Recollé Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
recollecters) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
recolle2018-08-17 05:53 pm
recollecters) wrote in recolle2018-08-17 05:53 pm
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Reverted The city of Recollé...have you looked beyond the city lately? It may be time to do so. I. The good news, perhaps, is that everyone is back in their original bodies. The last few weeks may have been trying and embarrassing for several of you, but never fear! You're all in this together. The nice thing about returning to your original body is that everything else seems to disappear along with the unintentional swapping. Your dreams on the evening of the 16th and the 17th are unoccupied and you're blissfully alone. Hallucinations fade away and the city almost feels brighter and cleaner. The messy paint job from May and June slowly flakes off to reveal a sparkling almost-new landscape below. All buildings, landmarks, flora and fauna are back to their original colors. The sky, however, is still painted a strange wash of colors and symbols. The other nice thing about returning to your original body is that it's much easier to feel the sudden, sharp pain on your palm at midnight on the 18th, a needling high-pressure pain that lasts for all of 30 seconds. Upon looking at your hand, however, you'll notice something new. In bright red font there's a new marking that reads: 13 Days:23:59:59. 58. 57. 56... The timer steadily counts down, each second synced with each beat of your heart. As the days pass by the timer will slowly shift from the red to a dark, ominous purple. The glow of the mark becomes harder to ignore, and there doesn't seem to be a way to remove it. Good luck with that. II. The Retrospec app doesn't seem to be much better. The scrambled messages and posting errors seem to have stopped and users are no longer receiving messages and pictures about themselves. In fact, the app seems to be quiet for a while. As users continue to use the app they will find that any post, comment or message that they send via the app will be tagged with a different ID. Instead of their name, all messages will be from Alpha##### or Beta#####. The string of numbers will be unique for each user and cannot be changed at any time. Individual mailboxes will be attached to your name, but the Alpha/Beta ID has made its way there, too. Over the course of the rest of the month, Alphas (those who have had the app for at least a year from August 2017) will find that messages to other Alphas are sent more easily than to Betas (those who have had the app for less than a year from August 2017) and vice versa. Messages to anyone from the opposite "faction" may drop out half-way or appear blank entirely. It might be wise to find a better mode of communication in the meantime. III. Even if you're alone in your dreams, you're not alone in the waking world. No one is free from the timer on their palm, though they may come to find that it impacts some users more than others. Some users will experience a steady pulsating in their hand as the timer counts backwards, each second ticking by. Standing still just long enough will send the pulse out of their hands and through the rest of their body, over their arms and through their feet straight into the ground. The earth begins to shake under these unlucky users, little quakes and trembles that spread out and seek out anyone else nearby. Whether you know this person or not, whether you're alone or several of you are impacted by this earthquake, the ground beneath you splits open and you're pulled straight down into the crevice, falling aimlessly. Instead of finding your own life flashing before your eyes, you'll find yourself witnessing events, faces, and memories that are important to the user the pulses came from. On the outside of things, the user will promptly collapse into a coma-like state no matter where they're at. Inside their mind, however, a scene begins to set itself to welcome you as you land. It isn't a memory and it isn't a hallucination. It's a construct of someone else's innerworkings that have trapped you and blocked you in. As the haze around you dissipates, the puzzle you received earlier this month floats in front of you. Whether you have finished building it or not it is now fully completed and all of the words have faded except for "Gordian Knot." Your cell phones will not work in these dreamscapes, and even Retrospec seems to be disconnected. It's up to you to venture further into someone else's mind and help them untangle whatever mystery is hidden within themselves. IV. So about that timer. As time begins to run out, more and more people begin to experience dream dives and encounter the knots of others that they must fix. Even inside the dreamscape, the timer glows just as brightly as it had out in the real world and it continues counting down. At least it gives you a sense of time and just how many minutes, hours, or days you've been stuck inside someone's subconscious. You might even realize that the timer is directly tied to just how much time you have to unravel the knots of your friends, loved ones, and strangers. Easy, right? Take caution, citizens. The monsters and demons lurking in the corners of someone else's psyche can manifest to something quite powerful. You will not wake up and be booted out of someone's dream if you are attacked, but your physical body and mind will shut down and remain unconscious for one week. Be careful how you approach these knots, however! Should you change any part of them too much, the