Christmas had never experiencedβnor had he ever wanted toβthe Hollywood movie scene of waking up alone and naked after a drunken romance. And his hadnβt even progressed any further than first base, leaving all the mistakes of the prior day in the limbo of the uncertain question βWas it worth it?β
No. His answer, with the mild ache of hangover gnawing in a tight band around his head and Sander nowhere in sight, was no. He shouldnβt have continued drinking despite how appealing the drink was in flavor. Yesterdayβs events still replayed too clearly for him and he wondered if his morning would have been easier had he simply forgotten it all. Heβd crossed a line, even if it was just a step. That was a mistake, no matter how he tried to console himself about it, and Sander disappearing so early in the morning was almost definitive evidence that whatever they hadβhowever nascentβwas now gone. Or, if not entirely vanished, sullied by his drunken stupidity. Were it not for the obvious futility of it, he would have hammered his head against the wall in shame. Instead, he just stumbled with his bundle of clothes into the bathroom, regretting everything and still hoping it was some kind of fever dream brought on by the residues of concussion. There were so many more important things to worry about, like the rest of the world for starters, but he couldnβt think that far around him. He could only think of Sander.
A scared, tired face stared back at him from the mirror and he took little comfort in the old routine of combing shaking fingers through his hair and tying on the new ribbon before even putting on clothes.
A small part of him wanted to blame Sanderβs unrelenting closeness, how impossible it was to avoid the temptation of touch and breath and taste when Sander always seemed to tempt in the most unbelievably innocuous ways. But he knew it was a feeble excuse. It wasnβt Sanderβs fault he had overdone it his first time drinking and ruined everything between them. Their shared experiences might have been more emotionally binding than some people would have managed in an entire lifetime, but it didnβt change the objective timeline of events. Theyβd barely known each other past two weeks and already he had managed to make a mess of the first real friendship he had formed after leaving his old life behind. Friendship and something more, and now it was too late to pretend like he didnβt know what that βmoreβ was.
He liked Sander, and it went a little beyond friendship.
But that was wrong of him. Sander wasnβt like him. Wasnβt βweirdβ like him.
To force those feelings on someone who couldnβt refuse like Sander was wrong, just like how almost everything about the boy known as Christmas was wrong.
βWow, you like this stuff? But, like, arenβt you a guy?β
βOh, that Christmas guy? Yeah, his nameβs pretty fruity. Who names their kid βChristmasβ?β
βHeβs dating Alvin? How even? I know Alvinβs gay but where did that come from? They donβt even look good togetherβwhat the fuck?β
βItβs so weird seeing those two together, though. Alvin could get basically anyone, right? I thought he was always around Alan βcuz those two were datingβ¦β
βI donβt want to sound mean, but itβs, like, okay, you know, when someone like Alvinβs gay because, like, his familyβs rich and all and heβs good-looking so he can be whatever, right? But if you donβt have that kind of stuff to make up for it, itβs like, not good, you know? To be gay. βCuz what if youβre not even that attractive and youβre gayβitβs just limiting your options or whatever. Like, all these fish in the sea and all that, but βcuz youβre gay you only get like half the choices and if youβre nothing special, like, why bother, right? And, oh my god, did you hear about Cynthia getting pregnant so she had to drop out of school because her parents wouldnβt let her abort the baby? Thatβs so terribleβ¦β
βHeβs kinda weird, right? Like heβs always huddled up somewhere or something. Alan keeps inviting him to the table but no one even wants him there. Heβs so weird. Like he doesnβt even talk to us and he just sits there with his head downβwho even wants to deal with that? You think Alanβs just doing it βcuz he feels sorry for him?β
He knew it was wrong, and for all the apologies he had made yesterday, he had still gone ahead and let the mistakes happen.
That was the problem with his apologies. They never meant anything because he was still doing what he was apologizing for.
God, why was he this stupid? This desperate? He didnβt want Sander to be a mistake. He wantedβ
Cold water splashed onto his face and dripped onto the marble counter top.
The shock of it relieved him of thoughts for a moment and he repeated the action, trying to keep himself from panicking.
It didnβt work and he felt the shortness of breath coming just as he finished pulling on a fresh T-shirt and pantsβthat he hadnβt set out for himself, that was for sure, once he realized the clothes were new and clean. Sander again, still taking care of him despite everything.
The soft bed was too large for just him and as Christmas lay there waiting out the gripping fear of losing Sander as a companion he couldnβt help but think that he had just begun expecting Sander beside him too often.
He was sorry. He really was. He shouldnβt have done that. But his apologies meant nothing when his actions wouldnβt correlate. His lungs struggled with breathing for several minutes longer while the anxiety twisted and spun in his stomach.
When the fear had passed enough for him to stand, albeit unsteadily, he rummaged through the bag of ribbons at the foot of the bed, pulling out a handful at random and trying to hold on to himself in whatever fragile way he could. He wanted to be here, in this moment, because he was supposed to be trying.
What for, he didnβt know now, but if he didnβt at least hold on to that small conviction, heβd be nothing but empty space and static again, like he had been for most of his life. He was scared again and lonely so he clutched the fistful of colorful fabric to his chest and tried to tie happiness down to his heart.
The more interesting interviews gleaned by reporters during the USARILN East students' stay had been on replay and rehash since the early hours of the morning, with rival stations and small-time newspapers latching on to a different station's interview and reviewing it on their segments as well, forming a disjointed echo chamber of "Marc" and footage of a trembling boy named "Christmas" writing on a notepad, interspersed with conflicting information from an Arbiter that some quick investigation had revealed to be a "Brent Roless" and another Arbiter fleeing down an alley that records eventually revealed as "Siena Santana."
They were the sort of field days that made the hyenas of the paparazzi--normally bloodthirsty--absolutely rabid. There was a great outcry from news stations the morning they received information that the soldiers were starting to pack up and route elsewhere and the exits and entrances of the motel and hospital were jammed with bodies, microphones, and cameras all hoping to catch the last vestiges of the tragic teenagers or, as some stations liked to spin the story, nigh-uncontrollable monsters.
There was a slowly forming divide in opinions after KLPN aired the most sympathetic subnatural interview broadcast in years, the brief, but compelling segment clipped and reposted in message boards and sent along to subnatural activist groups nation-wide within days.
In it, a teenager with scars across his face hung his head and dropped his shoulders, asking for the interview to end, his clothes wrinkled and his hair a mess. The segment ended with a long take of the thin cuff on the student's ankle before the camera cut back to the reporter in charge. Disturbingly human and a small, but noticeable threat to the status quo perpetuated by both the common folk and the people in charge. But it had already spread, and people were already watching, the views on every reuploaded YouTube video spiraling quickly into the millions before yet another version of the report was taken down. For now the majority of the recognition centered on the East Coast, but with a few choice words from a certain reporter and several stations agreeing to spread the news, "Marc" was slowly rising as the poster child of subnatural oppression. The portion of the interview that revealed his powers had the internet abuzz with speculation and potential uses, until a recurring nickname that cropped up was--as typical of simple, internet agglutinative fashion--"Time Scar."
It had become something of an unofficial tradition by now to name their subnaturals--the public viewing it as akin to naming a pet or, on the other end of the spectrum, heralding a hero. Regardless, it would be media publicity and spread of use that determined what would, in time, become "official" as far as nicknames went.
This meant, of course, that any subnatural who caught the public eye would either be forgotten or crowned with a moniker that may or may not be the worst name in existence. And despite not revealing his powers, Christmas's diminutive stature and generally unimposing demeanor snagged him the unofficial (and quite ironic) name of "Pixie"--a jab at his baby face, his gender, and the fact that he was far from being the bite-sized femme fatale that a colloquial "pixie" generally was.
Brent's interview had been washed out once the information was found lacking in sufficient sources in an attempt to save face for the station that had originally aired it, but the networked world of 2020 never forgot and never forgave. Opinions were divided between Brent being a mastermind or simply an unstable idiot, and even though he had introduced himself indirectly as "Gearhead," what people saw instead was the array of silver circuits that had danced down his arm, the sight captured in detail by the cameraman who had steeled his nerves and zoomed in instead of flinching away. That, combined with the obvious act on camera had several well-versed internet denizens refer to him as "Proteus." When they explained the loosely applied name, it caught on within a small circle, which then spread like wildfire once people jumped on the bandwagon.
While cyberspace boiled, however, the soldiers meant to guard and detain Experimental Unit B remained contrastingly calm. They met the wall of reporters with stern glares and ready rifles, jabbing the particularly brave ones back before they could approach any of the students being herded out of the buildings and into the waiting cars. A loud warning from Officer Brahms had scared most of the waiting paparazzi into submission, but made the threat painfully clear when yet another reporter broke rank and tried to dash into the center of the forcibly parted aisle of human bodies, microphone raised for a question towards the departing students from the motel. A snap crack of a pistol butt against the man's head knocked him down groaning and Officer Brahms simply motioned for the rest of the escort soldiers to keep moving the students into the cars while a spare soldier shoved the reeling reporter back into the swarming crowd. When the motel group had been safely secured in one car, the APC made its arduously slow way towards the hospital to join up with the second car collecting the students who had remained in the medical building.
Hazel was the last to be escorted out of the hospital, still cuffed with multiple suppressors and surrounded by guards. The reporters snapped plenty of pictures as the soldiers shoved her forward and into the truck, two soldiers sitting on either side of her to prevent any of the students from doing so.
The military trucks stopped well outside Washington, D.C. where the students and their assigned soldiers were moved to far more comfortable vehicles: luxury limousines lined with leather seating and built-in fridges stocked with drinks and expensive snacks ranging from caviar and top shelf liquor to the more common fare of chips and sodas. The students were shown into the cars at random, blacked out windows concealing the modular, leather design inside. Though the interiors were luxurious, it was made clear by the thick tires and steel lining on the door frames that these were vehicles made to withstand an emergency or more, should the occasion arise. The drivers remained focused on the road ahead, providing no indication of their destination. However, the comparitively short one and a half hour drive and the sight of an iconic white spire across the Potomac would soon reveal that it would still be a while before the subnaturals would return to the comfort of their dorms.
The emblem by the elevators leading from the underground parking lot displayed "Hyatt Regency - East Tower" in silver text, a lavish hotel and resort frequently patroned by executives and politicians enjoying a stay in the country's capital. The East and West towers were connected by both an underground concourse and a skyway, with both towers mirroring each other's amenities from conference floors to the 2,500 square meter ballrooms on the 15th floors.
The students were marched past shocked CEOs of large firms, current politicians, and the general upper echelon of society gathered around the hotel lobby ornately decorated with polished pilasters and carefully etched filigree on semi-elliptical arches over doors. Fluting further defined the heartwood borders of doors and windows, harkening back to classic antiquity in style and taste. Marble flooring buffed to a mirror shine spread out around them while the vaunted roof of the lobby's anterior portion gave the impression of a vast space. In truth, it was a large lobby furnished with embroidered seating and gold-etched tables, but the architecture seemed singularly designed to dwarf.
Further in, two rows of elevators facing one another moved the hotel's occupants between floors in glassy columns, the lavish decor of the lobby giving way to a different sort of modern luxury the higher the floor.
Men and women in only the highest quality suits and dresses gave the students and guards a wide berth, their procession marked by pin-drop silence as almost half of the nation's most influential people watched and judged from a snap impression.
On a massive, embedded TV facing the east lounge of the lobby, the interview segment with Marcus was replaying with commentary from a different news station about the state of affairs between humans and subnaturals, the golden-haired anchorwoman speaking about the two categories as if they were entirely separate species.
But they didn't get a chance to watch for long because once they had traversed the expanse of the marble tiles, the students were ushered into one empty elevator, the mobile room large enough to fit all of them and their guards with ease.
1, 2, 3, 4...the elevator continued upwards, slowing down only to pick up more potential passengers who quickly backed away from the doors at the sight of the large group of subnaturals. 15, 16, 17, 18--and only then did the elevator begin to slow down until it deposited them with a soft "ding" on the 20th floor, right in front of the glass doors leading into the lobby of the royal penthouse suite which took up the entirety of the top floor and consisted of 12 bedrooms with individual bathrooms, a 103-inch plasma TV in the cavernous living area, a private pool and jacuzzi towards the west side of the floor that bordered an insulated music room populated by a Steinway grand piano, two Guaneri violins, and a Style 85 harp.
Where the floors had transitioned to modern elegance earlier, the penthouse suite retained that Hellenic-inspired artistry of the lobby floor, gold and silver filigree lining the mullions and lintels of the large windows while a decorative chair rail of curling vines and blossoms in silver relief wrapped around the walls. Cove lighting carefully illuminated the room without irritating sensitive eyes and the ergonomic furniture had been custom made to match the room's decor, even if their designs were undeniably modern. Plush, off-white carpeting and cellula chandeliers finished off the luxury of every single room, ensuring its occupants were as comfortable as could be.
Each bedroom was furnished with a queen-sized bed, a multitude of tasseled pillows and sheets, a sofa, full-length mirror, automated closet compartments, maroon silk robes, floor-to-ceiling windows with adjustable, motorized interior shutters, and a bathroom large enough to throw a small party in; the bathtub was a sunken pool in the center of the floor while a showerhead perched on its raised mount attached to a short post beside the circular tub. Every room, living room and balcony pool included, displayed careful instructions on an electronic screen embedded in the wall that controlled a motorized snack and wine shelf that slid in and out of the wall on a press of a button. The rest of the control screen directed users to room service and other enjoyable amenities at the resort (a gym on the 3rd floor, conference halls on the 6th and 7th floors, a buffet on the 10th floor, a computer lounge on the 11th floor, and an arcade in the first basement floor; surrounding the hotel towers were high-end boutiques, cafes, and restaurants while a short distance away a concert hall advertised the next orchestra showing).
"You'll be staying here temporarily. Director's orders. No ETA on location change from the Commander, just a warning to avoid issues here. Even the Director won't be able to stop these people if they want you dead. If you're going to go outside, make sure a guard knows. The police force here don't take kindly to subnaturals, even from USARILN, so have a guard clear you over the law enforcement line first," Officer Brahms addressed the students after the soldiers had gathered them in the living space.
The short announcement done, the current CO of the group looked towards Hazel, who had been trudged into a corner and kept there.
"She can move freely on the condition that everyone here--" he looked at the students, "--acts to disable or kill her the second something goes wrong. The soldiers are ready, and if any student attempts to stop someone from eliminating her, they'll be marked for death as well. If she remains obedient, no one needs to get hurt."
The soldiers around Hazel stepped away as he finished, but they didn't remove the extra suppression cuffs. The message was clear enough: she wouldn't be using her powers until they confirmed she wouldn't lose control again.
"I'll be on the floor below and four soldiers will remain in the living room on standby. As safe as this place is, there's still a lot of potential danger from you all and to you all, so this setup is a bit of double-edged sword. Let's just hope the Director isn't wrong about placing you all here."
Without waiting for further responses, Officer Brahms left with most of the guards, leaving behind the promised four to keep an eye on things while they waited for the Director to respond to communications.
You have three days IC (so until the 20th of Sept., 1200) before the next update.
Info about stuff in the city? Ask one of the GMs. For generic stuff, you can just write in a coffee shop or the like. For divebombing the Pentagon, make sure the GMs know so the Precursors can kill your character.
General town climate: hatred. Seething hatred mixed with distrust, resentment, and overwhleming fear. The metropolis has been inundated in anti-subnatural propaganda and rumors for years and will be on hair triggers around subnaturals, even if they've been tagged by USARILN. In fact, the cuffs are the only things saving the students from local law enforcement and military forces stationed in the city. The atmosphere is quite tense right now, with news of Cat's Cradle nearby setting the already fearful city on a razor-thin edge.
News will be covering the interviews/photos from La Plata along with precautionary warnings about Cat's Cradle, so expect people to know your faces and hate you for existing.
We may accost certain players with utter bullshit and one of the GMs may just invade a collab if the situation feels right.
The world is filled with the supernatural--the typical supernatural. Dragons, fairies, imps, mermaids, phoenixes, etc. and some weirder combinations of the creatures coexist peacefully with humans, even in scenarios where they truly shouldn't. And still even stranger creatures exist in the unexplored regions of the world, flitting just out of prying explorers' sights. All are peaceful. All have been peaceful for as long as anyone could remember. All have been peaceful even as humans expanded and modernized, slaughtering many of the creatures for territory, for raw materials, for clothing.
With the advancement of more modern technology, the news stations and radio announcers were able to crowdsource repeated sightings of a vaguely humanoid, pure-white creature mixed with vestiges of animals--elegant deer antlers on its head, claws for feet and hands, a narrow, whip-like tail lined with spikes. But the main body remained unnaturally human-shaped: a torso that was too thin and gangly to support any internal organs, a waist that was little better, and legs like stilts. Its head had no features, mimicking a human cranium only in general shape while its interpretation of hair was a thin, white membrane flowing backwards from the crown of its head, parting around the roots of the antlers and splitting into three filmy sections. It, too, was never hostile. But it also took no damage from conventional weaponry.
