exsiliumlogs | open log » ❝ The VR Program ❞

Entry tags:

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Marco first realized that something was wrong when he felt his stomach start to sink. Literally. In a few seconds he had been standing, next to his nice, cozy future-tv and bam! suddenly he was outside a neighborhood house that looked way, way too familiar.

Vice principle Chapman, familiar.

And if that wasn't bad enough, the morphing process seemed to have a mind of its own. He barely had time to let out the choked sound of surprise before the ground came up to meet him. His skin hardened, extra arms grew out of his chest and stomach, and he felt his eyes grow, encompassing most of his face as pincers grew from his teeth.

Ant! Marco barely had time to register the fact that he was, yet again, transforming into the one animal he had sworn never to morph again. He was turning into a damn ant. As human sight left to be replaced with the ant's near-blindness, he caught the familiar forms of Rachel, Jake, and Cassie as they too became ants.

Z-Space. It had to be freaking Z-spa-

Food. Smelled food. Had to find it, bring it back to the colony.

Immediately, the ant instincts began to take over. The smell of a dead beetle assaulted his antenna as they flickered.

We would touch the carcass. We would judge its size. If it was too big to carry, we would hack it into smaller pieces and carry the chunks to the colony.

Or enemies would come. We would kill.

On some level, Marco remembered being Marco. He remembered this happening before, how the ant instinct had taken over and drove him forward, overwhelming all aspects of identity. He remembered scurrying around in the grass, how the mission had been to grab the transponder from Chapman's basement. How something had gone wrong. He remembered the rival ant colony appearing.

We had reached the beetle. We opened our cutting mandibles wide and bit into the carcass.

Into the tunnels the ants went.

And, as Marco went to turn, other ants began pouring out of the side tunnels. Red ants. Enemy ants.

Instantly, they descended on the four black ants. Marco came to his senses as three of them dug their pincers into his midsection, tearing at his body and trying to rip him in half.

< AHHHHHH!!! >

[ ooc: characters that enter the memory can either be themselves, ant-sized, or transformed into...ants. With the ant-morph comes a very totalitarian mindset. The ants are loyal to their hive, one gigantic "self", and initially characters will have to fight the impulses to go borg, for lack of a better word. Ants also have next to no sight, relying on smell to guide them via their antenna ]

Edited 2012-08-05 23:11 (UTC)

[ He hadn't stayed long in his own specially-crafted memories. Why should he? The enemies inside were no friends of his, and he was no fighter. He'd only teleported away from their attacks and began to explore, and pushing through to another world (a flash of something dark, wet, a man—and then gone again) had led him — here.

Ants. Giant-sized ants, as far as he can tell. He has no idea where he's landed himself, or how this is possible, even the monstrous ants of the Sograt Desert only came to the knee. He's not sure where he is, but, as he spins to slam the wood of his staff (no, the bone, this isn't his staff, this is the one the Initiative had given him) between the mandibles of an ant, he decides it doesn't much matter. Another place of war, another battle.

A battle between beasts, apparently. He scans the area grimly, searching for someone to help in the gloom, but all he sees is warring ants. His eyes fall on one of the black creatures, apparently in danger of death, but he does nothing. It would be one less creature for him to evade, if he saved it. ]

[ he can feel his midsection starting to split open and Marco screams at himself to demorph, to go human and avoid being stuck as a shredded ant-

and suddenly he smells something else. Something foreign. ]

We sense enemies. We will kill. Protect the colony.

[ Marco's not going to protect crap, thank you very much. He tries to ignore the pain, tries to get his bearings. But he has no idea what this intruder is so all he can really do is hope Jake or Cassie or, okay, even Rachel is demorphing. When he speaks, it's telepathically sent to the intruder: ]

< GET THEM OFF ME >

[ He has to demorph. He has to demorph or he's dead.