host will find themselves rejecting this new information. Too great of a change will result in the loss of an important memory to them and no way to recover it inside the dive. Even with these possible losses divers are responsible for fixing what's gone wrong and relieving the knot wound tightly in the host's mind. Venture forward, explore, and break it apart to awaken then. You will be greatly rewarded for your effort. Failure to break the knot and save the host from this comatose state will result in all parties suffering a loss. At first it may not be obvious, but over time it will be clear an important memory or item has left your possession. Is it just limited to dives though? Some users will feel that even with successful diving they don't quite feel like themselves. It seems as though there's some further self-evaluation they must meet in order to fully recover who they are...or were, as it may be. Tick-tock, Retrospecters. Mind the time. BONUS. Ever since he moved in back in February, the lights have always been on in Zee's office and home at the top of the Towers. Office hours are whenever he feels like making them and he's usually reachable by phone, email, or app. However, beginning on the 18th, messages to his inbox begin to go unanswered. Checking the inbox itself will reveal a change as well. Delta#02018329 is no longer receiving messages. On the 19th, the lights go off permanently. Beginning on the 20th, anyone who ventures to his office will find the building empty and locked, no sign of Zee at all. Reaching out to him receives a bounce-back error message. Any previous correspondences with him will remain, though his name has been replaced with his Delta ID. It's hard to say what's happened, but after some time, all users will finally receive a message from Delta#68422. No other messages will be sent or received from this account. Welcome to recolle's August event, part 2!As notated in the plotting post, the dreamdives are now live! Players are in charge of creating their own unique dive experiences for characters to explore and play through. These can be as harmless or as dangerous as you'd like. However, please be sure to let us know here if your character will be failing a dive and what memory/item they will be losing! For Prompt II, characters IDs will be comprised of the following: The date your character first appeared on Retrospec (so in Zee's case, that was 02/01/18) and the last four digits of your character's IC inbox as found in the HTML (in Zee's case, 8329.) These IDs will be more relevant in September, but for ease of playing/making sure no one ICly overlaps please use these numbers! Friendly reminder that if your character will be keeping their new AUs, please reply to this comment on the OOC plot post! As per Prompt IV, characters who are failing to recover their original AUs will begin to notice something is off and will not be able to accomplish what is needed to regain their original AUs. What this is is up to you! As per the plotting post, threading out successful dream dives will earn you a free memory! Qualifying threads must be at least five comments from you and can be from you either hosting a dive or participating in one. Please note that failed dives will not be eligible for freebies. Any questions you have regarding this event may be directed to the mod comment here. Be sure to review the mods' question thread on the plotting post for important information as well! |
Re: always glad to be of service
"...Why?" It's the only question that can form in his mind, at first. "Why did they need to die?" Was she the one that did it? Her answer might tell him.
Although he has a gun at the small of his back, he makes zero motion for it. There are shades of familiarity in this scene, but he still doesn't feel grounded here, this isn't his world, nor the other Togusa's. He needs to know the score before he acts.
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"It's my program," A2 says. There's no emotion in her voice, but her eyes, turned away as she is, squint at the one that's glitching out, shifting but remaining on the sword. The corners of her eyes turn downward. "All of them have to die."
Mutter, Vater, und Schwester. A2 does not know their names. They don't have names. Everything here is expendable and must be destroyed. Everything.
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"..Or is this display just for you?" Gauging her reaction carefully. She sounds impassive, emotionless. But this isn't the action of someone who is detached. Unless Togusa is completely misreading this.
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What's his purpose. Why is he being written into the code. A2 doesn't know or care, but if he keeps asking questions that she doesn't feel like answering, she'll find a way to remove him from the code. She's extremely good at that.
And no, he won't be receiving an answer about why these three are on display. They are because they are. There's no other reason for it, as far as A2 is concerned. Some die in heaps on the floor and some die pinned to the wall, but they all. Die. It's all she can do. It's all she knows how to do.
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"I'm looking for a friend." The words can come out confidently. "I believe she's in here." His spine straightens, and his eyes don't waver off of the bizarre parody of Annalise standing in front of him. Although this isn't real, there is likely some kind of truth to what he is seeing, to the woman- gynoid, that Annalise is remembering.
"If I can only get her to come out."
