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open log » ❝ The VR Program ❞

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.

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Peeta's eyes widened as the newcomer unleashed his...weapon? Whatever it was, it was nothing that had ever been introduced to the Games before. And the following of lightning just confirms it. A brief thought of the man being a Gamemaker's creation flits through Peeta's mind, but it doesn't make much sense for the Gamemakers to try and keep anyone alive.

Lightning explodes around the arena, and Peeta stood.

"We have to get out of here, now!"

Katniss dodges the lightning. Some of the mutts don't. But it breaks her concentration for a moment. Maybe that's enough for them to escape.

Overhead, mockingjays start landing on branches in the surrounding trees. All of them look at the two with hungry eyes as they start to chorus "Hanging tree, hanging tree, hanging tree.

"That can't be good."

His leg was pounding, and he had to fight the desire to vomit as he stares at the shaft sticking out of it. He had lost this leg, hadn't he? It was getting hard to tell.

"Near water," he grunts, only barely registering that he's been lifted up and cradled by a woman made of diamonds. "The trackerjackers are coming."

As if on cue, a few of the buzzing noises grow louder. Big, genetically altered wasps begin to swarm around them. Peeta snaps out of his pain long enough to register what their presence means.

"Don't let them touch you!"

Two base possibilities: either the man has a way of knowing that Barnaby'll be seeing somewhere else and soon, or he's faking it. If he's not faking it, either he can see things Barnaby can't (because that look away wasn't exactly illuminating) or he has a totally different way of knowing and was trying to throw him off the scent.

"Heroes are about saving and protecting people," he says, shrugs somewhat theatrically. "But of course, that only does them good if they want to be helped, too."

But it's just her way of saying hello. If she wanted to eat you, she would have done it already!

[ But the second tentacle that starts grappling for his wrist is definitely not friendly, and the atmosphere is turning at the very least uncomfortable as the beast starts to make noise. It's low, almost indiscernible first, a whisper in an old Eldritch tongue and none of the words intelligible to the untrained ear. That's when Feferi finally turns to look over her should, a little unsettled. ]

We will prevail regardless.

[Yeah, that'll show those Initiative jerks!]

Is this all they're capable of?

Nathaniel’s now grappling with the man who was guarding the door, trying to fetch a dagger from his boot at the same time.

“You seem... awfully calm... about this,” he manages to get out.

Nathaniel nods his head as he allows Roslyn to lead him away from the room. He’s experienced in stealth, and has no problem refraining from making any noise.

"I was at the wrong place at the wrong time," he replied, turning the baton over in his hand. The last officer looked from him to the teen, and not much to Takegami's surprise, choose to jump after the teen.

He really wasn't that much of a threat, was he? Maybe it was the distance. Shrugging to himself, Takegami moved behind the man, aiming the baton at his knees.

"Question is how do you come here?"

"What good would panicking do me?"

The officer knew how to hit. Takegami sucked in his breath as two blows landed hard against his stomach. It stun, but he ignored the pain and the lack of air as he went for the officer's throat. Last minute he didn't bite instead slammed the top of his head against the man's jaw.

Wouldn't do to let someone see him kill with his teeth.

[ He dropped the weapon, shrugging. A gun would be useful he suppose, but the sound would alert the others about this building. He followed her, head tilted as he listened. There was her breathing, the shuffling of her feet, the whirl of the air unit overhead. ]

To the left are the staff elevators. The way down to the parking garage is there.

The labs are down to the left, they shouldn't be staffed at these hours but she doesn't want to take that risk. The front door will be watched. If they head to the archives, there's a window out. She pulls him down a hall and starts to head down the stairs as quickly as she can. If they make it to the archives, they'll probably be safe.

[ She takes the turn left, gun out by her side just in case. She's not getting herself shot because she wandered into Takegami's dream. That is not acceptable. ]

Anything else it would be good to know?

Feferi doesn't expect to happen upon the memory of a young human male having his head hacked off, but she arrives a second too late. Detached enough from the scene that her arrival doesn't cause a stir or a distraction, she struggles to size up the situation. There are strangers, lots of them, even the dead human seems weirdly familiar but not. But the human on his knees at the foot of the others is familiar; even if his name doesn't come to her easily, the impression remains.

And she knows (from brief, stilted conversations) that he's too good-hearted to be having any kind of weapon brought down upon him.

Metal clashes on metal when she leaps into action, equipping her best trident. She doesn't really think about it, she just does it. She doesn't care what's going on here, or why. All she knows is that no one needs to

She catches the blade in one prong, giving a twist to try and arrest the stranger's movement or, better yet, disarm him. It's not a move she's practiced, or that she is even naturally adept at, but it's a start. If anything, there will be no heads rolling at that particular moment in time. It never concerns or occurs to her that changing a memory might not be possible, and even if it was? It would hardly be a deterrent.

"Looks can be deceiving, I've learned. You don't have to like your job to still pass out goody bags," Shepard pointed out before shifting her stance. "Okay. You're not here to congratulate me, or attack me, apparently. Why are you here?"

Bariyan winces. First because he expects the blade to lop his head off, then because of the screech of metal. He opens his eyes back up just in time to see Catsovi blink in surprise as the trident twists his sword out of his hand. Bariyan's gaze travels along the trident, and finds Feferi at the other end of it.