Pincers clamp down, ripping off three of his legs. Marco screams out his pain in thought-speak ]

< NOW >

[ Ashraf jerks, startled by the voice. It's not one he knows, although he recognizes it from the netbooks. A transport, but no one is in sight. Is it one of the ants?

He jerks away, casting a shield spell about himself. Ants begin to bounce off of it as he shoves through them, looking for — someone. A human? ]

I hear you. [ He sounds calm, grim. He refreshes his shield spell before the ants can break through it, and walks on. ] Where are you?

[ Human? The voice sounded human. But not like anyone Marco recognized-
-an ant tore away one of his antenna and Marco howled again. Okay, at this point who cared who it was. ]

< I'm the guy getting torn in half over here. > [ a beat ] < ANT, I'm the ant getting torn in half! >

[ He is an ant, then? That clarifies things. Ashraf scans until he again spots the ant being torn apart by reds, stretches out a hand, and casts his shield spell over him. A heal follows that, and he's about to add further strengthening spells, but his own shield runs out in that moment.

Mandibles tear into his forearm, another pair makes for his side. He cries out and instinctively heals himself, but the ants haven't let go, and are happy to recreate their undone work. His own fault for letting the spell lapse, he knows, and he begins grimly shoving at the attacking ants with his staff to get nearer to Marco. ]

[ a wave of something pleasant washes over him. Marco's pretty convinced that something is the absence of pain. It's starting to feel like a new emotion by this point. He breathes, mentally anyways because he's pretty sure ants don't come equipped with the sigh of relief package. ]

< Thanks man, I owe you one- >

[ the ground vibrates and Marco smells the scent of the intruder's blood. Not good. ]

< Hold on, I got you buddy. >

[ not sure why the ants have stopped attacking him for the moment being, Marco charges forward. He uses the ant's instinct to guide him as he clamps his pincers down on a red ant, tearing off a chunk of its abdomen. Ants are strong ]

A scream rang through her head, but the ant that Collette was didn't register what it meant. Everything was scents, ones that told her danger, danger, she was surrounded by the enemy, and that part of the right group was here as well.

All those scents driving her into moving as part of the whole.

The ant that Collette was marched into the mess, joining in the fray with a methodical directive that was outside of her conscious control.

By the time she came back to her own mind, Collette had her pincers around some ant's thorax, even as another was tearing off one of her remaining five legs. < What's the -- oh no you don't! >

Terrified, she bit down, trying to orient herself and interpret what the ant was telling her. She had to get out! Whatever she'd walked into? She needed to walk right back out and away from!

Marco could feel the enemy ant's pincers clamping down on his side, taking out a chunk of his abdomen and sending a blinding trill of pain through him. While he was thankful that the ant body had no well-defined sense of sight, he knew the smells would burn in his mind forever.

Like they did the last time.

Last time?

Marco tried to fight past the blinding pain to see logic, but it was getting harder and harder. And his head felt dull. That probably wasn't good-

< What's the -- oh no you don't! >

That. Sounded familiar. And it didn't sound like Jake. He didn't think. It was getting hard to remember...

Pain erupted again as one of his antenna were ripped from his body, making him half blind in an already dark tunnel.

The voice...crocodile?

Croco-

< Collette? > it was getting hard to think. He had to demorph. He had to focus...and demorph...because now he was hearing Collette and he was almost certain Collette wasn't here for this.

Edited 2012-08-06 04:25 (UTC)

Bodies, the enclosed space, all the chemicals rushing through her bloodstream pushed her into overload. Sheer willpower is what kept her in control, and even that was having trouble trying to balance the rest of the current situation.

Which seemed like walking in mid battle to something she seriously didn't understand.

Whatever sense that told her air, that way seemed like the best plan. Get out, get out of morph, how far underground was she, how --

< Collette? >

She half expected to hear James, but that wasn't James. Not even Timmy or Kelly, or either of James' lieutenants.

