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pluviosa2025-01-31 10:10 pm
pluviosamods) wrote in pluviosa2025-01-31 10:10 pm
Entry tags:
EVENT - Ripple and Warp IC log (part 1!)
ripple and warp
Hello and welcome to the IC log for Pluviosa's Fourth Wall event, Ripple and Warp!
In addition to providing information about how characters arrive on the new deck (whether they're existing passengers or not), this post also serves as a place where Fourth Wall characters can post top-levels without joining the game community.
Further information on Fourth Walls in general and the other accompanying OOC updates to the game can be found on the OOC information post here. This post also serves in lieu of a regular between-events Test Drive.
Finally, you may now start sending in your applications to keep your AU, CRAU, and so on characters around after the Fourth Wall! Be sure to note the minor changes to the Applications page (namely, the addition of an "AU information" section).
Without further ado - How did you get here? And more importantly, where is 'here' anyway?
Whether or not characters remember falling asleep on the evening of Day 37, they wake up somewhere different on Day 38, lying on a couch in an almost-familiar room. The couch is similar to the ones in the lounge, though those with keen noses will note that the cushions don't smell the same - there's no scent of your fellow passengers, or of the faint hint of an unknown, arid place that first accompanied the clean furnishings the Ship dragged out.
The room isn't one you've been in before, either, but it's still clearly on the Ship somewhere - there's the familiar motion of the legs moving, and the overhead emergency lights (the only source of light initially in the room) are the same as the ones in the hallways on Fern that the Ship has been working so hard to restore. However, that doesn't mean that it's hard to see - indeed, considering the contents of the room, the low lighting might be a blessing in disguise.
It's full of mirrors.
Not only the sorts of mirrors that character would expect to find, the ones that have been missing from the Ship's bathrooms and other expected places, though there are certainly plenty of those in the room - but the walls, the door, and the ceiling are also all mirrors. Mirrors hang on a portion of the larger furniture in what appears to be the living room of a suite. It's not as dramatic as it could be, but aside from the couch characters wake up on, it's pretty close. The floor, at least, is not reflective mirrors, though it's not much less shiny - instead of the usual hotel-esque carpet of the suites, there's seamless stone tile in stormcloud grey, slight variations in the color indicating marble. And all of those reflective surfaces are perfectly clean - although it's possible to find dried spots of decay on the backs of the mirrors, overall, it seems as though time doesn't have claim on this part of the Ship, much less the Growth.
And of course, where there are mirrors, there are reflections.
Some of them - probably the majority - are normal, perfect mirrors of the person the character expects to see. Some of them are distorted, but in a normal, mundane way - funhouse mirrors among the panels on the walls, making you wide or skinny or warped.
And then some of them show reflections of you that are distorted, not as in bent, but as in there being something different about the you that's in them. Different clothes; different hair; different age; different species. Added scars, or missing ones; limbs missing, or replaced with something else. A completely unknown you in the mirror.
For the most part, these altered reflections act the way you would expect, imitating the movements of the rest of the reflections in the room. But sometimes they don't. Sometimes they climb out of the mirror - and whether they're friendly or not remains to be seen.
There's a note on the mirror-topped table next to the couch. In backwards writing that needs to be held up to a mirror to be read easily, it says:
For those who are new around here, the method of arrival is... a bit different. This applies equally to characters who are just here for the fourth wall (alternates of existing characters etc) or those who will be apped as permanent residents - there isn't a distinction to these categories until the end of the event.
These characters arrive with a first sensation of being pressed against a hard, glass surface - not unlike the whispers of sensation that haunted the existing passengers over the last few days. The difference is that this time, the glass you're pressed against isn't a horizontal floor or bed - it's vertical or at least mostly vertical, and you can tell which way is down.
Or, put another way: Newly arrived characters start their boatride on the wrong side of the mirrors that are packed away into the unknown deck. They are facing towards the real world side, the way they would if they were reflections made physical, but turning around and looking behind them is nearly impossible.
Indeed, there's a growing pressure forcing them against the glass barrier. It grows harder and harder to breathe, almost like drowning, or being crushed by water pressure -
Until, just when you think you can't survive any more, something gives way, and you stumble out of the mirror into the real world. It's not the glass breaking - it's more like forcing your way through a soap bubble or the membrane that sits inside an eggshell that separates the hard pieces from the white. Water, too, cascades down out of the mirror with you, splattering all over the floor, but it's just water, and it doesn't seem to have left more than a bit of surface dampness on you.
However, when characters turn around, they will find that while the glass is still in place and unbroken, the mirror will no longer reflect anything - not even the shine of light cast on the glass - rendering these mirrors completely black. This reflectivity stays on the puddle of water around your feet instead, which aggressively reflects the area around it even if taken elsewhere - even if poured into a cup. In motion, it's too transparent to be taken for mercury or silver, but when pooled undisturbed, it does not ripple in response to the motion of the ship. Only the actions of characters or other forces can cause ripples. Otherwise, it appears to be normal water.
