redmarsshit | redshift: tdm #5

redshift: tdm #5

Redshift: Welcome to the v͖͕̺̲̘̱̜͎o̴̦̣̠̦̘̹͞i̯̖d̛̪̬͈̱̦̝͍̕.

▶ Click here to read what characters will experience when arriving in Anchor.

▶ All TDM threads can be considered game canon, and current players are welcome to either top-level on the TDM so prospective players can tag them, or use the prompts for logs or network posts on the communities. All threads on the TDM can be used for Activity Check.

a. don't be a sap.

Good morning, October 25th! Whether you're a confused new arrival or a current resident, you probably had some plans for today, right? Grab breakfast, visit a friend, pick some fruit, explore a new part of the massive city.

Well. Too bad. Because, as every single bot in the city will be telling you the moment you show your face, it's GOOP FESTIVAL DAY! What? You've never heard of it? Preposterous, everyone knows about the Goop Festival, it's one of the most anticipated holidays in Anchor! Haven't you been preparing for this for a week now?

The Goop Festival is a harvest celebration, in particular, a celebration of the sap-producing trees that grow wild in the Park, thick around the edges of the south side of the lake. The bots have been hard at work setting up the festival grounds in the shade of the trees in the balmy fall temperatures. There are spiles tapped into trees with buckets placed underneath that are already half-full of a thick, viscous, amber-colored sap. The bots have also set up troughs of shaved ice with long sticks nearby, with which they will demonstrate for excited residents (you are excited, right?) how to cool the sap in the ice and wrap it around the stick to make it a sort of taffy candy. That's not the only sweet surprise waiting, either.

A long table set up in the grass is loaded down with all sorts of delicious sap-related goodies, ranging from cupcakes with thick globs of sap-flavored frosting to sap-flavored jerky to sap sugar candies, and just about anything else you can imagine. There are a wide variety of offerings that would taste good coated, flavored, or glazed with the sap, which tastes sort of like a caramelized toffee. Another table is laid out that has row upon row of cups, each half-full of the sap, heated lightly to a thinner consistency and served similarly to hot chocolate - at least, if hot chocolate gave you a floaty, happy, hazy sort of feeling. Everything made with this sap does, actually, with the cups of pure sap having a stronger effect and items with less sap content having barely any effect at all.

Does this not sound like your cup of weird tree sap? Too bad. This is the GOOP FESTIVAL, and everything is shut down for this lovely paid vacation day. Spa? Locked down. Kitchens? Locked. Bar? Nope, totally shut down and the server bots are all down at the park. VR Gaming? Too bad, the computers are all shut down. Even roaming the halls and trying to stay out of the way won't help much...be prepared to be dragged down to the park to participate in this mandatory festival! Isn't it exciting?

b. familiar ground.

Every year in Anchor near the end of October, there's a very strange interaction between the protective dome over the city and seasonal radiation surges that happen in the wastelands. Some complicated combination of refraction and reflection means that for the last few days of the month, residents will experience some of the more benign effects of the red shift inside the city.

Did we say benign? Because while there may not be any dangerous radiation to melt your skin off, there are some mind-bending dangers. Characters experiencing the shift will find the world becomes distorted, warped, impossible to navigate; they are enveloped in auditory and visual hallucinations, and can become so disoriented that they can't even recognize people they've known for years. And characters will find that the citywide shift brings in slivers of other universes, little slices of places characters have never seen before...or places so familiar they make the heart beat hard with joy or fear.

And just like in the wastelands, the things that show up in these shifts are all too real. Characters may find themselves walking through a door into a scene straight from home, or from someone else's home. Whether it's a favorite place to share with a new friend, or the nightmare landscape you almost died in, complete with the monster that almost killed you, be careful. Everything you experience here is real, and if you die in the shift, you die for real.

Of course, the city has its own safety measures in place - residents experiencing the hallucinations and appearances of items and places from other worlds may find themselves locked down in the room they're in, trapped with the otherworldly effects of the shift.

c. the virus.

A few weeks ago, people in Anchor started getting a case of the sniffles. While some of the earliest cases might be clearing up, there are still a few people suffering, or people freshly infected by those who were sick earlier, including some of the new arrivals who may not even be feeling it yet.

Which may make the cause of some unexpected 'glitches' around the city a little unclear. Residents who are feeling the effects of the illness, or who are infected but not showing symptoms yet (or anymore) will find that their access to certain parts of the city are restricted. Suddenly, automatic doors aren't opening for them, as if they were ghosts, particularly when they try to access anything that may facilitate transmission of the virus. Suddenly, only some of the residents of the city will find they can't get into half of the MedBay, or the spa, the kitchens, the VR or games rooms, the bar...anywhere people gather or eat or sit close together.