Really, it wasn't that they didn't fight with the Animorphs, but they had their own tighter operating circles. And wait... since when did she have an ant morph anyhow?

How did any of this make any -- < Yowch! Marco? I hear you! > She didn't get it, but she also didn't know what else to say. Though it was weird. He sounded so faint, like he was at the limit of Thought Speak range.

Or a different limit altogether. < Tell me you're outside of this mess, 'cause otherwise you're getting way too quiet on me there, buddy! >

Oh by all that was -- ants couldn't even turn the same way she was used to, so a chunk of her antennae went off along with a dig at her abdomen exoskeleton.

Relief flooded him, or maybe that was just his brain going into shock. After all the battles, it was beginning to get hard to separate the two. Collette was here. Good. More Animorphs. He had wanted more Animorphs, hadn't he? Marco was pretty sure he had chosen that during their vote.

Wait. Focus.

Marco tried to wiggle the legs he had left in a mockery of a wave. It was hard, seeing as red ants kept wanting to snap at anything exposed in an attempt to kill him horribly.

< Over here. >

Weak voices? Collette wasn't sure how she picked out Marco's ant-waving action over the antics of the ants on attack, but she had, and that removed the possibility of talking at a great distance. Which left --

< Demorph! Look, I'm coming, but -- >

Collette yelped, an odd, high pitched mental cry tinged with as much annoyance as fear. She knew she'd never, ever had an ant morph. Something about this entire situation was wrong. Even weirder, because that was Marco, and this was nightmare level not-the-kind-of-dream worth having right now.

Or ever, but particularly right now.

< Oh that is it, the next time I find a magnifying glass I might just use it! >

And there went an antennae. < Ants have soft dirt tunnels, demorph and tell me what the heck is going on! >

Mess him just demorphing, she wanted to get away from these tiny yet horribly effective intruders now!

Her friend's blood was still staining her hands as she walked through worlds. Not literally of course, that blood had faded the first time she'd stepped into another nightmare, but the memories of her spells striking down those she loved most, of their flesh melting and searing under them because of her own need to survive, those scars would linger for a long time more.

Nothing would make it better. Nothing could. But, she'd found, ripping apart other people's demons did distract her for a time.

Not that anything could have prepared her for what she stepped into as she crossed that wall between the last dream and the next. Certainly massive insects were not unknown in Faerun, but she had never seen them in the numbers she found as the burned village faded and was replaced by packed earth.

All around her brewed a massed army of chitinous shadows, razor mandible's slashing in an orgy of mindless destruction, ripping enemies apart with no fear for themselves. While the tunnel itself was almost pitch black, her elven ancestry allowed Reya to see almost perfectly in the dark, to distinguish what, to a full human, would have been a writhing mass of formless death.

Staring as the giant red forms ripped at each other, she wondered idly why Bhaal had seen fit to grant her such a 'gift.'

"Well, it seems my world has a rival for strange wildlife," she murmured to herself, before two thrashing forms nearly crashed into her, forcing the mage to hurl herself to the side. Enchanted robes protected her from the worst of the impact, and as she rolled to her feet, a Ghost Armor spell on her lips, the incantation ready to wrap her in arcane protection.

Until a psychic scream breaks her focus and fizzles the spell, leaving her cursing as she drops to a crouch, clutching her head and barely avoiding the snap of an ant's jaws. Hand up, she unleashed a rain of magic missiles at her foe, the tiny red spheres tearing through the insect's armor like it was made from vapor. Rolling away from the dying beast, she looked in the direction of the scream, calling out with her mind and voice, "Who's there! Who's dream is this!"

The pain made it hard to focus. But the voice made the air vibrate in a way that he was pretty certain ants couldn't do. Another scream erupted as he felt a leg tear away.

< MARCO. THIS IS MARCO. I'M A CAPRICORN. I'M A CAPRICORN WHO DOES NOT LIKE GETTING TORN. IN. HALF. >

He swung his pincers down, using his mandible to try and bite down on the head of one of his attackers.