Characters who are alternates of each other might come out of the mirrors while they're literally being reflected (a certain surprise for those who are on the normal side of the mirror doing the looking), but they might also just appear in rooms all by themselves, or in the presence of someone else they know (or think they know). Those who don't have any immediate connections among the current passengers are more likely to appear in some empty room, but ultimately this is left to player discretion.
Not all reflections are as potentially friendly as those played by those of us on the player side of the screen, however. In addition to the "deeper" reflections played by real humans, who have or at least appear to have personalities and histories of their own, there are also "shallow" reflections. Unlike the Fourth Wall arrivals, shallow reflections can't be of characters who aren't present at the time - they only appear in response to characters looking into mirrors (whether those characters are existing residents or new arrivals).
The shallow reflections come out of the mirrors just like the Fourth Wall arrivals, but there's always something a little off about them. Some of them stay reversed like a reflection; some of them don't make any noise when they move and cannot speak; some of them come out of the mirrors with the funhouse-esque warped reflections and stay that way. Like their more 'real' counterparts, the mirrors the shallow reflections come out of turn completely flat, unreflective black; unlike their counterparts, they don't really hesitate in striding out, much less stumble and potentially collapse.
What do they want? To shove whoever they're a reflection of into the black mirror they came from. What happens if they succeed?
You die. I mean, probably. There's no way of knowing unless one of them does succeed, after all. If you want your character to die in this fashion, please let the mod team know. While we cannot guarantee that interesting things will happen to all characters (and those who are only here to visit for the Fourth Wall are not eligible), this may have permanent consequences for your character, take them out of play for longer ICly than a typical death, or impact other characters in the game beyond the typical levels of emotional harm. Or some combination of all three.
Fortunately, the shallow reflections only have physical strength on their side - they do not possess any powers of those they take the shapes of, and they can be killed in largely the same way as unremarkable flesh and blood humans. A killing blow causes them to collapse into the same hyper-reflective water as described above; the mirror they came out of remains black.
The deck itself is open fully to character navigation. Like the lab specimen storage of Zinnia, this deck - whose name is not posted anywhere for characters to find easily - is clear of any signs of Growth, and manages to feel chilly even if you get up to the top deck where the sun is shining.
Or... Should be shining. Regardless of the weather on other deck dimensions, the skies above this deck are
always, at best, a cloudy, half-stormy grey. The air above hangs tense, like the clouds are waiting for something to happen. Unlike the other instances of Ship weather, you don't need Neuvillette's particular affinity with water to sense it - any character with empathic or telepathic powers will be able to feel the sense of looming, helpless frustration in the clouds.
The most notable feature of this deck, of course, is that it's full of mirrors. Indeed, it's not only the mirrors that are missing from the suite bathrooms, the public restrooms by the cafeteria, and so on - there are far more mirrors than the Ship would reasonably need to outfit the decks it has, even including the multidimensional nature of it. Mirrors hang from the walls, and then more mirrors lean against those, or against the other furnishings, or even against each other (since some of them are standing mirrors), and the groups against the walls are often five or six panels deep with the largest at the back the side of the glass panels of the Ship's sliding glass balcony doors. (Yes, those are also replaced by mirrors, reflective in both directions.) Tabletops are reflective in their own rights, and then littered with even more, antique-looking hand mirrors and makeup compacts and those little circular mirrors sold in bags by the dozen at the craft store, only an inch across.
Considering all the reflective surfaces, it might be a good thing that there is only emergency power supplied to this deck - enough to keep the guide lights on and ensure that the sliding doors (though not the elevators) are working, and that whatever system pumps water through the faucets and showers is still going. The water is all cold, however, and there isn't any food available on the deck so far as characters are able to find. In the place where characters are used to finding the cafeteria, there is instead a terrifying mirrored bar filled with empty bottles and glasses as well as - well. Take a guess.
With the exception of the sliding glass doors in the suites, the glass of windows and so forth seems to be what it should be - though it's more reflective than seems natural, too. Like Zinnia, the cleaniness of this deck means that characters have full run of it, all the way down to the lounge on the bottom of the Ship - which is the only place that isn't completely clean on this deck. The super-reflective water that pours out of the mirrors seems to have flowed down here at some point, where it sits, unaffected by the motion of the Ship, about an inch deep across the entire floor. This water is the only feature down in the bottom lounge - there is no furniture, in contrast to its Zinnia counterpart.
And on this floor, at the very bottom, and only this floor, the reflective water has the smell - only the smell, not any other qualities - of fresh blood.
The Ship will not answer characters here - although the terminals in the residential deck that can normally be used to communicate with it (in whatever limited capacity) are present, their screens are (of course!) mirrors, and unresponsive. There's also no signs of drones about, not even the basic roomba-like cleaning drones; there's no evidence that they've been here recently, either.
