open log » ❝ The VR Program ❞

[initiatesnpc]

Date & Time: August 5th, mid morning.
Location: Anywhere characters happen to be/the VR.
Characters: Everyone.
Summary: From August 5th to August 8th, characters are plunged involuntarily into the VR Program.
Warnings: Potential violence within the threads.

When the chance arises, she's quick to take it. The programming is incomplete, she knows; the simulation isn't ready — but she's not likely to get another shot at it. And so she moves, slipping through security codes to input the command. The machines hum to life with nothing but a flicker of a green light in a dark room, and it takes only seconds to establish connections. The signal is sent out; the weapons respond.

In a single pulse, reality drops away.

There will be darkness at first as the mind realigns itself to the signals being sent it. Slowly, the darkness fades, forms take shape. People take shape. The setting is terribly familiar, plucked from the user's own mind. It might feel like a dream at first, with events playing out as if predestined, the would-be dreamer moving through a familiar and unalterable route in them. But as things begin to feel more and more realistic, as more senses more fully connect to the simulation, awareness will change. This is not a dream. This is more than a memory.

Welcome to the VR.

Only 20 minutes later, in some underground quarters, Doctor Sponde is roused from an undignified sprawl. He's hastily briefed and shuttled toward the command center, looking grim. He knows the problem demands an immediate fix, but… well, this is some complex machinery. It could take some time. It could take days. He gets to work.

Comments

coup d'état

[sunlitcrown]

Lymsleia hates this memory. She sees it on the nights she succumbs to her sleepiness - and this time it's a million times worse than the nightmares, because it feels just as real as the fateful night itself.

She hadn't been asleep very long, as the engagement party was nothing short of exhausting, so it took Miakis and Galleon a good amount of work to haul her out of bed. Making her even crankier was the fact that the two of them were being awfully evasive whenever she tried to ask what was going on. She wouldn't admit it, but their hurry to get her away from the palace was terrifying.

"Princess!" Miakis never slows her pace and tears down the hallway, tugging the little princess behind her the whole way. "Please hurry!"

"I'm... I'm trying! But where are my mother and father?" As Lymsleia pants out the question, her bodyguard falters, looking away guiltily, once again dodging the question. But she only takes advantage of this moment of weakness and whirls around to face Galleon. "Galleon! Weren't you with them?"

Galleon says nothing and shakes his head in response, leaving her to be dragged along in silence to Sun-knows-where - until, as suddenly as the two of them had stormed into her chambers, Miakis comes to an abrupt halt, causing Lymsleia to stumble. Blocking their path are two more Queen's Knights. Lymsleia knows she shouldn't approach them, knows they can't be trusted, but she cries out to them anyway, though Miakis tugs on her wrist with none of her previous gentleness.

"Zahhak! Alenia! What are you doing here?"

"Hello, Princess." There is no kindness in Zahhak's voice, though there never has been, not that she can remember. Rather, his tone reminds her of an angry parent about to berate a troublesome child. "And where do you think you're going?"

As he speaks, a group of Nether Gate assassins noiselessly stalk in from behind them, effectively trapping the princess's little entourage. Both Miakis and Galleon let out a few quiet swear words that she can't quite make out. There's nowhere to run now, all three of them know it, but frankly, she is tired of running.

"Tell me what's going on here!" she demands, punctuating each word with a petulant stomp of her foot, though she doesn't need to hear the answer. She certainly doesn't want to. "Tell me! Right now! That's an order!!"

"You're the ruler of the Sun Palace now, Princess," Alenia explains with a smile that doesn't quite reach her eyes. The meaning of those words took a moment to sink in the first time, but right now, what Alenia is really saying comes in loud and clear. If she is the ruler now, then her mother, the queen, must be...

"Dead," she mumbles, but no one seems to hear her.

"You must die!"

...Wait, what?

Each knight and every assassin raises their blades. Not knowing how to fight back when her weapon is the stupid crown on her head, Lymsleia screams at the top of her lungs, kicks Miakis in the shin, and darts under her attackers' legs before tearing down the hallway. And here she thought this particular memory couldn't get any worse.

back to the bathhouse

[punk_cute]

Kanji finds this memory terribly embarrassing. The atmosphere itself is oppressive--thick clinging fog and steam, but when it parts it's a sauna and bathhouse, filled with monsters. But the worst monster is himself, and the memory advances like he thinks it should, with his all but naked other self flirting and exposing all his insecurities and secrets until he delivers a punch and proclaims that he knows this is a part of him.