Every sighting heralded a new creature into the world: a chimera straight out of Greek mythology, a leviathan from the Old Testament, scores of tiny sprites sourced back to European folklore, and sometimes creatures straight out of Lovecraftian horror stories. It was almost like the white creature was testing the waters of human thought--taking the fantastical ideas and turning them into reality, but without any of the potential backlash. Almost like the being just wanted to mimic the thoughts of humans in its own way.
Every creature it created allowed itself to be reined in by humans if they came into contact. Any that people feared too much quietly sat by while guns and artillery tore it to pieces.
Without any way of stopping the creator itself, and with no threat of harm from any of the magical monsters it created, the world slowly relaxed and settled into an era of wary curiosity about these wondrous fantasies made reality. Reporters eventually coined a name for the white creature that actually stuck with the public (other attempts had only mixed levels of success): Dreamcatcher.
Around the turn of the 21st century, Dreamcatcher's patterns of appearing, creating a creature, and disappearing began to deviate. It started wandering into human cities where it had always favored outskirts and abandoned locales, if not the wilderness or unexplored territories overall. Every foray into civilization marked a human with powers. It was subtle at first--small powers like levitation and minor telekinesis--but as Dreamcatcher began tapping into the modern imagination in earnest, the powers became wilder: precognition, gravity manipulation, lasers, elemental generation, a magical weaponsmith, a shapeshifter, a healer whose powers could cure even recent death, and even a weaker mimicry of Dreamcatcher's own ability to create monsters.
But for all that it escalated, the number of people Dreamcatcher actually bestowed powers to was severely limited. By 2006, only 10 were known to exist throughout the world. Reddit speculated the number was likely higher accounting for areas where civilization didn't flourish enough for effective communication. The 10 were taken into custody wherever their respective governments caught wind of their existence, and they all went willingly. Eventually, word spread that the common threads between Dreamcatcher's choices were adolescent human beings of the cleanest moral caliber. At the very least, that was the news the governments spread. And so the 10 precursors were set to work under government supervision, carefully monitoring them for any signs of violence. When years passed with nary a smudge on any of their records, the world took to calling them superheroes in recognition of all the good they had done.
Everyone began hoping to be Dreamcatcher's next choice. People started simply acting better, and non-profit organizations saw a rising peak in interest. Certain parties opposed to celebration of something as unknowable and uncertain as Dreamcatcher formed small groups of opposition, rebelling against the norm. Society, for the most part, ignored them. The world was becoming a better place, even if no one could fathom Dreamcatcher's objective.
Those who were nearby saw Dreamcatcher appear in a city--just flickered into existence in the middle of the street in a quiet cul-de-sac at eight in the morning. People around the area flocked to it, only for the creature to shoot straight up into the sky, the trail of light it left behind almost blinding the people around it before coalescing into a thin thread of immovable white light leading up to where Dreamcatcher had flown. A pulse reverberated throughout the world that day, felt by all creatures and humans alike as a white light began spreading from a point high in the sky. There was little sound or fanfare that marked Dreamcatcher's actions. When the hubbub had finally died down, a thin, white veil had been draped across the planet. It followed no laws of light--sometimes a space telescope could catch it, other times it simply wasn't visible. But it was there, evidenced by the thread that the government finally traced to a massive, white, cocoon-like shell high in the stratosphere. The rest of the thread continued onward past the atmosphere, ending at some point where the barrier began.
Dreamcatcher had fallen asleep. That was the rationale. And something was coming that it needed to shield the planet from. This would have been a sacrifice worthy of song, were it not for the sudden, violent rampage of every creature Dreamcatcher had ever created. Leviathans rose from the sea to decimate coastal states and settlements, chimeras tore through inland settlements before being gunned down, the more absurd amalgamations of monsters rose from the unexplored frontiers and laid waste to anything and everything in their paths, some of them as tall as mountains and just as unstoppable.
Monsters true to their nature at last.
In the midst of this, the individuals granted powers by Dreamcatcher were detained, set to be executed before they, too, went the way of their less-human compatriots. It was the current President of the United States who saw fit to use them against Dreamcatcher's monsters instead.
In the middle of discussions for controlling the formerly regarded "superheroes," breaking news of magically gifted individuals began cropping up all around the world, with varying levels of approval and dissent from all factions.
For years afterwards, the world fell into complete chaos between stemming the tides of Dreamcatcher's monsters and rounding up the sudden surge of magical individuals. Too many lives were lost to a cause no one had any understanding of, and too many resources were spent trying to apprehend particularly powerful individuals who simply didn't want to rot in a reinforced cell for the rest of their lives just for the crime of being Dreamcatcher's chosen (assuming a cell could even hold them in the first place).
As small countries were wiped off the map by swarms of fairies wielding disproportionately destructive magic and entire cities were devoured by ghouls, manticores, and anything inbetween, humankind faltered. They couldn't sustain this. When half of China was obliterated by a swarm of dragons that took several nuclear bombs to stymie, the governments of the world crumbled and looked to other sources for help.
A new solution was proposed to the ongoing crisis as magically gifted individuals (dubbed the lusus naturae by the scientific community) began finding each other and banding together, forming anything from organized militia and vigilantes to terrifying cults.
The magic users all held one struggle in common, disparate philosophies aside: the world wanted nothing to do with anything involving Dreamcatcher. It was only by a fortunate twist of fate (fortunate for the "subnaturals," at least--as regular people began calling them) that the militaries of too many countries were too weakened by the constant battle of attrition to deny the usefulness of magic in the now endless war against some of Dreamcatcher's worst monsters. Thus began rigorous background checks and psychological evaluations of the adolescents the government could get a hold of, with the more promising ones assigned to institutions that would ensure proper education and preventative measures while allowing the government to keep a close eye on them. These institutions also doubled as headquarters from which to deploy children against any monstrosities that normal military forces couldn't keep at bay--and those were plenty. Under any normal circumstances, sending teenagers to fight borderline hellspawn would have violated human rights on a terrifyingly fundamental level, but with the horrors of the past few years weighing heavy on everyone's minds, most of the world turned a blind eye to this. Most of the world, actually, hoped the monsters on both sides would kill each other off.
Initial concerns about separating institutions based on age group were quickly debased when all the adults who had gained powers died inexplicably within a month after the event. The deaths were gruesome, to say the least. Some of the "bodies" left behind could hardly be called anything more than bloody smears on the floor. Analysis revealed that any individuals over the rough ages of 21-23 died to some unknown side effect of the powers while the ones on the border suffered severe dementia or simply fell comatose. And yet the Precursors, the original 10 personally chosen by Dreamcatcher, were now well over the danger limits. Someone eventually proposed the theory that powers gained young incorporated more easily into an individual and powers gained after adulthood might suffer a similar effect to rejection of foreign bodies. It wasn't a perfect explanation--nothing was a perfect explanation where the enigma of Dreamcatcher was concerned--but it was the best people could think of when physical examinations and autopsies of more salvageable bodies provided absolutely nothing to go on.
So the world tentatively tolerated the magical children, simply for the purpose of keeping them on society's side. There were enough to pose a danger to civilizations all around the world, but not enough to win in a battle of numbers. Not yet, at least. And for all their powers, they were still human: they tired from overuse of their abilites just like an athlete would overexercising, and a bullet to the head for most of them could kill them just as easily as anyone else. It wasn't quite so easy with the monsters, and there were far too many monsters outside to worry yet about the monsters on the inside.
Here's where our story begins in the year 2020, 10 years after Dreamcatcher abandoned the world to seemingly erect and maintain a barrier around the planet--the event now dubbed "The Slumber."
After waking up with your powers, you realized--unlike a lot of other dead idiots--that obedience (feigned or not) meant the antsy, trigger-happy government wouldn't execute you, so now you're at the United States Army Research Institute for lusus naturae on the East Coast (USARILN East), boasting a high school-to-college-level education regime to keep everyone feeling "normal" and "stable," whatever those words mean nowadays. The Institute is located in the brand-spanking-new town of Crimen Culpae 1 they set up just for your kind and all the weird people who find subnaturals more amusing than terrifying. That means you'll be somewhat welcome in this town--but not for the reasons you'd like.
Crimen Culpae 1 (CC1 as the locals like to refer to it) is tucked away in a corner of the East Coast near much of the farmland and former wildlife refuges and game lands of North Carolina, far from any easy access to major cities.
(35.725413, -76.955924)
It's the first of a series of CC towns the government has set up around the nation to control and utilize--as best they can--the emerging subnaturals. They don't really run the mascots and school colors thing, but the students still do, if just to defy institutional apathy on the matter.
The school's colors are, depressingly, black, white, and grey. No one really thought bright, exuberant colors worked for the situation, plus USARILN East is known to be near several major points of aggression for Dreamcatcher's creatures. (And USARILN West already took the bright colors thing, so it would be embarrassing to imp it now.)
However you went about "presenting" yourself to the mercy of the government is your tale to tell. Maybe they had to drag you in by force. Maybe they simply found you somewhere surrounded by dead people because you couldn't control your abilities (and you somehow looked pitiful enough that they didn't murder you on the spot). Maybe you brought yourself to the nearest police station and let things go from there.
But all the same, Dreamcatcher (or something else) gave you your powers, and you were just intelligent enough to know that the world is in no state to tolerate your presence if you didn't comply with their every demand.
What almost no one outside of your fellow mages (the world calls your kind "subnaturals" as an insult; your peers know better, usually) know is that everyone chosen by Dreamcatcher saw a dream. They saw a dream of their magic taken to its utmost limits--power beyond imagination serving the purpose of something that lined up with what every individual personally saw as "good." And right after that dream, everyone saw the nightmare--a perverted version of your power tearing down your enemies and making the world yours in whatever way you wanted, whether it was simple domination or some heightened form of solitude. Your world your way. But without a doubt yours.
When the visions faded, you saw two paths in a hazy mental landscape of sounds and light. On the one path, the you from the dream walked towards something you thought might be a bright future. On the other path, the you from the nightmare (or maybe that was the dream to you?) walked towards something that seemed to whisper "This will be even better."
You chose one. You followed one. And the moment you rejected the other, you felt a visceral emotion from the side you didn't favor--perhaps your brain translated that into hatred.
Those of you who followed the first vision bear a white streak that stretches from below your right eye and across your right temple, stopping as it reaches above the ear, the ends of the streak jagged and faded, as if someone took a brush with too little paint on it to your face.
Those who followed the second vision sport a thick, black X (someone once joked that it looked like the Xbox logo's "X" and the visual stuck) on the front of your throats, near the base.
With a bonus. In listening to the temptation, the second vision brought with it a deadlier version of your powers with the same cost for all: the worst day of your life, the most annoying things in the world to you, your most terrifying secrets, your deepest shame, your biggest regret--any and all of those play in your mind without cease, the sounds louder and the emotions more pronounced on each replay. Only doing something can distract you even partially and only doing something destructive to people or objects can sate what the more unfortunate mages have taken to calling their "Stigmas." Sate temporarily, that is. It always comes back.
The more cognizant mages of the various institutions have long ago spread this information amongst each other via a private forum where only mages attending an institution were allowed an invitation--it helped that one of the forum administrators could detect lies. It's an unspoken rule among the mages now that no one mentions what everyone secretly calls "The Awakening" to the "regulars." There was something too intimate about it to share with people who were looking for excuses to kill them.
The forum, known by the innocuous name "Death and Taxes," has also proliferated the underground names "Arbiters" for the mages who woke up on the "right" side of the bed, and "Aberrations" for those who didn't. Frequent, heated discussions debate the existence of a "second Dreamcatcher" due to the duality of the Awakening, with common parlance referring to this potential second Dreamcatcher as the "Wisheater." Even mages whose powers allow for something as abstract as "seeing magic" have no conception of Wisheater aside from the insidious hint of that second vision. The current magical community remains split on the debate with slightly more believing that Wisheater is a desperate fabrication to soothe the sting of Dreamcatcher's betrayal. This tends to lead to flame wars on whether Dreamcatcher had any morality to begin with or if all the current strife in the world is just another of Dreamcatcher's whims.
Individual opinions aside, the forum has a stickied thread titled "Unwritten Rules Written Out For Once (We'll Find You If You Break Them)." After a lengthy introduction, the gist of the post lists the core tenets of magical subculture in the Institutions--the only places that even officially allow a magical subculture, really:
Do not speak of the Awakening to the regulars. For the new mages, this refers to the two visions you saw when you got your powers. Further discussion can be found in the "Awakening" thread stickied below this.
Do not mention the nature of this forum to any of the regulars. We can wipe it before anyone investigates and we'll find you.
Do not call yourselves "mages" around the regulars. You are "subnaturals" to them.
Do not mention the divide between Arbiters and Aberrations to the regulars. For the new mages, check the thread "Arbiters and Aberrations" stickied below the "Awakening" thread.
Do not attack your fellow mages unless you absolutely have to.
Do not provoke the regulars.
Do not attack the regulars even if provoked.
Do not be baited by an Aberration. They're naturally never in the best of moods. Don't deal with them if you can't handle that.
Do not respond to an Aberration's suicide notice. They almost always fail. We can find them if they actually manage to get close to succeeding.
It remains to be seen if those unspoken rules and the animosity of the world will stop you from doing what you want.
But within the subculture of the Institute, there are more things to fear than just the guns of the military guards keeping an eye on you.
June 13, 2016 // 5:12 AM Last edited: December 25, 2019 // 4:30 AM
>[OP][Admin] Semordnilap:
So we all know those things we saw when we got our powers. No one needs to bring up details--actually, just don't. We don't want to know. We just need to emphasize that the events we saw in our personal visions are extremely intimate and should not be revealed to anyone unless we trust them with our lives and our firstborn children. Got it? That goes double for regulars--that's "regular humans" for the new mages reading this.
So that's out of the way and I'll compile what we do know about the visions.
First, they always come in pairs. Except for the Precursors, because Dreamcatcher picked them face-to-face.
Don't ask me why and don't speculate on that unless you've spoken to a Precursor because I'd like to shake your hand if you did. And don't lie. We all know Monster Frisbee can detect lies, so for all the new folks, don't try to be cool here.
So they come in pairs and it's like a good cop, bad cop routine, except only you can tell who's the good cop and who's the bad cop. Then you pick one and if you picked correctly, you get a white thingy on your face (Precursors don't have this, so all the more reason to think they don't have the visions). That makes you an Arbiter, plus white is almost always the good guy color right? Anyway, you pick the right cop and you get powers.
You pick the wrong cop and you get even better powers and that Xbox logo on your neck, except they come with these things we're calling Stigmas because from what I hear, they fucking suck. You get this broken record player of the shittiest moments in your life just playing on repeat when you sleep, when you try to relax, when you do anything but blow shit up and hurt people. It. Sucks. So we call those guys the Aberrations. Because it sucks to be them and it sure as hell isn't normal to be them. Yeah, I know, it's not normal to be us, either, but at least we're not constantly reliving our worst nightmares every waking moment while resisting destructive homicidal tendencies, k?
And that's all we've got on the Awakening, folks. That's what we're calling it since it's easy to remember and it sticks. Just don't go mentioning it anywhere regulars can hear. They don't really know why we've got the white face paint or the black X's, they just think it's like "X = violent" and "white swab = not violent" so let them keep that up, okay? It's not like it's completely wrong and you really don't want them poking around inside our heads any more than they already did before we got here. I think a few of the headcases mentioned something about the Awakening here and there, but no one took them and their crazy-asses seriously, except for small-time folks here and there, but those guys have almost no traction. Plus, Dreamcatcher's monsters keep everyone busy enough that no one cares about some stupid dreams. For now.
June 15, 2016 // 7:32 PM Last edited: January 11, 2020 // 1:53 PM
>[OP][Admin] Monster Frisbee:
Hey guys, it's your #1 Frisbee here. I keep seeing a lot of questions about the two different subtypes of mages around the forums, so I figured I'd lay out what we know for y'alls. Or at least what we've been able to figure out is consistent enough to consider fact.
The first thing you gotta know is that there are two types of mages (a-duh)-- the Arbiters and the Aberrations.
Firstly, the Arbiters...
We have white streaks starting from below our right eyes to where the top of our ears start. Looks kind of like a little glob of paint landed on our face and someone tried to wipe it off with a paintbrush. And it doesn't. come. off.
Our powers tend to be more stable and develop more slowly than Aberration powers. Some would say they're weaker, but we call those folks plebs.... Okay, that's only half true. Aberrations DO tend to have 'stronger' powers-- if you consider more destructive powers to be stronger. But I'll get back to that later.
Because our powers as Arbiters tend to be more similar to the Precursors (in that we don't have any bad urges... well... no more than the average joe), there has been a lot of speculation that we're meant to follow some sort of directive from Dreamcatcher. It'd be nice know what said directive is, though. World peace? Saving mankind from all the psycho creatures? Love, Trust, and Pixie Dust? Obviously it must have something to do with the barrier he set up, but that's a debate for another thread. (link here)
Basically, we're the best. The good guys. The chumiest of chums. (just kidding) And the best of the best of us are called Ardors. They're awesome (mostly). Rumors say some of them might be even stronger than Precursors, but we still haven't gotten one onto this forum to ask.
Then you've got the Aberrations....