A follow-up log, in which the Ship manages to make contact with characters wherever they are, will be posted later (mod goal time is 2-3 weeks from now). That log will take place on Day 40 and will bring with it food (for everyone who has gotten very hungry by then) and drone assistance, but whether characters actually manage to escape at that point or later on on Day 42 is left open to the opinions of you, the players! Both current players and visitors will be able to vote in a Discord poll on the matter, to be posted in the Discord announcements channel tomorrow (after you've had the chance to sleep on this post and let it cook in your brains a little).
Happy playing! Questions can be asked on Discord or added to the usual questions header below this post.
In addition to providing information about how characters arrive on the new deck (whether they're existing passengers or not), this post also serves as a place where Fourth Wall characters can post top-levels without joining the game community.
Further information on Fourth Walls in general and the other accompanying OOC updates to the game can be found on the OOC information post here. This post also serves in lieu of a regular between-events Test Drive.
Finally, you may now start sending in your applications to keep your AU, CRAU, and so on characters around after the Fourth Wall! Be sure to note the minor changes to the Applications page (namely, the addition of an "AU information" section).
Without further ado - How did you get here? And more importantly, where is 'here' anyway?
existing characters
Whether or not characters remember falling asleep on the evening of Day 37, they wake up somewhere different on Day 38, lying on a couch in an almost-familiar room. The couch is similar to the ones in the lounge, though those with keen noses will note that the cushions don't smell the same - there's no scent of your fellow passengers, or of the faint hint of an unknown, arid place that first accompanied the clean furnishings the Ship dragged out.
The room isn't one you've been in before, either, but it's still clearly on the Ship somewhere - there's the familiar motion of the legs moving, and the overhead emergency lights (the only source of light initially in the room) are the same as the ones in the hallways on Fern that the Ship has been working so hard to restore. However, that doesn't mean that it's hard to see - indeed, considering the contents of the room, the low lighting might be a blessing in disguise.
It's full of mirrors.
Not only the sorts of mirrors that character would expect to find, the ones that have been missing from the Ship's bathrooms and other expected places, though there are certainly plenty of those in the room - but the walls, the door, and the ceiling are also all mirrors. Mirrors hang on a portion of the larger furniture in what appears to be the living room of a suite. It's not as dramatic as it could be, but aside from the couch characters wake up on, it's pretty close. The floor, at least, is not reflective mirrors, though it's not much less shiny - instead of the usual hotel-esque carpet of the suites, there's seamless stone tile in stormcloud grey, slight variations in the color indicating marble. And all of those reflective surfaces are perfectly clean - although it's possible to find dried spots of decay on the backs of the mirrors, overall, it seems as though time doesn't have claim on this part of the Ship, much less the Growth.
And of course, where there are mirrors, there are reflections.
Some of them - probably the majority - are normal, perfect mirrors of the person the character expects to see. Some of them are distorted, but in a normal, mundane way - funhouse mirrors among the panels on the walls, making you wide or skinny or warped.
And then some of them show reflections of you that are distorted, not as in bent, but as in there being something different about the you that's in them. Different clothes; different hair; different age; different species. Added scars, or missing ones; limbs missing, or replaced with something else. A completely unknown you in the mirror.
For the most part, these altered reflections act the way you would expect, imitating the movements of the rest of the reflections in the room. But sometimes they don't. Sometimes they climb out of the mirror - and whether they're friendly or not remains to be seen.
There's a note on the mirror-topped table next to the couch. In backwards writing that needs to be held up to a mirror to be read easily, it says:
Thanks for visiting! I'm sorry I couldn't be there to meet you, but there's just so many people here today!
I wonder if you'll get a chance to meet the real you?
Good luck!
new characters and visitors
For those who are new around here, the method of arrival is... a bit different. This applies equally to characters who are just here for the fourth wall (alternates of existing characters etc) or those who will be apped as permanent residents - there isn't a distinction to these categories until the end of the event.
These characters arrive with a first sensation of being pressed against a hard, glass surface - not unlike the whispers of sensation that haunted the existing passengers over the last few days. The difference is that this time, the glass you're pressed against isn't a horizontal floor or bed - it's vertical or at least mostly vertical, and you can tell which way is down.
Or, put another way: Newly arrived characters start their boatride on the wrong side of the mirrors that are packed away into the unknown deck. They are facing towards the real world side, the way they would if they were reflections made physical, but turning around and looking behind them is nearly impossible.
Indeed, there's a growing pressure forcing them against the glass barrier. It grows harder and harder to breathe, almost like drowning, or being crushed by water pressure -
Until, just when you think you can't survive any more, something gives way, and you stumble out of the mirror into the real world. It's not the glass breaking - it's more like forcing your way through a soap bubble or the membrane that sits inside an eggshell that separates the hard pieces from the white. Water, too, cascades down out of the mirror with you, splattering all over the floor, but it's just water, and it doesn't seem to have left more than a bit of surface dampness on you.
