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

protecting his not-girlfriend!

[majoring]

It’s been a long time since Kaidan has thought about this.

It’s probably a bad thing that he remembers it so vividly, almost two decades later. He’d told Shepard he was over it, and for the most part that’s true. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t niggle at him every now and then. The first person you kill has a tendency to stick with you.

It unfolds exactly the same way it did the first time. The students are training under the watchful eye of Vyrnnus, who’s staring at them all with an expression of open dislike slapped across turian features. Rahna gets tired early on, and Kaidan wishes he could lend her some of his strength. He’s always been able to go for longer than most of the other students.

But he can’t do that, can only watch as she swipes a hand across her forehead, and then reaches for a glass of water. Something in the back of Kaidan’s mind tells him to stop her, get it for her but the memory is in full force now and he can only let it happen. Vyrnnus’ eyes zero in on the girl and biotic blue slaps the glass out of her hand. It crashes to the ground as the ex-Commander storms over in the midst of Rahna’s fearful apologies.

“Hey!” Kaidan finds himself yelling. “Hey, leave her alone!”

He’s ignored. The turian grabbed Rahna by the arm, ignoring the girl’s cry of pain.

“If you’re not using it for biotics, you don’t use it at all,” he growls. The snap of her arm breaking splits the sudden silence of the room.

White hot rage sears through Kaidan and comes out blue before he can think about it. It’s not any definable power, just a wave of energy that slams into the turian, snapping—

Except it doesn’t snap his neck, this time. And when Kaidan turns to Rahna, it’s not fear that clouds her gaze, because nothing clouds it at all. Kaidan becomes abruptly aware of the fact that every person in the room is now staring at him.

“You’re going down, Alenko!”

Rahna is the first one to attack.

[andhishat]

Dirt tunnels full of giant insects, burning villages full of monsters, even the depths of Hell itself, all these she can contextualize and understand, but this new dream she has stepped into? It is like nothing she has ever imagined was possible. She was a godchild, traveling the world and facing wonders out of legend, yet all of that dulled to nothing when she looked out one of the windows of this steel structure, and saw stars stretching on toward eternity.

For a span of time it was all she could do to stand and watch them move, struck by a sense of wonder she had not felt for a lifetime. She had begun to think herself incapable of seeing beauty anymore, of finding joy in new experiences rather than pain and fear. Life had seemed to have given her all the happy surprises she was ever going to find.

And yet, here in this alien place, she had found true beauty once more, enough to make her eyes burn.

Until the sound of a woman's scream brought her crashing back to the cold reality around her. Turning on her heel, Reya watched as the young man who must have been the dreamer lashed out with his power against the bizarre lizardfolk accosting the other girl. Her eyes widened in shock at the display. He had conjured blue force with a thought, and yet she hadn't sensed even a hint of magic. Was there any sanity at all in this place?

Philosophical debates and world paradigm shifts would have to wait, however, because the part she did understand was getting started. Raising a gloved hand, she chanted quickly before the shades realized she was here at the back of their class, and conjured up a sphere of protection for herself, before using a weak spell to try and drain the life force of the shade closest to her in order to help heal her own injuries. Whatever these things were, though, they were not human enough for her spell to find something to drain. Instead, she brought her staff down on the back of the boy's skull, and hurled an acid arrow towards the woman attacking the dreamer, intending to strike her in the back if it hit.

If these things were shades, then she would feel no guilt dispatching them, not that she'd ever felt enough guilt about taking life. Not that she was lying to herself about feeling guilt for killing her own friends.

"Here we go again. I'm starting to sense a very predictable pattern to this tale!" Though she did seem to be in the improper costuming, her medieval robes and leathers contrasting the modern mass produced uniforms around her.

[majoring]

He avoids Rahna's attack, for all that it's stronger than he remembers her being able to produce, and concentrates on Vyrnnus instead. Who, while an ex-Commander, should have been no match for Kaidan at this level.

But he was, avoiding the Major's Reave with an ease he shouldn't have been able to manage. He registers another voice, and replies before thinking. "Again? What do you--"

Wait.