They have thick black Xs on the front base of their throats-- and they totally look like Xbox logos. Which would be hilarious if it didn't suck to be them so much. As you all know, before our journey of being mages began, we got these two super weird visions-- one for good and one for bad. That's how most people tend to describe it, though which one seems which is entirely dependent on the person. I prefer to look at it as right and wrong-- since if you chose incorrectly, you get stuck with a "Stigma".
The "wrong" vision brought with it a deadlier version of their powers, but at a cost. The worst day of your life, the most annoying things in the world to you, every terrifying secret, every deepest shame or biggest regret-- that stuff plays in your head like the catchiest song you've ever hated and the volume of it just keeps getting louder and louder until you eventually can't function. Only doing something can distract you even partially and only doing something destructive to people or objects can temporarily "turn the volume down"-- exactly how much the volume is turned down and for how long is dependent on how much destruction was wrought. These loud, intrusive memories/peeves have been called a few different things, but they are most commonly referred to as "Stigmas".
Like I said before, Arberrations have powers that are a heckuva lot more violent, powerful, and volatile than ours (the Arbiters). Their powers advance much more quickly than ours, as well-- even more so if they use their powers to sate their Stigmas more often than needed. (Where's our cookie for using our powers, Mr. D?) The strongest of Aberrations aren't currently under government control and are considered high priority targets (FPCON Delta) whenever they're spotted. (At least we don't have to become public enemy number one to unlock our full potential, right?)
Everyone calls these amoral psychopaths Animi. An Animus, due to all the desctruction they cause, don't SEEM to be distracted by their Stigmas the way Aberrations are. There's been talk of whether, once you level enough buildings and kill enough people, your Stigma just goes away and your powers get even stronger, but it's not like Animi tend to post on this forum very much. If they ever did, us admins would have to wipe it right away. Last thing we need is to be assocated with any of that rabble (Plus they give me the creeps. I'm sure I'm not alone on this). Most of us older kids remember a few years back when it took THREE FUCKING PRECURSORS just to take down Garrote (Trung Nguyen, for those who don't keep up with the media nicknames) in Southeast Asia-- and one of them almost died. Then that stupid Garrote's Gallows group and their dumbass name started recruiting the Aberrations around Vietnam and Laos and now they think they're hot shit.
But I'm totally getting sidetracked here. The important thing to remember with Aberrations is that they're always on edge. Even the ones that seem calm are still completely on edge--I mean, who wouldn't be when you go through what they go through, right?
And because Semo mentioned it in the Unwritten Rules post, I'll explain a bit here, though we're not really sure if this is consistently the case because once in a while an Aberration does succeed in killing themselves. They usually can't because every time they try their Stigma goes bonkers and it causes anything from blacking out to seizures so it's really, really rare for them to succeed. But it's not like all of them know what they're getting into when they pick the "wrong" vision. Sometimes it's too much for them to handle, and they can't even escape from it the easy way. We had a few scares on the forum before where everyone panicked over suicide notices from Aberrations, but since everyone here attends an Institution, it's not hard for Semo to notify the guards if one of their precious living magical weapons is about to off themselves, so if it happens again, try not to panic too much, guys.
One last thing to note: if an Aberration is having a really bad day because they haven't "sated" their Stigma in too long, you can usually tell because they'll be punching walls or screaming or crying in the fetal position on the floor. Or all three and more. Don't bother them. Just let a guard know if you're feeling like a dick that day (and if they haven't noticed already for some reason) or find a mage with some kind of Prozac power if you're a decent human being and you happen to know a mage like that. For all that they're kind of fucked up, the Aberrations are still one of us.
Long story short, it really fucking sucks to be an Aberration and I know we all dislike their attitudes, but let's do our best to give them some breaks when we can.
July 2, 2016 // 3:43 AM Last edited: February 24, 2020 // 7:21 PM
>[OP][Admin] Rad Cow Disease:
We'll go in no particular order because you should always steer clear of all these guys.
ThΓ²ng Lα»ng Garrote, or 'Garrote's Gallows' in Southeast Asia. These guys are small time thugs just riding off the coattails of Garrote's fame in almost killing a Precursor. Not even worth worrying about, yet. All they've got under their belts are weaker Aberrations that even the other small-time gangs didn't want.
The Senators. Huuge faction in North America. Basically a vigilante Aberration group, if you can believe that the violence they spread is any sort of 'good.' They're a faction with a focus on self-destruction. They try to keep the violence to themselves with their continent-spanning fight club deal. The Senators have also been known to start wars with other factions and stand-alone Aberrations, though their targets leave their form of 'crime-fighting' as something left to be desired. They're a bunch of racist pricks, is what I'm saying.
Amigos do Pai, or 'Friends of the Father.' The largest South American faction (led by an Ardor, of all things) and far more covert than the Senators. They've got a stranglehold that spans from Rio's favelas to even some minor Texan communities. That's the rumor anyway. Extremely organised.
Fenrir's Heralds. A subsidiary of Australia's Hell's Angels motorcycle gang. The story is that the boss' cousin woke up one day with the X on his throat, blew up the east wing of the stronghold, and rode away before anyone could shoot him down. They never stay in one place long.
Cat's Cradle. BAD NEWS. These guys are way bad news. Don't ever fucking go near any area they've been spotted in--and if you get assigned to handle any case involving them, break an arm or something to get out of the mission, because you're not coming back from that. 10 fucking Animi in one group and they're all batshit insane. No one knows how they even function together, but they're globe-trotting psychos thanks to Backdoor and his teleportation. Then you have Whisper and his ability to blow your eardrums out from a few blocks away and trying to fight them is like running into a meat grinder naked. Don't mess with them.
This post will be updated as frequently as possible, but it's only a quick overview. If you want more deets, head into the Factions Discussion Threads.
Rad Cow, signing out.
December 6, 2014 // 11:28 PM Last edited: February 23, 2015 // 7:08 PM
>[OP] CundtBake:
Don't feel like studying, so I decided to do something I've been meaning to get around to for a while now. I am going to write up a survival guide for this piss poor excuse for a school the governent has stuck us all in. >:/
So every Institute is run by a fancypants Director who has the Precursors on call in case anything goes wrong. So if you've ever really wanted to meet one, go on a killling rampage and they'll show up to autograph your guts with whatever it is they choose to kill you with. But only if you manage to be more than the Directors can handle... and you'd be surprised.
USARILN East is run by Director XiΓΉyΔ«ng Zhang (her English name, Lina Zhang or "biggest bitch on campus" work, too). Of all the Directors, she's the most strict and merciless. She doesn't have a very high tolerance for "mishaps" (or even potential "mishaps") and has been known to execute more "uncontrollable" students from time to time. The more high-priority cases are left in her "tender" care-- she has a rap for pitting new students up against threats that are way out of their league.
There are also several "staff" mages on campus with more utility-based powers for keeping things running smoothly-- stuff like detecting traps, poisoned food, reading mental states, etc. I heard Monster Frisbee was almost forced to be one, but he somehow wormed his way out of it. You can't really talk to them-- they aren't allowed to, but I hear they get to stay in really nice, cushy apartments. You don't see them very often, but any time they are out and about, they're always surrounded by at least three guards at any one given time. In exchange for being good boys and girls, they never get sent out on missions, though. So it's kind of a fair trade, if you don't mind living under a rock.
For our convenience, the school is located in close proximity to high concentrations of Dreamcatcher's monsters. To help us all die a little less quickly, Hephaestus, as the media calls him, has been providing the institute with a steady supply of magical armaments to distribute to students who have been "vetted" to be useful and stable enough to not turn against the Institute. Very few students actually get these armaments, but they're rumored to allow a pretty ridiculous amount of control and amplification of your abilities. I wouldn't know. They wouldn't give me one. :/ The precognitive Precursor (Foresight) is rumored to have been instructing Hephaestus on which students to design weapons for, so if the Director ever grants you a weapon, it will probably be by Foresight's design-- so it will probably be made specifically to work with your abilites.
USARILN East proudly holds the record for most casualties on campus as of this year. Director Zhang's iron fist basically opened the flood gates. Meaning a lot of other Institutes feel fine sending her the more unruly Aberrations that they don't want to deal with. Thanks to that, the population of Aberrations to Arbiters is roughly a 60/40 split. Being an Aberration myself, I'd be fine with that if it didn't make bitch-Zhang feel so inclined to send us Aberrations out with little to no concern for our well-being. A lot of us don't come back.
There have been rumors that the Director picks out certain Aberrations and sends them after more questionable targets--other "subnaturals" who are trying to lay low-- some of them secretly and hiding them from government eyes with regulars who are supporting them. Even mages who are just trying to stay out of what is effectively a fancier prison are potential targets. But these are just rumors, I hope. I'd hate to think any one of us could be sent to hunt down our own kind.
Just like regular high schools, they run a semester system and we're academically divided according to our age and, in some cases, our intellect. I know a few people who've been held back, but I can't really blame them for feeling unmotivated. The school offers college level courses for once you finish your senior year, or if you're a real smarty pants and get advanced placement. Unlike some high schools, though, we don't have uniforms here (because too many of us die too often too brutally to justify always buying new uniforms) and no one really cares if we use phones and laptops in classes. We are monitored all the damn time, though, so it's not like it's total internet freedom here. Luckily, Semo pulled some strings and most of the IT staff just think "Death and Taxes" is some lit new forum for teens and young adults where we talk about nasty teenager kinks and shit. Except we're here because they don't give us much of a break anywhere else. Our letters are read before they're given to us, and they don't even bother hiding that they opened it; our packages are inspected and left open when we pick them up from the registrar's building; our phone calls and communications outside of this forum are all recorded somewhere-- I sometimes wonder why they didn't just flat out make this place a prison.
But I guess after my moods pass, I can appreciate that there are a bunch of recreational facilities and study lounges, as well as dorm buildings. Aberrations and Arbiters get different dorms based on behavior. Most Aberrations tend not to be great roommates (I have a hard enough time trying not to break my own shit sometimes), so we get shitty little single dorm rooms all to ourselves. Arbiters, in all their glory, basically get mini-apartments, but a little shittier in that the living room area is also the bedroom area and you have to share with one or two other Arbiters per mini-apartment. Every apartment does have its own kitchen/dining area though-- so that's kinda nice... if you cook... which I don't, unless you count cup noodles. Oh, and each apartment has its own bathroom. Can't forget that, especially since us Aberrations only get communal kitchens and bathrooms. Just because I'm way better at procrastinating than anything else, I even drew a picture of what the fancy Arbiter dorms look like (the school officially refers to them as "suites").
There are some Aberrations that get cleared to live in the Arbiter dorms, but not many. You've really gotta prove you have your stigma under wraps for that. Likewise, there are some idiot Arbiters that cause enough trouble to get their own room with the Aberrations as well. The Aberration dorms are all connected to each other and to the main registrar's office through several long and fancy hallways for easy access. The Arbiter dorms are a separate building entirely, just across the street from the Aberration dorms. Best part? No gender segregation. No anything segregation, actually. They frankly don't care if we see each other naked and stuff as long as we're always ready to go whenever one of Dreamcatcher's creatures need killing.
We've got a big library, computer lounges, cafes, food stands, and the like all on campus. Further out in the town, you get to buy groceries or clothes while subjecting yourself to the regular locals, who're constantly trying to talk to you and ask rude and intrusive questions about your life in school. Oh yeah-- money. This is kinda one of the cool things about living here, I guess. Everyone gets a meal card for three square meals a day at the dining hall, which is like a buffet sort of deal (the food isn't totally horrible, though I wouldn't recommend eating there on lasagna night). In addition to that, everyone gets a monthly stipend of $500, which is deposited into a governent-managed account. Unfortunately you can't cash out more than $100 of it at any one time (so you can't just take the money and run). And don't try to be sneaky by slowly saving up-- if you withdraw too much money too often or they just see a pattern of money withdrawals without any expenditures, you'll be put under investigation and that's never fun.
No one really likes talking about this next part, but for all the Aberrations around here, we've also got "Ground Zero," which is our name for the huge field a little ways off campus where Aberrations can go to sate their Stigmas. There's a staff mage who maintains the illusion of a ghost town there complete with people to hurt. I say illusion, but it's supposedly some kind of "reality that never existed" deal. Dunno, wasn't really listening to the explanation on how it works, but basically that mage can only make that kind of setting and can fix it up all the time, so you're hurting "real people" and destroying "real things." And that's enough on that depressing topic.
All students wear a magical transmitter around their ankles--the design and mass-production supplied by Hephaestus--so the school always knows your location. Students have definitely tried, but the overall consensus so far has been that the Director's direct command is the only thing that can mess with it... short of sawing your leg off, I guess. Nobody is allowed to leave the outskirts of town unless you're being sent on a mission. Failure to comply is usually met with a harsh magical taze from the transmitter. Continued failure to comply means a sniper bullet to the head/military intervention/other students sent after you. Failing all that, a Precursor comes in and deals with you. So there's another way to get an autograph on your insides. Once you try to leave on your own, they don't want you back. It's as simple as that. Sounds pretty great, right? :/
December 7, 2014 // 10:30 PM Last edited: February 1, 2020 // 9:12 AM
>[OP][Admin] Semordnilap:
So we don't have much on the Precursors because the government got a handle on them pretty quickly and suppressed a lot of their information. We've got basic names and general bios about their normal, everyday lives before they were picked out by Dreamcatcher, but nothing more meaningful than that so I'll cover their powers in the order that they were hand-picked by Dreamcatcher and I'll give you what the public already generally knows with some of my impressions mixed in. Keep in mind this is all hearsay from the news outlets and Reddit because the people up top sure as hell aren't going to publish this information for us.
Sparrow (Julia Brenner // 27): So Sparrow's got a pretty tricky set of powers. She can levitate, yeah, that's what she started out with. Then she improved that to straight up Superman-style flight. She can also grant that flight to nearby people. And whenever she's using her powers, she glows golden, because we needed that cliche, right? Reporters have seen her moving the entire Precursor team before. Now the weird thing about Sparrow's levitation-turned-flight is that while she's flying, she's immune to most incoming damage. Even rain and dust wicks off her with ease. Only person who's been able to hurt her in flight has been Garrote, and, sure, she nearly died in that fight, but it took Garrote everything he had, which is how Newton managed to catch him in a gravity field and crush him.
Kadabra (Vincent Nguyen // 30): A lot more straightforward. Kadabra can move things with his mind, but can't move people, weirdly enough. This wouldn't be so bad if his most famous attack wasn't throwing a mountain at Garrote. Let it be known that it was a distraction so Newton could kill the guy. Report had a backup plan involving three more potential mountains cleared for lifting and throwing. So the guy can move a lot of big shit at once really far. Just because his ability is simple doesn't mean it's not fucking nuts. Unlike Newton (who's kind of Kadabra's rival on the internet), Kadabra is a lot more creative with the what and the how of the things he throws, and it's that open-minded creativitiy in usage that, personally, makes me a member of Team Kadabra and not Team Newton, k?
Foresight (Stella Nedelcu // 29): Just as her name says, she's pretty good at planning ahead because she can see the future--in a way. She reads tarot cards the way literally no one else can but she needs someone else to ask her a question. She can't ask herself and she can't ask anyone to ask for her. Kind of sad, in a way. Every time she reads, she uses at least five decks, with more complicated variations requiring up to ten decks. And she can't answer in detail--or maybe she won't? No one's sure. It's always vague answers or "yes" and "no" answers. No one's ever gotten her to explain exactly how she interprets all the crazy shapes and patterns her cards move themselves in whenever she activates her powers, but she's never been wrong about something she reads. The only scary situation is when she reads multiple equally likely futures. Then people start scrambling to look for a fulcrum. That's what led to the sortie against Garrote, when a question involving him led to multiple futures from Foresight's reading.
Newton (Timmy Garcia // 31): Makes almost small-village-sized gravity fields at peak power. Otherwise he generally covers a block with one attack. His is another one of those "simple but deadly" powers, and being the one-trick pony he is, he's had a lot of time to get really good with that power. Where Kadabra worked on moving bigger things more creatively, Newton worked on making his fields larger and stronger. He used to just apply a weak downward force in a small area around him. Now he can lob a gravity ball towards an area and have it expand into a field of preset size that flattens everything down to a nice, smooth landscape. No one's really wanted to get close enough to check exactly how much gravitational force one of his fields can output these days. Not with all the monsters that he's been pitching them at. Guess it serves as some kind of testament to Dreamcatcher's creations that a lot of them don't die when hit by that field. At least Garrote died. Any Animus who can survive one of Newton's "full power" fields probably isn't human anymore.
Prism (Hsiao Tsu Lin or Annie Hsiao // 25): Shoots lasers. Shoots a lot of lasers at once. She can basically drown an entire city in lasers if she wanted to expend all her energy at once. And these lasers can slice through buildings like wet paper. Oh, yeah, her lasers can curve and home in on you, even if some of them don't really move as fast as lasers should, but are we really complaining about that when a laser is tailing you? No. Not at all. I mean, we call them lasers, but they might just be magical beams at this point because what the fuck, right? Another deadly simple type and the go-to girl for any Institutional issues. She does have regular lasers. And you're not dodging her. Apparently one of her other perks is small-radius teleportation and crazy accurate aim. And even if you can make her miss, she'll just curve the damn laser at you.
Merlin (Luke Iverson // 23): The youngest of the Precursors (he was 7 when Dreamcatcher chose him!), Luke has probably the highest potential of them all. His schtick and why the media's named him Merlin is elemental generation. Yeah, you read that right. He can just generate and control a bunch of any "element" defined by those mythical tales and whatnot--probably one of the more ridiculous things Dreamcatcher decided to pull from human imagination, really. Water, earth, fire, wind, and metal seem to be his limit, but he didn't always have metal, so Reddit's all over the guesswork on what he'll claim next; people are joking about light and darkness, but I don't want to really think about something that overpowered. They didn't send him to fight Garrote because they didn't want to lose him--which was fair. Garrote's not exactly something you "practice" on if you're building up combat experience and Prism was busy guarding Foresight at the time.
Hephaestus (Sem Maarschalkerweerd // 33): This guy doesn't move from some deep, underground bunker they've got him in and, honestly, with that kind of name, he's probably better off down there where I hear they cater to his every need and demand because he makes magical arms for mages that are absolutely insane. The government isn't allowing him to make arms for any of the other Precursors for now because they aren't desperate enough, yet, thanks to all of us little magelings running around dying and doing all their work for them. Basically, they're afraid that--with the way they've been treating mages as a whole--if Hephaestus makes something crazy for every Precursor, there'd be no reason for the Precursors to obey them anymore because they could probably just go around obliterating the world and any opposition. We've got a few pieces of Heph's gear here at USARILN East, but you can bet your ass they keep that shit under the tightest lock and key you can imagine, and then some. Rumor is Foresight's got a thing for him since she's always visiting him, but who even knows with those guys.
Morph (Emily Sharpe // 31): As one of the few shapeshifters (I guess Dreamcatcher, strangely enough, doesn't conceptualize "shapeshifting" well for something that's only good at some weird form of mimicry) in existence, Morph can look like anything. Not anyone. Anything. That pencil on your desk? Could be Morph. That crumpled piece of paper in your trash can that you swear you didn't throw in there? Could be Morph. When the government first got ahold of her and analyzed her powers as best they could, Reddit was all jokes and giggles because compared to powerhouses like Kadabra, Newton, Prism, and Merlin, Morph was kind of a letdown for someone who came later in the cycle. That is, until Morph, well, morphed into a second Statue of Liberty for shits and countergiggles at them. She can only morph into something she's seen before, and when shifted she has no choice but to remain still. Given the variety of things she's seen in this world, though, she's got a lot of options. I think she's got a size limit since she's never done anything bigger than that Statue of Liberty stunt, but that's just my guess. That's still pretty big, let's be real. With that kind of power, the US government would obviously be using her to spy on Russia or something because why the hell wouldn't you?
Benediction (Renard Malveaux // 25): Hoo, boy. Here is Jesus on a stick, and I'm only partially kidding. Benediction can bring people back from the dead if they haven't been dead for over two days. Two fucking days. He's always been able to do that, so everyone's guessing that's kind of a hard limit and not something he can improve on, but who even knows with Dreamcatcher. And that's just the most notable power. He can heal--really damn well. Like he shoots a white light at you and you're back to normal in a few seconds even if you're a bloody pulp on the ground (though I guess that falls more under the "bringing back the dead bit" but he still heals all those injuries up). I'm not exaggerating. He's done that for a few unfortunate folks important enough for the government to sanction resurrections for (yeah, he doesn't just get to go around raising the dead whenever he likes--because it exhausts him and the government generally wants him in tip-top shape for any unexpected battles). And if you thought that wasn't crazy enough, he can also place borderline invincible barriers around five targets at once. They tested this with a combo of Prism and Newton dropping damage on a shielded mannequin like there was no tomorrow and the thing didn't even take a scratch, though they did find out that Benediction gets a little tired sustaining the barrier under all that damage. Personal opinion? Benediction is the deadliest of the Precursors. Let's all be fucking glad he can't heal or ressurect himself or I think we'd be screwed. In the fight with Garrote, they obviously kept him close enough to jet plane there within two days in case any of the Precursors died. Guy's basically a walking save point.
Menagerie (Simeon Kovac // 24): I know next to nothing about this guy other than the usual jokes about him being Dreamcatcher's son. Real talk, it'd be a cool plot twist, but we all know Dreamcatcher doesn't human. Yeah, I verbed that noun. Anyway, Menagerie is a mystery. He can make monsters similar to Dreamcatcher, but they're smaller, weaker, and they always die within a week. Not viable, not self-sustaining, and sure as hell not as efficient as what Dreamcatcher's created. Look at what's left of China. Those dragons are intelligent as hell and they're just waiting for another swarm to build up. Everyone knows it. If it wasn't for Prism keeping them at bay all the time and thinning their numbers, I think there wouldn't be a China left to preserve. I'm rambling here because Menagerie's been out of the picture for a while. Maybe he's cooped up with Hephaestus or something, because we haven't heard jack from him in about five years, though the government assures the public that all the Precursors are hard at work keeping them safe. So he's around, supposedly. Doing what under the government's commands, I shudder to even guess.
March 17, 2018 // 6:56 PM Last edited: January 13, 2020 // 9:50 PM
Multi-author post //
>[OP][Admin] Semordnilap: >[OP][Admin] Rad Cow Disease: >[OP][Admin] Monster Frisbee:
Oy vey. Cat's Cradle. 10 Animi--yeah, that's full-on Animi, guys, not Aberrations--in one group with a "random access" teleporter to help them constantly slip away from the Precursors. Because Foresight takes time to read her cards and Backdoor's location selection is random until the very last instant, it's always too late by the time Foresight finds out where they've gone based on the game of 20 Questions people have to play with Foresight's power. You can see how they can just keep ahead of her by simply moving constantly. And the Precursors can't keep expending Foresight's energy on trying to uselessly read where they'll go.
If you can believe it, this slip of a guy named Nico Lehmann supposedly leads the group. We've got news bulletins and reports on them every time they crop up, but I still can't believe this 163cm, scrawny-ass kid leads this group of borderline/outright psychos. I guess crazies come in all shapes and sizes. The government's done digging on all of Cat's Cradle, of course, but with how they're behaving, they don't care if everyone's seen their baby photos and read their brief biographies. And this time we've got official reports on them to reference for information, because the bad guys get that privilege, right?
Cat's Cradle wasn't even a group and was originally just Nico Lehmann, Donovan Horska, and Whisper. Yeah, the guy's actual name is Whisper. I think Nico named him? He was an unknown--probably one of the nameless refugees from some no-name village that never got itself properly recorded on any map--fleeing to the U.S. in the wake of Dreamcatcher's monsters ravaging Europe. Not really sure how he ran into Nico and Donovan. Details there are nonexistent, but the two of them took him in, so to speak, because Nico was actually some really rich kid living on the West Coast and Donovan was his best bud. Housing records state that Whisper was formally adopted into the Lehmann family while Donovan attended the same school nearby, so they formed a kind of snazzy friendship unit that was the talk of the town. But here's the funny bit--or maybe it's not so funny in retrospect--Whisper was a mute. Emphasis on was. Nico gave him a name and he settled into that and the Lehmann family before going on to excel at academics and athletics with Donovan as some kind of friendly rival in school.
Wish it had stayed that way. Everyone does, probably.
Some giant, shadowy, Dreamcatcher-esque thing that might have been some primordial creature Dreamcatcher created way back in the fucking Jurassic period attacked the West Coast. It took all the Precursors, a bunch of volunteer mages, and most of the military to finally take it down. Luckily, it didn't move much from the spot where it emerged from the ground, but the fallout from its massive black waves destroyed a lot of places and people, Nico's entire family included. It was by some stroke of luck that he, Donovan, and Whisper had been visiting a relative in another city far from the site of attack when it happened, but the event broke the kid beyond repair. At least, that's how the media's been framing it this entire time. And all those stupid Cat's Cradle sympathizers all over the net think they'll be the lucky guy or gal who'll bring the crazy villains back to their senses. Fucking idiots.
Information is scarce after that, because the three of them vanished from the radar for a while, even though the Lehmann relatives committed a large-scale search effort to looking for them.
Cue 2015, four years after that, when the three of them suddenly appear in Chicago with seven other "apparent" Aberrations in tow. USARILN East, still building itself up at the time, sortied too slowly and too recklessly. No one knew they were Animi until it was too damn late and half of the city had been laid to waste. Then they just up and left, teleporting away through one of Backdoor's portals. They've been doing shit like that ever since, sometimes ravaging random, uninhabited areas and sometimes decimating large portions of major cities. And no one knows why. Plenty of speculation ranging from simple whack jobs with tragic backstories to some grand plan that no one had figured out, yet. But none of them are telling us a thing, that's for sure.
So with the backstory out of the way here we are now, your best bros Rad Cow and Semo collabing and coming to y'all with the latest deets on the most notorious and deadliest Animi to ever scurry the Earth! (Scurry? That might not be the best word choice. If you Cool Cats are reading this, please don't murder me haha)
Refrain (Nico Lehmann // 24): Refrain, as the media likes to call him, is the kingpin, you could say. His ability takes two simple forms: he can buff someone's magic or he can debuff someone's magic. He can't buff himself and magic aside he looks like a strong wind could blow him over. Strategy sounds pretty simple, right? Take out this guy and maybe the rest of Cat's Cradle won't be so fucking broken? Yeah, easier said than done. He's not an idiot. He always keeps at least one member of the Cradle with him everywhere he goes, and it's usually Manic or Whisper.
So now let's get talking on how intense that buff and debuff is. No one's really strictly measured it, but when he buffed Whisper once and the guy just shouted a quick "Hah!" Chicago lost about four blocks' worth of buildings and unfortunate people. And that was just Whisper fucking around. I've never had--and I hope I never have--the privilege of seeing any of their "serious" bouts up close, because they mostly steer clear of the Precursors and do their serious work in the most random places. Like in Siberia once where they blasted up enough ice, snow, dirt, and smog to fog the air in that entire area for a week.
Reports say Nico can buff all of Cat's Cradle at once, though the effect seems more diluted than just buffing one or two people. And it seems like he can't debuff and buff at the same time, since the occasional skirmishes with the Precursors have revealed that he does need to turn on and off his ability between forms. He's got an easy tell, though--red rings on his left hand and red rings on the right hands of anyone he's affecting. Easy tell, but unblockable. Sparrow backed out of one of the fights real fast when the debuff rings popped up on her. And she found out she couldn't fucking fly anymore. Almost all her powers blocked off.
When he debuffed multiple Precursors in another quick fight, they could still use weak versions of their magic, but nowhere near enough to harm. And that would have been deadly if Whisper had capitalized on that. But the Cradle always leaves every time they get the upper hand. My guess? They're totally after something and it's got nothing to do with the Precursors who keep getting in their way.
Manic (Donovan Horska // 24): Nico's right-hand man. The funny thing is that apparently, this dude used to beat up on poor Nico back on the elementary school playground. Guess psychopathy kicks in early. We know about this cos the Lehmann matriarch had written a rather irate Facebook status about her son being mistreated when they were about ten. Good thing digital records don't get erased by primordial natural disasters, huh.
Anyways, the kid had moved from Australia when he was ten and somehow managed to become bros with the kid he bullied and his former tormentee's adopted brother after that. Manic's schtick is that he is a master manipulator of emotions. He senses every living thing within a 110m radius and can have them shitting their pants with a single yawn. There was this one time where he wiped out an entire squadron of USARILN soldiers by having them shoot themselves in the head. The guy's ability lets him instill a crazy intense primal emotion in his targets, which basically lets him order them to do whatever he wants.
Whenever he uses his power, this blinding blue light shines from the center of his chest. So if you ever see a ginger with an Iron Man arclight smirking at you, pray that the worst he'll do to you is make you tapdance or something. Actually, that ginger part of the last statement might not even apply. Since his power isn't a combat-based one he usually stays out of the front lines, chilling by the side in a quick disguise. He never keeps the same hairstyle or hair colour for more than a month. Yep. He's a fashionista and a sadistic, murderous psychopath.
Whisper (Whisper Lehmann // 22): Tall, dark, and handsome, Whisper would be an Abercrombie & Fitch model (you know, those mostly naked ones on their shopping bags) if he wasn't a psycho Animus whose power revolves around screaming you to death. It sounds funny when I put it that way, but don't ever underestimate Whisper, because sound travels, boys and girls, and magical sound really fucking travels. Whisper has a terrifying 300m range (it took a lot of dead soldiers and civilians for them to finally calculate that) with a targeted sound wave and a slightly less terrifying 100m range when he's just letting off a point-blank sound explosion around him.
His power is always on all the time, so normally he can't talk, even though his magic apparently fixed whatever was making him mute before. Ironic. But I guess it adds to that silent and aloof Adonis image he has--don't even get me started on the fangirls that think they can "change him." His name is disturbingly apropos since even a whisper from him can send you and your chair flying a few meters away. His tell is obviously sound. If you ever see him and his mouth starts moving...well, you're probably not going to get out of range in time, so make your peace with yourself or whichever god you worship.
He once drove off Merlin and Kadabra just by casually strolling through a small town while singing some opera. I shouldn't even note that his singing was good considering the context of the situation, but I will just for details' sake. The sound waves were apparently enough to deflect most things Kadabra and Merlin threw at him and he just focused down anything that made it through the, apparently, walls of sound, which meant by the time he was done having his little singing stroll, there wasn't a town left. And then Backdoor met up with him as he stopped singing and teleported the two of them away before Merlin and Kadabra could close in on them.
I guess I should mention that Whisper's obvious tick--as several military squadrons have found out the hard way--involves his brotherly affection for Refrain. Basically, don't threaten Refrain if Whisper's around. He doesn't take it well and not even Refrain's direct order is going to stop Whisper from shouting you dead. When he says "Go to hell," he means it in more ways than one.
Queen Bee (Rhian Gallagher // 25): Frisbee's got this one, guys. Bee is hot. 'Nuff said. She's a fairly tall drink of water, if you ask me. She typically wears edgy punk type clothes and dark lipstick and eyeliner. She has a tattoo of some peonies on her left shoulder. And a symbol that glows a goldish color just below her collar bone's center, whenever her powers are active.
Bee has total control over insects, arachnids, and the like-- even some insect-like monsters leftover from Dreamcatcher (to some degree). This is still under speculation, but due to data gathering on the largerst swarm she's ever amassed on the fly (no pun intended), it would seem she can summon any bugs within a 4 mile radius. She can also grossly increase the size of her insects-- also to some degree. 15-20 car-size creepy crawlies at a time, five the size of your house, or one that's straight out of a Godzilla movie. These numbers aren't exact, but sightings have been consistent enough to suggest that the number of bugs she can grow is dependent on the size.
If giant swarms or just plain giant bugs (some of which are definitely poisonous) didn't seem like it was enough, Bee can also fly via a pair of large, translucent wings. As with her bugs, she is able to "summon" her wings at will, along with a pair of long, antennae. When is this state, she is extremely fast and agile-- like trying to swat a fly that's sending hordes of bees straight for your eyeballs at the same time.
Her past, unfortunately, isn't that interesting. We know she's from Scotland, but that's about it. Sources tell she used to be a regular run-of-the-mill high school student before her powers hit. They say she used to run with the more popular crowd, if that means anything.
One thing's for sure though-- she can bug me any day. I'd love to taste some of her honey, know what'm sayin?
Backdoor (Jonathan Mah // 20): Backdoor is one of the extremely rare long-distance teleporters in the world. No clue why the long-range version of the magic is that rare, it just is. The Precursors wanted him under their control for the longest time, so imagine everyone's surprise when he showed up with Refrain, Manic, and Whisper in Chicago.
His ability gives them an easy exit from every confrontation, but it's gimped in that he can't choose the destination. He can set a few waypoints down (and only he knows where he set them), but the actual teleportation magic will randomly select from there. For a gimp, it's pretty damn good at keeping Foresight from tracking them. There's only so many places someone can ask "Will they appear here?" before she exhausts her magic saying "No" or "I don't know" over and over again. There's likely a limit distance for Backdoor's teleports as Cat's Cradle has never been spotted too far from a previous teleport. A few cities' distance away seems to be the farthest they can go in one jump, though it's not known how far they can move if Refrain boosts Backdoor.
Little information on Backdoor before he joined Cat's Cradle. Average kid, average family, average home. Nothing spectacular. No weird quirks or psychiatric evaluations. How he got bad enough to become an Animus is anyone's guess with that kind of history. His tell is pretty obvious: he opens a gaping portal with ragged edges. Looks like someone shredded the fabric of reality. And beyond that is a black void. Because there's no location set until they exit the portal. So it's a little frightening to even look at, let alone jump into. Says something about how hardened they are that none of them even blink at throwing themselves into some abyssal reality maw.
Scaffold (Cecilia Lanner // 30): The main mobility of the group aside from Backdoor's escape-style plays, Scaffold doesn't actually fly like a conventional mage's thoughts on flight would veer towards. She makes, appropriately, magical scaffolding in the air that needs to be connected to each other as they're created, forming a constantly moving, floating construct comparable to the magic carpet from Aladdin, but instead of just sitting on a carpet and moving, Scaffold has to constantly create new carpets in front of the one they're leaving behind as they move forward.
She used to take ages to put things together, but not only has she gotten a hell of a lot faster and better, just like everyone else in Cat's Cradle, she also makes use of Refrain's boosts when they need to get away in a hurry. For her, the boosts amplify the speed with which she can create and "set" the next panel of scaffolding for movement. If she wasn't constantly deconstructing previous panels and creating new ones so fast you'd blink and miss it, you'd think she and anyone she's helping is running on air. Besides Refrain, she's probably the other most vulnerable member of Cat's Cradle since her power has no offensive/defensive capabilities. Her scaffolds are easily shattered by most strong magical attacks and can't really function as shields or even distractions, but she can definitely give the group some pretty crazy angles on the battlefield since she can generate and sustain her magical panels from about 150 meters away. That means Whisper gets easy shots on everyone if people aren't aware.
Scaffold used to be a hairdresser, making a decent bit from the rich customers in her area. Then one of Dreamcatcher's giant griffins smashed everything to pieces and spat out so much volatile acid that her little section of the city was declared uninhabitable. She also lost half her face from a light splash of the acid and now sports hideous scarring on the bottom half of her face despite multiple rounds of plastic surgery. After blowing all her savings trying to fix her face, Scaffold wasn't heard from again until she appeared with Cat's Cradle in Chicago.
Firestarter (Vanessa Hamilton // 21): Man, it's times like these when you wish that people had vanilla powers like flamethrowing eyeballs or something. But nope, this girl's powers are so much more undetectable and unavoidable than mere fire emission.
Firestarter can heat up an area covering several average city blocks up to 1000 degrees celsius. She's practically a mobile sun. The worst part is that you probably won't even see it coming. Maybe you'll see some shimmering air like you do in the desert but your body will probably have reached its melting point before you realise what's happening. You want to know why Matterhorn has dropped off of most maps? It's because Firestarter melted it down into a neat, flat little plateau in September 2015. Her power only takes about three minutes to transfer all that heat too. Imagine, you're trekking along with your little mountain goat one day, and then in that brief three-minute span a fucking mountain disappears and all the native flora is decimated.
Her tell is the condensed orange glow around her hands when her powers are activated, though when she can microwave you from hundreds of metres away, it's not a very helpful indicator. At the very least, while she's superheating an area, she has to stand still, and her effect kind of blooms out strictly in front of her in a bit of rough cone, so she's vulnerable to flank and rear attacks while she's "casting." She also needs time to cool down after every round or she starts to slowly succumb to her own heat. Her background was pretty simple. An orphaned black kid in a half-flooded Brooklyn, left to live off food coupons to feed her siblings after her parents got beaten to death by looters. She single-handedly collapsed the abandoned ten-storey building where the looters were hiding out, with all of them inside when it happened of course. Then she ran off, but not before entrusting her siblings to her aunt. It would be reasonable to assume that none of the family she left behind survived the followup attack a week later.
Perfume (Erica Baxter // 28): I really wish the media would choose more threatening labels for these psychopaths, cos former teen actress Erica Baxter's power is about a gazillion times worse than SpongeBob and Patrick's journey through the perfume department. Think of your local exterminator with that gas thingy he has to kill ants. Now think of that being on a human scale.
Perfume exhales this giant, ungodly-looking golden smog that can be remote controlled by the lady herself. The initial cloud only spans about 10m, but then she spreads the particles around up to 100m around her. Spreading it takes time and she does have to stand still to thin out the cloud to more practical sizes, but she's gotten faster at it. Only takes her a few minutes now where it used to cost the group a solid 20 minutes back in their more manageable days. The cloud smells damn good (like lavender apparently) outside of the real effect's range (about 50 or so meters outside of the 100m setup) and attracts people to it until they realize it's Perfume. Then it's too late. Its effects depend on how long you've been exposed to it.
A few seconds means a janked up nervous system for around three hours. Half a minute means you're completely paralysed for two to three days. Being exposed to it for full minute is the scariest part. Quick-acting leprosy-like symptoms over the space of a week. You're trapped in your own body, writhing in pain the entire time because your limbs are blackening and falling off one by one. No one has survived this for more than eight days. This is the kind of shit that makes entire states issue air filtration systems and gas masks to their citizens, if they're lucky enough to receive notice of CC's presence in the area long enough before.
I probably shouldn't even have to tell you much about her background. Chances are you've seen at least one of her old movies. If you haven't, you can check out the extensive Filmography and Awards and Nominations sections on her Wikipedia page. You don't become the second youngest actress to get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame without accomplishing some major shit. It wouldn't be hard to imagine at which point she lost it, with the whole drug scandal, car accident, incarceration for shoplifting, etc. She had only been outside of the public eye for about a year before she showed up in Chicago with the CC.
Cancer (Seiji Renge // 19): Wish granted, Rad. Next on the list is Cancer. So this guy's nickname stuck a bit too hard from first impressions when his power has nothing to do with cancer or carcinogens. He wears his "magic pet" like a weird, black blob around his neck and shoulders, and it's supposed to be imitating a feather boa or something. Someone at an editorial office late at night probably thought the joke would be hilarious (the social media backlash actually got the guy fired), but didn't bet on the name sticking thanks to the internet and the whole "what is dead may never die" mindset of trolls online. Cancer has a pet that devours everything it touches besides him and his allies, because he can fine tune that control.
This pet seems to have a movement range of 200m since it's been spotted that far from Cancer before returning to its master. The thing is intelligent. It is its own entity and it is as deadly as any of Dreamcatcher's creations. Hell, it might even be one of Dreamcatcher's creations and the guy's real power is to command certain Dreamcatcher creatures. Who knows? But he's only ever used the one and the internet has taken to calling it Tumor. Yes. Look, I don't come up with these names. So just bear with me.
Anyway, dealing with Tumor is a no-contact-ever type of strategy because no one knows if the "eat everything" ability can work past, say, Sparrow's flight invincibility. But given that Garrote managed it, no one's taking any risks. Tumor is about 30m long completely unfurled and moves fucking fast. It can float several meters off the ground and can bend and twist its creepy, boneless body any way it wants in order to touch you. Don't forget it has that face that reminds most people of the Jack the Killer creepypasta face. Why the fuck does it even have a face when its entire body is basically a touch-and-be-destroyed magical mouth? This has to be some of Dreamcatcher's worst fuckery.
Cancer apparently came from some Yakuza family in Japan, and reports indicate they were trying to keep him there. Reports also indicate the people and the surrounding buildings didn't survive the fight that followed with Cancer's nigh-invincible pet. Unlike his pet, however, Cancer is completely vulnerable, which is tempting until some idiot charges at him and Tumor moves back at nutter speed to blindside them. Then suddenly half their body's gone and Cancer's bitching about how blood stains permanently and how it was really hard to find a jacket that fit his gangly frame.
Hashtag (Garrett Hart // 27): The weirdest healer to ever exist. Hashtag has to stick his fingers into the injuries to heal them. He can't just touch them. He can't just lightly insert the tips of his fingers into the painful wound. He has to stick the entire length of his fingers into the wound. Wait, you might be asking, what if the wound isn't deep enough to stick his hands in? He licks them. Depending on the depth of the wound, he might have to lick it several times.
Wounds that are deep enough for him to stick his hands straight into heal immediately once he removes his hands. But it's kind of fucking excruciating before that, I imagine. Let it never be said his healing is ineffectual--it's actually pretty instantaneous. Skin doesn't even knit together. It's just back together in a snap. No process, just result. If it wasn't for how invasive and kind of kinky his healing magic is, he might have found a different place with a different group that wasn't Cat's Cradle.
As it is, now that he's been with them, he's stuck with them. Not that the guy minds. I don't think any guy minds getting to lick decent-to-pretty girls if they're heterosexual, and let's be real, Perfume is hot. Given the nature of their healer, most of Cat's Cradle do their damndest to not take any damage. Occasional banter recorded by nearby military units reveal it's something of a mark of shame in the group if you've had to be licked by Hashtag recently.
Not much is known about Hashtag before he joined Cat's Cradle. He was an accountant at a small firm who lost his job when the firm went belly-up as a result of losing too many business contacts in a slew of attacks from swarms of pixies. After that, investigations only revealed that he spent all his money drowning himself in alcohol before being evicted from his apartment. Where he wandered after that is anyone's guess, but he dropped off the radar until Chicago happened.
There's still a ton of questions surrounding the why and when of Cat's Cradle's first appearance and what the hell they're even doing in general, but we've compiled the most trustworthy bits on information here--though that's not saying much given some of the uncertainties and lack of details for some. Information is power, somewhat, so at the very least you'll know who to avoid and who you can probably get away from in terms of any potential fights.
Because of Backdoor and sometimes Scaffold, the rare Institution team here and there get nasty run-ins with Cat's Cradle, but they don't usually attack unless provoked. Just...when they do attack, it's an all-or-nothing deal, so if they're content to ignore you, live and let live unless you're damn fucking sure you can win. These guys may not be openly hostile in a random encounter, but they have no qualms killing you if you get in their way.
We've recompiled all that information we just mentioned into quick and dirty profiles on them over in the related discussion thread [link here] for those who can't be bothered to keep reading through all the extra observations on this post. Frisbee did the same for the Precursors in the same thread.
Basic CS template. Feel free to spruce it up as you like. This simply details the information you must have on your sheet. Anything else is up to you. Make sure you change the color to whatever you'll be using in-game.
[color=f7976a][h3] β π π£ π€ π π π π π π₯ πͺ : [/h3][/color] [indent]Be detailed here. Think quirks, small habits, triggers, pet peeves, and the like. How has your character's magic influenced their personality? (Last point applies more strongly for Aberrations.)[/indent]
[color=f7976a][h3] β π π€ π₯ π π£ πͺ : [/h3][/color] [indent]Barring important events/plot-related events (PM me if you want to try a more involved history), [u][b]keep it brief.[/b][/u] Focus more on how your character found themselves at USARILN East. Everything else can be revealed artfully IC. As a note, everyone will be starting out new to the school unless a GM or co-GM clears a different history.[/indent]
[color=f7976a][h3] π π π π π : [/h3][/color] [indent][color=red][b]PM me or a co-GM with what you want to do, first.[/b][/color] Be as creative as you want. This is the game where I'll ask you to throw me your special snowflake ideas and I or one of the co-GMs will take the proposed concept, apply limiters/tweaks to balance it out in the context of the universe, then give it back to you in both Arbiter and Aberration form for you to choose. Don't worry, you'll get more powerful. Disgustingly powerful. You'll need to, after all. But at the onset, you're all still working out the kinks in your abilities and making sure no one's losing an arm trying to cast a spell. We have mages for that arm thing, but it would still suck.[/indent]
[indent]Please also note that we reserve the right to reject any powers we deem too similar to ones already posessed by other accepted characters. Feel free to ask anyway, as abilities with similarities aren't neccessarily bad. Redundancy saves lives sometimes.
As a rule, Aberrations will generally have deadlier powers, though not necessarily "better" in all cases. There is a cost if you play an Aberration and I fully expect you to deal with the cost properly--no "shaking it off" or "ignoring it with willpower."
Make up a name for your ability for consistency's sake, please. Include it at the beginning of the magic description. Finally, if, in the discussion of powers, I/the co-GMs forgot to provide a visual/audio telegraph for your ability, feel free to make one up. One [i]must[/i] be included, however.[/indent]
[color=f7976a][h3] π» π£ π π π : [/h3][/color] [indent]Do not fill this out until we've discussed your abilities. What your character saw in the first vision. This generally aligns with what your character perceives as "the 'best' version of themselves doing the 'best' things possible with their powers."[/indent]
[color=f7976a][h3] β π π π π₯ π π π£ π : [/h3][/color] [indent]Do not fill this out until we've discussed your abilities. What your character saw in the second vision. This generally aligns with what your character perceives as "the easiest version of themselves accomplishing their most selfish desires in the most efficient way possible with their powers."[/indent]
[indent][color=f7976a] π π₯ π π π π : [/color][/indent] [indent][indent]Do not include this section if you're an Arbiter. Feel free to fill this out if you're an Aberration.[/indent][/indent]
[color=f7976a][h3] πΈ π£ π π π π π π₯ π€ : [/h3][/color] [indent]xxx[/indent] [indent]You have none, yet. You will get some as the story progresses. Keep track of them here. Some of them might be really important or something, I don't know.[/indent]
[color=f7976a][h3] π π π π π π π π π π€ : [/h3][/color] [indent]Try to keep them more atmospheric, but feel free to have multiple.[/indent] [indent]Your music link here.[/indent]
Basic CS template. Feel free to spruce it up as you like. This simply details the information you must have on your sheet. Anything else is up to you. Make sure you change the color to whatever you'll be using in-game.
Be detailed here. Think quirks, small habits, triggers, pet peeves, and the like. How has your character's magic influenced their personality? (Last point applies more strongly for Aberrations.)
β π π€ π₯ π π£ πͺ :
Barring important events/plot-related events (PM me if you want to try a more involved history), keep it brief. Focus more on how your character found themselves at USARILN East. Everything else can be revealed artfully IC. As a note, everyone will be starting out new to the school unless a GM or co-GM clears a different history.
π π π π π :
PM me or a co-GM with what you want to do, first. Be as creative as you want. This is the game where I'll ask you to throw me your special snowflake ideas and I or one of the co-GMs will take the proposed concept, apply limiters/tweaks to balance it out in the context of the universe, then give it back to you in both Arbiter and Aberration form for you to choose. Don't worry, you'll get more powerful. Disgustingly powerful. You'll need to, after all. But at the onset, you're all still working out the kinks in your abilities and making sure no one's losing an arm trying to cast a spell. We have mages for that arm thing, but it would still suck.
Please also note that we reserve the right to reject any powers we deem too similar to ones already posessed by other accepted characters. Feel free to ask anyway, as abilities with similarities aren't neccessarily bad. Redundancy saves lives sometimes.
As a rule, Aberrations will generally have deadlier powers, though not necessarily "better" in all cases. There is a cost if you play an Aberration and I fully expect you to deal with the cost properly--no "shaking it off" or "ignoring it with willpower."
Make up a name for your ability for consistency's sake, please. Include it at the beginning of the magic description. Finally, if, in the discussion of powers, I/the co-GMs forgot to provide a visual/audio telegraph for your ability, feel free to make one up. One must be included, however.
π» π£ π π π :
Do not fill this out until we've discussed your abilities. What your character saw in the first vision. This generally aligns with what your character perceives as "the 'best' version of themselves doing the 'best' things possible with their powers."
β π π π π₯ π π π£ π :
Do not fill this out until we've discussed your abilities. What your character saw in the second vision. This generally aligns with what your character perceives as "the easiest version of themselves accomplishing their most selfish desires in the most efficient way possible with their powers."
πΈ π¨ π π π π π π π :
Arbiter or Aberration?
π π₯ π π π π :
Do not include this section if you're an Arbiter. Feel free to fill this out if you're an Aberration.
πΈ π£ π π π π π π₯ π€ :
xxx
You have none, yet. You will get some as the story progresses. Keep track of them here. Some of them might be really important or something, I don't know.
Try to keep them more atmospheric, but feel free to have multiple.
Your music link here.
Blah blah blah, general formalities. I think you guys will be fine.
Rules may be added as new situations arise. Players will be notified for all additions/revisions.
Co-GMs are @banjoanjo and @RedDusk. Appreciate them. A previous co-GM Baklava arranged all the pretty things in the character tab and banjoanjo handled all the background work in terms of management and organization.
RedDusk, our fourth GM, is really good at hounding people to do things.
(With thanks to player @PapiTan for making beautiful banners for the RP!)
Do not metagame. Do not godmod. Do not autohit/autokill (unless the GM or a co-GM clears it).
If the GM or a co-GM declares something does/doesn't work, it does/doesn't work. That's it. No argument. (Exceptions on a case-by-case basis for more extenuating circumstances, but don't bet on being an exception.)
This game will be fairly detailed. It would behoove you to read posts in detail. Skim at your own risk.
Color your character's spoken dialogue, preferably with a different color from everyone else. NPCs will be color=f7976a.
Do not tag people in posts unless you're directly interacting with them in some form. When tagging, either tag everyone relevant at the beginning or at the end. For very long posts interacting with multiple people in various places, separate the sections with dividers as best you can and tag at the beginning or end of each section.
Be aware of the meta, but don't abuse it. Move your characters as true to them as possible based on what your character and their respective personality can do at that particular point in their development.
Romance is allowed. But make sure everyone involved is on board with it. Kissing, hugging, holding hands = all fine and dandy. Getting friskier? Sure. Just keep it from going straight on ERP because the GMs would really like to not be in danger with the mods. Anything that strays into full-on porn is fade-to-black before it happens or it goes to PMs. Anything under the age of consent goes no further, period.
This game will be gory. People will die--usually brutally. Dismemberment will happen. I say "PG-13" only in regards to erotic scenes to comply with global Guild rules on the topic. Combat falls well into the "R" rating. This doesn't mean it's gratuitous violence all the time here, though, so don't fly off the handle on the other end of the spectrum. Everything in moderation.
One character per player for now.
At least one post every week. One post every two weeks for special cases. Anything past that is a kick and the likely death/dismemberment/[terrible event here] of your character--whatever furthers the plot and drama more. PM the GM or one of the co-GMs for really special circumstances.
The "one post per week" minimum requirement is not imposed under certain circumstances such as combat events/NPC-relevant events/anything else the GMs decide to inflict a different schedule on. Refer to event-specific pacing for further details. Generally, pacing during events will be faster than normal.
COMMUNICATION IS KEY. Any and all powers directly controlling/altering other players should be communicated properly and politely OOC and both/all involved players should understand what's expected of them. The GMs will be heavily policing these types of interactions to make sure everyone's on the same page, but it would be easiest for all if there was OOC agreement/discussion on it beforehand.
Be aware that all PMs sent to the GM or co-GMs will likely be circulated between all three of them for discussion purposes and to keep everyone on the same page.
Co-GMs have the ability to accept and reject character sheets for any reason.
Co-GMs have the ability to kick players for appropriate reasons including, but not limited to, willful disruption of the RP either IC or OOC, insulting other players, insulting the GM/co-GMs, holding up the RP for an inordinate amount of time, and any other factors that would be counterproductive enough to warrant a kick. (If the GM or a co-GM asks you to leave, please simply leave. None of them want to resort to reporting you.)
Co-GMs have the ability to assign limiters and gimps to your abilities after clearing it with the GM.
Co-GMs have the ability to offer Arbiter and Aberration versions of your magic after clearing the ideas with the GM.
Don't be surprised if you PM the GM and one of the co-GMs responds to your query/concern and vice-versa. They talk to each other and if one isn't available to answer your question in depth at the moment, they'll direct it to someone who can.
IC upgrades happen solely at the GMs' discretion following criteria only they know. This is to prevent any temptation to subtly meta into upgrades. As far as the players are concerned, just consider it a mostly random process. In essence: your IC play determines IF you get upgrades at all and the GMs decide WHEN. Don't ever genuinely badger the GMs about upgrades or the upgrade criteria.
As detailed questions come up about powers, remember to update your "Magic" section since the GM is not clairvoyant enough to see all possible futures. While your scrublord barters with Dreamcatcher for a better version of Foresight's ability, keep your magic section spiffy. Any small details that come up (that weren't specifically covered in the initial discussion) can and should be added to your CS both for your own sake and for the sake of other players.
Upgrades to powers very much need to be added to the CS.
Check with the GMs for anything else that might be important. Don't check with the GMs for cosmetic CS edits.
Players can join the Discord for another method of communication. The public invite link is currently revoked following some disturbing news about random groups invading Discord servers and spamming illegal images (cheese pizza). If you somehow lose access to the server and need a private re-invite, PM one of the GMs on the site or DM them from Discord.
Player-versus-player is a very specific subset of what I consider "heavy interaction," which means the rule concerning collabs apply. But with some small adjustments.
All power vs. power interaction questions come to the GMs. Discussions and room for potentially heated arguments apply here, but if a GM makes a final call, it's final. Move on.
For most other things, the GMs expect the players to handle it neatly among themselves. Did someone's attack connect? The fighters decide. Did someone take serious injuries? The fighters decide. How many bones did a dragon bodyslam break on the opponent? The fighters decide (within reason). The caveat is that all headbutting parties need to agree comfortably with the moves made.
Matters of feasibility come to the GMs if both players are unsure or if the detail concerning something is unclear. Refer to the first PvP rule in this case.
For extended PvP battles, depending on the duration of the fight, the location(s) of the fight, and the time when the fight occurs IC, the GMs may require the players to break the collab into multiple sections/posts with each section/post covering individual locations across individual hours, days (!), weeks (?!), months (?!?!?!), etc. (pls).
Players with extenuating circumstances that prevent them from properly collaborating should first try to ask the other party/parties to write their moves in for them. Failing that, they may hand temporary control of the character over to any willing player to manage the fight in the meantime. They can also request full puppeting from the GMs.
Keep in mind that these scenarios will force the puppeteer to check the CS heavily and will likely rely solely on that if the character's owner is away (which is why keeping an updated CS is crucial).
Know when your character is finished. Pushing the limits of the character's endurance in battle is perfectly normal, but be careful not to overstep the 'pushing' line into powerplaying territory. Simple solution: just check with your fellow player(s). A quick "What do you think of this?" saves everyone a lot of trouble.
Further rules may be added as new situations arise, but stick to the guideline of 'consider both your fun and others' fun' for best results in most situations.
First of all, I will never impose a posting limit. I want interactions and events to flow as naturally as possible for play-by-post roleplaying and setting post orders/limits ruins that somewhat, as far as I'm concerned. That said, do not post a million back-and-forth conversational one-liners. Yes, conversations tend to proceed as one-liners, but for the sake of everyone's sanity IC, make a collab post for that kind of heavy interaction.
Quality over quantity in terms of posting, but since quality often goes hand-in-hand with quantity, feel free to write as much or as little as you think necessary (barring the aforementioned one-liner rapid-fire posts). I want everyone in this RP to post as true to their natural instincts as possible--so don't feel like you need to cut your posts down or drum up more length because someone else posted in their own manner. Just do/say everything that needs to be done/said in accordance with your character's personality, and whatever else you want to do in the moment that makes sense.
Swear as much or as little as your character's personality dictates. Try not to compose an entire post filled with "fuck," but don't feel the need to censor yourself.
I'd like everyone to have fun. If you're ever not having fun, please let me know what's wrong. This universe is very flexible. As the GM, I have a million different ways of catering to preferences (within the global rules of RPGuild), so if you're stuck, bored, lost, frustrated, etc., let me know. 99% of the time, I can fix it. The 1% will be that moment when you realize you just hate the RP's overall concept, which is something I can't do a thing about.
Bright truck headlights broke the uniform darkness of the night as several APCs turned off the interstate and onto the main road leading towards the remains of Wisford. Five trucks filled with soldiers, paramedics, and emergency relief supplies for injured citizens rumbled carefully to the miraculously intact evacuation team APC parked at the town's edge. Dean had driven them back once the sparks of tension between quite a few of them had abated enough that he could slide into the driver's seat without much notice.
The civilians already present in the APC had been entirely silent on the brief ride to the safety of military backup, doing their best to avoid angering what appeared to them only more of the volatile subnaturals that needed to be collared and hemmed in, lest absolute anarchy fall upon what remained of civilized society.
As he let the car idle and stepped out, Dean raised his arms in surrender, making sure the soldiers heading into hostile territory wouldn't shoot him on sight for commandeering the APC. He had opened the back doors to allow several of the passengers to exit as well, but didn't urge them. Between the haunted gazes of both civilians and subnatural teenagers, he found it hard to form words without the pressure of danger at his heels. Instead he let them rest in the brief moment of transition. From quiet lives to traumatic memories, the dead and the dying were as much as part of his small life as the unfortunate subnaturals' now--perhaps more, paradoxically, because Dean knew he would never have the potential to become desensitized. He didn't fault the bitter teens who still needed time to realize their childhoods hadn't simply vanished, but had been taken from them in a cruel jest. What teenager before the Slumber hadn't wanted magical powers? Even now, some still did.
But this was the reality it led to, because the scales previously tipped in favor of harmonious coexistence couldn't bear the weight of the worldwide disaster and so crumbled. Nothing measured the morality of the populace against the presence of magic now. The rules of society--at least as far as subnaturals were concerned--had given way entirely to martial law, ankle cuffs, and persecution.
And if he had to be brutally honest with himself, Dean felt more comfortable with that state of affairs than letting them run loose.
The arriving soldiers were quick to hold him at gunpoint until the paramedics could determine that the passengers in the back were the right people and then some. Another smaller military APC rounded a nearby corner and approached them, stopping at a distance before the driver's door swung open and revealed Ethan. He waved at them, but didn't make any further comments, turning towards the back doors as paramedics rushed over and began loading the exhausted or unconscious onto stretchers. The group moved with their prone teammates, joining them in one of the trucks while Dean explained himself a short distance away.
At Dean's location, a soldier was contacting a commanding officer and relaying the information: a civilian had taken command of the truck, the original driver was dead, and they were trying to determine at the moment if he was a subnatural or not. Another soldier rubbed at the skin over Dean's right temple, then checked his neck, looking for signs of makeup or other forms of concealment. When it seemed clear enough, they remained in position, just in case the final confirmation from Rosa revealed he was a subnatural after all.
The same soldier contacting command panned the phone's camera across the area, over Dean, and walked towards the back of the truck, gun at the ready the moment Rosa confirmed someone was a subnatural who wasn't accounted for. But everything checked out and three of the APCs drove off into the town, towards any marked survivors while looking for others as well.
Once the all clear was given, the rest of the soldiers were quick to separate the students from the citizens, with the majority of the paramedics crowded towards their own kind. The remaining ones in charge of the subnaturals gave most of them a cursory glance, checking for wounds behind the blood and dirt, but assured in the confirmation that both healers were indeed still alive, so there appeared to be no need to check further. They avoided Kusari entirely, deciding that the immortal girl wasn't worth the attention when the only injury she couldn't survive would have been blindingly obvious and equally as undeserving of a second look.
Lawrence and Savannah were taken away on stretchers to separate cars, with Christmas, AngelΓque, and Hazel joining Lawrence's car along with several soldiers. The unconscious enemy Arbiter, still trussed up, was taken away with Ethan's group.
A quick check of several notes regarding the abilities and the chief paramedic ordered Sander onto the same truck as the other unconscious students just as another medic recommended that Callan be taken with that group as well. Harried medics and well-worn stretchers swiftly moved the superhuman girl towards the truck, with another two soldiers directed to lift Siena onto the familiar canvas and framework before carrying her towards the rest of the injured.
The last person to join that truck's group was Lily, who was deemed unwell enough for at least some concern.
Loaded up with gurneys onto which the unconscious or weakened students were transferred, the truck's doors closed after the last of those requiring further medical attention were assigned and drove off first.
The remaining students were packed into a different truck while soldiers checked the evacuation team's APC for any significant damage or unwanted attachments. It was impossible to prepare for every eventuality when it came to magic, but at the very least they wouldn't be caught unawares because they hadn't tried.
Civilians were moved onto a fourth truck on standby while a fifth made its winding way into the town towards the location of survivors Kusari had pinged, eyes alert for more on the way.
"Move them to the nearest town with proper accommodations, then take them to Washington. Director's orders," Commander Kardos sighed, his communications with the temporary base just finished. They had cuffed the subnaturals found in Wisford and the officers at the base were already starting to pack up, the majority of the soldiers returning to the campus on emergency orders along with Ethan's team, which would be three hours behind on the return, but they needed the reinforcement in case things got worse before they got better.
Kardos's left arm hung uselessly in a sling as he sent the clearance papers to Mr. Greten, the entire process of one-handed typing and clicking far too tedious for his liking. His attached commands directed the secretary to contact the heightened security near Washington that had only grown pricklier at the mention of a subnatural or Dreamcatcher attack in a nearby city. They were not going to enjoy the news that Cat's Cradle had been sighted near Wisford and if the necessary permissions weren't managed prior to the students' arrival, the group was more likely to be gunned down than given a respite. And incendiary retaliation on the students' parts would simply make USARILN East look bad--doubly so if any of the students actually succeeded.
While a frazzled and bruised Mr. Greten rushed back and forth between his office and Rosa's gathering the identification papers and contacting the military forces near and in Washington, D.C. Kardos limped towards the shattered entrance of the administration building, clicking his tongue in irritation at the extensive damage to the building front. The brief, but severe battle had reached just far enough that the administrative buildings and several research buildings had taken enough damage that even their resident magical repairman couldn't handle it all at once. Currently, the boy was focused on rapidly restoring several of the underground passageways leading to and from the containment chambers, including the deeper areas. He had fixed the worst of the damage to the aboveground buildings, but was conserving his energy for the truly important structures.
Hector was currently cleaning up the bodies of both enemies and allies at once, with specific instructions to collect dead soldiers without further destroying the bodies. It was a hard task, considering several of the soldiers had been turned to stone in a cruel imitation of the legendary Medusa's powers. It had failed to work on Hector's eyeless abomination, however, and one of the enemy mages' attempts to shrink the creature down to a more manageable size only partially succeeded. Hector hadn't fought the change in size, letting the mage expend the energy with a feigned resistance until Miranda was the size of a small child and nearly too fast to track. There hadn't been enough time between the mistake and the mage's death for the woman to enlarge the creature again and the remaining mages had no defense against the impervious monster. Two teleported away, fleeing once the battle was no longer to their advantage, leaving behind the parts of thirteen other Aberrations torn asunder by Miranda.
There were cracks and rifts along the cement, and massive craters where explosive impacts had left behind broken soldiers and students. Several of the more capable students had fought back and luckily survived, but with most of their firepower at Wisford the Institute took far more damage than expected.
There had been attacks on all the Institutes here and there. Isolated incidents and usually easy to contain and eliminate. But an organized attack by mages had, ultimately, required a mage to end, especially when an Aberration girl in a bodysuit had baited out their snipers' locations with a field that appeared to freeze time on anything that entered.
Two other mages had appeared stuck in the field with her as she froze entire waves of bullets and prevented any ranged attacks from connecting. Rosa had suggested unloading even more projectiles into the field, a careful parse of the girl's power revealing certain limitations in the power's effect.
By all accounts, the group caught in the field's temporary safety should have been shredded once the magic faded, but its duration allowed one of the other mages inside the field time to touch one of the bullets with an unhindered arm, arcing a bright blue line between every projectile that touched the field. The third mage took the free period of safety to begin reshaping the immediate area, reconstructing the ground and walls into a far-reaching maze that encompassed the entire campus, though failed to overwrite Template's projected cityspace.
The moment the girl released her field, every bullet disappeared, the compounded effects of the destruction occurring all at once to the objects.
In the safety of the maze and with its creator leading the way and opening passages at will, it was too simple a matter for them to corral the unfortunate soldiers into a compact space and for the Aberration girl to drop from above into the group of disoriented soldiers and freeze them, her body suspended in mid-air while the linker mage reached in and touched the soldier closest to the field's edge, thicker bands of blue connecting the people together.
The effect was slow and inefficient normally and required a suitable amount of victims to truly be worthwhile, but a minute was more than enough damage, especially among six unlucky military recruits. When the field released again, the soldiers appeared to crumble into themselves, bodies dry as sand and just as structurally unstable, leaving only a bundle of clothes and their weapons behind. With legitimate arms dealers harder and harder to come by and almost prohibitively expensive for most without proper government sanction and discounts, the Aberrations were eager to take the weapons, even if their particular abilities didn't compliment the new equipment too well.
That wasn't their main job anyway, being the distraction, and the sudden explosions that felled two of the security outposts was a sign the main group had found the snipers' nests.
It was supposed to have been going well.
Then the litany of hissing had erupted from the forest and a monster like a woman had grown large enough to dwarf the buildings. It moved like molasses, but boasted enough strength that even the superhuman forces of their group were swatted away like flies. Most powers seemed to roll harmlessly off its shoulders and the only truly appreciable effects relied on external manipulation rather than direct damage.
There was a point to which powers were too strong to risk engagement without knowing how to fight it, and that thing had certainly surpassed that point.
A plan to clutch at that filmy substance that formed its flesh-like dress and freeze it momentarily had succeeded for the duration of the girl's power, but in the time she held it at bay, it had pulled a handful of cement from the ground and crushed the labyrinth constructor with a throw like an afterthought, the maze immediately retracting and the landscape returning to normal in the wake of the Aberration's death.
Bullets had no effect, and the linker mage had fled once the creature reached down for another scoop of cement.
He didn't get far.
When the girl's field ran out, she didn't get far either.
And then it was short work for Hector, who watched the scene aboveground from the safety of his containment chamber, tracking visuals through glass-black eyes and spinning slowly in his swivel chair, legs kicking back and forth impetuously. He was having fun for once--and who knew that girl could actually stop Miranda. It was impressive. If she hadn't fallen in with the wrong group, Hector thought he'd have wanted to play with her, too.
By the time it was all over, a fourth of the school had been decimated, with all its security outposts down and major security holes all across its perimeter where entire teams of soldiers and patrols had been murdered in the attempted invasion. And it was the most successful one by far, too, timed too conveniently to be coincidence and far too deadly to ignore.
The worry was creased in the furrows of Kardos's brow as he surveyed the shattered buildings on the southeastern side of the school. The attack had decimated most of the sport facilities, as well as the nearby security outposts. The buildings there now lay in ruins, concrete walls had already collapsed on themselves. Collateral damage from the battles between inhuman forces. The track was littered with debris and bodies, smoking vehicles and makeshift barricades marked where the guards had set up their defence perimeter.
The hospital had also suffered considerable damage from the initial attack. The buildings were still standing, though it was only a husk of what it once was. Most of the occupants had been evacuated; those that didnβt leave remained buried beneath the crumbled walls.
The administrative buildings remained mostly intact, fortunately. A broken window here and there, scorch marks and bullet holes marred the buildingβs front, but the damage was superficial at most. The same could said to the rest of the buildings on campus.
Meanwhile, Experimental Unit B was transported to the nearby town of La Plata, a larger location than Wisford, but still significantly smaller than the growing city that was Crimen Culpae 1. Stuck in that strange purgatory of not quite irrelevant, but not quite notable either, the town carried itself with an unsure air, several high rises in construction within what the mayor hoped to be the future "financial district" while the majority of the locale spread out in short, squat buildings built too many decades ago and entirely preserved out of sheer indifference to the modernizations around them. Close enough to a major hub of civilization and spared from any notable Dreamcatcher attacks, the town's police force and government-sponsored militia were ill-prepared for the lockdown that had been issued to towns near Wisford. As it was, their defense consisted of several car blockades and rooftop patrols, with what amounted to a ring of human bodies around the perimeter of the town facing Wisford.
Military clearance and communications had arrived just in time for the chief of police to relay that USARILN East's subnaturals and soldiers would be staying at the town for a period of time and that the situation in Wisford had been handled. The announcement was public enough that local stations picked up on the news and spread it among the townsfolk who wavered between a mixture of fear and anticipation. Some resolved to hole up in their homes until the subnaturals had passed through while others leaned over their porch railings, staring down the main road hoping to catch a glimpse without actually interacting.
The media, however, was starved for news in a town where a teenager saving a cat was considered the breaking event of the day and where rehashed news feeds from bigger stories around the world were the only reasons the populace even bothered with the news at all. The station had milked what they could of the Wisford disaster, but with military orders to remain out of the general vicinity of the town, there was little to do but wait until the situation changed. Of course the police chief received a slew of questions from the local news station regarding the Wisford situation and whether the incoming subnaturals had anything to do with the resolution, but he fielded them all with a curt "No comment."
That left them only one recourse which was to wait and follow the military arrivals until they could chance an interview with either an officer or--if they were truly lucky--one of the subnaturals themselves. It was the kind of controversial hit that big city news outlets always had their pick of, and finding one in La Plata was a godsend, so a journalist, a news anchor, and a camera crew followed the military cars from a safe distance, interviewing even the citizens down the street from the motel while they waited for the intimidating military soldiers to settle in.
The mostly uninjured students were placed inside the biggest motel the town could offer, recently requisitioned by USARILN East and promptly emptied of all current inhabitants, much to their chagrin. Each room there housed two single beds and a bathroom facility; however, the students werenβt allocated to specific rooms. The officer in charge of the group wasn't interested in keeping too close a watch on the more obedient students, choosing instead to eye the stream of information coming from USARILN East on his phone and making sure he would be ready to move if the situation changed. So the students were left to sort that out among themselves. The conscious ones, that was.
In the motel's lobby, a terrified manager and receptionist cowered behind the front desk while the commanding officer addressed the group of students in front of him briefly.
"If you're leaving the motel, you are to remain within easy access. That means stay on the main roads and don't wander any further than a few blocks. Make sure a soldier knows so someone can keep an eye on your tracker mark if they don't outright escort you. If we can't keep track of your position or you leave without informing one of us, we'll act on the assumption you tried to escape and shoot to kill."
That done, he left the building, returning to one of the APCs and shouting orders to the nearby soldiers.
The second truck of injured and unconscious students drove three blocks away to the town hospital, passing by a cafe and several restaurants where evening customers watched with wide eyes and bated breath, following the unwieldy truck's progress towards the hospital's ER entrance where each student was fearfully escorted from the emergency room after check ups and placed in their own accommodations in the local hospital: one per room with minimal guard presence among them patrolling the hallway that all the occupied hospital rooms shared. Hazel, however, was restrained by three more suppression cuffs--another on her right ankle, and two more on her wrists, then handcuffed to her bed. Unlike the usual cuff on their ankles with the option of turning suppression on and off, Hazel's were meant for dangerous prisoners. While most mages would have been entirely suppressed under the effects of four, Hazel's power still petered through, though it was a long shot from any of her prior antics. Four guards were stationed in the room at all times, weapons at the ready. If she so much as hinted at aggression, they had orders to kill.
Doctors and nurses were briefed by a soldier concerning the powers of the relevant students, with USARILN East's recommendations in handling each one while soldiers occasionally checked in on the child-sized body bag in the hospital morgue, making sure the dead Savannah was truly 1. her and 2. dead.
Christmas's unconscious body was carefully rolled from room to room on his bed, the doctors injecting his blood via syringe and needle into all the injured students except Sander, whose notes had carefully and repeatedly warned against large doses of blood, and Hazel, who was under special watch. They did, however, leave one packet of blood for Sander in the room's refrigerator, the nurse handling it nearly throwing the bag as she tried to leave the vicinity of the subnatural within seconds.
After the first bout of awe at the shimmering, glassy mist that enveloped AngelΓque's torso and restored her to full health, the doctors were much more ready to utilize the boy's magic, with or without his permission. None of the soldiers were surprised to hear a request to use the blood on several of the long-term patients in the hospital and after a brief check with the commanding officer, they allowed it so long as the blood was replenished through a transfusion.
Afterwards, the doctors wheeled the healer back to his room and left him hooked up to a blood bag and IV. While the notes confirmed that the boy's blood could take in large volumes quickly and convert them, the hospital staff followed basic blood infusion procedure, fearful of the repercussions should they injure a subnatural--both from the subnatural himself and from the fearsome reputation of USARILN East.
Everyone was moved into a new town. 'Cause shit went down. If you're in the motel, you pick your room with whoever you like. You can also all stay in one room, if you love each other that much, haha. Alternatively, Chris can sleep in the dumpster, too. No one would protest.
You will stay in this town for a little over two days. You have until Sept. 17, 0700 IC to do things. Have another collab hell.
Info about stuff in town? Ask one of the GMs.
General town climate: unwelcoming. Not outrightly hostile, but definitely unhappy and no one wants you guys here--except the news station. GMs will manage general NPC responses while here and if a player feels they're comfortable enough to take the reins for the rest of scene in order to further some agenda or scene goal, we'll leave it to you.
We may accost certain players in town with the news reporters and one of the GMs may just invade a collab if the situation feels right, or open a reporter post in response to someone else.
Siena's teleport with the blonde-haired Aberration took the enemy a hair's distance from the tree-like thorns below Lawrence and the girl screamed, willing her spikes to break down and retract. But not quite fast enough.
She plunged into several of the thicker spikes that jutted out horizontally, breaking apart the thinner ones in her forward stumble and screaming again as her pincushioned body registered every puncture and laceration. The branching asphalt steeples crumbled and collapsed as she tried to brush off several of the needles piercing her arms and face. It was the sort of instinctive response that made everything worse.
Most of them broke off, leaving the tips embedded in her skin. The points cutting into her eyelids and mouth sank deeper into the soft flesh there the harder she tried to clear them off.
Blinded and bleeding as much as the ally she had planned to abandon earlier, the girl took a leaf from the gravity manipulator's book and screeched--a sound that was hate and desperation rolled into one.
The ground below her roiled, then burst, as if the road itself had frozen in an angular explosion. A forest of peaks shot out from the ground, obscuring sight for over 40 meters and mindlessly bursting into needles and thorns, the configuration nowhere near as controlled and steady as before. The field looked like modern artwork decorated in the red wisping strands and droplets of the dead and dying. Several spikes tilted at odd angles while others broke as they grew into one another. Within the deranged architecture, the deadly flooring elevated any grounded student further up, breaking any grip to solid ground in the process. A spike shot past Siena's forearm, narrowly missing it and skidding past the protection of the wishalloy instead while other spikes knocked her off balance against and lifted her. The blonde Aberration girl now surrounded herself with several criss-crossing layers of angled spears, forming both a ceiling and rough floor in midair.
While the students caught in the sudden burst of magic were mostly unharmed thanks to the wishalloy, the same couldn't be said for the gravity mage. The girl gibbered uselessly in response to Zoe's demand, one arm and stomach impaled through. She was whimpering and wailing in breathless alternation and her power's effect seemed to decrease with her fading life, the field flickering like a broken lightbulb. In effect, it lifted and dropped the people in its radius carelessly and randomly, raising them up far faster than before and dropping them again before the levitation resumed. What remained of the gargoyle Aberration and the frost mage were pulverized further while the dead bodies of Savannah, the unfortunate soldier, and the brave citizen floated far above the rest, thankfully free of the potential mutilation.
For the moment, the wishalloy held steady against the impacts as several students fell against them repeatedly--once, twice, thrice before the field finally stabilized at a much lower intensity, letting a fraction of regular gravity slip through. But someone aware would notice the slight rippling in the material--how it shifted for brief instants into that watery state of transition. After a spear of asphalt larger than his body shattered against Lawrence's frozen state and not a second too soon after the gravity field steadied itself, Marcus's time freeze wore off and the Arbiter fell slowly towards a V-shaped pocket of intersecting shafts mercifully free of stray points, coming to a rest face up. He wasn't seeing anything at the moment, more focused on keeping his consciousness intact and his hand against the sucking chest wound as much as possible. The only thing Lawrence kept in mind then was the beating of his heart. For now, weak as it was, he was alive.
The black-haired girl's free hand fumbled to find Zoe's arms, attempting to weakly pull her off while unable to see and barely able to hear past the sensations of pain washing out noises in favor of her own hammering pulse.
πΈββ
Dean's fingers tapped quickly against the APC's steering wheel as he drove, first to just get away from the fighting between magically gifted teenagers and then to get away from the worst sections of town that had been obliterated by the fighting.
When he finally found a relatively quiet street, he turned the car down a smaller road and let it idle while he prodded the various buttons on the touch screen display to his right. "Navigation" opened into a map where markers and warnings flashed and alternated like strobe lights. He stared blankly at the display for a moment before catching several smaller buttons in the corner and eventually figuring out the various letters and numerical codes corresponding to the correct filters after several long minutes of trial and error.
Once a cleaner map flashed at him with ally markers, he looked towards the back of the vehicle, catching through the thin slit in the metal partition the wide open back doors. A quick check in the sideview mirrors for anything out of place and he was out, dashing quickly around to close the doors before returning to the driver's seat, adrenaline still humming in his ears as loud as the car's engine.
The nearest group of students weren't far, from the map's designations, and the markers moved at a snail's pace. The title of "Healer" in front of two names also caught his attention. If he could bring another healer back to the glowing pillar of light where the USARILN kids were fending off people who didn't mind snapping a little girl's neck, perhaps the "good" subnaturals could win this without worry. And perhaps his grandfather would be fine, as well. Dean wasn't an optimist, and he knew what that kind of injury foretold, but maybe someone had saved--he let the crackle of manageable rubble underneath the APC's wheels drown out the thoughts lining up for panic in his head, wondering in "if"s and "but"s about making the decisions in place of any real authority. The kids, at least, were following orders. What was a civilian like him doing when he should rightly be driving this car back towards the main military presence in the area? The indecision nagged at him and it wasn't the time. His grandfather had taught him by word and deed to stay calm, especially in this day and age when danger often came on unexpected wings and clawed feet.
But, in what appeared to his younger thoughts as a paradox, the senior-turned-militia member had always been the first to take action--against crime in the neighborhood, against Dreamcatcher monsters, against marked teenagers before the USARILN soldiers pulled the trigger preemptively. During those moments, the old man had never seemed calm. It had taken Dean years to understand.
"You can't force it when the blood's already pumping."
His grandfather had pointed at a nearby target on the practice range then.
"Sometimes, you just need to act and hope it's the right thing."
When the APC pulled to a stop beside Grant, Ernie, and the three unconscious students, Dean put aside surprise for relief. Whatever else could be said about the situation, it certainly felt right to be here at that moment.
"Which one's the healer?" he asked quickly, stepping out of the truck in case they needed help.
Another decision that hit just the right notes of "correct" to him, because two of the students suddenly dropped off the strange chains extending from one of the subnaturals' backs.
Troubled eyes squinted through the sights of the military-issue binoculars, stolen of course. Aside from Whisper, none of the others had bothered asking for a peek. The gargantuan silhouettes of brass golem and the yellow beacon had told them more than enough. Fracture was still dangerous and those kids would be lucky to have even half of their squad make it out alive.
It seemed that Donovan was the only one that at least tried to give a damn about this incident, as usual. Nico and the others had only stayed because of the right hand manβs insistence. Fracture was in the area, that continent-spanning organisation that housed Aberration psychopaths comparable to their own so obviously, Donovan had been adamant on staying. It was quite an impressive achievement these days, to have one of the most senior members of Catβs Cradle think of you as depraved trash. Nico might have been able to overlook the giant robot and its massacre, but this faction, with its intentions directly clashing with Catβs Cradleβs, were right there. They needed to do something, anything.
βNico, come on. We don't have to chase her down, but we should at least stop this."
Donovan had been given an hour to stay, twenty-five minutes of which had been wasted on watching an empty mine entrance and another thirty spent on observing the efforts of a squad of incompetent child soldiers. USARILN kids. They looked young, only a year or two older than he and the Lehmanns when they had first set out, before the sky came crashing down on their backs and before they had enough blood on their hands to fill an Olympic swimming pool. Those kids were sloppy, inexperienced and, most worryingly, very scared. Donovan didnβt need to have them in his radius to deduce that. They were in no shape to be fighting a situation of this stature. The last straw had fallen when the Fracture agents revealed themselves. As expected, Donovanβs angered pleas to support had been coldly shut down. He couldnβt even blame Nico for that.
No matter how much the he trained his body and mind, it was always his heart that would let him down. Perhaps the burden of an emotion-based power was taking its toll on him. Thatβs why he needed his scrawny companion to rein him back. A long time had passed since they were able to make appearances to their heartsβ content, almost five years if you wanted to keep track. With increasing USARILN pressure, they'd had to scale back any attempts to engage in notable fights or risk death while they were distracted, so Nico almost always elected to ignore pressing concerns of towns and cities besieged by Dreamcatcher's creatures even if their help would have easily turned the tides of battle. The first few times Nico had made those calls were quiet nights and quieter responses. Fast forward five years since their first public appearance and Nico could yawn and doze while not a mile away kids were dying. A part of him knew it was just a front--knew that almost everything about Nico now was just a front to hide the crumbling person underneath--but he still couldn't help the twang of resentment at the behavior.
He doubted any of the others would have spoken up to agree with his call to help anyway. A handful of lives being lost would just be another drop in that bottomless pool, negligible and forgettable to the point where it might have been funny to even care about it, depending on which team member you asked. To Donovan, it was just a tragic reminder of how far he had fallen since those days on the road with the two people he cherished the most. Those sprawling skies and landscapes that had belonged to just the three of them. Before Nicoβs--no, donβt say that--their greater purpose had called to them.
He knew it was foolish to believe that Nicoβs transformation had been a stark white and black. He knew it was foolish to think of it at all, considering how much it always pained him. There was no sole person to blame here, not even Nico. They had all chosen this path of endless bloodshed. It was something Donovan wanted to believe, needed to.
Even without his powers he would have felt those eyes trained on his face, a gaze as troubled as his own. Vanessa was worrying about him again. He had been too focused on the town battle, his internal strife, and hadnβt been guarding his expression closely enough. The Aussie immediately morphed his gritted frown into a forced yawn. A show of nonchalance, one that didnβt convince her in the slightest. Crap. Damn girl was too sharp for her own good.
With an annoyed click of his tongue, Donovan turned from the town and stowed away the binoculars. Heβd seen enough to confirm that nothing good had come of this watch. The Fracture agents, excluding the expendables sent after the child soldiers, were nowhere to be seen. The town was damaged beyond repair, its civilians too far to help, not that Nico would have allowed it anyway. But at least the USARILN squad were going to make it through. Hopefully. Maybe. Probably not. Looked like it was an appropriate time to leave after all. There was only so much inaction he could take before he had to look away.
Donovan made a big show of stretching, cringing internally as Vanessaβs worry turned into annoyance. Damn girl. Before either of them could speak up, a handful of presences that just appeared out of thin air and were now traversing the outer third of his range made the Aussieβs head turn sharply. Hostile presences, very hostile. And they either had a way of hiding from his detection or they had just teleported there. Quick strides were taken towards the general direction of the readings to get a better lead, broad shoulders pushing past Jon and Cece without much thought. His hand extended automatically to tap Nico twice on the shoulder. Their usual, non-verbal signal for amplification. Trouble nearby.
Nico was up within seconds, sleep falling away with the habitual alacrity they'd all developed being on the run so long.
"How far?" he asked, red rings appearing on both his and Donovan's hands.
" 'Bout a kilomet--right, bloody Americans--three-fifths of a mile northeast of us, heading straight. They just popped up on my radar, so worst-case watch out for teleporters."
"Hold them there and scramble focus," Nico replied, turning to throw a sigil on Jonathan as well. "Take us ahead of their path by a quarter mile, Jon. If Don's detected them, they've probably detected us. Fracture doesn't go anywhere without a fight, so we'll bring one to them."
>>Assuming Siena didn't BAMF somewhere safe, the same happens to her.
>>Sander is high enough that he's rose and fell without impacting the spike nest below.
>>After the field stabilizes, everyone slowly drifts downwards. Like walking on the moon.
>>Lawrence's cuff is still constantly transmitting. As is Angel's apparently.
>>Xmas and Hazel flopped off Grant's chain because magical lube is intense.