However, when characters turn around, they will find that while the glass is still in place and unbroken, the mirror will no longer reflect anything - not even the shine of light cast on the glass - rendering these mirrors completely black. This reflectivity stays on the puddle of water around your feet instead, which aggressively reflects the area around it even if taken elsewhere - even if poured into a cup. In motion, it's too transparent to be taken for mercury or silver, but when pooled undisturbed, it does not ripple in response to the motion of the ship. Only the actions of characters or other forces can cause ripples. Otherwise, it appears to be normal water.
Characters who are alternates of each other might come out of the mirrors while they're literally being reflected (a certain surprise for those who are on the normal side of the mirror doing the looking), but they might also just appear in rooms all by themselves, or in the presence of someone else they know (or think they know). Those who don't have any immediate connections among the current passengers are more likely to appear in some empty room, but ultimately this is left to player discretion.
shallower reflections
Not all reflections are as potentially friendly as those played by those of us on the player side of the screen, however. In addition to the "deeper" reflections played by real humans, who have or at least appear to have personalities and histories of their own, there are also "shallow" reflections. Unlike the Fourth Wall arrivals, shallow reflections can't be of characters who aren't present at the time - they only appear in response to characters looking into mirrors (whether those characters are existing residents or new arrivals).
The shallow reflections come out of the mirrors just like the Fourth Wall arrivals, but there's always something a little off about them. Some of them stay reversed like a reflection; some of them don't make any noise when they move and cannot speak; some of them come out of the mirrors with the funhouse-esque warped reflections and stay that way. Like their more 'real' counterparts, the mirrors the shallow reflections come out of turn completely flat, unreflective black; unlike their counterparts, they don't really hesitate in striding out, much less stumble and potentially collapse.
What do they want? To shove whoever they're a reflection of into the black mirror they came from. What happens if they succeed?
You die. I mean, probably. There's no way of knowing unless one of them does succeed, after all. If you want your character to die in this fashion, please let the mod team know. While we cannot guarantee that interesting things will happen to all characters (and those who are only here to visit for the Fourth Wall are not eligible), this may have permanent consequences for your character, take them out of play for longer ICly than a typical death, or impact other characters in the game beyond the typical levels of emotional harm. Or some combination of all three.
Fortunately, the shallow reflections only have physical strength on their side - they do not possess any powers of those they take the shapes of, and they can be killed in largely the same way as unremarkable flesh and blood humans. A killing blow causes them to collapse into the same hyper-reflective water as described above; the mirror they came out of remains black.
??? deck
The deck itself is open fully to character navigation. Like the lab specimen storage of Zinnia, this deck - whose name is not posted anywhere for characters to find easily - is clear of any signs of Growth, and manages to feel chilly even if you get up to the top deck where the sun is shining.
Or... Should be shining. Regardless of the weather on other deck dimensions, the skies above this deck are
always, at best, a cloudy, half-stormy grey. The air above hangs tense, like the clouds are waiting for something to happen. Unlike the other instances of Ship weather, you don't need Neuvillette's particular affinity with water to sense it - any character with empathic or telepathic powers will be able to feel the sense of looming, helpless frustration in the clouds.
The most notable feature of this deck, of course, is that it's full of mirrors. Indeed, it's not only the mirrors that are missing from the suite bathrooms, the public restrooms by the cafeteria, and so on - there are far more mirrors than the Ship would reasonably need to outfit the decks it has, even including the multidimensional nature of it. Mirrors hang from the walls, and then more mirrors lean against those, or against the other furnishings, or even against each other (since some of them are standing mirrors), and the groups against the walls are often five or six panels deep with the largest at the back the side of the glass panels of the Ship's sliding glass balcony doors. (Yes, those are also replaced by mirrors, reflective in both directions.) Tabletops are reflective in their own rights, and then littered with even more, antique-looking hand mirrors and makeup compacts and those little circular mirrors sold in bags by the dozen at the craft store, only an inch across.
Considering all the reflective surfaces, it might be a good thing that there is only emergency power supplied to this deck - enough to keep the guide lights on and ensure that the sliding doors (though not the elevators) are working, and that whatever system pumps water through the faucets and showers is still going. The water is all cold, however, and there isn't any food available on the deck so far as characters are able to find. In the place where characters are used to finding the cafeteria, there is instead a terrifying mirrored bar filled with empty bottles and glasses as well as - well. Take a guess.
With the exception of the sliding glass doors in the suites, the glass of windows and so forth seems to be what it should be - though it's more reflective than seems natural, too. Like Zinnia, the cleaniness of this deck means that characters have full run of it, all the way down to the lounge on the bottom of the Ship - which is the only place that isn't completely clean on this deck. The super-reflective water that pours out of the mirrors seems to have flowed down here at some point, where it sits, unaffected by the motion of the Ship, about an inch deep across the entire floor. This water is the only feature down in the bottom lounge - there is no furniture, in contrast to its Zinnia counterpart.
