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

pls let me know if I get things wrong here

[payback]

Rin gave up on trying to reason with those fighting with her in her own memories in fairly short order, and fell into the battle instead. It was almost a relief, settling into the rhythm of hack-hack-and-slash without thinking about anything else. That was simple.

She fought and then she ran once she was clear of the fight, pursued of course, but far enough that the edges of her own memory frayed, flashed light and dark, and then - she broke through elsewhere. Cold, stinking of rot, with shouts echoing quite nearby. A fight flashed through the trees. There was no sense to be made of anything. She ran with her sword still unsheathed instead, trying not to stumble and scanning the landscape as she went. Breath tore out of her throat in long white plumes with each exhale, and she ran towards the people darting this way and that without thinking about whether it was really a good idea or not.

ALL'S WELL

[theguideless]

Martin had never felt his sister's needles before; the program determined their pain for him. Sharp, burning a little, too thick to ignore. His cry was stifled by his own, gasping breath, reeling backward as the ground around him was peppered with more of the same. Their tinny noise as they struck hard stone and wedged between gravel filled his ears until his back hit the ground — "Whuff—!"

He didn't see it, but he felt it: Regina, his sister, soaring over him as she finished her volley. There was absolutely no way in his mind to make it make sense. None.

His skin prickled almost painfully and his body grew hot; it felt the Lamyin moving in, giving a garbled, throaty growl to announce itself over the stench. At a distance, over the breathless giggle of his sister, he heard the others calling.

"One!"

"Here, one!"

There were wet and world-worn jaws looming over his face when he opened his eyes.

[payback]

"Hey? HEY?!" Nothing was clear, but here clearly enough there was trouble, and Rin ran for it. She wasn't sure who to fight, who was worth fighting - dead animals scattered around the clearing, so discombobulated she went for the animal instead, sprinting in range and slashing. To fight with or against the girl? With or against the boy on the ground? Too confusing to decide - easier to go for the obvious enemy instead.

[theguideless]

Aside from flailing, senseless limbs twisting around to blindly swipe, the animate heap of meat she'd struck was no brilliant combatant, and continued to flail without a good section of flank or well-connected leg. Its head tilted and tilted, off-hinge, as empty eyes and a program reconfigured to accept the new guest.

Its jaw dropped and dangled as it bowed low and sprang, claws outstretched and accepting. Regina cackled just behind Martin and, as he spun part of himself to see, flung her arm and sent needles flying overhead to help greet Rin.

[payback]

Slicing off most of a leg - that was gratifying! The hail of needles, tagging Rin like a bull in the matador's ring - not so much. She threw up an arm belatedly to protect her face and eyes, and that part worked well enough. Still needles thunked home in her arm. The pain was immediate. She didn't get hurt so often.

"Get UP!" Rin screamed at the kid, and then she ran for the woman. There were others closing in. This was a disaster. Stupid, stupid, STUPID - !

[theguideless]

Martin was numb. He didn't know the stranger at all. Probably. If he did, it wasn't clicking. Her strangeness in the scene was just one more ripple disturbing the whole, big picture, and everything was distorted and wrong.

His eyes locked on his sister, dancing around to distance herself, fresh needles at her knuckles. Watched her shake the blood and black scourge off them and throw. Watched the stranger react. Numbness became nausea, and Martin felt and saw shapes in his peripheral. The shape shattered to pieces when he moved his arm, blindly aiming and launching his lance. The force, which he hadn't braced for, sent him rolling, and gave him chance to scramble up to his feet, staggering to straighten.

His veins hurt. He stifled a whimper with a firmly set jaw, searching again for his sister. Whatever...whatever was going on, he wasn't going to give it the same conclusion as before.

He ran toward the fight on shaken legs.

[payback]

The kid was up. Rin ran after him. She did not want to be there right now, and without her entirely realizing, she phased partly out of visibility - thank you, Siren's Port stealth powers.

She realized mid run she didn't know what she was doing or who this boy was anyway. Maybe he was an enemy too. She thought that and then kept running, fast enough even thought it had been a long time since she'd run like that. Try to curve around and get a look at that girl. And the others. That seemed like an articulate idea. She tried to do that, at least, arcing right and staring around desperately, trying to work out what was what.

[theguideless]

Wait.

He had to step sideways, following the chase. Please. The other one was...his imagination. Or something he hadn't focused on hard enough to be sure one way or another. Regina was there, whole, and that was what mattered most of all. The rest would fall into place, certainly. Maybe. Hopefully. If the rest even mattered.

Whatever mattered to Regina surely didn't include him; not even a passing glance. All the attention was on finding her new quarry, as programmed. The fresh ability was not accounted for, but the weapon that had drawn all these phantom figures and creatures to being could also pull from the disposition and abilities of its host-boy: Regina could smell the source of the strange power. Despite no accurate target, she threw the way the smell dictated, and the nearing, remaining beasts leaped the same way, ignorant to caution.

To Martin, it was his sister just doing her job.