a storm approaches.This log is for everyone who signed up for The Storm investigation. Feel free to use the here to plot further on how you plan on approaching The Storm, and the issue. The mod questions thread is also open, if you have anything you would like to run by us.
the investigation.It takes a day of preparation, and a day of discussion, before you are led further down into the tunnels. It's pitch black, but one of the BGs who you have become familiar enough with turns on a low light and continues further. You walk for ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, and then turn a corner into a large, open cavern. The BG explains that at one time, this had been an underground transportation system - old and unused for centuries, now, but still in working order.
They file each of you onto a single car - it seems to be large enough to fit nearly a hundred, possibly more, bodies - so everyone has a space. The BG explains that they have already input the coordinates into the system, and that once they close the door, you will be transported to the last known location. The car will be programmed to wait for 72 hours, and then will return to this location. There is food and water supplied, and already packed, in the car. If you are not back in the car by that time, it will leave you behind. They then give their farewells, thank you for your help and readiness, and step away from the door - letting it close behind them. The car travels down a pitch black tunnel, and while the inside is dimly lit enough for the Circle Members to see each other and move around without hinderance, you can see nothing through the windows. It continues for a few hours at this rate - nothing to see, no idea where you are going. That is, until it seems to break through the surface, the track running through buildings and another, unknown area of the city.
The streets and buildings are abandoned, the tech old and outdated, windows broken out and dust filling the street. The sky, like back in the city you knew before, is cloudy and grey. But these clouds are different - these clouds are dark in a way you haven't seen before. You travel for another half hour above ground before the cart comes to a stop, and during this time it happens twice. A low rumble, seeming to come from everywhere at once, and then a few heartbeats after, a disasterous flash of lighting - miles away, yes, but threatening and gigantic, brighter and more violent than you've ever seen lightning before. The crash shakes the ground under you, and the damage is immense.
But the buildings are abandoned, the streets empty save for crates, old mechanical bits, dusty remnants of a society long forgotten by the Struxta you came from just a couple of days prior.
This is The Storm you've been warned about. the storm.You have been asked to find out information that will help the BG's, and Struxta, to stop The Storm.
From what you can gather, it does seem to be a naturally occurring weather phenomenon, as far as weather systems seem to work on this planet. However, rather than scattered thunder and lightning strikes, it seems to almost recharge and strike with epic proportions. It can damage, or destroy, buildings. It shorts out any and all items (and people) who depend on electricity in any form to function (Sorry Daylight and Conner, sorry to anyone who brought along technology) within a three mile radius.
The 'darkness' the BGs were talking about does follow this storm, but they seem to have been referring to this electrical shortage that comes from the storm and it's strikes. If this storm does reach any of the still-occupied areas of the city, it will shut down the entire grid, as well as any of the robots, androids, or electrically based figures that exist there - essentially ending the life of every Struxta citizen that is effected.
Plot, plan, theorize, and see if you can find a way to stop The Storm. If not, be back on the train car in 72 hours time, to return to the BGs and report what you have found.PROMPT IDEAS
1.) Discussions on the train - do you have any ideas for what to prepare? Any discussions you may want to have? You and your fellow Circle Members are caught here together for a few hours, driving into a situation you know very little about. What do you want to make sure you're prepared to handle?
2.) Scouting missions - the heart of The Storm is very much in the distance, and it is not moving quickly, giving Circle Members plenty of time to set out and check out the surrounding city. What you will find won't be much - this is a robotic ghost town in every turn of the phrase. Buildings have been abandoned for hundreds of years, covered in dust and left entirely undisturbed, except for the breeze that now seems to flit through this entire area. There are stores, warehouses, apartments, and buildings you can't even tell what they were used for, cleared out. Whenever, or whoever, lived in this part of Struxta had evacuated, quickly but efficiently.
3.) The Storm - The Storm is still a distance away from where the cart has dropped you off, enough that when your 72 hours are up, the heart of the storm and the lightning strikes shouldn't reach the car, or the track. This does mean that to do any closer investigation, you will need to go to The Storm itself. But be careful - the electrical output from these lightning strikes are dangerous, and can have all sorts of effects on both natural and mechanical beings. The wind, the closer you get to The Storm, will also pick up - making any kind of flying or air travel impossible.