And on this floor, at the very bottom, and only this floor, the reflective water has the smell - only the smell, not any other qualities - of fresh blood.
The Ship will not answer characters here - although the terminals in the residential deck that can normally be used to communicate with it (in whatever limited capacity) are present, their screens are (of course!) mirrors, and unresponsive. There's also no signs of drones about, not even the basic roomba-like cleaning drones; there's no evidence that they've been here recently, either.
A follow-up log, in which the Ship manages to make contact with characters wherever they are, will be posted later (mod goal time is 2-3 weeks from now). That log will take place on Day 40 and will bring with it food (for everyone who has gotten very hungry by then) and drone assistance, but whether characters actually manage to escape at that point or later on on Day 42 is left open to the opinions of you, the players! Both current players and visitors will be able to vote in a Discord poll on the matter, to be posted in the Discord announcements channel tomorrow (after you've had the chance to sleep on this post and let it cook in your brains a little).
Happy playing! Questions can be asked on Discord or added to the usual questions header below this post.
no subject
It definitely has some implications, but after the third or so dragon, Eula has learned to roll with it like any good adventurer. If Malos doesn't want to make a big deal out of it, not their business.
Instead, they say, "You seem to have thought about it a great deal for someone who doesn't care," and there's a hint of a smirk in the I see you implied by the words.
"Or, depending on its intelligence, the ingenuity to repair something with less than ideal materials and still have it work," they muse. "Humans are quite a bit better at that than any machines I've ever run across." Even Sphene was chained to the thoughts of her creators, unable to evolve past them in the end, and the Endless was certainly the most advanced machine Eula has ever heard of or encountered. Well. Possibly excepting the man walking beside them.
no subject
Alright, Malos knows a trap when he sees one. He's not going to start arguing about how no, really, he doesn't care, because then they're just going to start being even more insufferable about it. Let him remain in denial in peace, alright?!
"Oh, yeah, that's a good point, too," Malos says, though it's kind of on automatic. He sees what they are saying. He's not done the examination upon Ship to know how intelligent it is on that front, though his bets hedge towards pretty damn intelligent. As for him? Well, they aren't talking about that.
Great news they seem to have reached their destination, anyway.
"Alright. You first, or me?"
no subject
However, there is still an access door leading, presumably, further upwards - there's one more floor above them, if the windows on the outside are any guide.
Eula hms and tries the door, which has no handle nor any evidence of one being removed, with a gentle push. It doesn't give. "It seems we shall have to bust in," they say. "I don't suppose you have anything other than muscle to make the job easier?"
his sword isn't out the icon is just for dramatic effect
"Hm..." Malos sighs, rolling his neck a bit. "Let me see."
He steps forward to knock on it. Yeah, okay, that's a depth he could definitely eat through. Nodding, confident, he turns to Eula. "Alright, step back a bit. I don't think you want to get caught in this."
Not that setting Eater's parameters to only eat through certain forms of matter is difficult. A bit of math, a bit of setup, and Malos has it ready to go. Rather than say the cast aloud, he just sets it off. His core glows bright as the wave of purple smoke - fog? who cares - extends from him, only forward, and starts working on the door, and a bit of the wall around it. It's maybe 10 seconds before the hole is big enough to let the both of them through, though they might have to duck a bit. He was sure to leave about ten centimeters of the door/wall by the floor and the ceiling, so he didn't potentially jeopardize the structural integrity of anything.
"There we go," he says, not even bragging about it. His head hurts, a little, core protesting from the cast and the crack. He steps over the bit of the remaining door and ducks into whatever lies beyond.
no subject
"Not quite what I imagined," they say as it works. The words are mostly thoughtful, though they do, in fact, take another step back, to be well out of range. "I've seen magicks of this ilk once before, and I've been warned that they can be... volatile." Though perhaps this man's is different from whatever it was that Aodhan did that day in Ala Mhigo.
As such, they let Malos take the lead through the door, and follow him up the staircase beyond. Unlike below, the walls are normal, and the stairs and banister themselves are typical of a service accessway - this was not a place passengers were meant to see, which is promising.
no subject
Malos shrugs. "Hey, it beats ramming it with my bad shoulder," he answers. "More elegant than slicing it open with a sword, besides. ...but, yeah. Bad idea to get in the way of it." Hopefully he's not going to have to later fight them, because, that's one card he won't be able to use against them. Eh. Oh well. Diplomacy works surprisingly well, on this boat.
"Huh." Malos considers the staircase a moment, as they climb. "You know, this is weird - at least a little - the Ship has all those drones it uses, and I'm not sure any of those could climb stairs, not that I've seen them try. Maybe this was for crew usage? Back when the Ship still had human crew to run it."
He's not sure they know all that about the boat, so he might as well share.
no subject
They are largely conventional, as explosives go.
"That would explain why it is now sealed off," Eula says. "No point in maintaining a space when there is no crew to make use of it."