Residents may put together that it's related to the illness some of them have been experiencing over the past few weeks, but it might take a while, since these safety and security measures are affecting people who are showing no symptoms yet. Be prepared for a few days of paranoia while seemingly perfectly healthy people are locked out of common areas. What does the computer know that residents don't? Are these people security risks? Is it a system glitch? What could be going on?

c. the network.

Need to get hold of someone, call for help, ask the city at large a question? Need to warn a friend not to leave their apartment unless they want to be forcibly press-ganged into the Goop Festival? Maybe you need to hold your sat phone up to whatever crazy thing you're seeing and send out a recording to double-check if your eyes are deceiving you and what you're looking at is real?

Whatever the reason, the network is going strong, so feel free to include a post to it in your top-levels.

Mod Note: The "familiar ground" prompt will be active between October 29th and October 31st; "the virus" prompt will be active until the next introductory mingle, which will be kicking off the second part of the illness plot.

Navigation.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Cole hasn't cried since the day he left Rhys. Spirits don't need tears, because they're not meant to have their own emotions and Cole gets by by not letting himself feel, only letting himself feel what others feel.

He can dimly feel the pressures of Ben's concern, slivers of pain and it makes him sit up a bit, blinking at Ben with bleary, red rimmed eyes. It's not pretty, nothing about Cole is pretty, but it's incredibly human.

"You, you do help. I'm sorry if you think you don't, but you do. I couldn't have gotten out without you."

If Ben hadn't been with him, Cole would have frozen. Perhaps lapsed, fallen back to the Ghost of the Spire and forgotten that this was real and not just his imaginings. Without Ben, he shouldn't have had the wherewithal to fight back and get them out.

He promptly falls forward into Ben's lap, hugging him around the waist and mooshing his cheek against his stomach, like he might be able to hide there.

Ben's heart breaks all over again when he sees Cole's upturned face, red-eyed and tear-streaked. It's a combination of an instinctual reaction to someone who is so vulnerable, and a reaction to the fact that this is Cole, someone Ben has come to care for a great deal.

Cole's words of gratitude, the certainty with which he says that he wouldn't have made it out without Ben, send a spike of fear through Ben, cold and paralyzing. What if Cole is right? He's strong, Ben knows that. Invulnerable in many ways that Ben himself is not. But he is fragile, too. What if Ben had left the goop festival (god that feels like it was a year ago now, how can it only have been earlier today?) and Cole had stayed, stepped through the door to the Pit on his own a little later? What if it had swallowed him up and Ben had never seen him again? If he'd just disappeared with no trace?

What if Ben had lost him?

It's an old wound, that that fear touches. So many years of being terrified for Klaus, of being convinced each morning that this was going to be the day that he lost him. There is little that scares Ben so deeply, so immediately and beyond words, as the thought of losing the people who matter to him. Cole is one of those people now.

His voice comes out choked and halting as he says:

"Then I'm- really really really glad - I was with you- when it- happened."

Ben is a little startled at Cole burying his face against his stomach, clinging to him like a frightened child trying to hide. But he is so awash in the belated terror that comes from the thought that he might have never seen Cole again that he is more than glad to be hugged tightly like that. He clutches Cole against him, one hand on the top of his pale-haired head, the other gripping his upper arm, just holding onto him. Reinforcing for himself that Cole is solid and real and alright, and he is solid and real and alright, and they made it out okay.

"I'm sorry- you had to see that horrible place again. I'm sorry... any of it happened. It shouldn't have happened. You- deserve never to be in a place like that again."

"Thank you for being willing to protect us, too." Cole whispers the words against Ben's stomach and they're not for Ben, even if he hears them. His gratitude extends to Them, who would've defended them if it had come down to it.

Cole works on curling himself tighter, around Ben's body as it happens, moving so his knees push up near Ben's hip, his body curled around him, tucked in and hiding and also protecting Ben's back with his own body to some degree. His fingers clutch with that surprising strength, but still so careful not to bruise.

"I'm sorry you had to see it. I'm not sorry you were with me."

He is used to it, by now; the little cues that tell him Cole is talking to 'Them', as he calls them, rather than him. It doesn't surprise him any longer.

