Ad Visitatores

[animusmods]

Characters: anyone participating in the event
Setting: floor 56 and eventually other areas of the Tower
Format: either
Summary: Welcome to the Tower.
Warnings: horror/creepiness/potential danger/generally unfortunate things all possible
Notes: PLEASE GO HERE TO MAKE NEW POSTS.

A few minutes before anything happens, Ruana's voice rings out over the Tower's intercom--it manages to be louder than anything the residents happen to be doing. "Hey, everyone, there's something exciting going on at floor fifty-six! Go make sure they don't get themselves killed!"


You arrive, stepping or tumbling, in a surgical suite. It looks abandoned, with dust collecting on the table and floors. The lights flicker, and for a moment blood dripping off the table, puddling on the floor--but no, the lights are back, and surely that was your imagination. It's quiet, eerily so, but nothing hinders you, and you're free to spread out and explore. There are multiple rooms here, like in any hospital, and it's all a bit confusing. Occasionally the lights flicker, and it's a bit frightening as Things appear that shouldn't exist. Shadowy creatures stitched together and reaching for you, doctors brandishing phantom surgical tools, blood splattering the walls or floor or ceiling, how did it get there--but none are real, and all of them vanish when the lights return. Eventually you find the staircase, spiraling up and down into darkness. Approach it, though, and the thing glitters with a barrier that will push back any attempts at climbing the thing.

A girl, a teenager dressed in red and black, appears. And she does simply appear, inserting herself into the space, nearly pushing it aside to make room in it for where she is now. Her face beams with unconcealed excitement, and her words tumble out on top of themselves. "You can't go there! Yet, I mean. You'd all die!"

The girl steps onto the staircase, passing through the barrier as if it weren't there, and sits on the steps to address everyone. "Hi! I'm Ruana. You didn't show up the normal way, so the Tower can't support you yet. We got this one floor ready when I saw you were coming but, well, the Tower's kind've big, so getting all of them set up is taking a little longer than I thought." She smiles, sheepishly apologetic in a carefree sort of way. "I've got everyone coming here to visit you--or at least they know they can visit you--and I'll have someone bring food up for you. It'll be oatmeal, and oatmeal is super boring, but you have to eat it, okay? Then you can have whatever you want! The cafeteria's down on the first floor if you get hungry. We should have everything ready in a few hours. I've gotta go help with that, so you guys wait here.

"Don't worry, the monsters can't get to this floor as long as that barrier is up."

And then she's gone, blinking out of existence. The barrier will remain for three hours.

Comments

[boxingemperor]

"I've never heard you do it before...what did they do to you?"

Delicious confusion

[demifemme]

"Long story short, I got kneecapped by an asshole with a gun and his pet mage... how have you never heard me talking before? We talked on the COMP network and in person before..."

Re: Delicious confusion

[boxingemperor]

"...What's a COMP? The network's down, and you've never uttered a word around me. Usually your friend Pixie is the chatterbox. And it look like Ruana, uh..."

He rests his hand against his chest. Dude, why do you have breasts?

[demifemme]

Shura paused. You are supposed to know what a COMP is! Unless... "I think there's been a mix-up..."

[boxingemperor]

"...Where did you come from? And where is your collar?" Something is very wrong. "You shouldn't be alive without one..."

[demifemme]

"I... collar? I'm from Hinoto-Ri, formerly from Tokyo's Vortex World, and I think you might not be the Akihiko I know..."

[boxingemperor]

He should be surprised, but that's normal here. "There are different timelines in existence here. This is the Tower. The administrators of it 'rescue' people, and bring them here. Everyone not from this world needs one of these to survive...including the Demi-Fiend that I know."

And then he spots her revival bead necklace.

"...Where did you get that?"

[demifemme]

She looked down at it herself, raising a hand to touch it. "I don't know... I think I had it when I woke up here... Why would I need a collar to live?"

[boxingemperor]

"That's how it works here." And he looks mad at himself that he doesn't know more about it than that.

[demifemme]

"Then, I don't know how come I don't have one, but I feel okay so far..."

[boxingemperor]

"Maybe that's a new type of collar."

It's hard to think the administrators would work to change things that already serve them well, though they do spend of a lot of time building new floors. But if this is an experiment that doesn't work, Akihiko will only get angrier with them. To take so many in at once and use untested devices...

"It's good you're alive, then. This isn't normal for them..."

[demifemme]

"'Them'? Am I suppose to arrive dead? ... am I dead?"

[boxingemperor]

"Not dead." Akihiko heaves a sigh. "When you arrive here, you're usually in the room they assigned to you, lying on your bed in some weird white bodysuit with a collar around your neck. Usually you experience sleep paralysis, but it goes away." He swallows, absentmindedly touching his collar with yellow liquid flowing through it.