Being a mage gave a woman a range of very odd skills, only some of which were magical in nature. One of said skills was learning to track voices appearing in her head. Not that she could actually discern direction, but the moment she heard the desperate cry in her mind she instinctively began to cast a True Sight spell as she swiveled on the balls of her feet, insect warriors clashing all around her.

With the right words and a hand passed over her eyes the magic fell into place, and all illusions were stripped away to reveal their true form. For the most part very little actually happened to the world, save that where before had been a shadowy mass of battling ants cast in red, she now saw a mass of ants very determined to rip apart the first fellow abducted she had met on this world. Spitting out an elvish curse, she lifted her hand and practically snarled the words of her next spell.

Memories of Jaheria's body twitching lifelessly from her magic flashed through Reya's mind, and she cut off her knee jerk destructive impulse to chant a new incantation. Invisible threads of power launched themselves from her fingers to wrap about the ants trying to rip Marco to pieces, compelling them to hold still. The creature's primitive minds were resistant to Reya's charm magic, but she was not some fresh from the tower maglet either, and the power she poured into it forced all but one of the soldiers to hold themselves still, some with jaws still lodged in Marco.

The one that did not was rewarded with an acid arrow to the head, piercing its armor and melting its small brain network. "Marco, is that you?" She raced over, dodging around hungry ants, casting protective magic as she did, several near misses speeding her casting. "You're proving to be a bit more exciting than I usually prefer my guidebooks to be."

< Yeah, excitement. Just what I think my life could use less of by this point > Marco joked weakly, trying to focus on his human morph. If he could demorph and grown large enough to crush the ants around him but not the tunnel, then they'd be in business.

If he couldn't, well. They were all doomed. It's nice not to break routine every once in a while.

Sadly, every time he attempted something would tear out a tiny ant organ.

After a few moments, though, Marco's antenna picked up the stillness surrounding him. That, coupled with some of his legs staying attached to his body, gave him the unique impression that perhaps the chaos had ebbed.

He mentally exhaled, trying to shift halfway back to human.

< I don't know how you're hear or how you're the ant-whisperer, but thanks. > He paused. < Also you might want to take a step back, I'm about to get a little bigger. >

With that, Marco focused on his partial demorph.

"Couldn't we always," she sighed, half to herself as she moved closer, keeping an eye on the ants to see if any might escape her spell. If she was able to get Marco away from them, assuming he could move, she would be able to drop a delayed fireball and clear the whole lot out without wasting a high level spell.

Chanting as she moved, she looked between the paralyzed ants and the one they had been tearing into, trying to asses how much damage they had done. Insect anatomy was not, however, her forte, and all she could gather from the hunks of chitin he was missing was that things did not look good. Once finished, she glanced over her shoulder to nod to him. "It helps they aren't the brightest of nature's creations. Whenever I try that spell on trolls or ogres they usually just get angrier." Feeling the layer of magical armor settle over her body, giving her a sense of weight without any of the burdens that came with it, she turned back, "You're welcome. Just make sure whatever you're doing, it's done before we're-" just what they might be was illustrated when she suddenly had to leap out of the way of another soldier's snapping jaws.

Defensive spell flashing as she hit the tunnel's floor in a roll, a massive foot crashed down atop her, causing her spell to flicker, but manage to hold. Were it not for her magic and enchanted items the blow would likely have been powerful enough to crush her, and even enhanced as she was she wouldn't be able to throw off the ant without enchantments she had no time to cast. Luckily, there were simpler options available. Grabbing the claw pressing down on her with one hand, she thrust her hand up towards the jaws closing down on her with a spat word of power. Flame welled to life between her fingers and roared upward in a straight line, the sheer heat enough to liquify a hole the size of her fist straight up through the creature's horrifying head, burning a smooth tunnel through the dirt above.