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"You can try."
The threat should be clear. She is here to guard the Knot and she will do so with deadly force, whether she must or not. But there is something meaningless within the code, something telling A2 that she should give this man a chance. That he deserves the opportunity to leave here alive. Not well, but breathing. private static void hitoriTogusa() darts from command to command around in A2's head as she listens to the code and stands there, poised to strike but not yet moving until he does.
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There are two thoughts that immediately clash in Togusa's mind. That one, if the other androids couldn't stop her, what chance does the squishy human have? But two, if she's running on programming and orders, he has a way to win this. But he has to take her down to the point he can implement his solution. So either way, it's a fight.
"I don't want to do this," he'll freely admit. "But if I have to help her beat you," Togusa reaches behind himself and draws his revolver, "I will."
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Her arm crosses over her chest anyway, preparing for a slashing strike when she's close enough. The electricity running along the edge of the blade casts her face in an eerie blue glow, the light catching in her white hair. A2 is good, but private abstract main() unknowingly wrote her based on evidence, on memories and their reasonable conclusions. A2 is strong, durable. She thinks faster than a human, but she does not act faster than one as far as ░░░░ knows. And that may be to hitoriTogusa()'s favor.
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Is it an advantage or a weakness that Togusa- that both Togusas- shoot to wound when they can? The memory of a similar opponent, someone with cybernetic limbs, burns in his brain, and it's the exact tactic the other one used. Take out the limbs, disable, and deal with the perpetrator once they're down.
no subject
She takes the hit but doesn't slow because she still hasn't hit back. He's better than A2's code dictated, but of course, she had no data on how he fought. The terminal opens a new file under the directories associated with hitoriTogusa() and documents his gun, a small 3D image gently rotating in space behind them.
"Useless," she says in a cold voice. Her sword isn't her only weapon; A2 taps into data of private abstract main(), memories that even she has not accessed in a while, and curls her off-hand into a fist to swing at the gut of her assailant. Of this person trying to access the Knot, the thing that it is her only purpose to defend. This arrogant piece of code. Her punch may not be as strong or as deadly as a blade, but her goal is to get him in a vulnerable position. To make the gun as useless as he is.
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It's enough of a distraction that A2's fist connects, driving deep into Togusa's stomach, and knocking the wind from him. Focus, Hitori. He clings to the gun with one hand, gripping in his right. His left blindly flails, tries to find a surface of A2 to shove off of, to get some distance again. Close is bad. Close is sword range. Even without electricity, that thing can kill him.
But at this range, he is looking, searching for what he can see on her. He's looking for a port.
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While she has a moment, though, her fingers dig into her shoulder and try to dislodge the bullet, but she can't get in. She'll just have to figure it out later, she thinks, and she speaks. There is something about him that makes it difficult to attack with the force she would like to, and the scroll of data flashes past behind her and stops on a name.
"Think of your daughter, Togusa." Is it a low blow? Almost definitely. Ask if she cares. The floating construct holding the body of the white-haired, blindfolded woman comes free from its formation and slides into place in front of the Knot. No, it will not transform; even A2 does not think herself capable of being that gruesome. But she will do what it takes to get him to give up.
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Why couldn't everybody do the back of the neck thing?His eyes track over to the Knot, the obvious center of data. If he is going to plug in and hijack this operation, then? He'll have to do it directly at the source.
Her words stop him, even as he knows it's a ploy to stab at his emotions, it works. He huffs in a tight breath through clenched teeth. "I am thinking of her. How could I look her in the eye if I just abandoned a friend?"
The gun raises, and he takes an extra second to aim before two more shots fire. He needs to keep that sword out of play.
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"Leave now and you'll be able to look her in the eye again," is what she says, unfazed by the bullets striking at the blade of the sword that's being held across her chest and pressing it into her body. She glances at it, hears one bullet fall—they don't puncture the blade, but they dent it, and it doesn't look like he'll have to worry about the electrical charge for a while now that the form of the blade is more distorted than it started as.
Though both bullets hit the blade, she only feels the jolt of one and turns her head sharply to see if the body behind her is intact. Or, well, as intact as it can be with a sword jabbed through it. Once she hears the second bullet fall, though, her attention is back to him.
"You'll run out of rounds eventually. And you're testing my patience."