Malos will see, as he comes up the stairs, that the room at the top is dark except for the light coming in the windows, painting everything a washed-out grey. The room they come up to seems to be some kind of employee lounge on the landing, with a real couch and one of those little diner tables where people could eat their lunch or whatever. There's windows along the one side, and another door that leads to a more forward part of the ship.
There's a towel - one of the ship's standard issue ones - tossed over the couch, stained lightly in incredibly old blood, not like it was used to mop up the floor or staunch an injury, but like someone with blood on their face or hands wiped themselves up and just tossed it there. It barely even smells of blood anymore.
no subject
Malos eyes the explosives appreciatively, but doesn't comment on them much more than an understanding nod. He's too busy really taking this space in, especially once they reach the top of the stairs. There's more interesting things to look at, then.
"Well, glad to see one place untouched by mirrors," he says, "I guess." Is that the important part here. "What, were the mirrors just spontaneously generating? But not here...?"
It's a fat load of bullshit, is what he's saying - maybe important, maybe not. A question that definitely deserves examination, that's for sure. Later, though. Because by now he's gotten close enough to see the towel, the blood.
"...Huh," he says. He doesn't touch it. His eyes tell him what's on it well enough. "Someone didn't clean up after themselves? Or someone vanished before they could...?" He scowls, puzzling about it. "Weird, if you ask me. Thought humans cared a little more about - I don't know - not leaving bloodstained stuff around."
no subject
"No dust," they observe. "Odd. Something so old as to no longer smell, yet no dust even in the pile?" That's unnatural as hell, if you ask them. Dust accumulates anywhere people or, indeed, any living things are.
Frowning, they turn towards the door, pausing to listen at it before testing the knob. "Unlocked," they say. "Here's hoping for no monsters on the other side." You can never entirely rule them out.
no subject
"Oh, shit, you're right," Malos says, mildly annoyed he hadn't thought about the dust. "No dust... Nothing to generate dust?" He tests that out on his tongue, but he's still scowling. "I know a lot of spooky shit happens on this Ship, but I was joking about them up and vanishing. What, they put the towel down and then stop existing?"
He doesn't like this. He doesn't like this at all. Humans don't do that, and blades don't bleed. Maybe those plants... but even plants generate dead cells, don't they?
"I guess even a corpse might stop smelling by now," he muses, but he's not seeing a corpse... in this room, anyway.
He follows Eula to the door. "You first. I'll cover you."
no subject
They nod, and slide the door open slowly, in case the track it's on makes some noise from disuse - but it doesn't make much of a sound at all, and either way, they needn't have bothered. There's no one in the room.
What is in the room?
Well, for a start, Eula was right about this having been a likely location for the ship's bridge and controls, at least at one time. The forward-facing wall is a bank of windows, giving them a clear view of the stormy skies and the distant horizon of the wasteland. A layer of screens above the windows might have shown other angles, or other parts of the ship - they're all powered off, however, and the one at the far end is properly broken, only attached on one side and swaying slightly with the motion of the ship. And there's certainly the shapes of where consoles were for a couple of crew members to sit and mind various instruments - however, all of those consoles have been ripped out, and the chairs pulled up to 'sit' in a circle of five.
Four of those chairs - the ones that aren't the captain's, still bolted to the floor where it belongs - are occupied by what appear to be faded, hand-made stuffed toys. Because that's what fills this room, aside from the remains of what was once the bridge - hand-made toys, and pillows, and blankets, and a couple empty cups that rolled into the corners. There are toys sitting on top of the ripped-out consoles to look out the windows, and an apparent nest in the middle behind the captain's chair that looks like where someone might have slept. Some of them are made of carved wood, but it looks like most of them are soft dolls, some in various degrees of disrepair, many of them color-faded by the sun.
There's a sewing kit on a folding table attached to the captain's chair. The doll sitting there, half-sewn-up with stuffing spilling out of her legs, has pinkish red hair and pink eyes, along with a pink and green outfit. Malos will recognize her instantly.
I ACCIDENTALLY GAVE PYRA GOLD EYES ONCE . ITS FINE.
There is a lot that one might want to take in about this, a lot of questions one might ask. Who made this nest? Were they not human, and was that why there wasn't any blood? Why are the plushies manning the bridge? What happened to the bridge, or that screen there?
But Malos doesn't get the luxury of all those questions, because he sees the Pyra doll on the folding table, and his brain basically shuts off. He's there in movement probably too quick for a human, grabbing her and picking her up. Yes, some of her stuffing falls out. His hand's large enough that his one-handed grip might have contained it, if he wasn't shaking the doll violently, anyway.
"What the hell!!! WHAT THE HELL!!!!" This isn't home. This can't be home - there's no Conduit - would there even be a Conduit after everything that happened? He was dead, how would he know - but what is this, then? The remains of old Earth? No, that's what the Cloud Sea is, what Morytha is. So if this isn't home, then how the hell would someone know what Pyra looked like to make a doll of her? And it must be her, because no one else ever could be wearing a blade outfit that glowed green like this. Even if the doll doesn't glow, the green lines are the same, and. Well, if he wasn't holding the doll, Eula would see the same shape of the core crystal, wouldn't they? On the doll. On him.
He stops shaking the Pyra doll, but he doesn't stop standing there, staring at her, trembling violently, most of her still obscured by his fingers. Eula hasn't even asked a question, but he might as well explain:
"Why. Is my sister. Who. Who was on this boat making a doll of my sister, and where the FUCK did they go so I can ASK THEM WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON!?"
i ahven't yet made an icon appropriate for this oops
They follow him in, armored boots seemingly too loud on the floor, looking over the other dolls scattered around the room. There are quite a few of them, but most have at least one or two recognizable traits to be unrecognizable.
The half-ranted, half-explanation-half-question, at least... Well, Eula Darnus of all people cannot blame him for having a bit of a meltdown, at that. They close their eyes for a moment, bracing, not answering, before returning to the search, half-expecting Alphinaud, if Alisaie is here.
It's not a doll of Alphinaud, at least, that their eyes alight on. That orange hair, the traditional warrior's clothes and sword... Eula goes to the window past Malos and picks up one of the dolls staring forward, in order to see its face.
As they'd thought. The facial tattoos confirm it.
"You aren't the only one with those questions," they say, tone level but in a way that suggests the levelness of a rifle steadied to aim. They show him the doll in one gauntleted hand and say, "Her name is Fordola. No kin of mine, but known to me all the same."
how could anyone, to be fair,
Malos watches Eula pick up another doll, confirm they recognize it. He blinks. No, he doesn't recognize that one... but are there any others? Hell, are there any others of people on this Ship? Miku? Mario? Hell, Princess Peach, if the dolls are all girls?
"That's... weird as fuck," Malos says. "They can see my world, they can see your world - whose else's? If you see one with long blonde hair... let me know, I guess. Or long silver hair." He feels like there's a knot in his throat. Yeah, he's absolutely going to steal a doll of Jin, if there is one. He might even steal Pyra. Or maybe that'd be worse than that book about Jin, that he got--
Did he get that book from - whoever the hell made these dolls!?!?
That thought is nearly too much for him. He puts it aside. Pyra was the only one that he could see, but he ducks down to have a look in that nest, and any of the other places a doll might have gotten stashed, out of immediate sight. He's still gripping the Pyra doll in his hand.
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Then, like Malos, they begin to work on the nest, though somewhat more systematically. They lift a blanket carefully from the pile - a wooden toy's leg falls out - and half-fold it to drape over the console. It reveals a few more toys, some of them of animals or monsters, all of them converging on a figure in the center who is unfamiliar to either of them. Whoever that doll is supposed to be sure looks like a teen boy anime protagonist, though, with choppy green hair and a sleek looking coat with orange ribbons tied around the upper arms.
A second blanket also reveals no one of note, though it does reveal a blue-green dragon that Eula picks up to look over more carefully before setting it aside. "Not one of ours," they say, before setting it, with some bemusement, in the captain's seat.
The third and final blanket they pull up reveals what might be a Kagamine Len in a sleeveless, fur-collared coat, or it could just be a false positive anime guy. There's a couple other dolls in that pile as well, but no one Malos will immediately recognize.
However, as he continues to look around, he might notice Sasuke Uchiha sitting all by himself at the end of the line of window-watching dolls.
"No one else I know," Eula concludes finally.
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Fucking. Sasuke Uchiha?????????? Malos stares helplessly at Sasuke for a while, and then finally stands, running a hand through his hair. He looks lost. He looks agitated.
"Shit. And I don't know if - there's like two dozen of us on this boat. You had someone here from your world. I had someone here from my world. Are the rest of these from one of their worlds? If so... Fucking hell, if Shang Beida was onto something..."
Well, he probably shouldn't tell Eula that specific thought, maybe not yet, but... It doesn't even occur to him to not tell everyone else about the dolls, in general. Like. First of all he needs to know which others of these dolls are significant to anyone else on this boat, just for data. Second of all they all they deserve to go what the fuck??? just like he did. Maybe it will cause chaos. Do you think he cares anymore? Super Mario is real.
"Dragging everyone up here would be a pain in the ass, though..." Shit, fuck it, why not. He looks cautiously at Eula. "You wouldn't have, like, a camera, would you? A way to take photos? Is that a thing in your world?"
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Which is a long winded way of saying no. Perhaps they should float the idea the next time they're home - surely there's some use for such a device, for a certain someone who tends to run around digging into ruins if nothing else.
Instead, Eula looks down at the dolls Malos is still holding - squeezing to death, really - and says quietly, "I'm no master, but I've a steady enough hand with a needle, if you need it." The stuffing coming out of Pyra's legs is beginning to get a bit and-then-the-five-year-old-squeezed-the-toothpaste-tube.