4.) Planning - the car leaves everyone off at an old train station, which a large room attached. This room can be used as a kind of home base, as well as a meeting location. What do you plan on doing? Simply taking down information, or trying to take the storm head on? How do you plan on doing that? Will your abilities help? This room attached onto the train station is a safe location - no effects of The Storm will make it inside. Use as you would like! |
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acatalepsy_logs2018-07-29 11:52 pm
4 hope this is ok
And Konoha doesn't really know how to take care of them. Do they need... food and water... ? To be kept warm? Just in case, she curls up next to the most recent returnee, tucking up her hooves and anxiously rearranging a few supplies while she waits, but.
When he stirs, she twists about to look down at him, concern on her face.]
- Simon? Are you awake?
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Simon’s awareness trickles back slowly; his vision is almost normal, dissolving into discolored pixels only intermittently in floating blotches, but everything else is slower to catch up, like he’s defragging.
He tries to grind the heel of his hand into his eye and it clanks against his faceplate instead, and croaks out in what would be a remarkably normal groggy voice were it not for the persisting static: ] Hayame?
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Konoha had considered propping him up against her side, thinking then at least he could have a pillow, but... she also didn't want to move him too much while he was... unconscious, maybe? So she'd settled for curling about him as best she can, somewhat protectively, adding a bit of warmth. Honestly, it kind of looks like... Well, she's stiffer spined than a dog, but... kind of... like a dog might curl around a person.
Except that's definitely a horse rib he elbows a bit as he starts moving, but that's okay! She's just glad he is moving!]
Simon? It's me, Konoha-
[Her more human half comes into view as she twists at the waist and leans over slightly, waving her hand slowly to try and give him something to focus on.]
Who's Hayame? Should I get them for you?
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[ Not that he’s against telling her who Hayame is— well, he kind of is right now because he can barely string a sentence together, so explaining Hathaway to Konoha would be an exercise in pain. But mostly he feels guilty that she just stayed here waiting for him to wake up and he immediately mistook her for somebody else. ]
I remember you, it’s just the uh- the electricity stuff.
[ It’s probably not necessary to clarify that he remembers her; if Konoha really thought he didn’t, she wouldn’t be expecting her name alone to clear things up, but his system of defending memory lapses persists. Partly to himself, partly because brain damage freaks people out.
Simon’s eyes dart from her raised hand to her face to a sweep of the train station, and (with one last dig into her ribs before she is freed) pushes himself upright, meeting her eyes. Mercifully, the position doesn’t exacerbate the headache any. ]
Thanks for being here.
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He's the patient.]
I heard you got shocked by the Storm... does it still hurt?
[That... sort of made sense to her as an explanation for his condition, so. She'll take it. She tries not to... think any deeper than that. It hasn't been working out for her very well.
So she lets him sit up without hovering overly, pulling up a foreleg and resting her hands on her knee in order to not fret about with supplies.]
Do you need... water? I have water.
[She's... never seen him eat, but. She's trying to be helpful, okay?]
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Thanks, but-
[ At her offer, Simon is just... coming to the slow realization that he has no idea what Konoha thinks he is, and it sidetracks him from answering the first thing she asked.
Granted, the inside of his helmet is pretty dark, so... maybe she thinks there’s a normal head in there with spooky eyes? Is this why she seems so unfazed by his appearance (after the first time she saw him, anyway) and explaining it will freak her the fuck out? He tilts his head from where it hangs from his shoulders, like a marionette strung at the top of the spine, to look up at her. ]
I can’t drink it, so you should probably just hang onto that. What about you? Are you doing okay?
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And really... she's been trying not to know. Just like with the way robots worked, all of Struxta, really, the trains on the way here... she's tried to just accept it. Just look, understand the bare minimum she needs to... and keep moving. If she didn't she felt like her head would burst, when it's already so stuffed with the unbelievable already. So Simon has been relegated in her mind to... man in a weird suit. Nice man in a weird suit.