He drags a barrier up around him to block several attacks at once from Vyrnnus and the other students, before spinning around to see a total newcomer. "Who are you? Did you do this?"

[andhishat]

Reya felt a flash of irritation at the dreamer's question. It wasn't that his confusion was unjustified, she'd misunderstood her own vision in a similar way at first, and there was no way for him to have already learned the rules of these nightmares. Yet when memories of slaughtering her friends to save her own worthless life were still fresh, rational consideration was in short supply.

"I'm your guardian celestial spirit, here to guide you through a journey of spiritual discovery," she answered, face deadpan. "The reason I look like this is because you've got a deviant imagination. Now look out!"

A magic missile spell ripped from her fingers, the ten or so red orbs racing forward to batter back several of the students who had been moving on Kaidan. Unfortunately, in watching him Reya didn't watch her own back, and a biotic flash threw her through the training room and into a bulkhead, one of her already weakened defensive spells flashing and failing from the hit. Rolling to her feet with barely a wince for her bruised shoulder, the half-elf flashed up her hand and chanted out the activating word for the spells she had sequenced earlier, causing all three to go off in rapid succession.

The first was a cone of air so utterly cold it froze the moisture in the air itself, as well as any living creatures unfortunate enough to be caught in it, leaving their skin cracked and blistering, the blood frozen in their veins. The second layered another magical shield around her, enhancing her faltering protections with what was one of her few remaining defensive spells. Finally came the spell that reached across the distances of space and time to pluck several creatures from another world and bring them to fight for her in exchange for a temporary immortality.

Ettercaps, monstrous beasts with vaguely human shapes but the limbs and faces of massive spiders, emerged from shining portals all around Reya, their mandible's clacking as they hissed and charged the oncoming enemies.

"These people are not real, this is an illusion created to challenge us, now kill them!"

[majoring]

That first response has him gritting his teeth. While he might have accepted that sort of response from Shepard, this woman is a stranger. And he still has no idea what the hell is going on.

He's focussed on his own battles, but a seasoned soldier doesn't become one without having some awareness of his surroundings. The hissing and clacking doesn't hurt with gaining his attention, either.

These people are not real. Easy for her to say. "And what do I do about those?" One hand moves through a mnemonic, the other one gesturing at the monsters.

[andhishat]

Kaidan was right to be frustrated, and perhaps later he would even get the proper apology, but for the moment Reya was not in a considerate mood. She'd already had to kill her loved ones, if she acted fast she could try and keep him from doing the same. Fitting for a daughter of murder.

"Form a theatrical group, What do you think? They won't harm you, let them do what they do best!" One of the ettercaps launched itself into a student, mandibles closing on his arm and sawing through to bone before a second used that bizarre blue energy to blow in the back of its head. The monster twitched and fell to the side, its body already fading as the next chittered, then hocked up a ball of white thread that spread out into a massive net of webbing to wrap up more of the students.

"We're in some sort of mass illusion, stolen from our memories. If you have someone you'd rather not feel responsible for killing, I'd recommend pointing them towards me!" She steeled herself, then turned and hurled a chromatic orb into a girl sneaking up behind her, the multicolored magical sphere bursting as it slammed into her and hurling the unfortunate trainee backwards as it locked all her muscles in place.

[hellodeadpeople]

[ She observes the scene and is actually about to clap, gets partway through it, when the Turian dies, but then the students are attacking and this all seems very familiar to Jack and she doesn't hesitate - a shockwave is sent through the pack of students and she comes to stand with her back to Kaidan, watching the other side of the room. ]

Damn, Alenko, color me surprised. I didn't think you had that in you.

[majoring]

Jack? [There's no time to be surprised, not with the students way more powerful than he remembers. Rahna's on Jack's side, and he's not sure if he should be grateful or horrified by that.

His Pull drags three students into the air, sucking at their energy. He replies to jack, tone dry] Well, it's only been almost twenty years since this actually happened. Maybe I got soft.

[hellodeadpeople]

No, Santa Claus. [ there's an eyeroll and it's probably better that Kaiden isn't on this side with her, because she's about to send his girlfriend flying. ]

You don't lose that kind of attitude. Maybe you're soft, but you're still capable of it.