Ben remains still, allowing Cole to move and reposition himself. He keeps one hand on Cole's head, resting there, pushing the pale strands back from his forehead for a moment before resettling. Bit by bit, his heart-rate is slowing down. The hugeness of what had just happened, of what they just went through, is settling in. Ben takes deep long breaths, in for a few seconds, then slowly out. He's had to learn over the years how to calm his body down. If he can do that, maybe he will help Cole to be able to do the same.

"Thank you for keeping me safe."

Deep breath in, deep breath out. They survived and they're together and everything is going to be alright. Ben tries to make himself really feel it. But panic that deep doesn't dispel quickly. So he just holds Cole while Cole curls around him and he breathes through the trembling and the echoing awful sick feeling of fear.

"Cole..."

Ben isn't sure how he can articulate what he wants to say. But he has to find some way to say it, now that he'd had that awful realization that losing Cole is a thing that could happen in the world. He takes another few long breaths. Tries:

"If anything bad happened to you..."

No, he isn't getting any further than that, apparently. He just hopes that despite his distress, Cole will be able to fill in the rest. Ben's concern for him, his certainty that if anything bad happened to Cole, it would hurt him quite intensely. All of that not-wanting-to-lose-someone wrapped up in a messy knot of emotions he doesn't have words for.

Cole's body isn't a mortal body. He doesn't do things that mortals do, like sleep, or eat, or sweat. He doesn't need to breathe to be, though he generally does because it's simply a reflexive memory.

But despite that, he is starting to relax again. And then Ben speaks and all his fears and hurts flood Cole's awareness, pulling him out of his own head.

He shuffles himself up to press his head to Ben's chest and then tuck himself under his chin. His hair isn't soft because he's permanently grimy with dust and whatever else is around the place, but he smells like here, like Anchor. "You would survive. It would hurt, a lot, and you'd grieve and They'd grieve with you, but you'd survive and one day, you'd think back on the good things like ice cream and reading to me and be able to smile without it hurting."

Ben knows that Cole is right. He's always right about things like this. He knows people, the way they hurt and heal and survive, and sometimes don't. There's no denial he can make that would be anything other than petulant and short-sighted.

(Ben had watched his family do all of that. Silent and unseen, he had been there to see the shock and horror turn to grief, turn to various forms of amending their memory of him, tailoring it to suit whatever narrative they needed. He'd seen it hurt less and less for them to talk about him. He'd seen them move on without him.)

Cole's rightness that Ben would make it through doesn't make the thought of losing Cole hurt any less.

"......yeah. But I would really rather not have to. So... if you can. Be careful with yourself, for my sake."

He pats Cole's hair, unbothered by the grime, just grateful his friend is here and safe and that things had not been any worse than they were. He doesn't want to let Cole go, to move from this spot, afraid the next doorway would lead to some fresh horror, that if he lets Cole out of his sight he'll be taken back to the Pit and left there, trapped, alone.

Cole hums a soft agreement. It wouldn't make it hurt less. It never does. The loss still hurts and usually time helps the soften the blow, but not always.

"I'll try to be careful. I don't know what careful really means, but I'll try." He doesn't know how he can be careful with himself, because he's never had to think about himself, not since he knew what he is.

He's also not moving. Not trying to move.

If Ben were still a ghost it's hard to say how long they might have stayed that way, on the floor of a random corridor, clinging to each other and unwilling move. Fortunately or not, Ben isn't a ghost any longer. Once his body has recovered enough from the panic, Ben remembers why he had gotten up to leave the goop festival in the first place. He was hungry. Is hungry.

Depending on how much Cole is paying attention, he may notice the way that it impacts Them, Ben's hunger. They notice it even before Ben, and it agitates Them a great deal. Causes pain - though it may not be immediately clear whether this distress is physical or something closer to emotional, or some equivalent thereof. What is clear is that They respond to it, even when Ben only has a vague inkling of some kind of physical unease.

At this point, who is to say whether Reginald discovered a peculiarity in Ben's powers - that the connection between Them and Ben was stronger and more unstable when Ben was hungry - and exploited that to his advantage while training Ben by denying him food when he deemed it necessary to make him cooperate... or whether there was no peculiarity to start with, and it was that repeated cycle of starving Ben into using his powers, and Ben's misery afterwards, that forged this bad association at all. The chicken and egg situation here is murky. What is clear is that They don't like it, any time Ben feels the beginnings of that sort of hollow ache in his stomach. It makes Them restless and wild and volatile.

Cole notices. Ben's hunger is a dim awareness, but Their agitation and stress is much worse.