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"Hey, at least I don't have to explain what a camera is - I think I'd rather explode. It's fine, anyway - I think some of the other passengers have one." Aventurine has a phone with a camera, right? Maybe Sunday does, too. Hell, he's pretty sure Super fucking Mario does, if he can stand asking.
...oh. Right. The doll.
Malos makes himself unclench it. He starts to just abandon it on the nearest surface, but stops. It'd be stupid and sentimental as hell to keep it... but... "She does look real bad with her stuffing going everywhere," Malos says, aloud. He shrugs, offers the doll to Eula. "Yeah, I guess. If you wouldn't mind."
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"Though I can't help but wonder what called the creator of these dolls away," Eula says, setting Dollra down to pick through the sewing kit. "Even if you consider the lack of dust in the other room, the motions of the ship should have knocked things from the table if it was very long at all." Even as they speak, a round wooden spool, mostly empty of pinkish-red thread, attempts to make its escape as the Ship goes a little nose-up over a hill. Eula catches it deftly just as it falls from the table and sets it inside the kit.
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Malos doesn't have a thanks in him, right now, but he watches with moderate interest. It's not the kind of thing he knows how to do, and he likes knowing how to do things.
"Yeah, that's a good question," he agrees. Data! He's much better with data. "Maybe it was the same thing that brought us here to begin with. Or maybe they decided they wanted to see what all the commotion was. I'd be starved for other people if I went too long without." Why else did he keep going back to gloat to Amalthus, anyway? Before he had Jin to go to, instead. "Or maybe they went to get food - I see cups, but no plates. Humans generally can't go without food - though I guess I don't know if the people on this planet were human, even if their ghosts were pretty human-shaped. They probably needed food, though, 'else Ship wouldn't bother with cooking it for us."
He lets that sit for a minute, but even then, he's itching.
"No, that can't be all of it," he says, snappish. "The old blood, the lack of dust - the only way in here was through that other room, wasn't it? Should I ask where they were getting their water, or if they were getting it at all? Why does it feel like time in this room - froze. How does that even make sense?"
And, to rule out one other avenue: he is looking around to see if he sees any mirrors. Not that he really thinks the goddamn controls is where someone would keep a mirror, but, you know. He pokes his head into the employee lounge, too, to check - he can't recall if there were any in there or not, either, given all of the... excitement.
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"Could the occupant have been a ghost?" they ask. "I know not your familiarity with the subject, nor this world, but spirits in ours are certainly capable of such things."
(Malos will find no obvious mirrors or mirror-debris in the outer room, though there is a small makeup compact tossed carelessly beside a dusty lip gloss in a corner of the blanket nest. When he opens it up, the mirror is fogged and has a few splotches of now-dead mold; it barely qualifies as reflective anymore. The lip gloss is similarly old and gross.)
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"...I wouldn't say so. The last ghosts I saw on this ship couldn't interct with the world like that - they weren't physical, even if they acted like they were. They were like... displaced memories. Sunbathing in the rain. Chasing their child down the same path again and again. Like they didn't know they'd died, didn't have the sense to move on. If they were a ghost, then they were different from the others."
Malos makes an annoyed noise, tossing the compact mirror back down.
"I don't think our mystery dollmaker made an exit through a mirror, at least." Which mildly sucks. It's one more point of data crossed off, but also one less explanation to go digging for. "Or if they did, it was long after they left the room. And, here, look at this."
He tosses the gross lip gloss in Eula's direction.
"That looks like it's been in here for ages. Maybe the same way the blood was. Was this room frozen, or really just - untouched, until we got here?"
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Eula catches the lip gloss - such as is left of it - with the hand pinching the needle between two fingers. They make a face, before setting the gloss aside. "Aye, that's seen its share of years," they agree. "But for that to be the only thing rotted... There's a smell of dust to the blankets, but no worse than something that's been in storage for a few years. And the needle kit had not even that." They got a good look at the bits and bobs while Malos was gone. Pyra seems stuff enough to sew up, now. "It doesn't seem like anything the vessel would have done - machines want not for comfort - so it was something human, or close to."
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That's what has Malos... actually legitimately pacing, for a few steps, bothered by this a lot, and the silence in his mind letting him get bothered instead of being drowned by apathy. Besides, this concerns the very reality he currently stands in, and he has to know.
"Yeah, and there's the catch, right? If it was human - where did it go? How long has it been gone? Did time only pass for things if they were left alone?" The data adds up, in a way. Stop caring about the lipgloss first, so it rots, and then the blankets - not sleeping as often - and then the needle kit, which was presumably seeing the most use. He's not confident enough to lay all that out, though - feeling like he's chasing rabbits down holes.
"What I'm really concerned about is how the hell they got a peek into our worlds, and why they..."
(But he knows why. He knows why a human, or something like it, would make company, would make it in the shape of familiar places. Playing with toys, as it were. It's all about comfort - just like Eula said.)
"Well, just. Why."