cup. And when you pour it back out, your cup of water is just part of the river again. But the whole time, it's all the same water.

[Well... yeah, that makes a lot of sense.]

So... my finger is kinda like the water in the cup, so it's not really... uh... me? Until it's back on my body and then it's actually a part of me. Man... now I'm startin' to feel sentimental here.

[He looks down at his pinky. Poor little guy. He should go back to his river.]

That's one way to take it.

[....Should she keep pushing this

God. Maybe. Maybe he'll find it comforting. She can't...like, preach her way of thinking to him, that won't magically fix anything, but...it can just be sharing. No preaching, no advice, just throwing out a line, and even if this isn't really his thing he always really considers what she says, in his own way, doesn't he?]

Another way is to think about how the way things are and the way we see them aren't actually one and the same. The ideas of the river and the cup are real, but not in the same way that each individual molecule of water that went into them are real.

["Therefore the self doesn't actually, materially exist" is, in Erika's mind, technically correct but also very fucking inappropriate right now.]

So you can't determine, scientifically, what divides the river and the cup, because the distinction isn't scientific. It's something you as a person get to make, if it matters to you that there is a distinction. Or if it doesn't matter to you. You can't make the water stop being water, but you can decide what makes something part of the river.

[He tilts his head when she continues on, trying to describe to him the conundrum and the application of the philosophy to what's going on right now. He's somewhat thick headed, that much is definitely true, but he's trying to get it, and when he has the determination to do something, he's going to eventually get it done.

"You can decide what makes something part of the river."

That's... true. It starts piecing itself together as Ryuji's body continues to threaten to fall apart. The relevance to everything here is his own personal experiences... in entire quasi-realities where you could imagine a toy gun being a real gun, and since you've decided it to be that way, it is.

And suddenly, this makes a lot more sense.]

The part that makes me, me is something I get to decide, then? I dunno too much about this crap, and honestly, I'm probably the worst person that you can probably talk to about this sorta stuff, but... I guess. My feelings, my thoughts... those are my river, and even if I'm like.

[Hoo, boy.]

Even if I'm dyin'... Yeah, man. This got depressing.

Especially if you're...sick. Or dying.

[Is this right?

She folds her hands in her lap and watches the ground.]

Everyone's made of so many different things. You can pull out cup after cup, try to describe yourself by things you've done, or who you hang around, or where you come from, or things you feel, and you won't - you can't ever perfectly define it. So when you're looking at - when things change and you don't know what's coming - you get to make some choices about what's important to you and what's not. What you want to keep or change or throw away. Something goes. Memories are lossy...it's like losing socks and coins when you move house. But if you decide on a few things that make you you, and you hold onto them, everything else can go ahead and change. And then, even if you look different, and feel different, you're still yourself.

[Other things come into focus here, too, and maybe... maybe he's understanding Erika a little bit better. He can't be sure, either way, but he feels it in a weird way.

He told Haru about something he heard once, he can't remember if it was a movie or a video game, or something like that, but when a person dies they experience two deaths. That first one is physical, its remnants are painful for people that are left behind. Then, a second death, when the last memory of you dies, when that last cognition of your mark on the world is gone. If you can't dictate the first, you can influence the second and, if we're talking about Ryuji here...]

Maybe a few months ago I wouldn't even kinda feel this way, but, uh.

I guess the choice of what's important to me is pretty simple. I'm not a complex guy or anything, y'know?

But what's important to me the most... probably more than even myself... is my friends. Even if my body goes, I wanna live on in their hearts, yeah? That's it. That's my entire river.

[She's had him wrong. Not...massively so. A few misjudgements here, a few there. A few things right on the money. It adds up. The part of Ryuji Sakamoto that is part of Erika Mishima moves by inches, into a better, more true shape.

He's strong. And she is struck by how - she loves people, even when they're too much to handle, and this is exactly why. Everyone is someone, and every someone is everything. It's just -

- it's just -

Erika realizes that she hasn't said anything, eyes a little wide and still fixed on the floor. She breathes in - fishes for something and brings the line back up empty - blows out a sigh, and grips her knees.]

I want to record you doing something.

[Even if he knew, he couldn't fault her. Ryuji has pretty much been judged on first meeting by everyone in his life, and for the past few years, he's lived like a punk who didn't really care about that sort of stuff. It came with the territory of losing the one passion he had in life, and it wasn't disingenuous or anything; he really gave up caring in a lot of ways. People could murmur behind his back about him all he wanted, get the wrong impressions left and right. They didn't really matter to him.

And that was still kind of true- when it came to his reputation after forming the Phantom Thieves with Ren, he didn't have some reverence for how he was perceived or what people got off of him, with the exception that the distance he put between himself and the rest of society was becoming increasingly inauthentic. After a while, small cracks formed and it was obvious that Ryuji now had a handful of people he'd literally jump in front of a bus for if it came down to it.

So, really, whatever Erika reads off of him, cover to cover, he's cool with. He's going to keep on doing his thing, and even in the face of death, he desperately wishes that he had some more time to get the things he wanted to get done with people. Erika learning that she loves people is reflected in Ryuji just... wanting to be loved. It's a weird feeling, for real.]

H-huh!? Whatcha mean? Like, something specific?

No, nothing specific.

[She works her way to her feet as she talks, a stubborn agitation coming over her. Her stiff ankle does something uncomfortable on the way up; she recovers with an affronted frown. Get the hell back into line, we've got a job to do!]

The worst thing this place does is make us think nothing matters. I have an idea for dealing with that. Or - maybe an idea about an idea.

[She'd talked to Jun about the difference between fighting to win and surviving a loss. Maybe her position was missing something. Maybe being the one to be won or lost blocked a part of the picture from view, the part that looked not two steps into the future but three, or four, or more. The part that asks whether you're proud of yourself, because that's something that matters - not just the material algebra of benefits and consequences left behind by your actions, but you, persisting, reflecting, mutating.