But then his friends turn and instead of supporting him in accepting his other self start slinging insults and readying weapons. And his other self grows again, becoming monstrous .

Kanji blocks with his shield and his Persona coalesces behind him in a burst of light but he's confused and obviously very reluctant to fight his friends.

"What the hell? Guys, cut it the hell out! What are you doing?!"

They don't listen, summoning Persona and reading to attack with sneers and angry words.

((ooc: For an idea of the scene, watch this from about 4:17 to 6:00. And for an idea of how the enemies will attack, watch the beginning! Warning, SMT games are permanently in hard-mode and these VR representations will reflect that. They fight very well together, with support and healing and a variety of attack styles.))

memories of a past life as robin hood

[hardbody]

In one instant, he was walking along near the city's edges, minding his own business, listening to the strangely pleasant mixture of birdcalls and cars. In the next, the entire scene shifted, as though someone had forcibly teleported him out of the city and into--a town back home? In the dead of night, no less. He took a few steps forward, then turned around, taking in the familiar shapes of the houses, the unpaved streets, and the utter quiet of a world without so much as a beep of electronic technology.

A familiar voice called his name.

"Zel! Zel, we got it!"

Zelgadis whipped around, panicking, as one does when a dead man shouts for you. Because that was old man Rodimus's voice, and he had been gone for years.

"It's not possible," Zel muttered, even as Rodimus and the others burst into view, their arms laden with treasure from the town's vaults.

"What're you standing around for? Let's go!" Zolf said, grabbing him by the arm. Zelgadis stumbled along after them until they were well clear of the town's lights; his body seemed to follow a pre-set path, something he had memorized. When the group finally stopped moving, they were in another, much smaller settlement, a place that was more of a hamlet than a proper town. Dawn was breaking, and people emerged from their ramshackle homes to greet Zelgadis and his friends. Children swarmed them, asking for apples; Zolf handed one of the bags to Zel and he found it brimming with these and other fruits. He handed them out gladly, in a daze.

He was in the past, somehow. Years in the past, before he knew the truth about Rezo, before his friends had perished or disappeared. Zel looked down at his pale hands.

Before he was a chimera.

He was so giddy at the sight of his rock-free skin that he almost didn't notice Rodimus lift his axe and swing, right at his mid-section.

sry your train won't be arriving on schedule cause it fell off a bridge

[asinine]

[ the chicago fraternity hq was fucked up beyond repair by yours truly. he knows he killed sloan, somewhere in the back of his mind, and he knows that cross is just as dead -- it's not what he's thinking, though, as the train is knocked off the tracks, metal screeching and groaning and twisting, and goes over the edge of the fucking bridge. he's thinking that he's not gonna lose his footing, then his grip, and he's not gonna fall to his fucking death but even as he scrambles for something to hold onto, he's violently ripped away from it as the train car smacks into the mountainside, windows cracking from the impact and spitting glass everywhere.

he turns his face reflexively, but shards still cut his face and just like that he's slipping, falling, barely managing to grab the frame of the door to keep himself from being plunged down into whateverthefuck is at the bottom of the canyon. he's not looking down to find out, not when he's busy trying to pull himself back inside, conjure up the strength to heave his own body back up. trying being the key word, because as the train shakes particularly forcefully he loses his grip, and he thinks, somehow, that he's prepared to just be thrown downwards --

but fingers close around his wrist.

this is where he knows he's supposed to be reaching back for his backup gun, shove it in cross' face and pull the trigger even as he's dragging wesley into the wreckage again and attempting to save his damn life, but he doesn't, not this time, not for this weird fucking do-over -- because this is cross, this is his father, so he uses his last bit of energy and adrenaline to climb through the door he's fallen through with cross' assistance and pushes himself towards something that looks like it's nailed to the wall this time. his heart pounds and his muscles scream in protest as he tries to catch his breath, and he thinks this didn't fucking happen and this isn't real, laughs because it can't be and because he knows it isn't, but it doesn't matter, because he doesn't get the opportunity for father and son bonding time anyway.

(isn't that fucking typical.)

thanks to his quick reflexes and just a dash of skepticism, paranoia, he avoids a bullet to the face and a knife to the throat as cross lunges at him. ]

[hellodeadpeople]

[ Pragia. It's all sterile, white walls and clinical looking men in bleached lab coats with clipboards and something that just seems off in their eyes.

In one violent moment, there's a loud crack and a clatter of a clipboard hitting the floor and the whitewash walls of the facility are marred with bright, traumatizing crimson. In the still open door to a cell with a one way reflective mirror, a desk with memories scratched into the underside of it and a bed terrified night had been spent in, Jack still stands, now a decade and some change older. Here eyes go a little mad at the memory - it's too vivid, too real for a dream. ]

What the fuck... What the fuck!?

[ But there's no time for her to expound further on that line of thought, because the riot is coming - facility guards and children, rioting, along with them. Various inane things are shouting 'I will destroy you!' 'Prepare to die!', but Jack here's none of it as she rips through them, sending off biotic barrages. It doesn't phase her what they are, the age, the fact she's much older than them now. There's only the stoic survivalism as a teenage girl is slammed into a wall, a sickening crack coming from her before the body falls limp to the floor. No hesitation as the same is down to the guard behind her. ]

RUSSIA because natasha can't ever have nice things

[chelicerata]

[ the smell of smoke is thick, makes her lungs and nostrils sting, but she's finished with her task. her job is done. her target will be taken care of by the flames -- unreachable, if she were looking to get up close and personal, but not out of reach for the fire which claws its way up the walls, tearing down everything in its way. people scream, and if natasha wasn't numb to it, she would've found it distressing; as it is, they're merely collateral damage, and she doesn't look back as she moves for the closest exit. through the hall, down the staircase. she knows what awaits her past the doors at the bottom of it, knows because this memory is old enough to have burst into her dreams (nightmares - the word 'dream' feels somehow inappropriate) countless times -- she's prepared for the heat, the dry, suffocating air, but that isn't what she's greeted by once she steps out into the corridor.

a child is crying, a little girl in a hospital gown with her hair in a braid, and she's not new. natasha doesn't save her, because it changes nothing and for some reason, it isn't as easy as that and she dies, one way or another, even if she tries - sometimes it's falling debris, sometimes she's dead already as natasha picks her off the floor, bleeding out of every orifice no matter if it isn't logical. so she runs in the direction of the emergency exit she's well aware of the location of, move move move don't look over your shoulder.

only to stop in her tracks, as the people supposed to be dying, weak and helpless, begin to rise from the ground or push themselves away from the walls they'd been clinging to for support. they don't speak russian when they open their mouths; it's perfect english that falls from their chapped lips, and while the nightmare changes frequently, it's never like this. the dream is twisting, distorting until it feels completely different - despair and panic no longer eat away at the building as much as the fire; it becomes cleaner, sharper, and the patients have scalpels and scissors and even guns in their hands, all armed to the teeth with deadly objects, each and every one pointed at her.

prepare to die. ]

[perfectionisms]

She has no idea how she got there, her father's office from many summers past. She was standing on the same spot she was when she was ten, and her father was giving the same speech. There was a copy of her grades on the table. All of her marks were excellent, of course. But there was one subject where her grades were less than perfect.

A von Karma must be perfect in every way. Her father paced back and forth as he continued his lecture. She couldn't pick up most of the words but she knew the general gist of it. She didn't find herself as afraid of him as she used to be. Perhaps it was because she was older, or because of what happened a year ago.

But that was before she noticed that the ground shook every time his cane hit the ground while he was saying something about the qualifications of being a von Karma.

"YOU!" She falls on her butt as the ground splits open.

"DID NOT!" Hold on, when did Manfred's eyes start glowing? She starts scrambling to hide behind the nearest sofa--

"PASS!" -- barely missing a bolt of lightning from the end of that cane.

Hold on! This is getting ridiculous! Not risking attacking her own father though.