πππ π£πππ ππ£π
Enemy Type
Enemies Dead
Enemies Injured
Enemies Left
Canines
17
0
0
Spiders
13
0
0
Centipedes
3
0
0
Avians
7
0
0
Collectors
3
0
1
Winged Snake
1
Factory
1
Previous notes:
Three day timers (and then another two/three days for GMs to read moves and respond), but given that rate of posting the GMs will be much more lenient on players shafting responses and moves onto more available people to write. For particular cases, just ping the GMs on Discord/the forum and let them know so your character won't suffer anything too serious as a result.
Maps show destinations for each group with the exception of Evac (since the car is being driven by a soldier at the moment and location is technically under GM control for now).
A map is available for collaborative effort here. Please keep positions updated for other players to refer to. If you're unavailable, have a GM or another player make the changes. (I recommend just selecting Insert > Shape > A circle or a rectangle > Resize > Color it in and move it around.)
For those who wrote without specifying a map location (and only if your location is different from the set destinations), the GMs will set one for you.
Feel free to delete/move this if I'm posting in the wrong place.
This is a suggestion for a potential What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editor.
This is a very trivial, quality-of-life suggestion so feel free to ignore it in favor of more pressing issues or if it's simply not feasible. I don't have a background in anything related to computer science, or coding, or website development, so if this seems incredibly ignorant and misguided, I apologize in advance.
I just thought it would be nice to avoid the hassle of coding and edit just the front end.
For example, this type of editor: CKEditor. Or this one: FroalaEditor. Or this one: TinyMCE. (If you follow the links, the websites have a sample editing page up to see some of the text editor's features.)
It's basically more of what we have, and you can edit what is effectively the preview pane.
Barring that, I'd like to suggest letting us edit in the preview pane on the editor we currently have, if that's possible?
Again, just very minor things that would be nice, but not necessary, to have.
And if this has been suggested before, I apologize. I'm simply too lazy to sift through all the previous pages of suggestions and a quick Ctrl + F on the first page for "editor" and "text editor" didn't hit any results.
As always, thank you for upkeeping and improving the site.
Lawrence Ellison | Grant Rotem | Christopher Francis | Callan Webb Kusari Bloodworth | Marcus Howell | Siena Santana | Christmas Halvost Brent Roless | Sophia Lemane
Space Deer Avatar β Original by Kezzi-Rose. STAG β Original by Kyle Dickinson. Grave Watcher Attack β Original by Por. Deer Skull Icon β Original by HotDogeBuns.
Lawrence Ellison β Original by PSlenDy, edited by Baklava. Grant Rotem β Commissioned from shizzzu. Christopher Francis β Artist unknown. Kusari Bloodworth β Original by Berabou. Marcus Howell β Commissioned from reis-artroom. Siena Santana β Original by εε€QYS3. Christmas Halvost β Commissioned from eleth89. Brent Roless β Commissioned from GlassTrinity. Sophia Lemane β Artist unknown.
Lilliana Brandt β Artist unknown. Emma Halwell β Commissioned from Liche (NSFW link). Sander Lorraine β Commissioned from eleth89. Zoe Fletcher β Commissioned from ky-th. Hazel Baker β Original by OFFCAR/μ€νμΉ΄. Angelique Lachance β Commissioned from kazuko-chii. Allison Revel β Original by kuvshinov-ilya. Ernest Mars β Original by dreamxxdream. Gregory Irving β Artist unknown.
Padma Majumdar β Original by MonoriRogue, edited by Baklava. Alexis Hunter β Original by Studio Feel., edited by Baklava. Rain le Blanc β Original by Eiri, edited by Baklava. Aaron Erikson β Original by Gohandesu Yo, edited by Baklava. Savannah Churchill β Artist unknown.
Shane Alkana β Original by PSlenDy, edited by January. Decker Gottman β Original by casanovakevin, edited by Baklava. Ethan Sonnino β Original by Pixiv Id 740932. Myla Dalbesio β Artist unknown. Eric Richardson β Original by Non204. Genevieve Harper β Artist unknown. Hector Rivers β Artist unknown. Callan Webb β Commissioned from meodwarf.
Rosa Schur β Original by Bev Johnson. Lina Zhang β Original by miura-n315. Fredric Francisco β Original by sandflake. Michael Kardos β Original by Kojoz. George Greten β Original by okiura. Clark Rosendahl β Artist unknown.
Christmas had expected to just run when the large clockwork charged at them, even when he knew without a doubt that he wouldn't escape. Then a large, purple hand had shorn away almost a third of the construct's body.
He had gasped, mouth wide open in a partial scream.
That was a mistake.
The smell hit him first in a wave of suffocating heat as blood and bodies poured out of the quadruped's torso. He wanted to double over and gag, thoughts flashing to the sewers and the dumpster again with disturbing alacrity, as if his mind had simply been looking for an excuse to dredge the memories up again. Disgust shifted instantly to horror when the initial outpouring of people both dead and alive towered over him, the stumbling creature's movements heaving more bloodied stragglers out of its torso cavity.
A stray arm knocked off his helmet. A body against his legs knocked him over.
And then he was being buried alive in a mix of squirming people and bleeding corpses. Coughing and hacking only made it worse when splashes of blood splattered into his mouth and he pushed frantically against the several bodies on top of him, whimpering in half-screams and sobbing pleas as he struggled to crawl out of the mess. The panic he had been fervently holding back collected into that single moment and burst into scrabbling and tears as he tried, and failed, to move away.
Warm and cold bodies alike pressed against his hands and he managed a weak scream when someone still alive grabbed at his arm, imploring him silently with unfocused eyes to help.
He pulled desperately at the bandages around his neck, letting the blood drift outwards as a shimmering white mist again because he didn't care at that point about conserving his energy or blood or anything. He just wanted to get out. Run. Hide. Curl up somewhere and hope the world passed him by.
Breaths came short and uneven. Rapid. Panicked. A small part of his mind recognized it as a bad thing to hyperventilate, but he didn't care because he wanted to leave. He barely realized he was crying by then, face contorted with terror as his healing mist rejuvenated several of the people nearby enough that their screams joined the keening sound in his ears. The hand gripping his forearm still held firm--firmer now as the middle-aged man slowly recovered--and Christmas couldn't pull away.
He was aware of sobbing, and thought it was the people around him at first. But the sounds heaved throughout his body and another ragged gasp exhaled proved the loudest cries were from him, not the healing survivors around.
In his distress, the healing mist had spread quickly, pulling more blood out of him than he realized. His vision blurred slightly and his thoughts seemed to flutter high above him, out of reach, out of mind.
His arms collapsed first, dropping him onto the cold body he had been trying to crawl over. The man he had healed was saying something, but he couldn't catch it and his mind was half elsewhere, unable to put together the reason to disperse the mist as he trembled and waited for everything to stop being terrible sounds and choking odors and the white noise that was his jumbled thoughts smashed apart by the unrelenting fear.
Once again, Ethan was playing second fiddle to the better powers. Shane had reprimanded him enough times about wanting the limelight, but it didn't change the envy when the showstopper abilities always seemed to favor everyone else. He liked being the hero. He liked being the guy people looked to and thought of as "the strongest of East's subnaturals."
These were things that bolstered his ego in ways no consolatory words could and he knew better than to pretend the achievement of saving others was enough to satisfy him.
He liked the glory for glory's sake.
It was childish, but there it was. Now he was left with detail work, after the new kids handily demolished what had taken his team a day and more to hem towards manageable amounts before they met their stalemate. Several frustrated shots of light scorched the dense metal of Factory's sphere as he and Genevieve approached the downed enemy. Also the work of the new kids. It nagged at his pride that without Shane their group had almost no meaningful stopping power in a decent timeframe. During simpler days when he had the luxury of being angry at insignificant things, Ethan would have raged at his online teammates if they had tried taking down the enemy team without a proper carry. Then his powers had appeared and he had gone with the flow under the impression that everything would settle soon enough and he'd be lauded as a hero once he had murdered enough monsters and obliterated enough enemy subnaturals.
He pretended to examine the remnants of the partially mechanized body in the sphere's center, jaw and a fist clenched.
"Is this him?" Genevieve's voice reminded him to save the self-pity for a different moment, when he could wallow in peace.
"Is what him?"
She pointed at the face on the ground.
Ethan didn't give it more than a passing glance.
"Guess so. You should send a picture back to the Institute. See if they have any records on him."
The young girl nodded, unfazed by a decapitated head whose face had fallen off. She adjusted her light headphones as one hand hunted through her coat and jeans for her military issued phone. It turned up in the inner pocket of her duffle coat, and a few quick snapshots of the face from various angles followed.
"...When do you think Shane will wake up?" she asked, watching the uploading bar tick slowly through the percentages while faint music played through her civilian phone's bluetooth connection with the headset.
"I don't know," Ethan answered, changing the conversation abruptly with a check on Myla. "Myla, everyone okay?"
A beat of silence followed and for a moment he thought the worst.
The opening buzz of a response quickly set those fears at ease.
"We're fine, but the other team is--there're enemy subnaturals on the map, Ethan, can you help?"
"They've got it covered. And me and Gen are pretty tired."
"I'm not that tired--" Genevieve's response ended at the glare Ethan leveled her, and she narrowed her eyes in response. "I'm not tired, Myla!" she shouted at the top of her lungs, opening the line on her phone as well just to make sure.
Silence followed again, and Ethan's frown at her soon turned into the smallest hint of bared teeth.
"We won't make it there in time, anyway," he protested. "And besides, if there're enemy subs around, we've gotta keep you guys safe, then. You're sitting ducks right now."
From Myla's end, an audible sigh. Her next transmission was subdued, and fatigue creeped at the edges of her voice.
"Yeah. ...Let's regroup. We shouldn't split up if the other team is taken down."
πΌπ§πππ¦ππ₯ππ π
Brent's shot found its mark in the gargoyle girl's left eye, the projectile puncturing at an angle and embedding deep in the mage's upper, sturdier jaw.
The scream that followed was broken into wet, uneven syllables as blood dripped from the girl's nose and pooled inside her mouth.
Callan's punches had already turned the hardened skin on the side of her head black and blue, but the bullet and its subsequent agony made her convulse violently below the superhuman Arbiter.
Her arm came up again in an attempt to throw Callan off, other hand pressed uselessly against the bleeding hole where her left eye had been.
Near the APC, Marcus's attack connected and the frost mage was sent sprawling to the ground, blood streaming down the side of his head where the crowbar had broken skin on impact. He blinked, disoriented by the attack, but still possessing enough sense of mind to raise the pistol in his hand and fire blindly in his attacker's general direction, one of the bullets catching Marcus in the upper left arm where ice crystals were starting to collect and condense.
Just then, Siena's appearance and pain radiation crippled the frost mage in the area and he spat out a string of curses as he clutched at his hands and arms, eyes scanning for the culprit. Finally given the chance to notice the latest arrivals, he shot again at both Emma and Siena, the magazine emptying within seconds, but the pain searing through his arms wiped any chance of a properly aimed shot and all the bullets went wide. Further away, the blonde haired girl yelped at the sudden pain in her arms, but gritted her teeth and bore it, raising a series of sharp spikes below Siena that shot upwards, throwing the girl off her feet and nicking her legs where the wishalloy didn't protect. But the worst of it glanced off the magical armor, much to the Aberration's anger. Another series of spikes lifted under Siena again, but movement from the APC caught the blonde girl's attention and she turned quickly to deal with it.
The area around the car was growing blisteringly cold now and Lawrence's prone form nearby looked nearly frozen, his lack of movement allowing the ice particles to gather that much faster on him.
It took the older man a while to recover from the fall after the levitation field disappeared, but as he clambered back to his feet, his resolve to finish what he had set out to do was unwavering. Dean was going to need cover in order to get everyone out of dodge. Aiming his pistol at the black haired aberration who had been blinded by Marcus's flare gun, he squeezed the trigger.
Dean immediately seized his opportunity to make a run for the driver side door, sparing Lawrence a token glance. Unluckiest bastard he'd ever met. Tearing open the door, he didn't bother closing it as he jumped in and eagerly turned the key that had been left in the ignition. The set up was clearly different than that of a regular car, but all he needed know was how to go. "Everyone hold on!" Hearing the engine roar, his foot sank into the gas pedal. For one terrifying moment, he could feel some of the wheels fighting to move against the ice that held them in place, but the powerful vehicle won out in the end, lurching forward and racing away to safety.
As sturdy as he was, Dennis Dumais couldn't bounce back like he used to. The shot tore through the girl's shoulder, but even if he'd hit his mark, he'd chosen the wrong target. The blonde young woman waved a hand towards him like one might swat away a fly before one large spike rose up in front of him, obscuring his view. A second spike jutted out from the existing one at an angle. Dennis's feet left the ground, but it was far from that feeling of weightlessness he'd experienced a moment ago. In fact, everything suddenly felt much heavier than usual.
His weapon hit the ground before he did as the spikes retracted. His eyelids felt the heaviest of all, but before everything faded to black, Dennis managed to glimpse the retreating bumper of the APC as his grandson sped away.
Pain, pain, and more pain finally drove the injured Aberration on the ground just mad enough that she couldn't care anymore.
Yellow light washed over the entire area for almost twenty meters around her, barely missing the car as it escaped. Everything in the field floated upwards save for her and she screamed into the concrete until her voice was hoarse.
βπ πππππ₯π π£π€
Several people tried to crawl out of the mess that spilled from inside the collector that Lily's group had left behind, but injuries compounded with the lack of room and air within the machine had left them too weak to move far. One blinked weakly after Kusari as the subnatural walked away, pulling two others with her after declaring the people nearby less worth the time than someone else.
Were he in a normal frame of mind, he would have thought the reaction appropriate. The world certainly hadn't been kind to subnaturals the last ten years and there were only the barest hints that social outlook was beginning to improve for them.
But he wasn't sitting cozy in his home at the moment. Nor was he calmly thinking through political conundrums behind his desk at city hall where an overturned plaque denoting his title as the town's mayor had, by now, been knocked into a corner during the initial rush to escape.
He only saw a subnatural caring for its own and in that delirious moment where the world's issues were too far out of mind, he could see that schism growing. It already had, by any estimation, but now it threatened to divide the world in two. The stopgap measures of the Institutes were the only sentinels against the growing dissatisfaction everyone could feel, but couldn't fix. The lines were being drawn and redrawn in the sand everywhere else and Mayor Tisdahl wasn't the only politician to realize what the inevitable outcome of it all could be.
Who started and propagated what wouldn't matter in a modern war against magic and by that point there would be little recourse for either side except total annihilation.
All the potential consequences seemed packaged neatly into the subnatural girl's receding back, and he hoped it was just a byproduct of the pain-addled thoughts that gave him such a bad feeling about it all.
As he wavered in and out of consciousness, his last waking thought was simply, They could have at least called for help.
Towards what remained of the initially sortied members of offensive support, Angel's attacks shattered the collector's legs, one missing its mark amd puncturing the metal near the collector's foot instead, but throwing it off balance enough that it tipped over anyway, crashing onto its side.
The large hatch near the front of its torso clattered open and deposited only an emulsion of clothing and human onto the street, the result of its body trying to rearrange its innards--humans included.
The stench was incredible and escaped the clockwork creature easily in the cold, evening air, blanketing the nearby mages with a nauseating wave of heat and human odors.
West of them, Ernie and Christmas were moving as quickly and carefully as possible towards Angel's location, the healer obediently tailing Ernie as they attempted to navigate around the worst of the crashing and thundering sounds near their location. They needed to reach Angel, but the shaking and thundering only seemed to follow them despite Ernie's attempts to put some distance between himself and the source of the noise.
Without warning, the collector's footsteps quickened and the sound of cement and glass shattering just a few buildings away was far too close for comfort.
If they had made any progress towards leaving the danger behind during the walk, it was rectified quickly when the machine turned down the street just ahead of them and twitched repeatedly, slamming the side of its body against a nearby wall before stumbling straight at the pair. Whatever remained of its original purpose seemed to flicker in and out of the spastically winking lights of its eyes, and the clockwork barreled at the two of them once it finally registered two living things in its path.
>>Everyone near the evac location is floating including Cal and gargoyle girl.
>>Everyone near Marcus/frost mage is also slowly freezing.
>>Lawrence's cuff is still constantly transmitting.
πππ π£πππ ππ£π
Enemy Type
Enemies Dead
Enemies Injured
Enemies Left
Canines
17
0
0
Spiders
13
0
0
Centipedes
3
0
0
Avians
7
0
0
Collectors
1
1
2
Winged Snake
1
Factory
1
Previous notes:
Three day timers (and then another two/three days for GMs to read moves and respond), but given that rate of posting the GMs will be much more lenient on players shafting responses and moves onto more available people to write. For particular cases, just ping the GMs on Discord/the forum and let them know so your character won't suffer anything too serious as a result.
Maps show destinations for each group with the exception of Evac (since the car is being driven by a soldier at the moment and location is technically under GM control for now).
A map is available for collaborative effort here. Please keep positions updated for other players to refer to. If you're unavailable, have a GM or another player make the changes. (I recommend just selecting Insert > Shape > A circle or a rectangle > Resize > Color it in and move it around.)
For those who wrote without specifying a map location (and only if your location is different from the set destinations), the GMs will set one for you.
Member
Jing
Arbiters 
Aberrations 