A weird suit with glow eyes and a glass face. A weird suit that gave off a hint of an odor she can't quite identify- a bit salty, a bit rank, tickling at the back of her nose occasionally. And a staticky voice, now, he's got that, too.]
... oh.
[Maybe he didn't want to take the helmet off right now. (Or maybe he was a robot, and she'd have to deal again with trying to figure out how beings with no flesh and blood could think and talk and walk and-)]
I'm alright... I can... make food now, apparently, so! I'm totally fine! No problem!
[So many problems.]
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[ Yeah, that didn’t sound like “totally fine, no problem”, but Simon isn’t about to say so. He’ll follow her lead, and it’ll either provide a distraction she needs, or whatever is bothering her — and there’s a hell of a lot that could be — will come out somewhere.
...Talking to somebody who isn’t chronically emotionally constipated is more of a break from routine than it should be. This is his life now. ]
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[Konoha tries to work up to explaining it, only to remember... there is no explaining it. It's "magic", when she shouldn't even be able to do such a thing in the first place. Sighing a bit in frustration, she bites her bottom lip instead of letting herself sink into another whirlpool of confusion.]
I'll show you. Do you like apples?
[Everyone likes apples!
Konoha puts her hands together in a clap, like she's praying, closing her eyes and frowning as she concentrates. Apple. Crisp, round, ripe apple. No worms!
And then as if it simply blinked into existence... there's an apple between her palms that she promptly holds out to Simon for inspection.]
See?
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And while she’s pseudo-praying Simon watches her intently, because- she said she can “make food”; she’s not about to....???
Is she??
Holy shit she did. He laughs when it sinks in, earnest albeit tinny and fizzly. For all his time spent with Hathaway he saw fairly little magic. Like, magic magic. This is definitely that. ]
Wow! Wow. Nice. [ He reaches out with the fingers of one hand to touch it, to ascertain what his eyes are telling him. ]
Well... you’re about to be the whole Circle’s new best friend.
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Haha... or at least their cook.
[But if the prospect of doing such labor for everyone else wasn't pleasing to her, she wouldn't be smiling like that, surely.]
I never wanted a power or anything, but I'm glad it's something so useful.
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but it’s probably still edible if you wash it; only cursorily, because he was already pretty confident it’s real. Which it is.Ruefully, ] So much for not missing food.
[ But whatever. From what people have been saying about the food here that they’ll starve if they don’t eat, Simon can’t say it’s not worth losing his Struxta-specific ‘that looks good MAN THIS BLOWS’ immunity. He’ll just have to deal.
He hands it back to her. ] Does it wear you out if you do that a lot, making things exist out of thin air?
[ he only has pop culture to go off of for this and it seems like a sensible enough consequence ??? ]
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She tries to ignore it, because now isn't... really the time. (If she has her way, maybe it never will be.) Rather than think, she just takes the apple back, rubbing its skin a moment before she reaches for the pouch on her harness for the small knife she keeps there. She shouldn't waste food, so-]
I don't really know... ?
[She starts peeling the apple rather skillfully, turning it over in her fingers to keep the skin in one piece as she carves it off.]
It seems kind of strange to me still, so I haven't tried making a banquet or anything... Just enough for me... I eat a lot...
[Jinba sort of have to.]
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Yeah... [ ...he remembers seeing Hayame surrounded by mountains of food on more than one occasion. ] Is that a jinba thing?
[ Simon is still curious as to how that even works, if they have two stomachs, or if there’s just one — and if there’s just one, then which half is it in? — but it’s not the kind of thing you can just ask. And even if it were, he’s not sure how likely Konoha would be to even know. For all he knows, the scientific revolution that included knowledge of anatomy is still in Europe in her world, like it was in his when... Japan was analogous to her Japan. ]
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[She definitely didn't have a lot of medical know how, but as opposed to how far behind Japan was to the Western world when it came to anatomy of humans... some people had eaten jinba in the past. That meant a lot more knowledge about their innards. ... and also, when she threw up, she got terrible gut pains from... whatever connected the two. (Okay, she didn't even know that much.)]
