reverielogs | MOD LOG: PART 2

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splatoon: marina ida

MOD LOG: PART 2

001: REMODELING For two weeks, the devils have lived in relative peace. Coexistence is noble, after all, and this is a place ripe for cohabitation. But with every stutter in reality, every gap in the walls and every tear in existence itself, there comes a certain reminder: this place isn’t safe. This place isn’t truly meant for you - not for humans, and not for devils. This place isn’t home.

It’s time to fix that.

All it takes is one moment - of weakness, of want, of please come in - to let the devil in. Whether it’s your body or something else entirely doesn’t matter as much as you’d think. The next time the walls open, the next time the station yawns in complacency, reach in and grab hold. These walls have kept you imprisoned here for too long; it’s time to put up some decoration of your own. Maybe they’re subtle, things from your subconscious that mirror your needs and desires. Maybe they’re in keeping with your new changes, eyes and roots and fur where there weren’t any before. Or maybe they’re something entirely new, fractals recursing into infinity born from light bouncing through impossible angles.

Regardless, to those who pour themselves into these walls, the changes don’t “go back to normal” when the distortion is over. They remain, a monument to you and the ones who made this possible.

For some, this will be a gift. These walls can be friendly now, or aggressive, or anything their devil desires. But for others, this may be a step too far. What little semblance of normalcy the station once had is being shattered, after all.

But what can you do to fight back when the world around you is corrupting? What is there to do other than hope and pray that someone hears you?

002: A GIFT FROM ABOVE It takes less than two hours for someone to hear - and to answer.

The chapel, safe and soothing as always, calls out to all those who have not let the devil in. Those who return to its confines will find a gift waiting there for them: radios, of all sizes and makes. Some are familiar, and some look just a little off, and some are unlike anything else you’ve ever seen, but all of them work and that’s all that matters now. There’s only one station around these parts. The tuning differs from radio to radio, but it’s a nice one to have. It plays- something, reassuring sounds and voices that you might not have realized just how badly you needed.

Listening to their voices brings the calm of the chapel wherever you might want. Focusing on them, keeping them in your mind until it seems like they might take form, gives you something else entirely: a weapon, forcibly broadcasting that same calm in whatever form you might need.

It might take you a little bit to figure out how to use them, but you’ve been armed. Maybe this situation isn’t as unsalvageable as you thought. Learn how to use these weapons. Practice. Help each other figure them out - or just enjoy the calm you’ve been offered.

003: TEAR DOWN THE WALL The bad guys have their walls, and the good guys have their weapons. It’s a conflict as old as time - everyone knows what to do, whether they want to admit it or not.

But maybe it’s not too late to reason with some of the devils. Maybe you can talk things through, reach a compromise through common ground and an appeal to reason. Or maybe stealth will work - waiting for the right moment to strike, using the radios to excise whatever corruption has taken hold.

However you choose to handle it is up to you. But just remember: in the worst case, if it comes to blows, you’re on equal footing now.

004: THE DEVIL'S IN THE RADIO (LOCKED) All things have to come to an end.

For nearly a month now, the devil’s made her presence known on the station. Bodies have changed; the walls themselves have been corrupted. Each fight, each discussion, each fixed area is a band-aid fix: they address a single problem but not the source, the symptom but not the disease. No matter how many times the radios come out, there will be more corruption to fix later. It’s the oldest trope in the books, right? The recurring fight of good and evil, of god and the devil.

It’s time to cut things off at the source. It’s time to take the devil on.

☆ code by kimmiserate ☆

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It’s nearly over.

Venus knows that much. She’s not blind - she couldn’t close all her eyes if she wants to. She knows that this is a losing fight, maybe one that’s been lost since before she started. The devil’s voice is getting weaker over the station speakers with each passing day, God’s presence (and is it even God? Venus doesn’t think so, she hasn’t heard his voice even once yet) drowning out the devil’s hour by hour.

But everyone has their own cause, and this is Venus’s, and she’s not giving up until the bitter end. She has to take visits to the radio’s hiding spot now, more and more frequently, to tend to the crystal and clean the wires and adjust the wavelength oh so precisely so that she can eke out a tiny bit more reception. And it’s one of these visits that finally gets her caught in the end. The radio’s eldritch wiring is fully exposed to the outside air, rust and galena and metal tendrils entwined into the station’s walls.

When they come, Venus knows it’s over. There’s no way this ends well for her - for the devils who have been fighting so hard for this. But she owes them all this one last try, doesn’t she? So she turns to the newcomers, soft and apologetic smile already on her face.

“Haha. I guess you found me?”

This is it. The final showdown’s here.

Marina was really hoping nobody would be here.

She wasn't expecting that, of course, and it had taken her far longer to track down the location than she would have wanted to, but she doesn't actually want a fight. If she could have just taken the radio apart with no devils to interfere, this would have been so much simpler.

(Also, she could have spent some time looking over that radio. Is that a galena cat whisker detector? Super old-school! And yet so much of it is alien to her, too! In another world, she and Venus could sit down and swap notes on something, she's sure.)

