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

[ex_bandai157]

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).

[gorillawarfare]

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! >

[ex_bandai157]

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?"

[gorillawarfare]

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. >

[ex_bandai157]

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?"