Ant rearing back in reflexive reaction to its own death, she twisted away with a furious expression and crouched with one hand resting on the ground, soil gripped tight between her fingers, the other pulled back as electricity collected in it, and with another series of words a bolt of blinding blue white light tore down the tunnel, blasting apart any ant that got in its way.

"Well, that should keep them off our back-" but for her words to be true, ants would have to know fear, or at least have a sense of self preservation, and they had neither. There was only the colony, and enemies of the colony must be butchered without mercy. Even before she could finish speaking, more ants were pouring from below, mandibles snapping as they advanced in a tide of jaws.

"Marco. Hurry."

Gigantic ants.

Barnaby is, of course, rather used to the strange and absurd being little more than reality, so while they get a brief wide-eyed look - embarrassing, and thankfully no one was around to see that - he's quickly calculating. This isn't remotely familiar to him, not like anything in his memory (he thinks, he thinks, he thinks) - it's not like the stadium he came from, anyway, and it doesn't seem like anything in Sternbild at all.

Dirt, ants, vegetation - not the sorts of things he'd ever been inclined to play with as a child.

He's not sure he has any interest in inter-ant battles, though there's something that feels wrong in watching them rip each other apart, but he doesn't hesitate to protect himself from the ants that advance on him, dodging as much as possible (and it'd be so helpful if he could only have his hero suit now) and kicking the ones that try to attack him ( - but he has to admit to the merit of these boots he picked up from the Initiative, because already his kicks have far more power than the normal human capacity).

Marco was in between some rocks and an ant's mandible when he felt a strange vibration in the tunnel. A thick movement of air confirmed the alien sensation, as well as the ant's inner thoughts going bezerk.

ENEMY. PREDATOR. RETREAT.

At this point, Marco was all about the ant predators. Especially since one of the bugs was having a hayday with his abdomen. Feeling another leg being torn off, Marco couldn't help another cry.

< AH >

He tried rolling, getting away, but the ants chased after him and with only two legs he wasn't getting very far.

< Go after the weird, mystic breeze instead! SHOO! >

He's avoiding activating his Hundred Power if he can help it - leaps backwards out of the reach of one's mandibles, takes another step and braces himself for a sweeping roundhouse kick at another, and even as that one falls more rise to take its place, and that's where half the difficulty arises. Antennae brush at his back, his arms, his legs, and he considers for all of his previous proclamations about working better alone how it'd help to have someone else to cover his back. It's no good wasting his energy like this, but he can't find anywhere else to go either. Logically, if he came in here from somewhere without them, he should be able to get back - or get somewhere else - but...

...dodge another, plant his hands on one's horrible head and flip onto its back, just see more of the dark tunnel. Damn it.

He considers the rapidly-thickening crowd of ants and powers up, eyes and body glowing brightly blue in the shade. And maybe it's because of his enhanced senses that he hears something, familiar and human.

"Who's there?"

And then the weird, mystic breeze began asking questions. Marco stilled, trying to think about the logic behind a human voice inside of an ant tunnel-

-but then another leg was in the process of being ripped off. So maybe if this was a hallucination it was better to go along with it for all it's insanity.

< Marco. Please don't say Marco Who? Now's not the time. > He muttered, trying to wiggle something, anything, away from his attackers. < I'm the impossibly attractive black ant over here that's getting ripped into pieces. >

He doesn't recognize it right away, but it doesn't take that long either for him to realize why the sound was familiar.

"Marco?"

The fellow NEXT with the shapeshifting power, he remembers, so he accepts the explanation and moves in that direction quickly - inhumanly quickly, in fact - looking for a black ant getting mauled by the others. He'll find one, hoping it's the right one, and kick one of the red ants right off - accidentally really, since he's still not used to the combination of his Institute boots with his Hundred Power. But it's effective and looks cool, so he'll never tell.

"Is this you?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

open log » ❝ The VR Program ❞

Why'd it have to be ANTS

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject