( 004 » ENSEMBLE ) decay

[reveriemod]

» 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?

Comments

[ryuji]

[Leave it to Ryuji to be an exhibitionist when what he really needs is an exorcist. Either way, he pulls upward on the suit to occlude what he just showed Jun, considering he saw the way he winced and doesn't really want to cause him any more discomfort. Even if. Y'know. Under all that black mess of pulsating and evil looking veins, he was totally buff.








(He wasn't.)

But Jun makes a pretty good point here, and he feels countered. Ryuji always feels slighted when that happens to him.]

I mean. Yet.

This could be the early signs of it happenin'. Dude, you've seen zombie thrillers before, yeah?

[floriographys]

[Ryuji, Jun is mega hella gay, but he's really not into the body horror. The black blood and visible veins would take him out of any kind of fantasy even if Ryuji were build like a Greek god.]

...Not really, but I know the gist of them. I've never been a fan of those kinds of things. But there's really no purpose biologically for something like zombification in humans, especially in this environment.

The closest thing to it in nature is Cordyceps, which make ants into zombies, but it's so that birds could eat them and spread the fungus further. You know?

[Ryuji probably doesn't know but that won't stop Jun from TRYING. Honestly, anything to prevent the spread of a zombie rumor. Jun scowls a little at Ryuji for his stubbornness. How dare he not go along with Jun's false optimism.]

I swear, if a zombie outbreak begins, I'm going to come after you for it.

[ryuji]

[Here he goes, talking about ant zombification and although Ryuji was probably trying to make a wise crack at the situation in order to conceal his underlying fear about what was actually going on around here, he just kind of... stares at him incredulously.]

What the hell.

[There's a bit of a shudder, and he looks away. He's going to be thinking about mind control fungus for at least a whole 30 minutes after this conversation is over until it eventually wafts back into his head for another terrifyingly terrifying amount of undisclosed time.]

H-huh!? It's not like I'm patient zero or anythin'. I mean. It's kinda effin' crazy, but like. We're gonna get better, right?

[Eh...

No.]

[floriographys]

[This is fine. He's doing great. Everything is going GREAT. Honestly Jun considers it a win that Ryuji just goes with 'We're gonna get better, right?', and Jun responds to that with a much more genuine smile than maybe Ryuji was expecting.]

Of course you are! I mean, I haven't even gotten sick yet, so it can't be that bad of an epidemic, right? It's not like I've been avoiding contact with others.

It'll be fine. Humans aren't so weak that we'll be wiped out like that.

[ryuji]

[Jun just didn't look like a person who gave out smiles like they were advertisements at the super market for what's on sale, so, yeah, he's a little taken back by it, but he doesn't draw too much to it... other than the flustered look on his face at the whole thing, of course.]

Uhh...

[That logic also doesn't really add up, but he doesn't have someone standing next to him to bounce that idea off of.]

Just 'cause you haven't gotten sick yet... doesn't... eh, forget it. I'll drink a protein shake in your honor tonight.

The way you're talkin' though... kinda makes it sound like we are the last humans or somethin'.

[floriographys]

[Jun pauses at that, grimacing. Wait did Ryuji think they weren't the last humans...???]

Ah...

We... are? The world was destroyed, just before I came here. [Also that message about trying to save the world??? He's unsure of if Ryuji just forgot or if he didn't believe it. Or if he somehow missed it, that was maybe possible.]

[ryuji]

[Well, yeah. His mom's back home, there's that grumpy owner of the coffee shop that he secretly respects the shit out of, a creepy doctor who likes experimenting on young teens, a fortune teller with a tragic backstory... they're all still alive, right?]

I mean... your world? That sounds kinda like... selfish, I know. But we all come from different instances of Earth. Some are... sort of connected, but, like... you catch differences all the damn time when you're talkin' to people. Like, some people call it Twitter, but we know it as Tweeter. That sorta thing.

[He thinks about that for a second. He never really thought that the world the reverie station was trying to save was... his own. He thought he got sucked up into this mess from his home world, an alpha world of sorts.]

[floriographys]

[Jun has never heard of Twitter or Tweeter, he's from the 90s. So he's just furrowing his brow there.]

I... have you... hm. I'm just saying that it's a possibility. Not one I like, but still a pretty good possibility. And the things we've heard from the station itself corroborates it.

Either way, you know the saying "Hope for the best, prepare for the worst"? I think we should at least prepare for it, if that is the case.

[Honestly he thinks that going into the whole 'Collective Human Unconscious' and 'selling his memories to make a new world(which messed up somehow)' thing was probably. Too much for this conversation. And maybe a little too much for Ryuji "I'm turning into a zombie" Sakamoto.]

You know, I never actually thought of that though. Guess it could be that just my world is dead and maybe everyone else's isn't, though... it's very hard to think that when there are Persona users from the future- relative to me and Tatsuya, anyway.

[ryuji]

[There should be someone around to put a guide out there for all the pre-millenial crowd who were familiar with the ideas of computers but nowhere near understanding of the horrible fucking world of social media. Kind of a necessary evil, though- they wouldn't have been able to get half the stuff done that they did without Mishima running the phansite. Kid never really got the credit he deserved for that. Even if he was a total control freak over it.]

Persona users... yeah.

[It's a weird thing to bring up and act as if this was the end of the world. The power of someone who could summon one was literally the power to change the world. Did Jun get a point where that didn't succeed? Where did it go wrong?]

I mean, I'm from the future. And I can use personas. I imagine if we're not from the same world, then we're from really close ones. Like... if you think of all the worlds out there like strings on a guitar, we could be from B and E together, y'know?

[Or... maybe something happened that he didn't know about? That's a possibility.]

Or you just don't know the ending of your own story and we're actually from the same place all along. I dunno, doesn't really seem that important now. Wherever... whenever we are. This station's got a hold of us and doesn't wanna let us go.

[floriographys]

Tatsuya and I... before...

[He pressed his lips together, thinking hard on how he wasnted to word this and WHY was it so hard? Why was he so flustered by the conversation? This shouldn't be anything. He knew his world was gone. His world and his life and his friends.]

We, with our friends, Lisa, Eikichi, and Maya, [They should know their names, Jun figured. They had the right to be remembered along with Tatsuya, and certainly much more right than Jun.] came to the heart of human consciousness, where Maya was killed and the world ended. I know how our story ends, more or less, because we all agreed to give up our places in reality in order to create a new one, which would not be destroyed by the events that had come to pass...

So I think.

Your world might just be the one that we made? And maybe that's how we're here, despite the year being 1999 last we remember, and you all being Persona Users from later years. Does that make sense?

So in a way, you're right. It's just our world that's ended, I guess.

[ryuji]

[He's not callous enough to take this from a logical standpoint- he's ruled by the world of emotions, and seeing Jun struggle through coming to terms with his own emotions is kind of rough for Ryuji. He lifts a hand out to touch his shoulder, and the contact is probably not wanted, but it's the best he can do? It's the only thing he knows how to do. Gives it a grip, and drops his arm down.]

Thanks... I dunno what to say...

[Destroying their reality to create his own is a pretty big fucking thing.]

And I gotta say, if that's the truth, and that's how shit really went down... that the world you made was pretty rad. [Sure, bad eggs and all... but any various combinatoric of universes were bound to be rife with that, as long as free will was a thing. Which Ryuji and his friends had fought so hard to protect.]

Whatever we got here, though. This is what we got. Even if nobody remembers you, I know I will.

[floriographys]

[Jun is an emotional boy, and Ryuji just squeezing his shoulder and saying he'll remember him is enough to start him crying. Way to go. It's good tears? Probably. Either way, Jun has to wipe some tears from his face before he can smile.]

...I'm glad... that it's... "rad".

[He didn't mean to rhyme but there it is.]

Thank you. I'm sorry, I just... I wanted to come here and help you out and also... assure you that you aren't be a zombie, but you're here comforting me instead. How terribly selfish of me.

But really... You should be fine, and if anything happens, I can probably heal you. I've got some pretty good healing spells...

[ryuji]

[Oh man- he didn't expect to cause the tears a flowin' down Jun's face, and he doesn't really know what he said or what he did to cause that, but he wants to go over and turn the sink off. That said, the dude seems to be doing okay there, hell, even starting to rap for Ryuji, and he smiles in a soft way back at the other.]

Nah, man. No apologies needed. 'Sides, I think I'm more the type of person that gets more comfort outta comforting people, if that makes sense. Gives me something to focus on instead of dwelling on all the other shit.

[Like viruses that turn his blood black and make his veins stand out against his skin.]

Oh, shit, really? I gotta remember that. All my spells are offensive lightning types or physical. But, uh, hey, if you ever need an attack buff, hit me up.

[floriographys]

[You'll get used to it, Ryuji. Jun's got full eyes. He cries often and freely.]

Yeah, I think I understand. Tatsuya is a little like that, too. You know the kind... can't turn their back on someone in need, but tends to keep it all inside when it comes to his own stuff... [He smiled even so. He's thankfully been able to read Tatsuya pretty well though, and doesn't have an issue getting past that wall.]

I will. Er... Actually. I don't think I ever caught your name. I'm Jun Kurosu.

[ryuji]

[Yeah, he gets that feeling really well. Ryuji's exactly the type to do the same thing, and when it explodes outward... man, there's a lot of carbonation to that bottling up shit he does.]

Hmm... [He holds out his hand for Jun to shake. He doesn't know whether or not touch is communicative in the pathological sort of way, but whatever.]

Ryuji Sakamoto. Good meetin' ya.