This girl... one of the trolls? Yes. He remembers her. (Something about whales.) She's certainly not from this time and place, though.

"Feferi...?" Bariyan says, the name strange on his tongue. But he doesn't have time to ask her how she arrived here. He hears more metal scraping, as Catsovi draws his second sword.

Bariyan makes a dive for the first one, the fallen blade. Too late. Catsovi's already advancing on Feferi, his new blade swinging through the air. This time towards her head.

[ bariyan makes one attempt to twist himself free of ros' grip, but that proves unsuccessful. perhaps it's better that they remain this way, anyway. better to stay close.

he keeps scanning the field, looking for strange movements, breaks where there shouldn't be, anything that might give the captain's position away, anything at all.

not enough.

they're almost free of the press when the captain shows up, a blur before he solidifies into a man again, blocking their path. he's drawn himself a sword, somewhere along the way, and he thrusts it straight towards ros.

bariyan sees the captain appear and moves just a split second later to slam himself into its way. he doesn't dare look to see if he was even fast enough, if he got there in time -- if the blade went through him or roslyn. ]

"Wrex? He's a krogan," she yells back, the answer just automatic. Most of her attention is on Kaidan, but she wonders if maybe she shouldn't ask to switch targets. No, that would be stupid. He throws a Reave at her, and Shepard flattens herself down against the floor just in time before she's engulfed by the biotic blast.

Shepard knows that she has to do this, or Bariyan could get hurt. That's just something she can't let happen. Leaning up, she aims at the man again, takes a deep and steadying breath, and pops shots at his head. The kill shot.

"Their biology is set up to make them war machines. He'll start regenerating his health soon." With Kaidan down, she turns to focus her attention on Wrex as well.

"Okay, you wing it by that machine over there then and I'll get this one." With that, Roxy picks up her bucket again, trying to douse as many of the flames as possible. Once she heres the other girl doing some sort of chant though she stops, turning to watch what she is doing, her eyes widening in amazement.

"Wow.. uh, what did you do? Is that some sorta magic spell or something?"

The SWAT team keeps their gear down here.

[ He remembered the room, walking past it while shuffling his feet, the press shouting questions behind them. He wondered how long they let those people stay in the building. He couldn't recall just how long they had let him stew in that little room. ]

Kaidan yells out the warning, and while he breaks cover to move, Shepard keeps her position. All the shit she has dealt with since this fight happened, one hyperactive husk isn't going to bother her. She aims her biotics as the husk jumps, pushing it back onto the platform as it writhes with the Warp. "Kaidan, now!"

She's breathing heavily, feeling exhausted and pushed to the limit, hands shaking slightly as she lifts her rifle in case Kaidan isn't able to finish off Saren.

Only vaguely does she catch what he's saying to her about their bodies, how long it's been. But that's a question to tackle later and hope that they're not wasting away in the real world.

"It's not that hard. Lym-slay-ah." She sounds the name out a little more slowly than she needs to, rolling her eyes. No one else back home ever had trouble with her name. But after a moment, her expression softens slightly, and she pauses in her stone-search, biting her lip. "My family calls me Lym, though."

This is no time to start getting homesick, though, since right now home kind of wants her dead.

Fortunately for the both of them, whoever installed the secret passage took pint-sized princesses into consideration. The loose stone in question is just within reach of her tiny little arms; when she pushes it, a dark staircase reveals itself.

She allows herself a little victory fistpump before stepping inside. "Here, hurry up! Make sure you close it behind you."

Sensible as Cousland's plan is, Anders has other, more immediate concerns, because Nathaniel just touched his hair. He flinches away from the touch. "You're not real, either, are you," he says angrily. "You wouldn't do that in front of your noble friend."

He half expects Nathaniel to attack. If he does, will he be full of something other than blood, like Oghren? Only it wouldn't be ale. Poison?

Edited 2012-08-15 01:13 (UTC)

What'd she do? Shepard would like to know the answer to that question herself. One minute, things are going along smoothly according to memory, the next her own friends are turning on her. "Maybe he just doesn't like the way I look today." There's a cheeky grin to her words, even if she doesn't feel particularly excited about this whole ordeal.

She takes aim at Wrex, barely feeling the jerk of her weapon when it fires. "Here's a question for you, Stark. How'd you even get here?"

If they get through this just fine, Shepard will be more than happy to give him one of her guns.

Or ran. Either way, one moment I'm in some dungeon after leaving my memory, and the next I'm here. [It wasn't so much her willingly forcing her way into memories as much as it was her trying to find the exit. So far? There doesn't seem to be one.] He's not real in here, but he exists back in the real world. [It's her own business to keep, and Shepard knows she shouldn't pry. But that doesn't exactly stop her ever, of course.

At the noise, her eyebrows go up as she glances over her shoulder towards the toward. Oh goody.] How many do you expect to come through those doors, exactly? [Either way, her hand glows blue as she turns to face what she can only assume are guards or knights.]

That seems like a place to avoid.

[ It's still quiet, for this moment. Maybe they'll make it out, or into another dream. She's bone tired already, ready for this all to be over. ]

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open log » ❝ The VR Program ❞

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LOL :'D I love bad puns what can I say

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FINALLY....

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