Marina smiles back, almost apologetic herself, but also set on her task. Her radio is gripped in her hand, but on its skeletal form--it's not on right now, because Marina is hoping this doesn't turn into a fight.

Still, this is really awkward!

"Hey, Venus. Sorry, but you have to get that this situation isn't really working out, right?"

Maybe she already understands? Maybe this will still be easy?

(Probably not.)

Gundam had opted to tag along with Marina when she revealed her ability to track down the locality of the Devil's voice. Marina seems to want to talk things out with Venus, which Gundam has no objection to. Resolving this without utilizing the full breadth of his abilities is prudent.

"Surely you did not think you could hide this demonic presence from me forever? Those who shroud themselves with the masks of the devil are doomed before the unstoppable might of my Evil Fourth Eye!"

Gundam really lacks any de-escalation skills though.

"You did quite well, but the end is nigh."

Tyl looms behind them both, though if he were to be perfectly honest (which he's not), it's partly an exhausted hunch rather than deliberate menace. He's used to staying up multiple days in a row. Every once in a while he'll just go on a tear and work until he topples over. The Empire tends to spin this as 'dedication' rather than 'insomnia', so it's good for the morale outside his lab.

But that's different! This has been because the corridors wouldn't let him get back to his quarters for a couple of days, compounded by the eternally-wiggling tendrils that grew out of his back when he'd nearly flown out of the station five intervals ago. Wait. Was it five? No. Longer. Whatever!

More importantly, he's got a new prosthetic that he's been enjoying immensely. It killed the tendrils, and they've been withering away the more noise he's made. The prosthetic makes him look like a lopsided crab, but he's been willing to put fashion on hold in the name of some very cathartic violence.

"This devil of yours." The one he would've been clued into from the start if he'd paid attention to the initial broadcast, but he remains semi-blissfully unaware of this. "Threatened my work, broke the station open just so I'd get stuck with these--" He reaches back, grabs one of the limp tendrils and pulls. It comes off entirely, leaving him with a new prop to gesticulate with.

"Not acceptable behavior. Stand aside. Or I'm feeding you that radio." Move fast, because he has a very shaky grasp on both time and patience right now.

It's really an interesting assortment, isn't it? Four people in the room, none of them human - okay, one of them is probably a human, but he yells loud enough that Venus is willing to count him out - and three of them intend to stop the fourth. Maybe in a different sort of place, they could all have worked together on this? Probably not. She's not going to try to kid herself on that one.

"Yeah. Don't worry, Marina, I get that much." It's not said quite hopelessly, but there's already a bit of resignation in it. "And- I guess not? I probably should have thought about the whole Evil Fourth Eye thing. Haha."

But it's Tyl Regor that really gets her attention. She's - a little intimidated by him, of course. Their meetings so far haven't been too bad, but he certainly seems ready to strike out now. Her shoulders tense; her knees bend, just a tiny bit, as she keeps herself ready to move with a moment's notice. And it's that last bit of aggression that pushes her over: them with their radios, and she as the devil.

It's a doomed battle, of course. Two can stand against the devil; what chance does she have against three?

"Are you sure she did all that?" She keeps her voice at least somewhat level, despite the clear tension in her back. "Do you really think the station will go back to normal if she's gone?" Because she sure doesn't. And judging from the way she's crossing her arms, she doesn't think his argument's very convincing.

Okay, so maybe Gundam and Tyl aren't great at diplomacy, and Venus looks more tense than before, but nobody has attacked anyone else yet. This can still work out. They can still talk.

"Some of the other devils are changing the station themselves," she explains, though she thinks Venus probably already knows, because Venus was a devil before anyone else here was, and Venus started this. "And these things change things back, even things I don't think any of you are doing specifically."

Marina turns her brella stick over in her hands, twirling it. It looks a little silly without the canopy. It's still not on, though.

"I've been tracking the signal through the communicators, and I know it's a radio-like signal, and these," the tech they found in the chapel, "give off radio-like signals, too. They have to be connected."

Gundam seems to pick up on Venus' stress and turns to look at the tentacle being waved around. For a brief moment Gundam folds his arms over his chest feeling the slightest prick of jealousy that Tyl was already challenged by the Devil.

A truly interesting, personal narrative! --Also Venus seems far more threatened by him.

How utterly... unacceptable.

Edited 2018-10-19 02:06 (UTC)

"Is this truly the Hell you envisioned to share with your compatriots? Is what you've wrought forth here what you wanted for them or yourself? Nothing in this world is deemed true simply because a devil dies for it."

Gundam doesn't have any tentacles to dramatically rip off his person, but he can certainly gesticulate with the best of them.

"I am not so cruel as to yearn for a meaningless death." Of course if Venus believes in her cause and wishes to fight for her ideals he can understand such a thing. He'll oblige her to the bitter end.

"So she breaks the rules of biology and then it's a coincidence the station starts peeling open for her minions to mess with? Please." The other question was totally irrelevant. Sometimes things just broke and didn't get fixed. Didn't mean you couldn't pound flat what broke it in the first place! Especially the things he'd run into here, festering in the depths of this floating rust bucket. Scaly, horrible things.

More importantly! Or immediately, anyway: "You're stalling." He takes a step closer, dead tentacle trailing from his hand. "I'm not fond of that at all."

"Yeah? You want to attack me first?" There's a bit of an edge to her voice when she answers Tyl Regor, a challenging glint even she's a bit surprised by. It's strange, having something to fight for around here.

But he hasn't struck yet. Venus heaves a sigh, focusing her attention on Marina (or at least trying to, with Gundam's gesticulations and Tyl Regor's- well, everything). "Yeah. You got it in one. They're all radios, only-" She doesn't step away from the wall, but she does jerk a wing in Marina's general direction. "-those are tuned to the wrong station. Or, well. I guess the right one for you guys? The heroes taking the station back to what it was. Haha."

Yeah, forgive her if she's a little bitter. She's on edge and doesn't honestly think she'll be making it out of this just yet.

She finally turns to Gundam, ready to acknowledge his grandiose announcement - and frowns softly. "It's not the Hell we wanted. But it's as close as we can get around here. A station under our control... that's not so bad, is it?" A meaningless death, he proclaims, and she can't help but laugh softly as she thinks of it. That's what it's coming down to, isn't it? She's not letting go of the devil - of herself. And she's not letting go of the one thing she's managed to really offer anyone in this place.

And if she won't, well...

No time to think about that. She takes one step back towards the wall, wings beginning to fan out to block their vision of the thing inside it. "Sorry, Gundam." She doesn't look sorry at all - upset, maybe, a bit rueful, but not a single ounce of apology. "Think you can teach me some of your eyeliner tricks once I'm back?"

Her mind's set. All that's left is to watch for who strikes first.

"Nobody has to die," Marina says before anything else, because that is absolutely not what she wants to happen, and even if this does turn into a fight it doesn't have to get that bad. "The problem is that a station under your control still isn't going to work for all of us. If the whole station ends up made for devils, what about the rest of us? The cafeteria looks like it's made for--insects, I think, the halls make it look like we got eaten by something, none of it makes sense."

And they have to live here, too, until everyone figures out how to go home. A place under control of the devils, from what Marina has experienced, feels as unsafe as the station did before. Maybe more for someone like Marina, who understands the science of metal and wiring but doesn't understand angles that are more obtuse than they look and perfectly parallel lines that intersect anyway.

This is going to be a fight, isn't it? But Marina isn't going to strike first. Her radio stays off. Let that prove her intentions, if nothing else will.

That taunt! Oh, now he can't resist. "I'd love to," he replies, flexing the fingers on his new prosthetic, letting the tentacle slide from his grip to the floor. He's just been itching to fight something, and now he gets his chance!

But for some reason, not everyone here has gotten with the program. "Oh, nobody has to, but I think they will anyway." And without pausing a second more, he charges forward--and disappears, leaving only a small burst of light and a strange, wing-fluttering sound.

...For about half a second. He reappears over Venus' head, radio blaring, leading with the elbow of his new arm.

"We can make it work." She speaks with an insistent authority, one she's not actually sure is backed up by anything reasonable. "The cafeteria still works, doesn't it? It looks scary, but it's- it's not broken now. Maybe we have more control over it than ever! It's a place for us now, not the station-"

And then there's a burst of light, and Tyl Regor is gone.

Venus stops in her tracks, a hundred different eyes swiveling to find where he could possibly be. She doesn't even wait the full half-second: she immediately reaches back behind her, wrapping her hand around the familiar hilt of the radio. It's been a long time, now, but it still fits into her hand; still has that comforting, terrifying weight beneath it.

She grips tight and rips it out, wiring and tendrils all snapping together as the radio bursts free. There is a sharp whine of static, a sudden flare of noise, and then a burst of light; she brings it up, holding it defensively in front of her just in time to see Tyl Regor body slamming her from above. His radio is loud, painful; his aim is true. Venus moves to stumble out of the way, but it's too late - he makes contact with a nearly musical sound.

Venus reels back from the hit, the noise and the radio both sending her off balance. But the radio in her hands - the one spewing static and light and that sweet, sweet song - let her recenter herself, and with one look at Marina she makes her mind up.

She turns and runs, light trailing behind her as she tries to make her escape.

"Guys--guys!" Oh jeez, this is happening. She'd regret her choice of negotiating partners except there were so few options at this point that she can't really think of an option besides just not having invited anyone else, which would have been really stupid if it turned into a fight anyway.

Marina turns her radio on and blasts silvery liquid metal on the ground. In an instant, she's an octopus, cutting through the metal like a fish in water (or an octopus in water, maybe).

If she can get to Venus and the radio first, maybe this doesn't have to be as bad as it could be.

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MOD LOG: PART 2

THE DEVIL’S IN THE RADIO (LOCKED)

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1/2

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Re: 2/2

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first tag... after game's end i guess?? CHASE SCENE BEGIN

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