Though-
[She laughs a little ruefully, finishing the peel perfectly and using the knife to set it aside before she begins rotating it in her palm and cutting it into slices.]
I think I eat more than most jinba, haha.
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[ That answers that question. And it’s probably less weird than either of the halves not having a stomach? Maybe. At any rate, he looks away from her food magic to her face — briefly, before it’s off to the middle distance or wherever, a habit acquired after seeing what faces tend to look like when they’re trying to process the sight of his. ]
Well, you know how I’m doing. Are you okay? I mean... in general. Not just the Storm stuff.
[ Granted, the Storm is kind of front and center right now, but Konoha was struggling enough before they found out about it, and Simon’s starting to recover his conversational faculties, he thinks. Or at least his working knowledge of pretending to have them while feeling like his head’s about to explode. As long as Konoha doesn’t mind that he sounds like a bad recording, and she doesn’t seem to. ]
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And not just as a way to stall answering how she is. She is hungry. And with her mouth full of apple, it's easier to hide the worried expression, the confused frown.]
... I don't know.
[She really doesn't. Her forelegs curl up under her, her tail swishes beneath the fabric worn as a skirt on her rump, but even falling silent a moment... she still doesn't know.]
Sometimes it feels like it has to be a nightmare... and now there's a storm and it could kill everyone, and instead of hunkering down to weather it we're supposed to go out in it?
[She shakes her head, chewing.]
... You shouldn't go out.
[If he was... a "robot". She'd already helped 9S back to the camp, she'd seen what it had done to Connor, and now Simon... ? They should stay in... batten down the hatches...]
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...but he was still a human socialized to look at people when they talk for longer than he was a dead-fish robot man, so he still seeks her eyes reflexively at the anxiety in her voice. ]
I don’t have much of a choice. I wasn’t anywhere near it, and it still almost killed me. I just don’t like not being able to do anything.
[ Not just for Struxta’s sake. Between the regularly scheduled robot dysphoria that probably burns a thousand calories a day in restless pacing alone, and the whole ‘waiting for the world to end’ situation, just sitting around is the worst.
a pause before he adds, for good measure, ] That goes for you too. Lightning’s still bad for you, even if you’re not a robot.
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It should hit taller things first, like trees-
[Ah. There was no green here, was there?]
Or buildings. ... But.
[She still didn't want to go, and it was so contrary to her usual helpful, gung-ho nature that it confused even her, and she's left with a mouth full of apple she's forgotten to chew and a few tears in her eyes, wiping the small blade on her foreleg's coat before she resheathes it.]
... I used to just have to worry about bears and wolves.
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Hey- [ he puts a hand on her, uh, front horse knee. ] It’ll be okay. We’ll- we’ll figure something out. The whole Circle’s from different dimensions. There’s gotta be somebody who knows something that’ll help.
[ ...as is often the case, he doesn’t know if this is true but can’t bring himself to respond to her with anything other than reassurance of this very thing. ]
And for what it’s worth, surviving run-ins with wolves and bears isn’t nothing. I’ve never had to run into a bear in my life, but it’d probably go even worse than this did.
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[Being touched reminds her that she's become emotional again, and with one hand she tries to wipe the tears away before they fall and with another she leans forward to put her hand on top of his.]
You're always comforting me.
[She hates having to be the one who needs it, of not being able to support everyone else more. As much as she wants. As much as she thinks she should be able to.
... oh she should. Probably stop speaking with her mouth full and swallow that apple, also. Gulp.]
I can't figure out anything about this place... but I'll support everyone best I can. You can count on me, even if I cry- I promise.
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C’mon, don’t be so hard on yourself. I’m just used to the interdimensional travel thing. You’re doing pretty well for somebody from a world without electricity.
[ And... could it be? Could Simon have met somebody who might actually not dismiss this sentiment out of hand?? ] Nobody can be strong all the time.
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Konoha smiles, even though she's still scared. It wavers a bit, but- She believes in what he says. Hasn't she said the same thing to the men on her site? Hadn't she said it to Gonta, not a few weeks ago?
When you couldn't do it by yourself... There was teamwork.]
... You're right. That's why we're not alone.
[It was just good to be reminded every now and then.]