It's a terrifying role to fill. She thinks she understands her brother better now than even before, and hurts for him more. She's not her brother, no matter how she's wearing her jacket. He had his problems, and she has hers, and doing right by this Ryuji has very little to do with meditating on the other's trauma.]

[Stiffness, huh? So as he watches her become upright again, the awkwardness of the movement reminds him of the same thing that was happening to Haru. Which means, for all intents and purposes, there were three sicknesses that he encountered. Zombies, ghosts, and statues. And they were all completely freaking terrible. Of course, Ryuji's also been known to jumping to conclusions, and it might not be that at all, it might be that she put too much weight distributed unevenly. He knows about that- the one leg that his coach broke on him meant he was constantly diverting pressure to the other, and it made it so much more vulnerable to sprains like this.]

Alright, I'll support whatever you wanna do.

[Because, yeah. He believes in her- this station was great at tearing hope out of things and throwing it right down into the space toilets, only to be blasted out into unreachable places. He doesn't know what he can really do to solve that; his interest is mostly just trying to help Erika out, and, maybe a little selfishly... to leave behind something of him even if there won't be anything left of him soon enough.

But if you were to ask Ryuji if he were proud of himself, he'd probably shy away from answering about himself. But if you ask him what he's proud about his friends? Well, everything, honestly. What's there not to be proud of?]

Alright.

[Step one: make the fucking recording.

.....

Well shit.]

The problem - the problem is permanence. The station can manipulate our bodies, make us disappear, and apparently materialize or destroy physical objects at will. Digitally, nothing that comes in contact with the station systems is safe. An intelligence with massive processing power is holding up security, and there's nothing stopping it from pushing back and wiping out anything stored on our comms if it has a reason to.

[She crosses her arms and talks to the floor, working through the problem for her own benefit and outlining the shape of her idea for Ryuji.]

The goal is to create a memorial. Something that contains as much information about us as we can provide, that's as resilient as possible against the station's attacks. A "proof of existence". To run tests, I need something to run tests on...so we're going to take a video to use as a subject. Something you want to add to a living memorial.

So...

If you can't save something digitally, and there's a risk of physical stuff gettin' destroyed too, how the hell do you create a memorial?

[Alright, he's hooked on this idea. Earth is probably billions of light years away at this point, and there's no real way of ever thinking something from here would get there, so that's out of the question. But if they're just lightning bugs that are here for the summer and die out along with their light... it's worth it to make a hallmark of what they did here. How fiercely they struggled against the paranormal. How much they took care of each other through times of distress. How loud, quiet, stupid, brilliant, sad, happy they were.

Yeah, he's all for it.]

Okay. I'll be your MeTuber. Make me your guinea pig.

I don't know yet. But there's no such thing as a system with absolute capabilities and zero vulnerabilities, so there's a solution, and Hudie's going to find it.

[She's going to find it. Somehow.

Alright.]

...Let's keep the test file ten seconds or under. Got any ideas?

[So... he may not know what Hudie really is, but he's also pretty sure that whenever Erika puts her mind to something that she's going to make it happen, so he doesn't ask too many questions about it, and instead, just nods.

Man.

What is he supposed to put on the recording? There's so much he could do. Skateboarding, playing his otamatone, talking about all the perfect ways to make ramen. But is that what he really wants to be remembered for?]

I know... it, uh, won't really make it to Earth.

But do you think I could record a message to my mom?

[There's a half-a-second pause there where there's nothing to see on Erika's face and nothing to hear from her, but her stomach lurches a little, taken aback - not because she wouldn't expect it from Ryuji (he's so transparent all the time), but because it's a lot, and it hits close to home.]

Mm-hm. [She fiddles with her comm's screen.] ...Do you want me to be around for that?

[Or does he just. want to take it himself and send it to her.]

Huh? I mean... it doesn't really matter to me either way. You bein' there to record it or not, I'd probably end up sayin' the same thing anyway.

[Out of everyone in the station, it's probably her that he misses the most. Who knows what the conditions were like back there? Did everything freeze in time from the moment he was taken, or did she have to live through Ryuji disappearing.

He hates the latter possibility, because he was so tired of causing her all his own troubles. Even the ones he never had any control over- a vestige of that first time he collapsed in the front door after he had miraculously made it back on a broken, bloodied leg. The "home" instinct is a really weird, powerful thing.]

If you're sure.

[Obviously it's different for everyone, but - it would matter to her. Does matter to her. If she were to leave a message for her brother - which she's thinking about now, as much of an impossibility as it is, thanks - she'd have things to say that she wouldn't want someone else to hear.

Maybe Ryuji is just better than that?]

What about location? Do you want to record it right here and now?

[Objectively speaking, no. Ryuji's not better than that at all, he isn't better than anyone or their motives by a long shot, there's just differences in opinion that make people different. And maybe his preference is actually for Erika being there- because right now, being alone in any sort of capacity, and having to talk about a memorial he'd want to leave behind to his mother... it's a sad swan song in a way.

And he wants to tell her that, so he does his best, in his own way.]

Yeah, it's cool. I think that... it might actually be a little bit easier if you're here. But, if it makes you uncomfortable, I can... y'know. I can do it in my room or something. I don't wanna be too much trouble.

[There's that word again, and he thinks for a moment what he needs to get off his chest, if he's going to go through with it.

He looks at Erika, serious for a moment in his expression.]

Sooner rather than later, yeah? Who knows what I'm gonna look like... tomorrow... or something.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

( 004 » ENSEMBLE ) decay

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i cant believe i wrote backgrounds instead of backwards wtf

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