His hand slides to press against Ben's stomach, close to Them as he can. "Shh, it's okay. Food's coming. You don't need to protect him, I promise. He's not going to be starved." His fingers pet slightly, soothing. "We need to feed you." That's directed to Ben instead. "Your hunger is triggering Them."

Ben blinks in surprise when Cole sets a hand against his stomach - that one is still taking a bit of getting used to. He has just a moment to wonder if Cole is going to communicate with Them, but then he doesn't have to wonder, because Cole's speaking aloud and even if the words aren't for him, Ben hears them. He only registers his own hunger right at that moment when Cole promises that food is coming. A cold flood of understanding moves through Ben when Cole promises Them that he won't be starved.

He is grateful for it, being known the way Cole knows him, without him needing to say anything. But it does catch him off guard sometimes.

Swallowing, Ben tenses, taking a minute to just... register the implications of what Cole's said. He had been speaking like this earlier, in the Pit - reinforcing that They want to keep him safe, that They feel what he feels, not just vice versa. For so many years Ben had believed that They were rageful, savage, thoughtless, and that all the things Reginald put him through were necessary to learn to keep Their nature in check. But what Cole's been implying - and keeps implying now - is that the opposite is true. That that rage was a response to Reginald, not just because They were impacted, but out of some kind of concern for Ben, as well.

That thought takes the wind out of him. He's more aware of that aching feeling in his belly, and it only amplifies the confusion and sadness and guilt that Ben feels. He nods absently, detaching himself gently from Cole and getting to his feet. He should have been more careful. He usually is so careful, to have a snack with him, to eat regularly. For a long time he'd thought of it as measures that were necessary to keep himself from being more influenced by these murderous predators inside him. But actually, had he just been keeping Them from remembering the times Reginald had made him go without meals, something that was apparently distressing to Them?

"Sorry."

He doesn't know who he's apologizing to - to Them or to Cole or to both. The guilt he's feeling is as strong as it is nebulous. He's really just sure all this is his fault somehow, that things are bad and he's made them that way, even if he hadn't meant to. Ben hunches into himself slightly, stomach growling, now, at this inopportune time. He shifts his weight from foot to foot, then asks Cole.

"Do you... know if we'll be able to get into the mess hall?"

Ben doesn't really want to go back to the goop festival, after all that. But if it's the only option for places to find food right now, it's better than nothing.

"You don't need to apologise. To me or Them," Cole promises softly. He lets Ben move away; even though he really doesn't want, Ben wants to put some distance between them for a bit. "What was done to you and Them by him isn't your fault. It's his. Not being miraculously able to recognise that what you had known your entire life was wrong with no other point of reference isn't a personal failing."

He hums and sways, then bends to pick up his hat and push it back on, casting his face into shadows again. "I don't know if you can, but I can. So I can get you food even if it tries to keep you out."

Ben nods to Cole's reassurance, but that guilt in his chest only untwists the slightest bit. It helps, hearing that it wasn't his fault. All Cole's soft reassurances that he couldn't have done different or better and that he should stop blaming himself for things out of his control - they are words he has craved and needed for a very long time. But the scar tissue on Ben's heart is thick in some places. Ben has a lot of practice scolding himself for not being perfect, hating himself for anything that went wrong, regardless of whether it was ever in his power to prevent it. He has very little practice at forgiving himself.

So even though he nods, even though he is grateful for Cole's words, he doesn't quite feel it, yet.

These things take time.

But he does reach up and, after a second's hesitation to let Cole move away if he wants to, tug at the brim of his hat just a little, to push it up and back so Ben can see his face just a little better. Ben likes Cole's face. He wants to be able to see it.

"Then let's go."

Cole doesn't expect to be able to undo the damage in a few words. It's taken Ben years to become this scarred and tender and it will take a long time to heal it to something better to live with, but Cole has time and he wants to help Ben heal.

Not just in his usual way, where he wants to help anyone who's suffering. He wants to help Ben.

Cole doesn't move away. He blinks as his hat is pushed up and then smiles slightly, inordinately pleased that someone wants to be able to see his face. "Okay."

His hand reaches out, just a little, silent, unobrtrusive invitation.

Ben sees the movement of Cole's hand and looks at it automatically, but doesn't understand for a second what he's doing. The hunger on top of the gamut of intense emotions Ben's been through in the last few hours combine so that there is just a moment of lag before he gets it.

But when he does, he looks up at Cole and manages a small, tired smile. Wordlessly, knowing Cole will feel his happiness and gratitude, he reaches out and takes Cole's hand, and the two of them walk off together like that.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

redshift: tdm #5

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject